Toadfish Monastery

Quote from: Swatopluk on June 15, 2008, 09:54:01 AM
Oil and gas are actually the main sources for sulphur today. Roast gases and natural sulphur deposits have only limited market shares.
Some sulphur compounds are smellable at concentration in the ppt range.
Btw, coffee aroma consists of hundreds of compounds, many of them sulphuric and many of them highly toxic (but diluted enough to be of negligible risk). My chem teacher at school told us that during his university time they produced a small amount of one especially smelly sulphur compound. Despite the flue filters it stank at least a mile around the building.

Back when I was in HS, my chem teacher told us of a tale about mercaptan (sp?) the ingredient that gives natural gas it's stink.

It seems this stuff is so odoriferous, that a tiny quantity is more than enough.   A local facility was transshipping used metal oil drums-- the sort that chemicals are shipped in.

Anyway, one's lid was not firmly attached, and the empty barrel had had mercaptan in it.  It had been superficially washed.  But enough chemical remained, that the surrounding neighborhood for about a 1/2 mile, could easily smell it.

The calls to the natural gas company for gas leaks continued until someone finally traced it to the offending barrel-- which had it's lid firmly re-attached.   Problem solved.

A quick google reveals that there are several chemicals under the name "mercaptan" and I'm not certain which variety is used by natural gas companies.

What's interesting, though, is that their sites all state 'non-toxic' for the chemicals they use.  Yet other sites exclaim the toxic nature of these classes of chemicals.

I suppose it's the concentration that makes the difference.... 


This is interesting reading:  What is the smelliest molecule

Over here they use tetrahydrothiophene.
Smellable at 10 ppb. That's a thioether (or sulfide), not a thioalcohol (mercaptane).

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on June 15, 2008, 04:36:52 PM
  What is the smelliest molecule

The article seems to have missed the most common one: Teenaged athlete's sock stench.

Has incapacitated Moms (and laundry-doing older sisters) at 200 yards.

Quote from: Sibling Chatty on June 15, 2008, 11:23:54 PM

Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on June 15, 2008, 04:36:52 PM
  What is the smelliest molecule

The article seems to have missed the most common one: Teenaged athlete's sock stench.

Has incapacitated Moms (and laundry-doing older sisters) at 200 yards.

All those fermented pheromones, no doubt.... 

The water-death argument certainly appeals to me, but I think in the end I'd choose the burning. There would be a certain release, I think, in physically feeling the inevitability of death and in being able to scream and thrash and do every other reflexive, natural thing to fruitlessly try to prevent it. In drowning there would be an agonizingly long period of perfect consciousness and peace with only a growing discomfort before I either breathed water or passed out (I'd pass out before I worked up the determination to breathe), and I think the sense of entrapment coupled with the placidity of the situation would be a far greater torture than a blaze (ha!) of physical pain.

This thread has taken a strange turn hasn's it?
Now what about quartering?

Executions -medieval or not- tend to be violent and/or with a good amount of risk for mistakes/problems (like wrong dosages on the lethal injection cocktail, ability to survive electrocution, partial decapitation, or spinal cord remaining intact in a hanging).

I much rather think on the least painful ways to go.

I guess quartering with ICBMs as pullers would be quicker and less painful than oxes.
The 15 ton weight of Monty Python fame should do the job, if dropped from sufficient a height.
The guillotine, if properly used*, is likely the least inhumane** (except for the executioners and those that have to clean up the mess***).

*e.g. no waiting in line for your turn, mocking etc. by the masses or executioners or things like that.
**provided conscious-while-being-killed is mandatory. Otherwise a tasteless sleeping drug in the meal (unannounced) followed by the actual execution would be preferred.
***that's one of the standard reasons for not beheading people anymore, the sensitivity of the staff

Placed in a room with plenty of "air" but insufficient oxygen makes you light-headed a bit, then sleepy.

Or in a room with reduced air pressure-- enough so that there is insufficient oxygen-- makes you, again, light-headed-- a bit "dopey".  Then you simply, painlessly black out.

This we know from experience of high-flying pilots.

Quite painless-- you just don't wake up after blacking out.

Carbon monoxide works well, too-- if pure (and not tainted with unburned hydrocarbons).  If you get enough dosage, you don't even realize you're oxygen starved at all. 

It's the slight dosage of CO that gives one a splitting headache.  If you've enough, you simply and painlessly pass out.

See the book Coma.   Keep the gas going for 15 minutes-- permanent brain death.   If no machines are used, the body will soon follow. 

I'd take freezing as an option too (particularly with moderate ethanol intoxication thrown into the mix), assuming sufficient protective clothing so that one got hypothermia before serious frostbite set into one's extremities.

Supposedly it's rather painless, although it takes a damnably long time and would be cruel and unusual in the context of execution.

I've seen a drunk co-partier lay down in a snowbank wearing nothing but wet swim trunks because his (bare) "feet were cold".  Well, that's why you don't run off from the party in bare feet and wet swim trunks. He would definitely have been IQF by morning if I hadn't followed him (he was in a residential area, so someone may have found him anyways, but this way he still has his toes).

Speaking of alcohol.

Getting totally, stinking drunk would work quite well, as executions go.

Allow the slob you're executing to get stinking, roaring drunk on the liquor of his choice.

Wait until he drinks enough to pass out completely-- check to see if you can wake him up.  If you can-- more booze.

Then..... inject his veins directly with pure ethanol.  Not much needed, really.

Result:  coma, followed quickly by death.

Painless.

Would start a new tradition:  the Last Drinking Binge.

And why not?   You're killing the guy, why NOT let him have one last drinking binge? 

But that's the trick about executions: vengeance. There is a desire for a certain amount of suffering/pain.

In the eyes of those seeking vengeance a painless execution would defeat the purpose. 

That's been my argument against the death penalty since middle school - much more vengeful to make someone sit alone, uncomfortable, bored, depressed in a cell for life than to painlessly execute them.

Quote from: Alpaca on June 19, 2008, 12:04:36 AM
That's been my argument against the death penalty since middle school - much more vengeful to make someone sit alone, uncomfortable, bored, depressed in a cell for life than to painlessly execute them.

Yes, and there's always the risk that they want to die

Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on June 18, 2008, 11:03:56 PM
But that's the trick about executions: vengeance. There is a desire for a certain amount of suffering/pain.

In the eyes of those seeking vengeance a painless execution would defeat the purpose. 

Which puts the person doing the vengeance on the exact same level as any common murderer....


.... which is one of many reasons why I'm agin' it, myself.