Chelsea are very good, but they were playing a poor team. The Newcastle situation is weird, obviously with the new owners there is huge expectation and anticipation, they want trophies and Champions League football, but at the same time this is one of the worst teams in the division, with every chance of getting relegated, the way things are going. They will need some astute purchases in the January window in order to achieve the primary aim, which has to be remaining in the premier league.

Neither Perez nor Bottas has been great. If you have a situation like this season where two teams are quite evenly matched and fighting for the title, it's absolutely crucial that the second driver steps up. Look at the last race, Red Bull had the advantage because Bottas was further down the grid and once the race started, Perez was able to stay near the front two, which gave Red Bull the crucial tactical edge at the pits stops. This is what the second driver should be doing every race. If it's a Merc track, then Bottas should be up there so that they can control Verstappen; if it's a Red Bull track then Perez should do the same to control Hamilton. If it's a neutral track, both Bottas and Perez should be in the mix, giving their team-mate whatever advantage they can.

I think the underlying cause is that wherever you have a group of people interacting with each other (even when this is only two people), you have a situation where each participant in the interaction wants different things. The outcomes that you as an individual want are 'right', and those you don't want are 'wrong'. Your own 'right' and 'wrong' will differ from other people's 'right' and 'wrong'.

In this situation, for Alice, the idea of Frank being with Marry is 'wrong'. It doesn't really matter what in her mind the 'right' outcome is, whether she would like to be with Peter but also stay with Frank at the same time, or whether she doesn't want anyone to be with Frank, or whether she just doesn't want her friend to be with him. It's enough for Alice that Frank being with Marry is 'wrong'. She has not reached this definition of 'wrong' through any logical reasoning, it's simply an emotional position. What she then does is to try to seek any reason she can find that might support this conclusion. She then decides that Marry's action is not compatible with the rules of friendship... because this is a reason that supports her desired conclusion, that Marry+Frank=wrong. Alice's reasoning is superficial and inauthentic. Her 'reason' for Marry's action being bad is not a reason at all, it's simply a mental prop to support a pre-established conclusion. It happens all the time. Consider for example the painful logical contortions that creationists will go through in order to deny the truth of evolution through natural selection.

It just makes me depressed that some people are willing to throw their lives away like this. The worst ones are those who have a deathbed conversion and realise they should have taken the vaccine, but by then of course it is invariably too late. I posted some links a few months ago to stories of anti-vaxxer radio hosts who died from Covid, regretted their decision to not take the vaccine, and regretted that they might have caused others to die by spreading the anti-vaxxer nonsense. I don't really feel any schadenfreude, just sadness.

I think she needs time. Remember she actually won the US Open before she even won a single regular WTA tour match (slams are ITF, not WTA), which is just crazy. She is completely new to the whole thing, and hasn't had the learning curve that other players have had. She's gone from nothing to suddenly being expected to win every match she plays. I can't imagine what the psychological impact of all this is. She probably needs at least a full season before we can start to get an idea of what she can achieve. At the moment there is a lot of raw talent, but also inexperience.

Yes, there is often a bounce-back effect where a good team gets a good result straight after a terrible result. It's difficult to say really whether this is a one-off, or the start of a return to form for Man U. So much of football is about confidence, which is created by winning. This will certainly restore some self-belief at United, but whether that is enough to compensate for the structural weaknesses of the team in the short-term is difficult to say. In the long-term it's clearer: their issues remain.

There's no objective right or wrong here (at least initially), there is just social convention, which we might call the 'default' right and wrong, and then the personal right and wrong as defined by each individual, and the conventions of each relationship Alice/Frank, Alice/Marry, Frank/Marry etc, as agreed (whether implicitly or not) by the two participants in each individual relationship.
Social convention generally is that Alice is wrong, but Marry's actions are fine. Individual right and wrong vary by individual, but it is often the case that people are selfish and want everything their own way... and they then use this feeling to attempt to redefine right and wrong. Stupid and insincere, but happens all the time... and most of us are susceptible to this to at least some extent.

Simply in this situation I would suspect that Alice just doesn't like Marry being with Frank, and is attempting to redefine what right and wrong mean in order to justify her position... in which case Alice is objectively wrong, because she is changing the terms to suit her preference. Everything else is subjective.

No, that's definitely not the case, and is covered in the FAQs:

That's only if you attempt to use it as a 5G mast.

That's an important website, thanks for the link. But I do have a problem with it... Bananas are radioactive death sticks, and that site doesn't mention it at all. They are covering for Big Fruit and are probably funded by them.

The only reason I still like the site despite the banana thing is because they are quite plain talking. I was worried it was all some complex bewildering vaxxer message, but the FAQs clear that up, it's not pro-vax at all.

Now that she has steadied herself in the tournament, she's a good bet, yes. I think if she wins her next match, the one after is against her childhood hero Halep... it may be possible that psychological anticipation of that match might destabilise her a bit, but actually I think this is unlikely as she seems a very grounded person.

It was one of those Weir matches where the losing player had several match points and could easily have won. I suppose what we take away is that these two are very evenly matched. Perhaps Norrie had some extra pressure because he knew that with Hurkacz losing, this was his big chance to gain ranking points... maybe that made the difference on those match points.

Clearly untrue. Even if for some inexplicable reason you think COVID-19 isn't deadly, are you really saying that if for example you contract MERS, you are guaranteed to survive?

Also what relevance does the 1930s have? We've lived with coronaviruses for thousands of years, probably millions, before we were even modern humans. It's not like they suddenly burst into being when FDR brought in the New Deal, or when Hitler invaded Poland.

Well, Murray lost against a player he beat not long ago. There is an increasingly clear pattern in his matches, he can beat almost anyone in the first round, but after he wins a tough match he will struggle in the next round. I think it's clear which way to bet on him, in which circumstances.

Yes, of course. An early defeat for Hurkacz is the ideal situation for Norrie, as they are fighting each other for the last spot in the ATP Finals. I think Sinner has come back into contention too, but really it's between these three. FAA is too far back, and doesn't have time to make up the points difference.

Yes, you are perfectly correct. There is a huge gulf between Russian communism and European-style democratic socialism (which after all exists in a capitalist framework). This should be perfectly obvious to everyone, and yet it's not. Any new policy idea — particularly in the US — that is even vaguely left-of-centre is immediately decried by those in power and their acolytes as communist. The strategy is simplistic and moronic, but it gets stupid people riled up, which is of course the intention. See for example the hysteria over something as inoffensive as ObamaCare.

The part he struggles most with is playing a lot of games in quick succession. As we move into each new round, it gets harder for him to maintain his top level. Alcaraz next, whom he's beaten recently, but this time it comes on the back of a gruelling match in the previous round. I want Murray to win, but it gets tougher for him.

Also on the women's side, nice to see Emma Raducanu winning last night... unbelievably this is actually her first ever victory at a WTA match (because US Open along with other slams is technically an ITF tournament).

My background is in physics. I value results obtained through documented, logical and reproducible scientific experimentation... which after all is the basis of the modern world. Fantastical storytelling from thousands of years ago, which has been filtered through countless generations, and which lacks even the slightest scrap of evidence is, to me, somewhat less reliable.




Carbon dating is extremely accurate, and is corroborated by results obtained from other methods, for example counting tree rings, which is proven to be consistent with carbon dating, back to I think around 8,000 years so far. But if we are talking about the age of the Earth, then the radiometric dating method would of course not use carbon. Radioactive decay is a known and well-understood process.

As crypto gets bigger, it's inevitable that governments and financial companies take an interest. It may be quite a simplification, but if it's a binary choice between crypto being accepted or banned, then I'd go for accepted. The famous Lyndon B Johnson quote on J Edgar Hoover springs to mind: "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

Thanks, yes, I understand what you mean now, and agree completely. There are always people who will try to make money out of anything, no matter the situation, there are plenty of people who see human suffering not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity.

You are assuming that everyone has a fair chance in life, which is certainly not the case. Would Trump, for example, have become president if he had been born into a poor family?

The government in my country is concerned more about money than about people. I'd imagine it's the same in many countries. They don't mind if people die, so long as it is not too many, which might cause them problems in the next election. They will do whatever they can to keep economic disruption to a minimum. The vaccination programme has meant that on average a person who contracts Covid now has a much higher chance of only mild symptoms, a much lower chance of death, than they had early last year.  So lockdowns and restrictions are lighter now, and total cases are higher, but deaths have not increased.