The problem is that the health care system in the USA, with its mix of government regulation and funding and private insurance companies, wastes an awful lot of money. Blind folks attribute that to the government regulation and funding, ignoring the fact that every other industrialized country in the world has much more government involvement in health care, and pays much less.
The best health care in the USA comes from the VA (Veteran's Administration). Yes, once again the beautiful, theoretical, ship of libertarianism is dashed to pieces by the ugly, rocky facts. The VA knows it has a captive audience, so they know that they will reap the benefits of investmenting in lifetime patient tracking. The VA pays attention to which treatments work, and which ones don't. Then they stop doing the treatments that aren't effective.
Most CFs sold in stores have a color temp of 2700K. This is a dull color, off-white almost blue in hue. A 4100K bulb is what you would call a traditional "soft white" You can get 5100K bulbs which are bright white.
You have this backward. A low temperature is a "warmer", redder color. A higher temperature is a "cooler" bluer color. Think of metal heated in a furnace. Low temperature, and it glows red; heat it more, and it turns orange, and then white.
We know Chemistry; we know about the periodic table, and we know nuclear physics. That's a lot of data that enables us to draw real conclusions. We can say, with certainty, that chemistry and physics on alien worlds will work the same way that chemistry and physics work here on earth. Alien Biochemistry will work with the elements we know and understand. Hydrogen is Hydrogen, Oxygen is Oxygen, and where they meet it's wet. Chemistry is chemistry, so we know that any environment containing liquid methane will not have a lot of energy available to power biochemical reactions -- if it did, the methane would boil.
For the last 30 years, all of semiconductors has been based on "and it'll be even cheaper in six to nine months". It has always been "buy it now, or wait six to nine months for the next cool stuff".
You can make a single-rotor helicoptor. It just can't torque the rotor blade itself. If you fed compressed air into the rotor, and it had a backward-pointing nozzle at the tip of each blade that spun the rotor, then you could fly with only one rotor.
Prolly wouldn't be very efficient, which is why it isn't used much today. Maybe as a childrens' toy, with a balloon for the source of compressed air?
It's conceivable, though highly unlikely, that one day evolution will be disproven completely
When Einstein's General Relativity 'overthrew' Newtonian mechanics, it had to do two thing: explain all the things that Newtonian mechanics got right, and also give a different answer to some question that could be answered with observables of the day. It did that in explaining the precession of Mercury and showing that gravity bent starlight.
Was Newtonian mechanics 'disproved completely'? It works well enough to get the Cassini-Huygens space probe to fly by Venus, Earth, Earth and Jupiter, picking up enough momentum with each flyby to actually make it into orbit around Saturn.
I have trouble conceiving of an observation, or a discrepency, that would "disprove completely" the fundamental pillars of evolution: descent with modification, and differential reproductive success. Sure, there will be i's dotted and t's crossed with details like the relative power of sexual and kin selection. Understanding the precise conditions that lead to mutations. but the basics are so blindingly obvious and unimpeachable that I can't honestly say there's a chance that they're all wrong.
An article in The Atlantic from a year or two ago, titled "The Oil We Eat", mentioned that human activitiy consumes half of the solar energy that plants collect. Two-thirds of that half is directly from agriculture (including feed for domestic animals), the other third is burning forests and waste to clear land. This figure included plat life in the oceans, and deducted our share of that consumed from fish.
Getting calories from animal protein consumes between 10x and 100x the amount of plant calories consumed. So increasing the percentage of meat in the world-wide diet to the amount in American diets would increase the world-wide consumption of plant calories between 3x and 5x. So we would be consuming 150% to 250% of the energy captured by all plants.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Both "being necessary to the security of a free state" and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" are clauses that affect the noun, "A well regulated militia".
Apple paid Xerox for the rights to commercialize their technology. The price was options on 100,000 shares of Apple stock at $10 per share. It's easy enough to find if your search engine goes back and covers 1979-1981.
For years and years, Gone with the Wind was the highest grossing film of all time. It was eclipsed by Jaws, and then Star Wars, and then I forget, and then Titanic.
I think the parent gets it. George Lucas made a Space Opera, that was the highest grossing film ever for a little while.
All of a sudden, the concept of Science Fiction was so totally overshadowed by Space Opera that Hollywood wouldn't do Science Fiction any more, only Space Opera (and, for a while, Star Trek).
I used to be a huge Science Fiction fan. I asked my parents to take me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in the theaters first run... I was too young to read the red flashing lights (but figured out that the frost on the windows and the flat lines on the monitors was a bad thing....) I subscribed to Analog for many years, and read each issue as it came out. Star Trek: The Next Generation was huge to me. But then something happened, and I lost interest.
I read the collection of stories titled "I, Robot" years and years ago. I even found "The Rest of the Robots".
I found "I, Robot" to be an enjoyable film. It wasn't a film adaptation of the collection of short stories. The only way that could be done is as a series. Get past the title, and enjoy the tale, I say.
Interstellar travel presents daunting problems. 186,282 piles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. So travel times will be long. Life support requirements will be huge. Knowing much about what will be there when you get there will be impossible. I don't think we will be able to overcome these (and many other) problems in my lifetime.
On the other hand, I believe in UFOs. People all over the world observe phenomena that could be objects they can't identify in the sky. These reports from France are more recordings of observations. I do not believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles. Not enough evidence for that.
Either we are alone in the universe, or there are other intelligent, techological civilizations out there. Knowing either one is true would be profound.
The old saying: Me against my Brother Me and my Brother against my Cousins Me, my Brother, and my Cousins against my Clan Me, my Brother, my Cousins and my Clan against my Tribe Me, my Brother, my Cousins, my Clan, and my Tribe agaist the others.
Ones loyalty to others is proportional to how closely they are related to you. The biologists call this "Kin Selection". Helping your siblings' children to survive is as good for your genes as helping your own grandchildren.
Also of interest is the results from game theory; "iterated prisoner's dilemma". When the usual dilemma (2 players; each chooses a strategy, traditionally either cooperation or defection, and the payoff matrix rewards one player defecting, but punishes both players if they both defect) is augmented to have some noise in the channel, and the contests are repeated over time and space, the winning strategy for a population is to have most people (the citizens) cooperate all the time, and to have a fraction (the police) use a strict tit-for-tat policy to punish those who would attempt to take advantage of the cooperating population by defecting.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the founding fathers did not include slaves, indentured servents, native americans, women, or the landless when they said "all".
The problem is that the health care system in the USA, with its mix of government regulation and funding and private insurance companies, wastes an awful lot of money. Blind folks attribute that to the government regulation and funding, ignoring the fact that every other industrialized country in the world has much more government involvement in health care, and pays much less.
The best health care in the USA comes from the VA (Veteran's Administration). Yes, once again the beautiful, theoretical, ship of libertarianism is dashed to pieces by the ugly, rocky facts. The VA knows it has a captive audience, so they know that they will reap the benefits of investmenting in lifetime patient tracking. The VA pays attention to which treatments work, and which ones don't. Then they stop doing the treatments that aren't effective.
And an even bigger win if you recycle the CFL bulb when it reaches the end of its life.
Our power here is 90+ % coal.
We know Chemistry; we know about the periodic table, and we know nuclear physics. That's a lot of data that enables us to draw real conclusions. We can say, with certainty, that chemistry and physics on alien worlds will work the same way that chemistry and physics work here on earth. Alien Biochemistry will work with the elements we know and understand. Hydrogen is Hydrogen, Oxygen is Oxygen, and where they meet it's wet. Chemistry is chemistry, so we know that any environment containing liquid methane will not have a lot of energy available to power biochemical reactions -- if it did, the methane would boil.
You had the choice to not move here.
And you will get SS benefits after you've paid in for 40 quarters (that might not be the current figure; I'm too lazy to look it up right now).
For the last 30 years, all of semiconductors has been based on "and it'll be even cheaper in six to nine months". It has always been "buy it now, or wait six to nine months for the next cool stuff".
If I get time this weekend, I might hook my LaserDisc player back up...
That's a kind of comeback.
Newbie. Apple //e, 4-digit serial number. Purchased February, 1983. Mac Plus.
Apple used a Cray to help design models of the Macintosh.
Cray used Macintosh computers to help design the (next) Cray.
You can make a single-rotor helicoptor. It just can't torque the rotor blade itself. If you fed compressed air into the rotor, and it had a backward-pointing nozzle at the tip of each blade that spun the rotor, then you could fly with only one rotor.
Prolly wouldn't be very efficient, which is why it isn't used much today. Maybe as a childrens' toy, with a balloon for the source of compressed air?
Was Newtonian mechanics 'disproved completely'? It works well enough to get the Cassini-Huygens space probe to fly by Venus, Earth, Earth and Jupiter, picking up enough momentum with each flyby to actually make it into orbit around Saturn.
I have trouble conceiving of an observation, or a discrepency, that would "disprove completely" the fundamental pillars of evolution: descent with modification, and differential reproductive success. Sure, there will be i's dotted and t's crossed with details like the relative power of sexual and kin selection. Understanding the precise conditions that lead to mutations. but the basics are so blindingly obvious and unimpeachable that I can't honestly say there's a chance that they're all wrong.
An article in The Atlantic from a year or two ago, titled "The Oil We Eat", mentioned that human activitiy consumes half of the solar energy that plants collect. Two-thirds of that half is directly from agriculture (including feed for domestic animals), the other third is burning forests and waste to clear land. This figure included plat life in the oceans, and deducted our share of that consumed from fish.
Getting calories from animal protein consumes between 10x and 100x the amount of plant calories consumed. So increasing the percentage of meat in the world-wide diet to the amount in American diets would increase the world-wide consumption of plant calories between 3x and 5x. So we would be consuming 150% to 250% of the energy captured by all plants.
Consumption of meat could be a huge problem.
Just like the way Schliemann went out and discovered Troy, proving that all of the events in the Illiad and the Odyssey were real, too.
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Both "being necessary to the security of a free state" and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" are clauses that affect the noun, "A well regulated militia".
Which is why Iraq is such a crime-free beacon of freedom now. AK-47 in (just about) every home. "A little rebellion". Yup.
Apple paid Xerox for the rights to commercialize their technology. The price was options on 100,000 shares of Apple stock at $10 per share. It's easy enough to find if your search engine goes back and covers 1979-1981.
And then you'd get sued by Diebold!
For years and years, Gone with the Wind was the highest grossing film of all time. It was eclipsed by Jaws, and then Star Wars, and then I forget, and then Titanic.
I think the parent gets it. George Lucas made a Space Opera, that was the highest grossing film ever for a little while.
All of a sudden, the concept of Science Fiction was so totally overshadowed by Space Opera that Hollywood wouldn't do Science Fiction any more, only Space Opera (and, for a while, Star Trek).
I used to be a huge Science Fiction fan. I asked my parents to take me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in the theaters first run... I was too young to read the red flashing lights (but figured out that the frost on the windows and the flat lines on the monitors was a bad thing....) I subscribed to Analog for many years, and read each issue as it came out. Star Trek: The Next Generation was huge to me. But then something happened, and I lost interest.
I read the collection of stories titled "I, Robot" years and years ago. I even found "The Rest of the Robots".
I found "I, Robot" to be an enjoyable film. It wasn't a film adaptation of the collection of short stories. The only way that could be done is as a series. Get past the title, and enjoy the tale, I say.
Interstellar travel presents daunting problems. 186,282 piles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. So travel times will be long. Life support requirements will be huge. Knowing much about what will be there when you get there will be impossible. I don't think we will be able to overcome these (and many other) problems in my lifetime.
On the other hand, I believe in UFOs. People all over the world observe phenomena that could be objects they can't identify in the sky. These reports from France are more recordings of observations. I do not believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles. Not enough evidence for that.
Either we are alone in the universe, or there are other intelligent, techological civilizations out there. Knowing either one is true would be profound.
The old saying:
Me against my Brother
Me and my Brother against my Cousins
Me, my Brother, and my Cousins against my Clan
Me, my Brother, my Cousins and my Clan against my Tribe
Me, my Brother, my Cousins, my Clan, and my Tribe agaist the others.
Ones loyalty to others is proportional to how closely they are related to you. The biologists call this "Kin Selection". Helping your siblings' children to survive is as good for your genes as helping your own grandchildren.
Also of interest is the results from game theory; "iterated prisoner's dilemma". When the usual dilemma (2 players; each chooses a strategy, traditionally either cooperation or defection, and the payoff matrix rewards one player defecting, but punishes both players if they both defect) is augmented to have some noise in the channel, and the contests are repeated over time and space, the winning strategy for a population is to have most people (the citizens) cooperate all the time, and to have a fraction (the police) use a strict tit-for-tat policy to punish those who would attempt to take advantage of the cooperating population by defecting.