Glider

In any event, a spokesman for the 'formal' Chechen separatists denied they had any involvement in the situation, and condemned absolutely the actions of those hostage takers, whoever they were. For Russia to declare all out war on a country (even one it considers a part of itself) in retaliation for an atrocity committed by an as yet unidentified group would be a bit premature...oh, wait...doesn't this sound familiar?

Outstanding!

A formal critique is the result of critical analysis of a written piece of work. It it not necessarily criticism; it acknowledges both the strengths and the weaknesses of the work, usually by comparing it with other, related works.

Nope. The man saw plums on the tree. There can't have been none.

That's not an answerable question. It's way too broad. It's like asking; how does consciousness function?

It depends mainly upon what stage of sleep you are in when you wake up, and the speed at which you are woken.

No it doesn't. But then, neither does an abiltiy in maths, science or IT. What spelling does do however, is give other people an impression of how clever you are. The sad fact is, that a person may be outstanding at science and have tremendous insight. But, if that person can't put it on paper in a way that people can understand, or at least that makes that person look half way credible, no one else will ever know it. It's one of those 'classify people using minimum evidence' things that all people do. If you write like an idiot, you will be treated as one by those who read your work. It's the same as turning up for a job interview in dirty, kneeless jeans, battered trainers and a torn T-shirt. It wouldn't matter how suitable you are for the post, you could forget any chance of getting it. Not really. Intelligent people tend to show consistency.

Yeah, and it changes with mood as well. Favourite this week is not necessarily the favourite next week.

A man had not eyes, yet saw plums on a tree. He neither took plums, nor left plums. How many plums were on the tree?

You could try using lime sulphur. It's use by bonsai artists to bleach and preserve dead wood (jin and sharamiki; features of certain styles of tree), but it's a very effective environmentally friendly fungicide (though it really stinks), as it's use implies. It preserves dead wood for decades. You can google for lime sulphur, there are even recipes for making it yourself (very easy). Use it diluted on live plants, it should do the trick.

From direct experience, I can tell you that increasing numbers of the new students entering University can't even manage to form complete sentances and they can't spell. Many don't know why they are there, some don't even want to be there and have no interest in the subject they are studying. Who's interest is served by their being there?

That would be ridiculous.

Size of those dogs, it probably only had room for one.

a) Debatable. What happens is undoubtedly real, but as to how or why, there are several schools of thought on the matter. They range from: People act the way they do under stage hypnotism because they have been given 'implicit permission' to do so, and are under pressure to conform to the wishes of the 'hypnotist' by the presence of an expectant crowd. To: Hypnotism induces fundamental changes in the way information is processed so the participant has no choice, and in some cases, depending upon the susceptibility of the individual, these changes may be persistant and have lasting and deletirious effects, which may not necessarily be directly related to the process of hypnotism itself. b) Not really, for a number of reasons. Not least of which is that as the underlying mechanisms of hypnotism are so poorly understood (particularly by 'stage' hypnotists, who are rarely at the forefront of research on the subject), the ethics of inflicting it on people simply for the entertainment of others is dubious. The situation boils down to people doing something they don't really understand to other people (and which may, in some cases, have lasting effects), to make a lot of other people laugh. c) Not so much looked down upon, as 'observed with deep suspicion'.

(one of) The best tactic(s) in a debate? Don't just focus on your own argument. Listen to your opponent.

I have a Tungsten T3 now. I used to have T2, but it blew up (well, corrupted and failed to run any word processor). The T3 has DocumentsToGo v6.0.2 bundled in the flash ROM so is a lot more stable overall. Bloody useful bit of kit (to me anyway). Some people have whinged about the battery life on the T3, but they are usually the people who want to listen to MP3 for hours on end, or play games. To them I would say, get an iPOD, or a gameboy.

The thing about the Nature, Nurture debate in behaviour is that in most cases, it's not one or the other. It's usually a mixture of both and is a question of the degree of relative influence of each.

Re the frogs. It isn't something we cleverly managed to do to the frogs, it's something the frogs have been doing themselves for millions of years. We just wanted to know how. They hibernate in shallow burrows which drop bleow zero. Although the frogs freeze and often become coated in ice, they survive and revive when the thaw comes.

Yeah. What's that saying? Give me the strength to change what I can, the tolerance to live with what I can't and the wisdom to know the difference (something like that anyway). Sound like a reasonable way of looking at things to me.

Not really specific to the net though, is it? That just sounds like some of the people in my class.

I spell words as I was taught; behaviour, foetus, aetiology, haemaglobin, amoeba, Edinborough, etc.. We often use incorrect spelling as an indicator of plagiarism. When we come across a paragraph that discusses participant 'behavior', or 'fetal' development, we know there is a reasonable chance the student cut and paste sections from the internet. It's not always the case, but it's a good alert mechanism and gives us a reason to Google for the source. Having said that, I suppose when it comes to difficult words, simplifying the spelling (behavior, fetus, etiology, hemaglobin, ameba, Edinboro') must be easier than trying to teach people to spell properly

I was refering only to those guys on Queer Eye, not gays as a whole. It's just your post got in before mine. It's just those couple of guys who feel it necessary to rip the crap out of the subject before they do their transformation thing. I was just thinking what would happen if somebody came into my home (invited or not) and spent 20 minutes insulting me on international TV. It might make for 'good TV', but I think I would find it quite annoying. The fact they're gay makes no difference.

They are very annoying though. But then, a lot of people on TV are.

I forgot the crunch point that it is pretty pointless to be anti something nobody can do anything about anyway. When I'm on a run, I'm anti rain, but that won't prevent it from raining, nor make it stop if it does rain. So, being anti rain is completely pointless. Homosexuality is not something anybody can do anything about (and indeed, why should they?). Being anti gay won't prevent homosexuality, nor will it change the sexuality of existing homosexuals. So, being anti gay is as pointless as being anti rain. All being 'anti' does is make other people's lives a little harder and your own life a little less content. For what good reason?