John Cuthber

You must have a very poor opinion of what normal humans can do. Most pilots are bored for most of the flight. The autopilot is flying the plane. Since the autopilot was invented in 1912 it's difficult to justify any idea that its role is all that difficult.

We can. Slowly. Very slowly.

"Any judge or jury, with a brain in their heads, will realize that "How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" from Al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine has no probable good purpose, beyond a reasonable doubt." If that is true and you know that it is, then you must have accessed that site to see what it said. Since by your own acknowledgement, there is no "reasonable doubt" you should now hand yourself in at the nearest police station.

Oh look! Evidence. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gun-science-proves-arming-untrained-citizens-bad-idea&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

You do realise that the constitution is not actually holy scripture don't you? It wasn't written with today's problems in mind and it is, unsurprisingly, not a solution to those problems. So, if it needs changing to prevent lots of deaths, change it. (and if you want to discuss the death penalty it's probably best to start another topic but the short answers to "IMO, if we went bad to public hangings for those that willfully and wantedly commit murder then those people we be fewer and fewer." are that 1 Sinking to the level of killing, just to avenge killing is not progress, it's savagery. 2 Most murders are committed in the heat of the moment, or by people who have planned them pretty much as carefully as they can. In the first case hanging couldn't have a deterrent effect because the murderer isn't thinking about consequences. In the second case the murderer expects to get away with it so he neither expects prison nor hanging. Since he doesn't expect to face hanging, it can't be e deterrent. 3 they sometimes get the wrong guy.)

OK, it turns out that I included two errors in that sentence. (Though, to save face I will point out that it should probably be "shall" rather than "will".) And I think that answer is "Yahweh and Vishnu are imaginary."

When you say this"Also I have it in mind to use to view inter net pictures and determen if the tissue is real or fake or somthing else" it makes me think that you are hoping to do something impossible. Can you explain exactly what you wan to do?

That's just silly. You were asking why there isn't a hue and cry in the States for control of swords. Pointing out that machetes are often used somewhere else is irrelevant. And, since swords are practically banned (i.e. if you start waving one around, you are likely to get shot) a strict ban wouldn't achieve much more. And the point still remains that there's an obvious defence against a man with a sword that simply won't work against a gun. Can you outrun a bullet? That's one of the reasons why the death toll in sword attacks is much lower (quite often zero- though the injuries are sometimes horrific).

"We've ended up with a rather sully collection of people that are now the government." AKA democracy. Now all you need to do is teach them that their best interests are not actually served by a government which taxes the majority to give vast sums of money to teh rich. But, even in the meantime, you are basing your support of guns on the idea that the people will attack themselves. Now, I may not have a very high opinion of the intelligence of the masses but that seems a bit extreme. "They could be misused in public just as guns are." There we go again. It's not clear that killing someone by using a gun is misuse. That's what guns are for, so it's use. Another possible reason is that people don't often run amuck with a sword. Also, where they do, the death toll is usually rather lower than a rogue gunman. There really is a difference.

Oh dear!. I thought we had nailed the rather quaint idea that the pea shooters which the people have would be any use against the military strength of a government which spends more on "defence" than the next handful of countries put together.In essence, if you are inside an APC a muzzle flash is a clear signal for where your target is, but it isn't a threat. Have you considered not voting for tyrannical governments as an alternative to carrying guns to defend yourselves from them? And, odd as it may seem, the police don't arrest people for knitting in public because there's a recognised defence of "lawful reason". But that doesn't make any difference to the fact that- unless you have a good reason, swords are, in fact banned. So the idea that "you never hear of any advocacy to ban them." is a bit redundant: they are banned.

Guess again. Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 prohibits having with you, in a public place of any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed, (including a folding pocket knife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 7.62cm/3 inches) (Archbold 24-125). Section 139A of the 1988 Act extends the geographical scope of both of the above offences to school premises.

You seem to have missed the point. If someone uses a gun to kill my brother I can't sue the manufacturer on behalf of my brother's estate because the gun did exactly what it was designed, built and intended to do. If a lawnmower kills my brother then I can sue because a lawnmower should not be built to kill people. There really is something different about guns (and cigarettes) compared to practically any other product. If you use them "properly" for their design purpose, they kill people. Oddly the US seems to have practically banned the one that kills the user, but not the one that kills other people. We may disagree on that but perhaps we can agree that the person who failed to supervise the kid should get prosecuted for manslaughter.

It's a right angle with the rather odd symbol given in the 4th picture here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_angle

"If a person has superhuman abilities and by superhuman I mean like the Cyborgs you see in the Terminator franchise for example) like being strong, resilient, extremely energetic and doesn't need to eat and drink much to stay in top shape, then it cannot be just genetics which gives him these abilities." But no such person exists so it's pointless to speculate about them in this way. "What I think is that maybe Satan or the Devil or some other very powerful being can interfere with the way our body works and give some people superhuman abilities." Feel free to think what you like, but some of us prefer evidence, and you haven't provided anything close.

It doesn't need to be possible. Ask Captain Kirk about the dilithium crystals.

What are you on about? "Since you consider this population of friends to be representative of the general population," Nope, if anything I consider them rather better informed than most of the population. That's why, for example, they do know what a group carcinogen is*. The point is that, even among this relatively well informed group there are still serious gaps in their knowledge; "blind spot" as it were. "Are you denying the possibility that alcohol consumption can interfere with brain development (or whatever it was) to adolescents?" No; of course not, and there's nothing I have written which implies that I do. What I have said is that society does enforce a more or less reasonable level of control which permits young people to find out about alcohol (though probably not as much as they should) rather than, for example, an absolute ban up to some age (say 18) then a total free for all. In answer to the question what would I do, for a start is impose a minimum price per unit of alcohol. This would have two effects- it would cut down the supply to most teens (who don't have a lot of money) and it would also reduce the price differential between supermarkets and pubs/bars. That would tend to get the kids into bars where people could keep an eye on them (not a great idea but better than the street). * http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/

Is there a minimum age for that philosophy?

I think you will find that they are.

Who was the first to point out that there is no preferred frame. And, with no preferred frame, there's no way you are right. The point also remains that, from the point of view of those on the ship, it weighs exactly the same as it always did.

The winos I see on the street don't seem to be enjoying it particularly, but that's not really the point.

The earth is buffered by the atmosphere. If it hits dust, or even small rocks they get trashed in the atmosphere. What you seem to to realise is that relativity works with velocities. There is no preferred frame of reference with respect to which the dust is stationary and the ship is moving. It is equally valid to say the ship is stationary and the dust is travelling at near the speed of light. So the ship gets hit by fast moving stuff and that damages it.

There is a deliberate error in it.

I meant this sentence "I'm willing to bet that none of the people reading this sentence spot the grammatical error in it."

One of the delights of English is that you can mess about with the rules. Yoda, you should ask. The rules are, of course in constant flux. Hardly anyone today seems to know when to use "less" and when to use "fewer". I'm willing to bet that none of the people reading this sentence spot the grammatical error in it. (Please don't post an answer yet, or use spoiler tags if you do. Let's see how many can spot the glitch)

Is there any reason to suppose that it wasn't a balloon? Presumably the one lost by the child in the report? If not, then Occam's razor kind of kills the UFO idea. Split infinity, Which of your statements do you actually believe? "These are men who have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by making such statements." or "The Astronauts and Cosmonauts that have now talked about E.T. are at an advanced age where they simply don't care any more what anyone might do to them."