exchemist

I presume the latter point is that the droplets evaporate, leaving a tiny dry nucleus of virus particles, which can drift in the air more easily. There is also, at least in climates like that of the UK, the issue of less sunlight in winter months (shorter days, more cloud cover) which reduces the sterilising effect of UV sunlight. I think we all became far more aware of these factors during the Covid pandemic. Certainly I knew nothing of the reasons until then. As for A/C, my experience in Dubai in the 1980s was that people caught colds in summer, presumably as a result of having all the windows shut and breathing recirculated air. There was also a theory about the shock to the body of moving between an external temperature of 40C with 95% humidity and a low humidity indoor temperature of <20C. But I have never seen that substantiated.

Yes quite right, being in a hurry I chose my words clumsily. What I had in mind is that the sine wave repeats its wave pattern indefinitely, whereas the Gaussian is just the one bump.

The Financial Times is in no doubt that we are in the midst of a stock market bubble, largely based around AI and crapto. I gather 35% of US stock value is now in AI tech companies - with no profitability in sight. It's a question of when, not whether, it bursts and what happens then. Nobody thinks it would usher in a new Great Depression, but a lot of people will get burnt. It's like those cartoons in which you run off a cliff and are fine until you look down. Some people are trying hard not to look down ,but soon one of them will.

The curve is the Normal Distribution or Gaussian. You can find various version of the equation for this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution It is not a sine wave though, which is the shape of a simple wave, as is evident by the fact that it does not continue indefinitely, like the graph of Sin x. I am not aware of an opposite, but I’m not a mathematician. It has been Christmas. People have had other things to do than answer queries on internet forums. I have spent the day taking the decorations off the Christmas tree, getting it outside for collection with the help of my son (it is a 9ft tree) and making a galette des Rois, which is the French tradition at Epiphany (today). That will conclude the festivities for another season. To your question, infra red photons are just about everywhere, as they are emitted by bodies above absolute zero. Being infra red, they are not visible and so might be described as “dark”. Photons are not a medium. They are disturbances in a sort of immaterial medium, the medium being the electromagnetic field.

One of my brothers emailed me today with a Star Trek clip from “The Squire of Gothos” episode. Trump at times reminds one of an overgrown child, playing with adult things. There’s a bit of a “Come along now, Junior” feeling about his antics. Just wish I could wake up from the nightmare. Apparently Trump thinks there are “Islamic radicals” in Venezuela. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/04/venezuela-trump-rubio-republicans Really?

Now that is really interesting. Have Trump's henchmen done their homework, one wonders. Actually, almost certainly not, given the low calibre of these goons. It would be funny if she rises to the occasion, tells them to get stuffed and mobilises the country to boot the Americans out. The parallel with Ukraine would be just about perfect.

I see the latest is that there is, after all, no intention to "run the country" but instead to let the deputy president Delcy Rodriguez do it, with a pistol to her head. No new elections, no recognition of the guy who really won the last election, nor of the banned candidate who has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So business as usual, but with a degree of coercion by the US.

“Run” Venezuela? Is there a missing “i” there?

That’s something I hadn’t realised. About the apples, I mean.

Interesting though that the stock price went up, slightly, nonetheless. From the article it appears investors are willing to buy Muskie's bet on robotaxis, which seems to be where he is now focused, finding the swasticars themselves too boring. Personally I think he's gone nuts now and will blow up, as so many entrepreneurs do when they believe too much of their own bullshit, in his case becoming distracted by neofascist political meddling in Europe. But then I'm not a stock market investor.

Hmm, except apples are not very Raj-like. But OK, this is was for consumption in Britain, with cold meat rather than Indian food, then. Yes I remember the practice of cold meat with warm cooked vegetables - a pretty dreadful combo as I recall. Cold meat much better with salads and bread in my view, but back in the day the British didn't seem to eat salads much. Also I suppose things like lettuce and tomatoes would have been unobtainable in winter. Though one could grate carrots and have beetroot, shredded cabbage, things like that.

Yes like many of my countrymen I use mango chutney as a condiment with Indian food. I’ve sometimes wondered how authentic this practice is. And this chutney is rather different.

What do you eat it with? Or rather, what was its culinary purpose back when the recipe was written?

….not to be confused with the capital of Albania……😵‍💫

French women, e.g. my late wife, have a theory that English women have good complexions. Boobs, I could not say. I don’t usually notice them much.

That’s something I never knew.

Those were both dark chocolate products, though, weren’t they?

Butyric acid smells like vomit. Why anyone would add that to chocolate beats me.

There is quite a bit of good British food in fact, but we still live with the hangover of our postwar austerity, which for decades caused us to lose faith and fail to do justice to it. These days you can eat better in London than in many capital cities. But it’s true that provincial standards of cooking are rather uneven, shall we say. You are dead right about British industrial milk chocolate, though. Most Continentals wouldn’t consider it chocolate at all, adulterated as it is by non cocoa fats etc. I believe Cadbury’s Dairy Milk no longer qualifies at chocolate under EU rules - not enough cocoa-derived content.

Ha. I have a niece who has just moved to Tobermory, from Tiree. I have not visited since the move.

I love the fact it was discovered in a plastic recycling plant in Japan, having apparently evolved there. One in the eye for the creationists! Maybe that's what we need to do more of: search carefully in polluted environments to see what handy microbes may have developed to make use of our junk. Microscopic wombles, in fact.

OK, I see Cornelius went through a number of instars, migrating from aviation compressors to refrigeration equipment and thence to food handling. So out of the serious compressor business for several decades by the look of it. Now part of Marmon Food Service Technology (owned by Berkshire Hathaway). However I see there are still some of these ex B52 compressors for sale on EBay as military surplus. Other people also seem to use them for SCUBA by the look of it. (I'd be a bit nervous about using them for breathing air quality applications myself, but that's another story.) But none of this helps you, I realise.

Yes, for posting what they considered pseudoscience. At least here nobody has accused you of that.

Are there bugs that digest microplastics?

Yeah I think a lot of this is hype. They still don't have a way to make a commercial quantum computer and the technical problems are formidable.