Nature Geek

Its not the years, its the miles.

A goose walks into a bar, sits down, and orders a beer. The bartender brings his beer over and says "hey, you know they have a vodka named after you?" The goose goes "They have a vodka named Roger?"

Hi mattmccade I'm a little confused as to what you want, since it sounds contradictory to me, but maybe it is my lack of understanding. You say you want to congeal the pigment, and then suspend it. In normal paint, the pigment is usually already suspended, it is very tiny particles of material (often a mineral) that is suspended in the liquid. If you congeal it, or let it settle for a year, it no longer is suspended. Now, there are some colorants that are not tiny particles, but are dissolved molecules, like in a dye. I suppose one could get those to clump together but stay suspended, but I'm not sure that's what you want. ​I suspect you want the pigment to not be uniformly dispersed in the liquid, or maybe only partially dispersed, but I'm not sure.

Oh, where is the fun in that. Humans have demonstrated repeatedly that they would rather ignore problems or pretend that they don't exist, and when forced to face the reality, come up with some crazy idea out of a James Bond bad guy playbook, or a cartoon. My guess as to what humans will do about global warming.... absolutely nothing. So far my answer seems right on track. Then, when the coral reefs are all dead and the oceans have displaced millions from the sea coasts of the planet, we will all act surprised and suddenly look to science to FIX IT!

About 25 years ago, when I worked for a company that grew quartz crystals, we had a small project to grow some oxygen-18 enriched quartz crystals for a professor that was doing ESR research. We needed a couple of liters of Oxygen-18 enriched water for this, and IIRC, it was something like $5000 for the water.

Nothing. If you don't have a way to complete the circuit, you won't get current flow, and so you won't have any electrochemical reactions.

That is among the stupidest part of Trump's actions. He says he is dismantling the clean energy initiatives so as to bring coal mining jobs back. Those jobs are not going to come back because of Trump's changes. No power company in the US is going to build a new coal-fired plant. Natural gas is cheaper. And it takes years to build a plant - by the time they have completed it, we may have a new President who will just reinstall all of those restrictions. And what little mining is done, is now much more automated than it used to be, and requires fewer workers. At most, Trump has slowed down the closing of coal-fired power plants, and slowed down the downsizing of the coal industry. And this, at the cost of preventing more damage to our planet. Bad.

In every way (he annoys me). Even among past Presidents who I didn't like, I could generally find some redeeming quality about them. Nixon was as amoral as they come, and was both paranoid and power-hungry, but he cared enough about how the future would view him that he actually did some good things. Reagan had a lot of bad policies, but he was a likable, senile grandfather figure, and gave great speeches. George W Bush is probably the dimmest bulb in the box, but I'd have a beer with him any day. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about Trump; he is, as best as I can tell, a completely despicable person, a con artist with no moral fiber, and what little business success he may have had, has been by guile, by pandering to the worst of human greed and avarice, and by taking advantage of others.

Wherever you stand on this issue, I find it almost mind-boggling that the Republicans have spent SEVEN years complaining about the Affordable Care Act, meaning they had seven years to fine-tune their own plan. Instead, they cobble together a bill in a couple of weeks, blow it through committees, still with entire sections filled with things like <insert future content here>, only to watch it die in the House for lack of votes. The incompetence is staggering. It says to me that in fact they never actually had a plan. It was always much easier to be against what Obama was for. If Obama said the sky was blue, they said it was red. But, when they moment of truth came to actual govern, they had no clue as to how to do it. The most ironic thing - the ACA is a Republican plan. Back in Bill Clinton's first term, when Hillary was the "Health Czar", and was trying to come up with a single-payer plan, what eventually was to become the ACA was proposed by Republican Newt Gingrich. It was an alternative that didn't get rid of the insurance companies, and allowed them to still make money, but gave a form of universal coverage. And where was it first tested out - in Massachusetts, by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. And that's why Obama proposed it - he figured the Republicans wouldn't vote against their own plan. But he was wrong; the fact that he agreed with them now made it wrong. But the problem now is that the Republicans came up with their best plan and now have to oppose there very own plan, and have nothing further to propose. A classic hoist on your own petard!

I have a dog, a whippet named Devo. He usually is well behaved, and when he is I say "Whippet, whippet good".

Employee for the US too.

I don't use pipettes in my lab work. I'd probably be predictable.

I think the threat of nuclear weapon use is greater than it was in the 50s and 60s, when the US and Russia dominated. As you mention, there are more actors now, both state and non-state. I certainly don't put it past the North Koreans or some terrorist group to lob a missile at someone. I'm actually a little surprised it has not happened yet. And while that would be bad, it would not be armageddon or nuclear holocaust. I think the possibility of a full out nuclear exchange among the superpowers is remote.

God's will?

The idea that mankind is of some use to the Universe implies a purpose and purposefulness of the Universe for which I find no evidence. Mankind's usefulness is only to itself. That should be more than enough motivation for us to behavior. I grew up through the 50s and 60s. I find the comparable threat of nuclear annihilation to be relatively low now. There are plenty of other threats to our planet and our species, climate change being top of my list at the moment. But I suspect, even with how bad that may be, that humans as a species will survive it.