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You'd pay up or do without.

1. Big notice at the entrance to the supermarket explaining the policy and listing the items effected. 2. Put coloured stickers on the shelves indicating items concerned. 3. A few big security blokes employed to hang around the tills and deal with customers who refuse to pay up. 4. A few...

Apparently there's enough supermarket stock to go around, so if folk buy at the normal rate, the shelves get replenished at the normal rate. There are literally no reasons for panic buying. I think I mentioned this before but the Danes seem to have come up with the answer: the first bottle of...

I agree but the practical side is that it is unlikely that there is enough of the law to go around. The background to that is of course good: we live in a society where we are governed and policed by consent. What needs to make a comeback is something that we seem to have abandoned i.e. social...

No offence taken. It's probably just an aspect of it that needs clarifying.

Thanks for the link. I noticed that some of the books are fairly recent and therefore surely still in copyright. That makes me wonder if it is legal to download them. There's another matter as well: if the books are still in copyright and if they routinely are downloaded on a large scale, the...

If it were any other flavour of government I would still be saying that we have to see how things pan out before we judge. I do not believe that any government would deliberately make sub-optimal choices in a matter like this. However, it is inevitable that some sub-optimal choices will be made...

You've just illustrated what I mean by the political angle. This whole thing transcends or should transcend that.

:D :mrgreen: :D :mrgreen:

That's barely believable. What sort of education have these youths had to make them think that that is in any way acceptable? What is there appreciation of real life? I trust somebody called the police as a bit of police brutality would do them no end of good.

I must say that I too have never heard of it taking place outside professional journals. But whether or not that is the case, peer review consists by definition of handing over what you have done or in the case in question what you have decided to do, to independent experts for their...

Right, so we've established that you simply don't know what the term "peer review" means, as it is not what you maintained earlier, nor is it anything to do with spreadsheets. It also doesn't mean peer in the sense of having a squint at something. So why bandy a word about and attribute to it...

Our paths would never have crossed, then.

A question which naturally suggests itself is that of the books to be read while housebound. IMO they should ideally entertaining, thought-provoking and require close reading (one would soon get sick of an endless diet of schlock). Therefore in that spirit I make my wholehearted recommendation...

14, 13 or 9? Me: Green Slime but I fled the Dark Side for the sunny uplands after 13.

I understand the point you're making there but comparison with other positions only becomes valid once we have the final results. Take for instance Italy: given that it is culturally common for three generations of a family to live in the same house, the relative failure (so far) of their...

Tell us all: how long in your experience does the peer review process take? Is it something to which decisions taken urgently under great time pressure are routinely subjected? Perhaps you could enlighten us.

Your first point doesn't hold up if you think about it. Nobody's going to come up to the government and say, "We've got some bad advice for you here". And the govt. isn't going to reply, "Oh thanks, we'll take that". The advice will have been made and taken in good faith. It's also probably...

I couldn't agree more. The scientists, under great pressure, got the ball rolling and the government acted. Once assumptions were shown to be false, remedial action was taken. I think that as a culture we have taken on the idea that "experts" always get everything right. They usually do ...

Don't forget that China is a totalitarian system and that therefore facts are a political commodity to be traded for the party's advantage: they initially went through the usual process of trying to suppress the facts and we have to hope that they are now telling the truth about it being almost...