mistermack

If there were 500 red ones, and 499 green ones, with one yellow, I wouldn't call it a rainbow selection.

It's impressive, but at £150 it's more than ten times what I spent on my bike. (police auction buy) The difference between padlocks and D locks and U locks looks fuzzy, I suppose they are all padlocks, and the difference is marketing names.

I just looked at the rock of Gibraltar on the web, and it's more interesting than it looks. I like the clouds that hit the rock, and are forced upwards like in a chimney. I actually have found that in one other place, a mountain on Achill Island in the west of Ireland. It's a similar cliff, but nearly 1,000 ft higher, and when I reached the top (from the easy side) I was amazed to see clouds shooting up vertically into the air, right in front of me. But another interesting thing about the rock is that it's composed of ordinary-looking sedimentary layers, but they are upside down, with the youngest rocks below the older ones. It must have had some pretty vigorous folding in it's history. Clouds covering the walls of Gibraltar Rock - Rock of Gibraltar - Wikipedia

Binary, in this context, is not the same as binary in mathematics. It merely describes the status-quo, where the vast majority of humans are one sex or the other. To concentrate on such a tiny number of exceptions proves that you've got no substantive argument, and are reduced to nitpicking again. Gender on the other hand is wide open, as I've stated plenty of times.

Ha ha, well spotted ! I wonder if that was a slip, or tongue-in-cheek ?

There must be some pretty creative defining going on, to try to portray the sex characteristics of the human race as anything other than binary, with an absolutely tiny minority of others. But if you have a motive for creative defining, you will find a way, and that's what I believe is happening. Otherwise, you wouldn't get such a divergence of numbers. It seems impossible to find the criteria that people are using to define intersex, to achieve these higher numbers. I've looked at the various genetic conditions that differ from XX and XY, and the numbers are absolutely tiny. But of course, I could call all homosexual tendencies an intersex trait, and arrive at a hugely inflated incidence of "intersex". It's wide open for some creative defining.

Some pretty creative reporting by MSN on this, but it's an interesting snippet about what the Mars explorer cameras are finding : Scientists are claiming an alien spaceship crashed straight into Mars (msn.com) These bizarre spiky Mars rocks likely formed by erosion and ancient fractures | Space I'm thinking that the second picture looks like gas from below, or water from above, created holes which got silted up and hardened, and later exposed by the wind erosion. ( just me speculating ) You wouldn't see it on Earth because the air is denser and gravity is higher, which would erode it more, and cause it to collapse.

Well, I pointed out to you that you are claiming a subset that's bigger than its superset but you ignored that for some reason. Is that a normal, or possible state of affairs?

The thing that really surprised me in the youtube video was the small size of the tools that you need. Bolt croppers I was aware of, but they are a bit of a giveaway due to size, and angle grinders make a lot of noise and sparks. But a couple of stout spanners, quick twist, and the lock's open is impressive, or disturbing, depending on how you look at it. Maybe there's an opening for an enterprising person, to start an assessment site for security devices in general, so that people can just visit and see how well their prospective purchase actually stands up. I did know that the cheap Chinese cast iron padlocks are pretty much worthless, you can just hit them with a hammer and they shatter, but I wasn't aware how easy it was to break the clasps of the (slightly) more expensive ones. I've generally put my faith in D locks, when it's convenient to carry one. They would take more than a couple of spanners to spring open, due to their size. It's the combination of small tools, and quiet and quick operation, that surprised me about breaking the padlocks.

Really ?? In the same paragraph it's stated " the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018%". Your maths don't add up. In any case, these tiny percentages of exceptions don't constitute a "rainbow". That's what's silly.

This youtube video is a real eye-opener. After watching it, you won't be anywhere near as confident in your bike or shed lock. It's made me determined to pay a lot more next time I buy a lock. Has anyone got any methods that they consider failsafe?

Dawkins put it quite explicitly. It's a question of semantics. While the vast majority of people on the planet knows what they mean by woman and female, the "woke" brigade are trying to change that, by repetition. Words can be changed by campaigns and repetition. Gay used to mean light-hearted and brightly coloured. But right now, woman, and female, are used by most people to describe people born with XX chromosome configuration. People might not be up with knowledge of genetics, but when they say woman, or female, those are the people that they mean. The huge majority, for whom genetic sex is not ambiguous. Wikipedia : Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:4500–1:2000 (0.02%–0.05%). To extrapolate from that that human sex is some sort of a rainbow is silly. Yes, sexuality is a rainbow, no doubt about it. But at the moment, gay men are considered men. Even though they are attracted to other men, which I would class as a hugely intersex trait. But I predict that it won't be long before that changes. Because words are pliable. What's not pliable, is the occurrence of the sex chromosomes. So why not abandon the words, male and female, men and women, and just refer to people as XXs and XYs? Plus the rare variations. That would probably get shortened to Xs and Ys very quickly. I can live with that.

If sex is not binary, then it makes sense to abolish women's sport, and just have one open category. How can you have a women's category, when there are no men or women, just a rainbow of humans. Then, people with XX chromosomes could start their own competitions, exclusive to XXs.

I don't think it's quite like that. As I understand it, objects with rest mass DON'T approach the speed of light. There isn't a mechanism for accelerating a massive object to that sort of speed. But theoretically, if there WAS such a mechanism, it would take infinite energy to do it. It's a thought experiment that can't happen in reality.

Exactly. I heard that red is now self-identifying as indigo. And yellow has got the blues. 😪

I was in Tesco's yesterday. I asked and assistant where the canned peaches were. She said, "I'll see" and smiled and walked off. I stood there waiting for ages, but she didn't come back. So I eventually asked another assistant, and HE smiled and said "I'll see" and walked off. Never came back either. That's me finished with Tesco's. I eventually found the peaches, they were in the very next aisle.

If I had one, you'd be very welcome.

That's a carefully worded nothingness. Let's see the definition and what's included in "intersex trait".

C. "Go ahead, take the gold medal for weightlifting. And sprinting. And swimming. And . . . . . . . etc. Who wanted womens sport anyway?

What 1-2% ? Who are they and where did the numbers come from? And what do you mean by "works" ?

Infinity seems to be a murky concept. There are an infinity of frames, but is EVERY frame equally real? If a photon travels at c in a particular direction, is a frame going in the same direction at 2c real? Would time run backwards in such a frame? Or is any frame at c or over not real? Similarly, is a frame that moves at more than c relative to me equally real? ( I don't know the answer )

I'll take that as a no, then. As far as I'm concerned, a "woman" is an adult human of the female sex. Other people seem to be arguing that a woman is an adult human of the female gender. I don't agree with that, because it means I can change from man to woman, just by self-identifying as a woman. That doesn't match the reality that I observe. I have one friend who had gender reassignment surgery, and the rest of the treatment. What was the purpose of all of those drastic steps? To enable him to present as a woman. What steps were taken to do that? They were surgery on the genitalia and various hormone treatment, all designed to match the traits that a 'typical woman' is born with. So transgender women themselves have a very clear idea of what constitutes a "woman" and they go to pretty extreme lengths to match it. The main bone of contention is whether the resulting individual IS a woman, or is more LIKE a woman. Just as Richard Dawkins said, it's a question of semantics. That's why I asked you what you mean by "woman".

Like this ? India Hills Community Center Displays Sign with Countless Funny Puns (mymodernmet.com) I saw it online, but the Indian Hills community centre ad gave it away.

You define what you mean by man and woman, and I'll define what makes you that.