John Cuthber

I know Swansont already made this point, I just like the clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy0UBpagsu8

"All of these concerns have to be seen in the context of the fact that the transmission of AIDS in the developed world is extremely low. " How does the virus know it's in the developed world?

The leftover curry seemed to help, but it took all day and night. I was, therefore, fine the next morning. My pet theory is that if you are sober enough to remember the advice about drinking lots of water before you go to bed then that sobriety might be why you don't get such a hangover. Incidentally, I don't eat carrots; never have liked them so we are talking about 40 years since I ate them. So how come I throw them up after drinking? (actually I suspect it's chips (fries for those on the wrong side of the pond) in disguise) Re "Not even getting a hangover. 1 glass of water per 1-2 drinks. " And take your mobile phone so you can still talk to your friends, even though you spend most of the evening in the bathroom

" I'm just wondering if it is actually possible to designate markers that would be commonly identifiable in all citizens but not in any non-citizens." "This is clearly a non starter. If I applied for, and got, US citizenship my DNA wouldn't change. Citizenship has nothing to do with genetics. How come you didn't realise that? "

"I presume then that you have some purely mechanical system available to: Make nitroglycerine and control the process temperature wile you do it. Make and dehydrate the nitrocelluose, keeping it solvent-wet throughout the process Mix the nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine and salts Extrude and cut the cordite rods Glaze the propellant with graphite without causing any static discharge and blowing things up" No, I would have some bloke with a thermometer do it. The alchemists had access to alcohol and distillation. You can get acetone by distilling wood tar or calcium acetate. Glycerine is a by product of soap making- again that was well known before the 18th c My mum's old meat mincer would do the extrusion. You can run a tumble mixer with a water wheel with even less chance of sparks than using an electric motor. "Chemistry is important, but there is a lot more to explosive manufacture than just chemistry." I know: I sometimes work with them.

Which 21st? Greek orthodox? I wonder if the organisers of the parties have booked a clean- up team.

Both properties have infinite extent (eventually). It is, in principle, true that if you suddenly produced some mass somewhere then the light emitted or reflected by that mass would reach an observer at the same time that the effect of gravity would reach the observer. Anyway I only said "significantly" to avoid pointless discussions about relativistic mass. The light suddenly becomes billions of times brighter, and it's mass changes by an amount a billion times too small to observe. That's what I meant by significant.

This is clearly a non starter. If I applied for, and got, US citizenship my DNA wouldn't change. Citizenship has nothing to do with genetics. How come you didn't realise that?

Lemur, do you think turning a light bulb on or off significantly affects it's gravitational effect?

"Is the manufacture of modern gun powder from scratch possible without electricity?" Yes. There's nothing about making cordite that needs electricity. "Can this be done by any geek with a library book or is this an uber technical task that takes years of knowledge and experience?" With the information currently on record in libraries it would be slow but possible. I'd say weeks or months because part of the process is the "fermentation" of manure to get potassium nitrate. You would also probably need to be a good glass blower, or be able to find someone who can work glass for you. All this would depend on the availability of the know-how. If someone had burned the books in the library because they needed to keep warm and paper makes good kindling, then they would be stuck with old fashioned gunpowder

Atoms and molecules are subject to radiation and mechanical shocks that have energies of the order of kT where k is Botzman's constant and T is the temperature. Near room temperature that's something like the equivalent of 0.025eV If you heat things up to a few thousand degrees you raise the average energy to about 0.25eV. Nuclear transitions take place with energies of the order of 10,000 to 10,000,000 eV From the nuclear point of view, any atom outside of the core of a star is already somewhere calm and cold.

If you don't know what he has plotted then you can't really comment on it. The plot is the traditional plot for the standard additions method. It's a plot of instrumental response vs. added concentration. The measured concentration is, as the OP says, the value of the concentration axis where the plotted line crosses it. "What I expected to happen, was that you have an unknown concentration of x which you wished to know the concetration of. So you would have made up some samples of known concentrations of x and then measured the absorbance " Why? He already said he's doing this by standard additions "Does that help? " Probably not.

I am currently undertaking research in this field. The present project involves seeing if the leftovers from last night's curry help.

The alchemists had oil of vitriol and aqua fortis. They would have had cellulose fibre such as cotton, or hemp. They could have made guncotton. If I needed to, I could make the stuff from "scratch". I could burn pyrites and oxidise the SO2 formed to SO3 . I can get potassium nitrate by the decomposition of nitrogenous waste. http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/lecontesalt/leconte.html So I could make nitric acid. Sulphur does occur free in nature, but if I had to I could get it from pyrites and gypsum (roast the gypsum with charcoal to get calcium sulphide; react that with acid to get H2S and react that with SO2 to get sulphur) As long as the libraries (or at least some of them) are still OK in this post-apocalyptic world, gun cotton is perfectly possible. In practice this would be a major challenge, but for the sake of a book it's perfectly possible.

The "smell of rust" isn't actually the smell of rust. A clean piece of rusty iron doesn't smell, but one that has been handled does. The oils from your skin get onto the metal and the rust alters them chemically into other compounds. It is those other compounds that you can smell. (strictly speaking, the rust catalyses the reaction of the oils with air, but the effect is the same as if the rust itself reacted)

"It doesn't do much good for America to puff itself up as the defender of human rights around the world and then violate them when it suits its own interests. " For the record, a good example of what Habeas corpus means is that it's the right to a trial; which was denied to the people in Guantanamo bay. It is also the right to trial that was denied to OBL- though as I have pointed out, if the soldiers had a legitimate basis for believing that their action in killing him was necessary to prevent further loss of life then it may well have been legal. We don't have the evidence so we don't know. For all I know, the tasteless joke about him being an Arsenal football club fan might be right. "personally i would have liked to have see him paraded around in chains and chained up at the 9/11 site and left there to rot in a pit of pig guts but that is just me" It is indeed, just you; and you may want to think about what it says about you. Personally I'd like to have seen him treated just like any other criminal. (Sadly that probably wouldn't have been possible). There's nothing special about him, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Marat, The case of John Haigh is probably the most famous one where no body was found but the guy was found guilty. In his case he misunderstood a different bit of legal Latin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_delicti Lets be clear about this. Habeas corpus doesn't refer to the body of a victim. Nor does Corpus Delicti. Given your understanding of the law, perhaps you should let others speak on issues like "Since it is surrealistic to suppose that a team of armed Navy Seals could not subdue an unarmed 55 year old bin Laden without having to kill him first, this has to count as yet another crime against international law by the U.S. ". In particular, if they believed that he had a bomb they would have been acting in self defence and in the defence of innocent bystanders if they shot him to prevent him triggering it. That would have been lawful. (OK, I rather doubt it's true but if I were the shooter it's what I would be saying very loudly to anyone who would listen)

You seem not to realise that Unions are made up of their members. They are reasonable democratic. A union that stopped representing people wouldn't survive. It can ignore the plight of a few for the sake of the many, but before long that "few" decide to form their own interest group. "My view of Walmart is that it does indeed negotiate lower prices in the way you say, but it also prevents competition that could lower prices potentially further, thus setting a price-floor that other 'competitors' can use as a stable market-position indicator." Wouldn't "consumers (who) bond together to get lower prices out of the corporations?" do the same? "Consumers could bond together to organize direct purchases that "cut out the middleman" of distributors/retailers altogether." They sometimes do, but generally they can't be bothered. Sure, I could organise a "Farmer's market" and get my food cheaper; but is it worth my while? If I decide to do it then it will only work if I persuade others to buy there to. If I do that am I not just another shop? "They could also lobby government to break up large corporations like Walmart in a way that preserves economies of scale and makes them compete against each other to result in even lower prices. " They did. But does anyone know why there's only one monopolies and mergers commission?

"Another method, if you are doing LC-MS or HPLC, is to run your unknow sample to get a baseline chromatogram. And then add some authentic standard of those compounds and see whch peak gets bigger." If you do that with known amounts of analyte then you are actually using the "standard additions" method. NMR is a very useful method. It has one aspect that makes it particularly easy co calibrate- all protons give the same response. That's not true for most analytical techniques where the response factor is different for different materials. So I could use dioxane as a calibrant for an NMR, even if I was measuring toluene. But if I tried doing that with a UV detector or a FID I would get the wrong answer. This should tell you a lot about the method (and why it's not always as good as people think it is) http://www.rsc.org/images/brief37_tcm18-149213.pdf

"Since labor-oriented political-theorists surely know of this logic, why do they always call for more jobs?" Possibly because they believe a smaller "reserve army of unemployed workers" is better. How big did Marx say the "army" should be? How many do you think it should be? Would a million more be better for the economy? How about a million fewer? Is there an objective way to answer that sort of question? If not, is it a shock that two groups of people have differing views on it? Of course there's the other reason. They agree that Capitalism needs this army, but they don't think much of Capitalism. Here's a bad analogy. I think that religious extremism needs an army of people who feel so disenfranchised that they consider suicide bombing as a reasonable option. I don't like religious extremism; so I would prefer there not to be a group of people in that position. (It's not the only reason I don't like it, but it's a valid reason). To that end I will fight for the improvement of their conditions.

( Note for Americans, 95% of the world do not live in America and may do things differently.)

"The fundamental basis for establishing the justification of the state to hold anyone in prison to face a criminal charge is known as the 'habeas corpus' principle. 'Habeas corpus' means 'you should have the body,' referring to the fact that being able to display the physical corpse of the person killed is the very essence of establishing that someone is guilty of murder." Bollocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus Anyway, who cares? If Bin Laden wasn't killed then I don't think it will be long before he posts a video of himself reading a copy of the Times with the headline about his death. If he was killed then the question is was that killing lawful? that's a more difficult question. Was it an execution by the US without trial? If so that's very naughty- especially since it was on someone else's territory. If it was a serious attempt to capture him for due process but, unfortunately, he refused to surrender, pulled a gun and was shot by, in effect, police acting in self defence that's another story. What are the chances of us ever being certain about the truth? Practically nil. Do I care? Not a lot. I think it would have been better if he had been tried then dumped in jail for ever. However, I accept that would be impractical. Too many people would be prepared to put too much effort into getting him out and an equally big mob would want to break in to kill him. I don't believe in capital punishment because I don't want to be thought of as sinking to the level of being a cold blooded killer myself (even by proxy). Of all the possible outcomes I think this is one of the least bad. Of course, for OBL's followers it's not a bad outcome either. He is now in heaven enjoying the rewards of martyrdom.

"Will the aluminum fatigue?" yes, but not rapidly. "Are we holding a shrapnel bomb at that pressure?" Probably not, Aluminium doesn't shatter easily, but you might lose a finger or an eye when something fails. It's not clear what pressure the extinguisher was built for. So 100 PSI might be pushing the limit for it. Also you have drilled a hole in it and added a stress concentrator (the valve). On the whole, it looks like you are gambling, and you don't know the odds or the stake.

Incidentally, the thread's sub title "reason vs. collective interest" is a false dichotomy. Collective interest is entirely reasonable. "should consumers also bond together to get lower prices out of the corporations? " Isn't that group of consumers called "purchasing power". Isn't it the way in which, for example, Wallmart demand price reductions from suppliers? I realise it's not organised with that intention in mind, but isn't it the effective outcome?

"In practice this means that certain individuals and/or issues are not just suppressed by the business but also by the union as well." Then they should join a better union or try to change the one they are in.