mistermack

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

the militia would always use the latest stuff. Give them some credit!

So what kind of weapons do you think will be available in 220 years time?

49 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

It just says "Arms" - easily interpreted as everything from spears to nuclear missiles.

Yes, but, when they wrote it, they meant stuff like this : 

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson 

I've often thought that they should pass a law that the right to bear arms should refer to muzzle loading old flintlocks, or whatever they were shooting when they wrote the constitution. 

Keeping it real !!

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

To me, your picture does not look biological, but more likely chemical. But I am prejudiced, of course.😀

Nailed it, I reckon.

I would say that it's 100% the usb power connector. USB plugs are a nightmare for working/not working. Sometimes you just move them a tiny amount, and they connect. If the blue light doesn't come on, then the power connection is not being made. 

It's usually the sockets, not the plugs, but in this case it sounds like the plug that's iffey. If you can get at it, try a few strokes of a very fine wirebrush. If you can't it sounds like it needs to be binned, unless you can swap the USB plug for a good one. 

Does the blue light come on with the laptop that it doesn't work with? That would tell you that it's not connecting up the power, either to the wall plug or the laptop, so it points to the usb plug.

Another big difference between us humans and our recent ancestors is of course the lack of hair on the body.

That takes away the typical carrying mode for baby apes, where they cling on to the mother's fur. And of course, our babies stay babies for far longer than those of chimps and gorillas. Which means that humans have a heavy baby that is helpless, whereas chimps have a lightweight baby that has an extremely strong grip, and can easily hang on while the mother goes about her business, and becomes independent much earlier. 

Indigenous women usually have some carrying sling or other, that wouldn't have been available to our more distant ancestors, so they must have struggled a bit, carrying a heavy child all day. Older children probably put in a shift carrying the baby, while the mother foraged. 

14 minutes ago, swansont said:

So what?

Either you have the right or you don’t.

Rights are what you get given by those around you. If you believe in a higher power that dishes them out, then that's your "right". 

16 minutes ago, swansont said:

It doesn’t have to be a clear-cut choice, as long as the woman is the one making it, and not some old guy forcing the decision on someone else.

Presumably you would baulk at the woman killing her own hours-old baby. Are you one of the old guys forcing her not to kill it? I am. That's the essence of the disagreement. 

If you regard a fetus as the same as a day-old baby, then you believe that they should have the same rights. 

I personally don't. I regard them as different. But the difference diminishes with every day of the pregnancy. To the point where, even though I'm pro choice, I would ban abortions of viable fetuses. 

While I am pro-abortion, I can hardly go with the general tone of this thread. The truth is that making abortion more difficult will result in winners as well as losers. 

It's not as black and white as most posters are portraying it. At the end of the day, not all unwanted pregnancies are the result of rape, or all the other long list of nasties. Some really are just down to people being their own worst enemies. Women and men. Self-inflicted grief is harder to sympathise with than bolts from the blue. And talking of self-inflicted grief, it's ironic that many of the people who will suffer most from this are people who never bother to vote. "because it don't change anything". 

And of course, the winners will be the people who get born, who wouldn't have. And the mothers who will be glad after the fact, that they didn't abort. And they do exist.

I'm giving the other side of the argument. Like I said, I would personally keep abortion, but I don't pretend that it's a clear-cut choice. Both sides of the argument leave a nasty taste in the mouth. In an ideal world, nobody would want or need one.  

2 hours ago, M.Ross said:

But that is only relevant in the local frame.

And only relevant in the local time era. Genghis Khan probably has the most descendants ever. But now, those descendants probably have about 1% of his genes. (wild guess, can't be bothered to research it).

So basically, if you want life to have a meaning, you have to invent one. 

13 hours ago, Eric Girard said:

Had new tires put on it and ended up with a leaky rear tire valve. $150 to replace.

I'm amazed. In this country, they fit a new valve as standard practice. And if it leaks, they would not charge to rectify it. 

I fit my own tyres. last one was the rear for a Honda VFR 800. £32 as new off ebay. As compared to about £130 fitted at the dealer. It was an easy job too, with the single sided swing arm, it just unbolts like a car wheel. 

7 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

For whatever reason, indigenous the mothers rarely put their babies down, and then not out of sight.

It's a very complicated picture, human evolution. Because we went through such big changes in a short time. I usually picture our ape ancestors lives, when trying to explain a modern trait, but that's not perfect.

Modern indigenous mothers would be very wise not to put the babies down, because there are nearly always dogs and even pigs running loose, so I don't find that surprising. But that situation doesn't go back very far in history. 

Our ancestors became upright about six or seven million years ago, which you would think would make them vulnerable to leopards, as they would run slower and climb badly. They must have had a very effective defence against predators though, bearing in mind that we reproduce slowly. I think it was a combination of social organisation, and the use of weapons, in particular the hand-held spear. So the had effectively armed males guarding the foraging parties. That's just specualtion on my part, but they must have had something effective. 

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

the leopard will be alerted to a baby's cries sooner and from farther away than the villagers.

The studies that I've seen conclude that leopards avoid chimpanzee territories. The reason they gave was that the troop of chimps have a hundred alert pairs of eyes, and give the alarm as soon as a leopard gets anywhere near, and one alarm sets them all off. So leopards not only fail to snatch a chimp, but all the local game are alerted, so they very rarely catch anything in chimpanzee territory. The local leopards learn that pretty quickly and avoid the chimp territory. 

You get similar pictures with monkeys and deer in India. The deer use the monkeys as lookouts, and the deer can smell upwind predators, so they all benefit. 

14 hours ago, Peterkin said:

For human babies, it's always and emergency.

We humans are evolved from animals like chimps that lived in very large family groups. It's instinctive in the great apes to protect the infants, even though they are not direct relatives. Since nearly everyone in the social group shares fairly close family ties, it helps your own dna flourish, if you look after the infants of others. So human babies being loud means they are unlikely to get mislaid for long. Someone will pick it up and take it back to the group.

15 hours ago, MigL said:

Wikipedia : " The final piece of detectable USA-193 debris re-entered on 28 October 2009."

The important word there is detectable though. What fraction of the debris is detectable? It depends on the way it breaks up I guess. I would have let the thing re-enter in one piece, and take the minute risk of it causing damage when it falls. In the future, they could try to design satellites with break-up in mind, so that they disintegrate into parts small enough to burn up completely. 

Super

9 hours ago, J.Merrill said:

This is my last post here, and I have enough to right my paper!

Today I right my paper. Tomorrow I right the world!

I'm write with you, go for it !!

6 hours ago, Moontanman said:

As a sufferer of deep depression

I think if there was a magic switch out there it would be widely known. 

The worst instance I ever saw was a friend's brother, who was persuaded to come and play golf with us. I was amazed at how bad he was, he couldn't even stand still, he had to keep pacing up and down, even though he said the golf shoes were killing him. I didn't think he would ever get out of it, it was so severe. 

But he did get out of it. I asked my friend what made the difference, and he said nothing, it just went, and he even found himself a new partner and it didn't come back. So I guess, like other nasty ailments, it can fix itself in the end, even though it doesn't seem possible at the time. 

If I find my mind churning over stuff in the past that still bugs me, I use a "happy place" diversion tactic, as quickly as possible, and refuse to let my mind go back over stuff. That works for me, you get better at it over time, if you persevere. 

10 hours ago, Eric Girard said:

No way to reach there inside, this is not sealed but riveted shut.

I can't see rivets, but if there are some you can drill them out. 

If it's sealed at the factory by pressing the chrome ring into shape, you can carefully bend it back just enough to get the ring off. 

Like this :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gAbn7IY8LI    

It might be that herd animals babies are more likely to be loud, as they have a bit of group security, but could get lost in the crowd, and need a way to contact the parent. We humans are historically used to living in large bands, and calves and lambs are herd animals. 

A calf is louder than a baby. You can hear them miles away.

Lambs are pretty loud too.

40 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

If you live in a clean place, work hard, never get rich enough to realize you're poor, have good friends and community, help others and laugh frequently, you'll live longer.

Not so. I just looked up the oldest person ever, and she never worked, had servants, and lived a life of leisure, but was fairly active with some physical hobbies. But her relatives often lived long lives. 

Smoking is one of the biggest factors, and the reduction is playing a big part in longer life-spans.

4 hours ago, J.Merrill said:

If the BB could only be proved and not falsified it would not be a theory.

Theories are verifiable and falsifiable, that is why they are theories. 

If they get proven to be Factual well then that means they cant be falsified. It is called the BB THEORY for a reason.

Again this can't be argued. And I refuse to argue over it. Its a meaningless discussion.

No one put me In charge but you clearly miss the underlining Theory part.

You are using some very odd logic around the word "falsified".

If you say you have a theory, that one plus one equals two, then although it appears correct, it is capable of being falsified. If someone can prove that one plus one equals three, then they have falsified the theory. The phrase "capable of being falsifed" does not mean "false" as you are arguing. It just means, if it were to be false, there is a theoretical possibility of proving that. Even if that method is not availabe at the present.

And unfasifiable means that a theory, by it's very nature, can never be shown to be false.

So falsifiable/unfalsifiable doesn't equate to right/wrong. It's about whether there is a theoretical MEANS available to show if it's right or wrong.

2 hours ago, MigL said:

I was thinking about breaking them up before they re-enter the atmosphere, as the recent Chinese booster did.
As long as they stay in orbit they pose little danger, as their position is fairly predictable, but when a large mass re-enters the atmosphere and can't burn up, whether it will fall on your head is pretty much a lottery.

Oh right. They could theoretically do a job there, although I doubt that it would be cost effective, but it would be a way of testing the weapon. 

If a satellite is due to fall from space though, I'm prepared to take my chances. The stupid things we did playing chicken as kids make me shudder when I think of them, so the billions to one odds of getting wiped out by a bit of satellite pale in comparison.. 

10 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Do most satellites orbit in roughly the same direction? And if that is true, are the relative differences in velocity between dust grains and satellites significant for those that do follow similar orbits? 

I wondered that. I don't think they do though, judging by the outcry when China zapped their satellite, and the research money going into cleanup technology.

9 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

It boils down to:

What drives a machine, "itself?"

OK, I give up, that brick wall is hurting my head.

2 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

A conscious AI would be "acting on its own," correct? But it wouldn't be doing so because of its programming. Hence "programming without programming" and "design without design."

I've really tried to understand that. But I can't make head or tail of it. Can you put it in simple terms, for a simple person?