mistermack

I did think of that, that's why you would have to adjust the spray and pressure so that the drops don't fully dry out. It would be a bit less efficient, but you couldn't allow salt dust to blow inland. You could possibly site the spray a bit of distance from the coast to ensure that no salt makes landfall. A problem might be that the salty brine might produce local ecology problems in the ocean, but I doubt that they would be widespread, as the tides and currents would soon disperse it. You could even power the pumps with wind generators, the daytime onshore wind would be available at the same time as the demand.

I've dreampt up a speculative scheme for greening a desert. Do you think it would work? (or be cost effective?) You need a desert that extends right up to a significant sea or the ocean. Like lots of Australia, or Namibia etc. Australia would be the best to try it on. Imagine you set up a huge array of pumps along, for example, the Great Australian Bight. Connect the pumps to spray nozzles, and start pumping when there is an onshore wind. Adjust the jets for a spray that evaporates most of the water, before it falls back into the ocean. So basically, you are manufacturing water vapour, from sea water, with the salty residue falling back into the ocean. So with an onshore wind, all of that humid air is carried inland, where it rises on thermals, forms clouds and rain, greening the land. If the wind blows the other way, you switch it off. Obviously, it could only be done on a national level, so that the benfits could be taxed and provide financing for the running of the system. Besides providing land that could now be used for agriculture, it could raise the level and quality of groundwater, cool the climate with more cloud cover, and actually get rivers flowing and lakes filling. If it worked. Any thoughts?

That's just an empty claim, with no argument to support it. Apart from the argument from incredulity. I asked if you thought that intent should be punished. I also posted earlier about the principle of punishing the intention. This will be gone over in the finest detail, possibly for weeks, when this idiot comes up for trial and sentencing. But it doesn't seem to be of any interest to you. Each country has it's own layers of moderation, censorship and legislation. So what? Motivation is guesswork for anyone but the criminal. It's an obvious given, that if you try to kill someone with a knife, you have a powerful motivation. That's a very good reason for locking you up for life. Because your motivations are a danger to the public. I personally don't give a toss why a dog bit me. I just want it put down. Humans are not dogs, so it's better not to execute them, but life without parole would be perfectly fitting in this sort of case. The intention was to kill, and to create terror, and it was only due to amazing courage by onlookers that he didn't succeed, so he deserves no benefit from the fact that Rushdie survived.

There's so much wrong, packed into one post, that the strong impression given is of someone trolling. Badly. If that's wrong, then I hope the poster is very very young, and my advice is to spend your time learning the science that's out there, rather than making up your own. It's a pleasant and rewarding experience learning about the world, rather than inventing it all. There's so much free online science out there now, that all you need is time and interest. Just search google for what you want to know, rather than inventing.

The ultra-violet part of the spectrum does damage cloth, in a similar way that bleach does, weakening the fabric making it easy to tear, like paper. But it's likely to be negligible for clothes on a washing line. I have a set of nice curtains, that have a white liner that hangs as an outer layer, and the liner has suffered, but the curtains have been hanging for years, and the window does get strong sunlight. You can easily rip the liner with your fingers, if you pull the curtains roughly, but the inner decorative curtain is in perfect condition. To replicate that kind of fabric weakening, I think you would have to leave the clothes on the washing line for years. The curtain liner is white, so that hasn't protected it from damage.

Loony is a word that has spun around in meaning. The original people classed as lunatics would now be classed as suffering from a serious mental illness, or severe PMT. Now it's reserved for sane people who ought to know better. By me anyway.

It is if you get it in writing. In the instruction book. Actually, I can't remember ever getting verbal consent from a real woman. Or giving it. Does "fuck off, I'm tired" count as consent? If it doesn't, I've been raped many times.

What utter rubbish. It's much easier to tamely accept the indoctrination you got as a child, than to question it. Especially when that doctrine has been specially designed to appeal to weak-minded people, who respond like puppies to the fake love of an imaginary friend.

Is it abuse, if you have sex with one? That's what they're made for. 😋

If you want too actually earn your +1, you're going to have to explain why it's fallacious, preferably without using a strawman fallacy. I thought that was self-explanatory. You posted "the question being, who's the loony?" That clearly assumes that there is ONE loony, and doesn't allow for both or neither parties being loonies. And it also doesn't account for lunacy being a question of degree, rather than a binary loony/non-loony condition. But anyway, how come you demand such elaboration from me, but ignore clear questions put to you? That's double standards. I have no interest in what Salman Rushdie thinks. I just support his right to think it, and publish it. I don't support the totally free right to publish offensive material, but I think the test should be, "would this be grossly offensive to a reasonable person?" and there's nothing reasonable about religion. And in any case, if offense is caused, there are peaceful methods of objecting, and stabbing people in the eye is clearly straying into the loony territory of expressing your objections.

I don't get why this should be a surprise. If you think about your own genome, all of it originated with a mutation. And they all proved beneficial at the time, otherwise they would not have persisted in the population. So what you've ended up with is a genome of the best available genes, and the worse ones have disappeared over the ages. So if a mutation occurs, it's up against a collection of elite genes, and the chances are low that it will be better than the established genes. They have thousands or millions of years of selection in their favour. So the mutation's chances of being better just by chance is pretty low. Of course, it's more complicated than that, and it's gene combinations that sometimes count, but the principle still remains. I would expect most mutations to be less fit than the predecessor.

A fallacious question, assuming that there's only one loony, and that lunacy is a binary condition. Your parable of the loony reminded me of this :

That's right. Atheism and religion are fundamentally about what you believe, not what you celebrate. Especially if there's free beer on offer.

That's difficult to picture. Helium rises here on Earth, so it's likely to float upwards and away in a 10 bar atmosphere. What about gravity, if the planet is bigger and more massive than the Earth? How would the humans cope with it?

So you don't think bad intent should be punished?

Who do you think the loony is?

Life without parole isn't an eye for an eye though. Nobody's going to stab the guy in the eye, or neck. (unless he gets unlucky in prison) The principle of punishing the intention is established in English law. Conspiracy to kill gets a serious sentence, even if you don't do anything. As is planning a terrorist act. And terror goes way ahead of a stab in the eye. It's designed to provoke fear in everyone, not just the stabbee. Also life without parole is a great way of protecting the public from the loony.

Just an update on Rushdie. 13/8/22 news, he's being helped breathing by a ventilator, and might lose an eye. (according to his agent). Sounds like he will make it. I would give the stabber life without parole. Like the idiot who killed Lennon. The intention is to kill, so why should they benefit from their own incompetence?

Hitchhiker's guide is a comedy novel. It's not meant to be taken seriously. I would view this in terms of information. The only way that all of the information in the universe was obtainable from a fairy cake, would be if the universe was made entirely of fairy cakes.

There are other variables at play too. Mars once had a substantial atmosphere, with resulting greenhouse effect and liquid water. But it lost nearly all of it. The difference between Mars and the Earth was I believe the magnetic field, which on Earth protects the atmosphere from the worst effects of the solar wind. Also the greater mass of the Earth increases the escape velocity. And Mars has little current volcanic activity, so replacement gases are slow in coming. So over millions of years the solar wind stripped the atmosphere off Mars, which caused the current freezing conditions. Compare Venus to Mars, it's much more massive, so even though the solar wind is stronger, it's kept it's atmosphere. It's also likely that it's still volcanically active.

Yes. One thing that complicates it still further, is where that subduction occurs. If it's at the poles, it won't cancel out the slowing, but if it's at the equator, it will more than cancel it. Most probably it's averaged out around the globe though. I would think that Greenland's shrinking ice cap will be having some sort of effect.

It just shows how stupid Nixon was. Instead of saying "I am not a crook" he should have said, " You are a crook, for investigating me ". It's absolute hogwash, but it actually works with Trump's portion of the American people.

You would have to do the maths. For a less dense planet to have the same surface gravity, it would have to be more massive, and would have a bigger radius, so the maths is quite different for the two cases.

I'm speculating here, but I would imagine that that's because on a small dense object, if you raise up by one metre, that's a greater percentage of the distance from the centre of gravity than a metre on a large less dense object. Because on the less dense object, you are starting from a 'higher' surface.

The thing is though, some of the Earth's biggest mountains are still growing. And they obviously grow from the bottom, which is a gigantic area. The Himalayas grow about 1cm per year, which doesn't sound a lot, but if you imagine the entire mass of the himalayas, raised 1 cm, it will knock hit the leaf fall and erosion into the weeds. I would imagine that most of the variation is down to the movements of plates, indirectly, with some input from hotspot volcanoes as well, both underwater and on land.