exchemist

I may be being a bit slow but why are you introducing "psychopathology" and all this stuff about psychiatrists? @CharonY was describing a progressive weakening of institutional structures, due to churn in the middle ranks of the professionals working in them, and loss of attractiveness of the jobs. And I have been talking about a loss of public trust in institutions, which is another way in which they can become weakened. Where does psychopathology come into this?

Very risky. The problem is the damage to trust in formerly independent institutions, including the judiciary, the Dept of Justice and the FBI. One that's gone it takes years to get people to trust them again, especially as one of the things that has to be done is getting rid of the Trumpy loyalists that were parachuted in. Doing that can so easily be presented as politicisation by the other side. As with presidential pardons. These have now, partly due to Biden's weird use of them, become discredited as a partisan way to avoid accountability for favoured individuals. Trump has already damaged trust in SCOTUS by appointing two manifestly underqualified people last time. There is also the danger that what seems outrageous today will, within 2 years, barely elicit a shrug from punchdrunk voters who have got used to it. No, I think this stuff has to be called out now, in as public a manner as possible, by heavyweight speakers that can communicate. (I thought it interesting that Trump had a go at Pete Buttigieg over the plane crash. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to find a way to blame Buttigieg for it. I feel sure he sees Buttigieg as dangerous to him, because he is the kind of sharp and articulate guy that can highlight what Trump is doing in ways that cut through to people.)

That is interesting. Not from the blacks, then?

OK, but PiS is also authoritarian and nationalist. So maybe "far-right" was a bit simplistic of me but they have most of the attributes, apart from economic laissez-faire.

😀

You are violently agreeing with me😁. It is the reason why it is not achievable where we seem to be disagreeing. The residual zero point energy of the ground state is by definition not extractable, hence is not capable of being exchanged among the members of an ensemble, and therefore cannot contribute to the temperature. So its presence is not an explanation for why absolute zero is, as we both agree, is unattainable.

Absolute zero is a temperature. The reason it is unattainable is not because of zero point energy.

Haha, always good to have another chemist around to balance all the physicists we seem to have.😁 As a Brit, I am really alarmed by what seems to be taking place in the USA. In Poland, Donald Tusk has found that reversing the damage to the media, judiciary and government caused by the aptly named far-right PiS party is very difficult, slow work. Once independent institutions have been compromised, popular trust in them evaporates. Without trust in institutions, arbitration and compromise between differing groups becomes impossible, and the rule of law itself can break down - providing a pretext for dictatorial oppression. Like you perhaps, I used to consider myself broadly conservative: what we used to call a pink Tory. But politics has shifted so far that I now find myself left of centre! In the UK, the old centre-right has collapsed, all its talented, educated exponents having been driven out of politics by Johnson and Brexshit. So now we have a sort of idiot Right, or the Labour party. Let’s hope that process is allowed to proceed without manipulation, then.

What evidence do you have that the blood of thalassaemic people can carry elements or compounds that normal blood cannot? If so, which elements or compounds? Or is this just a WAG (Wild-Arsed Guess) on your part? Bear h mind that, as I said earlier, there is no evidence so far as I know that this disease is prevalent near volcanoes.

If you rely on ChatGPT you will end up badly misinformed. You need to do your own reading. What do you mean by "stigma" in the context of blood cells? "Mediterranean anaemia", if that is what you are asking about, is nowadays called thalassaemia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassemia. Although it was first characterised in Mediterranean people, It is a genetic disorder found in many groups, not just those around the Mediterranean It has nothing to do with volcanoes. Far from giving people more energy, it makes them very weak, even to the point of death, due to insufficient haemoglobin in their blood cells for transporting oxygen to the tissues of the body.

I commend your unwillingness to adopt black and white judgements, but I do think there is a danger, in what you say in your previous post, of Polyanna-ish passivity. Here in Europe, many of us are aware that many educated Germans told themselves that maybe Hitler would turn out to be mostly bark and no bite and might do some good. (In a narrow economic sense he did, of course.) Whilst I don't intend to draw an over the top parallel between Hitler and Trump, the danger of the phenomenon of hoping for the best is similar, in my opinion. We have plenty of evidence that Trump et al are indeed intent on establishing autocracy in the United States. - There is Project 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 , which actually sets out a road map for doing this, by a purge of federal government, including the Dept of Justice, and replacement of those purged with Trump loyalists. - One of the authors of Project 2025 , Russell Vought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Management_and_Budget, has been appointed head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vance wrote the forward to the document. - There have already been purges, both in the DoJ and FBI, of professionals assigned to to the criminal investigations involving Trump. The politicisation of the FBI in particular is a cause for concern, as this organ of state security can easily be used for surveillance and persecution (cf. J Edgar Hoover), in this case of those who challenge Trump. In particular it could be used to intimidate unhelpful judges. - The access of Musk, not even a government official, to the Treasury payments system creates conflicts with his business interests and invades the privacy of individuals. - The dismissal of the 17 Inspectors General removes independent oversight, which will enable corruption and malpractice to flourish. - There are well-established links between Viktor Orban and Republicans. Prominent Republicans have visited Orban to learn how he managed to turn a liberal democracy into what he himself proudly calls "illiberal democracy". They see Hungary as a model. This is now a country in which Orban's Fidesz party controls much of the media, the judiciary and the universities and is considered by many observers to be well on the way to autocracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Fidesz - Since Trump's inauguration, there has been a blizzard of executive orders, many exceeding presidential authority, at a rate far exceeding the rate at which they can be challenged in the courts. This blitzkrieg approach certainly looks as if could be intended to overwhelm challenge and establish "facts on the ground" before it can be stopped. Evidence mounts by the day that is consistent with the hypothesis that the objective of Trump's administration is to bend formerly independent institutions and indeed both legislative and judicial pillars of the constitution, to the president's will, enabling autocracy. Perhaps the most important aspect of this is that autocrats find ways to stay in power indefinitely, by suppressing the opposition and/or bending the electoral system. So the biggest risk of all is that, even if the public decides it has had enough of this approach to government, they may find themselves powerless to throw these people out - which in the end is the crucial advantage democracy has over other systems. So, looking at this in a scientific spirit, it reminds me of climate change: how much evidence does one need, before seeing an imperative to act? There's always a temptation to leave it a bit longer and see, but the process - if the hypothesis is right - has an irreversible quality to it which makes that a dangerous attitude. I take note of what you say about Congress providing safeguards. As of now there is little evidence of this. One can hope that in the mid-term elections there could be a rebalancing towards resistance to an out of control Executive. It seems to me that if this is to happen, people need to start objecting and highlighting the dangers now, before the population becomes acclimatised to the outrageous things being done. (One also has to hope that over the next 2 years Trump and his team don't find a way to neuter, or delay, the mid term elections. For instance declaring - or even engineering- a "state of emergency" is always a good old favourite with autocrats.😉)

Consideration of the impact on voters is only relevant if there are still fair democratic processes operating. I do not think this is a given in 4 years’ time.

This is a misconception. Zero point energy does not contribute to temperature.

A lot will hang on what remains of the independence of the judiciary, to stop this shit. Some welcome signs so far, but the problem is speed of reaction. Project 2025 is trying to move too fast for the courts to keep up, and to keep everyone off balance. A blitzkrieg approach.

What cheek! The rules are there for a good reason. It is you that has to adapt here. If this is "chat" from a chatbot, it will be ballocks and not worth anybody wasting their time on.

I agree with @Phi for All. The so-called "laws of nature" are man-made models for the orderly behaviour we observe in nature. Often these "laws" are only approximate and they are all provisional, in the sense that we might one day find out something new that shows they are not a complete picture. This has often happened in the past. But we don't know if there is a reason for the orderly behaviour we observe. As far as science is concerned, It just is. If you want to speculate about that, you can but it will be metaphysics and not science, because there are no observations that we can make which could test the validity of the speculations.

This is Caine's account of it: And this is Sellers' account:

Ah, now this and the previous post have triggered (sorry!) one of my Michael Caine "Not many people know that" trivia. A Mr. Alfred Bird, a c.19th English chemist, had a wife who had a thing against eggs, being allergic to them. He developed an egg-free custard substitute for her and went into business manufacturing it. It was a great success, to the extent that I, like generations of British children before me, was brought up eating "Bird's Custard", a pinkish powder that when mixed with hot milk forms a sort of inoffensive yellow gloop that can be poured onto hot puddings etc. Bird's Custard powder has been at the back of kitchen cupboards all over the country for over a hundred years. The wife was also allergic to yeast, so he invented baking powder, as a raising agent for bread. It is of course also used for cakes, the previous, traditional method of the time having been to use whipped egg whites - which of course his wife could not eat. This gave rise to the famous "Victoria Sponge" so named because the Queen was said to like cakes made on this principle (1:1:1:1 butter:sugar:eggs:flour - with baking powder as raising agent), which is what we all make today.

🐐🎪

Kipling is underrated in my view, partly as he’s associated with the colonialist milieu of his time. He is one of the few English authors who writes about work. (Conrad is another - but he was Polish.) Kipling showed great respect for work and for the working man. Here is his poem The Glory of the Garden: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_glorygarden.htm It helps you keep in mind, when you go round some stately home, of the all the people working to keep it beautiful. And of course the metaphor is that the same applies to England itself.

Well it’s more rubbery with hard boiled eggs, certainly. But not off-puttingly so. One thing to watch with hard boiled eggs is not to cook them so long that the sulphur compounds form a grey ring around the yolk. It’s only cosmetic but worth avoiding.

Yes. My favourite was the Singsong of Old Man Kangaroo, which is basically a tour de force in blank verse.

Yes it's like yesterday. I can see it but if I try to post a reply I get the "Oops" message and it dies.

Yeah I saw this in the Guardian and thought what a load of cock it was.😁 The Nature article at least shows some interesting science behind it. Every cook knows the problem is that albumen sets at a higher temperature than yolk, so the aim is to get the heat pulse from boiling water through to set just the albumen, and take the egg out before it sets the yolk. The researchers' procedure, if taken at face value, is of course ridiculous. The value of the research is presumably in the investigation of the various mechanisms at play. I keep eggs in my fridge and find that plunging them into boiling water for 5 mins 30secs seems to be optimal, for the large sized eggs I cook. One needs to pierce the shell at the top, where the air sac is, beforehand, to avoid the shell cracking. There are proprietary pin devices for that. I imagine that, with eggs stored at room temperature, a shorter time would be needed to set the albumen. It might also make the yolk more liable to start setting faster, once the heat penetrated. But I don't eat many soft-boiled eggs so it is not something I have explored.