John Cuthber

What, in principle, stops me getting a sax (and someone who can play it), a microphone, a pre-amp and an A to D converter; then recording the voltage from the microphone as a function of time? If the sound doesn't vary over time* then I can "loop" the sample I have and make it arbitrarily long. And then I can Fourier transform it (the long version means I don't need to worry much about apodisation). I can then recreate that sound by digital synthesis from the Fourier coefficients and, apart from a few minor distortions that I can generally reduce by simply paying more money for the kit I use, I will have a "copy" of the original sax sound. * (if it does, I need a better player- one who can hold a note)

About 30 years ago, at the height of the cold war there was a joke, something like "thieves broke into the Kremlin and stole next years election results". Today they could do the same thing, but the results would be those for the Whitehouse. However, the man in the Whitehouse is only there because of the Russian's influence, and he plainly wants to stay there. How hard is he going to try to stop the Russians?

Forgive my ignorance. Do the same companies produce military guns as well as civilian ones? If so, how much market share does ech sector have? If they get millions from domestic gun sales, but billions from military ones then a boycott won't work.

Who, and why?

It's as if something or someone is pushing back against it.

What do you mean by "height"?

If Trump and his team hadn't colluded with Russia in the first place the FBI wouldn't need to spend any time on an investigation.

Propane and butane are used as refrigerants. Do they teach refrigeration engineers about fuel/ air explosives? It#s also worth remembering that most people reading sci fi won't spot minor problems with the science .

Can someone explain why anyone is talking about "macro objects"? http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/science/how-a-student-took-a-photo-of-a-single-atom.aspx

Why? They got rid of the 18th. It wouldn't have mattered if Nikolas Cruz had locked his guns away. He was the owner, he had the key. No it wasn't... And, when we point out that giving up your guns would (at least statistically) save lives , you decide not to give them up... Maybe- just maybe- there's some hope here https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/a-nationwide-teacher-walkout-could-shake-us-out-of-our-mass-shooting-stupor.html

No, I didn't (and don't) have a magic solution- and it's puzzling that you assumed I had one but didn't share it. However it still seemed sensible to point out that claiming that we already had a solution- even though we know it hasn't worked- is counterproductive, since it might lull people into a false sense of security. Your approach was to say you would give up your guns- and then not actually do so. I'm not sure that my way isn't better since at least it might work eventually.

LOL! Of course! The answer was so simple and right in front of our faces the whole time! Problem Solved! Glad you are taking this so seriously John. You always add so much to these conversations. You forgot to quote the bit where I suggested a possible way forward. It looks like the schoolkids might just be the ones who bring about change.

It seems the first stage is to explain to people that continuing along the same pathways as before (which didn't solve the problem) will not solve the problem. To me that's obvious, and so I rally can't understand how to explain it. If people will not listen (and it seems they won't)*, what can anyone do. Perhaps the problem will eventually get solved when the children who are at schools subject to these attacks grow up and vote in large enough numbers to make a difference. * Thank you for your opinion.

If your approach has been shown not to work over the decades then it's not "posting how to solve the problem", it's proposing the status quo.

Money.

Really? http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Music/saxw.html

"madness" in various forms was well documented before there were any psychiatrists (or capitalists). So there is no way they could have invented it. You are the one making an extraordinary claim and you are the one who has to supply extraordinary proof. Doing so may well convince us that you are right. Being rude to the mods will not.

Comparing cars to guns and considering the risk benefit analyses to be the same is the bit that is intellectually dishonest. In order to be recognised as addressing the problem you have to support gun controls that would address the problem. And, when we point out that giving up your guns would (at least statistically) save lives , you decide not to give them up...

Putting CFCs and fluorine in a mass spec won't get you very far. The technique only works for ions, rather than molecules. However the ionisation processes used immediately prior to most mass spectrometers may well get some interesting fragments. It depends on what you take "can fluorine be separated from hcfc/cfc refrigerants?" to mean. Strictly, the answer is yes. If you have a mixture of fluorine and CFC then you can separate them- for example by distillation. However, such a mixture would, in many cases, be explosively unstable. If, on the other hand you mean "can you get the fluorine atoms out of the CFC molecule? The answer s still yes, but the process is different. Passing CFC over a heated strong alkali would produce fluorides from which fluorine could be produced in "the usual ways"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-signs-bill-revoking-obama-era-gun-checks-people-mental-n727221 Now, I presume that he did that because he was pressured by the pro-gun lobby (whether that's commercial or private). And if he hadn't done so then a young man with (at least alleged) mental health problems might not have been allowed to buy a gun and might not have killed children. If I'm right about that, then the pro gun lobby's actions led causally to the deaths.

To be factual; he revoked gun control.

People who oppose gun control are responsible- albeit, usually indirectly, for the deaths of children. If you are not happy with that, it's your problem. Even Trump accidentally acknowledged it. when he said that the problem was people with mental health issues- after overturning Obama's legislation restricting the gun ownership rights of people whose judgement couldn't be trusted

So was the intellectual dishonesty of comments like this But feel free to keep hammering it in the hope that it convinces those who are not able to understand the difference. It's worse than that. The fact that they think they need a gun " to protect yourself from all the others who have guns" says a lot about the cause of the problem.

Do you recognise that, if you asked them just before their gun killed their child or whatever, most gun owners would say exactly the same sort of thing? You have no way to know that giving up you guns will save lives or not. But it is more likely to save lives than to cost them so, so be consistent, you should give them up.

It's a pity the crickets don't get long to chirp between shootings. There is only one country in the world where that is considered a sensible question.