mistermack

I don't think there's much to understand. Having a "free" will is like being a feather that falls off a high-flying bird. There are various forces acting on you, and your own characteristics affect how you react to those forces. If you had all of the information, you could accurately predict where the feather would land, but the whole system is so complicated, you would probably need a computer the size of a planet. We are much the same. We have forces acting on us, sometimes opposing forces, and our own characteristics are incredibly complicated. So the computing power isn't out there for a hundred percent certainty. But like the feather, you can make an informed guess and get a fairly accurate prediction. So to sum up, our will isn't "free", but it's not perfectly predictable either. What are the benefits to understanding that? Well, since it's in the realm of the bleedin obvious, we already have the benefits.

Electric.

Any link for that? The reports I've read indicate that the colder it gets, the less efficient they become. Double efficiency doesn't really mean much, unless you define what that means, and how it compares on price to other sources of heating. Countries like Norway can cope with it, with a small population, loads of Hydro power and big stocks of oil and gas. They can keep the price of electricity low, so air-source heat pumps are not prohibitively expensive to run. If 1kw of electricity is generating 2kw of heat, that's not great, if electricity is three times the price of gas, per unit heat. And of course, it's self defeating if you have to spend tens of thousands to adapt the house to make it work. So for a country with high electricity prices, and older housing stock, they are a waste of space. There is also a noise problem. For city houses, close together, they will all be generating a hum, which can be irritating to neighbours. On a still night in winter, with thousands of houses generating a hum, it might be a serious problem.

I'd vote for that !

As a definite non-physicist, I have noticed that the chess queen is impeded. She can only move at fixed angles, in increments of 45 degrees. Light can move in any direction. Maybe in space the "squares" are spheres ?

It will never stop. Industrial farming is generally about labour costs. In a competitive market, people buy on price, and industrial methods keep overall costs down. I guess the price of land comes into it though. If you can produce more out of a smaller plot, then you can make more money and compete better on price. But when "overpopulation stops", industrial farming will have even more of an edge, because labour costs will be higher with a smaller population.

Some bacteria produce hydrogen, when they feed on carbohydrates. At least, that's how they explain the litre of hydrogen that the best human farters produce in their exhaust gases. I used to think that ignitable farts were down to methane, but it turns out it's more down to hydrogen. You have to have the right bacteria in your gut to produce either, but hydrogen is much more common. Maybe deep down in the soil, bacteria are farting hydrogen.

But to put a dent in the Earth's CO2 would take vast quantities of basalt waste. It doesn't appear to be there, except in small pockets. Most aggregate is limestone, and it's so expensive to shift that it's not economic to truck it more than 30 miles. And that's the good stuff, not the waste. Without the magic taxpayer subsidy of about £100 a ton, this project would be going nowhere. And a ton of dust would have very little effect on an acre of land. It might make sense, if there were depleted fields, close to a basalt waste dump. The quantities of basalt used are small overall. I had a look on wiki, they say : According to the USGS, 2006 U.S. crushed stone production was 1.72 billion tonnes valued at $13.8 billion (compared to 1.69 billion tonnes valued at $12.1 billion in 2005), of which limestone was 1,080 million tonnes valued at $8.19 billion from 1,896 quarries, granite was 268 million tonnes valued at $2.59 billion from 378 quarries, traprock was 148 million tonnes valued at $1.04 billion from 355 quarries, Basalt is one kind of trap rock, so it's not a major player. An article I read about this idea admitted that after stocks of basalt dust were exhausted, it would be necessary to grind mined basalt finely, to keep going.

It takes a lot of ignoring. If this "higher being" knows the future, that means that the future is fixed. You cannot alter it. So what's the point in this internal debate, of what to do? Except that your internal thoughts, wondering what to do, are also fixed. You are not in control of anything. My instinct in those circumstances, if I believed it all, would be to do nothing that took any effort. Or just to be awkward, I'd remove the front door and burn it.

You need energy to extract the basalt. You need energy to transport it to a plant. You need energy to grind it up. You need energy to transport it to suitable farm land. And the farmer needs energy to spread it and plough it in. Nearly all of that at present is done using diesel. So at the moment, it's a big waste of time and effort, and probably adding more carbon than it's fixing. What it does do, is allow some big carbon-emitting companies to buy "carbon credits" and carry on emitting, while getting a tax break. Maybe in the future, when diesel, petrol and gas have genuinely been replaced with renewables or nuclear, the scheme might make a marginal difference.

This is a beautiful but stark warning against believing the voices in your head :

I think I'd personally opt for a bit of air conditioning, if things got so hot. Looking at the price of the ordinary cooling blankets, a powered one is likely to cross over into the price range of a portable unit. I just looked at one on the net, £200. It also dehumidifies, so a pretty good option for humid nights. You just need a way of venting it, they come with a long vent hose, but I guess you would need to adapt a window with the kit supplied or drill a hole in the wall. Evaporative coolers are even cheaper, but I've found them counter-productive for humid heat, they make matters worse. In a dry environment, they might be ok. AuraHome Portable Air Conditioner 9000 BTU 4-in-1 Air Conditioner, Dehumidifier, Cooling Fan with 2 Fan Speeds, Digital Display & Remote Control, 24 Hour Timer for Rooms >215ft Window Vent Hose Kit : Amazon.co.uk: Home & Kitchen You can also get camping AC now, that will cool a tent, so that might be a cheap option if you could make a sleeping tent indoors.

Certain plates that look impermeable might not be. Plates and cups that are glazed china can look ok, but the glaze has micro cracks that allow penetration, and liquids can stain the originally white china. Some older china is a maze of cracks on the surface, especially if you look under a microscope. I don't think it matters in the slightest, apart from a staining and presentation point of view. The quantities you are likely to encounter are so tiny. But if you're worried you can buy glass plates, cups and saucers, or coloured glass that looks just like china.

The term "cooling blanket" is a bit scammy. But it seems to be an accepted scam, since there are so many using it, and such high prices. In reality, no blanket can be a "cooling blanket" unless it comes out of a fridge or freezer. Any blanket will restrict convection, and raise humidity next to the skin. A justification might be "well, it's cooling compared to a standard blanket" which might well be true, but a truthful description would be a "less warming blanket". You might reasonably argue that anyone with half a brain would work that out, and that the title was just acceptable marketing hype, and the people who buy it would just expect a blanket that was less warming than an ordinary one. But I would disagree, there are plenty of people out there so gullible, that they would take it literally. I like something covering me, even when it's too hot at night. Hot clear nights can cool quite quickly, and you fall asleep needing nothing, but wake up cold. Also, some sort of covering might keep insects off, it's an instinct that we might be born with. An old cotton sheet is my favourite when it's hot. As cotton gets older, and more washed, it becomes more absorbent and softer.

No it isn't.

A big part of the reason is that it was about six thousand km from Liverpool to New York, but about twenty five thousand to Sydney. Although the Suez ditch shortened that a bit. That really was no joke, in a little sailing ship.

John Lennon could. In fact, three persons in one is not without precedent. And Lennon at one point was more popular than Jesus. Sounds superficially a worthy hypothesis. But against it is the fact that most Ozzies wear shorts in the outback these days. And wikipedia actually has a page on the Bowyang, and they say it's to save you hitching up your trousers when you kneel or squat, to prevent them going tight round the knees or gradually slipping down. They do give your hypothesis credit as a second benefit though, but if that's the case, life must be murder in those baggy shorts.

Maybe the hydrogen deposits could be used as an energy reservoir, with hydrogen being manufactured and added from renewable sources at times of energy surplus, and drawn when needed. If there is still hydrogen now, the strata can't be very leaky.

Mary had a little pig You should have heard it grunt She took it down the garden path And shot it in the abdomen

Only half of their genes will come from the parent tree, the other half will normally come from the pollen that fertilised the flower. That's why seed-grown trees are so unpredictable.

Can't see any sign of that. The string round the knees is called a Bowyang down under, I just discovered. It's to aid squatting on your haunches in long trousers, apparently. They all wear shorts these days. I don't think the picture is accurate though. If I was a sundowner, I'd carry the tucker bag on a stick over the shoulder, like Dick Whittington.

Of course not. The music died years ago. To change the subject, why has the Sundowner in the picture got string tied round his trouser legs, just below the knees? Is that an Australian fashion statement?

I doubt if you would have much success grafting a pear onto apple rootstock or vice-versa. It might survive for a while, but I doubt if it would be successful long-term. I have a friend who has a tree with three or four varieties of pear on one trunk. It's a good idea with pears, because pears typically need another pear tree close by to ensure pollination, as they don't self-pollinate. The one that used to confuse me was the Cox's Orange Pippin. I was told that "pippin" meant that the tree could be grown from a pip, but actually, with the Cox's Orange ( the UK's most popular apple ) they are grown from grafted cuttings, just like all the rest of the commercial crop. I think the original Cox's might have been a pippin, and that's how it got the name.

They are, at least the top bit is. The root is normally from a different parent, a wild stock that produces vigorous roots. The desired fruit tree upper part is grafted onto the wild root stock as standard.

It goes back a long way. Were there ever blue birds over the White Cliffs of Dover? Since bluebirds are an American group of species, I would think that anyone who "waited to see" was probably disappointed. I expect they had to make do with common Barn Swallows, which do have a bit of blue here and there.