En Passant

I want to cut the USA off the internet. Every place you go.... And all the TV... remaking anything decent because apparently your standard US citizen cannot even deal with a programme in English without it being changed for home consumption. (that's a dig at the producers, not the people on here who are clearly of a much higher standard). I am perfectly happy to watch those Scandi Noir thrillers as the original, complete with subtitles, and am not very fond of the 'English' remakes (yes Branagh, I'm looking at you). But remaking something already in English? Meh. Fire away.

If you say so. I'm done.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. I believe the Fermi paradox is just that, a paradox. And to me the most obvious answer is 'there is nobody out there' because if there were, we'd know. You believe differently. But its all speculation since not one contact has proved verifiable, which at least is not off topic for the thread.

Sure but an estimation is not a calculation. I do not believe that Drake's equation can be used with any degree of certainty to assume that there is only one species of intelligent life per galaxy, it could be none, it could be many more.

Ah yes, I've seen that of course, but so many of the variables are completely unquantifiable so much so that whilst still being used it's subject to a lot of variation and indeed criticism. It works as a starting point, but I would't use it personally as a counter-argument to the fermi paradox :S ETA: this one in particular fp = 0.2 to 0.5 (one fifth to one half of all stars formed will have planets No exoplanets at all had been confirmed at the time Drake wrote his equation. So that number could only be described as extremely speculative, since 1988 or so that's no longer the case. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the equation is wrong, simply that it's not definitive.

Yes and no, as far as I can tell. The distances are almost inconceivably huge, and that indeed was my first thought - it's just too far. However as a result of my extensive research (a bit of googling in an absent hour or so) I was reminded that time involved is also inconceivably long on a human scale. So even allowing for the limit of light speed, there should have been some evidence - Von Neumann probes amongst other things. I'd be interested to see this calculation though, since there is zero credible evidence of any life at all other than ourselves, how can anyone claim to have an accurate calculation for the number of intelligent species per galaxy?

Complete sceptic about any form of UFO myself (well, the extraterrestrial kind anyway) However I have done some reading on the Fermi paradox and here is an interesting treatise as to why it would be bad news to discover any form of life on mars.

I'm not sure I've got how the sequence in your previous post quite works out yet, still working my head around that. But this? No problem.

It's not that my mind is usually a sewer, but now that you highlighted the swallowing thing I'd definitely prefer to visualize one of those chocolates.

Seems to me that whatever the validity of those particular numbers, people don't generally bother to get out of bed on a cold winters day to protest when something is going their way - so comparing them directly is a bit moot.

Nice pictures. I wasn't really serious about Newcastle, I've avoided the place on reputation up til now and enticing as a 5am moon viewing is....

Is it just me waiting for him to get wiped out by a speeding Ford Capri at the end of that ad? Ok, maybe it is, seen too many parodies.

Well, I'm going to Newcastle for that one then. Because I was in Oxford for the one this summer and ended up walking half a mile trying to remove houses and trees from my line of sight, never did, and damn near fell in the canal at Iffley lock in the attempt.

I was trying to think of something witty or amusing to convey my appreciation of this sentiment. But right now I'm out of ideas so I'll have to settle for.... I fucking detest 'featuring'. Absolute bollocks. Example: Rockwells' early 80's hit "Somebody's watching me". Love it or hate it, it succeeded (or would have failed) standing on it's own merits (within reason, a lot of music requires some promotion and airplay). What is perhaps less well known is that it had Michael (and Jermaine) Jackson on backing vocals. Today the marketing goons couldn't avoid adding the godawful 'featuring Michael Jackson'.

Oh come on, she's got history for extremely well informed comment on a variety of topics that have nothing to do with cooking.