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Mostly-- but I know of a minor overpass (over the railroad) in rural Pennsylvania that was mis-aligned because the two construction companies building the road from two opposite directions both agreed that the left edge of the road should be on the reference line for the overpass.

You know, there are several people on SFN who have discussed this and might be willing to dive into the science again, if that was going to be fruitful. Based on the veneer of argument that you've made, though, you are signaling that you aren't really interested in pursuing that. If you are interested in a substantive discussion, though, just say so. But you will need to back up any claims you make, actually delve into science, and would be expected to refrain from rhetoric. One example. The reason CO2 lagged in the past but why we are in a different situation now would be something to discuss. But it has to go beyond the denialist talking points.

Might it be helpful to separate out the legal implications of torture (a society that legislates torture as okay) and the realworld implications of some rare and extreme emergency situation. I mean, clearly there's a strong case that a civilized nation should ban torture and not make its citizenry complicit in brutal sadism. But it is also quite sensible to say "this terrorist knows where a nuke is located in Manhattan, which will kill millions of people if detonated, so we will step outside the law in this extreme moment and do whatever it takes to get him to reveal the location." Torture still might not work, but even a low probability of getting an accurate answer, with millions of lives at stake, might be worth it. This action would not be saying that torture is generally right, or that a nation as a legal entity should ever support it. Millions of lives at stake. I feel this example might be less clouded by emotions than pedophile scenarios where the focus tends to be on revulsion for the sicko monsters.

Yes I saw the square and the note too, but I'm not sure what it signifies. In the structure, I think there are both octahedral sites (6 coordination) and tetrahedral sites (4 coordination) for cations, which glue together anionic double chains of silicate tetrahedra. It may be that the Mg2 denotes occupancy of the tetrahedral and Mg5 occupancy of the octahedral sites in the lattice. Maybe the defect remark indicates a repeating gap (vacant site), necessitated by electric charge neutrality if all the cations are divalent. (There are some structures with monovalent cations, eg Na+, where more of these sites would be filled, I think.) But I"m guessing and unfortunately I can't find anything on the web that gives me a structure or explanation clear enough resolve the issue. Maybe if we have a mineralogist on the forum he or she could interject. I am conscious that I am approaching the bullshit threshold.

Frankly, I'm appalled at the suggestion that a father torture a kidnapper for information about the location of his child. I might be interested in discussing the effects of torture on the torturer (especially in the case of the father pressing the kidnapper on the whereabouts of his child). The assumption is that there's nothing worse than losing your child, coupled with the assumption that recovering the child should be done at any cost. But you've reduced my interest in your OP by insisting on the parameters you have. The way you're approaching this, anyone who answers "no" has to argue against an unlimited amount of scenarios you can dream up. It feels cherry-picked and designed to appeal to emotion.

Agreed. I worded the OP quite carefully, but people are dodging the question, carefully avoiding answering like a barefoot scotsman doing the sword dance. All of these "what if he's innocent" and "heavy lifting" comments are question-dodging and derailing the thread. The title is clear and the OP is clearly worded too. If you want to anwer a different question, by all means start another thread. But if your answer to this one is "no", then I'd be interested in why you think that.

This is true, however the OP is discussing whether or not torture is "ever right". Meaning, is there any scenario, even if statistically unlikely but hypothetically possible where torture can be morally justified? So long as those details are a possibility, no matter how narrow a slice it maybe, then the issue is relevant to the discussion.

The earth. The earth ultimately loses energy via radiation, and will emit in a blackbody spectrum. There are a number of processes involved in global warming, but that's all modifications of internal processes. You were discussing why were are at 15ºC rather than -18 and the implications for the power involved. Being warmer means you radiate more heat, but the amount goes up as T4. If you use the S-B law, you can figure out why the earth would be at -18C without an atmosphere. It's explained in the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan–Boltzmann_law#Effective_temperature_of_the_Earth You can also see what effect the atmosphere and other processes have by looking at the radiated power at 15C. (note that the number that goes into the equation has to be in Kelvins, as in the link. This impacts some of your calculations) Then we could look at the other errors you made in your analysis. Your linear assumption was just the big one that jumped out at me.

I think this indicates that Mg appears in 2 different sites in the lattice and can be partially replaced by other cations, such as Ca++ or Fe ++, in the first position in related amphiboles. But I'm not 100% sure. The compositional ranges of these silicate minerals are not exact and are very complicated.

It is one Mg missing, it has to be Mg7Si8O22(OH)2.

It should be Mg6Si8O22(OH)2. in Comparison to Na2FeI3FeIII2Si8O22(OH)2.

I have explained till I'm red, white and blue in the face! I take moral responsibility for the wrongs I may do, for my own reasons, with my own hands. I don't make other people, especially victims, do my dirty work.

Which would you rather, be tortured and survive, or be blown to bits along with your family by a cruise missile? It's a strange world, when people were outraged by torture by guards in a prison, but were quite happy to see missiles raining down on Bhagdad. The basic principle is, if I don't see the pictures, it's ok.

The fact a phase III clinical trail MAY take a year =/= minimum requirement. The duration of clinical trials is, more often than not, dictated by finances - A company on the hook for the cost of clinical trial would never proceed to Phase 2 trials until the conclusion of successful Phase 1 trials due to the financial risk - massive public investment in these trials allowed for concurrent safety and efficacy trials, compressing the timeline by several years. Also, the COVID vaccine trials utilized unprecedented streamlining of regulatory processes - emergency scheduling of panels, skipping of lines for other approvals, etc. reducing the bureaucratic processing time from several months to days. Given the unprecedented manner in which these trials were conducted, the data is actually much denser than is typical for e.g. approval for the flu shot. Also, The vaccines all seem to reduce transmission by 40-60% https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2107717

Seriously, see a physician. If your partner was lubricated and had two children (not Caesareans, I assume?), and you are a young man, then pain would be unusual. Most young newbies to the act of coitus report the entry experience to be pleasurable, and you definitely would want to get a clean bill of health so as to have no further concerns about pain. If you are using a condom, you should also be sure and rule out any allergic skin reactions to latex. Good luck!

I wasn't aware there was evidence that torture did not work in any circumstances. Did I miss something? I agree. Just for an extreme example, let's assume I break into your house and ask where you keep your cash (and let's say you DO keep some cash around). You say "I have no cash", hoping I'll go away. But if I start torturing you, I imagine you would succumb to the torture and tell me where the money is. Giving me the fake location in your house only buys you time, not a reprieve. Many criminals will tell the police who their boss is just by being offered a shorter sentence. It seems obvious that many criminals would also succumb under torture. I of course don't condone any of this, only making the point that to say torture doesn't work is overstating things. Personal motivation, risk/reward, strength of character and belief, all play a role. Absolutely correct. Torture is horrible. It should never be policy. It is of limited effectiveness. It is a step back for humanity. It entails huge risk. But... If the outcome of some act was bad enough and could potentially be averted, I think it shouldn't be off the table. That's all. I was just answering the OP, not promoting torture.

@joigus @Markus Hanke Here is an interesting discourse on order and disorder in relation to binary strings. From 'What is Random' by Edward Beltrami - Springr-Verlag . 1999 I have highlighted a short passage to read first. This explains the what it is all about ie what may be nuggets of order in a binary string. This passage is on the third attachment. The rest is supporting background. The point is how the nuggets can arise from purely statistical considerations. Entropy after all arises from statistical considerations of the behaviour of large ensembles.

When did I say that it was? We're discussing a proposed mandate, not one that is already in place.

You seem fixated on the idea that this discussion is about you and me. It's not really about that, sorry. I'm more interested in the mechanics of this scenario and discussing the potential consequences. So perhaps you can see beyond the personal tit-for-tat for a change and analyze this situation objectively?

This is false. This is false. This is false.

No one mentioned anything about killing. Why are you avoiding a proper answer, like, My actions re the Father being locked in with the kidnapper who is remaining silent, stands. And as you yourself agreed on... Yep you did. Again why are you now denying what you said and not giving a straight answer? I have. Are you now playing philosophical politics? It is an extreme situation, as any situation regarding a kidnapped child is.

Given the almost 12 different threads where your misconceptions and seeming inability to grasp scale or probabilities and how very many times you’ve already been corrected, and given how you just keep repeating the same silly claims over and over and over … yes. A little humor seemed appropriate.

The first one is very on point about a lot of the objections: freedom and personal liberty over public health.

I thought he did. Are you actually reading the replies ? Is your animosity towards people who arrive at differing conclusions after proper analysis, clouding your reaing comprehension ? ( no, I didn't give you a down vote )

I note you are so busy correcting others that you still haven't bothered to correct your own false statement. Vaccination is not mandatory in the UK NHS service.

OK, so the vast majority of mRNA vaccine components (i.e. lipids, PBS and sucrose) have been in use in various medications for decades. The only active component that could be considered novel is a strand of mRNA that encodes the SARS COV 2 S protein. Do you know what else mRNA is in? EVERY ORGANISMAL CELL ON THE PLANET. Every time you eat, breathe and drink you ingest mRNA. Your gut microbiome produces billions of strands of foreign mRNA inside your body every day, which can and do cross the gut epithelium into the bloodstream. Also, the mRNA from the vaccines is cleared from the body in around 72 hours, the spike proteins encoded by them in 21 days. So, given how ubiquitously and frequently your cells encounter foreign mRNA molecules, and that no component of the vaccine actually persists in the body long term, by what mechanism would the mRNA cause an adverse reaction years after the fact? I mean, no one knows if you sprout wings out your butt 30 years after drinking Monster Energy, but there's not really a mechanism that would lend itself to that being a realistic concern.

"Should vaccines be mandated for NHS staff?" I think that entirely depends upon the threat posed by a disease and the safety and efficacy profile of the vaccine. A vaccine proven to be effective at protecting others as well as the recipient, that has a very good safety profile with long term safety data to support it, is very different from an experimental vaccine that does not protect others, has no long-term safety data and has questionable efficacy to boot, and especially where the full trial data has not been released or normal clinical trial protocol followed. The latter example should clearly not be mandatory especially if natural immunity is being ignored - a mandatory vaccine for someone already immune poses a heightened risk to the recipient with little to no benefit for others while ignoring the robust protection a doctor or nurse may have already acquired.

You're view is based on a major misconception: That you can expedite long-term safety testing by simply throwing money and people at the experiment - you can't. The aim of long-term safety testing is to establish safety over, say 3 years, because some long-term side-effects only manifest themselves after a number of years, as may be the case with infertility. For instance, recently Pfizer highlighted there was insufficient data on the myocarditis risk to young children with their covid vaccine, and to fully understand this risk these children would need to be monitored for 5 years. It doesn't matter whether you throw 10,000 people or 1 million people in to a 4 month trial, the data you get will only be for 4 months - adverse effects may not be seen for 2 years in all of these subjects - you cannot expedite human metabolism and latent reactions - time is a standard metric you cannot 'speed up', hence why clinical trials can take up to 10 years, or 6 years minimum. Your analogy presents many fallacies where you conflate a constant (time to reach a destination / time it takes to get long term safety data) with the ability to speed up that constant (police escort in a traffic jam / adding more people and money can speed up time). A better travel analogy would be: In 1066 it would take you 5 days to travel between London and Birmingham by horse on your own (the horse being the fastest mode or transport at the time). Throwing 500 more horse riders at the journey will not make you or anyone else get there any quicker - on average it will still take 5 days. The limiting factor is the fitness of the horse, you may be able to tweak the weight the horse carries (speed of developing a vaccine), but by and large you are restricted by the constant of time and the metabolic requirements of the horse that cannot be changed regardless of money and people thrown at it (this represents the metabolic constant of humans, you cannot increase this rate to reduce the reaction time of the vaccine trial). What exactly is the red herring you are referring to? You haven't rebutted any of my points. In the quote of Arete she does not deal with long-term safety trial data. Please show me the many 'other vaccines' you claim don't have any long term data. The recent Ebola vaccine was rushed through and safety corners were cut, but this still took 6 years to produce. Your claim doesn't appear to have merit. The long-term safety data is usually part of the clinical trial - hence why the PfizerCovid vaccine is still in its trial phase and won't finish till March 2023 - they are actively collating the long-term data because sufficient time has not yet passed to show any long-term data - how then, can it be claimed to be safe, when by Pfizers own admission, through the way in which the trial has been set up (standard trial requirements), the long-term safety part of the trial is still underway? ..."it"... what exactly are you referring to? What is "it" in reference to various vaccines with different efficacy and disease threat ratios?

This is a nonsensical response that lacks meaning or context - odd coming from a 'biology expert'. A phase 3 longitudinal study is designed over several years to establish the long-term side effects of a drug or vaccine - or have you forgotten this? Yes here you go: this is from the FDA website (the link is below the quote, which is on page 11) "The number of participants in the current clinical development program is too small to detect any potential risks of myocarditis associated with vaccination. Long-term safety of COVID-19 vaccine in participants 5 to <12 years of age will be studied in 5 post-authorization safety studies, including a 5-year follow-up study to evaluate long term sequelae of post-vaccination myocarditis/pericarditis." https://www.fda.gov/media/153409/download See my previous response regarding a nonsensical comment and context in terms of phase 3 studies looking at long term safety data.

The science justifies all methods that can help to reduce the spread, from social distancing, wearing masks, and lockdowns where necessary. No one, (as far as I know is held down and been forcibly jabbed), by the same token, mandatory rules about fully vaccinations are most certainly desirable in some industries, such as health workers, store assistants and other areas of concern. Thankfully these mandatory rules do apply in many parts of Australia, and just as thankfully the noisy minority of anti vaxxer nuts is getting less and less and being gradually drowned out.

No, the science doesn't justify all methods currently being proposed and used to reduce the spread. I thought this was a scientific forum - none of these claims have any basis in science regarding the current zeitgeist the evidence is quite the opposite of the opinion you just expressed - I get the impression that this forum has devolved into an echo chamber for those who simply want to believe in the official narrative. And rather than using evidence, misguided opinion seems to be the order of the day. How condescending are you? I like how your approach is to a discussion that challenges your perspective is to make it appear as though the other person is misinformed. For your information I used the data presented in the respected medical journal 'NATURE' the link is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 How can a 'biology expert' be so wrong on so many points? You've made many misconceptions I'm afraid. Each vaccine's efficacy and safety need to be taken in context and on their own merits. Yes vaccination is good, but not all vaccines are made equal, it is naive to assume that all vaccines are good. Vaccinating a child at near zero risk of covid, with an experimental vaccine that has no long-term safety data when that child has already developed natural immunity is immoral, unethical and scientifically unjustifiable especially given the increased risk of myocarditis, and the fact that this risk has not been studied, not to mention over stimulation of the immune system. Since when has it been acceptable to experiment on children? I think you should look up the word logic, because I'm afraid you've not applied it here.

Absolutely not. Why would you mandate something where the evidence does not support the requirement for the mandate? The vaccine does not stop or reduce transmission - the viral load is the same within a vaccinated, uninfected individual as it is within an unvaccinated uninfected individual. Scientifically this does not warrant mandatory vaccination. Furthermore, up to 70% of NHS staff have recovered from infection and developed robust natural immunity - these people provide better protection than those who are vaccinated given that the mucosal immunity of the vaccinated is not developed, hence the high viral load in the vaccinated. Removing these protective NHS staff members based on the false premise that vaccination protects others more so, is clearly incorrect and detrimental to both staff and patients - again, on this basis there is no justification for mandatory vaccination because the science supports natural immunity, a concept that many seem to have forgotten.

No, only in this case because the trials have been rushed through before any such phase 3 longitudinal studies have been performed. Please provide me with another example of a new vaccine created in 11 months and where the population became the guinea pigs, only for the long term trial data to be done after administration because it was brought out too fast to perform it in the trial. This is from the NHS website: Phase 3 trials: Carried out on medicines that have passed phases 1 and 2. The medicine is tested in larger groups of people who are ill, and compared against an existing treatment or a placebo to see if it's better in practice and if it has important side effects. Trials often last a year or more and involve several thousand patients. Phase 4 trials: The safety, side effects and effectiveness of the medicine continue to be studied while it's being used in practice. Not required for every medicine. Only carried out on medicines that have passed all the previous stages and have been given marketing licences – a licence means the medicine is available on prescription. ---------- It seems like you have your phase 3 and phase 4 trials mixed up. The covid vaccine was produced in 11 months (phase 1, 2 and 3) And yet the minimum requirement for Phase 3 is 12 months. Clearly it has not yet been proven safe long term - it is therefore not ethical or scientifically justifiable to mandate such a vaccine. Let's see the evidence to support your opinion please - such an assertion is not proof you are correct, misguided and misinformed maybe, but certainly not correct.

Incoherent and again nonsensical responses, and you've managed to contradicted yourself arguing against your own previous point. You previously stated: " the studies are done after the trials and after they've been authorized fror use. You can only get long term data by putting it out in the field. Phase 3 trials test for acute reactions and efficacy." You were arguing that 11 months to create a vaccine is sufficient for safety - I disagreed stating that Phase 3 longitudinal studies haven't been performed, which take at least 1 year and can span several years. I also confirmed that the Pfizer vaccine trial doesn't end till March 2023. You attempted to conflate Phase 3 trials with data collection performed after the approval and administration of the vaccine in an attempt to falsely support the notion that 11 months provides enough saftey data. I corrected you again highlighting that Phase 3 studies, according to the NHS, last at least 1 year and can be several years. I also highlighted that Phase 4 is the point at which data is collated after a vaccine is 'licensed' and administered, which you seem to have confused with Phase 3. Then contradicting your own opinion, and vindicating my point the link you provided actually states: "Studies for Phase III clinical trials usually take from 1 to 4 years." "in general, completing the first 3 phases of clinical trials can take 10-15 years or longer before starting the approval stage." One would think, that for a novel RNA vaccine never administered before in humans on such a large scale, we should be using the maximum time possible to ensure it is safe long term before unleashing it on the entire global population and speaking of mandating it. A final point - in that same link, it states something critical to this discussion: "If you are thinking of taking part in a clinical trial or an observational study, you should be clearly aware of how long it will last and the time commitment it will require from you. This information should be very clear before signing the informed consent." Informed consent is legally required before submitting oneself to a clinical trial. The current Pfizer vaccine is still in its clinical trial phase (phase III closes in March 2023) - How can this vaccine be legally mandated when it is still in its trial phase and informed consent is removed?