StringJunky

I nicked this from Swansont in another thread and find it perfectly acceptable because there is no way it can be interpreted as a personal attack yet he's saying the idea is crap. I think the trick is to use words that can't be denoted as a person. You don't call someone 'a bollocks' or 'a crap' but 'idiotic' can be construed as 'idiot'.

I think calling an idea moronic, dumb, cretinous, imbecilic etc is insulting a person in a 'curve-ball' manner such that it looks like one is attacking the idea but is in fact insulting the person. Using descriptions like these can only invoke negative feelings - via the back-door - in the receiver and hence a discussive impasse. It's rather sly imo and not conducive to further rational and dispassionate discourse. Criticism should directly and explicitly describe the nature of the error. This is specific to when conversations are serious in nature but erroneous not when someone is deliberately just being a troll or idiot then they deserve all the colourful adjectives one can muster.

We could for a short time then it was turned off.

Us mere mortals cannot see the rep given. I would like to though ...and iNow would IIRC

I'm sure it's no more than 30 posts before you can neg someone.

I agree. I was just speculating a possible source for the error by the ignorant not aware that it's actually an acronym. I like this.

I would hazard that most of those are from American posters as there is a tendency in American-English usage to put a 'z' where a Briton would put an 's'.

I think it's great that many regulars that are committed to science endeavour to use words, sentences and grammar correctly - for where they are from - but linguistic perfection, in the eyes of the reader, is all but impossible to expect and expecting it to the nth degree is not realistic in a public forum As long as the intent of the author is received correctly by the reader that's all that matters really in this format. I'm sure I could be shot many times over for transgressions in my use of the language here but I do try. The easy manipulation, misuse, and bastardisation by people over the centuries is what has given the English language it's global dominance today ...they can easily make it their own. It has probably communicatively joined more different people together than any other language. What we see, like with chadn's "error", is English language evolution in action. Having said all this, I do enjoy your style and overall precision and hope you continue to be as anal .as you are. We need at least some bastions of proper English.

Pedant. He was just being emphatic..

My Grandad once talked about this subject. He was an RAF Airframe and Engine Fitter (mechanic) on bombers from 1936-1972. In a nutshell he said mechanics just do it and engineers can design it ...this is the principle difference. His son was an Oil Project Manager (Engineer) and a scenario for him would be that he was told there was oil in say 7200 feet of water before hitting the seabed and he had to tell the oil company what they needed to execute the task and understand the geology so they would know the drilling equpment needed when they got there. Engineers can deal with the novel but mechanics can't ...generally. My grandad was quite capable of and had designed stuff but never called himself an engineer because he said you needed a degree. The dividing line is blurred somewhat but on the whole I agree with him. Professionally, it's about training.

Well, there's a lot of turtles down there.

Perhaps the difference between humans and other animals, like the bats you mention, is that we have the choice to resist instinctive behaviour patterns within ourselves and select a different behavioural path whereas in most animals the behaviour is hard-wired and extant from cognition or as you put it: mechanistic.

You not are taking into account air spaces created by movement of subterranean organisms eg worms and size variation in adjacent substrate particles. The denser the substrate and more anoxic it is plants adapted to that environment will have their roots, or at least a proportion of them, nearer the surface.

Extract and transfer all person-data, preserving data-sets, and brain data-pathways to a complex graphene lattice. i think it is capable of conducting signals and storing information. It's archival properties and thermal tolerance, being pure carbon, should be excellent. Economy of space should be good too.

it's as symbolically awesome as the US having a black president. Conchita Wurst (which means sausage} is actually a character the guy acts as as an ideological statement about accepting people for what they are and their many variations; gender and sexual.

Two objects cannot simultaneously have the same spatial and temporal co-ordnates i.e. they can only be in the same place at different times or different places at the same time. Therefore one must conclude, by deduction, that a temporal dimension exists.

I found this:

In visual terms, our experience is a sequence of passing still images and the more of these still images your brain can create in a second the slower things will appear to occur. It is generally tied in with the size of an organism and it's metabolic rate. The smaller it is the faster the metabolic rate and hence the slower things appear to occur. If the signal speed is faster then the recycling rate is increased so things will appear slower still.

Maybe you heard it in your language without alteration but your brain had not - at that point - made intelligible sense of it.

I think, in truth, it's the scientists fault for giving it a narrow non-standard or non-universal definition compared to what the non-scientific public think it is. The real meaning of "theory" is anything you can think of or pull out of your arse. .

Some Arctic animals can store vitamin A, only using it when needed, but if something else eats them then they are going to receive toxic amounts because, presumably, they will absorb it all at once.

A theory in science is the closest thing scientists will admit to an idea being a fact. When they call something a "theory" they mean it has a lot of verifiable evidence to support it. If new research has a confidence level better than 95% it can go on its way to be a theory. Note: they don't do certainty because if they did then their minds would be closed to new future evidence that may show current research conclusions to not be applicable in every instance. They like to always keep the door open a bit just in case an idea may turn out to be wrong or, as they call it: its domain of applicability may be limited. Most established theories are eventually found to be incomplete. This was found with Newton's theory of gravity which was superseded, or extended, by Einstein's geometric curved spacetime theory and lately his theory is found to be wanting in the domain below atomic scale i.e. tiny scales. Quantum physicists are currently trying to explain gravity in terms that fits with the description of the three fundamental forces - strong, weak and electromagnetic - but it's proving difficult. Established scientific theories don't usually turn out to be flat out wrong ...just incomplete and can still be used within their domain of applicability. Newer theories usually just extend older ones. A 'theory' in science is as good as it gets so if you want annoy a scientist say; "It's just a theory" After this explanation you should now realise the big bang theory is very highly regarded by conventional scientists.

Your altitude setting wants to be the same as your location latitude which is 33.26 degrees. You then just need to find true north.