John Cuthber

I disagree. The whole paper seems to be an interesting exercise in confirmation bias.

IQ is a measure of how well you do in IQ tests. It was originally designed to identify the children who were falling behind in school in order that they could be given better support. I'm sure we agree that's a worthy objective. Using it to compare people who are- by whatever criterion- average or above is, at best, misusing the tool. Getting into arguments about who has the bigger Dick, I mean the bigger IQ is unlikely to be productive.

You can't. The zinc will immediately start to dissolve.

Being small. On a related note... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-biscuit-bullet/ I thought everyone knew you could get frozen dough.

If your original post, which said had said something like "Outside of the UK which is magic, If wages are raised...s inflation, an increase in the cost of living ..." You would have had a point. Instead you doubled down on it saying Well, your assertion is not true universally. It is not true for the UK in 1999. It only needs one counter-example to prove once, and for all time, that you were wrong. Nothing you can say or do now will stop that being true. Similarly, while there may be problems tracing drugs, for example, this weed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine#Chemistry may complicate the analysis of caffeine use, it doesn't stop the technique being employed.

You are missing the fact that, at equilibrium, the concentration of zinc will not be zero. Some zinc will dissolve in the electrolyte.

Indeed. But Sensei still doesn't seem to believe in them.

You may know more about prisons than I do, but I assure you that the technique is widely reported. https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/html/pods/waste-water-analysis_en Two things, Caffeine is , to a degree. excreted as such in the urine. The fraction excreted as such is fairly well documented- and not hard to measure. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724768/ Also, did you notice I said that they measure benzoyl ecgonine (rather than cocaine itself) to determine cocaine use? Didn't you realise that they would also measure metabolites of caffeine to get a total figure? Same reasons as most people I guess. But I have no call to lie on this website. Why do you? A better politicians would get their researchers to check the facts. You don't seem to have done so. Caffeine is a drug. We were actually talking about your contrafactual claims about minimum wages. We then went on to discuss your failure to recognise that streets typically get washed by rain into rivers. What problem are you imagining? In parts of Utah, they consume very little coffee; perhaps that's where the 0.07µg/ litre figure came from. I gather that the folk in Finland consume the most coffee. Maybe that's where the 126 µg/litre figure was from. Or maybe the discrepancy is due to changes in rainfall. That's why I said you needed to know the river flow rate. Didn't you understand? Both, if you have any sense. How did you come to the conclusion that such a question matters? On the other hand, the classic line I hear from street beggars is "Can you spare me the price of a cup of tea". (I'm not saying that's what they plan to spend it all on) It very nearly won't affect it at all for two reasons. There's only 1 of you in a city of how many?. And, in a very real sense, all drinks get flushed into the river. And it certainly won't affect the point you were getting close to making about illegal drug use, will it? The point remains, calling me a liar because you don't understand science makes you look like you are 8 rather than 80 and also adds an amusing irony to your chosen name here. Incidentally, there is, of course a very good reason why homeless people might drink tea or coffee. "In the all night café At a quarter past eleven Same old man Sitting there on his own Looking at the world Over the rim of his teacup Each tea lasts an hour And he wanders home alone" From Streets of London Song by Ralph McTell It's warm in the café.

Like the scientists who did the research, you thought it through just a bit further than Sensei did. Correct on both counts.

... and wrong in this case. As shown by (among others) the history of UK minimum wages. Why are you pretending that those things are in the same category? No It's actually quite a good technique. Better yet; they can check on it. It's easy to survey for caffeine use (and also easy to just ask the tea and coffee importers how much they bring in). And you can measure caffeine concentration upstream and downstream of a town and calculate how much is in the water- the only other thing you need to know is the river flow rate and they are good at measuring that. They get the right answer. They can also measure prescription drugs that are not abused- things like allopurinol- for which there's no "black market. They know how much is prescribed and they can measure it in the water. And they can do the same thing for compounds like benzoylecgonine to assess cocaine use. So just because you couldn't get the right answer doesn't mean that clever people haven't. Can someone just check back with reality here? The UK introduced a minimum wage in April 1999. Inflation fell from 1.82% in 1998 to 1.75% in 1999 and 1.18% in 2000 https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/inflation-rate-cpi That observation trumps any "logic" that you might choose to apply to the situation. Inflation is driven by the money supply. Simplistically, if there a strike at the mint, the inflation rate droops to zero. Realistically there are plenty of causes. https://kinesis.money/blog/what-are-five-causes-of-inflation/ And if, as is plausible, increased wages actually lead to reduced costs because the company doesn't have to keep paying to recruit or because staff are more content and work more productively, there's not net increase in costs which needs to be passed on to the customer.

Thus far, the only one among us to have been communicated with is the OP.

We haven't worked out what they are yet.

Not necessarily. They may have successfully communicated between other civilisations, but not happened to reach ours yet.

Nobody said it did. You have shifted the goal post from Shifting the goal posts like that is also, at best, arguing in bad faith. Can you provide evidence for this idea? It should be easy to show that professional basketball players all get taller as they get older.

Yes; they got energy from the wind. Oh yes they do. See above. Do you now accept that I was right all along?

So they don't need to get much from elsewhere.

I bet "transition metal" is a better phrase.

How much energy do you think the bird needs?

Bird goes up. That means doing work against gravity.

The dandelions in my garden disagree. So do lots of birds.

The process of a dispute over pay doesn't damage cables. What actually happened? Some of the early research done on the subject was on people doing piece-work in factories. I don't think burger flipping is very different. The experiment was actually very instructive. They got a group of workers and found out how many items they made in a day. Then they reorganised the workplace and measured productivity again. It had increased. The management concluded that the changes had improved productivity. But the scientists were wiser than that. They waited a while an d then measured productivity yet again- and it had fallen more or less back to where it had been. So they swapped the workplace back to how it had originally been and, yet again, there was a temporary jump in production. It turns out that changing things makes people more interested and more productive. Further experiments showed that teh changes didn't have to directly relate to work. Starting a chess club would have an effect. Now, imagine the young burger flipper who gets a pay rise. He's going to make changes- possibly even joining a chess club. So, I can see a pathway , based on research (in the 1950s I think) by which a pay rise would improve productivity. The interesting question is can anyone think of evidence for why it would not do so?

That's more or less what the Conservatives said when the UK was considering introducing a minimum wage in 1999. They predicted mass unemployment, destruction of the economy, plagues of frogs etc. None of which actually happened. It's as if the political Right wing don't tell the truth about things.

A hot air gun is probably the option that minimises exposure to nasties (including lead). It leaves any lead compounds in a sticky painty mess which falls on the floor and can be disposed of. An abrasive will turn it into dust which will get everywhere including your lungs. Get a fire extinguisher, just in case. I think a hot air gun is the cheapest option too. One vital point. Do Not Combine DCM And Either A Heat Gun Or A Blowtorch. You will generate phosgene. (DCM is bad, but nobody ever used it as a war gas.) It's obviously possible to add some chemical to CDM to thicken it- because the manufacturers of paint stripper do just that. But I don't know what they added.

What's funny is having a town named Dildo in Canada,

Are you sure you really want to say that? The alternative is that you are dishonest. Because your idea can not work.