Those who can, don't get as much money as those who can't.

[Francko]

It is true that British society collectively is now more stupid than it has been for a few centuries.

Despite your best efforts to increase the average, I have to disagree with this.

[dang65]

Industry based on physics alone (never mind any other sciences) contributes about 6.4% of UK GDP, about the same as the financial services sector.

The bank bailout cost 850 billion pounds - more than Britain's science budget for all sciences for all of history.

We are poor because we are stupid.

What do you class as a "science budget"? Are you only counting investment into research and education? In which case, I don't suppose that Britain's "financial services budget" would be very high either.

If, however, you class the bank bailout as part of the "financial services budget", then presumably you would have to also class any money given to things like oil refineries, pharmaceutical companies, aerospace, weapons manufacturers, observatories and radio telescopes, telecommunications, North Sea gas drilling, computing, coal mining, world exploration and mapping, the steel industry, wind farms and alternative energy as part of the "science budget". Over the last couple of hundred years, or even over the last century, or even over the last fifty years, or even over the last ten years, I bet that lot adds up to a hell of a lot more than the bank bailout. And, of course, for any government funding for science, there will be many times more invested by financiers, so they couldn't be allowed to just fail. (Unlike many industries, under the Tories.)

[expat]

All industries are based on physics as ultimately everyone and everything obeys the laws of physics (maybe apart from threaded).

HTH

Funnily enough out in the less than rational world of British Justice, a man had his speeding conviction upheld despite proving that the Gatso camera had been set up in a way that would cause the reading to be exaggerated. The argument was really simple but the court rejected it on the grounds that it didn't really matter.

Philip Gwynne, of West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, said: 'In speeding matters, it is the law of the land not the law of physics that matters.'

Mediaeval idiot.

[Doggy Styles]

Funnily enough out in the less than rational world of British Justice, a man had his speeding conviction upheld despite proving that the Gatso camera had been set up in a way that would cause the reading to be exaggerated. The argument was really simple but the court rejected it on the grounds that it didn't really matter.

Philip Gwynne, of West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, said: 'In speeding matters, it is the law of the land not the law of physics that matters.'

Mediaeval idiot.

Also you can't drown a witch, so if a suspect survives 20 minutes submersion in water, they are guilty as hell.

[expat]

Also you can't drown a witch, so if a suspect survives 20 minutes submersion in water, they are guilty as hell.

No, it's the Americans that do that one.

[Lockhouse]

All industries are based on physics as ultimately everyone and everything obeys the laws of physics (maybe apart from threaded).

HTH

I've heard ye cannae change them.

[AlfredJPruffock]

I've heard ye cannae change them.

Believe that - and you'll believe anything ....

1 (a) Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

The Buddha

1 (b) Its all make believe - isn't it ?

AJ Pruffock

[expat]

Scientific laws are all make believe?

At least 1 American in 3 believes that "Evolution is only a theory".

I believe that Gravity is only a theory, and would like to see all creationists walk off a cliff and then report back on the level of their belief in established theories.

[Churchill]

Physics is bollocks - how does a magnet "work"? Eh? Eh? They can't tell you because they don't know!

[expat]

Physics is bollocks - how does a magnet "work"? Eh? Eh? They can't tell you because they don't know!

There was a story told by Feynman about one of the scientists on the Manhattan project talking to the others in the team. He had just come back from a visit to the UK, where he had seen the development of this new radar stuff. He tried to explain the generation of microwaves by something called a "magnetron", which, he was driven to explain, "works just like a whistle".

"OK then," said another scientist, "how does a whistle work?"



Radar, OK. Nuclear fission, OK. Whistle? Hmmmm.