exchemist

As I said earlier, it's a perception by the customer, not an objectively quantifiable thing. You can charge what the market will bear in the short term, but if you value customer loyalty that has to be tempered by an awareness of what your customers are likely to think is a reasonable price. During my career in the downstream oil industry (lubricants), I used to distinguish between the mentality of traders and that of marketers. A trader behaves exactly as you describe. Each transaction is profit-earning in its own right and there is little or no loyalty expected or shown between a trader and his counterparty, save that of basic honesty - nobody wants to trade with a crook. (Traders used to be advised to be guided by the old adage "my word is my bond".) But in marketing you are trying to build a brand, to which your customers will feel some loyalty, returning time after time for repeat purchases. For that they must be happy with the product and any associated services, and part of that is the price, of course, as well as the performance of the product and the general market behaviour and reputation of the company. Brands take decades to build, but can be trashed overnight by clumsy behaviour or a product failure. So they have to be nurtured with extreme care. There are thus a lot more factors to consider in marketing than in trading, even in a theoretical unregulated, free market environment.

Which is why you have the FTC and we have the CMA. And we definitely need such bodies, since an unfettered free market tends eventually towards monopoly, or at least oligopoly.

True, but those same market forces mean that companies that are perceived by their customers as ripping them off risk losing market share over time, if they have any competition. So it's absolutely fair comment for customers to complain of price gouging if they feel they are being shafted. It's just one mechanism by which market forces operate!

Why does this not surprise me? I must say I have always found this exclusivist variety of Christianity thoroughly arrogant, smug and obnoxious. As @iNow remarks, it's a No True Scotsman. It's also distressingly petty: the reference to the Westboro Baptist church, whatever that may be, seems laughably parochial to bring to an international science forum. This is the funny thing about some of these extreme Protestant sects: because they are exclusivist they are forever falling out with one another and splintering, with each of them claiming theirs alone is the one true version of the faith. From the outside it looks thoroughly self-absorbed and ridiculous. If there is any truth in Christian belief, it seems far more probable that, as faulty human institutions, no one denomination or sect has a monopoly on either understanding or on salvation. Surely it makes a lot more sense, instead of castigating everyone but yourself as erring from the truth, you accept we are all sinners and build bridges with other groups, focusing on what you can agree upon.

Because, you dimwit, not everybody has a system with a control near the door. If you had read the posts you would have realised that. For instance my alarms have no control at all, as I explained.

Then I don't see your point. Both are cars, using IC engines, gearboxes, suspensions etc that are broadly the same. Unlike, say a bicycle. Calling both a Honda and a Ferrari cars is not an "arbitrary", in your words, classification. Nobody is asserting a gorilla is the same as a bonobo or a man is the same as a chimpanzee. But that does not make it "arbitrary" to classify all of them as apes.

Can you provide examples then?

You are dismissing the science, then. That's a stupid thing to do. The similarities between Man and the other apes are numerous and obvious, as is the evidence of linkage through the progression of fossils. Possibly the most conclusive of all is the DNA similarity. No other creatures on the planet have DNA so close to our own as the apes.

All this from a person who claims clades are arbitrary........ "Random chance", in my experience, is a phrase used by creationists attempting to ridicule the theory of evolution. I note also the conflation of abiogenesis with evolution, which is an error (or sometimes a deliberate rhetorical ploy) characteristic of creationists. Similarly, the notion of "aggressive competition" is one beloved of creationists, rather than people who understand the science. (The only "competition" in the theory is in the sense of relative reproductive success - there's nothing "aggressive" about it.) So we seem to have a string of Aunt Sallys here, being projected onto "atheists" but in fact based around what creationists wrongly claim the theory of evolution says. Last time I checked, most creationists are not atheists. And the projection continues. No one who understands the science thinks the universe arose from "chaos". Quite the opposite in fact, in terms of entropy at least. Chaos, again, is a term creationists like, as it fits the biblical account in Genesis. There seems to be also an attempt to elide acceptance of the theory of evolution with "atheism". This is something we often see from certain types of biblical literalist (i.e. stupid) Protestant, who are ignorant not only of science but of their own religion as well. In fact, the major western Christian denominations are perfectly happy to accept the science of evolution. And finally we have the ridiculous idea that "atheists" accept science merely out of loyalty to a preconceived worldview, rather than because they have been properly educated in science. Once again, most educated Christians also accept the science. Why would those Christians accept the science on its genuine merits, whereas "atheists" only do so out of some sort of tribal loyalty? But at last it seems you are running up the Jolly Roger. The agenda is finally revealed. In some ways it's a relief to see my suspicions confirmed.

So you think the definition of clades in biology is arbitrary, do you? Why then do scientists bother to classify organisms according to clades? Just for fun? Or to bamboozle the public with self-serving nonsense, perhaps?

Good point. I suppose the issue is rather what the force is, at a given separation, for a given field strength.

No he, like the rest of us, was unable to work out what you were talking about because the question was so badly written - not just the English but the apparent confusion about the physical scenario you were trying to describe. That's why you got no other responses. But thanks for rewriting a new question which is easier to understand. You will see I have replied to it already. I hope others may do likewise. It's an interesting topic. (By the way, anyone who has brought up a small child - or indeed spent time on a science forum - knows there most definitely are stupid questions. 🙂)

Oh, this is about the Meissner Effect, isn't it? https://sciencenotes.org/meissner-effect-in-superconductors/ Generally it is easier to have the superconductor below, so you can arrange more easily for the cooling, and then put the magnet on top to levitate. But if you can find a way to engineer a free-floating superconductor on top of a magnet, then the effect will be the same. As for the magnitude of the force generated, I would expect that to depend on the the strength of the magnetic field and hence the distance by which the upper component is levitated, the force being stronger at smaller separation, where the magnetic field is more intense. However, being only a chemist by training, I don't know enough of the physics to do a quantitative calculation. I expect a physicist may arrive in due course and may be able to help further.

I don't believe the IDF is a proxy for any western interests. If it ever was, it most certainly is not now. No western country actively supports what is being done and many of them have expressed either grave reservations or even condemnation. No western interest is served by stirring up yet another Middle East war. In fact it doesn't serve even the interests of Israel, when these are considered dispassionately. This whole inhumane operation will simply sow dragons' teeth, while eroding what remaining international support there is for Israel. It does keep Bibi out of jail though..........

I'll leave you more patient people to tease out whatever meaning there is to be found. 🙂

Exactly. It means literally “sharply stupid”, the “sharp” denoting an acute meaning, intentionally conveyed by what might appear a “stupid” juxtaposition of contradictory terms. In this case the stupid is apparent but no acuteness is detectable, to me at any rate.😉

I don't think so. An oxymoron is a seeming contradiction made deliberately to convey a particular meaning, e.g. a deafening silence. I don't see much evidence of a particular meaning in this case.

OK you've convinced me. It's perfectly true that the beeping when the battery is low is peculiarly non-directional, which makes fairly annoying trying to work out which of the three is responsible. And they do tend to start beeping in the middle of the night, inevitably. But I do slightly resist the notion that the Chinese government knows every time I grill a steak or burn the toast. 😄

Now that really does seem like a solution in search of a problem. Unless, I suppose, one is in the habit of generating smoke at home. Badly drawing wood fire? Smoking huge bongs?

Yes I remember an Alzheimer's scare about Al saucepans about 30 years ago. However none of the recent articles I've seen in the press about advances in the understanding and treatment of this condition seems to mention Al at all. I also note organisations like the Alzheimer's Society are at pains to dismiss the idea that Al pots and pans pose an increased risk, focusing instead on lifestyle factors. So I think we can probably forget it as a significant factor.

There's no control on the little battery-operated units I have on each of the 3 floors of my house. If it goes off (normally due to burnt toast, or fumes from a very hot oven that has not been used in a while, you just take the battery out and it resets.

"Protection" is only relevant for inventions, i.e. something that can be made, which have commercial potential. If you just have a scientific idea, protection in a legal sense is not possible, apart from copyright on the actual text of any article you may write about it. An idea itself is not something that can be legally protected.

If by protection you mean intellectual property protection then do not post it or in any other way publicise it, until you have first filed a patent application. The moment you publish, the idea becomes part of the public domain and free for anyone to take up, unless you have first filed to reserve your rights.

You are just trying to shoot the messenger, I'm afraid. I was very patient with you at the start of all this, but there comes a point at which patience is exhausted. You are free to reject the advice you have been given but don't blame us for giving it. Make your machine and see for yourself, then. If and when you get it working, I predict this thread will suddenly go very quiet. 😁

It's no more arrogant than asserting F=ma. You have had plenty of helpful analysis here, from me and others, which you acknowledged at the time. And yes we do know for sure it is not possible, from Noether's Theorem and from 150 years of the collective experience of mankind. There is no earthly reason to think a bit of amateur dicking around with magnets (why is it always magnets? 🙄) is going to overthrow thermodynamics. That is why we are not curious. We know that you are on a wild goose chase, like so many of the other twopenny ha'penny free energy cranks we have come across down the years. Your machine may function, in the sense that the mechanism rotates etc, but you will not get out more work than you put in. Period. I've no doubt the engineers enjoy the challenge of helping you make a working machine, again in the sense of the mechanism operating. But thermodynamically, it's going nowhere.