Greg Boyles

There is an easier way to tell. The leads of a battery charger are red and black, black being the negative cathode and red being positive anode. Hydrogen is generated at the anode. Chuck it in the bin.

Never tried it with washing soda - would be a lot safer.

Easiest way to generate hydrogen at home is to dissolve some drain cleaner (sodium hydroxide) in water and throw in some scrunched up aluminium foil from the pantry. But be careful of the sodium hydroxide - if it splashes in your eyes you will loose your eye site. And it will burn your skin if you don't wash it off in tap water immediately. The reaction is also exothermic, i.e. it gives off considerable heat. Use rubber gloves and saftey glasses. If you use only a small amount of drain cleaner, so that not to much heat and steam is generated, you can collect the hydrogen in a freezer bag held over the reaction vessel with a rubber band. When it is filled you can slide the rubber band off and you have a balloon that will float like a helium balloon. But the hydrogen will escape through the plastic and the ballon will deflate fairly quickly even if the bottom is tightly sealed. The balloon will also be flammable - I lit one up once and singed my eye brows Perhaps you should try it under supervision from your parents.

Well it doesn't - that is the point of a reflex. Although sensory impulses from the limb doing the reflex action would reach the brain hence you are aware of the sensation of your limb moving.

I don't think so. You would require a temperature in excess of 3443 degrees celsius in order to vapourise Cerium. Is it even possible for the average commercial furnace to reach such temperatures?

CH3COOH is acetic acid or vinegar. What you mean is NaCH3COO or sodium acetate. CH3COOHNa is incorrect notation. CH3COOH incompletely dissociates in aqueous solution to give you a mixture of CH3COOH and HCH3COO (hydrogen acetate or H+ and CH3COO-) The pressence of H+ makes the solution acidic. By the same token the CH3COO- ions in NaCH3COO solution partially re-associate with hydrogen ions to form a small amount of CH3COOH or acetic acid. The hydrogen ions are torn off water molecules, and when you do this you are left with hydroxide ions OH-. Hydroxide ions make an aqueous solution alkaline.

You mean like a felled tree. The only reason why a tree topples when undermined is that the trunk contains no significantly compressible air spaces. It can't fall any other way. The debris field for the towers was, I believe, rather wide so it was far from a clean crumple. Perhaps the appearance of the building imploding was only relative to how tall they were. If they were much smaller buildings then perhaps it would have looked far more like a messy topple.

A conspiracy theory that may give me a micro-second's worth pause for thought is one that involves rogue elements of the US security aparatus recruiting and funding the terrorists responsible and making them think they were Osama Bin Laden. But thermite charges placed in just the right position prior to the collisions? Remote control jet air liners? This conspiracy theory sounds more like the paranoid ravings of schizophrenic.

I seriously don't know why you are even bothering to try and have an intelligent discussion with this conspiracy theory nutter. It should be fairly obvious by now that he is here for no other reason than to antagonise the USA and the west with his delusional conspiracy theories. And I say that as veherment Australian critic of the USA and its foreign policies and some one who is still in two minds as to whether the USA and its western lap dogs had it coming due to their naively partisan interventions in the middle east and else where.

You are not here to fairly discus this issue Dave as your mind is clearly already made up. You are here to try and convince the rest of us that you are right and we are wrong. You have received the consensus from this forum that your hypothesis is nonsense. So either accept it or toddle off and discuss your conspiracy theory with your whack job mates else where!

Nor is truth determined by minority radicalism. The scientific process and the scientific consensus is the best defence we have against the vagaries and inconsistancies of the human psyche. It has served humanity extremely well on the whole to this point, given our technology and what we have discovered about our universe. Why would you propose that we suddenly abandon them in favour of the views of these 20 climate scientists?

Exactly. Doesn't make it any less pleasurable to being on the receiving end of an alturistic act by another however. Why should it really matter whether altruism is wired into our brain rather than an act of pure free will? Unless you have any religious hangups about the true nature of human beings.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=385 Principia Scientific International is a publishing organisation recently formed by about 20 dissenting climate scientists. 20 scientists out of tens of thousands is hardly a ringing endorsement for their alternative hypothesis on the greenhouse effect.

But some people just can't resist a good conspiracy theory.

Although written and verbal language 'data' arrive at Wernicke's and Broca's areas of the brain via different routes, it is still processed by these two areas. So there is no fundamental difference between written and spoken language as far as the human brain goes. Google it and see for yourself. Once again, medical science has not uncovered any electro and magnetic receptors in the human body. So your idea is invalid. You need to look to more sensible and ways that telopathy might be possible that are based in current accepted science. The reading body language thing is one such idea.

What is the plausibility of demolition experts even being able to setup the charges for a controlled demolition of the towers without anyone noticing and without any loose lips (either on the team or outside it) giving the game away. Let's remember that controlled demolitions also involve weakening the structure of the building by removing and partially cutting through the major supports and ccarefully coreographed explosion sequences. Otherwise it is anything but a controlled demolition. I would say the plasuibility is negligeable.

Zero....you are implying that the problem is that there is NO food in the horn or africa. But that is clearly not the case. The problem is that there is NOT ENOUGH food in the horn of africa. Hence if there were signficantly less people then no would would be starving. Hence fertility control is a valid long term solution to the problem. While western mining companies certainly do little to help the majority of Africans and indeed exascerbate conflicts and problem, I am not at all convinced that kicking them out of Africa would make a signficant difference. Those Africans that I currently impoverished and viloent would remain impoverished and violent. Africa's problems would remain little changed. The only thing that would make any noticeable difference would be population reduction.

Evolution does not generate a brain of which only 10% of its capacity is used for something. That would be a collosal waste of energy and resources and contrary natural selection. Don't know of precise measurements but the 10% may refer to conscious thought, with the 90% refering to subconscious functions that we are not immediately aware of. Consider how much computing power it takes for robots to carry out rudimentary functions like face and voice recognition, successful navigation of real world spaces and even just walking up stairs etc. And yet the human brain can do these things with consummate ease and so much more. I re-iterate.......there is a great deal more going on inside you brain, during the simplest of tasks that you carry out, than you are ever immediately aware of. It is difficult for the adult brain to do this but extremely easy for a child brain to do so. Consider how easily very young children pick up a foriegn language compared to adults. Ergo the human brain has a particular natural penchant for language, both written and verbal.

It seems that I am of a similar physiology to you as I have not noticed any significant withdrawal symptoms if I stop drinking coffee or cola drinks in favour of some other beverage for any length of time. Never the less all living tissue, except the cornea, bleed when cut. The epidermis does not bleed when cut, as in a paper cut. But then that is also composed of dead keratinised and dieing keratinising cells hence no need for a blood supply. Skin only bleeds if the cut makes it through to the living dermis beneath. Although paper cuts still hurt a bit as the basal layer of the epidermis does have a sensory nerve supply if I remember correctly. Is that what you mean by tissue that is not heavily vascularised? Or did you have some other internal organ in mind?

They need more labor because, like all humans, they seek to create cash flow from their surplus crop. Nothing necessarily wrong with that as long as you keep your eye on the bigger population picture. But also like most humans, they don't and suffer long term as a result. So poverty is self re-inforcing on a physiological level as well as a social level. Similar sort of problem with alcohol abuse within aboriginal communities - foetal alcohol syndrome. In both cases you will never solve the problem by continually treating the symptoms. You must eliminate the source of the problem - excess fertility and alcohol availability respectively.

That would most likely depend on the constitution of the individual concerned. From research it seems that there is a proportion of individuals within the population that have an 'addictive' character and will become addicted to a wide variety of things - alcohol, herroin, gambling, caffeine, nicotine, cannabis........ I guess in these individuals the expected physiological withdrawal symptoms would be exascerbated by psychological ones thus making it far more difficult for such individuals to give up. In contrast there seems to be some individuals that can give up even smoking cold turkey with few serious withdrawal symptoms - just a matter of breaking the habitual behaviour.

According to this caffeine is addictive in exactly the same way as herroin. And while small doses might have some postive effects on health, over use can be detrimental to health, as is the case with all pharmaceutical drugs. So caffeine is good for your health in a similar way to that in which paracetemol is good for your health. But it is not good for your health in the same way that a balanced diet is.

You could skull 2L of soft drink at the last possible moment. 2L of water weighs 2kg so 2L of soft drink would weigh more than that with all the sugar. Just hope that the test does not go for to long so that you have to start p'ing in the middle of it. And that you can cope with physical extertion with a full stomach.

I will qualify that. Pain and/or bleeding are reliable indicators for distinguishing living tissue from dead tissue over the surface of the body The only living tissue that does not bleed when damaged, that I can think of is the cornea, but it does hurt like hell. On the inside of the body bleeding is a reliable indicator of living tissue. But not pain since not all organs have a sensory nerve supply, e.g. central nervous system. Apart from the cornea, what living tissue does not bleed when damaged? I seem to remember hearing or reading about some studies about short term withdrawal symptoms from caffine - headache, irritability and lethargy. Might have been quantum or catayst on the ABC.

There is little point in arguing with people who are scientifically illiterate and whose mind is set upon one notion or another. I have had a similar experience with former IT colleagues who were absolutely set upon the notion that hair was living tissue that could be 'nourished' by the vitamines and minerals in shampoo as per the advertising. My pointing out the obvious fact that hair does not bleed or hurt when you cut it did little to change their mind set.