Lao

Surely there's a possible pragmatic approach there somewhere? Some middle ground? there was a middle ground, but the armed forces shelled it last week!

it is news.

a truly remarkable and powerfully moving artistic performance. i have sent this link to friends who i know will apreciate it, great find Jagman.

"Uncle Albert's dating agency" our motto: settle for whatever you can find, before you get stuck on the shelf! Are you having a go? I'm not on the shelf................yet! I like the name of the agency though. Nah its just me imagining what alberts dating agency motto would be, cant really see him having something bright and cheerful. If there's one thing the forum needs more of, it's bitter recrimination from bad dates seeping into threads. There should be a whole subforum for this scheme, one where people are paired not according to their choice, but the common will of the forum majority as expressed through polls. this idea is awesome! forced dating based on viewers choice! this is so going to be a reality TV show, i can just tell.

"Uncle Albert's dating agency" our motto: settle for whatever you can find, before you get stuck on the shelf!

I don't think 'a night out' is the best way of meeting someone. i agree, the chance of meeting your future partner in Paramount or the Outback drunk is pretty slim. You wouldn't turn up a the bank asking for a mortgage whilst pissed out of your head, likewise, you wouldn't buy a car whilst shitfaced. Why would you expect to meet your future partner whilst in the same condition? Also, Lao is a lovely, handsome chap. Call him ladies! cheers man, the above recommendation was well worth the £5! good to see you at the traf on saturday and share martial arts horror stories. try chris' place, im sure you will be able to train without further injuring your knee.

But you might be fugly. Your avatar definitely is. And by the way, your tail is on fire. i might be fugly? so you're saying there is a chance i might not be..........excellent!

dont all rush to assure me im not fugly you bastards.

I think there is a stigma attached. If I were living in the UK I might possibly consider a dating website if I didn't meet anyone the 'usual' ways, but I don't think I'd do it here because the place is too small and everyone knows everyone else. I think most Manxies tend to get married really young so the dating 'pool' on the Island usually consists of divorcees or just undesirables. Most of my friends have imported their boyfriends - met someone that has come over here to work, or they have left the Island, met someone and brought them back. That's also how I met my last boyfriend (he came over here to work). If you don't have any baggage, go and live off the Island for a bit, you'll meet someone and can then bring them back. This will also improve the 'dating economy' for other Manx singles, as the imported person will have friends that will come over and visit and they might meet a single Manxie, etc etc. I think it's harder for single women out there than men. Most guys you meet on a night out are only looking for one thing. So if you're a single guy looking for more than that surely it must be easier because most women are usually looking for more. Aren't they? ouch! as a single man on the Island who isnt a divorcee, i feel the sting of the above classifications. i cant leave the Island as i run a business here, and as for being easier, i dont know who it is harder for but it sure ain't easy for men. but maybe im just fugly.

is there still stigma?

this can be true of all people, online or not. but it is a fair reminder to all dating site users to procede with caution.

if you were looking for/looking to avoid something in particular, a character trait or personality type, a dating site would be far less hit and miss than hoping someone you meet will be suitable. for example you could search for someone who share a particular interest, you could find someone from your own faith or avoid people with faith. you can search for singles in your area, people who want kids/dont want kids etc. and check out this list of niche ones: http://www.socialgrid.com/specialty-dating-service.html every taste catered for!

cleverly done. some people have a lot of patience to trawl through all the footage looking for just the right word.

thats bad taste, the least they could of done was not edit in the jaunty practical joke music to the video! i mean they had to record that, deal with the police after having witnessed their companion getting brutally gunned down, and then on returning to the studio they decided to continue to edit together the footage ....... oh wait, hoax.

So we will shortly be at war with the formalhaut due to us inflicting them with saved by the bell, but Arcturus will surely come to our aid in the hope that their are some more M.A.S.H. christmas specials that they havent quite reached them yet. If the BBC ever find out about this, they'll start their own space program to get the TV licence money from distant planet! as an aside did anyone ever play the old game elite 2 :frontier ? formalhaut was a profitable stop in the game

i agree that the entertainment meme is and will contine to be popular, however i think that in the future its impact on society will lessen. i cant see anything taking its place, but i can see a wider variety of people being elevated to the rank of 'celebrity'.greater appreciation of the amatuer athletes, the rise of the reality TV star and internet celebrity have all taken their own portion of the fame and in the future i see a growing interest in celebrating the intellect. as for the intelligence/IQ discussion i would have to disagree that they are not related. many of the more reputable IQ tests (not the kind found on facebook) are very good for demonstating the apply knowledge/solve problems part of intelligence which depending on the definitions of intelligece you accept is one third to one fifth of the required criteria. i know people who dont score well on IQ tests, they are considered educated and intelligent but they are not problem solvers,nor big on aplied knowledge.

Possibly I'm misunderstanding what you mean by 'high IQ societies'. But if you mean societies like MENSA: I am almost certain that membership of MENSA is primarily defined by being the sort of people who would even want to be in something like that. Only a certain sort of person would want anything to do with them. And IQ tests are not an objective measure of anything other than the ability to perform well in IQ tests. yes thats what im talking about, high IQ societies like mensa. all of what you have said is fair comment, but i will say that if you are going to consider IQ subjective, then it is doubly true for intelligence. how do you even begin to define intelligence ? is it the amount of specific knowledge you hold in your area of expertise? the amount of general knowledge you have outside of any specific career based knowledge? is it the number of books you have read or the quality of those books? intelligence is a hard thing to qantify. you seem to have some sort of distaste for people who would join or want to join a High IQ society, so i will ask this in their defence, is your distaste for everyone who wants to band together with other likeminded people as strong? martial arts clubs, football fan clubs, book clubs, choirs, wine tasting , religous, speed dating and just about any other activity or club that you can think where people who have something in common spend time together? i think you might just be being a little hard on them. to give my thoughts on the question of how natural selection will affect the human race in the future, i see one major factor in the human selection process and that is the lack of a selector. there is very little that kills us off in sufficent numbers to actual have a selective effect on competative DNA, so i can forsee us having a constant battle with super viruses, there could well be and ebb and flow of population figures as killer infections cull the herd. one of the possible traits that could become favorable as a meme rather than a genetic trait is creativity/invention. the ability to solve problems as they arise and find new soltions to old problem to increase quality of life will bring more and more rewards to the originator.

Another problem with the model (and perhaps the most glaring) is that it assumes that professionals are by and large more intelligent than non-professionals, in terms of raw intelligence. I'd argue that this ignores a whole host of factors and secondary discussions about intelligence, such as the role of class and money in influencing a child's later professional status, making the mistake of equating professional status with intelligence. I suppose what I'm trying to get at is that an awful lot of professionals are in fact quite unremarkable when it comes to intelligence, and have managed to get where they are primarily due to background and an ability/coaching in playing the system when it comes to exams/university and interviews. this is very true, many of the members of high IQ societies have ordinary mundane jobs, i often theorise that this is due to a profound lack of ambition, i may write a small monograph on the subject.

did you just threaten someone on the internet with physical violence? quite simply you are pathetic. physical intimidation has no place in the arena of debate, you have stooped so low as to render all possible points of argument on your side completely moot. do you really think that violence changes minds? if so please refrain from joining in on debates with rational people, your type of attitude is most unwelcome.

ok just voted. am curious to see what this other guy loa voted.

ok im stopping this derail. china now has reopened the thread regarding this in general chat, go there to argue that the video in question shows alien technology. here is a great video of Aronra disecting the recent IDA discovery, he does a great job. it is also a response to a video made by some creationist idiot.

i am simply pointing out to you why they think,that you think there is no ice in space. you obviously believe that there is ice in space that is clear now. however all three of us got the impression from your posts that you did not believe there was ice in space. im sure you can see how wording your post differently may have lead to less confusion. now that i read back over it all, you seem to have been milking the fact that i said melts rather than sublimates, which is kinda funny as i was keeping it simple for you as to be honest i thought you were a bit simple, in future if you want to score cheap points in this fashion, a simple post saying" didnt you mean sublimates?" would have been far more effective. but at least you will feel good about it all after you have donated the money.

in your nice little "you said/they said" post you forgot to mention this: this is you accusing them of underhand argument tactics, you are maligning their character by claiming to be the victim of having them put words in your mouth and you then went on to say this: bit of rightous indignation on your part followed by: i have since pointed out to you that your post does claim that there is no ice in space. when can the charity expect your kind donation? we all know that you believe that the objects on the video are something other than ice, but at this time we are prepared to believe that it is ice. also is it so hard to get my name right? its 3 letters! Lao that its, its written beside every post i make.

Manxman2 here is your comment that has prompted the last few posts from slim and chinahand, i can only assume from the complete reversal of direction in your argument that this quote is a mistake, perhaps a typo. but it does prove that neither slim nor chinahand are being underhand in their arguments, they are simply adressing this statement. and the hospice will be very grateful for your donation.

i look forward to it. this would be a very difficult thing to achieve, as temperature is a expression of the behaviour of the atomic vibration of a solid or the vibrational and rotational behavior of a gas. although space is not quite a vacuum, it is largely empty of anything that could vibrate and therefore is a very cold place. IIRC the temperature of space outside a solar system is based on the background radiation of photons generated by the big bang and has been measured at about 2K (-270 degrees C) inside a solar system is is only slighty warmer due to the solar winds. a more pertinant question might be what would cause ice to melt in space at all, if it does not meet with the friction of an atmoshere or collide with an object travelling at speed? i dont claim to be an expert on the subject, and the above might be better explained by someone with more up to date knowledge on the subject.