JohnB

I have to disagree Thomas. It's not that the evidence against is strong, it's that the evidence for is bloody nonexistent. I've just spent 30 minutes trying to find a table showing the relative incidence of dental caries in Australias Capital Cities to compare Brisbane (non flouridated) with the others (flouridated). One would think that this would be an easy thing to find. Not so. What I did find in many medical reports were comments like "it is accepted that flouridation decreases dental caries" with no statistics to back this up. Hmmmmm. Acceptance without proof? And I thought medicine was supposed to be a science. Oh Dear.

Cornelius, that was what I was getting at before. The Illuminati have supposedly controlled the governments for hundreds of years, but they "someday plan to control the whole world"? Can anyone else see the logical inconsistancy here? If they've been at it this long and haven't succeeded, they must be bloody poor at it.

I've always liked all the secret organizations that rule the world. From the "Gnomes of Zurich" to the "Illuminati". How do these guys compete with each other? The other versions of the stories are that these groups are "in the process" of controlling us. Now they've supposedly been around for centuries at least, always in positions of power, they must be bloody inefficient if they are only now "in the process" of controlling us. As an aside, perhaps there would be less conspiracy theories if some of the so called "debunkers" did not put forward explanations that are physically impossible as explanations of different phenomena.

Imagine ahot summers day with an afternoon shower. It's the smell that comes off the grass when the shower starts. It's similar to the "freshly cut grass" smell.

Um, that's something else I wanted to ask about.........

I have converted. I shall partake of the pasta. I shall add the herbs and spices. (But not 11 of them.) I shall eat the mince. For I have seen the light. (It's that little switch next to the oven temperature dial.) Aaaaarrrrrrr, mateys. PS, yourdad, the temp won't go down. Since there are more pirates, there must be more buckling of the swashes and rigging swinging. As rigging swinging creates friction in the air, more pirates doing more rigging swinging = more heat. Hence the temp will rise.

You're not alone yourdad, I can smell it too. I doubt that it has much to do with heritage though, I'm of European descent, no known indigenous blood.

BigMoosie is correct. It all started with the Babylonians. While their maths was in base 10, their accounting was in base 60. Since 60 baskets of grain are a lot easier to divide in many different ways than 100 baskets. This practice followed on into measurement. A Circle with 60 degrees would be too cumbersome, so they used 6x 60 degrees and got 360 degrees. Quite a simple and elegant solution I thought. A surprising number of things we take for granted go back a long way. Why is "clockwise" clockwise? Why is the standard wheel track of a car 4' 8"?

Makes perfect sense to me. But then, I can stand in the shadow of a corkscrew.

Exactly right Thomas. I came here because a complete fruit loop was complaining on another forum about how he was treated. I came, I looked, and saw he was a fruit loop so I stayed. Many science forums I've seen are dedicated to science, this one is not. This one is dedicated to the scientific process. A slight but important difference. All posters are judged by the evidence they present, not the idea they espouse. There are many experts here in many fields and I have yet to see one of them say an idea was stupid "because it is", they will always explain what is wrong with the idea. Enjoy your stay here, you will find the mods extremely tolerent of diverging ideas.

Welcome. A beginner huh? I can fit everything I know about at least 4 different sciences on one page.

A truer word has not been spoken. To answer you questions; 1. Seek.com, papers. you name it. 1a. Yes. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Yes. 7. Casual on call. In general, we work all hours and that seems to be the killer. Too many (we find) seem to think that as unskilled they should get $25/hour and a 9-5, 5 day week. Never going to happen. Agreed, the problem with the way we are currently doing it is that we are paying the trainers without too much regard for the quality of training. I've heard some real horror stories. Our Universities aren't helping things either. They are churning out graduates with degrees that we don't need. Look at the sheer number of law students in this country for example. Plus the rediculous number of "Social Workers" of all stripes and minimal intelligence and training. The fact is that for many years we (as a nation) have been putting down the unskilled workers, inplying that they should "do something" to become skilled. We actually need a pool of "unskilled" so that various industries can train them in their particular industry. Ours is such an industry, there is nothing less useful to us than a unversity graduate with a degree in "Event Management."

Ecoli, I don't really understand what you mean, although I agree we probably wouldn't recognise them as life unless we saw them coming out of their ship, if they have one. Bettina, I can only reply with the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: " Our science has concentrated on asking certain questions at the expense of others, although this is so woven into the fabric of our knowledge that we are generally unaware of it. In another world, the basic questions may have been asked differently." Why would they have to have radio? It could be that we are the only primitive enough to still be using such basic technology. Or they may never have invented it, but found something else entirely.

Groooaaaaannnnnnn

Yes they do explode. That is why you don't use those nice round ones from the streambed when making your campfire. As for making them explode, I've been using the fire and water method to break up granite floaters since I was a kid.

Seriously, try the dirty clothes basket. If you had them on your head when you took your shirt off, they may have got tangled up in the shirt.

Yourdad, I'm familiar with the Drake Equation but what actual relevence does it have? How many even approximate values can you ascribe? As we do not have the necessary data to complete the equation, any answer derived from it is guesswork and nothing more. Ecoli, I suppose I think about this topic statistically because I don't think our world is special. While there are many steps needed to turn the primordial soup into life, each of those steps only needs to happen once. Given the state of the early Earth, the billions of chemical reactions going on for millions of years, is it any surprise that just by chance the steps happened? If it can happen here, it can happen elsewhere too. To deny this is to deny the simple probability of a random event happening. Or to believe that Earth is somehow "special". We now know that planets seem relatively common, just because we are not advanced enough to find the Earth sized ones doesn't mean they aren't there. Does a world need to be Earth sized to have life? Probably not. We can see on our own world the incredible diversity of life supporting habitats. We've found complex life forms in the abyssal deeps living around the "Black Smokers" a place where you really wouldn't expect life to be, not complex forms anyway. We've extracted amino acids from meteorites, so it would seem that these basic building blocks are spread around at least our own System. Is there any reason to assume that they are only found in the Sol System? Given the millions of galaxies, each with hundreds of millions of stars and billions of years to play with them, is it reasonable to assume that life won't appear if given a chance? Once it does appear, the record of our own world shows that it is highly adaptive and extremely hard to kill off. It may be that for every advanced life form bearing world there are a million that never made it past bacteria, but given the size of the Universe that total figure for that "one in a million" is still staggering.

I would say Evan Thornley has an axe to grind. Adding the single parent benefit to the unemployment rate? Is he talking total people on benefits or about unemployment? They are two very different fish. Then would you like to tell me where the hell they are? We've been looking for unskilled people (that we will train) for our industry for ages and can't get anyone. We use backpackers because the Aussies are too bloody lazy to do the work. If there are so many people looking for work, why is it that when we advertise for people we get 5 Aussies and 25 backpackers applying? The prevailing opinion (and this includes the blue collars as well) is that the only ones left in the jobless pool are there because either they don't want to work or nobody bloody wants them. The picture in the big bad world of private enterprise is very different to the world of publicly funded medicine. As to what I do, go to http://www.qxaust.com/ All companies in our industry have the same complaint whether they are based in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne. So I ask again "Where is this huge pool you speak of?", 'cause we can't find it.

Ah, I see where you are coming from. I didn't mean that older systems must have more advanced life, I was referring to the topic statistically. My argument really only holds true for large numbers of planets with life. Along the lines of "If there are 1 million systems older than ours with life, then 600,000 would be more advanced than us and 400,000 wouldn't. If there are 1 million planets younger than ours with life, then 400,000 would be more advanced and 600,000 wouldn't." Some stars would develop planets and life early, some later. If we had enough data, we would be able to conclude that on average a star would develop planets after "x" years and life "y" years after that. This life would develop at an average rate of "z". Knowing this, we would conclude that older stars are more likely to have more advanced life than ours. Since there are more stars older than ours than younger than ours, it follows that ET is more likely to be more advanced. Please note, I'm not saying they must be more advanced, just that it is more likely, statistically speaking that they are more advanced. That there are probably more "more advanced" races than "less advanced" ones.

Ecoli, perhaps I didn't make my reasoning quite clear. My main assumption is that there is nothing "special" about our world. I'm assuming that it is average in all ways. There may not be any proof of this, but there is nothing to really refute the idea either. On that basis, there will be stars that form planetary systems both faster and slower than ours. Those systems that generate life will do so at a faster or slower pace. The life thus generated will evolve at a faster or slower pace than we did. If our world is average, then all these factors cancel out. For any group of stars the same age as our sun that have advanced life the odds are 50/50 whether they are ahead of us or behind us. My argument is simply that since there are more Population I stars older than our sun than there are Population I stars younger than Sol, the odds move in favour of the ET being more advanced. On average. There will of course be some that are less advanced than we are. If we have this conversation in 5 billion years time, I will answer the other way as there would now be more younger stars than older ones. See what I'm getting at? (Just in case we do have this conversation then, I will immediately bury a case of malt scotch in my backyard so we can celebrate. ) As to ET being at our level, yes there is a slight chance. Although given that most of our advancement has come in the last 200 years or so, not even the proverbial coat of paint on the roof of a hundred story tower when compared to the life of our world, it is highly unlikely. By analogy, two hunters that do not know each other decide to go into the woods. Neither knows which day the other is going or where he will be. Once in the woods, they each fire one bullet into the air. What are the chances of those two bullets hitting each other? Yes, it might be possible, but I would expect my automated lathe to turn out a cash register full of money first. If you were to expand the idea to "around" our level (say plus or minus 2,000 years), then the possibility increases dramatically.

Of course we could always follow the path that the Hawke/Keating governments took. Run the unemployment rate up to 12% and then there is no shortage of skilled workers is there?

Personally, I would think it likely an ET would be more advanced than us. The Universe began some 15 billion years ago while our System was formed some 5 billion YA ergo there are more stars that are older than ours v stars that are younger. No matter what statistical chance there is for life evolving, there are always twice as many candidates in the "older" group. Add to that most of our advancement has come in the last 6,000 years or so, a flyspeck in the life of the planet. There will be both more and less developed races out there, but probability makes me think that most of them are more advanced. The only certainty is that there is no-one else at our level of advancement.

Exactly. It's nothing more than wondering "What if...?" Both electricity and magnetism are unusual, seeming slightly different to the usual forces we see. Just as light can appear to be photons or waves depending on the detection method used, perhaps "X" can appear as a magnetic field, electric current or electrons depending on the way you look at it. It's just a thought.

I got this email today. BARRISTER ASHOK SANCHETI ASHOK SANCHETI & ASSOCIATES. LONDON ENGLAND. EMAIL:ashoklawfirm@tiscali.co.uk Dear, Compliments of the day! I am sorry for contacting you through this medium without a previous notice,I had to use the E- mail because it is an easier and more confidential way of making contact with people around the world. My name is Barrister ASHOK SANCHETI, a Forty Six (46) year old Attorney in practice here in London- England. The nature of my services covers individuals,corporate bodies and institutions. I also represent Government Departements as an External Solicitor. I wish to notify you on behalf of the Trustees and Executors to the Will of my late client as the beneficiary as stated in the depositors form as next of kin to the bequest of my late client`s Estate . Who i have tried to contact without success. I am writing you so that we can work together to remit the money left behind by my late client to you as the next of kin. I was my late client`s attorney for several years before his untimely death a couple of months ago .He died on 9th February He was buried on the 23rd of February, 2004 and He also stated that the content be shared to charity if not answered. As a lawyer and the personal attorney to the deceased I am now asked to provide the Next-Of-Kin of my late client by the safe storage Deposit Security company were he deposited a big sliver box that content's the sum of $ 23 million us dollars which he declayed to the safe storage deposit security company as important documents and some family values as the content in the box which i am the only one who have the true idea that the content is $23 million us dollars cash in one hundred bills all. As a result of this I am now contacting you to come and claim what belongs to my late client, as stated in the document he left in my care. When I receive a positive response and after proper discussion with you,I will furnish you all relevant information that will facilitate the release of the box to you, An Application will have to be filed to the Security Company for processing of the release of the box that contend the funds into your position further to be deposited to any of your nominated bank account.for giving you this information and ready to excute this project with you, i will only ask for 60% of the total amount in the deposited sliver box with the security company here in london and 30% will be for you and 10% will be used to offset local expenses I wait to hear from you. Pls do contact me for more informations on my direct email address above Thanks, ASHOK SANCHETI ( Esq ) All I need is to be a lying, cheating, greedy person of low morals like this purported lawyer. Hmmmm, lying cheating and greedy, maybe he really is a lawyer. Do people really still fall for this bull?

Nylex, are you stuck? I'll give hints for scotch.