A comet travelling at 0.1c is doing around 30,000km/second. 13 seconds or so to the moon. To be detected a few hours away... say 10,000 second (just under 3 hours)... that's 300million km away. 2 AU (astronomical units). Well on the way out towards Jupiter, where most comets are very small and inactive because they're still cold.
Build military schools. After all, teaching people how to kill other people is much more economically useful than teaching people how the world works, how to think critically etc.
My gut feeling was that this 2-day observation sequence couldn't be the result of a recent nearby comet fragmentation. Nice analysis, putting flesh on the bones of my scepticism.
If some of the bodies were moving three times as fast as others, there is no way they were fragments of the same comet.
Unless the fragmentation event was very recent and the various particles hadn't had time to separate. (But by the second day, yes they would have filtered themselves into a stream of particles on orbits appropriate to their velocities.)
Or are you suggesting a causal relationship? If you are suggesting a causal relationship, what mechanism are you proposing for the influence of the (putative) comet on Krakatoa? And how many other volcanoes would have been exposed to comparable forces over the several days of the apparition, and why didn't they blow at the same time?
Sorry to ask awkward questions, but I'm a geologist by trade and I see a lot of ill-thought-out speculations. It's your speculation, so think it through.
(BTW, IIRC the earthquake sequence in advance of Krakatoa's eruption was several months long, and the eruption sequence before the catastrophic explosions lasted for several weeks. Does this fit with your speculation?)
I know of a couple of shallow water things (including a hotel or two), but most of them are shallow enough that in a pinch you could swim to the surface.
In theory, you can swim to surface from quite a depth under Available Lung Power. The survivor from the Canadian offshore helicopter crash in 2009 ("Flight 91") indicates that he didn't get out of the demolished chassis until something like 30ft depth, yet survived to surface and on the surface. (Several others probably released themselves from the chassis, but drowned while attempting to surface, or at the surface. That makes this a reasonable estimate for the realistic limit of escape depths.)
However, for long-duration living at depth, you do have to seriously consider the effects of decompression sickness. What is safe after a dive of even a couple of hours is not the same as after a 12 hour working day (remember - decompression sickness was first identified as "caisson disease" amongst construction workers, often working at only 10s of feet water pressure, long before it's association with diving), or even longer duration at depth. there are body tissues with nitrogen half-lives approaching a hundred hours, which is why, strictly, you should wear your dive computer for several days before you dive with it, to allow it's internal state (computational) to be a decent approximation of your tissue's internal state (physiological).
And always remember that diving tables are an approximation to an average physiology, and people do differ. Significantly differ.
Military subs go pretty deep and stay submerged for a long time, but they're also mobile and can quickly surface in the event of a non-catastrophic emergency.
Military subs are a surface-pressure environment. Presumably so that they can deal with things like delivering troops to surface without decompression intervals. But in the past... I wonder how much air-cored tuning capacitors would have been affected by being at 2 or 3 bar in air? Or, for that matter, if the valves would have been literally able to take the pressure?
First published in 1925 so maybe that's why it's not in much memory.
Far be it from me to debunk a nascent conspiracy theory, but there is also the minor detail that all of Kafka's novels (and many of his short stories) are interminable, hallucinatory and repetitive to a disturbing degree. They're just not pleasant to read, and I've tried hard enough on several occasions to know.
I don't dispute that he's a great novelist. But he is really hard work to read. NOT a casual reader's novelist.
I wonder if George Orwell had read any Kafka?
Literary criticism from a geologist? You read it here first!
But it makes you wonder how many are wrongly convicted. I suspect the number of innocent in prison is quite a bit higher than we'd like to think.
Don't you worry about innocent people, Citizen. We have legalised execution in this country to make sure that the innocent accused don't suffer in prison for too long. Providing that we can get the anaesthetics (which we can't).
The only rubber hose encryption method I can think of is still 100% foolproof, at least until they can read a dead person's thoughts.
That sort of scheme doesn't depend at all on the "rubber hose" part of the technique. All "write-only" storage systems have this property.
Unless, of course, you have some technique in which you can use your rubber hose to extract information from the dead in a way that "Alice", "Bob", or "Madge-in-the-middle" can't do (I forget who takes which rÃle in crypto-speak).
That was the sort of scheme I was thinking of, but substitute a rubber hose (of one circumference) for the walking stick. However, put the hose under a certain tension and it's diameter will change allowing for an alternative "reading frame" for the message on your tape.
"Rubber hose cryptography"?? Surely you mean "Rubber hose cryptanalysis".
There is a difference. How do you intend to encrypt something with your rubber hose? (No, seriously! I can think of one scheme, thought it's hardly secure.)
It's pretty likely that I'm paid more for my opinions than you are, if that's what you mean by "important". Now get back to flipping my burger you under-educated septic retard.
And hand me your CV - I need to get this dog shit off my shoe.
My first employer in the business was responsible (in part) for the manufacture of the first downhole survey tools : aircraft gyro-compasses (from Sperry corporation) combined with drilling experience (from Sun Oil) to produce Sperry-Sun. Now long-since absorbed into the Halliburton empire of darkness.
If I recall the corporate bullshit correctly, they were involved in one of the first "claim-stealing" lawsuits somewhere in Texas, when Sun Oil proved that someone else was "stealing" oil from under their claim. Which opened up a whole big new can of worms for technical measurement of wells.
Of course, that was back in the 1930s. Back when men were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Well, she's said she's not going to stand (if I heard a snippet on the news correctly - I don't waste more attention on foreign politics than it deserves), which is a pretty good sign that she's going to. Though it may be another election before she does.
... of techniques. Nor is it new, for any meaningful meaning of "new". In fact, it was old hat a decade ago. As was "extended reach" drilling, which is likely to be next week's buzzword.
I've been doing horizontal drilling, in the oilfield sense, using Norwegian techniques from Finnish and South Korean rigs, with multiple nationalities, for longer than I've been posting on Slashdot. All of which time spans are bloody long times (in a non-geological sense of "bloody long").
("Extended reach" drilling... about the same duration that I've been on Slashdot. Give or take a half-decade.)
the problem is there's no "exit ceremony" in these wackjob cults except ones involving death. if i could be un-baptised, i would.
Try this : "Debaptise Yourself - making it official", which gives the procedure for getting removed from the Catholic Church in Britain. Since they have a procedure, then it's safe to assume that the hierarchical nature of the whole Catholic edifice means that there is a procedure in all other Catholic Churches.
Write a letter to âthe competent ecclesiastical authorityâ(TM) at the Diocesan Offices giving the details of your baptism (date and place) and include at least the following paragraphs:
"I wish to declare my formal defection from the Catholic Church in accordance with canons 1086, Â 1, 1117 and 1124 of the Code of Canon Law as mentioned in notification Prot. N. 10279/2006 from the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts."
"I hereby reject the teachings, dogma and authority of the Roman Catholic church and any benefits, so-called sacraments, graces and blessings supposedly bestowed upon me, either in the past or the future. Furthermore, please note that I make these statements personally, consciously and freely."
"I respectfully request confirmation that this act has been noted in the baptismal registry (cfr. can. 535, Â 2) with explicit mention of the occurrence of a 'defectio ab Ecclesia catholica actu formali'."
On that site a number of other procedures are described.
In other news, Sarah Palin's campaign for the Presidency of the USA is accelerating.
They can already track your movement on the bus (they know who bought what bus pass
My electronic bus pass was registered several years ago to Mr Osama bin Laden, of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. It only got paid-up once, with cash (it only works in the capital city of the country south of us ; it still has several rides on it).
I'd be astonished if I was the only Mr bin Laden on the bus system at any random time. On those rare occasions when I go to that festering shit hole of a city.
The problem is also in the "within 48 hours" part. You can't have a blog and go on vacation without risking *massive* fines when you're back if somebody got offended by what you wrote on it while you weren't checking your email.
So? Take down the blog when you're offline and put up a holding page. Blame the Italian people and the government they elected - so no-one gets personally offended. Or do you think that wouldn't work?
Slashdot Mirror
c is very, very fast.
If the report is accurate, at least one person thinks like that.
That's too many.
Build military schools. After all, teaching people how to kill other people is much more economically useful than teaching people how the world works, how to think critically etc.
Unless the fragmentation event was very recent and the various particles hadn't had time to separate. (But by the second day, yes they would have filtered themselves into a stream of particles on orbits appropriate to their velocities.)
Or are you suggesting a causal relationship? If you are suggesting a causal relationship, what mechanism are you proposing for the influence of the (putative) comet on Krakatoa? And how many other volcanoes would have been exposed to comparable forces over the several days of the apparition, and why didn't they blow at the same time?
Sorry to ask awkward questions, but I'm a geologist by trade and I see a lot of ill-thought-out speculations. It's your speculation, so think it through.
(BTW, IIRC the earthquake sequence in advance of Krakatoa's eruption was several months long, and the eruption sequence before the catastrophic explosions lasted for several weeks. Does this fit with your speculation?)
(Godot doesn't appear at all. And it's all "rambling on.")
Pozzo.
Well, that's the old-fashioned Mk-1 "Kid" completely blown out of the game. Where do I order my first batch?
In theory, you can swim to surface from quite a depth under Available Lung Power. The survivor from the Canadian offshore helicopter crash in 2009 ("Flight 91") indicates that he didn't get out of the demolished chassis until something like 30ft depth, yet survived to surface and on the surface. (Several others probably released themselves from the chassis, but drowned while attempting to surface, or at the surface. That makes this a reasonable estimate for the realistic limit of escape depths.)
However, for long-duration living at depth, you do have to seriously consider the effects of decompression sickness. What is safe after a dive of even a couple of hours is not the same as after a 12 hour working day (remember - decompression sickness was first identified as "caisson disease" amongst construction workers, often working at only 10s of feet water pressure, long before it's association with diving), or even longer duration at depth. there are body tissues with nitrogen half-lives approaching a hundred hours, which is why, strictly, you should wear your dive computer for several days before you dive with it, to allow it's internal state (computational) to be a decent approximation of your tissue's internal state (physiological).
And always remember that diving tables are an approximation to an average physiology, and people do differ. Significantly differ.
Military subs are a surface-pressure environment. Presumably so that they can deal with things like delivering troops to surface without decompression intervals. But in the past ... I wonder how much air-cored tuning capacitors would have been affected by being at 2 or 3 bar in air? Or, for that matter, if the valves would have been literally able to take the pressure?
Far be it from me to debunk a nascent conspiracy theory, but there is also the minor detail that all of Kafka's novels (and many of his short stories) are interminable, hallucinatory and repetitive to a disturbing degree. They're just not pleasant to read, and I've tried hard enough on several occasions to know.
I don't dispute that he's a great novelist. But he is really hard work to read. NOT a casual reader's novelist.
I wonder if George Orwell had read any Kafka?
Literary criticism from a geologist? You read it here first!
Don't you worry about innocent people, Citizen. We have legalised execution in this country to make sure that the innocent accused don't suffer in prison for too long. Providing that we can get the anaesthetics (which we can't).
That sort of scheme doesn't depend at all on the "rubber hose" part of the technique. All "write-only" storage systems have this property.
Unless, of course, you have some technique in which you can use your rubber hose to extract information from the dead in a way that "Alice", "Bob", or "Madge-in-the-middle" can't do (I forget who takes which rÃle in crypto-speak).
Of course, it's trivial to break such schemes.
There is a difference. How do you intend to encrypt something with your rubber hose? (No, seriously! I can think of one scheme, thought it's hardly secure.)
Where is it going to be refined?
(Sorry, I'm a geologist. Little details like that occur to me, and just might be important. But what would I know?)
Well done, wage-slaves of the US, you're finally starting to understand what Marx and Engels were talking about.
Now get your asses back into the salt-mines, or the dogs are going to eat well tonight.
And hand me your CV - I need to get this dog shit off my shoe.
If I recall the corporate bullshit correctly, they were involved in one of the first "claim-stealing" lawsuits somewhere in Texas, when Sun Oil proved that someone else was "stealing" oil from under their claim. Which opened up a whole big new can of worms for technical measurement of wells.
Of course, that was back in the 1930s. Back when men were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Well, she's said she's not going to stand (if I heard a snippet on the news correctly - I don't waste more attention on foreign politics than it deserves), which is a pretty good sign that she's going to. Though it may be another election before she does.
... of techniques. Nor is it new, for any meaningful meaning of "new". In fact, it was old hat a decade ago. As was "extended reach" drilling, which is likely to be next week's buzzword.
I've been doing horizontal drilling, in the oilfield sense, using Norwegian techniques from Finnish and South Korean rigs, with multiple nationalities, for longer than I've been posting on Slashdot. All of which time spans are bloody long times (in a non-geological sense of "bloody long").
("Extended reach" drilling ... about the same duration that I've been on Slashdot. Give or take a half-decade.)
But you're a media consumer, so I wouldn't expect you to knw anything about either of those points. And as an AC, you don't deserve any more reply.
Try this : "Debaptise Yourself - making it official", which gives the procedure for getting removed from the Catholic Church in Britain. Since they have a procedure, then it's safe to assume that the hierarchical nature of the whole Catholic edifice means that there is a procedure in all other Catholic Churches.
On that site a number of other procedures are described.
In other news, Sarah Palin's campaign for the Presidency of the USA is accelerating.
My electronic bus pass was registered several years ago to Mr Osama bin Laden, of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. It only got paid-up once, with cash (it only works in the capital city of the country south of us ; it still has several rides on it).
I'd be astonished if I was the only Mr bin Laden on the bus system at any random time. On those rare occasions when I go to that festering shit hole of a city.
So? Take down the blog when you're offline and put up a holding page. Blame the Italian people and the government they elected - so no-one gets personally offended. Or do you think that wouldn't work?
Sandwiches, or cocaine delivery vessels?