Posts by Pompous Git 3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014
"Making up your own mind.Some of us have a distinct antipathy to Lysenkoism.Because that's how science works folks!"
Jerry was not only a great author, but he was one of the first bloggers though he hated the term and preferred the term DayNotes. Thus he was the first among the DayNotes Gang. As well despite our political differences, Jerry alerted me to the two dimensional nature of political thought: not just left/right, but also the orthogonal authoritarian/libertarian axis.
"Requiem æternam dona ei, DomineEt lux perpetua luceat ei:
Requiescat in pace."
"Elsewhere, you'll no doubt have spotted a reference to an "Aubergine". That's the French word that the Brits use instead of the English word "Eggplant"."
The original word is aubergine and as jake says, French. It was a variant of alberge which is a variety of peach. All aubergines used to be purple, but plant breeders being the breeders they are, bred a white variant. This latter was called an egg-plant to distinguish it from the purple aubergine.
"Hopefully these fine examples of the ongoing mutation of the English Language are clear as mud, and have enhanced your reading pleasure." © jake™
"Good that we don't need to worry about our radio signals."Can't say they ever worried me. I was rather delighted by the idea that the harbingers of humanity were the Cisco Kid, the Lone Ranger, Lucille Ball, Dr Who even. To discover that's not so is a bit disappointing... Poor aliens will never know what they've missed out on.
"Most people prefer to ignore all this but only a few hundreds of years ago the most brilliant scientists at that time were also considered to be heretics by rulers at that time."Instead of parroting 19th Century fiction, why don't you read some actual history? It's not only more accurate, it's also a lot more interesting.
James Hannam: God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
Phil Dowe: Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: The Interplay of Science, Reason, and Religion
Edward Grant: The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts
"It's quite clear that not even all the elReg commentariat perceive the world in the same way."Mithen's thesis is that much of what is accessible to the conscious mind in modern man was unavailable to the conscious mind of our early ancestors... The available evidence would appear to suggest that not all of us are equally blessed in this respect.
"The reason I make this point is that human tool making evolved very slowly for a very long time (in our terms) and then some event accelerated it, which may have been the drying out of the Middle East and population pressure."Not really. Human toolmaking remained static for long periods of time before step changes.
From 2.6 Mya to 1.76 Mya those tools were very primitive. Tools from the early part of this period are no different to those found at the end. Then a new tech developed and persisted until 400 Kya. From this point (Middle Stone Age) onward there was some gradual progress though there's also a step change from the Lower to the Upper Paeleolithic.
As to intelligence in stone age humans, Steven Mithen has written some fascinating books. He makes a case that our ancestors perceived the world in a way very different to ours.
"I recommend Col. James G Burton's book The Pentagon Wars as an insight into how things are arranged and managed in the procurement of weapons at the Pentagon."I usually recommend Fred Reed's Au Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet Nam as a primer on US military management.
"A list of 'Whatabouts' of does not change the fact the the US still has Rule Of Law, as Trump finds out to his cost, whereas Russia has rule of Putin regardless of law or constitution."Forget about Putin, you need to take off the blinkers. What "Rule of Law" sends soldiers to kill students on a university campus?
Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
Jeffrey Glenn Miller; age 20; 265 ft (81 m) shot through the mouth; killed instantly
Allison B. Krause; age 19; 343 ft (105 m) fatal left chest wound; died later that day
William Knox Schroeder; age 19; 382 ft (116 m) fatal chest wound; died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery
Sandra Lee Scheuer; age 20; 390 ft (120 m) fatal neck wound; died a few minutes later from loss of blood
Not one of those kids shot dead on May 4, 1970 were political activists, or engaged in any criminal activity. Walking from one class to another is pretty routine behaviour for students world-wide. The day that the USA started executing students while doing so was transforming for many of us.
Luckily they missed Chrissie Hynde.
"But that is just missing the point. Saudi Aramco is owned by the Saudi state and that is not a normal state either. I grant you both in a second.First, the USA doesn't appear among the top 10 oil producers on the planet. What makes Saudi Aramco, a company that typifies oil production, "abnormal"?....
Honest question. None of you are going to change my mind any more than I am going to change yours. Why do you still bother?"
You appear to be attempting to persuade us that you are a jingoist. Frankly, you persuaded us with your first couple of posts. Repeatedly telling us what a jingoist you are isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference. We might very well think additional things of you, but you aren't going to change our minds about your jingoism because you have succeeded.
The relevant question then isn't why do we bother, but why do you?
"Gazprom and Rosneft are targets of sanctions because they are not normal oil companies. They are part of the Russian state's (which is not separated from the interests of any particular group as it would be in a normal democracy)..."Actually it's "Big Oil" that are not "normal". Most of the world's oil and oil companies are government owned and controlled. You need to learn that when you're in a hole you should stop digging...
"My antivirus is "not clicking on random things I don't understand". Served me perfectly well since the 80's,"What a truly excellent idea that is and well worth more than a single upvote. Worked well for me for the best part of two decades. Except there's more than just virus around these days so, being a belt and braces man, I've always had anti-malware protection as well.
Then the other day I really, really needed to run a dubious exe file. So, I dutifully ran it by Vipre and received the nod to run it. Big Mistake! It installed 26 different applications and a huge number of other nasties. Spent most of yesterday disinfesting the machine.
Malware Bytes was a great help. Vipre have most definitely lost a customer, but then that was the case when they started bad-mouthing Kaspersky. Put the idea in my head that they just might be doing what they accuse Kaspersky of.
"I have one literally next door. I haven't been able to buy anything I needed from them in several years."That's nothing! MS are on the Interwebs which is as good as next door. Haven't been able to buy anything I needed from them in several years either. Not that I'd want o give them any money since the GWX fiasco.
"Who says you can't use all the energy of a galaxy?"Frank Tipler says you can and has been doing so for many years:
There Are No Limits To The Open Society
From The Critical Rationalist, a short-lived peer-reviewed journal archived at The Karl Popper Web.
"Our planet doesn't need saving... it i'll be just fine without us..."As George Carlin so wittily pointed out:
"Class III: The planet has a light atmosphere, and exhibits some biological activity. But it has little effect on the planet. "Obviously never heard of
The Great Oxygenation Event (Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation) ~ 2 billion years ago.
"Incidentally the ones that live near me have bright orange eyes and elongated stripey bodies like miniature wasps, and look nothing like the El Reg picture "The Genus Drosophila contains ~1,500 species with considerable variation in appearance. The fly illustrated is D. melanogaster beloved of genetics researchers everywhere.
In a word: glue. The flies are glued to tiny magnetic pins that are held in place with a magnetic field. It's a hard, but mercifully short life when you're a fruit-fly.
A Magnetic Tether System to Investigate Visual and Olfactory Mediated Flight Control in Drosophila
"I think they are more interested in watching the neighbors and who's driving up and down their street. Seems many older folks spend a lot of time doing that. I'm thinking it's like watching a live soap opera. or something."Speaking as an old fart, it's more a matter of thinking to yourself as you watch: "Look at those poor fuckers having to go to work..."
Hello Lars, have an upvote for giving me the chance to make yet another foolish comment :-)
Well it's been a long, dry, cold winter. Now it's wet, cold and snowing. Usually we have much warmer weather at this time and the Welcome Swallows would have arrived. Instead we have Currawongs (large crows) visiting from the highlands and making a mess of things when they're bored. We usually don't see them after July.
"Who really fricken cares? If you want to play grammar police, or show off your self-centered egotistical knowledge on something you just googled, please do it somewhere else."Take a look in the mirror of your bathroom cabinet. Open the door and take the pills the doctor prescribed. You apparently forgot to take them...
@ handleoclast
Mostly agree except that Australia adopted -ise rather than the Merkin -ize or the Brits' mix of -ise and -ize. So, I tend to use the Macquarie Dictionary for spelling and the OED for meaning. I don't think the compilers of the Macquarie were trying to dumb down our language; they were more concerned about consistency. And including some interesting vernacular such as "cold as a nun's cunt".
People have a tendency to think of English as singular whereas there are several Englishes: British, American, Australian, Indian and so forth. Hence my concurring that shined is as legitimate as shone, albeit archaic in British English.
"the U.S was condemned them for invading a sovereign country. Ignoring the fact we have done it with Iraq and Afghanistan."And the rest!
1950 North Korea
1961 Cuba
1965 Dominican Republic
1983 Grenada
1989 Panama
1994 Haiti
Every ten* years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.
- Michael Ledeen, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute
* More like 8 years!
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