exchemist

Not a chance, not least because Trump is rapidly turning the USA into a dictatorship like Putin's. Secondly I do not know where you get this badly garbled story about "leftists" saying democracy is not the rule of the majority but the protection of minorities. What "leftists" are these? It is the case that well crafted democracies elect governments according to the will of the majority, or as close to that as they can get under their electoral system, but that they also have the a separate institution, independent of the government, responsible for applying the law. It is the legal system that has the duty to protect individuals from what would otherwise be mob rule. We are all members of minorities of one kind or another and the law exists in part to uphold our rights as individuals, regardless of popular opinion. The elected legislators make the law of course. But then the application of the law must be fair and logical, for all citizens equally, which is why it has to be independent of government. It sounds as if you have got hold of a mangled description of this basic principle and attributed it, absurdly, to "leftists" when it is embedded in the constitutional arrangements of every mature democracy, not least that of the USA. One of the most pernicious developments of Trump's government has been the threat to undermine this principle and make law enforcement an arm of the executive, doing the bidding of the president. This of course is how Putin rules. If he doesn't like what you say about him you get arrested, may be sent to Siberia - or may even fall out of a high window or get your underpants poisoned with novichok. Trump is already claiming that news organisations whose reporting he dislikes are "illegal". (What was that about "free speech" again?) And his agents have just ignored a court order not to ship prisoners overseas by misusing the Enemy Aliens Act. The rule of law is under threat in the USA now.

Yes I gathered that. What I mean is what I said about God working through natural processes, rather than overruling them by supernatural power. Evolution is a classic example. What you wrote about God “making a giraffe tall enough” rather suggested some sort of intervention, rather than allowing evolution to take its natural course. Such a belief would be incompatible with the scientific evidence. OK as a bible story for children perhaps, but no good once you start learning about fossils, dinosaurs etc. Whereas what I called the “adult” mainstream Christian view would be that God works through evolution following the laws of nature, which can perhaps be seen as His laws. I’m not sure what you understand by what everyone else says about God and science. It seems to me different people say very different things about that. What I have described as a mainstream view would not be shared, for instance, by creationists in the US Bible Belt, who are forced to think science is all wrong because they insist on taking every word of the Old Testament literally.

Hmm, it is not good science to say simply that "God made" individual creatures the way they are, as that does not provide a natural explanation of how they came to be the way they are. Science is all about accounting for what we observe in nature in terms of natural processes, not supernatural intervention. A religious believer is of course free to believe God created nature and upholds its processes via the laws of nature. But science shows us it is the operation of these laws that has led to the forms of life we observe today via evolution, which is one of the best supported theories in science. Invoking supernatural intervention as an explanation is in fact a science stopper, as it discourages the search for natural mechanisms. We just say "God did it", case closed, and go on none the wiser than medieval people who thought earthquakes, or plagues, were "acts of God" with no natural explanation. So by all means continue with your religious belief, but you should start moving on to a more adult, educated version of it that accommodates science. That is what the mainstream Christian denominations have done. If you don't, you will find yourself forced to make an unnecessary choice between science and religion, which risks leaving you intellectually impoverished.

Agree entirely with the analysis of you both. It's fundamentally social media that is doing the damage, (i) by enabling the views of any schmuck, however ignorant, to be aired across the globe, (ii) by deliberately amplifying, via algorithms, the most extreme and provocative of these and (iii) by targeting them to audiences the algorithm has identified as already receptive. The evil genius of modern populists like Trump has been to realise this early and use it. The basic problem those of us who believe in liberal democracy face is that we are "centrist dads". In other words we are too moderate to be algorithm-catching. A couple of years ago my son gave me a mug inscribed "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." I took it as a compliment, coming as it did from young man of 20, but to algorithm-driven social media that kind of sentiment is not going to get redistributed to millions. We are people who communicate - and therefore think - in paragraphs, not 140 characters. The best mode of pushback my be via a countercultural movement. Americans, being such indvidualists, are very good at that. cf. Vietnam War era. We need music, art, publications and above all humour, to take the piss out of Trump, Vance, Musk and co. They have to become seen as deeply uncool. London is doing its bit against Musk, with a pirate poster campaign with joke ads on the Underground and at bus stops for the swasticar ("Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 secs"), a spoof fragrance with a swastika on the bottle called "Elon's Musk", picturing his underarm as he makes the Nazi salute with the strapline "parfum 1939" with"pour wankers" underneath, and so on. If the USA had a parliamentary system, one would look to the Leader of the Opposition to play a central role in formally opposing what is going on and getting key figures in the party to give interviews and speeches with a coordinated series of messages designed to build up support from the electorate. But the Democrat party seems leaderless and totally uncoordinated at the moment. What's become of the Lincoln Project these days?

I find the whole idea suggestive of a predatory attitude towards women and consequently distasteful. And it is not a scientific exercise, as it is purely speculative and the resulting estimate would provide no insight into the science of sex or sociology, as far as I can see.

Are we not already spending a few billion on it though? We have several US projects, several in Europe, several in China and I think the Japanese may also be active.

To be honest I find this post a bit creepy, especially the revelation that this has fascinated you for 3 years. Obviously trying to do an actual statistical survey would be highly objectionable, and I can't see you have any sound basis for making an extrapolated calculation. I also don't think such a calculation, if it could be done, would offer much by way of worthwhile insight. The whole exercise seems to have a faint whiff of, well, incel about it. But I do note the remark you attribute to Franz Ferdinand (do you mean the Archduke whose assassination precipitated WW1, or someone else?) does not specify the sex of the "people". Maybe he was including the likelihood of +ve responses from gay men in his statistics. Are you still fascinated now 😁?

Enormous sums of money have been and are being spent on fusion research. But we are still decades away from a practical power-generating reactor. I doubt that throwing even more money at the problems would be good value, compared to other things we could use it for to accelerate the green transition.

Yes indeed. The Democrat party really should have put the brakes on to stop getting too far from Mr and Mrs Average. They seemed rather undisciplined, from my perspective across the Atlantic. They have some great people, e.g. Buttigieg, this Senator Schiff guy and so on, but no coordination and no party discipline.

Yes, that would be intelligent. And Chinese culture knows all about the importance of “face”, so this could indeed be part of a strategy for playing an angry buffoon like Trump.

Hmm. But the trouble with Trump is that paying a protection fee gets you nowhere, as he simply pockets it - and then reneges on whatever he promised you in return when it suits him. No agreement with Trump is worth the paper it is written on, still less any informal understanding. The only thing Trump responds to is pressure. If you want an arrangement with Trump to stick, you need to make sure you have the means to squeeze his balls if he fucks around. It looks as though the Canadians have understood that and reacted appropriately. (They do of course make sure they don't do or say anything irrevocable, as they need to leave him "a ladder to climb down", which is part of Negotiating Skills 101.) So if I were the Taiwanese, I'd make damned sure I held back something important that Trump needs.

I am not medically qualified but this looks like word salad, in its strict medical sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_salad

I certainly think that those with some awareness of the seriousness of climate change have become more favourably disposed towards nuclear energy than was the case, say, a decade ago. Whether awareness of climate change depends on level of education I am not so sure. That may be linked to the extent to which the climate change issue has become politicised: to a large extent in the USA but less so in Europe, for instance.

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.