John Cuthber

Well, I got in without doing the entrance exams. I'm not sure if the system still allows students to get offered a place on the basis of an interview and the school's recomendation (and, technically, the matriculation requirement of 2 "A" level grade E or better and "O" level English). One thing to think about is that, unlike most universities, it's a 4 year course. Great if you like it but an extra year of slog if you don't. I gather that they have the biggest chem dept in Western Europe (it was only the biggest in the UK when I was there) so they must be doing something right. This http://www.ousu.org/content/index.php?page=4801 will tell you some things that the official guides leave out. (ousu is the student's union there). I had a great time there and I hope that, wherever you choose to study, you do too.

You can't talk about difference with only one example (a glass ball or whatever). That's the basis of the joke about the duck. Difference between what and what?

The traditional aproach is a water jet type aspirator. Cheap, easy and almost impossible to kill.

Last tme I checked, tetralin had 3 double bonds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralin You might want to look at the decalins. What's the aplication you are looking at?

"Very few people get taken to hospital for 'startled'." Actually I think quite a few may be, but it gets labeled as taken in for observation. The purely (well, OK, mainly) psyhcological effect of a suprise like a car accident can leave people in no fit state to look after themseleves- not least they may overlook reletively severe injuries. I that case it makes perfect sense to take them into hospital to give them a chance to calm down and re-evaluate things. Anyway, as I said, the truth is that the word "shock" has more than one meaning. "Clinical shock" is another matter.

I have got a bit muddled up here. Are all atheists agnostics in the same way that all Christians are? I'm convinced there's no God (simply because I have no evidence to support the idea that there is one). I presume that most Christians have a similar belief that there are no fairies, again since there's no reason to believe in them. In the same way that I'm agnostic about God (because I can't prove he doesn't exist) and have a "faith" in his non existance most Christians must be agnostic about Fairies. So the atheists have faith and the theists are agnostics.

Sorry to have to tell you allmee, but there's no way this is ever going to work. If it did then you could connect the output back to the input and have a perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion machines don't work so your machine doesn't.

I'm not in the habit of assuming that the media can make a medical diagnosis so I assume they mean "shock" in the non technical sense. What word would you like them to use?

I don't see this thread changing many people's minds (a few perhaps) but I'm not sure that's likely to be its biggests achievement. I hope that it provides some ideas for those who are not sure about religion. Anyway, I say I'm an atheist. Some people say I that means I have faith. I say that my "faith" in the absense of God is comparable with my faith in the absense of fairies at the bottom of my garden. There's no evidence for either of them so I don't believe in either of them. Perhaps someone would like to tell me what exactly I have faith in? And why they think it is comparable to the faith shown by those who get up early on Sundays and go to church or who start crusades to kill the infidels.

In what sense do you think this enhances power? As far as I can see it just uses a bunch gears (rather more than neccessary) to transfer rotation from the handle to the bottom shaft. So what? A simple shaft and bevel gear would do a better job.

"Shock as in surprise is a massive missuse!" Err, no. The use of the word shock for a suprise is the original meaning derived from old French. When they wanted a word for loss of effective blood pressure etc they were too lazy to make one up and they started to misuse a perfectly respectable word. Or, more reasonably, like may words "shock" has more than one meaning and you need to sort out from the context which meaning applies in any given circumstance.

Why not accept that those 17 are responsible for the lung cancers?

It's probably important to realise that there are lots of different venoms from different snakes. They have different properties and therefore different potential uses.

I think that the usual problem is (as mentioned above) that the recoil of the atom as it spits out the electron is so big it generally breaks the bonds but I also have a vague recolection that the first synthesis of perbromates was a radiation chemistry type synthesis. Something like 83SeO4 2- --> -83BrO4 - +beta. The tiny amount of BrO4- was coprecipitated withIO4- and tracked by its radioactive decay. Can anyone access this page? http://www.turpion.org/php/paper.phtml?journal_id=rc&paper_id=2526

I don't seem to get flu when it does the rounds but if I did and I were, for example, asthmatic or elderly, then I would have to weigh up the risk from a tiny amount of mercury against the very real risk of dying from the complications of flu. That might be a cost that I wasn't prepared to pay. Think about that when you say "I would avoid it at all costs" the cost might be your life.

"the authority comes from the ability of the information itself to pass the scrutiny of several experts who have been offered the chance to give criticism." If a theory fails to meet reasonable scrutiny from any source then it fails. I scrutinised it and I still think theres more Po in smokers from background than from smoke for the reasons I gave. Incidentally, what's the explanation of the raised cancer (of the mouth and throat etc) incidence in those who chew tobacco? You have said that the stuff in the GI tract doesn't stay long enough to cause cancer so what does? JT2095, do you still have a real vacuum tube TV or monitor? If so please take a tissue and wipe the screen then place the tissue on the alpha monitor. You will almost certainly see a raised alpha level caused by dust stripped out of the air by the electric field of the screen. This is still background radiation and the few miligrams of dust will usually (unless you happen to live in a very low radon area) give a count that may compare with several tens of grams of tobacco. (and by the way, is the alpha counter named "CMAPT" if so please pm me, I could use help with sorting mine out) Ultma, that article is from someone's book on "how to cure your cancer- just buy my book". It's bull. My best guess as to the cause of the cancers in the mice is mycotoxins in poorly stored grain but there's another real possibillity; he made the story up to sell his book. The idea that excess phosphate in the diet causes cancer is bizzare; all those of us who drink cola by the bucketfull would be dead by now.

It's a bit worse than playing with fire; you can see fire coming, the temperature sensors in your skin give you a fair (though imperfect) warning of fire and the hospitals are quite experienced in dealing with the consequences of cocking up when playing with fire.

Quote from Paranoia a page or 2 back (sorry, I'm a bit out of phase because of the different time zones) "Originally Posted by John Cuthber 'In the real world there are some things that are taken on trust to be so probable as to be regarded as facts, at least until proved otherwise and not something that you worry about or experiment on. ' But not science, right? I agree in that some things seem so probable that I may be so convinced of them, it may as well be fact, but they aren't facts - they are beliefs based on faith since I can't prove them. I may have a great reason to believe this - but that doesn't magically make it fact." No, Sorry to have to tell you but even science is based on these sort of facts. If I don't believe that putting something in a test tube doesn't fundamentally alter its charracteristics then I have a rather limited set of options for doing chemistry. So as a chemist I make that assumption, as a matter of faith. Of course when someone gives me some HF to deal with I have to change my opinion. On the other hand, if I want to thik about what happens during some process I can assume as a matter of "fact" that the laws of conservation of mass will work (note, that's laws plural, including relativity so mass that is represented by energy and vice versa are not exceptions). Tomorrow someone may find something that violates those laws but I doubt it and I have even more doubt that it will matter to the experiment I might be doing so I call those laws facts just the same as the fact that the sun will come up. If you exclude facts like these then there simply are no facts and (like faith) the word becomes meaningless. Here's an amusing challenge, find me a fact please.

magnetrons are not the only way to make microwaves. The Gunn diode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunn_diode offers another possibillity. Of course, a mobile phone is a battery powered microwave transmitter. The problem is that the "sparking grapes" sort of experiment requrires quite a lot of power and the only practical way to get that is to use a magnetron.

Probably not. You might be able to use something else instead of tetralin. What are you hoping to find out by doing this?

"Those that wish to believe the official truth of 911 will go to the most extraordinary lengths to defend their position, as it represents, at a deep psychological level, a defence of all they hold true. It is in effect a defence of their reality." Interestingly, the same is true of those who wish to believe the conspiracy theory. Since it's clear that nobody is going to change their mind about this, I wonder what this thread can hope to achieve.

I just wonder about that wiki article. It tells me that there has been little research into the toxicity of this stuff. The stuff has been used for years, it was licensed by many authorities across the world. It was recemntly re-investigated because of some tripe about autism. It would have had its toxicity studied before it was licensed, then again over the decades through the adverse effect reporting systems then again on the autism bandwagon. It's a bit like saying that the toxicity of alcohol hasn't been researched. An interesting thing about dental amalgam is that it stays in the teeth (generally, unless the fillings fall out). I have some fillings that are older than some of my friends. It's certainly true that there will be a statistical correlation between people getting flu jabs and people getting alzheiner's disease. That's not cause and effect; it's just that old people are likely to get the disease and the jabs. It seems that, having caused a lot of fuss over nothing in the MMR/autism farce the media have decided to invent another "problem" Alzeimer's from thiomersal. A lot of cash will now be diverted from real research on this horrible disease to look at something that can't be the culprit. Alzheimer's rates are climbing but both the use of thiomersal and the use of other mercurial drugs has been falling. How does less Hg cause more brain problems?

At best, CSI is a drama (I think it's a comedy). It's not real.

long ago when Einsteins theory was new it was stated to prove that there was no "luminiferous ether". Some people clung to the old theory and said that Einstein had only proved that the ether could not be detected. What's the difference between something that can never be detected and something that doesn't exist? I can't detect the fairies at the bottom of my garden because they hide whenever (and however) I look for them thereby depriving me of evidence. On the other hand, people tell me that this absence of evidence is not evidence of absence so I should believe in them anyway. Unfortunately, like the pixies, crop circle making aliens and the monsters of lots of cheap sci fi I have read, God comes into the same category as the fairies. Whenever I say I'm an atheist people tell me that my explicit disbelief in God is a faith, so I'm not really an atheist. They never mention my faith that C3PO isn't real in spite of the fact that it's just as valid a faith. Sooner or later you realise that everything is "faith" - I can't prove to you that I'm real rather than a computer generated set of statements but I bet most of you believe in there being a real me. Strictly this means that there are no atheists and, therefore, that the word has no meaning. In the limit, to say you are an atheist you must have faith in the idea that the word "atheist" has a meaning, but that means you have faith so you aren't one. In the real world there are some things that are taken on trust to be so probable as to be regarded as facts, at least until proved otherwise and not something that you worry about or experiment on. For example it's a "fact" that the sun will come up tomorrow. As far as I'm concerned those who put the non existence of God in the same group of hypotheses as (for example) "grass is green", "the sun will rise tomorrow" and (from most people's point of view most people ) "gravity obeys an inverse square law" are called atheists. The ones who put the existence of God in that category are called theists and those who are not that sure are called agnostics.

"A famous scientific principle is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" Carl Sagan Demon Haunted World, pg 8." It may be famous, but it isn't true. How do you sleep at night with that elephant in the room? I realise there is no evidence of an elephant but you say that's no reason not to believe in it. If you look hard for evidence of something and there isn't any then you can start to justify the idea that the something doesn't exist.