John Cuthber

Given that the trains have not been public for about quarter of a century, I think we can largely discount your view on the matter.

If a sovereign country like China (or the US or UK) chooses to do GoF research clandestinely then there's nothing that another country can do about it. So, if we were magically able to prove that China had been doing it (And it seems unlikely that they would be stupid enough to do it essentially on an open lab bench) there's nothing we could do about it. So there's not much point wasting time on trying to find out.

Are you saying that, if it turns out to have escaped from a lab we do not need to worry abort wet markets? Are you saying it it escaped from the wet market we do not need to worry about labs? Or are you, as I am, saying that we actually need to look carefully at both of those because, whichever one was the source this time, that doesn't mean the other won't be the cause of the next outbreak? If both look like plausible sources we need to reassess both.

Which?

I may have missed some of the details, but is this essentially a three page discussion between those ho think nothing moves and those who think "The nothing" moves?

What's the difference? In one option the people cutting up animals use a scalpel and in the other they use a cleaver. So?

Tax law...?

If there's an embassy (or such like) anywhere in the world which is not swept regularly for "unexpected" RF emissions then they deserve all they get. You can get a "bug detector" on eBay that will detect power levels a million times less than those needed to affect people.

Are you talking about work funded by the USA? It was essentially decided by people who think money is more important than health and by those who close down funding for research institutions in the USA. So it's Republican policy.

As far as I can tell, Amazon is "trying it on". If I buy something from them They choose and pay the carrier. So they have a contract with the carrier. I don't; I don't necessarily even know who the carrier is. So, I have no claim against the carrier if the item does not arrive. But I do have a contract with Amazon- they included delivery in their price. They are liable if it doesn't turn up. I invite you to consider what would happen if Amazon really was allowed to write that clause into their contract and have it stand up in court. I would offer to be Amazon's sole carrier for all their goods- not a company; just me. Amazon would pay me a lot of money and pass responsibility to me for delivering the goods, and I wouldn't even take a van round to their warehouse. Amazon would be legally "exempt" because of their contract. I'd have enough money to point out in court that the buyers didn't have a claim against me (see above). After a while Amazon would realise that they didn't need to stock goods. There aren't many ways to make amazon more profitable, but this would be one of them However... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_Contract_Terms_Act_1977

At the moment what I can smell in the air is smoke- someone nearby must be having a bonfire. There are a lot of chemicals in smoke- most of the research focussed on tobacco, but apart from nicotine, most of the chemicals will be similar whatever you burn. And so I can tell you that much of what I can smell are compounds like phenol and guaiacol together with acrolein, naphthalene and others. It's also possible to connect a gas chromatograph to a glass funnel and put your nose in that funnel. That way you can smell the compounds as they are separated out. (so you knew which ones are responsible for what odours). Here's an analysis of the volatiles from heating paper. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00021369.1981.10864521 So, if you wanted to know what "smokey" air had in it, you could start with those. People have done work to identify the major components of smells. Things like "burning stuff" https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-burnt-smell-standard-compounds-measured-with-GC-MS_tbl1_223971634 or things like "woody" which would include things like pinene and eucalyptol Or "herbal" where you find compounds like thymol or citral (You might notice, the chemists are not generally very original with names. The dominant odour of lemons is due to two main components, citral and limonene). So quite a lot of the work has already been done. It would be expensive to repeat it.

The smell of petrichor is largely this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin The first big problem is that there are something like a billion known chemicals, and we can't look for all of them in one sample. If we did then the analysis report would be rather unmanageable; a billion lines most of which said "not detected". I think that's something like a thousand big thick books (and it wouldn't be cheap) The other big problem is that, for some materials, you can smell them at concentrations which are below the limit of detection by GC/MS (or most other techniques). Cloning would be a perfectly acceptable term if I was, for example, seeking to copy a trademarked perfume. It's also a term commonly used for copying a computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clone_(computing) And the word is used for credit card fraud involving a copied card.

Is it just me or... https://dilbert.com/strip/1992-08-03

This is close. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/worlds-tallest-timber-framed-building-finally-opens-doors

It's their home too, and they were there millions of years earlier.

Can you provide an example? A negative number of moles would be very weird.

I wrote code that could do that in about 1982. It played noughts and crosses (badly). It learned how to play by seeking to avoid repeating "losing" moves. The algorithm was from a Sci Am article. I'm not sure how I define "Life", but... that doesn't see to cut it.

It may not matter much how you store them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

"Is ingenious too strong a term?" yes

Toxicity- though it's hard to see the relevance in the context.

If wiser minds don't prevail and close the thread, I might respond when I have had a few drinks. I'm hoping it will make more sense then. Congratulations on timing this for Friday evening.

I don't think this is exactly a scientific review of the issue, but it does offer some explanations. What a drag it is getting old "Kids are different today, " I hear every mother say Mother needs something today to calm her down And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day "Things are different today, " I hear every mother say Cooking fresh food for her husband's just a drag So she buys an instant cake, and she burns a frozen steak And goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper And two help her on her way, get her through her busy day Doctor, please, some more of these Outside the door, she took four more What a drag it is getting old "Men just aren't the same today, " I hear every mother say They just don't appreciate that you get tired They're so hard to satisfy, you can tranquilize your mind So go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper And four help you through the night, help to minimize your plight Doctor, please, some more of these Outside the door, she took four more What a drag it is getting old "Life's just much too hard today, " I hear every mother say The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore And if you take more of those, you will get an overdose No more running for the shelter of a mother's little helper They just helped you on your way, through your busy dying day Hey

Could you expand on that- with real examples? Please take care to distinguish what the pollsters said from what the press and TV said about the pollsters' assessments.

This nonsense is old enough to have been parodied ages ago. There was a young man who said "God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad." Reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”