raja_indy14

The United States is unlikely to default any time soon unless the federal government utterly fails to correct structural imbalances that are relatively basic (only political posturing, irrationality, and vested interest stand in the way - admittedly these are very evident in contemporary American politics). The US has a relatively low tax rate to GDP ratio relative to the rest of the developed world, leaving it considerable leeway to raise taxes to offset deficits. Defense spending is a huge part of the federal budget that has many non-essential elements. Regulations that target private health insurance providers could significantly reduce the costs of publicly funded healthcare in the United States, since it is these institutions that make American healthcare some of the most expensive in the developed world. The biggest problem would be the end of the dollar as the world's reserve and exchange currency. This would happen as the US Fed effectively continues to print money although given the present weakness of the Euro investors have precious few places to invest, particularly if developing countries begin to impose capital controls to prevent inflows of 'hot money'. In this situation there are very few safe havens, and one could expect speculative investments in world commodity markets etc in response.

I'm not following you here. Quebec may want to have a French culture of French speaking people but, unless they are killing or imprisoning non-French, how are they like Hitler? The "conquest"? They never ratified the constitution and the Chart of Rights and Freedoms? No wonder there is a separatist movement. They never signed up for anything else. umm . . . how do you see a 51st unwanted state happening? The path to statehood does not include "conquest". So what? If that is what they want to do, what's it to anyone else? Quebec has a history of right-wing nationalism. While in many of the urban centres Quebec may be one of the most socially progressive regions in North America (at least since the quiet revolution), the rural areas can be extremely conservative. It also has had difficulty assimilating immigrants due to its nationalistic tendencies (one of the more benign instances of this is that the children of all immigrants must receive their education in French unless they go to a private institution). In one fairly notorious case in 2007, the town of Hérouxville published a set of 'norms' that immigrants had to adhere to if they settled there, such as not stoning or burning alive women. More germane to the topic, Quebec has never ratified the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it is still bound to them (although it has frequently used the notwithstanding clause to abrogate their terms for a limited period of time). It does, however, have its own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms that is more explicit in outlining social and economic rights (as opposed to the centrality of political and civil rights that have commonly been the preoccupation of Anglophone countries). Thus, Quebec's charter does guarantee the right to free public education. The "conquest" refers to the seizure of New France by the British Empire as part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763) after the capture of Quebec following the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759). France surrendered its rights to Canada in exchange for the return of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. There is lingering resentment among the Quebecois about their abandonment by France, hence their hostility to conscription or participating in a war to defend France (WWI & WWII). Admittedly, large parts of the American southwest were conquered from Mexico in the 19th-century, while secession from the Union was militarily resisted and the revolting states subjected to conquest. Thus, in a few senses at least conquest could be said to lead to (or at least preserve) statehood in the USA. (Not to mention that on several occasions US forces have invaded parts of Canada to compel it to join the Union)

This seems very locale specific. In Manitoba, the only worthwhile University to go to out of province for your undergraduate is over 1300km away, so almost everyone stays here unless they win an extravagant scholarship or have very wealthy parents. Virtually everyone I know lived at home during their undergraduate and worked (even with just a summer job, it's easy enough to earn the $3500 annual tuition if you live with your parents) to pay their way through University. For many of them, however, I would have suggested going to a technical or vocational college instead of University, an Arts degree is fairly useless unless you are going on to graduate studies, and few excelled. The amount of prestige associated with a University education is harmful and likely introduces all sorts of opportunity costs and misallocation of resources.

This article makes some interesting points about the 'sense of entitlement' to which the Quebec students are so often accused. All the more interesting for coming from the National Post.

This was my initial reaction as well. However, part of the reason that the government is broke is because they've been cutting taxes (particularly for the wealthiest income brackets and corporations) in recent years while making cuts to social services (the same old story). Arguably, exchanging the lost revenue from tax cuts for debt repayment would have been a more prudent fiscal policy. The subsidy is only ridiculous by North American standards, by European ones (on which the Quebec public funding system is based) it is not. In any event, just because the United States has increasingly unattainable University in the absence of massive student debt does not mean this is a model to emulate. After all, social mobility in the United States is currently half the rate of that of Canada. So much for the American Dream.

Did anyone ever really think that the US alliance with Pakistan was anything more than a relationship founded on barely concealed expediency (and historically that India had been aligned with the Soviet Union)? That would clearly be the end result if the US had not been doing such a good job already...

Blaming widespread social unrest and anger at the political-economic system among the populace on the fact that many lack a 'creative urge' ignores the very real economic hardships that have been imposed on people. The real source of anger appears to be a growing understanding of the inequality of the system and how the government acts to protect the well being of the richest at the expense of the most vulnerable - which is effectively what tax cuts for the wealthy, bailouts of financial institutions, and then 'austerity' entail. That 'democratic' governments have appeared unwilling to address, and indeed have often exacerbated, these pressing concerns means that there is really no other recourse but public protest. Given the complexity of the problem (at the very least one has to consider how emerging markets are beginning to have negative externalities for developed economies, that much Western prosperity in the last two decades has been built on unsustainable levels of debt, that financialization has become a cornerstone of major Western economies, and that governments are unwilling to countenance any solutions that may involve a radical redistribution of wealth downwards even though this might go a long way to resolving some of the deep-seated structural problems in mature Western economies, not to mention the ongoing demographic shift) it makes perfect sense that protesters will vent their anger and frustration at a clearly dysfunctional political-economic system, without necessarily clearly understanding it or having a viable solution. Government policies that force poorer (and increasingly this includes the middle class) families/students to take on sizable loans to attend University preferentially favours those students that come from high income families, exacerbating growing income inequalities. Financialization allows the lower/middle classes with their stagnant wages to continue to increase consumption and pay more (in real prices) for services and simultaneously allows the increasingly wealthy elites to find an outlet for ever greater accumulations of largely unproductive finance capital. Battles over tuition fees, and particularly as they are framed in terms of student debt loads such as the protests in Quebec, are a symptom of this trend.

I wanted Herman Cain, and I was sad when he pulled out. After that it was Rick Santorum all the way: if he had won the nomination and managed to beat Obama it would have been perhaps the most tragicomic event in the history of politics.

Except, of course, that bank bailouts are actually not Keynesian. Keynesian economics advocates for publicly managed finance so that the excesses and speculation that have characterized the post-1980s era of financialization would have been controlled. Bailouts would have been unnecessary because the risks and centralization would not have existed - banks could be allowed to fail. The only thing that is likely correct about the above statements is that 'creative debt instruments would never have existed' under a Keynesian economic regime. The fact of the matter is that bailouts of the financial services sector have been a characteristic of the era of deregulation of the financial sector and the growing importance and clout of that sector in the areas of policy making and regulation. Given that finance under a non-Keynesian regime is allowed much freer reign to move across borders, to engage in speculation, and to 'regulate itself', it has been the spectacular financial failures of the post-1980s that have forced governments to intervene more decisively to limit their effect. If Keynes had supported bailouts, he likely would have directed it at the home owners being foreclosed upon, since that would have been far more effective at maintaining demand than bailing out speculative financial enterprises.

Demanding more and more of everything. There are more and more people. The more people there are, the more chunks of the pie there have to be to go around. Stagnant real wages? It goes back to supply and demand. The more people there are to do the work, the lower the wages will be. Labor is an abundant commodity so it is relatively cheap to obtain. Social safety nets from governments are in retreat? Of course they are; there are more and more people to cover. Exorbitant fuel prices? No kidding. Fuel is, at the moment, not an abundant commodity is not as freely available as it could be. Of course it will cost more. and because there are more and more people, there has to be more and more fuel to maintain the same level of usage. We either already have, or will soon have, 7 billion people on the planet. When I was born, there were less than 3 billion. Seven billion people can not live on the planet the way that 3 billion people used to. But a lot of people don't see that. The initial discussion was in relation to financial crises and economic depression, in which I cannot see how the overall growth of the human population plays a key role. Financial crises have occurred since at least the early 18th century, when the population of the planet was a tenth of what it is today. Supply and demand of labour is obviously important, but the situation is far more complex than a mere secular rise in population contributing to an oversupply. The entrance of large numbers of women into the workforce, reduced protections against foreign competitors (imports), and automation/computerization of tasks have all had a far more powerful effect on the supply and demand for labour than national population growth. Social safety nets have been reduced because of ideological opposition (the Thatcher-Reagan revolutions), because of the high costs associated with maintaining them once chronically high unemployment set in during the 1970s, and because of the increase in the relative cost of providing services. The price of petroleum is being driven up by financial speculation and growing demand as a result of industrialization of large segments of the human population, that is, the level of usage is going up far more dramatically than the population (particularly in high-use areas). The argument that 2x number of people can't live in the same way that x number of people did works both ways, really. In terms of production, it would of course be impossible for the level and distribution of technology of 1960 to support the world population of a half century later. In the same way, 3 billion people would have been utterly unsustainable given the level and distribution of technology of 1890. The point is that both population and production are dynamic factors, both of which have limits (and indeed, are to a large degree self-limiting). Humanity has managed to significantly increase the carrying capacity of the planet since the onset of the agricultural revolution, and while there are no doubt some limits to this potential I think it is alarmist to suggest that it has been exhausted. In any event, the link between a broad global trend of population growth with the current crisis is tenuous at best. People starve in Africa because arable land is used to grow cash crops. Also, considering that real GDP per capita has continued to grow in every developed country, it seems ridiculous to suggest that the 'perks' that people used to demand are no longer economically viable due to population growth. This reasoning, and its relation to Greece (as a 'horrible example'?), appears to be utterly unsubstantiated. (That is, I can see understand the need for more sustainable lifestyles in developed countries, but the example of Greece suggests a different point)

Demanding more and more and more of what? If you mean demanding greater social safety nets from governments, these have been generally in retreat over the last three decades across the developed world (with some exceptions, of course), then this has had a limited effect on the present crisis (although the demographic transition is a different question). If you mean demanding more in consumer goods, this has been a symptom rather than a cause of financialization - stagnant real wages have been made up for by abundant cheap credit to fuel an unsustainable consumer boom, and while consumers can not be let off the hook entirely, creditors share a significant portion of the blame. Or perhaps you're referring to the financial services industry? (In which case it is a highly apt complaint)

In fact, governments can default on debts. This isn't being allowed to happen in the Eurozone because of its consequences for the currency and, consequently, world financial and money markets (let alone the European project). If Greece had its own currency it could default on its debts, devalue its currency to render its exports more competitive, and, while this would be painful, reset some of the macroeconomic distortions that have taken place as a consequence of being in the Eurozone. @Dvark, part of the reason they are continuing to spend more than they earn is because austerity has tended to worsen recessions, leading to declining tax revenues and continued deficits in a vicious cycle. The Euro might be saved if some country wasn't obsessed with not allowing any sort of inflationary policy.

In fact, the success of capitalism lies in compelling people to become wage labourers by removing them from the means to their own subsistence and/or forcing them to engage in a money economy. The enclosures in England and the imposition of head taxes in European colonies are the standard historical examples of this process, respectively. Not only that, but this process has often required the coercive monopoly enjoyed by the state. Historically, the move from pre-capitalist to capitalist society has often been accompanied by a significant amount of 'violence, overt or implied'. Capitalism has succeeded on the fact that humans divorced from the means to their own subsistence must engage in wage labour to survive and therefore they must sell their labour power, even if on very bad terms for themselves. The relative power of employers and employees (or capital and labour) is something that shifts over time, but in the beginning stages of capitalism, at least, strongly favours employers. To imagine that these relationships (employee-employer) are therefore 'voluntary' is to a large extent an illusion. Similarly, that every party is a 'willing participant' seems to be disproved by the long historical record of mass resistance to capitalism and its often state-led imposition. If one looks at the Soviet Union, the profound violence of its industrialization and collectivization is partially explained by the fact that under a theoretically socialist system there is no systemic method of compulsion (beyond the state, although volunteerism is the ideal). The problem is that this doesn't work, just as it doesn't under capitalism. A surplus has to be extracted from people somehow. By the end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union, peasants unwilling to sell their grain at state-mandated prices simply retreated into subsistence agriculture, depriving the state and economy of the food and export surplus necessary to fund industrialization. Collectivization proved to be a terribly inefficient and violent response, if rapidly successful in achieving the desired aims. Lastly, if one looks at capitalist development in virtually any successful economy, from England, to the United States, to Japan, the historical record strongly indicates that in successful cases, the state did far more than what you indicate there. Protectionism, empire, and industrial policy are some of the most salient state activities in this regard, but there are many others (including warfare). Perhaps the difference in perception lies in your description of capitalism as an 'economic philosophy' and the notion of 'true capitalism', which then leads on to an excessively theoretical understanding of capitalism. Capitalism is not a philosophy but a system of social relations that humans then attempt to describe. Whatever the 'theory' of capitalism, or socialism, what is important is the actual historical and contemporary fact of these processes, which people are still endeavouring to understand more fully.

Hi, I started learning about gmax about a week ago when exams finished and I had some free time. I've read most of the tutorials etc, and started work on my first BAT about 3-4 days ago. It has been fairly slow going, since I'm learning as I go along, but I think I'm nearing completion now. The project was a large but fairly simple design of an airport terminal based on, but not a recreation of, the one at Mirabel. I am, however, having a problem with the nightlighting, which I have not found a solution for despite going through several lightlighting tutorials and some of the threads in this forum. The problem, namely, is that omni lights inside the building are illuminating roof features. At first I thought this was because there might be gaps, so I closed them up with walls, to no effect. I am unsure where the problem lies, whether it is with the lighting, the geometry, or the settings of the roof objects themselves. These pictures should illustrate the problem and I've provided the settings of the omni light, in case there are problems there. Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

Sorry, what are the facts?

Originally posted by: Barbarossa Where is "here"? This is a cultural thing. From a purley Western perspective, it is quite shocking.quote> "Here" would be Canada, atm. What I meant was that this is clearly a case of ignorance of the dangers of smoking, and the implication was that not too long ago westerners were fairly ignorant or at least inconsiderate of the health effects of smoking. Perhaps I'm just too used to human stupidity to find this shocking, which implies surprise. Is it a cultural thing? I'm not sure that giving cigarettes to toddlers is really part of Indonesian culture. Originally posted by: morriswalters If the Indonesians don't care, why should I?quote> Do they not? The article seems to suggest they do. Originally posted by: Meg Clove cigarettes? Everything I've read about this kid says he is smoking tobacco.quote> From wiki: "Kretek (pronounced /?kri?t?k/) are cigarettes made with a blend of tobacco, cloves and other flavors...Partly due to favorable taxation compared to "white" cigarettes, kreteks are by far the most widely-smoked form of cigarettes in Indonesia, where about 90% of smokers usually smoke kreteks." I suppose something like "clove-additive" would have been more precise.

He'll be a lot more sick if you keep indulging him...quote> Unfortunately, Indonesian parents tend to be indulgent. Also, I'm not sure why this is so shocking, I seem to recall that doctors advertised cigarettes here not that long ago...

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Whoa nelly! If the U.S. currency was gold standard backed (I don't advocate this because it is far too late), then an international payment between countries would consist of a shipment of specie into or out of Fort Knox. At one time, in my chequered career, I worked for a big bank that had a gold depository. International payments consisted of moving skip loads of gold bars from one vault to another using a front-end loader.quote> This makes no sense; if the American dollar is tied directly to gold then the dollar was "as good as gold", and therefore there would be no reason to actually hold gold in lieu of American dollars. In fact, shipping gold out of Fort Knox for the purposes of settling international accounts would be nonsensical, a stable dollar-gold equivalency required that there be a set amount of circulating cash tied to a fixed amount of gold held in reserve. It was when governments and private individuals decided that gold was actually grossly undervalued relative to the dollar that a "run on gold" resulted and the US was forced off the gold standard. When were you moving gold bars from country to country, in the late '60s? Originally posted by: N_O_Body Because gold is a limited resource, we would never have arrived at this Peter's Pretty Pass we are in now. A gold-backed currency is redeemable for a fixed amount of specie at any bank. If somebody wants to put gold in his mattress he has only to go to his bank and swap his paper for gold. This is the real meaning of a "run on the bank". Banks can never carry this much metal, as it is usually kept in a national repository controlled by the central bank (if you have one).quote> A gold standard usually requires fairly tight restrictions on the circulation of gold, and during the Bretton Woods years this was certainly the case. Although in theory you could always redeem your dollars for gold, in fact there were restrictions on private individuals owning any non-negligible amounts of gold. Therefore, you could hardly just go into your local bank and demand the gold, and in the years where the system was becoming increasingly shaky the US government was forced to come to agreements with foreign governments so that they would not buy gold (at undervalued prices). A run on the bank is a shortage of liquidity, not gold. Originally posted by: N_O_Body Shipments of specie to cover circulating currency often lag transactions by months, if not years. The kinds of national debts that we see now would be impossible. You can't loan gosh-whatta-place money without shipping them metal in the end. A suitcase full of gold would never get on an aircraft because it would be too heavy. Heavy debt, indeed.quote> I was rather under the impression that most government debt is held as government bonds or treasury bills, not in gold. Also, why can't you loan "gosh-whatta-place" (The United States?) money without shipping them metal in the end? Most loans don't require you to actually be given chunks of gold (and why would they, you're supposed to give it back). The only reason I can see that the current levels of national debt would be impossible under that system is because there would be a severe shortage of dollars in the first place. Also, the Marshall Plan did not involve shipping over to Europe billions of dollars worth of gold. The aim of the Marshall Plan, and indeed a necessity throughout the period of Bretton Woods, was to maintain a negative balance of payments - this time targeted specifically at Europe to overcome their severe illiquidity - so that there would actually be gold-backed money circulating throughout the world and providing liquidity for international exchanges. Actually moving gold about was not the point, and was to be avoided. Originally posted by: saltandsauc the thing about gold standards is, when a government is in debt or running a defecit. the government is in real danger of bankruptcy. what countries drowning in government debt do is print money to pay off the creditors. the value of the money goes down but the debt is paid off. if a country has a gold standard it can't print money without buying gold. hence the unpopularity of the gold standard.quote> There are actually several responses to a government debt that threatens national bankruptcy. The first response is to raise interest rates, which makes government bonds more attractive to counteract fears of default. That is, interest rates on government bonds are dependent on the perceived risk of default so if there is a fear of bankruptcy interest rates can be raised until people believe the possible return on investment cancels out or exceeds the risk of default. Eventually, however, interest rates become too high to be sustainable or investors simply refuse to buy bonds at any rate. Taking out loans to pay off the current debt is a tactic that has been used before, often without much success. It results in a much higher debt load that will, hopefully, become less significant over time with austere government budgets and an increase in GDP. Printing money is another option, but one which Eurozone countries cannot use because they do not control the monetary policy of the Euro. There the disconnect between supranational monetary policy and national fiscal policy is contributing to the current crisis and revealing, perhaps, that certain countries should not have been allowed into the Eurozone to begin with. Also, a country on the gold standard can print money for a time, but sooner or later confidence is eroded and the system collapses. Raising money by improving the current account balance through increased exports is another way of dealing with foreign debt denominated in a non-local currency, although this is a more long term policy and cannot be enacted overnight.

Cigarettes in Indonesia are probably more palatable with children than cigarettes sold elsewhere because they are almost universally clove cigarettes, which have a sweet, almost candy-like, taste and aroma. One of my earliest memories is actually putting a clove cigarette in my mouth and I've never forgotten the taste of it. Of course, my parents would never have allowed me to smoke or to be smoked around, and now that I live in a western country, where cigarettes have an absolutely appalling taste and smell, I find the whole notion of smoking abhorrent and incomprehensible. Obviously this is idiotic and regrettable, but I think if I got worked up every time someone in the world did something idiotic and regrettable I'd lose my mind. A similar recent article in The New York Times discussed how many parents in African countries spend far more on alcohol and cigarettes than they do on, relatively cheap, bed nets to ward off malarial mosquitoes or their children's education. Doesn't matter. In that society there are lots of open flames.quote> Are there? I never noticed a marked abundance of open flame...

Ever since the gold standard was abandoned, everything depends on faith, wheels within wheels, way up in the middle of the air.quote> Admittedly, the gold standard relied on faith as well, and was abandoned because people lost faith in the value of the dollar relative to gold. All mediums of exchange rely on faith. Either way, I too am somewhat puzzled by this love of the gold standard, the return to the gold standard prior to and during the Great Depression almost certainly exacerbated that economic downturn.

Originally posted by: N_O_Body A lot of them have never read Animal Farm because their school boards forbade it.quote> I rather thought Animal Farm was as close to required reading as you got in the curricula? Along with Shakespeare for some inexplicable reason... Also, there are other (probably more important) reasons to join protests: (1) It's fun (2) Something to do (3) Sex

Originally posted by: OnMyKnees92 And just one question, what

Originally posted by: morriswalters Add to that the fact that English or for that matter any spoken lanquage is unsuited to discussing the concepts. Math is the lanquage of science and most people can't speak it. So when we are dismissive of those things that people believe in like God, it would be well to remember that from their point of view that science is just as unknowable to them as God is to some of us.quote> I really wonder how any of us can "know" God. We can at least, if we choose to, learn the language of science. As far as I can see, we cannot learn the language of God. I've always thought it supremely arrogant that even if there was a God, humans somehow could claim to understand It.

Originally posted by: B33Rm47 I'm still in secondary school thank you very much, these are lessons I have learned from a very wise creationist that has been proving many scientists and their suggestions wrong for many years. There is only so much I can communicate over posts, I am merely scratching the surface, I would have to make a whole other site or program to show you how knowledgeable creation really is and how much it makes sense. You don't need extremely complicated answers to explain creation, it just makes you sound smart.quote> If you could name this person it would save you the trouble of having to try to, imperfectly, impart what they are saying. We could look it up on our own. Originally posted by: B33Rm47 Every single person on earth knows that there is a "higher power", they just want to live for themselves and do not want to admit that there is someone in control of their lives. He is always willing to accept you, you just have to accept him.quote> How do you know this? I certainly don't "know" it, although at times I might countenance the idea. So there's one exception already, and I'm sure we could find more! Originally posted by: morriswalters Over and over again I see people here speak of proof, when in fact neither science nor Religion can offer it.quote> Just because neither can offer absolute proofs doesn't mean that both are equally valid in explaining the natural world. Originally posted by: morriswalters The best way to describe it is to think of an ant trying to come up with a reason why a man destroyed his anthill. The gulf of understanding is too wide for the ant. quote> That doesn't really help, and, I think, largely misses the point. Firstly, why would the creator of the universe destroy the anthill at all? A human will destroy it because quite a few of us are periodically wantonly and unthinkingly cruel, particularly to non-humans. These are not traits that one would attribute to a perfect creator entity, although in fact humans seem to routinely do so. Secondly, and this was the main point, how does a creator of the universe, even if one could be shown to exist, somehow justify Christianity? For Christians, I would have thought faith alone was enough (why is there a need to show, normally pseudo-scientifically, that there was a creator?). For non-Christians the proven existence of a creator would hardly legitimate any particular human religion, including Christianity. Also, if the gulf of understanding is so wide, how can anyone claim to understand it? This sort of ties in to my point, even if there is a creator, how does this somehow justify any form of human religion? They are all virtually guaranteed to have got it wrong. Yes, clearly I do fail to understand the essentially meaning of 'God', what I want to know is how so many other people can claim to understand it so well. The "gulf is too wide" argument works both ways, as far as I can tell. I should add that I'm not really anti-religious or antitheistic, so long as they aren't harmful to others, but that I fail to understand why there is a, seeming, need to find a creator so as to vindicate a human religion.

Although I can understand why some people might choose to believe that there was some "thing" that caused the universe to start, what has always puzzled me is the connection between that and any of the myriad deities that humans have dreamt up over the years. It seems to me supremely illogical that such a force would be so actively engaged in the affairs of human beings to the extent that is often portrayed in our various mythologies (such as bible stories). How, for instance, does that causative entity become the one that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha or visited the plagues on Egypt ("Insects-boils-the butchery of children-such work by any other agency would be considered an example of unexcelled sadism rather than celestial justice"), why would such an entity care how little carbon sacs of thinking water held up by transient accretions of calcium, to paraphrase Pratchett, live their exceedingly brief existences? It's never made any sense to me why a Christian would feel the need to advocate creationism having already abandoned the idea that the universe was created in six days. Why attempt to reconcile two things that seem unrelated? (this can, of course, apply to a person of any other religion for that matter, although they seem less publicly determined in this endeavour) Of course, I'm far too secular-minded to properly participate in discussions like this*, and I lack the specific knowledge of evolution theory to defend it as well as others here clearly can. *That is, I often approach true believers as some sort of bizarre creature to be studied and interrogated, but not to be taken in any way seriously.