gcol

chicken+chicken=chicks. The chicken was a hen and it crossed the road to get the cock(erel), my little chicadees.

Blind can't see 'em, Deaf can't hear 'em, Dumb can't shout to warn, Halt and lame can't move fast enough. And that, folks is just the drivers. When an afflicted driver meets a kindred pedestrian, don't even waste time calling the ambulance. The ghost of Woody Guthrie is prompting me to get out my ol' guitar and write a folksy protest song. How about 'them mean old leccy car blues'.

In an ideal world, we should all have the right to chose the time and possibly method of our own demise. It is as much an individual right as any other conferred under the guise of human rights and democratic choice. In the real world, it would be open to so much abuse by criminals and the generally unscrupulous as to be unworkable. It would create another legal gravytrain and place an excessive burden on the already beleagured forces of law and order. All just in my opinion, of course.

Drat, I knew that but was keeping it in reserve as a last-ditch clincher!

I think you are right. It was a long long time ago. "I am" I think I remember is "sum", as in sum, es, est, sumus, estis, and sunt. But again from long ago memory, "ergo" means therefore. Is there a latin scholar in the house? Otherwise I claim a draw.

Ego, of course simply means "I am" in Latin. I vehemently object to original words with simple uncomplicated meanings being highjacked for purposes they were never intended for by people who are unimaginative enough to coin their own. When used by Freud and Jung, the word was lengthily qualified. When taken out of their context, it only means "I am". So without "ego" none of us would be the person we are. It is an essential part of being a human. Nothing complicated there, surely. you can all complicate it if you want to play word games, but be honest enough to state your own prejudices when doing so.

A recent re-examination of road casualty figures in the U.K. has shown cycling to be akin to a death-wish, my excuse for giving it up. But when I did it, my backside got so hot and sweaty I wondered if a salt water cell built into the saddle might might make my discomfort somewhat productive. Note to YT: Yes, this is meant as a joke (you know what I mean).

DaK; Having just recovered from the shock of someone actually responding to one of my posts, I have to ask who or what is akira; some sort of japanese anime? If there is a risk of depleting ozone , frazzling birds, accelerating global warming, etc, then this project is a dead duck. I suspect even the pentagon would be wary of provoking the combined outrage of those powerful lobby groups. Definitely worse than provoking Islam. Loads of laughs.

So how do they get the collected power back to earth? Concentrated "sunbeams" perhaps? Why, when an idea such as this is floated by the Pentagon, do I automatically suspect another Starwars weapon. A big steerable parabolic mirror is probably cheaper than a laser. If it ever got knocked off course, I hope an American city is the first to be terminally suntanned and crispy-baked. But never fear, James Bond would soon knock it out.

That seems sensible from a pragmatic viewpoint. Pragmatism is always important for corporate risk assessment. As for what constitutes "insulting and degrading" students, we do not not all wear our beliefs like hearts on our sleeves. To cater within a teaching environment for the whims of every tender bleeding heart would surely render most subjects except perhaps mathematics as unteachable because of all the belief and faith beartraps. A smart lawyer could resonably come up with a suitable form of words to be signed by students and faculty as a legal disclaimer. Something like "Enter here at your own risk. Beware, danger of disagreement and exposure to contrary beliefs and opinions. You have been warned! If you do not wish to participate under these conditions, leave now."

My wife had carpal and tarsal (ankle) surgery many years ago. She reports absolute complete success. Having wrists and ankles done made her a minor medical curiousity at the time. However, several friends and acquaintances have had wrists done, and say they have residual discomfort of various degrees. It seems there is no guarantee of complete success. It is possible for the procedure to be repeated, but I think only once more. A combination of bad luck and the skill of the surgeon perhaps. She is not aware of any post-operative therapy or medication to alleviate continuing discomfort. My wife had carpal and tarsal (ankle) surgery many years ago. She reports absolute complete success. Having wrists and ankles done made her a minor medical curiousity at the time. However, several friends and acquaintances have had wrists done, and say they have residual discomfort of various degrees. It seems there is no guarantee of complete success. It is possible for the procedure to be repeated, but I think only once more. A combination of bad luck and the skill of the surgeon perhaps. She is not aware of any post-operative therapy or medication to alleviate continuing discomfort. I am afraid I have no anecdotal words of comfort, but a second operation might be possible.

Well said, Bettina. I would rather one fool gets their arse kicked for being provocatively stupid than one innocent person is killed or maimed by a real device. Do I smell the nascence of a new pressure group called perhaps "stupid rights", demanding the constitutional right to be stupid without fear of prosecution. Idiots of the world unite, you have nothing to lose. I guess it could happen, but only in America. There are a lot of potential members.

Do you mean separating the flemmings and the walloons? It is not really a big deal to me. Living in England, we have enough trouble with the scots, welsh and Irish nationalists/separationists. The Spanish have their Basque separatists too. the flemmings and walloons have different languages, and the french speakers seem to identify with france. On a lighter note, the Dutch have always made jokes about the Belgians. If Belgium ceases to exist, the dutch will have to pick on someone else. That will confuse them. Was not belgium a rather artificial cobbling together not so long ago anyway? Perhaps it is time to un-cobble it. If the bureaucratic leviathan of the euro-state has its way we will all lose our rather inconvenient national identities anyway. Perhaps belgium, as good little euro-boys will set an example to euro-sceptics like me.

It would be informative to compare that with other countries, but I guess the data is either not easily available, or is in a format that makes comparisons difficult.

. I presume your use of the phrase "most things" Is your get-out for squaring the circle of things theological against things scientific? A lot of semantic twisting and turning required. Your verbal gymnastics indicate enviable suppleness

Thanks very much. "but it is still a belief in something which you cannot prove." But at least it is based on hard factual evidence. "It is even a belief in something for which you have no evidence (since past events only become evidence on acceptance of the thing you are trying to prove). Codswallop. If that is really true, the logic of the entire scientific method goes out of the window. You seem to be suggesting that nothing that has happened in the past has any bearing on what may happen in the future. So no cause and effect then? Hmmm....interesting.

I am not convinced that many (all?) of the recent examples are really faith. I personally prefer to call them episodes of conditioned reflex. Everyday survival strategies. If a certain cause and effect happens often enough and regularly enough, we are conditioned to expect the same chain of events to happen in the future. It would not be a sensible survival strategy to work out the sequence of cause and effect from first principles before taking any action whatsoever. Pray to your faith first if you must, but your reflexes will get you out of the muck far quicker.

Food for thought indeed. Does that mean I can no longer call myself an agnostic? But then as I still have doubts about Big Bang creationism, all may not be lost.

Would it mean we are all compelled to have sex on the same day? Would that mean another national holiday? Can I bring a sicknote? I might prefer to go fishing instead.

It is asked whether alternative medicines and treatment is ethical. Ethics are a system of rules of conduct or duty. I now ask by which set of ethical rules are you judging alternative medicine? The medical industry at large is hardly likely to espouse a set of regulatory rules dressed up as ethics which provides a level playing field for a competing system. The real question is whether any alternative system is helpful, beneficial and safe compared with an establishment system. It can be argued that neither system is completely safe and foolproof. One can merely discuss their relative merits. I do not think ethics, in its broad meaning, really come into it.

There seems to be a measure of international support, and if it is so reasonable and enlightened, surely even the U.S. would sign up and ratify, as they did with Kyoto? (not).

Sounds like a good campaign slogan, but for which party? I think it has been tried before, it was called revolution. Aux armes, citoyens!

Found here, YT's original updated http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=seven+scientific+ethics&meta=

- A lot of weapons research scientists out of work, especially when obeyed together with: Scientists will obey, of course, as Christians obey the ten commandments.