chrisjpainter

Roll up, roll up! It's your final dose of harsh reality for 2021. BBC TMS stats man Andy Zaltzman had put together a miserable collection of statistics from this year: 'England's Ashes defeat caps a record-breakingly bad year' - BBC Sport My favourite has to be 14 ducks in 15 tests by the openers. A world record and enough to open a poultry farm.

It can only be a good thing. Although I guess the batting coaching team is unaffected, so how much difference will it really make? I really hope the ECB wake up after this debacle of a tour. Maybe they'll realise how much they've embarrassed their fans.

This guy's great. He's like a German Father Christmas who's given up his day job to live out his rambo fantasies.

Yeah, but 9 times the energy of the maximum energy of an unlicensed air rifle? There's something wrong there...

They seem a slightly pointless thing in the UK anyway, given that you can't hunt with them and most archery clubs aren't great fans of them. It does seem a bit ridiculous how easy they are to get hold of compared to the amount of damage you can inflict. I imagine there's a bit of social stigma attached to them and you can still kill someone with a compound bow, but it seems more unlikely somehow. Plus crossbows deliver way more power than almost any compound bow UK air rifle energy limit is 12ft/lb. Crossbows can deliver 100ft/lb+ comfortably. It does seem to be a bit of an oversight!

When was the last time you had an eye test? Do you wear glasses or contacts to shoot? I'd be looking at getting that sorted first. 30yds @ 9x mag should be plenty to be able to see the impact holes. It might be time for a check up to see if your sight's changed?

I think we should promote the tail. Send in Anderson, Broad, Leach, Wood etc. in first, just to do what they can. If we're 30-4 so be it, what have we really changed?! But the ball will be older the bowlers a little tireder and we'd have a full quota of supposedly competent batters to make hay. Then with every wicket falling in the first session we'd be thinking, 'well this is expected, we've got the cavalry coming soon' rather than 'one more wicket and we'll be done for'. Then Buttler comes in at number eleven to slog a few fast runs before the end of the innings.

Oh good grief.

Did he say anything interesting?

Sounds like a knackered air seal. I don't think they're particularly difficult to change, so you should be able to do it yourself. Is it a fast leak or a slow one? Welcome to the site, btw

It was the fake palms the bamboos and tea that did it. I wonder how they helped technique. Shambolic end to the day. If I was a bowler, I'd be sorely tempted to down tools and go on strike. They're getting nothing from their own batters time and time again. Anderson, Wood and Robinson get us back into the match, only for the batters to immediately dump us back out of it.

Sorry, is this a real thing or a comedy spoof?! Back in Melbourne, England have exerted some pressure! A wonderful spell from Anderson's got us back in this one. Wood's got rid of Labuchagne, Anderson's got Smith. Anderson's spell: O M R W 6 5 1 1

The opposing teams change, the locations change, but the scores remain predictable

Sigh. England bat. We lost the toss, but Root's said he would have bowled, so that's a start!

It looks like we got two thirds of our Christmas miracle: two Surrey boys dumped! Out go Burns and Pope in come Crawley and Bairstow. Still not Foakes. Leaky Leach in along with Wood for Woakes and Broad. So in order to cure our lack of runs, they've shortened the batting line up to seven batters, then four genuine 10 and 11's. By the fifth test they're going to struggle to find some mistakes they've not made. But maybe it's a masterstroke and it'll fall into place perfectly! In half an hour we'll start to find out... Or not. Rain. Typical

That's utterly miserable. Sorry to hear that for your family. Hopefully she found a way to enjoy it still 😞 Although pork belly is always a winner

No that was my mistake. Initially I'd thought they'd neglected to do the checks, not that he'd refused. I guess he's just incredibly lucky he didn't kill someone and get a death by dangerous driving conviction.

What did she lie about? Wife was 'in difficulties': Need more information, but it's not clear she lied He was in a place he didn't know: True 'Drove in the way [they] have seen': True No alcohol sample was provided: True. She's not lied. She might have put a positive spin on it, but she's not lied.

Exactly. That is her job. She presents the best possible case she can, which includes highlighting what he can and can't be punished for. Failing to provide is relevant to sentencing. But whether he was actually over or not isn't, because that couldn't be proved. The Prosecution suggested he was clearly intoxicated. She counters that by saying there's no proof of that, so it can't be used in sentencing. There's a clear difference between the two. He hasn't been charged with drink driving, so the prosecution shouldn't assume that he was and the judge shouldn't include into the sentencing a punishment for drink driving.

She's making comments in mitigation. She's saying no alcohol charges have been laid, so sentence cannot be made with any alcohol-based sentencing. And she doesn't need to prove he wasn't. The burden of proof's on the prosecution. All she's done is her job. She's trying to present the best case for her client. That includes pointing out relevant details in the case that should not be harmful to him in sentencing. Alcohol shouldn't have been brought up by the prosecution, but because it was, she's well within her rights to point out that as no charges were brought based on alcohol intoxication, any suggestion he was over the limit should not count towards sentencing. The sentence is a joke, but that's down to the judge. And the police have stuffed up over the lack of alcohol test. But that's not Soubry's fault either. The legal system must have defending counsels doing the best possible job they can for their clients. She's done her job. It's just a shame the police and judge didn't do theirs. I imagine if drink driving charges had been brought the sentence would have been more.

Irrelevant to the charges, perhaps, but Mr Dee, prosecuting, had tried to make it relevant by saying, 'He was clearly intoxicated'. She's doing her job by finding holes in the prosecution's case.

Because it's her job? She's only said what any lawyer would have said in those circumstances. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have been fulfilling her role as the guy's legal representation. Somebody would have to have done it. And I imagine barristers are left scratching their heads with some of their defendants' ideas of mitigating circumstances, but they can't just turn around and say 'you know what, your honour? This guy's as guilty as they come.'

It's on the BBC, but don't let that put you off! It's a head-first dive into the perils and nastiness of social media. Thought provoking, insightful and at times deeply personal but nails the issue. BBC iPlayer - David Baddiel: Social Media, Anger and Us Well worth a watch.

This sounds like what's called a multi-dose vial - i.e. a vial that contains more than one shot. The vaccine is turned up side down a few times (at two different stages and specifically not shaken) to get the stuff to mix evenly. Vaccines have a few things in them besides the active ingredient, including enablers, preservatives and dilutants (more on that story later). When a multi-dose vial is initially turned, it's to get all those preservatives and enablers to be evenly spread. These vaccines have been stored for a while (firstly frozen, then chilled) so there is a chance that the vaccine has separated. Rotating allows it to recombine. If you shake it, you risk damaging the active elements, thus rendering the jab useless. Dilutants are then added to allow the vaccine to be administered smoothly and again this needs to be mixed evenly throughout the six doses in the vial. There shouldn't be sediment left over at either stage. If there is, the whole vial's discarded. Getting two things to permanently mix (as opposed to bond) is tricky if you're trying to keep the things independent. It's much simpler to accept the potential for it to separate and then just turn it over a few times to guarantee it's evenly mixed. The vaccine ingredients are all in there for their own individual, specific reasons, so you need them all to be chemically distinct to allow them to do their job. It's the scientific difference between a compound and a mixture (so slightly relevant to your above things!). Mixtures can be separated into their individual parts easily, compounds cannot. That's what you want with a vaccine. Each bit can do its thing as easily as possible. If you bond things together, it will be evenly mixed, but the parts won't operate as individuals when the time comes. Why not just mix it in altogether? Storage. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines must be stored at -70, but the dilutants don't. You'd need to double your cold storage for each vial, which is unnecessary and the dilutants don't take kindly to being frozen anyway, so it's cheaper and more space efficient to have them separate and then combine them at point of jab.

Okay, well you'll be happy to know they're nonsense. I don't really get what the first video is trying to tell me. She melts down the capsule, and then brings a magnet into the game and it's proof of what? The presence of graphene? The trouble with that is...there is no graphene in the tablets. The link below tells you what is in it and you can scroll down to 'excipients', which is the capsule ingredients. You'll notice plenty of forms of iron oxide. This is magnetic. It's not as strong as pure iron (it's known as paramagnetic) but it's still got enough of a field to react to a magnet. Notice how there's still some gunk left that's not reacting? that's because there are other compounds in it that aren't magnetic. It's the iron-based compounds she's dragging around, nothing to do with Graphene. Flucloxacillin 500mg Capsules - Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) - (emc) (medicines.org.uk) The second one's...weird. Take this line for example 'Graphene oxidises rapidly when exposed to electromagnetic fields'. But Graphene oxide (GO) needs three things to be formed: Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen. You can't make it without a chemical bonding process where hydrogen is a factor, so simply firing electromagnetic fields at it won't do the job. GO is normally produced with sulfuric acid (H2SO4), sodium nitrate (NaNO3), and potassium permanganate (KMnO4). The H in the formulas is Hydrogen and the O Oxygen, so you have the chemical ingredients to make Graphene Oxide. As to Graphene and 5G, which I think is what it's trying to say is dangerous. Firstly, it's worth pointing out that Graphene isn't in the body naturally. So this is only applicable to introduced medical/technological things - medicines, electronic devices and so on. Secondly, the research for Graphene specifically is still in its early stages and it's not used in medical procedures or tech, yet. There are hopes for it because of its legion of practical uses, but it's really in its infancy. But this idea of electromagnetic waves playing havoc with our blood and making us pseudomagnetic (I'm sorry, whatnow?! Just how much graphene is supposed to be coursing through our bodies?! More on dosing issues later...) is nonsense. HOWEVER this is where it gets confusing, because there's an oddity to graphene. GO is used in some medical things quite regularly (NOT COVID VACCINES See below!), because it creates a very useful membrane, which is great for drug delivery. So a lot of these crazy internet theories see graphene oxide and assume they're the same thing, but the chemical bonding process that goes into graphene to make it graphene oxide changes it massively. This isn't unique to Graphene/graphene oxide. Ever asked yourself why, when you put salt onto your potatoes as you're boiling them, it doesn't immediately catch fire? No? Why not? Because salt, which is basically Sodium Chloride NaCl, is a whole different kettle of fish to Sodium, which does catch fire on contact with water. Chemical reactions change a substance's properties drastically. What's weird about GO is that it was discovered, created and used WAY before Graphene was discovered. It's been around since the 1850's, whereas Graphene was only observed in the 1960's and only practically studied from the mid 2000's. Consequently, its' had decades' worth of time to be played with, experimented on and so forth to understand it and its uses and how it reacts. Graphene's in its infancy. There's a lot of hope that it can be hugely useful, but it's not there yet. It's why research is going on, but also why there is a shed-load of red tape to get something to be medically viable. It protects people from being lab rats. But those protections are in place and do work, especially in the days after the Thalidomide disaster. Both short term and long term effects have to be understood, as well as on a diverse population. These videos are classic examples of misunderstanding science and chemistry specifically. They often rest on two mistakes. Firstly, critical ingredients get muddled up (either intentionally or accidentally) and assumed to be dangerous, like we see with Graphene/Graphene Oxide. Another one is mixing up chemical mercury and organic mercury. we know Mercury is bad so, EVERY Mercury must be bad, without understanding what's really going on. The second mistake is dose issues. Graphene Oxide experiments on mice have shown NO toxicity complications with doses between 0.1 and 0.25mg. at 0.4mg - deposits were found in vital organs and that could be dangerous...but the headline news? Mice are quite a bit smaller than humans. Shocker. Consequently what represents a massive dose for a mouse (0.4g) is an extraordinarily negligible amount in a human. Again, this mistake isn't uncommon. Antivaccine types see the elements Potassium, Sodium and Aluminium and think that, because water poisoning from those elements is potentially dangerous, having those elements in the body at all is dangerous, but forgetting they're always in the body anyway and no one's claiming you shouldn't eat that Potassium-laden death tubes that is a banana. How do we know graphene oxide isn't used in COVID-19 mRNA vaccines? (health-desk.org)