mistermack

No, I'm not French. If you have a brain, you weigh up the odds. Especially when the lives of the innocents depend on you. Only the brainless would fight no matter what. As I posted earlier, MacArthur ran for his life, when he saw the Japanese coming in the Philippines. Shouting "I will return" once he was safe. That's what heroes do.

Would that have been worse ? It's the Ukrainian way. Wikipedia has a whole section on Ukrainian corruption : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine

I'm replying to previous posts. Nobody has stuck to the OP question in this thread. The US response? Do very little, and make money doing it. Like always. The US waited years in WW1 to see which way the wind was blowing. And were content to watch for years as the REAL bully, Hitler, plough through country after country, murdering as he went, and they only took action when the Japanese bombed them, and Hitler declared war on them. So the answer to the OP should be obvious.

But some steps are more dangerous than others. Like off a cliff, or onto a live subway rail. Not hitting people is less dangerous than hitting people. The world is regulated mostly by odds, not certainties.

Words which mean nothing, when push comes to shove. We defended ourselves against Iraq's weapons of mass destriction. The words meant nothing. They were there to soothe the gullible. NATO bombed Serbia. Did Serbia attack a NATO member? (not that I have a problem with that) The principle of defence is there for public consumption, it doesn't mean a damn thing in the real world. Much like the Allies did.

This is a horrible tragic incident. One of many. But who would have thought that innocent people could be injured or killed in a war? It hardly seems possible. I’m sure if Zelensky had known that a couple of months ago, he would have done some sort of deal to give up on NATO membership in the future, instead of opting for the invasion. But how could he possibly have known? Why wasn’t he told that war was a horrible thing? This is nothing to do with him! It wasn’t a lack of caring or any ability to see the obvious that guided his actions. It was his courage, leadership and grace under pressure. So I’m told. Nobody would have been killed if I’d been President. That’s probably why I wouldn’t make it as a politician.

No, the point is whether the blow could have killed. The joke is a side issue.

I'm sure the Lord would guide me.

We all enjoy a daydream or two. It can even be useful in the odd situation, as above. But that's NOT religion. It becomes a religion when you start preaching it to others as a certain fact, and forcing it down the throats of little children, and demanding substantial sums of money to better propagate the myth. And fighting and killing people who have a different daydream. In the name of god.

I thought that they said that a couple of weeks ago. It's really just stating the obvious. If Finland tries to join NATO, they will instantly have several nuclear warheads pointing their way, with Helsinki on the address label. As every NATO member already has. So everone in Helsinki will enjoy the privilege of being minutes away from being vaporized. That's the real security blanket that NATO provides. I personally live ten miles away from the UK Government Communications HQ. A dead cert for one of the first nukes. It gives me a warm feeling. Hopefully, that's as warm as it will get. If I was in Putin's shoes, I would just announce that Russia would not recognise any new members of NATO, and would treat them as non-members in any dispute. That would make things a little more tricky for NATO's enlargement ambitions, raising the stakes in the game of chicken.

Jokes aside, just going back to the OP question, I was saddened to read about a woman who died in the May Day traditional fest in Padstow, Cornwall, from a bump on the back of the head. She suffered a bleed, leading to a stroke, when she was bumped by the elaborate hobby horse costume that is danced through the streets on May Day. She apparently had suffered an incident about ten days ealier, not significant at the time, that left one of her arteries in the back of her neck a bit delicate, and then the bump from the 'Obby Oss' compounded it and caused a fatal bleed on the brain. You never know how vulnerable someone is, when you strike them. So the answer is "yes" to the question, could Will Smith's blow have killed Chris Rock. Very unlikely, but yes, it could. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10692353/Laura-Smallwood-inquest-Coroner-says-Padstows-Day-parade-professionally-managed.html

I'm sure I did not. But you will no doubt be able to point to exactly where I did paint with a "broad brush" Or is it just a case of, you said I did, so I did? A broad brush would include words that implicate the people in general would it not? But no words of that sort are in the post. The broad brush appears to be inside your own head.

Would it be better for the cow in the field to know that her precious newborn calf would only be allowed to live for a few months, and then be slaughtered for his meat? Not really, unless she had a viable escape route. Would it be better for me to know that I'm going to be roasted in hell for all eternity after I die? Of course it would. I have an escape route, I can just give up my soul to the Lord, and praise his righteousness. Maybe tomorrow.

Sounds like caramel sweets and molasses are to be avoided too. And Guinness. I might as well kill myself now !

I've never heard of this, but obviously it's there. I usually keep potatoes in the fridge and have never noticed any raised sweetness when I do. As they are stored cool anyway, maybe it's hard to tell. I have to cofess, I like the taste of burnt things, which I knew was bad, but what the hell, you only live once anyway. I bake my own bread, and like it dark. I like my toast almost burnt, and I like my chips dark all over. It's too late to change now. Maybe you could counteract this fridge effect by buying a less starchy variety, and to allow for the slight starch increase from refrigeration. But I think it is very slight, I've certainly never detected a difference.

You're trying to derail my thread. Start a thread of your own, if you want to discuss payoffs in Russia in the 90s. I'm sure it will be fascinating, but this thread has an OP, and I'd like to keep it on that. I contrasted one kind of immigrant, ( Roman Abramavitch ) with another kind, the ones who rob, rape and kill. Swansont insisted that I should justify with facts that immigrants are statistically more prone to crime. Something I NEVER wrote. Is there a forum rule, that if you mention the bad things that some immigrants do, you have to prove that they ALL do it? When you clearly never said it? Even when you were praising another kind of immigrant in THE SAME SENTENCE ? How is it right, that you should be required to produce facts to back up something that you didn't write ? And when I did produce facts as demanded, I got a modrator's warning point?

Where's your evidence? Where's the figures, where's the accounts for what was spent and invested in the intermdiate years? This is just hand waving.

Where's your evidence?

No spin here then. So long as YOU think it's possible, that's good enough for me !

I didn't, because my original post was not about numbers or percentages. Or casting aspersions on immigrants in general. That came from you. I posted about the contrasting TREATMENT of immigrants. Comparing the best, like Roman Abramavitch ( an immigrant ) with the worst, the minority who rob, rape, and murder etc. You then spoke to that post, as if it was casting a slur on all immigrants, which it never did. So you twisted and spun my post to supposedly be a bigoted comment about ALL immigrants. When it was just about how our legal system treats them, best vs worst. If you responded to what I wrote, and not your own false spin on it, there wouldn't need to be a split thread.

Except that your "statistical study" seems to have come up with a spectacularly false conclusion. I just looked up incarceration rates in the US, and non-US citizens make up about 16 to 17 percent of inmates, while they are only 14 percent of the population. And reading your actual link, the top reason given as a deterrent to offending by immigrants was fear of deportation, just as I said earlier. And in their shoes, I would do the same and keep my head down. In the UK it's 9% immigrants giving 12-13% of inmates. But going by the reporting, the immigrant inmates are often there for the more serious crimes, whereas a substantial proportion of the domestic born inmates are there for more petty crimes, because of mental health issues and drug offences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#:~:text=entirely.[citation needed]-,Citizenship statistics,-[edit] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-the-united-states https://fullfact.org/immigration/foreigners-prison/ I'm sorry if you find facts bigoted, but you asked the question.

The majority seem to have the gel type electrolyte these days anyway, and topping them up seems to finish them off altogether. ( I tried it ) With modern cars, I find that they start so well these days, that you get very little warning that the battery is on its way out. On my old Espace, it would start when the battery was on it's very last gasp. In the old days, a car would need a fair bit of winding over to start, so you could judge how much life your battery had. On a petrol car, you can pull out the main HT lead, and turn over the engine with the starter, and you will get a good idea of the life in your battery. But I don't know how to do that on my diesel. It just starts first touch.

I would say that a wipe over with a slightly soapy cloth would be more than enough for your fridge. Vinegar or cleaning products might give a taste to other items in the fridge. I make sourdough bread, and keep a culture of yeast and bacteria alive in the sourdough starter. At room temperature, it needs refreshing twice a day. In the fridge, once a week is more than enough. So a crude estimate is that the fridge slows down moulds and bacterial action by a factor of 14 but it's probably more. Anyway, you breathe in mould and bacteria spores with every breath, and they flood in when you open the fridge door. So even if you sterilised the fridge interior, you would still get germs in it. So just a wipe clean with a damp rag is as good as anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtMlsiDd138

"No, it's information. "NATO currently recognizes Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine as aspiring members as part of their Open Doors enlargement policy.[2]" Wikipedia Dunno where your facts are coming from.