1

Just Chat! / Re: When have religious gatherings been illegal?

« on: Today at 11:10:20 »

Surely some religions and spiritualities teach love. I think of reconciliation with first peoples.

Do you mean the surviving remnant of native Americans and Australians who were deprived of their land and rights and forcibly "converted" to christianity?

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, charities, CFAN going from Germany, once military, to Africa and loving pagans and Muslims, appealing to them to love Jesus.

I repeat, all religions teach you to despise all the others. And you have just given the perfect example. "Loving" my arse.

Sure some people tragically love Jesus but hate His enemies. But that is not what Jesus wanted. The Christians are a different lot from the Muslims and Hindus.

  "How odd of God to choose the Jews, but odder still are those who choose the Jewish God and spurn the Jews"

It seems the RCC finished with bad priests secretly just over thirty years ago, with the last reports of abuses seeming to stop then. But they were sluggish.

  On the contrary, there are civil and criminal prosecutions currently ongoing. "Sluggish" is a poor euphemism for "criminally complicit".   

I don't hate Catholics and Anglicans. We fellowship. I get on with Buddhists and Muslims also.

How awfully decent of you. No mention  of Jews, Zoroastrians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, Anabaptists....All of whom at some time have been or still are being persecuted by one or other, not for what they do, but for what they are. 

I think instead of tolerate religion, embrace spirituality. Worship light and love and compassion and honour and wisdom. Instead of money and cars, and pleasures... which can lead to greed.

If you can find a greed-free substitute for money,

The churches are conscientious and are able as a whole to repent. The church laws change.

Terms like Human and subhuman are 20th century ideas coming to fame in Nazi Germany. The churches refer to souls and the cross is for all of them. The medieval church was greatly in the wrong with some shining stars, the saints. And the revivalists.
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2

New Theories / Re: New Theory: Is consciousness fundamental?

« on: Today at 10:52:47 »

Proof? Non-circular definition of consciousness?

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Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Is a human virus with a wild reservoir eradicatable ?

« on: Today at 10:46:14 »

The question is ambiguous.

If a virus is endemic but trivial among humans, it will be very difficult and probably pointless to eradicate it, though it might extinguish another species entirely. Think squirrelpox - grey squirrels have evolved immunity from long exposure in their native America but it is fatal to European red squirrels. I can't immediately think of a human virus that kills other species but swine vesicular disease is carried on human food waste.

If a virus is endemic in and tolerated by a wild species, it will be very difficult and probably pointless to eradicate it, but common sense and swift action can prevent it becoming epidemic or pandemic among humans. Ebola is a good example, COVID a bad one.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Links between corona virus and other variables

« on: Today at 08:56:20 »

Since the only vectors for COVID are edible bats and other humans, you have to narrow your definition of pleasure to enjoying the company of crowds of strangers and/or eating bats. Then you will find a strong correlation.

My pleasures are the three Fs: flying, sex, and consuming good food and drink at home. None of these involve crowds of strangers and I have too much respect for fellow mammalian aviators to eat a bat. Hence an equally strong anticorrelation. I also enjoy playing jazz but it makes little difference whether I'm playing to the usual audience of a man and a dog or just abusing the piano in private.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Do smokers have low tolerance for low oxygen levels?

« on: Today at 08:43:32 »

Long terms smokers have chronic oxygen deprivation.

Oxygen deprivation impairs rational thought. Chicken or egg?

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« on: Yesterday at 23:42:01 »

Which is the better : before or after? What is the consideration for your judgement?

It would be decidedly perverse to take any action intended to  make "after" worse than "before" for whoever is intended to be the beneficiary of that action. The moral problem is to choose the beneficiary (me or the squirrels?) and the requirement to choose negates the possibility of a universal moral standard.     

What makes killing for fun generally bad?

It contravenes the principle of "do unto others as you would wish them to do to you".  You can generalise that to "behave as you would wish others to behave", which is a universally applicable moral principle even though it may not produce the same result when applied by different people. In this specific case I taught my kids to  enjoy the hunt, take pride in a clean kill, and only eat whatever you would be happy to kill for yourself. Result: three good hunters and a vegetarian.

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General Science / Re: The Start of Time?

« on: Yesterday at 18:20:57 »

All systems require an initial state else there are no subsequent states.

A rock is a system, but if it doesn't change, initial and subsequent states are irrelevant. All its properties are described by its present state.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is UK sunshine after 5pm useless for Vitamin D formation?

« on: Yesterday at 18:17:18 »

Any is better than none. A clear evening is better than a cloudy midday. Summer cloud cover is often maximal between midday and 3 pm.

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Technology / Re: Does coolant velocity matter?

« on: Yesterday at 18:13:12 »

Yes.

Heat transfer rate depends on temperature difference. If the coolant isn't moving, it heats up at the interface and doesn't remove the heat once it has reached temperature equilibrium. If it's moving too fast you may get semi-laminar flow where the core of the coolant doesn't mix efficiently with the boundary layer, so you are wasting energy pumping ineffective coolant around. There will be an optimum speed where turbulent mixing transfers the most heat to the bulk of the coolant which is then removed from the area. Producing an optimal device for a given application is something of a dark art, but plenty of excellent work has been done by the automotive industry. Nuclear reactors require a lot of safety and redundancy factors that may compromise optimality.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Some questions on Stern-Gerlach experiment?

« on: Yesterday at 17:46:37 »

BC has summed it up neatly. The basis of a lot of magnetic resonance analysis and imaging is that spin relaxation has a distinct half-life dependent, among other things, on the chemical environment of the target particle. Adding "contamination" to the electron beam would probably reduce the half-life and thus the differentiation from 50/50 to something less spectacular and more difficult to explain.   

11

COVID-19 / Can we organise an effective national quarantine?

« on: 05/07/2020 23:55:16 »

Assuming that COVID remains a significant disruptor of daily life for the next 6 months, would this suggestion find any favour?

Starting now, government prepares for a full national quarantine period beginning on Christmas Eve. Don't call it "lockdown" because that sounds like a punishment: it's a cure.

Starting today, we build national stocks of basic food and hygiene supplies. No different from provisioning a ship for a month at sea, except we have enough to deliver 4 x 1 week packages to everyone. Actually it's easier than provisioning a ship as we can assume that everyone has access to clean water, so no limit on dehydrated foodstuffs.

On 18 December we begin distributing the first week's packages with a "do not open before 24 December" label. Remote locations will get a whole month's supply but most of the mainland will get 4 deliveries on the same day each week. Not a big deal as the Post Office and courier services will be shifting a lot of packages anyway.

From midnight on 24 Dec there is a compulsory prohibition on all but essential travel for 2 weeks. Essential means only those services and personnel previously identified as such, patients needing urgent treatment, and corpses. All retail and high street trading is closed. Included in essential services is a door-to-door COVID testing program for everyone. No need for tracing as nobody is going anywhere. There being nobody in the streets apart from emergency services, we should have enough police manpower to help with testing. On 7 January those households with a clean bill of health are released and all others remain under curfew until 28 January. 

Given 6 months notice and the experience of the current shambles, people should be able to cope with staying at home during what is mostly a holiday period anyway, and everyone gets the "clarity" that seems to be the current watchword. There being negligible business or holiday travel, hotels can accommodate the homeless and anyone arriving from overseas, and gear up for providing compulsory 2 week quarantine for all arriving passengers until further notice. 

12

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Do smokers have low tolerance for low oxygen levels?

« on: 05/07/2020 23:13:52 »

Against that, and as suggested by COVID cases, some people seem to adapt to low oxygen availability, either through living with chronic disease or at high altitude, and thus may fare better when their intake is further restricted.

That said, the men in a vault will be more affected by rising CO2 than falling O2 levels. CO2 is tolerable (and even necessary) at levels below 0.5% but fatal above 5% concentration, whilst O2 falling from 20% to 15% (equivalent to around 10,000 ft altitude) is tolerable and even at 10% may be survivable.

13

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Can Biorhythms be measured ?

« on: 05/07/2020 22:59:14 »

Biorhythms have been deduced from statistical analysis of large-ish groups over long-ish periods. If the group is big enough and the period long enough, you may well find a meaningful mean and a convincing standard deviation for almost any measurement that is not inherently random, and given that human physiology is inherently cyclic, most spectacularly for females, the findings are not surprising. BUT

Statistics is about predicting group behavior from a study of an adequate sample. It does not allow prediction of individual behavior from the group mean, so unless you are dealing with clones, the stated figures are individually meaningless.

The fact that the figures are whole numbers of days is obvious and significant.

Most people live, literally, 24/7. Rise at dawn, work to dusk, sleep in the dark, every day. Even shift workers and people on remote sites with 14/5 or 21/7 contracts still live by the sun  and calendar. We take sick days off, and are allocated holidays in whole numbers of days, not hours.  If you ask someone to record his emotional state, he may say “felt lousy Thursday” but almost certainly won’t say “felt lousy between 2200 on 1 July  and 1600 on 2 July”. Hence obvious. 

But astronomical phenomena are not all related to the spin of the earth – indeed the only one that is, is the length of a day from one solar zenith to the next. Anything else has a cycle involving fractions of a day: a lunar month, for instance,  is about 29.53 days. So the significance of whole numbers of days is that they clearly cannot relate to any astronomical phenomena. 

14

COVID-19 / Re: Are there any trials that involve deliberately infecting someone with the virus?

« on: 05/07/2020 13:39:01 »

These people will eventually be exposed to the virus (sometime) - they just have the option of doing it under controlled conditions and close medical supervision.

Yes, but. Everybody is at some risk of being hit by a bus, but I doubt that it is ethical to "do it under controlled conditions and close medical supervision".

The problem is that we don't have a cure, or any reliable means of predicting the outcome of an individual  COVID infection, but we do have plenty of real subjects at various stages of disease, and perfectly simple means of preventing infection and eliminating the virus. The only worthwhile and ethically defensible research is on treatment of existing patients, and development of a preventive vaccine in case governments continue to mismanage the pandemic.

15

COVID-19 / Re: Are there any trials that involve deliberately infecting someone with the virus?

« on: 05/07/2020 13:32:00 »

"Reasonable expenses" are payable in the UK - but also taxable and can affect eligibility for benefits.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: I designed a crewed interstellar spacecraft

« on: 05/07/2020 13:28:22 »

Maybe in a billion years, intelligent life would evolve.

Or they might elect an idiot for a president and all die from a wholly avoidable disease.

17

Chemistry / Re: Are we really made of stardust?

« on: 04/07/2020 17:56:38 »

Are we made of stardust? What else is there? We are mostly composed of light elements that are fairly common throughout the universe and whilst the heavier atoms may be rarer, there's nothing unique about the solar system.

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Just Chat! / Re: When have religious gatherings been illegal?

« on: 04/07/2020 17:51:53 »

We can pray from home.

To whom, for what? Will you be asking the Creator of the Universe to change His mind about something? Hubris is a sin. 

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: I designed a crewed interstellar spacecraft

« on: 04/07/2020 17:45:52 »

In theory, it could be possible to achieve 25% the speed of light, reaching the closest potentially habitable exoplanet in less than 20 years.

And then what?

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Just Chat! / Re: When have religious gatherings been illegal?

« on: 03/07/2020 16:15:03 »

IIRC most London prostitutes are self-employed and many are unionised. This is politically necessary as money spent on prostitution is included in the Gross Domestic Product, and in times of serious governmental incompetence (like now) this may be the only active area of The Holy Economy, so their tax returns are very important.