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Everything posted by CaptainPanic
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Was it something like this?
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The big city poses a real challenge for some birds... so it may take bigger brains to make it there. But could it also be that food in a city tends to be richer in calories and proteins, which at least enables the birds to grow that bigger brain? I completely agree with Dekan that city pigeons seem to be an exception to the rule. They are like the of the avian world.
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There is probability before you flip a coin, but not afterwards. Afterwards you have a measured result. however, you can use the result of a previous experiment to predict something about another future experiment. (For example, if you get 10/10 heads, you might make a suggestion that the coin is not a 50/50 chance coin).
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Going out to the pub! Watching movies, series and sports. Going out to the pub! Watching movies, series and sports. By sometimes not going to the pub or watching movies, series and sports Nah, I post at home, but I also post in my coffeebreaks at work. Perhaps not the responsible thing to do, but it keeps me sharp. Especially topics on the engineering/chemistry and physics forums are things I know, or things I know how to look up. So, in a way it is studying for me. The Politics and Lounge are just a complete waste of time, but possibly the most interesting as well! I find the time for that by not keeping track how much time I spend on it...
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You can always choose to use more heat, or less electricity, to achieve lower temperatures. But the efficiency of the engine goes up with higher temperature, so make sure to get it as higher as possible without melting the engine. I think a much bigger problem is how you're gonna get enough electricity to get the engine running. Batteries? It needs to be very light if it is fitted in an airplane / spacecraft.
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I like it how you somehow dragged the communists into this You shouldn't mix up government spending and private spending. What you do with our money is nobody's business. However, the government has the responsibility to spend our tax money responsibly. Regardless of how capitalistic or communistic a country is, I would claim that a government has to be utilitarian. Please note that nearly the entire war on terrorism (which is the topic of this thread) is a government-paid war... so the recognition of private rights is (imho) rather irrelevant. A government has no private rights. It has many responsibilities to facilitate the lives of its citizens. In other words: if the war on terrorism becomes too expensive, the American people will suffer because of it. And then it is the responsibility of the American government to be utilitarian, and seek a way to end the conflict without running the economy into the ground.
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Ah, I understand now. So, if you mean to have something like a plasma cutter (plasma torch), then you can have an electric jet engine. There are (many) practical problems, but thermodynamically (i.e. theoretically) I think it'll work. Plasma engines in spacecraft actually accelerate the gas using an electric field, or a magnetic field. A jet engine however accelerates the gas because the temperature goes up, and there is a pressure difference between the combustion chamber (high pressure) and the back end of the jet engine (outside pressure). But it can work. You can heat the gas in the "combustion" chamber electrically, so that there is no actual combustion. Theoretically, you don't even need a fuel. Just ordinary air would work. The US once tried to do this with a nuclear powered ramjet instead of an electricity powered jet engine... but the plan was scrapped after testing.
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But it IS! You can only spend money once. People can only spend their time once. If they fight terrorism, they're not treating children. zapatos, I am not asking you personally to focus... but I demand from my government and from society as a whole that it prioritizes objectively. And I am frustrated to see that it actually doesn't, and that both my government and society as a whole seem to make the irrational choice to over-prioritize terrorism.
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All eggs have an airpocket (or egg sac, egg cell), and therefore cannot be considered incompressible.
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If you were immortal would you be happier?
CaptainPanic replied to Mr Rayon's topic in General Philosophy
I'd like to have the option to extend my life expectancy by 100 years at a time - always having the option to say no and die peacefully. Eternity is a long, long time... -
I get the idea that battery research has a LOT more money than fuel cell research and hydrogen storage, because batteries have so many existing applications. Therefore I would put my money on ordinary solar cells / wind power and electric cars with batteries. I think this technology will be ready for the real world much sooner than the clean hydrogen + fuel cells. That doesn't say that these new developments will not find a market somewhere. There is in fact a rather huge market for hydrogen already: the chemical industry uses lots of hydrogen.
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There's a rather simple (empirical) formula for calculating a safe wall thickness for pressure vessels. Here's a website that has it for aluminium. Assuming a diameter of 0.6 foot, at 100 psi, I get that the wall thickness should be 0.048 inch... which comes pretty close to the 1/16 you wrote. Too close for comfort, I would say, especially if you weakened it by drilling a hole into it, or if it has fallen and has a few dents in it or something. I suggest you search for the pressure that the fire extinguisher was at when it was still just a fire extinguisher. It might (1) be written on it, or (2) can be found in Google if you know what type it was (powder, CO2, foam). That pressure would also be a good indicator if you're doing something dangerous.
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Either heat it, or create a vacuum. It's the only way to remove moisture faster than just leaving it in the open air. How fast it dries really depends on the shape of the plastic too. The bigger the surface area (compared to the volume), the faster it will dry. Finally, if the air in which the plastic is placed (in the room, or a special box of some kind) is very dry, it will also speed up the drying.
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The whole point of a jet engine is that it sucks in air, compresses it and then mixes that air with fuel, and ignites it. All the plasma engines that wikipedia mentions are rocket engines (i.e. no air involved). You can't have a jet engine without air - for the simple reason that it wouldn't be called a jet engine anymore. And regarding the PD engine: Google suggests that those are specific types of diesel engines. Not sure how you would want to convert an internal combustion engine into a plasma engine/rocket.
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I am glad to see that CharonY understands it. The point is that terrorism just is not our #1 priority. Standard response is to ridicule it and indeed, A Tripolation then says we "shrug it off", like we don't care. And zapatos plays the " emotional card", which always works. A Tripolation, nobody suggests that we just completely stop fighting terrorism... But that impressive list that zapatos posted is so incredibly insignificant if you realize that this is a list of the entire world, which has 6,800,000,000 people on it, and where on average roughly 100,000,000 people die every year of various causes (mostly diseases)! Here is a list of the most common death causes. Diseases of the heart at #1. Cancer is #2. And whaddayaknow, terrorism isn't even on the list. zapatos, I will play my own emotional card too: If a kid dies of cancer, the parents are just as much hurt as when a soldier dies in the line of duty, or when a bomb goes off and kills someone... Did you know that in the USA 3 children out of 100,000 die of cancer? In 1995, in the USA, a total of 2,275 children died of cancer. And I guess that number will rise every year. Can we please give that the same attention as terrorism? Is it really too much to ask to try to prevent the slow and agonizing deaths of innocent children? Does the actual threat of terrorism really justify that for example the USA devotes 4.7% of its entire GDP to defense? Wouldn't it make sense to, for example reduce that by 0.1% of the GDP, and devote that money to cancer research? That 0.1% of the GDP would amount to 14 billion dollar for cancer research and treatment... I dare say that 14 billion dollars can save a few innocent children, children who are the future of the world. And it would still leave 650 billion dollar (4.6% of the GDP) for bombing and shooting the bad guys. So, I repeat, can we please focus on the more important things please?
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You seemed to suggest that business in general would either pay people well so that they can afford their products, or pay less, and logically sell less products. But this is not true. Any money that is not given to workers can become profit. And that money is also given to people (investors). And workers and investors are both consumers... so even if you give nothing to your workers (literally keep them as slaves) and therefore a lot to your investors, you will still have a market to sell your products. Seems like a pretty accurate description of reality. Everybody is indeed concerned only with optimizing their own financial situation. Btw, consumers already bond together in "consumer organizations" to protect their interests. ... and consumers obviously have a free choice to buy or not to buy. And consumers have a vote in the democracy which can change policy. In some cases, you can live outside the system... but it gets harder and harder. Luckily, there are still plenty of choices. Personally, I think the most important is what you do for a living. A responsible choice for your professional career can make a difference. I think that union membership is always voluntary. But you do run the risk that your interests are not as strongly protected... you will not be invited to union meetings where they discuss the plans if there is any dispute between the union and a management. You can however act as a single individual. But don't be surprised if management doesn't have time to discuss the future plans with every individual employee.
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My point was that nobody completely understands it... not even our leaders, not even the CEO's of the large corporations, and not you or me either. But I admit that some people seem more dimwitted than others. The world as a whole behaves like a mob. There is no leader with a vision. We're all in it, and we all have our own plans and ideas... and the combination of all of that gets us somewhere. Well... I am sorry but that is a pretty accurate description of reality for any Westerner. - Goods come into our shops by truck. We do not really know how it ever got into the truck. We're rather clueless about who made it, and where... although quite a few products seem to have a little logo saying "Made in China". That reduces the puzzle to only 1.3 billion possible people who made it. Who transported it from there to here will always remain a mystery. - Food arrives in our supermarkets by truck too. Again, we do not know where it came from, or who got paid how much for it, and when. And unless you buy local products, even the most well-informed people (like the ones on this forum) just cannot answer those things. It's just there. Strangely, we seem to have convinced a large part of the poor people in this world too that this is the way it is supposed to be. They too just go with the flow. And in all fairness, you cannot realistically expect people to do their everyday jobs, live their everyday lives and also worry about the entire world as well? You and me just happen to be in a situation where we do... we're probably surrounded by people who do too (friends, family, colleagues). But we are a tiny, and very frustrated, minority.
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lemur, I congratulate you on an excellent post. Indeed, the only way to fight terrorism is by arresting them and trying them as criminals. If they hide in a remote area, and fight a guerilla, they are called "rebels" and can be considered an army. Indeed, regretting loss of life is the only road to peace. Finding something good in your enemies is the only way to get to speaking terms. Indeed, in a free world, it is essential that we allow people to completely and utterly despise the (rather dominant) Western culture. They should, according to freedom of speech even be allowed to try to convert the rest of us to whatever ideology they have. As long as they do not take up arms (especially against civilians), there is no problem. And your final comment - I just completely agree with that too. In our fight to protect Freedom and Democracy, we sometimes seem to forget the freedom and democracy itself.
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As long as all the people who believe that terrorism is the Biggest-Threat-To-Life-As-We-Know-It believe that Osama is dead, it's Mission Accomplished. Personally, I couldn't care less about Osama bin Laden. Terrorism was never really important... it was just made very important by politicians. The terrorists had their time in the spotlights. Can we now focus on more important things again, please?
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You want to know how many watts per second you need to heat contained CO2 from 30°C to 100°C? That does not make much sense. Let's do an analysis of what you're asking: Watts per second, that is W/s = (J/s)/s = J/(s2) (energy per second squared) And you want to use that energy per second squared to raise the temperature, to "ruin the knowledge that energy out cannot be equal or greater than the energy in" (in other words: to build a perpetual motion device). Good luck! I'm afraid I cannot help you with it. And I can say with certainty that nobody can help you. And if that sounds a little rude, then that's because you've been on this forum before with some stories about some contraptions you've worked on. And it also didn't make much sense to me (sorry). And I get the feeling that we're now 4-5 months further, and you haven't learned much yet. But just in case you actually wanted to ask what the heat capacity (or: specific heat) is of gaseous CO2 at constant pressure... the answer to that is found here.
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Because saying that "We will deliberately keep the unemployment at an economically interesting level" isn't gonna help you win any elections. Almost none of us are interested in the economy. We're only interested in our own personal situation, and that of the people directly around us (family, friends, colleagues, local neighborhood, possibly also the country). I've said this in another thread as well: I get the idea that you regard the economy as a plan-economy, while in reality it's more a response-economy... and that you think that the governments are actually in control. In reality, I think there is no plan anymore, we all respond to other developments. At best, some government agencies try to make a crude estimate of the effect of certain plans. At the moment, Capitalism is it... although in many cases (esp. Europe) it has some Socialist things too. Governments make a few more regulations or a couple less regulations. The tax levels change a bit and are quite different in different parts of the world... Businesses come, and businesses go. We fight some wars if there is some economic interest... But apart from that, everybody is just going with the flow. Have you ever played Sid Meier's Civilization? I think reality it's pretty similar (although a lot more complicated). You start off with a plan... but rather sooner than later, you're mostly responding to developments that you cannot control yourself. The economy is quite similar to that. So, why do politicians say they will create more jobs? Most likely because they actually really want to do that. Because they are unaware of the global implications of their plans. And because it just sounds good.
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Your assumption that business aims to find a balance between making their products as cheap as possible and paying their workers as much as possible is false. They are not a filantropist organization that wants to provide goods to the public at the lowest possible prices or pay the highest possible wages. They wish to optimize profit. This 3rd financial outlet of a business is what it is all about, and you completely overlook that in your analysis. You approach a business as if it was a plan-economy like the Soviets had, just balancing income and expenses. The real question we must first ask ourselves is how much profit can a company make before it is only fair that the workers get some of that too. Obviously, if the place is running a loss, this is still a valid question, although then workers have to realize that by demanding more, they risk to lose their jobs altogether. Take for example Apple. They had a revenue of 26 billion last quarter... and a profit of over 6 billion. Of every dollar revenue, about 22 cents was profit (going to shareholders, who in all fairness don't work very hard for that money). The Taiwan government isn't gonna set higher minimum wages, shorter working weeks and more mandatory holidays. So, would it be a bad thing to have a union step in and demand to have higher wages? We're looking for a balance here. It is no black and white question. And when we're done with that, we must ask ourselves: who can regulate that? Can companies do it themselves? Can governments? Or do we need unions? Personally, I really think that unions are the only organization that really keep the interest of the workers in mind...
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Well, the topic of this thread just changed a LOT! Instead of just chatting away about eyelashes, the actual topic is trying to find out who is the father of your child??? Anyway, as SMF said before, an anonymous forum is NOT the place to solve this problem. And there is a big chance that our advise is not helpful, because we base it on only a very small explanation of the problem. It's quite irrational for somebody to claim he is not a father of a child, but to refuse to take a test. It is silly to deny being a child's father only based on a different length of eyelashes alone. At this point I should probably point out that you are on a Science forum - we're definitely not experts in the relational field... Still, I advise you (for all kinds of reasons) to see if you can get an official test anyway. Personally, I think a child shouldn't grow up thinking that mommy's boyfriend is not his/her father, especially when there is a chance that he actually is the father. Also, there may be legal reasons to find out, but those become especially important if you ever end your relationship.
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1. Unionism assumes that business will always do everything in its power to exploit labor/workers and, therefore, that labor must organize to garner collective power to pursue worker interests despite resistance. Correct assumption. Business will in fact move entire factories to another continent if that means they can have cheaper labor. 2. So what do you think: can democracy do with reason and government what unions do by threat of strikes, etc.? A union can look in detail at a single company, and a relatively small group of employees (just several hundred is not uncommon). Democratic governments make regulations for entire countries. So, logically, in certain cases the unions just have more information. Often, people working in a certain company are also union members. But in fact, democracy DOES make many rules to protect employees, if they are able to apply those to the entire country. There are laws about how and when you can fire someone, about minimum wage, about minimum travel compensation, about health and safety, maximum working hours, minimum holidays, etc, etc.