Cirocco

Oh hey, Klondike9000, how are you?

blah, I only caught a couple in one and a half hours staring at the sky. Bloody light pollution is far too high in Belgium. Still, caught 4 shooting stars, 2 satellites (one might have been the ISS, it was due to pass overhead I think) and a whole bunch of uninteresting planes.

belgium will be, so it's a good bet the netherlands will be too. Kinda depends where in the netherlands I guess

Not sure if it's been mentioned on the forums yet, but tonight (night in Europe anyway) the Perseids will be at peak. This means that the earth is passing through a dust cloud and leads to a lot of dust particles burning up in the atmosphere, meaning lots of shooting stars. Tonight from midnight to 04:00 (GMT+1) will be the peak with up to 70 shooting stars per hour, though you'll see an increased amount of shooting stars throughout the entire night. Some tips to get the best view: - try to be somewhere away from light pollution. That basically means away from cities. - look northward - get a comfy chair, let your eyes adjust to the darkness and look at the sky for at least 15 minutes and finally: wish away *note: neither the universe, the atomizing dust particle nor any other person, entity or event, cosmological or otherwise, can give guarantee of wish fulfillment. Also, no refunds.

Extraterrestrial Navigators Do Go To Heaven. UWOTMA

granted. You take 3 damage. I wish I wasn't so bored at work.

False, I'm European and I've never flown to the US since I was a toddler. TUBM knows/remembers what the link is between a crayon/pencil and a cassette tape.

Not here. I'm going to hazard a guess at cziken20

Banned for engraving.

This right here is exactly correct and a very sad truth. If it's labelled drug/medicine, then you're subject to FDA (EMEA for europe or other regional equivalent) regulation and a whole slew of other rules and regulations put in place to protect the patient. Food supplements don't need to follow the same regulations. Be very, very careful with them. And this right here, ladies and gentlemen, is why I far prefer non-living chemistry over biochemistry. Living things obey certain patterns in large numbers, but individually, a living system does whatever the hell it wants. And heck, even a "simple" example such as a bucket with an two holes, a stirrer and a reaction happening inside it already requires differential equations to properly model

Banned for being you.

I'll be honest with you here: I don't know. I have some knowledge on biology and biochemistry, but I'm no oncology expert. That being said, I can make an educated guess. Educated guess being as follows: I've had several people in my family suffer from cancer. All of their chemotherapy sessions usually came once every 2 to 3 weeks, and they were always sick for about 3 days to a week after their sessions. so my guess would be that the amount of time these kind of compounds stay in the body can be measured in days to weeks. Give it a month, maybe two to be absolutely sure and it should all be gone. As for if they can accumulate and cause more harm: if you keep taking things that induce cell-death and kill off your tissues, it probably will start causing more harm the longer you take it. Partly because of accumulation but also because you're weakening yourself and then you keep attacking our own weakened body, weakening it further, etc. If you just stop taking the stuff before any real damage is done, you should be okay. Remember, people who take chemotherapy can also fully recover once the therapy is successful. The biggest danger here is that chemotherapy is very carefully monitored and dosed but these diet pills are not. If you take these things without close monitoring, you have no idea what you are doing to your body until it's too late. That being said, the above is pure conjecture and educated guesswork on my part. I have no idea about the long-term effects such things might have, and I'm guessing that lack of knowledge of long-term effects may be one of the reasons why this stuff is not FDA-approved.

Welcome to the madhouse NotAnOrange Seriously though, we're a fun and friendly bunch. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I had a look for alpha-mangostin. It appears that it does indeed induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) when taken orally. As for what happens when you take what is essentially a chemotherapy drug without having any cancer cells.. Well here's how chemotherapy essentially works (what I am about to write is an oversimplification, but it should get the point across). Chemotherapy is essentially poisoning your own body. Cancer cells are cells that reproduce uncontrollably and therefore require a ton of nutrients and use them very quickly. Chemotherapy basically poisons your body (or an area of the body around the cancer) close to lethal range. Because cancer cells take up more nutrients, they take up more of the poison, pass the lethality threshold and die off (note, even with today's advanced treatments, that statement is often followed by "we hope"). If you take an agent that induces cell-death without cancer cells, then the cells you have most of will take up most of the agent and die off. If you have a ton of fat cells, you'll probably lose weight (probably. Depends on the chemical agent. Again, biochemistry is a messy business). But the thing is, while you're doing this you're also damaging other tissues. And once you start losing weight and the number of fat tissue drops, you're going to start killing off more and more other tissues. bottom line: taking chemotherapy drugs when you don't have cancer is a very, very bad idea. I would highly suggest you ask your mother to try the diet and yoga exercises without the pills. It might be slower going, but it will be a lot safer. EDIT: also, about losing a lot of weight quickly: fatty tissues can contain (low) concentrations of chemicals that are bad for your health. Part of the reason for this is that fatty tissues are storage tissues, they store both the good and the bad. If you lose weight at a normal pace, this is absolutely no problem as the hazardous compounds are simply filtered and excreted. But if you lose too much weight too fast, your health can actually suffer because of this. An uncle of mine went though it after having lost a lot of weight quickly due to illness. Best just to take things more slow and steady. It's healtheir and results last longer.

if I was still at uni I might have been able to get some time on the liquid chromatography machine, but sadly that's not an option anymore That being said: in response to the OP I would not trust these pills at ALL. If it doesn't get sold in the US but is exclusively imported from vietnam, then that does indeed cast doubts about its FDA approval. And frankly, if you can't be sure of FDA approval or equivalent, don't trust it. The research you yourself have done so far would already be more than enough for me to toss these things into the trash, but if you'd like to have something else to research: look for evidence of GMP certification of the producing company (GMP stands for Good Manufacturing Practices. They're a set of international rules for production of food and pharmaceuticals which MUST be adhered to to ensure customer safety). If you can't find any of that, then most definitely toss it in the trash. Vietnam is notorious for producing dubious pharmaceuticals and supplements, GMP regulation in vietnam is limited to say the least. From what I've read in your research and my own quick searches, I'm afraid you've got a snake oil at best, and a serious health hazard at worst. As for the precise effects of the chemicals you mentioned on the human body, that's really tough to nail down exactly. Biochemistry is messy and unpredictable, best you're going to get is probably the studies you've already found and I wouldn't trust them for reasons you've already mentioned. For reference: i'm a bio-engineer working in the pharmaceutical industry. I work in the quality department and the first thing you learn there is pretty much: if you cannot guarantee safety of the product then get rid of it. Never take risks with the patient's (or in this case, your mother's) health.

I believe it's 4,5 hours? I could be wrong of course. I also believe ping is a two-way communication (one side says "hi!" and waits for the "hi to you too!" from the other side) so that would put NH at a ping between 6 and 9 hours. Anyone fancy playing a multiplayer game with NH? You may experience light lag EDIT: 8h, 50m, 38s ping. Thank you Awaras.

while it's true that we have no idea if everything went according to plan, this is a symbolic event. It's a credit to the team and everyone involved in the mission and a thank you for their hard work. Think of it as a ribbon-cutting ceremony where a lever is pulled to activate a machine for the first time. There is no way that said machine is being started up for the first time, it's been fired up plenty of times before and thoroughly tested through and through. But the "official" start up is a symbol, same as it is with this flyby celebration. It's the moment that we can look back to in history and say "that was the moment when we explored the edge of the solar system". And of course, as with any ribbon-cutting ceremony, the unsung heroes , the engineers and scientists and other level-headed people behind it all just smile, enjoy the festivities for a brief moment and then go back to work. Historical moments are just that, moments, but they are backed up by countless hours, days, years of tireless and often thankless work.

ok, so now we can all sit back and wait equally tensed for the return signal and images to be transmitted in oh... anything between 9 and 16 hours

I would be if my computer/internet would cooperate. Seems I'm doomed to refresh-monkey the server until it lets me watch it properly!

NASA posted it on their instagram. I got there via teh NH twitter: https://twitter.com/NASANewHorizons

Jesus..... words fail me for this one. This is a picture of space history being made guys and girls.

anxiety at the possibility of losing my Kerbals. I've never been further out than Duna because I'm too fearful of running out of fuel and not being able to return my Kerbals. I also try to do too many things in one mission, leading to heavy craft and increasing the possibility of said running out of fuel.

First off: WOOOOOOOOOOO! congrats on getting married dude! May you live long and prosper As for the whole KSP anxiety thing, I feel you. I've been hesitant to start up KSP myself because of the recent amount of updates. Personally, I would suggest the following: take one version of KSP, get it up to speed with your favorite mods and stick with said version until you want to upgrade to the newest one. Games are meant to be fun, so once you find a place that is fun, stick to it. If the game updates, but you don't feel comfortable upgrading yet, just sit it out and wait until you feel you actually want to update yourself. If you're running the game on steam, make sure you have a backup copy of the KSP folder of your favorite version and turn off automatic updates. For reference: the pathway you want for the KSP folder (using a steam install) is program files/steam/steamapps/common/Kerbalspaceprogram (or possibly KSP, I'm not too sure about the exact folder name and I'm not on my gaming PC right now). Finally, here's something someone on "teh internets" once taught me to do in cases like this. Just follow these steps. Don't read on to see where I'm going with this, just do it as you read 1) sit up straight in front of your PC screen. 2) make a fist with your right hand (or left if you're left handed) 3) position your arm horizontally and move your fist forward until your knuckles touch the screen (make sure not to damage your screen) 4) you have now been given an internet brofist. You have achieved +1 awesome.

granted, given a certain value of "bacon" and a certain value of "infinite". Since you're asking for infinite bacon, every single atom of matter (and all other forms of existence) in the universe is instantly integrated into making said infinite strip of bacon. The entire universe is bacon, there is literally nothing else. Your strip of bacon has some very, very weird properties in places, but technically it is still bacon because everything is now bacon. always. forever. without anyone or anything to taste, smell, or otherwise appreciate it in any way shape or form. I hope you're proud of yourself. I wish for money, fame and power without any downsides associated with them.

you mean an in-space construction through docking ports? None on my side. All the stuff I launched so far has been in one launch. I've had a couple of instances where I launched a lander seperately from the transfer ship and docked them in orbit, or where I used up the transfer fuel to make orbit and refueled the ship once I made parking orbit, but that always only consists a single basic rendezvous and docking manuevre, so I hardly think that qualifies as "construction". If we're including spaceplane hangar and VAB: super-heavy, long range interplanetary SSTO spaceplanes. Still working on those, they're hard as nails.