lemur

That's true. I guess I am just fixated on utilizing the abundant water in some way. True, but beware of thoughts like this deterring hope of innovation. Just because some aspect of a technology has been optimized in numerous ways for centuries doesn't mean it can't be improved upon. Especially once you start dealing with combining new technologies with older ones, you face the challenge of optimizing an essentially new hybrid. Also, it's a trap to think in terms of people being smarter than other people when they attempt to innovate. It has less to do with being smarter than it does with generating an idea and passing it to someone who can carry it further in some way. Bicycles are the most efficient technology for converting energy into surface transit, I think. Bicycle designers always seem to be messing around with different alloys and designs to maximize performance for the most competitive cyclists, but the basic bicycle is about as efficient as you can get. There are some human-powered-vehicle competitions that deal with wind-drag and add various forms of power to increase overall speed and range, though. There are also infrastructural innovations that would improve commuting by bicycle (or horseback, why not?). And, of course, the holy grail of bicycle modernization, imo, would be a good rain-canopy system that didn't blow you away like a sailboat in a storm-gust. But I think the bicycle was basically perfected in the 19th century.

I think academic compartmentalism does tend to promote hopelessness, which is especially sad because it is essentially an arbitrary belief system about how academic demand works. I.e. you do a PhD and in the course of defining your project, you create a very narrow sub-specialty with the idea of becoming a relatively high-value member of a knowledgable elite that is your particular sub-genre of your area. Then, you either get rewarded for this by getting a valued professorship or you get screwed by people deciding that your narrow specialty is not relevant enough to invest in. I think the process of specialization leads people to forget that they have general competencies and skills that make them economically valuable regardless of what funding says about their sub-specialty. However, if they get too fixated on the idea that they've been rendered permanently irrelevant, this could contribute to suicide rationalization. Funding can influence this in a couple ways, though, I think. Well-funded scientists, for example, can become accustomed to a high level of status and consumption as a reward for work that is cherished by many simply because it has won them academic success. Obviously there are some people who actually appreciate science as science, but science also has many "groupies" who are mainly in it for the perks and fringe-benefits. So when you go from being a celebrated leader in your field to being confronted with funding cuts and questioning of your relevance, I think this can be more painful to people who didn't see it coming and don't have experience dealing with it. This is not to say that someone automatically opts for a suicidal exit, but that they may be more susceptible to the downturn because they had it so good before. Personally, I think scientists that get permanently excluded from academic jobs have a special role to play in several ways. For one, science is supposed to be about value-neutrality and freedom from bias and, however much people want to deny it, academic funding can influence the way people regard the relative value of various lines of research, forms of publication, etc. You could be doing more scientific good by posting in public online forums than by publishing peer-reviewed articles but I can't imagine that getting recognized in academia simply because journals generate subscription money and create scarcity of credentials for competing academics. Still, science NEEDS liaisons between high academic intellectuality and "the undereducated masses." You can be cynical and view your role as a schoolteacher as just prepping people to pump money into academia and pay for research money and jobs that you're not getting, but if you continue to value the actual content of science you will want to do all you can to stimulate people to learn from it - because it has the potential to improve lives in all sorts of ways.

How much do you really need to store it if you can burn it immediately in the motor? Ok, it's nice to have reserve power when the wind is calm but if there's no disadvantage to running the motor while the sails are up, why not run full speed and park when the wind dies? I suppose there are water friction issues that make it more efficient to go continuously slow than intermittently sprint and stop. I don't sail, btw, so this is all hypothetical for me. There's some stuff online about solar fabric and even some concept stuff about such solar-cell sails (I'm not the first to think of this). What you are saying makes sense, though, considering the electrical connections and the fragility of the photovoltaic material. Still, maybe you could do something like figure out a way to use the parabolic shape of the active (white) sail to reflect and somewhat focus light onto a solar collector that can be moved around to position it in the focus of the sail-reflection. I don't know if the sail would whip around and wave too much to maintain a consistent concentration of reflected sunlight on the collector though. I've heard that but I still don't understand how it is possible. Maybe the energy could be used to somehow improve the hydrodynamics of the hull instead of power a motor. Well, that's probably just grasping at straws. I guess the big issue would be how to store the solar energy to make some time with the wind is low. I believe there's one concept boat online with rigid solar sail that is supposed to be able to go down and basically cover the deck. Thanks for your lucid realism - too bad your insight doesn't also include more promising ideas. Surely there must be some way to improve sailing as transoceanic transit. It is basically totally sustainable assuming people would avoid having wars, piracy, etc. at sea as seems to have been common during high colonialism.

The books I read said that Lincoln held the view that slavery was a dying institution and should be allowed to fade away on its own. Then, it was supposedly the Kansas-Nebraska act that allowed it to expand into new territories by allowing the majority of each new state to determine the legality of slavery, which changed his attitude. I also read that citizens would register to vote in new states in order to sway the government in favor of slavery. This is logical, if you think about it, considering how lucrative cotton and other cash-crop farming were. Plus, the advent of industrial power for processing and shipping of raw-materials was logically increasing the demand for agricultural raw materials, which would have increased opportunities for all free people to benefit from productive slavery. In other words, the slave economy was booming because industrialism was. The question is why plantation owners would have freely chosen to begin paying their workers and allowing them more freedom of self-determination if their competitors were managing slaves successfully at a lower cost? Granted, if it was seen to be cheaper to hire free farm-hands and managing them cost less as well, I think you're right that slavery would have gone away because of economic non-viability. Still, I don't think you can underestimate the strength of cultural traditions and expectations in social relations. It is hard to go from bossing someone around as your slave to treating them with respect as a free individual with the choice to accept a job or not. Even still today, there is a harsh public ideology of chastising people into taking jobs that are offered to them regardless of their opinion about the job. Yes, people are ultimately free to take a job or leave it, but there are numerous benefits designed to make people's lives significantly less comfortable if they choose to hold out for a good job. Anyway, the point I was originally making was that I read Lincoln only chose to actively fight slavery because it was expanding instead of fading on its own. As I said, you can't underestimate social tradition. I think it was uncomfortable for people to develop respect for people they viewed as slaves. They found it socially proper to regard slaves as lower people, the way nobility may find it proper to regard their subjects as "lower stock." Older people and corporate managers also often find it proper to receive deferential treatment and treat their "subordinates" accordingly. Restaurants and retail businesses are often successful for treating their customers as royalty. In short, there are lots of institutions where people would become uncomfortable and even upset if they had to respect others as equals. It's odd that slavery and racial identity became such a special case of inequality. When people accept their servitude graciously, it can be endearing to their masters who will in turn show appreciation. If/when the servant expresses a desire for freedom, the master may feel that the servant is doing this to undermine the master's livelihood. Look at what would happen today if everyone who worked in minimum wage jobs said they no longer wanted to do so. Business owners and investors would be upset because they would lose their means of profiting from employing low-wage personnel. They would either have to man their businesses themselves or drastically restructure - and many would probably complain that the employees should be grateful for the opportunity to work and make money that they were given. Slave owners/masters probably had similar views, e.g. that the slaves had land to farm and places to live so why should they want to be free? Yes, but that wasn't caused by their emancipation. It was due to a negative reaction to that emancipation by those who didn't like the idea of equality for former slaves. Sometimes people want to blame people's children and grandchildren for their actions, but it's not really legitimate. The reason it seems to be is that people often take sides with their parents and grandparents and refuse to be critically objective from their own perspective because they feel uncomfortable with judging/admitting their parents' flaws. Feelings of honor, blood-ties, etc. lead people to side with each other, regardless of right and wrong and you get factionalism, which is imo how many wars occur. The killing (and other dying) of that time-period is sadly extreme. I think that many former soldiers died of things like infections and/or were addicted to morphine. I don't know if the economic problems that followed the war were more a result of destruction and disenfranchisement or just the fact that plentiful slave-labor was no longer available. It has occurred to me, though, that the ante-bellum period involved a lot of migration from Europe and that many people joined the war effort to receive citizenship. Then when you consider the number of casualties of Union soldiers compared with Confederate, it's almost as if the war was set up to thin out the immigrant population, using Confederate soldiers as the executioners. Obviously it would be conspiracy theory to claim that was an intentional purpose of the US civil war, but it does seem to have had that effect, among others. Probably the Confederate states would have continued to use plantation slavery for agricultural production. Europe would probably have enjoyed higher levels of material consumption and possibly averted the two world wars. It depends on how much cotton-farming and other economic exploitation colonialism could have continued bearing. Is it possible for the global economy to perpetually grow without interruption? No, I don't think so. I think cultural changes have to take place and spread to result in economic restructuring that makes it possible to sustainably prosper. I don't think materialist consumerism has reached that point yet, so I don't see how it would have reached it if slavery had continued.

Well, first let me say that I would not want the responsibility of having this discussion if someone's spiritual development was hinged on it. I just like to explore the (theo)logic of these personified/metaphorical philosophical issues. In response to your logic that the devil is more interested in tempting people away from Christ/God, that makes some sense, but I don't see why the devil would not want to recruit, manipulate, and otherwise indenture souls into the service of tempting people away from Christ/God. According to the logic of Christianity, it might even be easier to indenture non-believers in Christ because they lack faith in eternal life and thus may fear death AND if they lack faith in the Holy Spirit, it could be easier to convince them that God/Christ doesn't really love them or is absent altogether. Thus, in fear and spiritual darkness they may be more susceptible to cooperating in the abuse of themselves and others. Sorry if this sounds like prosthelytizing; I'm just trying to summarize the (mytho)logic of good vs. evil for the sake of the thread discussion. So to respond to your point, I think that not believing in Christ and/or God would make someone easier prey for the devil, but I still wonder what the devil would do with your soul if you're just too spiritually powerless to be an effective servant of demonic possession.

The only thing you seem to be missing is that a thread about the possibility of time travel would, I think, be impossible if everyone stuck to the idea that nothing can travel faster than light/energy propagation. That's why the only response I could think of that would facilitate time travel would be if somehow objects could move faster than light, e.g. if light's speed was relative to its source and thus different sources could travel faster than each other's light. Even if that was the case, though, how could two objects ever meet in close proximity in each other's past? As you get closer to an object, you get closer to its present, right? Presence = present?

And is there any physical reason to assume that the universe was preceded by its absence?

Many people have said that hydrogen storage and engine could be heavier than batteries and electric motor, but how is that possible when hydrogen could be electrolyzed directly into a tank that would compress the resultant gas? Furthermore, no one seems to have understood the concept of using solar-cell fabric in the sails themselves so that they could be collecting solar energy while functioning as wind-collectors. As for the issue of wind being more effective than a motor, why can't they run simultaneously? Doesn't the wind blow faster than the top-speed of a sailing ship? If so, I would think any motorized propulsion would only add to the wind-driven speed, although I am not an expert in sailing. Another question is whether the electrolyzed hydrogen could be stored in a balloon whose buoyancy could be used to reduce the weight of the ship? If the wind is blowing in the right direction, wouldn't such a balloon just add to the sailing thrust while reducing water-drag by counteracting weight? I've never heard of a "blimp-boat" but wouldn't such a construction be advantageous in comparison with a pure sailboat with no air buoyancy?

The question is whether it would have been worth it to abdicate the war to prevent deaths if doing so would have required giving in to slavery. It may be legitimate to accept slavery in exchange for one's life, but then what? Where do you go from slavery? Do you devote your life and the life of your slaves to maximizing the happiness of free people? Do you simply give up your will to consciousness and obey what you are told as narrowly as possible? Do you avoid questioning orders when your sanity tells you they are questionable? How far do you go to respect the property rights of your master? If states' rights to check federal power had lost completely, there would be no post-bellum state governance. The Kansas-Nebraska act was supposedly the big issue of states' rights in question, in that it allowed popular sovereignty to determine the legality of slavery by majority vote on a state-by-state basis. Supposedly, Lincoln refused to accept that slavery should be decided at the state level. It is sometimes assumed/extrapolated that he did this because he didn't want to have "a nation divided," but I think it was a universal issue for him and if he would have had global jurisdiction, he would have opposed slavery globally. I have the sense that Lincoln was just doing what he believed was correct in the position he was in; i.e. take every measure possible to achieve maximum good. I think he overweighed the validity of local sovereignty versus universal rights and saw that local sovereignty of a majority shouldn't eclipse universal rights to freedom. Today it is of course more difficult to assert universal rights as an individual because of widespread recognition of UN human rights as an authoritarian document that transcends anyone else's claims to universal human rights. In reality, however, there's no reason someone like Lincoln shouldn't be able to make their own claim to some universal right(s) on the basis of reason.

To understand this thread, you sort of have to understand the logic of why the devil wants to possess souls. Presumably, it is because souls have the power to make choices and they can be seduced into choosing evil over good. But what if your soul lacks power? Would the devil give up on you then, or would he still consider it useful for some purpose?

What is the point of trying to create an artificial vacuum that somehow exceeds the vacuum of outer space? Doesn't it make more sense to identify where the greatest vacuum would occur in nature, e.g. near the event-horizon of a black hole, and then study the light that penetrates that space? Still, this seems like a fruitless endeavor since whatever photons do make it through outer space to Earth must necessarily travel through whatever medium they are traveling through. If light can't travel through an absolute vacuum, then we will not be able to observe any stars or galaxies that are eclipsed by such a vacuum. So what possible comparison could you ever have been an ultimate vacuum (not penetrable by photons) and a vacuum that is? The best you could do, imo, would be to theorize reasons why photons would be diverted from making it to Earth and then come up with ways to recognize the effects of those reasons in other ways.

It's not. What's hard for me to imagine is that it is possible for people to become independent farmers in the sense that the pilgrims who travelled from Leiden to Plymouth rock did when the land they have to work with is dessert? Is there sufficient agricultural means to become self-sustaining or is trade required to attain basic food? I have the feeling that much of the world is dependent on trade for even basic nourishment, so how can people expect to attain social-economic stability by asserting political independence? If you are dependent on trade for basic necessities, you have to have some means of securing that trade in a way that guarantees basic welfare. This may require labor-exchanges where people agree to participate in the labor that sustains them, even if distant migration is required to perform that labor. Sometimes the problem is that large-scale farms produce enough food but fail to provide sufficient labor opportunities for people to work for their own nourishment. In that case, people have to seek income-opportunities to make the money that is required to purchase the food. Then what are they supposed to do with those income opportunities are not available? The first priority of anyone who is concerned about poverty globally should be food-resources - second only to potable water. No one should be without water or food. Then you get to the issue of shelter. Once people are protected from the elements, you have health-care issues to deal with. How do you deal with sickness? Amazingly, these issues are not limited to the global poor. They are present in every developed economy. Even the most socially-conscious economies have people who are undereducated regarding nutrition and health-practices. They expect public medicine to take care of them when they get sick so they fail to put sufficient effort into maximizing health through exercise, good nutrition, etc. People need to get educated about basic necessities so they can maximize their health first. Healthy bodies are the foundation for economic development. The rebels have the world's attention. Now they need to create global understanding of what is needed for them to prosper.

If you had the rhythm pattern: hlhlhll hlhlhll, could you program the generator to seek combinations of words that fit together with the given rhythm, regardless of word-length? E.g. "a sil-ly mix of nox-ous words" or "un-der-min-ing rhy-me's absurd?" I.e. can you get it to only generate lines of text with the given rhythm pattern regardless of the word-breaks? I think it also needs to know how to start with a logical sentence and transform it into one that fits in the required rhythmic pattern (though I don't think that can be programmed). new idea: what if it started by identifying compete sentences from the source-text that fit the assigned rhythm pattern and then searched for rhyming sentences that also fit the rhythm pattern? Would that take a long time?

Even if he had said, "I know, right?" would that be good grammar? Is it logical to agree with someone and then ask if you're right? You would either say, "I know," or "right." "I know, right?" questions your own statement of agreement. Is it because you're not sure that you really understand what you agreed with so you're checking? If so, how are they supposed to know that you don't really know what they meant when you said you did? I guess the fact that you added the question, "right?" after "I know" suggests that you didn't really know, in which case they could answer with, "no, you don't know because you had to ask." Then they could add, "right?" to that statement because they wouldn't know whether you really understood and agreed and then just put "right?" afterword to sound diplomatic. After all, you might have thought that if you just arrogantly said, "I know," they would argue that you didn't really know just because they didn't like that you would be so arrogant to assume you know without asking. So maybe it is really wise to ask, "right?" after stating, "I know." That way you can agree without sounding too assertive, which could be bad. I overanalyzed this . . . I know, right?

Just assume for a moment that not only is the speed of light relative to its context of emission, but that molecular motion was always relative to its inertial frame. In that case, gravity and other forces could ensure that matter remains intact as it exceeds the speed of light. Then, objects could travel faster than the light they emitted, which would allow them to precede the arrival of their history and thus exist in their own past from the perspective of their observer.

I don't know if the logic of . . . os-cil-at-ing sy-la-bles can be pro-grammed com-plete-ly al-go-rhy-thm-rhyth-mic-ly

Slant-rhyme can also be a liberating parameter in poetry. It may result in a mix of symmetry and asymmetry. I think the meter may be a more important factor though. It causes the text to sound like ebb and flow. (you know?) You might want to try transposing rhyme patterns from popular poetry. That might be worth a try. Since if it was me, it would be AABB or ABAB. Because anything more would cause my brain to fry.

I'm really confused. I don't see why these questions aren't contributing to sufficiently addressing the OP question. The issue is the relationship between electromagnetism and photons, right? Since black-body emissions are photons, I think it is relevant to address why/how resistance in a conductor results in both heat and EM emissions of increasing frequency (btw, I have started another thread to address this topic specifically). Then, the other issue is how AC current induces photon-emissions without causing heat, and whether this involves some form of resistance. Logically, it does from a macro perspective of energy-conservation in a conductor, but I still can't figure out what factor within the conductor-electrons could be responsible for resisting current in a way that directly generates photons. I assume, however, that this line of inquiry could be helpful in prompting others with more detailed knowledge to address the OP question more robustly. Am I obfuscating in from someone's point of view, though?

Your sarcasm is witty but totally averts the question of what you think these people could be doing with their time that is more productive AND that prevents them from simultaneously doing this research, which THEY seem to consider valuable regardless of how politically dominant you believe your opinion should weigh.

I started another thread to discuss what causes energy to be dissipated as heat vs. EM waves. Is there anything constructive in your pushy language? Why is it wrong to call a conductor that conserves energy as current without releasing any of the energy as heat OR radiation a "perfect conductor?" If a conductor is losing energy to radiation, it wouldn't be conserving it perfectly, would it? Also, if you don't call whatever it is that is responsible for converting electrical current energy into photons "resistance," what do you call it? To me, "perfect current" would be current where all energy is retained within the electrons of the conductor. Any energy that is lost must be due to some form of "resistance," no? Or is this getting too close to assuming a medium for light? Idk. Is there experimental evidence that a substance can emit photons that it cannot absorb? I would assume that if a frequency can be emitted then it can be absorbed, but maybe that is presumptive logic.

I don't understand why people complain about tax money financing science. If the government wants science to cost less, why don't they find something for scientists to do to make money that won't interfere with their scientific work? I'm sure it would not be that hard for scientists to fund their own research given the opportunity? Besides, what non-science forms of labor would you want scientists to contribute to the productivity of an economy? What do you want them to do, make fast food? Build houses? Fix infrastructure? No, you're just complaining because GDP growth isn't as big as you'd like so you want to harass anyone and everyone until your income increases. If you want scientists to somehow contribute to GDP, you have to first scientifically analyze the very possibility of increasing GDP and how.

Can potential energy exist in the absence of space and time (i.e. motion and energy)? I can see how it would, if all force-fields were unified in a single powerful field that didn't move in relation to itself or anything else. But, if so, what would cause it to begin moving and/or fragmenting? Do you literally think there was a (conscious) being, God, that produced the force and set it into motion? If so, what did God make the force out of? How did God set it into motion and division? Interesting, maybe theology will provide a deus ex machina for big bang theory.

Emile Durkheim, father of structural functional sociology, has a very influential book on suicide where the defining factor was concluded to be social-integration. Specifically, he found that catholics were less likely than protestants to commit suicide and he reasoned that this was due to greater levels of relative social isolation among protestant and/or higher levels of social responsibility and social integration among catholics. I would doubt this would be the only factor, though, for a population as big as an entire national region. I also don't think you can assume suicide is always connected with unhappiness. Durkheim concluded that there were three types of suicide: egoistic, altruistic, and anomic. Anomie is associated with unhappiness because of feelings of confusion or madness as a result of conflicting rules/norms/etc. Egoism and altruism need not generate as much unhappiness. A person who truly believes s/he is going to escape problems may be happy to do so. A person who sees their death as helping a cause or otherwise benefitting others may also feel happy to do so, such as a suicide bomber. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that people can face death without any sense of fear or immanent loss but it may be possible nevertheless.

Ok, so if the AC current is vibrating the electrons without upsetting the atoms as a whole, and EM waves are getting emitted, what prevents those waves from getting absorbed into the conductor and generating heat that way? How can the electrons of a conductor be transparent to the same photons they are emitting?

source text: lyrics of popular music available online. I don't know how much trouble it would be to compile numerous song texts though. thesaurus: maybe you could get it to use a thesaurus to find words that are more related than not. Could it randomly search through chains of synonyms by looking up synonyms and antonyms of synonyms and antonyms, etc. in search of rhymes, for example? Really neat project, btw.