Area54

I've found the response "Your bum looks big in anything" is not always the best choice.

The camps were erected for genocide. They now serve a different purpose. The statues were erected to honour a world view. They can be repurposed. Both are symbols. It is as symbols they have the potential to create problems, but they also have the potential to provide solutions.

Find a friend, colleague or facility that has Windows 8.1. Confirm, thereby, that the problem is with the Windows version change and not an issue with the flash drive. If the file can be accessed on the 8.1 system try emailing it back to you and see if you can then access it. Can't, offhand, think of anything else.

You assert that the middle ground hardly moves. From this I deduce that you think there was very little difference between the middle ground view of homosexuality in the 1950's and today. That doesn't match my experience. In the 50s the middle ground was "I don't want to know about this distasteful practice"; today it is "Whatever. Who cares. It's not an issue." To me that is much more than a "middle ground [that] hardly moves".

We have kept the ovens and the camps in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau and used them effectively to teach a lesson. For that reason alone I would retain those statues. It is how they are presented/portrayed that is key.

I repeat If one's goal is to avoid fecal residue one should stay out of the pigsty. If that is ones goal it takes precedence over any other products, useful or not, located in the pigsty.

Are you sure about that? To take a single example, consider the middle ground towards homosexuality in the 1950s compared with today. Are you saying they are identical?

If one's goal is to avoid fecal residue one should stay out of the pigsty. [/Area54 Rule 20.2]

I can hardly wait for that glorious moment. Oh my! It's taking effect already.

I never do.

Damateur has been rude, but more pertinently has denied any responsibility for the ambiguity of his statements. I would not ignore someone simply for being rude. I would not place on Ignore someone who simply held different thoughts, regardless how different they might be. However, Damateur has demonstrated that his thoughts are not different to mine, but unintelligible to me. I see no merit in reading posts that are unintelligble. That's why I only read internet sites in English. Out of courtesy, to save Damateur the trouble of responding to me, I've advised him I shall not be seeing anything he posts. The alternative would be seeing it and probably not understanding it. You suggested I may be refusing to see what (s)he wrote. I'm countering that I am unable to understand what (s)he wrote, because (s)he claims my interpretation is comepletely wrong. With my very best efforts I cannot make my understanding of Damateurs written words match Damnateur says they mean. I don't think that provides any grounds for useful dialogue. Apart from this specific situation I am in general agreement with your point. [In truth I don't even know how to place someone on Ignore, so I was just not going to bother with any future posts from Damateur.]

I merely repeated your own words. What is rude about that? If you did not want what you said repeated then perhaps you should not have said it. In the light of your first objection and now this subsequent one I have read and reread your disputed post multiple times. Despite my best efforts to read it differently it always comes out with you saying what you appeared to say. I accept unreservedly that you did not mean what you appeared to mean. Perhaps you should try to write more clearly in future. As to rudeness, downvoting someone because of an error in writing you have made is very definitely rude. My thanks to the member who very kindly corrected that with an upvote. Now let that be an end to the matter. Since I clearly cannot correctly interpret your words correctly I shall be placing you on Ignore.

It is a curiosity that the sentence works with either use or misuse as the key word, depending upon which emphasis one wishes to carry. It seems, despite my criticism, I was empathising with the militant atheists. I prefer your version.

Indeed. I'm not sure we have ever had a real communist government. Certainly the USSR, (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) never properly claimed to be communist, but merely one stage on the route to communism. It then got taken over by opportunistic sociopath dictators. Following its dissolution several of the Republics got taken over by opportunistic sociopath dictators. But that's irony for you. And I think your reading of the new-right in the US is accurate - a bunch of opportunistic sociopathic would-be dictators.

Yes, but not in the sense you mean. Well, there eyesight is adequate for their purpose. It is good enough, for example, for bees to view the dance of their hive colleagues that encodes directions to rich sources of nectar. John has pointed out that eagles have better eyesight than humans. It is much better. This is true of many animals. Dogs rely much more on scent than humans. There eyesight is correspondingly less effective. It is more that the size of the eye (and its character) determine the size of the portion of the brain that deals with visual input. We have two eyeballs to deliver stereoscopic vision. One eyeball would be a comparative limitation. People are only going to get bigger heads if they also get bigger hips, otherwise there will be a lot of death in childbirth and an end to that genetic lineage.

There is quite active debate in the UK concerning ethnic ratios on television, both dramas and general programming. The situation is greatly improved over that of thirty or forty years ago. Is there room for further improvement? Probably, though I would prefer it occur naturally, because it is the right way to go, rather than by means of imposed actions.

Doesn't work for me, since it fails to convey the active and organised opposition to theism the subgroup represent. Whatever we wish to call them, I maintain that compromise, or perhaps concession, from any scientists in that sub-group would be welcome.

Militant is, I think, a perfectly accurate (and in its way, honourable) adjective for describing the stance of that sub-set of atheists. What are the alternatives? Aggressive atheists? That, to me, implies a emotional content that is not necessarily part of their stance. Active atheists sounds vague. Militant captures the structured approach, with an objective and active program. I don't attack the religious zealots for stances I disapprove of on the basis of their religion, but on the failure of those stances in the face of logic, science and common decency. Tarring all with the same brush, as has occurred in this thread, is neither rational, nor helpful. As to the limited number of atheists who claim to have disproved god, I made no assertion as to number. I simply contradicted your claim that no compromise was necessary. Those individuals who are militant and who make claims arguably just as weak as those they oppose are the ones I suggest need to compromise. And that remains true even if there were only two of them. A

I understand (though I cannot recall the source) that the paths of hurricanes is expected to change. Since Airbrush's data considers only those hurricanes striking the US it is not necessarily representative of the global number of hurricanes.

Smart move. Don't feed the troll. I'm out to.

AnubisSight, I can assure you that I do not hate you. I politely asked you some simple questions that you have, so far, refused to answer, but instead responded with rude accussations. What everyone here is asking you is very simple. "What the fuck are you talking about?" Until you choose to answer that openly, honestly and clearly, people are going to be frustrated by your behaviour. Now please quit the crap and tell us "What the fuck are you talking about?"

They are uninhabited islands with little or no current economic value. Areas of economic value have high resolution photographs taken of them and detailed maps made of them. I'm sure the UK government has more detailed information on file, but there is no compelling reason to make the material publicly available, because there is no public interest. On the other hand, here are is a link to research publications in Google Scholar. There are over 9,000 relating to the South Sandwich Islands, many of which were dependent upon "landings". It rather looks as if the islands are not so secret after all.

Fortunately my ethics have never been governed by the thinking of studio executives.

No, although in the cooperative spirit of good fellowship it would be a nice gesture. However, you do have an obligation to answer bona fide questions directed to you. You agreed to that principle when you signed up to the forum. Not at all, but I am not gifted with telepathy. As I noted in my post I saw nothing odd in the paper. You have hinted at something that could or should disturb us. I am trying to determine what that is. So, while I do not need you work out everything for me, I do need you to explain what it is you are trying to say or ask in this thread. If you just want to trade insults I can probably outgun you, but I'd rather have a constructive conversation. I think you are being deliberately obtuse. I think you are being rude. I think you are breaking forum rules and breaching internet etiqutte. But none of that has anything to do with the paper cited in the OP. You want to know what I think, but you have not defined "about what". I've told you what I think about the paper. That has not satsified you, so what is the subject you wish to know my thoughts on? Be precise, be prompt, be polite. Thank you.

I probably agree with you that science should not compromise. (I have not examined that possibility in enough depth to be sure.) However, I think scientists can compromise. In particular militant atheists who use their science to declare they have disproven the existence of God. Or, as we see in this thread, scientists who insist religion fails completely when subject to a cost-benefit analysis. I would argue that such positions are often unscientific and stem from belief systems rather than logic.