mistermack

I've already covered that point. You seem incapable of reading or comprehending, even when it's big, bold and blue. If you read my post above, you would see that the vast majority (68.4%) of ethnic Ukrainians living in Crimea thought that the referendum result reflected the will of the people of Crimea, and only 14.5% thought it didn't. But you, sat on your arse, looking at your screen, think you somehow know better than the ethnic ukrainian people living through it. If anyone needs waking up, it's you.

Don't worry. It's fine when you say it. I said the same and it got moved to trash with a nasty made up title added. It's not what you say, it's who says it on this site.

You can have too much democracy. You could have a public vote to decide every issue. It would be dangerous and poor performing, because the public just haven't got the time, or intelligence, to research and make the wisest decisions. In the UK, we elect members of Parliament. Hopefully, they have a bit more time and intelligence than the average voter, so the final decisions are more considered and wise. And the members of Parliament elect a leader, hopefully someone with a bit more about them than the average MP. And the leader picks a team to govern, hopefully the cream of the crop, and they get huge help from the civil service. All in all, a lot better and safer than full democracy on every issue.

The government didn't fall in this case. The PM resigned, and the party has the right to choose a new leader. The government only falls when it can't govern, that didn't happen here. In other countries, governments are falling all the time, and elections are constantly being held. That's a case of too much democracy, every system is a compromise. In this country, you only vote for your MP, not a government, or PM, although you're free to take that into account. Your MP then does the rest, on your behalf. It works ok, of sorts. It's a fairly stable system.

They did, and it's impressive. But you can do a lot with slave labour in every link of the supply chain. And of course, it's always downhill, no pumping involved as far as I know. There were matching impressive waterworks in the Andes, by the Incas I think (from memory) and of course they had the advantage of melting glaciers at very high altitudes, so they always had a decent fall to work with. On the OP idea, I would think that one of the most suitable spots to do it would be from the upper Mississippi and Missouri to the drier parts of Kansas and Oklahoma. If it's not economic there, then it's probably not economical anywhere else. The land is flat but the gradient is uphill for a long way.

Should've got rid of them years ago. A thousand years ago, a monarchy made sense. But today, it's just ridiculous.

That holds no surprises. It's a speculative hypothesis by a gastro-intestinal surgeon, not an evolutionist. The comment at the bottom, by professor Holloway, physical anthropologist with Columbia University who has specialised in the evolution of brains, puts it in it's rightful place. "To suggest that the brain is constrained by chewing muscles is just rubbish," asserts Ralph Holloway, a physical anthropologist at Columbia University."

I've never heard that. Do you have a link? I've always read that the crest reflects the diet. A pronounced saggital crest goes with enlarged grinding molars and thick enamel. It enables forceful grinding of lower quality food. I've never read anywhere of a link to brain size. In fact, the robust australopithicenes had enlarged brains, just like their more gracile cousins. In modern apes, the gorilla has a much more pronounced crest than chimps, and it reflects the different diets of the two, and not any pronounced difference in intelligence.

What's the point of philosophy? Well, it's something we all do, to examine and possibly predict ramifications of what we are observing. We do it like breathing, people do it all the time. What's the point of philosophers? Not a lot. Anyone can do it and everyone does it. But I can't think of a single question that "philosophers" have solved. They seem to spend most of their time arguing over the meaning of various words.

You said yesterday : Well firstly, the pandemic IS behind us. Covid is still around, but not as at pandemic levels. You don't have to wait till the last covid case ends to say that. So wrong reasoning, he's not lying. Secondly, here is the latest figures download for deaths. ( They have probably fallen further since the 29th ) The chances are, given the trend, that they're bumping along in ones and twos now. So yes, wrong facts. It's probably killing one or two a day now, not 100.

Your facts and reasoning are both faulty. Firstly, deaths in England are down to thirty a day, and falling rapidly, and without an uptick will be bottoming out around zero in about a week. (although an uptick is always possible) Secondly, nobody is calling road accidents a pandemic. Yes, road accidents are not behind us, but they are not at pandemic levels. Similarly, there are still some covid deaths nationwide, but they are no longer growing at pandemic levels. It's mostly mopping up the unvaccinated elderlies now. It is a bit optimistic to say that it's behind us but I wouldn't say that he's lying.

Well big mistake. I posted from memory that the result was 98% . It was actually 97%. Sitting on your butt in the USA, you pronounced “returns that go into the upper 90s suggest manipulation and intimidation. 538, at the time, had cited polls that found 41% of Crimeans wanting annexation. Hmm. “ I don’t know where you fish up such rubbish from, or why. Wikipedia states : “Gallup conducted an immediate post-referendum survey of Ukraine and Crimea and published their results in April 2014. Gallup reported that, among the population of Crimea, 93.6% of ethnic Russians and 68.4% of ethnic Ukrainians believed the referendum result accurately represents the will of the Crimean people. Only 1.7% of ethnic Russians and 14.5% of ethnic Ukrainians living in Crimea thought that the referendum results didn't accurately reflect the views of the Crimean people.[37]” Your posts seem to be a blend of selective rubbish and pure invention. It’s not hard to find out the facts, but when you don’t like them you seem determined to change and insert your own.

One of the main factors in the variety of frog calls is species identification. A frog has a tiny brain, and they often mate at night, so they don't just need to find each other, they need to make sure that they are mating with their own species. The calls are the main way they do that in the dark. If you are a frog, and mate with another species, you are wasting your chance to do what you were born for, to continue your line. And in the dark, without the calls, one frog looks much like another. If the calls of two species are too similar to each other, it's likely that both species will suffer lower mating success, so there is constant evolutionary pressure for the calls to be different. And the more different, the better.

Two youtube absolute gems. One for it's dancing, the other for the playing :

You really do just see what you want to see, don't you? Not long ago, you were declaring a "landslide" for the pro-west faction, after the Ukrainian coup. You found that trustworthy. But choose to ignore the vote in Crimea of 98% for union with Russia as "no trustworthy polling" even though the western media hardly questioned it's accuracy at the time. Crimea flipped bloodlessly in a few hours, they needed no encouragement, there was no resistance to the pro-russian takeover. Very different to the violent resistance in the Donbas region, even though the media agree there is a pro-russian majority there. That tells ME that the 98% support figure was almost certainly genuine for Crimea.

That's just your opinion, you seem to think you know what Putin is thinking. I think you overestimate your mind-reading powers. Russia invaded Georgia when Russian speaking Georgians were under attack. He could have just rolled on right through to the capital, but didn't, and merely protected the areas under threat. He took back Crimea, partly because it should never have stayed with Ukraine, which it never was historically, and because the population was hugely Russian, and because Ukraine were clearly not keeping to the independence deal of neutrality, which would threaten his Black Sea fleet. It's all been pretty reasoned, as far as I can see. A vicious thug would have just flattened Kiev. He has the weaponry to do it. What would Stalin have done?

That's a clear hijack attempt. Start your own rape thread if you want to debate rape.

There is already performance related pay. If you can perform as a brain surgeon, you get paid better than those who perform as bin men. It's called a jobs market. If a bin man can perform as a surgeon, he's wasting his time as a bin man and would be better off changing his job. And if a surgeon can only perform as a bin man, it's better for all if he leaves.

You've totally missed the point as usual. In playground terms, he announced to everyone that he was wanting to join an opposing bully gang, who had already said that they wouldn't intervene to help if he got duffed up. Well surprise surprise !! The "school bulley" even gave him the chance to change his stance, but he 'wisely' said no !!

If you think about Zelenskyy's thinking, when he turned down the option to avoid invasion by comitting his country not to join NATO, it's frankly ludicrous, and it reveals just what sort of a man he is. Firstly, he couldn't possibly have thought that it was best for Ukraine. How could anybody possibly think that? To be invaded by a much bigger power has to be the worst option for the country. Secondly, he had the perfect excuse, to accede without losing face. Olaf Scholz visited him personally and asked him (to put it mildly) to abandon the goal of NATO membership to avoid the invasion. While Scholz had his own german reasons for being keen to avoid the invasion, it was still a golden oportunity to pass the buck, save face, and do the non-NATO deal. But Zelenskyy still said no. Maybe he was being conned by NATO, with vague promises of significant help. An invasion is a good outcome for NATO, it justifies the existence of the organisation. A friendly Russia would spark questions of whether we need NATO at all, so there are a lot of top jobs that are safer now as a result. In the end, I think Zelenskyy was motivated by the macho culture that pervades eastern Europe. He couldn't face being seen as giving way, even though he knew it would cost many thousands of lives. And Putin is probably motivated in the same way. He can't face the domestic humiliation of Ukraine joining an enemy of Russia on his watch. He would have preferred a deal, but had to be prepared to back up his threat. To threaten, and then do nothing when rebuffed, would have been the biggest humiliation of all. So it's all down to egoes. Firstly NATO's, then Putins, and then Zelenskyy's. But NATO set the ball rolling.

I would say the chances of that happening are virtually nil. Insects tend to specialise. Fruit fly maggots eat vegetable material. Other kinds of fly maggots eat dead animal material. They are very different. And even those don't eat living flesh. Maggots will colonise an infection, and eat the dead flesh. Sometimes that helps a victim survive an infection, by removing the infected material. Fly maggots that eat healthy flesh are pretty rare, and these fruit fly maggots are nothing like those. There is a big fly called the warble fly that lays eggs on cattle, and the maggots go under the skin and eat flesh. But they are a big fly, and very rare now, and nothing like the tiny fruit flies.

I doubt it. What could have spawned a debate? Anyway, Aristophanes transcribed the sound of frogs debating in ancient Greek as "brekekekèx-koàx-koáx".

The reason that people expect frogs to go "ribbit" is to do with Hollywood films. All the frogs go "ribbit" in Hollywood films, because the films are all shot in the same place, and in that locality, the frogs go "ribbit". Elsewhere, they make all sorts of different noises, but most people don't know that. I expect they just dub the frog noises on in the movies anyway, maybe they use the same track for all the films.

In my experience, these are the maggots of tiny flies. I believe they reside in the soil in plant pots, but if there are vegetables going off, they will very quickly multiply, sometimes you will get a cloud of them in as little as a day. They especially like the sink area, anywhere they can get a drink, and banana skins, or over-ripe bananas they go mad for. If you don't have plant pots, you don't get them. That's what I've found anyway.

This is slow and wistful to start, but you need to hear it all the way to the end, which is amazing playing.