Carl Sagan

Rain now sheeting down across the pitch, driven by strong winds. Not very nice conditions to play in. A great leveller!

Just now, Pottig said:

Anyone know of a way to watch for those of us outside of the UK?

Presumably a VPN and then watching on ITV Hub

Colin is in the crowd!

2 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:

Lucky Sibbo

Really? I thought he was very unlucky. There didn't seem anyone near him so he tried to control the ball on the end of his high foot and the player lunged in. There was no movement of foot towards the opponent. Has to be a foul, but nothing more. Ref playing to the crowd by producing a card.

1 minute ago, Ramant62 said:

Is this on bbc or itv live. Im in hospital and havent had much interest till now 

It's ITV 1. Get well soon!

The team is:

Edit: beaten to it by a lightning @Caerphilly Ram

Wildsmith

Smith     Cashin     Forsyth     Roberts

Mendez-Laing     Sibley     Bird     Dobbin

Collins     Osula

1 minute ago, ram59 said:

I don't think so, wouldn't they have to be signed by now?

Yes but I think Warne is cannier than our recent managers so I wonder if there's just a chance we did sign someone, but didn't announce it, to wrongfoot the opposition. Unlikely but not impossible. Presuming not, then still time to bring someone in against Liverpool.

Will we bring in short-term cover with a free agent to see us through till January? If we'd been thinking it, the Torquay and Liverpool games would have been ideal to get them more up to speed. Perhaps a surprise debut tomorrow?

19 minutes ago, Rample said:

Shouldn't be risking anyone against Torquay, and to be honest I'm not sure I would against Liverpool either. A couple of rounds further on then maybe.

If our reserves/youngsters can't beat Torquay I'm not sure they have a future in professional football.

Lost track of who has been farmed out recently but fringe players like Rooney, Thompson, Osula and so on are more than capable. The not so sures like Oduroh are going to have to be trusted to step up, and those bubbling under like Aghatise have got to get a chance at some point so why not now.

Can't keep running our players into the ground, and certainly can't risk defensive injuries.

Obviously Thompson, Oduroh and Rooney will play so long as they're fit. My recollection is that Aghatise has hardly been fit all season and checking he didn't feature in the U21s last time out, so is presumably still out. Nunn captained that last U21 team so that's why I have him on the bench in my proposed Torquay selection. But the Academy has been decimated by our recent woes and I don't think it's anything like strong enough to use as the basis for a team in a game of men's football like this. And we must also remember that, following those financial woes, a cup run can be a huge bonus for us, getting to the third or fourth round and drawing a "glamorous" Premier League side. Sadly we are in that position where it all helps.

52 minutes ago, littleover ram said:

why is this being played on Sunday and not today?

Live on ITV tomorrow afternoon.

1 hour ago, Ramrob said:

The guy who sat behind me at the Ipswich game won’t be happy. Kept calling him a CU next Tuesday and then blamed him for their goal (when it was Davies). Even weirder when I think most thought he was our best player (or one of) on the night and clearly has been this season. He’s made mistakes but who hasn’t? 

I know most get frustrated at a game and have a moan, but why go all that way to abuse one of our own players rather than giving them a bit of support? 

Some people eh ? 

I can't remember the game, but one time I got a ticket in the Toyota with no one I knew around me, and two blokes nearby spent the entirety of the 90 minutes shouting vitriol and abuse at our own Kris Commons (who played pretty well). Their faces were contorted with rage at him for the whole match. Then when the final whistle blew, they immediately calmed down, had a laugh with each other and wandered off. Their whole reason for going had been to abuse one of their own players from first to last. It was the weirdest thing.

Some people indeed!   ? 

11 hours ago, sage said:

I don't think he can play as one of a two, he doesn't have the positional sense or defensive awareness 

If you look at their goal again. Bird as twice as far to travel to get the block in and gets much nearer to the scorer. 

Not Sibleys fault but his inclusion left us so open. 

This sort of endless sniping really frustrates me. Sibley had yet another excellent game, in many people's eyes (looking at the ratings) it was a MotM performance. He scored the goal that got us back into the game when it was beginning to get hard to see where a goal was coming from. He's not been played enough IMO yet only Collins and McGoldrick have scored more Rams goals this season. We desperately need him in midfield, whether it's a two or a three, because of his ability to carry the ball forward at pace, his physicality and tackling and his inventiveness and vision in the final third. And that desire to score. Yet we have here "I don 't think he can play in a two". I was so pleased to see Warne "trust" him to play there, and for the full 90, and reap the rewards as a consequence.

Presumably missing Davies, Chester, Knight and Barkhuizen. What has happened to Anang who broke his hand back in August? Some of the other players are looking tired. Liverpool away shortly after. Players suspended in the league (I think just Cashin) probably might as well play in the cups as they have a rest coming.  Warne has to trust some of his fringe players who he says aren't ready, such as Rooney and Oduroh. Do we stick with 4-4-2 or revert to the 3-5-2? Having called the Morecambe starting 11, I think this time Warne will go with:

Wildsmith

Stearman     Cashin     Forsyth

Oduroh     Sibley     Rooney     Thompson     Roberts

Collins     Dobbin

Subs: Loach, Smith, Bird, Hourihane, Osula, McGoldrick, Nunn

Mendez-Laing having a well-deserved rest and possibly Sibley, Bird and Hourihane getting the 30 minutes each Warne talked about when it was that Man City U21 game.

Just now, Yani P said:

2 of the worst penalties you will ever see but how was he not sent off???? The ball was going in and he handballed it????

Collins acrobatic shot but well over..

I'm only listening on the radio but they reckoned the ref didn't know which of the defenders handled it, so he couldn't send one of them off.

Do we not practise penalties? High into the top corner. Unstoppable. 

Yet for some reason we go soft and low.

19 minutes ago, Yani P said:

The wing back thing was a bit strange..as soon as the incident happened the Rams TV commentary team said straight away Sibley will go to wing back as he has been training there all week as an experiment?

Bad decision..

It would be a crazy decision to put Sibley at LWB again instead of at the heart of midfield where he belongs. Let's hope we're sticking with 4-4-2 and he's in the middle with Bird.

BBC TV has been bloated beyond belief for years. Sometimes working in a studio nextdoor for ITV, you could only drool at the BBC green rooms compared with ours. To make a comparable show, they would employ 4x the number of staff. And they totally distorted the market paying massive salaries to presenters and staff, so now everyone and their dog earns more than the Prime Minister. And that's before you talk about their political bias which has understandably made enemies for them in government, so made even more funding harder to come by.

It's such a shame for local radio, which costs so little, is having to pay the price for their largesse.

18 minutes ago, David said:

Use iMessage, if you get a message comes through that's Green, block them, you don't need people like that in your life.

This whole Apple walled garden I know nothing about. I can have a work iPhone if I want one (but haven't because why carry two devices?), but am toying with getting one so I can see what the fuss is about.

For those who don't know, Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp are all the same company, rebranded Meta by Mark Zuckerberg because he wants everyone to live their lives virtually rather than out enjoying the real world.

This time last year the Meta share price was $330. Today it's $99. Given I would suggest the only purpose of Facebook is to farm everyone for their data to make Zuckerberg and the other major shareholders richer, at the expense of society and especially our youth (there's a lot of evidence Instagram has been the main driver in the collapse in mental health of young girls), I'd say this should be a cause of great rejoicing. 

Do people on here still use Facebook or Insta? I've tried to move all my friends from WhatsApp to Signal as that's a more secure, decentralized messaging system, but sadly some have been resistant so I retain an account.

One of the roles of Facebook is an online graveyard as the number of dead uses grows, especially if the living abandon it: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-04-29-digital-graveyards-are-dead-taking-over-facebook But just as the tech giants of today didn't exist 30 years ago, is Facebook itself dying, already going the way of Friends Reunited, Bebo, MySpace and all the others, to be replaced by TikTok and more? 

Interested to know if anyone on here still bothers with it.

I'm posting this in both threads while we wait for the mods to decide what to do:

With all the injuries and Hourihane suspended, the team should be:

Wildsmith

Smith     Cashin     Forsyth     Roberts

Mendez-Laing     Sibley     Bird     Dobbin

Collins     McGoldrick

3 hours ago, Highgate said:

And is therefore a fact.  

And that greenhouse gases warm up planet. Not just ours...all of them. That's what they do in conjunction with sunlight.  Also a fact.

I don't think highlighting that either of these are facts is reckless.  You agree with the first, and I assume with the second, so what's the problem in pointing those out?

I agree entirely that the climate is complex, and that the models do vary.  But they all point in the same direction, significant warming and nowadays their predictions are really remarkably good when compared to the empirical evidence as we gather it.  

Pumping aerosols in the atmosphere sounds like a last gasp 'Hail Mary' to me.  I'd much rather try to draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere before trying anything like that, as it could well have unforeseen consequences.  

I don't see how shutting off the Atlantic circulation brings global temperatures down.  Sure it will have local effects in Northwest Europe...but globally, where is the evidence for that?  Also the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet would have a 7 metre sea level rise on it's own, but presumably it would also be concurrent with melting in Antarctica.  Exactly the sort of dramatic sea level rise we want to avoid.  

I don't follow your last sentence, it seems like a non sequitur to me.  A fully melted Greenland ice sheet would be pretty catastrophic by most people's standard's I would say.  I'm sure many in the Extinction Rebellion go too far...but a 10 meter plus sea level rise...that would be disastrous. 

You say "their predictions are remarkably good" but where is the evidence for this? It seemed to be that the global Covid shutdown was the perfect opportunity to test quantitative predictions by the many different models to see how they fared, but alas I haven't seen evidence that attempts to falsify any of the models were made.

Pumping aerosols into the atmosphere might not suit you, but it's partly a cost-benefit analysis and it's partly about the need to continue economic growth. Without which extinction is certain.

If the Greenland ice sheet melts it will likely produce a situation similar to the Younger Dryas, but you're correct this ice age would probably be localized to the Northern Hemisphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas But such a situation would see more ice locked up.

I'm not saying that some elements of climate change won't be bad, but I am saying they won't be the end of the world, so long as we continue to grow and be rich enough to develop and implement the technological solutions we might end up needing. It's by adopting an antigrowth platform as Extinction Rebellion does that dooms us.

I once carved a pumpkin and wore it for Halloween. A little like this:

It scared the trick or treaters and I ate the pumpkin innards, so it was a win-win.

1 hour ago, Highgate said:

I'm not suggesting that all of physics or indeed quantum mechanics is fully understood far from it.  Just that, at the scale of our bodies, we know very well how the atoms work and interact.  And what we know and have observed doesn't leave much room for ethereal shenanigans after we die.  

You think in this era of everyone having recording equipment in their pocket we would finally have solid verifiable evidence of ghosts existence.  But they seem strangely introverted all of a sudden.  They seemed to prefer the past when there was less electrical lighting and no smartphones.  Maybe because our imaginations and pattern seeking brains were more active in the shadows back then?  

Like I said...if we are think ghosts are a serious possibility, then surely unicorns, vampires, and leprechauns are also genuinely possible.  There existence can also be supported using the same 'we don't understand all of the universe so anything is possible' logic. 

I didn't used to give oddities much thought. People would go on about ghosts or UFOs or big cats roaming around and I'd shrug and think they were a bit nuts. But then I saw an 8 foot long puma stalking its way across a field in Staffordshire and it gave me pause for thought, as I wondered what I'd have thought if someone had told me about it. I have highly intelligent friends who have talked very convincingly of their experiences with "the supernatural" or ghosts. I've no experience of this myself, but my big-cat experience makes me think it's right to keep an open mind.

You asked about my ideas regarding dark matter and an obvious "traditional" way not to have dark matter is the idea of massive gravity (ie the force-carrying graviton also has mass, which I actually suggested to Hawking when I was still at school!) but my personal idea nowadays is that it's more likely the Universe is some sort of computational entity (and quantum mechanics is a clever way of reducing the computational load) and, if that is the case, it raises questions of whether it's natural and still some sort of base reality, or whether it's some sort of artificial programmed thing, which in turn raises questions of whether it's a type of simulation or not. And in some of these options there is potential scope for "ethereal shenanigans after we die".

10 minutes ago, Highgate said:

How open should our minds be?  If we are open to the idea of ghosts, should we be open to tooth fairies and leprechauns too?  Science is never about proving things 100%, we can never be absolutely sure, but some things are so unlikely that we can behave as if we are sure.  Ghosts are in that category to me.

I do believe in dark matter (I don't see any realistic alternative) and dark energy (admittedly this name is just a placeholder for some form of vacuum pressure that isn't understood), but neither are these things are really relevant when talking about the human body.  If Quantum Field Theory is correct, an all experiments suggest that it is the most precise theory in the history of science,  then we simply understand how atoms work.  And our brains and bodies are made of atoms...we simply know there is no way for any energy or information to escape in any coordinated way after we die.  All of that remains in our bodies.  

Life is a process,  not a tangible thing made of some unknown substance (like a soul). It's like a candle flame. When a flame extinguishes, the process finishes and it simply ceases to be.  We don't ask, is the flame living on spiritually somewhere somehow.  It will be the same when we die, the process of life will end and that's all. 

Incidentally, if you don't believe Dark Matter exists, what is your alternative?  Are you die-hard Modified Newtonian Mechanics advocate? 

While quantum field theory can indeed be described as the most numerically precise theory in the history of science, it's a mistake to suggest we "understand" how atoms work from that. As Feynman said, "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics". Zeilinger has just won the Nobel Prize for proving reality does not exist locally as his experiments violated Bell's inequalities. What it all means is up for grabs.

No I don't think Modified Newtonian Mechanics is an answer to the dark matter debate. I think what quantum mechanics shows us is that the Universe is not made up of anything tangible - instead it is made up of information. But like @Stive Pesleyalso says, it sounds as if the Jim Smith Room should have separate debates about the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which some of us would find lots of fun.

19 minutes ago, Highgate said:

Isn't this just more of same old argument again, that the climate has always changed...so how do we know it's humans that are changing it now?

Yes,  it's indisputable that the climate changes naturally due to the various orbital and earth's rotational cycles you've mentioned as well as variations in ocean currents, vegetation density and so on.  There are natural predictable cycles as well as some layers of unpredictability there.  All that is known and well established.  

The fact is without greenhouse gases the Earth would be 30 °C colder than it is now. Not 2 or 3 degrees,  but at least 30 degrees.  That's the effect of greenhouse gases here on Earth, without them the planet would be literally uninhabitable, for humans anyway. Since the industrial revolution we have raised the atmospheric level of CO2 from a steady 280ppm, to a current level of 414ppm, as well as simultaneously raising the atmospheric concentrations of other GHGs, such as methane.  There is only one reasonable extrapolation to make given those facts.  And they are facts.  The climate changes naturally AND we can also change it.

Ironically it was your namesake Carl Sagan, who explained all this, better than anyone, nearly 40 years ago to the US congress. 

You seem to think I'm disagreeing with you when I largely agree except I'm always wary of people who bandy around the word "fact" with quite such abandon. Yes the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels is clear. And stronger greenhouse gases such as methane will likely begin to play a more significant role, especially due to permafrost melting. But I'm saying (and many climate scientists I meet and discuss these things have made this point to me) that the Earth is such a complex system there remains a huge degree of uncertainty what it will lead to. There are vast numbers of factors to take into account and we cannot model them all, so we're trying to model what we consider are most important, but there is disagreement over this. 

Presuming temperatures continue to rise I'd expect we'll either begin geoengineering within the stratosphere (adding aerosols) to bring temperatures down or beyond it by creating a solar shield in space to bring temperatures down. Or else the Greenland ice sheet will fully melt, cutting off the Atlantic circulation which in turn will bring temperatures down (dramatically in that case). None of these three things are great options but they all suggest climate change wouldn't end up being catastrophic in the way the extremists of extinction rebellion suggest.