How could they have passed the requirements for the owners if they demanded the people were married?

They can’t get ‘married’ because the christian church won’t let them (dunno if they want to go through with a religious do).

I’m also unclear on if they asked all heterosexual couples for their marriage certificates when they turn up for a bed, as it would only be fair. IIRC bosses and their secretaries used to book themselves in as a married couple, how would they stop that?

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Imagine the fuss there would be if an atheist refused christian people to stay at their hotel? I thought we’d at least grown up a bit in the last fifty years. Obviously not.

What do I think? Fair enough.

I think that mathematics is a pure abstract that is not a science but is a tool to describe interrelationships within theories of physical phenomena. It is the only tool that can ever prove anything as it is abstract. You cannot prove any science as it is based upon theories used to match evidence of phenomena. I am trained as a scientist but mathematics is not my branch so my foundations are not certain (but this *is* STW!).

Evidence of phenomena .. statement, while fairly opaque etc. still does not matter. The important part is ‘Evidence of….’ That’s where science starts and the theories are then rolled in for fun.

science is not based on facts its based on theories
No it isn’t. It’s based on evidence.

String theory?

Mathematics?

Astrophysics?

String theory is a hypothesis – it cannot be a theory without the ability to be falsified. Like religion in some ways. (Edit: someone made it up as an idea. That doesn’t make it science. If you think so then I have a thesis about flying aardvarks to discuss. The ones I just made up.)
Mathematics: some say it is, some say it isn’t but just a servant of science, e.g. link.
Astrophysics – of course it is. Without the evidence of planetary bodies being there and moving as they do with the properties they exhibit (e.g. ‘evidence’) then it wouldn’t exist.

science is not based on facts its based on theories

No it isn’t. It’s based on evidence.

I’m more concerned about the slurry pits and things getting into water courses.

Yes there are regulations. Regulations mean diddly-squat when something bad happens, by accident or on purpose. This happens all too frequently.

If the cows are happy and well-treated then I have no issue. After all I generally use soya milk 😀 Pigs, on the other hand, I wouldn’t like to see in this kind of arrangement as I think they require more outdoorsy areas for doing piggy stuff.

Then I’m also concerned about access to the land so I can use me bike!

Being half Welsh and half Irish I tried for the Celtic Dragon roar. Unfortunately after I came out it sounded like ‘meeeoiouw’. And I’m not that good with cats. Go figure.

As for the idiots bit – can you let me know where the forms are please? I’ve got me marker pen handy.

Look chaps, speaking as a gay man please note that ‘flounce’ and ‘mince’ are quite related but do have some differences. I feel, as a matter of public information that people should know the difference.

A mince is small steps, elbows to body with hands at about 25 degrees out from the front and about 80 degrees up, fingers out as if holding a handkerchief, eyes up towards the right.

A flounce, on the other hand is similar, small steps but much more side-to-side arm action. Eyes straight ahead.

At least that is what I was told when I joined. Dunno if it has changed since. 😀

On the other hand, surf-matt hasn’t really bothered me too much, so I don’t really have that much of an opinion. As most people (apart from severely nasty works) I wish him well.

Trailmonkey – then please elucidate: what *is* the issue?

My dad died when I was 16. He was 59. I guess, going by the state of this board, he should have had me when he was 20 or something….

Lets ignore the gay aspect of it, however hard it is for people to do here. The biggest question is ‘will the child have a good life’. He’ll certainly not want for anything. He’ll be brought up with a nanny I should think. The only views we have of Elton/David are the things on the telly, I don’t know what they are really like so can’t really say.

I even say that about Fatcha. I abhore her policies and she came over like an evil monster but I only saw what was on the telly. For all I know she’s a really nice person. Saying that, look how her son turned out! 😀

The phrase about taking planks out of your own eyes keeps coming to mind here….

I earn more than my partner so once a year I ask him how much he gets in his hand each month and then I ratio it based upon that. I pay for all bills and we have a joint credit card. If his job changes and he gets more then I’ll modify the spreadsheet of outgoings appropriately.

Of course my function has just been outsourced to HP so he may be paying for a lot more soon… 🙁

it amazes me that people don’t believe in God. what other explanation can there be for the creation of this incomprehensible universe

Ding ding! Round one!

Hold on a sec, I’ll get the kettle on and rustle up some hobnobs.

Right, I’m sorted. Now where’s woppit? 😀

Handbrake will decode disks if it finds the correct software on the disk, IIRC. I am on a mac so it uses the library from VLC if it sees the VLC app in the ‘Applications’ area.

Mine just turned up. I think the firmware works out which country you’re in and puts the icons on the XMB. They are only weblinks to specific pages.

Still, can’t find anything of interest to see on 4oD and ITV player.

So Admirable – I take it you have sent a sample of blood/sputum/hair/whatever to put on the DNA database previously as it is such a good thing?

How old are you lot?

The only good thing to come out of ITV was the Muppets. 6:30pm on Sunday IIRC!

Hi Dave

I personally would go for gigabit. The benefits will be for device-to-device transfer as opposed (at the mo) to device-to-internet. This would be useful for streaming films, filesharing etc.

Obviously the devices you connect to must also have gigabit ports to get the full benefit (most PCs do these days, the PS3 does, dunno about X-box).

Adam

Gah. Nut intolerance. The damned thing has a load of almonds in it. 😕

I think the daily mash has it right:

Britain-trapped-under-two-feet-of-global-warming-bullshit[/url]

You think you got it bad. Try the gay route. Many moons ago I put an ad in ‘Gay Times’ (must be 1990 or thereabouts). Me == naive. I put in ‘into mountain biking, snowboarding’. The number of photos of (hideously ugly ancient blubbery) men wearing lycra and leering at the camera in obscene poses made my stomach churn.

My mate Pauline at work is on the straight dating websites. She’s usually got a new man on her arm each weekend. Usually she finds out they are married and are just looking for a jump though… 🙁

Which member of the british royal family has ben doing something naughty as well, due to come out soon the details that is.

Perhaps one of the princes has made a cheese pie better than Harry_the_spider and he’s had to honour the reach-around? 😆

PS it’s still an iPod, dammit!

Well, in general when i say God, I mean the abarahmic god, when i say god, i mean any god. I tend to use the singular only for simplicity. In general, in my limited understanding, the gods of the “multi-god’ religions is not quite the same, they tend not to be creator gods, and they do seem to be more directly interventionist at least on a local scale. (Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism) Some forms of Buddhism belive in a Godlike character, but i’m not sure of the details. and the complexity of the meaning of Buddhas as a manifestation of the God-type character is a bit unclear to me. These ‘lesser gods’ don’t seem to be the same kind of thing as the gods we are generally talking about.

The amazing thing is the sheer plurality of this. All believing something slightly different. I wond which one, if any, is correct? I still tend to back the theories that can be tested and disproved.

When the Buddha was asked about the creation of the universe He stated it was something on which He did not have an opinion. Dependent upon the Buddhist ‘flavour’ being a god is much worse than being a human, as only humans are in the correct state to meditate, show compassion, destroy karma and thus achieve nirvana, which in some cases means nothingness, leaving the wheel of live. Others have ‘pure land’ beliefs which means you go to a type of heaven after you die before being called for rebirth. The closest you tend to get to gods are boddhisattvas (bad spelling, sorry), which are those who have achieved enlightenment and have decided to hang around to help everyone else do the same instead of leaving the wheel.

Faiths themselves are fascinating, and the dogmas that become created around them can be pretty bizarre!

Charlie – you keep using the singular when referring to a god. Is this deliberate? I guess those cultures with many deities may have something to say about that. The discussion seems very Abrahamic faith-based.

Interesting….

MrNutt you appear to use the word ‘Belief’ to give an equal rating to ‘Creation’ and ‘Science’ (yeah, ridiculous capitals again). Your argument seems to favour the Christian creation myth. If I were to follow your reasoning why would I stop at those two? Why not creation by an infinite number of ways?

Creation caused by:
[list][*]A team of aardvarks[/*]
[*]Giant space amoebas from the tenth dimension [/*]
[*]An iPod made of cheese[/*]
[/list]

I got a million of them… So are they all equally likely to have happened? I include the Christian myth and big bang theory in there too. The only thing I can think of is looking for something to back up the hypotheses given. That does tend to favour the big bang theory, no matter how hard I look at my iPod and dream of a nice bit of Wensleydale….

erm…No.

Sorry, I don’t believe you. Can you provide something to back up your assertation? 😀

This is not the point, as i have said before. I am not claiming that because we don’t understand physics we must believe in God, rather I am saying because we don’t understand physics, we have to believe Physics / Physicists

I would use the word ‘believe’ in this context personally as ‘trust’. If my iPod turned into a block of cheese I would start doubting them. I would not use ‘believe’ as in ‘I believe what physicists say about how silicon chips work’ as I would for belief in deities.

Depends really, I’ve changed my mind about some things based on this discussion. If by why not, you mean I haven’t changed my mind about the existence or not of a God. I’d be surprised if you could point me to where i stated my beliefs in that respect. If you mean have i changed my mind about people who do not believe in a god? Then now, but in this discussion I have not heard anything new, nor has it been presented in any way other than that which I have heard in any number of arguments over the years. The ‘there is no proof’ argument is not new nor is it particularly complex.

Nope, not my intention in this discussion.

Well I’ve no idea how it works, but given time I can find out.

The underlying presumption here is that “someone” actually knows. This is not always the case. And certianly not with gravity

Then I must respond with either “No-one knows, yet.” (which may be the case with gravity – after all people are continuing their experiments and theories now) and possibly “It may be that we do not find out.” Neither requires unquestioning belief in the existence of one or more of an infinite number of speculated entities to do that thinking/magicking away for us.

“I don’t know.”/”I’m not sure” – I can live with those answers.

I’m never sure anyone is right and am willing to change my mind,

But what would it take, therefore, to change your mind? I usually ask for a chat or discussion (like this one). Obviously you haven’t changed your mind regarding this discussion – why not? Normally when a person has a view of something and someone disputes it they ask for a reason why they should change their mind. Or if you see something that is contrary to your view you change your mind – usually. That is called evidence.

No this is not my use of the term faith. Aeroplanes do work, we’ve seen that. Gravity happens, we’ve seen that. The ‘faith’ comes in when you say, Well, I’ve no idea how it works, but i’m sure some very clever people have thought about it and I’m sure they are right.

While I see what you are saying there I prefer to change it to:

Well I’ve no idea how it works, but given time I can find out.

I’m never sure anyone is right and am willing to change my mind, depending upon evidence. As Tom Baker’s Doctor stated: “Being sure of any one thing is a sign of limited intelligence.” 😆

Well, i’m not too concerned waht you call it. But belief seems a good word for accepting that things happen because of certain things, without having any understanding about waht those certain things are, and faith is what it sounds like when you trust that other folks have worked it out for you. But as I said, I don’t really want to get involved in a semantic argument. Call it what you like. We are talking about the same thing.

But the issue is the whole argument you are positing is just that – a semantic one. I have ‘faith’ that aeroplanes work, just like others have ‘faith’ in a deity or deities. Your argument all hinges around the meaning of the words ‘belief’ and ‘faith’.

CharlieMingus – surely it is about levels though?

Using the argument you present you end up eventually at solipsism. I believe I exist but nothing else. Absolutely everything becomes an issue of ‘faith’ which makes the word itself meaningless.

Usually I go with the phrase: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”. If someone says that their house is painted blue then I’m happy to believe them unless proven otherwise. If someone says their house is painted blue and levitates ten feet off the ground with no visible means of support then I am likely to demand proof.

I think this is really playing with the word ‘belief’. My acceptance of fluid dynamics as a model for how certain things work is not a faith in the same manner as a religious one.

Only the God in the Christian Bible (of Abraham, Moses and Paul etc) offers us relationship and reconciliation with him through his son Jesus. This offer of a personal relationship with him is the fundamental difference between Christianity and other ‘world’ religions – as I understand it.

So does this mean all the other gods exist but you should only choose the Christian one for the reasons you mentioned?

Can we stop the somewhat ridiculous use of Capital Letters To Attempt To Give Things More Gravitas Than They Deserve?

An example: faith vs. Faith. science vs. Science

The latter is either the start of a sentence or a name of a person.

faith=Faith=FaIth=fAITh

Everyone seems to say this but I honestly don’t see it. A lot of people say Dawkins is ‘shrill’ and ‘screaming atheism’.

I read the God Delusion. It is simply a discussion regarding religion and its place in the world. All he says is that if he was given evidence that a god exists then he’d believe.

I’m sort-of buddhist myself and what he says makes an awful lot of sense.

The only thing I thing gets up peoples’ noses is the fact that he reckons that religion should not have any special consideration in the world. I agree. Live and let live, just don’t push any dogma onto me from your religion and we’ll both be happy.

After all the most faithful religious person is atheist in all other faiths apart from their own…

Erm…. electricity is actually bought and sold every half-hour in wholesale markets. Your meter readings go through half-hour aggregation to give a ‘virtual’ quantity of electricity that you would use for pay-back. For large power users (e.g. smelters > 100kWhr) they are actually metered every half-hour due to the quantities and have much more regular bills.

TBH I only post a few things here and there. I like to help and give what info I can and pop in with the occasional (rarely!) witty comment, but know that if I were to post often then I would just be attacked. I’ve already been burned once so don’t really want to participate that much.

I doubt I am representative, but I read often yet post once a week (if that) because I know that if I post more I’ll get crushed by those who want to argue…. 🙁

Dr AdamW: molecular electronics/chemistry

Team found out about it a few years after I started. I’m now known as ‘the doc’.

I just wanted a verrry long scarf, that was all 😀

Got a recommendation for a joiner from a mate at work, so he came in and did all the internal doors. Good job he made of it too. I mentioned I needed to do some other work on the front door, a bit of bricklaying and fix the back garage door. He said he would like the work and that he had skills in those areas, so I said fine. He then took ages to provide a quote, which I accepted, then turned up after four weeks to measure, saying he would be in touch. I have not heard from him since. I discreetly enquired about him through the mate at work and the joiner’s wife is furious because he hasn’t got any work on. He obviously had second thoughts about the job but didn’t have the decency to tell me, and kept me waiting for two months.

As a result I have no idea who to turn to. I will pay a decent amount for a decent job but traders who I approach just aren’t interested. I’m talking of at least a couple of grand in work too. 🙁

Strange this. I was in a similar conversation t’other day. Blokes at work saying about some colleague that it is a shame she was gay, it was a waste, etc. Much chortling ensued. Then I added, “Yeah, it’s a shame XXX is straight, he’s hot, same reasons.”.

For some reason the chaps seemed to take on a slightly horrified look and the conversation abruptly ended.

Strange that.