Severian

Let's try again shall we, or will you just keep deleting? Do you really believe that shooting an innocent person through the head for no reason is defensable? Would you feel the same way if it was you? Would you feel the same way if it was your brother? The sky certainly fell for the poor bugger with his brains splattered all over the subway. What do you think - should I report you for this flame?

That is completely pathetic Pangloss. You deleted my entire post just because you can't deal with my objections to your argument. Not a flame in sight....

Bascule: Do you understand the strong force? Perhaps you would care to explain it to us? Just how does it hold the atomic nucleus together?

No I didn't. Go back and try again. Part of living in a civilized society is learning to be civilized.

France? They have so many nuclear power stations they actually export electricity. (They still use oil in their cars though.)

Well, there is structure behind the random numbers, in the sense that you mean (I think). There are laws which must be obeyed and given enough statistics the random numbers will fall in well predicted distributions. So in that sense there are 'hidden variables'. If there weren't, our theory would be non-predictive and that would be bad. But that is not what is meant by 'hidden variable theory' in which there are no random numbers, and everything is deterministic but we just can't see it. These sort of hidden variable theories have been disproven.

I am a particle physicist and university physics lecturer.

Was that meant to be self-mocking, or did it just come over that way?

Of course I did' date=' but given that I don't believe that everyone held in Guantanamo Bay is a member of Al'qaeda why should I trust the US authorities to be able to tell an 'Al'qeada operative' from a hole in the ground? Who knows, maybe [b']I[/b] am already on a blacklist for expressing my opinions on this site. I certainly wouldn't appreciate my phone being tapped (although they would be pretty bored listening to my phonecalls). Today they are bugging Al'qeada operatives, tomorrow they bug Al'qaeda supporters and the day after they will bug anyone who disagrees with them.

I'm serious! I truly think that the people who are trying to take away our civil liberties at home in the name of security are actually a bigger threat to my way of life than any member of Al'qaeda ever could be.

For an overview take a look at: http://lisa.jpl.nasa.gov/

I can't get much more specific than actually including a quote! No, the US was rightly judged as a collective and responsible for the problem. Similarly, any individual country who has citizens who perform terrorist acts should try and prevent them. But you should not make an entire ideology responsible for every person who claims to believe in it. Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but in that case they are entitled to their opinion that you are evil. The publisher was at least trying to make a point. The republishers were just being deliberately provocative.

It is not Al'qaeda I am worried about' date=' it is people like you. I don't care if its 'lawful' or not - it is still wrong.

So do I get to bug your telephone too? Judging frm your opinions in this post, I regard you as a threat to my liberal rights, so I think I have 'need'.

There seems to be a lot of bigotry of people on this site, and while I defend the right of people to be bigots, I would try to discourage them from it. Not all (or even most) muslims are foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics twitching for the chance to blow themselves up in a busload of schoolkids. Most muslims are constructive members of their society who want to live their lives peacefully and without violence. They are as appalled by the terrorists' acts as you or I. However, they care deeply about their beliefs (who doesn't?) and are offended when people make fun of them, or call their beliefs evil. When you draw this sort of cartoon, you offend lots of people, and potentially drive them towards your enemies. Why can't the west understand this? So while I would defend the newspaper's rights to print this cartoon, I think it is irresponsible and bigotted. Wouldn't it be better to write an article pointing out the common values that Islam and the west share, and try to bring them together rather than drive them apart?

All pointless pass-times of pseudoscience poets give me a head-ache.

To quote an American:

I think I would dispute that. Energy is a property of matter, but matter is not a property of energy. A photon (which is not matter) can have energy too.

I must admit I am having difficulty seeing any tracks in that picture. I suppose if they are moving you can see them more easily.

A ball rolling into a stable minima is clearly not a chaotic system (since pretty much any starting condition will result in the same end position) but a ball rolling off an unstable maximum (in 3d) is a chaotic system since a small perturbation in initial conditions leads to a large change in the final state. It is also clear that almost all very complicated real world situations have some potential to be chaotic to some extent. If some lunatic decides to assasinate George Bush, there may be a profound effect on world politics. A small change (one person's instability) leads to a big change.

Surely not!

I wasn't. Anyway, I said 'get drunk', not take paranoia inducing drugs. wanker

Get drunk.