Viewing profile — russholmes

Craig Murray is basically a decent guy. He fell out with the British government when he was ambassador to Uzbekistam and broke protocol by protesting about the treatement of Uzbeks…

I have seen this stated before. What is your source please? This is false: SARS-CoV-2 is significantly more lethal than seasonal influenza for all ages past puberty. In fact, at 50…

Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough for butter. I was mainly using it for cooking and ended up using olive oil for most things. I used to have a bread machine, and bread seemed to b…

A significant minority are quite sensitive to salt. I fixed my high blood pressure by reducing salt intake. I got it down to hunter-gather levels - less than 1 g per day and combin…

Bow hunting is illegal in the UK. Permitted firearms and ammunition are also regulated on animal cruelty grounds. http://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/90.pdf

Yes, the UK police caution is "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anyth…

The British Marines tried this in Operation Moneybags. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WscQIp3Kac

It is an unpleasant slur both in UK and US English. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gimp

What Facebook's system does by design is to propagate and amplify simplistic, emotionally potent narratives. These tend to be fictional i.e. misinformation because reality is nuanc…

There is a more balanced review article on herd immunity here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4

The BMJ is not a credible source, it is the Daily Mail of medical journals. The author of that article, Peter Doshi, has form: "I think the first thing we to review is who is Peter…

In one axis, and I don't think they were capable of doing it at the time suggested.

The Rayleigh limit in spatial resolution of an image forming device is given by: l = 1.22 * λ * L / D Where λ is wavelength, L is distance and D is optical element diameter. For sa…

Same here. I went to a fairly good state school and never received any English grammar but got some French grammar. The French language teaching was terrible - hours and hours of m…

Small classes are excluded, so as you say, biased towards private schools. My niece was hit by this but luckily still did well enough to get a place. She was attending a large scho…

I have hard water so washing machine and dishwasher get limescale. I just run them on a hot cycle with a bottle of white vinegar every month or so. Leaves them sparkling clean. Sam…

There is no such thing as free will, is there? Decisions are a consequence of physical brain state.

The government communication in the UK has been lamentable. Confusing, inconsistent and patronising. On the other hand, we had idiots who stripped the supermarket shelves of toilet…

According to this research in the Lancet, masks help but not as much as physical distancing. 2 m distance reduces risk by 10x face mask reduces risk by 6x eye protection by 5x Ther…

I think the reason that various authorities advised against masks is political - there simply weren't enough and to direct the supply to clinical workers.

Quite. Much of the cult status of Feynman was created by the man himself. He had several books written espousing his genius. As for his charm - salesmen are charming, psychopaths a…

Ageed. When the quoted dietician is repeating the old canard regarding protein and amino acids, it calls into question the rest of her statements.

This is specific to tobacco: firstly that the tobacco leaves pick up trace amounts of polonium-210, and secondly that inhaling tobacco smoke concentrates the Po-210 into localised …

A nose lets you breathe while you eat.

Immunity to coronaviruses does tend to fall within a year or so, but this is believed due to immune memory rather than viral mutation (coronaviruses have a modest mutation rate). T…