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Nikola Tesla spent his entire life working on wireless power, and eventually went broke in the process. It wasn't just a one off idea, it was his lifelong obsession (after having been successful with AC) which he spent untold amounts of money investigating (much of which wasn't his own. He duped J.P. Morgan into funding what Tesla claimed to be a worldwide radio transmitter which was, in fact, a transmission system for wireless power) His big problem was he liked to dream more than to calculations, and while he was able to transmit a fairly decent amount (200W, iirc) of power across the room, he failed to take into account the inverse square law and that what works for sending electricity across the room does not work for the entire earth. We can send power wirelessly nowadays, using large microwave antenna arrays. Sadly the magnetron didn't see common use until Tesla was old and decrepit.

CMBR has fascinated me ever since I heard about it. I especially liked Tony Zee's idea that a "message from god" could be encoded into it, but sadly I guess the CMBR varies depending on what vantage from which you observe it Actually I started a thread on it asking just that... for someone to explain what the hell it was all about. No takers If what I think they're saying is true, and there is a pattern in the CMBR, then it would seem to make some good evidence for strong determinism, at least in my wacky world view. I was really fascinated in The Singularity is Near when Kurzweil described the universe as evolving like a Rule 110 cellular automaton, which is something I've kind of been playing around with in my head long before reading that book (I posted some threads about it before) An infinite flat universe never sat well with me, probably too much poking and prodding around inside of computers for so long make me think exclusively in discrete and finite terms. That and I think an infinite regression explanation of causality is really no better than the "There's a little man inside your head who has a little man inside his head who has a little man inside his head ad infinitum" approach to epistemology. I'm of course a strong determinist so to me the universe represents an enormous quantum computer ticking away at solving some problem, and the more we figure out what the problem is (or for that matter, why the universe is solving it in the first place), the closer we'll come to understanding what the universe is really all about. Well anyway, enough crazy ranting. I guess I just await the day when we look at those doting on the infinite heavens no differently than those who thought the Earth was flat. Or maybe I'm wrong, but for now, WMAP seems to agree

Depends how they're designed. Neither does the eukaryotic cell and it seems to handle EM pulses just fine... Obscurantism does not provide a lasting solution. I think Eric Drexler's approach is the only sound one. The UN really needs to be more aggressive in terms of diagnosing and planning real solutions for existential risks.

I'm not expecting much. Given how horrible previous attempts to translate Alan Moore's work to film have been (i.e. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell) I seriously doubt V for Vendetta will do any better, or for that matter, the upcoming Watchmen movie.

Yeah, with the Singularity comes rapid discoveries of better and better ways of destroying ourselves. Singularitarians classify all of these scenarios as existential risks to the human species... or in the case of grey goo, all life on earth... Eric Drexler's proposed solution (in Engines of Creation) of an intelligently controlled nanorobot "shield" (i.e. utility fog) to stop out-of-control replicators seems like the only real solution... Of course, nukes can kill us now.

Very cool. Thanks for the links, Martin. I especially liked this quote:

I see MAD as becoming an increasingly antequated strategy, especially as nuclear weapons begin to fall into the hands of geographically disparate terrorist groups. If a fission bomb were used on a major US city, what would really be the proper retaliation? Is a nuclear response (especially with a fusion bomb) really in order?

Okay, it wasn't a fallacy, you're just wrong. Glad we cleared that up.

Source? Find me some official policy where the Democrats assert the position you claim they do. Otherwise stop prefixing your statements with "The Democrats"

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that that photo had already been debunked as being a toy submarine: http://skepdic.com/nessie.html

Composition fallacy. You are taking the opinions of certain Democrats (which ones I don't know) and attempting to make it out to be the entire party platform. I, for one, support a military intervention in Iran. I'd like to see special ops forces go in and take out their nuclear facilities.

What the hell is "unpromising science"? Pseudoscience? Electric Universe Theory, perhaps?

There's been a lot of articles published recently about a new Seth Lloyd paper regarding the preservation of information which enters into or evaporates out of a black hole using the final-state projection hypothesis: http://www.physorg.com/news11202.html http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/3/1 http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8836-black-holes-the-ultimate-quantum-computers.html But this is the only paper I was able to find, and it's dated 2004: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0406205

The CMBR freaks me out. Sadly the coolest thing I could think to do with the WMAP data is load it into Mathematica and spit out a sound file. Someone already did this with the data from WMAP's predicessor, I think (whichever one showed the CMBR is non-uniform) A more precise estimate of omega would be awesome. I'm not really a big fan of the whole infinite flat thing...

Where's the "marriage will eat your soul" option?

ND is something I'm quite passionate about (a passion which only intensified after visiting the Hiroshima Peace Park). I suppose it stems from the whole Singularitarianism thing and worrying about existential risks, i.e. ways humanity can annihilate itself. Nuclear weapons are definitely on the top of the list for now. On this thread revprez asked me why I dislike the administration's stance on Pakistan, believing my thoughts to stem from the actions of A.Q. Khan. And they certainly do: in addition to selling centrifuge designs and components to North Korea and Iran, Khan was the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Non-proliferation agreements have limited "legal" ownership of nuclear weapons to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: US, UK, Russia, China, and France. However, not all nations have signed the treaty, and we know for certain that India and Pakistan have both obtained nuclear weapons, while most speculate that North Korea and Israel have as well. I do not codone ownership of nuclear weapons by the members of the UN Security Council, but I most certainly am opposed to nuclear proliferation. This is why I find it rather odd that Bush regards Pakistan as our ally. I think it was a really telling moment during the presidential debates when Kerry listed nuclear proliferation as his number one worry, and Bush said the same, but was quick to add "in the hands of a terrorist enemy". I guess Bush simply doesn't care about nuclear proliferation unless terrorism is involved. I'm quite hopeful that in the future, we will be able to set up a planetary monitoring network for weapons grade nuclear material and, once that is in place, I really believe nuclear disarmament could begin. I don't think nuclear disarmament is something that's really feasible until everyone can be assured that no one else has nuclear weapons. Sadly I feel that this is something that won't happen until a rogue state like Iran actually uses a nuclear weapon against one of its enemies...

The Philosophy & Religion forum is the main one. Yeah, sorry to derail...

It most certainly changes the way you think. Whether the effects are beneficial or deleterious depends greatly upon your neurophysiology...

Seems to me the last real Pi day was 3-14-1592 and the next won't be until 3-14-15926

Images only seem to work in certain subforums and are disabled in others...

Can someone quote specific incidences here regarding Kurt's previous "suicide" attempts? There are two documented (and debunked) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain

I think the real question is if you've done 3X a lethal dose of heroin, why would you bother with the shotgun, rather than waiting to pass out and die?

Courtney filed the missing person's report under Kurt's mother's name, without her permission.

The only real evidence for suicide, as far as I can gather: - Circumstantial attributes (Persistent depression and overall instability) - A previous "suicide attempt" and an escape from where he was being treated - Suicide note One of the main reasons I doubt the suicide explanation is that Kurt's behavior before his death seems far more consistent with a person fearing for his life than one who was suicidal. For example, his body was found by a man he had hired to install security lighting. The question becomes: why would Kurt order security lighting for his home, then commit suicide? On March 18th, 1994, Courtney called the SPD and told them that Kurt was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. When the SPD visited, Kurt told them he was not suicidal and had locked himself in a room to hide from Courtney:

If you get into any sort of intensive symbolic analysis of Ethan Frome, I'll assure you that you'll discover it's not really fit for a 7th grade class. Specifically look at things like the pickle dish. However, I think it doesn't take too much imagination to grasp what "pickles" and "donuts" are trying to represent.