TheGunnShow

*starts randomly singing Sachsen-Anhalt by Rainald Grebe upon seeing this thread*

Think my favourite stat there, regardless of club, was when German side Energie Cottbus fielded a starting eleven in the Bundesliga with no Germans in it (home against VfL Wolfsburg in April 2001).

I'm Hungary for country-related spelling errors but there's Norway you got that right. 😉

Portugal - Ivo Pinto France - Cedric Anselin Germany - Marco Stiepermann Spain - Borja Sainz Netherlands - Fernando Derveld Belgium - Ritchie De Laet Poland - Przemyslaw Placheta Norway - Erik Fuglestad Sweden - Martin Olsson Finland - Teemu Pukki Brazil - Gabriel Sara Argentina - Emi Buendia

The Knut that invented the hissing swear filter can funking rot in hello. 😉

Crikey, I know Bolton's not the wealthiest of places but now you mention it... 😉

Can't fault the character of this lot, even if the execution can be patchy on occasion.

Considering the size of the town/urban area, I'd think Grimsby Town (yes, I know it's in Cleethorpes) is one that's struggling a bit compared to the days when Alan Buckley was in charge. On a similar scale, someone mentioned Plymouth but I'd also throw Exeter City in there - they've never made it into the Championship / the old Division Two despite being a fairly populous area. I know this next one is in a part of the country that's not short of clubs at all, but considering its location and ownership, you'd think Salford City would have pushed further up the leagues than they have done so far. Considering that Morecambe are pretty established in the Football League now, you'd have to say Lancaster City are a long way behind.

Similar for the whole of the EU, that. Remarkable is that devoutly Catholic Poland and Italy have two of the lowest rates (although the Faroes have the highest, which isn't that surprising - it's pretty religious by Scandi standards). Even in largely Muslim Albania their rate is at the bottom end of the table too. Total fertility rate Europe by country 2023 | Statista Difficult to look past increased retirement ages and learning how to manage economies with decreasing populations. The likes of Iran show that even when you have a theocratic ****hole, women are still thankfully loathe to give their reproductive freedom up. Have heard unfortunately that in Iran (and also in Hungary and italy) governments are pushing hard to get women into having kids again, so let's hope those who don't want them stick to their guns. Back to Africa and the Third World though, as this chart shows, they are slowly getting there. Total Fertility Rate of Africa 1950-2024 & Future Projections (database.earth)

Considering that for the first time in history, as many countries worldwide have a birth rate below 2.1 as do those above it (and pleasingly, birth rates are continuing to fall in practically all countries), the notion of replacement may not be all that accurate and on top of this, belief systems are not genetic. To put into perspective, in 1950 the average woman worldwide had 4.7 children, but now it's at around half of that - and as most of this is due to the education of women as well as advances in contraception, meaning women can better choose if they want kids or not. Even a theocratic hellhole like Iran is still below replacement rate. The real difference is that in the First World, said birth rates have fallen quicker than in the Third World since the end of WW2 - but even there, they're still making some progress in practically all cases. You may be unwittingly making a very cogent argument for further foreign aid that focuses on the education and emancipation of women in Third World countries, as well as further increasing access to contraception and quality sex education in those countries. As much as I tend to agree with Dambisa Moyo more often than not, local-level charities that focus on these would be very deserving of support. Fertility Rate - Our World in Data (Incidentally, it's an absolute disgrace IMO that it is so difficult for adult women to get sterilised on request, as the likes of Holly Brockwell and Faith Roswell intelligently noted when they wrote about their travails).

Is that due to religion, or is that due to land/power/resources where religion's used to pick sides? I suspect it's more the latter, although I agree with YF in having a general unease at the notion of faith schools in general, regardless of religion involved. Totally agree with the paragraph re. sexual abuse though. Essentially I'm not sure religion's the underlying casus belli in a conflict unless we're talking the Crusades.

Rowe's shoes might just be the most polished performance of the season.

No horseplay here.

Might work, but here's a cheap laugh of me playing five-a-side in goal for a team I used to play for. This video footage is of two games, I wasn't playing in the first one, but the game I was playing in starts from 55 seconds in. I'm the goalie in blue, nearer the camera. (1) Facebook

Not really, it merely gives an order of priorities based on the quality of substantiating evidence. Determining the quality of evidence is a different ball game. But your last sentence could be readily summarised as my phrase "god of the gaps" - used as a substitute as knowledge hasn't reached the points in question yet.

Sure, no dispute at all there regarding unsubstantiated claims being a fuel for the scientific process, but the point here is which claims/models are given more credence at the time the question is posed, and a mental tool is useful for helping sift through various models at the time. And I would say that science has the habit of eating its young (revising what was previously considered correct when new evidence comes to light) as part of its progress or indeed if previously undiscovered weaknesses in methodologies come to light (the social sciences are particularly vulnerable there). If we bring it back to religion though, as I like to jocularly put it, we've been waiting 2,000 years to watch a god walk on Doffcocker Lodge (a local beauty spot).

I like the attempted twist in there, but then it invariably brings up the question of what use is an unsubstantiated claim regardless of the field of knowledge in which it is made? You could basically say anything with no evidence and expect it to be treated as seriously as anything that is thoroughly justified, observed, and evidenced. That brings it back nolens volens to your fair point about science also needing some assumptions to function, but you'd surely agree that minimising them as far as possible (and particularly on foundational matters) is a reasonable enough starting point?

I'll just have to ask for evidence on that bit in bold. 😉 However, it's digressing away from the fundamental use of the razor, namely putting the onus of evidence back on those making the claims. For that alone, it is an extremely good tool for creating clarity and seeing which points in discussion are more informed after analysis of evidence that is proffered. EDIT: It should go without saying that this is meant not just in religious terms, but in any discussion, regardless of topic.

Agree with the second paragraph, but not the first - simply as by definition the second paragraph takes political and economic ideas that tend to exist as a form of spectrum, whereas theism is an either/or - there is either definitive evidence for a god, or there is not. You're either dead or you're not. You're either pregnant or you're not. There's either a god or there isn't. I don't think Hitchens's Razor pretends there's nothing to know at all. It merely says "where's the definitive evidence?" It puts the onus back on the person making the claim, which is exactly where it should be.

Yeah, Birdie said something about curiosity, but I think it's more about how people choose to live with uncertainty and also lack of knowledge that is currently beyond our current scope/senses. I generally suspect religious people just "need" an answer much more than the non-religious. My stance there is "we don't know at all, we're working on it, let's wait for more defined/definite answers and I can live with the uncertainty as it currently stands".

This is precisely what I like about Hitchens's Razor - it helps provide some clarity of thought by reinforcing the notion that the onus of evidence is on that person making the claim. An atheist is simply saying "where's the evidence for a god's existence?" As I said in my previous post, it's basically all about the "god of the gaps". Can't explain it - just say a god did it. And it gets particularly shaky when they try to force codes of conduct based on it across society at large. The Abrahamic religions are all notoriously bad at this although some wings are more tolerant than others.

Think I'll feel this one tomorrow. To break up long runs on the treadmill I started doing them as a slower interval session. Remember that my half-marathon PB is 1:39:23, so just over 12.7km/h. As a means of breaking things up whilst providing some tempo work, I decided I'd run a period at a faster pace, an equal period at a slower one, then reduce each period by one, until I got down to zero. In other words, just as an example, 5 minutes fast, 5 minutes slow, then 4 minutes fast, then 4 minutes slow, then 3 - 2 - 1. Usually on flat ground my slow/recovery place is about 10.5km/h to 11km/h. Decided to have the slow pace at 10.5km/h and my fast at 13.1km/h, so a bit sharper than my half-mara PB. And I started out for an 11 minute fast spell, then 11 minutes slow, then 10 - 9... etc. Got down to finishing the slow 4 minute phase and two hours had elapsed. Longest run this year, so I cut it off at that having clocked up 23.6km/h whilst feeling fresh in cardio terms. I'd only covered the half-marathon distance for the first time since the first week of this year in Norway so to be putting over 10% on the covered distance already is pleasing enough. And without really slogging it for a prolonged period of time or even treating it as any form of race, it translated into a sub 1:47 half-marathon. That said, if I want to do proper marathon training, I can probably just drop back to my slow pace after two hours of that, then try to finish off with a mile of the faster stuff. EDIT: If I'm going mara training as well, that top pace can drop a fair bit. 12.5km/h should still hold as a faster pace for at least a full 11 step, if not 12. A 12-step would put me over two-and-a-half hours of interval work, 13 would get me to about three hours. That won't be 26 miles in one shot by any means, but the changes of pace should be very good strengthening work in training that would be somewhat faster than my target marathon pace.

Heard that Einstein said "marriage is but slavery made to appear civilised". That said, the demands he made of his first wife were - if I am being charitable - possibly of a man of his time at the turn of the 20th century but would undoubtedly appear unevolved to most vaguely sensible men nowadays, and that could have flavoured his perception.

Yep, thank heavens times have evolved. Said for a long time that the traditional set-up shafted men and women equally badly. Men were reduced to basically bringing the money home and getting the money in for the household, women were financially dependent on what the man could do and if the relationship broke up, she'd very little to fall back on. And the bloke would end up taking the brunt of the flak in divorce settlements. I don't think that many stayed in relationships so long due to love. I think they were trapped.

Ginnel's more a word used by people my age (mid-40s) or older, at least in Bolton. You'd get "alley" nowadays.