The Hall of Fire

Sorry to cut across, but the importance of Brexit cannot be overstated, and why Starmer has lost so badly in Hartlepool. Hartlepool is a leave constituency. It was solidly Labour, so Labour that it elected Peter Mandelson as its MP, even though he is on the extreme right of the Labour Party. A red r...

I don't understand UK politics, but I noticed that people in my timeline, including the TORCers, seem to be equally angry at both parties. Which makes a refreshing difference from the US politics, where the majority of voters only manage to be angry at one party. Very true! :D However, roll back a ...

At the time I'm writing this, the Conservatives have gained 173 council seats, Labour has lost 164, the Lib Dems have lost 28, the Greens have gained 50, UKIP has lost 2, and others have lost 89 ( link ). A disastrous result for Labour? My reading: Incumbents have done well worldwide during the COV...

Don't let the sun catch Labour crying? I think the term is "Sol", not "S*n" in Liverpool ;) (I didn't realize till now that Gerry Marsden had died earlier this year. R.I.P.) Gerry, Cilla, The Beatles; for a while, before the Beatles went stratospheric, they all, equally, represe...

I understand this is a parochial topic, but I wanted to highlight the election of Joanne Anderson as Mayor of Liverpool. She's black, scouse, and proud of it. Nothing special there? Well, Liverpool is 91% white. A black woman won the election. And a Chinese scouse male ran her a not too distant seco...

A Re-view of an old film, but I watched John Carpenter's "They Live" the other day, for the first time in over 30 years, and I was pleasantly reminded just how clever a film maker John Carpenter was. Most refreshing was how naturally "diverse" was the casting. There was no impres...

I believe a fundamental measure of how civilized is a country must be whether or not it has capital punishment. The taking of a human life is difficult to accept, but outside the category of self defence (and the parameters of that are debatable) there appears little justification for willfully endi...

It was a UK guy with a musket. Shooting blanks. There's probably a joke in there. Possibly his mother smells of elderberries. But was his father a hamster? Questions, questions that need answering! :cannotpass: Would that be a Syrian hamster or Russian hamster? And could either carry a coconut as a...

QP is one of those things that terrify me because when I think I'm starting to understand it I think I must be mad because there's no way I actually understand any of this so I am perpetually convinced I don't understand it at all even when I think I do which I obviously can't. I call it my Quantum...

Then I am near certain the musket was a statement regarding Waterloo and all that.
The English are... determined about history.

If your interest in Quantum Physics has been piqued, and you like Jim Al-Khalili's approach to the subject, this is an excellent introduction. It is the poetic window into another world.

That doesn't explain the musket! What can I say? The French have never recovered from the ineffectiveness of the Maginot Line. Realizing the last time they won a war was when Napoleon was Emperor, perhaps they are trusting in that age's weaponry... :P Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Napoleon...

A consequence of the UK leaving the EU. French fishermen are discovering the EU waters they have been fishing are not EU waters anymore. Their UK. The French fishermen, of course, protest at the new rules, and the UK polices its territory. Not quite the drama as presented by the Daily Telegraph, but...

Pleased you appreciated it, Alatar and Inanna. :) The act of observation affects reality. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" From the other end of the spectrum (pun intended), this is an experiment demonstrating a property of light that is ...

I am never sure where quantum mechanics belongs. It is counter-intuitive. It seems to belong to a different world with different laws of existence. It touches on the very idea of consciousness and reality. I hope nobody has already posted on this specifically, but here is a Royal Institution lecture...

Whistleblower #1 - Barry Jennings Barry Jennings is the only person to provide an eyewitness account of being trapped in the Salomon Building (WTC7) on September 11th. This account challenges NIST's assertions, while supporting the conclusions of Hulsey's research. The video is 25 minutes long. http...

I have no expectations of people. I have concluded that people are comfortable with lies, as long as the lies are consistent. I have no confidence people who have believed lies have any interest in discovering how they have been lied to. I think that explains why 70% of Republicans still believe Tru...

No, actually, it's more a comment on my suspicions regarding your motivations. And you didn't answer my question, BTW. It wasn't rhetorical. Why is this worth anyone's time and why did you take such a bass-ackwards approach to opening the topic in the first place? I'll answer your latter question f...

And why on earth should I spend my precious free time on that? This got talked to death >15 years ago. Get some new material. And to think I actually spent time doing a basic search on University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It's a real place. Not sure how they rep out for anything outside earth sciences,...

Yours is exactly the reaction that prompted my reference! Thank you. :) It seems an age ago, but I was engaged in discussion regarding how terminology affects our approach to subjects. You cite the (universally ridiculed) 9/11 "truther" movement. By couching the subject in those terms, you...