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I hope we can at least collectively agree that anything resulting in the deaths of children and innocents is not desirable. And if we use that as a guiding principle, I doubt anyone has much of a moral high ground here.

Well both are indeed false. 1) There is no such thing as a "hydrophobic force". For a non-polar molecule to dissolve into water, it has to get between the water molecules. There will be attractive London forces between water molecules and the non-polar molecule, but its presence between water molecules will reduce their mutual hydrogen bonding and thus raise the energy of the solution, so it is energetically unfavourable - and will only happen to a slight extent. (Dissolution is still favoured entropically, so the free energy change won't be determined purely by the enthalpy change. The influence of entropy will be greater as the temperature goes up: ΔG = ΔH-TΔS. ) So there is no "repulsion" of any kind: it's just a reduction in net attractive force. 2) I had actually forgotten this 🙂, but D and L stereoisomers are a naming convention, relating chiral molecules to the enantiomers of glyceraldehyde, i.e. to the way those rotate the plane of polarised light. It does not mean and given D or L stereoisomer will rotate polarised light in a particular way. More here: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Purdue/Purdue%3A_Chem_26200%3A_Organic_Chemistry_II_(Wenthold)/Chapter_22._Carbohydrates/22.03%3A_The_D_and_L_Notation

That’s principally invariance - but so long as you specifically talk about c in vacuum, and so long as there is no gravity involved, then it is also constant. Just bear in mind that it won’t be constant if you go from vacuum into another medium. No, sound is different from light, it’s neither invariant nor constant. The thing is this - even if you didn’t know anything about the theory of relativity, and just worked off Maxwell’s equations alone, you would still find c to be invariant. You can derive the electromagnetic wave equation from Maxwell, and solve it for a fast moving emitter - the resulting wave still propagates at exactly c. Special relativity simply describes the logical consequences of this fact in a coherent and simple way - something which Newtonian mechanics fails to do. Of course, we now know that Maxwellian electrodynamics is essentially a relativistic phenomenon, but Maxwell himself didn’t know this.

Then our instincts kind of suck given all the war, genocide, global warming, pollution, nuclear weapons, etc.

This is the UN version of the events between 1917-1947:

Well, it is a fact that we live in a universe that is not deterministic through and through, quantum effects being the exception. However, this is not relevant for free will: free will implies that my actions are really my actions. Quantum jiggles would only be disturbing the connections between my self and my actions. Your other examples can be distinguished in two categories: (partial) ignorance: it is impossible to have a complete overview of all conditions that lead to an event deterministic chaos: microscopic changes in initial conditions lead to macroscopic effects But both these categories are still deterministic! So all three of your 'escape routes' lead to unpredictability, but do not contribute to free will. @iNow and @TheVat: We already had the topic of epiphenomalism: And about consciousness and free will: I listed the reasons why consciousness is an evolutionary advantage: These are all mental processes ('observe', 'see', 'anticipate', 'reflect', 'compare', 'choose'). I have no problem that all these processes run on a determined hardware. But I think it really is not possible to understand free will without taking consciousness into account. But the only thing really necessary to be able to speak about free will, is that I can observe that my actions are according my own motivations.

In Chuck Palahniuk's "Choke," the main character is told that he was cloned from Jesus' foreskin. Seems prepuce-terous. Skin DNA doesn't hold up that well.

I would have thought that, but which would last longer, a wooden table or a baby's foreskin? Because various bits of his foreskin have been worshipped down through the ages, by Popes and Holy Roman Emperors among others. So the one thing we can be sure of about Jesus is that he had a very big dick, going by the sheer quantity of foreskins that have been venerated down through history. Apparently, his umbilical cord was also saved and is stored away somewhere.

A fire would simply burn the hell out of it.

For an alternative take on the NYT/Siena poll published on Sunday, you may wish to read this article as well: https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2023/11/poll-watch-thoughts-on-the-new-york-times-siena-colleges-battleground-state-polling.html The article becomes a little technical at times, but the nub of it that the pollsters are accused by critics of having oversampled Republican voters, undersampled opposing groups, and then fiddled with the weightings to reverse engineer a pre-chosen result that has more to do with the current editorial leanings of the NYT than the current political realities in the swing states. Do you recall those pollsters who loudly trumpeted a coming Republican ‘Red Wave’ in the 2022 mid-term elections - which vanished like a mirage when the elections took place and votes were counted ? In the aftermath of that debacle, the NYT published an article called “The Red Wave Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Political Narrative”. Their comments then make rather ironic reading now: “Traditional nonpartisan pollsters, after years of trial and error and tweaking of their methodologies, produced polls that largely reflected reality. But they also conducted fewer polls than in the past. That paucity allowed their accurate findings to be overwhelmed by an onrush of partisan polls in key states that more readily suited the needs of the sprawling and voracious political content machine — one sustained by ratings and clicks, and famished for fresh data and compelling narratives.”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html On balance it seem that Sunday’s NYT/Siena poll is about as credible as Trump’s claim at a public rally in Florida just the day before, that he “Won all 50 states in a blowout” https://www.salon.com/2023/11/05/claims-he-won-all-50-states-in-the-2020/

I know what I say when I hit my thumb with a hammer.

OK thanks for coming back to clarify. If you dissolve 2 salts and all the combinations of ions are soluble compounds, then you won't get any displacement reaction as such, you will just get a mixed solution with all the ions dissolved. For instance, NaCl(aq) + CuSO₄(aq) will just give a solution with separate Na⁺, Cu²⁺, Cl⁻ and SO₄²⁻ ions, all happily solvated and swimming around. That's because there is no combination that has markedly lower solubility than the others. (If you were to concentrate the solution enough you you would eventually exceed the solubility limit of the least soluble combination and you would start to get that one precipitating out. I don't know without looking it up which one that would be.) In your example. CaCO₃ (chalk, limestone) is well known to have limited solubility so that would precipitate, leaving you with NaCL(aq). KCl has similar solubility to NaCl. But if you are asking if there is a rule to predict which salts have high solubility and which ones have low solubility that gets involved and is quite hard. There are slightly handwavy explanations e.g. that when cations and anions are of similar size they pack more efficiently in the crystal structure, with small gaps, and thus tend to have a high lattice energy. This makes them reluctant to trade that stability for the attraction of a cage of polar water molecules. This is one explanation for why BaSO₄ is insoluble, for instance. Both are big ions, Ba because it is in the 6th row of the Periodic table and sulphate because it is compound ion in the shape of a nice tetrahedron so it can pack more or less like a sphere. Both also have a double charge on them which increases electrostatic attraction in the crystal and also makes it a bit harder for water to stabilise them fully when solvated. Carbonate does not pack like sulphate as it is a planar triangle, and you need to know a bit of crystallography to understand how efficiently it can form a structure with Ca. But Ca also has a double +ve charge so is a bit more challenging for water to stabilise in solution. So, to he honest, this kind of argument strikes me as being better at rationalising after the fact than really predicting with confidence. If this is a school level question I think you will just need to know which of the common salts are insoluble and which are soluble. You won't get asked about obscure combos. There is a rule of thumb in the link here which may help a bit: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/College_of_the_Canyons/Chem_201%3A_General_Chemistry_I_OER/04%3A_Introduction_to_Solutions/4.05%3A_Solubility_of_Ionic_Compounds

Sometimes species go extinct because other predators become dominant and change the ecosystem. One has to try extremely hard to remain obtuse to these obvious facts

Homosexuality in the animal kingdom has already been observed in over 1,500 species and we’re still counting. Homophobia is just stupid nonsense we should all move beyond, but instead it becomes a lever to drive out the worst most abhorrent behaviors from the most manipulatable people among us.

Well, the female ducks in my yard regularly hump each other. Same for the male rabbits.

You said that humans evolved from apes, which is simply wrong. Evolution refers to a changes in gene pools over time. Same-sex sexual behaviour in all its forms have been observed in about 1500 species. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41290-x Species went extinct for a wide range of reasons not just during major extinction events and none of that addresses your assertion that there is some magic instinct preventing it.

Good thing that science is not opinions, then. Homosexual behaviour has been observed in many species. Conversely, instincts that somehow senses extinction level events and adjusts behaviour accordingly are unheard of, and likely doesn't work well, considering the number of extinct species.

In my opinion, humanity has evolved over several millions of years since reaching the mammal stage. As we evolved we developed instincts to guide us and warn us against behaviour that is not conducive to the well being of humanity. This is because same sex couples cannot procreate. While at evolutionary stages where humanity was vulnerable to extinction because our numbers were so low that a plague or natural disaster could wipe our species out our base instincts warned us against any behaviour that didn't contribute to our future. A combination of instinct, pride and ignorance as well as other Psycho/social factors contribute to homophobia. However I believe our history of persecution towards homosexuality mixed with any childhood homosexual experiences kept secret and resulting in personal shame is a major factor. Remember that our morals were dictated by the church and people were killed or imprisoned for homosexual behaviour and until very recently people were persecuted by society if they admitted being homosexual. Homosexuality is different with men than with woman as many women actively choose to be gay as a result of both many generations of trauma,abuse and repression on top of being used as sex objects. Sex has become the most important aspect of mens relationships with woman and it's obvious. I believe homosexuality is nothing to be ashamed of...Nor is it something to be Proud of...It's just sexuality and Pride is as much a factor with homophobia as it is with Racism and supremacy.

Some are. Some are not. Correct

Phobias are irrational. There are no dangerous species of arachnid in the UK so arachnophobia is irrational. Two gay men doing what they want with each other in their own home cannot possibly harm anyone else, thus homophobia is irrational.

Do you know what you should do if you don't like gay marriage? Don't marry a gay person!!! That's not really an ethical issue, but I did hear of a scientific paper that suggested cat's only really give a shit, if you don't feed them... Maybe that's true of homosexual's. 🥱

Good grief. The "missing piece" is the design without a design. There's no such thing- It's a contradiction as I've already pointed out numerous times. The process of evolution isn't that of design. There is no design in nature unless someone is fielding some sort of Intelligent Design argument (ironic given the reply I got above) I'm going to take TheVat's advice and ignore you and your replies. Not going to spend any more time with some school child whose concept of design is expressed with his ridiculous post about his parents having sex.