John Cuthber

I think it is dross. It gets as far as the second sentence before saying something that's clearly false i.e. "To most people, it was an established fact that the earth was flat and sitting on a tortoises' back. Travel far enough and you'd fall off the edge.". This bit "They don't tell us the purpose of the sun or have an explanation for the stars" is also nonsense. The Sun doesn't need a purpose and we do have a good explanation of the stars.

Not considered by some, but it's the whole point of the post I wrote. However, notwithstanding the fact that I asked about a bridge that was built on top of the North pole it was answered by saying "Assume that you built it on the Equator in a west East direction". Imagine it's built on the North pole, straight out, tangential to the earth. Stand on top of it and start walking. The whole earth is "below" you, so gravity will always tend to pull you "down" onto the bridge rather than away from it. Ignoring questions of oxygen and temperature I can walk up a slope provided that I can get enough grip on it. (in the limit, I can climb a vertical ladder) I did mention a handrail so, as long as I don't get too tired, I can drag myself up using that. Am I right in thinking that, if I go far enough, I get thrown outwards by centrifugal force? (As an aside, does that happen at the point where I reach the height of a geosynchronous orbit?) The further I get from the centre of the earth, the lower my weight gets. The further out I am, the faster my (tangential) rotational speed gets and the bigger my radial acceleration gets. At some point surely, one overtakes the other and I "fall" outwards.

The unhelpful but accurate answer is that it depends. For both the compounds the resolution will depend on flow rate in agreement with this sort of thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van-deemter.jpg Without knowing a whole lot of other things about the situation it isn't possible to know where you are on that plot, so it's not possible to know if you would be better moving to the right (faster) or the left (slower). Realistically, the only way to tell is to try it.

The OP thinks there are only 4 sorts of people. LOL

Probably not. I doubt, for example that anyone would have prompted be to do so by asking "I have to know,,, How old are you kids?" If, in real life, they had complained about someone locking a thread that wasn't locked, then (in spite of the fact that my age is probably fairly obvious from my looks or from checking my profile) gone on to ask how old I was, I might well speak like that. I wonder if Homie12 does that sort of thing in real life.

" Doesn't immense pressure cause immense heat? " No. The bottom of the ocean is generally cold.

No. Because at that time people were not relying on the model in order to put planets in motion. On the other hand we do rely on our understanding of gravity to put satellites in orbit. That's one of the important bits of science- you can use scientific models to predict how things will work and, on that basis, you can undertake projects like satellite communication.

As I said If anyone can be bothered to transcribe his rant I'm happy to rebut at least most of it. (Though I think the cartoon pretty much does that for me.)

1 They are supported by evidence and the bible isn't, indeed it contradicts itself. Have a look here http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html#contradictions 2 What else would they have done it for? You pointed out that it doesn't make much sense otherwise. 3 the way in which the horizon recedes as you get higher is different for a flat earth, rather than a round one. You did the experiment- you just didn't know how to interpret it correctly. I think that's a bit silly.

Just fora start re "Shanon's entropy is not connected to thermodynamic entropy " Oh yes it is. " They don't give me genome, what they give me is a representation of it, not exactly what I wanted." Well, since , as I pointed out, you have a real copy of the real genome in (almost) every cell in your body, it would be pointless to give you the real thing. What they give you is a human readable version of it. What did you actually want? "Dualism still stands out as a possibility." At a pinch, so does triadism. But just because something is possible, doesn't make it real. Some bloke named Occam dealt with that idea a long while back. "Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in." No, their forerunners had to be in place. Those were replaced through a process of evolution. "These things are enough for me to give some space for irrationality in my mind so that I can investigate on new ways of looking at nature since I clearly know that there is something wrong with the positivist approach used in mainstream physical sciences. " If you "clearly know that there is something wrong" why can't you tell me what it is in nice clear words.

Why did you think that might work? Anyway, if you leach ashes with water you get K2CO3. If you concentrate that solution down and then add Ca(OH)2 you get CaCO3 and KOH. The Ca(CO3 is very insoluble so that drives the reaction to give KOH. If you boil off the water you can get solid KOH. What do you want KOH for?

1951 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greenhouse

Separating a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen doesn't take much energy (It does take some). You can let the mixture diffuse through a fine pored membrane for example. Splitting water into H2 and O2 takes a lot of energy. However you separate the gas mixture it's still remarkably dangerous. It's a better bet to produce them separately. The only thing I can think of that you might be trying to do is split water thermally, then separate the gases. The big problem is that the gases will react as soon as they cool down unless you can sort them while they are still very hot. But water, hydrogen and oxygen at those sorts of temperatures are very corrosive. It's difficult to get anything to work under those conditions

"1. They didn't find the scrolls, they made it up. Would you write over 770 000 words just for the fun of making people believe false things? 2. They found the scrolls, but they changed it along the way. Again, would you write out that many words, in hundreds of copies to trick someone, and for no other reason?" More or less. We know who "they" were, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea we know when they did it AD 325 and we know why. Power. Incidentally, since the different bits of the gospels and Bible contradict each other it's a bit pointless to say " yet don't deny each other, if they weren't God-breathed, so they must have been…" because they do deny eachother. "You say that they have evidence, but have you done their experiments? Why believe them? The Earth could be flat, I don't think it is, but I haven't done experiments to figure that out. " Actually, in all sensible probability, you have done the experiment. Have you noticed that you can see further from higher up- say upstairs in a building or when you climb a hill and admire the view? That only works because the earth is round. Please don't waste people's time posting silly things like that.

"If the islanders are acting on dream information then they're not acting on perfect logic." No, because perfect logic would permit them to grasp how they would react to dream information. " Imagine a case where there are 1 or 2 people with blue eyes " then it's a different question. " assume there is 1 blue which assumes there might be no blues" Bollocks. they can see blues, so they know there are not "no people with blue eyes". At the outset, where there are 100 blues, it is clearly absurd to assume that there is just 1. If there were just 2 islanders you would have a point, but there are many more than 2. "No one dies first" Oh yes they do. Anyway I'm bored so please answer the question. Who dies first? How do they decide it's "their turn"? This is meant to be a logic puzzle so lets see the logic behind the purported outcome. How does the first guy to die know that he shouldn't be the forth guy?

Plants don't generally bother much with sodium chloride. What, exactly, did you do?

Meh! http://xkcd.com/84/ Its dreadful! I could be as bad as Europe! He's broadly wrong on everything as far as I can see. If anyone can be bothered to transcribe his rant I'm happy to rebut at least most of it. In the mean time Google " We told them the wealth would trickle down" and look at how may images there are.

"No, the "dream information" is not the same unless the dreamer knows that everyone else also knows the dream information, which they don't." The others know exactly the same as the dreamer. That's my point. What if everyone had the same dream on the same night and didn't realise it was a dream? The traveller doesn't say anything that the islanders couldn't predict that he might say. Also, there still needs to be some external factor that puts the islanders in order. Otherwise you have to explain who dies first, who second etc? How does the first suicide know that he has to be first? What stops everyone thinking "I should be first" or, later on "I should have been first"? If it follows from strict logic that they all die then that same logic must say who dies third. Who is it? Fundamentally, this is a symmetry breaking problem. As written, the puzzle is fully symmetrical with respect to an exchange of any blues (or any browns) So any solution must also be symmetrical in that way. But the given solution is not symmetrical. If I swap corpse 1 with corpse 3 it doesn't work properly because someone died before there was a reason for them to do so. So the given solution must be incorrect.

" Turns out that Ca(OH)2 had no reaction whatsoever." How do you know? "Where do I get potassium sulfate? " I usually get it from the gardening store. Adding dilute sulphuric acid to the K2CO3 leached from ashes works too.

Still waiting

I still think the traveller brings no new information (of any order) to the island. Because, as far as I can see, the logic works perfectly well if one of the islanders dreams that a traveller arrives and makes his dreadful pronouncement. A dream clearly doesn't add new information. I think the flaw in using inductive logic is that you cannot put the islanders in order. How do you decide who dies on the first day? Who dies on the second and third and so on. Inductive logic works for things that form a clear sequence, but people don't.

Not universally (and not by me as it happens) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_sciences

"But what makes you think that it has suddenly become possible to convey the experience of an epiphany? " The experiment where they did ( with the helmet ). You quote this from wiki "They explain further: "Which of these three possible outcomes will actually occur? We believe we've learned the answer from a colorblind synesthete subject. Much like the theoretical Mary, our colorblind synesthete volunteer can not see certain hues, because of deficient color receptors. However, when he looks at numbers, his synesthesia enables him to experience colors in his mind that he has never seen in the real world. He calls these "Martian colors." T: we suggest that the same thing will happen to Mary." And it seems to support my point. In particular "he fact that color cells (and corresponding colors) can activate in his brain helps us answer the philosophical question" Those colour cells are real. There's nothing magic about "redness": it just means activating those cells (by whatever means). Redness is, therefore, perfectly amenable to scientific analysis and experimentation. Re. "Science cannot solve the problem of origin of life. Genome and genetic code is an abstract thing, which cannot be found physically". That's just not true. Proving that life originated in the way we think it id is a practical impossibility, but in principle, the experiment is easy- just watch a large number of Earth-like planets and see what happens. The genome isn't abstract at all. If you ask these people nicely they might even give you a copy- but don't get upset if they don't. You have a copy in every cell of your body. It's silly to pretend that it's "abstract". "Science can only measure information and who decides whether the things described by mathematics are abstract concepts or they actually describe something existing in the physical world which evades from being seen as we are confined to our universal phenomenal room?" The decision is made by the consensus among scientists and technologists who use the models. "are there any natural mechanisms which can produce natural algorithms along with a set of codes and machinerys to process those codes?" Yes, evolution is very good at that sort of thing. So, once again, what is there that science can't tell us about?

" I now have a massive amount of solution that is slowly evaporating to give (so far) clear crystals. " Do you know that 1 KOH is very hygroscopic. 2 KOH solutions rapidly pick up CO2 from the air and are converted to K2CO3?

I'd not recommend the fluoride and the iodide is soluble. Adding a carbonated drink to Mg SO4 won't ppt the carbonate. It won't work.