padren

I guess stating "we won't do things Bush's way anymore" is worth a lot these days. I think Obama is a great candidate for the prize in that he could end up winning it one day, but this really is premature. I am glad for the direction he's taken, the principles he's outlined for the most part... but it's not called the "Nobel Speech Prize" for a reason and really some sort of accomplishments should be in order before handing the thing out. Having great ideas or ideals don't mean a damn thing if you can't reconcile them in the real world, and he has some ways to go to prove he can do that.

That's like saying in a mixture of oil and water has the "goal" of separating into layers based on density, which it does in an exceptionally efficient manner. The only difference is that it is easy to see the layering of oil and water as a simple natural process and evolution is mindbogglingly complex. Just consider watching oil and water separate for the first time without knowing anything about fluid dynamics: At first, you'd be watching the bubbly mess thinking "What the heck is this doing??" when it would dawn on you that "Holy crap, it's sorting itself into layers!" and after watching it long enough after many times you'd be blown away by just how perfectly and elegantly it manages to achieve that goal every single time. But the fluid dynamics don't have goals, it's just how molecules respond to pressure. Evolution is no different - it's just how self replicating patterns respond to (albeit far more complex) pressure.

All I can say is thank goodness, it's about bloody time. I really hope the plan goes through with the public option, and the Democrats really start to realize they really have to get it straight before it hits the floor for a vote.

I think generally humans do feel like we have a pretty unique capacity to really appreciate existence in the way we do, and we'd like our descendants to share the qualities that we feel make being human so rewarding. In addition to survivability, we seek something that extends the (subjectively) better qualities we identify with. I find there is something comforting about the idea of our descendants retaining the qualities that make them "like us" while still going forward enough to disappear over the horizon of the unknown so as to render their fate (and ultimate mortality) beyond comprehension from this vantage point.

In terms of natural selection, keep in mind that members older than the general limit for reproduction still contribute to the raising of children. With the degree to which people are having children later in life people over fifty are invaluable when it comes to parenting. If at 25 you have a kid, who has a kid at 25 - you at age 50 are the only person liable to tell them just what the heck is going on! While we live in a technology driven world that is accelerating every year which makes some information of the older generations obsolete the fact that a lot has survived speaks volumes as to the value of the "grandparent generation" in society. I suspect your concerns have to do with the rise of "old folks homes" and the Simpsonseque abandonment of "old people" to pursue the "important" concerns of youth and middle age. While any increase in that sort of trend is disturbing I can't help but to wonder if it's actually systemic or just the result of having access to a wider range of samplings through modern media. (ie, the "Jerry Springer Effect") I have yet to meet anyone that does not value their grandparents and parents (aside from non-age related dysfunction of course), and they are appreciated for a great many things. In short I think you are overly concerned about a phenomena that is not as large it feels (the "throwing away of old people") and have read into causes that explain that which doesn't really exist. Of course, my experiences may be atypical, but I still don't think you can draw on Darwin to explain the problem if it does indeed exist. To be clear, "Biological adaptation does not abandoned us after fifty" and any adaptations occurred at the genetic level before we were born. Our ability to have offspring may be over at 50, but we can still play a role in how well our offspring succeed. All of that is only an issue if you even care about genetics - we are sentient and get to make up our own concerns in life independent of our genes, and may skip kids altogether. My stepdad had no biological kids but I learn from him all the time.

Just with regards to the Aliens vs Humans and "relative strength" deal: natural selection and evolution is often misrepresented as a cage match with species duking it out to try and place as high as they can on the food chain... which is just one of many human characterizations. I think the real question that is on many people's minds is: Are we adapting (including through technology) in a manner that aids or threatens our long term viability to survive as a species? We see the threats that disease have caused in the past, as well as large environmental shifts throughout our species' history. As such, we naturally fear that by shielding ourselves from disease through technology that we may be less naturally adapted to deal with it and if we find our environment changed in a manner that technology is no longer available (apocalyptic potentials, etc) that the end result could hurt us more than if we hadn't used technology and relied on genetic defenses to diseases. Personally I am not too concerned with that, but I think that is the general concern when we talk about "good" and "bad" with reference to the impact of technology on natural selection. When we think about natural selection we have ideas of what we "hope" for such as bigger brains, stronger muscles, better eyes, etc. We see those not just as things that are likely to be selected for today, but have the best chance of aiding us in the future even if the environment changes radically. We think favorably of adaptations that we (even if it is naively) see as aiding our long term survival as a species well into the unknown. Likewise, the idea of adaptations on par with peacock feathers makes us want to slap ourselves in the face and worry about the species long term survival. While those are purely subjective human opinion I think they are at the core of what people mean when they talk about "good" and "bad" adaptions. It's definitely good to be clear that it is a subjective opinion and not part of natural selection itself and correct people that mistake it... once corrected it's fair to discuss those human concerns in where natural selection may take us in the future. If I had to guess I'd say: No idea. IMO natural selection requires a very long time to have a profound impact on a species' genetics, and we are living in times too fast to really predict where it may all go.

Water as a "fuel source" could be more aptly described as a fuel "source" because it can be used to make a fuel - just that it contains no chemical energy you can pull out as a fuel. It's like the difference between a compressed spring and a loose spring. Water is like a loose spring which you can compress and use to store energy, and release it later. Of course, a compressed spring will never have more energy than the amount you put into compressing it, and you'll waste energy during the compression process so you'll get less than 100% efficient returns. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage You'll probably have more trouble with the hydrogen than you would storing it in a battery or selling peak power back to your power grid and pulling when you are idle. You could argue the energy wasted in the hydrogen process would just be "more useful heat" as a heater, but considering the transportation of "excess hydrogen" you'd probably be better off sticking with just electricity and selling your excess power back into the main electrical grid. That would probably be more efficient than trucking around the hydrogen and its cumbersome container.

Google suggests your intentions are not pure. ...expecting the shill followup post with "oh use this it's great" in 3...2...

Okay, I wasn't sure about that but good to know. Still, if black holes can grow over time, would anti-matter make them shrink? If their radius grows with the more mass they consume, would they grow, shrink, or stay the same with anti-matter?

Surely that depends on the need they identified and are trying to fill with this translation. From what it appears the "need" in question is to have an unambiguous moral and religious source of authority that lends absolute credibility to their political ideology. Given the stunning success of the "facts are irrelevant if you know the right conclusions" politics we have at this time, it will probably work quite brilliantly. It really doesn't matter how this translation is drafted as long as it reaches the right conclusions.

Based on the cited info that it can be released with "0.037 Volts" does that mean the hydrogen can captured and power a fuel cell with the sort of returns they describe in the article? First, I have no idea what "0.037 Volts" means - ie, how much hydrogen is released. They claim though that a gallon can power a car for 90 miles - but they don't say if it takes 100 gallons of urine or just over 1 gallon of urine to produce the urea. They also say a cow can heat water for 19 homes yet that is also a pretty ambiguous metric. Does the body's capacity to produce urea actually result in a real harnessable power of notable amounts? I'm trying to nail down the values because I find the idea that biological systems create such power accumulation pretty fascinating, if the numbers hold up.

Don't we already distinguish between "super black holes" and black holes and see a growth in the event horizon as black holes gain more mass? Also, if the black hole exists because of the gravitational force of the matter in the singularity, if anti-matter annihilated enough of that matter, would it still be a black hole, and if not wouldn't radiant energy then be able to escape? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Black holes may "just have" those attributes in terms of detectable attributes from outside the event horizon, but can that really be said about their interiors? As far as I know, you can't really convert a quark to an anti-quark, etc so wouldn't the interior makeup have to be different? Wouldn't that upset the conservation of energy between matter and anti-matter if they were indistinguishable? I really am out of my depths on this so it's just a guess, but the only answers that jump to mind is either A) the anti-matter or anti-matter singularity entering a black hole would never be able to interact with the normal singularity's core, or B) the two would have to react (even if it could never be observed unless it - if possible - destroyed the singularity and thus it's event horizon) in some sort of fashion that was consistent with a matter/anti-matter collision, even if those rules were very different due to the extremely unusual conditions within the black hole. Matter and anti-matter exist as a result of a massive amount of energy, and their collision results in that energy being released. It's not like the "anti" attribute is information that can be corrupted or lost without that energy coming into play somehow. (as far as I know)

My main quandary was whether or not a black hole could be destroyed with an equal amount of anti-matter, but I guess that could never happen due to time dilation, and at most it would collide with matter that was also heading towards the center. Is that a fair assessment? Or does matter normally get pulled in and actually become part of the singularity at the center?

Pretty much just what the title suggests: What would happen if two black holes collided and one of them was anti-matter?

But is that logical? Is there any rational basis for this "instant send and receive" mechanism? There is no evidence for such other than anecdotal evidence with a massive, massive sampling bias. There is a difference. If people simply proposed the idea that people may fly someday that's one thing. If they had no basis for that claim, that claim would have no place and it would not stunt the development of flight. If anything, it would help advance the invention of flight. With no clear understanding of what flight requires and just a simple "belief" it is possible people could try all manner of things from pixie dust to eating a diet entirely consistent of dragonflies. Flight was invented (first) with the lighter than air machine and was based on a hypothesis - not some random assertion. The heavier than air machine was based on other theories and the like - again not pulled out of the ethers. So far all you've done is assert that because some of our current technologies would be unbelievable in the past, that things we don't believe are possible now may be in the future. It's worth making the distinction however that you are claiming a phenomenon exists now and is not understood (like your light example) and not talking about new future technologies. The thing about light is the theory that light travels at a certain speed is all well and good, but without certain tools it's very hard to test. Just because it is right doesn't mean people should have jumped on it in ancient Greece, as they'd have had to take it on faith and that style of thinking would hurt the advancement of knowledge far more than getting lucky on one guess would help. What you propose is not a mechanism, but an effect. You are claiming when someone "thinks" someone else can "pick up on it" subconsciously. What mechanism do you propose causes this effect? That is already pretty well established I think - we deal with a lot of information subconsciously (repetition and the subconscious factors are really one I think), right down to whether or not we think someone is "shifty" and lying to us... we process a lot of information without realizing it that raises as a gut feeling into our conscious mind. That is not instant of course, and based entirely on the rate at which stimuli impacts our senses and they are processed by our minds. Why would thinking create a 'trail' and in what medium would this exist? Does it 'radiate out' from the thinker or hang in the air where they stood at the moment they thought it? Does it float on the breeze? Do you understand how weak that theory is - you already reduce it to 'the atomic level' because you know nothing has detected any such thing in any easy to measure scale... what exact manipulation of the 'atoms' do you think occurs as a result of thought? How can the complexity of data of a thought be embedded in atoms? How can it then be picked up? Where does the energy to manipulate these atoms occur? What mechanism in the brain is sensitive to this atomic level reading of information, and how does it travel to the target brain? You say "instantly" but atoms cannot be manipulated instantly. Do you understand that we are investigating a simple phenomena that can be explained by either "sampling bias" or "super complex subatomic imprinting and instant relaying and deciphering of data" that just happened to evolve without offering a survival advantage somehow? You also invoke some pretty strange "constants" in terms of being thought related - if a person intends to kill you, and you pick up the thought, why can't you pick up that a mine is almost underfoot ready to kill you? Or a predator drone in a fully autonomous mode? You invoke "thought" and "consciousness" as absolute terms that sounds more like philosophy or theology than science. If it's a theory you make predictions and test the results. So far no predictions (ie, blind tests on telepathy in the lab) have panned out at all. Telepathy could be discovered in the future just like anything could be - maybe it exists cuz we are all living in some "matrix" reality and don't know it. However, it gets shelved (not scratched) when you run experimental predictions that don't pan out, and you run out of ideas on how else to test for it. If it's relegated to a completely untestable theory (like the flying spaghetti monster, theories on whether consciousness survives death, etc) then it could at best join the ranks of philosophy and all that, but it's not useful to science until someone comes up with a better way to test for it that actually does produce results. Lets test the theory that a 5.1 Mega Ton nuclear bomb went off July 1st, 1776 in the heart of New York City. There is a lot of evidence this bomb detonation never existed. It's not conclusive, but pretty compelling. To note that we actually have a pretty good understanding of how thoughts are formed in the brain is not to say we are at the peak of science. All it's saying is - it's not a magical black box that could contain magical subatomic manipulations. At least, our understanding of the wiring of the brain explains thought more easily in a manner that does not include subatomic thought trails. But we use negative claims to survive. I don't know that robots aren't coming to kill me and I can't know that for sure, but I'd run out of food if I spent all my money on Old Glory insurance. When you want to point out that a "negative claim can't be proven" ask yourself if the "positive" claim you are making can be proven. If you have a theory that includes the basis of why it can't be tested (at least with current technology and techniques) you are proposing a theory that can't be proven in the positive form either. To denounce counter claims as "unprovable negative claims" doesn't make your unprovable claim any more provable. You are free of course to have an untestable and unprovable theory - it just happens to be useless to anyone else and is lost in a sea of millions of unprovable theories many of which conflict your own theory. Your theory becomes valueless in that case. Are you suggesting that it is not crazy, because it's no more crazy than a celestial toaster? How long would you investigate whether a nuke went off in 1776 New York? You can't say you can prove it didn't, but how long do you dig before the complete lack of evidence plus all the evidence that business as usual occurred that day gives you the impression that you should not bother with the matter any further? ...which can easily be explained by a combination of sample bias and convergent effect. 1) Consider how many people didn't see the assassin coming. Far more than picked up on the "killer intent" for sure. 2) If you are constantly aware of your surroundings, you can become intensely uncomfortable that something is wrong when it is even if you can't put your finger on it. As for convergence, believing in the "killer intent" myth would aid survival if someone felt they could pay 'enough attention' to pick up on it - being more aware and sensitive to gut feelings meant being more aware of your surroundings. 3) How many people "thought" they felt that and yet no one ever appeared in the shadows to kill them? Is that written off to someone far away having the "killer intent" or acknowledged as a strike against the theory? It is far more logical to write this off as a psychological phenomena than theorize it's part of some mystical ability. Honestly I don't understand your dedication to this theory: It's untestable, every theory seems to become more convoluted so as to explain why it hasn't been detected with instruments yet - all to explain something that is more easily explained with a sampling bias and selective memory. I also don't fault you for believing what you want to believe - everyone has that right. What I don't get is why you can't seem to understand how capricious your theory is, and why you think it's arrogant to say that in all likelihood it does not exist. There is no more of a case for telepathy than there is for unicorns or a race of blue people living under the Shasta Mountain. I could make a case for the blue people under Shasta and come up with all kinds of metaphysical reasons (ahem, excuses) for why we can't detect them but all that would be is one giant contrivance with absolutely no compelling value. Science does not work that way.

I don't want to hijack the alt energy thread, and I can't figure out if this is bad science, or good science that just totally elludes me. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/08/urine-power.html That's a pretty hefty claim - though I have no idea what the actual amounts of electricity are that they are talking about. The first paragraph is facepalm-worthy since releasing hydrogen is not financially prohibitive but prohibited by the law of conservation of energy considering the result of using hydrogen to generate electricity is water. However, it appears based on those numbers you could expect to get a considerable amount of 'bang for your buck' on hydrogen/nitrogen if it is accurate. The part I have a hard time understanding is: 1) We don't get any energy out of drinking water. The body can only either use H2O in that form or expend energy to break it down, the only energy we can get then is from food. 2) The article claims that "A fuel cell, urine-powered vehicle could theoretically travel 90 miles per gallon." which means to me that there would have to be a tremendous amount of energy not harnessed in the food we consume that is still there when it becomes waste. I may just not be familiar with how much energy does go into food but it seems that people can subsist on pretty low-energy diets and I have a hard time believing the left over energy could be there. That of course is just my perception, and not based on any facts so I am curious about this. Is this for real? Anyone have ideas of the actual numbers in terms of energy etc?

Well if they find Amelia Earhart in another galaxy I'll be turning it off for good.

I did like it. I had a few issues with their choices: [hide]Seriously, no one tried to identify where the ship's infirmary was?[/hide] Overall I enjoyed it and it did have more of a BSG feel because of the dystopian nature of the cast and situation. It wasn't "edgy" the way BSG was in shocking you with new ideas/twists/dystopian choices - on that front it felt very SG1. Overall I love scifi shows and I'll definitely have to keep watching it.

They have a super majority only when every single democrat votes in favor of the bill. When one of them sells out to lobbyists they don't. When one of them simply doesn't like the bill they don't. The sad fact is, when it's a given that every single Republican will vote against and actively try to filibuster any and all legislation proposed by the other side on principle alone the only way to pass anything at all is to have unanimous support. That's insane when you think about it: How far would any group get, whether a city council or a parliament or a congress or board of directors if to do anything they always had to have a unanimous result? How effective would the Supreme Court be if in order to make any active ruling it had to be with zero opposed to the ruling? Honestly, the only way I see them getting anywhere is (until Republicans are willing to work with the legislative process again) to agree to hold an internal "democrat" vote and then all vote with 0 or 60 in accordance with that casual vote. Those who have the power to sink Health Care that would "vote rogue" against such an agreement should be worrying about when they do have something they want to pass and see the impossibility of unanimous agreement. The Republicans could actually have something to complain about then, and the Democrats could simply tell them "when they are done holding their breath and throwing their tantrums, they can play too" which honestly is the only way to get them to act like adults again.

If I hear what you are saying, you are basically making the statement "at least they don't march like a bunch of partisan automatons to the tune of one Glorious Leader with a single set of talking points... which worked out so well in the past." If so, then I do agree - but I think they've gotten too excessive on the other side. Every time the Republicans start beating the drums Democrats get scared and confused and start jumping into nets. I find it really sad. It's not individual integrity that is running their show, it's confusion, uncertainty, selfish pork hording and blatant lobbyist pandering. We have the music going and they are all being a bunch of wall flowers afraid that people will think they look stupid if they get out on the floor. I wish we had more alcoholics in the Democrat ranks, I don't care if it comes from liquid or a sense of urgency these people need some courage already. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Honestly I don't have a lot to say because I'm spit'n angry at these guys including Obama. Sometimes I wonder if politics is like jumping in and swimming the rapids - easy to call from the shore but seriously disorienting once you jump in the thick of it. I'd like to understand just how they could be so useless because I'd like to have some idea of what they can do to get their act together. At the same time I am sick of it and don't care what their excuses are... they are right on track to building the most powerful and useless and unproductive political bloc in US history (that I can recall). I just hope they start acting with some urgency as they near the "midlife crisis" of their trifecta and elections start to get closer on the horizon. They need a sense of mortality to kick them into gear.

Bet I'll be more drunk - that's my 36th Bday. It'll be my last chance to enjoy another "12s trifecta" and I haven't done that since I was 12

Paradoxes are mental traps that exist due to the incomplete manner of how we model the universe in our minds. The universe itself doesn't require our models to operate, and thus are free of them. Take Maxwell's Demon - it caused some interest but ultimately it only is perplexing if you don't count all the variables in play, and that's why paradoxes are so difficult... we can't always figure out what we are missing. If time travel is somehow possible, my bet is that you can only go back/forward to different versions of reality and that both versions always have and will exist. I think the most telling element in these discussions is the nature of time over time: Take looking at a huge stone at 12:00pm exactly Oct 2 2009 that has been tilted to the left for 1000 years. You go back in time a few minutes, and tilt it to the right, and hide in the bushes at exactly 12:00pm Oct 2 2009 again but this time it's tilted to the right. Now, you have the normal paradox issue here but we also have to ask "If at that exact moment the rock started out leaning left and ended up leaning right (still in that exact moment) how much time did it spend in that one instant facing the left, vs facing the right?" If you view points in space as locations that can either contain something or not, we expect that to change over time naturally since matter moves around so much. You can describe a 3D object as a series of x,y,z points in the same way a picture can be described as a series of x,y points but the 3D object that is described has to be static. There is no room for more information. To describe a 3D object that changes over time, you need x,y,z,t points. That can describe a rippling bucket of water for instance, where x,y,z points could only describe it's form frozen at one given moment. But now you are talking about going back and changing time. For time to change over time we need another dimension. If one exists that allows for it, my layman's guess would be 'probability' but I honestly have no idea. If I had to bet though, I'd bet you couldn't change time over time and still talk about the whole mess in terms of space/time (ie, x,y,z,t) because you'll always be sort one dimension simply from the perspective of describing the data of the event. From the x,y,z,t perspective, it will always be a baffling paradox.

I post in necro threads. That's a bad habit.

Can we clarify the definitions in use? I see 'criticism' to essentially say "You are wrong, I find your plans to be full of flaws, you suck as a person, you are not being entirely honest, etc" and to 'delegitimize' is to say "You are a fraud, you have no right to the position you hold, you are an illegitimate fake and if the facts were known you'd be forced out of your office." During Bush's first election, there was serious concern as to the legitimacy of the votes - as backed up by a huge series of facts and people in positions of clear conflict of interest (Katherine Harris, for instance) and lawsuits to stop doing manual vote counts. However, the moment Al Gore conceded Bush was undeniably the next President of the United States. The far left continued to hammer Bush as illegitimate, but the main bulk of the party and Gore all called to move forward. Many were still bitter, many raised the question of "the mandate" in a term that failed to win the popular vote but he wasn't delegitimized by the Democrats. When left wing fringers considered Bush to be behind 9-11 and effectively tried to delegitimize him they were panned universally by Democrats. In fact Democrats as a party failed to even criticize him for the most part after 9-11, and certainly never loaned credibility to those delegitimizing him. He was accused of crimes but within the context of abusing his position, based on actions he took. I think that's pretty fair. Can we clarify: A) the meaning of "deligitimizing" someone and B) the actions the right have taken to try and deligitimize Obama? I think that would help clarify the topic

http://gizmodo.com/5370752/the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind-persistence-jury+rigging-and-ingenuity-against-all-odds It's a story about a Malawian kid that was kicked out of school because he couldn't afford the $80/yr, but found a book at the library covering windmills, and at 14 not only did he decided to build one (as his village had no electricity) but he pulled it off with junkyard parts and successfully was able to run lights, radios and pumps etc that greatly impacted his life. The video in there is well worth the watch, it's a very inspirational story. Man I love science! When we have all sorts of books so accessible on every topic and especially the internet, it's quite something to consider such a limited range of information in a place like his village. But some people, somewhere made an effort to ensure those books were in that library with nothing but the hope they'd be read and be helpful in some way to someone. As a result and with his inspiration and hard work, his life and entire village has been impacted in a huge way. Edit: This story started a number of years ago, he has a blog here now: http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com