Greg Boyles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye Compound eyes first evolved in the Cambrian period some 500 million years ago. The extinct triloites were among the first life forms to possess them and in fact their compound eyes are unique in evolutionary history in that they had lenses composed of calcite......calcium carbonate........effectively stone. Since then complex lensed eyes have evolved independantly many times in many different types of animals and thet all share common components and common genes. While it is impossible for a complex eye to evolve in a given species in 100s or 1000s of years, leading you to the false conclusion they must have been created by your god, it is highly likely that they might evolve in a given species in 100s of millions of years. 100s of millions of years is a LOOOOOONG time for tiny genetic and anatomical changes to imperceptibly accumulate and produce a functional complex eye.

If you built your geothermal power plant near or on an active volcano it would have a very short lifespan and you would expend more energy replacing the infrastructure than you would ever extract from the volcano. This is where you folks with little or no scientific education show extraordinary naivity in not moderating your ambitions for science with practicality and common sense. As for releasing pressure in volcanos, your talking about vents hudreds of metres in diameter and / or kilometres long. And yet these are unable to release enough pressure quickly enough to prevent massive volcanic explosions. What in the hell makes you believe that the puny human bore holes would make any noticeable difference to the enormous pressure exerted by massive upwellings of motlen rock from the mantle???????? In my opinion some of the general public has substituted their faith in god with faith in technology and now direct they're prayaers to scientists rather than priests. This ludicrous idea is little different from asking a god or gods to stop a natural catastrophe in my view. The best that you can realistically expect of science is to be able predict a volcanic erruption with enough time to evacuate any communities from danger zone.

Conceded, then perhaps the strict oversight should come when pure research is being converted to specific industrial applications where its misuse could be better predicted by an appropriate multidisciplinary body. That is how it works when new drugs are being developed for the medical profession. These days that seems to have more to do with whether or not the research will be profitable for the university in the short to medium term rather than if that research will bring long term benefit to human civilisation or not. I am not refering to only human or animal ethics. I am suggesting that the science ethics systems be unified across the globe to produce one global standard and that it be broadened to global ecological considerations as well as narrow human and animal ethics. Animal ethics committess could never have predicted the disasterous effects of DDT because their focus is far too narrow. Perhaps if soil scientists, ecologists and organic chemists combined their expertise in an ethics committee, charged with determining whether or not DDT should be manufactured on an industrial scale, then they might have predicted this and decided that it should not proceed. This is the whole problem with our society - no one, including scientists, is prepared to accept their proportion of the responsibility for our increasingly dire global circumstances. It is always some one else's falt. I am saying that the buck has to stop some where and, as scientists have played a central role our current global predicament and they are in a position of superior knowledge, it should stop with them. Forget his name but that american scientist who was involved with development of the atomic bomb and who gave the technology to the soviets in order to prevent the yanks from misusing it could clearly, if belatedly, see this and he made the ultimate sacrifice in being branded a traitor. Let us consider what happens in the political and business spheres. A CEO, prime minister or president gains power and embarks on a political or business strategy. If that strategy goes bad due to the president, prime minister or CEO failing to foresee are particular detrimental scenario resulting from their strategy then they are held accountable regardless of their best inentions. Such accountability often makes them very cautious about what they say and doo while in power. In the applied science community there is little or no accountability beyond falsification of data and plagerism etc. Why should there not be some level of wider accountability similar to that in the political and business spheres? For example I suspect I would not be alone in western society in being open to seeing the scientists responsible for facilliating the industrial development of DDT to be held accountable for their share in the blame for this global disaster. Especially in the scientific community, individual career interests should not trump wider responsibilities. The scientific community spends far too much time asking whether they can acheive something and far too little time asking whether they should acheive something in terms of the bigger global picture.

John it would be an easy matter to put your silverware in a tub with a sealable lid, add your .88 ammonia, close the lid (with some duct tape if necessary) and immerse the tub in a laundry trough full of hot water. So don't give this nonsense about it having no place in sensible discussion - it is entirely possible. And I some one has made an valid point about the nature of silver tarnish via PM. How can you be so sure that all silver tarnish is entirely silver sulfide? Perhaps if you lived in Bejing or near a mangrove swamp! I believe that Ag2O is also black or dark brown!

In my opinion that is just passing the buck and is exactly the same argument that the American gun lobby uses to justify swamping their society with firearms. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"................"people kill people more easily and effectively with guns". It just aint good enough. Scientists know, or should know, better than wider society and therefore have an moral obligation to see that their discoveries and technologies are not misused by it. Perhaps if the wider scientific community and other segements of society got together and put a restraining hand on the shoulders of over eagre scientists then the problems with DDT may have been anticipated and averted. As I have said in previous threads, outside the medical profession, science is a bit of a wild west with lots of individuals doing their own thing without anyone keeping their eye on the larger global picture. For instance the current global food crisis and global warming is a direct result of the massive population expansion that was enabled through the development of fossil fuels and mechanised farming. And it seems the only answer to this problem from much of the scientific community is to produce even more food. As with all other animal species, the response from the human population will undoubtedly be to continue expanding until the technology and the global food supply runs out and the population crashes. Even as a student of science myself, I can't avoid the conclusion that scientists themselves are equally (to politicians, business and the general public) responsible for our global predicament. If polciticians and the general public wont act to fix this then the onus is on scientists (being in a position of superior knowledge) to do something about it as they are currently facilitating the irresponsibility of politicians, business and the general public. The only way to do that is to bring some sort of 'law' to the scientific wild west through a global scientific regulatory body to which all scientists must be members and are bound by its rulings. If medical science can function well under such a regime then there is no reason why wider science cannot also function well.

I have no doubt that if you heated diammine salts you would cause the ammonia to out gas and the complex ion to break apart. But to heat ammonia solution without losing its strength you would need to do so in a sealed vessel. In which case the diammine salts would undoubtedly remain stable. And we are talking about raising the temp to perhaps 80 degrees celsius of so, not to hundreds of degrees.

The point is that equilibrium constants are effected by temperature and pressure. So it is entirely possible that ammonia in high concentration, temperature and pressue could be enough to remove small amounts of tarnish. You insisted on nit picking about differences between below 0 solubility of various silver salts, so I will insist on nit picking about the differences in solubility in ammonia solution that higher temperature, pressure and concentration can and would make.

Medical research and the medical profession have fairly strict ethical oversight in the form of ethics committees and the Australian Medical Council (and similar organisations in other countries). These system are quite strict and put the onus on the researchers to show that their research, and the resulting technology, will do no harm to individuals or at least that the benefits far out weigh the risks. Generally it is successful resulting in high medical standards in the west. Why should such a system not be broadened across the globe to all scientific disciplines? I.E. As well a purely human and animal ethics perspective, it should also have a wider ecological perspective The idea would be to make science and individual scientists more accountable for the long term and wider implcations of the technologies they develop. For example, perhaps such a system might have averted the global disaster of DDT.

No, thiosulfate. Because I was reading about its use in removing unreacted AgCl (or what ever it is) in photographic emulsions and it also mentioned that it has also been used to leach the silver out of silver ores. Look it up on Wikipedia for yourself. And since one of the silver ores is Ag2S (aragonite I think it was) then, since there is no specific mention of it not working for aragonite, then logically there is no reason why it should not also work in cleaning the tarnish off silver. Apparently it is often used as an alternative to cyanate, which is highly dangerous due to possible release of cyanide gas, in gold and silver mining. There is also a number of mentions of ammonia being used for the same purpose of leaching out the silver from silver ores. In fact look here: http://www.electronicsrecyclingdirectory.com/article/ammonia-extraction-of-gold-and-silver-from-ores-and-other-materials.html Leaving aside the issue of them not being cost effective, ammonium thiosulfate is apparently quite effective and I have also read that ammonium thiosulfate gives off ammonia. Why specifically ammonium thiosulfate and not sodium thiosulfate. Perhaps the combination of two chelating agents is more effective than the individual ones. But yes I acknowledge that such cleaning methods remove silver metal and slowly erode the silverware. No different to polishing them with Silvo however.

OK well I can accept that - makes sense to me. To what extent is copper an impurity in silver? If silver iodide, chloride and sulfide have varying solubility, albeit very low, in water then logically they would also have varying solubility in ammonia solution also, and probably at least slightly higher than in pure water. Which is to say that ammonia should be capable of dissolving some Ag2S varying with temp and conc of the ammonia. As to how effective and practical ammonia is at cleaning silver might be a different matter. I accept that ammonium thiosulfate (from what I have been reading) is a much stronger chelating agent than ammonia. But it is not something that you could lay your hands on around the house. The electolytic process involving aluminium sounds like the easiest, most effective and practical method however.

Specialty health food shops usually stock geatin powder. You use it at a concentration o 1-2% or 1-2g per 100ml of water. Unlike gelatin it melts at about 80 degree clesius but wont solidify until the temp falls to about 35 degrees celsius - quite useful if you need to re-pot a seedling in fresh agar.

Surely there will be some similarity to the situation with the beta thalassemia gene where one copy of the gene makes you more resistant to malaria but to copies of the gene gives you fatal sickle cell anaemia. Another factor that probably triggers depression in may cases is the fact many humans are now living in population densities vastly greater than what we are socially evolved to cope with. For example I have read studies in the past about how high population densities in lab rat colonies induces abnormal psychology in individual rats.

There has been one person so far who has some knowledge and experience of chemstry, beyond my first year BSc, and who does not agree with you John. We are all well aware of your opinion. Now unless you can back up your position with a PHD and professorship in applied chemistry (I doubt it) then butt out!

In my opinion it is more about peoples' emotional levels. Some people are highly emotional and this mind state clouds their more cold rational judgement. Analysing things with cold harsh rationality is effectively have a perception of your consciousness as you prefer to put it.

Interesting. here is another method for cleaning silver that you could try......from wikipedia http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022508883900954 I assume it works simply by destablising the sulfide tarnish thus allowing it to be rubbed off easily. But you wouldn't want to leave the silver in it for to long as you may end up converting the black sulfide tarnish to crusty chloride deposits. This patent, found via google scholar, also indicates that ammonia is capable of converting silver sulfide to diammine silver plus free sulfurous by-product. Hence ammonia is useful for cleaning the tarnish from silverware. http://www.google.com.au/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT5308381&id=qcwlAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=dissolving+silver+sulfide+with+ammonia&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q=dissolving%20silver%20sulfide%20with%20ammonia&f=false

I posted it as it was medical support for my original idea that consciousness is a spectrum rather than a light switch.

Found this on Wikipedia:

You can probably convert it to oxide by heating it but I don't know what temperature would be required.

I seem to remember a documentary where a medical researcher was using a strong magnet to induce an out of body experience (altered consciousness) or something like that. At least I think it was a magnet. I think it was one of those Through the Wormhole docos with Morgan Freeman actually. But as has been said above, it would take a magnet considerably stronger than a toy magnet to have any effect. Here you go: http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/7/3/181.full Apparently magnets are used to psychiatry.

Even today plant material barely rots in the low oxygen aquatic environment of swamps and bogs. I believe that the climate of the Carboniferous period was warmer and wetter than today and that swamps and bogs were more wide spread. Hence the large coal deposits that originated from that period.

Builder's lime, for making mortar, is calcium oxide I believe.

Looks like a mythical perpetual motion machine to me. In actual fact your device would make a rather unwieldy spirit level. The water in the reservoir would flow through your tube until the level in both the tube and the reservoir would be equal. The only way water would flow out of the end of the tube is if it was below the water level in the reservoir.

I don't see how such a hypothesis makes logical sense. How does it account for the fact that the cosmos has clearly existed before there were humans around to project it from their consciousness. Surely it is an unresolvable paradox? I recently watched a documentary where it was suggested that reality as we experience it is a holographic projection from the surface of a black hole, i.e. a 3D projection of a 2D universe. That is logically consistent, if no less bizarre, as the universe can exist with or without humans.

http://reptilebehavior.com/target_training_to_reduce_aggres.htm I am certain you would argue that reptiles, specifically alligators, or not intelligent therefore not conscious. But read the above article. It is possible to train alligators to be less aggressive when it comes to food. More specifically, it is possible to teach them to respond to human commands including calling their names. Now cognition is linked to learning and learning is linked to intelligence. Therefore can we be so sure that reptiles do not have intelligence and are not conscious???? Even though they lack cerebral hemispheres that are traditionally associated with intelligence. It is said that the brain is 'plastic' so perhaps even the reptilean R complex has limted plasticity that allows them to learn in ways that humans would understand as intelligence.

You could widen your perspective say exactly the same about quantum mechanics and relativity etc. How can biologicial construct, generated by the cosmos possibly undertand the cosmos that created it? But we can and have begun to understand the secrets of quantum mechanics and relativity at the heart of cosmos as the success of of various technologies, based on those secrets we have discovered, attest. It is the scientific discipline that will, theoretically at least allow, us to understand how the brain works in full eventually. It is this discipline that has and does allow us to overcome the biases and other limitations of our brains that would otherwise stand in the way of us understanding our own brains.