The difference with an anarchist approach is that everyone would be directly engaged with decisions and policies at a local level (if they want to be), rather than just relying on a councillor or MP and hoping that they do something about it if they can be bothered.

Cough <localism> cough.

Yeah, I know it was just a sop to the proles…

Smith and Wesson

Watson and Crick

But to make an sweeping statement like “it’s a misguided society” takes a special kind of ignorance indeed.

It’s true though, relegion is only a symptom, or process to obtain power. In itself it is harmless, in the same way as any other tool. When it’s wielded to exert power is when it becomes an object of hate.

Ultimately it’s society that has bred the relegions we currently have, society is at fault. People. You and me and everyone else who participates. It’s even more screwed up though, because in this particular case it’s the misogyny of society that has resulted in the horrific conditions and deaths of mothers and children. It’s those who are underclasses who are targeted, the weak, young and disenfrachised.

Does the computer then have a soul or a heart?

Good question, probably at some point they do. When they start thinking about their own existence outside of their immediate environment, wants and needs.

RE: Chemicals and emotions, yes I’ve seen some of the research on these, serotonin etc. But are these (emotions) an indicator of consciousness? Are they even linked? A psychopath/sociopath devoid of ‘normal’ feelings still exhibits signs of consciousness, labotomy victims – similar. Emotions and consciousness/sentience are two seperate things in my book.

I am, yes – why wouldn’t it be?

Really? seems to be quite a big assumption to make. But I suppose without evidence to the contrary… …nah, the mystery of it all is what makes it interesting!

Couldn’t critical thought and/or self awareness arise without the existential bollocks? It would give a lot more time for doing stuff if we weren’t burdened with the whole meaning of life questions.

Not sure you’ve understood that correctly. ‘We’ are a specific assembly of atoms. If you put all your carbon in one box, all your oxygen in a gas cylinder and your hydrogen in another, you would no longer be you.

Physically, yes. But are we assuming that our consciousness is purely limited to our bodies? If so, is that a safe assumption to make?

Actually, that makes a bit more of an interesting question. Rather than “Why are we here?” How about, “Why do we have the ability to ask the question “Why are we here?””. I mean there seems to be a lot of life around that is quite good at living without being burdened with sentience/self awareness*, so what’s the point of it?

* I also fully appreciate this is a very superior and possibly incorrect attitude, but then humankind tends to be that way. Hopefully, Dear Reader, you get the gist of the post and won’t get hung up on my own hang ups.

Wordnumb – Interestingly there’s loads of new development (residential and business) going on all around the airport, prime targets for stray aircraft of all kinds!

Ah. You’re right Dez. Apologies.

Life – It’s just killing time then.

Only for the people watching the coffin b u r n

You reckon, what about turning into a gas and being spread throughout the atmosphere of our pathetic little rocky planet? What about the carbon atoms being recyled into plants, diamonds or whatever other materials circumstances happen to dictate?

Stuff like this happens all the time, it’s little miracles that nature thows at us and all we do is gloss over it and stick to our pathetic fleshy bodies until the mortal coil is shuffled off and our true potential can arise! Maybe?

Personally, I hope that there is a big cruch, followed by another big bang in an endless cycle….as that will fit into my worldview rather nicely.

Yeah me too. Although, the universe itself seems to be a bit of boundary to something else. String theory, ‘brane theory and all that point to more interesting things still…

Yep, there lovely.

Just like chocolate covered pretzels.

It must be comforting to truly believe that anything happens once we die other than ceasing to exist.

It is!

I haven’t a clue what, I follow no relegion. I understand that matter and energy cannot be destroyed or created therefore we must go somewhere right?

I want to know where, I want to be at the point when my atoms are smashed together to form a heavy metal at the centre of a star, I want to float in a nebula for billions of years before condensing on a comet as ice!

What would be even cooler would be to be turned into energy, stuff we know even less about than matter!

It’s next to Aldershot.

And Camberley.

Both prime candidates too.

We are talking about the Hampshire Farnborough aren’t we?

We’re all here to search for knowledge.

Of course knowledge is infinite, so it’s effectively just one big hamster-wheel.

Besides, life is just the waiting room anyway, it’s what happens after when things get interesting.

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Are they?

Nope Uphill, no jest it really does take that long to break in! All commuting and utility (tarmac, towpaths) so not MTBing, not sure I’d cope with a leather saddle in proper off road. The Nidd is on my Tourer so it fits the bill perfectly.

I picked up a Brooks Flyer cheap a while back, now that is stupidly heavy, all the metal in the springs. It does look very good though. Form over function nevery time!

Been using a Nidd for the past seven months, probably around 3000 miles and it’s starting to break in now. As Ton said, it isn’t an easy break in period, the leather is thicker and more rigid than Brooks and not as comfortable.

Having said that, even though it was initially hard (and still is compared to my B17) it was still comfortable, the shape is identical to a B17 so if you choose one that’s got an analogous partner in the Brooks stable then you should be okay. Just be aware of the stupidly long break in period, and be prepared to hand it down to several next-of-kins: I’m confident the life span of the Nidd is going to be a lot longer than mine!

Nope, made redundant 18 months ago after zero pay rise for five years, got another job in the same organisation at a lower grade, zero pay rise for another 18 months. Taxes go up, goods go up, pay goes down.

but I’ve still got a job I ‘spose, silver lining etc….

but I do suggest some value should be placed on human life? No?

According to my (slightly rusty) memory, the Dept. for Transport economists calculated it as about £1.5million. Interestingly most of this was due to the distress of the victims family and friends, rather than the specific economic value of the remains of the victims life/emergency services costs.

Ah. Thanks Ian.

Its amazing how understanding many people seem to be on this thread in a typical SMIDSY situation. The driver clearly wasn’t paying attention.

Not that amazing really, most of us are drivers, most of us can empathise. Unfortunately most of us are also wrong and some even end up on juries that aquit drivers of SMIDSYs that result in KSIs.

Wasn’t the reason RTAs (Road Traffic Accidents) were renamed RTIs (Road Traffic Incidents) something to do with the no-fault=accident thing?

Either way, I doubt very many of the RTIs that happen are deliberate and calcualted so the earlier definition of accident should be sound…

The DfT do a National Traffic survey:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-travel-survey-statistics

Okay so it’s not going to be specific to Nottingham’s local road network, but it should give an idea as to likley proportions.

According to this website : http://www.poverty.org.uk/75/index.shtml

Cars are very democratic, it’s only at the margins where they cease to be so. Therefore if you’re not in the bottom 30% of the population by income (give or take) you’re fine. Lower than that you’re screwed as far as society (public services, retail, leisure, work etc…) is concerned.

But the top 70% are fine thanks! Democracy = the tyranny of the majority.

It’s the cheapest and easiest way to introduce nationwide Road User Charging. The sooner the better from my point of view.

As an aside, if they use it to get the 2 million+ untaxed, uninsured vehicles/drivers off the road that’d be good too.

I’ve had a Dahon Mu Uno for four years. Great bike, very happy with it. A bit flexy out of the saddle, but that’s the case with most folders, the rear coaster break is great fun for power slides too!.

Tried a Brommie, but found it a bit “noodly” and the small wheels didn’t like dodgy road surfaces very much. All the other folders I’ve tried have been cheap steel copies of the big makes are just too heavy and the poor quality hinges and components inspired zero confidence in them.

and the bike lane designer is brain-dead

Unfortunately the bike lane designer is very limited in what they can and can’t do as far as road design is concerned. These daft, dangerous and stupid facilities are the only option in most cases because of ridiculous rules dreamt up by the motor-lobby, sorry Dept. for Transport. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that a lot of those in charge of the roads wanted to see cyclists maimed and killed.

Interestingly the cyclists in that video would’ve been breaking the law if they had entered the ASL area on the (safer) right hand side of the lorry because they’d need to cross the first stop line. Legally you can only enter an ASL (when the red light is showing) via the dashed entry lane.

It’s the entire system that’s to blame, not the individual cyclists, not individual lorry drivers/motorists.

English Midlander living in the SE of England, France is nearer to me than Scotland, I know very little about the detail and don’t really consider it will affect me in the slightest. I don’t get the opportunity to vote and don’t really mind either way anyway.

Let the population who live there decide, like Gibraltar and the Falklands!

Under the new proposals, local people wouldn’t have a say on whether or not to accept nuclear waste. The decision could be made by their district council and Westminster bureaucrats

Hang on, if the decision is made by the District council, it’s likely they’re the Local Planning AUthoirty already. So they already make these decisions. How do they get their power? They get voted in by local people, so if you don’t like their decisions then don’t vote for them. Am I missing something here?

because they were ordered to destroy the enemy and lines must become blurred between what is fundamentally right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable

My understanding is that this is quite a widely recognised type of group psychology, it happens in conflicts (small and large scale) all over the world, has done for millenia and probably will do indefinitely. Interestingly the ability to overcome ones own morals when in a group situation (such as the violence of war) is far easier and quicker for men than women.

I think you’re right though, this is very different to the acts perpetrated without group involvement of the size required to maintain those levels of behaviour for a significant period. I.e. crimes in peace time such as this.

Sadex – It depends on their motivation I think, in some cases where chemical (or physical) castration has been carried out on serial rapists it didn’t stop them because it was more of a power-thing than a sex/lust-thing.

Having said that, the use of hormones to reduce/remove libido in sex offenders isn’t unheard of, not sure of the success rate though.

These things seem to be so complex and individual that there is rarely any single solution.

Politicians might like to argue that things are better now in the Middle East, but lets face it, hundreds of thousands have died needlessly (and every death in every war is probably needless) and if my family had been amongst them I can easily see why someone would find it hypocritical that Remembrance Sunday now seems to be more about military pomp and circumstance than about the simple job of remembering the fallen.

Yeah, I was watching the news yesterday, I think under five hundred British soldiers had been killed in Helmand since the start of the Afghan offensive. I wonder how many Civilians had been killed in the same time period?

What’s the “Islam will dominate Osama” bit all about? Something to do with moderate Islam overcoming the more dangerous extremists?

The idea that the character of Jesus’s mother was a virgin is the result of an early mistranslation from the greek.

Now that does surprise me. I’ve long been under the impression* that there are dozens of virgin birth stories, along with resurrection and messiah type stories that have been around since the history (and probably prehistory of humans).

Aren’t there quite strong parallels between the stories in the Bible and equivalent theistic/mythological stories in unrelated parts of the world (South Ameerica, Africa and the Far East)? What I’m saying is that these things crop up on a pretty regualar basis in humna cultures that are far removed from each other anyway so I’m surprised the Bible doesn’t follow a similar model to others.

* But I’m no Anthropological Theologist/Mythologist so make of that what you will.

And the OT is still wheeled out in a lot of church services, it’s not been shelved so still up for criticism shirley?

Yeah that’s true. I’ve still got a laptop that runs on Windows 3.1…

Like I said how about bible 2.0? Keep the good stuff, lose the silly and nasty stuff. I’m guessing the trouble is to edit out leviticus or to say gods word was wrong, or even just say “the bloke who wrote it must have been smoking a lot of crack so lets just ignore it”, well it undermines the religions based on it and a lot of the more fervent believers are going to get a bit stroppy.

Oh I don’t know, when the Chistians came along they basically wrote Bible 2.0 as the new testament (NT). If you compare the vengeful, angry god of the old testament wih the forgiving and self sacrificing (holy trinity assumptions of course) god of the NT it’s a pretty dramatic difference.

Just remembered that TV mini series “Second Coming” I think it was called, had Christopher Eccleston in it. The ending of that was that humanity needed to write it’s own third testament: Bible 3.0…

Religion = be nice or we wont let you play on a cloud – unless you say sorry, in which case do whatever you like and then we’ll let you off anyway… Once we’ve rid you of the nastiness you were born with naturally!

Apparently there are some relegious folk who believe in an all forgiving being who will let you play on a cloud even if you don’t say sorry and all the rest.

I used to know a vicar who believed in “Universal Reconciliation” who followed this line of thought. I think it involved quite a lot ot theological mental gymnastics but made some kind of sense at the time. This was way back when I was a Christian of sorts anyway, but that was a while ago and I can’t remember much about the philosophy of it all.

I’ve spent years promoting sustainable transport trying to get people to choose environmentally (locally and globally)friendly and socially/health aware options, I’ve cajoled, persuaded, influenced and argued and come to the conclusion that the primary factors in peoples choices are inertia and cash. If something is cheap enough and they’ve alwaays done it, they will stil do it. Make it more difficult and more expensive and they’ll start to think about other options, make it really expensive and even more difficult and a few will change…

The only way to persuade people to change their behaviour is by sticks, carrots don’t seem to work in my experience. Which is a shame really, because the stick approach is basically really difficult to implement over a population.

There’s probably quite a bit of psycholgical element to it all too. The short term thinking, the limited spatial awareness people have and the complete lack of appreciation that their actions have on others!

Not sure I’d press an off switch, as others have said it would leave too much of a trail of devasation behind with others lives. I do take comfort in suicide being the ultimate “get out clause” if it does get too much, but I doubt I’d ever actually go through with it.

One thing I often day dream about though is the possibility of rewriting history without me in it. A bit like “The Inquisitor” episode on Red Dwarf. Giving the millions of sperm/eggs the chance that I got.

All cars are completely unnecessary… …to me. I think the point is that “unnecessary” is a subjective judgement. Just because I think they are it doesn’t mean you have to as well.

I feel the same about Pink Floyd. No one else seems to agree with me though.