Peterkin

With regard to public transit, it's not a this-or-that proposition; it's more like this+that+those+these+the others(s). At least, that's how it works in Toronto, and I'm pretty sure other cities do likewise. The subway runs entirely underground - under the busiest streets - in the dense urban core and most of the older boroughs. Where it was feasible, they put the rails in a little canyon, fenced off from pedestrians, so you can see daylight and vegetation from the windows, but not landmarks. (whole lot cheaper than digging tunnels!) A recording (in my memory, a pleasant mezzo voice) announces the next station in good time to get to the door. In the less dense suburbs, they have an elevated train, which is very quiet and smooth, with nice scenery. On the surface are streetcars, trolleys and buses (diesel, hybrid and electric), as well as shuttles to the airport and other high-demand destinations. One of these is the ferry terminal, where you can ride boats to the islands. Between the city center and the outer suburbs and not too distant 'bedroom communities', there is a fast commuter train, above ground, which has recently been extended to provide regular service to more distant places in the Golden Horseshoe area. Cities and their transportation systems are not usually planned: they grow, adapt, branch out, diversify, upgrade, evolve. I just read that they're putting in a maglev train o replace the monorail in the zoo. And I forgot to mention the bike trials. Overall, and okay city, except for the odd shooting. https://www.marsdd.com/news/10-toronto-green-projects-to-enjoy-when-the-pandemic-is-over/

That you contradicted yourself. But that's okay, as long as you're sure.

So, which is it? Consequences or hoped-for outcome? Those are two different sets of consequences.

Right. If you get the desired results (assuming your society still desires those same results by the time you do get them) you did the right thing. If you fail to get the desired results, you did the wrong thing. You can, therefore, never choose a course of action according to your own moral compass, but rather according to a statistical calculation of the odds for and against the desired outcome. As long as all the variables in a situation are given in a thought-experiment format, you should do just fine.

I'm glad you're here now! I'll try to damp the static down this month.

No. Scratch doesn't contain enough DNA, let alone stainless steel.

The sad thing is, those first two monoliths (not unlike the late World Trade Center) are all from a single, futile - if sometimes heated - conversation, while neither of us contributed much to any science subject.

Well, he might have become a little slow on the uptake - you can't fake deadish! - but his music is electrifying.

According to the story told about him, Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving behind a promise to return in 1000 years - not to skulk around pretending to be other people. If he came back on schedule, he'd have been just in time to see the church of his sepulchre destroyed and Muslim empires spreading east, west and northward. Being an intelligent man, he kept a low profile, moved to the south of France, bought an olive grove, got married and raised a family; died at the age of 82, peacefully in his grape arbour, surrounded by great-grandchildren. And then Dan Brown blundered in, found a couple of old scrolls and ran off with the whole wrong end of the stick.

Admirable examples of modern westernized democracies! Some people, in various times and places, have sometimes been convicted of crimes (in we don't know what kinds of legal proceedings); therefore, a nameless, nationaless, unaccused casual example of death by firing squad must be guilty by association. Due process be shot full of holes!

Yes. Presumed guilty, on zero evidence.

That is your prerogative. To my hypothetical hapless guy facing a firing squad? You don't even know his time period, nationality or what he was accused of. Indeed! Thusly: You were talking about letting a guilty person off, even if he got the child and 5000 other people killed with all of his failed methods of detection. It may have come to that. I'm sorry!

I had never thought about that! Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I wonder, now, about the variation in juvenile hairiness. It depends on where the cutoff point is between juvenile and whatever comes next - adolescent or prepubescent? Because I've certainly noticed ethnic patterns of body hair in children as young as 8 or 9.

So do I. Repeatedly. If you don't like the answer, that's not my problem. Neither. I countered your non sequitur "Tell that to the victims of 9/11" with a reference to the hundreds times as many victims of American bombings and incursions in the Middle East over the preceding decades. Then I disagreed with your assertion that the US' melodramatically-named "War on Terror" started in 2001 with a guerilla attack on the symbols of American economic, military and political control of the world. (I didn't mention that it was exactly as effective as The War on Drugs and The War on Poverty.) Nothing started on September 11th - something very complicated that had been going on for a long time continued on that day. The victims on one side are no more guilty or innocent than the victims on the other side. (BTW There is no longer any such thing as "peacetime". There hasn't been since at least 1939.... probably closer to 6000 BCE) Perhaps.... Hapless, either way, whichever side he was on yesterday. (You seem a whole lot quicker to presume guilt than innocence in any case of which you know none of the facts. The legal system of these much-vaunted modern westernized democracies predicate their laws on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, not supposed or maybe guilty. ) If the prisoner was black and the cop was white, in a city where the majority wears red collars, probably. Yes, I did. It means you believe that such countries have no bad laws and no bad cops and no bad ideologies, no corruption or injustice. Again, we disagree. Though I have to wonder why that "left of the political spectrum" imagines itself different from the right wing, it's possible. In which case, the 25-50% of people who vote for the winning candidates in those countries can still be just as wrong as their ancestors were.

You have worked up some interpretation of "my" philosophy of life, but i don't know what-all you've included in that hypothetical philosophy. If supporting what one believes in is an "agenda", then I suppose everyone has their own agenda - even you. I can't see that as dishonest. Nor do I see how my advocating what I believe to be right costs anybody else anything, let alone innocent lives - not even imaginary ones. Is this not the right of every poster? An exhaustive history of the Middle East, South Asia and Europe, c. 661-2000 CE is more than a bit off topic. And available to you elsewhere. Plus, you told me you lost interest when Putin invaded Ukraine. 'Cos he's standing against a wall, wearing a blindfold, with 19 loaded and one blank rifle pointed at his chest. Most people wouldn't call that being fortunate. Not very likely. Firing squad is a more common form of execution for army deserters, insurgents in an occupied territory and suspected enemy collaborators. Sometimes, just any random citizen(s), rounded up to be made an example, if the locals are suspected of harbouring insurgents. Yes. We disagree on that. Also on torture by proxy: designating some other person, whether a fellow officer or a civilian, to carry out the decision made by the officer in charge. When it's successful. Condemned and prosecuted when it fails. Ignored or denied most of the time, because the public isn't told any details. There, too, we disagree. If 99% of the population is all gung-ho about burning heretics, or considers it necessary to break little girls' toes to make their feet dainty, or thinks albinos have no right to live, then 99% of the population is wrong. It wouldn't be a unique situation.

Legally, that may or may not be true; the lower ranks don't get always get away with the "just following orders" defence - though, of course, they may well have faced a firing squad themselves for refusing an order. Ultimately, it is every person's own responsibility. You're alone inside your own mind. The majority makes the laws, supports the official policy, condones black ops, espionage and torture by its own organs while condemning the same methods employed by other nations. The majority imposes its world-view on the minority. But it cannot suffuse every individual conscience. History is littered with conscientious objectors, deserters, heretics, activists, reformers, resisters, protesters, rebels and martyrs. It was an outline. Then Moses and Aaron had to labour at Leviticus, to elaborate the law. And the Israelites obviously didn't consistently obey those laws, or their prophets wouldn't have had to berate them so often over their sinful ways. Those same commandments have been elaborated by all Christian nations into quite different legal codes. It's a simple enough outline, that nevertheless has failed to gain consensus. I don't know what makes you so sure. None of us, AFAIK, is currently on such a team. I worked, a long time ago, in a forensic lab and met some of their members. They were not much like the television version. Ordinary men - all of them: not a female in sight, but that was 1980, practically the stone age - none exceptionally clever, certainly not disciplined in their habits of speech nor reverent toward the law and the citizenry. The protocol is nowhere near as strict (if the news is anything to go by, this is true of most jurisdictions) as we like to think. The tone is always established by the top ranks of each division: they hire and train according the policing style of the leadership. Dissent is not permitted. Some divisions work better than others; some teams are better than others; most work fairly well. Toronto homicide section clears 70+% of its cases. (Of course, they also have some wrongful convictions on their record.) Some kinds of crime are not handled by local police but specialized federal, state or provincial ones, who may be better trained, organized, equipped and disciplined, but most importantly, have a wider jurisdiction and discretionary powers ... which doesn't always prevent mistakes. You're not supposed to know that. It can't be official, as long as there is a law on the books forbidding it. How much leeway each precinct commander gives his troops becomes evident only after the fact, when an abuse of power comes to public notice. Most instances are not revealed. That's exactly what I have maintained. I don't rule out the possibility that I would resort to a wrong action if I were convinced that I could prevent a greater wrong. If I did that, it would still be just as wrong as if someone else did it. I trust neither you nor myself to determine with any certainty whether it is justified in the circumstances. In a crunch, I believe we do whatever we feel (not necessarily think) we have to do. That doesn't make it right or moral, in my book; it just pushes one guilt down a rung below some other anticipated guilt.

It's not my place to excuse or condemn. All I pointed out was that it, as well as every other event, was a consequence of past events, just as it, as well as every other action and decision, has consequences in the future. I wish you would either tell me what that "agenda" is supposed to be, or else stop referring to it. I don't expect either of those things to happen. I answer all the questions that seem relevant to the thread subject, as well as some marginal ones - at tedious length and tiresome number of reiterations. I do not answer, except with reference material you may consult at your leisure, any questions that would require several volumes to explain adequately. That seems to me both a derailment and a great waste of time. Sharing the responsibility lightens the burden. That's why a firing squad, instead of a single executioner: none of them knows which killed the hapless guy in front of the wall. For ethical purposes, however, it is the commander who must answer for the consequences. Besides, answering a question about ethics is not a committee assignment: it's specific and personal.

Neither. Stating a fact. All of history leads to the present. There is no moment, no single event, at which a chain of causation begins or ends. No new happening has one single cause; every new action causes more events. There are very few Y/N B/W answers in human affairs.

Bone, I think. You can use grafts, either from the patient or from a donor, as a framework for new growth, and new cells will fill in the gap to bind them. The titanium mesh and artificial, 3D printed bone serve the same purpose: provide a hard framework. They can be very precise. Amazing work is already being done. For the patient, though, it's still no cakewalk.

"Ever" goes back to the 7th century CE. That's a lot of history, all of it inappropriate to the present venue. No, I don't. As you wish.

No, it isn't. Shelve the Bible. Start here https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/mhccmajorsbio/chapter/introduction-to-genetics-mt-hood-community-college-biology-102/ and come back when you've completed the course. (Without the colour nonsense, please!)

Do you? That's standard practice in science. I suspect you want to discuss 'race' and I'm pretty sure that will be as airworthy as a balloon made of lead. But that's a different branch of science.

Did you know that nationality is not genetic? Absolutely! Just like Americans. What was you intention in putting this under Genetics? You'll be gratified to learn that it has no merit whatsoever in any field.

Why not? I hope somebody who actually knows tells us pretty soon.

How about on the bacterial scale? Mangrove trees live over 100 years each, while bacteria live o more than a day. The turnover, and thus mutation opportunity and thus evolution, is considerably faster on that scale.