abskebabs

I think Hezbollah has learnt from the lessons of the PLO in the early 1980s so it does not keep any obvious infrastructure or bases which can be targeted. This makes it harder for Israel to destroy it, and as it's weapons and operations are embedded within civilian areas it makes it harder to destroy. On top of that this causes civilian casualties when Hezbollah targets. In this sense Hezbollah are more like a shadowy secret society that masquerade as civilians, inevitably drawing the conflict into civilian areas as it is the only place they can escape detection. This is an alternative theory, which would not require Hezbolah having an elaborate strategy of using Lebanese civilians as "human shields." Regardless of either theory, the IDF knows about this, but it does not stop it firing at many civilians to kill a few terrorists. I ask an open question; can this be justified just because it is the only available means of attack should it be pursued? Also what about the UN post bombed in this war and the one bombed 10 years ago? I doubt Hezbollah was using them as "human shields", so why were they targeted? Or were they caught in crossfire?

It took me a while to find mooeypoo, but I think this is the article. http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/08/04/10057432.html

I am not defending Hezbollah's actions when saying this, but when you look at things from a slightly broader historical perspective, Israel doesn't exactly have the moral high ground when it comes to kidnapping prisoners from Lebanon during border incursions and holding them hostage. It has been carrying out this exact policy in Lebanon for almost the last 2 decades, and many of the prisoners are still unreleased, without trial. Did the world even raise an eyebrow when this happenned? It is far from the truth that only Hezbollah members have been kidnapped as businessmen, politicians and civilians with no affiliation to the group have been held without charge for a verey long time. This makes the claim that this is a suitable reason for Israel to invade Lebanon and blatantly attack and bombard heavily populated civilian areas; just because Hezbollah has started employing their own tactics agains them. I would be shocked if anyone truly believes this war was pursued because 2 Israeli soldiers were kidnapped. That was simply the excuse. IMO this war was planned in advance, and Israel was waiting for its oppurtunity to pounce, you could say. In light of this, I think the strategy has proved to be as disasterous as the Iraq war. Why are these countries(US, UK and Israel) continuing to believe that violence can solve these problems? It is just tangling them into a biggger and bigger mess. I'm no longer surprised Hezbollah is gaining so much popularity in the middle east and Lebanon. I think even Christian and Druze communities in Lebanon they are gaining popularity. To me it seems there is no sense of fairness, the rules are not dictated by the UN or any other world body. The rules are that Israel and the US make the rules, or else. As long as this is the impression ppl in the middle east and Arab world have, I don't think there can be any hope of lasting peace in the region. Most importantly I think, is not the destruction of Hezbollah by arms, but to stop giving ppl a reason to support them, especially in Lebanon. This task may sound Herculean to western military thinkers, but perhaps after proverbially banging their heads on the wall, it is time for a change in approach.

The problem is the militants dont usually fight each other, they just kill innocent bystanders from other communities most of the time. In the name of religion...

I see... are there any that are important, and would be useful learning in your opinion, or at least being aware of?

Hi everybody. I remembered when having a discussion today with my driving instructor about centripetal forces, mechanics and gravity; that I stumbled upon the realisation that whereas I know the maths regarding these subjects, I cannot justify it or gain a true understanding from first prinicples or axioms. For example, I know that centripetal accelleration is equal to [math] \frac{v^2}{r}[/math], but I cannot derive or prove it from axioms/first principles. To be honest I do not know any either. I would love to be able to refurnish up my understanding from the ground up, to put it metaphorically. Thereby I have 2 favours to kindly ask of you. Could someone please tell me how, or show me how I could derive this expression for centripetal acceleratuion? Secondly and more importantly, could someone tell me what the basic or founding axioms of mathematics were, from which the following theorems were deductively reasoned. Am I wrong in thinking these axioms could be so neatly comprised, and do you think it is important to know them? Also is this kind of reasoning taught in Maths courses and related subjects? I would be very grateful for replies:-)

I think the coca cola advert fot the world cup definitely deserves to be here.

I suppose I shouldn't have used the words "better explained. Instead "easier to understand" would have fit better. What Morris Kline describes as "logistica" means the mundane or trivial calculations that need to be carried out to reach a certain result. This is something all computers can do, once given the right set of instructions or software to carry out a certain task. Arithmetica is defined as a study of the concept of number, its principles, and itd application to nature. Is it incorrect to assume that this kind of activity is quite different to the process of logistica, and would require something more than calculations to be able to understand the context of numbers? If this is wrong, are you suggesting that this kind of understanding only results as a subtle side effect of calculative and computational processes that evolve in the brain in the first place?

I raise this question after purchasing Morris Kline's book Mathematics and the Physical World, and having read just over 50 pages of it so far. On page 41 the author makes an assertion about the capacity for computers for thought, which he justifies, and I quote: "Since computing machines simulate the actions of nerves and memory, they may give us some clues to the functioning of human brain and of nerve actions. Though these machines are in speed, accuracy and endurance superior to the human brain, one should not infer, as many popular writers are now trying to suggest, that computers will ultimately replace brains. Machines do not think. They perform calculations. The machines to use the word the Greeks used at the beginning of this chapter, do logistica but not arithmetica. Nevertheless, we undoubtedly have in the machine a useful model for the study of some functions of the brain." The position of the author's seems similiar to Roger Penrose's but better explained. My questions are; Do you agree or disagree with the author? If so, why? My guess is someone like bascule may be hot on the heels of a thread like this:D

Thinking about it now, I think I was talking a load of garble and u need not worry about it. It's just I've recently been reading up about matrices and how they can be adapted to solve systems of equations by producing an augmented matrix; and then performing elementary row operations, to obtain a triangular matrix. I thought something similiar could be done here with gravitational equations. I used the word statistical, and that has no bearing on what I was trying to say whatsoever. I know that it is easy to find exact solutions to linear systems of equations, but only approximate solutions can be achieved whwn trying to solve nonlinear systems of equations. I then made the link between this and the inabillity to solve this specific problem exactly. Was I fallacious in making these assumptions? Also, on a side note what kind of application of matrices are used in Heisenberg's matrix mechanics?

Holy moly:eek: ! That's news to me. I had no idea that this problem would require quantum mechanics, I just thought statistical methods could be applied to produce approximate solutions to this problem. For example, I thught perhaps one could apply nonlinear equatons and solve them using matrices to produce approximate answers. I hope someone else can eleborate a little more on this, as this has now left me proverbially scratching my head:confused: .

I'm sorry if this compliment seems innapropriate or trivial, but you do appear like a very intriguing and interesting person to me, as well as one who I can identify with. You seem to be quite aware of social idiosyncracies and your situation. I wish you happiness if this girl is your new girlfriend, she seems quite an honest and patient person from your post. Incredibly, this is my first post in this thread! I guess I caught the bus a little late...

I remember reading about the three body problem from the advance notice article I received for my OCR synoptic physics exam. In fact, I have it here with me now. To get to the point, it interested me very much and made me wonder if it could have been solved, and worry; rather stupidly that it might be on the exam. Anyway, I'm glad it wasn't, as the article stated there is no comlete solution to the problem. Why is this? Are the solutions to this problem only approximate? If so, are methods involving matrices involved? Also the french mathematician Jospeph Louis Lagrange is credited with finding special places where the smallest body of a system(consisting of an asteroid, the sun and the earth as an example) consisting of three, could keep the same position relative to the other two. It seems to me, it would be relatively easy perhaps working out where these "special" places are if variables of the 2 larger bodies, like the masses, velocities and orbital radii are known. It is great that even classical or basic physics can be so interesting:-) .

If u had a little aptitude:-p ; you may have realised u could have just googled this instead of wasting a thread on it. I felt ppl were being a little unhelpful so I decided to just google "aptitude tests." And lo and behold! Here are my results http://www.aptitudeonline.co.uk/ http://web.tickle.com/take/free-online-career-aptitude-test.jsp http://www.shldirect.com/ Here's a site about personality tests in general: http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/personalitytests/a/personalitytest.htm [edit] I see cloud beat me to this post, that test above is a good one. I guess I'm just a hopeless idealist with my long pondering over posts!(you'll get that if u view the thread)

I really like this thread, a lot of these jokes have actually been quite funny. Anyway, here's a joke I hope you haven't heard yet, it's more of an engineering joke, but it doesnt matter. 2 engineering students meet each other on campus in between lectures. One of them turns up on a shiny new bike. The other student asks him, "When did you get that bike?" The other student replies, "Well the other day I was just walking to my next lecture, when a beautiful woman came rushing to me on her bike, threw it down, took all her clothes off and said'Take what you want!'" His fellow student nodded concordantly, replying, "Ah yes, the clothes probabaly woudn't have fit."

I really love the adverts for malibu I'm placing the links to 2 of them both below. You should definitely check them out, they're classics:D . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8EAQfTKu0A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0skdqi1fKc I don't see the big deal with the citroen adverts, I dont really like them and the music on them irritates me.

Hey everybody, I was wondering the other day how important is the abillity to have a viewpoint of the underlying processes involved for a physical theory? How important is this to allow theory to be considered theoretically plausible by the scientific community. I am concentrating on theories in the field of Physics, which was I posted in this part of the forum. I shall help to illustrate, using 2 examples. You may or may not know, in ancient times, the egyptians and babylonians had already developed accurate mathematical models that were able to predict the movement of the stars and constellations. However, the Ptolemaic model, whose predictions were not as accurate, still became generally preferred over these older, more accurate models. This seems to me because it provided a viewpoint and a basis for what was happenning that at the time seemed plausible. My 2nd example is at time much further along the road of history. During the 1920s, when Heisenberg came up with matrix mechanics in the field of Quantum theory, Schrodinger among others, very much disliked for its lack of a viewpoint, or illustration of the processes involved. He developed his own version of Quantum mechanics based on wavefunctions and the now famous Schrodinger equation. I think it is generally thought to be easier to use. It was later shown however, that both theorie were mathematically equivalent. In light of this, I would like to summarise by reiterating my original question, how important do you think it is, that when we develop physical theories we maintain a viewpoint?

I like to read erotic stories and literature, but I haven't really told anyone until now, I think...(I'm so ashamed:embarass: !) I think ppl avoid revealing this kind of thing for fear of being judged by others. I agree with Yt though, if I had a wife, I coudnt live with myself if I kept secrets from her.