John Cuthber

Segregating the prisons wouldn't really help. The power crazed would still rape their fellow inmates. Is black on black violence really better than black on white? If not, what would the separation achieve?

Well, now it isn't even spam, I think it's a totally pointless thread. (other threads on similar topics are available). Would someone like to put it out of its misery?

Am I the only one who thinks the original post is spam?

The usual methods should work for mercury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_separation but they will never be quick or cheap. There's also a great opportunity to get mercury poisoning. Why do you want monoisotopic mercury?

Nope, just plain wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin#Reproduction_and_sexuality I'm in two minds about saying you should study more or get out more.

In a very real sense, but in a rather more real sense the food is frozen at a low temperature before being dried (often under vacuum)- hence the name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeze-drying

Just to clarify the answer given. Helium has absolutely no IR absorptions. It's totally transparent for all energies up to the fairly hard UV.

I'm not sure if the body has a use for it, but I have read that if you mix chilli powder into bird food it stops rats eating it (because they respond to capsaicin in the same way that we do) but the birds don't notice it.

Don't worry too much, it may have been necromancy, but at least it was accurate. That put's it one up on rocketfan's post.

I don't really know a lot about this and that might be why I wasn't clear. What happens if I choose a company, scheme, and premium that I feel suits me, and then I fall prey to some (expensive) condition that's not covered? I don't believe I will suddenly be able to transfer to another deal which does cover it, because the premiums would be higher than the cost of treatment. So, since I know I'm always going to be at risk of finding that the insurer won't pay out enough, what do I do? No company can honestly guarantee indefinite payout (to be fair, not can a government, but they can get closer). So my choice is to pay all the money I can afford and hope that I'm lucky. That's not much of a choice

How well does that work? For example, if I had diabetes and a dodgy heart and my current insurer decided they couldn't afford to treat me in the way I thought was right, could I really move to another one who would happily foot the bill? Remind me not to buy shares in the second one- they are idiots.

There are lots of "causes" too.

Exactly whose arses are you trying to save in the Middle east? "What is so unethical about putting yourself in a stable economic position?" Nothing per se, but if you make money by exploiting others or, for example, invading their country and awarding yourself rights to all their oil, that is unethical. "I was talking about shooting of rockets breaking international treaties. " What rockets?

Re " A law does not mandate that you buy a service or product." If it doesn't then you have nothing to complain about. If it does then you are wrong. What you said (post 140) was "By mandating that you buy something is an attack on your freedom. Some may argue that they mandate that you buy auto insurance, but they don't. Only if you choose to drive. Mandating that you buy something because you choose to live is an attack on freedom. " My reply (post147) was Justin, All laws are an "attack on your freedom" as you put it. If you want to see what life is like in an anarchy, have a look at Somalia for example. (though that might be a bit unfair to Somalia- even thy have some local law) Would you prefer to live there where you can have your "freedom"? You haven't answered that question yet. I said "all laws are an "attack on your freedom" as you put it." and your reply was "No there are not. A law does not mandate that you buy a service or product. " Strictly speaking I should have asked what you meant, but I thought you intended to write "no they are not" which would have made sense (but been wrong). Well, the fact is that laws are restrictive. "And you think it is the government's responsibility to demand that these people do so? " Who else is going to? Re air fares "I didn't mean that they had to fly around the world. Go to the next town over, or even the next if that is what it takes." Unless there are any unemployed people in that town already. That's the point- some of the people could get jobs, but not all of them. And I did my best to explain why your attack was a straw man. If you didn't understand it then you should have asked about it. When it comes down to it, the fundamental problem is shown in the data here http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5aAsxFJOeMw/Rufu26aRbXI/AAAAAAAAAeg/ZI5BkAJdWDo/s1600-h/2005-OECD-THEpC-vs-GDPpC-Sigmoid-Regression.JPG Idaho and Sweden both have per capita incomes of about 32000 dollars. Idaho spends about 4500 on healthcare Sweden spends about 2900 Pennsylvania and Ireland both have incomes around 38000. Pennsylvania spends 7200. Ireland spends 3000 I could go on and list other pairs. Why do the Americans spend so much more? It's not as if the evidence shows that they get better healthcare for their money- indeed on 2 of the most widely used criteria they do worse. It's not because they have more money- I chose pairs where the per capita income is pretty much the same.

I thought all health insurers rationed payouts. There's a link to this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_rationing_in_the_United_States on the page Justin cited. If they all ration then the question is who can pay more before they run out of cash, a government or an insurance company? If you want indsurance for anything you are better off with a large company that can stand a big payout. The biggest company is the government.

"Taken in that context you are correct, but I think you know what I meant." Actually, I don't know what you meant. You say that you want freedom and I point out that universal freedom is anarchy which you probably wouldn't like. But, rather than accepting the point you try to pretend that laws don't restrict freedom. I point out that of course they do- that's their whole point and the best thing you can do is say "you know what I meant" as if that's some sort of counterpoint. Well it does not. Governments restrict individual freedom in order to maintain general freedom. If you don't like it go and find an anarchy somewhere. "Does every person not possess the power to work towards their future? If not, what restricts them?" Poverty is probably the commonest answer. It's what makes your comment that people should travel abroad to find jobs particularly stupid. Are you going to pay their air fare? In any event it has drifted a bit from the original discussion of the fact that that power brings responsibility. Those who are in a position to help others should do so precisely because they can. "No. You just say that it's wrong. You never say how. " That's a plain lie. See your own acceptance in post 151 of the criticism of a strawman attack you made in post 136 Also, in post 111 iNow explained that you were using an argument from incredulity. If you didn't know what that meant you should have looked it up or asked.

"Rivalry to me is simply a: brother/brother, sister/sister, or sibling/sibling thing." Possibly, but that's not what it means to the rest of us. http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define+rivalry To us it means competition. Id rather the armed forces were fighting the enemy, rather than each other. "Most nations nurture this type of rivalry." Any evidence with that assertion? This "Until the white men came and changed their vernacular, Indians of all nations in upper America played it out to the hilt." doesn't seem to make much sense. In any event, the white man probably didn't change the natives' language much. "Symingtons proposal was not an attempt at cohesiveness, but to convert a soverign nation into a limp wristed bunch of pansies. " also seem s a wee bit short of evidence.

If this "Most people can find work somewhere. " is true (which I doubt) then it's still sufficient to show that you were wrong because it doesn't say "all people..." as for "All laws are an "attack on your freedom" as you put it. No there are not. A law does not mandate that you buy a service or product." you must be kidding. Any law necessarily restricts freedom. The law bans killing so it restricts my freedom to kill. The law bans parking on some parts of some streets- that removes my freedom to park there. The idea that laws don't remove freedom is absurd and if that's the sort of thing you have to say to defend your point of view then you have lost the argument. "Do you see the vagueness of this statement. You have given me nothing but vague accusations of where I'm wrong without telling me WHAT is so wrong about it. " while the statement is a bit vague it's not true to say that "You have given me nothing but vague accusations of where I'm wrong without telling me WHAT is so wrong about it." I have, for example pointed out a few occasions where you were using a straw man argument and iNow pointed out some other logical fallacies. You have been told- but you carry on anyway.

I'm still not sure what your original intent was. I don't know how we teach morals to our kids but I'm pretty sure I don't want the military doing it. Not least because there aren't really enough of them. Also, their view of morality seems to differ from mine. I'm sorry, but I don't see what "I honestly believe our military is a Godsend in reviving views in many lives." means

"The gas Iraq used is only deadly if you continue to breath it." Failing to continue to breathe has much the same effect. The guy was a shit anyway: there's no dispute about that. However there's no way he was a threat to the US so there was no justification for the invasion. That was a simple oil-grab. Not a moral decision, but a financial one. Incidentally, the Kurds got the bad end of the deal twice. Hussain didn't do them any favours and they sided with the rest of the world, against him during the liberation of Kuwait. But we then left him in charge in Iraq so he had an opportunity to retaliate against them for their actions; we failed to protect them

http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define+wholesale

You missed my point. If the missile actually hits you you will die. It doesn't matter much if you are in a building, in a car or out in the open. The reason they didn't kill many people was that scuds are crap missiles. they have poor accuracy so they generally miss. Citing them as "wholesale" use of weapons is silly when there were only 42. Claiming that they are evidence of his "power" when they only actually killed 2 people shows rather a lack of understanding of just how little "power" he had. He was, essentially, only a threat to his own people. That's bad but it's not rare. I'm not disputing the fact that Saddam was a bastard of the first order. Personally I'd sooner have seen him rot in jail than be hanged and perceived by some as a martyr, but that's a totally different issue. The fact remains that the US (abetted by the UK) illegally invaded another sovereign state. They should have acted through the UN, but they didn't. They told lies about WMD and prevented the inspectors looking for weapons finding the truth (i.e. that there were no WMD). (I know that he used to have them- we sold them to him- but they were destroyed after gulf war 1) That's not particularly moral. Now I accept that I may have got muddled about exactly who said what about Saddam's rockets but it doesn't matter much. I still maintain that the only way that Saddam and his government could get a missile to the US or UK was to send it by UPS or something. He wasn't much of a threat to Israel who showed commendable restraint by not bombing him into the stone age. His best efforts killed two people. They really could have hit back rather hard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces#Budget He wasn't a threat to the UK or US. There was no basis for the invasion except the oil. It was certainly Justin who asked me "And how many rockets/mortars over the past decade?" and the answer remains not many, he was stuck in jail or dead. and I think it was you who said "Saddam was pumping Scud Missiles into that country "wholesale', as a trecherous reminder of just how powerful he was at the time" 42 isn't very "wholesale": 2 dead isn't a display of much power.

I'm real enough to see that the difference between Saddam and , for example, Mugabe is not that one is a nicer guy than the other, but that one lives in a country with lots of oil and the other doesn't. That difference may be pragmatic and so the choice to invade Iraq rather than Zimbabwe may have been sensible, but it's not a moral stance, it's an economic one. (and, as you may note, I never introduced the question of how many scuds hit Israel. That was Justin W's contribution. He's the one who thinks that Saddam was scudding the area "wholesale" for 10 years, of which he spent 9 in captivity or dead)

I have seen brass nuts being made by a different process. They started from hexagonal bar stock, cut it into short lengths, then drilled and tapped the holes on a lathe.

Correlation <> causation. Eyes certainly respond to humidity.. The humidity depends on the weather. The weather depends on the pressure.