John Cuthber

Google doesn't. What do you think it means?

On a practical note: plenty of things still stink when they come out of the autoclave.

OK, so what idiot let a 3 year old get hold of aldicarb? It's only licensed for professional use. The fact that some twit can't follow the rules is down to him, not the chemical. Incidentally does anyone else have a problem with "By the time the girl arrived at the local emergency room, she was near death. She recovered eventually" I mean, just how near death is it when you recover. "Industrial agriculture IS NOT currently feeding the world " Nope, but at least its feeding some bits of it. BTW, have you noticed that the bits with more than enough food are the bits that use highly mechanised / industrialised farming? the point remains that organic farming generally has lower yields so adopting it wouldn't help anywhere and it would probably make things even worse. And I'm still waiting for someone to answer my question. Why did farmers change their production methods? The issue of DDT is interesting. It was brought in to use instead of arsenic based poisons. It's not great but I will challenge anyone to a competition- for as much arsenic oxide as they can eat, I will eat that much DDT. DDT was actually a relatively "green" product compared to the ones it replaced. Sure, we now do better. That's progress. We no longer let any Tom, Dick or Harry use Aldicarb. That's progress too. But remember- the only reason we can replace these toxic chemicals is because we have better ones. Nobody could seriously suggest that we abandoned the use of pesticides altogether. That leaves the "organic" pesticides like nicotine- which is rather more toxic to people than to insects (on a weight for weight basis). You might wonder what it is about nicotine that poisons you- the mode of action is actually rather similar (in the effect, if not the direct cause) to another well known group. In the case of nicotine poisoning you die from over stimulation of the cholinergic nervous system Oddly enough, that's what kills you if you get from nerve gases. So, the organic movement advocates replacing the "nerve gas like" OPs with also "nerve gas like" nicotine. EDIT (I forgot to ask.) And I'm still wondering what part of my premise was false. I assumed that long ago there were no synthetic fertilisers or pesticides so all farming was organic. Now most farms use synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and so they are not organic. At some point they changed. There was a reason for that change. But, when I asked what the reason for that change was I was told my question was based on a false premise.

What false premise. Also, since the MMb predates the idea of "organic" farming, it has nothing to do with the issue.

Also, he says he uses pure water (not electrolytic solution). One electrode is Mg//Mg(OH)2 the other is H+ / H2 The only ions needed are H+ and OH which are there anyway. The solubility of Mg(OH)2 is pretty low so it's fairly pure water. I think what he means is he didn't explicitly add anything to the water.

Another interesting one would be to calculate the forces if you tried to turn it upside down (WRT the set up in the digram) say in 1 second assuming the shaft length is the same as the rotor diameter Feel free to make such other assumptions as you see fit.

No, but I think you would be an idiot to think that many or most aliens are built that way. Possible yes: probable no.

I hope he's not planning to give up the day-job and concentrate on his musical career.

I think it's plain that he doesn't realise that, for his design, the radial loads are taken by the nylon. That's fine for a toy, but with a big, fast rotor they wouldn't cope. They would overheat and melt in much the same way as, for example, cheese. That's why proper magnetic bearings are expensive and complicated: they have to deal with radial and mixed loads.

How can a badly made battery change the world?

Great! Now you can tell us how well they cope with radial loads. Incidentally, what is the nylon/plastic for in your diagram?

I disagree. This "I put copper and magnesium in some water" tells you exactly how he makes electricity. He has made a battery. It will run until the magnesium runs out and he needs to buy some more. Nothing new- pretty much the same experiment that Galvani did http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Galvani Odd as it may seem, I don't want to invest in this process. For a start it is obvious, so there's no way you will get a patent.

Yes I know they have magnetically levitated trains. I know they are expensive. They are expensive because they are complicated. If you could make them work without being complicated they would be cheaper. The people who buy trains do not want them any more expensive than they need to be. So the people who make them complicated do that because that can not make them simple. If your idea for a bearing worked then it would be simple and cheap and so people would use it. They don't. So your idea does not work. Magnetic bearings do work, but they are much more complicated than your idea.

Actually I did. I pointed out that your position that "God can do anything" is logically inconsistent and, therefore, a bad axiom. I realise it's nothing new- I didn't come up with the idea- it's a lot older than me, but I did bring it to your attention. You ignored it - your response had nothing to do with the issue. Also, once again, you are ignoring the evidence by saying "There is no possible way mono-theism could have survived that long if it was that illogical " It did, but that's not the big problem. You compound this by saying " it actually didn't do one single thing for people," which is a straw man and, as such, a logical fallacy. Such arguments are frowned upon.

So, you thing unicorns make your computer work then?

Do you actually read what you post? for example "but no warm is is taken from the poles at the surface." The whole point of the wind is to move warmth to the poles. Why can't you see this?

Actually any fusor that works will give you more energy out than you put in. However the figures are likely to be something like 1KW in and 1.0000000000001 Kw out. If you are using one to warm the room then it's an improvement on an ordinary heater, but only slightly- very slightly.

How much is left near the end?

Hello! Is anyone there? Studiot, When you answer the question I asked it will be your turn to ask. Got that? OK, now why do you think farmers originally adopted modern farming practice?

I don't give a tinker's cuss for the video: I didn't watch it. However the winds on earth are still driven by the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. What do you think drives them?

I rather suspect that we know they are often right because they are a self fulfilling prophesy.

1 No, the effect will be too small to measure essentially because the blades are narrow and most of the air simply misses them. 2 Congratulations this bit ( an echo of what I said earlier) is actually true. 3. Stop just imagining things: Learn some physics and do some maths. 4 Yes you are aware of them. This whole tread is about them. You just don't understand that the winds are driven by the temperature difference between the poles and the equator. 5 No it doesn't. Just for a start, for a good part of the year the poles are in darkness- they can't see the sun so the idea that it heats them is just silly. 6 No. It's how you misunderstand it.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus "Aside from its rarity, the original scientific interest in observing a transit of Venus was that it could be used to determine the distance from Earth to the sun, and from this the size of the solar system, by employing the parallax method and Kepler's third law. The technique involved making precise observations of the slight difference in the time of either the start or the end of the transit from widely separated points on the Earth's surface. The distance between the points on the Earth was then used as a baseline to calculate the distance to Venus and the Sun via triangulation.[12] Although by the 17th century astronomers could calculate each planet's relative distance from the Sun in terms of the distance of the Earth from the Sun (an astronomical unit), an accurate absolute value of this distance had not been determined." Historically itr was an important observation: now I think it's just rarity value.

Why do you think you add any? How much is left near the end?

Why have you replied to an assertion that nobody made? Nobody said God had to do anything. But I did point out that there is at least one thing He is not able to do, even if He wishes to. Either He is unable to set himself a task He can't perform, or He can't perform that task. It really is a paradox whether you like it or not. Also, if "God can do anything" isn't an axiom (and it shouldn't be) then it kills your earlier assertion. So whether it's in the Bible or not doesn't matter, you can't rely on it (which is what we said in the first place). Here is a reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox