John Cuthber

You can see exactly where he gets the idea that average IQ will decline. In fact, it rises. He is, therefore, wrong. This statement "A problem now in the United States is that with the increasing stagnation of incomes among the poor and the middle class, intelligent, educated, and culturally sophisticated people have realized that the only way to improve their familial wealth is by having fewer and fewer children with each generation. But uneducated, unintelligent, and culturally underdeveloped people, who are minimally conscious of their social situation and unable to conceive of their lives as a planned project, are still thoughtlessly having huge families. " is, at best, false. The idea about "thoughtless poor people" is deeply offensive. It's also rather silly. Most "civilised" countries, rightly or wrongly, provide welfare assistance to children. However, as the children are not able to make use of this money, it is given to the parent(s) to use on the children's behalf. The more children they have, the more money the family receives. In many cases, this is a significant part of the family's income. Why would they want to reduce it by having fewer children? These families are not in a position to decide on the merit of the provision of a welfare state (at least not without the cooperation of others) and it would not be in their interests to do so. Many rich people will not vote for the reduction of child support payments because it is seen as punishing the children who are the one group whoo can not be responsible for the system. Of course, most people, of whatever income and background, have children as a result of a biologically produced desire to do so. The economics of the issue don't enter into it. Also, in the UK (I don'rt know about the US but I suspect things are similar), the current birth rate is not high enough to maintain the population. If it were not for immigration we would have a falling population. If you ask an economist about what generates wealth he will probably say that, in the end, it is people. Fewer people is not a good thing; who pays the pensions?

Learn to read. That way you could get to grips with the fact that at least one US politician has a lisp and that I already apologised for the error about Hesseltine. Then perhaps you might care to answer the questions I asked; twice.

Oops! sorry, I was in a hurry this morning. Can we pretend I said "So, on the basis of a waiter, a foreigner, and 5 people who are nearly all dead you are prepared to judge an entire country. If this were not a science site that might be OK. As it is, it's a bit silly." Also, now I have had a bit more time I tried this "Try listening to Zeinab Bedawi for a while on BBC World News. It affects me like chalk screeching on a chalk board." She has got a slight lisp (strictly a sibilant S rather than a lisp); big deal. I'm glad that tiny errors in speech don't move me to slander whole countries. (fortunately, miss-spelling Badawi doesn't trouble me much either). Perhaps the fact that she is Oxford educated explains it, though I doubt it. I also now have time to point out that Marat failed to answer my other points. i.e. There is the so called "Chinese" lisp (OK, technically, its rhotacism rather than a lisp but that's what it's called) Are you going to psychoanalyse one of the largest groups on the planet on the basis of one speech trait? and The reverse of the "English lisp" is common among French speakers trying to learn English. They pronounce th as either s or z. Are you going to speculate wildly that they all want to be geriatrics?

So, on the basis of a waiter, a foreigner, and 5 people who are all dead you are prepared to judge an entire country. If this were not a science site that might be OK. As it is, it's a bit silly.

Without any real data on the incidence of these speech impediments (any of which may be referred to colloquially as a lisp) there is nothing but guesswork and bias here. So, lets test what looks like the only really testable claim here. Marat's assertion that "If you watch BBC World News you will hear more than a few news presenters with very strong lisps, " Those newscasts are on-line. Please list a few of these lisping presenters, with web addresses. Incidentally, even if it's true that we have lots of them (there are certainly some) that just means we are more tolerant of variety. The same goes with our observation that you don't need "perfect" teeth to be a productive member of society. Incidentally, Re. "It is difficult to prove my assertion that it is much more common in England than in America, but there is a phrase, "the English lisp," though I know of no comparable phrase such as "the Australian lisp" or "the American lisp." " There is the so called "Chinese" lisp (OK, technically, its rhotacism rather than a lisp but that's what it's called) Are you going to psychoanalyse one of the largest groups on the planet on the basis of one speech trait? The reverse of the "English lisp" is common among French speakers trying to learn English. They pronounce th as either s or z. Are you going to speculate wildly that they all want to be geriatrics? God alone knows what he would have made of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_lisp Can I also point out the irony of a criticism of what is essentially lazy pronunciation from a representative of the country that turned "How do you do, you all?" into "Howdy yall"? On a lighter note

By far the most likely explanation for the "phenomenon" is that it's a product of Marat's imagination. He also ignores other bits of reality " How many American politicians have you ever seen with a strong lisp? None, because they would be laughed out of their business." Well, Rudy for one. "Notably the former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, has this type of lisp." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(speech) I have an alternative explanation or two. England has a lot of regional accents, some of these are quite difficult to understand. Marat has come here and, through a lack of familliarity, has failed to understand them. Rather than accept his own failure, he has imagined an epidemic of lisping so he can blame someone else. It is certainly possible that the "public school" accent is common in the groups he has encountered and he has mistaken a class distinction shibboleth for a lisp.

The pronunciation of r as w is also a class thing. It's commoner in those who are, or wish to be seen as being, upper class.

"after living for 13 years in England I would have to say that about 10% of the people there speak with a lisp, often in such an extreme form that they are nearly incompwehensiboo." I have lived in England a lot longer than that and I doubt that there are anything like that many people with a lisp. Do you actually think a society could get by if one in 10 couldn't make themselves understood? Before launching off into some explanation of this "observation" I think you need to show some sort of evidence that it's plausible never mind true.

Personally, I'm reasonably happy with bashing religion, but you are wrong anyway.The particular irrational crap they are fed is what the Chinese call communism (which isn't the real thing, but that's beside the point).

An answer to the question would be that, whatever it is that IQ tests measure, the Chinese have lots of it. The more difficult question would be what does the IQ test actually measure?

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/teams/team=43942/index.html

That joke would be better if British Petroleum still existed, or if you gave BP the right name. This one is much better.

Just as soon as they show me some evidence, I'm prepared to learn about it. But you are right about this just degenerating into a slanging match. Nice cartoon BTW.

"To say someone is ignorant is not insulting, to say they are stupid is how ever insulting. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity implies something that cannot be changed due to a real defect in the person or that the person refuses to learn." From my point of view, as a staunch atheist, the believers refuse to learn that there is no God. Am I allowed to describe that as stupid?

AN is a perfectly adequate explosive at least in the presence of impurities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZF However it is normally difficult to initiate an explosion in it.

There seem to be any number of ideas about am. nitrate. The stuff is slightly hygroscopic. It's a useful (and fairly cheap) nitrogen source so it gts used as a fertiliser. Unfortunately, as a powder, it gets damp then forms into solid lumps that are difficult to handle. So someone came up with the idea of coating prilled AN with wax. The wax stops the grains sticking together. Even more unfortunately this was found to accidentally generate a fairly good explosive (albeit, one that's quite hard to detonate). Further refinements of this gave rise to the low density prill based ANFO used as an explosive. Since the decomposition of AN is exothermic, it's easy to see how the reaction could get out of control. In particyular, the reaction is catalysed by impurities so, as the AN decomposes and leaves the tube (as H2O/N2O) any impurities left behind get more amd more concentrated. This would increase the effective reaction rate. That raises the temperature. I guess you can all see the punchline now.

Webster's calls itself a dictionary of the English language- but it's a dictionary of the American language. Since it got its own title wrong I'm not suprised that it doesn't know what analyze means.

That's easy. The word analyse comes from the same route as electrolyse and hydrolyse and it should be spelt with an s. For words like deputise or deputize both spellings are acceptable. The word "analyze" means to make something anal.

No they are not, and can you please cite your source. Incidentally, I'm sure that something can be invisible and yellow; I saw it on this website somewhere. Individual pollen grains are invisible and yellow. Here's a picture of one You can't see it, but everyone knows pollen is yellow.

Since many elements show multiple oxidation states the table is ambiguous. If it's meant to me highest oxidation states then copper is wrong; if it's meant to be most common then iron is wrong. If the asignment is arbitrary then it's all wrong. It also fails to convey any information about the underlying reason for the periodic nature. It springs from the arangement of the electrons in what for simplicity's sake are usually called shells.