MigL

All good ideas sensei. Mass transit, especially in heavily populated areas ( not so much in rural areas ) should be free. Unfortunately governments have come to see mass transit ( buses, trains, subways, etc. ) as just another way to generate revenue ( i.e. tax ) because they cannot control their spending.

Chips and tomato sauce ?!?! You mean French fries and ketchup, don't you ?

Whether the gravitational red shift is due to time dilation in a frame deeper in the gravitational well, or to radiation losing energy as it climbs out of the gravitational well, is moot. We can only ever measure the time dilation by the radiation signal in our frame. And that shows that the signal has lost energy climbing out of the well. And I find it rich that xyzt previously complained about swansont 's response ( " You don't have to get rude " post #11 ), yet everyone of his, while accurate and true to the math ( if not the physicality ), is disparaging and condescending. I give you the same advice you gave to Rolando.Take a few courses on dealing with people. WE are not doing physics here. None of this will get published, or quoted in papers. What we are doing is discussing and dealing with people.

Didn't know wether to call this 'Stupid government responses to a problem' or 'Insane social engineering'... The desire to switch from fossil fuels to electric as a means of powering cars is a commendable one ( although it makes no sense in some parts of the US where most of their electricity is generated by burning coal ). Governments, in a rush to "be seen to do something', are therefore offering rebates on electric vehicles to force the take-up of the new technology. The most popular electric vehicle that I know of is the Tesla, a very nice electric vehicle, but it costs roughly $100,000 in the states and $150,000 in Canada. Obviously a little above the affordability level of the middle class, yet our Canadian government, offers over $9000 in rebates on the purchase price and the charging system. I would think that someone who can affod a $150,000 car doesn't need the rebate. Apparently the US government offers roughly $10,000 in rebates also, and Steve Wozniak ( the brains behind the origin of Apple, not Steve Jobs ), with a worth of roughly $100 million, owns two Teslas, and got rebates for both. I would think someone who's worth $100 million, doesn't need a rebate. Surely this makes no sense, and there's gotta be a better way.

Not to mention that 'Nightcrawler' was one of the crappiest movies I've ever seen. Had to quit halfway through, although Renee Russo still looks good.

Let me see if I can clear up the misunderstanding between iNow and Waitforufo... I think we can all agree that it would be a bad thing if Iran gets Nuclear weapons. Am I not correct ? And the reason it would be bad is because the leadership of Iran, not the people, cannot be trusted. So we enter into an agreement with Iran where they promise not to enrich any more weapon grade material. Because so far, Waitforufo, punishing sanctions have made no difference to the leadership and only 'hardened' the populace's views towards us. As iNow says, they are clearly not working. But then Waitforufo says, 'what makes you think they can be trusted to keep that agreement' ?

Was only able to read the cover notes of the second link, and it states that risks of contamination are low if operations are sufficiently regulated and run correctly. Heck, if a bus is run correctly it provides transport, saves money and is environmentally friendlier. But if run incorrectly, like being driven down a busy sidewalk, it'll kill dozens of people. But nobody says " Oh no, London may need increased bus service ".

They were chanting 'Death to America' in some parts of the middle east 20 yrs ago. And good-hearted American people just laughed it off saying its just empty rhetoric. " What could they possibly do ?" Then 3000 people died on 9/11, and America is still being affected by that event today. Maybe I'm not as extreme as Waitforufo, but I'm not as naïve as Moth either. I can almost guarantee that Iran will get nukes, and no agreements or show of force will deter them. Even an isolated, poor country like N Korea was able. Maybe instead of negotiating agreements on enrichment which will no doubt be ignored, and keeping our fingers crossed, we should have made an agreement for more openness in their society. The people need access to all information, not just what the religious leaders feed them. That America is not the devil, and most Americans want to improve conditions in the rest of the world, not subjugate and exploit them.

I've soldered on computer motherboards ( even laptop ones when my eyesight was better ) with a 150/300 watt soldering gun. The technique is more important than the tool used. Pay attention to what you're doing, and if you learn or already know proper technique, you should have no problem with a cheap 30-50 watt ( grounded ) soldering iron. There's no need for temp control unless you're soldering for hours at a time. And as others have mentioned, use the finest rosin core lead/tin solder you can find. I myself use a desoldering pump, but have on a few occasions lifted the trace right off the circuit board.

Well, fracking is, by definition a seismic activity, although a controlled one. And AFAIK, fracking uses water ( with added biocide ) to provide the hydraulic pressure for 'cracking' the shale plates. Can you point me to some studies of ground-water contamination as a result of fracking ? And what were the contaminants ?

That's a non-answer DrP. Why is it further from the centre of the Earth ? Does dirt and rock weigh less at the equator, and so 'sits higher', enabling the Earth's radius to be greater at the equator than the poles ? I prefer Spyman's reference to Swansont's answers.

I don't think they'll be filling pools with it and burning it for no reason. If they need it they'll burn it. Or is the CO2 from foreign oil less harmful than CO2 produced by British oil ? And I get the impression that you're not thrilled with the prospect of fracking, Pavel. At the risk of thread derailment ( and opening a can of worms ), what risks do you see associated with fracking ?

Its much easier to talk from a position of power. Currently Israel has nukes, Iran doesn't. Maybe once Iran has them too, talking as equals will be possible and easier. Or I'm living in dreamland, and those crazy Ayatollahs will destroy the region in a nuclear holocaust.

That's what I thought. This is a variation on Zeno's paradox, and how the arrow can never reach the target because it needs to get to the next halfway point first.

True, but Iran aids Hezbollah, who then attack Israel, who then retaliate. And Lebanon gets attacked. One could say Iran is the sh*t-disturber in the area.

No need to apologise. Just need a little period music in the background to set the mood. Although 'The stolen lemon tree' incident is funny now, at the time I was rather distraught, as it was only a year after my dad passed.

Locality has a specific meaning in physics. It is a causally connected distance, Mike. The gravitational fields from far-away galaxies/stars/etc. are set and stable. They change very little as changes in gravity only propagate at light speed. So on galactic scales, where even fast motion is miniscule compared to the distances involved, gravitational fields are very 'stable' and do little, if any, 'swirling' and 'intercepting'. The sun, for example 'sees' a large but very slowly changing galactic gravitational well. At much smaller distances, where masses move comparatively quickly, the gravitational fields are much smaller. A mass that is accelerated has to change its gravitational field. But if it is accelerated such that the propagation delay of the change is non trivial, then the mass ( and field ) must be extremely small, i.e. the effect is still unmeasurably small. In this case, a particle moving around a cyclotron at close to c, has a rapidly changing, but negligible gravitational signature.

This is the example I always use to describe fictitious forces in accelerated frames Mike... Take an old fashioned record player and put a round piece of paper on it. Spin it up so it is rotating clockwise, then get a pen and draw a radial line from the center spindle to the circumference. In your inertial frame ( not spinning clockwise ) you draw a straight line directly from center to edge, but in the rotating frame of the sheet of paper, what's actually drawn by the pen is a counterclockwise spiral. As if there was a force pushing the pen in that direction. If you were a microscopic inhabitant of this flat spinning world, you would see the pen draw out this counterclockwise spiral and no-one could convince you that there wasn't a force pushing ( or pulling ) it in that direction. This we know as a fictitious force that is solely due to the spinning ( accelerated ) frame of reference. Since the Earth is spinning, the fictitious force due to its rotation is called Coriolis force (after Gaspard Coriolis ) and wiki has this very same explanation. If your frame ( not inertial ) is inside a car making a high speed left turn, that is your rotating frame of reference, and the fictitious force you 'feel', seems to push you to the right, and is called centrifugal force. From an inertial frame outside the car ( person standing on the sidewalk ) there is no force pushing you to the right, rather it is the car door constraining you to accelerate to the left. And this real force is called centripetal. ( no, there were no French scientists or mathematicians called Centrifuge or Centripete )

Agreed, I'm thinking only of nuclear EM pulses or EM pulse weapons.

If I remeber correctly Feynman only finished his PhD in 1942 so he was definitely a junior member. He was well liked by H. Bothe however( who much later persuaded him to go to Caltech instead of Princeton ) and put in charge of the computational division which was as Overtone has suggested. The Hollerith punch cards were developed much later as an imput method for digital mainframe computers. They were still being used in the late 70s-early 80s; I know, I used them. Los Alamos had no digital or electronic computers, as Overtone said, they had slide rules and log tables ( I have also used those ). However I can't agree with Overtone ( I knew I'd find something ) that Iran feels threatened by Israel. If anything, Iran is more threatened by her Arab neighbors, and just uses Israel to destabilize the neighboring states.

I could be wrong but I thought Feynman was just a junior member of the project. You're probably right Overtone. Pakistan needs a strong dictator for 20-30 yrs to implement the changes needed to their society and reduce the influence of tribal warlords.

That raises the interesting scenario where you predict that you will lose the war so you make sure you don't get into one.

Don't have much of a garden at my principal residence which is my late father's house ( my own house sits empty and my niece crashes there usually ). My dad used to have a huge garden, about 15'x40', consisting mostly of plum tomatoes, various kinds of peppers, eggplant, green beans and garlic. I may start again, myself once I retire, but for now, I just keep a planter with parsley, mint, oregano, rosemary and basil ( hey, I'm Italian ). I do have a lemon tree which is a lot of work in this climate. My dad took care of it before me for about 12 yrs, and I have for the last 8 yrs. I don't have a sunroom, so I move it outside in the warm months ( it was stolen once, but recovered ) and inside a large south facing window in the winter. It is about 6' tall and weighs about 250 lbs. Unfortunately, dragging it through doorways knock a lot of buds and flowers off, but it still produces about a dozen sweet, fragrant lemons. I use the citrus tree fertilizer sticks for convenience. Does anyone know of an organic fertilizer that is suitable ( and not offensive smell-wise ) for citrus trees ?

I could be wrong, but, EMR from a chemical explosion, no matter how large, is not ionizing radiation, as it involves electron level jumping ( bonds breaking/forming ). An EMP disables electronic equipment by ionizing and 'driving out' electrons from circuits and batteries.

My apologies if my previous post was redundant. My point was that although size/weight were the drivers 30-40 yrs ago, they are not currently. Sub-micron design rules, 3d gates and transistors, etc., are all in response to power and switching speed issues. Or is this also redundant ?