John Cuthber

The reactions are, in principle, reversible, but the pressures involved would be silly.

He's specifically talking about compounds where some of the " carbons carry 2xH, and others H+OH ". That rules out ethers, esters, aldehydes, acids and ketones.

If you are not an idiot then you tell the torturer things that might be true but can't be verified. For example you could give the location of an old disused arms cache. They waste valuable time and effort finding it and then come back and say that it was empty. You say that it must have been emptied since you last heard about it. You only have to hold out against telling "the truth" for a relatively short time; information becomes out of date very rapidly in wars. "Would you be more likely to tell the truth under torture if the torturer told you to expect more of the same if you are lying? " Not really, no. I'd expect more of the same whether I told the truth or not. After all, they have already made it clear that they are barbarians who enjoy torturing people. If they were not then they wouldn't do it (and pretend that they were doing it to obtain information).

I'm not sure about that. Ether, for example, isn't an alcohol and nor is acetone.

You say "The officer claims he targeted my front license plate since it gives a good horizontal flat and reflective surface for the purpose of targeting, however I have never put the front license plate on my car in the 10 years I have owned it!" If you can prove that then you have shown the officer is a liar. In that case there's no trustworthy evidence against you. On the other hand you might get off the speeding ticket, but get done for not having a license plate.

No, because the 4th square doesn't get a number. Arsenic pentachloride might get pretty close to ticking the other 3 boxes. It's hard to say since it's so unstable it hasn't been studied in detail.

Probably the best know example is ordinary alcohol.

"Why , for soda lime glass , is the derivative of transmissivity with respect to wavelength so severe of a drop when the wavelength is in a narrow range around approximately 2.6 micrometres ?" I think the essence of the answer is explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perturbation_theory_(quantum_mechanics)#Time-dependent_perturbation_theory It's a resonance effect.

Torture is likely to get the prisoner to say something, but there's no reason to think he will tell the truth (even if he knows it). If there's a way of checking what he says, then you wasted your time (and your dignity) torturing him in the first place. If you can't verify the data then you can't use it anyway.

Not all crows are black http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/06/19/bc-albino-crows-.html the colour of cows has no influence on this. I never saw a purple cow, I never wish to see one. But I can tell you anyhow, I'd rather see, than be one.

Michael, I didn't make myself clear. When I said "and nobody cared" I meant in the sense that it affected nothing that anybody did. I'm sure you would care about the opportunity to pig out at the Hilton so you would invalidate that condition.

"Bible law exceeds God’s “Eye for an Eye” law. From this fact,..." It's not a fact. Last time I checked, the bible was God's law. Also, remember that anyone citing Leviticus is likely to end up looking, at best, rather outdated. for example "And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, he is forehead bald: yet is he clean" (other silly looking quotes are available.) Seriously, where can I find "God's laws" if not in the bible?

Edtharan, in saying "If you had a prisoner that could not remember any previous torture sessions, then the torture would be completely ineffective. " you seem to overlook the fact that torture is ineffective anyway.

"The medical progress is coming to brick wall." "Well some dotors hope in 50 or 100 years from now we will tell genes when to turn off or when to turn on and there will be a three approaches to problem of drugs or surgery or telling of when to turn on or off the genes" While we are working towards the latter, the former cannot be true. "other than that, medical progress is slowing down and yes medical breakthroughs is slowing down very fat ." So, because we are working towards revolutionising the whole of medicine, you think we have hit a brick wall. BTW, have you noticed that the medical journals are getting fatter, and more numerous because they have so much progress to report? Did you notice that survival rates for most cancers are getting better? Have you spotted the fact that, apart from overweight Americans, the lifespans of people are getting longer? In fact, is there any real evidence for your assertions at all?

We invented money once; if it all went away then we would probably invent it again. It's just bits of paper or metal trinkets. I did once before point out that the transfer of money isn't actually important. Imagine all the money went away but nobody cared. People still went and did their jobs. The farmers grew crops, the shopkeepers ordered goods and people came and took stuff from the shops. Everything the same as today, but without money changing hands. (I'm not sure what the bankers would do but, to be honest, I'm not sure what they do now).

I would. There are certainly too many to ignore. Anyway, they would be the "low hanging fruit" if you were trying to wage war against Islam, why not start with the ones nearby?

If you were outside there would be enough ventilation. I'm not knocking it off the list until you try it out with lots of fresh air. Why do you think there is not usually condensation on the floor? It's because there's enough natural ventilation to remove the water. A dehumidifier would kind-of-work, but think about the capacity you need. It has to pick up water at the same rate the players lose water (as sweat and by breathing). You have a rough idea of that rate if you look at how much water they drink. If there are 30 of them and they each drink a bottle of water an hour that's something like 15 litres of water an hour that the dehumidifiers need to shift. My guess is they drink more than that. A big industrial dehumidifier will shift 50 litres in a day under ideal conditions. That's roughly two litres an hour. You get 3 of them and you can move 6 litres an hour (if you are lucky) The other 9 litres an hour will end up on the floor. The only practical way you can get rid of all the water is to blow it out of the window.

Incidentally, how can the US be at war with a significant fraction of itself?

"The loss of the latter two is also a pity, since learning them is vital for building a good English vocabulary" I just wonder; do you think that most English people have a poor vocabulary, or do you think we all learn Latin and Greek? Speaking of English vocabulary, the word "nous" is part of it and it still has all the technical meanings it ever had (as well as the every-day one that is pretty much the same as its every-day meaning was in ancient Greece)

Since you don't seem to want to do this the easy way, perhaps you should ask these people http://www.publicanalyst.com/

What's the point? Say they test the food and find, for example, temazepam. What will that tell you? If you insist on spending your money failing to find out anything useful, the labs you need to get in touch with are called "contract laboratories". There are lots of them to choose from. Or you could buy a camera.

Simple question, if you really want to find out what's going on, why not use a camera?

Do you realise that yours is an extraordinary claim and therefore requires extraordinary evidence?

If I were responsible for an illegal war like the one in Iraq, I'd probably not want to be seen to accept that responsibility.

"Which foreign language is most beneficial to learn for an Australian? " English (for a given definition of foreign).