leicsmac

England doing the usual of controlling the majority of the game and still being behind at half time because they're useless finishers, then.

The Fermi Paradox and its offshoots and possible solutions cover this in much more detail, but I'm sure you're aware of that already.

Beating England one match and then losing to Italy the next is so very Scotland.

Fair. But having said all this, which is the more likely possibility? - That the professionals both government and private are interested in these situations because they represent new tech from entities public and private that they know nothing of, might could threaten them and therefore need more information on or - That the professionals have evidence for and are suppressing the knowledge of genuine alien spacecraft who have the technology to travel vast distances to visit us, but then seemingly not the tech to hide from us, or choose not to, for reasons not yet known ....? If they are going to have mastered interstellar travel, they will as a matter of course be further along the tech tree than we are. But the first sentence is spot on. Reminds me of a conversation from the movie Sphere: "We always assume these creatures will be green, or insect-like, but basically human. But what if they inhale air and exhale cyanide gas? It's perfectly plausible."

Scoring over 500 in a day at the fastest rate ever and winning as many Tests in one series as all the other series put together in Pakistan stands out.

Fourteen wins, eight losses (six of those against Aus and India in the last year) and one draw. Four won series, three drawn series, one lost (this one). It's clearly not perfect, but it is a marked improvement on what came before that needs fine tuning, rather than the wholesale overhaul the "purists" are calling for.

Further to this, it's been pretty rare in recent times that any one of India, Oz or England have actually lost a Test series with four or more Tests at home. India beat Oz there last time out and we've drawn against both at home not long ago, but an actual won series is rare.

Disappointing to not at least have made a better fist of it. But then touring India is a task very few teams, even the truly great ones, win at. This team isn't good enough for that, especially in the spin department. Onto the summer and time to prove they can excel in every other circumstance before the trip to Oz.

Fair to say, though I did try to qualify what I said by referring to businesses that appear to be more prevalent than they should be and them being likely rather than certain to be engaged in dodgy stuff with cash. Just a hunch on my part; it's perfectly plausible that I'm wrong, but I'm not sure how some of them stay in business with the (apparent) lack of foot traffic in and around them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68428348 Last month was the world's warmest February in modern times, the EU's climate service says, extending the run of monthly records to nine in a row. Each month since June 2023 has seen new temperature highs for the time of year. The world's sea surface is at its hottest on record, while Antarctic sea-ice has again reached extreme lows. Temperatures are still being boosted by the Pacific's El Niño weather event, but human-caused climate change is by far the main driver of the warmth. "Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit," stresses Prof Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. Carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level for at least two million years, according to the UN's climate body, and increased by near-record levels again over the past year. Those warming gases helped make February 2024 about 1.77C warmer than "pre-industrial" times - before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. This breaks the previous record, from 2016, by around 0.12C. These temperatures saw particularly severe heat afflict western Australia, southeast Asia, southern Africa and South America. Needle keeps cranking up towards 11.

Time was that our top order would fail and it would be the middle order that would have to dig us out. Over in India the opposite appears to be true. But then there's a reason India have gone undefeated in all home series for the last 14 years and only lost two in the last 40.

Not sure about the last one as I would think you would need a registered business location - bricks and mortar - on the back of it all to help it work, but yeah.

Any business that takes mostly cash and is more prevalent in number than one might expect is likely money laundering, IMO.

That could be a new topic in of itself tbh; which businesses are clearly money laundering fronts?

It's deeply frustrating. Another area where the future of human civilisation is subject to idiot nationalistic willy waving.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2419671-uk-spurns-european-invitation-to-join-iter-nuclear-fusion-project/ Since Brexit, the UK no longer has access to ITER, the world's largest nuclear fusion experiment, through the European Union. After an invitation to rejoin this week, the UK government has confirmed it prefers to go it alone. What parochial idiocy.

Interesting thoughts. As you say, the system seems very convoluted and fascinating at the same time.

Putting aside the cause for a moment, what is happening now in Gaza is what happens when a couple of the elements of the bottom tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are not met - almost total rapid social breakdown. Now imagine that on a scale with ten times, a hundred times, or even a thousand times as many people involved.

Bringing this back to the fore because the recent TV show on Channel 4 has brought up some discussion about juries on the TV thread... The jury system is clearly deeply flawed in a lot of ways, mostly because of the way bias and stronger personalities work and how it is difficult without training to isolate oneself from those things and look at facts only. Having said all that, is it still the best worst option that we have when it comes to deciding guilt or innocence?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68435197 England and Wales had their warmest February on record this year, the Met Office said on Friday. The average temperature for England was 7.5C, with an average of 6.9C in Wales. The UK as a whole saw its second warmest recorded February. Farmers say they are losing crops to floods while less frost hurts the growth of trees like apples and pears. The provisional statistics are in line with long-term projections of warmer, wetter winters due to climate change. More record breaking.

They're both an adjutant to each other rather than one being a bigger issue than the other, I think. One will feed into the other and then they both mix and cause dire trouble.

That's a fair assessment too. However again, I'm looking at it in terms of quantifiable damage caused. I've no reason to disagree with the idea that if the appointment of someone not as good as Maresca had happened that we'd be in a similar very parlous situation to those Taylor days, though, and Rodgers would have been wholly responsible for that - but we've been lucky and/or skilled there.

Well, last year they were all deep-sea vehicle experts. And some time before and during that, armchair generals too. The good thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice. The bad thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice.

No disagreement there regarding intent and situation. I was just looking at it in terms of overall damage caused while each was in charge.

I can see the point given recency bias, but Rodgers didn't put our club on life support with massive input needed to save it from death. Taylor and Wise did. Perhaps that's a too quantitative way of looking at it, though.