sethoflagos

Depends which way you're voting. If you vote for more egalitarian, liberal policies then the common person gains more control over his/her destiny and it's in the anarchist spirit. If not then not. True, but won't you consider that common understandings may have been coloured by centuries (indeed millenia since these arguments were current in ancient Greece) of negative propaganda in service of those who consider themselves born to rule over others? Having said that, the British anarchist tradition that probably began with William Godwin around the turn of the eighteenth century is toward the peaceful end of a spectrum that does extend to the more revolutionary figures of the Russian tradition such as Mikhail Bakunin. Children of their times, and those times were routinely violent. Personally, I'm truer to the Godwin stream and see no paradox whatsoever in participating peacefully in a democratically organised society. Whether this accords with the common understanding or not.

At the time of passing of the Queen, your post reminds me of a paragraph from Hobbes' Leviathan: Hobbes' had no problem in seeing anarchy (=democracy) as the polar opposite of tyranny (=absolute monarchy). Look, I've no real axe to grind on this issue. If you're happy with your tyrants and oligarchs, then fine, feel free to wipe their backsides to your heart's content. But it does irk me a little to see anarchy characterised as being violently insurrectionist. You're just regurgitating propaganda that served the cause of tyrants and feudal lords in the immediate aftermath of the English Civil War nearly 400 years ago. It is the anarchist spirit that originally underpinned the concept of parliamentary democracy and all our emancipatory freedoms that sprang from that. And gradually improving our democracies should not be viewed as revolutionary but evolutionary. Remind me where I said anything about religious education being banned. No objection to Wicca and Mami Wata whatsoever.

No. It claims to explain the Bernoulli Principle in qualitative layman's terms at the molecular level: an interpretation that wasn't available to Bernoulli who published Hydrodynamica about 150 years before atomic theory became widely established. In my view the video did a perfectly reasonable job of that. Naturally, this explanation only describes the real world cases where Bernoulli's Principle applies. The video certainly made no claims regarding the validity and scope of applicability of the Bernoulli Equation. To suggest so would be a bit strawmanish. The Bernoulli equation is a rabbit hole that offers very little insight into the mechanics of flight. The changes to gravitational potential energy of air are three orders of magnitude less than the dominant forces and a little more significantly, frictional dissipation is neglected as pointed about by @J.C.MacSwell. Most crucially from my perspective the Bernoulli Equation neglects the contribution due to thermodynamic work. Particularly at the leading edge of a wing where air is both pressurised and rapidly accelerated simultaneously. This is the absolute reverse of the expections given by the Bernoulli Principle and a clear indication that too much is missing from the Bernoulli picture for it to be usefully employed here. I noticed that too. Sometimes having to go back to square 1 is a bit dispiriting.

Agreed. Agreed, The regulation free idealistic version is a hopeless pipedream. Noted. But this does put you in a minority of the global population, and a particular window in time. Economic growth has funded that comfort zone and it carries no certain future guarantees. Neoliberalism seeks to transfer much of the role of government to employers and landlords : ie a return to more feudal conditions. This is in effect an ultra-authoritarian position - tyranny by proxy - and therefore the polar opposite to the OP subject matter, isn't it? I've always seen universal good secular education as a key factor in the evolution of a healthier society. I hope we get to try that experiment some time. Heinlein is one of the last individuals I'd look to for political guidance. Neither would I seek it from Tolkien as it happens, but does he really strike you as a revolutionary? Can't it be evolutionary? Just a gradual programme of repealing outdated laws that disadvantage minorities for example? Two questions: 1) Do you agree with the idea that the single transferable vote system makes it more difficult for divisive authoritarian politicians to gain power rather than more inclusive compromise-minded candidates. 2) Would you see that as a good thing. You don't have to answer of course. But these are the sort of questions where I see the authoritarian - anarchist spectrum as simply more relevant than traditional right - left politics.

Much of what you say is correct of course. But on what scale do we measure 'betterness'? We're all familiar with the right-left spectrum in politics and I guess most of us have a clear idea with where we feel most comfortable on that measure. But isn't there another somewhat independent axis that quantifies the degree of authoritarianism in society? I simply see anarchism as the opposite end of this spectrum, and a desirable direction to take when government becomes too intrusive and restrictive in our daily lives. We're really not that far technologically from the point where potentially every human interaction we have could be uploaded via Android etc. in real time to the internet for analysis and judgment by the twitterati. Or by the government. And they would put your mind at rest with the age old jingoistic 'claim that they were acting in the interests of combatting criminal activity. But I think that you and I would soon realise that that was only a fraction of the story, and life had taken a turn towards a truly Orwellian nightmare. Or maybe my fears on this front are totally unfounded and we are about to enter a crime-free golden age.

Are you thinking about thermite reactions (eg iron oxide + powdered aluminium > molten iron + aluminium oxide)? As @exchemist states, these will require some activation energy to get started. However, I wouldn't rely on that too much with more reactive mixtures such as say potassium and barium peroxide.

My conclusion is that you don't understand what anarchism is. Anarchism is not a specific organisation of society (this very concept is alien to the spirit of anarchist precepts), rather an acknowledgement that however we are organising ourselves at the current time, there is a better way of doing so. Classically, this is summed up in Proudhon's mantra "Society exists to transcend itself". which is as good a statement of the underlying principle of progessive politics as I can think of. In The General Idea of the Revolution (1851), Proudhon wrote: This remains rather difficult to argue with. At the heart of anarchist thought is the same scepticism towards forms of government as is embodied in the scientific approach to explanatory hypothesis: it may have some merit, but there is room for improvement. I'd refer you to Herbert Read's superb work "Anarchy and Order" (1959) which had quite an impact on me in my youth. It's focus lies in anarchy being most clearly defined in artistic expression, and very closely linked to the philosophy of existentialism. However, I believe it's now out of print. A pity.

During the nineties I got a contract to assist in the design of a major upgrade to waste water treatment on the Tees estuary - a mix of urban and heavy industrial effluent (ICI Billingham mainly). A part of this involved the analysis of historic datasets to identify and quantify the significance of various input streams. Data was good up until 1989 when the UK water industry was privatised. Within a couple of weeks of privatisation, testing for 'red list' compounds (the really nasty stuff like dioxins and tin(IV) organic biocides) that had been religiously observed for decades stopped suddenly and completely. Draw your own conclusions as to the attitude of private enterprise to the health and well-being of its customers.

However, the national economy has the resources to absorb short term large fluctuations in supply pricing, and maintain a stable pricing structure within its own borders. This would be of benefit to most, if not all, wouldn't it? The balance of public and private enterprise within a mixed economy, is just that. A balance. We have no fundamental disagreement here. The challenge as I see it is that the transformation to a carbon neutral economy requires a substantial investment and development programme that the private sector would be unwilling to engage in without massive government subsidies. And if the current UK government has taught us anything, it's that a large percentage of taxpayers subsidies of private enterprise gets routed into offshore tax havens to the detriment of the tax payer. I see more sense in public ownership here. Exactly. But I would add that since energy costs are a large cost factor for most businesses, then this argument applies pretty well across the board.

Good points, but aren't we beyond the point where short term fixes to energy policies are adequate? We've seen over the last 40 years the malevolent influence of the fossil fuels lobby in derailing the climate debate. In recent years, they've been extending this influence to other aspects of government policy through the largely undisclosed funding of right wing 'think tanks' and pseudo-academic bodies around the globe, in order to further political aims that go way beyond merely increasing the dividend income for their shareholders. The parallels between their current malign political activities and those of Krupps and Thyssen in early 1930s Germany are striking. Given the social and strategic significance, one could now make a very strong case for putting the entire energy sector under state control via compulsory purchase. This would give future governments the opportunity to manage fiscal policy, social welfare, climate change and energy policy in a holistic manner plus remove a major agency of corruption in public life as a well-needed bonus.

That's about 10", of course!

Let's spill over a bit. Commercial airliners typically cruise at a tad less than 600 mph. Their wings typically take 1/100 second to pass through the air and in that time a slab of air equal to the wing thickness must separate by about 10" and rejoin. We'll leave aside what happens at the blunt end of the leading edge (complicated) and focus on the point where the wing surface is at 45 degrees to the oncoming air. At this point the airstream close to this surface must physically be travelling upwards at the same speed the aircraft is travelling forwards. ie -600 mph. Like any other matter, air at 600 mph will continue travelling at that speed in a straight line unless an external force (and in this case, a substantial one) acts on it. Therefore, one millisecond later the air 'would want' to be about 75 feet above the thickest part of the wing creating a void. In order to stay in contact with the wing surface the air must expand very rapidly, substantially reducing its temperature and pressure. The bulk of the airstream now has 'normal' pressure above it and a partial vacuum below. This provides the large driving force necessary to reverse the direction of the airstream and keep it in contact with the wing surface. Now let's return to Bernouilli. The Bernouilli equation was developed to describe the flow behaviour of water, not gases. If you puncture the base of a water tank, the kinetic energy of the jet is directly proportional to the pressure difference. If you puncture a compressed air vessel, the kinetic energy of the jet is directly proportional to the temperature difference. In the gas case there is also a drop in pressure (giving some sort of apparent validity to the 'Bernouilli Principle') but it is very far from a proportional relationship, and can be highly misleading if Bernouilli is treated as Gospel. Which some of the lay community are prone to do.

Firstly, we can restate this as 'an increase in a fluid's kinetic energy is matched by a decrease in its internal energy'. The internal energy of an ideal gas is purely a function of its temperature. (High altitude air is to all intents and purposes an ideal gas). Therefore in order to create kinetic energy, this must be matched by a corresponding drop in temperature. For 'fast' processes such as the movement of an aircraft wing through a body of air, there is insufficient time for any significant thermal diffusion and therefore the process is very close to one of constant entropy. Under such conditions P = P0 (T/T0)^(1-1/k) where k ~ 1.4 for air So when gas velocity increases therefore temperature decreases therefore pressure decreases. It's an indirect route so not intuitively obvious. Having read the posts above, I suggest you consider: 1) The primary direction of motion of the air over a wing is vertical, not horizontal. The air is accelerated up and down. 2) Pressure is a force, not a form of energy. You can safely disregard any post that tells you otherwise (it's a very common misconception). 3) Eugene Khutoryansky's Youtube videos on thermodynamics are very good. The challenge with this one is in visualising how flow in a pipe can be relevant to your area of interest. It is there but you need to have the right mental image in place. If not, then it probably won't help.

Sometimes emotions run high, don't they?

Try https://www.science.org/content/article/weak-jaw-big-brain

We know from our own example that by shrinking the strong, robust mandibles of our ancestors, we no longer needed such sturdy muscle attachments for them allowing us to shed our supraoccipital crests which in turn allowed us to expand our brain cases. Perhaps the switch from toothed mandibles to beaks allowed a similar shuffling around of soft tissues for modern birds. I found this paper illuminating: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abg7099

As regards the K-Pg extinction event, the primary sieve for survival seems to be whether or not a bird posessed teeth. Toothed birds (Enantiornithines & Hesperornithines) which were dominant in the Cretaceous were all wiped out while just a few beaked taxa survived. But this is an interesting read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-birds-survived-and-dinosaurs-went-extinct-after-asteroid-hit-earth-180975801 So having both a beak and a more developed brain seem to be linked.

Phoebes are among the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrants are unknown outside the western hemisphere. (I hope @MigL doesn't misread this as another attempt at 'humor'). Hence you're unlikely to be a Brit.

Very hard to say. But take the honeyguides. They have a very complex interaction with humans (including mutual recognition of each others calls), that is thought to have developed over the last 1.9 million years. ie they were coevolving with our H. erectus ancestors. They're neither cuculids nor corvids (more closely related to the woodpeckers), but they are brood parasites. You know tyrant flycatchers and how to spell 'humour'. Canadian? Entirely credible. Or maybe they're just saying '*** off this is our swamp'.

I wouldn't have minded one, but no. I rarely drink before midnight these days. You're right of course. The 'chicken' and 'egg' calls are no more than an amusing coincidence, and no one here believes otherwise. But there clearly is some interaction going on between the species and that in itself is interesting. I see no harm in other forum members picking up on this. What do you mean by 'conscious'? A correct answer would be Nobel prize material. @chrisjones has already brought up the free will debate, and the superdeterminist faction of physicists would claim that all actions (including thought, conscious or otherwise) are predetermined. I don't personally believe this for a moment, but I've nothing better to offer than an argument from incredulty. Not sure anyone else has.

The cuckoo tales clearly show that many birds are clearly aware of eggs-istential threats, not only to themselves, but also threats to other species, and can refer to these threats (such as raptors) even when there are none around.

The species (I presume it's two different species) wait for the other species to fall silent before making their calls. So they clearly appear to acknowledge each others existence. We've a bright metallic green cuckoo called the Diederik (it's usual call is dee-dee-deederik). A while ago I was watching one perched on an elevated cable being mobbed by a multispecies group of smaller birds. It's primary response (before eventually flying off) was to mimic (very well!) the call of our local kestrel. There's quite a lot going on here. Interesting article. Thanks!

Taking a balcony break this evening, I was greeted once again with a chorus we get at the height of the rains that has intrigued me for years. Here in southern Nigeria, our frogs don't go 'Ribbit...' There's one species that does a similar and insistent 'Chicken... Chicken... Chicken'. And then there's a second that intersperses a deeper pitched almost lugubrious 'Egg... Egg... Egg'. Is there an Aristotelian debate going on here amongst the lower orders?

Living in the tropics, I'm quite keen on lactic acid fermentation to preserve vegetables rather than to buy fresh daily. Fruit flies are therefore the bane of my life. It's fruit fly maggots that you've found, and they're really keen on lactic acid (Reference: https://lsi.ubc.ca/2021/07/02/not-all-acids-are-equally-sour-gordon-lab-research-sheds-light-on-why-fruit-flies-find-lactic-acid-a-delight/) It's a real bind, but this is why you should be thorough with sterilisation of storage vessels and keeping everything airtight. The stinky stuff isn't the fruit fly maggots though. That's Kahm yeast. But the preventives are much the same.

It's already in the wood. Seasoned wood is typically around 12% moisture at equilibrium, but this shifts around a bit according to the ambient temperature and relative humidity. Since wood (especially softwood) is quite porous, there is a continuous exchange of moisture between the wood and its surroundings. (Reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying) If you prevent this exchange with an impermeable plastic film, then your likely to find free water pooling under it from time to time. Puncture the plastic cover on something like a 5mm pitch to allow the wood beneath to breathe.