imatfaal

You might substitute the phrase Manifest Destiny with the legal term terra nullius; this was how the British Empire justified its enormous landgrab. Land could not be claimed if there were people living on it - so the imperialists just defined the native inhabitants of USA, Canada, OZ and NZ etc. as "not people" . There is a brilliant book about Eddy Mabo and the Tores Strait Islands fighting this ruling many many years later

Dylan - Desire

I hadn't thought of it like that - but yes; most definitely. A modern kabala

Not always humorous or even intended to be. I knew a Ghanaian once and Backronyms were almost cultural - every politician, country, sin, virtue he could list of the Backronym. He was especially proud of those that worked in both English (which he spoke beautifully) and his mother tongue the name of which I have forgotten. God Has Appointed Nakruma Already - is claimed by many to be the root of the country's name; by others as a backronym

! Moderator Note According to our rules you should post details here - members should not be forced to go off-site to get information crucial to the the thread. Please post abstracts/summaries Thanks I have removed the links as they were slightly odd in that the showed one link but seemed to be via facebook. Please post straight links rather than anything else as members may not wish to go to some sites and should be able to ascertain where they are going from the blue underlined text

We have had several members recently claiming to be justified in using insulting language about another member due to previous encounters at other fora. Just to reiterate the ban on insulting language is absolute - there is no just cause. We are a discussion forum and everyone arrives with a clean slate; we do not look at reputations we look only at the content of posts here at SF.net. It is probably also worth bearing in mind that if you need to stoop to insults you have probably already lost the argument and members will view those casting aspersions with a touch of scorn

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Badstuffhere is in th mod queue. One too many rants about Canadians

Frankly it just made me realise why they pay John Williams so much. It was pretty formulaic - not impressed; what were you looking for in it?

Not sure which is more unusual the Compressorhead version with robots actually playing - or Lemmy singing softly

on the topic of women's names At the wrong speed - so unusual

Monty cannot reveal a door chosen at random - he might reveal the car

It is wrong because it is not right - there would be an internal contradiction if it were to be correct; ie the maths says the probability is 1/3:2/3 (stay:switch) which is not the same as 1/2:1/2 Why people think 50:50 (stay:switch) is correct is because they guess rather than do the maths. If you do the maths you get it right, if you use walking-ape logic you get it wrong. I think - if you really want to investigate the flawed reasoning you have to get into psych rather than maths and that your best avenue would be reading the literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of internet threads on this very problem. There are lots of misguided souls out there who continue to bang on without the faintest glimpse of enlightenment. You say "trust me" - with respect No. This is SFN - you should pony up proof that this is manifestation of a deep set internal make up. And where are the studies - must have been done a long time ago as Monty Hall is very very famous and that would completely screw the validity of any test But there is no mathematical reason why people are wrong - just a lack of mathematical reasoning

Because humans are naturally bad at probability - it is something that a huge majority must learn rather than understand intuitively. There are many things like that - many of the topics here are also unintuitive BUT they do not crop up so regularly in common world experiences.

That is quite possibly the worse answer to Monty Hall I have seen. If you simply had a 50:50 chance then why swap - the clever part of the problem is that Monty always reveals a goat and by doing so changes the information you have and thus increases your chances (you have a 1/3 stay and 2/3 switch win probality

FishTrembleAtMyName has been banned as a sockpuppet of UltimateInfinity

marieltroken has been placed in the mod-queue for the foreseeable future - the key to getting out of the mod-queue is to post intelligible and meaningful messages not garbage

I will accept no variation - although Clapton et al and Tom Petty et al both had fair stabs at it at the tribute concerts. The above, well... And the ultimate cover version is Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah. Cohen's orginal is good - but Buckley's version on Grace is IMN-S-HO the best individual track ever recorded Trent Reznor - said it was like losing a girlfriend, that was his song till he heard Cash and knew it could never be his again.

How can you not have had a basic science education - is it not mandatory in the country you grew up in? That is a real shame - I hope you are able to catch up soon because the nut and bolts of science are brilliant fun and allow access to a world of investigation

Me too - but it is a guilty pleasure. The yootoob page had Africa - then cued up men at work "down under", aha "take on me", rem "losing my religion" , jeff's airplane "we built this city" - and at that point I realised was 20 minutes late leaving the office. And apart from rem none of the songs I liked at the time they came out - fraid I am getting old

Inspired (not sure that is the right word) by Moontanman's In the Jungle

I had missed arc's follow up :-D The guys who invented them got funding from kickstarter - maybe they would like a suggestion for an every racier front light

As the company is called Bike Balls - and they are advertised as ‘the world’s most overconfident bike lights' I am pretty sure that above is just a mealy-mouthed bowlderism. Although the set I bought for a friend were 18 dollars so that is a good price - perhaps they are a rip-off and trying to avoid being sued by claiming it is an upside down heart

xxsolarxx has been suspended for one week for rude and abusive behaviour on the boards and in Private Messages

RobbityBob1 has been suspended for 30 days for continuing to hijack, post off-topic, failing to take any note of other members' arguments, and refusing to change his posting style when asked repeatedly