"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."
The point is, you are imposing scarcity upon the show, which does not exist in the show.
Consider Moriarty episodes (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/James_Moriarty_(hologram)). Again, no mention of constraints on holodeck usage. You're inventing constraints with no evidence from within the show itself. Moriarty ends up living in an endlessly running holodeck program.
Consider also a replicator. It ends scarcity of food (or anything it can replicate, such as itself). Under a scarcity model, food should have no value since it is no longer scarce, and no one should want to produce it. But such a model is irrelevant since no one has to produce food anymore: the replicator does it. Old models based on scarcity simply don't apply.
The show doesn't treat the holodeck as a scarce resource. You're putting your own ideology into the show. Anyone who wants to use it appears to be able to use it as much as they like.
There is no mention of rationing holodeck time or the scarce resources of the holodeck or Barclay trading favors. The holodeck is not considered a scarce resource.
The problem is that science requires faith in measurement devices, faith that repetition provides a basis for faith, faith in logical postulates such as the law of non-contradiction and excluded middle.
"Religion is based on Iron Age superstition (Scientology and Buddhism* are excepted)."
Jainism is older than Buddhism, and has a highly developed logical theory called anekantvada. Jain theories of karma and pudgal use similar language to how physics describes the Higgs, for example.
Buddhism was driven out of India; it was forgetten for centuries that the Buddha had come from India. Jainism survived in India despite prosecution by Muslims and others.
A droplet bouncing on a vertically vibrated bath can become coupled to the surfacewave it generates.It thus becomes a "walker" moving at constant velocity on the interface. Here the motion ofthese walkersis investigated when they passthrough one or two slitslimiting the transverse extent of their wave. In both cases a given single walker seems randomly scattered. However, diffraction or interference patterns are recovered in the histogram of the deviations of many successive walkers. The similarities and differences of these results with those obtained with single particles at the quantum scale are discussed.
In 2005, Couder, Protiere, Fort and Badouad showed that oil droplets bouncing on a vibrating tray of oil can display nonlocal interactions reminiscent of the particle-wave associations in quantum mechanics; in particular they can move, attract, repel and orbit each other. Subsequent experimental work by Couder, Fort, Protiere, Eddi, Sultan, Moukhtar, Rossi, Molacek, Bush and Sbitnev has established that bouncing drops exhibit single-slit and double-slit diraction, tunnelling, quantised energy levels, Anderson localisation and the creation/annihilation of droplet/bubble pairs. In this paper we explain why. We show rst that the surface waves guiding the droplets are Lorentz covariant with the characteristic speed c of the surface waves; second, that pairs of bouncing droplets experience an inverse-square force of attraction or repulsion according to their relative phase, and an analogue of the magnetic force; third, that bouncing droplets are governed by an analogue of Schrodinger's equation where Planck's constant is replaced by an appropriate constant of the motion; and fourth, that orbiting droplet pairs exhibit spin-half symmetry and align antisymmetrically as in the Pauli exclusion principle. Our analysis explains the similarities between bouncing-droplet experiments and the behaviour of quantum-mechanical particles. It also enables us to highlight some dierences, and to predict some surprising phenomena that can be tested in feasible experiments.
The problem is, Couder's bouncing droplets require an ether, a substrate. But they are such a good model.
In the summer of 2001 a drought in the northwest states reduced the amount of hydroelectric power available to California. Though at no point during the crisis was California's sum of actual electric-generating capacity plus out-of-state supply less than demand, California's energy reserves were low enough that during peak hours the private industry which owned power-generating plants could effectively hold the State hostage by shutting down their plants for "maintenance" in order to manipulate supply and demand. These critical shutdowns often occurred for no other reason than to force California's electricity grid managers into a position where they would be forced to purchase electricity on the "spot market", where private generators could charge astronomical rates.
That's pretty glib. How can you say what the long-term consequences are? And who are you to proclaim what is inconvenient for others? Wait, are you being paid by the oil company to astroturf?
Elasticity in the money supply is essential, and was recognized as such by the private sector. Panics resulted from money being taken out of the stock market to supply farmers with their deposits on a seasonal basis.
"that's the way free markets are supposed to work."
The free market doesn't care about the General Welfare or the public interest. Government does.
I blame Reagan for everything (War on Drugs, ripping solar panels off the White House, Meese the Pig, etc.). The only good thing Reagan did was prove that deficits don't matter.
In Zimbabwe, as in Venezuela now, they are exchanging their currency for US dollars, because US dollars are the new gold. The demand for dollars far outweighs the supply, so "massive inflation" is not an issue.
Inflation is psychological, not physical. Just because there is more money, why do you have to raise your prices? It is a choice, and a sociopathic one. It is like the head of Carlin Financial, quoted in the article: “It’s not just enough to fly in first class; I have to know my friends are flying in coach.” Or Colbert saying "Everyone knows you can only appreciate what you have by seeing other people that can't have it. That's why I had my wedding banquet in a soup kitchen. Those people across the room eating the thin gruel just made my Rosemary chicken that much more delicious."
One way to deal with inflation is with indexing. Make it seamless, automated, so that it becomes transparent to people.
I like C. H. Douglas's Social credit definition of money:
According to economists, money is a medium of exchange. Douglas argued that this may have once been the case when the majority of wealth was produced by individuals who subsequently exchanged it with each other. But in modern economies, division of labour splits production into multiple processes, and wealth is produced by people working in association with each other. For instance, an automobile worker does not produce any wealth (i.e., the automobile) by himself, but only in conjunction with other auto workers, the producers of roads, gasoline, insurance, etc. In this view, wealth is a pool upon which people can draw, and money becomes a ticketing system. The efficiency gained by individuals cooperating in the productive process was coined by Douglas as the “unearned increment of association” – historic accumulations of which constitute what Douglas called the cultural heritage. The means of drawing upon this pool is money distributed by the banking system.
Douglas believed that money should not be regarded as a commodity but rather as a ticket, a means of distribution of production.
In the 19nth century, when prices were falling, the small farmers were being hurt because there wasn't enough inflation, so they kept owing more and more to the banks. So they formed the Greenback Party, ahead of its time, urging the US to get off the gold standard permanently (Lincoln had already printed over $400 million greenbacks during the Civil War, and species payment had been suspended, so the gold standard wasn't rigidly adhered to), and print more greenbacks. The small farmers understood that deflation benefited the big money holders more than the poor.
The problem with the gold standard is that it didn't permit elasticity. Elasticity in the money supply was needed during times of panic, or with seasonal variations in the demand for money. So farmers would withdraw money to get product to market in the fall, and the banks would pull it out of the stock market to pay them in gold, and the stock market would crash and there would be a panic. So the banks on their own evolved a clearinghouse system that functioned essentially like a central bank, creating credit, using paper money. Eventually the private sector agreed it was better for the government to run a centralized clearinghouse, rather than let J. P. Morgan run it, because Morgan had no obligation to serve the public interest, and could help his friends and hurt his enemies. So after Morgan ended the Panic of 1907, it was generally agreed upon by the private sector that the creation of the Fed was a better idea.
Inflation is used as a scare tactic by gold-mongers. One common story is: a suit cost $20 in 1920 (or whenever). But how much was a computer in 1920? $Infinity, because they didn't exist. So along with some inflation, came a huge increase in standard of living and technology. An increasing money supply fuels innovation. The Song Dynasty in China was the first to experiment with paper money, and saw great innovations as a consequence.
I think corps are fucking us by harping on government debt, which has never mattered and is not the crisis they cynically claim it is, when in private they laugh and tell each other "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and wait till their party gets in so they can run up the debt to new record levels. Because they know it doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't Dark Energy discovered after that book? Something that occupies some 70% of the universe?
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote."
Michelson, 1903
The point is, you are imposing scarcity upon the show, which does not exist in the show.
Consider Moriarty episodes (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/James_Moriarty_(hologram)). Again, no mention of constraints on holodeck usage. You're inventing constraints with no evidence from within the show itself. Moriarty ends up living in an endlessly running holodeck program.
Consider also a replicator. It ends scarcity of food (or anything it can replicate, such as itself). Under a scarcity model, food should have no value since it is no longer scarce, and no one should want to produce it. But such a model is irrelevant since no one has to produce food anymore: the replicator does it. Old models based on scarcity simply don't apply.
The show doesn't treat the holodeck as a scarce resource. You're putting your own ideology into the show. Anyone who wants to use it appears to be able to use it as much as they like.
I just read through the synopsis of the "Hollow Pursuits" episode, at http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
There is no mention of rationing holodeck time or the scarce resources of the holodeck or Barclay trading favors. The holodeck is not considered a scarce resource.
The writers of that episode didn't think of MOOCs?
How come Barclay could easily use the Holodeck as much as he wanted? Credits weren't really scarce.
The only real scarcity in Star Trek was of knowledge. The Prime Directive inexplicably furthered that scarcity.
Harsh words on the internet beat shooting up schools.
Did they put the arrows back at the top and bottom of the scrollbar? I use those a lot.
The article claims 70 barrels were leaked. One barrel is 42 US gallons. 70 * 42 = 2940 gallons. More than twice what you glibly wrote.
Is the oil dumped naturally concentrated in one neighborhood? Does anyone live in the areas where that oil is naturally seeping?
Your reasoning process contains a lot of handwaving.
Freeing oneself from reincarnation is rare. Reincarnation is the norm.
Note also that Pythagoras believed in metempsychosis, which is very similar to reincarnation.
"Faith is belief without evidence.
Science is about getting evidence."
The problem is that science requires faith in measurement devices, faith that repetition provides a basis for faith, faith in logical postulates such as the law of non-contradiction and excluded middle.
"Religion is based on Iron Age superstition (Scientology and Buddhism* are excepted)."
Jainism is older than Buddhism, and has a highly developed logical theory called anekantvada. Jain theories of karma and pudgal use similar language to how physics describes the Higgs, for example.
Buddhism was driven out of India; it was forgetten for centuries that the Buddha had come from India. Jainism survived in India despite prosecution by Muslims and others.
Another indication that supports the ether: Yves Couder's work with silicone droplets.
Abstract of the Physical Review Letters paper:
Brady and Anderson further discuss the implications:
The problem is, Couder's bouncing droplets require an ether, a substrate. But they are such a good model.
Yeah let's have some REAL leaks like the Elk River spill in West Virginia!
I think he wants to trust in the invisible hand to fix the very real problems. If the people affected don't like it, why don't they just move?
The statement that the system was "_out of water_" is an exaggeration.
According to http://www.sanfranciscobay.sie...:"The year 2000 was about average for rainfall (97% of typical precipitation)".
Wikipedia says:
That's pretty glib. How can you say what the long-term consequences are? And who are you to proclaim what is inconvenient for others? Wait, are you being paid by the oil company to astroturf?
Elasticity in the money supply is essential, and was recognized as such by the private sector. Panics resulted from money being taken out of the stock market to supply farmers with their deposits on a seasonal basis.
"that's the way free markets are supposed to work."
The free market doesn't care about the General Welfare or the public interest. Government does.
I blame Reagan for everything (War on Drugs, ripping solar panels off the White House, Meese the Pig, etc.). The only good thing Reagan did was prove that deficits don't matter.
In Zimbabwe, as in Venezuela now, they are exchanging their currency for US dollars, because US dollars are the new gold. The demand for dollars far outweighs the supply, so "massive inflation" is not an issue.
Inflation is psychological, not physical. Just because there is more money, why do you have to raise your prices? It is a choice, and a sociopathic one. It is like the head of Carlin Financial, quoted in the article: “It’s not just enough to fly in first class; I have to know my friends are flying in coach.” Or Colbert saying "Everyone knows you can only appreciate what you have by seeing other people that can't have it. That's why I had my wedding banquet in a soup kitchen. Those people across the room eating the thin gruel just made my Rosemary chicken that much more delicious."
One way to deal with inflation is with indexing. Make it seamless, automated, so that it becomes transparent to people.
The interest on bonds bought by the Fed is returned to the Treasury. So let the Fed buy T-bills, and fund the government at zero cost.
I like C. H. Douglas's Social credit definition of money:
In the 19nth century, when prices were falling, the small farmers were being hurt because there wasn't enough inflation, so they kept owing more and more to the banks. So they formed the Greenback Party, ahead of its time, urging the US to get off the gold standard permanently (Lincoln had already printed over $400 million greenbacks during the Civil War, and species payment had been suspended, so the gold standard wasn't rigidly adhered to), and print more greenbacks. The small farmers understood that deflation benefited the big money holders more than the poor.
The problem with the gold standard is that it didn't permit elasticity. Elasticity in the money supply was needed during times of panic, or with seasonal variations in the demand for money. So farmers would withdraw money to get product to market in the fall, and the banks would pull it out of the stock market to pay them in gold, and the stock market would crash and there would be a panic. So the banks on their own evolved a clearinghouse system that functioned essentially like a central bank, creating credit, using paper money. Eventually the private sector agreed it was better for the government to run a centralized clearinghouse, rather than let J. P. Morgan run it, because Morgan had no obligation to serve the public interest, and could help his friends and hurt his enemies. So after Morgan ended the Panic of 1907, it was generally agreed upon by the private sector that the creation of the Fed was a better idea.
Inflation is used as a scare tactic by gold-mongers. One common story is: a suit cost $20 in 1920 (or whenever). But how much was a computer in 1920? $Infinity, because they didn't exist. So along with some inflation, came a huge increase in standard of living and technology. An increasing money supply fuels innovation. The Song Dynasty in China was the first to experiment with paper money, and saw great innovations as a consequence.
I think corps are fucking us by harping on government debt, which has never mattered and is not the crisis they cynically claim it is, when in private they laugh and tell each other "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and wait till their party gets in so they can run up the debt to new record levels. Because they know it doesn't matter.