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Curious layman

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Posts posted by Curious layman

  1.  

    1 minute ago, iNow said:

    The fight must occur on multiple fronts.
     

    Sometimes, people are actively plotting mayhem and violence and bloodshed and beheadings against the innocent. Those people must be stopped with bullets and bombs (and the occasional banking restrictions). 

    Bullets and bombs, however, don’t kill bad ideas. Sometimes, they even make bad ideas worse and more common. A balance must be found.

    Bullets and bombs can’t be the ONLY way we fight. They can’t be the only front I’m for attack. There’s more happening here than everything looking like nails because all we have are hammers.

    We must ALSO battle for hearts and minds and for the spread of better ideas.

    It’s just silly to me to suggest we don’t in parallel work to stop the mayhem and violence being plotted against innocents by taking out those who plot it and who are themselves anything but innocent. 

    We can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. 

    Wish I'd said that...

  2. I don't know whether to laugh or cry?

    Iraq and Afghanistan were both disasters, It's been 18 years since 911 and there are more terror groups attacking us now than there was then. 

    Yeah, were really kicking there ass. They won't do this again. 

  3. 2 minutes ago, iNow said:

    So, back to my original reply: Why not both?

    Who you going to negotiate with? If you take out the entire leadership you'll just end up with a situation where you have several dozen smaller terror groups, all with different agendas, and ideologies. It will make it more difficult.

    6 minutes ago, MigL said:

    This is what I was referring to as "Off topic".
    And if my reply to this is off topic, then so is the post that prompted my reply, and deserving of a similar warning, Strange.
    Not to mention all the others he has brought up that are similarly off topic.

    By all means, enforce the rules, but do it equitably.

    WTF...:confused:

  4. Whack-a-moles great, don't get me wrong, theirs a certain satisfaction knowing we can take them out, and Delta Force are pretty badass aren't they? SEAL team six and the SAS too. I just think it might be better to be abit more selective with who we whack.

    A nuclear strike - I would secretly look forward to watching that.

  5. https://www.mivision.com.au/2016/01/australia-s-bionic-eye/

    Quote

    Three Australians with retinitis pigmentosa will be implanted with a bionic eye this year when the second clinical trial of an Australian developed and manufactured bionic eye commences. This trial will be supported by Bionic Vision Technologies (BVT), a commercial spinoff from the successful Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) research consortium (2010–2016). Commercialisation may still be five to seven years away but according to Dr. Lauren Ayton, Bionic Eye Clinical Research Team Leader and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA), it will be worth the wait.

     

  6. Ok, sorry about the delay, I've got stuff going on,

    should we target the leaders? 

    It depends what we're trying to accomplish, has killing this guy actually done any harm to them, from what I've read, no, they had a new leader within 24 hours ( 'the destroyer'), he's already promised revenge. Short term good, we got one, medium to long term, pointless, this 'destroyer' will have different ways of doing things, we have no idea where he is, he will most likely change the leadership around. It hasn't harmed them at all. It's like the drug war in Mexico, it just changes things, usually making it worse and harder to stop.

    If we knew where the other guy was, would it not of been better to use this to our advantage, put him under surveillance, and to take out his most important people, making him ineffective and more likely to negotiate?

    The point of the IRA and FARC, and Israel and Palestine too, was whether we like it or not, the military, nor their bombings, is going to win this war. At some point we're going to have to negotiate with each other, and like with the IRA and FARC, its will have to include letting them get away with crimes they've committed. We can't do that if our strategy is to kill their leaders.

    If we keep killing their leaders, it will be never ending.

  7. 18 hours ago, iNow said:

    I'm unclear on the relevance of this reply. You rightly highlight the problems of civilian death and drone attacks. We're agreed, those are serious problems that often make matters worse.

    In this operation, however, we specifically went in with helicopters and put Delta Force boots on the ground to avoid the very civilian deaths and uncertainties you lament. 

    You seem to be arguing to leave these leaders in power indefinitely. I want to understand your position. It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, and I'm interested in correcting my confusion.

    'In this operation, however, we specifically went in with helicopters and put Delta Force boots on the ground to avoid the very civilian deaths and uncertainties you lament' - how cool, I'm sure it will make a great film, and I cant wait for the book. (we'll just ignore the children that died) 

    Ever heard of the IRA or FARC. There's been huge progress made recently, and guess what? it wasn't because we kept killing their leaders. At no point in this war on terror has killing our 'enemy' done anything but make them more determined to fight. We've been killing them for years now, IT. DOESNT. WORK. But hey, as long as it makes you feel good.

  8. I didn't say do nothing, but having drones scaring the shit out of the local population, and killing innocent civilians in the process just makes it easier to recruit new terrorists. We're using terror to defeat terror. Since 911 the terrorists have gotten bigger and stronger. This strategy isn't and won't  work.

  9. 2 hours ago, iNow said:

     

    Disagree, this war on terror reminds me of the war on drugs. All the leaders of the cartels are eventually arrested/killed, but the cartels have become stronger, bigger, more violent. They've learnt and adapted and become harder to stop.

    Its the same with the terrorists, they just adapt- 'lone wolves'

    Ive no idea what to do instead, but this just seems counter productive and pointless. 

  10.  

    10 hours ago, StringJunky said:

    I wonder if it would be better to leave the leaders alive and take out the infantry first because one can familiarise oneself over the longer term with the tactics of the group. Killing leaders means having to learn the new strategy all over again.

    I agree, it's like the Mexican cartels, you take out a leader and the next leader is even more violent than the last one. In the long run you make it worse. It's not a very good strategy. Maybe better to focus on the leaders key men instead.

  11. Why can't you see who giving you likes?

    Compared to some of the people on the forum, who actually know about science, my posts contain no substance whatsoever, yet I've got 22. I know there not important, I'm just curious.

  12. Henry Cavendish  look no further..

    Quote

    Cavendish inherited two fortunes that were so large that Jean Baptiste Biot called him "the richest of all the savants and the most knowledgeable of the rich." At his death, Cavendish was the largest depositor in the Bank of England. He was a shy man who was uncomfortable in society and avoided it when he could. He could only speak to one person at a time, and only if the person were known to him and male.[31] He conversed little, always dressed in an old-fashioned suit, and developed no known deep personal attachments outside his family. Cavendish was taciturn and solitary and regarded by many as eccentric. He only communicated with his female servants by notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper, because he was especially shy of women. The contemporary accounts of his personality have led some modern commentators, such as Oliver Sacks, to speculate that he had Asperger syndrome,[32] a form of autism.

    His only social outlet was the Royal Society Club, whose members dined together before weekly meetings. Cavendish seldom missed these meetings, and was profoundly respected by his contemporaries. However, his shyness made those who "sought his views... speak as if into vacancy. If their remarks were...worthy, they might receive a mumbled reply, but more often than not they would hear a peeved squeak (his voice appears to have been high-pitched) and turn to find an actual vacancy and the sight of Cavendish fleeing to find a more peaceful corner".[15] Cavendish's religious views were also considered eccentric for his time. He was considered to be agnostic. As his biographer, George Wilson, comments, "As to Cavendish's religion, he was nothing at all."[33][34]

    The arrangement of his residence reserved only a fraction of space for personal comfort as his library was detached, the upper rooms and lawn were for astronomical observation and his drawingroom was a laboratory with a forge in an adjoining room.[35] He also enjoyed collecting fine furniture, exemplified by his purchase of a set of "ten inlaid satinwood chairs with matching cabriole legged sofa".[36]

    Because of his asocial and secretive behaviour, Cavendish often avoided publishing his work, and much of his findings were not even told to his fellow scientists. In the late nineteenth century, long after his death, James Clerk Maxwell looked through Cavendish's papers and found things for which others had been given credit. Examples of what was included in Cavendish's discoveries or anticipations were Richter's law of reciprocal proportionsOhm's lawDalton's law of partial pressures, principles of electrical conductivity (including Coulomb's law), and Charles's Law of gases. A manuscript "Heat", tentatively dated between 1783 and 1790, describes a "mechanical theory of heat". Hitherto unknown, the manuscript was analysed in the early 21st century. Historian of science Russell McCormmach proposed that "Heat" is the only 18th-century work prefiguring thermodynamics. Theoretical physicist Dietrich Belitz concluded that in this work Cavendish "got the nature of heat essentially right."[37]

    As Cavendish performed his famous density of the Earth experiment in an outbuilding in the garden of his Clapham Common estate, his neighbours would point out the building and tell their children that it was where the world was weighed.[36] In honour of Henry Cavendish's achievements and due to an endowment granted by Henry's relative William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, the University of Cambridge's physics laboratory was named the Cavendish Laboratory by James Clerk Maxwell, the first Cavendish Professor of Physics and an admirer of Cavendish's work.

     

  13. 27 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

    Why? 

    There are people who don't feel pain (rare) and some who would be grateful for a reduced level of certain hormones; so what if you hit the jackpot and he was both?

    Or people who enjoy pain. Thankfully this guys long dead.

    Albert fish

    IMG_1948.JPG.e2bf00f5a67ad581dbba63e975abcdda.JPG

    X-ray of Fish's pelvis and perineum, with two dozen self embedded needles.

  14. 9 hours ago, Sensei said:

    Human can get rid of money and the all evilness associated with them i.e. there will be no thieves, there will be no murders to kill witnesses of stealing, there will be no corruption, there will be no hunger, no people dying unable to buy food, medicament or unable to afford health care, there will be no poor, nor wealthy, no greediness nor jealousy of possession of things you don't have but others have.. no drug dealers, nor drug wars.. People will be well educated, if they will be intelligent enough to use free of charge universities..

    In the distant past, people lived in small villages, each other voluntarily helping other members of community because of goodness from the bottom of their hearts..

    Is it even possible to have a society with no money ( paper or electronic). How would that work? Where would the motivation to work come from, wouldnt this 'new' motivation not be the same as money. Being serious, this interests me.

     

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