FWIW, the only thing I read into it was "insufficient prior knowledge to evaluate claims, and failure to do adequate fact checking from reliable sources".
Global Warming Skepticism
(57 posts) (14 voices)-
Elemenope
ModeratorBEEEEP. This is an automated message. Custador cannot respond right now, as his head just fuckin' asploded.
LOL. Trust me, the reaction of the class was collectively approximately that, which quickly degenerated into a farcical scene. To his credit he accepted the update with equanimity and grace (considering the class got rather rude at points about it).
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ty
Moderatorhttp://www.cancertutor.com/Cancer/HydrogenPeroxide.html
No, they shoot this shit into themselves.
A friend of a friend, a goddamn chemical engineer, was getting ready to get this stuff shot into his wife for her "fiber myalgia."
Posted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
MemberWell, that links to a lovely bit of pseudoscience stitched together with meaningless bafflegab.
But I suppose the whole point is that it doesn't matter if it means anything. The target audience is that segment of the population which is not educated enough to recognize it as bullshit.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Kodie
MemberIs it still okay to swish it in your teeth once in a while? Diluted, then spit. I tried to get info about how safe or unsafe that was and could not find any solid NO. It was hard to wade through all the silly people, but the cautions against it weren't any more credible.
Posted 1 year ago # -
@ Kodie: The British Dental Association is suing several companies which offer tooth whitening, and qualified dentists aren't allowed to use any concentration stronger than 6%. They also have to get permission from the BDA and indemnity from their insurers on a case-by-case basis, because it carries such a high risk of killing nerve roots, which kills the teeth and turns them grey. File under "avoid".
Posted 1 year ago # -
Kodie
MemberHousehold hydrogen peroxide is 3%? I think? Halved with water is 1.5%. There's peroxide in a lot of toothpastes and mouthwashes anyway, I just thought it was cheaper and less of that hyper-marketed beautiful packaging. I haven't done it in a while, and I think I only did it less than a handful of times before I just don't bother anyway. I find beyond the minimal requirements for daily hygiene, I can't really keep up with extraneous tasks. I think the toothpaste I use probably has peroxide in it, and though it probably won't whiten my teeth so much, I also feel like they would be a lot yellower without it. Is 1.5% strength hydrogen peroxide still that bad? I'm so nervous about it, I don't dare do it "full strength" at 3%! I also feel weird about using things in the mouth when most of the skin creams and ointments stress that they are topical only and never to use them inside the mouth.
Posted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
MemberI worked for seven years in a dental research lab. I never once heard any dentist recommend hydrogen peroxide for rinsing your mouth.
I can tell you from first principles that it won't kill all the bacteria in your mouth (which is what a lot of people imagine that it is doing), and that there are many other things that are less damaging to your tissues that will kill just as many bacteria as hydrogen peroxide does without being so rough on you. Most commercial mouthwashes do a bang-up job of killing 99% of bacteria, if that's what you're after. But the survivors will always repopulate your mouth within a few short hours.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Kodie
Member@Ursa - I think since it's an ingredient in most teeth-whitening products, the bacteria-killing is just a nice side effect. Some of the people whose accounts I read were also all about the all-around health of it for oral hygiene maintenance, some videos from people who said they were dentists, etc. I think if you have oral surgery, don't they tell you to rinse with hydrogen peroxide? It was kind of new to me. Since I'm not a chemist, assumed most liquids found in the bathroom were not at all for oral use. I got a drop of conditioner drip into my mouth once and I was heaving for 10 minutes, and not the Herbal Essences kind of heaving. I did not want to want to put hydrogen peroxide in my mouth any more than I want to put hemorrhoid cream under my eyes. I have since learned the active ingredient has changed so that it's not going to work on eyes anymore and it can blind you, but I still see it on lists of how to be beautiful.
While I'm on a tear, I recently bought some Blistex medicated lip ointment which is different than usual lip balm, which usually is mostly if not all petroleum jelly. What it does instead is numb the lips slightly to discourage licking lips, which both seems to cause and relieve chapping. I'd like to know if this is safe. It really does keep me from licking my chapped lips long enough for them to heal. http://www.blistex.com/products/medicated-lip-ointment I don't have to re-apply it a million times a day.
Active Ingredients:
Dimethicone 1.1% Skin protectant
Camphor 0.5% External analgesic
Menthol 0.6% External analgesic
Phenol 0.5% External analgesicPosted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
Member@Kodie: You've pretty much nailed it. Hydrogen peroxide is included in tooth-whitening products for its bleaching properties. It's a multi-trick pony.
The alcohols in your Blistex are all toxic if ingested in large amounts, but if you get too much of any of them you'll puke them up long before you can be poisoned by them. The phenol is kind of iffy- it might be a mutagen (and is therefore a potential carcinogen). Last time I worked in a lab, OSHA regulations required the use of gloves and goggles and called for avoiding skin contact when working with it. On the other hand, all three listed alcohols are bacteriostatic, so they help prevent infections if your lips are cracked. This is generally not a problem for most people anyway, so their inclusion is mostly for the analgesic effect.
The dimethicone (which is a trade name for polydimethylsiloxane) is probably harmless. It's not something that your body can absorb.
The best (and safest, and cheapest) thing to use for chapped lips is some kind of low-temp-melting wax or oil. The whole point is to form a moisture barrier. Beeswax or plain Vaseline work well. You don't need anything other than a thin waterproof coating to do the job. The rest is all bells and whistles.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Kodie
MemberBeeswax or plain Vaseline work well. You don't need anything other than a thin waterproof coating to do the job. The rest is all bells and whistles.
But they don't. That's why I went looking for the hard stuff. I don't use this Blistex every day, but my lips reach such a chapped state in the winter and I think the vaseline is like I used nothing. Frequently re-applied to assume the position of pro-activity I liken to prayer. When I used the Blistex medicated, I didn't need to re-apply and forgot about the chapping, then it was bedtime, then I woke up and I realized my lips felt comfortable for the first time in a few weeks. I'm a little worried about the slight numbing. Obviously that wears off, my lips get dry, I start licking them a lot or applying chapstik... actually I think I have a different brand that's beeswax 'cause it has a little bee on it. Cute package design. It reaches critical again and nothing makes it better. I got breast implant goo on my lips. That's weird. I think the chapstik doesn't work since it doesn't feel better, I still lick my lips too much and takes it off. If I could manage to restrain myself, it would probably work a lot better. It's agony, it's like when you have stitches and they itch and you're not allowed to scratch.
Posted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
Member@Elemenope:
Polydimethylsiloxane is an umbrella term for any dimethylsilane polymer. "Breast implant goo" is a longer-chain polymer with a higher molecular weight and viscosity than the stuff that they put in lip balm, so although the two are chemically related, they're not the same compound.
On a side note, this is the sort of molecule that has been theorized as a possible basis for non-carbon-based life forms. I have my doubts as to whether it would work; the pi valence orbitals of silicon are too large for it to form stable double or triple bonds. Here on Earth, silicon is exceedingly abundant and carbon is exceedingly rare, and you will note that life uses the latter. That's rather telling.
@Kodie:
If you're not comfortable using the Blistex because of the phenol that's in it but you want an analgesic, you might consider oil of clove. It's a good topical analgesic, and a very old remedy for cold sores and toothaches. Combine it with beeswax or petroleum jelly to numb the lips and seal in the moisture. It's not risk-free either; the active ingredient is eugenol, which can mess with your liver if you ingest it in large amounts. You can buy the purified oil, but the poor man's version is to buy a huge bag of cloves from your local Indian grocery store for $2 and grind them to a powder yourself. A little goes a long way.
Or if you don't want to play Kitchen Khemist, you could look for a lip balm that has oil of clove in it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Mogg
Member"I know intelligent adults with access to google who honestly don't know that injecting Hydrogen Peroxide into their blood stream is bad for you. One was a chemical engineer."
AARGH! My head just asploded. This is a very messy thread. I spend a considerable amount of my professional time removing all traces of chlorine from water that is going to go into people's blood streams because it can kill them pretty damn quick.
"polydimethylsiloxane
Better known as "breast implant goo". "
I thought that was better known as the ebil silicone in shampoo that according to hippies will make your hair break off if you use it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
MemberI thought that was better known as the ebil silicone in shampoo that according to hippies will make your hair break off if you use it.
It's all very scientific. Rocks are made of silicon compounds. Obviously what's happening when you put a silicon compound in a shampoo is that it turns your hair into stone. Stone is very hard but very brittle. Your hair then breaks off, Q.E.D.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorOoh, quite right, Ursa. Thanks for the correction. On the latter note, this is an interesting thumbnail survey of proposed alternate biochemistries.
I personally tend to think that a hybrid silicon-carbon biochemistry (with silicon providing, for the most part, a replacement for carbon in large structural chains that are characterized by serial sigma bonds, and carbon retaining most of its role in functional groups) is more plausible than purely silicon-based life.
Posted 1 year ago # -
UrsaMinor
MemberA hybrid boron-nitrogen biochemistry is another possibility that is frequently overlooked, as alternating chains of boron and nitrogen mimic a lot of the properties of carbon chains. But there's not a lot of boron in the universe, much less than either carbon or nitrogen or silicon, so it would probably be hard to arrange a planet with enough boron in the environment to give it a try.
A hybrid carbon-silicon biochemistry certainly seems possible, but probably not under Earthlike conditions. Maybe under a high temperature regime, and then you'd have to figure out a biological solvent other than water, and how to retain some kind of suitable atmosphere to support an analog of the hydrological cycle. Iron or nickel carbonyls might work; I certainly wouldn't want to visit such a place. The most charitable description you can give them is "dreadfully toxic to terrestrial life".
Carbon-based life is theoretically detectable across interstellar distances by the spectroscopic signatures of its metabolic byproducts in planetary atmospheres. Other biochemistries probably would be too, if we just could figure out what to look for. And without a concrete, proven example of a non-carbon biochemistry to work from, it would be difficult to distinguish an exotic biological signature from that of an exotic chemical one.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Paul
Member@ Brian, Spectrox
I'm a bit late to the party, but Potholer54 has a youtube series presenting the evidence for global warming and debunking a lot of the commonly used arguments against global warming. He can be condescending to the other side, but he does cite all of his sources; most of them even cited on screen for you to immediately reference and know he isn't BSing you. Also, I think it is accessible to those outside of science, so you might find it a useful start to learning what the evidence is and what the actual scientists are talking about. It can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA4F0994AFB057BB8&feature=plcp
Posted 1 year ago #
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