mistermack

Tested in air with a brick and a feather? That usually IS an obvious fact, in air. You're a bit careless with facts. But it took you 14 hours to assemble that pile of strawmen? And nowhere in that pile of verbiage did you actually quote the phrase you took exception to. Which was : (and I quote, since you wouldn't) "the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight." And you don't think that's obvious? Why do burglars operate at night? Fear of punishment. (FOP) Why do armed robbers wear masks? FOP. Why do muggers run away? FOP. Why do shoplifters hide what they stole? FOP. Why do prostitutes sell their bodies for sex, instead of just stealing what they want? FOP. Why do men not grab the asses of every skimpily clad girl? FOP. Why do I not drink and drive? FOP (amongst other reasons) The fundamental thing that you are getting wrong, is that because some people override their fear of punishment, and still commit crimes, that somehow means that FOP doesn't exist at all, in anyone. I'm saying it's obvious, bleedin obvious, that most people DO go straight, and FOP is the number one reason. Plenty of other reasons exist too, but that doesn't invalidate FOP as being number one.

It's usually a last resort for less serious crimes, so you are in effect selecting the worst and most persistent for prison. People who have not been turned off crime by the other options. Those people might not be reformed by prison, but at least prison lightens the load on victims, for a while. And some do eventually swear that this is "the last time" and eventually manage to avoid going back. Not from being rehabbed, but they just get sick of going in and out of prison. I'm sure they know perfectly well that they are a criminal. When you break into someone's house, and steal their cherished property, it's fairly self-evident that you're a criminal. Try explaining to victims that you shouldn't label the person who trashed their home, and left them feeling unsafe and violated, as a criminal. The victims have rights, and one of those rights should be that the criminal pays a price for what they put the victims through. I can't believe this. You're demanding studies for the bleedin obvious now? I can't imagine any reputable organisation would risk the embarrassment of taking part. Or spending money on it.

What's a bit odd, is that you would think that the same principle would apply in reverse, so if colour ran into a white, due to a 60 deg wash, then washing it again, on it's own at 60 degrees would wash the colour out, and leave it white again. That might remove some of the colour, but it doesn't get all of it, so it must be a bit more complicated than just temperature. Maybe some components of a fabric hold onto colour better than others, so the less "fast" parts let go in the coloured fabric, and the more "fast" parts in the white retain it.

I think it's a property of black pigments that it only takes a tiny amount in water to have a visible effect. I don't buy printer cartridges, I refill them using a syringe from a bottle of ink. When you're done, you can rinse yellow, red and blue fairly easily, but with black you have to fill the syringe, squirt it empty over and over again, before the water runs clear. Maybe it's because black pigment only has to block light, whereas coloured has to selectively absorb some colours and not others. So blocking or absorbing all light might be easier to achieve, so black dye is more effective. There's a lot of maybe's in there, it could be down to something else entirely.

I don't think it would be as simple as that. The formula would be ok for static conditions, but surely the pressures and turbulence of re-entry, and how they vary with time would hugely complicate the calculation. Also, it's not just the temperature reached, but the time it stays at the highest temperature, and how fast it rises and falls. Also, the cooling effect on the cold side, how that varies with pressure and altitude. It's more likely that you would need to use data from previous re-entries and build models and try to match it all up.

What utter rubbish. The words "unsourced conjecture and opinion" were from Swansont, not me, and I quoted them in reply, as I'm sure you're well aware. If you have to sink to that to try to make your point, it's pretty sad. I posted a graph, commented on the trends it did and didn't show, and yes, I didn't link it's wikipedia origin. People do that all the time on here. I provide plenty of links but missed that one. But I did provide the link in the very next post. If you can't comment on a graph that you've posted, what's the point??? The point of the post was the trends in the record. People were perfectly free to disagree, and point to errors of fact or logic. That's how discussion usually works. You call my comments unsupported, but they were directly about the graph shown, visible to all.

Would you kindly provide support for that claim?

It that were to happen, it might be comforting to know that you and any children you might have will have been dead for at least 500 years, or more likely 1,000 years or more. And of course, that's assuming that the climate keeps warming for that long. Since the human population is projected to top out and start falling by the end of this century, and renewables keep increasing, and fossil fuels are getting used up, there's virtually no chance of MMGW still being the talk of the town in 500 years time. Meanwhile in the real world, today's more pessimistic models are pushing up the forecast sea-level rise by the end of this century to between 10 and 15 inches. How quickly are Antarctica's glaciers melting? | World Economic Forum (weforum.org) They might even be in a nuclear winter in 500 years time. That's always an option in a desperate situation. Solve the population problem and AGW by pressing a few buttons. Nuclear winter - Wikipedia

So, so long as the facts and evidential support are safely stored inside your head, you are free to post without them? I suppose that's one of the benefits of moderating.

Rubbish. The rehab industry will shout it to the rooftops, but they ignore the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight. Since most crime goes undetected, it's not possible to assess the success of rehab. Many criminals learn from getting caught, and are more careful next time. The probation industry will claim them as successes, while they carry on offending but not getting caught. I envy and admire the US for their sentencing policy. Or I used to, but behind the scenes, a lot of the headline sentences are abandoned when the criminal " shows that they have reformed " and they end up doing four years of a nominal 20 year stretch. I think you would get the same results, or better, by getting rid of all the rehabilitation industry, and just kept people in for the sentence they deserved on the day. In this country, people know full well that if they get 8 years they will only do four. Criminals especially know how to play the system. The people I really feel sorry for, are innocent people who are found guilty. If you don't admit to something you didn't do, you will do the whole 8 years and more. THAT is criminal.

You seem to think your raw opinions are meaningful without facts and evidential support.

Sixty million years is a long long time, since the Tyrannosaurus walked the Earth. The ancestors of modern chickens were probably not closely related to it even then. And now, 66 million years later, the modern chicken is loads more distant. If you look at a more realistic project, to resurrect the Aurochs, (the ancestor of modern cattle) by breeding from existing cattle, you would think it would be a doddle in comparison. The last wild Aurochs only died out about 350 years ago, and they only began domestication of cattle from Aurochs about 10,000 years ago. A blink of an eye compared to 66 million years. But the various attempts to "breed back" the Aurochs have not succeeded. So trying to breed back to a typical dinosaur is a waste of time. Having said that, chickens are a type of dinosaur, just not the ones we first think of.

You seem to be confusing IPCC reports with science. Instead of responding to my post with any kind of logical point. I just posted the graph from wikipedia (as usual) and the rest of my post was easy enough to read and respond to, if you disagree with it. As for unsourced conjecture and opinion, I write my own posts. I would have thought that would be obvious by now. Sea level rise - Wikipedia If you think Wikipedia got it wrong, I'm sure you'll soon be writing your own pages.

It you rearranged that to a circle, it would have a radius of 6.7 miles.

If you look at the sea level rise over time, it's very hard to attribute any of it so far to CO2 levels. The current CO2 level rise was tiny, up until 1950, when the acceleration began. Given that there must be a time lag between CO2 rising and sea level rise, it's reasonable to infer that the graph up to 1970 is of natural rises, due to other causes. It's very very hard to look at the graph, and see any effect as yet, after 1970, from CO2 level. It appears so far that it's just continuing the previous trend. If there is an effect in the graph, it's very very tiny.

We are both. A typical ice age consists of glacials and interglacials, which add together to be the actual ice age. So although we are in a warm interglacial, we are still in an actual ice age. Hence the ice sheets at the poles and Greenland and mountain glaciers.

I think it might be more of a mental thing. I've noticed that the tiniest draught, nowhere near enough to affect my temperature, immediately makes me feel the cold, so changes in humidity might have a similar out-of-proportion effect. I use humidity to make my place more comfortable. The kitchen opens up to my tv room, and I just leave a huge pot on the gas ring simmering as low as it can go. If I don't do that, I find I need to turn the heat up a bit. That's at comfortable room temperature, of about 22 dec c on my digital wall clock. So for me, at that temp, raising humidity does make me feel warmer. In a cold room, judging by the study posted, it would probably have little or no effect, and just cause condensation.

They certainly do act. If your egg had had no genes, it would have been flushed years ago. If you take the example of Neanderthals, the species is extinct, but the genes live on in modern humans. They don't necessarily benefit our species, in fact some modern genetic problems are blamed on Neanderthal genes. But they live on. I read somewhere that you could assemble the entire Neanderthal Genome, from the current human population. I don't know if it's true, but billions of people carry the genes.

What he doesn't mention is that infant mortality is falling much faster than the birth rate, and people are living longer. That's why the population level is still rising.

I always thought that a humid atmosphere feels warmer because perspiration evaporates a bit slower.

You could say the same about a virus. They act in a selfish way, even though they are mindless, and don't have an independent existence. The term "selfish" is more of a marketing ploy. Genes have no intentions, but they act in a way that a selfish one would act. Like the way the eye looks designed, but isn't.

On my pc, the "map" view is always oriented N/S in line with the side uprights of the monitor, and obviously E/W to the top and bottom rails. But if I change the view to street view, you can spin it around, and if you zoom out of street view, it stays spun. I can re-normalise it by going back to map view which is always N/S straight up/down.

I would rather go by what Dawkins said. It's genes that count. (selfish genes)

It's gradually going that way. In the field of work, you can be sacked for discrimination, or sued for sexual discrimination, for constructive dismissal etc. in this country, if you employed a he who demanded to be treated as a she. What do you do as an employer, if you have men's and women's toilets, and some man wants to use the women's, against the wishes of the women employees ? These cases can involve big money, whoever ends up winning. In any case, you asked for examples, I gave some. I'm not too interested in the finer points. Well, if nobody is inheriting anything, you wouldn't be disadvantaged. I would use the money to level up education quality for all, and free healthcare, and keep the threshold where you start paying income tax as high as possible. So you might miss out on a lump sum, but you could keep more of your wages from day one.

Well my initial comment was about what could be regarded as "centrist" in rights. I didn't claim that centrist was my own stance in everything. But LGBTQ turns up a lot of conflicts. Does some man's demand to be referred to as a woman interfere with my right to free speech? Does someone's determination to be offended interfere with my right to free speech? Do men demanding to use the ladies toilets interfere with women's rights to privacy and a safe space? There's arguments on both sides. The ones I feel most sorry for, are straight men who look a bit feminine, and straight women who look a bit male. In the old days, they would never get asked if they were a man or woman.