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DrKrettin

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Posts posted by DrKrettin

  1. My guess is that the reaction product is only being produced for a short period of time while the putty is hardening. If you are concerned about that, how about just running a load of water through the system to get rid of any unwanted products. My other guess is that considering it is for underwater use, the manufacturers must know that this would include water intended for human consumption, and if there were any risk, there would be a warning label writ large.

     

    I used to be in the same situation as you, and had water in a header tank above the farm in Wales. I had all kinds of health concerns, such as water being filtered through rotting frogs, and we didn't have a UV sterilizer. I'm not aware that anyone ever had a water-related illness. Not that this proves anything.

  2. Let x = y

     

    x^2 = x.y

     

    x^2 - y^2 = x.y - y^2

     

    (x + y)(x - y) = y(x - y)

     

    cancel out the (x - y)

     

    x + y = y

     

    2 = 1

     

    Spot the error, or accept that 2 = 1

  3.  

     

    German has umlauts, which English lacks. An ö becomes oe in English, for example. (e.g. Schroedinger vs Schrödinger) so even though you can tell it's German, it has been Anglicized.

     

    I don't think this process is necessarily being Anglicized, to be honest, it was part of the development of German orthography. The vowel difference was notated with a small e above the vowel, which became either the umlaut or an e behind the vowel. This is visible in a lot of German surnames, Goebbels and Goethe being the most obvious (my ex-wife's maiden name also). With the invention of the typewriter, it became increasingly common to write oe instead of ö because of the limited number of characters available.

     

    Some Anglicised German names just dropped the umlaut, e.g. Schroder.

  4. One investigates is knowledge thought (imagination) ; This implies, to use your imagination to verified the veracity of the structure of your though about something .

    < then fallow experimentation to incise is Knowledge :

     

    I hope for your sake that English is not your first language. This quotation makes no sense. Why should we bother to try to understand it?

  5. I think far too many people use imagination, which is as easy as storytelling, guessing, or lying, as a substitute for systematically eliminating their ignorance, which is hard but rewarding work. I also think those who know the inside of "the box" are the best qualified to think outside it.

     

    I think imagination can't be more important than knowledge, so I disagree with Einstein. Imagination by itself is guesswork at it's worst. Knowledge alone would do much better, but when you have great knowledge your imagination is expanded, richer, and more nuanced. How can it not be?

     

    I agree - imagination without knowledge is totally valueless. Knowledge without imagination useful, but rather limiting. Obviously a combination of the two, with imagination based on knowledge, is the optimum.

     

    People who claim that imagination is of value without knowledge say this because it requires absolutely no effort at all. The knowledge is the hard work.

  6. Perhaps we are not differentiating enough between a natural science and a science. I know from bitter experience that computer science is something which the Americans call "knowhow", and which I don't consider actual worthwhile knowledge at all. You can spend ten years studying computer science, and ten years later, computers have changed so much that all the crap you learned ten years earlier is totally useless. It is disposable and expendable information of no lasting value, because computers are an artificial human construct.

     

    That is not how I see a natural science, which even if it's ten years out of date, it pertains to the natural world and still of value.

  7. I don't consider computer science as a science because it is an artificial construct with no relation to the physical world. It is an invention. It is called a science because programming involves logical argument. I can't see it as a branch of maths either, it is just the mechanism by which a complicated machine works.

     

    No, you can't study physics without maths, but it doesn't follow that maths is then a science.

  8. We have enough evidence at our disposal that life evolved through the mechanisms of evolutionary biology, therefore religion has no basis in reality and is in fact bullshit.

     

    You are arguing that because we have an idea of how, you think it answers the question why. OK - young-earth creationists are clinically insane, but the catholic church embraces evolution and still argues that god intended it all this way. They are entitled to that belief, and you can't prove that it is bullshit. You are of course entitled to suspect it (as I do).

     

    Edit: damn - cross-posted

  9. Actually, I have found the solution. You have an enormous number of small coins in the bottom of the bag: members of the eurozone will know that 1 and 2 cent qualify because they are totally useless and accumulate remorselessly. You can't get rid of them because the banks never have the blisters in stock for you to hand them in. Keep them in the bag, and the centre of gravity of the bag is so low it will never topple over. It's also too heavy to move, but you can't have everything.

  10. You can start your engine and air conditioning (or heater) from the home or office, before you get in.

     

    Ignoring the issue of global warming, would this not be illegal, if your car is parked on a public road with the engine running and you are not there? I'm fairly sure that this is the case in Europe.

  11. I have a kind of handbag/shoulderbag for all my crap, and it has an extremely irritating property. I arrive home, weary, dump my bag on a flat surface, and it immediately falls over. If the surface is a chair, the contents usually scatter on the floor. The odd thing is that it never falls towards the back of the chair, which would not matter. No matter how I place the bag, it always falls forwards, even when the surface is exactly level. A clear demonstration of Sod's Law.

     

    And yes, the inside is always black, the car key fob, the last thing I put in it, is also black, and always the last object I can retrieve, and the black memory stick which I know with total certainty is in there, stubbornly refuses to emerge even when I empty everything else out in a heap.

  12. The potential gain does not outweigh the additional cost.

     

    In this case, nobody would buy an ugly, expensive car with solar panels and fans in the roof, because leaving a baby in the car "will surely never happen to them" anyway.

     

    To put in some figures:

    On average, 38 children die this way every year in the US.

    In 2015, 938 children died in motor vehicle accidents in the US.

     

    So it makes sense to put 25 times more effort into preventing the second category.

     

    But if it really bothers you, nothing prevents you from putting a fan in you roof and installing a solar panel on top. It isn't even that difficult to do yourself. I'm not really sure that it would be 100% effective, though. The air can only get as cold as the surrounding air, possibly heated by blistering tarmac on a parking lot. Still a considerable improvement, obviously, but a child left for hours under those conditions could still die.

    I don't think this is entirely fair. Why would they sell a car that nobody will buy?

     

     

    An afterthought: wouldn't such a system encourage parents to knowingly leave their children in the car "only for a minute"?

     

    Interesting stats. Totally off-topic, but the first link is written by a "Dr. Richard Osbaldiston, Ph.D.". This is tautology - I thought the convention was that you were either Dr Z. Krettin or Z. Krettin PhD, but not both. Or is the convention different in the USA? (like everything else)

  13.  

    The whole Brexit thing may have been avoided if Britain had joined the Euro.

     

    I think the euro deserves a thread of its own. My view is that it is insane to have a monetary union without a political one. The result of the euro is that after the 2008 crash, countries like Spain and of course Greece were unable to devalue their currencies. Meanwhile, Germany has an export surplus because their products because their currency is fixed. The effect on Ireland of joining the euro is disastrous, after an interim period of growth. Who the hell has benefited from the euro? IIRC, Britain was unwilling to join specifically because North Sea oil gave them a different economy, and it was a wise decision not to join. But what do I know? Who the hell understands economics?

  14.  

    With proportional representation of some sorts and a legal requirement to vote, democracy might work better.

     

    I agree that PR is the only sensible method, but of course the two main parties would never agree, because the liberals would always be in power. But I can't agree that a legal requirement to vote would improve matters. They should not be forced to have an opinion, and most don't anyway. Policing it would be a nightmare for a start, because huge numbers of UK residents have no means of identification.

  15. People only perceive a problem with democracy when the vote doesn't go their way.

     

     

    I don't agree that this is always true. There is a problem with democracy when a major decision is taken by a referendum winning 52% - 48% when after the event large numbers admit they only voted for brexit as a protest, not dreaming it would happen and not actually wanting it when they realised the implications. Added to that the apathy of the young voters who didn't bother to vote to remain because everybody said brexit would not happen. This is democracy at its worst.

     

    I don't actually think that a simple majority should be sufficient to make a major change like this - If it had been 60-40 or greater, then fair enough, but the result was so unconvincing and not actually legally binding, I am at a loss to understand why May (who had voted to remain) goes steaming ahead with an insane policy instead of a period of reflection. I am cynical enough to believe that the politicians only operate on what is best for their own careers, not what is best for the country (whatever that means).

     

    I get very angry with politicians like Cameron and Buffoon Johnson, whose own private financial situations will never be affected by the political decisions they make, and when everything goes pear-shaped, they can shrug their shoulders and walk off the stage and go and play croquet, leaving Cuban revolutionary Corbyn in charge to bankrupt the country entirely.

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