Did you write a moderator for an opinion to satisfy your curiosity? I'm guessing either no mod has read your first question or those who have don't consider it worthwhile to act upon.

Perhaps nobody's complained. I'd guess the word is probably not considered seriously vulgar by most speakers of English. If a reader did earnestly complain, someone might act. (I thought about reporting it, to see what happens, but it just wouldn't have been an honest report for me. It doesn't bother me.)

What are you after, in the end? A clear and bright list of forbidden words? I think the mods don't have one, and context probably makes a big difference whether some particular strings of characters should be welcomed here or shunned.

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Mods almost always just ignore any PMs I send them, so I couldn't be bothered doing that. Anyway, I was only curious as to what's deemed offensive or not.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

In the U.S., the word is virtually unknown, except for what you might hear in a British TV import. I'd associated it with "nonsense" and nothing more.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Why are you two playing "kick me hard" with the mods? Just curious.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Ah right. Well, earlier in this thread was:.
The word in question is certainly not one you'd say to a classroom full of British 11 or 12 year olds (is that what a US sixth grader is?). I suppose different words have different meanings in different places, and different grades of swearitude too.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Um, sorry?

Seriously I didn't mean anything by it. But I suppose as an American in the UK it really doesn't have the same impact for me as it might a full-blooded Highlander such as yourself.

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Naw, I wasn't getting at you at all and know it was meant in its "nonsense" meaning. I was merely wondering where the profanity line was. As for impact - I am never offended by language.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Lianachan,

Even within the US it can be like that. I had to come up with the "casual cursing" phrase to explain the phenomena. You see, some areas of the US don't use certain phrases as casual cursing. Which as expected gets "harder" the more urban you get. Even with television and movies.

In bootcamp, where this big culture collision is going on anyway, the big shocker for a lot of guys was the refference to one's mother. Where a lot of the guys came from that just wasn't said, while some of us from New York, L.A. and San Francisco had been using it since grade school. Meant nothing.

Guys got into to some injurious fights over comments meant to be no more insulting than, "Hey, dumb ***!"

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

astronomically, what's supposed to happen in 2012? I think I heard somewhere that the solar system passes through the galactic plane?

Also, the Mayans didn't necessarily think the world was going to end. They just thought the world as we knok it would end. i.e. we'd enter a new age of some kind.

Depends on what you mean by "astronomically". By astronomical observation, the sun passes through the galactic plane every year around the time of the winter solstice (and again at the summer solstice). However, the sun physically passes through the galactic plane as it orbits the milky way, about every 28-33 million years and it is believed to have last happened about 3 million years ago as I understand it. There is some uncertainty in the figures I have quoted (I am reciting from memory) and it not easy to know our position and motion with absolute precision. (well...if you're a mayan priest, perhaps you can figure it out.)

-V

Well, a new age in the same way that this New Millenium is a new age. It's technically different from the last millenium, but pretty much, people are still going about their lives as they did in 1999.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Not me. I made more money in 1999.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

Not only did I have a higher income in 1999, the cost of living was a Heck of a lot lower too!
Gas was about a buck a gallon where I lived.

I would NOT say things have changed for the better, in many many regards, many of which are too political to discuss on BAUT.

Hence my saying "pretty much", rather than "exactly".

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

This isn't what you seek, but it's a fresh, new BA link to a good article at Universe Today. It'll do until the BA gets medieval on 2012:
BA Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen

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Lol.

Hey!
Look!
Out in the street!
Can't you see the man is Kappa Mikey?

Welcome to BAUT!

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

To ignore the Mayans and the 2012 business for a minute, I'm gonna discuss symptoms.

There have been some interesting finds under the vanishing ice around & under the poles. Volcanic activity of all shapes, sizes, and types. Much of it is getting more active now as the alignments of 2004 & 2012 happen. California (usual for her) and the rest of the country (not so usual) look like they've been doused with fleas they've been so quakey. Our weather system's gone bananas, where the tornado folks are almost to the point of head rubbing. Coastal residents deal with woe getting insurance for floods as they are perpetually drowned and baked with drought. Animal migrations have apparently gone as wacky as tornado season, as lost travelers land far off course more often.

Politically, this planet's acting like it has an itch it can't scratch. Economies go bust, inflation sours, food is unfordable, life is dirt cheap.

Something is off folks.

If you can even cite half of the nonsense you just claimed as even remotely accurate, I'll be very impressed...

There were more and more severe earthquakes in California when I lived there than there are now.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I'll second Neverfly. I don't see any particular increase in volcanic or seismic activity. It seemed to have been a pretty unremarkable tornado season in North America, and the weather in Ohio this summer has been lovely. Do have any evidence of some changes, like actual numbers? And what alignments in 2004 and and 2012 are you talking about?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I see allot of fellow humans have thoughts and problems with the impact of 2012. Lamen and intellects have debated the topic but it seems none can grasp any truth within the BS. 2012 is filled with theories all based in theories. the only fact is that there will be an alignment with the earth, the sun, and what the mayans called "cosmic mother, or the dark rift' in the center of our milkly way. Thats a fact, that the mayans first claimed, but because modern man had no idea really how they could be so accuarte..it wasnt really thought of as FACT...untill the 2000's ---after 1500 years of speculation. that modern man found that the BLACK HOLES of Stephen Hawkings thought actally werent as random as science had thought, but that the Cosmic mother is a black hole...
What i'm trying to say here people, is that the truth behind a 2012 impace wether huge or small is gonna be dealt with by people from differn nations sharing there history and thoughts so olds myths can be seen to possibly become modern truths

swift wants numbers.. lets see. How bout we talk about everything on a scale 1-10. Everything that is on a tipping point, would be in that 8-9.9 area.
Certain things on earth are on these tipping points naturally.. Yosemite national park and the super volcano underneather, many active volcano's...dont tell me the san adreas fault isnt on a tipping point. Ice shelves are " as one scientist put it" last year this was still intact on a tread, this years he said it is still intact by a filament! That ice shelve has lost most of its mass in the last couple years...
So the numbers you desire, exist but are lost in translation due to the fact that 2012 will come from all differnt angles.. You can't just focus on one thing swift you gotta " open your mind quade" (total recall)

Yeah Swift, open your mind to the "truths" of the 2012 apocalypse.

Well, first off, you'd have to define "tipping point," as it has no meaning in seismology. If you mean that the fault is poised to slip, well, yes. That's rather what faults do. I grew up in Los Angeles County, and kids there are told pretty frequently that they have to learn what to do in an earthquake, because the San Andreas fault could slip at any time and cause the Big One. It has nothing to do with the 2012 hooey; it's simple geology. Eventually, all major faults slip. The fault running through Seattle is going to slip at some point. The offshore Cascadia fault is going to slip at some point. Mount Rainier is going to blow at some point. Those are all three dangers that my current location faces. Is it tied into some claimed-but-not-demonstrated Mayan belief? Of course not! These things have been happening off and on since the Earth was new, and they will continue to happen off and on until the sun goes red giant and the Earth itself is destroyed. That's seismology for you.

Oh, and it might help you to communicate your ideas if you worked a little bit on clearing up your writing. Just a tip.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Hi 2012impact, welcome to BAUT.

My mind is very open. But as another member around here said in her signature, an open mind is like an open window, without a good screen, a lot of bugs fly in.

I'm fairly familiar with the Mayans and I've never seen anything in their beliefs about a "cosmic mother". Do you have any evidence for that?

I never heard about a super volcano under Yosemite, could you possibly mean Yellowstone? There are several threads in Science & Technology about it and there is no evidence of anything unusual happening. Listing possible "tipping points" is nice, but do you have any evidence that any are actually tipping or that it has anything do with 2012. Things like ice shelves relate to climate change, which has nothing to do with galactic alignments.

And there is no galactic alignment in 2012. Look around BAUT, you'll find lots of past discussion about it.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

2012impact

I think you will find the following link to contain everything you might ever require to know about this 2012 "thingy"

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The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

And I though I had it bad in Florida!
I just have hurricanes, mega-tsunamis, the occasional tornado, and severe thunderstorms to worry about.

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This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

What's there to know?

The world won't end. Isn't that all one really needs to know?

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This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

We don't get thunderstorms; I miss thunderstorms. Obviously, we don't get hurricanes. And, oddly, I haven't the slightest worry about any kind of tsunami, living where I live. The curves of the coast make Olympia pretty safe, even though we're a port city. No tsunami's going to make it all the way down the Sound!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"