Dekan

I think the evidence is plain. But I'd rather not make any further remarks on this subject, because the introduction of menacing expressions like "flagrant racism" makes rational discussion difficult, except in a very guarded, "be careful what you say or you'll be in trouble" way, which I don't wish to engage in. So I'll withdraw into silence.

Do you mean, all Americans (and Europeans) hate Communism. They all do. Every one of them. They do it through group behaviour. Because their leaders keep saying "Hate Communism!" And their newspapers and TV keep saying "Hate Communism!" That doesn't seem very likely, does it?

Point accepted. The oil from the car, obviously wouldn't be "liquid car". As the water from the wood, wouldn't really be "liquid wood". And if an entire car were melted - with all its metal, glass, rubber and plastic components. This would produce a witches' brew of boiling, liquid gunge. Which would be "melted car", undeniably. But I now understand from CaptainPanic's replies, that it wouldn't be "liquid car" - because its "car-ness", ie its vehicular, automotive nature, would have been irreversibly destroyed.

Thanks CharonY. Appreciate your reply. I take your point about the possession of a nervous system. I suppose a bacterium can't be said to have one. Your mention of bacteria hunting other bacteria in packs is very interesting. May I just ask you, it's probably a silly question, but - is it possible to train such bacteria in any way? I mean, in the way slugs can be trained to go to the left or the right, to find a source of food. Could bacteria ever be trained to hunt in a particular direction?

Just to follow up this interesting subject - muscles can be grown and expanded by exercise, such as lifting weights. Can such exercise ever make bones grow and expand?

St John's Gospel starts by saying, in the English translation: "In the beginning was the Word". But St John's Gospel was of course originally written in Greek. What it actually said in the original Greek, was: "In the beginning was the Logos". I looked up "Logos" in my Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary. The Dictionary says "Logos" can have the following meanings: "saying, speaking, speech, eloquence, discourse, conversation, talk, word, expression, assertion, principle, maxim, proverb, oracle, promise, order, command, proposal, condition, agreement, stipulation, decision, pretext, fable, news, story, report, legend, prose-writing, history, book, essay, oration, affair, incident, thought, reasoning, computation, reflection, deliberation, account, consideration, opinion, cause, end, argument, demonstration, value, proportion". Such a lot of meanings! Which of them is the right one to choose - does anyone know?

I grieve at the mess America has got itself into. You were the hope of the world. Now look at you. A National Debt of $18,000,000,000 by 2013? Please sort yourselves out. The world needs you.

Suppose it were possible to conduct this experiment: Move all the people from the Horn of Africa to Japan. Then move an equivalent number of Japanese people, to the Horn of Africa. I predict that, were such an experiment to be conducted, within 5 years the Japanese would have created a thriving country in the Horn of Africa. A country well-irrigated, with no famines, and developing an modern industrial/agricultural economy. Whereas, the parts of Japan to which the "Horn of Africa" bods had been moved, would be disaster areas. Begging for aid. Such an experiment will never be conducted in Japan, as the Japanese are far too intelligent to permit it. However Europe and the USA are doing something similar. The results are becoming all too obvious as the economies of Europe and the USA get dragged down.

But isn't a melted substance exactly the same as a liquid substance? Just at a higher temperature. Eg, Ice at a higher temperature, is liquid water - or in other words, melted ice.

This title of this thread seems redolent of the 1950's. In that decade, Americans were rightly opposed to the Communist threat to the Free World. But the Free World has defeated the Commies. The Soviet Union is in the dustbin of history. History has moved on, communism is dead. So how can Americans really hate communism today? That's not credible. The truth is most WASP Americans don't like President Obama and all he represents. But they don't want to admit this openly. So they use "Communism" as a kind of code-word instead. Isn't that true?

What if you put a block of wood under a very strong hydraulic press. Then operate the press so that it squeezes down on the wood. All the water in the wood will get squeezed out. This squeezed-out water will probably still have wood chemicals in it. So it can be fairly be called "liquid" wood. And isn't "liquid" the same as "molten". So this "liquid" wood can justly be termed "molten" wood.

Some insects seem to show very intelligent behaviour. Ants make nests, and engage in farming. And termites build high-towering cities. Also bees construct hexagonal cells in their hives, or "colonies". And the bees in these colonies, communicate information to each other. They perform the "figure-8" dances. The dances advise all the other bees, how far away some food is, and in what direction to fly, to get to it. Yet each individual bee, has only got a tiny brain. A brain the size of a pinhead of tissue. But somehow, all these tiny brains, combine to make the whole colony, consisting of 100,000 bees, behave intelligently. Now, bacteria exist in colonies far exceeding 100,000 individual organisms. There are millions or billions of individual bacterial organisms, living in bacterial colonies. So is it not at least conceivable, that such bacterial colonies, could be capable of intelligent behaviour? Has any microbiologist on these forums observed bacteria behaving in a manner possibly indicative of group-intelligence?

Why are the famines always in Africa - what could be the reason?

This is very interesting, because I've noticed something similar recently: I'm reading a book, or doing a crossword. The radio is on in the background, half listened to. The radio says a word which matches the word that I'm reading! So for instance, I look at my crossword for the clue to "12 Down". At the precise same moment, the radio says "The Dow-Jones index was down 12 points". (That's not an actual example, I just made it up to illustrate the point). But that kind of thing seems to happen with disturbing frequency. I never noticed it happening in past years, but now I do. Is it caused by getting older perhaps?

I can't see why you're insisting on that word "but". The word can certainly be used in expressions such as: " Some posters drink nothing but vodka ". However the contrived sentence: "We will go to neither the football nor the golf, but the hockey" is unnatural in modern colloquial English. It invites the question: but the hockey - what? If you absolutely insist on having "but", this would be an acceptable sentence: "We will go to neither the football nor the golf, but we'll go to the hockey." What's with this "but" fixation? Please clarify, thanks.

That's a good point. The ancient texts should not be ignored. Rather, they should be scrutinised, to see whether they contain useful data. However, I'm reminded of a certain SF story, whose title escapes my memory, but it was about a future bloke who worked in a library. His job was to read each old book in the library. Then write a summary of the book's useful information content. His summary of the entire content of Melville's "Moby-Dick", went something like: "19th Century knowledge of cetaceans was inexact". Is there a moral here - I can't quite crystallise it?

If you said that to someone, they'd back away nervously, muttering "OK guy, fine, see you later...". Then they'd phone a friend and ask: "Is that guy safe?"

That's not really a proper modern English sentence, though. It lacks punctuation, and the use of "but " is archaic and King James Bible-ish. If the sentence were put into modern English, it would read: "We will eat neither fish nor chips - only bread." Even that doesn't sound entirely idiomatic: Better would be: "We won't eat fish, or chips. Only bread". An interesting post, but what exactly are you getting at?

Was I the only one to read the post title, and think it was about what goes on in the trenches, before soldiers go into battle? Into my unworthy mind, swam visions of the British trenches on the Western Front in July 1916. The eve of the Battle of the Somme. The soldiers facing almost certain death on the morrow. When they will have to advance into the murderous fire of the German machine-guns. What did they get up to in the trenches the night before? Last-minute flings with smuggled-in French mademoiselles of easy virtue? Maybe even a little Oscar Wilde-style gay abandon? Fascinating if sordid speculations, but alas - the post is on a higher plane, and deserves a better answer.

I think you're just telling the truth. Is it any use sending "aid" to these people? They seem fundamentally incapable of doing anything, except asking for more aid. We could keep giving them aid for a hundred years, and they'd still be asking for more. Why can't they do something for themselves, instead of perpetually holding out their begging-bowls. Aren't we all getting a bit disenchanted with them?

Hm. "Language" and "properly" spelled correctly. But obvious kites like "der" and "dey"? Dis am um wind-up, innit?

For Heaven's sake - everyone knows, the reason Germany isn't in debt, is that the Germans work hard. And the reason Greece is in debt, is that the Greeks don't work hard. "System"? "Chaos Theory"? My backside!

China.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans originated in Northern Europe. Then they migrated south into Greece and Italy. There they temporarily achieved things like the Roman Empire. But they soon succumbed to heat-induced lassitude, and the Empire fell. Conquered by the vigorous Northern people, Goths, Vandals, and such. Even today, Northern Italy is much more prosperous and industrially advanced, than the impoverished South. It's the heat. As for Carthage, it never had the energy to raise a Punic army. It relied on hired mercenaries. These were led by a general of genius, Hannibal, but even he couldn't defeat Rome. True, things might have gone differently, if he'd marched on Rome immediately after smashing 8 Roman legions at Cannae, but he didn't. Lassitude. And Ancient Egypt - perfect example of a civilisation with potential never fulfilled. They invented a beautiful written script, but didn't do much else. Apart from piling up huge pyramidal heaps of stone, then exhausted by this effort, relapse into lassitude. It's the heat again. The Ottoman Empire soon got wasted once Northern Europeans decided it was a real nuisance and got rid of it. Anyway, all this is an off-topic digression. To get back to the OP, in my opinion the real reason many Muslim countries are poor, is that the inhabitants are too exhausted by heat to work hard, so they don't get prosperous. I don't think it's due to the Muslim religion per se - it's a fine virile faith.

An excellent aphorism. Climatology has in recent decades, lost any claim to be a Science. It's become more like a religion. Its purpose is to uphold the belief in man-made Global Warming. Sceptics are denounced as "deniers". As if they were denying the truth of Holy Writ. Thankfully this doesn't yet apply to Physics. Let's hope no-one ever gets denounced for "denying" QT or Relativity.