tomgwyther

Gave me a chuckle.

I'm looking at a horse right now, outside my house. I can confirm it's neck is about one third of its overall body length.

There are nearly as many gods as there are people who believe in god. In any case, why would we wish to attribute properties to something which does not exist?

A lot of military hardware comes from the private sector. you might look into contacting, BAE systems, Lockheed Martin, Ratheon... Companies like that for navy and air force. I also found this A-Z of army suplliers http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/indexAtoZ.html

Each part of the thalamus is about the size of a walnut, the whole structure is about the size of a standard chicken egg

We'll see. Care to place a bet? I wager £1000 that none of the above happen.

"A secular explanation for human conscience" As a question doesn't make a great deal of sense. Secularism is the principle of separation of government institutions, and the persons mandated to represent the State, from religious institutions and religious dignitaries. In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state that is neutral on matters of belief. Whereas Conscience is the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action: to follow the dictates of conscience. The question might be better phrased as... "In the absence of a God/Gods or other similar divine agent(s), From where does human morality originate?" I would answer that morality, altruistic behaviour and conscience have evolutionary roots, especially in species which tend to live in herds or packs. Humans being one example of such a species, many other animal species exhibit similar altruistic behaviours also.

Nay. At the Curie point it loses its ferromagnetism. Iron melts at 1811 K and its Curie point is at 1041 K. From a post on this forum, in December 2008 by Gilded

We can rule out that hypothesis because of the hundreds of dreams I made a record of, and of the many de ja vu experiences afterwards, none of them actually correlated with a dream. The claim that it is possible to see into the future in our dreams is an extraordinary claim which would require extraordinary evidence. Whereas disturbances within the sensory and memory parts of the brain is far more likely, and in some cases can be demonstrated.

My hypothesis was that there are no such things as Deja vu dreams, it only seems that we dreamt some current event in the past. My mentioning the bike accident and the wall-paper stripping, was merely a presentation of what I observed. I still have Deja vu experiences, they haven't gone away. I now know however that when I experience Deja vu, it isn't because I dreamt it at some earlier time. There is no correlation between dreaming and deja vu. We can rule out the hypothesis that we dream future events. iNow's contribution is by far the most plausible I've seen here. Over the years, researchers have pinpointed disturbances of the medial temporal lobe as the culprit behind déjà vu. Studies of epileptic patients investigated via intracerebral electrodes demonstrate that stimulation of the rhinal cortex (such as the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices—structures involved in episodic memory and sensory processing) can actually induce a déjà vu episode.

The McGurk effect. Here's the video

I've had this experience before many times. From a subjective point of view, it is very powerful. A few examples:# Whilst stripping wallpaper, some loose plaster came off the wall, leaving a random pattern behind, a pattern which appeared to exactly match a dream I'd had some six months earlier. I bike crash i had when I was a teenager, seemed to exactly match a dream I'd had a few months before, every skib, every bump seemed to match perfectly, in hi-def perfection. it seems most people have these de ja vu experiences, usually about 10 seconds of what feels like a repeat of a pre-recorded video. Being a man of science, I devised an experiment. Every time I woke up and could remember a dream, I would write down as many details as possible, including drawing pictures of the scene or scenes which I had dreamt. I wrote the date on each one and kept them in chronological order. I did this for a year. The results were that, none of the dreams I recorded "Came true". That is, none of the subsequent de ja vu experiences matched observations made at the time of dreaming. I can only conclude that the de ja vu experiences many of us have are indeed tricks of the mind. As to how these happen; I can speculate that there may be some form of disconnect between left and right hemispheres, or maybe a similar processing error between different lobes of the brain.

http://youtu.be/oSfUvXiNKtc it starts at 15:20 Is this the list you're looking for. There is another one which mentions odd commandments, I remember seeing it too, but can't seem to find it anywhere. Back on Topic. I eat red meat (Medium rare steak) and drink milk a lot, with no ill effects. Other than to trawl Youtube for amusiing QI moments.

If it were me, I'd fix 'em up and sell them on Ebay, I'll buy one. Or perhaps donate them to a less privileged school, or maybe start some sort of community IT project. Kids could learn how to strip, re-build and re-program them.

If you're using approved, - fit for purpose - conditioning bottles, they shouldn't explode. Conditioning bottles are made from very strong, very thick glass. If (as I suspect) you're using just ordinary bottles, then yes, you 'Have a fridge full of ticking time bombs and are at risk of serious injury. If you want to bottle condition you beer, use only the correct equipment. Or, as mentioned earlier, use a conditioning barrel. It has a safety valve on top to release excess pressure. the same valle can be used to attach a CO2 cannister to increase the CO2 content if necessary.

Thought I'd share this. it is the Billion pound o Gram for 2012. although issued for the UK, it's somewhat salient for this topic showing where a westernised country spends it's money in relation to alleviating poverty. Pay particular attention to Tesco revenue* and Africa's debt. If we didn't spend on cheap consumer goods, we could do a lot to help impoverished third world countries. *Tesco - similar to Wal-Mart Source: informationisbeautiful.net p.s. I've always loved the way intangible numbers are presented by 'Information is Beautiful.' It brings it all to life. Try doing a similar thing for your own household budget, or whatever. all you need a graph paper and colouring pencils!

Oh, that's OK then. As long as deaths aren't concentrated geographically too often. Also, If the armed militia would care to use their handguns against their tyrannical government's standing army any time soon, I'd be very interested in the results. It saddens me; the weakness of the arguments for handgun ownership - automatic or otherwise.

The report I read said he used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, a civilian version of the M-16. Plus two hand guns loaded with high capacity magazines. Is there currently a need for a militia in the US? I accept that my views may not be shared by US citizens. But I find the arguments against them; (guns are fun, big guns a harder to get, armed militias.) Etc, just a little weak.

The opinion that 'Guns are fun' still doesn't resolve, or address, the legal conflict I mentioned earlier. a semi-automatic or fully automatic firearm has a sole primary purpose which is in conflict to the law. and in my opinion, a conflict to moral sanity. I'm not against guns as a whole, on the contrary. I recently used a shot gun to shoot a few pheasant. I used a knife to butcher them and a fork with which to eat them. Each of these items could feasibly be used to inflict harm to another person; but that's not their primary purpose, and I don't use them for for purposes for which they weren't designed. In the case of a fully automatic rifle, it's primary purpose is to kill/injure people, which it did - only too efficiently in this case. It did exactly what it was designed to do.

If assault is a criminal act; then why are assault weapons legal? In other words, why would one allow the sale/ownership of apparatus, who's sole function is to commit an act contrary to law? You can't buy software specifically for hacking/identity theft from Wal-mart, nor can you buy a device specifically for breaking into cars, or stealing money from an ATM, or counterfeiting banknotes. While it's true that a great number of things can be used as a weapon to commit assault (Knife, baseball bat, various hunting weapons) using such items to assault a person would be secondary to their primary function.

You can have a 'grey water' system installed. Whereby waste water from the bath/shower, is used to fill the toilet cistern. It's easier than pumping sea water miles inland.

Fermentation continues in the conditioning barrel, for months usually, You then have the option to bottle it. The pre-conditioned, bottled beer is easier to transport/store.

Get a conditioning barrel, rather than conditioning the beer in the bottles. you can always bottle it from the conditioning barrel if you like. having a conditioning barrel means you don't have to worry about upsetting the bottles and having sediment floating around in your drink. I keep my conditioning barrel in the basement where it's quite cold (which almost makes my beer into a lager in winter) or keep your barrel in the house and have beer-on-tap 24/7

This one always gives me a chuckle!

Is this an example of taking Sorites paradox too far? How far is too far? As with 'how many apples [grains of sand in Eubulides' case'] make a heap; the question 'how far is too far' is a demonstrative example of the sort of questions philosophy tends to deal with.