Could you kill someone by tossing them in that arsenic lake?
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 2:42 pm
by Malcolm
GORDON wrote:Could you kill someone by tossing them in that arsenic lake?
Ingesting or breathing arsenic will kill you if you let the it accumulate in big enough quantities. I don't know how/if it can kill you just by absorption into the skin. However, arsenic poisoning is extremely treatable.
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 2:42 pm
by GORDON
Malcolm wrote:
GORDON wrote:Could you kill someone by tossing them in that arsenic lake?
Ingesting or breathing arsenic will kill you if you let the it accumulate in big enough quantities. I don't know how/if it can kill you just by absorption into the skin. However, arsenic poisoning is extremely treatable.
Not if you hold them under long enough.
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 2:52 pm
by Troy
GORDON wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
GORDON wrote:Could you kill someone by tossing them in that arsenic lake?
Ingesting or breathing arsenic will kill you if you let the it accumulate in big enough quantities. I don't know how/if it can kill you just by absorption into the skin. However, arsenic poisoning is extremely treatable.
Not if you hold them under long enough.
Ba, I had "If they couldn't swim" as my response to that.
The Drake Equation itself is perfectly valid and reasonable. It's claiming you have information to limit the results to less than the range from 1 to a small multiple of the number of stars in the galaxy that is hooey. We can make some reasonable guesses (for example I find it unlikely that there are more civilizations in the galaxy than there are stars), but beyond that then you are moving away from science.
It's not useful, though. Not without a heck of a lot more information than we now have.
Edited By TPRJones on 1291335695
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 11:29 pm
by Leisher
But this is definitely a cocktease announcement. Where's my fucking aliens?
As for that Sagan video, I got confused by his statement and calculations in the second step. He says that evidence suggests "many or most stars have planets orbiting them" so of the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, he wrote 1/4 have planets orbiting them.
Huh? A quarter? If your assumption is that "many or most stars are accompanied by planets" why use 1/4? Why not at least 1/2?
P.S. The guy in the article Thib linked actually makes an interesting case about why global warming is horseshit that I hadn't heard before. Well, I probably had, just not the way he writes it out. Essentially, he says "technology constantly changes, and thus, worrying about what our current technology might do the the environment 100 years from now is pointless."
Edited By Leisher on 1291350827
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 11:54 pm
by TPRJones
Leisher wrote:As for that Sagan video, I got confused by his statement and calculations in the second step. He says that evidence suggests "many or most stars have planets orbiting them" so of the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, he wrote 1/4 have planets orbiting them.
He's being a bit conservative on purpose, I think. He mentions being conservative during the third step.
Although he then is quite nonconservative in step four, so maybe not.
Edited By TPRJones on 1291352139
Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2010 7:25 am
by thibodeaux
Leisher wrote:P.S. The guy in the article Thib linked
It's Michael "Jurassic Park" Crichton.
Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2010 6:36 pm
by unkbill
Malcolm wrote:
GORDON wrote:Could you kill someone by tossing them in that arsenic lake?
Ingesting or breathing arsenic will kill you if you let the it accumulate in big enough quantities. I don't know how/if it can kill you just by absorption into the skin. However, arsenic poisoning is extremely treatable.
Arsonic is found in nature. Apple seeds and peach pits. The arsonic compound in peach pits was refined to make Layatril. A drug used to treat cancer.