Norman

Have you witnessed any antisemitism on this forum? I can't say I have as they would be banned as it would not be tolerated. 
I haven't seen one person defend Hamas, not one.
They are terrorists. Forget forum rules, if anyone was to glorify what they have done/doing in anyway, the next knock at the door could be from the Police.
Dropping bombs, capturing and murdering innocent civilians is wrong, doesn't matter which side of the conflict they are coming from. It's wrong.
Criticising those actions is not antisemitism, nor is it islamophobia.
Just a final point, there is absolutely no reason this topic should even come close to UK party politics.

Reading this thread I can't help thinking religion is the root of many terrible evils in the world, and that's the case here. In my youth I was really thrilled that the UK was fast becoming a secular country where rationality should soon win out over religious fervour, but probably the biggest downside of immigration to the UK has been a rise in religious belief and religious fundamentalism. It's both dangerous and worrying. Of course there are good and decent religious people, but many others are effectively medieval nutters. When the media talks about radicalizing children, they conveniently overlook that this is effectively the point of much organized religion of all types.
Meaning there are some Muslims who want to wipe out all the Jews simply because they're Jews. And there are some Jews who think they're God's chosen people on Earth and can do no wrong.
When the basis for a dispute is so irrational, it's incredibly hard to find a solution. I think/hope everyone on this thread condemns all the killing, but my guess is this thread will have to be pulled soon because of how some people see the issue.

Lovely to see this thread. What's the universe made of? What is the nature of reality? It seems to me (and many others) that the most fundamental thing in the universe is information, rather than fundamental particles, and that suggests to me we're living in a kind of simulation - I prefer to call it a programmed construct.
Some interesting thoughts from Nick Bostrom about it here, including his paper "Are you living in a simulation" where he uses statistical arguments to demonstrate we likely are: https://simulation-argument.com/
We've chatted about this from time to time and I've suggested the original simulation argument is too narrow, and should be extended to the possibility that non-human intelligences have programmed our universe, and Bostrom's agreed it would make sense to extend it along those lines. As it happens, at work I'm presenting a book idea on this subject tomorrow, with a view to offering a prominent astronomer a contract to write a book that asks this question!

A ground that one Footbal League Expert Witness described as "Bog Standard" and compared to the Globe Stadium at Morecambe.

You 
 

Where is the controversy in what was said? If we are going in to a home tie against a team that narrowly missed relegation last season we should go in as favourites with a reasonable expectation of winning the game.
If we now consider expecting to beat Cambridge United at home as arrogant or out of order then our expectations are far too low and we need to collectively get a grip.

We currently rank 15th for key passes per game, 17th from open play.
17th for total shots, 22nd for shots on target, 21st for shots in open play!
Prior to yesterday, we ranked 14th for expected goals in open play (7th with set pieces - 3 expected).
Aren't the alarm bells ringing yet?

As per my earlier post - if you're designing a simulation, where one of the fundamental features that makes it interesting is that the playing characters have absolutely no idea (or at least proof) that they are anything other than "real" then you have to design into the simulation an environment in which the laws of physics (aka the rules of the game) prevent anyone from ever categorically proving that it isn't real. Because then the simulation would cease to be interesting
In that respect the vastness and the unexplorability of the universe is the perfect design
 

If it is, can I load a previously saved game please?

I say ban this topic.  Ban it, I say... at least until Easter.
By uttering even the merest reference to it opens us up for ridicule.  For disappointment.  Even heartache for some.
Delete the thread.  Ban further reference to it.  Auto-Censor the number 11, and the word eleven.

Let's hear no more of it.
We reconvene at Easter... and remember, it's early next year!  March 29th (Good Friday) it is then...
 

 
 

Please, can we have one day, tomorrow, where not one post is made about Paul f****** Warne. If you think him great or s****, let’s just have one bloody day on this forum where we can discuss something different. Just one day. It’s doing my head in coming on here and every thread is about him. Thank you.

She actually prefers it if i spray balls from deep and make late runs into the box. 

We need to be bashing the Bishop more.

Fun Fact: Dido had a hit song in 2003 all about the 70th minute James Collins substitution. 

That's the million dollar question. No one is really sure. All we know is that he's been here for 10 years. He was CFO when Sam Rush was sacked for alleged financial irregularities. As CFO either he was negligent in policing what was going on, or he was complicit in what was going on. Yet he stayed in post. He was CFO/CEO throughout the MM FFP-busting glory years and eventual admin. Again he was either negligent or complicit. Yet he is still here
At the forum he was asked outright whether he thinks he could have personally done anything differently to avoid what happened with FFP/Admin and he changed the subject.
So we don't know that he did anything wrong, it's just a general feeling of something not adding up - and the fact that when questioned at a public forum he refused to address it doesn't help allay anyone's fears
It's not a witch hunt, or a vendetta - just fans who want what's best for the club. Administration was such an emotionally draining time, we all want to move forward with a clean slate. And we have that in terms of an owner, a squad and a manager. But the CEO - nope - same guy who let it all go to s**t last time. Only fair that we question that
 

I wonder if Lawrence Stroll is feeling a bit awkward about the points Aston Martin are missing out by having one of their cars towing a caravan 

He also had the minerals to turn up at a previous forum, and assure us that every single pie sold would help us clear P&S rules, whilst he knew the owner had already sold the stadium to himself.
 

I guess the issue is why bother with long term vision when managers are generally out of a job in 2 / 3 years!

Wouldn't say I dislike them, but I do think they should be banned from supermarkets at a weekend.

I think a burst is well into double figures, this is half that.
The market is around 20% over priced but I can't see this drop going further than 10%. 
 

Folk were built different back then. 
Furthermore, I'm not sure the 'Health and Safety Dept' had been invented in the 70s 😛
 
 
 

Hello darkness my old friend I come to drink with you again.

You're right that sparking the imagination is incredibly important. Now as well as in the future. SpaceX and Tesla already have all the best engineers because, why would you be interesting in iterating the iPhone20 when you can be working on rockets or self-driving cars. And yes it will be an absolutely huge deal when we do finally return to the Moon. But the early missions will cost vast fortunes as they're launching on SLS (at least $4bn per launch and a very low cadence - one every year or two), so there will be critics. It will forever be planting flags unless we can switch to reusable launches, after which we can finally build that Moonbase. And that will indeed make Mars much more real. 
But I think long-term life-support and on-orbit refuelling are the main bonuses of going to the Moon in terms of preparing for Mars, so they're kind of tangential to the Moon. But another bonus may be automation which will be needed for both locations. To have the ability to effectively automate the 3D-printing of landing pads and habitats, to navigate to and collect water, and all that kind of stuff. And to grow food in artificial environments. And maybe another commonality is that one idea for early habitats is to build them within collapsed lava tubes, and these exist on the Moon and Mars, so that is another way we can potentially learn from living on the Moon. But it could be the case that's the sort of thing we'll end up doing on Mars first, and then reusing the tech closer to home.
Some tech is bespoke. It's much easier to create oxygen on Mars and there's vastly more water there than on the Moon. There is also such a huge difference between having an atmospere, albeit thin, compared with no atmosphere, which makes lunar "soil" really sharp and dangerous, but I suppose if you can design protection from that then you have a lot of added insurance for when you arrive on Mars. The landings are very different. Every single time a SpaceX rocket lands on Earth, it is specifically giving them more information for when the time comes to land on Mars.
But they will have to create an entirely new landing system for the Moon, which is a distraction. The soil is so lethal, you need to minimize how much you disturb. That's why my number one goal would be to build landing pads before you even attempt a Starship landing. But when they do finally land, it will be using thrusters at the top of the rocket rather than the main engine at its foot.
But ultimately, if (still an if) Starship works as intended, it will create such a monumental change in our space capabilities that everyone will have to sit up and take notice. Very quickly from that point on we'll be able to launch new and much bigger space stations (hopefully rotating), and things like space-based solar power. But because (like the Shuttle) there is no separate escape system it will need many hundreds/thousands of launches before being rated safe for Humans from the pad. Happily, having a rapidly reusable rocket (and trying to build a new one every week!) means that won't take as long as many people think.

Great to come on and see this thread full of comments. Seriously. Because it's about going to Mars I haven't posted about India's achievements on here, with their lunar landing, although I tweeted about it.
It's actually an interesting question as I used to think Humanity couldn't go to Mars and build a settlement there without first doing a lot of work with practice Human habitation on the Moon, and a fully working Moonbase and infrastructure around it. Then, one day, I was having drinks with the head of rocket landing at SpaceX (before they'd ever landed a rocket!) and we were talking about this and he said how Elon thought the Moon was irrelevant and Mars had to be the goal - because only on Mars can you live sustainably using local resources, and because there are too many differences that make the tech you'd develop in each case, not transferable. Over the years we've discussed this more, and I think Elon is basically right.
However, the Moon is a prize for politicians and nations, hence we see the current race to land people back there, America in the lead but China (and now India) coming up on the rails. With Congress throwing a lot of money at the project because their SLS rocket creates jobs in every single state. So, some visionary people at NASA managed to award the lunar landing contract to SpaceX, as a means of helping fund Starship and allow them to work together on on-orbit refuelling and long-term life-support systems (for the ultimate goal of Mars). Jeff Bezos didn't like this and sued to stop the award, to much ridicule in the space community whose response was you can't sue your way to the Moon. Despite Bezos founding Blue Origin a couple of years befor Musk founded SpaceX, Blue Origin has never launched a single thing into orbit. But now it means SpaceX is diverted slightly from the Mars goal as they have to adapt a version of the Starship to land on the Moon. One of the NASA engineers on the project came over to see me a month ago and talked about how advanced these plans actually are, even if they've not yet been made public.