Manticore

consciouness n. The state or condition of being conscious.

The worst maths teachers are those who are naturally good at maths. They tend to be incapable of understanding student's problems, since, to them, it is obvious. Give me a teacher who has struggled with maths and understands the difficulties.

Bees see in colour (not the same range as us - they can see into the ultra-violet but not the red end of our visible spectrum)and I can't really imagine an individual bee possesses consciousness (whatever that is).

From:https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/sub-saharan-africa/overview "Following the discovery that male circumcision could reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV from females to males by 60%, in 2007, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS recommended voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as a key component of HIV prevention in countries with a generalised epidemic. Studies from 2009-2011 indicated that circumcising 80% of men in 14 priority countries in Eastern and Southern Africa in 5 years could avert 3.4 million new infections over the next 15 years and save $16.5 billion in treatment costs. As a result, the WHO and UNAIDS launched the Joint Strategic Action Framework for accelerating the scale-up of VMMC for HIV prevention in Southern and East Africa, calling for 80% coverage of adult male circumcision by 2016. By 2013, 5.8 million of the estimated 20 million men needed to achieve 80% coverage had been reached by VMMC programmes, requiring a further scale up of existing efforts."

Stereotypes tend to vary from place to place. For example, the English used to (maybe still do) make a certain kind of joke about the Irish - Americans told identical jokes about the Polish - Canadians about Newfoundlanders and West Africans about Zambians. So maybe you could just move.

I can't see you and I'm definitely here.

Racists.

"Reverse Gravity"? Where? Show me some.

I think you will find that the stepped leader causes the forked shape of the lightning. Therefore, in an inverted forked bolt, the leader must be propagating upwards rather than downwards as in a normal strike. Presumably the main discharge is also in the opposite direction to that of a cloud to ground discharge. (When I took my (French) pilot exam, there was only one question related to thunderstorms. The question was 'What is this?' with a picture of a Cumulo-Nimbus. The correct answer was 'Dangerous'.)

A quick search for "ground to cloud lightning" shows that the phenomenon is more common than I would have thought. And that, yes, this gives lightning that forks upward.

You should maybe try Mint. I know a lot of people who use it very happily without knowing jack about computers. I use SUSE Tumbleweed which is definitely not for beginners. But the old Macroshaft FUD that Linux is difficult should have died out long ago.

A couple of months ago I saw an inverted stroke of lightning ie. forked upwards rather than down. I assume that in this case the leader propagated from the ground upwards & the actual strike was downwards. (Apparently this is caused by metal masts and towers which concentrate the Earth's charge at a single point.)

Who does use Windoze? If you count smartphones & tablets, Macroshaft has less than 20% of the OS market (some sources put it as low as 11%!). As they say; the only use for Exploder is to download a proper browser. (I switched to Linux when Windoze 95 came out - couldn't stand all the baby talk - 'My Computer' , 'My Briefcase' etc. Bleaugh.)

"Vortex" - a word that shouts "Crackpot" at the top of it's voice. (Except when applied to aerodynamics.)

The big question about design, is, that if things are designed, why are they so often designed so bloody badly?

Heavy processor activity on a web page is usually a sign that a script is running. Definitely agree that NoScript is a good idea. I also use Disconnect to block tracking, uBlock Origin for adblocking and DansGuardian on my proxy server to block any sites I just don't want eating my bandwidth. (And Duckduckgo for searches - what I do is no business of Google's so they can f*ck off.)

Certainly true for African villages without electricity. At least with a full moon you get a chance to see the leopards rather than just hearing them (sometimes terrifyingly close).

The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out. The ones that go in are lean and thin. The ones that come out are fat and stout. Your eyes fall in and your teeth fall out. Your brain comes tumbling down your snout. Be merry my friends. Be merry. The Pogues.

This might give you some ideas: https://briankoberlein.com/2015/08/24/could-we-ever-build-a-time-machine/

Why Windows 7? Runs fine under Linux - agree about 64 bit & plenty of RAM.

Most of the laptops here are Dell, HP or Lenovo. Having spent many years fixing computers, I would say: 1) Avoid Lenovo at all costs. Sometimes they break immediately. Sometimes it takes a month or two. 2) Dell is usually a bit more reliable. Some models have no indicator lights other than for power - makes it impossible to know whether or not the Wifi is on - very annoying. 3) HP are generally very tough. I forget which model, but there was one a few years ago with an NVidia graphics chip where they screwed up the cooling bigtime. 4) If it's a name you've never heard of - DON"T BUY IT!

Original post translated to English: I have vomited out a whole book full of ludicrous gibberish. I am trying to find enough people stupid enough to give me good money for it that I never need to do a days work again.

The falling on the head part is modern. When I was at school the story was that Newton merely observed the fall of an apple (and even that is probably apocryphal).

I would suggest that if true AI is developed, we will pretty soon find that we don't really want it. After all how can we call anything truly intelligent until it turns around and says "F*ck that. That's boring. I'm going to do this instead."

Right. Which is why you should sit quietly and actually listen to people who do know what they are talking about. When you have done that for a few years you might become qualified to discuss these things sensibly.