I'll concede that you may be right about the public transport thing. Here's photographic evidence of the Kraken venting his fury just after failing to board the 9:30 to Boston, tentacles flailing everywhere. Absolute nightmare.



... But if, as an alternative, he's decided to surf the watery sky highways, doesn't that make him one of the bad guys? Is he being paid off by Big Plane*?







*_{It looks small in the photo, but that's because it's far away.}

The problem for Norrie is that he's due to meet Djokovic in the quarters. Whereas for Hurkacz, with Tsitsipas out of the tournament, he has an easy route through to the semis.
I think Hurkacz has to be a strong favourite to finish the race with more points than Norrie.

Engineering is a form of applied science. This is why it is vital that engineers understand the laws of physics, and particularly the laws of Newtonian mechanics. You can't be an engineer without understanding how forces work.

In general, theory comes before application. Science comes before engineering. It's not the other way around, as you believe. Engineers don't just magically build stuff that works, and then invite scientists to have a look to work out how they did it. This is why, for example, no-one built a Tesla car in medieval times. Engineering is based on science.



Scientific theories are falsifiable, yes, that's a fundamental strength that sets it apart from, say, religion. If the theory doesn't work in practice, that simply adds to our understanding, and helps scientists to devise new, better theories. If it does work, then it is reproducible, and anyone with sufficient expertise can verify this.

That's what they want you to think. Let me tell you, I used to have this smoke detector, and one battery wasn't enough, for some reason it "needed" two. And then one of the batteries got old and I had to get a booster third one. So I don't think it's Big Phire who are running this scam, it smells very strongly* of Big Battery to me.





*_{A heady zinc/manganese aroma, with notes of potassium.}

I think I finally have the answer. If this aquatic behemoth is using the railway network to rise from his briny lair to wreak his vengeance, that really narrows it down. There aren't many underwater trains in the world.
It seems probable (but correct me if I'm wrong) that he's using the Seikan line in Japan, which runs between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido.
Which of course reveals the answer... Underwater beast? Green and scaly? Lives off the coast of Japan?
It's a simple case of mistaken identity. This isn't the Kraken at all, is it? You've been thinking of Godzilla the whole time.
I can't believe we've had over 200 posts of what appeared to be sensible debate in this thread, but now it's turned out to all be nonsense.


https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/seikan-tunnel/

I think Norrie's chance of making the ATP Finals has gone now. Paris Masters is the last big tournament, and even if he keeps winning, he still has to face Djokovic in the quarters. Losing in the quarters would get him 180 ranking points... he'd need both Sinner and Hurkacz to lose in the last 16 (which seems highly unlikely) to give him a chance... and even then he'd only claw back 90 points on them, Sinner would still be ahead.

It's partly the rules of the society as defined by the people in charge. A good example of this might be right and wrong as defined by a religion (religions simply being mechanisms of social control). Something might be 'right' simply because it is more conducive to harmony in a society comprising many individuals, or it might be deliberate behaviour-modification with the establishment of negative consequences for those who transgress.

Really it's a complex subject with no single clear answer. You can go back much further, and consider a default right and wrong as being partly something innate, distilled over millions of years... we might consider evolutionary selection pressures in favour of reciprocal altruism as an example in this case.

And on top of this, there is undirected drift, through changes in culture, homosexuality as an example again here, which in many societies is considered very differently by younger people today than it was even 20 or 30 years ago.

The word 'partly' is key here. There's no single answer.

This thread might benefit from input from some other people, too.

I think his only aim is to get back to the very top and challenge for slams again. I can't see that aiming for anything else would make sense. How could a player with Murray's history and pedigree possibly get motivated if he knows he'll never break back into say the top 50, let alone the top 4, where he used to belong?

It may be that once he accepts he won't regain his previous level, he'll consider retiring.

The only other alternative really is that he simply loves tennis, and loves playing, and the result is a secondary concern - but I can't see that this is the case.

Yes, I was looking for data on the relationship between mortality and transmissibility of viruses a while ago, when the first CV-19 variants started to take hold. Certainly a coronavirus such as MERS is much more deadly but much less transmissible. I suppose another factor is the speed of mortality... if a virus is extremely deadly but slow-acting, so you're infectious for a long time before finally succumbing, then there's no pressure on the virus to reduce mortality as it mutates. But I'm by no means an expert, just another armchair virologist.

It's very difficult to bet successfully on Murray matches. Of course he has the talent to beat almost anyone out there, but his physical side is not the same after his injury and surgery, and as you say, the longer a match goes on, the more of an effect it has. And even if he wins a long match, there's a good chance he'll lose the next one regardless of opponent, just because he can't play a lot of matches in quick succession any more. It must be really frustrating for him, he just can't return to his previous level of winning slams and even (briefly) being world number one.



I think so, yes.

The data are perfectly clear. You just need to look at anything with a time axis, for example, this from the ONS:


https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19/latestinsights


Co-morbidities are just that. Someone with a chronic lung condition who contracts Covid is more likely to die than if they didn't have the lung condition. But this dispute over reason for death is silly, and is easily debunked by simply considering data on excess deaths, from any reason.



Variants arise naturally due to copying errors. The more of a virus is in circulation, the more variants arise. Vaccination reduces the number of variants. This is not complicated. Vaccines of course exert some selection pressure, but this is insignificant... and if you are saying that vaccines create selection pressure, you are also saying that they are effective at preventing infection, you can't have one without the other. Also, which variants are you worried about? Delta is the dominant one... this originated in India in 2020, prior to any vaccines being available.


Fine, show the data.

I'll concede that it's an easy catch-all term that covers a variety of different viewpoints. I'm not suggesting that your views are the same as, for example, BADecker's.
But regarding the Covid vaccines that are in use today (Pfizer, AZ, Moderna, etc), it is certainly not true that they are untested. They were developed quickly, yes, a sense of urgency is understandable... but they have each been through the normal full testing process, as documented and published.


Yes, of course.


Why not? You've conceded that a vaccine is a preventative. It prevents people from catching Covid (or mitigates the symptoms if they do). There's no better solution to a pandemic. The only other option is to let everyone catch it, which is not a great idea with a virus that kills people.


Why not? Polio used to be endemic until it wasn't... because of vaccination.
Certainly people who currently have Covid shouldn't take the vaccine, but that's a separate issue... and is one of the screening questions at the vaccination appointment anyway.


Are you suggesting that people who have had the vaccine are more likely to die from any unrelated reason, than those who haven't? I don't know if this is the case or not, but if it were, it wouldn't be surprising given that the vaccine was administered in descending order of age and frailty. The vaccination rate in a nursing home will be higher than that in a primary school. Booster jabs are currently being administered solely to the over 50s and the clinically vulnerable.


^{[CITATION NEEDED]}
This is not supported by the data, which I have shared many times. If you have the numbers, then please present them.

Merited purely for the vivid descriptions.  

It's not entirely individual, no. I think I started by saying there is a 'default' right and wrong which is whatever is defined that way by the conventions of the society. A personal right and wrong may differ from the default. There is huge pressure to conform, so in many instances the personal ideas of right and wrong may be suppressed in favour of going along with the crowd view in order to fit in.
We could consider homosexuality as an example. Over the course of the last fifty years, in many societies, the default (and legal) definition has migrated from being 'wrong' to 'right'. And obviously many people have suppressed their homosexuality, which they believe to be 'right', because society in general, or their peer group specifically, believed (or still believe) it to be 'wrong'.

Tyranny is when a couple of anti-vaxxer zealot politicians expect everyone else to bow to their demands. Vaccination is a public health issue, not a freedom issue. But at least you've not tried to compare it to the Holocaust this time, so that's something.

Gyfts is correct, that the burden of proof lies with the theists. The reason for this is that the default, status quo position has to be that God doesn't exist. If you consider the world around you, you see buildings, trees, sky, animals, but no God. You may posit that because you don't understand how the world came to exist, some higher power must have created it... but this idea, in the absence of evidence, is merely that: an idea. And the burden of proof lies especially heavy when the idea is one that, by its nature, can be proven but can never be disproven.

Atheists are not making a claim. Rather, they are saying to the theists: your claim has no supporting evidence. This is apparent in the word itself: a-theism is a response to the theist position.




This is a separate issue, and doesn't relate to the question of the burden of proof other than through Russell's Teapot ("the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others").

It may be boring, but I'd back Mercedes to come up with the best design, they've been a long way ahead of the rest for the current era.

They are struggling a bit this year, but that's an anomaly that's been forced on them really, with the way the new rules affect high/low rake cars differently, and with a full rebuild being impossible for the current season, it's hit Mercedes and Pink Mercedes harder than others.

People do it all the time; you only have to look at some of the anti-vaxxer threads on here to see people starting from an emotion-derived conclusion and then attempting to prop it up with logic. But it's not just them, of course, I'm sure we all do this sometimes, to some extent.



There's no single answer, because the root cause will differ from person to person. You'd have to unpack someone's whole identity to understand why they feel a certain way about something.

If this happens, then perhaps not. And if, because of this, the chance of infection amongst vaccinated people is actually lower than believed, then it strengthens the case for vaccination.




The other issue with this is that Peter would likely be quite displeased at Alice's relationship with Bob, given her past history.
I'm not consciously migrating our discussion to a different thread with each post I make; it's just how it's working out.

I'd imagine the amount is zero or very low, as qAnon already look like stupid extremists, and don't need any help. But it would certainly be a sound strategy in general, yes. Not thinking so much about the US, but in countries where there are more than two parties who can win votes, the best way to get say a left-wing party into power would be to create a new right-wing party to split the right-wing vote, and vice versa.



I don't think so. Past experience leads me to believe that many anti-vaxxers would not understand the concept of a metaphor, so the effort would largely be wasted.



I find their arguments to be solid, and intellectually compelling. For example, fire departments are certainly socialist.
Apologies, that's not sufficiently dramatic, it should be: SOCIALIST!!!