npts2020

5 years and still some semblence of sanity, congrats.

The state usually allows a lot of leeway for religious practice. AFAIK snake handling (usually rattlesnakes), peyote use, and refusing medical treatment are all legal for religious practice. The state is less interested in regulating religion than religion is interested in regulating the state for the most part.

I guess we have to have something to spend money on, apparently there are no other more pressing needs.

Thanks for the link BabyAstronaut. I see that passenger trains were excluded and they mention a few other negative things about using locomotives but it does seem they are the most efficient means of going from point A to point B that we now have available. My problem with the efficiency of railroads has never been on the fuel side (other than running them empty) so much as limited range (time efficiency in getting to where you want to go). You are not likely to ever have a train stop in front of your house or place of business if there is not one there already, whereas personal transit could be made to go anywhere current roads go without major changes to infrastructure. To finish I would just like to say that, railroads mostly still burn fossil fuels with no plan to change. The system I advocate would use solar and wind power, making efficiency less of a concern.

My understanding of current cosmological thinking says there is no "edge" of the universe per se only a limit to what is observable.

Does that mean that anyone with elevated risks of having children with Downs Syndrome, microencephaly, Huntingtons Disease, cancer, etc. should similarly be kept from having them or do we only discriminate against relatives?

I am sure you can gather from my previous posts that I do not believe in a "natural" level either, however, that is not to say there is no desirable level. I have been interested in the environment since before the first Earth Day and have read many volumes of information about different related topics including global warming. Hard numbers for any discussion of this matter are exceedingly difficult to come by, even for experts in the field. My take on all of it is that, in general, the "environmentalists'" position makes far more sense than any arguments I have seen for not being concerned. This is what makes me say we need to be conservative about our assumptions and conclusions. In addition, it will be far easier to add CO2 if we want a warmer climate, than it will be to remove it if the levels are too high. IMO the system is so complex that we may not ever have computer modelling perfected to the point of removing all uncertainty and to wait to do something about the changes which we know should occur, is foolish to an extreme.

Lure them into shark infested waters then throw some blood in the water (while you are in a boat of course).

You don't know how much I hate disagreeing with this but if humans were all replaced by some other animal there would still be CO2 emissions. IMO this is what the "natural" level would be. I'm not even sure what relevance any so-called natural level has, since the levels have varied pretty widely over Earth's history. What everyone is looking for is a level we can live at and deal with the consequences. Having said that, I would think someone actually doing climate science (not myself) would have tried to figure out what CO2 levels were during time periods when the climate was most like whatever target we want (presumably similar to today's). This is likely how Mr. Hansen arrived at his number but I couldn't say for sure. JohnB;Not to worry. Apparently, the Younger Dryas lasted so long because massive meltoff of glaciers flooded the North Atlantic basically shutting down the gulf stream. Here is a long-winded but informative treatise on the subject. We can disagree about whether there is much difference between 40 and 100 years on a geological scale but there is some disagreement as to whether much of the world outside Europe and Eastern North America suffered nearly the temperature change indicated by the Greenland ice core readings (see the same link above). Not being a scientist myself, I would like to know what methodology you would find acceptable for determining what our goal should be?

There are no weather stations at the peak of Mt. McKinley, so you have to extrapolate from the link iNow provided. Those instruments are about 1500 ft in elevation below the summit and one of only two monitoring stations in the world above 18,000 ft.

If the string didn't tear, could you theoretically tow the black hole to another location?

Only if it spins at the rate of the yoyo and isnt geared down. (think about a grandfather clock that uses weights) I haven't decided on the bounce part yet but am thinking it may require more than one spindle or an offset one.

I argue until them becomes us.

You were to set your clock back one second to make 2008 longer. As swansont rightly points out it is the atomic clocks that need reset and not ones measuring terrestrial time.

Also, an automated system could use rails, but that will add significant cost to the system and likely rule out any possibility of mixed use until conversion is completed (not necessarily a bad thing IMO).

Increse drag with a flywheel of some kind that expands with speed and drags on the string. You should be able to set it at nearly any speed from zero to free fall. I will have to think about how to get it to bounce all the way down the string but it seems to me you could rig a ratchet mechanism of some kind to make it do that instead of stopping.

Even if every historian in the world agrees, how does that apply to the field of economics?

Unfortunately, you live in a period of human history where it is pretty much impossible to learn the entire breadth of human knowledge. Even if you already knew everything humans knew now, it is doubtful you would have time enough to read and understand everything that is put out on a daily basis by humans. Maybe someday it will be possible to just "download" everything into your brain but until then you will just have to accept being a human and try to focus in particular areas of interest.

Feel free to play devils advocate I am interested in any arguments someone could put forth. First of all, there is no rail that goes even close to 300mph (record American trial speed is 295 kph-see wikipedia/high speed rail) in the United States. Furthermore, it is doubtful that one could run trains that fast on the current infrastructure (crossing and signal issues, current condition of rails, etc.). Every high speed rail I have seen is separated from everything else by being elevated, having a fence, or being underground in all places they operate at near max speeds. I would like to see your source for the mpg of a rail because I can't believe a train pulling as few as only three or four cars could even get up to speed using any acceleration on a gallon of gas much less go 400+ miles after. I understand that rush hour mass transit in highly urbanized areas is by far the most efficient transportation option, and should be continued in many places. Unfortunately that is only a fraction of the miles travelled on an annual basis by Americans. People who live near public transit and only basically only travel to and from work generally do not own cars, that is not the vast majority of us. Also, on an automated system you would not have to get youself to wherever public transit is then get to where you want to go from wherever it ends. An automated car would show up in your driveway and take you to the driveway of wherever you were going. While it is probable that some will not like "giving up control", that sentiment is totally illogical. We "give up control" every time we take a cab, fly on a commercial plane, take public transportation, or ride with a buddy to go play golf. So far as "forcing" anyone to take the system, I really don't see your point since I am not advocating making cars illegal. Right now I am "forced" to use a car because there is no viable alternative where I live, how is having a choice of one or the other forcing anyone to do anything? In order to not write a book here, I will finish by saying that cost of various methods of automation is a subject I have been pursuing for over six months now. As you say there is no working models at present (of the sort I advocate leastways), this makes getting good cost analysis information very difficult. Suffice it to say, it is not complete speculation when I claim that the system I have envisioned will be less expensive, in the long run, than high speed rail and if it is powered with wind and solar energy, efficiency becomes less of an issue.

If any and all drugs were legalized, the prices could be set through taxation and the government could keep far better track of those individuals who are users. I find it very difficult to believe that there would be much increase in use of any drug simply by it legalization. Did America suddenly become a nation of drunks with the end of prohibition? The main reason you see few advocates of legalizing all drugs is that incremental change is far more likely to happen, so advocates work on the most popular one. I might add that prices of illegal items are nearly always much higher than if they were legal.

It seems to me a good way to increase the time is to have it do a series of bounces while descending where after the last bounce you are at the end of the string. I also thought about some sort of ratchet mechanism but am unsure how you could do it without making the yoyo stop (against the rules).

I have read the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights on more than one occassion. They have a lot to say about personal freedom and the pursuit of happiness but I can't recall anything about competing in the global economy. If the goal is to make sure everyone maximizes their productivity, a ban makes sense but it seems to me diametrically opposed to the spirit and ideals embodied in the aforementioned documents.

Many in the crowd when the Marines pulled down the statue of Saddam were throwing their shoes at the statue. Here is a good description of the shoe throwing incident with some brief commentary. Apparently that brand of shoes is selling like hotcakes in the Arab world. Do you think if somebody backed over GWB in an SUV Tahoes and Explorers would start selling again?

Pretty much. What's good for one branch of gov must be good for the others, right? Isn't that how we got things like Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graib, warrantless wiretapping and data mining, by making it up as we go?

You don't see those same people advocating closing down the roadways and airports because of all of the animals killed by the vehicles using them either.