John Cuthber

If you plan to do something, it is your responsibility to check that it is legal first.

"I do wonder how American armed forces would react to finding journalists embedded with an operation designed to disrupt and circumvent a US Military mission pursuant to national security." I imagine they are used to it by now. Have you seen the videos from Bin Laden? some of those at least pretend a degree of journalism. In any event, the US often bring their own journalists along. So do the UK's armed forces. "but to simply say "In my mind I don't think it's justified" and then ..." I didn't say that I said "It is unusual that I find a group of American lawyers holding much the same view as I do but it seems to have happened here. Is there any independent, legally qualified, group who considers the blockade to be legitimate? If there is then I will be happy to look at the evidence that they submit indicating that the blockade is proportionate. As far as I am aware, from all I have seen in this thread and elsewhere, no such evidence exists." Do you see the difference? I cited expert evidence and sought alternative evidence. "This already proves that such third party checks are irrelevant if they are not done by a trusted third party." Fair point, but who would both sides think of as "trusted"? "I'm pretty sure Saddam considered the entire invasion of Iraq illegal," And so did at least one US military/ government official. It was illegal, (in essence because the attack was by forces who were not under any direct threat and all parties were signatories to the UN agreements on warfare- but that's a whole different thread). What's the point of international law if it gets flouted like this? Shouldn't we hold our own governments to account? Perhaps we can then hold others to account without looking so hypocritical. "It's the frick'n military - when they conduct an operation, they'll point a gun at your head to ensure their operation succeeds, and try not pull the trigger unless they feel they absolutely have to. That's not the Israeli military, that's standard for all military operations." That's the reason the military should not have been used for this. They are not noted diplomats. Someone suggested earlier that riot police would have been a better choice. " * They refused third party trusted inspection. * They refused to dock and observe the inspection of goods." There wasn't anyone near who could have acted as a third party (for any definition of "trusted") because they were at sea. .There wasn't a dock for roughly 80 miles. There's little doubt that part of the reason for this convoy was to provoke a reaction- I doubt the intention was mass suicide. At best their opponents seem to have played right into their hands. Israel overreacted and has managed to make Hamas look like "the poor underdog" while looking like bullies themselves (and, just to be clear, I think both sides are pretty much as bad as each other). I wonder which side planned that.

All I'm saying is that if I had done that and got that score it wouldn't just have been the score that got thrown.

All materials are soluble ( provided they don't react with the solvent). The question is how soluble are they?

When the journalists get their video back they can black out the faces to protect the identities of the soldiers . Nobody cares exactly who they were in this context. Then they can show the pictures from start to finish. Of course I guess the IDF will also have video they want to present. Then, perhaps, we will get to see what happened. If it turns out that the journalists' recordings are all missing that will be rather telling. It is unusual that I find a group of American lawyers holding much the same view as I do but it seems to have happened here. Is there any independent, legally qualified, group who considers the blockade to be legitimate? If there is then I will be happy to look at the evidence that they submit indicating that the blockade is proportionate. As far as I am aware, from all I have seen in this thread and elsewhere, no such evidence exists. It seems to me that these people were subject to an unprovoked and unlawful attack and sought to defend themselves. There is no debate that the incident took place well into international waters. A boat full of people with knives and sticks can not attack a helicopter containing men with guns. Never mind the guns, you simply cannot reach the helicopter with a stick. Throwing a knife at a chopper is not a meaningful threat. The pilot always had the option of flying away. He chose not to do so. (I realise he was probably under orders; but retreat is a perfectly well recognised military strategy). The boat had already been checked for "contraband" by a third party. (That leaves the question of the military significance of cement but, since this was eventually allowed through anyway, both sides seem to have accepted that it is not a particularly important threat.) All the evidence seems to indicate that the boat was no threat to the helicopter or to the nation it represented, but that the soldiers (or their leaders) decided to invade it anyway. They could have simply ignored it. It is difficult to portray that as anything better than bullying; such behaviour generally loses the moral high ground. Since the action was in support of an apparently illegal blockade, and also ignores the rule of the presumption of innocence, it would seem difficult so say they had the moral high ground in the first place. The essence of the legal argument against the blockade is that it is disproportionate. While I accept the right of a state to defend itself, I find it hard to see the loss of 9 lives in order to slow down a shipment of goods as proportionate. I'd also like to say that I'm very pleased that the tone of this whole discussion, on what is clearly a very emotive topic, has generally remained very civil and polite. I hope nobody will be offended if I thank Mooeypoo in particular, for keeping a cool head in what may have been a rather trying debate.

At about 3:50 in that video you can see that one of the judges has only given him 7.5 out of 10. If I had just done that jump and got 75% from some ****** I'd have taken him up and thrown him off to see how well he could do it.

OMG! You have kids who would eat Quaker oats?

Green Xenon, You forgot to add enough beer to make it acceptable.

Nice pic. I think the best shape might be a cross; a star of David; or some such symbol (depending on your personal beliefs). Nothing else is going to save you. Incidentally, does anyone have any strong evidence about how soon you would die for a head first dive or a belly flop? I think it would be slightly quicker head first, because you would hit the water faster and crush your skull to mush over a shorter interval. On the other hand I can see that the massive organ damage caused by landing flat would see you out of this world and into the Darwin awards pretty quickly too.

The simple answer is to dilute the H2SO4 first. Add the NaCl and then distil the HCl. I take it that you know that messing with conc H2SO4 is a bit on the risky side. Boiling acid isn't nice either.

I always thought being able to see was something cool that involves refraction. There's also a party trick that relies on it. The refractive indicies of perspex and glycerine are pretty nearly the same. If you get a clear perspex container and put a short length of perspex pipe in it (on it's end) then fill the whole thing up with glycerine you can't see the pipe because there's no noticeable refraction of light as it travels from the glycerine to the perspex. If you drop a big steel ball bearing into the container it falls through the glycerine but it's held up by the pipe. It looks like it's floating in the middle of the liquid. OK, not much of a trick. Anyone know any better ones?

But it still works. CuCl + NaOH --> NaCl + CuOH 2 CuOH --> Cu2O + H2O

I don't understand why nobody has taken a shot at the open goal here. Clipper says "£10,000,000 says that no-one in this community disputes it" OK. I dispute your ideas Clipper. Pay up or admit that you lied when you made that offer. If you admit to dishonesty, why should we give you any attention? I'm citing this http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dispute as the meaning of dispute and I'm citing the notion of the Holy Trinity as evidence that God may very well be said to equal 3

I guess that in this day and age plenty of people had video cameras. What happened to those recordings? I have read that the Israeli forces destroyed it, but, obviously I can't confirm that. I can't help wondering if they would have destroyed videos footage that exonerated them.

If the grass is sugar cane, rice, maize, wheat, oats... then you can eat it. Bamboo shoots anyone? There are some grasses that are poisonous, on the other hand a lot of grasses have seeds with a high starch content and a fair protein content. If you found the right grass it might hold off starvation for at least a while. Make sure that you get stranded with a botanist who specialises in grasses. I have not checked, but I suspect the insect/ steak comparison is right if you don't dry them first.

The fairly simplistic answer is that the alternative to committing acts of piracy is not committing them. If they had waited until they were in the (disputed) exclusion zone then their attack would have had slightly more legitimacy. As it is they have added some legitimacy to Hammas's cause. One thing that will be interesting to do is wait until the people who were involved get home and can tell their side of the story. re. "It doesn't matter how motivated they are. If someone tries to kill you then you usually try to kill them back, whether or not they care about dying." Isn't that the reason the people on the boats grabbed sticks and knives to defend themselves from the helicopter-borne soldiers? There's something that still puzzles me. If it's true that "That Israel was within their legal rights to board the ship, and then to attack given that the people on the ship had attacked them, is a matter of international law." then why? There was no evidence that the boats were delivering anything but a propaganda victory. It's hard to see a few more sticks and knives as being a significant boost to "the war effort". Why is it legal for Israel to forcibly board a ship in international waters and then kill people who seek to defend their ship? Would the situation have been legally different if the boats had been, for example, American or British?

Michael, if your feelings don't agree with the evidence then it's not reality that's wrong.

Well, the Earth started out as a big cloud of stuff and shrank under gravity to the size it is now. It's not absolutely unreasonable to wonder if that shrinkage has stopped. However, the evidence (from things like the near constancy of the rotational speed) proves that it had certainly pretty much settled to its current size by the time civilisations were able to record the length of months and years. We can now track the length of the day to very great accuracy, and the Earth's not shrinking.

So, it's OK to be a bully if you are better equipped? If your enemy is prepared to kill themselves then you don't need to do it for them. I'm pretty sure that both sides subscribe to the idea of "an eye for an eye". They just don't seem to do that in practice. I was, btw, looking at the more general history of the conflict where the death toll is decidedly one sided.

More important than human life? For example?

As far as I'm aware it's perfectly legal for people on a ship in international waters to carry arms in order to defend themselves from, for example, pirates. In the interest of balance can we also have a video of the weapons that the other people brought; you know- the soldiers who had guns and such (and a helicopter). Saying "they were were armed so we attacked them" isn't an excuse in the first place. Those arms were only used after the boat was attacked. Finally, if the excuse is "they came armed" then both sides can use it so it has no meaning. Up till relatively recently, "Piracy with violence" was still a capital offence in the UK. As far as I can see an unprovoked attack my armed people in international waters is piracy. Don't misunderstand me; both sides are wrong, but the numbers of deaths show which side is more wrong.

Once the filter is wet it is difficult to get air through it. That's because the air would have to form lots of little bubbles to get through. The effect of surface tension makes this difficult.

Get lots of ventilation. With enough air flowing through the place you won't get condensation. Alternatively, get more dehumidifiers, but they will be more expensive to purchase and run.

Lotteries were always a tax on poor people; if you are already a millionaire, you don't buy tickets.

They work just fine, and yes, there are good ways to do them.