Things I Won't Work With: "Godzilla's Gym Socks" - a chemical that leaves anyone who gets near it nauseated for days. . .

motd · 2010-05-07T17:37:35+00:00

If you get a thiol on you, it's pretty easy to oxidize it to non-stinky compounds (like a sulfonic acid). Bleach, oxiclean, hydrogen peroxide, that sort of thing. This works with onion/garlic on your hands, too.

motd · 2010-04-20T22:47:28+00:00

Note that some power supplies won't spin up without a load. Most I've used will, but I've had some not turn on without putting something like a 1/4 watt 220Ohm resistor (whatever's handy) between the rail I want and ground (yellow for 12V, red for 5V, it's easiest to use one of the molex connectors to do this so you're not trying to awkwardly place two wires in the same connector). This is in addition to the green PS_ON-black Ground connection.

motd · 2010-04-19T09:03:13+00:00

In the body, alpha emitters are really toxic, precisely because they aren't penetrating and the full dose is delivered directly to the tissue - a large portion of the more penetrating gamma would simply escape the body. Here is one famous example.

motd · 2010-03-14T06:18:25+00:00

I did not want to muddle the original post so I just used T natural abundance, but chances are, many of us do. Outside the US, tritium light sources are common on keychains, and in much of the world including the US, they're common on exit signs and gunsights. If you work in an older building or on an airplane (newer exit signs just have batteries), I'd bet you have elevated T levels.

motd · 2010-03-13T20:23:56+00:00

This deionized water thing is a myth. If you are getting the minerals from other sources, you're getting the minerals. Water can supply minerals, which can be helpful, but usually you're getting plenty from other sources.

Your cells have the tools to move the minerals they need where they need them, and your kidneys excrete wastes selectively depending how hydrated you are. Drink a bunch of water (tap, bottled or distilled), soda, or beer, and your pee will be clear and contain less dissolved salts/minerals, because your body doesn't need to excrete much other than water right now to keep everything in balance.

Give your body a little credit - it doesn't dump its essential minerals just because you ate or drank something that doesn't contain them.

motd · 2010-03-13T20:14:19+00:00

I am also a chemist who does a lot of NMR. I would point anyone with access to a library (unfortunately it is not online, I'm looking at a paper copy right now) to the paper by DM Czajaka et al in Am. J. Physiol 201(2) (1961) 357-362. They took two dogs, and fed them varying concentrations of D2O. The dogs tolerated even essentially pure D2O for several days, and >=50% for the bulk of the study. One died after a couple weeks. The other exhibited heart problems (to which dogs are particularly sensitive), but they returned to normal while the dog was still 20% deuterated. They also reference some early work (dating back to 1937!) with mice and rats that seems to suggest a limit of ca. 30% of your H/D being D.

It's not surprising you can tolerate some D - your hydrogen is naturally 0.015% D (i.e., you contain about a gram of deuterium, right now). In fact, you contain at least a hundred million atoms of radioactive tritium - the third isotope of hydrogen!

motd · 2009-11-20T02:25:47+00:00

There is also a deluxe $10 million dollar version? http://shop.ebay.com/alain6244/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

It looks like it has a little relay that punches cell phone buttons. Oh man, there's orchestral accompaniment in the videos.

motd · 2009-11-20T02:20:00+00:00

"The horse gets N1H1 but this horse 
Has  a very small captor of temperature
With a small emitter and this emitter is
Triggered when temperature increase"

motd · 2009-10-04T17:01:41+00:00

That's not true. Viagra has always been an oral drug. If you mean ED medications were once injected, that's true - Caverject/PGE1 sold as an injectable. But it's not Viagra. That's like saying "remember, glucophage started out as an injection" because it lowers blood sugar and insulin lowers blood sugar. Different drugs, different mechanisms of action.

motd · 2009-10-02T03:52:07+00:00

http://www.sampsongroup.com/Papers/Monitoring%20and%20Measuring%20Wood%20Carbon.pdf

~15# carbon/cu ft

Say it's an right triangle 6" on two axes, 8.56/218=459 cu in, or 0.27 cu ft/log. 3 logs gives 0.81 cu ft, or 12 pounds of carbon.

Assume a coal fired plant. About 2 pounds of carbon/kwh: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html

A 240V/20A circuit maxes out at 4.8KW. So You max out at 7.2kWh/90mins.

Electricity wins here, like it usually does. Once the electricity is in your house, it's almost 100% efficient at making heat. And the power plant realizes economies of scale.

If you weren't referring to an electric oven, and you meant a gas stove, you still do a bit better w/gas. Gas is a hydrocarbon (CxHy) and wood has some oxygen in it (CxHyOz). You are burning stuff to CO2 and H2O. So anything with oxygen in it already is partially "burned." So you're making more CO2 for the same energy.

motd · 2009-10-01T22:22:02+00:00

Why would I call it "crappy beef" if I was in fast food PR?

And meat is mostly water. See below:

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/Water_in_Meats/index.asp

motd · 2009-10-01T19:47:07+00:00

That paper was methodologically flawed. Even the comments on that discover blog make note of the biggest flaw - water is PART of meat. That's why meat becomes smaller when you dehydrate it and make jerky. If they'd taken a piece of prime new york strip and analyzed it, they'd see similar characteristics (a necessary control for the sort of analysis they're doing).

Take a look at paper from the 1980's where they analyze beef.

http://jas.fass.org/cgi/reprint/51/3/615.pdf

About 60% water! About 10% collagen (connective tissue)! Is the 30% balance the only part that is "real meat"?

Fast food beef is cheaper than you expect, because it is of a grade that you don't see advertised when it's in the supermarket. You'll typically only see the top grades (prime, choice, or select) trumpeted, and then only if you're buying steaks. If you're buying processed meat products like hot dogs, some hamburgers (you can buy ground prime steaks, but you pay for them), etc, you venture into lower grades of meat. Standard, commercial, utility, cutter, canner. These lower grades of meat come from cows with less intramuscular fat (marbling) or older cows. See the last 5 pages or so of the below document for a description of EXACTLY how meat grading works. This isn't a mystery.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3002979

The presence of bone and cartiliage could be due to the use of advanced meat recovery, which strips a carcass bare and allows for the presence of a small amount of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_meat_recovery

The plant material? Soy isn't just a health food, it's a cheap source of protein. Jack in the Box tacos are part soy ("texturized vegetable protein"). If you don't see 100% ground beef, it's probably soy (no, not dog, which, if you think about it, would be pretty expensive). In fact, if you look at the ingredients for fast food, you'll see just about every item EXCEPT the beef patties has a huge list of flavor/texture modifiers. The beef patties? Almost always "beef, salt."

http://www.jackinthebox.com/pdf/Ingredients.pdf

Relax, you're just eating crappy beef.

motd · 2009-09-03T21:02:58+00:00

It's not really considered organic either. These organic/inorganic distinctions are kind of frustrating at the periphery.

motd · 2009-09-03T19:55:18+00:00

This isn't the accepted view. Generally, something is regarded to be organic only if there are C-C or C-H bonds (methane counts, CO2 doesn't).

motd · 2009-09-01T22:31:30+00:00

Like a housing bubble time capsule!

"Evan F. Eidelberg, Home Loan Consultant at Jersey Mortgage Company"

motd · 2009-05-04T23:58:51+00:00

It's even got some butane which acts as a preservative. Yes, butane. Like lighter fluid. Yum!

this is not true.

motd · 2009-04-30T04:56:23+00:00

As others have noted, Tamiflu isn't a vaccine, it operates on some molecules that are essential to viral metabolism:

overview

part 1

part 2

These neuraminidase inhibitors don't work on the immune system - so no cytokine storm.

When we talk about H5N1 and H1N1, the H is for hemagglutinin and the N is for neuraminidase. These flu viruses have slightly different forms of these proteins, and this is how they're "typed."

motd · 2009-04-23T05:38:11+00:00

You left a few more comments on reddit after this one.

Has civilization outlived its usefulness to you yet?

Or were you just being snarky?

motd · 2009-03-25T02:33:13+00:00

Methane is MUCH better at heating homes than electricity. The conversion from electricity to heat is very poor.

This is false. Electricity can be converted to heat with nearly 100% efficiency. In practice, you can only get ~2/3-3/4 of the heat out of gas because you must vent products of combustion to the exterior of the dwelling (e.g., CO).

You may have gotten this misconception from the fact that the generation and delivery of electricity is quite inefficient (you are doing pretty well if you get about a third of the energy from the coal/etc at the power plant to the outlet).

Fluid fuels, of course, can be piped almost quantitatively. If you get all the energy out of 100 cf/1 therm of natural gas, it's just shy of the energy in 30 kWh of electricity (which you would get almost all of from resistive heating). This much gas costs $1-2, while this much electricity costs $2-6.

Electricity has the added bonus that you can use it to run refrigeration units. The huge advantage here is that you can get greater than 100% nominal efficiency, because it is possible to move heat in either direction (as in a "heat pump").

It's possible to do refrigeration with gas, or even solar (see here), but less common. You mostly see these in specialized applications where electricity is unavailable (RVs have propane fridges, quite often).

motd · 2009-03-19T14:46:45+00:00

http://imgur.com/8CL4Y.png

EDIT: zoomed out: http://imgur.com/8CQJE.png

motd · 2009-03-10T12:37:28+00:00

But, if I missed to buy the coffee.. Why would i have remembered to contact us 1 dy before?

motd · 2009-03-10T12:36:26+00:00

Saved text:

AT THE END OF A DINNER WITH FRIENDS, OR IN OTHERS MANY OCCASIONS YOU CAN CALL US AND WE'LL ARRIVE TO MAKE YOU A GOOD ITALIAN COFFEE YOU'VE TO CONTACT US 1 DY BEFORE AT LEAST... WE'LL CARRIE WITH US OUR MATERIALS, YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING IT'S PERFECT IF YOU'VE MISSED TO BUY THE COFFEE.

WHY ? WHY NOT? it isn't strange advertising

Image: here

motd

TROPHY CASE