exchemist

Indeed. The tech bros won’t be happy about the helium, as it is needed for integrated circuit chip manufacture. More seriously, raw materials for fertiliser are held up too. Urea, sulphur and sulphuric acid (used to digest phosphate minerals for phosphate fertilisers). This will have a big impact on food production in Africa and Asia. (I see my earlier remarks about diesel are in line with what the CEO of Shell had to say today.) By the way, for Shell too, lubricants production will be impacted. A lot of both diesel and lubricants base oil these days comes from their Gas to Liquids synthesis plant in…….Qatar!

Your first statement makes no sense. No doctor, whether in private practice or a public health service, will prosper if he or she fails to treat patients effectively. So that's just a silly conspiracy theory. There could be however be some truth in what you go on to say about medicine becoming so specialised that there may be not enough attention to knock-on effects and treatment of the whole patient. In theory, family doctors, or general practitioners, have this role but certainly in the UK today they can become too overloaded to do that effectively, unless the patient proactively seeks them out for an overview of their condition. The third point is the one @CharonY has already made: doctors are not paid per person treated, so collectively making the population less well would not make them more money. So this again is just a baseless conspiracy theory. The fact of the matter is that life expectancy in western countries has increased greatly in the last 50 years or so. That would not be so if your ideas were true.

Ha! No, though I noted the other day with interest that this seemingly paradoxical effect does seem to have been occurring. The article I read seemed to be saying it was to do with the likelihood of higher inflation, but I could not follow why that would make gold less attractive as a safe haven. But I understand the dollar was strengthening (possibly because European and Asian markets will be hit harder by the Gulf closure than the US?) so I suppose that would tend to make gold cheaper in dollar terms. But it's not my field so I'm guessing really. The oil industry on the other hand I know a little about, though I was never a trader (I worked in the lubricants division). In fact a lot of refining nowadays takes place in the Persian Gulf. The Gulf States have been moving downstream into the product business for years, to capture more of the value chain. So there is an immediate shortage of refined products too, especially heavier fractions like kerosene for jet fuel, as Middle East crudes tend to be quite heavy. I gather the price of aviation kerosene has doubled. Again, this is not "profiteering"; there is already a serious shortage, such that airlines are wondering if they will be able to maintain a full service. Also fuel is ~30% of an airline's operating costs, so airlines will be in trouble unless they pass the costs on. I expect a similar shortage effect may play out for diesel, which will have a significant effect on road transport costs and thus on consumer prices. Gasoline will probably not be affected quite as severely, though still significantly of course. And for some reason Americans go apeshit when the price of that goes up, even a little, hence the Iranian strategy.

This is not how markets work. Both crude oil and refined petroleum products are globally traded commodities. As such, buyers have to pay the price at which these commodities are traded, just as with gold, coffee or any other commodity. The price of many refined products has jumped because supply is now short, globally. That affects buyers in N. America even if the physical supply does not come from the Persian Gulf. It is not a question of the president “allowing” prices to increase. If he wanted to stop that he would have to pass a law enforcing government price control of these products. And then supply would soon dry up, because sellers would find it more profitable to export instead of supplying the N American market. To stop that, he would then have to ban exports. And then investment in the oil sector would dry up.

This is quantum woo bullshit. It is not science. Energy is a property of a system, not stuff, so nothing is “made of energy”. And as it is not stuff, it can’t vibrate. The wave character of QM entities is not waves of energy. Why do you post this nonsense?

Typo? Not "virus cells". Bacteria. Viruses are not cells and antibiotics don't work on them. That's interesting. The Canterbury "superspreader" event seems to have been some kind of nightclub venue. I imagine it will have been hot and very noisy so everyone shouting, everyone in close proximity, with a good deal of exchange of saliva.

Yes, my understanding is that under normal conditions a significant proportion of the population (~10%?) carries meningococcus bacteria in their throats without suffering any problem. The problem comes when for some reason these bacteria get into the bloodstream. What I don't understand about the current outbreak is what has changed in tis location to cause a higher incidence of infection. Is it that student behaviour (kissing ,sharing vapes etc) has led to a far higher proportion than normal carrying the bacteria, thereby raising the usual low probability of infection to a higher level, or is it that there is a specific strain of bacteria that is more likely to jump the skin barrier and get into the body?

Explains what?

Did the searching not give any reasons? By the way, it came as a slight surprise to me initially that citric acid is a slightly stronger acid than formic. Though it makes sense when one thinks about it a bit. But they are all similar, at the stronger end of the weak organic acids. I use vinegar around the house for limescale removal: pots and pans, shower heads, that sort of thing, as it is so cheap: 45p for a bottle of spirit vinegar in the supermarket.

I'm curious as to why that would be. In terms purely of acid strength, citric has a (1st) pKa of 3.13 whereas acetic acid is 4.76 (formic is 3.7). So citric acid is nominally the strongest of the the three and acetic the weakest. So if what you say is true there must be some other effect going on.

Don’t be silly.

I don’t think so.

Psychotic episode?

Oh good. I must say I have always struggled with things that are just sweet and usually try to cut it down or else balance with acidity. When I make the Christmas puddings each year I use 3/4 the quantity of sugar in the recipe, substitute a cooking apple for the eating apple and chopped prunes for the sultanas. I also buy the "moins sucrée" version of French jam. The snag is the reduction in sugar affects the keeping qualities, so I need to keep the jam in the fridge after opening and I only make the puddings on "Stir Up Sunday", i.e. the week before the start of Advent. One of the minor trials of living in the USA as I did for a couple of years was that so many things were too sweet, from the jam which I found inedible to - believe it or not - the wine. Even the damned bread and potato crisps had added sugar. I couldn't believe it at first. But it was Texas (Houston) - I might have done better in one of the E. Coast cities.

A slight digression, but the place of the fart in literature could be interesting to explore. It famously features in the Canterbury Tales for instance. And there is a rather good passage in Kingsley Amis's "The Old Devils", involving a Welshman called Alun Weaver: "...There followed a brisk walk of a hundred yards to a short driveway, at whose entrance he abruptly checked his stride. Standing quite motionless he gazed before him with a faraway look that a passer-by, especially a Welsh passer-by, might have taken for one of moral if not spiritual insight, such that he might instantly renounce whatever course of action he had laid down for himself. After a moment something like a harsh bark broke from the lower half of his trunk, followed by a fluctuating whinny and a thud that sounded barely organic, let alone human. Silence, but for faint birdsong. Then, like a figure in a restarted film, he stepped keenly off again and was soon ringing the bell in a substantial brick porch......." The birdsong is a nice touch, I feel.🙂

Yes a guy I knew at school collected a fart over water, using a jam jar in the bath and was then able to set light to it.

You had better ask a current chemistry teacher, I think, rather than us old fogies.🙂 But for what it is worth, I would expect most UK exam boards would specify that IUPAC naming and labelling conventions should be taught and those would be used in examinations, the aim being to avoid confusing students and to rear them on the modern system. I see. Seems to be from the early 1960s, so a few years before my time. I can see the logic. It's interesting to group silicon with both germanium and titanium.

The fourth one is curious. I have never seen that before. Where does it come from?

Oh sure there are always things like that going on round the edges. Chemistry is complex and messy. There are elements for which there is no agreement as to what the ground state electronic configuration really is, when valence subshells are very close in energy. And you can have a (slightly sterile) debate about whether Zn should be counted as a transition metal or not. And so on. But in chemistry I have always felt it is the rule-breakers that provide a lot of the fun. A good rule has to account for say 90% of cases, but then the exceptions become more interesting in contrast - and thus easier to remember.

Yes it can be confusing, as it has changed over the years. I still think of B and Al as group III and N and P as group V. But IUPAC has spoken, so it is all different now. Personally I think the most rational system would be to number the columns within each block, so C would become gp 2 of the p-block.That’s because it seems to me the 4 blocks, s, p, d, f, are the most important primary classification for the elements, reflecting the last valence shell being filled according to the Aufbauprinzip. But the periodic table is so old and so fundamental to chemistry that it is impossible to scrape off all the barnacles of history. One just has to learn to live with the different versions. (And don’t get me started on why we name the blocks s, p, d and f. That’s another long story, to do with early spectroscopy.)

So, to be clear, when you said you were quoting Einstein as reported in Britannica, that was untrue and you had made it up. I see. This does not augur well for the discussion. It is not "a common myth" that Einstein didn't understand quantum mechanics, so far as I am aware. It looks to me as if you have made that up, too. I suggest you read up some of the history, look at things Einstein really said, and clearly separate what he actually said from your own musings.

This quote sounds a bit odd. Can you provide a link to where you got it from, to help us understand the context?

Yeats expressed the danger of this tendency in human affairs with: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” (And we have our present day rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, but that’s another subject.)

And bears shit in the woods............ This has always been obvious to any independent-minded person working in a corporation. In my >30 years at Shell I was repeatedly struck by the ability of members of the Committee of Managing Directors to speak in clear and simple language, quite unlike many of the senior managers beneath them. I was also struck by the tendency of those managers with a burning ambition but rather modest intellect to tend to hide behind buzzwords and management-speak, sometimes to a quite baffling degree. But they used to egg one another on, as if it was some mysterious language to which only they had the key. It got worse over the years. Eventually there was a whole cottage industry of this crap, speaking in generalities, none of it actionable. I recall one particular incident in which I had a meeting with a recently promoted senior manager in the Research division. She spoke at length in answer to one of my questions and I simply could not follow what she was saying at all. So I asked if she could clarify, whereupon I got another equally baffling cloud of buzzwords. So I just said "Thank you very much" and left. There was nothing else to do. (Her research centre was shut down a few years later.) So my conclusion was the CMD were the real deal, whereas a significant number of their subordinates were faking it.

Some kind of bagel, perhaps? I see, having looked it up, that bagels may have originated in Poland.