imatfaal

Very few of us on these boards will be unfamiliar with the writer, commentator, and all-round iconoclast Christopher Hitchens - whether you love or loathe him you might find the linked interview interesting. In the interview he talks to Jeremy Paxman about life, death, cancer, and other things in his usual forthright and uncompromising style:

Paxman Meets Hitchens

This is an iplayer link to content which I am not sure is available outside the UK. I will also ferret around for a different source.

Youtube link part 1

Youtube part 2

I hope this is the correct place to put such a link - I wondered about ethics, religion, politics, and the lounge but decided on genphis as a compromise.

I think it is GR that predicts the increase in mass. I seem to remember that the radiation given off by an accelerated charged particle is a limiting factor as well (ie the increasing energy goes into producing synchrotron radiation not into increasing velocity).

Current favourite album on ipod -> Becoming a Jackal - Villagers. Longterm favourites (per itunes playcount) i am kloot/dylan/rem/billy bragg

Surely the Greek letter Sigma (Σςσ) predates the Latin Ss; to describe a capital Sigma as an S with "originally a fancy finishing stroke" reverses the development of alphabets (semitic->phoenician->greek->latin).

Godel Escher Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Not sure if Ole Romer isn't a little out of his league with that distinguished company - and surely a opening role for Galileo. Good luck on your work Craig..

there isnt a simple one word translation - yiafto means "that's the reason why" .

example "he sent me a rude text, yiafto I am not talking to him any more" - it is similar to therefore - but has a different causative feeling

Captain & Pangloss - Wikileaks has published hundreds of documents that have nothing to do with the United States - I seem to remember documents that were highly embarassing for the Germans, for others, for the UK and a cring-worthy video of the Thai crown prince. I cannot access Wikileaks at present to confirm this - and when I looked last it was difficult to get past the Iraq war diaries and Afghan log. Quite a large percentage of the leaks about scientology have been published on Wikileaks as the scientologist are so litigation-happy that many news sites just cannot bear the risk. On the whole we need gadflies annoying and inconveniencing the state and institutions.

"I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you" Socrates/Plato Apologia

To be honest from info on the website it looks rubbish. And if you are Garfield (or that is your nom de plume) making a plug for your own book, which I kinda expect, can I ask how much you paid the stones to use 'paint it black' on your advert? keith and mick have a fairly tough track record (pun intended) on clamping down on people using their tunes for a commercial venture without permission.

I don't think anyone did or should - but we must be careful when crafting legislation concerning matters such as this not to delegitimise speech protected by freedom of expression. I did not personally agree with the arguments put forward by other posters on this basis, but it is a valid exercise.

I think you are correct that all three are epithelial cells carcinomas - but perhaps they are looking for a more aetiological guess. I would hazard that the connexion is the fact that these three different carcinomas have plausible/presumable external causes; smoking/crohns/xs uv exposure. But then my guess is, if anything, less technical and more basic than yours.

Sorry Greek nowhere near good enough - and the Greek speakers in my office are all a bit too old and respectable for me to ask! I knew ΓΛΥΚΟ meant sweet and wikitionaried (that's a horrible verb) ΜΟΥΝΙ - those two together were all the proof I needed.

Are you sure its a cryptogram? - looks like greeklish to me glyko moyni / ΓΛΥΚΟ ΜΟΥΝΙ (which is very similar) would mean "sweet pussy" - I shudder to think what the rest might mean.

happy birthday!

Lemur, I know of an actual case where someone's amateur (but very impressive) work lead to him receiving fewer consultancy contracts in an area that would seem totally unrelated. Big corporations can be incredibly controlling - and in decisions like this it is very hard to bring them to account. I think you are almost safer when there is a direct connexion, then you can show a causal link between discrimination and research topic and 'shame' the funder into fulfilling their past commitments.

You seemed to say that the M'Naghten rules clarified matters - and I took issue with that point. Your subsequent post is more in line with my thinking, although I would add that anything other than case by case investigation is bound to lead to injustice. On the point of purely accidental homicide being adjudged as murder - I have looked through much ancient and medieval law and those sorts of cases are not numerous; the inanimate object point is a little marginal as not only is it not similar but also many of these accounts are apocryphal and/or the court is acting deliberately perversely.

Dave - I am guilty as charged of being too serious. However; I also know that, personally, that if I had a scheme like this in mind I would be constantly thinking about it (just a tiny tiny bit) throughout the whole exam. The last multiple choice exam I sat was almost 20 years ago - and it was full negative marking (I think they have done away with this barbaric practice), very time-limited, and seriously testing; overall not a pleasant experience. Self-assessment of answers becomes vital in essay papers (especially in humanities/arts) - I have seen far too many students spend inordinate amounts of time writing one first class answer, and only managing poor answers for the rest of the paper; whereas the maximising strategy is writing four good(ish) essays.

I think it would a retrogressive move for economic concerns to limit political freedom of speech - even when that speech is from a totally bonkers (although insanely talented) ex footballer. Almost every political stance will entail potential financial and economic changes - we cannot allow courts to become involved in deciding when economics takes precedence over politic in freedom of expression. Although there can never be absolute freedom of speech we must be highly averse from creating new barriers.

Agree with the tree - use the five minutes left over to find the question you read incorrectly, the bad assumption you made, or even just check that your marks are unmistakable on the answer script.

A2C - yes all observers see the CMBR and all observe it having the same characteristics (red-shift etc). You could check out this thread (especially towards end) in which Michel wasn't persuaded of this fact ... http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/52438-picture-of-galaxy-from-when-expansion-only-600-million-years-old/

So now, in order to be guilty of murder, you not only have to kill someone but also you have to know what you are doing when you kill them and do it deliberately. These two elements which are necessary to convict anyone of any serious crime are called the 'actus reus' (the thing done) and the 'mens rea' (the mental attitude). Both have to be present for criminal guilt to exist.

Out of curiosity, I would like to see a source for the type of case that has someone convicted for completely accidental occurrence. The intent required for a murder conviction is very rarely limited at a desire to kill, it normally also includes an intent to seriously injure and in the past other things (any deliberate act within the commission of a felony etc). For those interested in the derivation of words/phrases "actus reus" and "mens rea" translate as "culprit's act" and "culprit's mind" which shows an interesting prejudgment.

In the case of a schizophrenic who does not know what he is doing when he kills someone, lawyers say that 'his mind does not go with his act,' because when he killed someone he thought (perhaps) he was just lopping the head off a daisy. He is really no more guilty of murder than someone tripping and causing someone else to fall off a bridge. The McNaugton rules (from an 1842 ruling) used in most common law jurisdictions clarify this point by stating that a criminal must know 'the nature of his act and the fact that it is wrong' before he can be criminally liable for it.

The M'Naghten rules (not McNaughton spelled different sounds the same) clarify nothing - they are an incredibly poor set of guidelines that cause more trouble than they solve. Most modern courts tend to acknowledge the M'Naghten rules, but then within the constraints come up with a more sensible set of ideas. Fitness to plead is often seen as a useful mechanism for removing those from the criminal justice system who do not have the competence to be there.

What links? I see no links?

if you want to avoid batteries, and I guess internal combustion is not acceptable (otherwise you wouldn't be asking); solar will work but I believe it would be an expensive build and you would have to lose weight everywhere, for a short distance you could use a flywheel to store energy (after spinning it up using some interesting energy source), and if you love engineering and want a silly build - what about steam/compressed gas? And, if by HHO you mean the electrolysis products of water, be ridiculously careful; hydrogen is not easy to store - it tends to leak. maybe give the board more of an idea of what your project is - and you will surely get some suggestions

To PI the projectile/object design can make a difference to one's ability to be accurate - we put flights on arrows and darts to help steady flight, a cricket ball polished on one side and rough on the other can swerve and swing (admittedly it's spinning as well as flying thru air), and I would find it much easier to throw a ball of scrunched up paper into my bin than a paper aeroplane.

To OP I think to get much help you need to be more forthcoming in the constraints and desired results of your experiment.

The introduction does not really state the question that the experimenter is hoping to answer and the way the experiment will affect the hypothesis. The introduction is poor - I don't really like the way cooling through evaporation is described. I learnt the word as stoma and collectively as stomata - but that might be just old-fashioned.

The method is dreadful - a diagram is essential. A systematic and straightforward explanation of procedure once apparatus and setup is clear. Clearly explain what different situations are being testing and how. There is no mention of the control group in this section!

The report does not even mention error - every measurement is prone to various forms of error and these must be understood and accounted for.

Some of the conclusions (in the results section) do not follow from the experiment (although they may well be correct) . The initial part of results and discussion should be the results not conclusions. Use time elapsed rather than clock time - more easily comparable. The graphs are awful - two pages of tables that could easily be condensed into half a page, but only two rubbish graphs. Each experiment should be graphed - with the same axes/units/scales if possible.

The conclusion shouldn't have description of how to run the experiment - unless it is showing why this was necessary and what you have learnt. It should also not have results!

The above just a few pointers that occurred immediately. The main point is that each section of a write-up has requirements and uses - and this one fails almost everywhere. I can see your teachers point about showing you a bad write-up - and that one is bad - but I would also recommend seeking out some good write-up hints on the net.