exchemist

You are quoting @MigL , not me, about inheriting Trudeau’s faults.

What orbs? The expansion of the universe is an observed phenomenon which is a physical thing and as such quite independent of human awareness.

Poilievre: doesn't that mean rabbit(strictly hare) fur? Mr. Rabbit Fur for PM! 😁

Well that’s true. But, as I’ve commented previously, I think Trump would be perfectly happy to see China swallow Taiwan, so long as the high end chips can be made in the USA. In fact, if both Ukraine and Taiwan were to be swallowed, that would give him the symmetry he would like to be able to claim for his own territorial designs, on Greenland, Panama and maybe even Canada.

SCIRP is a well-known family of predatory journals, which publishes any old nonsense the author pays them for.

If things get really tough with Trump, perhaps Canada might go into coalition government, as in wartime.

It sounds silly because it expresses the limits of personal freedom in absurdly negative terms. It suggests that recognising other peoples' rights is ipso facto an infringement of one's own. That attitude is a recipe for anarchy and allowing dominance by the strongest. In fact I think your comment, that "you" are also "others", sums up why this is wrong very neatly.

Where does this "principle" come from? I have never heard of it before. It certainly sounds rather silly, on the face of it. But perhaps all it it is intended to mean is that, in a civilised society nobody has total freedom to act without consideration for others.

If you have 8 minutes to spare, watch this speech in the French Senate (English subtitles): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danbowyer_vivelaeurope-ugcPost-7303368801457176578-T0B_?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAGxW24BfNLDShCe4dF4XTjG78YdhXJPrbw&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=messages It lays out with brutal clarity the nature of the change that has occurred and the imperative that Europe now faces. It also, by the way, shows great respect for the democratic traditions of the American people and expresses the hope that they will make their voices heard and arrest the rapid slide into dictatorship that is now taking place. As a Brit, I also noted in particular the vindication of France's traditional defence policy of independence from the USA (ever since de Gaulle's time) and the embrace of the UK as an essential defence partner. But perhaps the most pointed line of all is that: "....it took only only one month, three weeks and two days to dismantle the Weimar Republic and its constitution." The speaker is Claude Malhuret, a Gaullist senator. A translation of part of it is already on his Wiki entry: QUOTE "Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester [actually he says bouffon, i.e. buffoon] high on ketamine (Elon Musk) in charge of purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you."[10] UNQUOTE Translation of the full speech here: https://www.newsletter.samuel-warde.com/p/were-fighting-against-a-dictator

What was behind my question was the degree to which the average Trump voter really thought he or she was voting for authoritarian government and the suppression of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. My impression is that a lot of voters are pretty unengaged and just vote on the basis of things like gas (or egg?) prices. It seems shocking that they could vote for someone that tried to overthrow the result of the last election, but did they actually think about that?

Yes, well, that all fits then. So there will be a new McCarthyism in the universities. The big question in my mind is whether the American public cares about any of this stuff. Or are they happy to try a spot of fascism?

Yes, if we want to get some science into this thread, I suppose we could discuss the possible origins of the Middle Eastern flood myth. Seasonal flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates is perhaps the most likely origin. However the way the Mediterranean and Black Sea refilled after the end of the last Ice Age are two other ideas. One I rather like is the refilling of the Persian Gulf, which would have involved an encroachment of the Arabian sea through the Straits of Hormuz. Someone calculated this would have spread up the shallow floor of the Gulf, along the banks of what would have been, at that time, the continuation of the Shatt al Arab, at a rate of advance of 1km/yr, i.e. 3 metres per day, for hundreds of years. That would have displaced people living on the banks and might have been a traumatic experience for the population. This would have been between 12000 and 6000 yrs ago, so within possible folk memory.

Here is an article from a few days ago, reporting the opinions of four previous British ambassadors to the USA: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/05/seismic-shift-in-uk-us-relations-is-not-a-blip-warns-ex-ambassador., in support of my recent post about Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Serious people now see this scenario. And stemming from that, serious people are now further concerned that the USA may cease to support the UK nuclear deterrent, Trident, which is a US system: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/us-support-uk-nuclear-arsenal-in-doubt-trident-france. I wonder if France's Ariane Group can maintain it for us or if we have to refit our subs with Ariane nukes. That won't come cheap. Or quick. The extraordinary thing is that this 180 degree switch has taken place in the space of a mere six weeks. And nobody in the USA is able to challenge it, apparently, presumably because the Repubican waxworks in Congress are all terrified of Trump and his henchpeople. By the way, I read (was it here or somewhere else?) that Reuters has a report of US judges receiving pizza deliveries they have not ordered. This I gather is a well known signal that "we know where you live", designed to intimidate. I've been forecasting for a few weeks that intimidation or sidelining of the judiciary would be the next thing. The beauty of this is that anonymous MAGA types can easily organise this kind of low level intimidation, quite deniably as far as the Trumpies are concerned. I also expect an attack on the independence of universities, which is another tactic from the Orban playbook the Trumpies are following. I note a report that $400m of grants has been removed from Columbia, on the pretext that they don't protect their Jewish students enough or something. Expect more of this, at universities with a reputation for leftish politics.

You are shooting fish in a barrel. We don’t have any biblical literalists on the forum to kick around, and I doubt anyone here will have the patience to hunt down the silly arguments these people try, just so we can all agree they are cobblers. Biblical literalists, in my experience, are very ignorant people, often even cultivating ignorance to avoid confronting the obvious problems. I used to post on a religious forum and there were people there who refused to learn, simply ignoring inconvenient issues even when they had been carefully and simply explained. Logical argument is water off a duck’s back to them.

There is that. However, now that he can't even make his tariff idea stick (kudos to Trudeau et al for being so clear, firm, unified and measured in response), I have the feeling that fantasy will die away. He is already looking like a prize twat.

Musht be a joke, shurely?😄 [with apologies to Bill Deedes]

Trump would like to carve up the world between three strongmen leaders: himself, Xi and Putin. So he wants to annex Canada and Greenland, take back the Panama Canal for strategic access to both coasts and oceans by sea, get out of entanglements in Europe, which he sees an economic rival and nuisance with all its pathetic concerns over outmoded ideas like democracy and social welfare - and let Xi have Taiwan, once he has got the chips being made in Arizona. If Putin fights with the EU, so much the better. It's Orwell's vision of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.

A number of British former diplomats have suggested we need to do this. Trump may even at this moment be planning an invasion of Canada, for Christ's sake! I have little doubt the heads of intelligence in the other Five Eyes group will be urgently talking about how this could be done, hard though it will undoubtedly be. They may start by no longer sharing their most sensitive information. Obviously nothing on Ukraine. There is also a move for the EU to provide a backup for Ukraine to Musk's Starlink, which they have been using for military operations, in case Musk pulls the plug on that. There is another system I gather, a French one. De Gaulle was right, it seems, to insist that France should have independent defence capability. They have their own ballistic missiles, unlike Britain whose system was bought from the US.

What? You asked whether magnetism caused gravity, not whether gravity causes magnetism. The answer to the first is no. The answer to the second is a qualified no, in that gravity and magnetism are quite separate things. However it is true that the convective circulation in the Earth’s core is believed to be responsible for the magnetic field of the Earth. Convection is driven by density differences, that lead to differences in buoyancy under the influence of gravity. So without gravity there would be no convection and no magnetic field.

Because of your stupid answers. How do either house or phone prices cause the disappearance (your term) of an entire class in society?

Yes, the good thing (if there is anything "good" about this disaster) is this shows German people are alive to the seriousness of the sudden switch in alliances. We will all (and I mean the UK and Norway plus the EU) need to put our hand in our pocket to fund a rapid rearmament of Europe. Taxes must rise and we need a lot more of those excellent German panzers. Not only to help Ukraine but to defend the eastern boundary of the EU, especially Poland and the Baltics. The USA is no longer an ally and could easily become the enemy, at least in terms of intelligence sharing and cyber warfare. We have to kick the US out of the Five Eyes system. Anything we tell them may go straight to Moscow.

Yes, it is a recipe for war: war between the EU and the USA. And war between Canada and the USA as well: let's not forget Trump wants to annex Canada, having crushed it economically. Trudeau's speech makes crystal clear that that is not a joke. Trump means it. Trump seems to be engaged in deliberately wrecking relations with all the other members of the Western alliance. It looks as if his idea is to remake the globe into Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four power blocs: Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania. Europe has certainly got the message it is on its own now. As has Canada.

How is that evidence that the "middle class", whatever definition of it you have in mind, is "disappearing"? And what has any of this to do with supposed "liberals"?

This seems to be question-begging. Where have these (at least partly false) statements been “denied”? But what do you mean by “middle class”? Do you mean what we used to call lower class or working class? In other words people that do predominantly manual or “blue collar” , or otherwise poorly paid jobs? Or do you mean what in the UK we mean by middle class, which is the class above the aforementioned, predominantly professional, managerial, university educated? Whichever it is, what makes you think it is disappearing? I don’t see any evidence that either group is. I don’t know what you mean by “liberal” in this context either, so you should not take my reply to the OP to be agreement to being classed as one, whatever it may be.

I can't speak for others but I've now had enough of this. Every time we try to explain something, you move the goalposts back to something earlier in history and claim you can't understand what we are saying because of this earlier issue, which you had not previously raised. That makes it impossible to progress. You also claim to be unable to understand the references we provide. Yet it is clear you are not an idiot. I do not think you are posting in good faith. I think you are abusing our goodwill, time and effort to jerk us around. I'm out.