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When I was a boy, those caught in playground fights were marshaled into the Principal's office and promptly had the crap beat out of their butts with a heavy wooden board. Mere 'horsing around' or 'sassing back' got the same treatment in many cases. While I do think punishment for rule-breaking is called for, the kind of treatment we got in school taught us violence is A-OK and to be sneaky with our offenses so as not to get caught. Suspensions seem reasonable although every district has their own rules which leads to some pretty extreme applications of suspensions. In-school suspension seems a smarter approach and done in conjunction/consultation with the parent(s). With so many parents -single or not- working it strikes me as an undue burden on parents to either miss work or pay someone to watch a suspended child. Expulsions I think only applicable when law enforcement gets involved and there is a prosecution. Here again, many law enforcement districts (in the US) have such variable laws as to make for a confusing situation at best. Unlike the country wide laws mentioned in England, things vary here in the US by state, county, and city and there is a trend toward adopting these so-called 'zero tolerance' laws which in many cases I view as poorly thought out and more a means of passing the buck than taking responsibility for rationally determining and applying appropriate justice for children on a case-by-case basis.

You wrote You can't simply make the substitution of (-i) for one of the i's from the 2i midstream. Both of the i's from the 2i are positive. If you have a specific problem using i in an equation or expression with some utility, then by all means present it.

You misunderstood. i equals the square root of negative one. [math]i=\sqrt{-1}[/math] or [math]i^2=-1[/math]

I meant for you to point out specifically the left-wing possible nutcases and support your assertion regarding 'them'. Don't tell me what to do. You implied it. Again; don't tell me what to do. You started this thread saying: Whining when you get what you ask for is bad form.

شكرا Citations please. Progressive society is not exclusive to 'Western'. Can you say algebra? Seen Islamic art? Again, these denials of education etc. are coming from extremist Muslims and they do not represent the majority of Muslims. Yes all religions are to receive blame for their narrow-mindedness, but Islam holds no exclusivity in this regard.

I don't know about most of those countries, but Saudis 'circumcise' little girls and don't allow women to drive, to name just a couple examples encouraged by their religious belief. To be fair, Mormons and Catholics don't allow women in the clergy and Catholics prohibit birth control. So, if it's not one thing oppressive with religions, it's another. . As we have been learning in the Is Political Conservatism a mild form of Insanity? thread, 'left-wing nuts' are few and far between compared to right-wing authoritarians when it comes to religious fundamentalismnuttiness.

No; they are not behaving differently. The media may give that perception, but while there may be more violence being perpetrated by extremist Muslims than extremist Christians or extremist Hindu's yada, yada, yada, most Muslims, as most other religious followers, are not extremists. (Outside of the usual extremes all religions involve.) Again no. Christianity is hardly benign given 'their' stance against gays, birth control, evolution, their proselytizing, yada, yada, yada religious BS ad infinitum. No; I jumped nowhere. Common sense led me -at a leisurely pace- to the conclusion you want to bash Islam over other religious bashing. I am an equal opportunity basher.

This is a false premise. Christianity remains full of hatred, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, selfishness, and no end of other extreme thoughts and actions. Islam or any other religion your care to pitch will suffer no better in the West or elsewhere.

U bent van harte welkom. Yes, the laws vary even county-by-county here. It is quite rare for Bobcats to venture into urban areas so their prey is definitely different. Cougars on the other hand have been increasingly coming into urban areas as development encroaches on their habitat as well as drought making food scarce and forcing them to look elsewhere. The Cougars will eat pet food put outside as well as pets allowed outside, and they are fully capable of attacking and killing humans. (No human has been killed by a Cougar in my state of Washington in the last 80 years, but Cougars entering urbania are taken seriously and the public is warned and the animal is quickly captured and relocated.) We have plenty of birds in our urban areas, many of which naturally prefer to feed on the ground and nest in low places. As you say, domestic cats are not a predator our US birds have evolved with and that together with cat owners lack of concern for the damage their pets do to wildlife compounds the problem. Good advice more-or-less, though I would recommend keeping the well-chosen cats indoors. Not only does that protect wildlife, it protects the cat from not only traffic but all those diseases that I earlier listed. Note that even catching mice in the house exposes the cat to many of these diseases. The wider problem as I see it is peoples' failure to acknowledge the detriment their pet keeping causes. That's all very touching and cuddly, but in the face of the facts it is just so much nonsense. Denial is not just a river in Africa. . As with Sunshaker, that is quite touching but hardly an acknowledgement of the wider reality. . Addendum: Europe is not immune to wildlife decimation by domestic cats. While these cats may have their origins there -a fact which is still under some debate- the number of cats under domestication far exceeds that of any 'natural' population. I'll just quote a snippet concerning Switzerland here, but the link it comes from is a detailed look at the domestic cat over millennia. Introduced Species Summary Project: Domestic Cat (Felis catus)

Since the original poster did not specify the project, the active system is as relevant as any other.

Reducing Skin-Friction Drag by Laminar Flow . Addendum: Shark week. Shark-skin surfaces for fluid-drag reduction in turbulent flow: a review

Do you live in a country where cats were not native? A bit of confusion there in your reading. I was referencing my county which is the largest administrative district of a state in the country of the United States. North America has naturally occurring felines, including Bobcats, which is a type of Lynx, and Mountain Lions (aka Cougars). While some people do have these animals in captivity, they are not Domestic Cats. I have no problem with our wildcats killing wildlife in the wild. Wildlife is protected in the US whether it's in a park or no, save of course for those wildlife we are permitted to hunt. (Even for those we hunt there are strict regulations on seasons, locations, and bag limits.) As my earlier post and reference make clear, Domestic Cats unselectively kill billions of small animals in the US annually. This is hardly an inconsequential effect on wildlife and the environment. As to mice and rats, we have traps and poisons to control urban infestations. There is no Federal law governing this in the US. States make their own laws regarding pet control and within State guidelines Counties in the State make their own laws. It is a citizen's responsibility to know the laws for the area in which they reside. As I said, the laws in my County allow a person to live-trap a Domestic Cat on their property and then turn it over to Animal Control Authorities. If a person does not have their own humane live-trap, the authorities will provide it. (may be a rental fee.) Getting my own cat just would add to the greater problem Domestic Cats generate that I am explicating here, and would add a financial burden to me that I am neither willing nor able to take on. Here's my County's legal definition page for Domestic animal nuisances: >>8.11.060 Nuisances.

A banal reply. In my county the animal enforcement bureau loans traps to those of us not amused by cat crap in our veggie garden or cats hunting birds at our feeders. We then can trap those cats and release them to the authorities. Several excuses are always less convincing than one. ~Aldous Huxley

Linguists refer to the subject as taboo language. (Linguist is only confused with lingus by douchebags. ) To whit: taboo language @ About Education

Should we feel better that it only harasses wildlife? If you must keep cats, the Humane Society recommends keeping them indoors. And whose veggie garden is she crapping in; do you know? Do you care? How to Keep Your Cat Happy Indoors @ US Humane Society

I am sorry for your loss. I have owned cats in the past as well and enjoyed their company. Nonetheless, the facts concerning the detriments to the environment wrought by domestic cats stand regardless of the excuses we make for ourselves. The 'it's not me & my cat, it's others' argument simply falls flat given the grander consequences.

Domestic cats kill billions of small animals in the US alone, making them a bane to ecosystems. Then there is the matter of the billions of dollars people spend on them and the ecological damage caused by producers of their food and other products for them. Oh, and the billions of pounds of their waste and the diseases they spread and the billions of dollars spent treating the cats and humans for these diseases. Domestic Cats Kill Billions Of Mice And Birds Per Year, Study Estimates Pet Care Industry Analysis 2014 - Cost & Trends The environmental impact of pets ZOONOSIS - DISEASES SPREAD FROM CAT TO MAN

Possibly. The dictionary says Latin from Indo-European roots, but their link to dek leads to no further explication regards tens. deci- @ The Free Dictionary

This is a pretty good webazine. >> SciTech Daily

Knowing that you dear tender readers have been reading along with me, I'll just jump to a bit of the summary. Next up is Chapter Five: Authoritarian Leaders. Keeping this all in the perspective of politics, most who score high on the Fundamentalist questionnaire also score high on the RWA and most high-RWA folk self-identify themselves as politically conservative. Crazy, huh? The Authoritarians

I too am abashed to see this in politics. People can and do use any words that they care to and that includes words they make up. Dictionaries are not political instruments; they are factual records. Dictionaries receive regular updates to reflect words in common usage as well as words that have fallen out and receive an archaic notation. Dictionaries do not dictate what can be said, they designate what has been said. Claims to the contrary are just so much douchebaggery.

Roger; you're welcome. Since climate refers to long term conditions/trends of weather, then variations of weather in time & space (region) are to be expected. Looking at climate models to predict specific weather events is the wrong approach in my humble opinion. Let us know if you find otherwise.

... Our pleasure. You may be interested in the Is Political Conservatism a mild form of Insanity? thread for an analytical perspective on the psychology of conservative trogladytism in the US and other countries. While poking is admittedly fun, it would be interesting to see a study on this type of oral dysfunction. Your posts insofar as I have read are full of meaningless gibberish. It is as if you were as1eep and having a nightmare when you made this thread.

Are you volunteering? Logan's Run anybody?

Good question. While I don't recall reading anything on the effect of the Sun-side Moon on Earth's magnetic field, it does seem logical to expect some 'shadow' effect in relation to the solar wind. If it were significant however, I would expect to have seen something on it. (Not that I have read everything on the subject, but I have read quite a bit.) Since the Moon is not always directly aligned between Sun & Earth (else we would have a solar eclipse every month) and because the Moon is in constant motion it seems to me that the effect would be generally minimal. I suggest we both do some looking and report back. --------------------- PS I have found no study yet on the Moon shading effect on Earth from the solar wind, but I did read some [standard] things that prompt further considerations. Not only is the Moon's shadow on Earth during eclipses a rather small area, but because the solar wind has a [somewhat] fixed velocity that is well below the speed of light, a patch of lowered, i.e. reduced in number, charged particles trailing behind the Moon would still have approx. 1/4 million miles to travel before arriving at Earth. Since the Earth is moving in its orbit it may not intercept that patch. The specifics I will leave to those better practiced in these types of calculations.