I notice no-one has jumped in to defend the SNPs failure on benefits outlined above as a triumph for devolution, and an excuse for more?

Also, in the context of this thread, this is quite interesting;

https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/1006968577101090816

epicyclo, you realise that all decisions about how much money is given to NHS schools and councils are already made by the Scottish Parliament don’t you? How does that highlight the need for “the people of Scotland to make their own decisions”.

Unless you mean make better decisions? (I would concur)

Nobeerinthefridge. Good point, I was thinking about NHS and education funding when I wrote. Lets say that the SNP has decided to spend proportionately less on the NHS and education that the tories in England. But while education is a complete mess, the NHS seems to be doing relatively OK, apart from the whole A&E and cancer waiting time thing.

BruceWee “the arguments you have made are based on SNP policies” I know other policies are available, but they don’t change the economic facts. If there was a good economic basis for independence would the SNP have spent years trying to find it and then published the report on a bank holiday Friday and then lied about its contents (Sturgeon saying that its economic guidelines would have “prevented austerity”).

Gordimhor The GERS figures are put together by statisticians working in Scotland, employed by Nicola Sturgeon. They were the central plank of the book of dreams put out by the SNP before the 2014 referendum. They are also the central plank of the more realistic but still a bit dreamy growth report. They are equivalent or better than any statistics you see about any countries economic performance.

Just because something is an estimate doesn’t mean its not accurate.

BruceWee

I don’t think I’ve said anything about the EU apart from the fact that I don’t want to leave.

Regardless of the details of future relationships I’m just pointing out that brexit plus scottish independence is not stupidity halved, its stupidity squared,

PS. The UK as a whole also has a deficit, but not one which would prevent it from joining the EU. (Like Scotlands)

PPS. Brexit will be bad, Scottish independence would be worse. If flouncing from a “union” and separating yourself off from your best customers and strongest partners causes economic hit, then why would compouding that with departure from a longer lasting more integrated union (in addition, not instead of) suddenly bring benefits?

PPPS I didn’t say the NHS in scotland was a mess, only that it was underfunded (given less cash) relative to England. Same with education. Same with councils (given and 8%? cut on the back of 2% austerity from Westminster).

Stop getting outraged and watching the flouncers and instead watch what they’re trying to distract you from.

Yes yes, I’m sure there are other parties and many valid ways to make Scotland an economic powerhouse in no time flat which invalidate the predictions of the SNPs own (much sat on, delayed, edited, reedited, rescued from the leopard and finally published) growth report.

They just didn’t think to include them.

The report confirms that GERS is good data (hi zoomers :O), and tries to say how we would get out of the hole Scotlands finances would leave us in if independent. It fails, except in listing of other small countries which aren’t us and don’t have the SNP in power.

For extra giggles, lets look at the benefits of devolution using the example of Scotland controlling welfare benefits and taking powers from the evil westmonster controlled DWP shall we?

Oops, we can’t, because the people who were going to set up a whole country for £400million in 2 years can’t set up a partial benefits system in 4 (and have hidden the cost). They’ve actually asked the DWP to keep being evil to the people of Scotland.  http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14885035.SNP_criticised_for_leaving_welfare_powers_with_Whitehall/

But by all means, lets get angry about the lack of devolution.

Yup, as I thought ..

Much discussion of “the flounce” and no discussion of the fact that the SNPs own growth commission report shows that “project fear” was right on the button economically, and that an independent Scotland would lose 13Bn a year (about 10% of the budget and the cost(ish) of the NHS in Scotland).

We would have massive austerity (an order of magnitude larger than that from westminster), the pound, and no EU membership until we balanced the books (10 years under the SNPs very positive growth projections, so maybe 25, maybe more).

The SNP can’t win the economic argument (and they never could without lying), so they’ve taken to flouncing and behaving like a teenager instead of trying to fix the mess they’ve made of schools and the NHS (both of which the SNP has decided needed smaller % rises in budget than their english equivalents under tory rule over the last 10 years).

I’m not a brexiter or a tory, but that doesn’t mean I have to support nationalist grievance over good government.

Its almost like the SNP is scared of making things better with the powers that they have. Wonder why?

Ha Ha ..

Manufactured controversy.

The SNP MPs were actually due to ask questions (and may have been granted a debate on the effect devolved assemblies) but walked out and denied themselves the chance to be involved on behalf of their constituents for the sake of a stunt.

I’m no brexiteer, but the SNP playing their “Stay as part of a bigger market (unless its the UK)” games can go hang.

A few weeks ago the SNP Growth Commission Report (after its massively delayed publication)  basically accepted the cost of an independent Scotland being a loss of 13Bn a year, massive austerity, and 10 to 25 years outside the EU to put it right (under the best growth scenarios).

In other words brexit on steroids.

As they now agree with the long standing economic arguments of “project fear”, expect more stunts, distraction and obfuscation.

SNP and Tories, 2 balls in the same nationalist nutsack.

Kryton

Still no evidence to back up your notion then.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Kryton

No-one else is making unsupported assertions.

Its up to you to prove what you say.

It is no-one elses responsibility to disprove your notion.

That doesn’t make both sides equal.

Am I being unclear?

For clarity, read this https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Russell’s_Teapot

“Russell’s Teapot draws attention to the formal logic behind the burden of proof and how it works.”

If you read that carefully, you may not be any the wiser but you will at least be better informed.

Kryton

“A status quo then”

I think you mean that you have forced a draw through your gallant effort (like the knight in monty python)

You have produced an idea from nothing,

Offered no evidence, and

Declared your unsupported idiotic notion equal to all of the scientific, archaeological evidence which does not support your assertion. (Note I didn’t say “disproves”)

Brilliant!

Kryton

I refer you to my previous post

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

Its not up to ANYONE to bring the evidence to disprove your nonsense! Its up to you to prove it.

dudeofdoom

It doesn’t make sense.

Do you think the Russians were not watching the moon landing very carefully and listening in to the transmissions?

You admit they had a vested interest in the Americans failure, so if the fakery was as obvious as every (conspiracy theorist) says, why the silence from them? (or does the rabbit hole go even deeper than we suspect!)

Spin, the phrase you may be looking for is “fractal wrongness”. Wrong at every possible level, and no matter how closely you look. ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness 

Other useful phrases in the context of this thread include “Bullshit asymmetry” or “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” Ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bullshit

And for Kryton57 “Hitchens razor”  “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

Just one human mind can generate lazy and/or crazy statements, ideas or questions at a massive rate*. If they can’t be bothered to put the work into proving it don’t ask anyone else to put the effort into disproving it.

* e.g. Aliens built pyramids!

Earth 6000 years old!

Freddie Starr ate my hamster!

Man seen riding flying horse!

WWII bomber found on moon!

All humans infested with souls of ancient dead aliens executed in volcano!

I could go on, but I’m sure humanity will continue to rise up and fill the gaps in our stupidity.

Editto add: And then berate us for not taking them seriously.

bsims

This is like a discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

There are pretty well defined documents and popular biographies explaining the invention of the engine which was the heart of the Harrier. It was invented and developed in the UK and was a unique solution to a previously intractable problem.

I answered your original question which implied that the US couldn’t have developed a vertical landing system by showing you pictures and video  of the vertical landing system they invented.

Now you’ve changed the thrust of the conversation to a discussion of why the Harrier was bought and the engineering difficulties of disparate unrelated systems.

Why don’t you:

a) Decide what historical fact confuses you the most.

b) Clearly articulate a question that people can answer.

c) Stop moving the goalposts like a big trolly troll.

bsims

i know theres been a lot of back and forth, but your original question was:

If the Americans built a VTOL system for the moon landing craft why did they have to buy the Harrier from Britain? Genuine question, no one i have ever asked has been able to give me a decent answer, all I get is something about more cost effective. (which would be unusual for the US military, they like tech in house)

You seem to be implying that the Americans were not able to create a working vtol system to land on the moon.

Here is the wikipedia article about the test bed vehicle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Landing_Research_Vehicle

and here is video of it flying (the most popular video is one of it being destroyed in a test while being flown by Neil Armstrong but it had flown successfully many times before).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbdJPuq08Wc

So bearing in mind that you’ve (hopefully) just read an article about the device you claim could not exist, and seen a video of it flying. What was your point?

People are allowed to be idiots with their own money.

The bit I still can’t get over is that its all tax free.

America is weird (I think the situation in the UK is slightly better because charities have to show they do some “good”? But that may be rubbish, and/or the definition of “good” may include telling fairy tales to the gullible).

I’m still not completely comfortable with this whole thing for the reasons stated above.

But I saw that Gammon People thing on twitter and now I can’t stop humming it and smiling to myself.

As long as its about “spluttering indignation” and not “white people” I think I can live with it :O)

Cougar,

The crux isn’t that they’re white, but rather that they’re apoplectic with rage.

I completely agree 🙂 Although as I said I don’t think its helpful.

But that means the word “White” should probably be avoided in the definition, or criticised when it turns up.

You don’t get many non-caucasian Islamophobes so it must be racist, right?

I see what you’re trying to say here, but its a bad example if you’ve ever heard of the partition of india.

I don’t think it is racist in the way that most people are using it.

But against that we have the definition given on page 1 of this very thread by tomhoward:

White, middle aged men being marginalised.

I think that the inclusion off the “White” here means that some people think that the definition is race based, but don’t seem to care.

If thats the sense you are using it in then you should have a word with yourself.

Your opinion is invalid because you have X physical characteristic.

Ha Ha.

I genuinely found it funny when I came across it and I can can see it the irony of using it against people who are spouting discrimination against other groups (“wimmin”, “foriners” etc. etc.).

But the more it develops, its less about irony and more about just bundling people together in a group and treating them all the same.

The beauty is, you don’t need to try to reason with them anymore (which is an impossible task anyway) just constantly talk over them saying “Gammon!” loudly

Shouting people down is easier, not better.

theotherjonv

Saul carrying an emergency wig in case he has to disguise himself as Carrie is slightly more plausible than what happened 🙂

Tho’ I reckon Mandy Patinkin could pull that off even with the beard.

I can see him swishing his blonde locks and shouting “diplomatic immunity!” at a confused russian border guard.

theotherjonv

You are a script writers dream, and your suspension of disbelief may be a danger to the International Space Station.

I’m a little envious :o)

muggomagic, theotherjonv
They were looking for a dark haired woman.

They couldn’t actually see her from before she dropped the scarf to the moment when they actually found her, but they kept searching.

Are you seriously suggesting that if she had taken off the wig and walked off that they would have immediately stopped searching or recognised her as the target?

Short version .. Making it impossible for them to find the dark haired woman, would be better than being found behaving suspiciously with black wig on.

When running from Russians looking for a woman with dark hair; do you:

a) Take off your wig, walk out and hail a taxi to the airport.

b) Remain in disguise until caught risking the lives of everyone in your team.

I think Carrie needs either stronger medication or better scripts.

Not sure if its come up after my skim read, but those who “aren’t worried” by all this should look at https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters 

It shows what sort of groups were generated by facebooks own algorithms for advertising.

It enabled anti-semitic groups to target people more likely to agree with them.

Facebook was forced to fixed its algorithms, but imagine what you could do with the same information, and zero accountability?

If you think this doesn’t matter for you then you lack imagination.

I am aware that, on twitter for example, I live in an information bubble where my preferences are catered for, and conflicting views are largely invisible (except to the extent that I make an effort to follow people with views that I dislike).

When that bubble becomes your “society” and then actively targets your emotional red button issues (everyone has them .. see an amusing take on this from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe  ) to make your views more amenable to their political ends then we all lose.

By the way, some people seem in doubt whether Cambridge Analytica were involved in the brexit campaign. i guess thats partly because much of the media don’t seem to be mentioning it for reasons I fail to understand (and leave.eu denials). But heres a link to a pretty specific tweet by Arron Banks. https://twitter.com/arron_banks/status/696410417569120256

Have a look while its still there.

If you don’t know who he is then you’re part of the problem whether you realise it or not 🙂

As a follow up, I did hear a tale of a way to convince people of dowsing and show them it was false at the same time.

Do the whole “Hey I found a thing” demonstration with some water/gold etc. hidden under a series of buckets.

Then teach others to repeat your success “wow it moves, without me trying” etc.

Then show them there is no water/gold under the bucket and explain the ideomotor effect.

I think this has been done (although I lack a reference), but the results showed that many of the new trainees refused to believe the trainer when they were told it was a false result.

P.S. I have a feeling that Assistant Deputy Minister General Tareq al-Asl was potentially in the frame for spending a considerable amount of cash on pseudoscience.

molgrips,

“can you find water with two metal rods”

No.

The Amazing Randi tested dowsers for his million dollar prize. He said that, although they _all_ failed his double blind experiments, that they were always the most surprised to fail (compared to psychics, mediums and mind readers of various kinds).

They (in his tested cases) were apparently not frauds and genuinely believed that the experiments they agreed to participate in with Randi would be easy (detecting which upside down buckets in a room concealed full or empty cups of water.

Importantly, when the dowsers tested themselves in the same way, or had some practice before the event by getting a friend to conceal a cup under a series of buckets, they were always successful. But in a room where no-one knew anything (double blind in that the person who was observing had no idea where the water was either) they failed (did no better than chance).

That should tell you something important about dowsing. When there is someone or something in the area capable of giving conscious or unconscious cues, dowsing works!

When finding pipes and drainage etc there will be local cues in the slope and shape of the land, the color, type and size of the vegetation or the distance from nearby roads or infrastructure, and their orientation.

This effect is probably increased if the person holding the dowsing rods has a lifetime of experience in digging holes to bury drainage pipes, and digging them up again.

Basically,

a) Reaction to environmental cues explains the hit rate.

b) The ideomotor effect explains the movement.

c) The failure under double blind conditions shows that a) and b) are a better explanation of dowsing than intelligent sticks.

So for all of you believers, try the experiment

Google randi dowsers (like I just did without thinking at work :O) and fill yer boots, with double blind evidence based loveliness.

I don’t know if this has come up in this thread .. i’ve only read the first few pages.

But for those who defend divining as a method for finding things, have a read of these.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/04/29/dowsing_for_bombs_maker_of_useless_bomb_detectors_convicted_of_fraud.html

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a21678/dowsing-iraq-bomb-detectors/

This stuff is just a harmless way to find things that you know are already there, until you trust it with something important like keeping car bombs out of Baghdad.

Not tried this myself but I’ve heard that (at the front end) you can take away the effect of a lens blemish by covering it with black felt tip.

You’ll get slightly less light in the front, but what comes in will be through the good bits of lens, so any effect should go away.

I’m an avowed SNP hater, but this is a good thing. Churches should be next (where they are basically inward looking tax free clubs that dont provide a reasonable benefit to society).

However the SNPs dismal record on education generally (plus the “free” university education that makes tuition free by robbing the grant budget from poorer students which stops them taking advantage) make me think that this is another squirrel! policy to distract from the lack of progress (or surplus of regress :0) they have made on pretty much every educational front while being in power for 10 years.

hemorrhoid cream

I’d go 7d (or 70d if you prefer the video gubbins and articulating things).
The light sensitivity on either will be better than a 40d, but the focusing system improvements will outclass a 40d to a much greater extent.

GrahamS – Member
Good idea for an experiment, but the reasoning on a) is wrong.

The air density may have been even along the tube while it was on the ground, but the balloon was still less dense than that and wanted to go up.

Sealing the tube and turning it vertically the air density inside doesn’t need to change, the balloon is still less dense and still goes up.

there is nothing in his universe to create a density difference
I suspect he’d argue, as Sasha did above, that there is a natural order. A “natural place of density” as Sasha put it.

They usually don’t attempt to explain what causes this natural order (spoiler: it’s gravity)

I see your point, but the fact is that (try not to take this personally) you’re thinking too much like a person who understands gravity.

I considered the point that the balloon was less dense and would “rise anyway”.

Outside the tube the balloon wants to go to somewhere less dense, and less dense is ‘up’ [for some reason beyond our understanding]…

But the balloon only moves at all if there is a gradient to move along.

Imagine a balloon in an area of equal density in all directions. Where is up?

If theres no gravity to create a gradient and density is the equal in all directions. How does the balloon know where to ‘rise’ to?

Conversely, if there is a density gradient (and the balloon follows it). Where did the gradient come from? And why does it consistently form as more dense near the large mass and less dense further away.

Basically, if a gradient forms where there was none before, then there’s a force at play moving gas around the tube. This force moves things in such a way that the gas in the tube moves towards the big mass at the bottom of the tube (Earth). We call that force gravity.

I realise that this may be too subtle an argument for your opponent.

May be just easier to assume that Earth sucks.

I haven’t read the whole thread .. but what about this as a thought experiment (to try to encourage him to wonder where density differences he cares so much about come from).

Imagine a really long tube lying on the ground.

You seal up the ends of the tube trapping the air inside and lift up one end so that the top end is miles in the air and the bottom end rests on the ground.

What would happen to a helium balloon (that would normally rise to the height of the top if it was outside the tube) sitting inside that tube?

Does he think it a) would float to the top, b) sink to the bottom or c) stay stationary in the tube.

If a) then that rise implies that the air in the tube (which was distributed equally along the tube while it lay on the ground) has now somehow become more dense at the bottom of the tube than the top.

That implies that “something” influenced the air in the tube to move towards the bottom of the tube (become more dense) and leave the top of the tube (become less dense) as it became vertical (otherwise the balloon would be stationary

If b) Wrong answer, but there is also a density difference. So what caused it?

If c) Right answer (I guess) from his POV as there is nothing in his universe to create a density difference, and no density difference means no movement? But the cognitive dissonance should hopefully flip his brain right out of his ear. Problem solved.

In any case if he suggests that the balloon moves, it implies unequal density, so where did the change come from?

[Having said that I largely agree that you can’t reason someone out of a position that they didn’t reason themselves into. E.g. brexit, communism, religion etc.. “Theres nothing wrong with [thing]. You’re just doing it wrong!”]

Also no kids, but working at an outdoor pursuits centre with some kids in care, we told them that the river we were paddling rafts down was circular (drop off and pick up points were very similar car parks in forests, and the minibus parked in the same place in both).

I don’t think the kids fell for it but one of the carers thought that was “very convenient” and fell for it hook line and sinker. I told him it was easy to spot if he checked a map later.

Wonder if he did 🙂

One of the other guys who worked with us told some older kids that if they fell in they had to watch out for the bearded clams that lived on the bottom of the river in case they grabbed them… Occasionally when we threw one of the kids in they would shout “I felt them! They nearly got me!”

Evolution FTW. But don’t use them to cut metal like in the adverts. I cut small bit of angle iron once, and it cut brilliantly well but the swarf/shrapnel pebbledash took about an hour to remove from my fleece, and I was extremely glad to be wearing eye protection.

For all those trying to say its OK to work for RT, because its just the same as everyone else. Even the SNP have thrown Alex under the bus.
They mention things like Russias persecution on the grounds of race and sexuality, attacks on journalists and concerns about the integrity of the democratic process.

If those things matter to the SNP more than they do to those defending RT on here, then your moral compass might need calibration.

I suppose now that the white smoke has risen and the party line has been decided some SNP MSP/MPs might comment as well :O)

seosamh77
Its certainly given then something to work with. Either way the election of Trump and the Brexit vote have hardly strengthened any of us internationally.

peak whataboutery.
Russia wants to destabilise the west, break up the EU, emasculate NATO, and have America turn inwards and take less interest in the world outside its own borders.
Trumps election, the EU vote in the UK, are so far the most successful parts of this strategy.

There are many weapons used to achieve their aims;
The use of RT as a Russian Government mouthpiece.
The hacking deployed against Clinton via wikileaks (which weirdly never publishes things embarassing to the Russians?)
The direct funding and implicit support of Nationalist groups throughout Europe and the UK.

There was even a recent attempt to set up a California independence movement (Calexit, after Trumps election) by a guy who later moved to … Russia. The attempt failed, but was largely pushed online by (later found to be) russian social accounts. They even had a few rallies and gained the support (and visit/speech/fundraising) from one Nigel Farage .. who, in other news, also paid at least one secret visit to the Ecuadoran embassy.

I’m about the furthest from a conspiracy theorist that you could get, but theres a lot of cash and influence being pedalled towards Russias ends.

If you know that and you still think that a briton being paid to appear on RT (and that includes tories, labour, SNP anyone) is a harmless thing and equivalent to the BBC? Then thats what I meant (up there) by peak whataboutery.

Edtracker is pretty good (I have 2 .. thought I’d borked one by soldering badly, so bought another and then realised both worked! Then I broke the USB connector off one :O) (now reinforced the other with hot glue).

All forms of head tracking (short of having the screen clamped to your head .. i.e. VR) basically rely on you looking maybe 20 or 30° left, right up or down while keeping your monitor in view but the view on the monitor rotates 180° L/R or 90° up or down.

Ed tracker is better than nothing but its hard to get used to 3 degrees of freedom (yaw pitch roll) rather than 6 (yaw pitch roll X Y Z) which you get with IR trackers and cameras.
Although, as someone said, you can get pseudo 5(?) dof with a few tricks (use roll as an analog for X (side to side) and pitch forward as an analog for Z).

Having used a PS eye camera and IR headset, I’d still go for that as a single option, but ed tracker is much, much better than nothing, and astoundingly cheap for what it is.

I thought it was spectacular, just the beauty of it all brought a tear to my eye more than once.

I also have many unanswered questions, but isn’t that part of the point? We have the internet and we can find things out for ourselves.

Haven’t googled yet but I’m interested in whether any of those sex changing fish are actually born male or are all males sex changers?

Also, you can never have too many dolphins and killer whales. As long as they are being shown in new ways doing things we haven’t seen before.

As for anthropomorphisation. Part of what people need to know is that we are not as unique as we used to think we were. They have shown animals (and now fish) using tools and taking part in war. Is it really “anthropomorphising” to show them cooperating, grieving or caring?