John Cuthber

Midgetwars, if you really think "NOthing is impossible if you think logically everything is possilbe" Perhaps you would like to take up the challenge about the square root of two?

"In what base?" Any integer you like- btw, non integer bases are a bit odd anyway.

According to wiki Ti catches fire at about 610C.

iNow, please find me a rational square root for 2. Let me know what time and resources you need.

I don't see evidence of out ethics declining with time. I'm sure the Romans were better at organising orgies than we are now (No, I can't prove that). There seems to be evidence that people are waiting longer to have sex. Even if it were the case then there's another factor; people are not actually stupid. If the rates of HIV ever got anything like that high, people would start being more careful about their sexual behaviour.

There are problems caused by drug use. There are also problems caused by the illegallity of drug use. We can't prevent the former (any number of attempts in the past have patently failed since the drugs are still used). We can do something about the latter. It's possible that the reduction in damage done to society (however you may chose to measure that) by removing the latter set of problems outweighs any increase in damage done by any increase in the former set of problems.

Cosmic rays cover a large range of energy and a large range of nuclei. It's fair to say they include at least some that are comparable with the products of the LHC. The bit about 2 beams vs 1 beam is a red herring. It matters from the point of view of a physicist sat on the plannet and trying to watch the reaction products. It's not important from the point of view of the collision itself. From the point of view of each of the particles in the LHC colision, each is stationary, the other one comes and hits it. The same is true for the cosmic ray hitting a particle in the atmosphere or on the moon. There's a difference in the energy transfered but that's easilly overcome by looking at a different bit of the cosmic ray energy spectrum Saying something has a non zero probability is practically meaningless, so it's no wonder it was followed by an outbreak of sarcasm. It's entirely possible that the lawyers will collapse into a black hole and eat the earth*- perhaps we should ban them. * This requires that Maxwell's demon hates lawyers, but that's not too strange an idea.

Gelatine is a protein and lots of bacteria can degrade it ( which is what Alwayshere found). Agar isn't the same , it's a polysacharide and many bugs can't digest it.

SkepticLance, What's the difference between a cosmic ray high energy ion and a cyclotron produced high energy ion?

The question is poorly framed. Imagine I start with a car at the top of a hill. It's a "physics question" car so there's no friction or air resistance. I push the car and it rolls down the hill accelerating. Whan it gets to the bottom of the hill it runs up the other side of valley. After 5 mins and 5 Km (because I carfully chose a hill just steep enough to get the right journey time) it comes to rest at the top of the hill, across the valey from where it started. Net energy consumed is nil.

I don't know where you buy stuff YT2095, but I don't think of "The flow is 5 kg/s (large). " as being OTC. My guess is a byproduct from biodiesel making. I'd think about vacuum stripping a lot of the water out then desalting it by ion exchange then vacuum distillation to clean it up. Freezing the stuff might strip out some of the water, but if its already near boiling that would seem clumsy. Another aproach might be to find a use for the dilute, impure stuff. That's the holy grail for biodiesel makers at the moment. If, for example, you could find some bacterium/ yeast that could ferment the glycerol to ethanol, or methanol you could use that for the esterification which would be very neat.

There's another reason. You generally use one at a time for most of your breathing.They swap responsibility for handling most of the air from time to time. This means the air is drawn through them at different rates and this, in turn, means that you can detect a greater range of odours. (The distinction between which odour moleculr=es are more likely to be spotted by which nostril is comparable with the difference between kinetic and thermodynamic control of chemical reaction paths).

Playing devil's advocate is all very well, but ... There's still the scientific observation that colisions with higher energies than this happen in the atmosphere all the time and they haven't eaten the earth. The fact that those particles are not made in our nieghbourhood isn't important. They only need to exist to show that the LHC is safe. The dual beam bit isn't important either, one of the particles is sationary from it's point of view when the other hits it. While the earth's atmosphere means that most cosmic rays interact with relatively light elemnts the same can't be said of the moon, which is also still there.

Incidentally, quite a lot of metals (Molybdenum is one of them) are OK at red heat in a vacuum, but oxidise in air.

midsizeD, WTF help is periodic table? Oh, and what does "apply the carbonates with the chemical acids to with some H20 then you will get the soultion" mean? Thedarkside, I presume you just buy a bottle of H2CO3 then? Funny, but I don't remember seing it in any of the catalogues.

I don't know how hot high speed steel can be used but it's a better approximation to "as well as be fairly light" than tungsten which is nearly twice as dense as lead.

"Can you show the math of this conlcusion, since only one in roughly every 600,000 pit bulls is likely to be involved in an attack?" I already did. Obviously it hasn't anything directly to do with the 600000. Have e look at the post where I first estimated it. If you don't like that try 42% of the deaths from 1% of the dogs. With the accuracy of these sorts of numbers 159/3 or 42/1 are both about 1 in 50. "Your continued suggestion that risk of death is dog type specific is rooted in logical fallacy and misframing of the issue. You cannot prove causation using only correlation, as you clearly know. " What have I shown that is correlated with what? where have I shown a range of some ordinate and compared to some coordinate? It's true enough that correlation and causation are not the same thing but so what? I have produced the evidence that pitbulls are responsible for more deaths than you would expect from the fraction of the population that they represent. In return you have come up with the " statistic " that they are someting like a third of the dog population. Someone else has described that as laughable. I wonder if any objective observer would have posted that without thinking about what it meant. I wonder if you fell into the (very human) trap of seeing the answer you wanted. Mr Skeptic you accuse me of bias and you may have a point; but my bias isn't against pitbulls per se but against any breed that kills vastly more than its share. I can't prove that the effect is genetic- I doubt there is any useful research on a "gene for violence" in humans where a lot more research is done than in dogs. On the other hand, I can point out that these dogs were bred to fight (OK, originally it was as buldogs but the pit in their name isn't a coincidence). Mankind is quite good at selective breeding; if we wanted a fighting dog that's what we would get. I accept that owners with no suitable skills don't help, but it's odd to think that it's only pitbulls who have irresponsible owners or that the owners of pitbulls are particularly irresponsible (in fact there's evidence against that in this thread where some of the posters are responsible owners of these dogs). If the breed is responsible (and I think it is as I have explained then removing it would reduce the number of deaths. Whether or not 66 deaths, and presumably many more injuries, is enough to justify getting people to chose anothe breed is a matter of personal opinion. I have already said I think it's selfish to put your choice of breed before others' safety- no matter how small the risk.

"You concede that you can't provide numbers, yet at the same time you are trying to suggest that fatalities caused by all dogs are down as a result of the ban. You can't have it both ways. Of course if there are no pit bulls then there are no pit bulls to cause death. I'm not completely retarded, as you keep implying." Yes, I do keep saying that the dogs that are not there don't kill anyone. I have been saying that for some time. That's what I meant when I said a ban is effective- it's a truism. On the other hand you chose, for some reason to interpret is as meaning that over a fairly long period during which a whole lot of other things happened, the overall number of deaths would go down. YOU said that- not me. The fact that I don't have numbers to support your interpretation of what I said isn't my responsibility. On the other hand, while you igonred the fact that you had raised the issue of the effectiveness of a ban in the first place, you insisted that I was in some way responsible for finding the evidence about it. You asserted that a ban wouldn't work. I asked you to prove it and you came up with some ideas that I refute. Once more, I ask you to support your assertion with evidence, or withdraw it. Speaking of evidence I see this has just popped up "While there is no completely accurate consensus on dog populations, the common numbers shared in those which are available to us show that pit bulls comprise an estimated 30 – 40% of the of the entire dog population. This percentage is drawn from a collection of various shelter and rescue statistical data. " It seems to be an assertion without citing a single reference. It also runs into the problem that, if as I contend, these dogs are less safe than other breeds, then they will be disproportionately represented in animal shelters, pounds and such. A lot has been said about pitbulls getting bad press. If they are then that too would mean more of them being dumped by their owners (and, just to establish some common ground here, I should point out that I think such behaviour is reprehensible). That would mean that a lot more of them would show up in the place where you found 30% or so. That suggests that the population has rather less than 30% pitbulls and the odds go against them again. Your data supply begs the question. BTW, in the summing up you seem to have overlooked a bit "For every one pit bull which is involved in a killing, there are literally hundreds of thousands which are not. " However, for every dog that kills there are literally millions of other dogs that don't. It's the fact that one number is roughly 10 (or 50 or whatever) times bigger than the other that matters here. If the question were about forbidding dogs then the fact that pitbulls kill more than their fair share wouldn't matter. If the question is about banning pitbulls then the fact that they are disproportionately represented among killer dogs is an essential part of the case. Another way of sumarising it would be "If you get a pitbull you are something like 50 times more likely to have a death on your hands than if you get another breed." By not including that fact in your summary you are ignoring the data. Hardly to be expected on a scientific site.

"There's not a lot of lithium in the world " estimates vary but it's about an ounce to the ton on average. "But there's a bigger problem: the magnets will be exposed to the full neutron flux regardless of external shielding" What magnets? Anyway, the most the neutrons could do is transmute a mole or two of shielding for each mole of fuel fused. Not that big a problem.

My guess is that he meant that if pitbulls happen to kill 3 people in one year and the next "most dangerous" dog kills 2 then that's not statistically significant. OTOH, (and I haven't done the maths to check this) 66 deaths over 20 years compared to (I think it was) 140 deaths over 20 years may well be significant from a breed that's far less than 1/3 of the population. I think it is but I'd need to check. The null hypothesis is that some other breed is at least as likely to kill a human as a pitbull is. Now we don't have good data for that but if the figures are 42 % and 1% for deaths caused by pitbulls and dogs that are pitbulls then the expected figure for pitbulls would be roughly 1 or 2 deaths over 20 years (about 1% of the total of about 160 deaths caused by dogs (based on 42% of them being 66 deaths)) The actual observed number is 66. 3 in one year might be a fluke, but roughly 3 a year for 20 years is pretty unlikely. I contend that it's a probability of less than 1 in 20 so it's statstically significant at the p=95% level. If you really insist I can do the stats, they don't frighten me, but I'm prety sure it's a waste of time particularly since I don't have a stats package on this computer. A breed that's only 1% of the population really shouldn't cause 42% of the deaths. Saying that such a result is statistically significant is hardly an "unfounded conjecture", it's common sense. And, since it really was you who said a ban would be effective it falls to you to prove it not me. Posting that the problem isn't specific to one breed of dog doesn't cut it. The problem of one breed of dog being disproportionately represented in the dogs that kill figures is specific to that type of dog. Other dogs are also poorly raised and trained. I contend that the reason pitbulls are responsible for more deaths must, at least in part, be due to their nature. Other methods of dropping the toll may well also be apropriate but I think the pitbulls, (one relatively uncommon breed responsible for a lot of the deaths) count as "low hanging fruit". I think it's a reasonable place to start. Even if all we do is displace the problem, that might help. Unfortunately some people get a pitbull because it "looks hard". Without that incentive they might chose to do something else (tattoos perhaps) or they might try to find another "hard" dog. Even if they do, I think they are likely to end up with a dog that's less of a risk to the population in general than the pitbull they currently have. I tried to find pre and post ban death rates- the data don't seem to be available. I have said that before and it's clearly not a refusal to provide data. You really ought to look at the difference between "I wont" and "I can't". Even if the raw numbers were available they wouldn't tell the whole story. What about total numbers of dogs owned? Say the number of deaths has gone up by 10%- it looks like the ban failed but if the number of dogs has gone up by 20% then the number of attacks per dog has fallen. The UK stopped licensing dogs decades ago so there are no definitive stats for the number of dogs. IIRC crime against the person has fallen in recent years in the UK but crime against property has risen. That might well mean that more people are getting dogs or that more of them are getting big dogs. We simply don't know and I don't think we ever will. That doesn't detract from the fact that a ban works because a dog that's not there doesn't do any harm.

iNow, Once again I am going to point out that it was you who first made the statement that the ban won't work and you have yet to provide any evidence for it. If you think evidence is so important, why don't you provide some or retract that statement? BTW, "I said 3 deaths per year. You said 66 deaths in 20 years. It's EXACTLY the same number, except you are trying to inflate it's perceptual salience" OK I wil send you $3 and you can send me $66- it's EXACTLY the same number. If you don't know why a running average over 20 years is more likely to represent reallity then I wonder why you asked about statistical significance. Incidentally, you are now asking for statistical evidence for smething you already accepted "I conceded long ago that I won't argue with you that based on the numbers shared this type causes more deaths than others." May I ask what changed?

SkepticLance, Thanks for the support but I don't think the sociologists are going to be sending you any Xmas cards this year. Some of them are scientists.

I will not retract the statement that dogs that are not present do not cause a problem. On that basis the ban is clearly effective. This "Show us how many deaths from dog there were in the UK prior to the ban per annum, and how many deaths from dog there were in the UK after the ban per annum." is your idea of what I meant, not mine so I don't need to answer it, no matter how many times you ask. Incidentally, you seem to have convieniently forgotten that I made the observation that a ban will work in reply to this assertion "What is being said is that there are several more effective ways to achieve the goals for which you are arguing (safety of others), and that the ban will not achieve that end." OK, you are so red hot keen on getting me to retract something that's a truism (dogs that aren't there don't cause a problem). Perhaps you would care to provide evidence that a ban wouldn't work or perhaps you would care to retract your statement.

The data will almost certainly show one of two things, The number has gone up or the number has gone down. Whichever way it goes one or other of us will say it's down to confounding variables. There's not a lot of point looking it up, but feel free to do so if you want. I have looked and it's not obvious where the data can be found. I still say that the pitbulls which are not here are not killing people. I really don't think I need to prove that something that doesn't exist doesn't kill people. Anyway, you are asking me to prove a negative which is about as much use as asking me to account for an infinite number of times something didn't happen.

There shouldn't be much water in the fuel because it's not very soluble in LPG. On the other hand I don't think you would need much to foul up a pipe. Anyway, unless you are below -138.4C it's not butane. IIRC you need about 20 carbons in a chain before it's solid at room temp even decane would need a very cold day. Something like benzene or cyclohexane might explain it, but 2/3 of the earth's surface isn't covered with benzene. My guess is still water.