John Cuthber

The usual model of a metal is a set of ions surrounded by a sea of electrons.

Indeed, but French is almost entirely Latin based. Prior to the Roman invasion there would have been lots of tribal languages and all of them were largely replaced. So, by comparison, English has done rather better than. for example, France and Spain who essentially lost their earlier languages. The Breton bits of France, for example would have had a language rather closer to the Welsh I posted earlier. There's also the observation that quite a lot of ideas have two words in English, the original and one derived from Norman French. The usual examples cited are the cows, pigs and sheep that, after slaughter, are presented as beef, pork and mutton. The farmers were still using the older English terms, but the cooks who had to present the food to their new Norman lords used Norman terms for the same thing. The real difficulty with saying that English is a mixed up language because we have been invaded a lot because of military weakness is that, since England came into existence (about the 10th C), we have only been invaded once, by the Normans. (Obviously the Vikings popped in for a cup of tea from time to time as well; quite a few of them settled) So, the whole development of English, since that time can not have been brought about by invaders. At that time, English looked like this. Forrþrihht anan se time comm þatt ure Drihhtin wollde ben borenn i þiss middellærd forr all mannkinne nede he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn all swillke summ he wollde and whær he wollde borenn ben he chæs all att hiss wille It doesn't look like that any more, and the difference can't be invasion. A lot of changes came about via settlement- notably by the Vikings) but that's not a military thing.

4 bankruptcies is not what I'd call stellar.

Waitforufo, you seem to have missed my post earlier about your saying " The environmental movement won't be happy until we all return to a pre 1800's primitive state. That is why they are against not only nuclear power, but any power generation." or are you tacitly admitting that you are a fool?

Air and oxygen have very similar densities. Collecting it over water will work much better http://scienceaid.co.uk/chemistry/applied/gases.html I never got the zinc/air cell to work- but I didn't try very hard http://www.edu.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/chem/v13n1/10_2d4_1.pdf It's also important to consider what other gas might be present- for example if there is a flammable gas too, the effect of the splint might be more vigorous than you had in mind. Where is this gas from?

You should see what happens in the "soft sciences" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

A glowing splint or a zinc/air battery?

The idea that English has lots of "foreign" words because we were invaded is daft. A while back a friend and I were trying to think of any language from which English hadn't stolen any words; we couldn't. I'm not saying no such language exists, but there are words in English from many languages- including those whose native speakers certainly didn't invade us. Isn't it vastly more likely that we have words from Swahili and Hindi because we invaded their countries?

I look forward toy you citing evidence for the first part of tthat or admitting you are a fool for saying it. " By the way I'm a conservative. " It shows; really, it shows.

When? English, as the language we recognise today has been around since, roughly 1200 since which time the "weak" nation bested the Spanish, French and Germans while building an empire that spanned the world. There's obviously little doubt that the "Vikings" and Norse had a major influence but realistically, we were protected from invasion by the sea to an extent that, for example France , Portugal Spain and so on were not. The Romans came here, discovered that it was cold, wet and hostile then buggered off home again. that's why English doesn't look "Latin". (The Germans and Scandinavians seem to be in much the same position) Incidentally, how many people who are not from this funny little bunch of islands are aware that the UK has several languages. How many of you can read this, for example (I openly admit, I can't- I got it from Google) Ein Tad yn y nefoedd, sancteiddier dy enw; deled dy deyrnas; gwneler dy ewyllys, ar y ddaear fel yn y nef. Dyro inni heddiw ein bara beunyddiol, a maddau inni ein troseddau, fel yr ym ni wedi maddau i'r rhai a droseddodd yn ein herbyn; a phaid â'n dwyn i brawf, ond gwared ni rhag yr Un drwg. Oherwydd eiddot ti yw'r deyrnas a'r gallu a'r gogoniant am byth.

Who gets to decide "The level of complexity of the explanation required"? The problem is that your opinion might not tally with someone else's. But does that make them wrong, or you?

Have you seen this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_principle#Derivation Which bits are you struggling with?

It depends on whether you consider it to be an absolute predictor or just one of many. A single counterexample is enough to rule it out as an absolute predictor. To be blunt; hard work is not required.

I never claimed to be normal. However it only takes one counterexample to rule out the idea that IQ is subordinate to dedication as a predictor of success.

The entire "speculation" section

It's interesting, and has the advantage of being testable- measuring blood/serum Fe and Zn levels is easy enough. Just a quick word of warning, Excess Fe is rather toxic.

Tell that to the system admin.

As far as I can see, the heat capacity of most metals shouldn't change much with temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulong%E2%80%93Petit_law Th big problem there will be energy absorbed during phase transitions. Thermal conductivity of metals typically correlates strongly with electrical conductivity. You can probably find measurements of the electrical conductivity as a function of temperature- though to a fair approximation you can says that the resistivity is proportional to the absolute temperature. Why do you wan to know?

After death there's no heart beat and thus no blood pressure to "power the hydraulics". Incidentally, is it just me who worries slightly about poster who pop up out of nowhere and ask about odd things "because I'm writing a book"?

In many, if not most regard, I'm successful. But I'm not generally good at motivation or sticking power. At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, I got through school and university then into a job and through promotion with very little effort and a lot of innate ability to learn stuff easily. I'm the outlier.

Why is it a problem? What are you trying to do?

It's an idea, but I don't think it helps much. Whoever runs the system that handles the card transactions would be essentially all powerful and very rich. It would be like the current system where the rich and powerful can do what they like.

...was to do with standing up to authority, and nothing to do with atheism. The fact that you had to say "soviet persecution" rather than, "atheist persecution ... in ..." is the give-away here.

When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was going to be from someone at least twice that age. "Is it too late to learn certain things?" No, it isn't.

Quote Hawking when asked about his IQ in the New York Times, December 2004. It's a dratted nuisance that he said that: I had to stop bragging about my IQ