louis wu

Here you are definitely wrong. Hammas has unilaterally declared and observed several ceasefires, all of which have been ended by Israeli military action. When the peanut king, AKA former US President Jimmy Carter, devised a peace plan Hammas found it acceptable, Israel refused to go along.

John B that is a well thought out post, far superior to most legalistic style posts on this issue that I have come across on other forums. But I have to take issue with your conclusion that the blockade is almost certainly legal. One of the criteria in assessing the legality of a blockade is whether the military impact is disproportionate to the impact on civilians. By that measure the Israeli blockade would fail - it is clearly being used not purely for defence purposes but also to oppress the civilian population in the hope of stirring up dissent against Hamas - why else would they be blocking building materials amongst many other innocuous items such as chocolate. The humanitarian argument would have to be tested in court and complicated arguments can be made on both sides (and just which court will try the issue?). The main problem with Israeli actions is not the debatable legality of the blockade itself, but the international waters aspect. San Remo is clearly written only for belligerents who are nation states, and cannot apply to Israel-Gaza. I state this with such confidence because as well as my brilliant research capabilities and innate understanding of legal matters I asked a MOD lawyer about it. This guy is expected to have opinions on what the Royal Navy can and cannot do on the high seas. UNCLOS is apparently the overreaching relevant international law. As Israeli forces attacked a Turkish flagged ship in international waters they were not acting legally. Israel is a signatory to the 1988? treaty which responded to the Achille Lauro incident. Apparently this means that a Turkish flagged ship cannot be intercepted in international waters without consulting and liaising with the Turkish Government. Consultation did not happen so the interception is not legal. I am sure that you will be able to find legal opinion that justifies the boarding in international waters, but the issue is to say the least highly contentious and has serious ramifications. In theory the Turks can invoke NATO provisions that require all their NATO allies to join them in fighting the Israeli navy. The USA would have to help the Turks or leave NATO. Fortunately the Turks seem very keen on getting those Israeli drones that are on order and not in making a bad situation worse.

Well moneypoo I understand that you might feel that you have to defend your countrymen right or wrong. So these elite commandos, after shooting a guy in the leg twice, also a shot in the back and then a shot in the face feel the need to shoot him in the back of the head. All close range shots. The only possible explanation that occurs to you is that it is all self defence. There is no possibility that excessive force has been used. I suspect that you will be in a minority on this issue.

Yes my imagination seems to have failed me. Please explain how this is consistent with self defence. Shot 5 times at less than 0.5m range including in the back and in the back of the head. Notionally the IDF were using pistols rather than automatic weapons.

News is emerging that the dead activists were shot multiple times in the head. No doubt the IDF will explain how it was self defence as the nasty activists were trying to head butt the guns out of the soldiers hands. Some cynics will think that shots to the back of the head at close range are more typical of execution style killings. Personally I could not possibly comment on the issue. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results

You have to consider the heat capacity of the medium. In so hard a vacuum there is very little energy per m3, despite the fact that individual molecules have a high velocity (temperature equivalent). There just is not enough energy to do much melting of comets.

San Remo only addresses blockades or conflicts between states. I am not aware that Israel has ever agreed that Gaza has statehood so nothing in San Remo is relevant. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged According to Fox the claim was made by the Israeli ambassador to Denmark. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/30/reports-israeli-ships-attack-aid-flotilla-dead/

Can I ask what relevance you think the San Remo manual has?

That the activists had recording equipment is indisputable. Mobile phones these days can record very detailed video files, and modern video cameras are very compact. The IDF indisputably shot people so I would expect footage of the shootings to 95%+ probability. My expectations of seeing the footage are small. As to who shot first, I have no way of knowing. The two sides have diametrically opposed versions of the event. But as I have said earlier the Israeli authorities have all the video of the event; they could release all the video and show what happened. Instead they release limited heavily edited versions. It appears that the Israeli authorities may have something to hide. After all several activists were shot to death. It seems you do not start from the neutral position but have an inbuilt assumption that the Israelis are more likely to be honest. Perhaps you can give your reasoning for this position. I take the view that the video shown so far could possibly be misleading as it is so heavily edited. As to the Al Qaida allegations we talked about earlier I hake the view that it was a reflex smear put out in the manner that two politicians smear each other. Any political campaign manager will tell you that the initial smear gets big headlines, the retraction gets 2 inches on page 92.

You seem to be missing the point. I have not called anything false propaganda. I have said that both sides are putting out propaganda. Israeli forces stole all the recording equipment from the protesters, so the protesters are unable to release their own heavily edited videos. If the protesters still had their own recordings they would be showing film of Israeli soldiers shooting people. The IDF are naturally keen to avoid such damaging footage. The best propaganda is in fact true propaganda. As PR becomes ever more slick it gets harder to see exactly what is the truth. If you feel I am reaching unwarranted conclusions then please enlighten me as to why, providing a detailed line of reasoning.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/gaza-flotilla-attack-turkey-funeral According to this article the Al Qaida link accusation have been dropped. The cynical might think that the original accusation was merely for PR purposes.

ecoli You are very naïve if you think that these films were not released as part of the PR war of who was to blame over 10 violent deaths. The Israeli authorities apparently confiscated all recording equipment from the 'peace activists'. Do you doubt that this was done to stop the activists releasing their own propaganda movies showing Israeli soldiers shooting people? The activists attempt to influence public opinion by claiming that Israeli soldiers opened fire before they boarded the ship, and by allegations of ill treatment whilst they were under detention. There have been claims activists were beaten up as they waited to leave at Ben Gurion airport. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/gaza-flotilla-survivor-haneen-zuabi Above is a rather different account from the official Israeli one. So to answer your question, it will take some very solid convincing evidence to convince me that these films have not been released for propaganda purposes. Do you propose to supply some evidence?

Don't you realise that it takes time and very careful editing to put together propaganda films? I expect that the improved director's cut will be available in a few days.

You are right that there is a lack of direct observation for the Oort cloud, unless you consider objects such as Sedna are part of it. There are arguments from the statistics of observed orbits of long term comets that indicate an Oort band out somewhere at 45000+ AU. How much 'stuff' is there is unknown until we can go there and see.

No 4 should in theory be more downfield as it has 2x N at 2 atoms removed. No 2 has 1x N at 2 atoms removed. The difference is unlikely to large as these are not primary factors in fieldshift.

Well with 15,000,000 gigabytes of data produced per year, my Pentium II may struggle to keep up.

Greenwood and Earnshaw Chemistry of the Elements seems the book for you. This is a real textbook and will be priced accordingly. The layout of giving each element its own chapter has not been duplicated in any other serious textbook (in my possibly fallible knowledge).

Well, I am not sure I can help. I'm afraid I did not build the Ringworld; I only went there for the rishathra. A non orbital ring system is gravitationally stable to perturbations normal to the plane of the ring but is inherently gravitationally unstable to perturbations within the plane of the ring. Placing the ring so close to the surface of the Earth makes the situation worse by allowing very little time for corrective action before the collision. At 1 mile high you are still in the atmosphere so a simple weather system such as a depression will start the inevitable fall to Earth.

The Cap'n is right. Your gas in urine symptoms sound very much as if there is a fistula between the colon and bowel. You definitely need medical attention as soon as practicable.

Ether has no H atoms directly bonded to electronegative O. It is the H-O bond that produces the [CE]d[/CE]+ partial charge on the H that produces Hydrogen bonding.

Don't you realise that you are already in the matrix? Just don't take the red pill.

insane alien How about Bode's law of planetary formation. Is that just numerology?

Well yes in P2O5 you have the only chemical desiccant that rates above conc H2SO4 in this table. http://www.mallbaker.com/techlib/documents/americas/3045.html But I do not see it as a good choice for this case, as it a severe toxic dust hazard, and tends to form a coating that inactivates itself. Incidentally are you sure that P2O5 will strip water from conc H2SO4 if they are in separate beakers in the same desiccator rather than in direct contact? I endorsed H2SO4 because it will be found in most labs whereas P2O5 or molecular sieves will not be. Actually for staying power as a desiccant, conc sulphuric is tops in terms of g/g water capture. Of course silica gel is most conveniently regenerated in a furnace, all our furnaces were in use at the times I have used conc sulphuric to regenerate desiccants. From comparing the two MSDSs conc sulphuric is a less hazardous chemical to use. Anyone with some chemical experience will know how to use H2SO4 safely, and any chemicals lab will have the correct equipment. P2O5 appearing as an innocuous white powder can catch people unawares and contamination often happens without people realising at the time. Of course if the user is inexperienced with chemicals, has no safety equipment, and is working in a shed at the end of their garden then conc sulphuric is a dangerous chemical. Under such circumstances P2O5 is an even more dangerous chemical to use and we would be more likely to see evolution in action. Finally I am unsure if NaOCl solution is suitable for use in a vacuum desiccator it tends to decompose.

The Milky Way is indeed expected to collide with Andromeda sometime soon (within a billion years or so), transforming our aesthetically pleasing spiral galaxy into a mishmash elliptical one. As tangential velocities are difficult to measure for galaxies there is some doubt over the event. Incidentally our whole galactic supercluster is on a journey to and presumed collision course with something called 'The Great Attractor'. The Great Attractor is at least 250 million light years away and may be 500 million or more light years away. Details on this huge gravitational anomaly are scarce as it lies in the galactic plane so we cannot get a good view of it. Events could prove very interesting when we get there, though the Sun will have burned out long before.

Sciencerocks Your question is actually an interesting one. Firstly an average photon will be one not at a wavelength suitable for absorption by CO2 or H2O. If you take the edge of the atmosphere to be the top of the mesosphere, then that is 85Km high. As the speed of light is reduced only very slightly by passage through air I calculate the passage to take ~0.00028 sec. Now photons that are at the correct wavelengths for absorption by CO2 have a very different fate. Effectively all these photons have been redirected to the ground or transferred as heat energy to surrounding molecules within the lowest 10 metres of atmosphere. In pre-industrial times I guess it would take ~13.5 metres of atmosphere for the same effect. The fact that photons susceptible to capture by CO2 would all be absorbed in the first few metres of atmosphere was used to discredit Arrhenius' theory of atmospheric warming from back in the 1890's. It was argued that as CO2 blocked all photons in its absorption bands so effectively, addition of extra CO2 into the atmosphere could make little difference. This line of argument seems fine as long as you consider the atmosphere as a static single slab. When the atmosphere is viewed as a dynamic system with many different layers it is seen that extra CO2 can indeed trap more energy within the system. The exact amount of extra energy trapped per ppm of CO2 is still vigorously debated. So the answer is that photons in CO2's absorption bands do not get out of the atmosphere at all. Decay times for vibrational excitement are usually ~ 10s of pico seconds. As CO2 is a linear molecule with fewer vibrational modes I would expect its decay to be relatively fast.