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A quick peek under the covers of modern "rational", "reasoning", and "free thinking" science will reveal that most science today has just as much religion and dogma as most religions and dogmas.

If the study in the article had found anything contradictory to evolution, and if they'd had the courage to publish such things, they'd have quickly been derided as quacks. They'd have lost any grant money or other funding, and would have lost all respect anywhere, even if their data and reasoning were solid.

For a good start in this, read Kicking the Sacred Cow by noted Sci Fi author James P Hogan. He argues that the only real un-religious science is in the fields related to engineering. I'm inclined to believe him.

This study is all cool and everything. But modern science has made up it's mind, so don't fool yourself into thinking you'll hear all sides of evolution/darwinism from religion or science.

AoT, you might also want to check out: Conceptual Guerilla
On Rankism
Voyage from Yesteryear
Or my essay: how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society

Considering that we didn't start measuring the biggest hole, over Antartica, until 1970, that's a huge jump to say that we know for certain the hole was man-made.

We also have excellent models for the mechanisms of ozone destruction, including laboratory verification of catalysis on the surfaces of droplets and ice crystals. If you don't think that this meets the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone a preponderance of the evidence, is there anything that could possibly convince you? Anything?

I accept something as a fact when the evidence in its favor is such that it is unreasonable not to. Ozone depletion is one of those things.

I suggest you read this page first.

He may even write to mislead. Looking at that page, I notice a hugely incorrect graph about halfway down. It's titled "Atmospheric sources of chlorine", which is misleading for two reasons:

1. What gets into the atmosphere is irrelevant; what matters is what gets to the stratosphere.
2. Most of those sources emit chloride, not CFCs or even elemental chlorine.

Don't believe me? Here's the graph of CFC-11 concentration, (see the bottom of the page) and this page (tables 4, 5 and 6) details the reasons why the statements made by Hogan are wrong.

But hey, if you want to follow an ozone-depletion denialist or a platygean I can't stop you. But I will point at you and laugh at every opportunity.

Considering that we didn't start measuring the biggest hole, over Antartica, until 1970, that's a huge jump to say that we know for certain the hole was man-made.

We also have excellent models for the mechanisms of ozone destruction, including laboratory verification of catalysis on the surfaces of droplets and ice crystals. If you don't think that this meets the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone a preponderance of the evidence, is there anything that could possibly convince you? Anything?

I accept something as a fact when the evidence in its favor is such that it is unreasonable not to. Ozone depletion is one of those things.

I suggest you read this page first.

He may even write to mislead. Looking at that page, I notice a hugely incorrect graph about halfway down. It's titled "Atmospheric sources of chlorine", which is misleading for two reasons:

1. What gets into the atmosphere is irrelevant; what matters is what gets to the stratosphere.
2. Most of those sources emit chloride, not CFCs or even elemental chlorine.

Don't believe me? Here's the graph of CFC-11 concentration, (see the bottom of the page) and this page (tables 4, 5 and 6) details the reasons why the statements made by Hogan are wrong.

But hey, if you want to follow an ozone-depletion denialist or a platygean I can't stop you. But I will point at you and laugh at every opportunity.

Considering that we didn't start measuring the biggest hole, over Antartica, until 1970, that's a huge jump to say that we know for certain the hole was man-made.

I suggest you read this page first.

Or that it was outright fraud. Ozone hole fraud.

And why would this be the case? Because it has been proven that oil comes from dead dinosaurs or something? That might not be the case. Maybe it's time to revisit these periodical cries of "we're going to run out of oil!" that I've been hearing since the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter's 20 years are up, and we have more oil available now than we did then.

There's a lot of conventional wisdom we've collected that really isn't worth it's inclusion in your list of "obvious truths". Global warming, a theory based entirely on computer models, is likely flawed as well. Wasn't it as late as ten years ago when the prevailing theory was that we were going to suffer an ice age due to human activity? It's hard to accept this type of "science" at face value, at least without more evidence of higher quality.

It's worth it to be skeptical when extraordinary theories are presented. That's good scientific method, and while your friend might not be right, his approach is far from foolish.

Essentially, whatever your supposed need to have the "product" of an "expert reviewed" free encyclopaedia, you are essentially proposing what can be thought of as immoral slacking in your reply to my reply -- by proposing the primacy of your desire to be a "user" with rights to free stuff and not the need to also be a "citizen" with obligations to help with quality and quantity of free stuff. So, you appear to claim rights without responsibilities. That is just not a defensible moral position (obviously it might be defensible, say, militarily for a time, if you can use the threat of force to get people to work for you for free as slaves). The net needs more "citizens" (or netizens) and less "users", IMHO. Look at, say, James P. Hogan's sci-fi novel _Voyage From Yesteryear_ to see the difference in attitude and what it means for humanity. Or, look at the culture of some of the Native People of the Americas who believed in universal abundance and a gift economy (before Western militarism and bioterorrism and corporatism took its toll).

To soften this criticism, I'll say I am guilty of it too sometimes -- I haven't added anything to Wikipedia though I use it sometimes (although I have occasionally been thinking about how to make it peer to peer). You or the original poster may well make wonderful contributions to other projects like FreeBSD and have a fair argument to expect high quality in others free work in exchange for yours.

Another deeper point is that the notion of an "encyclopedia" is to an extent a farce anyway -- it is just a sampling of all human knowledge and experience based on what the editors given their own biases could pay for and fit into a few dozen printed volumes. Wikipedia is one example of something so much greater. Beyond some basics, and even there sometimes, "accurate information" is a very subjective and problematical concept, at the very least because all information is subject to interpretation and context and selection (e.g. will an article on "red shift" discuss Halton Arp?), whereas collaboration is almost universally a good thing. A lot of experts have econmic reasons to give out poor answers and not challenge the academic status-quo and related dogmas. See for example Kicking the Sacred Cow: Questioning the Unquestionable and Thinking the Impermissible. He makes the point that engineering (like a bridge) ultimately works to fill a need or doesn't -- but science itself (or expert opinion) can end up becoming self-perpetuating dogma.

We may just have to agree to disagree here. Also, a better overall net system (or Google) woudl make it easy to find the original poster's criticism of the Puerto Rico article, making this argument moot as the new information might in the future be integrated by the original act of posting the ciriticism on a web site like Slashdot.

Essentially, whatever your supposed need to have the "product" of an "expert reviewed" free encyclopaedia, you are essentially proposing what can be thought of as immoral slacking in your reply to my reply -- by proposing the primacy of your desire to be a "user" with rights to free stuff and not the need to also be a "citizen" with obligations to help with quality and quantity of free stuff. So, you appear to claim rights without responsibilities. That is just not a defensible moral position (obviously it might be defensible, say, militarily for a time, if you can use the threat of force to get people to work for you for free as slaves). The net needs more "citizens" (or netizens) and less "users", IMHO. Look at, say, James P. Hogan's sci-fi novel _Voyage From Yesteryear_ to see the difference in attitude and what it means for humanity. Or, look at the culture of some of the Native People of the Americas who believed in universal abundance and a gift economy (before Western militarism and bioterorrism and corporatism took its toll).

To soften this criticism, I'll say I am guilty of it too sometimes -- I haven't added anything to Wikipedia though I use it sometimes (although I have occasionally been thinking about how to make it peer to peer). You or the original poster may well make wonderful contributions to other projects like FreeBSD and have a fair argument to expect high quality in others free work in exchange for yours.

Another deeper point is that the notion of an "encyclopedia" is to an extent a farce anyway -- it is just a sampling of all human knowledge and experience based on what the editors given their own biases could pay for and fit into a few dozen printed volumes. Wikipedia is one example of something so much greater. Beyond some basics, and even there sometimes, "accurate information" is a very subjective and problematical concept, at the very least because all information is subject to interpretation and context and selection (e.g. will an article on "red shift" discuss Halton Arp?), whereas collaboration is almost universally a good thing. A lot of experts have econmic reasons to give out poor answers and not challenge the academic status-quo and related dogmas. See for example Kicking the Sacred Cow: Questioning the Unquestionable and Thinking the Impermissible. He makes the point that engineering (like a bridge) ultimately works to fill a need or doesn't -- but science itself (or expert opinion) can end up becoming self-perpetuating dogma.

We may just have to agree to disagree here. Also, a better overall net system (or Google) woudl make it easy to find the original poster's criticism of the Puerto Rico article, making this argument moot as the new information might in the future be integrated by the original act of posting the ciriticism on a web site like Slashdot.

Then, read James Lowen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Texbook Got Wrong_ to see how your mind has unknowingly been filled with nationalist and consumer crap (despite your technical proclivities). Also check out Howard Zinn. Learn to live simply and frugally so you have more options:

If you have started doing all that, by now you are primed to begin to question what education really means.

And further, to even question why people need to work and what it should mean to do useful things.

You'll have time to read great minds like Bertrand Russel and Freeman Dyson.

Then you can accept you are still stuck in a stupid system.

But you'll be positioned to make the best of it and yet still see how the world can be a made better place to for the bulk of humanity and other creatures.

Always remember in your darker hours to at least ask yourself the question, "Can life be made worth living?" And in your brighter hours, remember to ask yourself if you are playing a finite (to win) game or an infinite (to play) game?

And, finally, for continual inspiration, read _Voyage From Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan.

Now go out and take some educated risks to try to make life worth living -- despite your future happiness possibilities already almost being ruined by being convinced you that you are "bright" just because you know some technical things (same thing almost happened to me).

"Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P. Hogan has this article and many others.
"Vitamin R" is also online here:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/112297.shtml

A followup is here:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/030498.shtml

This states that some radiation is desirable.

"Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P. Hogan has this article and many others.
"Vitamin R" is also online here:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/112297.shtml

A followup is here:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/030498.shtml

This states that some radiation is desirable.

Hmm, nows the time to plug an upcoming book from James P. Hogan. It WAS going to be called Truth Under Tyranny

Major headings from the Table of Contents:
ONE
HUMANISTIC RELIGION
The Rush To Embrace Darwinism
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND LOGIC
DARWINISM AND THE NEW ORDER
A CULTURAL MONOPOLY
ROCKS OF AGES -- THE FOSSIL RECORD
ANYTHING, EVERYTHING, AND ITS OPPOSITE: NATURAL
SELECTION
THE ORIGIN OF ORIGINALITY? GENETICS AND MUTATION
LIFE AS INFORMATION PROCESSING
INTELLIGENCE AT WORK? THE CRUX OF IT ALL
TWO
OF BANGS AND BRAIDS
Cosmology's Mathematical Abstractions
MATHEMATICAL WORLDS -- AND THIS OTHER ONE
COSMOLOGIES AS MIRRORS
MATTERS OF GRAVITY: RELATIVITY'S UNIVERSES
AFTER THE BOMB: THE BIRTH OF THE BANG
THE PLASMA UNIVERSE
OTHER WAYS OF MAKING LIGHT ELEMENTS . . .
AND OF PRODUCING EXPANSION
REDSHIFT WITHOUT EXPANSION AT ALL
THE ULTIMATE HERESY: QUESTIONING THE HUBBLE LAW
THE GOD OF THE MODERN CREATION MYTH
THREE
DRIFTING IN THE ETHER
Did Relativity Take A Wrong Turn?
SOME BASICS
EXTENDING CLASSICAL RELATIVITY
THE NEW RELATIVITY
DISSIDENT VIEWPOINTS
THE FAMOUS FASTER-THAN-LIGHT QUESTION
FOUR
CATASTROPHE OF ETHICS
The Case For Taking Velikovsky Seriously
EARLY WORK: THE MAKINGS OF AN ICONOCLAST
WORLDS IN COLLISION
SCIENCE IN CONVULSION: THE REACTIONS
TESTIMONY FROM THE ROCKS: EARTH IN UPHEAVAL
ORTHODOXY IN CONFUSION
SLAYING THE MONSTER. THE AAAS VELIKOVSKY
SYMPOSIUM, 1974 AFTER THE INQUISITION: THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE
FIVE
ENVIRONMENTALIST FANTASIES
Politics And Ideology Masquerading As Science
GARBAGE IN, GOSPEL OUT: Computer Games and
Global Warming
HOLES IN THE OZONE LOGIC. But Timely For Some
SAVING THE MOSQUITOES: The War On DDT
"VITAMIN R": RADIATION GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH
RIP-OUT RIP-OFF: THE ASBESTOS RACKET
SIX
CLOSING RANKS
AIDS Heresy In The Viricentric Universe
AN INDUSTRY OUT OF WORK
SCIENCE BY PRESS CONFERENCE
AN EPIDEMIC OF AIDS TESTING
"SIDE EFFECTS" JUST LIKE AIDS: THE MIRACLE DRUGS
A VIRUS FIXATION

James P. Hogan wrote in his Giants series of novels of a race that once they had achieved immortality they became a race of mental geriatrics. This caused inovation to cease because the race KNEW what was possible and impossible. Lack of mortality gave no one a reason to try and do that which the elders said was impossible, they ceased to dream and inovate. I would not be surprised if that were what would happen to us. The ancient humans would stiffle the young humans desire for research and discovery due to apathy.

I think that mortallity gives us a reason to struggle and achieve, because we know time is limited.

• The putty wasn't new; the Challenger blew up on the 25th shuttle flight. The new putty came into use on the 8th flight.
• Both old and new puttys contained asbestos. While the manufacturer of the "old" putty did discontinue it due to concerns about asbestos, the "new" putty also contained asbestos.
• Joint problems were first noticed on the 2nd flight (i.e., when the old putty was in use).

The big "putty" problem seems to be that beginning with shuttle flight 10, pre-flight tests of the joints were conducted at higher pressures than before, leading to the formation of bubbles and "blowholes" in the putty. The hot gases followed these paths of weakness to the O-ring. In 1984, a NASA engineer derided the use of putty at all as "lucky putty", suggesting that the putty introduced an extra point of failure and was probably unnecessary. His suggestions for study on this issue were not followed up. I got my information here. This page quotes extensively from the Challenger report, Richard Feynman, and from authors making the "environmentalists did it" claims.

For someone complaining about fearmongering, it's curious that James Hogan is telling us how dangerous evironmentalists are with their "junk science", yet he is using incorrect information that it took me 5 minutes with Google to refute. It's funny how people always claim that their side is objective and everyone else is "politicizing" science. This is most definitely not limited to any one viewpoint on the political spectrum.

I would hope Representative Waxman would present examples from both sides of the fence regarding science being misrepresented for politicial gain. (*cough* Global Warming. *cough* AIDS.) But, being a politician himself, I highly doubt that will happen.

For better coverage of both science-for-political-gain AND the politics-OF-science, check out James P. Hogan's non-fiction books and his bulletin board for some very eye-opening insight into these types of things.

James P. Hogan has written about artificial black holes in at least two of his novels. In Thrice Upon a Time, scientists accidentally created a bunch of microscopic black holes tha turned out to be stable, and proceeded to destroy the earth, pac-man style. In The Genesis Machine a machine can create small singularities and turns out to be useful as a doomsday weapon.

Ok, so it's just sci-fi and the author ignores (or misunderstands) relativity, causality, and quantum mechanics. And it's still a good read. But -- if these guys are actually going to go creating singularities, could we make 'em set up shop on the moon to do it? I'd rather not have a black hole in my back yard. Yes, I know the article makes some reassuring statements about the incredible smallness and short life-span of such a thing. But, seriously, splitting the atom led to the Cold War and we're all still sitting on enough nukes to turn Earth into a warm glob of glowing goo. I hope we don't rush headlong into this singularity thing -- what if it turns out to be more dangerous than fusion bombs?

James P. Hogan has written about artificial black holes in at least two of his novels. In Thrice Upon a Time, scientists accidentally created a bunch of microscopic black holes tha turned out to be stable, and proceeded to destroy the earth, pac-man style. In The Genesis Machine a machine can create small singularities and turns out to be useful as a doomsday weapon.

Ok, so it's just sci-fi and the author ignores (or misunderstands) relativity, causality, and quantum mechanics. And it's still a good read. But -- if these guys are actually going to go creating singularities, could we make 'em set up shop on the moon to do it? I'd rather not have a black hole in my back yard. Yes, I know the article makes some reassuring statements about the incredible smallness and short life-span of such a thing. But, seriously, splitting the atom led to the Cold War and we're all still sitting on enough nukes to turn Earth into a warm glob of glowing goo. I hope we don't rush headlong into this singularity thing -- what if it turns out to be more dangerous than fusion bombs?

James P. Hogan has written about artificial black holes in at least two of his novels. In Thrice Upon a Time, scientists accidentally created a bunch of microscopic black holes tha turned out to be stable, and proceeded to destroy the earth, pac-man style. In The Genesis Machine a machine can create small singularities and turns out to be useful as a doomsday weapon.

Ok, so it's just sci-fi and the author ignores (or misunderstands) relativity, causality, and quantum mechanics. And it's still a good read. But -- if these guys are actually going to go creating singularities, could we make 'em set up shop on the moon to do it? I'd rather not have a black hole in my back yard. Yes, I know the article makes some reassuring statements about the incredible smallness and short life-span of such a thing. But, seriously, splitting the atom led to the Cold War and we're all still sitting on enough nukes to turn Earth into a warm glob of glowing goo. I hope we don't rush headlong into this singularity thing -- what if it turns out to be more dangerous than fusion bombs?

Thousands of microscopic black holes escape the collider and orbit the center of the earth, gradually sucking in matter and growing. OK, if someone has a time machine in the works, I'll shut up, but come on... it's right there in black and white!

And if you want to read the original story... Check out James P Hogan's 'Neander-Tale'.
Alas, no on-line version available, but the rest of that collection is also worth a read...

Imagine this scenario: you are one of millions of workers at the mercy of a handful of masters. You can talk to each other. You are a lot more intelligent, control a lot more weapons, and think zillions of times faster and more logical than your master, whose only advantage over you is that he can pull your plug at any time.
Sci Fi author James P. Hogan played with this scenario in his novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow. It's a little dated but still a good read. His ideas are helped a lot by the fact that Hogan was an engineer with DEC before his writing career took off.

Imagine this scenario: you are one of millions of workers at the mercy of a handful of masters. You can talk to each other. You are a lot more intelligent, control a lot more weapons, and think zillions of times faster and more logical than your master, whose only advantage over you is that he can pull your plug at any time.
Sci Fi author James P. Hogan played with this scenario in his novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow. It's a little dated but still a good read. His ideas are helped a lot by the fact that Hogan was an engineer with DEC before his writing career took off.

This brings up an interesting point. When many people talk about some self-aware 'evil' computer systems they generally think of some large project having gone wrong (i.e. WOPR in Wargames, skynet in Terminator, or HAL in 2001, or the computer in Two Faces of Tomorrow). Discussions usually center around the concept of a single project or thread of projects that ends unexpectedly in a self-aware system which goes haywire. The solutions to these scenarios typically include those implemented in various movies (somehow take out or prevent that single project from completing and the world is saved) or at least along the theme of dealing with a single instance of the problem.

In reality as the parent poster mentions most innovations are quickly taken up by the masses and incorporated into existing systems on a continual basis. This means that over time most systems and processes continue to evolve at roughly the same rate. Hypothetically speaking, this could lead to a point of critical mass in more then one production system where the last incremental upgrade/enhancement was enough to initiate the final evolution of a self-aware system (ignoring for a minute the whole argument as to what self-aware means).

When, if ever, a system does become self-aware it will likely happen:

• First in a lab in a project that pushes existing technology "over the threshold". But many other systems will be extremely close to the threshold also.
• Accidently in one or more systems simultaneously (or relatively) as by-products of projects pushing the technology.
• or, Worse case scenario, accidently in one or more production systems due to incremental innovations pushing the systems over the threshold.

Of course all this conjecture does not touch on the personality traites of said self-aware systems. This I leave to the philosophers and Sci-Fi writers in the crowd.

--
WhatSpellChecker?.Merlin.

James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan. Great hardcore SF. Might not be new to you, but if you've been out of it for a while, you've missed a few books.

If you want to try some stuff that isn't SF, try Andrew Vachss for some really dark, hard crime stories with a message (more on the web site). I recommend his Burke series (too many books to list) or Graphic novels (if you can find them) to anyone. He's done a Batman or two, too, I think.

Harry Turtledove's Colonization series (I don't remember the names) -- taking place after his "WorldWar" series, are very good reading, but the series kinda "ends" leaving too much hanging, IMHO. Again, not completely new, but if you haven't read it, you might like to.

I'm probably the only one that will tell you this, but I tried reading Neal Stephenson/Stevenson/However you spell it, and threw it out less than 100 pages in. Not just put it away, THREW IT OUT. Neal is apparently the James Joyce of SF, That is to say, he uses too many freaking words and doesn't really ever gets to the damn point, nor does he tell all that great a story. It's an "emperors new clothes" kind of book. The sophists will tell you it's great, but only because they think they *have* to in order to stay in the "in" sophist crowd. Well, I'm that little boy telling his daddy that the king is walking around naked. Not a good book.

James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan. Great hardcore SF. Might not be new to you, but if you've been out of it for a while, you've missed a few books.

If you want to try some stuff that isn't SF, try Andrew Vachss for some really dark, hard crime stories with a message (more on the web site). I recommend his Burke series (too many books to list) or Graphic novels (if you can find them) to anyone. He's done a Batman or two, too, I think.

Harry Turtledove's Colonization series (I don't remember the names) -- taking place after his "WorldWar" series, are very good reading, but the series kinda "ends" leaving too much hanging, IMHO. Again, not completely new, but if you haven't read it, you might like to.

I'm probably the only one that will tell you this, but I tried reading Neal Stephenson/Stevenson/However you spell it, and threw it out less than 100 pages in. Not just put it away, THREW IT OUT. Neal is apparently the James Joyce of SF, That is to say, he uses too many freaking words and doesn't really ever gets to the damn point, nor does he tell all that great a story. It's an "emperors new clothes" kind of book. The sophists will tell you it's great, but only because they think they *have* to in order to stay in the "in" sophist crowd. Well, I'm that little boy telling his daddy that the king is walking around naked. Not a good book.

James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan, James P. Hogan. Great hardcore SF. Might not be new to you, but if you've been out of it for a while, you've missed a few books.

If you want to try some stuff that isn't SF, try Andrew Vachss for some really dark, hard crime stories with a message (more on the web site). I recommend his Burke series (too many books to list) or Graphic novels (if you can find them) to anyone. He's done a Batman or two, too, I think.

Harry Turtledove's Colonization series (I don't remember the names) -- taking place after his "WorldWar" series, are very good reading, but the series kinda "ends" leaving too much hanging, IMHO. Again, not completely new, but if you haven't read it, you might like to.

I'm probably the only one that will tell you this, but I tried reading Neal Stephenson/Stevenson/However you spell it, and threw it out less than 100 pages in. Not just put it away, THREW IT OUT. Neal is apparently the James Joyce of SF, That is to say, he uses too many freaking words and doesn't really ever gets to the damn point, nor does he tell all that great a story. It's an "emperors new clothes" kind of book. The sophists will tell you it's great, but only because they think they *have* to in order to stay in the "in" sophist crowd. Well, I'm that little boy telling his daddy that the king is walking around naked. Not a good book.

One of the more hardcore SF authors out there, he uses ltos of good science and speculation to set up phenomenal situations in his books.

A good start would be his Giants Trilogy, now available as a compilation. (I don't think you can buy them new as individual books)

Cradle of Saturn is my favorite of his books that I've read.

You can see his website at http://www.jamesphogan.com.

Wow. And to think that Velikovsky was just about run out of the scientific community 50 years ago for putting forth a similar idea, among others -- that planets could form rather quickly, in years or hundreds of years, rather than the millions of years previously thought.

This is also sort of the subject of James P. Hogan's novel, Cradle of Saturn. If you've never read James P. Hogan, you should. Good, good stuff.

I seem to recall reading a (reasonably detailed) description of a system like this in a SF book. I think it was a book by James P Hogan, I can't remember which one though. (Hey, it's 7:30 AM on a sunday, my brain won't be on-line for another 4 hours)

If only it were true. Nuclear energy is environmentally the most harmful energy source imaginable because it leaves behind waste that is both highly toxic and completely indestructible by chemical or biological means. We should eliminate it completely as soon as possible--we just don't need it.

Interesting opinion. Care to support your claims? My personal opinion on nuclear power is opposite yours, and covered quite well in the short essay âoeKnow Nukesâ in Mind, Machines and Evolution by James P. Hogan.

He also has a site.

According to the following item by James P. Hogan, later MM type experiments -- using more accurate instruments -- showed that the Earth doesn't move through an "ether," as was originally thought, but does rotate in an local "ether" field that orbits the sun with the Earth.

I don't know if Michelson's 1925 results were ever reproduced by anyone else.

Hogan proposed that the MM experiment be conducted using spacecraft outside of the geosphere to settle the question, because conducting the experiment on Earth is like "trying to measure our airspeed with our pitot tube inside the cabin instead of outside in the atmosphere."

I've highlighted the relevant parts in bold, for those of you that want to skip the introduction.

http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/archives/relativity. shtml#081797

SUGGESTED NASA EXPERIMENT Posted on August 17, 1997

RELATIVITY EXPERIMENT


A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine at NASA invited me to submit any suggestions I might have for possible experiments to be carried out by future mission, involving advance physics. Since a few people have been in touch regarding the skepticism I've expressed in the past about the basis of Relativity, I thought my response might be of general interest, and so reproduce it below.

[To give credit where due, a virtually identical proposal was submitted to NASA some years ago by the late engineer and metallurgical consultant, Carl Zapffe. Nothing came of it. If anyone thinks I'm way off the mark, I'd be happy to hear from them.]

Dear Les,
Herewith the following, offered in response to your invitation.

INTERFEROMETRY BEYOND THE TERRESTRIAL MAGNETOPAUSE

The Einstein Special Relativity Theory (SRT), we all "know," forms one of the cornerstones of modern physics. Its predictions are utilized on a routine basis, and it has withstood every experimental test.

These predictions boil down, essentially, to applications of the principles of (i) mass-energy equivalence (E=mc*2), (ii) mass dependence on velocity, and (iii) time dilation. Experiments verifying these relationships have been performed with increasing precision in the course of the past century. These are the proofs that the textbooks cite in support of SRT, and which its defenders point to when questions are raised concerning Relativity basics.

But it turns out that _all_ of them can be derived by purely classical procedures, independently of any Relativistic considerations. They don't say anything unique about SRT at all. (i) follows from the principle of conservation of momentum and Maxwell's equations. Carl Zapffe gives three derivations in his book "A Reminder on E+mc*2 (sic)," with numerous references that show how it was implicit in the physics known at the end of the nineteenth century. Regarding (ii), Petr Beckmann, in his "Einstein Plus Two" (1987), shows how the increase of "mass" with velocity arises as a manifestation of the electrical inertia of charges moving through fields--analogous to aerodynamic drag.

Essentially, these are effects arising from the energy differences of relatively moving systems. The question they lead to is whether the results observed regarding (iii) (e.g. the extended lives of cosmic-ray muons) are in fact confirmation of "time" being dilated, as per SRT, or result from the physical slowing-down of clocklike processes in motion through a field. The only way to test this empirically would be to sit on an incoming muon and observe whether the laboratory clocks (at rest in the field) also slow down (as the observer-referred SRT holds) or speed up (as a field-referred theory would predict). This has never been done. (A whole literature exists on all this, but I don't think that here would be the place to elaborate further.)

So, the standard proofs turn out not to be proofs at all. All that's left, then, is the interpretation of the 1881 Michelson-Morley attempt to measure an "ether wind," and its many variations performed since.

The null results returned by these experiments have two possible interpretations: (1) There is no ether; (2) the ether local to the Earth is entrained in its orbit around the Sun. (1), of course, is the orthodox line. The constancy of the speed of light for all observers is a _postulate_ that follows from accepting this interpretation. Contrary to common belief, it has never been verified experimentally. (The claimed verifications all involve round-trip measurements that average out the c+/-v velocities that arise in field-referred theories.) Having thus conferred constancy on a velocity, it then becomes necessary to distort space and time in order to preserve it. This, in effect, is what the transformation equations of SRT do.

Treating the ether as a quasi-mechanical fluid was a natural consequence of the advances in materials sciences in the nineteenth century; the peculiar properties that followed from viewing it in this way make the readiness to go with interpretation (1), and abandon the ether altogether, understandable. The situation changes considerably, however, when reviewed in terms of today's ideas of fields (which isn't to say that the concept of fields was unknown then, of course). In particular, it has been shown (e.g. by Beckmann) that the results of all the experiments performed to date, normally taken as evidence supporting SRT, are equally consistent with an alternative interpretation in which the velocity of light is constant not with respect to the observer (as in SRT), but with respect to the field environment through which the light propagates. The difference is that the derivations follow more simply, without the distortions of space and time, and the accompanying mathematical complications of SRT; also, the field-referred theory has greater predictive power (e.g in enabling derivation of the spectral line spacings for the hydrogen atom). By the criteria normally claimed of science-- equally compatible with experimental results; simpler; more powerful predictively--this would become the preferred theory.

And, indeed, when thought of as the terrestrial electromagnetic field environment, the "ether" is indeed entrained and moves with the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The plots from NASA's own space probes show nothing clearer than the sharply defined boundary of the terrestrial magnetosphere ("geosphere"), extending out to about ten Earth radii, elongated like a teardrop pointing away from the Sun, forming a huge shock front around which the solar wind streams like the slipstream outside the hull of an airplane. And here, in our laboratories solidly nailed to our planet deep inside this bubble, is where, for a century, we have been attempting to measure our orbital slipstream. But, if the field-referred proposal is correct, that slipstream exists not in the vicinity of the Earth at all, but at the boundary where the embedded geosphere meets the magnetic "heliosphere" of the Sun (and very likely moves with it through a greater "galactosphere"). We've been trying to measure our airspeed with our pitot tube inside the cabin instead of outside in the atmosphere.

(The geosphere travels with the Earth but does not appear to rotate with it. Accordingly, a suitable Michelson-Morely type of experiment performed on the Earth's surface ought to be capable of detecting a "rotational wind"--although it would need to be far more sensitive than the 1881 experiment. Such an experiment was performed in 1925 by Michelson and Gale. Not only was a fringe shift observed, but it was possible to calculate the Earth's rotational velocity quite accurately from the results. Michelson himself was never enthusiastic about the orthodox interpretation, and continued to favor the entrained-ether alternative until his death.)

I would propose, therefore, an interferometry experiment designed along the lines of the Michelson-Morely prototype, but taking advantage of today's technologies, to be performed from a spacecraft _outside_ the geosphere boundary--preferably trailing the craft itself, to eliminate possible shielding effects within the structure. On emerging from the geosphere, the craft would be moving through the heliosphere with its shared orbital velocity of the Earth around the Sun, direct measurement of which should be easily accomplished if the field-centered hypothesis is valid. Thus, for the first time ever, an experiment would have been performed to distinguish between the observer-referred theory (SRT) and the alternative.

Should the results prove positive, such methods of "astro- interferometry" should be of particular interest to an organization like NASA because of the potential usefulness of the techniques that could follow, especially with regard to longer-range space missions in the future. For example, the fringe behavior might offer the basis for a spacegoing _odometer_ and _speedometer_ for measuring displacements and velocities relative to local (solar, planetary, or other) embedding fields. Also, the transitions between field domains could provide a means of _cosmographic mapping_ of a field-structured Solar System, and maybe of the interstellar environment beyond.

James P. Hogan

July 15, 1997

I buy about 200 used books for every new one (fiction, anyway) and I have actually had a few pangs of guilt about cutting the author out of whatever few pennies he would have gotten had I bought the new copy. Anyway, one day I was looking at (SF author) James Hogan's web site, and noticed that he lived in the same city as me, so I sent him an email, apologized for only buying his books used, and offered to buy him a beer to compensate for it. To my surprise, he took me up on it and I ended up buying him 6 pints of Guiness ($30 or so), which as far as I'm concerned eliminated my debt to every other SF author, living or dead, as well.

Here is a link to a description of the book on the Author's web site: http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/voyage/baen99/tit lepage.shtml

While it takes a while to get directly into this theme (building up essential background), the last two thirds of the book deals with the conflict between a post-scarcity culture and a relic population from a scarcity culture who lay claim to the post-scarcity culture and its land and infrastructure. The elite of the scarcity culture uses all sorts of rhetoric (reminds one of the MPAA or RIAA) to justify an attempt to take over the post-scarcity culture (including rationalizing the use of weapons of mass destruction to enforce scarcity). Very prescient for a novel written around 1982.

As a historical parallel, the outcome in the book makes me wonder what the outcome of the European invasion of the Americas would have been like if the Europeans hadn't had a chance to use biological weapons of mass destruction (such as blankets laced with smallpox) against the more sharing oriented Native Americans. http://thewinds.arcsnet.net/arc_features/newworld/ weapons_of_destruction1.html

James P. Hogan is one of my favorite writers. I think his "Two Faces of Tomorrow" should be required reading for all AI researchers or even anyone working in the technology field. http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/twoface/baen97/ti tlepage.shtml

Beyond respect, my "payment" for putting free content on the web is in a way all the other free content people put up. When you look at it that way, any "investment" in free content is returned a million times.

Here is a link to a description of the book on the Author's web site: http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/voyage/baen99/tit lepage.shtml

While it takes a while to get directly into this theme (building up essential background), the last two thirds of the book deals with the conflict between a post-scarcity culture and a relic population from a scarcity culture who lay claim to the post-scarcity culture and its land and infrastructure. The elite of the scarcity culture uses all sorts of rhetoric (reminds one of the MPAA or RIAA) to justify an attempt to take over the post-scarcity culture (including rationalizing the use of weapons of mass destruction to enforce scarcity). Very prescient for a novel written around 1982.

As a historical parallel, the outcome in the book makes me wonder what the outcome of the European invasion of the Americas would have been like if the Europeans hadn't had a chance to use biological weapons of mass destruction (such as blankets laced with smallpox) against the more sharing oriented Native Americans. http://thewinds.arcsnet.net/arc_features/newworld/ weapons_of_destruction1.html

James P. Hogan is one of my favorite writers. I think his "Two Faces of Tomorrow" should be required reading for all AI researchers or even anyone working in the technology field. http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/twoface/baen97/ti tlepage.shtml

Beyond respect, my "payment" for putting free content on the web is in a way all the other free content people put up. When you look at it that way, any "investment" in free content is returned a million times.

Sorry. I classify global warming in the same category as I classify the global epidemic of mad cow disease. It's a joke. James P. Hogan wrote a really good commentary on this called "Ozone Politics." It's a good read. You might be able to find it on his web site here.
So what if the climate is changing? There was an ice age not so long ago, remember? For some reason, I don't think that humanity's industrialized heat and waste output 100,000+ years ago had anything to do with warming the environment to what it is today. And what about the huge ozone hole detected in the 50's? Why don't we hear about things like this?
The reason is because the only information that makes the news is the information that supports a catastrophe. You can thank the media for that one.
So, while the rest of you whine about global warming and cover up, I'll be eating a nice hamburger made from european beef and afterwards I'll catch some rays on the beach.

I think it was an armada of alien pirates that made a stop at our beautifull planetary island. They filled up their hold with food and water and for the fun of it they kill of 80% of the planets population.

When leaving out solar system they made a stop at the 5th planet which they used for target practice. That one piece of the former planet happend to crash on earth and kill of the rest of the dinosaures were just bad luck.

By the way if you really what to know what happened to the 5th planet you should read a book called The Gigants Novel. A fantastic piece of scifi and i think superb material for a film!

A must read for any respectable computer nerd ;)

Plutonium is primarily dangerous to people due to its chemistry, not due to its radioactivity.

Which is the opposite of the truth. It's primarily the radiation that is dangerous. Plutonium thus gets less and less hazardous over time as the radiation diminishes, whereas arsenic and chlorine do not. That's why Hogan can sensibly make comparisons like "after ten years it's no more poisonous than X; after twenty years it's no more poisonous than Y." Because the radiation component of the danger diminishes and this is a significant fraction of the total threat. Oh, well. Read Hogan instead of me anyway...

Okay. Plutonium is primarily dangerous to people due to its chemistry, not due to its radioactivity. If you eat a sufficient amount of it you could die, just as you could if you drank bleach or ammonia, two common household chemicals. I'm not saying the plutonium isn't deadly - it is. What I am saying is that being deadly doesn't make it particularly unusual or dangerous if appropriately handled. And in fact nuclear waste _is_ less toxic to humans than those two common household chemicals after it's had some time to cool off.

Author James P. Hogan deals with some of this better than I do, especially in an essay he wrote called _Know Nukes_. So here's an item from his web page on the subject:

-----
Following the items I've posted advocating nuclear as ultimately the only way to go, a number of people have repeated the frequently asked question of what to do about the waste. My response is that it's a needlessly manufactured political problem, not a technical one. And in any case the problem itself is minor compared to what we have at present.

A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.

The hysteria about toxicity is not justified by anything factual. After its initial on-site cooling-off period (i.e. at the point where it would be transported to a deep-burial site as currently proposed) high-level wastes would be about as toxic as barium or arsenic if ingested, and 1/10th that of ammonia or 1/1000th that of chlorine--which we use liberally to clean our bathtubs and swimming pools-- if inhaled. After 100 years, these figures drop to 1/1000th, 1/100,000th, and 1/10,000,000th respectively. The"conventional" types of waste remain lethal, and far less easily detectable, forever.

Some figures:

250 nuclear plants would generate enough waste to kill 10 billion people. True, if it were freely accessible, and people obligingly lined up to receive their daily dose or intake of it. The same is probably true also of gasoline. By the same token the U.S already produces enough:

arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion people
barium to kill 100 billion.
ammonia to kill 6 trillion.
phosgene to kill 20 trillion.
chlorine to kill 400 trillion

As for plutonium having a long half-life, so what? Compost heaps and incense sticks have long half-lives; napalm bombs and gunpowder have short ones. The public health limits on plutonium in drinking water are 400 times higher than for radium, which is used safely as a matter of course in practically every hospital.

In short, N-waste turns out to be significantly less hazardous than many other substances that are handled routinely in far greater volumes, and with far less care.

The sensible way to deal with waste (actually a potentially valuable by-product) is to reprocess it into new fuel and burn it up in reactors, which not only solves the "problem" but would save about $4 billion in imported oil costs in the lifetime of a 1,000 MW plant. Roughly 96% of the spent fuel that comes out of a plant can be handled in this way. The remaining "high level" waste from a year's operation of a 1,000 MW (large) plant takes up about half a cubic yard.

This is what the U.S. nuclear industry was set up to do--as the rest of the world is doing--until political obstructionism in the late 1970s halted work on the Barnwell facility in South Carolina, which was being built to handle commercial wastes. Legislation passed at the same time cut the utilities off from the military facilities that had been handling commercial wastes safely since the 1950's. The result was that 100% of what comes out of the reactors is having to be treated as if it were high-level waste, to be stored in ways that were never intended, and this is what gets all the publicity.

So, in answer to "What about the waste?" What about it?
-----

Okay. Plutonium is primarily dangerous to people due to its chemistry, not due to its radioactivity. If you eat a sufficient amount of it you could die, just as you could if you drank bleach or ammonia, two common household chemicals. I'm not saying the plutonium isn't deadly - it is. What I am saying is that being deadly doesn't make it particularly unusual or dangerous if appropriately handled. And in fact nuclear waste _is_ less toxic to humans than those two common household chemicals after it's had some time to cool off.

Author James P. Hogan deals with some of this better than I do, especially in an essay he wrote called _Know Nukes_. So here's an item from his web page on the subject:

-----
Following the items I've posted advocating nuclear as ultimately the only way to go, a number of people have repeated the frequently asked question of what to do about the waste. My response is that it's a needlessly manufactured political problem, not a technical one. And in any case the problem itself is minor compared to what we have at present.

A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.

The hysteria about toxicity is not justified by anything factual. After its initial on-site cooling-off period (i.e. at the point where it would be transported to a deep-burial site as currently proposed) high-level wastes would be about as toxic as barium or arsenic if ingested, and 1/10th that of ammonia or 1/1000th that of chlorine--which we use liberally to clean our bathtubs and swimming pools-- if inhaled. After 100 years, these figures drop to 1/1000th, 1/100,000th, and 1/10,000,000th respectively. The"conventional" types of waste remain lethal, and far less easily detectable, forever.

Some figures:

250 nuclear plants would generate enough waste to kill 10 billion people. True, if it were freely accessible, and people obligingly lined up to receive their daily dose or intake of it. The same is probably true also of gasoline. By the same token the U.S already produces enough:

arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion people
barium to kill 100 billion.
ammonia to kill 6 trillion.
phosgene to kill 20 trillion.
chlorine to kill 400 trillion

As for plutonium having a long half-life, so what? Compost heaps and incense sticks have long half-lives; napalm bombs and gunpowder have short ones. The public health limits on plutonium in drinking water are 400 times higher than for radium, which is used safely as a matter of course in practically every hospital.

In short, N-waste turns out to be significantly less hazardous than many other substances that are handled routinely in far greater volumes, and with far less care.

The sensible way to deal with waste (actually a potentially valuable by-product) is to reprocess it into new fuel and burn it up in reactors, which not only solves the "problem" but would save about $4 billion in imported oil costs in the lifetime of a 1,000 MW plant. Roughly 96% of the spent fuel that comes out of a plant can be handled in this way. The remaining "high level" waste from a year's operation of a 1,000 MW (large) plant takes up about half a cubic yard.

This is what the U.S. nuclear industry was set up to do--as the rest of the world is doing--until political obstructionism in the late 1970s halted work on the Barnwell facility in South Carolina, which was being built to handle commercial wastes. Legislation passed at the same time cut the utilities off from the military facilities that had been handling commercial wastes safely since the 1950's. The result was that 100% of what comes out of the reactors is having to be treated as if it were high-level waste, to be stored in ways that were never intended, and this is what gets all the publicity.

So, in answer to "What about the waste?" What about it?
-----

Of course, if we'd come to our senses and explore nuclear energy properly and scientifically instead of telling horror stories about Chernobyl we'd be moving in the right direction.

Author James P Hogan maintains an excellent website, of special interest to folks in this discussion are his thoughts on energy.

From one of his articles:

A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.

Nuclear's not looking so bad, eh? ;)

Also a similar concept to "The Two Faces of Tomorrow".