insane_alien

no. i talked to him on IRC. he stormed off when i suggested something safer and to go buy a book on experiments that can be done in the classroom with instructions for teachers.

i've never felt that i would go crazy from a dream but i do have pretty vivid ones and tend to remember them (this has been true for as long as i can remember). for instance, last night i got gunned down in a WWI trench except the germans were replaced by people sized yellow rubber ducks. Make of that what you will. felt utterly real, felt myself dying, then moved on to another dream. this time a more sane one, a holiday i went on with some friends a few years ago (with the usual dream like twists, people there who weren't at the real one, different events etc.) I think perhaps it is only because you have recently started to experience(or at least remember) vivid dreams its just that your brain doesn't know how to cope with them. the likely outcome is that the more you have, the better your mind will be able to deal with them sensibly and they won't affect you as much.

hallucinations are not reality.

largely the consist of events in which the observer who deems it a miracle does not know the cause and/or explanation of the event. upon closer examination, they tend to be explainable. a good example for this is the people who see jesus in their toast or what not. What they don't know or understand is that the human mind looks for patterns everywhere and every so often will even recognise a pattern that doesn't exist. MOST of the time when this happens you just wave it off and don't even notice it(though you may do a double take first). BUT when the 'pattern' your brain says you noticed is something of great importance to you (like jesus to a christian) then suddenly its a big deal and you don't just dismiss it like you should and claim its a miracle. even though the exact same thing happens to everbody everyday, even every hour.

well, it depends on the cell. SOME cells will go into a kind of hibernation when you starve them and re-awaken when conditions are more favourable. others, will chug along till they die. the cause of death is actually surprisingly complex and will vary from cell to cell. ultimately, there are certain functions a cell has to carry out to maintain its life, mostly repairing damage that naturally accumulates and replenishing chemicals it uses up to keep active. if there are no resources to repair itself then it will die because of accumulated damage and if it cannot replenish certain chemicals it will die because it cannot maintain a chemical equilibrium in itself. then you have to factor in the whole 'what is alive?' factor because at the cellular level it starts getting a bit fuzzy.

the literal form is indeed when does life begin, but the actual meaning intended was when can you be considered human as was made clear by later discussion.

no-one is denying that fertilization is the starting point of an individual lump of human. what people argue over, is at what point the lump of cells gets treated the same as fully formed humans.

I wouldn't say we're all hopelessly pedantic. I often forget to use proper capitalization. True it's a thing that I'm trying to fix but old habits die hard. Note: I had to go over this 3 times to put in the capitals I missed. Yes, I do know there aren't many in this short post, thats just how bad this habit is.

Also, some people who vist the site have a first language other than English. It isn't fair to them if they have to know proper English AND the various forms of slang which may or may not translate very well.

The big bang didn't generate very much sodium and chlorine. sodium and chlorine were primarily formed by the nuclear fusion process in stars. it called nucleosynthesis. the stars that produced these then exploded and sprayed these new elements all over the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust <sodium and chlorine are fairly high up the list for the earths crust.

well, there is such a thing as radiation pressure but it will neither cause violent accelerate nor get you to the speed of light. it is impossible to get to the speed of light due to relativistic mechanics. you should go look up 'solar sails' the current favourite light based propulsion technology.

no not really. although, interesting factoid about the ClO2 that the sodium chlorite produces, above a concentration of ~15% it WILL explosively decompose into chlorine and oxygen. fairly nasty compound really.

well, its not as strong an oxidiser as ozone...

doesn't mean that he's right. it will oxidise more than just plain old oxygen because it is stronger. there is no arguement here, that is just a completely false statement. again, false. (appart from the sodium chlorite not keeping you alive bit) again, false, repeating does not make it true. also, if it was weaker than oxygen, why the hell would it do anything at all? actually, its far more likely to go for the nice abundant reducing agents in the body rather than some trace not-strongly reducing agent. and more to the point, so what? most heavy metals only cause a problem when they are in an oxidised state. no it doesn't. please provided references to lab studies and clinical trials. also references to peer reviewed journals on the properties of sodium chlorite that back up your claims about its oxidising potential.

actually, there are a number of fault lines in the UK. there is a difference between a fault line ang a tectonic plate boundary.

thats because the sun runs on protium-protium fusion. our reactors are running on deuterium-deuterium and deuterium-tritium fusion. this fusion occurs at a much lower temperature and occurs faster as there's less steps. i wouldn't worry about the fact that the sun appears to be really bad at fusion.

yes, it'll have been stable for billions of years because it would have reached equilibrium fairly fast as there was more salt available back then as it hadn't beenwashed down. it would likely have taken a few million years to reach that equilibrium however.

no, thats only because the remains of the cell walls still stick together and they make a very effective sponge due to a combination of their miniscule size and capillary pressure.

cell damage. upon freezing ice crystals form in the cells and grow out through the cell wall. a cell that has been frozen and is not capable of protecting itself against ice crystals(ie, human cells) will appear burst open.

well, then thats just your opinion. Fact: rocks contain salt. Fact: this salt is exposed by erosion Fact: this salt will dissolve in ambient water(whether it's groundwater, precipitation or already in the river) Fact: this salty water will then be washed to the sea. Fact: there isn't anywhere else for the salt to go to the oceans are the worlds biggest evapourative concentrators. The reason rivers have such a low level of salt is because of the large influx of freshwater(from rain) compared to the relatively low influx of salt from erosion. anywhere you have a body of water with a long retention time of water(typically one where there are no outflows) you see salty water. this is because any salt washed there has nowhere to go so it accumulates. the excess water can escape via evapouration so you get a concentrating effect. its a simple mass balance.

well, everything in there will have electrical resistance meaning that the electrical energy will be converted to heat, there will be losses to radio emission because its an AC system(this will be small) and there will be friction in the electric motor. these are all areas where the electrical energy can leave the system but there is no input of energy so the device will slow down and stop very quickly.

too small to view directly.

well, the only way salt can get into the river is when its released be erosion of rocks. this is a slow process while the solvation of salt is fast. this means the concentration of salt in the rivers never gets very high. i'm sure that when water was just starting to condense out of the atmosphere in the beginnings of earth that the rivers did indeed run salty but they would quickly turn fresh as the exposed salt was quickly washed down into the newly formed seas and oceans.

actually we have theories on the origin of life, good ones too. they are just independant of what happens after life has formed.