John Cuthber

Their, their, their.

You seem to have missed the educational video. Why? By whom? When does "temporary" end? And why do you think pointing out a historical fact is a problem? On a related not, give that I deliberately didn't give details of how an insurance scheme might work and yet you felt able to say this about it "register all the guns individually to their owners 2) Establish by law that anyone who buys a gun has to pay an insurance company to cover the prorated State-established costs of the suicidal, homicidal, or accidental behavior of everyone else who even possesses a gun - any gun 3) Revoke the current system of personal responsibility for personal carelessness etc - as currently enforced by civil law, and covered by existing insurance systems, at the expense of gun owners individually. " why did you make up all that bollocks?

As Imatfall says, you can't just use the areas because the volumes are not proportional to the areas. If you have two solid objects which are the same "shape" (i.e. all the angles are the same), then the volumes scale as the cube of any characteristic length- such as the height. So, if the volumes of the whole cones are in the ratio A:B:C And the enclosed volumes are A B - A C - B because they are the differences between the volumes of adjacent cones the heights must be in the ratio Cube root(A) Cube root(B-A) Cube root(C-B) [assuming I got the arithmetic correct] This also applies to other things, cuboids, spheres, Russian dolls, whatever.

Well, I certainly agree with all you say up to this bit. " Any measures, like insurance, meant to price people out of firearm ownership overtime will fail." And I agree with most of the rest of what you say after it; in particular I agree that that "Some societal shifts require baby steps. ". I just think that , if it were done slowly at first, insurance might be a "baby step". Also, thus far I have seen damned near zero other workable solutions, so even if this one is practically doomed (and I accept that it might well be) I think it's more practical that the science fiction world of "signature guns" that are going to cost so much that they will never sell in significant numbers, unless you make that feature compulsory. If yo do that it fails on the same basis as the insurance until you guys remember that the original constitution didn't have the 2nd amendment and, in much the same way that times changed and someone thought it was a good thing to add, times have changed and it would be a good thing to remove. You did it with prohibition (in spite of the massive self interest of a large drinks industry); you can do it again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium and two or three amusing coincidences. (Well, I think it's amusing, others would probably say serendipitous)

Plants absorb phosphates from the soil. things that eat plants get phosphates from plants. Things that eat (things that eat plants) get phosphates from (things that eat plants). And so on. In fact, most things that eat plants (and so on) get rather more phosphate than they need and the excess is excreted in the urine. The phosphate in dead things is returned to the soil by bacteria etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus_cycle

The problem there is that the "finger of God" has absolutely no foundation to shore it up. It's possible that some other explanation might be found for the observations of, for example the rotation rates of galaxies; possibly another force with rather odd scaling factors. The difference between science and religion is that when science realises it is "wrong" in that it's model fails to explain something, science thinks "Goody! An opportunity to improve". On the other hand religion takes the view that it is better not to look through the telescope- nor let anyone else do so, lest you find out that the dogma is wrong.

I don't have a factory, but perhaps, in cash terms, I have 1% of a factory. If I, and 99 others get together then the bright guy gets to go to college. Why do you not see that as a good thing? and, re " I don't call those factory owners elitists, " What I call them is "rare", and I think I do so with the benefit of evidence. https://philanthropy.com/article/The-Income-Inequality-Divide/152551.

I don't know? are you particularly wealthy?- It's rhetorical question- I don't actually think the answer matters. But the simple answer to your question is that the "competition" you are talking about should be decided on whose daughter is better fitted to the job, rather than whose daddy had most money. And yes, if your daughter isn't fitted for that sort of future, it makes sense for you to pay for the education of someone who actually is. If, of course, both are good college candidates then that's great- send both of them to study- it benefits the society as a whole- the, in their turn will earn more, pay more taxes and thus provide the government with the cash it needs to provide you, in turn,with a better pension.

Interesting. My answer to "Why I am an atheist" is a bit quicker. Why not?

The republican party was doing the wrong thing by proclaiming, in essence, that "greed is good" long before 9/11 and before that IRA loving nut shot people. So, perhaps you would like to address the problem. They are a bunch of power crazed money loving selfish bastards. The problem isn't, as you seem to try to paint it, some small number of nutters- any party will have them. The issue is that they lie about the nature of government- i.e. that to be useful, it has to cost money.

OK, two points. If I'm factually wrong that's not an error in reason (well, it is, but on your part to characterise it as such, not mine) And the point of insurance is to pay out so when called on, where's my error of fact? And I know that car insurance isn't quite the right analogy- but that's simply because the point of cars isn't to kill things. A requirement for insurance where the gun owner pays the premium and the insurer pays out for damage caused by the gun would work. What's the problem? Oh, and of course this " law that anyone who buys a gun has to pay an insurance company to cover the prorated State-established costs of the suicidal, homicidal, or accidental behaviour of everyone else who even possesses a gun - any gun" is a straw man, hardly worth commenting on since insurers charge according to an individual's risk - insurers are good at calculating that sort of thing.

OK, I'm not American, but let's pretend for a minute that I am and that, in spite of that I still hold my political views that are viewed as Left wing, even in the UK so they would be thought very Left wing in the US. Now, you tell me that I'm responsible for what the Republican party has done. Well, I think that's obviously nonsense. Tell me, what could I have done to stop them (and don't say "vote against them" because 1 vote wouldn't have made any difference.). If, as I contend, there would have been absolutely nothing i could have done to change them, then you can not say I am responsible for them.

One possible reason is that the gut has to continuously "repair" itself because it's under attack from the digestion process. The tissues there are fast growing and thus susceptible to damage from anything that reduces their growth. That's certainly part of the reason why the GI tract is greatly affected by radiation sickness and by some anti-cancer drugs.

OK, let's have a quick look at this "Neither is it true that "less crime" means "cuts in insurance premiums". " Since insurance (in this context) is designed to pay out in order to mitigate the effects of crimes there really should be fewer (and/ or smaller) payouts if there's less crime. If, for example, there were no crimes there would be no pay outs. People would very quickly migrate to insurers whose premiums reflected that. Imagine that the government required insurance for gun ownership- in the same way that they require it for cars. I have already pointed out that waving your favourite bit of paper isn't an argument against that because it can be amended out of existence so please don't waste time mentioning it again. If the insurers had to pay out the cost to the victims (and/ or the next of kin) for damage done by a gun, what do you think the premiums would be? There are broadly speaking two possible answers. Either they would be small- perhaps technically negative- because guns contribute so much to security, that they would be able to reduce ordinary household insurance or (as I suspect) they would be dominated by the costs of the payout to the family of roughly 1 child a day (obviously, it's rather less than that because it's often the owner's kid who is killed). If that was the case then the premiums would be enormous. Now, isn't it part of the "American way" that people are responsible for their own actions- like the decision to buy a gun? How would that work out if it was actually enforced and they were made to actually pay for their carelessness? There's nothing "unconstitutional" about expecting people to take responsibility for their actions and, if they can't, to not act that way.

One difference is that science won't mind if Dark energy is shown to be wrong. OK, it will irritate some people for a while- until they get over having found out they were mistaken-, but that will be true whether they are theists or not.

No, you don't need a distillation license to claim back duty; the lab I work in used to do it. Even if you claim back the tax, ethanol still costs more than methanol; it's a more complicated molecule. None of this matters; ethanol gives a slightly higher energy density, and that's what the OP asks for.

The duty paid on ethanol for drinking can be reclaimed from the tax man if you can show that it in't used for humn consumption. On the other hand, all fuel for road vehicles has to pay fuel duty. The big factor isn't duty, but simple cost. methanol is much cheaper than ethanol.

GM11 Firstly, did you see the date of the last post in this thread? They probably have their still running by now. Secondly, the azeotropic temperature and composition depend on pressure. Vacuum distillation is one way of breaking an azeotrope.

You still don't seem to have addressed the point. The government's actions do sometimes make guns more expensive so there is a precedent. They could mandate insurance for gun ownership. The gun lobby say it should lead to a cut in the premium because they claim that more guns = less crime. So, why not require the insurers to set premiums that reflect the risks associated with gun ownership. Of course, there's the slight problem with the payouts to the families of roughly 1 child per day. "And pa said "what do you usually pay?" http://monologues.co.uk/Albert_and_the_Lion.htm

Exactly what elite group am I a member of?

How? For a start, a collection of admins closed the thread- it's seldom a unilateral decision apart from closing down blatant spam. And, since there's a reason given when they shut the thread down, you know what that reason is, and it isn't because they were threatened, is it? Then there's the point that you know next to nothing about any of the admins- so you can hardly threaten them. Thirdly, based on your behaviour so far you are not going to prove anything. It can't possibly be for personal reasons because nobody here knows you personally. and re. "he hides behind anonymity here and so question his own actual credentials. So that's likely a part of it. " Well, those of us who are in a position to understand his work are well aware of the validity of his credentials. So, when you say you "question his own actual credentials. So that's likely a part of it. " well, simply no, that's not likely to be a part of it, because it's not a valid basis. What you have done there is highlight your own ignorance.

If I cook the chicken that's in my fridge now, I can decide later whether to have chicken for my supper, or keep it and have it later in the week when I get back from work and don't really have time to cook it.

Some people will believe that atheists are closed minded- not matter what the actual facts and evidence are. The funny thing is that the atheists are (1) not generally in that group (2) better placed to know their own minds.

Yes, to exactly the same degree, and for the same reasons , that I lose credibility when I say "Unicorns don't exist" or "there are no penguins on the moon" rather then that "the probability of the existence of unicorns is vanishingly small" and "the likelihood of lunar based penguins can be considered insignificant for most practical purposes". To be honest, I think I can live with that, for the sake of convenience in speech.