TheVat

It would be interesting to imagine what other facts would come to light, as far as the conventional militaries and their future capabilities are concerned. I don't know if the Ukraine war would end or not - it's being fought with conventional weapons. And the military budget would effectively increase for Russia, absent the cost of maintaining and manning a nuclear strike force. I've even wondered if all the nuke talk lately from Putin is just hot air, and they stopped taking care of their missiles some time ago. Could there be Potemkin silos, filled with rusting equipment and non launchable rockets? How good is our intelligence in the West? This is all a bit out there, but I try to remember that Russians are excellent chess players.

Ehrfurcht vor dem leben (3 genders, 4 cases, how do Germans do it?).I hope folks here won't conflate that desire to lay groundwork for global zero with a naive sensibility. We all know how far away a true START agreement is, let alone global zero. As that Brookings fellow pointed out, the latter goal is pragmatic WRT to a longterm winding down of proliferation. Why would all those dictators abandon nuke ambitions so long as the big boys have them? Nothing really happens until Cold War (and hot war) issues are resolved with the big three, and that would require regime change in Russia and liberalization in China to even get parties to the arms reduction table. Well that has been the standard assumption. I think maybe we should test that against the current reality, maybe a thought experiment. What would happen if, right now, one of the big three dismantled all its nukes, fed the fissile material into power plant reactors, and said hey we're done. And then, one assumes, put some of the billions saved into more conventional weapons. (maintaining a large nuclear arsenal is expensive)

A couple of cannibals are sitting around, and one says: “I don’t like my brother-in-law very much.” The other one responds, “Then just eat the noodles." When I entered high school, I got my sister's hand-me-down calculator that didn't have a multiplication button. Times were hard back then.

Also an advocate for Global Zero here. The Brookings paper makes some strong arguments for continuing to work on this - the mountain seems steeper now, alas, with Putin rekindling the Cold War and saber rattling crazily. I hugely appreciate your passion on this - the world needs to be aware of that Damoclean sword over its head and agitating for its removal. Bingo. Yep. And that's part of why Global Zero is, however distant, a pragmatic approach to global security and species survival. When the stakes are this high, gambling on continued good luck is a bad idea.

No, but I will. Thanks. Sounds like a less comedic approach to a plot setup similar to Eureka. With possibly also elements of the German series, Dark. You are welcome. A really unusual neo-noir. People who knew her have speculated that the author of the originating book, The Talented Mr Ripley, was a nonviolent sociopath - this would not always be for me a plus in an author, but Ms Highsmith also happened to be a brilliant writer and it seems possible her own worldview added to the story's realism. (I looked for a What are you Watching thread but didn't see one, so apologies if this is too much digression for TIL thread)

I don't know if concerns about radionuclide residues and their longevity (iodine 131 is brief, 8 day HL, cesium 137 is a 30 year HL) are still the main locus of concern about nuclear weapons. At least not since the TTAPS paper (and Sagan's popularized version which appeared in Parade Magazine) drew wide public attention to sweeping ecological and climatic changes from even a quite limited nuclear exchange. IIRC that paper, detailing the nuclear winter scenario (prolonged dust and smoke, a precipitous drop in Earth's temperatures and widespread failure of crops, leading to massive famine, etc) was what gave momentum to the Nuclear Freeze movement in the eighties. The concerns raised seemed to rise well above the level of phobia (granted, some concerns about peacetime nuclear power do verge on phobic). Again, we have been incredibly lucky. And it might take only one rogue general somewhere to fire up the apocalypse. Happy Earth Day, y'all.

I have wondered if the moral equation, when nukes enter into a seemingly practical cost/benefit analysis, changes in a way that is unique as equations go. When conventional weapons are used, it doesn't open a special door through which a vision of apocalypse is visible. To use a nuke is not merely to conduct warfare, but to decide to use a principle of deterrence which, if widely applied, would end us. (there's kind of a Kantian categorical imperative aspect to this) So, ethically, using a nuke seems to require a kind of myopic view of reality: sure, you showed those [insert adversary name here] bastards not to mess with us anymore, but you also crossed a line where the unthinkable is now an instrument of foreign policy. Maybe we were able to step back over the line after Hiroshima, but there's little chance that could happen now.

That it is still possible to find slow television - a series that doesn't have to land a narrative hook in you in the first couple minutes. That takes its time. Lots and lots of time, looking around at everything in sight, no constant buzz of dialog. Ripley. (the new series) Utterly spellbound. Hitchcock would have liked this series.

Some audiences would give it a standing ovulation.

I think someone posted that presentation just a week ago at the dot-com sciforum website. I will watch it, thanks. I always enjoyed watching him rattle the cages of other intellectuals, some mentioned in the obit - John Searle, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Jerry Fodor, Richard Lewontin et al. Definitely a pitbull when it came to skyhook thinking. I want to go back and read some of his books, not that a person has to die for that to happen. I had some disagreement with his brain-as-computer view, but I acknowledge he made that argument with impressive clarity and finesse. His Multiple Drafts model of the mind struck me as one of the more nuanced forms of computationalism. He certainly did a fine job of demolishing the Cartesian Theater.

Seems to describe the situation, though I would add that some of our fellow Americans, due to prior prejudices they had mostly suppressed, were consciously and enthusiastically willing to spread their legs for him. TFG somehow gave them a safe space and In Group where they could resurrect their xenophobic (and other phobics) biases and most regressive feelings. Sorry to hear about your papa. It is painful and frustrating to watch, especially when you feel they should know better.

Do you know anything about GA toxicity, before you proceed? Maybe Pirrung's Handbook would be helpful. Vogel is also good, for procedures. Looks like GA has a lower vapor pressure than formaldehyde, so that's probably a good thing. You can make it by oxidation of ethylene glycol - use hydrogen peroxide in the presence of iron(II) sulfate. Might want to review this, too: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Glycolaldehyde

Yep. Are you interested in its theoretic role in abiogenesis?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-philosopher-atheist-darwinist/ Daniel Dennett, the American philosopher, who has died aged 82, was, with Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of Darwinism and one of the most virulent controversialists on the academic circuit. Dennett argued that everything has to be understood in terms of natural processes, and that terms such as “intelligence”, “free will”, “consciousness” “justice”, the “soul” or the “self” describe phenomena which can be explained in terms of physical processes and not the exercise of some disembodied or metaphysical power. How such processes operate he regarded as an empirical question, to be answered by looking at neuroanatomy – the engineering involved in brains. Darwinism, to Dennett, was the grand unifying principle that explains how the simplest of organisms developed into human beings who can theorise about the sorts of creatures we are. In Consciousness Explained (1991), he argued that the term “consciousness” merely describes “dispositions to behave” and the idea of the “self” was nothing more than a “narrative centre of gravity”. In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) he went further than any other philosopher or biologist in arguing that the whole of nature, including all individual human and social behaviour, is underpinned by a Darwinian “algorithm” – a single arithmetical, computational procedure. Borrowing Richard Dawkins’s notion of “memes” (“bytes” of transferable cultural ideas encompassing anything from a belief in God to an individual’s fashion tastes), Dennett argued that the Darwinian algorithm also explained, for example, the musical genius of JS Bach, whose brain “was exquisitely designed as a programme for composing music”. Dennett’s philosophy undercut any idea of teleology or “purposive” creation....

I am sorry to report a brief period of backsliding. A canister of honey coated almonds. Our eyes met across a crowded room, at the home of Sam and Janet Evening, and I felt a sick rush of almond lust that I had assumed was long ago consigned to my distant youth. I stumbled across the room, my mouth filled with saliva, and began to pack my cheeks like a squirrel at the peak of acorn season. Fermentable oligosaccharides! I moaned. Not the easiest phrase to moan with a full and avidly chewing mouth. California aquifers be damned! (also a challenging word string to enunciate while masticating) A beautiful woman who bore an eerie resemblance to the Santitas Corn Chip lady walked past, and I took advantage of the distraction, the substitution of one sensual delight for another, handed her the canister and said please keep these away from me! Pobrecita! she said, with a silken yet husky voice only a corn chip lady could possibly manage. Later I walked home, my feet pounding the hard macadam, back to the macadamia nuts to whom I had pledged my life and my sacred honor. One of the hardest journeys of my life.

Where weight gain is a chronic issue, it seems to work better to take the draconian step of just eliminating sweets. That seems to go better than repeatedly venturing out on the slippery terrain of moderate sugar intake. There are lots of delightful flavors in this world that are not sweet. Savor them. JMO.

Thread seems real similar to another thread started Sunday by same poster, with some of the same questions raised. Just curious why two threads needed.

Ahem....

Seems like doing it the hard way, and deceleration takes a lot more newtons than deflection. I would favor a high energy laser that strikes one side to form a jet of vaporized material. Depending on the mass of the rock and its distance, a few hundred newtons of thrust could steer it off its collision course.

The musician finally gave up and began to erase all the lines of notes. His wife walked into the room and asked, "what is that smell?" "I'm decomposing," he replied.

When people see a magnet doing work it is actually (e.g. a salvage yard crane) electric forces in the electromagnet and motor that do work. Could one say that magnetic forces are used to redirect and apply those electric forces? So you have to have an electric current for the magnetic forces to be instrumental in doing work. Sort of like a smooth ramp that is redirecting a lateral force (me pushing on a heavy appliance) to lift my appliance several feet upward. The ramp does no work, it only redirects my force.

Yes there is clear evidence, and "small quantities" is not a safe option. Your post contains dangerous misinformation. Ephedra was killing people. Shame on you!

However, he cautions that it remains to be confirmed whether the regulation of gene expression through interventions that enhance self-awareness is the mediating factor in the association between self-awareness and well-being. Good caution there.

I agree but was going with the OP usage, which seemed to include diminutives. They exampled Chris. And yes, nickname makes me think more of Shorty or Pigeye or what have you. For reasons never clear to me, I was "Newt" for a few weeks while working as a teenager on a corn detasseling crew. This bears no relation to my RW name, an affinity for Fig Newtons, or amphibious creatures. It can be short for Janus, a name which has come into usage in the US in recent years. But yes, it's often a full name.

A lot of G-N nicknames can be derived by shortening a name, e.g. Mel (Melissa, Melanie or Melvin). Or Alex (Alexander or Alexis or Alexandra). Or putting an "ie" on the end of a stub, e.g. Ollie (Olivia or Oliver). Other shortener examples are Pat, Jo (as exchemist mentioned), Jan, Kris, Sam. In the US, Nick is sometimes used for Nicole, though as @exchemist said Nicky is more common.