Posts by Rich 11 4578 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jul 2009
Do you actually believe that some people believe in superheroes the same way that some people believe in Jesus? I'd think that someone who'd studied the psychology of religion would have a better grasp of what the word belief means.
Maybe your confusion explains why you agree with Chesterton's claim, seeing it even in your own educated self.
in Catholic doctrine all the souls of the dead are in Heaven, Hell or Purgatory
What about Limbo? The Church had to invent this to cover a gap in their theology, and GK Chesterton was certainly speaking in the time before Limbo became a rejected hypothesis more in line with a modern interpretation of theology.
he pointed out, very correctly in my view, that the problem with unbelief is that when people drop their religion they do not stop believing in anything, they start believing in everything
Please tell me what equivalent nonsense I started believing in once I got rid of my god belief. Yes, you will get some people who will pick up beliefs in nonsense after leaving religion, but equally you have people in a religion who will also believe in that same nonsense (jade fanny eggs, ghosts or otherwise). Chesterton was an apologist attempting to blacken unbelievers with this remark; it makes no logical sense and I tend to think that the people who think it's an accurate observation have usually either not given it any actual thought or have their mind clouded by their religious position.
Russia has now over 102 years of experience
By giving such an exact figure it's clear that you're thinking about the Russian Revolution as being some sort of turning point, but it wasn't. You can go back much further than the rise of Communism. The tsars also imposed political censorship, from at least Peter the Great's time, while in the centuries before that censorship was primarily a tool of religious orthodoxy.
The same can be said for China under the warlords and the emperors. Censorship has been going on far, far longer than the days since the Long March.
the obvious solution would be to say that this rule takes effect a year or two after the UK has actually left the EU.
Welcome to the political shenanigans over Deal / No Deal Brexit. There's a reason it's not going well, and claiming something is obvious doesn't come into it. It's a little more complicated than that.
that suggests there is a limit to how far gravity can impact something
No, gravity's range is infinite. The effect is just incredibly weak at great distances.
gravity, if it travels either loses most of its strength in that distance, or travels a lot slower than the speed of light.
The first item. Definitely the first. Have you heard of the inverse-square law?
I've had them call me up and say that by law I must have a smart meter installed before [whatever the date is]. I politely remind them that the government put the onus on the electricity companies to provide all their customers with a smart meter by [whatever that damn date is], and that I'm not obliged to accept one. *crickets*
Next time, though, I must make a note of that damn date because it's really bugging me that I can't remember it now!
"The reliability of our election system and the sanctity of every vote is something we should never have to question," said Stuart.
Then why the hell do you keep using such bizarre methods of casting votes, so many of them with known problems? Is the country so divided that no-one trusts anyone to tally ballot papers by hand?
because I'd downed about 15 pints and still felt fine.
I did that just before the Grand Prix in Macau in 1995. The reason I still felt fine was because I was used to stronger English beer and at the end of the night I still retained enough good sense to drink a pint of water before falling somewhere in the approximate direction of bed.
About two years after I first started work I found myself in the unenviable position of having to apply for a bank loan. The assistant manager who interviewed me (some of you will remember those halcyon days when High Street banks didn't take risks) asked me my job title, to which I replied "Computer programmer". After searching through all the options on her form at least twice, she asked, "Can I put you down as 'Mathematician (semi-professional)'?" I said yes, and indeed saw it as something of a compliment.
Ron was gainfully employed performing IT functions for the equities business of an investment bank back in the early noughties. "It was," said our reader, "when Risk was still just a board game."
I can remember playing Risk on a Mac SE in about 1990 or 1991. The computer player wasn't very good.
(OK, I probably haven't interpreted that the way it was meant.)
Couldn't agree more. I'm happy to wait for the computers to catch up too.
a 93-mile wide space rock
Please, when you convert measurements between systems don't state a precision which didn't previously exist. I bet the paper said something like 'estimated to be 150km wide' and some journo somewhere (probably not even Katyanna) stuck this into Google and blindly copied 93 rather than the more sensible 90.
Anyway, I'd say some proper experimntation needed and don't just write this off.
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