What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
Any situation that isn't a pure rule is always pure relativism, because whilst you might have a "general rule" it is not a "rule" in the sense of rule based morality. In the colloquial sense of "rule of thumb" or "general rule" - sure, yes, fine, I accept. But when you are talking about philosophical models of ethics and morals a rule has to be a rule, or it is pointless.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
I think this shows that if you want a rules-based morality then it can't be based on abstractions such as 'lying is bad'; otherwise you get the absurdity of it being morally objectionable to lie about Anne Frank's whereabouts. The rules will have to be based on some measurable consequence: X is morally correct if it causes more joy in the world than not doing X etc.
How does a rule measure joy? How does a rule weigh different forms of joy? What if you have a joy monster, let's name him Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who can feel infinitely more joy that anyone else, and therefore enslaving the entire globe to the whim of that one joy monster literally creates more joy than misery? How does a rule solve that?
Rules based morality doesn't work. Everything is moral relativism. How do people not get this.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
Any situation that isn't a pure rule is always pure relativism, because whilst you might have a "general rule" it is not a "rule" in the sense of rule based morality. In the colloquial sense of "rule of thumb" or "general rule" - sure, yes, fine, I accept. But when you are talking about philosophical models of ethics and morals a rule has to be a rule, or it is pointless.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
I think this shows that if you want a rules-based morality then it can't be based on abstractions such as 'lying is bad'; otherwise you get the absurdity of it being morally objectionable to lie about Anne Frank's whereabouts. The rules will have to be based on some measurable consequence: X is morally correct if it causes more joy in the world than not doing X etc.
1000 sadistic people torturing one child may bring more joy to the 1000 than bad stuff to the child - 1000 is loads more than 1? Goodness, joy etc are not measurable or comparable.
No moral systems survive theoretical scrutiny. Aristotle was and is right: if you want a broadly good society then the character of people needs to be developed in ways which they and society flourish in. Such people, says Aristotle, characteristically behave on the whole well. He identifies justice, moderation, wisdom and fortitude as the four big character qualities. I don't think he is wrong.
However - and it's a big flaw, He is blind to the needs of: women, slaves, non-Greeks, less bright people.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
Rules based morality = a form of morality that says acts are inherently right or wrong, and therefore whether you do those acts or not is not based on context.
Relativist based morality = a form of morality that says that acts are not inherently right or wrong, and therefore you need context for those acts, such as intent or outcome or environment.
If "x = bad= creates the rule "do not do x" (which we will call you cannot say your morality is also rules based if your morality allows you to ignore rule B. If, on the other hand, you say "B holds for most situations, but some situations B does not hold" you have entered a situationist form of morality (which is relativistic).
Just because you can write it out like it is a rule, it does not make it a rule.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
We don't reason in the moral sphere by 'rules', but rather by principles. 'Calculus' enters in under the principle of proportionality; it's not a description of the entirety of moral reasoning. The accompanying principle here is, of course, that you may prevent a great evil by means of a lesser - but if you don't have to resort to an evil at all, that is to be preferred.
Of course what one defines as good or bad is based in human intuition and social consensus - it's hardly an absolute. Pretending otherwise is to suggest we can contract morality out to AIs.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Written from a US perspective but there may be parallels here.
Useful link, thank you.
(continued...) Yes, it's from a US perspective (liberal vas conservative), yes it's used with reference to gender dysphoria (which is why it's on Unherd: if it was autism or depression would they have published it?), and I'm not sure all of it works (analysis by age group sets my teeth on edge and is subject to problems over time: it should be cohort analysis instead), but the central point - the pathologisation of behavior and the belief that the surgical/medical paradigm can be used for cases when it isn't - seems valid.
It doesn’t just cover gender dysphoria - for example, the much higher incidence of “long COVID” in young women, with parents who are also suffering from “long COVID” when we know the young were least affected by COVID.
The fundamental point is the medicalisation of treatment where other solutions may be more appropriate.
I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that only one leading western country had an opioid epidemic. The one where a “Pain Society” promoted the prescribing of “harmless, non-addictive” drugs to a susceptible population. Only to be closed down when links to the drug manufacturers were revealed. Hundreds of thousands dead.
Couldn’t possibly happen again, could it?
I think it's rich people looking for justification -
It would be interesting to interrogate the demographics of the parents of children referred to GIDS at the Tavistock - given their record keeping the data may well not exist. But I suspect you’re right.
I believe there are multiple factors involved in the increase in the diagnosis of gender dysphoria - social contagion is only one of them.
...and on that happy note of agreement I can go to lunch.
What happened? I was listening on the radio but they didn't really explain much, just that play was disrupted.
Just Stop Oil. Good for them. More of this sort of thing.
"Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Ulrike Meinhof
Do you support all protesto-vandalism, or only for causes you agree with?
Why the fuck would I support it for causes I disagree with?
I find your position baffling. The means of change are more important in the long run than the change itself.
Why is it baffling? Strategies are, mostly, morally neutral; the cause is the thing that places the morality. Violence is typically considered "bad", but it's fine in self defence; so violence isn't actually the bad thing, but the cause is.
Protesting is a strategy. I like it when causes that are good use it, and dislike it when causes that are bad use it. I would still protect the right to protesting, as long as counter protest and self defence in the face of violence at protests is allowed (see Honor Oak this weekend).
Violence isn't morally neutral, of course.
Yes it is; it's a tool. Is it always bad to do violence? Is self defence immoral? Are police arresting people, a clearly violent act, always immoral? I would argue most violence is probably immoral, but that's typically due to the cause.
No, it's not - which is why the law sets quite a low bar on the offence of assault. And why police use of violence must be proportionate to the situation. The question is whether it's utilised in preventing something morally worse, as in the examples you cite.
So self defence is immoral, but less immoral than being assaulted, and therefore is permitted? That's ridiculous. Self defence and the defence of others can be actively moral - and still involve violence.
Moral questions generally resolve to context and instance.
What is self defence? What is proportional?
Indeed, they do. I didn't say they were easy answers, just that it is clear that there must be some instance where violence is morally acceptable or even a moral good.
There is but its the exception that proves the rule.
As a rule violence is morally bad.
There are exceptional circumstances whereby it can be good, eg repelling Russia's forces and liberating occupied land is morally good. Typically the exceptional circumstances are where a use of force is needed to repel or prevent a greater act of violence.
But that doesn't detract from the fact that as a rule violence is morally bad, just because there are exceptions to that rule.
I mean, yes actually - having exceptions to the rule is exactly why rule based morality doesn't work and why we aren't all Kantians. "Lying is bad" - "Okay, is Anne Frank in your attic?". Rule based morality doesn't work. Actions are strategies that you have to back up with intent and reason; those are the things that provide the moral basis for an act.
Rule based morality does work, but there are circumstances which are exceptions. Any rule has exceptions typically.
We are humans not machines, we can think and judge exceptions. Heck, even rudimentary machines can have exceptions built into their programming.
You have the moral judgement "x is bad", you have the rule "therefore do not do x", you cannot have a rule that says "x is bad, therefore do not do x, except when x isn't bad" because that isn't how rules work - you have invented moral relativism, which is how people function and is necessary - but is not a rule based moral framework.
Yes, you can.
Rules allow exceptions. Next.
Philosophy and law 101.
How do you decide what should be granted an exception and what shouldn't? Isn't that in itself a moral judgement?
Yes it is. As I said, we're human, we can do that.
Its also part of the reason in the law we have juries and the reasonable person test. To underpin that.
But the existence of exceptions doesn't prevent the existence of rules, it just means that exceptions to the rules do exist too.
Then that isn't a rules based morality, it is moral relativism. That is what that means. It is the definition of those things.
Unfortunately I have to go, which is a shame as this discussion is getting interesting, but most philosophers would allow the existence of both rules and relativism, and it is upto human judgement as to determine which is appropriate. "Always" as you put it, is a fool's errand, but so too is "Never".
You are acting as if pure relativism, without rules, is appropriate. That is equally as nonsensical as operating "always" in accordance with a rule.
Any situation that isn't a pure rule is always pure relativism, because whilst you might have a "general rule" it is not a "rule" in the sense of rule based morality. In the colloquial sense of "rule of thumb" or "general rule" - sure, yes, fine, I accept. But when you are talking about philosophical models of ethics and morals a rule has to be a rule, or it is pointless.
To say "x = bad" therefore "don't do x" does not allow exceptions.
If you say "x = sometimes bad" you have to define when "x = sometimes good" - that is relativism. If you say "x = bad 99% of the time" you still have to define and parse when "x = good" that 1% of the time - that involves relativism. That is not rule based.
I think this shows that if you want a rules-based morality then it can't be based on abstractions such as 'lying is bad'; otherwise you get the absurdity of it being morally objectionable to lie about Anne Frank's whereabouts. The rules will have to be based on some measurable consequence: X is morally correct if it causes more joy in the world than not doing X etc.
1000 sadistic people torturing one child may bring more joy to the 1000 than bad stuff to the child - 1000 is loads more than 1? Goodness, joy etc are not measurable or comparable.
No moral systems survive theoretical scrutiny. Aristotle was and is right: if you want a broadly good society then the character of people needs to be developed in ways which they and society flourish in. Such people, says Aristotle, characteristically behave on the whole well. He identifies justice, moderation, wisdom and fortitude as the four big character qualities. I don't think he is wrong.
However - and it's a big flaw, He is blind to the needs of: women, slaves, non-Greeks, less bright people.
I was really only saying that if you want a rule-based morality then it has to be based on some measurable outcome. But what you measure - if that would even work at all - is another question entirely.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
It's nothing to do with time-shifting water - it's all about collecting, purifying and distributing it.
What percentage of the 122 billion m2 is transpired by plants?
What percentage is necessary to keep up the health of streams, rivers and lakes?
It is about time shift it - that is what the storage is about. To shift a tiny portion of the flow of water from the rainy seasons to the non rainy seasons.
We currently have a hard time in the rains with flooding, excess runoff etc. If we catch a tiny percentage of that. we are good.
It's not as if the water won't eventually end up back in the rivers....
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
You don't appear to be getting the LA contracts anyway, or are you paying some of them backhanders, just not this one.
Excuse my cynicism but if you know that sort of thing is going on, if you have evidence - even circumstantial, you have a duty to not look the other way. By not reporting it you are complicit.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
I wouldn't keep a serious money in the alt-banks until they have had about 2-3 major crises to winnow out the issues.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Isn't the length of a Mandelbrot set's outline finite, though? It must converge to a limit as the units of subdivision approach zero.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
It's pretty typical of these things that they work ok for years and then suddenly not. This time in 2008 I was a satisfied customer of Iceland Bank.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
If we did that we would never get another job with any LA or large company. This situation is endemic. The hypocrisy that exists with people who moan about corrupt politicians but have no problems taking cash or freebies. A buyer for a large Construction company once asked us to pay for his family holiday to Barbados in return for the award of a contract.
You don't appear to be getting the LA contracts anyway, or are you paying some of them backhanders, just not this one.
Excuse my cynicism but if you know that sort of thing is going on, if you have evidence - even circumstantial, you have a duty to not look the other way. By not reporting it you are complicit.
...and one evening in walks Dinsdale with a couple of big lads, one of whom was carrying a tactical nuclear missile. They said I had bought one of their fruit machines and would I pay for it.
2nd Interviewer: How much did they want?
Vercotti: They wanted three quarters of a million pounds.
2nd Interviewer: Why didn't you call the police?
Vercotti: Well I had noticed that the lad with the thermonuclear device was the chief constable for the area. So a week later they called again and told me the cheque had bounced and said... I had to see... Doug.
2nd Interviewer: Doug?
Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.
2nd Interviewer: What did he do?
Vercotti: He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
One of Norway's most popular natural attractions, also a location for the Vikings TV series two and one of the Mission Impossible films
Been there many times. It always makes me smile that a country that in some ways is so keen on health and safety is so unconcerned about letting the public wander about on the edge of a half a kilometer high sheer drop.
When I was up there a few years ago someone shot by me on a pushbike and rode straight over the edge. They were of course wearing a parachute but it still makes you take a deep breath when you see it happen in real time.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Isn't the length of a Mandelbrot set's outline finite, though? It must converge to a limit as the units of subdivision approach zero.
No it doesn't have to.
1+1/2 +1/3+ 1/4 +1/5 ....
is infinite even though the units in the series approach zero.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Isn't the length of a Mandelbrot set's outline finite, though? It must converge to a limit as the units of subdivision approach zero.
No it doesn't have to.
1+1/2 +1/3+ 1/4 +1/5 ....
is infinite even though the units in the series approach zero.
Sure, but one doesn't get an infinite amount of seaweed on the coast of Britain. Though that I suppose is a finite figure, being the deduction of the area of a Mandelbrot set from the area of of a fractionally larger one (two beaches' worth wider).
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
Point taken. My daughter had an unresolved fraud problem with Revolut and now won't deal with it.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
One of Norway's most popular natural attractions, also a location for the Vikings TV series two and one of the Mission Impossible films
Just thinking that, looking at this picture and tied in with the current discussion about Mandlebrot and coastlines, we ought to pay our respects to Slartibartfast for all the great work he did on the Norwegian fjords.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
Point taken. My daughter had an unresolved fraud problem with Revolut and now won't deal with it.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Is this not what happens with e.g. Monzo automatically?
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Isn't the length of a Mandelbrot set's outline finite, though? It must converge to a limit as the units of subdivision approach zero.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
how do we get back from here to:
WOULD A NEW TORY LEADER SAVE A NUMBER OF SEATS?
which was the exam question for today.
Well if you postulate an infinite series of Tory leaders between now and the next election..
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
At the bottom level of reality it's all mathematics. You cannot conceive of it in a physical way. Hence the advice in quantum mechanics "don't think, just compute".
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to just pay (in CHF) by credit card for that sort of thing, since my credit card doesn't impose a per-transaction fee. I'm also old-fashioned enough to like having some cash for emergencies though -- ended up spending 8 quid in conversion losses from turning 40 quid into Czech currency and back for a recent trip where (as it turned out) I was fine paying by card everywhere...
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
Point taken. My daughter had an unresolved fraud problem with Revolut and now won't deal with it.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Is this not what happens with e.g. Monzo automatically?
Yes. It only converts exactly as much as is needed to pay for the coffee. At a really good rate and with no pesky foreign transaction fee.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Physicists, of course, argue that Britain is, to a good enough approximation, a perfect circle and use 2*pi*r, p*r^2 for coastline and area
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
how do we get back from here to:
WOULD A NEW TORY LEADER SAVE A NUMBER OF SEATS?
which was the exam question for today.
If Michael Fabricant has a fractal hairline, does that make his brain capacity infinite? If so, maybe he should be leader.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
Point taken. My daughter had an unresolved fraud problem with Revolut and now won't deal with it.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Ridiculous example. If you wanted to buy a coffee in the Swiss part of Geneva airport you'd have to convert £10 into Swiss francs and then the person behind the counter would tell you that you needed to convert another £10 into Swiss francs if you actually wanted to buy the coffee which would cost around £15.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to just pay (in CHF) by credit card for that sort of thing, since my credit card doesn't impose a per-transaction fee. I'm also old-fashioned enough to like having some cash for emergencies though -- ended up spending 8 quid in conversion losses from turning 40 quid into Czech currency and back for a recent trip where (as it turned out) I was fine paying by card everywhere...
My wife took the approach of converting all the left over Czech currency to chocolate at the airport. Which I subsequently converted to an increase in BMI.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Physicists, of course, argue that Britain is, to a good enough approximation, a perfect circle and use 2*pi*r, p*r^2 for coastline and area
If circles were hexagons, we could use 3 instead of Pi.
Anyone actually prepared to use Revolut? Seems to be a reluctance to give them a banking licence.
Though considering what licenced banks have done, perhaps that's not a black mark.
I would not touch Revolut personally at the moment.
There are other alternatives out there. Less risk.
No FSCS protection. "Safeguarding" apparently. Well I've seen the movie before. If the company goes el busto the "safeguarding" account tends to too... Not worth the risk for the 3.44% offered.
Golly thanks for pointing that out.
I have been trialling revolut and Monzo abroad. Monzo is miles better and fscs protected. Must now run down the £200 left with revolut.
I use Revolut for easy foreign exchange and payments. It's free, easy to use and I've had no problems with it.
I have not looked at Revolut yet but I would be wary after the report on You and Yours the other day about them refusing to accept very large numbers of cases of fraud (far in excess of the industry norm) and being forced to change their mind on over half of them by the ombudsman.
I've spent £50K through it since 2017 with no problems but I only have about £100 balance.
Yep to make it clear I am not sure it is any more prone to fraud than any otheer system. Just that when it does happen they seem to be very poor at dealing with it unless forced.
Point taken. My daughter had an unresolved fraud problem with Revolut and now won't deal with it.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Is this not what happens with e.g. Monzo automatically?
Yes. It only converts exactly as much as is needed to pay for the coffee. At a really good rate and with no pesky foreign transaction fee.
Starling, Monzo & Revolut all support overseas payments and use mastercard / visa's exchange rates for the transacton.
There are plenty of new world options - and even Halifax has a travel credit card (don't use that one to get money out from a cash point though).
Is this not what happens with e.g. Monzo automatically?
Had a quick look at Monzo, after previously inspecting Starling. I get around £1500/month in spare-time translation earnings from agencies based abroad, and was interested in finding a bank which would minimise exchange fees. But Starling and everyone else who I looked at seemed to be focused on payments TO other countries, which isn't very relevant for me, so I mostly have them paid into my First Direct current account. FD use a good exchange rate but charge me £5/transaction to do this. Would Monzo (or someone else) be a better option?
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to just pay (in CHF) by credit card for that sort of thing, since my credit card doesn't impose a per-transaction fee. I'm also old-fashioned enough to like having some cash for emergencies though -- ended up spending 8 quid in conversion losses from turning 40 quid into Czech currency and back for a recent trip where (as it turned out) I was fine paying by card everywhere...
Its for that exact reason you want a Starling or similar debit card. In France provided I use a Banque Postale cash point you can take money out with no fee charge by either side at Mastercard's exchange rate.
It worked out at saving about 2% compared to the other options..
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to just pay (in CHF) by credit card for that sort of thing, since my credit card doesn't impose a per-transaction fee. I'm also old-fashioned enough to like having some cash for emergencies though -- ended up spending 8 quid in conversion losses from turning 40 quid into Czech currency and back for a recent trip where (as it turned out) I was fine paying by card everywhere...
Its for that exact reason you want a Starling or similar debit card. In France provided I use a Banque Postale cash point you can take money out with no fee charge by either side at Mastercard's exchange rate.
It worked out at saving about 2% compared to the other options..
I saved quite a bit of money paying for entire holidays through such alt-bank cards. The rates they offer are very close to the market rates - in Thailand, they beat the best local money changers, let alone credit cards.
A fair few credit cards are advertising "no exchange fee" - but hiding the fact that the exchange rates they are offering are terrible.
Genomic screening of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38717-w There has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. Here, we screened for coronaviruses in 48 faecal samples from 16 of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK, collected through a bat rehabilitation and conservationist network. We recovered nine complete genomes, including two novel coronavirus species, across six bat species: four alphacoronaviruses, a MERS-related betacoronavirus, and four closely related sarbecoviruses. We demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind and use the human ACE2 receptor for infecting human cells, albeit suboptimally. Additionally, the spike proteins of these sarbecoviruses possess an R-A-K-Q motif, which lies only one nucleotide mutation away from a furin cleavage site (FCS) that enhances infectivity in other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. However, mutating this motif to an FCS does not enable spike cleavage. Overall, while UK sarbecoviruses would require further molecular adaptations to infect humans, their zoonotic risk warrants closer surveillance...
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
how do we get back from here to:
WOULD A NEW TORY LEADER SAVE A NUMBER OF SEATS?
which was the exam question for today.
We have also done a quick tour into moral philosophy and fintech. And cricket, natch. Gold star day for pb.com.
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
Personally I prefer to just pay (in CHF) by credit card for that sort of thing, since my credit card doesn't impose a per-transaction fee. I'm also old-fashioned enough to like having some cash for emergencies though -- ended up spending 8 quid in conversion losses from turning 40 quid into Czech currency and back for a recent trip where (as it turned out) I was fine paying by card everywhere...
Its for that exact reason you want a Starling or similar debit card. In France provided I use a Banque Postale cash point you can take money out with no fee charge by either side at Mastercard's exchange rate.
It worked out at saving about 2% compared to the other options..
I saved quite a bit of money paying for entire holidays through such alt-bank cards. The rates they offer are very close to the market rates - in Thailand, they beat the best local money changers, let alone credit cards.
A fair few credit cards are advertising "no exchange fee" - but hiding the fact that the exchange rates they are offering are terrible.
I use nothing more exotic than a Halifax Clarity Card - no transaction fee and the Mastercard exchange rate. (Not for use for cash withdrawals though.)
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
A 15% increase is only a little more than what the Government are giving those who aren't working for a living, and its reasonable for those who are working for a living to ask for a little more than those who aren't.
If you want to avoid people asking for more, then stop padding out the wages of preferred voters at the expense of others.
More bigoted bollocks from you as ever. Thick enough to think every pensioner votes Tory, what a fcuknugget.
No just illiterate bullshit from you as you once again display a stunning lack of reading comprehension.
I said that the Government is preferring to favour pensioners with double-digit pay rises while wanting to give 1% pay rises to those who work, which it is, not that all pensioners vote Tory. The latter was an inference you made all by yourself and not based on any words I used.
Who has been offered a 1% pay increase by the govt ?
Certainly not those on the triple-lock.
Can't find any 1% links from Google right now, but I do recall it coming up, but the DFE wanted to give a 3% pay rise to teachers this year.
3% for teachers is a real terms pay cut of 8%, almost decimating in real terms the pay for teachers, but the triple-lock keeps those who are not working at a completely different rate.
Perhaps you can find any examples where those who are working for a living are being offered significantly more than those who are not?
Yes and 3% of $40K is 33% more money than 10% of 9K and leaves tehm 30K above a pensioner so as usual you are talking through your arse and fact that few indeed if any are getting as low as 3%.
LOL, you don't actually believe this dribble do you?
If you do, you can't be far from people needing to wipe the dribble off your face.
The "9k" as you put it is for most pensioners on top of, not instead of, other pensions or other incomes they may have - and is not subject to National Insurance, Graduate Tax or other deductions that those working for a living have to pay.
Same old grasping Malcolm, never change. Not all pensioners are Tory, but you certainly are a Tory at their worst, the only difference is you're a Saltire Tory.
Serious green cheese there methinks, go out and earn money yourself instead of constantly whining that a few pensioners have done ok and beggar the rest. You are typical of the moron type that has wrecked this country, lazy good for nothing whining loser. Get out and do a days work you slacker.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
He's clearly not, since the particles which make it up are not infinitely small, and thus incapable of infinite subdivision. That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
Physicists, of course, argue that Britain is, to a good enough approximation, a perfect circle and use 2*pi*r, p*r^2 for coastline and area
If circles were hexagons, we could use 3 instead of Pi.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
Genomic screening of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38717-w There has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. Here, we screened for coronaviruses in 48 faecal samples from 16 of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK, collected through a bat rehabilitation and conservationist network. We recovered nine complete genomes, including two novel coronavirus species, across six bat species: four alphacoronaviruses, a MERS-related betacoronavirus, and four closely related sarbecoviruses. We demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind and use the human ACE2 receptor for infecting human cells, albeit suboptimally. Additionally, the spike proteins of these sarbecoviruses possess an R-A-K-Q motif, which lies only one nucleotide mutation away from a furin cleavage site (FCS) that enhances infectivity in other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. However, mutating this motif to an FCS does not enable spike cleavage. Overall, while UK sarbecoviruses would require further molecular adaptations to infect humans, their zoonotic risk warrants closer surveillance...
Lets hope the researchers arent all seen sniffling near Smithfield market this weekend......
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
If Mandelbrot is right and Britain’s coastline is infinite, then sure also it’s area is infinite and thus our supply of rainwater is limitless?
It doesn't follow that its area is infinite.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
At each iteration, doesn't the area increase? (Now obviously we'd describe it as approaching a limit, but still...)
Yes it does but, as you say, it approaches a limit.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
how do we get back from here to:
WOULD A NEW TORY LEADER SAVE A NUMBER OF SEATS?
which was the exam question for today.
Well if you postulate an infinite series of Tory leaders between now and the next election..
Each one smaller than the last?
Cos Boris must've been into Russian dolls or something.
Genomic screening of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38717-w There has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. Here, we screened for coronaviruses in 48 faecal samples from 16 of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK, collected through a bat rehabilitation and conservationist network. We recovered nine complete genomes, including two novel coronavirus species, across six bat species: four alphacoronaviruses, a MERS-related betacoronavirus, and four closely related sarbecoviruses. We demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind and use the human ACE2 receptor for infecting human cells, albeit suboptimally. Additionally, the spike proteins of these sarbecoviruses possess an R-A-K-Q motif, which lies only one nucleotide mutation away from a furin cleavage site (FCS) that enhances infectivity in other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. However, mutating this motif to an FCS does not enable spike cleavage. Overall, while UK sarbecoviruses would require further molecular adaptations to infect humans, their zoonotic risk warrants closer surveillance...
Lets hope the researchers arent all seen sniffling near Smithfield market this weekend......
Yup - we don't need a plague of airport thriller writers multiplying like the Andromeda Strain on speed.
I don't know where these polls come from but they just don't tally with the opinion on the street. There's zero enthusiasm, only deep distrust, for Starmerite Labour, certainly in the parts of the Red Wall that I travel around. One doesn't wish to be conspiratorial, but I call BS on these polls. I think that's what certain parties WANT us to think.
I can't understand why anyone would vote for that greasy freak Starmer and his dangerous far-right fascists (further right than the Tories even).
Normal people like me, with normal backstories like mine: my father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanise, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve, I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I suggest you try it.
Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed,' the Duke said..
I think Boebert, Gaetz & the other loons have half a point - She DID support Kevin Mcarthy remarkably quickly and fullsomely for a supposed freedom caucuser. Strikes me she's likely in it for the grift rather than true deep seated batshit belief.
1 - Is Daniel Korski toast yet? Not that it will make much difference to the identity of the next Major.
2 - The 40% water bill increase sounds like either industry scaremongering, or media sensationalising.
25% sounds more like it, and it is wished on us - as it will be across the UK and across Europe since we all have the same sewerage in rivers issue - by lobbies demanding umpteen billions of investment.
Since English water consumption is about 25% above the European best practice (140l pppd vs 105l in Denmark), if peeps invest in reducing their consumption (eg rainwater collection for the garden using a couple of Industrial Bulk Containers and an automatic watering system) and change habits, then bills will stay approx the same.
Personal responsibility required.
One thing I find fascinating is that Greens inm my experience are demanding that millions of tons of concrete (presumably) be used to build new reservoirs. Greens? Rather than control consumption. What happened to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?
Why would we not build new reservoirs to cope with a vastly increased population? Scratching around for ways to stave off a hosepipe ban in Britain of all places is grotesque.
It seems sensible to me to do the easier, less expensive options first.
Why create expensive, treated water to water your garden, when you can harvest the rain that falls on your roof? Why drown more valleys or build bunds when we lose around 17% of water from pipe leakage?
To me that just seems bizarre.
It's not bizarre at all to fill old quarries with water, which is the sort of thing that gold-plated EU legislation has prevented us from doing. We have plentiful water in this country - it is one of the benefits of the huge rainfall we have to put up with. It takes willful stupidity not to be able to supply all our water needs and desires with ease and at little expense.
Govt policy, as mentioned in the link, is already to reduce consumption to 110l pppd by 2050.
It's surprising which places get more rain than London. London isn’t even near to proclaiming itself the wettest capital in Europe by the annual amount of rain. With its 557mm of rain per year, the city holds 35th place on the list.
Gulp, 1200 for me, though less in next town so a bit suspect
I grew up in 1238mm. That's what you get for living on the western upslope of the Peak District. Down to 807mm now that I live a sliver more distant from the downslope.
Comments
Rules based morality doesn't work. Everything is moral relativism. How do people not get this.
621mm a year for me.
No moral systems survive theoretical scrutiny. Aristotle was and is right: if you want a broadly good society then the character of people needs to be developed in ways which they and society flourish in. Such people, says Aristotle, characteristically behave on the whole well. He identifies justice, moderation, wisdom and fortitude as the four big character qualities. I don't think he is wrong.
However - and it's a big flaw, He is blind to the needs of: women, slaves, non-Greeks, less bright people.
The area of the UK is often quoted as 244,820 square kilometres
2.4482e+11 m2
if we take rainfall as 500mm a year - much, much lower than present - we get
122,410,000,000 m2 of rainfall per year
Personal consumption is 50 m2 per year (approx) - say 3,350,000,000 m2 for the whole population.
which gives us the result that 2.7% of a very low figure for rainfall will provide the entire annual water requirement for everyone.
This strongly suggests that the issue we have is time shifting water via storage.
Relativist based morality = a form of morality that says that acts are not inherently right or wrong, and therefore you need context for those acts, such as intent or outcome or environment.
If "x = bad= creates the rule "do not do x" (which we will call
Just because you can write it out like it is a rule, it does not make it a rule.
'Calculus' enters in under the principle of proportionality; it's not a description of the entirety of moral reasoning.
The accompanying principle here is, of course, that you may prevent a great evil by means of a lesser - but if you don't have to resort to an evil at all, that is to be preferred.
Of course what one defines as good or bad is based in human intuition and social consensus - it's hardly an absolute. Pretending otherwise is to suggest we can contract morality out to AIs.
Avoid them.
I have even less confidence in them than I had in Binance and I was warning about that for ages.
Revolut are the sort of firm that would appoint Cressida Dick as a NED to their board.
What percentage of the 122 billion m2 is transpired by plants?
What percentage is necessary to keep up the health of streams, rivers and lakes?
Says quite a lot about the UK economy.
The two most successful UK startups of the past decade, Revolut and XTX, were both started by graduates of Moscow's New Economic School.
https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1674019205925031936
That's the problem with mathematicians versus physicists.
We currently have a hard time in the rains with flooding, excess runoff etc. If we catch a tiny percentage of that. we are good.
It's not as if the water won't eventually end up back in the rivers....
Excuse my cynicism but if you know that sort of thing is going on, if you have evidence - even circumstantial, you have a duty to not look the other way. By not reporting it you are complicit.
The Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then dividing each side into three equal parts. At each step, the middle third of each side is removed and replaced by a smaller equilateral triangle. This process is repeated infinitely many times.
You end up with an infinite boundary but a finite area.
EDIT I know you were joking
That's merely one of the problems.
...and one evening in walks Dinsdale with a couple of big lads, one of whom was carrying a tactical nuclear missile. They said I had bought one of their fruit machines and would I pay for it.
2nd Interviewer: How much did they want?
Vercotti: They wanted three quarters of a million pounds.
2nd Interviewer: Why didn't you call the police?
Vercotti: Well I had noticed that the lad with the thermonuclear device was the chief constable for the area. So a week later they called again and told me the cheque had bounced and said... I had to see... Doug.
2nd Interviewer: Doug?
Vercotti: Doug (takes a drink) Well, I was terrified. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug.
2nd Interviewer: What did he do?
Vercotti: He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, pathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.
When I was up there a few years ago someone shot by me on a pushbike and rode straight over the edge. They were of course wearing a parachute but it still makes you take a deep breath when you see it happen in real time.
1+1/2 +1/3+ 1/4 +1/5 ....
is infinite even though the units in the series approach zero.
You can't safely use common sense or intuition in mathematics!
https://www.directrailservices.com/
In the old days, if you wanted to buy a coffee eg in the Swiss part of Geneva airport, you'd have to convert say £10 into Swiss francs and end up with some small Swiss change after paying for the coffee. With Revolut, you convert £ to CHF, pay in CHF by tapping your Revolut Mastercard, then convert the remaining CHF back to £ with very little loss and no small bits of metal in your pocket.
WOULD A NEW TORY LEADER SAVE A NUMBER OF SEATS?
which was the exam question for today.
Which is something like 0.8% of actual UK rainfall - using the extremely low value above, it would 1.6%
https://bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=RP%2bv3tKp&id=D6856B81E45F028ACE92A0D96EB14F56EB6D343C&thid=OIP.RP-v3tKp3K2_RcEtn6cZlAHaFw&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.44ffafded2a9dcadbf45c12d9fa71994%3frik%3dPDRt61ZPsW7ZoA%26riu%3dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.bobatkins.com%252fphotography%252ftechnical%252fcheckershadow_illusion.jpg%26ehk%3dLKgFY5GeZp3LcWb4UshwkoiFNk4iKTOJQUKELtLiyRY%253d%26risl%3d%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=420&expw=540&q=checkerboard+optical+illusion&simid=608022629229211209&FORM=IRPRST&ck=C4151233CD40D83C3B3FDC8C10611034&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
The portents are not good.
In most summers, and even some years in the SE, evaporation exceeds rainfall.
I reckon I'm about 68mm net rain so far this year (and falling).
CEH did some modelling (the data is available for download)
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/10/951/2018/essd-10-951-2018.pdf
There are plenty of new world options - and even Halifax has a travel credit card (don't use that one to get money out from a cash point though).
https://www.directrailservices.com/locos-offered-for-sale/
It worked out at saving about 2% compared to the other options..
A fair few credit cards are advertising "no exchange fee" - but hiding the fact that the exchange rates they are offering are terrible.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38717-w
There has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. Here, we screened for coronaviruses in 48 faecal samples from 16 of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK, collected through a bat rehabilitation and conservationist network. We recovered nine complete genomes, including two novel coronavirus species, across six bat species: four alphacoronaviruses, a MERS-related betacoronavirus, and four closely related sarbecoviruses. We demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind and use the human ACE2 receptor for infecting human cells, albeit suboptimally. Additionally, the spike proteins of these sarbecoviruses possess an R-A-K-Q motif, which lies only one nucleotide mutation away from a furin cleavage site (FCS) that enhances infectivity in other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. However, mutating this motif to an FCS does not enable spike cleavage. Overall, while UK sarbecoviruses would require further molecular adaptations to infect humans, their zoonotic risk warrants closer surveillance...
DRS is worse than VAR.
https://www.finder.com/uk/halifax-clarity-credit-card
Failed to take advantage of the overcast weather this morning, too loose and too many no-balls.
Cos Boris must've been into Russian dolls or something.
Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed,' the Duke said..
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/26/freedom-caucus-vote-marjorie-taylor-greene-00103656
Edit: 24!