Ophiolite

Get off your agenda long enough to read the article Pangloss! The Secretary of Education (that's a Labour government minister) gave the idea 0/10. To everyone who thinks this is pc gone mad here is a simple story. When my daughter was learning to read she was having big problems. I spent lots of time with her trying every way I knew how with little effect. Finally, in desperation, after she had made another very poor attempt at reading her material I said 'That was very good. Much better than last night.' In other words I lied through my teeth and kept on lying, until two weeks later it wasn't a lie anymore. Just a thought. Edit: You are all hypocrites. That was just to get your attention. Those of you in business will have attended sales or management courses. A common theme, implicit or explicit, is the power of positive thinking. At the root of this is that there are no problems, only opportunities; that failures do not exist, they are, indeed, just a matter of deferred success. So, when applied to mature, responsible adults it is not only acceptable, but encouraged to rename failures and setbacks in positive terms, but when we deal with children they must face the full force of 'reality'. Interesting dichotomy. [And there is such a wealth of data confirming the advantage of such 'self deception' it is arguably immoral and certainly foolish not to embrace it.]

How can you consider Pluto its satellite when Pluto doesn't go around it?

Proof? No. Interesting evidence for the precursors of prebiotic chemistry? Yes. That's ten billion light years away from proof.

Just coincidence it was next to a field of oil seed rape then?

Ever wonder where stereotypes start?"I know someone, who works for a German company". Wow! What an incredibly reliable, statistically valid, basis for deduction that is.

Apart from everything von Braun and his fellow Germans brought from Peenemunde. Take Bert Rutan, lock him in a room with Zubrin, give them the ISS budget and we'll be on Mars by 2015.

We are all minorities of one.

Point 1: I'll second Mokele's call that you offer some proof that you are a congressman. If you, are my opinion of them necessarily drops even lower. Point 2: If man is not the ultimate judge, but god, who has existed for eternity, then why should we distinguish between someone who is a few paltry decades older than another? At 57 I think I qualify as an elder, but as far as I'm concerned any respect I have has been earned, any accorded because of my age is irrelevant. Point 3: Are you ever going to acknowledge plagiarising your post in The Holographic Universe, or do you claim congressional immunity?

I don't think Martin was presenting it as a 'Gee, look at this' event, but rather as part of the slowly building body of evidence that water is both more common and more accessible than the popular view amongst planetologists and certainly areologists and areographers ten or even five years ago. As such it is noteworthy.

Not to nit pick, but there is a significant difference between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, other than distance from the sun. The objects in the Oort cloud orbit, for the most part, well away from the plane of the ecliptic, while those in the Kuiper belt are relatively close to the ecliptic, though not so close as the major planets (of which I would regretably no longer consider Pluto a member.) Additionaly we suspect that KBO's are comparatively rare and large, while Oort cloud objects are numerous and small. Coincidentally there was an interesting article in New Scientist concerning rival theories of planetary formation. One of these predicts several (as many as a dozen) large (between Mars and Earth sized) terrestrial (i.e. rocky) planets orbiting on highly eccentric and oblique orbits at mean distances of 1000 to 10000 AU. It's a lot more crowded out there than we ever thought.

Not the Oort cloud, the Kuiper belt.

Thank you for that measured response. I am certainly not one of those calling for prosecution of the police - unless the investigation were to reveal that was appropriate. In general, I am pending judgement. Overall, I have been impressed by the efficiency and apparent effectiveness of the police and security forces.. That should not blind us to the fact that mistakes have been made. It is appropriate, indeed essential, that the source of these mistakes is identified and actions taken to prevent a reoccurence. I am sympathetic to the personal involvement you feel in this. When I am in London the only way I travel is by tube. Each of those stations is familiar to me. I am also well aware of the impact of terrorism or just plain civil unrest and corruption. I've been in locations where it was thought appropriate I be accompanied by ten fully armed soldiers and I've had loaded guns pointed in my face at roadblocks more often than I care to remember - perhaps that's why I am sensitive to being gunned down by the 'good guys'.

YT, you have consistently and admirably made this same point throughout this thread. I am in 100% agreement with you. I am pleased that the same thoughts occured to me before your promptings and before we knew the victim was innocent. It puzzles (and saddens) me, that while we seem ready to accept the police officers acted according to the highest of professional standards, applying these within a flawless system of intelligence gathering and ensuring a rigorous application of procedures, some of us here are, as the obverse of this, prepared to tarnish the reputation of a now dead individual - accusing him of stupidity. My position remains, that until the investigation is completed we do not know what the 'truth' is. I am astounded at Aardvark's cavalier approach to the gathering and evaluation of evidence (see below) and I have already acquired an official warning for expressing my contempt for Mokele's ‘heartless bastard’ position on the matter. Aardvark, thank you for your detailed response. Here is what disturbs me in it: We are party to very few available facts. A selection of eyewitness testimony and official police statements, filtered through a media blitz. They have an entire block of flats surrounded and their intelligence is so flawed they follow an innocent individual from a completely different flat. That merits investigation. This has not been properly verified. Nor has the manner and clarity of any warning been established.Aardvark, this may all have been done with great precion and correctness and the victim may just have been stupid, but this needs to be established properly. I find it surprising that you, who are attentive to such detail in science discussions abandon the approach when 'all' that is at risk is the reputation of a dead man. Again, simply not established.

Oh, that's good. I'll let the coroner and the independent investigation committee know their work is done, shall I? Don't you feel it is a tiny bit presumptive to declare you know they acted correctly, when you are not in possession of all the facts?

Clearly it depends on the size of the balloon.

Hugely valuable as science projects. Immensely impressive, well planned, properly managed, brilliantly executed. But man belongs in space, and nancying around in Earth orbit, barely out of the atmosphere does not cut it.

And here are the correct answers - Economic Left/Right:-3.0 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian:-5.44 I then re-took it, changing my answers to those questions I had hesitated over Economic Left/Right:-4.5 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian:-4.92 Damn, I'm changing into the Dalai Lama.

Will your book be in English or pidgin?

The shuttle is an engineering abortion (google horse committee "designed by" camel then raise to the power of forty two). The ISS is a white elephant that should never have been started and will never be completed. The future is in space. America has turned her back on the future.

And the Christian religion is the only true religion because...?Tell me Herme3 do you see anything at all odd about following a book that is said, without proof, to be the word of God, while simultaneously rejecting concepts for which there is massive evidence, any part of which you could personally test? I can, like Humpty Dumpty, believe two impossible things before breakfast, but this stretches my powers of self deception beyond breaking point. And by the way, we did all come from dust: star dust from a supernova. Try googling "ancient writings", "use of metaphor", or some such combination.

My point was that a Type II/Type III Kardashev civilisation might still be just about as dumb as humanity. e.g. "We know that when we employ the neutrino flux focus interface for instantaneous interstellar travel we tend to incinerate, by stellar flare, any planets in the Goldilock's zone, but it is such a convenient way to travel."

Right. I'll keep that in mind when reading your posts in future. For the record sloppy definitions are never acceptable in my book. If you ever catch me making or supporting one please let fly with both barrels. Sloppy definitions and science are simply incompatible. (I know this is the politics section, but it's still part of Science Forums.)

How strange you assume the cops were white and male. I think that confirms what your earlier posts were merely hinting at.

No. For the reasons Dave has pointed out. Also, it seems rather petty to express exasperation at the application of semantics in relation to a definition. In other circumstances I might have let it pass. Do you actually feel that sloppy usage, especially in a definition, is acceptable. I find it difficult to believe that is so.