lemur

I would have like to have seen this thread evolve into a discussion of the role of chlorophyl in photosynthesis and the chemical process of transforming light into chemical potential. I don't know if the process of spontaneous fuel-generation from sunlight could be considered a general form of life-process, but it seems like a good candidate to me. Of course life as well as non-living processes can consume fuel (potential energy) but does nature have other processes besides living organisms that transform radiant or kinetic energy into potential/fuel?

So atoms, electrons, and photons are like billiard balls breaking apart from the triangle only with more complicated forces constraining their motion. I'm sure that would be a misleading analogy if applied in other ways, but it seems like an energy-conserved system that would basically depict the breaking apart of the electron(s) from the atom along with the photon(s) radiating away from both.

If the either was displaced by Earth (which would make sense if it was lighter than helium because I assume it would be shot way out of orbit with its low mass), then how would it function as a medium for light? Wouldn't light only be present where the aether is? Second, how can anything with inertia be completely frictionless? It takes energy to accelerate matter with mass from rest to motion or a faster speed, no? In that case, there has to be a time-lag between the addition of energy and the full dissipation of that energy through all subsequent collisions, right? So how can that not result in some degree of friction? In fact, how could it be the cause of gravity if it didn't exert friction against matter? Also, I read in one of Hawking's books (I think it was Hawking anyway) that gravity can't be attributed to particles reaching bodies from the outside because that would mean that there would be 'gravity shadows' caused by moons and gazebos and such.

So the process of wavelength-decrease is really caused by absorption of the photon, whose energy gets divided into a combination of kinetic energy and re-emission. So if the particle gets ionized, some of the energy ends up as free-electron momentum while the rest may either end up changing the momentum of the particle, re-radiating at a frequency appropriate to the energy-level change, or some combination. So just pretending I know the energy-quantities to check my logic, take an example where an atom gets hit with 100 units of EM radiation. 20 units could be carried off as momentum of a liberated electron, 30 units could be expressed as additional kinetic energy to the atom's motion, and the remaining 50 units would be re-emitted as a wavelength with half the energy of the light originally absorbed? Does this sum up the logic and are their any other outlets for the energy that conserves the total amount absorbed?

Yes, one of the things I think gets lost on many people both secular and religious is the idea that something can be sinful and still happen regularly without life degenerating into a total seething hell of hate, debauchery, and destruction. Obviously when someone commits theft, murder, or adultery something gets permanently lost and there is no reversing the consequences so people need to be aware of this and not deny the (potential) consequences before or after the fact. However, there are less consequential sins, such as lustful thoughts that, while they may distract you from higher morality may occur regularly and be a continuous struggle of resistance without resolution. So, for example, someone who cannot even have a normal conversation with an attractive woman because he can't focus his mind on higher matters may be able to develop the ability to control this even though he still has lustful thoughts or engages women flirtatiously in some instances. The important thing, I think, is that men (and women) achieve the ability to interact without sexuality eclipsing their ability to interact on other levels. I think this is primarily a question of being sufficiently focussed on the non-sexual matters at hand, which requires a sense of focus generally and the ability to take other matters than relationship-negotiations seriously. I would also be interested to know how much men exposed to western 'pornocentrism' are able to let go of sexuality when engaged in other activities. Sometimes I think the most peace-giving feeling is being exposed to some representation of sexuality and being able to regard it with emotional neutrality (i.e. without it having a titillating effect) because that makes you feel more mature and liberated from uncontrollable reflex. Fascism has its basic roots in collectivism, I think, but it intensifies the sense that individuals must submit to collective authority. So it may be that part of the reason individual freedom is abused to breakdown families is a response to fascism that occurred at the family level for that individual. I.e. if an individual failed to feel free to engage their family as THEIR family, instead of feeling pressure to submit their individuality to the will of their parents or in some other way sacrifice their independence/individuality for their family, they might be more likely to reject family as such. Divorce is often caused, imo, because one or both partners have been indoctrinated from an early age to subjugate themselves to their partner's will instead of using their relationship as a resource to pursue and achieve what they believe is good for themselves and others. I think this is especially strong with women because they are taught from a young age that they are only good when they are sacrificing themselves for the happiness of others. So, for example, they are unable to reach a point of personal satisfaction from marriage and family/child care because they only experience it as a duty or expectation and not as an opportunity to achieve a desired goal. For example, compare the will to build, say, a remote control airplane to the will to have children. Usually people building an airplane are excited with the idea that they have the capacity and skills to make something they want. On the other hand, how many people have children with this same attitude? How many, on the other hand, have children because they think it is their duty and people will either resent them if they don't have children or they think they'll finally be respected as adults by their parents because they are parents too? Ideally people should think, "I have the capacity to make a child and raise it and enjoy the process of helping it develop into a good person." Or in the case of marriage people should not think that they have to be faithful to their partners to be obedient and respectable but instead they should see being faithful as a way of making their partner/spouse feel completely secure in their marriage. It should give people satisfaction to support others instead of feeling like a burden that they want to escape. This is what fascism causes, the desire to escape social responsibility. Maybe the art was meant to express the idea that the thoughts people put into their minds through media shape how their bodies function and that this could have an effect on a pregnancy, for example by causing excess adrenaline or causing more happy/loving hormonal activity (oxytocin?) You could interpret it in any number of ways, though, which sort of speaks to the fact that it was art.

Idk, but couldn't progressive homogenization of genetic variation also result in more similar appearance? Like if you interbred as many breeds of dogs together as possible, wouldn't you eventually have dogs that appeared more like a single breed than multiple breeds? I think that selective breeding is typically geared at isolating certain characteristics, though, and that the result of this emphasis is that the phenotypical distinctions become subject to more attention, institutionalization as a specific breed with a name etc. That makes people who know the breed characteristics more likely to identify that particular breed-influence in a less breed-isolated individual. So, for example, if you are familiar with labrador retrievers you might look at a dog and see "some labrador" in the dog whereas if you were not familiar with some other breed of the dog's ancestors you would not have any basis for identifying that breed as contributing to the individual's appearance. Idk if any of this speaks to your issue but I always think it's worth considering the role that institutionalized cognition plays in any system of classifying things by appearance/aesthetics.

Well, the idea of forced migration for energy savings is ridiculous I will admit. But the question of whether it would make a significant different in energy savings is another question. Does insulation really make enough of a different to close the gap between heating in northern and southern climates?

Imo, "modernization" fails when it is applied cross-culturally. All cultures modernize according to their own progress, albeit in dialogue with all other cultures they are in contact with. Btw, don't assume that "culture" is ever homogeneous at the group level. Every society and individual consists of multiple interacting "cultures" and each "culture" evolves interactively with others. No expression of Islamic culture, for example, exists in isolation from the complex of other social-cultural traditions of the particular society in question. Each "culture" consists of numerous interacting constituent "cultures" that evolve in dialogue (interactively) with one another.

Thanks for the slideshow. I still wasn't able to extrapolate the answer to my question about how different wavelengths translate into different breakdowns to shorter wavelengths. I guess that's the reason I should raise it as an issue for discussion in a forum. Maybe it would work better as a series of specific questions; i.e. "what happens to gamma radiation in the atmosphere?," "what happens to UV radiation in the atmosphere?" and "what happens to blocked-infrared and blocked microwaves in the atmosphere?"

This is getting into a much broader discussion of culture, which I would gladly engage in except I don't want to deviate too far from the focus of the thread. What I would like to know is whether Islam is more effective for individuals seeking liberation from the obfuscation of sexual morality as titillation or whether it just intensifies the intrigue of sex by making it that much more a release from the public bondage of unfaithful authoritarian morality. Temptation is omnipresent. The question to me is when people with clarity see the costs of infidelity alongside the immediate gratification. Western culture has developed an ethic of "you only live once so embrace every opportunity for experience." I think this obfuscates the value of religious morality that gives people the option of choosing sustainable peace-of-mind over the roller-coaster of 'living life to its fullest.' While I agree with your ideas about family emotional support, I think you fail to recognize that this demonization of individuality has been appropriated in the interest of fascism in the west. Individuals should be taking responsibility and using their moral reason to self-govern for the optimization of good for themselves and others. Yet fascist culture tells them that instead of embracing their individual responsibility and reason, they should regard these as "selfish individualism" and thus subjugate themselves to collectivist authority. Then, once external authority has them in submission, they no longer dare to resist the abuse of power and thus end up mindlessly conforming to whatever "the flow" is doing, afraid to subject authority to their own moral reason because they've become brainwashed that to do so is selfish egoism/narcissism on their part. Christianity has never required that men take any responsibility for their mistresses/affairs as far as I am aware.

No. I thought that while you're turning off lights to save power, you might want to turn of heaters to save even more. I suppose it is humorous that if you're going to turn the lights off anyway, you might as well send people south. It would save energy though.

I already conceded you were right based on the fact redshift doesn't involve any loss of energy in changing to a shorter wavelength. However, if you're going to beat the dead horse to see if there's any kick left in it, there is still a little:) Namely, I still think there's some analogical validity in the fact that gravitational redshifting is caused by field-force interaction with the light, which is sort of similar to light getting (partially) absorbed and re-emitted by the electrons of an atom. Do you think that's a baseless analogy? I read all those diagrams both of you posted as treating each wavelength as an isolated timeline from sun to absorption. I didn't see anything about partial absorption and shifting of remaining energy to lower frequencies until the links you posted.

Maybe Earth is a transforming-Bakugan: http://vimeo.com/14424476

I think the reason why people seek Islam as an escape from western 'Christian/secular' culture has to do with Foucault's repressive hypothesis described in the History of Sexuality (volume 1?) where he claims that Victorian culture repressed sexuality for the sake of titillation in order to intensify desire for expression in 'its proper forms.' I think he claims that the Victorian culture has evolved in such a way that "we new Victorians" continue to play all sorts of flirtatious games with sexual repression in order to be 'naughty' and break the rules for pleasure. I sort of have the sense that Islam appeals to people as having a moral code strict enough to escape all this game-playing and titillation that goes on regarding sexuality (and other aspects of culture for that matter). Of course I can't generalize, but from the few Imams and Muslims I've talked with, there seems to be a high degree of sincerity and directness regarding sexual matters that is only slowly emerging in much of western culture after decades of "sexual liberation."

I suppose the fact that the wave loses energy as it "shifts" is different from redshifting in that redshifting conserves the wave energy as it expands. I just thought it sounded like a universal phenomenon of light going through a medium; and if it was that it would make sense that it would have a name (if it doesn't already). That makes sense, but the part that is really interesting to me is the question of how much sunlight at sea-level differs from sunlight prior to atmospheric contact. I.e. how much does the sunlight change and what happens to its energy? I used to look at high frequency radiation as wasted energy as far as solar collectors are concerned, but I thought it was blocked (i.e. reflected) by the atmosphere completely and I never considered that it might make it to the ground at a lower frequency. I also didn't know that any infrared was blocked so I assumed that all the heat felt from sunlight was the total amount of heat the sun is emitting. Now I wonder how much hotter sunlight is in orbit. This question may be too far an extension of this topic, but it's one I've been trying to figure out. How much does visible light get absorbed as heat, as opposed to getting reflected off visible objects? I guess the color and hue of the object basically tells you how much light it's absorbing, but is a certain amount of all visible light absorbed instead of reflected and we just don't notice it because its constant for all visible objects?

This is something I also wonder about. Do the 'clean' people have meticulous clothes, car, home, etc. because they keep it all clean by their own labor or do they just spend money to get new things and pay others to clean and maintain them? If so, that may explain your association between poverty and messiness. Now, consider if you would take the 'clean' person and the 'rough' person and give them the same disposable income, how long would it be before the clean person appeared like the rough one? Sometimes I have found that wealthier, better educated people can be the worst housekeepers while meticulous people can be very anti-intellectual - so I don't know if that is another stereotype that's worth comparing with yours.

Nice references, Mooeypoo. So gamma and xray radiation actually get absorbed by the atmosphere by gradually stepping down to longer wavelengths, according to the linked discussion. That means that some of the visible light and infrared reaching the ground were first superluminous radiation (is there a better word for that, btw?). That also leads me to wonder if the visible light from the sun also steps down in frequency as it penetrates the atmosphere. Is there a difference between this stepping down process for different wavelengths of radiation? It almost seems like you could call this absorption-redshift if it was a universal phenomenon for all radiation to decrease in wavelength as is passes through a medium gradually giving away energy to electrons.

That is logical if they have a vision for a cleaner future that hasn't been reached yet. Whose being the ass? If you don't want to respond to my question, why post a response at all? It's behavior like yours that makes nationalism synonymous with bullying.

Yeah, and since you're turning them off anyway, why not send all the people who live around them south to warmer climates to take advantage of solar heating?

Based on the pic posted by Mooeypoo, it looks like most of the infrared spectrum is blocked along with microwaves, x-rays, and most of UV. I guess, though, that the blocking could refer to atmospheric absorption as well as reflection. I guess I was just assuming that anything blocked must be reflected.

The problem that environmentalism is used as an impetus for lawsuits, fines, and other money transfers is equalled by the problem that money-concerns are the driving economic force in people's decisions for how to live, what to consume, etc. In other words, the main problem is economic dependency on a culture that puts various social expectations and creature comforts above the will to reduce pollution. I do find it especially striking, though, that the Democratic party both promotes cleaner technologies AND lower gas prices. This leads me to believe that they only care about cleaner technologies for the fiscal-stimulus effect that produces higher taxes, and that they only like environmental protection because that creates fines that redistribute money from lucrative businesses to a broader subsidiary group. In other words, I think they just want to spread out the prosperity of the existing industrial economy and will never challenge that economy where it means decreases in GDP. Republicans, on the other hand, would cut taxes and spending regardless of how much it would reduce GDP. I think this makes the Republican party appear somewhat more free of economic bias, despite whatever other social-cultural biases individuals who support the party may have.

Then why do you talk negatively about "furriners," and say they should be kept out? If you don't see yourself as superior, what gives you more entitlement to the US than anyone else, in your mind?

Rigney, do you view people with non-US citizenship as being somehow inferior to US citizens?

I'm curious if anyone sees a distinction between distance-between-points and distance-within-a-field. It seems to me that much physics relies on the idea that fields have center-points and measures the distance-between those points. If fields were regarded as independently self-constituted, I wonder whether distance would continue to be a viable measurability. With EM waves, for example, are the electric and magnetic fields that constitute it measurable? Yes, there is wavelength/frequency, but these are not fields that emerge from a central point, the way the electrostatic fields of electrons and the nuclear fields of nucleons supposedly do. So if the point-epistemology would be replaced with a diffuse-field approach, would distance become fundamentally uncertain at every level because there would never be definite points to identify as the exact location of a 'particle'-field?

Shouldn't the Earth actually be reflecting more radiation than it is absorbing and radiating?