Viewing profile — bloak

That rule wouldn't work very well if the person who destroyed the evidence isn't the person suspected of the crime and it is unclear whether the person who destroyed the evidence i…

Rare, certainly: there are plenty of vanity publications that were chucked into the bin by almost everyone who was unlucky enough to be given a copy. Precious? Well, with the help …

Since you seem to know about this, what are the actual rules about "destruction of evidence" in your jurisdiction? What does the accused need to have known for a crime to have been…

Which country are you in? Here in GB it is expected that dogs will be under control, and in any case their owners are responsible for any damage they do. Cats on the other hand ...…

I don't know much about the USSR but I'll just put this here: 1. If the children didn't have enough vitamin D, wouldn't a pill be a much cheaper and easier solution? 2. There seem …

On the other hand, if everything about you is boring, that in itself may begin to seem suspicious. "I borrowed this old phone from my stepson because my own phone got run over by a…

There are so many different options, it's confusing. But a "proper" 7 kW charger can cost over £2000 to install if your house isn't wired in a convenient way, while installing an o…

It was expressed in a strange way but I assume what they meant was that if the former student goes bankrupt within the 7-year period then the student loan is not cancelled.

I'm being pedantic here, of course, but "nation-states" is perhaps not the right expression to use for that era. Nation states are primarily a thing of the nineteenth century ( htt…

Why exactly? "Error logging" is mentioned there as an alternative. I would have thought that if you can do telemetry you ought to be able to generate a local log file that is reada…

I used to have a device with a physical button which, when you pressed it, would beep and add 30 seconds to the time. However, sometimes it would beep and not add 30 seconds, and s…

Not necessarily. Which country were you in and when was this? (I don't much like this Internet confusion where half the time people don't know what country they're reading about. A…

I think the problem with Russian names in particular is that a Russian name has three parts (e.g. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky) and different parts get used in different contexts,…

Yes, I agree, but really we shouldn't even be comparing "arrests" and "fine". The latter is a punishment, and the former is a practical measure to prevent a future crime (such as d…

Are we talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska#Author's_re... (I've not read it, of course, and don't know whether I'd consider it inappropriate for sc…

Some stuff is public domain, though!

To be fair, pointy knives are unnecessary. At least I haven't found a use for them, though I stab myself with them occasionally when unloading the dishwasher. Some people will tell…

There are lots of world flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Earth https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Flag_Simple.sv...

Also [soft violin music] when it's a Bach cello suite.

Someone should make a list of all these weird overreactions. Didn't they turn one flight around because a passenger found something scribbled in Arabic script inside the inflight m…

Yes! "Of the five pay-checks I mentioned above, no less than three are rubber-stamped with the words 'death stoppage'. When a miner is killed at work it is usual for the other mine…

Apart from The Economist, I don't know anyone who says "the Americas". If you asked a random person what Columbus discovered, what would they answer? Round here I think most people…

I have personally been baffled by some Scottish and Indian speakers of English, particularly when I was younger and less experienced. And Singapore English is said to be particular…

We have a similar thing on this side of the Atlantic where people argue about whether it is acceptable to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as "Brit…

Cantonese is a language, yes, but mutual intelligibility and similarity to other languages is hardly relevant unless the languages are very similar indeed. For example, there are s…