John Cuthber

I think the distance between the pupils is relatively easy to measure. The last time I had my eyes checked it wasn't the optician but the sales' assistant who measured it- that's probably why it's not on the prescription. Any place that will sell prescription glasses should be able to measure it so, as long as you have the other prescription details, you shouldn't need another eye test.

I'm not convinced that the best answer to the original question involves all the spinoffs. Surely it is like asking "Art; why bother?" and the answer is that it's what humans do. On the other hand, my favorite example is that particle physics like atom smashing makes lots of data and that some bloke at CERN wanted a way of sending lots of data round the place. There's a reference to it in that page ajb cited. The outcome was called the web.

He may well want it but it's not this sites habit to give the answer. Giving hints and advice is better for th estudent.

They may get the news round well enough, but the pirates have guns.

The biggest word in this sentence "If colloidal minerals does indeed contain 60 or more minerals that may be valuable to the body, then why not?" is "If".

Well, if you put fine copper wire in a candle flame it melts so that's over 1083C. Anyway, here's a demo. It's called "Reduction of Copper Oxide"- not very original. BTW, don't do thermite reactions in test tubes there's far too big a risk of flying glass.

I imagine that by now the beer concerned has been drunk,

"There is no need to account for, or explain; those things that QT already does very well." Yes there is, it's called producing a consistent theory. If your theory can't explain simple things then it's no use trying to get it to explain complex ones. "There is a need to explain those things that QT does not do." OK, but your theory hasn't done this. Is it any use at all?

I always thought that the answer to "Okay, say someone would be an alcoholic, and destroys alot of brain cells. How long would it take for the brain to regenerate cells? " was "Do you believe in reincarnation?" because you won't regenerate any to speak of in this lifetime.

Reducing copper oxide is a high school experiment and can be done with a bunsen burner as the heat source. Also a bunsen is capable of getting well over 1200 C

Actually, I think that some people could do it more cheaply still. What we need is someoone with a working understanding of Japanese and a copy of the Tokyo yellow pages. Phone any of the plumbers and ask them if they have ever had to repair a pipe that burst when it froze. If they have, then we know that Tokyo tap water freezes (at least once) asd we can dismiss Emoto's ideas completely. Roughly equivalently, we can seek to find out if this sort of product http://www.plumbworld.co.uk/arctic-spray-2-high-0-3509?CAWELAID=205025317 is on sale there. Sometimes, you don't need Galileo or Columbus- you just need a Japanese plumber.

"I imagine that many people expressed much the same sentiment when Galileo tried to make the case for a round earth. I hope you will further refine your objections to fit more comfortably within the framework of a reasonable discussion." An appeal to authority like that is a logical fallacy. It doesn't fit within the framework of a reasonable discussion. Anyway, I find both sets of crystals (from the tap water) beautiful, so there's no case to answer. There is also the assertion that the water will "never form crystals". Never is a long time; it is not reasonable to extrapolate infinitely into the future on the basis of a very limited set of results (ie one dodgy result). Do pipes freeze and burst in Tokyo? If they do then that proves the assertion to be false. Also, do you have the xray and neutron diffraction patterns from the two frozen samples. If you compare them and find them to be significantly different then you may have a valid point; until then you have baseless speculation.

"In pursuit of a believable explanation." Quantum mechanics is a widely believed explanation.

I have seen some bull in my time, but I think that may be a record breaker.

Do you mean the 5th ammendment to the constitution of a country that has no jurisdiction where you are? You do not have to say anything But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence

I wondered if perhaps the search algorithm used bitwise "or" on pairs of numbers, but that doesn't work; 3 or 1 doesn't give the same answer as 1. Also the number of hits for 1 or 3 isn't the same as the number for 3 or 1 (though the differences are quite small). Very odd.

I also have difficulty with digesting onions- so I try not to eat them. On a less silly note, you may find this sort of thing helpful. http://www.ivstandards.com/tech/reliability/part14.asp If you can dry the onions first it might help. Then you should be able to wet ash them (which might lose some arsenic) or just dissolve them in hot nitric acid. Is there someone there who usually uses the AA machine, and can you ask them for help.

Sorry, I had intended to add this (old) reference to the original post. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01960a005 No sodium here.

Very kind of you vedmecum, to try to bail me out but I screwed up. I knew it did both forms of decay (which is why I said "mainly- but lets ignore the other possibility for a minute") but I got the decay mixed up.

It's a risky strategy to try to "titrate" drugs against eachother this way- trying to offset the side effects of one drug by using another is rather complicated. Trying to do it while pissed is probably suicidal. Try just giving the body time to recover.

This isn't the only forum on which someone is franticaly trying to plug that product.Also I don't see any evidence for the claim that yellow light is bad for your eyes or, come to that, that CFLs generate a lot of yellow light. The only CFLs that I have looked at through a spectroscope emit little or no yellow light - they rely on red and green emisions (together with blue of course) to produce light that looks white. So, overall, it seems to me that this is not just a spam advert, but a dishonest one.

"For some years I have been advocating a classical explanation of particle and atomic structure. " Why?

Let's take an odd example, but one where the chemistry is relatively simple. Potassium has a naturally ocurring isotope of mass 40 which decays (mainly- but lets ignore the other possibility for a minute) by beta decay to give argon. It has a half life of 1.25 billion years I think) Imagine that we extract some of this isotope of potassium and turn it into the chloride. It decays slowly but surely to argon, and of course, argon doesn't form a chloride. So the reaction is 2 KCl --> 2Ar +Cl2. The potassium was there as K+ ions and when they lost a beta particle they (briefly) became Ar++ ions. Now Ar(II) is a much stronger oxidant that you get in any normal sort of chemistry. It's perfectly capable of oxidising chloride to chlorine. In case you are wondering, the beta particle will hit something and stop. Then it's just an electron. Now tha electron (on it's own) is a very powerful reducing agent. It can certainly reduce Ar+ to Ar

That's an interesting concept. Electrolysis of a solution of ammonium chloride in water giving a sodium compound. Here's a relatively recent reference to a related compound, just to spice things up a bit. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6THS-44VFYDR-15&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1a40443903d2e0c998a7cf6732838681