John Cuthber

OK, so based on those numbers most people in the UK would be delighted to use electricity. Petrol here is about £1.20 per litre that's about $1.90 per litre or $6.80 per us gallon. As crude oil gets less common and more expensive you will end up with the state of affairs where electricity is cheaper. There are other major problems with electric vehicles*, but the cost of the energy isn't a big one. *( The cost of energy for heating the car in cold weather is a major one which nobody looks at)

Can I just clarify something here? Suicide bombers are dead. Attempted murderers (by bomb or otherwise) should be dealt with as run-of-the-mill criminals. That way you rob them of "martyrdom" if that's what they were seeking. As Mr S says, they can wait for God to free them or until they realise that's just not going to happen. As for the idea that the trial is "unnecessary" I find myself wondering something. Currently, these people are not killed; it would be unlawful to kill them. Rigney and Dragonstar are proposing to have them killed, even though killing them would be illegal. Is that conspiracy to commit murder? If it is then, perhaps we should dispense with the trial (which they consider unneeded) and jail them for that conspiracy.

I suspect that slaughter according to any of the accepted sets of rules is relatively humane. However I think that in all too many cases the rules won't get followed. At that point it hardly matters which set of rules you are not following.

You are right, it should be neutral.

Have you seen this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhmZBMuZ6vE&feature=related

It is generally presumed that the military would side with the government because the government pay them. However, the government don't actually have any money- they use the taxpayers money to do things. I have an idea where the leader of the revolution sends a note to the leader of the military saying something like " Dear army, We currently pay, through taxes, for the government and for you. We would rather not pay for this current government. If we stopped doing so then we would have more money to give to you. Any thoughts on the matter? Yours revolutionarily, the people."

An answer to the question would be that, whatever it is that IQ tests measure, the Chinese have lots of it. The more difficult question would be what does the IQ test actually measure?

As far as I can tell, Rigney is advocating the death penalty for terrorists which is a valid point of view, albeit one with which I disagree. However he seems to be particularly focussing on suicide bombers. Rigney, The defining characteristic of suicide bombers is that they are dead. You can't kill them twice no matter how much you want to get revenge,.

As far as I'm aware, God isn't a member of this forum.

"That sort of implies that anything we're going to see in the future (assuming it's useful) has already existed." No, it doesn't. It means that if esp exists it must be new.

If you are going to try honey you ought to try sugar as a control. Anyway, are you sure that growing a potential human pathogen like e coli is a good idea for a science project?

Isn't a career as an amateur anything a contradiction in terms?

If any sort of ESP were possible then evolution would have made it common (if not universal) because it would be useful.

I don't know how true it is but I have heard that the difference is essentially the language in which the prayer is said. Since the animal won't understand either language and God, if He exists, will understand both, this distinction seems a bit silly to me. Someone better informed than me has taken the trouble to compile this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_and_Jewish_dietary_laws_compared

"What percentage of people in Western society die from natural causes as opposed to by disease? " Diseases are natural.

I think you are more likely to benefit from a zinc supplement than from any herb. In any event, you should ask your doctor because anosmia may be a symptom of some underlying problem that needs to be sorted out.

An answer that usually works but may not be practical is to clear everything important way from it, cover it / stack it with wooden packing crates etc, set fire to it and walk briskly away. TNT won't usually explode in a fire- but you don't want to be there if it decides to do so. Of course, this is only possible if the bunker is not near anything important. A much more interesting question is why has someone who is asking on an amateur science website got responsibility for dealing with a WWII bunker?

When did American politics last see the middle ground? From my point of view in the UK , the US has two right wing parties. Many people in Europe see the UK as right wing (not without reason) and think the US is way out to the right.

LOL

"In what way would it be "right" to say that a state's deficit doesn't matter?" In the same way that it is "right" to say Conservative states do so much "better" than Liberal ones. It's an opinion.

Perhaps the people of California just don't care so much about the budget deficit. If they are right then you can't say that the Texans are "better"- just different.

"My solution is don't give money any value at all." It hasn't any value- it's just bits of paper.

Nice use of a pronoun there. Which "he" did you mean?

The point I was making was not just about oil. There are other differences between the two states apart from their political positions. Unless you can allow for those confounding variables you will not be able to ascribe any measured differences in wealth to the effects of politics. Incidentally, an unproven oil reserve is 1 unproven and 2 still in the ground so it cannot make any difference to the current finances of the state.

Gold has no intrinsic value*. Why would you wish to peg your currency to it? * OK it's useful for a few technical things like really thin wires in computer chips and reflective coatings on aircraft windows but that's not a big enough market to matter much.