mistermack

it seems to me that space and space time are being spoken of as the same thing here. Einstein used the concept of curved space time. Not curved space. It's questionable whether space time exists. Does the future exist, or the past? Maybe that's a philosophical question. Does something exist, if it's inevitable? Because that's all the future is. Something that doesn't exist, but certainly will. That's spacetime really. It maps the past and the future. Space isn't noticably curved in the present, but it is, if you add the past and the future. I found this online, from the University of Austin. Don't know if you will find it relevant : https://stardate.org/astro-guide/faqs/what-do-scientists-mean-when-they-say-space-curved

The bad pipes I mentioned are very local. The city itself has perfectly good water. And like I said, they have made improvements, but I still prefer the spring water. I live in a hard water area, but the Malvern springs I believe come out of ancient volcanic rock. Anyway, the tea tastes better with it. My parents had a farm in Ireland in the west, and there was a well that they drew their water from. The tea over there always tasted much better, for some reason. It's a peaty soil area, maybe that's got something to do with it. It works for whiskey anyway.

The other side of the coin of course, is that free falling in a sealed chamber in a gravitational field is also indistinguishable from floating in zero gravity. With similar local limitations. The Astranauts in the space station are doing that, free falling in orbit, but I suspect there would be a way to tell that you were orbiting something, rather than just floating or free falling directly towards the source of gravity

I drink nothing but bottled water. Not because the water in the mains is bad here, but because the local pipes are bad. They have been improved, but I'm in the habit of bottled water now. Having said that, I bottle the water myself, from one of the famous Malvern Springs. I have three 25 litre containers that I fill at one visit, and I store them in the dark, and fill smaller bottles from them. So I'm not consuming plastic or generating waste. But I do drive to Malvern to fill up. It's a scenic run, and I would do that now and again anyway. The Malvern springs are tested for bacteria levels regularly, and occasionally they hang a notice on the outlet advising that you boil it. But I never have, and have never suffered any effects. Malvern water is extremely low on dissolved solids, quite close to distilled. You can get hand-held water filters now, that will filter water from a stream or puddle, and make it safe to drink. For about £50 at sports and camping outlets. They remove 99.999 percent of bacteria, or so they claim. I haven't got one, but I'm tempted. They are supposed to be everlasting, and do a litre in less than a minute. You just fill up a strong polythene bag, attached to the filter, and squeeze the water through by hand. Or you can hang it up and let gravity do it for you.

The good news is that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will speed it back up. So no need to adjust your alarm clock just yet.

Crude evidence and data need comprehending. What you linked in no way shows what the situation would be without immigration. In countries with a high inflow, the "crude birth rate" is hugely raised by the incomers, partly because they are mostly young and fertile, and partly because they often come from societies that traditionally have big families. And that effect can persist over a few generations, before the family sizes align with the new country. And I include myself in that category, as both my parents were Irish, and I have six siblings, whereas most of my school friends were from families of one or two kids. Right. But 7.7 billion people need three times as much water as 2.5 billion. And create three times as much climate change. Species that are now going extinct due to the level of human population would still be around, not lost for ever. Everyone bangs on about peoples' rights. What about the rights of other creatures to a life on this planet?

But if outward migration put some of those countries in the list, then inward migration keeps other countries out of it. It's likely that the UK and Germany and many other countries would feature in the list for example, without inward migration. If there were no migration happening at all, I'm pretty sure that the list of countries with shrinking populations would be much longer, so migration is really a red herring.

Yes, but that's basically what I said in my first post. The more local you look, the more equivalent are the two phenomena. And the less local, then the less they are equivalent. So it's a useful approximation, only actually true for a time interval of zero. In the case of my seventy years, if I was free floating in space, it would take an infinite amount of energy to maintain a force of 200lbs on me for seventy years. On earth it needs none at all.

That is in itself a simplistic view. It's actually a situation where one set of ethics works against another set. Which is more important, the planet or our treasured "freedoms" ? In cases where you can't have both, you are eventually forced to choose. But with human nature as it is, we always end up putting off hard choices, preferring the "do nothing for now" approach until it's too late anyway. After all, the levelling off of population growth by 2100 is just an hypothesis, a projection, someone's best guess. It might be right, it might not.

I think you're putting the boot into a straw man there. I didn't suggest it was possible. It's the fact that it's not possible, that is the difference between the two scenarios. A rock can sit for a thousand years on the surface of the Earth, with a constant force acting on it from below, and yet would not be moving "pretty fast" at the end of it. Whereas the same rock, with the same constant force acting on it in zero gravity, would be moving pretty fast after just a few days. Another way that the two cases are not equivalent, is that "real" acceleration involves a force acting on a mass over a distance. In the case of me, standing on the Earth, a force is acting on my mass, but not over any distance. So real acceleration involves work, whereas standing still in a gravitational field doesn't.

Where on earth did you get that idea? Not from me. I gave one example, of countering religious propeganda. A harder choice would be to restrict religions, like they did in China. Not very liberal. But which is more important, the right to indoctrinate, or the planet? You then answered your own question, with the healthcare and education points. Perfectly good options, but difficult choices, as I said, because they cost money. Then there are practical options, like providing free contraceptive advice and products right across the world. Another hard choice, but good for the planet. One free condom can save thousands of tons of CO2, over three or four generations. People who don't get born don't use fossil fuel. Bill Gates is a Christian, but I think I read somewhere that his foundation are working in that direction. If it's true, then good for him. If we can plan on going to Mars, then working out strategies for reducing population growth sooner rather than later can't be beyond the wit of man. Like I said, if people REALLY cared then they would find a way. Not an easy way, but it depends how much you want it.

It's only your assumption that those five billion would have been born. I'm not removing anyone. You can't remove people who never existed. If there were no churches, preaching against the sin of contraception, the numbers today would be massively less. The estimate is that the population will eventually stop expanding in 2100. That seems to be on the assumption that nobody does the slightest thing about it. The truth is that people bang on about the environment, but they don't really care enough to make the more difficult choices. They seem to think they can do it all, just by spending other peoples money on pet projects, and ignoring the real cause of the problem.

So we have, but not due to CO2 levels. That only started rising significantly from 1950, the year I was born, and coincidentally, the benchmark I quoted of population at 2.5 billion. Cars in 1950 would average about 15mpg. Today my car does nearly four times that, per gallon. That sort of economy has been repeated across the board, with things like double and triple glazing, jet engines, internet conferencing etc etc. So more affluence doesn't have to mean more environmental problems. It does cause some, but if the population was still 2.5 billion it would be manageable. Why would you just assume that it would take a cataclysm? This assumption that population rise is inevitable is the real problem. It's inevitable, only because people shut their eyes to it. It's not inevitable in these countries : https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-shrinking-populations.html Not in the countries I linked to. It's just a lack of will. I listened to an interview with a Greenpeace activist today, she was banging on about the environment, but you could hardly hear her, because of the noise from babies in the background. Seemed a bit ironic to me.

When I was born, the world population was 2.5 billion. Today, it's about 7.7 billion. Surely there's a clue in there somewhere? What would the world ecology look like today, if the population was still 2.5 billion? Would there even BE any environmental crises?

Evolution was widely postulated before Darwin. Darwins great insight was the mechanism, of natural selection. And not knowing anything about genes, he was greatly bothered by the question of why different characteristics persisted, instead of being instantly diluted by cross breeding. If only he had met Gregor Mendel, he would have saved himself thousands of sleepless nights.

To me, the interesting part is the limitation on equivalence. Take my example, I've existed for over seventy years, with a gravitational force acting on me, equivalent to an acceleration of nearly 10 m/sec2. If I had been in deep space, accelerating at 10m/sec2 for seventy years, I would be moving faster than the speed of light. So equivalence doesn't hold for longer time intervals. It gets more equivalent, the shorter the interval, so presumably is only really true for an interval of zero time. In other words, it's not a true equivalent, but a useful approximation.

This seems to be a case of looking for complication, in something absolutely simple. Imagine two people facing each other holding a rope taut. When one pulls harder, the other is pulled forward. When one relaxes, the other moves in the opposite direction due to the tension he's applying. So a rope under tension transmits a duplicate back and forward motion from one end to the other. There's the mechanism of transmission.

If you want to know about independents, ask Donald Trump. He's been in all the parties and donated to all the parties at some time or other. Apparently he's leaning towards the Republicans at the moment.

If you take that principle to the extreme, then you would get stuff that would HAVE to be banned. Like Russian Roulette shows on tv. Winner take all.

Like I said I'm pulled both ways. But I don't think you can equate boxing with Rugby or American Football. It's the sheer number of hits to the head that's the difference. There's only two boxers in the ring, not two teams of fifteen, or fifty odd (that's what it looks like anyway) in American football. Hit's to the head are not what's aimed at, and they are much fewer. Even so, soccer players in the past got dementia that was put down to heading the ball in practice. Especially in the old days, of heavier leather balls. If I was 18 and just going into boxing, I'd try to do it without sparring, or at least sparring involving head shots. If you could cut out the hits to the head in training, it might make the difference. I'm not really arguing about deaths. I agree, deaths happen in many sports. It's brain damage I'm talking about.

No germs alloyed.

You might think I have a firm opinion, from the title, but I'm pulled both ways. I like watching boxing. (male) But there's no denying the brain damage it causes. Mohammed Ali is the prime example. You do get the odd death, but you get that in other sports, and if that was all there was it would be easier to be against a ban. But the brain damage happens to every boxer. You can't box and not take head shots. Many boxers show no sign of damage, but they definitely do suffer it, some more than others. I'm quite concerned about Saturday's World Heavyweight Championship bout between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz. I've followed Joshua's career since before he became champion, and there has been a trend. He's hugely impressive, until he takes a good head shot. But once he's been nailed, he's a completely different fighter for two or three rounds. It's very unusual, but it happened in several of his bouts. Many boxers are back to full alertness in seconds, but for Joshua to be affected for two or three rounds is really unusual, and I would honestly advise him to pack it in, if he was talking to me now. You only get one shot at life, and he could be risking it more than he knows. I still don't know if I would ban boxing though. I hate women's boxing, I wouldn't watch it, but I wouldn't ban it unless men's boxing was banned too.

What's missing is the importance of variation in individuals to evolution. That's why generalisations like "women find this or that attractive" are usually wide of the mark. What people find attractive varies widely, and that's an important part of evolution. When you have variety in a population, it improves the chances of the species surviving setbacks, and evolving to match new circumstances. You get that variety in physical and psychological traits. I don't recognise your claims of "males prefer this" and "females prefer that". It's not reflected in the people that I know. Some do, some don't.

I do a stool sample every year. It's free in the UK after a certain age. There's nothing in the instructions on our kits about food restrictions, it must be a different process. It does say that finding blood can be from a range of different causes, so it's not the time to panic, but obviously it wouldn't be wise to skip the colonoscopy. My next door neighbour actually got colon cancer a few years ago, he's only about fifty. He was successfully treated and has had no subsequent problems at all. But anyway, hope your results are good.

Wikipedia didn't find any herd immunity from vaccinating the elderly, I'm going with that opinion. They also say : Herd immunity itself acts as an evolutionary pressure on certain viruses, influencing viral evolution by encouraging the production of novel strains, in this case referred to as escape mutants, that are able to "escape" from herd immunity and spread more easily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Evolutionary_pressure