John Cuthber

define "microbes" if they product is based on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage then they might have a point. But I suspect it's just a rip off.

"The data in the thread above don't support the idea that significant advances are being made in medicine." Sort of true, but only because "We are finding cures for cancer every day," is an assertion not evidence. On the other hand this http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/cancernews/2011-07-05-Small-US-study-suggests-celecoxib-may-reduce-risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former-smokers-?view=rss is actually evidence of a drug that reduces deaths from lung cancer. "but a healthy population dies not of cancer but of pneumonia," Just for a start http://xkcd.com/285/ Not since the development of antibiotics they don't, or at least not nearly so much. That is part of the reason why they now die of cancer. Also, since lung cancer has a long latency the people who took up smoking in the 60s are still dying from it. Here's the evidence http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/lung/smoking/ It shows that the rates of smoking ion the UK only really started to drop in about 1990 so the people who were still smoking 20 years ago are still dying from it. "Stem cell therapies hold great promise, but you won't see anything significant in clinical practise for another half century in that field" Can you tell me next weeks lottery numbers or are you not really able to predict the future?

Sorry, but that's the wrong area code. Sepoquro's formula must be wrong.

It's an amusing gimmick, but it has no legal standing.

IIRC the displacement of the eardrum is about comparable with the size of a molecule anyway. Everything you hear is nanoscale and it always was.

Under almost any conditions above about 200 C you will eventually get mainly charcoal and water. At high enough temperatures the steam and charcoal will react to give carbon monoxide and hydrogen. What you cannot get is "molten wood".

"but IMO for life itself to exist the brain/memory must start working well before birth." IYO perhaps, but in fact, life can exist perfectly well without any memory, even in adulthood. Ask a mushroom.

"I have an interview on Monday to work as a production assistant for a major pharmaceuticals manufacturer. What should I learn on the weekend to impress the president of this company?" Honesty. Well OK, that may be unfair, but if you think you can pull the wool over their eyes by cramming about practical chemistry in a few days then you will not have a long career (except, perhaps, in politics). If you don't know the stuff, say so. They can teach =you the lab stuff if they fell they want to. If they even suspect you are bulls**tting them they won't bother to speak to you again. On the other hand, make sure you have stories you can tell about things you have learned in a hurry before and how keen you are to get into the field. If your only previous job was flipping burgers then at least make sure you can say that you learned to do it in half the time the other trainees did. If you are going to cram something then Dr Miller's ideas are a good start. Also learn a bit about the company.

If you were not, at some level, conscious when asleep, you would fall out of be a lot more often.

If there was a God, He would have ensured that this wasn't posted in Chemistry.

Obviously, but I keep them a thousand miles away for good measure. Really, I'm just reiterating the point made earlier i.e. "There is also the problem of the vast internal distances within Australia, so it is not as easy to attend a conference in Sidney if you are working in Melbourne as it is to travel for the same purpose from Cambridge to London."

I do want to calculate everything, but I realise that might take a while. Could you start by using that equation to calculate these for me please? (1) next week's winning lottery numbers. (2) The 'phone number of the girl I met in the pub on Friday (sorry, I didn't get her name- it was a bit loud and I wasn't entirely sober). (3) anything of any F***ing use at all?

"Flying simply makes sense." Not going makes even more sense. If the place is really too big to get round without trashing the fossil fuel reserves you have to ask. why go?

"Put a Michelson Morley apparatus into orbit." Michelson and Morley already did that, specifically they put it on a planet (commonly referred to as Earth) in orbit round the sun. "It should detect the speed of the spacecraft. " What would your second guess be?

It's wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis

I think it's significant that your reply to my observation "Any chance of an answer to my point that you seemed to be using the argument from personal incredulity?" is "Sure. I don't see a problem with that approach." You think that a logical fallacy, duly noted as such, is a reasonable point of view.

Hang on? "I remember being breast fed at least once although my mom says she didn't breast feed " So, you know that your memories of early age are wrong but you still think "I can remember things from about the age of two or so for sure" How do you know that these are not false memories where what you are actually remembering is imagining yourself in stories you have heard about you when you were very young? (and the same goes for other who say they remember anything before about 5 years old.) Also, if you ask a 5 year old what they remember about being two they don't recall it (or they recall very little). How come you can now remember things you didn't know when you were 5?

"But you fly down Friday night, go to a party Saturday and fly home Sunday, it's no big deal. You'd get used to it. " Oh yes, I forgot about the carbon footprint of a lot of Oz, all that travel and the "need" for air conditioning doesn't do a lot for per capita energy use.

For the benefit of the 95% of the population who don't live in the USA, could you tell us what the 17th amendment actually is?

And since you can't get to absolute zero...

Well, there's this http://www.lab-initio.com/screen_res/nz338.jpg and if you don't like the F word don't watch this.

"It seems to me that π was used originally because the diameter of an object was easiest to measure, along with its circumference," Sure, it's perfectly easy to measure them both, but you can't use the same unit of length because pi is irrational the two measurements are incommensurate. The same thing happens with tau.

Thanks for the data on the optical fibres in the eye. I should have remembered Orgel's second rule. Of course, it doesn't really prove a lot. Were Pringle cans invented to act as antennae for wi fi or were they invented for some other purpose, but subsequently found to act as wi fi links? Glial cells are usually "just structural" but it doesn't surprise me that evolution has co opted some of them. The basic form; a long thin cylinder, would be there as a structural component. To be tough it would have a lower water content and/ or a higher level of cross linking which would mean it had a higher refractive index. So to do it's structural job, it would be pretty well set up to act as a wave guide. Any chance of an answer to my point that you seemed to be using the argument from personal incredulity?

On what basis do they assume that mankind has been getting this wrong for at least 10000 years? If we have not been getting it wrong, then why change it?

Is it just me who read this "But if they were put back into Scotland, sooner or later a pack of them would attack and eat someone. Then the lawyers would have a field day." and was reminded of one of the fairly early scenes from Jurassic Park? Anyway, a reason, if not a particularly good reason, for keeping the animals is that if we get rid of them we cannot bring them back. It's seldom a good idea to make big changes that you cannot undo.