John Cuthber

There are lots of banned drugs, yet they are still available. Why would banning porn work any better?

The Gaelic languages are also Celtic. (so are a few others) I think we need to distinguish between what would be called " English English" (if that were not a bit silly because it's tautology) and "American English" which is a bit silly because it's fundamentally not American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas Meanwhile, back at what might have been the topic. How many of you can confidently read this out loud? I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble but not you On hiccough, thorough, slough and through. Well done! And now you wish perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead, it's said like bed, not bead- for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'! Watch out for meat and great and threat (they rhyme with suite and straight and debt). A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth, or brother, And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's doze and rose and lose- Just look them up- and goose and choose, And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart- Come, I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd mastered it when I was five. And those are the easy ones which made it into bad poetry. How would you pronounce Slough and slough? I think there are 11 different ways to read "ough", but can anyone beat that tally?

The moon was inhabited rather briefly. It depends on your definition.

I think you may have just annoyed the Scots and Welsh.

There wouldn't be much point moving this thread to religion. The same tired old points are already made there- generally rather better. If the OP had read the stuff that's on this site already he might have realised he was wasting his time and the site's bandwidth repeating stuff.

If the earth was growing at any significant rate then GPS wouldn't work. GPS works therefore the earth isn't growing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_press

That's an opinion, not a fact.

If John Cuthber was my real name, you might have a point.

A few thoughts. I can stand up for my rights quite calmly- in fact I think things through better that way so I do a better job at winning the argument. Against whom would it be a defence? I undserstand that those skilled in martial arts seek to avoid becoming angry- for it leads to a loss of control which is bad for winning a fight.

I am a member of a secret society, but I'm not telling you about it.

Very roughly, 10 doublings gives you a thousand (3 digits). Twenty will give you a six digit number and so on. If you want 10^43 then that's 43 digits that's about 143 doublings My calculator tells me that 2^143 is 1.1X10^43 2^145 is 4.46 *10^43 So it's about 145 doublings. An indium atom is about 300pm in diameter so 10^43 layers of them would be impossibly thick (3E34 metres, much bigger than the solar system). A milimetre thick sheet would be "only" about six million atoms thick. Two dozen foldings would mean the "layers" were just about an atom thick.

There are, no doubt, many factors, but I think Phi for All's point is very telling. Running a prison for profit is in my opinion morally bankrupt. Exactly how much incentive to the prisons have to prevent re-offending in that system? In principle I don't object to the meals being provided by an external supplier- but the staff and governor of the prison should eat the same food (in a different room of course) in order to maintain the quality of the service.

If you were stuck in quicksand on the beach and the tide came in you might find that reality was even more rude than your friend. Strictly speaking you wouldn't drown in quicksand but the effect would be the same.

Essentially, yes. The leftover alcohol mixes with the water and the mixture doesn't dissolve the salt as well as clean water does.

I'm surprised nobody has chosen to break down the problem into what seem to me to be two obvious parts. Is the prison population high because you have many criminals (i.e. a high overall crime rate) or because you put people in prison for crimes that would get non-custodial sentences elsewhere. If it's the latter (and I suggest that a 3rd strike policy might lead to that) then the solution is different from if the root cause is a high crime rate. Of course, it might be a combination of both. As an aside it might be interesting to know what fraction of the prison population have serious mental health problems and/ or addiction problems.

You don't need any actual ability to be a boss, you just need to be an ****hole.

More of an old joke than a riddle.

It's probably worth noting that other places don't put so many people in prison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

OK, so "The only issue religion addresses with any authority is morality." and " For as long as people follow them, they are moral authority". So, now that people have stopped following them (for example we no longer persecute people for eating shellfish, nor stone children to death for swearing at their parents), they no longer have authority. That tells us that religion has nothing left. Sounds about right to me.

As I understand it that Bible as we know it was endorsed by these people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea They decided not to include some scriptures so, by including the book of Job, they endorsed it. Since their version is accepted by many major churches and they are senior members of the church, I think I have met your criteria. Incidentally, a straw-man is where you pretend that your opponent's belief is something other than what it is in order to ridicule it. I didn't need to do that. The idea that morality comes from religion is ridiculous without any help from me. In any event, you would still need to show how religion leads to morality. It's not sufficient to simply state that it does. As I see it, the evidence shows that in spite of religion (or at least religious scripture) is subordinate to moral behaviour.

Except for the ones that are not. Root (9/16) = 3/4 which is rational. However, I think you are right for integers.

The problems listed in reply to your previous post http://www.sciencefo...__1#entry617696 still apply.

"The only issue religion addresses with any authority is morality." Yes, for example it's perfectly morally acceptable to offer your virgin daughters to gay men in order to save your own arse. "After supper that night before bedtime, the men of the city, young and old, gathered around Lot's house demanding he bring his two guests out that they might "know" them. Lot went out and closed the door behind him and prayed that they not do such wicked things, and offered them his virgin daughters, that had not "known" man, that they might know them instead, and do with as they pleased. " from Genesis, via wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lot_(biblical_person)

On a related note, can anyone explain how come most of us have the right number of ribs?