KipIngram

He's just looking at the initial appearance of each digit, which only seems to require a truncated approximation. But I don't seen any claimed significance, in the post or in the cited paper. What's the point supposed to be? Also, my very first thought was that any supposed point shouldn't depend on choice of the decimal number system; you'd want to see the same thing manifest regardless of radix choice. Without some claim of what this is meant to tell us, it seems like nothing more than a cute observation.

By that argument practically anything can be considered infrastructure. Food distribution, communication networks, etc. I'm not really taking a yea or nay position on the permissibility of such things - just noting that you're opening a very open-ended door with that argument.

That is true, and is a good point. An income-tax based direct payment of the form I described above would at least "live completely" within the tax code. the 16th amendment is pretty terse - it doesn't really say anything about the redistributive nature of the tax code it authorizes.

So, +1 on Kaiser Family link - I kicked the tires there and they seem extremely well thought of as far as being unbiased. One thing that makes all of this more difficult than it should be is the inflated costs (the many dollars per Tylenol pill and things like that you find in hospitals). Any sort of comprehensive solution should address that as well - if the whole business wasn't outrageously expensive (except where it should be - I don't claim that every treatment should be cheap) then it would be a lot easier to consider various options. So another Kaiser link: http://kff.org/report-section/medicaid-spending-growth-compared-to-other-payers-issue-brief/ pegs the cost of private insurance vs. Medicaid at 18%. That's a difference, but it doesn't seem like a difference that completely rules out consideration of a fully privatized system. I thought perhaps you were talking about a 2x or 3x difference or something like that. I noted earlier that many doctors refuse to take new Medicaid patients, so we're clearly giving something up for that savings. We save some money, but in doing so we create a "caste system" within the population. By the way, I don't want to come off as promoting the nobility of private health insurance companies. I think, by and large, they're greedy corporations like most other corporations. It's been my experience that they will dodge paying out any way they can. That is an area where close government oversight is in order, in my opinion. Promises should be kept, just like in any form of business relationship. That includes both 1) keeping to the letter of the agreement, and 2) not "stacking" the agreement with so much legalese that there's a way to wiggle off using technicalities. The insurer / insured relationship is one where one side has mighty legal resources and the other does not - I'm all for government oversight to ensure the little people don't get stomped on. Ditto for government oversight of cost-gouging at hospitals. But back to the point - I found 18% as a cost differential. Do you accept that as roughly right, or do you feel it's much more substantial? I don't mean to imply that it's "bad." I generally support a humane, well-executed welfare program. I'm just defining terms - in my mind welfare is anything that transfers economic benefit from one person to another in an income-based way. Insurance premiums transfer economic benefit amongst people in an entirely random way. I think a single welfare mechanism operated through the tax code would be more efficient and less "exploitable" than one comprised of many many programs such as we have now. I'd prefer such a program even if it was order of 20% more expensive than a set of programs "optimally" managed by the government - I'd be happy to pay my share of the 20% extra. If the 20% is wrong and it would actually be 2X or 3X I'd have to opine again, and I realize that 18% number came up only in the context of health insurance. I think it's easy to agree that we'd all prefer that any given person not need welfare - that would just mean he or she is doing better in life, right? But in a nation as prosperous as ours I think there is plenty of room for a well-executed safety net to keep people from suffering. Just because I'm generally in favor of free enterprise doesn't mean I lack all compassion.

Yes, I have to agree.

I didn't say that, at all. My point was simply that one way of helping people have health insurance is to help them have the money with which to buy it. If something I said up there implied that I approve of Medicaid patients having worse outcomes than private insurance patients it wasn't in any way meant to. I was just noting that as a point I saw leveled against the ACA when I was searching. By assisting via cash payments to cover premiums you turn every patient into a private insurance patient, so there wouldn't be a question of "private insurance vs. Medicaid" any more - it would all be private insurance.

I would imagine for some it could have been spite, while for others simply a reflection of belief. Some people just believe that the role of government should be minimalist. I share that belief, while still wanting to show compassion for the less fortunate of us - I straddle that fence the way I mentioned above, by supporting the idea that the government can redistribute wealth to assist the needy without having to get involved with every single detail of how the economy works.

Well, I wasn't just particularly chomping at the bit to discuss this; I just felt that the other thread had drifted OT and didn't want to contribute that more of the same. But I feel like it would be lame not to post something given that the thread is here now. I did find this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/#656bde7c15be which cites this Brookings study that I'd also run across earlier in my search: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Fall2014BPEA_Kowalski.pdf Both of these take the position that the in the immediate aftermath of the introduction of the ACA private industry health insurance premiums rose faster than pre-existing models predicted otherwise. This CNN article discusses some of the reasons why merely "enrolling people into something called health insurance" doesn't really constitute success: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/atlas-obamacare-poor-middle-class/ The core problem is that most of the increased enrollment comes in through Medicaid, and that many doctors are refusing to take new Medicaid patients. I haven't followed this angle up yet, but it also cites a study stating that many Medicaid patients suffer worse outcomes than private insurance patients. It also cites the Congressional Budget Office as projecting that ten million Americans will be forced off of their insurance programs of choice as a result of the program. That was something I wasn't even aware of earlier today that I'll need to peek into further. The problem with researching this, like so many politically charged issues (like, say, climate change) is that a lot of the information available is politically motivated. I think for every negative review I could find one could find a positive one, along with analyses on both sides showing why the other side's arguments are garbage. I actually intend to read the Brookings study, but it will take a few days. Please let me digress momentarily and share my own thoughts as to where we've gone wrong with this. Insurance is a very well-defined thing. The idea behind insurance is that you have a group of people some of whom will suffer an extreme cost of some kind, but you have no way of predicting which ones. Each of them pays premiums that represent the average cost across the whole group of all such events (plus a little extra for insurance company profit). Then the insurance brings forth the money for those that actually suffer the event. Providing that same protection to people who do not pay in that full premium amount is not insurance - it's welfare. I think we have confounded the phrase "health insurance" by turning it into a welfare mechanism. If there are some people who cannot afford health insurance, we could just give them money (a welfare payment) that they could then use to purchase health insurance on the open market. I see no reason it couldn't just be treated as a straight up welfare issue. The government could help people afford it without actually managing it. This would be my general approach to all welfare, by the way - implement it all in one way, via a negative income tax administered by the IRS. Cash money, usable to fund any need, and get rid of the alphabet soup of agencies we have now. Well, I'll stop there for now. While the "negative" effect of the ACA that would affect me personally in the most adverse way is the driving up of private insurance costs, I recognize that many who value "more people insured" might just not be very bothered by increased private costs. So I will try to look more deeply into the other thread: the premise that just having people on the insurance rolls doesn't necessarily mean that they are better off. I sense that might be a more compelling argument for those focused on the impact of the program on the poor as opposed to the impact on everyone.

You mean something like a "standards document" laying out the model?

Here is the paper I read. Like I said, I'm not qualified to comment on whether this is good science or not, but it seemed at least reasonable on first reading. I'll leave it to others to make a deeper commentary. http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/5/1/190/pdf

Well, I read a couple recently and could at least follow. I'm not well enough trained in the area to comment on the science quality of the paper I read, though. Give me a few minutes and I'll see if I can find a link.

Yes, the point I was trying to make is that you have to engineer the system to deal with it (rigidly support the two counter-rotating wheels), and said engineering adds extra weight, cost, and so on. You're right - it shouldn't wear out your tires; the gyro effects would be "contained" by the supporting structure. Another thing you have to keep in mind is what's going to happen if a flywheel fails; those tend to be rather violent events. So you'd also need a containment system, and that adds weight and cost as well. But of course all of these technologies have risks (gasoline can explode too).

There are papers out there that talk about retro-causality at the quantum level. Things like antiparticles being mathematically equivalent to the equivlalent "non-anti" particle traveling backward in time. I think it's one of those things that you can choose to embrace or not - it just depends on how you interpret the equations. And I also think that such retro-causality is limited to quantum situations.

Yes, I think the UN is great as well in the "Babylon 5" style - a place to work out our differences. I don't support having it making decisions that are binding on the member nations. For that the discussions in the UN should lead to a treaty executed per the various mechanisms specific to the individual nations. Regarding decentralization, I think the federal government should enforce the honoring of citizen rights under the Constitution - no state should be able to "reduce the freedoms" granted by the Constitution. Similarly re: the states vs. the localities. So the each "higher government" should make sure the "lower governments" within its jurisdiction are "playing by the rules." Some things do need to be organized nationally, like national defense, for instance. Other things don't. I'm for each thing being organized at its own appropriate level.

Oh, interesting. I didn't know it was a specific "named thing."

I agree - it didn't seem condescending to me. Often people whose work involves the application of their minds are viewed as "not really working" by people whose work is more physical. That's flawed reasoning - the common factor in both cases is that the person offers something that's considered valuable enough to pay for. So there's really no difference whatsoever between physical and intellectual labor in that sense.

No, clearly they were potentially at risk just from the Russians knowing, if the Russians had any concern that the Israeli's were also gathering information on them (the Russians). The ACA wasn't just "imperfect" - it just didn't work as claimed at all. If you want to discuss the ACA, please open a thread, because that would pull us OT for sure. Health "insurance" is a mess in the United States, and has been for years, and I don't know if I see a very good solution.

Yes, this one was really really pretty. Very sleek looking. And they made what you said very clear on the website. But then the video got into independent circulation without the disclaimer.

I just found this same video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8-Kek8Halc A little way down into the comments there's one by user asm0deus who quotes as follows from the website that posted the video (http://www.veproject1.org/): From the website: "My Perpetual Motion Machines models are of motorized versions that were built to illustrate how they were supposed to work in the minds of Inventors. Never mind what educational level we are at, we all miss something that goes beyond the usual scientific explanations. Fundamental Science, Physics Laws and boring Laws of Thermodynamics bring the ‘flight’ of Inventors’ ideas to land. Growing Technology … We live in an age of consumption. But many of us are still dreaming and believe that the era of creativity has not gone. My PMM models are built for them. I’d like to inspire these people by demonstrating Unworkable Perpetual Motion Machines that were designed centuries ago."" The quote is at the bottom of this page: http://www.veproject1.org/index.php/perpetual-motion/. So it looks like the machine in the video is explicitly acknowledged as being motorized. Mystery solved.

I can't find it on uspto.gov.

I've always felt pretty much the same. However, my employer (IBM) "refreshes" our computers every four years, and I came due in early January. The Windows options have absolutely terrible battery life, so I decided to give in and try out a Macbook Air. An online friend told me about Homebrew, a third party package manager for Mac OS. Using that I've gotten it set up so that I can do more or less all of my usual Linux tricks, and the battery life is better than any computer I've ever owned. So at least right now I'm pretty content.

This post got me to noodling around online for similar type things. One thing I noticed in the attached conversation is that many, many people seem to have the idea that anything that moves "forever" represents the forbidden perpetual motion machine. They'll note how it "must be possible, since the planets keep going forever." Very few of them seem to get that what's forbidden is perpetual energy output with no source, not simply "motion."

They would if they are turning in the same direction. But if they are turning in opposite directions you won't feel that resistance (if they're turning at the same speed and have the same mass distribution). You're right that there's resistance to either direction of turn. But there's still a cancellation effect when the flywheels are counter-rotating. I'd probably have to go to a reference to express it mathematically, though.

In the first case the voltage that you across the empty socket is the same voltage that made the light bulb light up when it was in place. It might be slightly higher, because now that no current is flowing there are no voltage drops in the wires. Voltage does not require a complete circuit - there's a voltage between the ends of a battery when it's just sitting on the shelf. That is the voltage that causes current to flow in the load when you attach one. The same can be said of the two slots of an AC outlet that has nothing plugged in, except that's an sinusoidal AC voltage rather than a fixed DC voltage. In the second case, with the series bulbs, when you remove the first bulb you stop current from flowing in the system. With no current flowing, there can be no voltage across the second light bulb, because it is basically a resistor and resistors only develop voltage when a current flows. So the prongs of the socket that it's plugged into must have zero voltage across them as well. In the last case, let's draw a picture. We'll assume the external power supply applies voltage across the outer ends of the drawing. +V ---------------------A1 A2-----------------------B1 B2---------------------- -V A and B are the bulbs. In this situation you would measure voltage between points A1 and B2. However, you won't measure voltage between A1 and A2 or between B1 and B2, because neither of those point pairs connect to both ends of the voltage source. In other words, when you remove both bulbs from the circuit you completely disconnect the wire A1-B2 from the circuit. That wire contains one of the prongs of both sockets, so neither socket will show a voltage. Does that help? Let me say that a slightly different way. With only one bulb removed, both prongs of the empty socket still see a conducting path to the two sides of the supply. There will be no voltage drop across the second bult (the one that's still in the circuit) because no current is flowing. With both bulbs removed, each socket has one terminal that is connected to the supply, but the other one is not. So neither socket will show a voltage, though an appropriate measurement using terminals from both sockets will.

That's a good point. Though I certainly think the original source of the information should know; they're the ones with potentially exposed operations. But yes, it's hard to call the media process much more than a circus these days.