Area54

You are on a loser here. The sentence construction you have used, in combination with those words, does not make sense. Insisting it does is simply antagonising readers and distracting attention from your central points. Please accept this and move on.

An object put in orbit by "some magnetic method, like the high power projectile firings" is not a rocket.

It's your country. Your choice. I just favour the Nelson Mandela approach. If we followed your approach in the UK our towns and villages would be denuded of practically all statuary. I think that would be a loss. You think a more restricted application of the approach in the US would be a gain. Just two different views. If I have been obtuse in expressing my stance, I apologise. I recognised this was a contentious issue and attempted to express myself delicately, while still expressing myself. I believe that is good practice on a discussion forum where diverse views are likely to exist. Clearly that attempt has failed, at least as far as you are concerned. I have nothing further to say on the matter.

I am puzzled by this comment. If you consider that ProgramGodJordan's remarks in that post are nothing but fairy tale philosophical musings then you think that each of these statements is false The universe is indifferent to ones incredulity. Evidence that exists continues to exist even when it is ignored. Phenomena can all be examined by the scientific method All I have done is to render PGJ's remarks concisely From what I have noted of your posts in other threads I would have imagined you thought these statements to be true, yet here you are describing them as fairytale, philosophical musings. What gives? Unfortunately this is another exmple of problematic phrasing.This statement could mean: I could use expressions that have been previously used and thereby refined by many other people. I could use original expressions that many other people would understand despite their originality Unfortunately, I seriously doubt the expressions you are choosing are "better understood by many". I repeat my suspicion that a significant part of the hostility you have been experiencing is due to the awkwardness and consequent ambiguity of your sentence construction and idiosynchratic phrasing. The website is superficially correct. The algorithm used has, probably, looked at sentence structure in this way.

The carpet on the floor of my study is wet with the tears of frustration I have shed.

Much the same as a particle physicist. They have friends and family. Some of them go to the cinema, others like hunting. A proportion of them get drunk.

You stated the folllowing in the response to my question as to whether you would or would not be in favour of a federally funded library for lee. This, coupled with the undertone of other of your posts, creates the strong impression that you object to anything that provides Lee with any recognition. I shall be charitable and assume I have been vague, not that you have been deliberately obtuse. We can use statues, amongst other things, to educate people about wrongs committed in the past in the hope that other wrongs might be avoided. Adopting the ostritch approach hasn't always worked out well. However, this is a US matter and I am neither a US citizen, nor a US resident. I've expressed my view that the desire to remove the statues is PC gone mad, but - more importantly - would be discarding an outstanding opportunity to teach a valuable lesson. Thank you for your time.

Might it be that the choice of drink for some people is governed by how they are feeling at the time? In such a scenario your father would have been feeling annoyed by some generality on those occassions he chose to drink white wine. His aggression would be a reflection of how he had been feeling before drinking, with its expression made possible by the loosening effects of the alcohol. Any alcohol would have produced the same result, but other subconscious choices led to white wine when he was in that "mood".

Like the Cowboys winning another Superbowl?

Homo sapiens, not homo sapient. Mike, I would go so far as to say that someone claiming some of the credentials of a scientist on a science forum who repeatedly makes errors of this kind, as you do, is disrespecting science. Is it any wonder some mebers feel it appropriate to downvote you? In some regards you are correct, most authorities put it at 180,000 years, but some would add another 20,000 or 40,000 to the total. What the jury is really debating is where we place the artificial dividing line between species. They are not disputing the considerable age of beings that were recognisably human. Are you disputing it?

I wonder PGJ, if some of the difficulty and the hostility may lie in your phrasing. It is sometimes difficult to follow and this may have misled some members to misintrepret your words. If I may give an example: I this sentence, the phrase "we may highly concern evidence" is not grammatical. It is therefore difficult to understand. I think you have used it before and on those occassions I did not know what you meant by it. Now, because you have confirmed my overall understanding of your straightforward idea I believe you mean by it "we focus on evidence", or "we may make use of evidence [not belief]". Just something for you to consider.

Which to me is resorting to a legal loophole. "We shouldn't do it because we haven't made any legal provision for it." He appears to me, to be opposed to the notion of making such a legal provision. So, to me, his objection was not clear, if it is precisely as you suggest. And he did not speak of other generals, but only of one. Lee. Who, as I understand it, was one of the most historically important of the Confedarate generals. And it is the historical importance that seems to me to justify the retention of these statues. And, to ensure the correct "message" is delivered, then accompany these with appropriate plaques, guidebooks, whatever.

Books and museums were judged insufficient for preserving presidential material. Your objection to affording similar modes of preservation for material related to Lee appears to be based upon your distaste for Lee. That may or may not be an appropriate stance for a physicist. It would stink to high heaven were you a historian.

I am not familiar with the details of this staute, but I imagine (and ask to corrected, if necessary) that its objective is to preserve matters of historical interest. While there may be no statute requiring the same for Lee would the underlying objective not make it a worhtwhile project?

There is no evidence that God, if she exists, has any interest in man. God may be malevolent. God may have lost interest after the first matter condensed and she turned her attention to other matters. There is more evidence for that God than the one it comforts you to believe in. You talk of your relationship with your goldfish. You say their relationship with you is based primarily on food. That mirrors my relationship with fish. I eat a lot of them. Why shouldn't that be a model for God's relationship with man?

@PGJ Excuse me for going off-topic, but I wanted to briefly address what some have called your monomania. It occurred to me that you are actually saying something very simple that many members would have no trouble agreeing with. Now I may be misinterpreting your intent, or the position of those members, but I think it's worth a punt. All you are saying is that belief is faith based and therefore unsupportable. Acceptance of "reality" has to be based on evidence, which is the scientific approach. You don't believe anything, but you accept many things, when there is evidence to justify the acceptance. Is that it?

Sadly, or perhaps proudly, all I know of Kanye West is that they are some form of modern celebrity, probably American and either a musician or actor. I don't even know which sex, if any, they are. He or she probably knows the Kardashians, because apparently everybody, apart from myself and my aunt Ethel know the Kardashians (and she's dead). I only know of them because I read of them when confirming the seemingly implausible story that Bruce Jenner, outstanding Olympic decathlete was now transgender. What does all this have to do with the OP? Precious little, but I got up late and needed to spout nonsense to clear my mind. Also, celebreties in general seem likely to be the very antithesis of people who don't lie. Discuss.

Yes. I also understand that it is in the interests of certain nations at certain times to publicise what they know of the nucelar capabilities of certain other countries. Realpolitik can be really revealing. That's something you have overlooked. (Apparently.)

You never fail to surprise me with your ignorance. One of the few behaviours all normal babies have, practically from the moment of their birth, is the instinct to seek out a nipple and suck. After a period of reasonable behaviour they become, as young teenagers, strongly disinclined to come to the table to eat.

Australia has no nuclear weapons, nor does Japan. South Africa dismantled their's in the 1990s. If any of these statements is incorrect it has, surprisingly, missed the attention of the usual conspiracy theorists.

Basalt only crystalises under set conditions of temperature, pressure and melt composition. Bower birds only build their elaborate courtship structures under set conditions. Students are only admitted into University under set conditions. The universe is tightly structured by fundamental constants, particles and forces. Set conditions are solid evidence of those constants, particles and forces, not of a Supreme Being. And the puddle was amazed to discover that it had been lucky enough to find a hole that fitted it exactly. Surely this was not luck, but the act of a superior being, In one of your earlier posts you stated that science did not have much understanding of male-female attraction. I pointed out that was seriously incorrect. I was just reminding you of that. You do not have to go beyond the pages of this forum to find strong, even bitter disagreement over what is right, what is wrong, what is beautiful, what is ugly. Perhaps not what is up and down, but certainly whether the Earth is round or flat. Or the endless disputes about the moon landings. There is clear evidence that many humans lack any affinity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Early scientists recognised this and developed a methodology that did not require reliance on an unreliable "inbuilt affinity". Yet you have failed to provide either evidence or reasoned argument to justify your claim as to the reality of such a hierarchy.

It seems to me that if something needs explaining then there must be an experience to explain, which is exactly what John has recognised in noting your assumption of experiences. If there are no experiences then there is nothing to explain. You assert explanations are needed therefore you must have assumed that experiences exist. Now I'm pretty sure that John and you and I all agree that experiences exist. What is in dispute is your denial that you have assumed it in your argument. Perhaps I am missing something, so, would you care to explain how one would require an explanation if there is nothing to experience?

This paper caught my eye. I've highlighted the point I found intriguing. "Fungi belong to one of the largest and most diverse groups of living organisms. The evolutionary kinship within a fungal population has so far been inferred mostly from the gene-information–based trees (“gene trees”) constructed using a small number of genes. Since each gene evolves under different evolutionary pressure and time scale, it has been known that one gene tree for a population may differ from other gene trees for the same population, depending on the selection of the genes. We present whole-genome information-based trees (“genome trees”) using a variation of a computational algorithm developed to find plagiarism in two books, where we represent a whole-genomic information of an organism as a book of words without spaces." I am sure there are many examples where methodology from one sphere is applied in another. Any thoughts?

Mike, for the entity in dispute's sake. Crap! 1. Where one early civilisation is to be found, not all civilisations were to be found there. 2. Will you please use a spell checker. Your bizarre spelling is becoming annoying. Bosphoros or Bosporos, not vosferous, and certainly not with a lower case first letter! 3. If there is an opaque canopy, how can the sun dominate the day? You do realise means opaque means it will not let light through? So, the civilisation in the ME, the one you believe to be the first civilisation, arose in darkness. Just how did those crops thrive? 4. What evidence do you have for this opaque canopy? What was the canopy made of? Just in case you missed my earlier point, crap.

I don't know whether or not I speak for the other participants on this thread, but here is my take so far. I think I may have said it before and I think I've read at least one other member making the same comment - you seem to be a thoroughly good person. I think that is the reason your nonsense has been tolerated so far. And it is nonsense. Nonsense that you continue to repeat. Look at some recent examples: You claim the rainbow is evidence for God, yet it is simply an expression of fundamental laws, one of many emergent properties. You claim the formation of the Earth is evidence for God, yet.....as above. You claim science doesn't understand male-female attraction. I offer 3,000,000 hits on Google Scholar as a refutation. You take each of your desires to represent reality: because you wish something to be true that is your evidence it is. That is the epitome of illogic and arrogance. You claimed to know more of fish than science. I listed ten sciences that provided us with a much deeper understanding of fish. It is clear you still feel your hierarchy concept has some value. The problem is that you have quite failed to present a cogent argument for it; an argument that could be respected by others, even if they did not agree with it. Since you won't present that I guess I'll have to do it for you. That may take some time. Don't hold your breath.