No, my argument was that anything that increases your blood pressure and/or your heart rate is bad. I made the mistake in assuming that this specific drug also did this, and I'm happy to accept being wrong on this point. The rest of my argument is that you can't claim something is safe over the long term (lifetime) without actually studying it over a lifetime. You may have convinced yourself that the risks are minimal, but without even clinical trials, I find it hard to be so confident.

It's good thing if Phenotropil doesn't affect your heart rate or blood pressure (but my comment on no-safe level of the typical ADHD drugs still stands). At the same time, you don't know what other health effects long-term usage may cause. I can't find any studies of the sort you would find for a drug that has gone through clinical trials. If this was going to fix something that was wrong, I'd view the risk as pretty moderate, but to take it to "be smarter" looks pretty dumb.

Define safe. How do you know that it is safe? Have there been long term studies following users over their life span? The answer is that they haven't, so you can't know that it is safe. There may be no obvious harmful short term affects; but this is not the same as safe. Cigarettes are quite safe for a very short term view.

All stimulants; including Methylphenedate and Dex at normal prescribed doses cause an increase in blood pressure and resting heart rate. Long term the research is showing us that this increases your risks for dementia and heart disease. Don't kid yourself, there is no safe stimulant.

There are in fact controlled studies showing that these stimulants enhance learning, remembered detail and a host of other things that are useful in both the academic and work setting. BUT. They are stimulants, there are side affects that will have a negative affect on your long term health. For people with ADD etc, it's probably worth it to have a normal life, but for a normal person you are greatly increasing your risk of heart disease and dementia (due mostly it would appear to the impact on your resting heart-rate and blood pressure). These risks are the same if your ADHD, but most medicine is a trade off. Here we are trading quality of life in the late stage (and length of life) for quality of life through the early to late stages. It'd be awesome if we could create drugs or other mechanisms to resolve these issues, without the negative health affects, but I've yet to see them. Anti-depressants are worse.

There is a reason why your doctor will try to get you to eat healthy and exercise, rather than go down the drug route. Sometimes you can achieve just the same benefits, and it won't be killing you

I would love to help you with your severe ignorance problem, but I fear to be wasting my time. Good luck.

The Russian experiment was extremely interesting for a number of reasons (the way floppy ears and lower brain capacity came with selecting against aggression for example. There is evidence to suggest that humans have self-domesticated over the years leaving us friendlier, cuter, and a bit dimmer than our distant ancestors; but I digress), but it's hard to see how it has much to do with the original domestication of the dog (you need cages and scientists and 50 years of a completely useless animal before you end up with a lovely pet). The dog was the first domesticated animal, and in a lot of ways it seems a very odd choice to domesticate (it's an unlikely choice for the first dinner menu item). And you can't start with a dog when you don't have a dog, you start with a wolf. Even the most friendly of wolves is still a wolf. Even a wolf puppy is still going to turn into a wolf. It takes several generations of selective breeding to get something that's not going to have that level of aggression that stops every wannabe tough guy having his own pet wolf today. Add to this that there is evidence to suggest that humans and wolves (or early dogs), were hanging out together while humans were still hunter gatherers and the situation becomes even more intriguing. Did humans and wolves cooperate in some way? How could hunter gathers kept early dogs that were much more wolf than dog? Why did they do it? There is so much here of interest and it's great that all the disagreeing researchers are now working together (more or less), to really gather the information that will hopefully shed more light on this fascinating piece of our history.

The dingo only originated about 5000 years ago (a dog that hopped on a boat from Asia). It's a dog gone wild, nothing to do with the original domestication/s.

If you read the article (I know, I know), you would have seen that the evidence for multiple domestication events can be misleading (as was first believed in pigs, and then disproved). This research will hopefully get to the bottom of it.

Yes, but his brilliance was in minimising the number of components required to perform a certain function. His "art" was in solving two pragmatic problems. a) Correct function of device and b) minimising the costs (components). The constraints (physical and budgetary) are what channeled his creativity.

Personally I think that one of the problems with software development is that we don't treat it like engineering enough. Not engineering in the sense of building a bridge, but engineering in the sense of design (designing a circuit for example). Engineering is inherently a pragmatic discipline where creativity is constrained by various physical, budgetary, and time constraints. Because software has less of the physical constraints, I think that the "art" side can get a little carried away at times. But the main issue is lack of discipline; and that is more of an artefact of the culture that can be associated with software development, rather than anything inherent in the work itself. I'm biased (with an engineering background), but I think that many software companies could benefit from the attitude that comes with engineering.

Yes, but somebody had to do the proving. As that great fount of wisdom, John Wooden, once said; when we are young we tend to see all change as progress, but as we mature, we can forget that there is no progress without change. It's not easy to know when you should take on a new technology, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take on a new technology.

I didn't ask can we get to the speed of light, I asked "does space travel become possible?" We would just need to go at some % speed of light. I thought this was impossible at the moment due to accelerating == throwing stuff over the side, and I had assumed even with EmDrive physics defying abilities it would still take "too bloody long". But perhaps not is the point.

The fact that time slows for you as you go faster; doesn't this imply that if you could travel at the speed of light, then you could reach anywhere in the universe in 0 relative (to you) time? I mean the thing you were aiming for might be gone by the time you got there, but still. If that EmDrive thing is a real thing, doesn't long distance space travel become a real possability?

Actually, the placebo effect still works even when you know it's just a placebo. Go on, give it a try. You'll feel better.

Astrology and Homoeopathy are both extremely effective, especially for difficult conditions such as mental health issues. Now sure, this is only due to the placebo effect, but doctors are pretty rubbish at exploiting the placebo and the placebo is extremely powerful! Something seems to prevent them from telling a patient nonsense that will make them believe they will get better and thus actually help them get better. Astrologists and Homoeopaths have no such issues, so this politician is completely correct that utilising astrologists and homoeopaths could help take the load of the NHS.