exchemist

OK yes certainly, the religious “man in the street” may still cling to some kind of argument from design, without having thought much about it, especially if he has little familiarity with science I suppose. I’ve always been struck by the way in which the “laws of nature” bring order out of the randomness at the molecular level, e.g. in kinetic theory and statistical thermodynamics. Seems almost biblical 😉

OK. Must admit I have not come across this being used in religion recently - except perhaps in the widest sense that the order in the universe (i.e. what we sometimes call the "laws" of nature) may be seen by religiously inclined people as due to a creator (or in Einstein and Spinoza's case, as actually being the creator).

YouTube is full of shit. I suspect most of us have better things to do than trawl through it, looking for something that may or not be what you are talking about. I had a quick look at the link you provided, but as ever there is no adequate description of what is being done. As I am not going to indulge in guesswork, that's the end of it for me.

Aren’t you flogging a dead horse? ID was blown out of the water years ago and its inventor, the lawyer Philip E Johnson, has been dead for some years. The Argument from Design was taken apart by numerous people when ID was still a thing. Does anyone still use it now?

OK thanks.

Are you referring to chromium trioxide?

It may be worth keeping in mind what science is. Methodological naturalism is at the heart of the scientific method. It you want to call that a mechanistic worldview, then I'm afraid there is no getting away from that. Consideration of supernatural influences lies outside the scope of science, by definition. And so does any evidence that is purely individual and subjective, i.e. is not objectively reproducible. Your "spiritually enlightening experiences", if reported by different people, may be taken as evidence of something that happens in the minds of people, but won't be taken by science as evidence of anything supernatural.

Quite. It was a jury trial so pretty hard to see how the decision can have been "rigged". The tragedy of this is that Trump has succeeded in making it normal now in the US to regard its justice system as politically motivated. That indicates a potentially catastrophic loss of trust in one of the fundamental pillars of a democratic state. This may have huge and deeply malign consequences for the country.

It was not obvious to ancient people that the ground we stand on is the surface of just another object with mass, like an apple except bigger. You need that insight before you can construct a theory like Newton’s. Astronomy, in particular the predictable motion of the planets and the heliocentric perspective to account for it, would have been a necessary precursor to thinking in such a way. There is a long line of development in thought about the world, which has progressively seen it, and us, less and less as unique and more and more as just one case of a general principle. This can be seen in the move from geocentrism to heliocentrism and then to seeing our solar system as one of many and our galaxy as one of many. Or in seeing Man as unique and later as just one animal among many produced by evolution. Hardest of all, historically speaking, was probably the start of chemistry. The modern idea of elements required considerable leaps of imagination, considering that substances around us tend to be complex mixtures of compounds with no obvious connection or pattern among them. At least with astronomy you have a “clean” system, simple enough for accurate calculations and predictions, which strongly suggests some unifying principles and order must be at work.

What word are you talking about that has these multiple pronunciations?

Which is what I said.

Adblock plus seems still to suppress them for me, on iPad with Safari.

I see capocolla = coppa, so we should be OK with that at least. I would be less confident about Carrefour (French hypermarket chain) rosette beng nitrate free though. Saltpetre has been a traditional preservative for centuries, after all, though not nitrites.

Interesting. Yet nitrites as preservatives, e.g. in cured meat products, are regarded as unhealthy, I gather. But that, I dimly seem to recall, is due not to the nitrites per se but to the nitrosamines they produce in the meat, which are possible carcinogens. If I’ve remembered correctly how this works… (Have to confess my son and I have been eating French rosette sausage and Italian coppa for lunch most days in the last fortnight, while we are on holiday in Brittany, promoting the odd twinge of conscience.)

You can still see some wisps of what may be down on the head of the bird in the video.

I found this image on the web which is almost identical and is described as a juvenile starling: The slightly screechy call also reminds me of the juvenile starlings we had nesting in a tree in our garden when we lived in Houston. So that would be my best guess as to what it is.

But presumably one can’t attribute the health benefits of these vegetables entirely to the NO that may be produced, via interaction with nitrate-reducing bacteria. My understanding is that vegetables in the diet protect against these cardiovascular conditions via a number of effects, ranging from more fibre that promotes excretion of more bile acids derived from cholesterol, to antioxidant compounds, sources of vitamins, etc.

Looks to me like a juvenile, from the yellow interior of the beak and its behaviour. That makes it harder to identify, as distinctive markings may not be fully developed. But I’m not a bird expert.

Seeing as there is a clear risk of accidental swallowing, I find it inconceivable that a dangerous poison like methanol would be used.

Pity about your second sentence. The first is undoubtedly correct.

Transmission losses for electric transmission will be nearer 20% I should think.

I think this is very well expressed. +1

All valid points, but you will still expend considerably more energy (perhaps 30-40% more) on this machine to get from A to B than on a conventional bike, due to the combined transmission losses and the extra weight of motors, generator and battery.

Sure, creep in solids is a recognised phenomenon. That does not make the solid state an illusion, though.

Eh? Surely this does not mean the solid state is an “illusion” but that pitch behaves as a viscous liquid rather than as a solid?