John Cuthber

No, lets not consider those hypothetical issues. Lets look at the solubility of hydrogen chloride in water. If you warm up some conc HCl the gas comes off. So, while adding more advanced thermodynamics may not make it clear, it has the advantage of giving the right answer. If your ideas don't agree with reality, it isn't because reality has made a mistake.

I really don't see any point to rebutting any more straw men like these "It's hard to convince yourself that one in ten is a majority. I'm very curious to see how you do it. Please, tell me more....." (I never did). "No, I'm sure you were all up in arms because they acted that way 10% of the time." Nope again. "You imagined that 10% was more than chance and it caused you to go berserk." ditto "In fact, nine times out of ten I would bet that you'd call something political and the Justices would just look at it legally." ditto and so on. If you make a valid point I might reply. If I don't reply to any future post, you might want to think about what sort of logical error I'm choosing to ignore. It remains the case that a bias is a bias even is it's 0.001%.

Oh give me a clone, yes a clone of my own, with the y chromosome changed for x Then when I'm alone, with this clone of my own, we'll be thinking of nothing but sex. Slightly more seriously the normal way of cloning yourself is to have children.OK, it's not quite perfect but the child has half their genes from you- so that's at least 50% the same DNA as you and your partner must be pretty closely related to you to be able to mate . At the least, they must be closer than a chimp and since a chimp has about 99% of the same DNA your partner's contribution to the child will be at least 99% the same as yours would be. So any child is likely to share about 99.5% of the same DNA as you. That's pretty close to a clone. Of course,they will be a lot younger than you which rather messes up the viewpoint expressed in that rhyme. Did you realise that when you asked "can we alter it to become an opposite gender?"? What did you have in mind for the clone?

"It is what you expect from him. *You* expect Picasso to paint expressionism and" And so does Google images, so it's not just me is it? And I don't, of course, expect it all the time. "If your claim is true, that justices decide cases on political merit, yet they only manage to flip the coin on the right side 5% of the time then either they are retarded or you are wrong." Or I never expected then to do much better than 10% because a lot of the things they discuss are not clearly "political". You still seem to be saying that, unless my point is validated on every single occasion, I'm wrong. So, re "i don't care that the most conservative chief justice in modern times legalized abortion. But, you have to explain it." No, I don't. I never said they would always act that way did I? So, it's still a strawman. On the other hand, if you say they are not biased then you have to explain the 10% of cases where they were. Still willing to play cards or do you accept that a bias is still a bias, even if it's only 10%? You have two choices, lose money or accept that I'm right.

"One has no idea what political temperament a justice will have afterhand when nominating them and approving them beforehand." One ought to avoid appointing unstable, unpredictable justices. And, since the use of Piacsso was clearly illustrative, rather literal, taking it literally is a straw man. The point remains that Picasso is famous for works like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dora_Maar_Au_Chat.jpg If you ask Google for images related to his name you get pictures of Picasso and a lot of abstract stuff. I never said, that he was only able to produce abstract art. No sensible interpretation of my words would lead to that conclusion. But it is what you expect from him. You seem to think that being biassed means always acting in a given manner while the word actually means having a tendency to act that way. Once in ten is often enough to be biassed. A bias of only about 1 in 40 is enough to make sure that casinos play roulette. So, most of your points don't seem to stand up to analysis. The simple answer to "Yet, 9 times more of the court's decisions are not so politically decided. Why does this scientific fact do nothing to dissuade your opinion?" 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. In essence I said"they are biassed" You said "you say they would always vote on party lines, and they don't always do so, it's only 10% of the time so you are wrong". But I didn't say they would always do it, I said they would be biased towards doing it. So, what you have attacked is not the point I actually put forward. It's a straw man. Please don't do it again.

"Or get rid of it, or ignore it, sure - nobody is saying it's physically impossible to ban guns in the US." Some folk give the impression that you ought not outlaw guns because the constitution says you should have them. They seem to think that the constitution is some sort of Holy Writ which can not be questioned. Since it can, if needs be, get altered, the constitution is not relevant to the arguments about whether the right to bear arms is a good thing from society's point of view. If I was somehow able to convince the entire population of the US that having guns in the home is a bad thing, then they would arrange to alter the constitution. It just tells you what a bunch of (admittedly very clever) people thought a long time ago, under very different circumstances thought about ownership of a more or less totally different sort of guns.

Studiot has it half right. For gases that react with water, like HCl, the solubility also decreases when you warm the solution. He needs to understand that equilibrium happens when the forward and reverse reactions have the same rate. The gas may well dissolve faster when the water is hot, but the reverse reaction will also be faster. What dominates the overall effect is the T S term in the Gibbs energy.

No Like the eye, the camera can not distinguish yellow light at 590 nm from some mixture of red light at 650 nm and green light at 530 nm. They will both give the same output. Since they give the same output, there is no way to look at that signal and say what the illumination was. You need to have the wavelength discrimination near the object you are looking at.

People don't think in any language- at least not always.

"Could I introduce carbon to water, let it soak, and pull out pure hydrocarbon in a solidified state?" No.

"The thing you keep saying, and the thing that is not true, is that they are dependent on you after you pay them. They aren't." Nope, I never said that. I barely mentioned pay. What I said was that the decisions will depend on the make-up of the court and that make-up is decided politically. In just the same way that, if I choose Picasso, I will get a portrait with half an eye and both the ears off to the left or whatever, because I chose an artist who paints like that. It's not that I paid him to do that- it's because that's what he does. I don't have to pay Justice Rightwinger to vote against abortion, because I chose him carefully, knowing that's how he would vote anyway. Since we were initially discussing gun control in the US it would have been silly not to focus somewhat on the US legal system, wouldn't it.

You need to decompose the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. that's not too difficult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis Then you need to cool the hydrogen until it freezes (at about -259C) which isn't easy unless you happen to have a supply of liquid helium. Why did you want to do this? You need to decompose the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. that's not too difficult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis Then you need to cool the hydrogen until it freezes (at about -259C) which isn't easy unless you happen to have a supply of liquid helium. Why did you want to do this?

I'm waiting for someone with better photoshop skills than mine to superimpose the FSM (blessings upon his Noodly appendages) with that image of the sunstorm

"Correct. The person who recommends you to be hired doesn't make you dependent on them forever more in every subsequent decision, unless they are your boss and can also fire you. That isn't the case here. This is as common as common sense gets." If I hire Picasso to paint my portrait, I expect a different outcome from hiring Monet. You choose the employee on the basis of what you expect to get from them. "This is as common as common sense gets." Also, as this is a science site I expect to see evidence if you are going to make allegations like this "I understand that anti-Americanism is fashionable regardless of how illogical it is, but this is a science site. Simply disagreeing with, and mischaracterizing, everything cited isn't expected" I remind you that, here in the UK the system is very similar and equally politically biassed so I'm also criticising our system.

"Would you get a one-way ticket to Mars" Yes, but I'm not saying who I would send.

The most spectacular example of "seeing stuff that isn't really there" since the "canals on Mars".

OK if you all insist. A bunch of politically appointed judges are independent of politics. The justification for this assertion is is that they don't always act that way. And, it seems you are unconcerned when they do act overtly politically.

Superglue is a monomer. It's fairly pure ethyl cyanoacrylate. It reacts with itself.

The constitution has changed. So it's a record of the current outcome of the process that defines "the formal, legal, official, structure and bound of the legislative powers of government in the US." "Noting that the Constitution forbids entire categories of law that might otherwise be employed to control guns in the US is not circular." nope, but saying that you can't outlaw guns because the constitution says so is silly: you could change the constitution.

Interestingly this image pre-dates Christianity by millennia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_cross

The decision by the state to sanction, or not to sanction, gun ownership by mentally competent adults, in spite of the risks and in spite of the fact that more guns means more shootings is a decision that the state can make. Whatever the outcome, it is either the correct decision, or it is not the correct decision. That decision is written down as part of the constitution, and, at the moment, they permit guns. But saying that the constitution is anything other than a record of the outcome of that decision making process, made some time ago, is unsupported. Using the constitution to argue against gun control is a circular argument.

"Republicans were frothing at the mouth to kill Obamacare" Which was originally a republican idea, and was supported by a republican SC. "Justice Roberts may have upheld Obamacare *because* he is a conservative Justice." So, it's OK, if only some of them are biassed? "Only 10% are split down what one might consider ideological lines." So that's only 10% too many. "You want to say "they make that decision on political grounds" on the sole basis that they were nominated by an elected official. But, the statistics completely disagree with you." Except where they don't. "What more does it take to convince you?" A system where overt political influence doesn't decide the makeup of the supreme court- one where the law makers are not also the judiciary. And, do you mean "Judges value their political independence" or "Justice Roberts may have upheld Obamacare *because* he is a conservative Justice."? They both can't be true.

This "fire breathing" idea is only slightly ludicrous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle

Is this close enough? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook

Yes, and during prohibition you didn't have a constitutional right to sell liquor. but before and after you did. But moral right and wrong didn't change because of some words on paper. The disparity is because it was a political decision. So is the rest of the constitution. The fact that the constitution can be changed means it's not acceptable to cite it as a logical proof of anything. There is, it seems, in the US, at the moment, a constitutional right to bear arms. (and as far as I understand it, nobody is saying otherwise, there is some debate about age limits and the types of guns etc.) That does not mean that bearing arms is a good thing- it certainly does not address the fact that those guns keep getting used to kill lots of innocent people. Saying "We should be allowed to carry guns because the constitution says so" is a logical fallacy because it's an appeal to a fallible authority. It is the logical equivalent of saying " we should stone adulteresses to death because the Bible says so". Sure the Bible says it, but that doesn't make it right. Just a thought, if the government changed the constitution to make gun ownership illegal,(no matter how unlikely that may be) would that alter your belief that you "ought" to be allowed to have guns? If not then the constitution has nothing to do with it.