John Cuthber

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.
 

On 5/28/2023 at 6:01 PM, Arnav said:

Let's say i keep a zinc rod immersed in pure water as oxidation half cell,

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

15 hours ago, Externet said:

What prevents the yeast from meeting death in sub-freezing temperatures ?

Being small.

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

On 5/27/2023 at 9:02 AM, Sensei said:

you are in one country, JC is in yet another, MigL is yet another country, and I am in yet another..

For which country is it needed? If I show you data for one country that is not yours, you will complain that is not yours (which happened in the past).. It's simple math. No politics. No economics.

If your original post, which said
 

On 5/13/2023 at 7:58 PM, Sensei said:

If wages are raised, the employer must 1) increase productivity or 2) raise the prices of the products. Which means inflation, an increase in the cost of living and reduced competitiveness in the global market.

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

On 5/16/2023 at 4:20 PM, Sensei said:

If I make some claim, it is universal, worldwide..

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.

On 5/24/2023 at 5:16 PM, CharonY said:

A bit of sidetracking here, but I would like to add that addiction rates are typically not estimated by a singular method (such as wastewater surveillance), but typically incorporates other measures from multiple sources

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

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

A good technique only in prison..

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

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

According to your claim, caffeine is not processed by the human metabolism..

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?

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Why do you lie

Same reasons as most people I guess.
But I have no call to lie on this website.

Why do you?

 

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

(a politician would say "you presented a different version of reality")

A better politicians would get their researchers to check the  facts. You don't seem to have done so.

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

we were talking about drug use, not caffeine use

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.
 

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

So how do you get any level of accuracy from the 0.07-126 ug/L range?

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.
 

On 5/20/2023 at 10:02 PM, John Cuthber said:

the only other thing you need to know is the river flow rate and they are good at measuring that.

Didn't you understand?
 

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

"caffeine concentration" or "caffeine metabolites processed by the body".. ?

 

Both, if you have any sense.
 

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Do you think so homeless drink tea or coffee?

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)
 

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

If I flush coffee and/or tea and/or Coca-Cola and/or Pepsi down the toilet, how will that affect your results... ?

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.

3 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Also, keep in mind that urine in the street ends up in the sewage, anyway. 

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

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Always read John's posts; he's a very sharp guy.

Correct on both counts.

On 5/16/2023 at 4:20 PM, Sensei said:

If I make some claim, it is universal, worldwide..

... and wrong in this case.
As shown by (among others)  the history of UK minimum wages.

On 5/16/2023 at 4:20 PM, Sensei said:

That's how in the US you probe the amount of of unemployment rate?

 

How do you in the US measure rate of homelessness? Do you make survey? By text message? By sending e-mail?

How do you in the US measure rate addiction from narcotics.. ? Do you make survey? By text message? By sending e-mail?

 

Why  are you pretending that those things are in the same category?

4 hours ago, Sensei said:

.seriously.. ? The amount of inaccuracies must be counted in hundreds of percents..

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.

7 hours ago, swansont said:

I’m not seeing any wiggle room here.

13 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

yet.

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

We haven't worked out what they are yet.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

So these would be unsuccessful Bracewell probes, seeing as they have not succeeded in communicating with us?

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

3 hours ago, genio said:

Creating simple amino acids does not constitute life.

Nobody said it did.
You have shifted the goal post from

4 hours ago, genio said:

When scientists can create with favorable conditions any form of life where no life has existed before

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.

3 hours ago, genio said:

We can see evolution at work with professional basketball players and how they're so tall because they keep jumping.

19 minutes ago, Genady said:

Yes, they have found another way.

Yes; they got energy from the wind.
 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Genady said:

They use air flow. But they don't harvest energy from it.

Oh yes they do.
See above.

Do you now accept that I was right all along?

53 minutes ago, Genady said:

They get a lot from food.

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

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

Perhaps you are using a translator and it has not chosen a good term. 

I bet "transition metal" is a better phrase.
 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:06 PM, Genady said:

...small amount of energy compared to ...

How much energy do you think the bird needs?

Bird goes up.
That means doing work against gravity.

1 minute ago, Genady said:

Organisms did not utilize, e.g., wind energy until humans invented windmills and wind turbines.

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

19 hours ago, StringJunky said:

As a coincidence, a frigate being fitted out in Scotland had a load of its data/power cables damaged through a pay dispute.

The process of a dispute over pay doesn't damage cables.

What actually happened?
 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Do you really think that applies to the kid working at Burger King, or the single mom working at Tim Horton's ?

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?

On 5/13/2023 at 7:58 PM, Sensei said:

If wages are raised, the employer must 1) increase productivity or 2) raise the prices of the products. Which means inflation, an increase in the cost of living and reduced competitiveness in the global market. People see higher prices in stores and that their increased salary is not enough anymore, so they demand a raise and the cycle repeats itself.

Meanwhile, another country with lower wages can create the same product at a lower price. In the open global market, the product is imported and sold to people who want a lower product price. That's when populist politicians step in and demand increased import tariffs to "save their hard-working fellow citizens" and "save the domestic market from countries that produce their products below the cost of production"). That is, they want to raise the price of the product for fellow citizens.

Subsidies to farmers are needed to keep farms operating, otherwise they would sink.

Many branches heavily dependent on workers' wages have sunk, unable to deliver product at an acceptable price to their customers.

 

How social welfare spending has evolved over the years? Are welfare recipients counted as unemployed?

How homelessness rates have changed over the years? Are homeless counted as unemployed?

How have crime rates changed over the years? Are criminals counted among the unemployed?

And so on, so on..

Here, if you don't go and register as unemployed, you are not counted as unemployed, but as employed. The only reason people register here is for unemployment benefits, but they are only granted for a few months (depending on how long you were previously employed). Thus, it is easy to bend the unemployment rate, as there is not just one way to calculate it..

It would be easier to count the employment rate, not the unemployment rate, because the employed pay PIT.

"The unemployment rate is, for example, 5%..." What does that even mean? 5% of what? If it were 5% of the country's total population *), it would give a meaningful comparison between countries.

*) in some countries children and teenagers work, in others, mainly Western countries, they do not.

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,

On 5/4/2023 at 5:42 PM, graybear13 said:

I am not insane, mad or foolish

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

16 hours ago, FRAGMASTER2023 said:

none educated to discuss in here that's why it would never become a discussion

You are here and therefore you just called yourself uneducated. That my be the most salient point you have made.

Anyway, if you don't like the membership of this forum, you will be delighted to know that we won't force you to stay.