mistermack

Still sounds like a highly dubious claim to me. Firstly, how does an underground lake "suck" CO2 out of the air? Yes, rain falls on the mountains, and it contains CO2 dissolved, as it always does. I don't call that "sucking", it's just normal rain. It happens all over the world. There seems to be large reserves of water under a lot of deserts worldwide. Gadafi spent a fortune building a pipeline to transfer fresh water from beneath the Sahara to the more populous coastal areas. Australia has huge quantities of slightly saline water under it's surface called the Great Artesian Basin, which I first learned about sixty years ago.

No, it's your posts, that come straight out of your arse....

I just followed my nose. 😧

Well actually, that could happen. If the patient gets infected by the sensitive strain, it could get the immune system up and ready with antibodies in place so that the resistant strain could struggle to get a foothold. It's only a possibility, but it could happen. Even though you kill off the infection with an antibiotic, the protection could linger on for some time. You could say that about any new process or drug. What's different about this? No, not purposely infect people. Just flood the environment with the weak strain, after cleaning, so that the resistant strain is crowded out. The idea is that the resistant strain will struggle to compete for space. Even on the person of patients and visitors, the resistant strain would not have and advantage. Only on a patient who is already on a course of antibiotics would the resistant strain have the edge. The point was made by Hypervalent Iodine that the sensitive strain that you've created could acquire resistant genes from the nasty version, which is true. But since regular cleaning would of course continue, those acquired genes would get flushed away, and new fully sensitive versions would be re-applied every time. So if there was any gene transfer going on, it would only act to dilute the resistance, in the hospital environment.

The good news is that the pound has jumped back up ten percent, since the site came back on stream. And the planet has cooled by one degree. Panic over, me lads !

You're not really making a lot of sense. If a patient has an infection, it's likely to be one strain or the other. Are you suggesting a patient is likely to be infected with both strains at once? How often would that happen? If he has the sensitive strain, it can be cleared quickly and fully. If he has the resistant strain, he is no worse off than he would be now. But it's far more likely that he will get the sensitive strain, because you clean first, and then introduce the safe strain. And as I asked before, why would that not happen in the opposite direction? You're talking as if these things can't be tested first. In an industry where everything is tested first. Far more likely that the selection happens INSIDE the host, and the results then get flushed into the wastewater and manure etc. Which has the highest concentration of antibiotics, the pig or the dung heap ?

I did say that the one place that resistant strains would have the advantage is inside the patient being treated with antibiotics. That's obvious. However, if the initial infection is by a sensitive strain, then it's easily cleared. The idea is that if you do pick up the bug, it's far more likely to be one of the sensitive strain than a resistant one, because of the numbers factor. A resistant bug would have no initial advantage, if the patient was not yet on a course of antibiotics. I didn't suggest genetically engineering them. I said selectively bred. And of course, like cattle, you could keep improving the breed as time goes on. Resistant bugs only evolve resistance on or inside the animal being treated with the antibiotic. And that's the only place that they have an advantage. I can't see wastewater having enough antibiotic in it to ever enable resistance to evolve. In a hospital, if you do your normal thorough cleaning, then the remaining numbers of the resistant strain would be very low. Then you dust or spray with your sensitive strain, the resistant strain will be a minute percentage in the environment and hopefully get crowded out before they can infect someone. It could even be possible that the sensitive strain could stimulate an immune reaction in a patient, and prevent infection from a much worse resistant one. Also, as I suggested, if visitors got the dust or spray treatment, then any resistant bug that they picked up and carried out would be in the minute minority, and be less likely to get passed around from person to person.

I'm not pretending to be well-read in the subject, so no it hasn't occurred to me. But if that were a serious factor, then maybe the exchange could go the other way too. i.e. Your specially bred bugs could pass genes to the resistant ones, weakening their resistance?

I'm going to start off with my own suggestion. But the thread would maybe more valuable if it was open to other suggestions, and the latest news. My own idea, ( which I'm not wedded to, but I think it's worth proposing ) is to fight bugs with bugs. The bugs are evolving antibiotic resistance by natural selection. But selective breeding works quicker than evolution. If a nasty bug has evolved resistance, how long would it take to BREED a strain with the opposite characteristic? i.e. A strain of the same bug that keels over at the slightest hint of the cheapest antibiotic. What use would that be ? Well, instead of trying to scrub every nook and cranny clean, you could dust or spray with a culture of your specially bred bacteria, so that if a patient gets an infection, the chances are it will be one of your super-sensitive bugs that caused it, and not one of the resistant strain. If that were to happen, the infection would be quickly and cheaply cleared using a stock antibiotic. Maybe the nasty ones could be crowded out by your sensitive ones in the environment. The only place where the resistant bugs would have an advantage would be on or inside the patient who was on a course of antibiotics. Everywhere else, it would just be a numbers game which you could win by breeding your creation in it's billions. You could even get visitors to dust their hands and faces with your created bugs, so that if they picked up a resistant bug, it would find itself crowded out, before it could be passed on. I dreamed this idea up years ago, and also foresaw drawbacks with it. I can't remember what they were but I'll post them if they come back to me. Any other ideas welcome.

I don't think "cure" is the right word. You can certainly affect a person's personality in various ways, although I don't think it's very predictable. A brain injury can change a personality, and chemicals can too, and the lack of them. Maybe one day there might even be something that switches on some latent unused empathy in the brains of psychopaths, but I doubt it. In any population, natural variation means that some people will have more empathy than others. I think that psychopaths are just the people on the extreme negative end of the natural spectrum. There might even have been in the past an evolutionary advantage in having a wide spectrum of empathy. Psychopaths might have been advantageous in a small tribe with enemies all around.

That's overstating the point by a billion percent.

I don't think having plastic buried under my house would be hazardous. There's a lot of stuff in landfill that would be absolutely fine to build on, but another lot of stuff that wouldn't. Really, what is needed is intelligent sorting of waste so that It can all go to the best place. I'm sure it won't be long before robots can do it to a high standard but we're not there yet.

I thought that WAS clear from my post, which was meant to sound mildly sarcastic. Sorry you missed it. Fair enough. I consider my nits well and truly picked. "Lynchings are common in many contemporary societies, particularly in countries with high crime rates such as Brazil, Guatemala and South Africa." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching I think that's fair enough. I do feel that the chance of people taking the law into their own hands IS an argument for scrapping limitations, but that's about it. The wisdom or not of doing that deserves it's own thread, if anybody wants it.

Humanity is doing fine. Standards of living are amazing, compared to a hundred or two hundred years ago. For most people at any rate. But less population will improve the situation for practically every other species, except dogs and cats. Extinction of species is the one thing that really hate about the world today.

It's bound to be different when it's family. Although it doesn't stop some people taking revenge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_and_Lorena_Bobbitt One that always makes me laugh is a friend who fell out with his girlfriend big time over some slight, and dumped her, but he also peed in the nearly full bottle of Pepsi in the fridge when he left. He's a sad man, but the thought of her drinking his pee definitely makes him feel better every time her name is mentioned. Of course, it's wise never to upset the waiter if you are eating out, for the same reason. It happens all the time. People are like that.

I'm trying to post about the real world and real people. You seem to be dreaming of a world where everyone follows your wise advice. If we had that, you wouldn't need laws or prisons. Clint Eastwood films were huge box office. You've illustrated my point. Even in movies, people get satisfaction from revenge. It's a basic human instinct.

I'm nearly 100% sure that implanting memories will never be possible. The circuits involved in memory are so random, and the possible combinations so vast that it's not going to happen. The next best thing though, is wide open to improvement. We've been doing it for years, with books. Now we have pcs, and smartphones and smart watches. I have no memory of ever repairing a steering joint on my car. But with a decent manual, I can act as if I've done it before. Not only a manual, but you can now view youtube videos of someone actually doing the job. I think that sort of thing is in it's infancy and it's suffering by not having a financial element. It relies on people doing it for nothing at the moment, and they are generally not great at explaining what they are doing. Once somebody figures out a way to make money, like google did, it could well take off. On the negative side, I'm convinced that car manufacturers are already reacting to the workshop manuals. I'm sure that they design things deliberately to be more difficult to service these days, and also design in a requirement for special tools. They rely on their dealers making big money on the servicing, and that won't happen if servicing is kept simple.

You would have to ask them. For myself, I would feel better if I took revenge. The feeling that I had been abused, and the abuser got clean away with it, would definitely be a drag on my mental well-being. I've never been abused, but I have extracted revenge for other things in my past, and I can assure you, I feel better for it to this day. That's just me, but I know I'm not unique in that way. You can argue that revenge is senseless, that it doesn't achieve anything. It doesn't change the facts. It's human nature and that isn't going to change any time soon.

Those videos are of no use to me. They might mean something to another navy pilot, but all I can see is blobs. My ten-pound dash cam knocks spots off that fuzz. I'm sure that those planes have conventional cameras fitted. Why wouldn't they? If I can get crystal clear pictures for a tenner, what could the navy get for their sort of money? On the other hand, if I wanted to spread disinformation, that's just the sort of image I'd use.

Delusion, in your case. 😉

You're aiming blows at your own strawman. Nobody pretended that the argument was about a single piece of anything. That's a ridiculous interpretation of my post. If one piece of plastic is safe in landfill, then ten are, or a thousand are. They either are or they aren't. Plastic is so inert, as I pointed out in my post, that it's no hurting in landfill. You could argue that it's a waste, which might be a bit more relevant. If it was technically viable, I'd rather see it incinerated. If not, landfill is fine for that sort of a thing. Well, that's a real straw man. Nobody here is proposing building on landfill. The same argument applies to flood plains. Developers do build on them. It's not a good argument for eliminating flood plains. It's an argument for not building on them. ( or raising the level with some land fill 😊) It's probably true. But consumption isn't the problem. It's disposal that causes harm. If they cut littering by 10 percent, I'd be surprised. The people who throw stuff out of their cars are probably the same people who don't care about paying 5p for a bag. The supermarkets used to have recycling bins for used bags. I haven't seen them lately. I never ever litter. I hate litter. I've never seen any of my family litter, apart from babies. But I'd have no problem putting bags in the bin for landfill. If you can tell me the problem with it, I'm happy to read it, although, as I said, I'd rather incinerate and use the energy.

You seem to be under the illusion that people only do things that help them. In the real world, that doesn't apply. People often do things because they feel like it. And after being the victim of a serious crime, most people want to see the criminal suffer. And the more serious the crime, the more suffering they want to see. The justice system is there to get between the victim and the perpetrator, and deliver some form of justice that is enough in most cases to prevent people applying their own. Among other things, but it's a big element of it. Back in the days when justice was less reliable, you used to get lynchings, when not just the victim, but a big chunk of society would meet out their own justice. That's what happens when organised justice is lacking.

It would change the method. It all sounds a bit unlikely though. What's the percentage of rapists? And the percentage of people who don't feel pain? Multiplied by the percentage of people who wouldn't mind having their balls cut off, it probably exceeds the total population.

I find it telling that in the days of the smart phone, when most people have quick access to a good camera, there is a distinct lack of photos of these UFOs. Back in the old days when nobody carried cameras, there seemed to be loads more sightings. In this sighting, I find it odd that there was a visual sighting, but no pictures recorded. Do modern planes go up with no cameras? I have a very good one in my car, and it cost about a tenner. If the US Navy are short, they are welcome to borrow it.

I agree, but it would still be worth it. He would definitely feel pain, and would definitely not be grateful. Not for long, anyway. I'm actually against the death penalty, but only because of the risk of executing an innocent person. If you could guarantee that the person was guilty in some way, I would have no objection at all. (provided that the offence had no mitigating factors)