John Cuthber

How dry does an area need to be before it is considered agricultural? The question doesn't make sense because the issue of whether an area is agricultural or not is not defined by how wet it is. Perhaps the best answer would be, if it's too dry for people to live there without having to bring in food and water, it's a desert.- of course that would include luxury ocean liners. It's all down to the definitions- pick whichever one you like; but always say what definition you are using.

""Trickle down' economics, ..., is not just a Reagan Conservative policy." Nobody said it was. But the important thing is that it doesn't work. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens " There is no such thing as a 'conservative' or a 'liberal'" Then why worry about them? In particular, why keep using those terms? Incidentally, from my point of view (and, I think that of most of the world) America doesn't have any Left wing politicians actually in office. " IIRC, it was President Obama, a Democrat, who bailed out the bankers and investors who caused the crash of 2008," You seem to have muddled him up with Dr Who. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama "Assumed office January 20, 2009" So, you seem to be saying there's nothing insane about Conservatives (which, you say, don't exist anyway)- the problem is the crash caused by Mr Obama shortly before he became president. Glad we got that settled.

http://xkcd.com/285/

All "A" are "B" doesn't prove all "B" are "A". But if it's true for a large enough sample, it supports the suggestion. I can't check all Conservatives, but I have looked at a sample of them... Can you show me the clearly sane ones please? Can you, for example, show me the ones who don't believe in trickle down economics and who believe that the wealth inequality isn't a good thing.

I believe the traditional phrase is "don't try this at home".

Says who?

I take it that you accept my point, the guy who really thinks he's Napoleon isn't sane. Do you also accept that the bloke who was on Fox news saying he believed that B'ham was a Moslem city and off-limits to those who follow other faiths, was also either deluded, or lying? Not least because there's no logical route from "The place is totally Moslem" to "It's a no- go area for those who are not"

Whichever one of them is happier.

What you said was ", libel laws are fundamentally flawed in that they presume guilty until proven innocent, which is ridiculous." What I have pointed out is that (almost) every court case presumes guilt. They presume the guilt of the party who is not the party whose innocence is presumed. There are always two sides. You can not have both sides assumed to be innocent (and thus free from the burden of proof). Imagine I slander you, for example, by saying you are a murderer. You take me to court, and accuse me of slander. I stand up in court and say "I don't have to prove I'm innocent- you have to prove me guilty if you want to get anywhere. In particular, you have to prove that what I said was false" You, in turn stand up and say "This is slanderous unless I'm guilty of murder. I don't have to prove that I'm innocent of murder. You have to prove that your assertion is true". So, since both sides can claim that they don't have to prove their innocence, neither side can get anywhere. You have yet to address this problem. Please do so. Perhaps you can then address the fact that the only way you could prove me guilty of slander is to prove that you didn't commit murder. You can't, in general, prove a negative. So you are seeking to put the burden of proof on the party that would be logically unable to prove their point. Also, look up what ad hom means. If you think I'm using an ad hom argument, please point out where. If you think I'm being insulting then say so, or...

What "value" do you think it might have?

The problem is that your "simple" relation to Pascals triangle- with all the exceptions and such, is nor pretty nearly as complicated as the real model. You are making up rules to fit your hypothesis and that's the wrong way round. It's not science it's numerology. Apart from anything else, it has no predictive value, so it has no scientific value.

"My understanding is that slander (or defamation) involves making false claims." Yes, so if I claim that Royston is a murderer then either he is a murderer or I am a slanderer. So? If he sues me for making that claim then with whom does the burden of proof lie? Is it with the person making a claim that his opponent committed slander or is the burden of proof with the person claiming that his opponent committed murder? It's not generally difficult to decide if an allegation was made. The tricky bit is deciding whether it was justified or not. Is it, for example, legitimate to call mr Smith a murderer in the case I suggested? It is a matter for a civil court- but the court still has to decide if I'm a slanderer or he's a murderer. And it's still not obvious who should have the burden of proof.

Did you think there might be someone here who didn't know that?

OK is the burden of proof with the person making a claim that his opponent committed slander or is the burden of proof with the person claiming that his opponent committed murder? The situation is pretty symmetrical, so it's not obvious where that burden should lie. The point remains that it has to be with someone; there are two sides to the argument. Royston seems to think it should lie with nobody since that's what you get if you assume that both sides are innocent. My view is that murder is a much more serious matter than slander so, if there's no strong evidence to prove that it took place, the assumption must be that there was no murder. If that's the case, then there must have been slander. So, slanderers end up carrying the burden of proof. There's also the fact that they chose to start the whole sequence of events by making an allegation in the first place. If you are going to make a defamatory statement then you should be able to back it up.

I'm extraordinarily unlikely to "favorize" anything. I might favour some things. in general I think that, if the consequences of ones actions are not the basis of ones choice of action then one is rather missing the point of having a brain that can deduce what those consequences may be. However, I'm not foolish enough to say I'd never be a hypocrite about these things. If I was in that situation, I might not yell very loudly...

Yell over the wall to see if there's someone there. Count them. Minimise the total deaths. Of course, if you are selfish, you can lie about how many people are on your side.

It's still a problem of definition. Bananas are very convenient, but scarcely processed. Essentially, what it comes down to is that some foods, especially,if consumed in excess, are bad for you- though probably less so than starving to death.

I'd also like to know what's between the green and black croc clips in the last picture. But it won't really help. Stripping the wire will, at least, make a circuit that you can get some sort of resistance measurement of. but the effect of temperature is small and the meter will not be sensitive enough to detect it. Either you need a much more sophisticated measurement, or (more realistically) you need a much longer or thinner wire. Enthalpy, if you look at the meter it only has one resistance range and the display says it's auto-ranging, but overloaded. so it's not meaningful to say it's on a 60 MOhm range.

Do you see why I don't trust you to understand what I have written? You also seem resolute in your refusal to count to two. There are two sides to any case. You can't assume they are both innocent, because they (generally) can't be. In the specific case I suggested, either there's a slanderer or there's a murderer. It's not that you have rebutted the point inadequately, you have not addressed it at all. How do you deal with the fact that you can not assume innocence on both sides? There is a solution for most cases- that's the origin of legal privilege- but it doesn't work for slander.

"Iron is so common because radioactive nickel, 28 (magic) protons (and neutrons?) decays " Not very "magic" then, is it? "By the way, if one really wants to get all New Agey, consider the following discovery. If taken as atomic numbers, Fibonacci numbers (up to 89, that is, within the known atomic system) ALL pattern as FIRST members of their orbital blocks," 1 yep 2 no 3 yep 5 yep 8 yep Oops! 11 element, Sodium, is missing from the series 13 yep Damn, potassium, 19 isn't a Fibonacci number either 21 Yep 34 Drat- nothing special about Selenium 55 yep 89 yep Soyou are right. I's very "New Age"- because, when yo look properly- it's not actually true, just a handful of coincidences.

So, how come iron is so common? But yes, a definition would have been a good place to start. Why didn't you?

OK, so your answer to "How to reduce wealth inequality?" is "But this has nothing to do with stratospheric CEO salaries." Check again, I think you will find that's exactly what it's to do with.

Does washing the dust off food count as processing? It's a physical process. If it does, then do we eat any non processed food? So, it's clearly a matter of opinion/ definition.

There is one sort of magic number- the ones that the experiments give. If your ideas don't agree with the real world, it isn't because the real world is wrong.

If all that stuff about Pascal's triangle had come up with the right numbers it might be interesting. However "The seven most widely recognized magic numbers as of 2007 are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_%28physics%29 And there's a reasonable claim for 34 as well http://oeis.org/A018226 Since the rather long post misses out some and includes others that are not right, yet it picks all the ones in the list he was working from "The predicted spin-orbit magic numbers, for neutrons in spheres, are: 2,6,14,28,50,82,126,184" it is reasonable to conclude that the OP has included stuff to force the numbers to match the list he was working from, rather than actually calculating the right numbers. It's not just numerology, you can, in this case, pretty much prove it's numerology. He has carefully fitted his model so it predicts the answers he wanted,, rather than the answers which experiments show to be correct.