Nouveau

The way in which we experience reality indicates that infinity is actually real to us but equally demonstrates its almost total irrelevance given that we reside completely within its confines that can never be exceeded.  For the grandeur of scale of an observable universe now thought to encompass 2 trillion galaxies each themselves containing 2 to 4 hundred billion stars, it's not unrealistic to expect speculation as to whether it may indeed be infinite beyond the furthermost reaches we able to see.  Certainly, we can easily imagine infinity as being something really big, but a far easier way to understand infinity is within our purview using only mathematics,  Imagine if you will the length of the room you are sitting in, divide by 2 and see how many times you can repeat it.  The answer, is an infinite number of times with your original length becoming infinitely small.

What this tells us is that we exist somewhere along an infinite scale, we don't start at the smallest and we aren't the biggest we are inside a scale of infinity that can never be exceeded, it also indicates the possibility that if we are inside one scale of infinity we may well be contained within many others.

I don't think we really even another referendum. Instead just a vote in parliament on the principle that every constituent country that makes up the UK must agree, or at the very least a majority of countries, to major changes that would effect the entirety of the United Kingdom such as exiting from the European Union for example. Given that a large majority of MP's support remaining in the EU they may welcome the opportunity for such a vote on a fair and reasonable democratic principle that could also provide the necessary political cover for remaining whilst also keeping the United Kingdom together. It would then prevent them from having to vote through the necessary legislation that would give the government the power to envoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, something which couldn't be retracted and which the majority have already publicly stated as being very much against the national interest.

Ok well thank you i've learned something. I must confess the concept of infinity not existing in both directions or actually having a starting point hadn't even occurred to me. I think this may well be educational to many others as well, cheers.

Ok let me clarify, in order to be infinite by extent it cannot have an end in whatever direction you travel. What I'm suggesting is would this not also equally apply to any definitive limitation we may encounter in the world of the very small. If indeed we do reach such a limitation couldn't it equally be considered a starting point and then given that everything that has a beginning must have an end wouldn't we then know that even on the largest possible scale the universe must have limitations and isn't infinite.

Wouldn't something have to be equally infinite on a deceasing scale as well as an increasing one to actually be infinite?

Maia Vidal - Our Place

That seems to be a horrible situation to face, I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer. I think maybe i would decide to tell them all as soon as possible to give them time to come to terms with it. Also maybe that everyone could value the time they had left together. I think this might also give then time to express their feelings so it won't be quite as difficult or a shock come the end. I think maybe just being together and sharing that bond even if they dont fully understand will make things easier for everyone.

hey guys,

 

I was just wondering what was it that caused the Iraq war to occur?

 

How did politicians from various countries manage to manipulate the masses in such a coordinated way as to be successful in fulfilling their objectives of starting a war??

 

Also, who have been the major beneficiaries of the war??

 

Did the Iraqi people do enough to prevent other countries from attacking their country?

 

If you were a politician and Iraqi and wanted to prevent such a conflict what would you do?

Do ordinary people have any power at all? What was it which lead to so many people being killed and so many people doing nothing?

 

Typically, is it easy to start wars like this? I'm scared there will be more wars in future and want to prevent future wars from happening in future but do I have any power to influence the masses?

 

Is there anything we can learn from the Iraq war to prevent future events from happening?

What happened to make so many countries believe Iraq had WMDs?

 

 

Well if you wish to prevent a war it's probably not a good idea to have your President threatening a major allie of the United States as was the case with Saddam Hussein threatening to release anthrax onto the underground and streets of London. You have to figure that probably had some baring on Tony Blair's willingness to go to war.

Seems like being asked to allow others to gamble with your future when you haven't been told or don't know the stakes. From what I've seen the Brexiters sole stratergy consists of this 'project fear' they keep mentioning and trying scare voters with immigration and the possibility of Turkey eventually joining the EU. Quite ironic if you consider the UK's exit might actually hasen Turkey's entry and UK citizens subsequently making a trade agreement that gives Turks the right to live and work there. The UK also has an ageing population that needs younger workers to financially support and help pay the pension oblegations to the old, what this means is that the whole suggestion of immigration reduction is a lie being sold to the xenaphobic. The reality being that immigration levels will remain consistent and only the nationalies perhaps changing.

As to control of borders one suspects it's more about the fear of people leaving rather than stopping people enter. If someone was thought to be dangerous or a threat they wouldn't be allowed entry whether they were EU citizens or not, the notion that the situation could magically change after a Brexit and that they would somehow know which immigrants are or arn't dangerous appears somewhat unlikely. What appears more likely is that, following an economic meltdown caused by affects of 1.5 trillion pounds of debt, millions of UK citizens would be prevented from the escape route of seeking affordable housing and employment in other European countries. The immigration door swings both ways.

This being said though from an entirely scientific standpoint it would a disaster for UK scientists and research because they would no longer be entitled to the reportedly 3 billion pounds a year they currently receive from the EU budget in research grants. Also it would make it much harder to work abroad on long term collaborative projects.

But then does that also mean that every single other type of job in existence that you don't have the ability to perform are also your weaknesses. If indeed that is the case then surely you will require an awfully long time answering the, have you any weaknesses question during job interviews.

Once you can stop thinking purely in terms of weakness you can start to think of how to get the best from what you have, the idea of weakness is an illusion predicated on the notion of a situational disadvantage, however if you change the situation then you can also change disadvantages to become advantages and thus become useful to developing your success.

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Perhaps they just think you're applying for the wrong job and recommend you for a position in their IT department where you can make the best use of your skillset and experience, thus giving you a more positive outcome.

Why would you choose to ignore the possitive outcome derived from applying for a position where being better at working alone proves advantageous. Predicating your senario on an assumption of a negative outcome that ignores the obvious positive benfits just appears to be a defeatest attitude and totally incongruent with becoming really successful.

The difference between being a really good poker player or a very poor one isn't the strength or weakness of the cards that each receives, the difference comes in how they get the best possible outcomes from those cards. It's the same with people, it's not about strengths or weaknesses but how you develop your ability to obtain the best possible outcomes from whatever combination of attributes you may have.

Neither are stengths or weaknesses, each is simply an attribute to be made the best possible use of. Weakness implies failure, but if an attribute can be put to good use it isn't a failure. It's about understanding and adaptability. The better you are at understanding the easier it is to adapt your attributes, the more you are able to adapt your attributes the more skills and abilities you can gain from them.

Just to clarify, having an inability to work well in groups is a negative product of either a specific, or a combination of attributes, but it isn't the actual attribute itself. A positive product of the same combination of attributes may be a better ability to work by one's self. Two possible outcomes and each determined by how the attributes are being used. The goal is always to successfully use and further develop the positive outcomes from which ever attributes a person has.

There is a different way to consider this, if you can step away from the notion of strengths and weaknesses and start from the point of attributes which shape the person then a better perspective can be achieved. There arn't actual strengths or weaknesses per se only attritubes that we choose to define dependant on given situations, e.g. someone may not be good working as part of a team or group, conversely the flipside is they are better at working by themselves, thus neither is as a specific weakness or strength but each would have their own merit in particular situations.

Laziness is another good example, many would certainly consider such a trait is a weakness, however this again can have the flipside in meaning that simplicity is easier to achieve and that a worker who may consider themselves lazy may not over complicate their work as a result.

Rather than having a specific goal of choosing to improve either your strengths or weaknesses it seems a more successful approach might be to work upon maximising the benefit you can achieve from all your attributes. The most successful people are the ones able to make use of all their attributes.

I think right now there will be billions of people right around the world reading in horror and disgust at what has happened in Paris. It's hard to stay detached or not be affected, but even the anger is less than the emotions of immense sympathy for the families of the victims, can't even begin to imagine the horror of what they are now being faced with.

But for France sadly another collective scare, one of far too many for in recent years. I fear also one that will not be so easily overcome or quickly forgotten, but optimism is inspired by the way in which the French people came together in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. A proud nation and if that courage and spirit exhibited then is any indicator we will see them come through this terrible shock without being permanently damaged by it, I also just don't see them holding immigrants and refugees responsible and making them suffer, and that the closing of the borders is only just a short term reactionary measure to the current crisis situation.

Why not?

 

They aren't senile enough? Trump's wall is not as obviously a chuckleheaded corruption magnet as Star Wars? Rubio and Cruz aren't tall enough or divorced enough, their wives are too young and pretty? Jeb's family connections aren't enough evidence of mental deficiency, and his Miami anti-Castro mob ties don't provide the gravitas and clout inference of Reagan's union and California real estate mogul connections?

 

I think you underestimate the Reagan-creating abilities of the powers that be. Your assessment of Cruz'z IQ based on the debate, for example, was strong evidence of progress in that direction - his major problem has always been his off-putting presentation of intelligence and elite education, his lack of the common touch. If he can learn to dumb it down a bit, temper his delivery with some folksy charm, his lack of height and dangerously capable wife can be overcome with cute kid pictures, cookie recipes, low camera angles, homily-competent speechwriting - - and voilà.

Perhaps it might somehow be that the optimism of the 1980's is offering a rose-tinted vision of Reagan. It was after all a very defining era when everything appeared much more clear cut, we were the good guys, it was the West vs the USSR and I suppose in some ways that feeling that we won. It makes it much easier to look back into the past for the answers because they're already there, kind of takes all the guess work out of it.

In fairness though everything you have said seems both reasonable and logical, perhaps my dislikes are just somewhat irrational, I can't honestly say for sure. But also I'm not American, so in this respect my opinions don't really hold much weight anyway given that I'm not someone who will be voting in the election, that is of course not to say though that the decisions taken in D.C. don't affect my country or that we don't have a vested interest in having a strong and successful American President.

Well Carson either really is madder than a box of frogs or, he's gone all out Pinocchio to catch Trump and is going to end up backpedaling like crazy towards that rapidly disappearing horizon of the center ground, should he actually get the nomination, by contrast Trump just wants to get elected so he build his big wall and stuff it with condos. Jeb's campaign looks like a deflated hot air balloon and Cruz appears like he would be lucky to get into double digits from an IQ test. Rubio seems articulate but may prove a little to conservative. None of them are future Reagans.

Some of the most contraversial experiments conducted by the Nazi's, where today we are using and benefiting from the research, were the one's into the human body's resilience to extreme cold temperatures.

One of the problems the Nazi's had during world war 2 was a constant shortage of experienced pilots, thus it was decided to conduct research into the survivability rates for pilots and aircrews that ended up either by being shot down or ditching and ending up in the sea. One of the most serious issues was the extremely cold temperatures that these men would then be exposed to. Thus a program of illegal freezing experiments were conducted on prisoners from the concentration camps and in some cases allied POW's. In most cases the subjects of these experiments ended up dead having had to suffer terribly during the process.

Today still somewhat controversially much of the original data has ended up becoming part of our mainstream science and is referenced in over 45 seperate major works which are widely used for the treatment of hypothermia.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2044.2004.04034.x/abstract;jsessionid=56AFFB67351954D796A152CDE574C491.f04t03

http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html

The daily mail is pretty much a right wing propaganda rag.

London's position on a island did not cause Japan's problems.

All cities are on islands.

Quite an apt description.

One might even perhaps wonder with some justification if it's that unreasonable to suspect that the Daily Mail's entire raison d'etre is to castigate and chastise non-nationals, that a whole nations ills should be attributed solely to the evils of immigration and those who don't actively oppose it. But thank goodness they don't publish in New York, given their tendacy for exaggeration and over population scare stories residents of Manhattan may be forgiven for thinking they were living in the middle of the apocalypse, should they actually ever believe any of these ridiculous fairy tales that is.

Yes indeed. The disparity in terms of net food production is quite large between Japan and the UK. I think about 70% of its consumed is homep-produced vs 40% in Japan. That both on Islands is only tangential to the whole matter.Some of the reasons include the shift to Western style diets and increased meat consumption(which necessitates the import of non-home-grown produce) but more importantly, the increased urbanization with heavily decline of rural populations (and hence, farmers) as well as the aging of the population (and again, especially the rural population is hit hard). If the availability of land was an issue, food production would have peaked at some point.

Instead, it has been steadily declining over the last decades.

 

From NYTimes:

 

Thus, space and population density is not the issue here. Rather it is demographics and economic drivers. To some extent this is also happening in European/Western countries. There is a general decline in farming (especially small farms are dying out), but it is rather independent on whether you happen to be an island or not.

Just looking at this land distribution map it appears quite staggering how unpopulated the UK actually is, the amount of available farmland must surely be enough to provide for all of the agriculture and food requirements without ever really having to become dependant on imports in quite the same way as Japan. More over the amount of coastline surely offers great opportunities for expansion of offshore windfarms to reduce the reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Actually the United Kingdom is far from overpopulated and land distribution means that only 7% has been urbanised.

 

Apart from the fact that the United Kingdom is the most densely populated major country in Europe http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530125/This-worryingly-crowded-isle-England-officially-Europes-densely-packed-country.html

 

However being on an island London is limited in the size of its catchment area. This leads to problems such as Japan being unable to feed itself."

What?

That's wrong on more levels than farting in a lift.

 

Um the Japanese food crisis is a thing they have to rely on food imports now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/asia_pac_japan0s_food_crisis/html/6.stm

 

 

Also, it's quite a long while- it is, for example, possible that we will have fusion power in less than 200 years.Two hundred years ago, humanity was inventing dental floss and the Davy lamp, Things might alsochange in the next 200.

 

While entirely possible so far fusion power has yielded little in the way of electricity. Unless you believe rumors.

 

 

Overpopulation of the UK is a propaganda claim usually wheeled out to support an anti immigration agenda. Of the major European nations the Netherlands is the most densly populated with 407 people per square kilometer, (the UK comes down the list, in 51st place of the most densly populated nations overall, with some 262 people for every square kilometer), but even the higher Dutch figure pales in comparison to some of the smaller European places such as Gibraltar or Monaco with each having 4,250 and 18,900 people per square kilometer respectively.

I would strongly ask you to carefully consider whether the Daily Mail is one of the best or the most reliable of sources for research or citation purposes.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density

http://www.monacostatistics.mc/Population-and-employment

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_367167.pdf

 

I have mentioned it a few times years ago. Basically the UK is a set of islands and they were overpopulated. Now the UK has massive constraints on the availability of land. Since all of it is owned by somebody. But also faces the depletion of its fossil fuels. As such the UK is in a bad position now where it may be unable to power all its homes. Then you have the problem where old coal powerplants need replacing and it is a question of the UK not having coal to power them. You have this mad situation that the largest city in Europe according to http://www.citymayors.com/features/euro_cities1.htmlis on an island.

Actually the United Kingdom is far from overpopulated and land distribution means that only 7% has been urbanised. This figure looks even smaller when you consider that 12.7% is covered by forests. Major population centers such as the London, Birmingham and Manchester metropolitan areas can give a false impression because of the greatly increased population density in such areas, however much of the UK has smaller concentrations consisting of towns and villages. Recent decades have seen movement in local populations away from rural areas towards the larger cities due in part to work pressures from closures of local industries and the demand for affordable housing, given restrictive rural planning regulations and higher demand and prices for countryside real estate.

Centralised larger population areas however haven't been the cause or even a problem in terms of the UK's energy situation. A failure to maintain or replace aging power stations and an under capitalisation in their renewables program have seriously added to the situation. There seems to a confused approach to energy production, over a decade ago renewables were being pushed to the fore as the strategic answer to the nations long-term future, even then this was viewed as a belated attempt to play catch up to the lead being shown by other European countries in making use of solar and wind technology. Nuclear energy was still being talked about but was never the most popular topic on the agenda. Fast forward to 2015 and already with several incidents of power stations having to either go offline or reduce capacity near panic stations have begun set in within some parts of Whitehall, after hushed tones talking up future blackouts out roles this new nuclear deal with the French and Chinese.

Currently their stated future strategy is for more renewable generation, more nuclear power, new generation of coal-fired stations with carbon capture and storage technology, improved energy efficiency programmes, pipelines to import gas from Norway and continental Europe, terminals for imported liquid natural gas and further gas storage and infrastructure improvements including major new electricity lines and a smart grid.

But this still all feels a bit last-minute, somewhat chaotic even, and doesn't signal any real commitment towards a long term adoption of nuclear over and beyond the current panic Franco/chinese deal. The potential problems and risks surrounding nuclear in reality shows it makes little real difference for, in terms of risk reduction, the UK government to continue to go down the nuclear route, given that even if they were to replace all of their own reactors with other forms of power generation, they have France sitting on their doorstep whose whole nation are entirely dependant and totally committed to a future of nuclear energy.

What will be of interest to see in the coming years is how much control and reliance over energy production the UK government will allow other nations to gain and indeed thus the long-term benefits or repercussions of such a strategy.

I think he's bullshitting for popularity... means to an end. It takes 13 years to be a neurosurgeon and I can't believe he really thinks that.There must be a serious disconnect if he's sincere.

I would certainly concur with that sentiment. Though sadly most of his target voters are unlikely to have the intelligence to realise it. So perverse in the way he's gone after that idiot sector of vote and with the garbage he's using to attact them for someone who really surely should know better, just shear shamelessness.

am - ante meridiem (before midday)

HR - Human resources

Q&A - Question and Answer

ADHD - Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

SAD - Seasonal affective disorder

pm - post meridiem (after midday)

MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction

ME - Myalgic encephalomyelitis

PTSD - Post-traumatic stress disorder

R&R - Rest and Recuperation

Q.E.D. - quod erat demonstrandum (which is what had to be proven)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJCc3LL-Fyw

Could it be that part of the whole point in cheerleading is to give guys something attractive to look at, to help get them more excited for enjoying sporting contests. Since it's usually guys playing the sports in their uniforms, when there is the expectation that girls already have the guys there to watch and excite them.

Now given that most people like to feel attractive and have people looking at them and thus thinking just such, then surely the cheerleaders themselves do at least enjoy being in outfits that makes people notice them.

I'm really not sure about this idea that cheerleaders are somehow being encouraged to look or dress like hookers though. I just don't buy into it. That seems like suggesting putting guys in shorts to perform sports is akin to encouraging them to dress like rent boys.

People seem to be having these strange ideas that having young people dressing in anyway that makes them look attractive is somehow wrong or damaging. When surely really the focus should just be on having people dressed appropriately for the specific activity they are doing at the time, thus having a teenage girl go out a date dressed as cheerleader might send out the wrong message, but likewise also having her dressed as a librarian for a cheerleading competition would surely be equally silly.

If a 50 year guy does enjoy watching a pretty teenage girl in a short skirt cheerleading at a football game, or for that matter even a pretty teenage girl walking down the street in a pair of jeans and jumper, how does it really matter? Who is being hurt in reality? Surely there are far more things of concern in the world than worrying about middle aged guys finding teenage girls attractive, especially so given that this is exactly what has occurred for thousands of years, thanks largely to biological programming over which nobody has any actual control, doesn't it all just seem tad bit daft to be worrying about!