Dafydd Llewellyn

Good post - however, just a side note: If you visit Napoleon Bonapart's tomb, which is in the Ecole Militaire chapel, in Paris, there is an interesting list of his achievements; they were by no means all bad - for example, he established the Bureau Veritas (the first public quality assurance bureau) - which had real teeth; and as a result, as I found in 1978, you cannot purchase a piece of steel there that does not come with a certified quality document. I doubt anybody could market something like those Falcon altimeters there without being prosecuted (in Napoleon's day, sent to the guillotine, I assume). He actually did a great deal of good, before he came second to Wellington at Waterloo.

Ha! That explains why I keep having to get stronger glasses, then! God bless the man!

I could not agree more. But have you heard the latest? The Abbott Government has just made it mandatory for all schools to have a trained chaplain on their staff! Do you want your kids to get the Hellfire & Damnation treatment? What are YOU going to DO about it? I managed to protect my kids from it, but I'm concerned - and legally powerless - to protect my grandson - tho fortunately my sons are quite clear headed and articulate on the subject. I suspect it's contrary to the Australian constitution.

Of course the speed of light varies according to what it's passing through - that's the fundamental principle of refraction. Your glasses, your camera lens, the reason you need to wear goggles to see under water, rainbows, etc. Scientific dogma, horse ****.

QUOTE: Ooooh.... question atheist doctrine or the high priest Darwin and you get a strong reaction! This is not a scientific, inquiring mind but a closed mind folks. No; I'm just tired of the whole stupid debate. That's what I say to religious hawkers, too, when they turn up at our place. I object to "atheism" being classed as a "faith" on logical grounds. Apart from that, and the entertainment provided by FT, I'm very much of the view of Voltaire's Candide; the universe can look after itself.

This is an extension of the "intelligent design" argument; it started with eyes, and flying. Attenborough elegantly dealt with them. So now it's getting a bit more subtle. Still crap, however it's wrapped. I suppose this will continue to entertain people indefinitely. It does not entertain me. Your argument is destroyed, in my eyes, by your use of the term "Darwinism", which indicates that you regard that as another form of faith. We are still learning about evolution - for which there is a vast amount of evidence, gaps or no; however there is NO such evidence to support religious doctrine - only doctrine, which changes continuously to de-emphasize the more unpalatable parts of it. Take your damn dogma and go somewhere else. Somebody once asked David Attenborough whether he believed in God. He pointed to a young African child, and said (as best I recall it) " That child is losing his sight because of a parasitic worm that is destroying his optic nerve. I think that a God that allows that sort of thing to happen is not worth believing in." I agree with him.

Darwin's so -call evolution theory (which he never claimed) has now been disproven by newer research, and man's history has been pushed back from about 6000 years to about 30,000 years and more recently 200,000 to 300,000 years. I take it, then, that you have David Attenborough on your "ignore" list? This thread is certainly supplying some interesting information . . .

Actually, testing Don's hypothesis. I rather think it's been sufficiently peer group tested to qualify as a theory . . .

Yes, you have only to watch the crowd at an airshow when a Spitfire turns up to see that. Every other aeroplane on the field looks like a heap of dog meat, all of a sudden. But the ME 109 was far, far more practical to produce and maintain than the Spitfire. It almost caused a riot in the corridors of power in 1939 or so, when it came to light that changing an engine on a 109 took 12 minutes.

I have the complete technical history of the Spitfire. It's a very large book and extremely interesting, and the simple truth is that there is no simple truth as to which was the "better" aircraft; they each had different strengths and weaknesses, and the advantage was more in how they were used. The advantage depended on the combat altitude, and shifted from model to model, and the spitfire went up to Mk 24 (Seafire to Mk 47); the Me 109 went from 109A to 109G, but there were field modification kits that added many minor variations within that series, plus add-ons such as GM-1, so broad-brush comparisons are really meaningless.

That's assuming there is actually anything to know. From an atheist's viewpoint, there isn't. I agree, close the thread.

Yes, Don - that's in post #21 on this thread . . . and it about sums it up, I think.

Mediocrity is always amongst us. And those who are still in the process of breaking out of their childhood trauma may need some support. But I question a human need for communal "worship"; one of the by-products of religion is that it seeks to prevent its followers from ever growing up. If you truly accept responsibility for your own actions, you don't need to worship anyone or anything.

Yes, well you've put your finger right on the core of the raison d'etre of religion - traumatisation of children when they are too young to recognise the fallacy of what they are being taught. That is the trauma that results in PTSS, in adults. Look it up. I was fortunate to have parents who did not expose me to that form of trauma as a child. When you see it for what it really is, that treatment of children is a hideous crime. Religious education, my foot. There is some evidence that some of the forms of treatment for hypertension - the ones that are essentially tranquillisers - can break the vicious circle set up by religious trauma. Those people need medical treatment.

Not sure what you are trying to say; atheism is a state of mind, not a religion. Do atheists have a church where they assemble to NOT believe in God? Don't be bloody silly! I do NOT want freedom of religion; I want freedom FROM religion. Religion has been the greatest single cause of misery on this Planet. It's arguably a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome; i.e. it's a disease.

NO! NO! NO! Don't make that mistake! Being an atheist (that's from the greek: it means, "not a theist" ) is by definition NOT a faith; in fact it's an absence of faith. Faith is belief without proof. An atheist does not accept doctrine - i.e. he does not believe in belief without proof. Take your damn dogma and go somewhere else, is the general attitude of Atheists. Atheism is NOT a belief that there is no such thing as a God; an Atheist does not bother believing in an unprovable negative. If a God bothers to prove his reality, your average atheist would acknowledge that - but he's not going to do so because some fanatic tells him to do so OR ELSE. . .

Somebody's published a dictionary of Gods; it names about 1400 of them, from various religions. Quite a few are obviously the same, but with different names according to the religion. It's not that I don't believe in them, so much as I don't believe they live up to their advertising . . .

See http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/fear-ebola-outbreak-make-nation-turn-science

I suggest you read "Parkisnson's Law" - the chapter on how to select a Prime Minister . . . "Boards of Selection" I think is the title of the chapter.

I assume you know the definition of an agnostic dyslectic insomniac? (Person who lays awake at night, wondering if there really is a Dog . . .)

There's a lot of concern on the Darling Downs about CSG drilling; it evidently destroys the artesian aquifer, and the Downs is Australia's richest agricultural area, relying on artesian water.

Why not, indeed. But trying to bludgeon it into existence by legislation is not the way. CO2 is a fertilizer, by the way; plants structures are built from it. I would imagine that it would make considerable sense to use some of the CO2 emitted by power stations to promote the growth of food crops in intensive (greenhouse) cultivation. I've no idea of the acreage involved; but it's a pertinent question I think - makes more sense than CO2 sequestration.

OR - the multi-nationals who control those thing will simply walk away from Australia. I focus on your technical inaccuracies because your fundamental tenet is that the laws of physics can be coerced. Motor vehicles were as crude as the manufacturers could get away with, at the time you describe. So there was plenty of scope for the Government to get tough. But before you assume that ploy can be applied to power generation, at least get some understanding of the basic physics involved. I'm by no means an advocate of coal-burning to produce electrical power - but at least I have some notion of how massive a problem it is to get away from it. You cannot take a power station such as Bayswater, and set an arbitrary requirement on the % improvement in its efficiency - because that's what governs the amount of CO2 it produces - per year. The efficiency of such a plant it what is designed into it. You can scrap a truck - what, every fifteen years? A major power station is costed over more like 75 years. I have no doubt that the Japanese companies that contracted to build Bayswater will have a cast-iron contract; if the Government were to make an unrealistic demand, they'd close it down and call in their lawyers. So your argument is nonsensical. The government can call for competetive tenders for any new power stations, and if they have the technical nous - which I strongly doubt - they could insert appropriate clauses in the Request for Tender. So we're looking at long-term in any change from coal-fired steam plant - and I don't think we have any politicians who are capable of thinking past the next election. So please stop talking utter crap.

No, it's NOT equivalent at all. The black smoke from a diesel is incomplete combustion; fixing it improves the overall efficiency. You fix it be either increasing the engine capacity about 15%, so it does not have to run above the smoke limit; or by turbocharging, which gets more air into the engine, to burn that fuel. There is NO such equivalent for a steam turbine power station; simple economics means they run as efficiently as possible, given the constraints of their location. The air-cooled Inglewood station has to accept a lower efficiency, because there's no cooling water available. It's no accident that Bayswater and Liddell power stations are located on the shores of lake Liddell.

You're waffling. The efficiency of the Rankine Cycle (power station steam turbine plant thermodynamic cycle) is limited by the temperature difference between the superheated steam, and the cooling means available for the condensers. The upper limit to the steam temperature is set by the triple point of water; the lower limit is usually set by the water temperature in a lake. There's no practical way to alter those, short of shifting the power station to Antarctica. A power station such as the Callide complex produces 1750 megawatts of electrical power. Solar cells run about 22% efficient in full sunlight, and the average solar radiation is of the order of 1 KW per square metre, about 50% of the daylight time. So figure around 0.11 KW, i.e. 110 Watts per square metre, on average. So to replace Callide with Solar would need, by my admittedly dubious arithmetic, 1750000000 / 110 = approx 16 million square metres of solar cells, plus the control systems to collect that energy efficiently. Then it still has to be converted to alternating current, and transformed to high voltages for transmission. The economic life of a major power station is what - about 75 years? The economic life of solar panels is what - about 25 years? Not this week, I think.