Posts by Pompous Git

@ TRT

I haven't been able to find any evidence that nichrome wires generate nickel nanoparticles, but thanks for your heads up on the potential. I have put an immediate ban in place on the use of the toaster, electric sandwich press, washing machine, hair dryer and fan heater in my household. This will of course not eliminate the exposure due to the extensive use of integrated circuits in the TV, Hi-fi amp, computers etc, but will go some small way toward mitigating the risk.

The doctors tell me I should be good to eat solid food again in about 6 weeks time, Mrs Git having taken somewhat unkindly to the new regime.

Re: Anyone's opinion on vaping is largely dependant on one thing...

Check the delivery invoice, if it says "Tobacco Industry" your opinion has just been altered.

Given that I am now a vaper and no longer consuming Big Tobacco's product, I'd be surprised to find a "dump-truck" from them "depositing a load of cash" into my non-existent front yard. Whatever it is you are smoking might be entertaining. Care to share?

Re: A report based on evidence instead of prejudice ?

How many 'food safe' items have been breathed rather than consumed in the past?

All of them. Most of what we describe as flavour is detected by the olfactory nerves in our nasal cavity. It's also one of the reasons warm food is tastier than food that's very cold. The volatiles we are smelling when we eat are emitted in greater quantities at higher temperatures.

kale is psychologically damaging when used in any quantity

It also tastes pretty awful. If it was grown using water soluble N, it also contains nitrosamines and they are physically harmful.

Re: Effects of inhaling propylene glycol.

if nano particulate (~5nM dia) nickel, aluminium or chromium gets into your body, into your cells, nucleic acids may wrap around them and if this happens in neurones, it may accelerate cell death by displacing linker histones which may disrupt mitochondrial function (neurones are very susceptible to mitochondrial failure). I'm saying may, it's all conjecture based on some studies and some as yet unpublished results from colleagues here where I work. I know down votes follow me whenever I point this out to people

Well that should please the dentists! Having made a small fortune replacing mercury fillings with nichrome, they can replace nichrome with, oh I dunno, platinum say. And presumably some study will find platinum to be potentially unsafe...

No downvotes from me BTW. I tend to prefer upvoting.

Apropos asbestos, the first report to government on its dangers I read (back in 1969) was dated to the first decade of the 20th C. I suspect that governments are more of a health risk than the many things we are supposed to be alarmed by. Sorry about your relatives dying from mesothelioma -- nasty. Quite a few of mine died in Mr Hitler's Hoilday Camps. Also not particularly relevant to effective NRT.

Re: 2nd hand vape...?

Depending on concentration, seems at least possible others who've never smoked or vaped themselves could end up nicotine addicts too.

I take it you are already avoiding the danger of nicotine addiction by avoiding all those foods that contain nicotine compounds: tomatoes, capsicums, potatoes, chillies, egg plant, tomatillo, Cape gooseberry -- all, like tobacco, members of the solanaceae family.

Re: 2 years

The issue I have is finding decent tasting e-liquids.

Same here. I find that unflavoured isn't that flash either. I mix my own using about half the usual amount of "honey nut tobacco" for flavouring as a compromise. Non-smokers frequently remark that it "smells really nice". I also vape a high nicotine mix to reduce the amount of vaping to just 2-3 sucks. The approved equivalent from the pharmacy I tried needed 15 minutes of sucking to achieve the same result, tasted really foul and cost heaps more.

Re: 2 years

I vape a lot more than I used to smoke

Quite a few of my friends have remarked upon how I vape a lot less than I used to smoke. I actually don't at all enjoy vaping. I vape to avoid the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

Re: A report based on evidence instead of prejudice ? @ AC

The damaging effects on the brain of marijuana are well established, and I suggest to you that smoking weed rolled up in a bit of paper will have similar effects on the lungs and heart as tobacco rolled up in a bit of paper.

Er, some us vape our Mary Jane too. Of course anti-inflammatory drugs like Vioxx are much safer than high cannabinoid MJ. Where's that sarc tag when you need it!

Re: Effects of inhaling propylene glycol.

this stuff is sucked straight into your lungs with the aim of getting as deep in there as possible

I do no such thing! The water particles are at least an order of magnitude larger than smoke particles and thus too big to enter the alveoli. Like many vapers, I don't inhale at all. The nicotine is absorbed via the mucosa in my mouth and sinuses.

Re: propylene glycol plus some flavourings ?

Food additives have only been tested for safety in a cooking/food environment.

No, they haven't. They are GRAS (generally regarded as safe) because they are substances that have been consumed by people for very long periods of time with no apparent ill-effects. As for the carrier, it's used for stage smoke and we don't hear of any moves to ban its use at rock concerts, stage plays, military displays, movie sets etc. Exposure is less than 1% of the safe industrial limit in workplaces.

As for the "link to cancer", Bruce Ames work indicated that just about everything we consume is linked to cancer. You'll starve to death if you avoid eating anything!

Re: enables high speed interstellar travel – but with only minimal fuel

Thanks for the correction cray74. It's 48 years since I did basic physics.

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

You didn't answer any of my points BTW

You asked "What particular usage of scientific are you using here ?" I gave the short answer as used in textbooks to teach science to students. Long answer:

Scientific comes from medieval Latin: scientificus. This was a translation of the Greek epistemonikos ("making knowledge" in Aristotle's Ethics). Knowledge to Aristotle was justified true belief. One might then expect those who adopt the appellation "scientist" to promulgate knowledge in this Aristotelian sense rather than horseshit.

I gave as an example astrophysicist George Smoot's disbelief of Galileo's own account of his falling weights experiment and his preference of the fictitious account by Vincenzo Vivianini written after Galileo's death. While Smoot's Wrinkles in Time is not a text book, it's a typical example of what scientists write for consumption by non-scientists. Another example is Reginald Lester (FR Met Soc) who wrote when I was a boy "It has been found that the cosmic rays about 14 miles up are 150 times stronger than at earth-level. When cosmic rays reach such a force they could crush to death both man and his machine." Stirring stuff that led me to ask why Gagarin wasn't crushed to death by cosmic rays.

Needless to say I was told not to ask such questions by my teachers. Happy now?

Re: enables high speed interstellar travel – but with only minimal fuel

However if you manage to change momentum without throwing stuff out, you can circumvent all of this, all you need to care about is the energy requirement.

That's the idea behind the gravitational slingshot (aka gravity assist manoeuvre, or swing-by) as used by interplanetary probes from Mariner 10 onwards. Also the idea behind the "space warp" of Science Fiction.

Re: 'Cannot be explained by known Physics' they say...

If solar flux or "laser" beams can push a light sail (widely accepted, I believe it's been proven), then there should be an infinitesimally small force by the EM emission from a microwave horn.

School I went to in UKLand had a vacuum tube with a little "windmill" inside it with the vanes blackened on one side and reflective on the other. Didn't need a laser to drive it (they hadn't been invented yet).

Yes, photons are photons.

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

A historical account of a scientific discover is in some way inaccurate? No shit? Next thing you'll be telling me Newton didn't get hit by a falling apple.

Can you explain precisely why historians are wrong for taking Galileo at his word, rather than the word of some scientist/priest who made stuff up at a much later date?

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

I was taught that Galileo did a thought experiment, not a physical one. ...

Final point: If you're standing on a 500km tall ladder, you're not in "outer space", you're still firmly in Earth's gravity well.

Galileo performed the Gedanken experiment, but he also performed the real one as described. It's an interesting account. The Gedanken experiment was also performed by Jean Buridan in the 14thC long before Galileo in the 16thC.

The interface between the Earth's surface and outer space is called The Kármán line at a height of 100 km. I guess by your account Gagarin's Vostok I never made it into outer space as it only achieved a height of 169 km. Alan Shepherd's flight reached 187 km, so he was well short of 500 km too. I guess very few early spacemen and women were true travellers in space by your account.

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

What particular usage of scientific are you using here ?

Textbooks as used to teach science to students. Try reading some and you might be surprised. Much of the science I was taught at the secondary level was horseshit.

You can see the result in the comments here. The phrase "scientific proof" has no meaning. Corroboration is not proof. Proof occurs in logic and mathematics, but scientific theories can never be proved.

Re: The first hint you are reading an Orlowski article

People who know their shit are a "priesthood".

Perhaps it would be better to say scientists who teach scientific shit are a priesthood. Let's take the falling weights already mentioned above. According to ever so many scientists, Galileo disproved Aristotle's notion that heavier objects fall faster than light objects by dropping a musket ball and a cannon ball from the top of the tower at Pisa. The two balls hit the ground simultaneously thus disconcerting the Aristotelians (aka Scholastics).

Galileo didn't record where he dropped identically sized wooden and iron balls, but if it was the tower at Pisa he was at least a hundred feet tall, or the towers was that much taller in his day. He also described the fall as the wooden ball initially being ahead of the iron ball, and the iron ball overtook the wooden ball to arrive at the ground first. To have both dropped the balls and observe this behaviour means he must have run very fast indeed to make the observation. Faster than the speed of sound even.

Astrophysicist George Smoot in his book Wrinkles in Time wrote that he realised the historians' account was wrong when he saw the tower of Pisa in the moonlight.

Other scientific horseshit includes:

Columbus being the first person to realise the Earth is a sphere.

Gravity in outer space is zero. At the top of a ladder that's about 500 km tall you would be in the vacuum of space, but you would not be weightless at all. You'd only weigh about fifteen percent less than you do on the ground.

Medieval scholars debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

Benjamin Franklin's kite string was struck by lightning. And it didn't kill him and anyone else standing nearby?

A prism can split a beam of sunlight into a rainbow. Science textbooks show how a second prism recombines the colours. Two prisms do not work as shown. Try to duplicate the effect illustrated with real prisms and you will discover it can't be done. You need either three prisms, or two different sized prisms.

[Mutter, mutter...]

Re: Devastated

As we get older, it seems death gets closer.

Not just seems; it does. I went close for the third time last December. Good to make a habit of looking up old friends before they go. Odd thing about the "celeb crowd", or the ones I've known anyway, is that they are all just people like you and me.

Re: Meh

and did Prince recommend asking John Williams?

Or Bruce Mathiske?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXfR5cb7UKs

Re: Unexpected

Keith Richards is still very much alive and kicking and people have been saying "he's next" for nearly 20 years now.

A bit longer than 20 years methinks. Back in the early 70s when he was in Melbourne I said: "Good morning Keith". He said: "Who the fuck are you?" A real gentleman is Keith :-)

Re: Seems to be a mass die-off of celebrities at the moment

I dunno, I think I took drudgs too...

If I did, I can't remember. Currently enjoying (if that's the right word) two weeks so far of acid visuals. Ivabradine does more than just slow down your heart-rate. And it's legal!

Re: omitted

they stay inside and fatten up (or egg lay at caged hen rate).

The number of eggs per bird is lower; the number of eggs per dollar spent on infrastructure/management/feed is higher. I have some data from back in the 1950s when battery chooks were a new innovation and barn/free-range were the usual. Maximum yield per bird was from free-range housed in coops holding ~20-24 birds IIRC. The relevant data is on paper in an archive box somewhere so difficult to access. The book I photocopied had a picture of rows of these coops spaced sufficiently far apart that a tractor and trailer could be driven between rows for egg collection and putting out feed. Egg laying rates were ~300/bird, or nearly double what was usual before WWII.

Re: Free range ...

The big difference I've noticed is that the yolks are much more yellow in properly free range eggs.

Unfortunately, cage egg producers can sell you eggs with yolks of any desired shade of yellow. They just add a commercially available dye to the chickens' diet. The yellow of free-range eggs is due to vitamin A and analogues in green feed.

Re: telling off a snide psychology professor

desire to show up pompous gits.

And what makes you think your beard is more beardly than The Pompous Git's beard?

Elvis isn't dead

I can hear him on the radio right now...

Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)

the bookies nearly always win.

Horse shit! Tasmanian punter/mathematician David Walsh is a billionaire courtesy of the bookies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Walsh_(art_collector)

He rented his first computer off my ex business partner (an Exidy Sorcerer purchased from the Electronic Dick) and he makes world class beer.

Re: @Stu Mac

The failure of motorists to detect and recognize motorcycles in traffic is the predominating cause of motorcycle accidents. The driver of the other vehicle involved in collision with the motorcycle did not see the motorcycle before the collision, or did not see the motorcycle until too late to avoid the collision.

From the Hurt Report, a motorcycle safety study conducted in the United States, initiated in 1976 and published in 1981. The report is named after its primary author, Professor Harry Hurt.

http://www.webbikeworld.com/Motorcycle-Safety/Hurt-study-summary.htm

Re: Cyclists who treat pedestrians as a slalom course are idiots

Links:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-08-08/hell-ride-cyclist-fined-400-over-mans-death/2525134

http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/216390/muarc285.pdf (see Sect 1.1.3)

And it occurs in UKLand:

http://metro.co.uk/2016/03/09/pedestrian-died-following-collision-with-cyclist-on-old-street-5742315/

I suspect that many will believe as do I that $AU400 fine for killing a pedestrian is anything but designating cyclists as an outgroup.

Cyclists claim that the speed and mass differential between a car and a cyclist are substantially greater than that between a cyclist and a pedestrian. This is bullshit.

The kinetic energy of a 1500 kg an ordinary sedan in a 50 km/hr zone compared to a cyclist’s kinetic energy of a riding at 30 km/hr in the same direction is a ratio of around 44 to 1 in favour of the car. On the other hand, the kinetic energy ratio between the same cyclist still travelling at 30 km/hr and a pedestrian walking at normal speed of say 5 km/hr is around 48 to 1 in favour of the cyclist. That is the car-cyclist kinetic energy differential is similar to that of the cyclist-pedestrian ratio. This is high school physics, not my "misinformed opinions".

Councils and road authorities have moved the responsibility from the car driver over to the cyclists by moving the cyclist onto the pedestrian footpath in order to reduce cyclist fatalities and injuries. The belief is that cyclists are supposedly travelling at a slower speed on the shared footpath in contrast to a car travelling on a road. In other words, it is assumed cyclists are in a better position to avoid harmful impacts with pedestrians and any impact therefore is necessarily of a lower severity.

The potential for conflict on shared paths is exacerbated by the differences in type, abilities and movements of users. Shared use pathways are frequented by pedestrians, cyclists, joggers, in-line skaters, skate-boarders, dogs, babies in prams, riders of powered recreational devices and many others. Particularly vulnerable users are the disabled (the visual, hearing and cognitively impaired), the elderly and children. Users have differing degrees of ability and experience, health and fitness, reaction and perception time, age and purpose. Generally, walkers will travel at significantly less speed than cyclists who can travel at over 50 km/hr or ten times the speed of the average pedestrian.

German research indicates that although fatal collisions are rare, cyclists are more likely to cause collisions but pedestrians usually suffer more severe injuries. They found younger bike riders were often at fault and the victims were often frail elderly people.

Graw,M., König, H.G., 2002. Fatal pedestrian–bicycle collisions. Forensic Sci. Int. 126, 241–247.

While you claim I am "uninformed" I am elderly and the literature, sparse as it is, supports my belief that cyclists on pedestrian footpaths are an existential threat to pedestrians. Despite finding several pedestrian deaths, I have been unable to find record of any cyclist dying from impact with a pedestrian. Sounds like weapons are definitely called for!

Re: Cyclists who treat pedestrians as a slalom course are idiots

I'm not in the least upset at the idea of sharing the footpath with cyclists. If they feel unsafe in traffic, then they can walk on the footpath as I do. That after all is what a footpath is for: walking on.

The verbal abuse is not unique to cyclists. I have been told to watch where the fuck I'm walking (at a speed only marginally faster than a snail) by fellow pedestrians, usually female, young, and staring at a mobile phone.

What upsets me is the possibility that I might be seriously injured, or killed by a cyclist. There have been two deaths that I know of so far; one in Launceston and one in Melbourne. There are generally far more "accidents" occasioning physical injury rather than death, but we are not privileged by those who know with the relevant data.

Putting a stick into the spokes of a bicycle might very well be a salutary lesson and save lives! The bicycle rider might well claim to have accidentally killed or seriously injured a pedestrian, but it seems a bit far fetched to claim bicycle riding as accidental when it's clearly a deliberate act.

Please also note that Hobart has several thoroughfares with dedicated bicycle lanes. I have never seen a bicycle rider using them. Nor have the people I have asked. They merely act to restrict the available amount of roadway for the use of cars and buses.

You might want to ask yourself what your attitude would be to a vocal section of the public demanding rather expensive infrastructure changes and then ostentatiously refusing to use them when provided.

As for ostracism on the road, that too was earned by the cyclists. South of Hobart is the Taroona Highway, a long, winding stretch of road with double white lines to discourage overtaking. It is common for cyclists to ride two abreast to prevent vehicular traffic from behind overtaking in the left hand lane. Overtaking in the right hand lane is insanely dangerous and the cyclists, knowing this, put their own and everyone else's lives at risk by cycling ever so slowly. That they are doing so deliberately is apparent from their smirking faces as they look over their shoulders at the traffic banked up behind them.

No, not all cyclists indulge in this behaviour. But what relevance is that? Ever so many do and no action is taken by either police, or fellow cyclists.

There's a reason we don't eat in group nudity

Presumably it's because where you live the cold makes your cock shrivel. Here in the Antipodes it's often as hot as the hinges of hell. We might not be completely nude while dining in 40C+, but we're often as close as... Just avert your eyes when looking at blokes and focus on the pretty young women. It's not hard. Unless you've inadvertently taken Viagra having mistaken it for your beta blocker ;-)

Re: "This is a straight-talking book about the numbers"

From the POV of plant life, the zero point for CO2 is ~150 ppm. At that point, the energy cost of photosynthesis = the energy gain. Atmospheric CO2 dropped to 160 ppm according to the Antarctic ice core record. Plants recovered from the La Brea tar pits from that period had become sufficiently starved of "carbon pollution" to have become unable to reproduce. I suspect that had the atmosphere remained at that point, we would not be having this discussion.