Thanks Di, I had guessed that was the case, but I can't see any technical reason why that should be!

Drink the coffee first..............

Anywhere she wants to go

I guess I would have a huge grin.

Can anyone tell me how to include a picture in a message within the internal mail system? I've received a message from another member which includes a picture and wanted to reply with one from me. Using copy & paste only puts the filename of the picture in the message text, not the actual picture! Any other ideas?

The scientist Laura Mersini-Haughton has suggested a cyclic universe. Currently we are in an expanding phase. The universe might one day reach a maximum size after which it starts to shrink until one day it gets to the smallest size possible at which point there is another Big Bang and it all starts again. That idea solves the concept of time itself starting at the Big Bang, which is hard to grasp. Instead, the universe has existed 'for ever' and will continue to do so. If this is proved one day, the religious people will probably say that god created the universe many cycles ago and there were 'people' in all the previous cycles and after ours has gone there will again be 'people' the next time around.

Current thinking by most other scientists does not agree. they say that this universe will just get bigger and bigger with its constituent parts getting further and further away for ever. Maybe one of those theories is right or maybe the truth is completely different.

I've not heard that people use only a tenth of their possible brain power, only that half of the brain is not used. I seem to remember that right-handed people use their left brain half and left-handed people use their right brain half. I can't rmember if any research has been done as to why this is. Something else to google on a wet day when I want to stay at home!

I think that is a very important point - if you don't think something is 'right' please don't campaign to try to stop others from doing it just because you don't want to do it!

Having said all that, I can confirm that 785 is the best yet!

I always thought that gravitational waves move at the same speed as light in a vacuum. I just looked that up on Wikipedia and it confirms what I thought.

I know that light is both a wave and particle, but I believe it is, "not as we know it, Jim" as Spock once famousely said. I can understand that the way to avoid the idea of two particles colliding at a combined velocity of greater than 'c', when 'c' cannot be exceeded, is to go into the realm of waves. My problem is still back at the level of trying to understand how it can be both at the same time, or put more cynically, a wave or a particle, according to what you are trying to prove, and at the same time never exceeding the maximum possible speed!

Sometimes that cynical train of thought can lead me to speculate that maybe the 'speed of light' is not in fact a fixed constant. Perhaps it is only fixed for the range of experiments we have so far conducted. Who knows what future scientists will be able to achieve? I wish I could take a pill that would enable me to live for several hundred years in order to be able to find the answers to this and many other questions!

As far as I know we use only half of our brain. What is the other half for? What does it do? Can we train ourselves to have double the brain power by using all of it? Or am I talking my usual gibberish

I don't subscribe to religion and I don't subscribe to god either.

I believe in atoms and the speed of light because sufficient numbers of very clever scientists agree about such things. There are of course many things about which we are not certain and I duly keep an open mind on them. My beliefs start with, "as far as I know..." which is so different from the fundamentalist faith believer who just 'knows' what he/she believes for certain, without needing any proof. These are presumably people who like some of my school colleagues were taught what they must believe and accepted it as 'obvious fact' without any questioning. In Christian terms I would be called a 'doubting Thomas' (!) - one who needs to pur his fingers in the hole to prove that the hands had nails in them.

Travelling faster than light is an example of my beliefs. As far as I know, the fastest speed at which anything can travel is the speed of light. Speed is relative to something else. The difficult bit for me, is the answer to the question about what heppens when a torch beam is pointed at another torch beam. Relative to the earth each beam is moving at the speed of light, but relative to each beam, the speed of the other beam is twice the speed of light!

Clearly there is much science we have yet to learn, which is why my belief system is different from that of the religious fanatic.

I was sent to a Catholic school but when I left at age 18 I started to wonder if all that stuff about an all-powerful being could really be true. Would I sit at the right hand of god eternally twanging my harp if I was good? And would I burn for ever in hell if I was bad? I can't imagine anything more boring than twanging a harp for eternity and neither can I imagine how it is possible to burn 'for ever'. Of course asking questions like, "how is that going to work?" would get me a clip round the ear and helpful advice along the lines of don't ask awkward questions, just believe what you're told.

Unfortunately, being a bit of a rebel, I was not happy with those answers. If google had existed in the 1960s, that's where I would have gone for further enlightenment! I could see nothing around me to provide any believable 'evidence' that what I had been told was actually true. Not sure what sort of evidence I was looking for, but nothing seemed 'right' about what I had been taught. As for being told to 'believe' that was the most difficult bit. The things I believe in are things like the world being round and five added to six gives eleven. Always. I don't believe something just because someone else says it's true. That seems naïve to me.

I discovered humanism about five years ago and suddently realised that here is a description of me - and I had not known it for the last 65 years! If I had previously felt any remanining guilt over not believing what I had been told to believe as a schoolboy, all that now floated away and I am very happy.

And here endeth the gospel truth, according to Mike

Actually, I beg to differ, but I think the correct number is 736

Such a pity that anyone would disagree with JBH. This should be obvious and not a matter for discussion, yet so many people belong to one or another religion that they feel pressured by their belief system to do what someone 'senior' tells them to do - or not do, as in this case.

So sad.

experienced

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I'm sure it was in the 200s You have to keep an eye on the ladies here.......

Perhaps I am missing something, but am very happy in my life nevertheless. I don't belive in god or the devil, so all that stuff about mind control is all in another language that I don't speak - goes right over my head!

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I was just mildly curious about was the intended recipient of that rude comment. Presumably it was aimed at the believers who don't understand how and why Darwin is so correct. Recently two small gaps in his theory have been filled with new discoveries.

very nice