A lot of that article is just embarrassing. Arguing that a blind spot is not problematic because we cope is like arguing that vision isn't important because blind people can cope. Arguing that the first later is transparent is stupid, given how easy it is to make the blood vessels, or even white blood cells, visible. As for the rest, the efficiency arguments, why aren't there any comparisons to cephalopods? We have an example of the other design, so efficiency should be easy to demonstrate.
That this kind of arguments is presented is the best indication of just how much creationists are grasping at straws.
I think the best description of why is "General relativity - causality - Faster than light information transmition: Pick two". Or, more user friendly, in general relativity, FTL communiation is equivalent to the reversal of causility, with event B affecting event A, even though B takes place after A.
Now, we have pretty good evidence for general relativity, and causality also tends to hold up, so the general assumption is that FTL communication cannot happen.
It isn't an idiot designer, as cephalopods have their eyes the right way around. The designer clearly can do it correctly, but chose not to do it with vertebrates. Furthermore, when looking at the way the world works, it becomes clear that the designer is evil, mad or both. All in all, Cthulhu is the best guess at a designer, given the evidence.
acetylsalicylic acid does say SOMETHING about the structure for the molecule. With just that, you can draw up half the atoms (assuming that acid refers to carboxylic acid, which is not that risky a bet).
. All the rest of you, don't mix it with alcohol or take it for a hangover. The toxicity is cumulative
From what I gather from the literature, you are right about the hangover, but wrong about the mixing with alcohol. The blood concentration of the toxic degradation product is lowered when paracetamol is taken with alcohol, probably due to the alcohol successfully competing with cytochrome P450 in the liver, in much the same way that alcohol can be used to treat methanol poisoning (though another enzyme is competed for here).
All NSAIDs are hazardous, but but some have higher toxicities than others. For occasional and long-term use, products like ibuprofen and naproxen are safer and as effective as other NSAIDs.
Except, of course, individual problems, like you mention with Tylenol.
There is no "mass" in reality, it is just a concept we havr made up because it makes a whole lot of equations easier. Or, in the logical extreme, there are no particles, only clicks in my Geiger counter.
That's why I wrote "in the field". I don't know how lettuce seeds are grown, but as each plant produces many seeds, muchless land is needed. It could even be grown in greenhouses where you could also keep pollinators.
Lettuce isn't a fruit, so lack of pollination on the field shouldn't be a problem, tomatoes and potatoes are from the new world, and wheat, oats and rice are wind pollinated, so pollinators doesn't enter the equation. However, I think that is close to a complete list of crops that wouldn't have a problem.
I think I have seen a documentary where a snake was coiled around its eggs. IIRC, it even had muscle spasms to supply heat. Snakes are cold blodded, right? Or can an animal be warm blooded part of the time?
That would mostly be glyphosate, which is definitely the least bad pesticide to eat. If the glyphosate- resistant crops have less of other pesticides on them because glyphosate is used in stead, they are probably more healthy.
For example, if you live in France, and you enjoy not speaking German, (or if you live anywhere in Europe, for that matter, and enjoy not being required to speak German...) you're welcome.
Conversly, if it weren't for the French, you would be writing English.
Wouldn't this lead to more flash crashes, where everybody tries to sell at the same time if a company does badly, as everybody can react to the news simultaneously, and know that they don't get another chance for a month? And everybody is afraid that somebody knows more, so they are more eager to sell?
They are *not* suggesting banning the activity, but restricting it with taxation to make it less attractive to profit from short-term fluctuations in prices - this would dampen volatility. [...] A transaction tax sounds like a good idea to me, do you have any concrete objections to it?
It could increase the volatility. If a tax was introduced, it wouldn't make sense to trade for small changes in price. When the prices change become large enough that it makes sense, the people selling would drive the price down further, leading more people to sell.
It would also lessen the liquidity, leading to worse prices. As it is today, I can sell my stock to HFTrs at close to the current value. If there were no HTFrs, I would have the choice of selling now at sub-optimal prices now or waiting in the hope that somebody would at some time would meet the price I want.
Whenever something sounds too good to be true, you have to ask yourself if it is. In this case, id it were that easy, why haven't other people done it? My guess would be that the price development is clear in retrospect, but hard to predict. How would you know when it is going to peak? How would you know if the bottom have been reached, or if it just plateaued before the real drop?
In the long run, it is really hard to beat the market.
One explanation that has been proposed for why Kopi Luwak is different is that the civets choose the most ripe berries. This effect could easily be lost with captivity.
Are you sure that catalytic converters produce H2S? IIRC, sulfur is a poison to them. Actually, the only noxious gasses I can think of that cas produce is NOx, which is one of the things catalytic converters should remove.
The relevant metric is not only "people killed", but also "people scared" and "amount of disruption due to people being scared". The last two are massively higher with bombings in cities or of civilian infrastructure. Places that you can sabotage is also better protected than the average intersection.
Forbes directly says that only number 3 matters: "Money has only one purpose–it makes doing transactions, that is buying and selling products and services and securities, infinitely easier than barter."
I am not saying anything about what is OK, and I think much of what the US government is doing and have done is very far from OK.
But that was not what we were discussing. You said that the US government was "as nasty and corrupt as the rest", the AC pointed out some examples that he felt was worse while acknowledging that the US did have its own problem, and you interpreted that as giving the US a free pass. I pointed out that that was not what the AC said, and you have now accused ME of saying everything the US does is OK. Lets see if you can get a hattrick, and misinterpret this post as well!
Your original comment said "Frankly the US government is just as nasty and corrupt as the rest[...]", against which examples of other, worse regimes is a quite effective argument.
Let's keep the comparison apples to apples, and either note that being doused in a fluorohydrocarbon will probably do little more than to cool you down a bit; or that being doused in carbon monoxide is not exactly the start of a good night on the town, either.
Dude, it won't "cool you down" a bit. It will, upon being exposed to fire, pass through your skin without leaving any evidence of its passage, and thereupon start to chemically burn your body from the inside out.
[Bold emphasis mine] Which wasn't what I said. You compared HF production to unburning gasoline, which I pointed out was not the fairest of comparisons, and gave two fairer comparisons.
Exposure to carbon monoxide or gasoline is readily treatable.
To the degree that it doesn't kill you, yes. But then, so is exposure to small amounts of HF (at least skin exposure, I imagine no good way to treat lung exposure exists): Rinsing with water for 12 hours removes most of it*. Admittedly not something I yearn to try, but very few things involved in a car crash is. It is not clear to me that this makes it significantly worse.
BUT PLEASE, TELL US ALL HOW IT'S JUST LIKE INHALING SOME CAR EXHAUST OR GETTING SPLASHED WITH GASOLINE.
I never said it was, I pointed out that, without knowing the amount of HF being produced in a typical crash, we have no way of evaluating whether it is a larger problem than gasoline already is. Do we know how much HF could be produced in a car crash, and over how long time? Do we know the concentration produced in the experiment, or is it only being reported as "being produced"?
*I know that injections of calcium gluconate was (is?) the standard. This is probably the worst cause of action, as calcium gluconate is a cell poison in its own right. Luckily, HF happens to be an excellent prophylaxis for this effect. Massaging with calcium gluconate gel probably does a slightly better job than rinsing with water does, if you can get people to massage the spot for 12 hours, which you can't.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of that article is just embarrassing. Arguing that a blind spot is not problematic because we cope is like arguing that vision isn't important because blind people can cope. Arguing that the first later is transparent is stupid, given how easy it is to make the blood vessels, or even white blood cells, visible. As for the rest, the efficiency arguments, why aren't there any comparisons to cephalopods? We have an example of the other design, so efficiency should be easy to demonstrate.
That this kind of arguments is presented is the best indication of just how much creationists are grasping at straws.
I think the best description of why is "General relativity - causality - Faster than light information transmition: Pick two". Or, more user friendly, in general relativity, FTL communiation is equivalent to the reversal of causility, with event B affecting event A, even though B takes place after A.
Now, we have pretty good evidence for general relativity, and causality also tends to hold up, so the general assumption is that FTL communication cannot happen.
It isn't an idiot designer, as cephalopods have their eyes the right way around. The designer clearly can do it correctly, but chose not to do it with vertebrates. Furthermore, when looking at the way the world works, it becomes clear that the designer is evil, mad or both. All in all, Cthulhu is the best guess at a designer, given the evidence.
acetylsalicylic acid does say SOMETHING about the structure for the molecule. With just that, you can draw up half the atoms (assuming that acid refers to carboxylic acid, which is not that risky a bet).
. All the rest of you, don't mix it with alcohol or take it for a hangover. The toxicity is cumulative
From what I gather from the literature, you are right about the hangover, but wrong about the mixing with alcohol. The blood concentration of the toxic degradation product is lowered when paracetamol is taken with alcohol, probably due to the alcohol successfully competing with cytochrome P450 in the liver, in much the same way that alcohol can be used to treat methanol poisoning (though another enzyme is competed for here).
However, there seems to be no reason to not use inbuprofen or naproxen:
All NSAIDs are hazardous, but but some have higher toxicities than others. For occasional and long-term use, products like ibuprofen and naproxen are safer and as effective as other NSAIDs.
Except, of course, individual problems, like you mention with Tylenol.
There is no "mass" in reality, it is just a concept we havr made up because it makes a whole lot of equations easier. Or, in the logical extreme, there are no particles, only clicks in my Geiger counter.
That's why I wrote "in the field". I don't know how lettuce seeds are grown, but as each plant produces many seeds, muchless land is needed. It could even be grown in greenhouses where you could also keep pollinators.
Delivery is OK but I think you get a worse selection of fresh produce than if you go and pick in person.
On the other hand, you get produce that hasn't been in the store all day, and that 10 other customers have not picked up and put down again.
You also miss the special offers that you see round the store
That depends on the store, some do have special offers in their web store.
Lettuce isn't a fruit, so lack of pollination on the field shouldn't be a problem, tomatoes and potatoes are from the new world, and wheat, oats and rice are wind pollinated, so pollinators doesn't enter the equation. However, I think that is close to a complete list of crops that wouldn't have a problem.
Does the plants take it up from the soil? Things that bind that well too the soil tend to have low bioavailability.
I think I have seen a documentary where a snake was coiled around its eggs. IIRC, it even had muscle spasms to supply heat. Snakes are cold blodded, right? Or can an animal be warm blooded part of the time?
That would mostly be glyphosate, which is definitely the least bad pesticide to eat. If the glyphosate- resistant crops have less of other pesticides on them because glyphosate is used in stead, they are probably more healthy.
For example, if you live in France, and you enjoy not speaking German, (or if you live anywhere in Europe, for that matter, and enjoy not being required to speak German...) you're welcome.
Conversly, if it weren't for the French, you would be writing English.
No more flash crashes
Wouldn't this lead to more flash crashes, where everybody tries to sell at the same time if a company does badly, as everybody can react to the news simultaneously, and know that they don't get another chance for a month? And everybody is afraid that somebody knows more, so they are more eager to sell?
How does it hurt productive industries? This blip was short enough and small enough that no-one except high frequency traders should be affected.
On the other hand, it does serve some purposes: It decreases volatility (at least, it seems so from the data), and in reduces the bid-ask spread.
They are *not* suggesting banning the activity, but restricting it with taxation to make it less attractive to profit from short-term fluctuations in prices - this would dampen volatility.
[...]
A transaction tax sounds like a good idea to me, do you have any concrete objections to it?
It could increase the volatility. If a tax was introduced, it wouldn't make sense to trade for small changes in price. When the prices change become large enough that it makes sense, the people selling would drive the price down further, leading more people to sell.
It would also lessen the liquidity, leading to worse prices. As it is today, I can sell my stock to HFTrs at close to the current value. If there were no HTFrs, I would have the choice of selling now at sub-optimal prices now or waiting in the hope that somebody would at some time would meet the price I want.
Whenever something sounds too good to be true, you have to ask yourself if it is. In this case, id it were that easy, why haven't other people done it? My guess would be that the price development is clear in retrospect, but hard to predict. How would you know when it is going to peak? How would you know if the bottom have been reached, or if it just plateaued before the real drop?
In the long run, it is really hard to beat the market.
One explanation that has been proposed for why Kopi Luwak is different is that the civets choose the most ripe berries. This effect could easily be lost with captivity.
Are you sure that catalytic converters produce H2S? IIRC, sulfur is a poison to them. Actually, the only noxious gasses I can think of that cas produce is NOx, which is one of the things catalytic converters should remove.
For the discussion of what could have caused it by people who know about fertilizer plants?
The relevant metric is not only "people killed", but also "people scared" and "amount of disruption due to people being scared". The last two are massively higher with bombings in cities or of civilian infrastructure. Places that you can sabotage is also better protected than the average intersection.
Forbes directly says that only number 3 matters: "Money has only one purpose–it makes doing transactions, that is buying and selling products and services and securities, infinitely easier than barter."
I am not saying anything about what is OK, and I think much of what the US government is doing and have done is very far from OK.
But that was not what we were discussing. You said that the US government was "as nasty and corrupt as the rest", the AC pointed out some examples that he felt was worse while acknowledging that the US did have its own problem, and you interpreted that as giving the US a free pass. I pointed out that that was not what the AC said, and you have now accused ME of saying everything the US does is OK. Lets see if you can get a hattrick, and misinterpret this post as well!
Your original comment said "Frankly the US government is just as nasty and corrupt as the rest[...]", against which examples of other, worse regimes is a quite effective argument.
Let's keep the comparison apples to apples, and either note that being doused in a fluorohydrocarbon will probably do little more than to cool you down a bit; or that being doused in carbon monoxide is not exactly the start of a good night on the town, either.
Dude, it won't "cool you down" a bit. It will, upon being exposed to fire, pass through your skin without leaving any evidence of its passage, and thereupon start to chemically burn your body from the inside out.
[Bold emphasis mine] Which wasn't what I said. You compared HF production to unburning gasoline, which I pointed out was not the fairest of comparisons, and gave two fairer comparisons.
Exposure to carbon monoxide or gasoline is readily treatable.
To the degree that it doesn't kill you, yes. But then, so is exposure to small amounts of HF (at least skin exposure, I imagine no good way to treat lung exposure exists): Rinsing with water for 12 hours removes most of it*. Admittedly not something I yearn to try, but very few things involved in a car crash is. It is not clear to me that this makes it significantly worse.
BUT PLEASE, TELL US ALL HOW IT'S JUST LIKE INHALING SOME CAR EXHAUST OR GETTING SPLASHED WITH GASOLINE.
I never said it was, I pointed out that, without knowing the amount of HF being produced in a typical crash, we have no way of evaluating whether it is a larger problem than gasoline already is. Do we know how much HF could be produced in a car crash, and over how long time? Do we know the concentration produced in the experiment, or is it only being reported as "being produced"?
*I know that injections of calcium gluconate was (is?) the standard. This is probably the worst cause of action, as calcium gluconate is a cell poison in its own right. Luckily, HF happens to be an excellent prophylaxis for this effect. Massaging with calcium gluconate gel probably does a slightly better job than rinsing with water does, if you can get people to massage the spot for 12 hours, which you can't.