atinymonkey

The spine compresses during the day with the weight pushed down on it. During the night it expands again, as lying down takes the weight back off. Depending on your height, you gain/lose a few cm during this process. If you ski, it's quite an important thing to remember as the risk of injury to the spine increases the longer you are out for (as the spine is compressed and less flexible).

Diplomacy has set limits, it's unfortunate but true. Politics fail at the point when violence occurs:- http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jul/15iype.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/189058.stm After the tragedy of the massacre in Beslan, diplomatic avenues have closed down. One could argue that they have effectively been closed for over 100 years, and this is the unavoidable result. Diplomacy is only an option where there is ground to give on either side. Where the sides are arguing one single point from opposing attitudes, then diplomacy can only sustain a status quo. The Russian activities in Chechnya have been vicious and uncompromising:- http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9910/09/russia.chechnya.01/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3293441.stm * Warning, Graphic Images * http://www.alkhilafah.info/massacres/chechnya/ * Warning, Graphic Images * For a Muslim based country, the resorting to military activitys was the natural second course of action against Russia. The Muslims still have the jihad against the West, Russia itself has been a target for the militant factions since the 70's. Russia has conducted itself far outside what the international community consider a justifiable response. They have, at the least, violated an international arms treaty. This in itself is not the action of a state willing to open diplomatic relations:- http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9910/09/russia.chechnya.01/ I don't agree with the methods employed by either side. But I think that unles we understand why this happened, there is nothing stopping it happen again.

I've translated it:-

Blike put it up. Sayo mentioned that they would be going through the higher profile members when they got the stuff together. If your desperate to see what Sayonara look's like, here he is attempting to punch a kung fu master:- Ah, foolish man :-/

As a side note, and because I’m supposed to spread the profile around, there is an organisation called the Samaritans that provides emotional support, listening to people who are distressed. They are there for almost all emotional crisis, including depression and suicide. They can be contacted by email at - Jo @Samaritans. org , 24 hours a day. http://www.samaritans.org/

This is a common misconception surrounding depression. Depression is not when you in a bit of a bad mood. You cannot tell a sufferer to 'snap out of it' it doesn’t work that way. Depression is sometimes likened to cancer: - Cancer can be fatal. So can depression. Cancer will not go away if you ignore it. Nether will depression. Cancer needs treatment or it will spread. So will depression. Anyone can suffer from cancer. Anyone can suffer from depression. Clinical depression is a very serious problem for someone to suffer from. It’s severely underestimated by most people, due to the lack of physical symptoms and confusion with ‘being a bit sad’. If you don’t understand depression, there is very little you can do to help a sufferer. You will most probably just worsen the situation. You can offer support, and not advice. Ah. Sometimes, probably it is. Other times it’s the only option open. People don’t like to discuss suicide, as if breaching the subject might push people over the edge. In reality if someone is feeling suicidal and no one discusses it, the person become isolated. People tend to attach a stigma to talking about suicidal feelings, or view it as to heavy a conversation. If people were more open in discussing it, people with suicidal thoughts would not feel so isolated and alone at the one point where they need support.

The Russians agree with you, they have been slaughtering the civilian population for years. Perhaps we should club together and send them a supportive letter, people commiting genocide get such bad press they must all be awfully depressed.

I think people forget just how few plane crashes they have seen. The problem is people imagine they know what a 747 slamming into a reinforced building at 500Kph looks like. Brazil, plane crashes into an apartment block (not a reinforced building):- Cargo plane hit flats in Amsterdam:- The wreckage is small on building impacts because a plane is mostly just aluminium around a skeleton. It's not a flying tank.

The cold war is over, and America is still fighting. As there is only one person left in the superpower race, most people will look at it as an oppressive regime. The venomous outbursts, violent reactions and military occupation of other countries certainly put the US in the role of the bad guy. Unfortunately for the US there is no other major force for people to hate, and people will always hate something. The ‘war of terror’ did not provide an adequate enemy for the US to fight, so they are depicted as oppressors rather than the crusaders the government wished to be. Sorry, but the popular current view of the US is a comparison to the Roman Empire. The comparison shows that the US is, without it’s enemies to fight, in its decline. It wasn’t war that destroyed Rome, but peace. The comparison of attituides could be made with the old British Empire as well, I suppose. It's not a view of the American public; it's a view of the country. If it were a view of the general public, the Hollywood films/TV etc would be doing very badly outside of the US. The American public is very much part of the international consciousness, a bit like a younger cousin we see every so often.

Well, as the bottle would contract in the cold it's probably contraction that caused the cap to come loose. I'm not surprised the lid was loose, I am surprised it didn't explode. It certainly does with wine :-/

God's not happy with Florida, is he? O_o

Actually, that was an honest question. It came across a bit sarcastic because I was a bit preoccupied. It's a good answer.

Ok, for a moment I'll forget what I know about boats and radar. I'll pretend for a while that I've never used either. Lets assume that the Navy is rather poor at monitoring underwater acoustics. What is the advantage of placing a manned submarine over, say, a sea mine?

Somalia was quite famously the American balls up, not the UN's.

I think if it got to the stage where the human population was massively infected by HIV, people might use precautions. Screening sexual partners would negate the risk of the disease spreading.

They are quite an old technology in the UK:- http://www.ferroboats.com/ I think I've been on board one, but I don't really remember much about it. It was used in the arctic for surveys, the concrete was a safer option than steel in the sub zero environment. We have the technology to detect 400 year old shipwrecks at the sea bottom. We can even identify individual cannon, part buried in the sand. What the system looks for is regular shapes on the seabed directly around the boat. The system is simple, if it isn't a fish or a rock it flags it up. What they mean when they say modern subs are not detectable is that a frigate equipped with tracking equipment could not track down a Sub in the sea based on the noise it made. All the sub needs to do is stay out of it's 'line of sight' to stay invisible. It's a huge ocean, and it's quite easy not to sail anywhere near another vessel for months while at sea. However, if the sub was stupid enough to sail under the bow of the ship it would be detected before it approached 400 yards.

It's not a myth that cell phones should not be used around gas stations. It simply that some cell phones interfere with the pumps themselves, and can cause the reading to jump. So I'm told by an engineer, anyway. It’s not to do with explosions, just the reading on the pump.

Just because the UN efforts don't make it onto CNN does not mean they are ineffective.

Hang on, the AR15 is the M16. The M16 is the second most prolific assault rifle in human history. I think we can take the " " away from the word assault, as that's the sole purpose of the weapons design for the military. That particular weapon may have been produced by Bushmaster for 'hunting' but its design function was to put a lot of holes into other humans. Deer hunters usually use a rifle, an M21 or an M14 if you like the military connection. But unless the deer around your parts are particularly vicious beasties, that rifle is shear overkill. You may as well strap the grenade launcher to the bottom and have done with it.

That's another positive thing to come out of 9/11 and the war on terror. The White House no longer has supporters for the IRA and Bush came out on the side of the peace process. At long last' date=' the lid on the violence seems to be on tight as the funding ran dry for militants. Well, if the president owned his own Multinational Billion Dollar Potato Company, and was put into power by his father who also owned a Billion Dollar Potato Company. If both father and son had instigated a war on the country with the highest yield of Potatoes, and made public efforts to secure the transfer of Potatoes out of the country they attacked; then yes I might see something suspicious going on in Idaho. I don't blame Bush for my troubles, he doesn't impact me. I live in the UK. You can't expect people to drop reasoned opinons just by inferring that they are somehow not seeing the 'whole picture'.

It's an interesting view. The attack was not performed to elicit a response, nor was it to further any goals (political or otherwise). Ergo, it was not a 'terrorist attack', but more simply 'an attack'. However, the definition of language is in it use. If 9/11 is commonly known by governments as a terrorist attack, then the definition of terrorist includes 9/11.