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Bill Angel

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Everything posted by Bill Angel

  1. One avenue of investigation that I don't think anyone has mentioned is related to the concept of "quantum decoherence". To quote from the wiki article on this subject:
  2. I shouldn't think that their lungs would shrink to enhance breathing in thin air. I should think that their lungs might get larger or their blood chemistry change. See: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0224_040225_evolution_2.html
  3. And it's the Higgs field that interacts with the electron, giving it mass and limiting its speed to less than the speed of light.
  4. The Government has rejected the idea of creating a Trillion Dollar Coin. See: Treasury, Fed oppose using platinum coin to avoid debt ceiling It's a pity, because I had a neat idea for the design of the coin. How about a Trillion Dollar Coin with Alan Greenspan's Image On It? The reverse side of the coin would contain the following quote from Alan Greenspan: "The whole notion of a debt ceiling makes no sense"
  5. If one were observing the behavior of a group of children, it's likely that their activities could trigger a recollection of some incident or situation from one's own childhood, an incident or situation that you may occasionally have dreamt about when you were older. I know in my own case that I've watched children and then thought to myself "I know what's going to happen next..." Sometimes I'm right, sometimes not.
  6. Here is a section from a video in which a physicist explains why there is no life after death. I "tubechopped" this section (1minute 50 seconds in length) from a longer presentation devoted to explaining the importance of the discovery of the Higgs boson. http://www.tubechop.com/watch/835975
  7. Interesting work was published last year about progress understanding the function of so called junk DNA: Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From Junk, Play Crucial Role
  8. I'd curtail the ability of the Senate to filibuster bills to death. The Senate could amend its own rules to accomplish this, but refuses to do so.
  9. Most people including myself would agree with you. But in looking forward rather than backward in time, the key foreign policy situations for which a successful strategy needs to be developed relate to Syria and Iran. Should the US and NATO sit on the sidelines ( with respect to military action) simply chanting the mantra "we don't want a repeat past mistakes"?
  10. The photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force. When two charged particles interact they do so by exchanging virtual photons. This interaction does not collapse the wave function, nor it need be observed for it to occur.
  11. Interesting chart here about the budget of NASA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2012 As a percentage of federal budget expenditures NASA's share of the budget has been in decline for the past 20 years. It is now down to less than .5%. So I think that if one is trying to cut "fat" or "pork" from the federal budget to fund other endeavors, there are better places to look, such as eliminating special tax breaks for the oil industry.
  12. David Bowie has a new song and video out, which brought to mind two other depictions of two headed individuals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOyDTy9DtHQ Two Headed Accordian Player... Two Headed Infant (good and evil)
  13. What I believe you are referring to is that heavy elements have a more ordered state and hence lower entropy than the lighter elements from which they were created, and that their creation occurred in a star that subsequently exploded.But here is another example. A newly laid chicken's egg contains an undifferentiated region of egg yolk surrounded by egg white. When development is complete, the egg contains a fully formed chicken, a much more complex structure then what the egg originally contained. Does the entropy of the universe increase or decrease when the original egg develops into a chicken?
  14. I think that the video is clever and well executed. But I like what Albert Einstein said on this issue:
  15. Another example is superconductivity, which is a phenomenon explainable only via quantum mechanics.
  16. Here is a paper from a Creation Ministries website that is of interest because it appears to be a scientific critique of research in evolutionary biology.: Human chimp dna similarity re-evaluated The authors' conclusion is that "The humanchimp common ancestor paradigm is clearly based more on myth and propaganda than fact." Not so closely related after all.
  17. Yes it can. Check out "The Two Cultures" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures by C.P. Snow I don't think so. The development of new drugs is based on experimental work, followed up by testing on human subjects. Not in the case of Quantum theory, which no one would describe as "organized common sense".
  18. I have a pair of prescription reading glasses, and as one of my eyes is noticeably weaker than the other, the lenses are of different strengths. I don't think that drug store reading glasses, with both lenses of the same strengh, would work for me either.
  19. If God is a point of consciousness and the universe is his dream, then how does one account for the presence in this universe of quantum indeterminancy? If I dream that I see Schrodinger's cat, the cat that see in my dream is either dead or alive, it's not in some undetermined state with some probability of being dead or of being alive.
  20. One does get the impression that wealthy investors and corporate executives are more comfortable negotiating with the Communist Chinese than they are with the duly elected representatives of the American worker, be they the labor unions or the Democrats. Instead of calling in Joe Biden at the last moment to try to negotiate a deal with the Republicans, perhaps they should have called in Hu Jintao, the President of the People's Republic of China, whose portrait I had incorporated into my political image.
  21. I worked in a laboratory that utilized mercury for making pressure and vacuum measurements. The concern was that any accidental spillage of mercury would lead to the release of mercury vapor, which is very toxic.
  22. Consequences of going over the Fiscal Cliff? Think of it as "outsourcing" our Government to China
  23. You can rent a similar facility for parties and street festivals. Here is some video that I shot of children enjoying themselves in one.
  24. There was an intriguing presentation of an alien invasion of a planet in the movie "Starship Troopers", with the aliens are organized like an insect colony. There were workers, warriors, and "thinkers".
  25. I would think that having one side of the Earth permanently face towards the Sun and the other side permanently face away (like the moon does with the Earth) would lead to very strong convection currents in the atmosphere, moving heat from the hotter side to the cooler.
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