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Doh -- I missed mentioning that "Phase" wiring, one of the first ones mentioned, is for AC circuits. Until I read the list on the wiki page a little more deeply, I hadn't noticed that. Interestingly, what I noticed from the link you posted was that the coloring seemed to correlate pretty well to the wiki page, so perhaps I misunderstood your post as disagreeing with the parent post:

http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/ac_wiring.htm

Usually, three copper wires come into the home. Two are covered in black insulation and one has white insulation. Sometimes one wire is red instead of black. Each black or red wire is called a "hot" wire and has 110-volt AC. The white wire is called the "common" and is grounded at the power station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_wiring_in_North_America#Design_and_installation_conventions

Phase wire in a circuit may be black, red, orange (high leg delta) insulated wire, sometimes other colors, but never green, gray, or white (whether these are solid colors or stripes).
The neutral wire is identified by gray or white insulated wire, perhaps with stripes.
Grounding wire of circuit may be bare or identified insulated wire of green or having green stripes.

> The history of science shows you that there are a lot of the former.

This is what I'm disputing.

> Just look at how long it took for QM and GR to become widely accepted.

I do know about QM. It took many years to get the theory ironed out - there was what we now call "old QM" which wasn't quite correct. Of course this older, and incorrect, idea wasn't promoted to the status of Quantum Mechanics.

As for GR, it started in about 1910, and it took Einstein about 5 years to write down and was published in 1916, and then it took another 3 years until it could be tested by looking at the deflection of light. And this is all going on during World War 1.

The Nazis actually got 100 German scientists, including Nobel Prize Winners, to come out and say that Einstein was wrong, because they disliked "Jewish science".

Yet despite of all of this, according to http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/gravitation_relativity.htm it was almost universally accepted as soon as there was evidence for it.

What is your version of events to claim that scientists rejected the theory out of dogma?

> Extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence to be accepted, but they shouldn't require extraordinary evidence to be published or funded for further study.

And they don't - both of your examples, GR and QM, were published before there was evidence. They only need to be logically sound and hopefully fit existing data.

I read the URL, and I agree with the editors. Claims MUST require strong evidence. If there is not evidence for your idea, then instead you should state that and not make a claim otherwise.

If there are mistakes in your paper, and they caught, then the paper should be rejected, revised, and resubmitted. I can't see why you would think otherwise.

> And read Kuhn's work (and other works on the history of science) showing how much resistance there is even to contemplating new ideas

Uh, no, Kuhn's work is resisted because he was just plain wrong. He seriously proposed the ancient of idea that mental health was due to humors in the body. Without a single piece of evidence. And claimed that all ideas were equally valid. And dismissed science as just 'puzzle solving'. If he does not come up with a falsifiable model with better predictions than what we have now, then of course he deserves to be dismissed.

> what makes it "extraordinary" is just that current theory simply can't deal with such a possibility at all.

Right. Disagreeing with the current theories, which have tons of evidence for them, requires extraordinary evidence. Glad we agree. :)

You can destroy anything if you apply the right force. Making a bald statement that a phone (or anything else) is unbreakable will just prompt some folks to find the right force, even if it isn't something the phone would normally experience.

How true.

Did you notice that he hit the screen against the corner of the tank?

Now if I remember correctly from high school a force applied to a small surface area means high pressure.

http://www.school-for-champions.com/SCIENCE/pressure.htm

Great to see this in practice. ;-)

• Perhaps, instead of trying to shoot them all yourself, you need to find some kind of predator that'll keep their numbers down. - introduction of non-native species is likely to be disastrous; they'd likely do the job, but then you have another problem on your hands. It is very risky - remember Australian rabbits and European {sparrow,starling} in North America. Shooting of squirrels is the absolutely best, ecologically speaking, way to control the population. Poisons are largely illegal (100% illegal where it matters, like on farms.)
• Would cats be good for this? - Not likely; both[1] species of California ground squirrels are about the size of a cat, and they are faster, and they have excellent underground burrows. Squirrels also live in colonies and notify each other about the danger. Squirrels prefer areas that offer good visibility of ground- and air-based predators. All in all, I doubt that a cat could even win the battle. It is also important that a wild squirrel is far more aggressive than a domestic cat, and its claws are longer than cat's own (and not retractable.)
• rattlesnakes eat them - first of all, I'd take 1,000 squirrels instead of one rattler :-) Also note that some populations of adult squirrels are partially immune to the poison; also note that squirrels learned to confuse snakes by chewing on rattler's shed skin, and by heating their tails.
• Maybe you could catch some feral cats and relocate them to your area. - this is illegal, even if there was an easy way to catch a feral cat :-) Also cats are rare here, somehow, which is sad because I like cats.
• Trees can be protected by wrapping the base with light-gauge metal - yes, this is known, particularly useful against rabbits. Looks ugly, though :-) but in 2010 I'll probably leave my squirrels alone for a year (to let them multiply a bit) and protect the trees instead. I have no intention of exterminating them all; I only want to let them know who pays the property taxes ;-)

[1] The other species is Spermophilus richardsonii, they live in North California / South Oregon.

Paper must reach the temperature of 451 F (233 C) to burn. But the water in the box is less than 212 F (100 C) and any heat added to the paper will be absorbed into the water by conduction. The paper and water will be at the same temperature. In fact, any material you use that readily conducts heat will stay at about the temperature of the water.

Once all the water has turned to steam, the cardboard or paper will burn.

For the first time since the War of 1812, the US Mainland was hit in war.

You might want to check your history facts. Santa Barbara was shelled by a Japanese submarine in February 1942. A few months later, another Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. Both of these locations are on the U.S. mainland and both were hit "in war." Furthermore, Oregon happens to be the only location on the U.S. mainland to suffer a deaths from the otherwise ineffectual Japanese "balloon bombs." Mainland attack, since the War of 1812, with a fatality no less.

Now for the rest of your post, I happen to agree that the terrorism threat is waaaay overblown. However, I also think that the long-term threat of radical Islam is a real threat that should not be so easily dismissed. There is a war going on, but it's a war on cultural/religious diversity.

My point was that students aren't dilettantes either

Then your point is by its very nature fallacious.

diletante:
- An amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge
(WordWeb 4.5a wordweb.info)

- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=define:dilettante&spell=1

By definition, this is what most students are in my 6 plus years of formal post-high school education, and my many years of informal or work-sponsored education. Students are NOT by definition experts. Students are by there very nature not professionals. But there is a difference between the word "scholar" and the word "student" that should be noted. Not all students are scholars, but all scholars are students.

Most students (in my experience) are students because they want to get a token degree or diploma because they want a reasonably paying job doing something that isn't manual or tedious labour.

In my experience most students cheat and are quite frankly not as interested in learning or doing something good as they are in passing or getting good grades. This is so ubiquitous I shouldn't even have to mention it. For good measure I will leave you with a couple of references:

Recent survey results from the Educational Testing Service and the Ad Council suggest that 75 percent to 98 percent of students cheat in high school, compared to just 20 percent of students during the 1940s. Indications are that just as many students cheat in college and graduate school too. Students say they resort to cheating due to heavy workloads, unclear rules, and lack of faculty assistance.

- http://www.live-pr.com/en/the-majority-of-us-students-cheat-r1048171088.htm

Also:

The typical comment is that what's important is getting the job done. How you get it done is less important... Other grad-student cheaters include: engineering students, 54%; physical sciences, 50%; medical and health-care, 49%; law, 45%; liberal arts, 43%; and social science and humanities students, 39%.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/1614232

Also:
- http://www.school-for-champions.com/character/newberger_cheating2.htm

Being able to expect to contribute "publishable" material as a reference for the world to use as a learning exercise for a "student" is highly suspect. Learning is learning. Publishing as a learning exercise is something else. Publishing because you are motivated, and expert in your field is yet again something completely different. A person does not have to have a PhD to be an expert. But a student by it's very definition is not an expert.

Your quotes:

They'd still do well to undertake the exercise of writing and expressing ideas like an academic.

Sure, as long as they are not exploiting WikiPedia just to pass a course, it makes sense to me.

If you're studying at tertiary level, you should be getting the background knowledge of your field, and you should have an interest in your chosen field

- You use the word "should" a lot, and I agree, but the word "should" is not relevant to actually being a student. Medical students should practice on patients, but most people would not want any random medical student doing heart surgery on them, much less an under-grad or pre-med.

Furthermore, I'm intrigued (/amused) by your idea that academics shouldn't have to do research and publish papers.

Don't mean to sound sarcastic, but you sound like a student. Of course I NEVER said what you stated, but your in

I own several ANC/ENC headsets for use in aircraft. They are abso-friggin-lutely fantastic! The first time I tried one on I was completely sold on it. I was sitting next to a humming Coke machine, flipped the ANC switch, and... silence! My ears have thanked me ever since.

My best headset has a Noise Reduction Rating (passive) of 23 dB, and an active NRR of 20 dB, totalling about 43 dB of noise reduction. To say that you are still being pounded with 90dB of energy sounds implausable given that waves 180 degress out of phase with each other would completely destroy each other--drop two pebbles in the water and watch where the waves interfere with each other, the water will be still. Also, here's a bit of a sales pitch about ANR/ENC technology.

"if there's no scarcity in labor, there's no money."

Horsepower, kiloWatts both measure how quickly work can be done.

e.g.
http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/electp ower.htm

Same thing. Machines do things faster because they consume energy faster. We'll move to an economy based on energy consumption rather than labour.

No need to explain. Crap metaphor says it all.

Winston Churchill was one of the greatest people of the past century. We all owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Here is a starting point for a glimpse into his life. He was also the master of the snappy comeback. My favorite: "Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee. Winston: If I were your husband, I'd drink it."

I take the point you make about pseudoscience and free energy devices etc. It's interesting to note through that Tesla did believe in "free energy". His thought and experiments in wireless transmission of electrical energy was that people around the world could tap into his free energy system. It was free in that anybody could use it without cost, but it still had to be generated and he planned on tapping the massive hydroelectric potential to feed his network. Because there was no way to put up a meter and charge people for the use of this electricity he was considered a little crazy and could not find any serious backers for his project. (J. P. Morgan in fact pulled funding of the Warden-clyffe Tower project in 1905 after learning of Tesla's plans to use it to send free energy with the technology he was developing.) Tesla did, I understand, conduct practical experiments and successfully transmit power through wireless transmission over some distance with little loss.

Tesla's business accumen I'd almost go as far to say was inversely proportional to his genius in invention.

I did a quick search on the 6 million I said I thought Westinghouse owed as royalty. I found that in 1907 Westinghouse paid him $216,000 to settle the royality problem which was a LOT less than the 12 million (not 6 million) that it was valued at that time. ref. I imagine 12 million dollars in 1907 would be worth hundreds if not billions today (if you didn't loose in the two may sharemarket crashes between then and now ;)

how it works it also has more informative links.

Am I the only person who doesn't use a Cell Phone these days? Would you hold the back of a TV set to the side of your head?

Not unless you are into radiation therapy.

Granted X-rays are higher energy waves than cell phones, but that stuff adds up.

Look here for info on some of the other classic stunts.

Sources? Links? Reasons we should take your statement as fact or truth?

The 2000 annual report has a catagory of 'Blades and Razors' - but does not give a breakdown on just the razors, so they could be selling the razors at a loss, and making up the shortage on the income from the blades - exactly what King Gillette started way back when. Where are you seeing otherwise?

Or is this a troll?

Story of Archimedes

The ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, Archimedes was asked by the king to determine if a gold statue he had was 100% gold. Since it was an odd shape, Archimedes could not simply measure the volume to determine the object's density and thus its composition.

Archimedes decided to take a hot bath, to help him think about this problem. When he got in the bath tub, he noticed the water rise. This clue led to the discovery that an object will displace its volume when immersed in a liquid. When Archimedes realized that objects displace their volume in water, he excitedly jumped out of the tub and ran down the streets shouting, "Eureka! Eureka!" which means, "I have found it!" Unfortunately, he didn't notice that he forgot to put his clothes on! When Archimedes put the statue in a container full of water, he measured the volume of the overflow to determine the volume of the statue. Then he measured the weight of the statue and compared its density with the known density of pure gold. He discovered that the statue was not made of pure gold, rather it contained some other metal, like lead.