TheVat

I usually rely on Honest Bob's Total Tubular for all my test tubes. Weirdly, they also sell surfboards.

Thanks to all three of you who weighed in. I see I was wrong to assume such a high kinetic energy required for an escaping molecule. I do understand it would quickly be in equilibrium with the ambient air above the meniscus. And get well, Ex. (my countrymen sometimes now say "be well," a phrase I'm less fond of)

Steam is vapor which is visible because some of the vapor is recondensing at it makes contact with cooler ambient air. So the vapor carries along tiny recondensed droplets of water which give a more visible cloud. The water in the glass under your bed has a temperature of, say, 20 C, but temperature is just the average kinetic energy of all the molecules, right? So there are a few molecules that happen to be so energetic that they happen to escape from the glass as vapor. The average kinetic energy of those escapees is 100 C or more. Their escape will slightly lower the temp of the glass of water, but only briefly because the water keeps staying in thermal equilibrium with the floor and room air.

Haha. No, she totally owns up to it, and empathizes enough to occasionally shrink or (even more shocking) organize and store one of the crap piles. And, to my suprise, a 120 year old coffee grinder works damn well.

On this you have my sympathy. I'm a minimalist married to a packrat. During the five year period between marriages, otherwise known as The Glorious Era of Zen Bliss and Personal Hygiene Lapses, my possessions were at the Gandhi end of the spectrum - a chair (plus two folding ones for guests), a small table, a bankers box of books and personal papers, the previously mentioned topo maps, a sleepable futon (frameless) that folded up into a chair, an all purpose Pyrex bowl (cereal, curry dishes, whatever went in my face hole), and (briefly) the loan of a 23 pound Maine Coon named Old Jules. Given my equally limited wardrobe - basically, one rolling suitcase's worth - Jules often proved handy for added warmth or as a pillow. Television was an internal bio-virtual system activated by running the eyes over character strings printed on dead tree fiber. (this fine arrangement collapsed when I obtained an 18 inch early LCD tv, plus dvd player and amplified antenna) Anyway, now I live amidst the towering crap piles of an Olympic class craphound, occasionally tugging Jenga-like on discrete objects in a crap pile because (maddeningly) it proves useful.

As someone who still travels into remote areas without cellular service, I will note the remarkably enduring utility of maps printed on thin sheets of dead tree fiber. Apparently they don't need batteries - the ink just stays in place! A broader answer is that single tool reliance can create enormous vulnerabilities. Cell towers can go out in storms. Strong solar activity has great mischief potential, too, both on devices and networks. Another thought is that too much reading or video watching on a tiny illuminated screen is hard on the eyes. And, as physicians are reporting, the human neck. Google cellphone neck hump or "text neck." (and then look up, for godssakes)

Vapor. Boiling means to change phase from liquid to gas. That is the definition of boiling. There are street lights (or were) that rely on the relatively low BP of mercury. An electric arc is sent through mercury vapor. USA banned them in 2008.

Or I have. I am not sure which way this works. Also I don't know what proportion of your payment is from the SS trust funds (which accrue interest) and what is from incoming payments (which don't, I would guess). I wonder how "transparent" our government really ever is, on such matters. 🙂

Fibre and vitamins, which these foods contain, are important for good health. But that's another topic. One you need to research, it sounds like. Let me make this real simple: do not put raw fresh human excrement on your crops. Your risk (and that of other family members) of cholera or other infection is too high to be experimenting with this. Do your research on composting manure, so that you can put something on there that's been through a process to eliminate human pathogens. While boiling, a form of pasteurization, will kill bacteria, there are still hazards from raw excrement from contact with your hands and shoes when you are gardening. Raw excrement on the surface of your garden (or tracked into other areas on your shoe soles) can also potentially transmit pathogens to some household pets (unless they are absolutely kept indoors at all times, something few of us achieve in the RW). If you think you can do the handwashing, boot washing, pet sequestering, child discouragement (from, say, plucking a ripe cherry tomato or strawberry while out playing in the yard), etc. then yes, you could probably reduce your risk. I am going to speculate that you have never had a severe GI tract infection, or you might take these risks more seriously. I have experienced one, and that was enough. As the saying goes, "You probably won't die...but you will wish you could." I will also point out that the odor factor can become more prominent than you expected. Basically, having your garden reek of raw sewage is not going to win you friends in the neighborhood (or much love from family members).

The US had a baby boom after WW2. Which lasted until 1964. Because of this, there are many more people now reaching the age to collect SS. Processing applications is thus extra slow, going through our federal bureaucracy. Payments to you are made from people who are presently paying in to social security, not from the money you paid in years ago. The working people currently paying money in, some of that goes towards your SS payment, and the rest into the SS trust fund. If I understand it correctly, if you end up waiting a little longer for your first payment, it will be slightly larger, in compensation for you receiving benefits for fewer total months of retirement.

Maybe others have said enough, but I want to suggest that this kind of equivocation is removing clarity and precision from your postings here. Actual thought, aka cognition, is an emergent process in large networks of neurons, which opens up to holistic descriptions. This doesn't mean there are tiny thought processes in individual cells, or that cells have the same causal powers (in miniature) that sentient creatures do. This opens a trapdoor into panpsychism and metaphysical conjectures that are untestable pseudoscience. Remember, when a biologist uses a word like "communication" to refer to chemical interactions between organelles or between cells, it is a specialized usage that does not imply anything akin somewhat to thought . Or when a biochemist speaks of a reaction, it is no way like a person reacting to shocking news. Different functional levels may use the same nomenclature, but the terms refer in very different ways.

You buy vast quantities of meat, requiring a large fridge and chest freezer. While I don't want to discourage environmentalism, I would say that meat consumption and large appliances are an awkward fit. And the meat, eggs, etc sold at Sam's is cheap in part because it is produced in a way that pledges fealty to Monsanto and the eco-destructive cutting corners of Big Ag. It is not organic or free-range or anything else usually associated with environmentalism. He needs to be debriefed.

Simpler solution: skip Sam's and go to the nearby megalomart. Sam's doesn't save that much, and encourages food waste due to selling perishable items in such large sizes that consumers don't use it up before expiration date. And you then support the traditional retail model where cash is still accepted and anonymity is okay. I buy groceries and most small fungible goods with cash, preferring to not leave a data track in every purchase. With cash, all megalomart knows is "somebody bought some Silk almond yogurt today." And that is all they need to know. (another benefit of cash: the clerk doesn't hand the money back to you and say your bill isn't working) PostScript re Sam's - one thing estate executors often encounter (per a lawyer pal) are home-dwelling elderly who die and have accumulated enormous hoards of Sam's Club food, often years beyond expiration. It gets landfilled, usually. (once in a while, an eco-minded relative will take the stuff that has no animal product, like expired canned vegetables or dry grains)

Max size of object that can go into the turbofan safely. Agree, a "weak laser" cannot mince birds in advance. About as feasible as installing a sushi chef in front of each engine.

And we do have split ticket voting here, where you can vote for, say, a populist oaf for president on the basis of one hot-button issue you like him for, but then vote for the opposing party for your Congress person(s) so as to impose a restraint through the legislative side on issues where you don't trust the oaf. The Constitutional separation of powers is, in theory, designed to restrain autocratic tendencies. I guess we'll see.

I read The Hot Zone, too, but didn't find quite the same message there. (I, too, have had the "pretty, but nuts" experience, and the inner conflicts that can arise. Sometimes one imagines one can talk the fair maiden off the ledge, but chances of that are slim.) This BF in question does seem to have money and come from a wealthy family, which has been a gauntlet of culture shocks for my daughter - sounds like the orgone bioenergy device may be a penultimate straw.

The problem is not E Coli per se, as most strains are benign and reside in our own guts in a friendly symbiotic way. The danger is that E Coli mutates very easily to a pathogen - a few strains like O157:H7 can cause severe illness. And it only takes a few thanks to a process called conjugation. The O157 refers to a chromosome, called a plasmid, that can be shared between bacteria via conjugation. So it can take over really easily and you get the Broad Street pump incident and so on. Pertinent to your question is that some foods may be sourced from places where people poop while they are out in a crop field (or go into one, for the sole purpose), so there is an environment where the mutant E Coli strain like cholera, or a parasitic organism, can easily proliferate and then get transferred to the crop. IIRC a small number of cattle also have a strain of the 0157, so their manure needs some processing. (cattle poo can also have other nasties like listeria or campylobacter) Equine is better for a garden, I've been told, but fact check that. But always use processed, i.e. not fresh, manure. Congress, though a rich source, is not recommended. Do you boil cilantro? Lettuce? Bell peppers? Spinach for a salad? Tomatoes? Just saying. Not all foods get boiled as a normal prep, and just going over them with a vegetable sprayer may not be sufficient.

The net can't help but amplify nonsense, because the sensible people who look up and recognize it's probably a drone then go inside and resume their evening routines. It's the credulous who freak out then go online to spread their misinformation virus. Sturgeon's Law was never more applicable than it is to the net. My daughter is spending some of her holiday break (she teaches music) with a new BF who apparently believes in biochargers. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/biochargers-claims-are-too-silly-to-take-seriously/ Though he seems an otherwise ok person (based on secondhand report so far), my impulse on learning that he'd spent 15,000 USD on this quackery was to urge her to flee for her life. Being a dad means holding one's tongue now and then. Mainly now.

One value I find in both philosophy and religion forums is that you can find hidden assumptions in a statement which you didn't even know were there. This can happen to anyone. I don't think Swanson is making a logical fallacy there at all. When you assert you are referring to non-existence as what follows biological life. You make this clear by saying this is all we get. While this is likely to be true, it doesn't have to be held true by an atheist. It is not a necessary belief for being atheist. That is Swanson's point. And the point of my example. Atheism asserts only that a personal God isn't in the picture. Were you to amend your initial sentence subject to "all scientific materialists and some atheists," then that incorrect hidden assumption would be remedied. Haha. Good one. But you've logged enough time at science forums to know how unlikely that is. To paraphrase Twain, whisky is for drinking, definitions are for fighting over.

Confusing. Atheists believe there's no supreme being. So if you say they believe this life is It does assert they ALSO believe there is no other plane of existence post mortem. But that's not required of atheists. To give a silly example (just for purpose of illustration), an atheist could postulate that we have a soul that just naturally exists, 21 grams of organized exotic matter which detaches from our synaptic endings at death and then joins up with some interstellar mycelial network, the great space fungus of heavenly contemplation. No deity needed.

Indeed. Possibly the opposite. Being able to build one's own home and furnishings and tools, memorize long passages of narratives and poems, keen observation of weather patterns and other patterns and relations in nature, identify and locate hundreds of botanical sources of food, medicine, and artisanal materials, etc. Modern technology and digital culture permits levels of obtuseness that probably wouid have been life-threatening to a hunter-gatherer.

If I know the taxonomy of a raven, do I really know anything about what it is like to be a raven?

Yep, the softwoods can be a problem here if codes don't demand proper barriers against pests. There is a cedar that grows in the Pacific NW, Western Red Cedar, which is quite durable and naturally insect resistant, but it costs more, so less used in the postwar building boom. Interesting bit about the concrete v clay tiles. Clay is popular in the Southwest here, lasts long, withstands searing desert heat and is eco friendly, but quite a bit of labor to properly install. Asphalt shingles, which are used so much elsewhere in US, really do poorly in hot desert. If you find a shorter way to type naybr, you likely would cease to be English, so caution advised.

I can't find the emoji of the head with question marks exploding from it - let's pretend it's there. How can roof load be consistently negative? I will guess you mean wind uplift, where high wind creates a pressure differential so the roof is a bit acting like a delta wing. Here of course we deal with high positive load, thanks to heavy snows. My house has 25 ft spans, so I have a hard time imagining me and my loved ones under a concrete slab with a foot or two of snow on it. That's easily 20-60 lb/SF.

What is the discussion topic here? It's not 2045 yet therefore my life sucks? Crikey, if you want to support EVs and carbon neutrality someday, then buy a Nissan Leaf or some other affordable EV, make the best of its limitations, and when you want to haul a pallet of bricks or some sheetrock just rent a truck. Elecric trucks are expensive as hell, require far more carbon and rare earths in their fabrication, and make more sense as rentals than as a person's all-purpose vehicle. Send a message to Big Auto by refusing to take part in the F150-ization of America's passenger fleet, and just buy a sedan.