Verbal

In what way was Mandela a terrorist? Please explain rather than sticking a label on and hoping that's sufficient.

If you're starving you're also likely to be dying of thirst - and have no money to buy food or water. The essence of capitalism is that you're therefore dead. The amelioration of this is what social democratic ideals and institutions (not socialistic ones - the terms of this debate are off) are about.

I'm not really. The phrase "equality of opportunity" has lost its meaning - and its radical power. If you were to say that the principle needed in all cases to apply to the selection of, say, members of the Cabinet, what would have to change? For a start, the power of Eton, Westminster, Harrow, Winchester, Oxford and Cambridge to "pre-select" political leaders. It also means the inhibition of closed political "clubs", such as the Bullingdon, where qualifications for membership are restricted to the odious criterion of "breeding". It means altering the powerful, pervasive middle-class sense of entitlement (this one still amazes me whenever I hear it, which, in my present place of work, is often). And most of all, it means empowering those without power, without presumptively aspirational parents, without inherited wealth, without private education, in such a way that they have good reason, based on equitable social and educational systems, to believe that they too can rise to the top. To make the institutional and social changes needed to achieve this requires something close to, or maybe more than, a revolution. As an aspiration, at least, it's happened before, in 1776 and 1789. It was what the Enlightenment was in part about. And what, around the 1830s and 40s, was the last Great Idea of the Enlightenment? Socialism. Are you ready to come out as a socialist, Smirking?

Lesson one: how to contradict oneself within one and a half sentences.

Great article, depressing thread.

#whatabouteryfail

Good grief! An awful lot of physics has absolutely nothing to do with climate science. It's pretty amazing that this needs to be said to a supposed "scientist". The other thing I find really quite odd about your stance is that you proclaim your "beliefs" with a "100 percent" certainty. Actual peer-reviewed climate science is neither about beliefs (in that quasi-religious, unshakeable sense you imply) nor absolute certainties (surely a mark of a bad scientist - your PhDs must be rolling their eyes in horror). Much of climate science is probabilistic, or works with estimates of best- or worst-case scenarios to produce predictions. You on the other hand seem to demand, and to have discovered, the ersatz-science proof of perfect data. As your hopefully much better-informed PhDs will tell you, that's a mirage.

Seriously? So smart are you that in copying, pasting and dumping you've produced a forest of broken links. Funny that.

Is there a source for this improbable claim? Because I can find no evidence of anything remotely like it on this thread.

Aren't there infractions on here for heavy sarcasm?

Cows no longer farting will henceforward be known as the Viking Warrior Effect. Or Ontrolley for short.

You are wrong on both counts. I happen to have known one of the scientists who discovered the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica (and also much of the southern tip of South America). The late Joe Farmer of was one of three atmospheric scientists at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge whose experiments in 1985 proved that the ozone layer in the stratosphere was thinning and that this was due to the release of man-made chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons. He was no political campaigner but simply pointed out that by continuing to produce these chemicals, the thinning of the ozone layer would worsen - but also that by banning their production there was a good chance that the ozone layer would repair to some extent. The mid-eighties were simpler times - fortunately not plagued, as we are today, by the irrational conspiracy theorists who rant about a corrupt, craven scientific "hoax". And unlike today, CFCs were phased out internationally under an agreement reached in Montreal less than two years after Farmer's discovery. The hole is not fully repaired but the layer is thicker than it was. The problem today is that the manipulation and heavy promotion of denier opinion by petrochemical multinationals and their political allies (a provable, real conspiracy if ever there was one), as well as obstruction by some states, has prevented similarly effective measures being agreed internationally. I'd have another think about your "impressions". The ozone layer problem and partial solution are both a warning from recent history, and also a damning lesson for the profoundly corrupted denial movement.

Indeed. And like other conspiracy theorists he's nothing more than an internet troll with a narcissistic scumbag's disregard for the feelings of those who live closely with such tragedies. In addition to "theorising" about Kelly, he's also concluded that Robin Cook was murdered because - ta da! - "he was walking MOD land." However, this particular scumbag is also number two at the Home Office, imposed on Theresa May by Clegg's palpable lack of talent, or rational minds, in the LibDem ranks. This means we have the first conspiracy theorist to be in charge of the National Crime Agency, drug and alcohol policy and forensic science. So a loon, yes. But one with power. Such is the bottomless pit that is this coalition.

I'm not surprised. He was a lousy Tory MP.

Quite. The real problem for anyone trying to discover the "truth" about the Kennedy assassination is that he was shot by the archetypal conspiracy theorist. Lee Harvey Oswald was dreaming up conspiracy theories as he sat in his jail cell. "I was just a patsy" was, ironically, the sound of a starting pistol for all the other conspiracy theorists to pile in after him.

Nice petard-hoisting trousers.

This is not strictly true. He sued outside the statute of limitations and the case was dismissed, but he subsequently reached an out-of-court settlement with the author and publishers, which amounted to an admission that they were wrong. Of course, now he's dead, Hickey is once again open season for those such as the Channel 5 schlockmeisters.

Biscuits FFS.

I somehow doubt that ANY of this crossed Andy Kaufman's mind.

The Tories trying to delete the internet must have been watching that documentary, the IT Crowd, and got hold of Jen's internet box.

The persistence of the JFK conspiracy theories has much less to do with Oliver Stone's overheated, overlong and wildly implausible movie, and much more to do with a film that's only 26.6 seconds long, and shot in 8mm not 35mm. Without the Zapruder film, the JFK conspiracy theories would have died long ago. The amateurishly inventive frame-by-frame interrogation of the film over the years has given us such entertaining absurdities as the "umbrella man", firing a "flechette with pop-up wings".

You keep asking me this, but i have no idea what the mystery is. You said: I said that this statement meant you are an anti-Semitic buffoon - because only an anti-Semitic buffoon would believe this. In what sense do i owe you an "apology"? It's merely a statement of fact.

What on earth is "someone from a very ethnic background" "someone of the ethnic community" and a "non-white person"? You've sent five whole paragraphs avoiding the word "black". Why?

Thank you comrade. Your analysis is excellent - and rather surprising given your post history.

Route One just took on a new meaning, even for stoke.