Phi for All

I've used this one before. It's a bit pricey but it's belt-driven so the motor is quieter than a direct drive, and it's got a huge blade to displace a lot of air without the steep bevel that makes the blades loud. On low it can be used indoors to move the air from room to room. On high you better make sure everything is secured to the walls. But it's great if you set it so it can circulate air from upstairs to downstairs, or in an unused bedroom aimed down the hall towards the main part of your habitat. Fans work best if they've got a lot of clearance behind them, say 18" or so. That's one of the things I don't like about ceiling fans in an 8' tall room. They work better on cathedral ceilings, but they're better than nothing. Much better than cooling with air conditioning, imo. I like the breeze that michel123456 mentioned, and he's right, it may be psychological but it seems cooler to feel it.

When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, a bunch of us found a Phidippus audax in my sister's family room (they're fairly common where I live). We all gathered around it and moved in as close as we dared, not really knowing what kind of spider this hairy little thing was. As we stared at it, suddenly it vanished. We were all stunned and no one said anything for a couple of seconds, each of us convinced we were the only ones who couldn't see it. Finally, one of us said, "Did it just disappear?" We all looked at each other in disbelief and then I saw it on top of the head of my cousin next to me. Everybody freaked out! We were told later that it was a jumping spider. Man, that thing didn't so much as twitch a muscle, I'd swear it!

Most people search Google about equipment before coming to a discussion site. My guess is that a sockpuppet will join to send us a link.

I would think that any difference in infrastructure requirements would be offset by the fact that the energy is renewable, it doesn't require massive tankers risking massive spills requiring massive cleanup, and it won't get harder and harder to find. And at a certain point, space-based solar technology could take all the collection problems off-planet, where collection will be 144% better. I doubt the "foreseeable" part. When GM tested its first electric car 15 years ago, the range was about 70 miles. The 2012 Tesla Model S can go 300 miles on a charge. The oil and gas people use this same argument, and so many people listen to it, ignoring the fact that IC engines have had more than 100 years to get where they are today. It's an unfair argument. Since the Tesla Model S could take you 300 miles of your 565.2 mile trip to Sydney right now, how many years of aggressive research do you think it will take before it can go the whole way? And remember, if you get stuck in traffic on the Hume, your IC car will still burn fuel while the electric car won't.

What are your temperature ranges, daytime and nighttime? Is this for year round use or just certain seasons? What about wind? "... forced air heat under the entire wood framed patio"? Is this vented out to the patio area or is the floor heated from below using the forced air heat from the room underneath? This may be more of an engineering thread. If it starts to head that way I may move it so you'll get more qualified attention.

! Moderator Note Please refrain from attacking another member's credibility. It is always enough to disprove a claim in science. You don't need to make it personal.

Scientifically, your equation is imbalanced. Solar hasn't had 100+ years with which to establish its energy profit delivery. To give an example of an industry that was innovative but ultimately undone by the required physics, and to try to tie that to renewable energy. I think it is irrelevant in this instance. If solar had some kind of physics problem, like the panels caused blinding glare, and used a material that was becoming scarcer and more costly to procure, then the comparison would be valid. But it's not. Again, infrastructure is required by any energy alternative. If we had been getting our energy from seawater somehow for the last 100 years and we were talking about switching over to petroleum, petroleum would still have to build an infrastructure against what seawater already had. You used the Malaysia comparison before and were corrected; I'll remind you here: Once again, you're trying to replace all oil overnight with today's solar technology. It's an unfair argument and it's a bad scientific assessment. That's not going to be the reality.

But everything that could replace fossil fuels will have a hideous infrastructure requirement. Oil has had a hideous infrastructure requirement. How could you possibly think any global energy alternative wouldn't? Despite what you claim, he is not "comparing the hideous fuel usage of the concorde to the hideous infrastructure requirements of solar thermal and voltaics etc.". He quite clearly states: He doesn't mention infrastructure, he mentions "both the supersonic boom and a substantial fuel consumption penalty compared to a Boeing 747". Inherent problems with the Concorde, problems that solar doesn't have compared to oil. The fuel consumption bit has nothing to do with infrastructure, it's an acknowledgement that the Concorde would quickly lose its viability as fuel prices rise. Please show me where. I pointed out that some of his claims lacked validity. This is not personal. It's just as invalid an argument when you use it.

Lol, arachnads!

Hey Externet! Yeah, I noticed that. I have a facility I can ride my bicycle to that manufactures solar panels. I even pursued a job there hoping I could get some at a discount. But they didn't need anyone to sell their product. Everything they made was already sold to other companies, some in the US and some overseas. I use natural gas for heating, and I don't really use my air conditioning. I'm a fan fan myself, and fans run great on DC current, and last longer than fans that run on AC. Partial infrastructure exists for DC appliances because of the recreational vehicle industry. Personally, I think having a PV array that powers a block of homes would be the most efficient use. You wouldn't need to push the current a long way and you spread out the expense of installation. Am I right in thinking you could have panels on ten homes, which then run the power to a single inverter and then back to each home?

I realize that English may be a second language for you, but it's frustrating to see you using the word "logically" so often when you are not being logical, and not putting sentences together correctly. It's not very precious of you. The scientific method (singular) was not "discovered". It was created from many techniques, put together as a way to reduce bias and opinion and, well, exactly the sort of thing you're doing when you say, "One knows that something exists, but may not know where it is exactly". You continue to add phrases that make no sense in this context and further remove this from a scientific discussion. What do you mean by short term and long term with regards to animals and humans? thinker_jeff, how can you possibly ask for evidence when you are the one who made the statement everyone is questioning you about? Where is your evidence that a line exists between animals and humans? Honestly, the cracking sound you hear is not only the thin ice upon which you stand, and the knuckles of frustration amongst the participants, it is the sound of patience drying up quickly.

It's a machine that measures light energy absorbed by molecules in both the ultraviolet and visible spectrum.

And if they did, would they cross the line and suddenly become human? That's part of the problem. You can list all the things you think make us different from animals, but if animals suddenly started doing each and every one of those things, they wouldn't cross some sort of line and become human, would they? Just because you think humans aren't animals doesn't mean there is a line that separates them. You think you're being logical but you aren't taking everything into account. You are being very simplistic about it. You are making an Argument from Incredulity ("We're different; I can't believe there isn't a definite line you can point to that shows it").

Nice. We go from, "It sounds like a pro-oil propaganda piece" to "Graham Palmer is a mouth piece of the fossil fuel lobby". Well spun. He doesn't have to be working for them for his words to be used as propaganda. Everything he said is technically true, but his arguments are obfuscations; they mask the fact that we don't really know what direction solar research will take. As was pointed out, his figures on concrete and steel failed to take other nuclear costs into consideration. And a third of his quote attempts to link solar energy to the failed Concorde. It's very typical of propaganda to use logical fallacies as arguments. This is a combination of Poisoning the Well and Guilt by Association. Solar power doesn't have inherent flaws like sonic booms or hideous fuel usage, but the Concorde was a long-term investment that failed, so it makes a very vivid comparison that brings investment in solar into question without any real validity.

Why do individual people convince themselves they have somehow stumbled onto secrets that the global collective scientific community has not? What kind of hubris is necessary in order to ignore scientific methodology and yet still call it science?

It sounds like a pro-oil propaganda piece. Stacking solar against nuclear is a no-brainer since you can easily make people afraid of nuclear. Of course solar has its limitations. But it still doesn't have the kind of R&D money it needs to overcome many of those limitations. Once it has that, advances are practically guaranteed. The campaign seems to be focused on the impracticality of large arrays. Put those down successfully and you kill solar efforts for at least another 20 years. But the small scale, micro-power aspect of solar is what really threatens the established markets, and I think that's why it's always met such opposition. Oil, nuclear, coal are all impractical on an individual basis, but how much more research would be necessary to bring the cost down on a single family dwelling solar array? Last time I checked, I could power my house (in a sunny state) for about US$18,000 with panels that were only 12% efficient. Couple this with the purchase of a fully electric car and now the utility and oil companies are threatened with extinction. If I purchase some DC powered appliances, I use even less power and can go off the grid completely. The only thing stopping me is the hope that the costs will come down drastically if this technology is embraced and more R&D is funded to make it a reality. Better efficiency and mass-marketing coupled with high demand will mean my investment is recovered much more quickly. But the propaganda scares people off and the established market lobbies squelch any funding while their technologies, which have been around for a hundred years and more, continue to get government subsidies.

Redundancy? It's a big gas giant. Part of the reason must be a combination of non-reflective gases. From the CNN story:

No. Some things are easy to distinguish with a line between them. Shoes and socks are both something you wear, they're similarly shaped and they both go on your feet. A sock can be thickened and reinforced, almost made to do what a shoe does, but there will be a point where your efforts to toughen the sock will turn it into a shoe. When it's so tough and thick that you can't put a shoe on over it, the sock crosses the line and becomes a shoe. You can't do the same thing with animals and humans. There are too many shared characteristics and not enough truly distinguishing factors. Evolution doesn't always move towards complexity. Refinements that increase survival in an environment are generally selected, but there is no overall best structure to have. Put me in the ocean and I'd rather be a shark than human. Put me 1000 feet in the air and I'd survive better as a bird. 1000 feet underground and blind troglofauna are more skilled than I am.

Jesus said it in a dream that John of Patmos recorded. Lots of things can happen in dreams without them being real.

Yet without higher intelligence, ants can organize super-colonies that number in the hundreds of millions, larger than any human city, all without crime, poverty or aggression. Unicoloniality is probably one of the most successful and productive social groupings in the animal kingdom. Virtually any single behavior you can name, with the exception of tool use, is done more effectively by what you call a "lower" animal. "Superior" is a subjective term, and you can't apply it like a blanket over humans. Until the OP comes along to tie together the first post and the title with a little meaning, feel free to discuss this further. I will split it off if "Obsessions" and "animalistic behaviors" turns out to be a more hirsute pursuit.

! Moderator Note Topic moved to Speculations, as its validity has not been established. We do this so others don't mistake it for established science and use it for school tests.

Your variables aren't based in reality, so any calculations you do are irrelevant. You can't draw any valid conclusions from this. Perhaps you could define what you mean by "choices". Are you choosing between a number of things or choosing to do or not do a certain thing?

I think you're being too literal with the question. I don't think the OP is interested in first grader distinctions. And I think you mean precise instead of precious. The question, AFAICT, was not whether humans and animals are different. The question was where do humans begin to descend into what one would cease to call normal human behavior and start thinking of as more animal in nature. I'm guessing that examples might be a man having multiple wives, or a person eating only raw meat.

I think everyone's life makes me question whether there is a "line" between animals and humans. PhDwannabe said it very well; you can't delineate between human and animal behavior without using arbitrary judgements. Very little behavior is strictly animal or strictly human. Sophistication as a result of higher intelligence might be a better benchmark. Perhaps that's what you're after. We form more complicated social structures that compete and cooperate together. Our bigger brains and upright walk allows us to take tool use to a much higher degree than any other animal. And our communication is much richer. Combine all of those and you have a more sophisticated approach to your environment and survival in it.

I agree but I still think these touchstone policies are vulnerable to media/special interest spin. And the easiest ones still seem to be liberal/conservative tagging. I just don't think people realize how this spin really affects them. I think some special education is needed to warn people of the manipulative effect of these words, how easily they can polarize the public when we need multiple viewpoints the most. But where would it come from? It's certainly not going to be happily offered by the media. Exactly. And yet, there is much more common ground there if you can get past the initial reaction the buzzwords create. Take these statements about welfare: #1 - "I don't want my taxes helping some guy sit on the couch and drink beer all day when he is fully capable of getting a job but just doesn't want to." #2 - "I don't want a widow with three children to be out on the streets so I don't mind my tax dollars helping them." or these statements about the military: #3 - "I don't want the military to have a blank check from the taxpayers." #4 - "I want this country's borders and it's citizens strongly defended against those who would harm us." On the surface, it's really easy to label these feelings either conservative or liberal. But if you really ask people, you'll find most of them agree with ALL the statements. Only the most extreme stances disagree with all of them. So I think the conservative/liberal labels divide us into camps we might not belong in, or at the very least they put us on opposite sides of a fence rather than seated around a table.