John Cuthber

OK, there's a debate about the meaning of the word "ratify", so use a different word. MMX is consistent with SR. Does it prove it? Is there a different system, like SR, but different in which the MMX would work? If so are there any experiments which would distinguish between that system and SR? Anyway, unless you can define the speed of a vacuum then I think my earlier point stands. I can calculate C in a way that doesn't depend on my speed WRT anything.

You can see exactly where he gets the idea that average IQ will decline. In fact, it rises. He is, therefore, wrong. This statement "A problem now in the United States is that with the increasing stagnation of incomes among the poor and the middle class, intelligent, educated, and culturally sophisticated people have realized that the only way to improve their familial wealth is by having fewer and fewer children with each generation. But uneducated, unintelligent, and culturally underdeveloped people, who are minimally conscious of their social situation and unable to conceive of their lives as a planned project, are still thoughtlessly having huge families. " is, at best, false. The idea about "thoughtless poor people" is deeply offensive. It's also rather silly. Most "civilised" countries, rightly or wrongly, provide welfare assistance to children. However, as the children are not able to make use of this money, it is given to the parent(s) to use on the children's behalf. The more children they have, the more money the family receives. In many cases, this is a significant part of the family's income. Why would they want to reduce it by having fewer children? These families are not in a position to decide on the merit of the provision of a welfare state (at least not without the cooperation of others) and it would not be in their interests to do so. Many rich people will not vote for the reduction of child support payments because it is seen as punishing the children who are the one group whoo can not be responsible for the system. Of course, most people, of whatever income and background, have children as a result of a biologically produced desire to do so. The economics of the issue don't enter into it. Also, in the UK (I don'rt know about the US but I suspect things are similar), the current birth rate is not high enough to maintain the population. If it were not for immigration we would have a falling population. If you ask an economist about what generates wealth he will probably say that, in the end, it is people. Fewer people is not a good thing; who pays the pensions?

I doubt that, at the time, there was any difference.

I conduct electricity. Magnetic forces have infinite range . The moving magnets will induce a current in me. This will transfer energy to me and warm me up. Other things may also absorb power from your system, but my existence is sufficient to show that, in the end, the energy will dissipate.

Shouldn't this thread be in Cherokee, Navaho, or some such?

Sorry, I'm getting my interferometry experiments muddled up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagnac_effect I meant this one.

"I'm an educated university student. Does no one else even find it remotely suspicious? " Yes, very. "If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world, of a steel framed building suffering a gravitational collapse under it's own weight due to a fire, moreover a localised fire which would cause all points of the building to fall simultaneously, so it falls into it's own foot-print, and could demonstrate with historical, logical, experimental physical evidence to support such a hypothesis..." I gather that there's some evidence that two buildings did that on 9/11. There's a report that supports it.

I must have missed the war against Saudi Arabia where the hijackers actually came from. There was one against Iraq because they wanted one and wrote a report to justify it. This report was subsequently referred to as "the dodgy dossier". I'm not sure about the war in Afghan.

"Luckily we found out who did it and are still hounding them to extinction." Actually, they are already extinct. We are hunting down some people who were probably involved. "they plummeted straight down" Which direction does gravity normally make things fall? "(and let's not forget that the sprinkler system in BOTH building just conveniently malfunctioned)." OK, lets not forget it, lets look at it. The fire sprinkler systems will have been designed to barely scrape past the minimum required standards in order to save money. No designer will have thought " what happens if some moron flies a freshly fuelled plane into this?" Nor will the people who wrote the building standards regulations. Of course, BOTH buildings will have been built to the same standards.

An interesting point (from wiki) about crop circles Twenty-six countries ended up reporting approximately ten-thousand crop circles, in the last third of the 20th century, and 90% of those were located in southern England. Do aliens only visit SE England? Or is it just the Wessex sceptics?

"But in contrast, from day one of studying Sophocles' plays or Melville's novels, you are, as a junior high school student, not only invited to develop your own theory and present your own creative insights, but you are even required to do so if you want to do well. So if you are really creative and enjoy not just absorbing knowledge but also developing it with your own ideas mixed in, how do you tolerate waiting until you're 22 to do this in physics when everyone in the humanities or social sciences gets to do that at 12? " It's true that (some) 12 year olds can come up with their own ideas about a play or novel. The thing is that that's the whole problem. Even a 12 year old can do it. Nothing has really been created by this year's 12 year olds that wasn't created by last year's 12 year olds. Since there's no right or wrong answer it doesn't tell you anything. The merit of science is that, once you have sorted out what is already known, you can genuinely find new things that might actually matter. Having an original thought about the humanities is like deciding which chocolates you like best. It's creative, in that it produces an answer that you hadn't produced before, but it has no consequence.

Grignard reagents are strong enough bases to deprotonate amines. Benzyl might work. The usual suspects- conversion to amides or some such- wouldn't help because they, in turn, react with Grignard reagents.

Long ago and far away I heard the tale of someone who worked with refrigerated trucks. These trucks were chilled by liquid nitrogen sprayed directly into the back where the goods were stored. The rules said you had to fully open both doors and wait 5 minutes before entering the back of the truck. There was some debate about the risk of entering them without giving the N2 a chance to dissipate once the door was open. The assertion was made "You can see the fumes clear as soon as you open the door. This requirement to wait 5 minutes is just a waste of time." Some brave (or foolhardy) individual elected to open the door, walk from the back door of the truck to the front, turn round and walk out again. Those present insisted he had a safety line and harness so, if anything went wrong, they could pull him out. He got half way from the door to the front before he passed out and was (thankfully) rescued by his colleagues using the line or you would have seen this story in the Darwin awards. On this basis I offer two pieces of advice. 1) Buy some bug spray. 2) Don't piss about with oxygen deficient atmospheres; you will die. Feel free to ignore the first.

The MM experiments have done on a rotating table, but observed by a stationary observer. The results were the same as those with the table stationary. That's two different frames of reference. Rotating (wrt to Earth) and stationary (wrt Earth).

The light emitted by a LED is close to linearly proportional to the current through it. Much more nearly proportional than the case with a "classic" CRT. LEDs are used as modulated light sources. The 60Hz pulsing is, if anything, proof that they can be switched fast enough to provide a moving picture display. It arises from the power supply and wouldn't be an issue in a display.

People born at particular times of year (I forget the details) are more likely to suffer from hay fever*. People who suffer hay fever are less likely to succeed in athletics. Therefore there is a seasonal relation between month of birth and athletic ability. The trend is reversed if you look at the antipodes. If you call that "astrology" then astrology has some validity. On the other hand, most astrologers don't seem to think that this type of correlation is what they mean. Also, the effect is due to the sun/ Earth system and to no other heavenly body; which rules out almost everything astrologers say. They make "predictions" due to the current arrangements of the stars and planets. These have no physical meaning. * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1468028

I like Grignard reagents. When I was at college, as we had a good library, I even took the trouble to look up the original reference by M. Grignard (It is, of course, in French). Even if you allow for the fact that they are relatively expensive they often offset this by producing good yields and easy work ups. On the other hand, since you can't make one in the presence of an amine group they would be neither use nor ornament in the procedure indicated. It's not obvious to me what protecting group you might use.

I had hoped that this nonsense conspiracy theory had died out. Oh well never mind. To me, this "3) The fact that none of the black boxes from the planes were ever discovered." seems like evidence it wasn't a plot. Faking a couple of severely damaged black boxes (which could seem to say anything you liked) would have been very easy compared to all the other aspects of this "conspiracy".

Hypothetically, in ideal conditions you can measure currents that small. But it's not easy. http://www.tmworld.com/article/319701-Femtoamp_fA_measurements.php It will only work if the currents carry on for a reasonable length of time.

"you need to take into account the fractal dimension of the earth's surface" No you don't. You only have to look at nooks and crannies big enough to hold a typical faecal molecule. Most of the molecules are water (something the OP seems not to have realised).

Benzene Toluene 4 nitro toluene 4 nitro benzoic acid 4 amino benzoic acid. Of course, in reality you would start with toluene. You would have to remove the 2 nitro and 3 nitro toluenes after the nitration but pretty much any nitration will run into that problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy0UBpagsu8

All the acetate ions in the product will come from vinegar whichever way you do it, so you will need a lot of vinegar. Your "second way" doesn't make sense. If you add dilute sodium hydroxide to a solution of copper sulphate you will get a precipitate of copper hydroxide. You can wash that with water and dissolve it in vinegar to get copper acetate or you can treat the copper carbonate with vinegar to get copper acetate. Adding ammonia won't help.

"This is a discussion that does not reflect reality." No Sh1t?