John Cuthber

You can usually get bigger better made crystals by cooling a solution slowly so the crystals form slowly.

I could ask this question two ways. Either where does the cut-off occur? i.e. where is the point where the complexity becomes too much for physics and we end up with collections of atoms behaving in unpredictable ways. It must happen somewhere between hydrogen atoms which we can calculates quite well and humans which we can't. Or I could ask if the physicists have solved the 3 body problem yet? i.e even for some incredibly simple systems like a single helium atom, we are not able to solve the equations analytically. We can write then down and we can get pretty good answers, but strictly speaking these equations can not be solved. The physicists look down on the other sciences as being "inexact", but the fact is that they are not, philosophically speaking, any better off themselves. The difference is in what level of approximation you choose to put up with. You can't solve Schroedinger's equation for a human, but then again, you can't really solve it for a helium atom.

Not my field but, IIRC there is an example of scientific thought in the old testament. Joseph was accused of seducing the wife of Potiphar. He claims (honestly) that she was the one taking the lead. He points out that his clothes were torn but hers were not and this, of course, supports his story. But the facts are ignored and he gets jailed anyway.

The only good thing about homoeopathy is that it generates lots of jokes http://xkcd.com/765/ BTW, did you hear about the homoeopath who forgot his remedy and died of an overdose?

If only the church was allowed to conduct marriages then they would very clearly be in a position to dictate who could marry whom. There is no reason to give them that authority. If they want to have some sort of ceremony, that's fine by me, but don't expect me to take part. If they want to exclude some people from their little party, then that's their prerogative, but they should not exclude me or anyone else from marriage because marriage is more important then the church. Why not do it the other way round. Why not have the church cross out the word "marriage" and make up some new word? After all it's not as if they ever had a legitimate monopoly on marriages in the past: why give them one now?

Glad you recognise the style. It's called showing evidence, and I plan to carry on with it. It's true that the figures quoted are for delta T of zero, but these things still work when delta T is quite large. Pointing out that if something is inefficient then using lots of them is less efficient isn't really helpful. People have been buying and using them for years. The market isn't that generous: if they didn't work, people wouldn't use them. Anyway, as I said, I usually try to provide data so here's some more. http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/007b/0900766b8007ba20.pdf page 8, coefficient of performance still exceeds 10% for a delta T of 60C for a single stage. For a smaller delta T the efficiency improves. With a small enough temperature difference, say 20C (which is still just about useful) the COP is a little over 100%.

As far as I can see that's only true in the sense that testing the idea that electrons repel each-other would take the whole universe. You would need to test it with all possible pairs of electrons. However most people would accept, a theory that had been tested on quite a bit of the universe and found to work, as a potential ToE.

As far as I can tell, the only true statement that they make in the first 2.5 min or so is that water expands on freezing and that we would be in trouble if it didn't. That's not a good hit rate. Most of it is BS. So I gave up on it.

It still works for me. Is anyone else having problems with it?

"Further, if God doesn't exist outside of time, how is it possible for God to be omniscient?" Omniscience is self contradictory anyway. If it's a required property of a God then God doesn't exist at all- never mind the issue of time.

It's difficult to be certain but this sort of thing http://www.google.co.uk/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=bug+dtector#q=bug+detector&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=tzTPT6n6JsbF0QXIn_3JCw&ved=0CL4BEK0E&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=e1521a97fe2508cb&biw=1280&bih=899 might find any device. It won't deal with very high tech stuff, but you are dealing with school-kids not government agencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_surveillance_counter-measures

Why not, and in particular, what part of the definition prevents it?

The first line "A scientific state is the condition in which a scientific system exists." fails to explain what a "scientific system" is. How can a system be "scientific" or not?

It looks like they do. http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=peltier&_sacat=58058&_odkw=computing&_osacat=58058 And trying to pretend that they don't just makes you look silly. Incidentally, even you have just tacitly accepted a 27% efficiency. Here are some data (unless you are going to pretend that a major company is telling fibs.) http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/002a/0900766b8002a346.pdf Let's start with the first one in the table. It pumps 1 Watt. To do so it takes 2.1 A at 0.85V. That's 1.78Watts Why are you seeking to tell us that 1 W is "very few % " of 1.78W? It looks like roughly half to me. Feel free to look at the other actual facts presented and see if any of them supports your claim.

If you are going to put the word "INFERS" in capital letters you should find out what it means. An abstract concept like miles per gallon isn't in a position to infer anything. You probably meant implies "Why is it that we can so easily conceptualize the idea of division in units but not multiplication?" Do you have a problem understanding square metres or a cubic foot? What about the Joule- roughly the gravitational energy released by an apple falling off a table (1 Newton metre)? It seems you are OK with that. We can handle multiplication of units, as long as we understand what the product is. You ask about the " kilogram watt" and I grant you that it's obtuse. But why would you ever calculate it?

Not officially available outside the UK, but you might find that this answers Airbrush's question. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jszy4/Horizon_20112012_The_Transit_of_Venus/

How would you know? In particular, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of fathers adopt someone else's child without knowing it. Way back in history that was, if anything, even more common.

It was a long time ago that I did this but, as far as I can recall the crystals of boric acid I got were flat and shiny like the ones in your picture. That is the characteristic shape of boric acid crystals (in much the same way that salt crystallises as little cubes). What are you hoping to get? If you want a powder you can always grind the crystals.

If the church and the state really can't agree about who should be allowed to marry then it's the church that should get out of the game. Plenty of people do without the church. It's not necessary. On the other hand we all rely on the state. Also I don't get to vote for the local church so it should not be in a position to dictate how I act; in particular it should have no say in whom I may marry.

Thanks, I should have also added that, even if there are issues where it doesn't matter, there are clearly issues where it matters a great deal and we should be prepared to judge people on their attitudes towards those issues.

Arguably it's still following the inverse square law when it's being lumpy. If you calculate the effect on the satellite of each lump of the earth following the inverse square law you get the right answer. Also, it has been measured on a tabletop scale as well as on the astronomical scale.

Well done for the strawman. My point is that someone who gets into the habit of believing incredible stuff is likely to carry on doing so. In the case of a mechanic it might mean that he believes in some "new" engine additive that the maker says will improve efficiency. I'd prefer a mechanic who was in the habit of looking at the information and making a decision rather than showing blind faith. I think that's a reasonable preference and I think (all things being equal) that an atheist mechanic is more likely to do the job I want. "Whether a person is an evolutionist or a creationist has no bearing on how they view their local councils efforts in garbage removal." Would you like to bet on that? There is good evidence of political belief correlating with religious belief. www8.stat.umu.se/kursweb/vt011/stagkvantv11/?download...pdf

Oh good, we seem to be back at the topic. Unless we grow enough food we can not feed the people. If you look at figures like these http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_cer_yie_kg_per_hec-cereal-yield-kg-per-hectare you can see that intensive farming (with all it's problems) generates a lot of food. There are exceptions of course, Canada doesn't look good on this scale. If all production yields were as low as some of those then we would starve. I agree that there are massive problems with distribution and other issues (they are probably a large part of why Zimbabwe is at the bottom of the list.) However you cannot simply dismiss yield as important. If you think that organic farming raises yields why do you think farmers generally don't adopt it (especially as "organic" food now sells at a premium) and why did they drop it in the first place? In effect you are arguing against the farmers and their understanding of their work. I read the bit about the effect of large scale conventional farming on small scale organic farming somewhere, most probably New Scientist. I will try to track down the article.

For those who think that description is outdated, may I remind you that we still talk about the bride's father "giving her away". Marriage has been a property transfer agreement for a long time. Ownership of the bride was formally transferred from the father to the husband. Not very PC, but that was the way it was.

There was ( I think) probably a ceremony of some sort before there was a law or a religion. Birds do it Bees do it. I'm afraid I couldn't find a video of educated fleas doing it.