Skye

Well don't be too casual in equating Israel and Jews. Iran has a Jewish minority and a seat reserved in its legislature for a Jew (admittedly one seat of 290), and generally there's some respect for 'people of the book', Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. I think railing against Israel is mostly hot air. Francis Fukuyama was on TV here last night and said something along the lines that the US gov could be boxing itself in to taking action against Iran by using that sort of language (allow Iran to get nukes). One of the things about the nuke situation is that it is part of Iran's long term economic strategy to diversify and modernise its economy, at least to buffer the economy from the the volatility of oil prices. This has been policy for years, but has stagnated for a variety of reasons. So there's domestic pressure to push ahead with the nuke program because it's become a big part of that policy.

I think I was a bit too obtuse, Every Rose Has Its Thorn is a song by the glam rock band Poison.

The particular sneeziness of pepper is mainly caused by an alkaloid called piperine. It's an irritant and this is also what gives it the hot sensation when you eat it. It's similar to capsaicin in chilli peppers.

Every rose has its thorn

pink_trike: if you think a post is spam report it by clicking on the triangular icon in the bottom left hand corner of posts user information.

Another method is by forming lead fluorochloride and back titrating, see Vogel's Quantitative Inorganic Analysis (though there's probably a method on the net ). It is volumetric so you don't need any special equipment, and if you are careful it should be fairly accurate.

You know plants split water in photosynthesis right?

It's something I already thought was likely given there was evidence going that way, so it doesn't change preconceptions anyway. I don't think abortion is a good thing in any way, unfortunately it's sometimes the best thing.

I think in general body mass dimorphism is larger than brain mass dimorphism. Using the brain mass figures they gave, 1250cc is about 109% of 1150cc. The average US male is 86.1kg, which is about 116% of the average 74kg US female. (The body masses are from here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf for 20+ y/o in 1999-2002)

I played a little as a kid and liked the Liverpool team then. I have trouble watching soccer now because of the actors rolling around on the ground clutching their ankle all the time.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. Just to be clear, deleterious basically means bad. So a nucleotide substitution in the gene BRCA1 could be deleterious because it could predispose the person to breast cancer. Deleterious is not related to deletion. Don't confuse the analogy, the man's direction of walking is him moving forward in time. If he stumbles backwards he's travelling backwards in time.

You could argue that some are more complex in terms of their metabolism, I suppose.

Stephen J Gould created an analogy of the inevitibility of increasing complexity in life which he called the drunk's walk. Basically imagine a drunk stumbling along sidewalk, on one side is a wall and the other side the gutter. If he staggers randomly from side to side, his movement towards the wall is always blocked, allowing him to stagger back towards the gutter, which he'll eventually reach by randomly stepping in that direction a certain number of times. It's a fairly similar situation with life, it presumably started off quite simple, somewhere near some minimum level of complexity. If you don't like the concept of a minimum complexity, just imagine nothing. So if wanders over to the more simple side it is liable to bump up against minima/nothingness. While on the other hand, it is free to move out towards the complex side as far as it likes. And eventually he'll reach some threshold, like say being as complex as a human. In reality there are some important differences. For one there are many different types of organisms, all stumbling along. And there is selection, which takes into account the physical laws that place great constraints on organisms. This makes their walk more orderly and constrained. So despite the tendency towards complexity, life has for the most part resisted it. Most of life, especially the successful life, has stayed very small. If your job is to replicate, then having much less to replicate makes the task that much easier. Consequently some organisms show signs that they have been simplified, including their genome, in order to become reproductive masters.

So if we extrapolate, one day everyone will be a billionaire? Huzzah! Well you know the situation is fairly complicated, because the left isn't a singular entity. Some green groups now feel that it's easier to lobby corporations than governments. In most cases unions will try to find agreements that lead to the long term security of their company. But socialists are naturally going to want to move to more public ownership.

Yeah, it was a silly decision. Hopefully the Arabs will just treat it as such and everyone can move on.

Many lower animals have antibacterial chemicals in them, and they get a bit of research, eg. sponges and ants.

As far as I know outsourcing is a term used by business, or simply the hipper sourcing.

Why not (other than the politics of it) put more emphasis on the businesses in enforcing illegal workers? Sort of like fining businesses that sell cigaettes or liquor to underage kids.

It hasn't won over the naysayers, but the naysayers haven't won over the public either.

I'm not that fond of any particular party at the moment. There's no party that's running on the 'Providing scientists with a rock star lifestyle and porn star girlfriends' line. Politics is so out of touch with the common man.

You mean the hybrid car/hydrofoil? http://www.rinspeed.com/pages/cars/splash/pre-splash.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0701_040701_oceantrap.html

In the shorter term (and a more immediate policy concern) there are concerns with the safety of nano stuff. This is mainly in regards to the effects of particles, say from machined nanotube materials.

alpinestar, I could use one of those 6 minute videos so I look good for Becky. Frustratingly, every time I manage to superposition I collapse into a single location when someone notices.

I agree in principle, but here's a contrary perception, in spite of the media insurgents have moved away from abductions and beheadings to some extent. The major attack has been the bombing of the golden mosque. Ok, this got a fair amount of foreign media attention, but it would seem to be aimed much more at Shia than at foreign media. I'm sure he's sincere, and I'm not suggesting he leave Iraq alone. I was saying he could do more to shift attention to other areas. It was fairly light-hearted.