John Cuthber

When we grasp vanilla ice cream, we begin to grasp the concept of God There is no special case to the concept of vanilla ice cream, nor does my logic require a special circumstance, the concept of vanilla ice cream is common knowledge, I am making a an association between vanilla ice cream and the concept of God. You could equally choose to replace "infinity" with "nice sharp pencils". It still doesn't actually make any sense (unless, of course, you say there's something special about infinity or God, but that would be special pleading and you have said you are not doing that).

" the degree of political bias is critical, central, essential to the workings of any judiciary." Fair enough. First question, is such a bias a good thing? For example, was it good for justice that the judiciary in the USSR were puppets of the government? Second question, does having a politician choose the judiciary make it more likely to be biased or less likely?

OK, I checked. Wiki tells me that "Slavery in the British Isles dated from before Roman occupation. Chattel slavery virtually disappeared after the Norman Conquest. It was finally abolished by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (which made some exceptions for other parts of the British Empire). The prohibition on slavery and servitude is now codified under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998." Legally abolished in 1833, but practically non existent for 800 years or so before that. I'm focussed on the army because they are one part of the government charged with responsibility for enforcing the law by the use of arms. Obviously they are the last resort, but if you plan to introduce a dictatorship then you need to be prepared employ the last resort. If, on the other hand you think your guns are going to save you from tyranny, then that last resort is what you need to be able to beat. Good luck. "In most institutions of slavery throughout the world, the children of slaves became the property of the owner. This was the case with, for example, thralls and American slaves. In other cases, children were enslaved as if they were adults." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_slavery A person who is "property" is a slave. Come to think of it, when did it become legal to kill a prisoner for disobedience or being too old to work? It isn't? I thought you said they were slaves. "The black people in Jim Crow America didn't vote in a dictatorship." No, the white people did. Shameful isn't it?

If you can convince the reader that it's possible to accidentally clone yourself, then swapping the sex shouldn't be a problem. I'd make up something about the great leap forward made in cloning in 2016 when Dr Verylucky realised that it was easier to use reptilian cells to do some of the work. The problem was that, in some reptiles, the sex is decided by the incubation temperature. Just as long as nobody notices that reptiles have a totally different system for sex determination, you should be OK.

"The coin is always random, a coin that lands on heads 5% of the time is far more biased than any reasonable interpretation of the confusing term "10% biased" would predict, and so forth." a 5% bias is more than a 10% bias?

"Yep. It's a right, in the US. It's not a privilege. It cannot be taken away except by due process of law. How you "see" it is irrelevant. We have a fact here, not an opinion." In a discussion of gun control that "fact" can be changed by opinion. "You may have seen the slogan "An unarmed people is subject to slavery at any time"? There's more than a core of truth in it." FFS! I'm sure we have lain that idea to rest. First, I'm not a slave and I live in an unarmed society. Second, your little guns won't help much against your army and , perhaps most importantly. Third- don't vote in a dictatorship. "In the Jim Crow era (ending sometime around the late 1960s) the judicial systems of several former Confederate States racially enforced a series of bogus laws for the purpose of supplying labor" I didn't say that tyranny didn't exist. And that particular system has been overthrown. And "OK, when do they start selling the prisoners' children? They don't? But you said they were slaves."

There are a bunch of people who may be chosen to become justices, and the each have some trend towards voting heads rather than tails or vice versa. If you pick ones who are more likely to vote heads then you will tend to get an overall decision that is more likely to be heads. The extent is a different question. It's the fact that you are allowed to choose a biassed set that's the issue.

It isn't a strawman to point out that the constitution is barely consistent, since it's being used to justify things. "So! How does that imply you should have any right to infringe on someone else's right to own a gun?" It doesn't. I don't have that right any more than anyone else does, though I don't think you will find that I said I did which would make you one constructing men from straw. Society, as a whole has that right because- unlike the right not to be a slave, the right to own a gun is within the authority of the law. The law can restrict gun ownership because being banned from having a gun is really different from being made a slave or indeed, being killed. It remains the case that work in a prison isn't slavery or, for that matter, indentured servitude. "I quoted an appellate court disagreeing with you." OK, when do they start selling the prisoners' children? They don't? But you said they were slaves. "The purpose of the bill of rights and the rest of the amendments is to say what the government may *not* do. It is not a document of laws. It is a document forbidding the enactment of certain types of laws." And, it originally didn't include the bit about slavery. Well, they changed it. So they could , in principle, change it back and then the government would be able to declare slavery legal and say that people did not have the right not to be enslaved. And, if they did that, then the French solution to the government would be a just response. "Liberties are not so granted by governmental ban." Nor by the constitution. Slavery was wrong before the 13th amendment, but the constitution did not grant the slaves liberty until someone changed it. For nearly a hundred years the bill of rights didn't grant the slaves their liberty.

"Translation: if a person is convicted of a crime they can be denied the 'rights' granted them in the thirteenth amendment. That was exactly my point to John, and it is exactly true." There are two problems with that. Work in prison isn't slavery (as already discussed) Even if the constitution said that you could keep prisoners as slaves, it would still be wrong. It might be legal, but it isn't the law that gives people the right not to be slaves. A law that said that you could have slaves would be wrong and a government that implemented such a law would be invalid. "John has made the point before that banning firearms of all sorts grants him a right not to be killed." No I have not. Please stop doing that. It doesn't make you look clever. I have the right not to get shot, no matter what the constitution says about guns. That right wasn't granted by the constitution, nor could it validly be revoked by any constitution. (of course, I might forfeit the right to live- most obviously if I'm trying to kill someone else, but that's my decision)

"You are claiming that there are 9 coins, five of which will do their best to come up heads and four of which will do their best to come up tails." Stop telling me what I'm claiming, or at least get it right.

Semiconductor manufacture is a whole different ball-game. You do need UHV for that because you have to ensure that not too many "foreign" atoms end up in the working parts. Titanium is a great getter, but it's melting + boiling points are much higher than Mg (though, to be fair, you don't need to melt it to get it to work as a getter.) Argon has roughly the same boiling and freezing points as oxygen so it's quite a common impurity liquid oxygen, but there's usually more than a part in a million million in nitrogen. There are wet process methods for gold, but, like silver, they only work well for back silvered mirrors and those don't get used much in telescopes.

If we were just disagreeing over terms then the two terms would have to be equivalent ins some way. they are not as iNow has pointed out. (and also, you don't sell prisoners or their children. You can't execute them at a whim and so on.) So, no, we are not just disagreeing over words. There is a fundamental moral prohibition of slavery that no government can legitimately overturn. There is no such right to gun ownership, any more than there is a right to drive a car.

Interestingly, the same constitution which permits slavery and indentured servitude as punishment for a crime, also forbids cruel and unusual punishments. So, Slavery isn't cruel? Seriously? No government has the authority to permit slavery: ever (You might want to consider yourself in the slave's position before you argue with that.) That's the sort of thing which governments exist to prevent.

I thought much the same about your opening post.

You can aluminise a mirror at 5X 10^-4 mm Hg (0.5 microns) http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF00674994.pdf#page-1 so 10^-10 is overkill. A decent mechanical pump can get close http://www.yellowjacket.com/node/890 will get to 15 microns Mg gettering should just about get to 0.15 microns by stripping everything but argon. (Of course this assumes a very good vacuum system with no real or virtual leaks. Ypu probably won't make one at home at the first attempt) But, if you vac the chamber down with the pump, then back fill with nitrogen twice you should remove practically all the argon. The air starts at about 1 metre pressure and is dropped about a million fold by the pump so that should take out all but a millionth of the argon. Fill it with pure N2 and there's only a part per million or so of argon present. Repeat the process and, in principle you get to just 1 part argon in 10^12- obviously, the nitrogen will have more than that much argon as an impurity. The residual pressure will depend on how pure the nitrogen was. Other metals like barium would be a better getter, but are less easy to get hold of. Hydrogen is often derived from moisture so a baked out system will help. It's probably easiest to get someone else to silver the mirror.

If you have a 'phone that can tell which way up it is then you already have a 3 d chip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerometer

It still wouldn't have made sense as a PM. What I said was "is that once in ten is enough to show bias. Would you say a coin that landed on heads 5% of the time was unbiased? That's what you get if the outcome has a 10% bias. (90 times out of 100 it's random, averaging 45 and the other 10% it's always heads so that gives 55 heads out of 100). If you claim that's unbiased, I'd like to organise a few card games with you sometime- I could use the money." It has nothing to do with the fact that 10% is quite a lot smaller than 50% So choosing 0.001% or any other figure doesn't affect the outcome. A bias is still a bias. And the allegations that I'm anti American would be insulting if they were not absurd and baseless. It's not anti American to focus on the US justice system in a thread about SCOTUS

The point seems to be one of nomenclature. The right not to be murdered or not to be kept as a slave is a right. These rights are unchanging (though they may be denied- such denial is tyranny) Permission to drive a car is a privilege, which the people (often acting via a state of some sort) may or may not grant- often with some limits. Gun ownership is, in my view, a privilege, but you see it as a right. I think that you see it as a right because it's in the constitution but that was just the opinion of some people at that time and in those circumstances. I see it as a privilege which should be much more closely controlled. The rights are absolute. The government (ideally, acting as the will of the people) decides on the privileges. So, while the government might legalise murder, they don't deprive you of the right to live, they just ignore that right. Such a government is tyranny and should be overthrown.

Are some rights not absolute? Is there a difference between the right not to be murdered and the right to carry a gun? Rights can also be gained BTW,

Not exactly, you are sensing the null hypothesis. Nothing is happening.

If you want to avoid being criticised don't make statements like "If, however, the gas chemically reacts with water and this reaction speed increases with temperature, then the solubility will increase." as if they are factual. The OP has the answer pretty much right, but you told them the opposite so, while I may well have been very impolite, I think you were the first to do so. And, for the record, stating that "If, however, the gas chemically reacts with water and this reaction speed increases with temperature, then the solubility will increase." does "dispute what would happen with your hydrogen chloride - water system."

It may be the best guess so far, but as you are suggesting that something should fall up, out of the sun...

You should certainly throw that idea out. (and you should check out what the word "theory" means in science.

Weird, you think that might be relevant, when I already posted the right maths earlier. Are you unable to read? And I don't see why you are going on about this being an American issue. The UK version is, it seems, even more muddled. http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/media-releases/2012/lcj-retire-next-summer and this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chancellor is a crook. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Grayling#Expenses_claims

"No effort by either to circumvent the constitutionally protected rights "of" the people should be tolerated "by" the people." Either prohibition did that or its revocation did or these "rights" of which you speak are time dependent. Gun ownership may have been a "right" when it was introduced, but not one now.