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Comment by glibgil | Hacker News Reader

> Copper is not something the body can make, so we need to get it through our diet

Does the body make any elements?

Obviously the answer is no, but the average reader likely doesn't know which minerals are elements and which are molecules. The statement seems redundant to you and I, but it is a key fact and likely not obvious to anyone with minimal chemistry/physics training.

"The statement seems redundant to you and I"

As long as we're on the subject of pedantry, and with your kind leave, may I humbly point out that the above statement should read "The statement seems redundant to you and me"? If in doubt, drop the words "you and" then see how the sentence works:

"The statement seems redundant to I"

"The statement seems redundant to me"

http://www.betterwritingskills.com/tip-w026.html

If you really want to go there, "you and I" is never correct by the rules of English grammar. It's only when we apply the foreign rules of Latin grammar to English that we wind up with things like "you and I", which needs to be taught. It has, however, become a marker of education and good manners, so even though it is manifestly incorrect, it is often a better choice to use it in subject position in formal circumstances. Expectations outweigh correctness in this case.

That's a pretty interesting point. Never knew that.

What's even more interesting about this particular mistake (at least to me) is that it often shows up as hypercorrection[1] by educated, fluent speakers of English who've been socialized to recognize "You and me" as the subject of a sentence as wrong, and perhaps as ignorant-sounding, but have formed a too-aggressive (wrong) representation of the underlying rule.

Basically, I know a bunch of people who've been to college and would jump right down your throat if they hear you say "You and me should grab coffee some time," but will walk around all day saying things like "Hey, let's see if Fred wants to grab coffee with you and I."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection#Personal_prono...

There are no hard rules with grammar. Just conventions. If we understood what the person meant, then they succeeded at their goal of communicating.

By all means! At the same time, there may be something to be said for writing well. I was reminded of this thread:

Rare is the leader who can actually write well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429298

and especially part of a comment by Alex3917[1], quoting 37signals's Getting Real[2]:

"If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=429352

[2] http://gettingreal.37signals.com

That's true, but the convention for educated English speakers has it that it should be "you and me", or "us". They may have succeeded at communicating facts but they also conveyed some slight ignorance to some subset of people reading it.

Definitely wouldn't have taken the time to point it out, though.

except he was specifically being pedantic. You can't combat pedantic criticism with "But grammar is just conventions". Grammatical pedantry deals with exactly those conventional nuances.

It wasn't pedantry about grammar, it was pedantry about meaning. If a Russian with bad English grammar tried to correct your code, would you try to correct his use of "was" rather than "were"?

No, it was grammar. Because the grammar shaped the meaning. But when you are dealing specifically with meaning or context and not formal conventions, it is considered a semantic, not pedantic. I don't generally correct people's grammar mistakes these days because I myself have laxed quite a bit in favor of "progressing" my language a bit. But I especially wouldn't correct a foreigner just because, only if I felt they would be receptive to the advice. I would certainly appreciate the same when using a language I'm not familiar with.

It was simply a factually incorrect statement. It was about grammar as much as "fish ride bicycles" is about grammar.

edit: It actually wasn't incorrect at all... I'd lost track of the original statement:) It was just something that would be obvious to people who understood basic chemistry. Either way, it wouldn't be a question of grammar (any more than "some fish swim in the ocean.")

>There are no hard rules with grammar. Just conventions. If we understood what the person meant, then they succeeded at their goal of communicating.

If I have to put a lot of effort at decoding what someone says, it's less likely that I'll bother. I'm sure we could all decode l33tspeak but that doesn't mean someone who uses it "succeeded".

Only because it's called the Geneva Convention that doesn't mean that you shouldn't follow it.

Touché.

All the dietary minerals are chemical elements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_(nutrient)

While the body cannot make Copper or other Elements, it can build some organic chemical compounds. This process is called anabolism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabolism

I think where this is confusing on what are considered nutrients. Some nutrients can be built by the body, while others cannot. Essential Nutrients are those that cannot be built by human bodies. The Wikipedia page for Nutrients is pretty accessible and interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient

>Does the body make any elements?

That wouldn't be possible unless the body somehow did nuclear fusion or fission.

That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A2t%C3%A9_de_Foie_Gras_(s...

With enough volume you might be able to harness cosmic rays.

Standing next to an unshielded nuclear reactor should get you a bit of nucleosynthesis from all the neutrons. There is the unfortunate side effect of dying painfully, but everything has tradeoffs.

At least you lose the weight?

It can synthesize many organic compounds, so you don't have to eat every compound the body needs.

But yes, nuclear transmutation is nit supported.

In short, no.

Pedantically, though, some radioactive elements decay in your body, so there are nuclei in your body right now that are different from when you ate, touched, or breathed them in.

For example, the milligram or two of potassium-40 present in your body will, over a billion years or so, become calcium-40.

Well, half of it will. The half life of potassium-40 is ~1.25 billion years. It decays to calcium-40 about 89% of the time and argon-40 11%. When using potassium-40 decay for dating, the usual method is determining the ratio of K-40 to radiogenic Ar-40 [1]. This is not easy and involves irradiating samples in a nuclear reactor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon%E2%80%93argon_dating

There was the case of the goose that somehow synthesized gold, and excreted it in its eggs.

I'd say it's more plausible that it drank a lot of ocean water, and acquired the gold that way...

No, and I chuckled at wording as well. And I also thought it funny how too much copper unbalanced your zinc levels, which as anyone knows who has made a battery out of a potato, if you don't have copper and zinc you are a pretty lousy battery :-).

No.

But there are also some more complex molecules that the human body doesn't make either.

Sure, quite a few--vitamins, essential amino acids, essential fats are well-known. The body uses these as "raw ingredients" to produce a huge range of necessary compounds.

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/406bio_alchemy....

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