“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Hawkmumbler]

Oh, Giant Squid a legit. It's just a question of HOW big they can grow. They are literally amongst the least documented marine invertebrates with carcasses of individuals barely out of infancy being the only real evidence to go off. The only footage of what might be an adult was recorded back in 2005 (I think) and we can only just make out the front of the thing.....from 20 meters above it. It must have bean massive.

And Pops, theirs a world of a difference between filter feeding marine predators and an Ape living in the woods of Ohio. The fact people actually live in Ohio and in pretty high numbers being one of them.

[ZenArcade]

Oregon?

[Hawkmumbler]

I failed my Geography A-level, you can't expect me to remember where every state in the US is when they don't even know Scotland is a separate country to England.

[ZenArcade]

I think the existence of a meter scale primate roaming about in the US North West is stretching my belief levels as well. I think the land based discoveries will be on the millimetre scale ie arthopods. The oceans may well be another matter. Z

[JayzusB.Christ]

... a few years ago we still believed the world was flat ...

Comic-geek pedantry time - that's not entirely true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

As for extraterrestrial life, well, my guess is is that it exists in some form or other out there, but doesn't visit earth in silver cylinders like the one I saw.  And I'm about 99.999999% sure it hasn't helped humans in any of our historical endeavours, despite the insidious vortex of bullshit the History Channel is sucking people into. Did I mention how much I hate Ancient Aliens?

[ZenArcade]

No Jayzus.....are you none too fond of Ancient Aliens? Z

[Hawkmumbler]

[JayzusB.Christ]

No Jayzus.....are you none too fond of Ancient Aliens? Z

I... I'm secretly in love with it.  But it won't have me 

[Famous Mortimer]

Did I mention how much I hate Ancient Aliens?

Maybe we could have a hate-off about it. It got to the point where every time the narrator would ask a question, I'd scream "NO" and would then loudly abuse every stupid fact-free minute of it.

[The Legendary Shark]

How about vaccinations causing autism in certain cases? It seems Italian courts have ruled it more likely than not. Is a court science? No but it is meant to consider evidence and come to an impartial decision. (I can't read Italian so I don't know what the linked Italian pages say - anybody on here read Italian?)
.
www.ageofautism.com/2015/01/recent-italian-court-decisions-on-vaccines-and-autism.html
.
(Sorry I haven't been on this thread for a bit - I must have cocked-up somewhere along the line and ceased receiving update notifications, so I thought the conversation was dead - but it's good to see you can all get on perfectly fine without me and my big spoon...)
.

[Theblazeuk]

So Sharky, you're saying courts come to impartial and just decisions eh?

[Richmond Clements]

http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm saying the purpose of a court is to reach impartial decisions. Nothing can be taken for granted - who's to say some judges don't wear tinfoil hats under their wigs?
.
I'm downloading that study now, Rich. Will read it later.

[IndigoPrime]

Absolute fucking bollocks. To even suggest anti-vax might be a thing, or that there's a link between vaccination and autism, really gets my back up, not least given how many middle-class fuckwits are not vaccinating their children, putting them and everyone else at risk.

The ONLY 'link' that was ever really shown was by Wakefield, immersed balls-fucking-deep in all kinds of dodgy activity. His plans backfired to the point that he got struck off and we now have pretty major diseases like measles making a comeback in the west, despite being all-but-eradicated. Autism rates won't change, because as numerous scientists have pointed out extremely clearly, there isn't and never was any link. The Lancet should every single bloody week reprint WE ARE SO FUCKING SORRY across a double-page spread, and Private Eye's championing of the original report shouldn't be forgotten either.

[Jim_Campbell]

So Sharky, you're saying courts come to impartial and just decisions eh?

Not when there is a significant technical component they don't. When I worked for $HIGHSTREETBUSINESS*, I helped our legal secretary prepare the documents that formed the basis of our barrister's case when a customer sued for damages.

We did not dispute the the customer had been sold an out of date product, but we repudiated utterly the suggestion that they had suffered any harm as a result, since such harm would have required a sealed, sterile product to magically have become either acidic or caustic enough (the prosecution was never quite clear which) to cause harm to the customer within weeks of the expiry date. Harm whose symptoms, strangely enough, tallied precisely with a well-documented pre-existing medical condition.

We produced expert witnesses to explain these facts in detail, while the prosecution offered only a tale of woe from the customer. At the end of the trial, the judge announced that we was going to 'set aside' (transl: ignore) the expert testimony and made a substantial damages award to the customer.

Also: what IP and Rich said.

Cheers

Jim

*Which I won't name for obvious reasons.