mistermack

That's a very simplistic view. It applies most definitely in the case of the MMR vaccine, where you have an effective vaccine and no serious side effects. Where you have vaccines that are far less effective, and that have far more serious possible side effects, the argument doesn't stand up. You can have the jab, and still get flu. You can vaccinate everybody, and still get a serious epidemic of a slightly different type. You can get swine flu, chicken flu, duck flu, Spanish flu, Chinese flu. Comparing flu vaccine to MMR or smallpox is like comparing chalk and cheese. There's no prospect of any degree of herd immunity being achieved by vaccinating the elderly, according to wikipedia, because the vaccine isn't effective enough, and the immune system weakens with age. There's some hint of a statistical effect being achieved by vaccinating the young, but not the old : Influenza (flu) is more severe in the elderly than in younger age groups, but influenza vaccines lack effectiveness in this demographic due to a waning of the immune system with age.[7][26] The prioritization of school-age children for seasonal flu immunization, which is more effective than vaccinating the elderly, however, has shown to create a certain degree of protection for the elderly.[7][26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity Having said all that, I might well get a jab next year. I just had a look at the NHS page on vaccination and apparently, there is a 24% reduction in the chance of a stroke, for people over 65 who have the jab in the autumn. That's enough to sway me so I'll pencil in a jab for next year. I'm more scared of strokes than I am of flu. https://www.nhs.uk/news/neurology/flu-jab-may-cut-stroke-risk-by-a-quarter/

I did say in my post that I was only quoting anecdotes and have no personal experience or knowledge of the figures. My mother was working with the elderly many years ago now, she's been dead more than ten years, and was retired for some time before that. However, the friend I mentioned who had the reaction was last year. He always had a flu jab, was happy with it, never had a reaction before, and told me that I should be having it. But his reaction last year was so bad he now swears never again. He wasn't hospitalised, but he was absolutely knocked for six for at least a full week, and was not fully recovered for several weeks after that. Like I said, it's only an anecdote, one person's experience. I know other people who have it every year, and never have any problem. As he did, up to last year. I'm nearly seventy, I often think I'm gambling, not having it. It's a gamble both ways. In my case, I virtually never get a cold, and probably haven't had the flu for at least forty years. I don't remember ever having it. I keep a diary, and I went six years once without a cold, the last three were six, three and two year intervals. I know a cold isn't flu, but I seem to resist viruses fairly well. (so far ) If I believed in tempting fate, I wouldn't be writing this. 😕

Doesn't say much for the effectiveness of the flu jab. I've never had it, my mother was a nurse dealing mainly with the elderly, and she never had it and didn't recommend it. She reckoned that the reaction to it could be almost as bad as the flu itself. I have a friend who's over seventy, and he had it regularly, but the last time, he was ill for a week and had after affects for a lot longer, and he swears he'll never have it again. It's all anecdotal, I have no idea what the figures show.

I'm sure it has, and that's bound to be a factor. I don't have any figures on people giving up with the help of vaping, but my sister and her husband have both given up due to it. Her husband switched to vaping, and he vapes far less than he used to smoke. With nobody else smoking in the house, my sister stopped altogether, without vaping at all. Not a scientific study, but it worked great for them.

Depends what you mean by healthier. They are probably fitter, but their life expectancy in their country of origin would have been a lot less than their British counterparts. I can believe that they might well be fitter, given a less sedentary childhood and later life. Whether that will translate into a longer life in this country, who knows? It probably will, if they keep off the cigarettes and drugs but it will take years to be sure. There is an effect that happens across generations, where second and third generations benefit from the health of their parents and grandparents. It shows up in the across the board increase in height of people in wealthy countries over the last couple of hundred years. Maybe something similar might happen with life expectancy.

More sedentary lifestyles, for childhood onwards. More drug use. More low-skilled immigration, adding to the numbers of smokers and poor diets. More take aways and high-fat foods. I would have thought that vaping would have a positive effect though. I know lifetime smokers who no longer smoke cigarettes, having given up with the help of vaping. Vitamin supplements don't seem to have made a big difference. I take one a day, just as an attempt to counter my lousy diet.

👌 Flattery gets you brownie points. Unlike science then, which thrives on speculation, hypothesis and theory to make progress, and even theories are always open to revision and replacement.

Your guess is as good as mine...

Their descriptions of the events are ambiguous about the timing. When did this happen? Obviously not 8 billion years ago, since space has expanded since then. Is the galaxy 8 billion miles away now, or when it happened. How far away would it be now, with the expansion of space? It seems like there needs to be a standard way of describing distance and times with respect to the present, something more obvious. Not that I'm thinking of going there.

Have you been getting coaching from dimreepr ?

?? There's nothing in that lot that would make me change anything in my post.

There is some tried and trusted technology available :

Metaphysics is speculation about the unknown. As a field, it's obviously shrinking, as the unknown is shrinking. But the chances are that it will always have something to speculate about, because some questions appear unknowable, since they involve the concept of infinity and nothing. Just like god of the gaps, you can shove pretty much anything you like into the gaps in our knowledge, knowing full well that you can't be disproved. Like the celestial teapot.

So your logic is, if he is acquitted, they will look stupid ?? Well, I never said that. I don't know where you got that idea. If he is acquitted, they will say what they always say when they lose a case. Although on the odd occasion they do end up looking stupid, as in the recent Carl Beech VIP paedophile ring scandal. : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50596148 And the recent Hillsborough tragedy trial, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50592077 And @curious layman, I'm not saying that they are protecting guilty officers using weak prosecutions. In this taser case, I'm not alleging that the cops actually did anything wrong. In fact I suspect the opposite from what's been released, although you can't know till you hear all the facts. I'm just pointing out a trend, and saying that this looks like another example. It's more prevalent and blatant in the US, but it can happen here too.

The molten iron core of the Earth is very useful, it provides the Earth's magnetic field, which helps shield life on Earth from harmful solar radiation and Cosmic Rays.

I meant the Kevlar, not the natural gas. I'm guessing that it wouldn't survive well in a fire.

Investigating yes, of course every incident is investigated. Not every investigation results in a murder charge and trial. Not every investigation takes three years, either, when the facts would have been known within three days. In a perverse way, I think race has had something to do with the politics of the case. A black fairly famous ex-footballer is a high profile case, and might warrant a bit of political correctness pressure from above. Of course cops can be murderers like anyone else. But using a taser is part of their job. They're trained in using it. It's a legal part of their equipment, and they are expected to make a decision whether to deploy it as part of their job. It's not like they just bought one off the internet and tried it out on him. If they made a terrible decision and tasered him when they shouldn't have, that's incompetence, not murder. It's not like in America, where a cop pulled his gun out and deliberately shot a suspect. It's supposed to be non-lethal. The trial will be decided by jury, not a judge. I don't know what the betting is. If betting was allowed, you would think the odds would be around 50 to 100 to one on acquittal.

Triping. ☺️

Jesus used to talk in parables. You just couldn't nail him down. So they nailed him up.

I've often wondered if it would be possible to not repair, but reconstruct video and stills using a powerful computer. If you amassed a huge repository of digitised images, of good focus and definition, and broke them down into small squares with the digital characteristics of colour tone and image map encoded, then you could take an old cherished image, that is small and grainy and out of focus, and break that down into similar squares. Then search the database for a match for all of the squares and assemble them in a totally new image, that has nothing from the original, but which is bigger and clearer than the original, and looks exactly like what the original would have looked like if it had been taken with top quality equipment. To simplify it a bit, say one square has a hand at a certain angle, your computer finds a modern high quality match for it and fits it to that square. Like a mosaic, it builds up a reconstruction of what the original should have looked like. Maybe there's something out there already. I'm just musing and daydreaming what I'd like to see. To add to that, I'm picturing something like a police photoFIT picture, only not done from memory, but by comparison with the original, and done using a gigantic database of stock originals. A much more sophisticated and accurate version of this, done on a powerful computer : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_composite The above was done by an artist, but this one is computer generated : It still has the defect of being done from memory. If you had an original photo, you could probably recreate it to a very high standard, so that the human eye couldn't tell that it wasn't an original.

Too cryptic. I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say. Did you ever try just saying what you mean? It's not hard.

I'm not sure what that link has to do with tasering. The two links in the OP give a rundown of what happened. Murder can be due to somebody dying, due to an intentional illegal act. If they didn't use the taser legally, the prosecution could try to make a case for murder. I agree, in this case, it seems on the face of it that they haven't got a chance of making murder stick. Which is what makes me suspect their motives in pressing charges. That the real objective is acquittal, not conviction.

That actually sounds expensive, not cheap. Not that I know much about manufacturing costs. But also, it doesn't sound like it would be safe in a fire, which is important for use in vehicles.

Just having been around for seventy years, and seeing the same thing happen over and over again. They charge a cop, who is then "cleared" by a jury, when in reality, no real effort was made to convict. It serves a few purposes all in one. They are seen as "taking action" and "doing their best" for the victim, while actually ensuring that the cop is put beyond any sanction. The clearest example I can think of is the case of Rodney King, which was really notorious at the time. He was viciously beaten up by LA police, but it was all caught on film by a local resident. They did the usual trick of charging the four officers, and then running a completely incompetent prosecution, and all four were acquitted. The whole thing was so blatant that it sparked six days of rioting in LA, and the federal government were forced to step in and mount another prosecution, on charges of "violating his civil rights", and they managed to convict two of the cops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King The case is considered to be a big factor in the acquittal of OJ Simpson. It caused lasting dislike and distrust of the LAPD and the prosecution service alike, which affected juries for years. But that's one case in hundreds, where I've seen cops charged and acquitted after high profile cases. Most, far more blatant than this one in the OP. This case may or may not be another example. I can't see why it's being brought, on the face of it. But time will tell. The three years delay is suspicious, and if the officers are cleared, and "mistakes" by the prosecution are criticised afterwards, then you will know what really went on. Again.

I used to have a van that ran on dual fuel, LPG and Petrol, switchable between the two. The cylinders were very heavy, but not too bad for a van. But in a car, the weight and space is a liability. I believe that LNG cylinders would have to be much thicker and heavier still than LPG. Then they might be more explosive in a fire as well. I think it's probably a non-starter for cars. Don't know how it compares to hydrogen though. That might give a clue as to what it would be like.