tomgwyther

I tried this experiment myself, accidentaly whilst working in theatre. We had to use either red or blue filters for near stage applications so they wouldn't interfere with the main effect of the stage lights. Red works best for most people. It's still dark but you can clearly make out printed paper (Musical score) and the equipment around you. Blue is not bad, but it's more difficult to see what your doing. Once, the only filter I could find was a UV gel. 1. I could only see things that were pure white, every thing else was black. 2. I felt physicaly ill, and nearly threw up! The Lighting engineer later explaned that 'They never use purple or UV gels backstage, as it makes the crew bring up their breakfast!' I'm not sure exactly why purple or UV light makes you nausious, it just does.

In short; yes. although most people see and hear things the same way as most other people. But some do have auditory sense beyond the usual 18hz - 21000hz range, and some can see a slightly larger range of colours in the EM spectrum. If it were an evolutionary advantage to see and hear more, then maybe future generations would have these enhanced senses. As yet I don't have X-ray vision unfortunately.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566&q=the+great+global+warming+swindle+duration%3Along&total=29&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Have a look at this program, originally transmitted on UK's C4. I wouldn't advocate changing ones opinions based on one video, but it does state some compelling scientific evidence. 1. the sun has a much bigger effect on Earth's temperature than man made Co2 2. that it's the rising temperature that causes the sea to release more Co2 into the atmosphere. i.e hot climate equals Co2 increase, not the other way around.

As far as I'm aware, these are the reasons we see dots and shapes in our field of vision, 1. Occasionaly, blood vessels around the retina bursts, the resulting blood clot can break free and float in the eyes fluid, [a floater] most people have about 4 or 5 of these at any one time, any more and you should consult an optician 2. minute dust and dirt particles can stick to the front of the eye, when they pass the pupil we can just about see them, especially if you look up at a clear blue sky 3. most disturbingly, there are parasitc animals that make a home on your eye, the names of these fail me at the moment. some live in the gut and find their way to the eye, by hitching a ride on bathroom towels. about 1 in 3 of us have them, they're quite harmless, unless you suffer from conjunctivitus. I do know that some specifically evolved to live on the mammalian eye ball, in the tear ducts or on the eye lid. The most common of which appears as a squigley line in the field of vision.

The old style kettles, (Like my grandmother used to have) would have a whistle attached to the spout, when the water boiled the steam presure would be forced through the whistle, making a sound and alerting you that it was time for a nice cuppa. you then take the kettle off the range, remove the whistle, and make tea, (or coffee)

Fingers and ears are also exposed; they're not oily.

Firstly, I quite like your post, it's worth raising, as Heisenburgs findings always seem to me; a little uncertain. As far as I know, you can messure accurately, one or the other (Velocity-Position) Thus theorectically you could use two sides of the same particle to messure both? The thing that uneases me about Heisenburg is that, by mesuring useing 'light' he affects the particle. Maybe the device he uses to get a result is at fault? I've always felt it's like mesuring traffic flow on a highway, by crashing into a few cars.

I'm not a neuro scientist, but I am a professional musician. I would say that music tends to have an effect on the limbic system of the brain as well as the cerebral cortex. it would bounce between the two, The primitive part of the brain would deal with emotion and feeling, while the higher functioning part of the brain can deal with the subtle lyrical sugestions etc. The brain will always find patterns in things anyway, (i.e. Rythm) so it's not impossible to supose that music preceded language, or maybe they co-evolved. Other points: 1. A phsycological reason why dance/techno music has done so well, may because Our brain gets used to the repetative drum beat, and some-what, blocks it out, alowing the frontal cortex to hear more clearly the other instruments in the music. If a real drum kit were used (Rather than a drum machine) It sounds like the drums are too loud, Somthing I have to compensate for when mixing. 2. all humans seem to have an inate sunse of harmony. The 'Perfect 5th harmonic interval' is present in all musical forms from different cultures [e.g. perfect 5th would be C and G played together.] 3. It's been documented that listening to classical music can improve IQ scores, maybe as the brain is stimulated on many levels by the music. 4. When I'm performing, especially if I realy get into the music; The higher brain functions seem to shut down. The mind becomes utterly blank, the piano seems to be playing itself, and one experiences a complete 'in-the-momentness' . As if the limbic system is calling the shots with no help from my consious mind.... wierd! I've listened to myself playing in this state, and cannot replicate what I've played earlier. 5. For some reason, cats and dogs will leave the room when someone is playing live, soft classical guitar, as if they can't stand it. But will stay when pre-recorded heavy rock loud music is played. Dont ask me why, they just do!!

Maybe you should remove the human qualities we associate with food. Most of us are able to procure food at will, and have done so for a very long time. we can over-ride our prime-eval erge to eat whenever possible, most of the time. With the exeptions of... (On a plane journey, most of us eat; not because we're hungry, but to break the monotony of 6 hours in economy class on British Airways.) (many people eat when upset.) (Those with 'eating disorders' over or under eat in responce to nuero-chemical or external stimuli.) etc... Dogs, and many other carnivorous animals, will simply eat at any given opertunity, as their instict tells them. It's a dog-eat-dog world, so eat while you can! They lack the higher reasoning we do, so to us, it's seems like Fido is just plain greedy! But they're just doing what evolution has made them do, without it, the kanine and lupine species would have died out. Domestic dogs, in my experience, will consiously decide not to eat when they're very full, and just leave food in their bowl. You have to feed a dog a heck of alot for this to happen though. as i found out at a friends BBQ the other day. p.s. The domestic cat realises it does not have to hunt for food and will stop catching things after about a year or so. It knows there's a ready supply of catty treats on the kitchen floor. Wild felines store food in a similar way too. p.p.s. some animals, when constantly fed, will eat until their stomach lining ruptures.

Deep blue, The chess playing computer which defeated kasparov, is now working for United Airlines call centre, (Well half of it is anyway.) Also, until a few years ago, you could burn witches in my home town.

Has Nikola Tesla's experiment of tranmitting energy via the ionasphere been repeated succesfuly under lab conditions? If it were possible, how might this work? Any other insight into Tesla's experiments would be appriciated, his claims seem a little too out there, and should either be dismissed, or corroberated with serious scientific scrutiny. thanks. Tom

I happend to see the 'The great swindle' too, and it simply confirmed what I'd been aware of for a while. that the carbon cycle is mostly concerned with the oceans, that when more sunlight hits water, more water and CO2 contained within are released into the atmosphere, hot sun = hot planet = more CO2... not the other way around! I though everybody knew that.!! The Idea that a few humans (Who only inhabit about 1% of the Earths surface) could have a greater effect on planetary temperature than a giant thermo-nuclear fireball (the sun) has always sounded stupid. It's long been known that Earth's temperature fluctuates, e.g Greenland used to BE green, hence it's name, it was hotter then. Airplanes for example help reduce sunlight penetration, via the vapour trails they leave. (This was noticed on September 12th/13th 2001, after nearly every aircraft was grounded, researchers across the globe noticed increased sunlight and temperature.) You can always rely on reactionist tossers and the media to spread panic amoung the masses. It's up to us scientists to see through te crap!!

Thanks Rocket man. You've answered my original question perfectly, I does seem very obvious now, water vapour condecsing in Volume, D'oh ! Now I can wat my dinner AND sleep at night

A small room, within a shed, with a powerfull light inside? Are you growing pot?

Behold!! photographic evidence of the elusive sausages ... The dimentions of the bag and food therein remain the same, although the bag does expand like a ballon whilst in the microwave, only when cooking is finished does the air in the bag disappear. photo at http://www.redweaselmusic.co.uk/sausages

thanks for the input guys, I repeated the 'experiment' but his time mesured to bag before and after cooking. The mesurements came out the same i.e. the bag it's self did not shrink. Other observations: Condensation occurs inside the bag, telling us that the air is hotter inside than out Most of the shrinking happens after cooking has stopped. Bear in mind the microwave energy has no major effect on the air in the bag, the heat from the food heats the air around it The size of the bag never changes The same shrink wrapping effect is observed when other heat sources are used (e.g. a hot lamp) the bag shrinks during heating. The bag is not completely air tight, air can escape and appears to be being 'sucked' out. The air pressure inside the microwave is constant (Microwaves are not air-tight). Discuss

Hight tax on fuel is the most stupid idea ever conceived. I have to pay 89 pence per litre here in the U.K, (That's about $10 per gallon.) Our governments way to stop the amount of traffic on the roads is to stop poor people from using cars. If I have alot of money, I can burn as much fuel as I want, and clog the road with my SUV. Unfortunaly I don't and I have to use a car to run my business, the tax on fuel is bleeding me dry, I spend about 100 pounds ($200) per week on fuel and can't afford to eat somtimes. I wouldn't mind if their was an alternative (Public transport) but the 1200 pounds ($2400) council tax I pay wont provide a bus service. If fuel were cheaper, neither myself nor anyone else would use their car anymore than usual, But we would have more money to spend in the high street shops. If fuel were cheaper, our consumer goods would cost less, as everything has to be tranported to the shop via truck. I could afford to charge people less for my services as I wouldn't have to add fuel costs to my bill. the general cost of living would fall, true, Tony Blair would have less money in his pocket to spend on all the wars he get involved in for no reason. Hi fuel taxes are killing industry and the economy in England, the working man who fuels economic growth is being squeezed dry. 1 in 10 English citizens now live abroad, because they're fed up with the cost of living, If fuel is cheaper, everything becomes cheaper. including public trnsport. It makes economic and enviromental sense to abolish the duty tax on fuel.

Here's an odd phenomenon I can't quite figure out... A microwaveable sausage comes wrapped in an air-tight bag (Similar to a bag of crisps/potato chips) When I heat it in the microwave, the bag contracts around the food, as if a vacuum were being created. The hot sausage comes out shrink-wrapped! How is this possible, since the hot meat should make the available air in the bag expand like a balloon. Microwaves only realy have a noticeable affect on sugar, water and fat molecules, not air, and in any case, the bag should expand as it heats. How can hot air contract? Is the meat absorbing the available air? Could the humble sausage be breaking the laws of physics? Will t.v dinners help us toward a unified theory of everything? Why am I so concerned about my lunch in this way? So many questions: Any answers? p.s the same happens with hot lasagne in a bowl, wrapped in cling-film.

I thought I'd give you a reply as nobody else would. Provided it does't have to be a 3-D model you could. Make a pin-hole camera from an old shoe box and some thin paper, you can use this to observe the sun. Maybe somthing with gyroscopes, their properties are linked with the axial rotation of the earth, their angle depends on where on Earth you're standing. (Try holding a spinning bicycle wheel whilst sitting in a swivel office chair.) A tray full of white powder (Flour or sugar) with a layer of darker powder on top (or vise-versa) will replicate the surface of the moon, if you throw a small pebble into it, it creates a very realistic meteor impact. My own personal favourite would be a 'Scale model' of the solar system. a ping-pong ball would represent the sun, a grain of sand about 5 meters away would represent the Earth, a peppercorn about 10 meters away would represent Jupiter, and so on... This shows people just how huge the solar system is. If you were to put another 'sun' ping-pong ball about 3000-4000 miles away, this would represent our nearest star. (Please double check the mesurement on the last one, they're only vague distances!)

One way me and a friend discussed (After quite a few beers!) was to push someone over board. We were on a ship going from Portsmouth U.K, to Le Harve in France. We sat on-deck with a case of beer at about 3:00am halfway across the English channel, and wondered 'If one of us were to push the other overboard; who would know?' All the other passengers were asleep. The body may not have been found for months, if at all. there would be no witnesses, no murder weapon and indeed no motive. If questioned by police, one could claim to have been sleeping on a couch away from other passengers, or passed-out in the toilet from drinking too much. Needless to say, we both arrived in France alive, albiet with severe hang-overs.

Time is your brains way of stopping everything from happening at once. We expirience time as one moment after another rather like we expirience a movie as one frame after another, but the film is all there as one whole.

Your 'Getting away with murder' question has kinda answered itself, the next time there's a murder in an Australian city, your name's going to be TOP of the police suspect list!!

The easiest way I've found to explain Einstiens theory to people is to substitute 'light' for 'sound' Sound moves much slower but exhibits similar characteristics to light, because it moves slower, it's properties are more apparent. You know the way the pitch of a police siren changes as it goes past you, [it speeds up or slows down depending on its position and speed 'relative' to you.] the same is true of light, you perceive it differently depending on your possition/speed. Now imagine two police cars, both with their sirens going. one driving along the road and one stationary, as one drives past the other, try to imagine how each police man would perceive the other,

It's good that such a horrible man is gone, but I don't think it should have been televised, that brings us down to his level. When is it bush's and blair's turn to be hanged for their crimes agaist humanity?

1 in 6 people who have ever lived are alive today. Earth has three natural satilites 1. the moon we can all see. 2. cruithne and more recently AA29. The compression on the frame of a fully strung grand piano is about 20 tonnes. Olive oil, when heated is carsonagenic.