"So what's actually the difference between alpha and beta types?"
Look, man, when we talk about alpha versus beta, all we’re really talking about is which specific chain—the alpha chain or the beta chain—is where the mutation actually happened. Human hemoglobin is basically made up of two beta chains and two alpha chains, and they're laid out just like squares on a chessboard, sitting right opposite one another... You see, the beta chain is a constant; it shows up in all types of hemoglobin, whereas instead of an alpha chain, you might find something like a gamma chain—that's what makes up fetal hemoglobin, which uses two beta and two gamma chains. There are other variations out there too, but since the beta chain is so conserved and present in everything, that's usually where the mutations tend to cause the most trouble. Every single hemoglobin chain has this porphyrin ring with iron tucked inside that grabs onto oxygen and lets it go... But when you have mutated hemoglobin, the whole tertiary structure of that peptide chain gets messed up, which can mess with how much the iron actually wants to bind to oxygen. It might block oxygen from getting in there entirely, or maybe it shifts the porphyrin ring just enough that the iron becomes way harder to access or something like that... If that mutation hits one of those critical spots—like it does in Thalassemia Major—you're looking at a really severe disease. That's why the severity fluctuates so much from person to person, because every single mutation plays by its own set of rules...
So, we're talking about what people call Cooly anemia, or beta-Thalassemia Major... it's pretty common in places like the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. It's easily the most severe form of thalassemia out there. Basically, it’s this genetic issue where the amino acid sequence in the beta globin chain gets messed up—you know, how human hemoglobin is supposed to have two alpha and two beta globin chains? Because of that glitch, the iron's affinity for oxygen drops way down, which ends up creating these totally deformed red blood cells. There isn't a cure, unfortunately, so patients are stuck with regular blood transfusions just to stay afloat, plus they have to deal with chelation therapy to clear out all the extra iron that builds up from those constant transfusions. A bone marrow transplant is an option too, but man, that kind of treatment is obscenely expensive...
I'm not entirely sure if this specific link to malaria is meant to apply to the Mediterranean type of thalassemia😕
hiddenviper9, there isn’t any difference at all, whether you’re talking about frequencies or anything else, between two atoms of the same element. It’s just an illusion you're using to try and describe the world around you because you don't quite grasp it—and hey, I don't mean that as an insult, really... The proteins you're bringing up recognize one another, sure, but that’s just the result of intermolecular forces that we understand pretty well. Take drugs like cimetidine or ranitidine, which serve as active ingredients in all sorts of medications; those were developed strictly through computer modeling and by understanding how H2 histamine receptors work in the stomach. An atom or a molecule just has the properties it has, and based on everything we know so far, it doesn't possess any special traits that would somehow assign it to a specific "organ"...
I get that when it comes to homeopathy, people try to hunt for explanations just so they can rationalize what they think they're seeing, but this whole idea about water memory is just flat-out wrong. Water memory doesn't exist, and not a single modern experiment has been able to prove it. I doubt things will be any different in the future, but honestly, every bit of experience we have studying chemistry in aqueous solutions points directly against that theory, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of scientific papers being published every single year. Do you seriously believe that none of those thousands of scientists performing these experiments want to accept water memory as an explanation simply because they're narrow-minded? Why is it so hard to just accept that water memory isn't a valid explanation?
hiddenviper9 said:Maria Bennett2: Maybe hiddenviper9 can enlighten us about this "water memory" thing, since no homeopath has ever even suggested it as a hypothesis, let alone actually proven it...
hiddenviper9: Oh, honey, listen... I don't need to explain water memory to you—because Japanese scientists already did the talking there... "A sensational discovery by Japanese researchers following twelve years of lab studies. - Water reacts—actually, it stores feelings and information it receives from the outside world within its 'memory'—says Masaru Emoto, president of the Japan General Research Institute. Emoto and his team filled small vials with water while playing various types of music. They froze the water at minus 20 degrees Celsius and photographed the frozen crystals under magnification of 200 to 500 times. The result? The ice crystals from water that 'listened' to classical or spiritual music had perfect, beautiful structures, whereas heavy metal music left behind images of pure chaos and decay. Water even responds to words; for instance, if you say 'thank you,' delicate, filigree crystals freeze, but if you threaten it, the water reacts with shattered, broken crystals."
And honestly, all I have to tell you is that everything we think CREATES MEMORY... If you don't believe me, just ask your son—he’d definitely know...
I feel like we’ve touched on something like this before. Look, hiddenviper9, liquid water doesn't have any kind of memory. There isn't a single experiment out there that shows it. Liquid water is fundamentally different from ice. It's dominated by this massive, constant dynamic of hydrogen bonds breaking and forming. These stories just can't be proven. If water actually had a memory, then its influence on, say, chemical reactions happening inside it would be different, and yet nobody has ever actually observed that. Do you seriously think that something like dissolving salt or a neutralization reaction would turn out differently just because you're speaking nicely or yelling at the glass where the reaction is taking place? It’s not that hard to check. Try dissolving table salt in one glass while you're yelling at it, and in another glass while you're being polite, and then compare the solubility. Do it 50 times for each glass and run a statistical analysis. If water memory existed, you should get different solubility rates. As for crystallization under sound waves, maybe the pattern could change (though I'm not entirely sure), but it would look that way even if you were just banging a spoon against a pot without any emotion involved. I looked up that Japanese guy you mentioned on Google, and he's just some guy working at some alternative university. He wrote two books, but from what I can see, he hasn't published a single paper in a serious scientific journal—you know, the kind with rigorous peer review. That tells me he isn't even confident in the quality of his own experiments, because if he were, publishing there would guarantee him massive publicity. I mean, if this were true, I guarantee you he would have won a Nobel Prize for such a discovery. Actually, back in the 70s, there were theories about a sort of fourth "aggregate" state of water because they "found" a reduction in vapor pressure under certain conditions and assumed it was a specific structure of water consisting of (I think) ten water molecules per unit in a liquid. They even calculated the molecular mass of that structure. There was even a conference dedicated solely to it. In the end, it turned out the experiment wasn't repeatable or reproducible, and it turns out the Russians (since the theory was theirs) were working with impure water, which has lower partial vapor pressure. As you can see, the scientific community takes results seriously, but they verify them first.
I have one more question. If water remembers, does it memorize the yelling first, and then if I speak kindly afterward, does it "forget" the yelling and remember the kindness, or does it remember both?
"I'm sitting here watching movies in the theater. But honestly, I think because so many people are living out there, it feels like films arrive way earlier than when they actually get to us... and you don't even consider that folks are coming in from the outside. I'll go ahead and start a whole thread about some movie, and then the film won't even hit theaters in America for another few months. It's just frustrating...
That’s exactly it, it feels pretty stupid to me to open a discussion about a movie playing in the US when it won't be released here for quite a while. By the time the movie finally arrives, the original thread is buried or forgotten, and then someone else opens a new thread with the exact same name once it's out, making it look like I was just trying to brag about being one of the first to see it.
So, this one is based on a book by Stephen King. Honestly, Thomas Jane is pretty solid in one of the lead roles. It’s this weird, cool mix of Sci-Fi and Thriller, kind of giving me those vibes from The Thing, though this felt a bit more fleshed out... even if I think they could have handled the development way better than they did. Yeah... they definitely rushed things toward the end, but all things considered, I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5 in my book. Oh, and having Morgan Freeman playing the villain? That was totally fine...
No way, man... definitely the Countach. I mean, there aren't even any new ones being made anymore. Sure, the Diablo is killer and the new Murciélago is great, but the Countach? That’s the only one that’s truly Outrageous.
"driftinggull13, do you actually watch any "smart" movies... instead of just all this crap you're always ranting about?
I mean, honestly, reading your stuff on other forums made me think you were actually a pretty bright guy"
Thanks for the compliment😘
I do, but man, I hate to say it, but there hasn't been anything worth seeing in theaters these last few months. It's just the same old Hollywood garbage over and over again. I don't know, this one isn't total trash, but since the Friedkin Group did The Exorcist and The French Connection, I'll always give them some credit... I'm really big into thrillers and sci-fi, but damn, most of what comes out is just pure junk.
It’s a Friedkin's film. Of course he couldn't help himself when it came to splashing blood all over the screen... just constant gore. The plot feels a bit like Rambo 1, honestly. All in all, it was a fun watch, even if it did have those annoying little undertones of militant environmentalism...
"You're talking nonsense... What a shame. Daredevil is hands down my favorite out of all those superhero comics—it's dark, it's smart, it's actually beautiful. But good grief, there isn't a single stroke of genius that Hollywood can't find a way to screw up."
Man, what you said about Hollywood is just the honest truth. You've got the main villain—some guy just chucking arrows, glass shards, staplers, or whatever else he can grab—aiming straight for the throat of the squad, and then some random side character gets killed off, and suddenly everyone is jumping eight or nine feet into the air and all that other garbage. I mean, fine, maybe Daredevil can pull that off (I guess), but why on earth would anyone else? It makes zero sense. Honestly, it feels like those third-rate kung-fu flicks from the 70s. I won't go on about it, though, because nobody's actually going to sit through that anyway...
Watched it yesterday. There are some genuinely killer effects in there because the guy is basically blind, so he’s navigating through sound alone—kind of like how you'd sense seismic vibrations—and honestly, they nailed that part... it felt real. The rest of it, though? Total garbage. Just absolute trash...
In those horror movies, whenever some idiot wanders into an abandoned house shouting "Is anybody home?" They always head straight for the darkest, creepiest basement because apparently, that’s where everyone’s hiding... And when someone starts pounding on the front door, they don't run out the back exit, no, they always sprint upstairs right into a literal death trap...
Oh, and one more thing... I went to the theater and there were kids everywhere, half of them hiding their faces under their hoodies or just refusing to even look at the screen. Seriously, why would you market a movie like this to children? It’s a total scam...
I honestly feel like both the book and the movie were always meant to be for kids first and foremost... I just couldn't get into the second part because it drags on forever, and besides, those spiders and especially that snake scene? That’s definitely not kid-friendly material in the way it was presented. I've got my own little ones at home—a six-year-old and a ten-year-old—and they were absolutely terrified by it. Honestly, damn it... It should have been a movie for children, not something designed to stress out the parents, and I think that’s why it feels like such a total flop, regardless of how much they tried to stick to the original book. If this had been aimed at adults, then all the complaints I mentioned earlier wouldn't even matter, but if it's meant for kids, you can't have these horrific scenes that leave them unable to sleep... and it wasn't just my kids, either, I know other families dealing with the same thing. The whole movie is just this weird bastard child caught between a kids' flick and an adult thriller, and that's exactly why I think it fails...
"Man, I've been waiting forever for something new from the duo behind Se7en: David Fincher & Andrew Kevin Walker. "
Maybe it'll be Rendezvous with Rama (2004), or who knows, maybe even something else...
"I wanted to tell you is that a trusting source of the Rama production told me that Fincher will AT least direct another movie after Panic room before directing Rama. This will probably be They Fought Alone with Brad Pitt. Besides he's developing The Michael Bay producing Stay and Squids."
"I'm seriously losing consciousness over here. Look, The Wrath of Khan is easily the greatest sci-fi movie ever made (1). Richard Howard2, read the room... "
Listen, I agree it's the best of the Star Trek bunch, but calling it the absolute king of all cinema? Yeah, not quite. There are better ones out there—at least if you ask me—like Solaris (and I mean the Andrei Tarkovsky version, not that garbage starring George Clooney), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and plenty of others. By the way, for all you sci-fi junkies out there, Rendezvous with Rama, based on the novella by Arthur C. Clarke, is finally coming out in 2004.
Man, I’m over here in the States... I don't think it's even hit the screens here yet. Just a bunch of sentimental garbage wrapped up in some mediocre special effects. If you ask me, it's easily the absolute worst entry in the entire Star Trek franchise...