No, often it strikes lightning rods of tall buildings. Which, with a very constrained coordinate system, is a spatial confinement that practically guarantees it strikes the same spot quite often. However, in the grander scheme of things, points in the universe are not so constant (particularly if you are talking in terms of loop quantum gravity).

Maybe I just caught a few uninteresting episodes via random luck and thought that was how the show was.

Parents like to talk about their kid's accomplishments; get used to it. Being able to read and understand at a level significantly greater than someone of their age is an accomplishment. Playing video games is not completely a waste of time, but it isn't really the kind of accomplishment that contributes to academic success. Since the child is in school, and school constitutes a large portion of their life, academic success is one of the most important aspects of their life at that age.

Rubbing alcohol is almost universally isopropyl alcohol. If it is ethyl alcohol, it is denatured alcohol, which basically has added toxins to deter people from drinking it. In either case, it is not the same as drinking alcohol. To extract vanillin, the cheap/easy way is to use vodka. But drinking enough vanilla extract to get drunk is going to be unpleasant, to say the least (I guess this somewhat means it is denatured alcohol). Also, it would cost a lot more than just buying the booze.

Yeah, it has been a while since I have taken those chemistry classes, too. I was just reminiscing. My recent coursework in chemistry has been building chemistry test equipment and comparing their performance to commercially available models. It is really more of an electronics class, but it is coded as a chemistry course because we are building equipment used for chemical analysis.

Yes I have. And I know quite a few doctors, personally. I did a summer internship at the Mayo Clinic in the pathology lab. Let's look at it this way, just because someone has a degree in calculus does not mean they can solve every calculus problem. Just because your doctors cannot solve your case does not make them idiots, and it certainly does not mean that you know more than they do. I understand that you are frustrated, and it really does suck for you; for that, I am sorry. I am in classes with people who are in college before they even go pre-med, and I am sure even they have more broadly applicable medical knowledge than anyone who hasn't gone to grad school in a biomedical science or med school. Because I actually do know shit, I know enough to realize that your claim of knowing more than your doctors is delusional.

Unless you are a scientist or a doctor yourself, I can almost guarantee you that you do not know how to tie your shoes compared to what they know. You may have looked something up on the internet and maybe even learned more about your specific case of a particular disorder, but they have to be familiar with hundreds or even thousands of disorders, all of the organs and tissues, system integration, medications and interactions between medications, etc. Yes, they can look these up, but they did have to learn a lot more in college, pre-med, med school, and probably a specialty school than anyone without an upper-level science degree (or something similar). Go ahead and challenge your doctor to a medical trivia game if you think you know more; try and stay above zero points if the questions don't pertain to your specific condition(s).

I personally thought nearly all of organic chemistry was boring, except the NMR/IR/GC-MS to figure out the structure of your compound. I also like spectrophotometry. In contrast, I really like biochemistry.

Why should the medical field be bastardized and turned into some sort of game in order for the people saving lives to make enough money to pay off the debts they incurred for going to school for many years of their lives just to be able to do their job? The problem isn't that the medical field is not exciting, the problem is how our society is so obsessed with entertainment that we cannot appreciate important things just for the sake that they are important and necessary.

I am pretty sure lindsmolinari is making the point that sports are not a necessary part of life, and should not be treated as such. They are were created for entertainment and as a way to keep military personnel in good physical condition (also, in some cultures, to solve disputes in a comparatively non-violent manner). It should not be a dominating part of society, throwing shadows over other things that should actually matter much more than they do. Sports are fine, watching them is fine, playing them is fine, but effectively worshiping athletes/teams is a long ways past the ridiculous line.

We could make little changes that make a difference, like not making military personnel, police, and whatnot pay taxes. That's an effective ~20% pay raise for them. To pay off our debts, give the government employees who deserve it pay raises, put some government funding money in researchers' pockets, and begin to narrow that enormous gap between socioeconomic classes, we can stop those tax breaks that keep those people and companies that should be paying the highest % in taxes from paying any at all. Imagine the funds generated by raising the taxes on e.g. Apple by only 1%; then other huge companies and ridiculously affluent people as well. We could have subsidized occupations, like if you are an EMT, the government pays you some amount, in addition to your normal wages. As we know, charging more for visits only screws over the person who cannot afford insurance and does not put more money in the doctor's pocket or really help anyone in any way. You gotta think outside of the box.

That was the first lab we did in organic chemistry. Caffeine extraction, thin layer chromatography, melting point analysis, and spectrophotometry.

@ underyourbed yes, that is why professional athletes get paid about 5000% (not an exaggeration) or so more than they should. Wouldn't it be nice if someone who was actually doing something beneficial to society every day got paid that kind of money instead? If our society were focused on something more than keeping us entertained, we might actually maintain a position as a world power and leader of innovation. It is a position that was painstakingly carved out for us, and then summarily wasted so we can funnel money into people running around with a ball, or watching the same people pretend to be the same type of person countless times with a different name (and often the same name, with all of the sequels, prequels, and remakes).

There are a lot of similarities between cancer cells and stem cells. I have often wondered if introducing the reprogramming factors to cancer cells has any therapeutically beneficial effect. This would probably only work on certain cancer subtypes, since conditions like supernumerary centrosomes will always promote overactive cell cycle progression, and thus oncogenesis. Or it might just make the cancer worse by making them pluripotent stem cells, which metastasize, emulate any tissue type at attachment e.g. mesenchymal-epithelial transition, generate new tumors of this new tissue type, and essentially make it impossible to properly diagnose and treat.

Well, my point is that it is not necessary to use embryonic stem cells anymore. We can get the same benefits and more from induced pluripotent stem cells, without the ethical dilemma. Obviously wikipedia isn't a scholarly source, but it is a decent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_pluripotent_stem_cell

Well, games like Foldit have the potential of contributing something useful to the world... I could take that seriously.

There is mainly controversy because people equate stem cell research with embryonic stem cell research and presume that babies are being killed. Not all stem cells are embryonic stem cells, not all embryonic stem cell extraction harms the embryo (even if it did, abortions within the first trimester are legal, so why not use the stem cells from these?), and not all scientists are mad scientists. Induced pluripotent stem cells are adult cells that have been reverted back into a pluripotent stem cell form in a laboratory. There should be no ethical issue involved from a scientist taking a skin cell and using chemicals to transform it back into a cell with amazing potential. In short, the science and medical literacy in this country is appalling, and this is a major contributing factor as to why science has no funding.

Also, I would suggest stem cell research over pharmacy; it has a lot more potential for growth and meaningful discoveries. Look at induced pluripotent stem cells. With scientific and clinical research, we have the potential to make the world better, bit by bit. Or we could release yet another movie that is more or less just like a dozen other ones that will be released that year to give people two hours of entertainment. Give them FS (which is free and more than two hours of fun) and put that money in the labs.

Or imagine if labs just had the budget of box office movies.

I always thought that part was kind of like brainwashing.