So, they only think it is tidally locked? Some follow-up questions.
Earth is not tidally locked. Why? I have heard that they think this is because of a massive collision which created the moon and spun up the planet at the same time. Could this not have happened to this other planet?
If this did NOT happen to this other planet, would that planet have a magnetic field? If it does not have a magnetic field, would it not have lost most of its water to space due to solar wind, as has happened to Venus?
And if it has no water, this planet may be "habitable" in temperature only, with virtually no water present?
Someone calculated that about 4 joules of energy would be deposited. I assume that is in a single pass of the beam. However, if the beam recirculates (does it?), then the hypothetical hand will get hit by the beam many times. Then a huge amount of energy will end up in the hand in a short time and it'd probably be cut by the beam as you inserted it.
What also intrigues me is whether a fatal does of radiation would occur from the 4 joules/pass that you would get. I think it would be about 8 Gray of radiation dose into the hand. A 5 Gray whole-body dose of radiation is usually fatal. The hand is less vulnerable to radiation than the body in general, however, this cannot be a good thing.
Here's my take: multiple passes: either hand is sliced as it is inserted into the beam, or the hand explodes single pass: might lose the hand, owner of hand might get pretty sick
If you RTFA, they mentioned that they're going to be using a different-than-standard electronic technology based on silicon carbide rather than silicon. Silicon carbide does not decompose until 2730C, per Wikipedia, wereas the Wiki article you mention states that "most" magma is around 1300C or less.
What I wonder is if you make a conventional CPU out of SiC, you can operate it at a far higher clock because it won't melt itself, thus enabling high performance CPUs or perhaps 3D integration.
I've had some of the same 'benefits' from riding a bicycle.
You constantly have to be on the alert for people who will negligently mow you down.
To this day, I react to lights about 20% faster than most others--I anticipate the light some by noticing the status of the opposing lights, while also being more aware of cross-traffic, and I often arrange to show up at the light just as it turns green so I don't have to fully stop. (Having to fully stop on a bicycle is a big bummer, you lose ALL your hard-won kinetic energy.)
Splitting it would be a huge win. You'd get surge access to a Gbit of bandwidth, and if everyone was "surging" at the same time, you'd get 18MB/s as you said. Considering I pay $30/month for less than 1MB/s..... Yes, I'd jump on this if I could split it.
Never heard of Alzheimers, head injuries, aging, damage from anoxia, other forms of dementia, drug induced damage, infection...? (To name a few ways of "losing intelligence already gained").
Furthermore, natural forgetting erases skills and "intelligence" too. The brain is wonderfully plastic, and if you're not using your intelligence, your brain will scrap it so it can more readily do whatever it is you really are doing with your brain.
Remember, your brain is continually recycling/rebuilding itself.
"Only dangerous for infants" minimizes the nastiness of this.
Imagine coughing so bad, for months at a time, that you: 1) Can't sleep 2) Throw up regularly from coughing fits 3) Break your own ribs from coughing 4) Burst the blood vessels in the whites of your eyes, giving you a solid-red-eyes demon look 5) Can't work
Despite having had a childhood vaccination to whooping cough, I had 1) 2) 4) and 5).
Lucky for me I had more than a month of vacation + sick leave at my job, or I might have had some nasty economic side effects from having had the whooping cough.
Get your shots people, even though you probably won't die of whopping cough, YOU DO NOT WANT IT.
If you read the article it says that the solid hydrogen was expected to disappear about 10 months after launch, and it was launched in Dec 2009. Now it's 8/10.
What's so remarkable about something being used up that was designed to be used up?
I read that he intended his proof only to be distributed to a select group of people to help him review it. Then it got away, bits being infinitely copiable.
If someone else released his proof into the wild, we can hardly blame him.
You also forgot to factor in the cost of money. I.e., if you banked the $5000 instead, you'd have that much more money at the end of the car ownership period. In 10 years at 7%, that $5000 becomes almost $10,000 (depending on how you compound the interest.)
And then, you also forgot to factor in the cost of externalities. How much is your reduced production of CO2 going to save in reduced damage to the environment?
Let's face it: humans are poorly adapted to live anywhere but here on earth. We don't like no/low gravity, we need a huge biosphere to support us, we need a plethora of symbiotic intestinal bacteria just to digest our food, etc., etc., etc. It's very hard to take all that stuff with us and keep it all functioning in a self-sustaining (except for energy) way. The various biosphere projects have shown how difficult it is to keep a small environment balanced. I do not think we could do it long term in a reliable way.
If we want to go somewhere else, we have to become very different. Perhaps migrate our consciousness to a silicon-based implementation, or solid-state anyway, so we can deal with cold, radiation, and "eat" sunlight directly. Or at least bio-engineer ourselves to deal gracefully with zero or low gravity, high levels of radiation, etc., so we can live in orbital habitats, perhaps in the asteroid belt. It would be much easier to travel between the stars in such a form, too.
In the end, I do not think that the "humans" that end up leaving Earth will much resemble us except in intelligence. I think changing ourselves to make us more portable would be much simpler than trying to re-create all that Earth provides to support our life.
The Chinese have got very close to US carrier groups with submarines--well within 20 miles--apparently without being detected. Submarines can be hard to find. Also, the Russians have "supersonic" underwater torpedo/missiles, too.
Thank you for teaching. I'm glad you personally find it a rewarding job and that you apparently can make ends meet.
However, I claim that society misses out on a lot of gifted teachers because they are unwilling or unable to trade off so much money for the sake of personal rewards, and that we are better served by incentivizing good teachers rather than heaping more requirements on them in order to enter the profession.
As to responsibility for failure, yes, by all means assign the blame where it justly belongs. I argue that we, as a society, scapegoat teachers routinely when the blame properly belongs on either student or parent.
The reason that 'the best' are not going into teaching is because it rewards poorly as a career. The money sucks, you have to deal with people's undisciplined brats, you get blamed for kids' failures (instead of the kids and parents getting their fair share of the blame)....
About the only benefits are job security (which is evaporating slowly) and 3 months off during summer--(which is also evaporating as schools go 'year round').
Not only that, as a teacher you have to endure the meddling and mandates of everyone who wants to 'fix' the educational system, until you are a powerless mouthpiece for the official doctrine, and must also deliver the dogma-of-the-week in a specified manner.
We get bad teachers in this country (USA) because we have made it a TERRIBLE job.
If you make it HARDER for people to enter the career, as you are proposing (without offering ANY incentive), you won't have ANY TEACHERS AT ALL, NOT EVEN BAD ONES.
Suppose you were falling into a black hole, and you didn't get turned into spaghetti (as might be possible if you're approaching the event horizon of a supermassive black hole). Would the event horizon seem to retreat before you? I mean, light can't escape a black hole's event horizon as we see it, but if you're falling in, wouldn't you be able to see further into the black hole as you fall?
The post you replied to was referring to the often-heard claim that the Air Force has kept the true maximum speed of the SR-71 a secret. I have not heard any credible report about whether the Mach 3.? number that is acknowledged is actually correct. I suppose some Soviet radar operators would know, in addition to the people in the US Government who know.
You make an interesting point. My counterpoint is this: the effect you speak of leads to a winner-take-all society. For example, the sports players that are in the top 1% of their field collect 99% of the money to be made. Minor league baseball players make diddly squat compared to the major league players.
This is due to the effect of mass media and a global society. Everyone watches the major leagues, because the media carries them, while the minor leagues are ignored. And the money follows the media attention.
So there are a VERY FEW "winners" and a lot of losers who barely scratch by.
This holds true for ALL entertainment. Many talented musicians make nothing. The top 1% of their field makes a killing.
With large companies, this is happening too. Executives are cleaning up in companies, everyone else is getting diddly.
This is leading, almost inevitably, to an insane stratification. Someone who outperforms YOU by 5% or even 1% gets paid 1000x what you do. The elite collect ALL the wealth. Everyone else just scratches by. Whole professions are dominated by a few superstars who collect all the money to be made, while the rest (who are almost as good, or BETTER but unknown or unlucky) languish in obscurity.
Yes, this is a result of supply and demand, and a result of mass media and popular culture, and is an "economic" truth. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT OR DESIRABLE. It offends me that some idiot THUG who CAN THROW A BALL 1% better than OTHER BALL THROWERS makes hundreds of millions while the doctor who saves my life by spotting and removing a melanoma makes $200k/year working 80 hour weeks and has to spend 40 of those hours filling out BS health insurance forms. (And incidentally, by catching this melanoma early, this doctor also saves my health insurer $1M in cancer treatment bills!)
This is pure social inequity and I have NO problem fixing this brokenness in the market via VERY progressive taxation at the high end. The capitalist free market is NOT holy, it is NOT moral, and it should serve HUMANS not the other way around!
Having an agency which uses public dollars to enhance and secure open source software for use both within Government and for the public at large makes a huge amount of sense. It's important that the Government not *own* the code, just provide patches/alerts to the project leaders, and customizations for internal Government use, as needed. (The reason for non-ownership is because, well, who *really* trusts the Government?)
In this way, software could become a public good and much cheaper in general rather than a profit center for a few companies and a millstone around the necks of most companies.
You realize that this policeman's crime affects ONE person over the course of that ONE person's life? The judge's crime affects maybe 10,000 people for their lives?
A *resistant*, *contagious* disease can be passed worldwide and affect billions. Think about how much fun smallpox, polio, TB, AIDS are. We've only successfully eradicated ONE of those. And this website is selling resistant, contagious crabs. These crabs and their descendants may possibly affect people worldwide for thousands of years and affect millions/billions of people.
Sterilized crabs are self-limiting and could be considered a "joke", but *any* contagious agent (particularly a resistant one) deliberately released has almost unlimited potential for misery.
I mean, what if these crabs get loose in Africa and, because they suck blood, open up small wounds in people and marginally (1%) increases the transmissibility of AIDS? How many hundreds of thousands will die, potentially, because of that? You don't know that won't happen, do you?
The crimes you mentioned, these are very limited in scope compared to a general crime against ALL of humanity that *deliberately* creating and unleashing a contagious, resistant disease/parasite is.
I say again, I can think of no worse crime.
--PM
This should be illegal unless the lice are sterile
on
Website Sells Pubic Lice
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Willfully spreading a contagious illness (which this qualifies as) should be illegal. I would say that creating ANY resistant, contagious disease should be considered a crime against humanity in general and should be rewarded with a swift death.
Contagious disease is a GREAT way to inflict misery on a lot of unintended and innocent victims.
Honestly, I can think of no worse or more dangerous crime.
Thanks for the backup. I also want to add that MANY of the government (or whatever bureaucratic) workforce have a good work ethic. They are just so mired in bureaucracy and poor process they can make very little headway.
Congress is partly to blame here. Want to buy ANYTHING for the Government? Well, you have to go through this Congressionally mandated checklist: 1) Is there a disadvantaged business that can supply it? 2) How about a small business? 3) Prove you're not stealing from the Government, please, and BTW, to prevent you stealing, you need 4 phases of review and 5 signatures for your purchase. 4) How about a woman-owned business? 5) Is there a mandatory vendor for which we've negotiated a price? Justify not using them. I don't care that the vendor you found costs 40% less. 6) Is this the same vendor you used last time? Justify why you're not using a different vendor, or switch vendors. The Government doesn't play favorites, you know! 7) Justify why you need this thing in the first place, in triplicate, and BTW, get these 4 people to review and sign off. 8) Prove this purchase isn't going to have a negative environmental impact. I don't care that you're buying computer software.
AND THIS ISN'T AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST.
Ever wondered how the $10,000 toilet seats came about? This is how. And a lot of it can be laid at Congress's door. If ANYTHING gets done at all, it's because of the industrious work of way, way more people than should be needed to do the job, because of Congress's rabid application of their power to create new rules for everything.
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So, they only think it is tidally locked? Some follow-up questions.
Earth is not tidally locked. Why? I have heard that they think this is because of a massive collision which created the moon and spun up the planet at the same time. Could this not have happened to this other planet?
If this did NOT happen to this other planet, would that planet have a magnetic field? If it does not have a magnetic field, would it not have lost most of its water to space due to solar wind, as has happened to Venus?
And if it has no water, this planet may be "habitable" in temperature only, with virtually no water present?
Best,
-PM
You're right about the dangers of tylenol, it's bad especially combined with any other drug/chemical that strains your liver.
However, it's the only painkiller known safe for pregnant women. All the rest of 'em? Not so good!
--PM
Someone calculated that about 4 joules of energy would be deposited. I assume that is in a single pass of the beam. However, if the beam recirculates (does it?), then the hypothetical hand will get hit by the beam many times. Then a huge amount of energy will end up in the hand in a short time and it'd probably be cut by the beam as you inserted it.
What also intrigues me is whether a fatal does of radiation would occur from the 4 joules/pass that you would get. I think it would be about 8 Gray of radiation dose into the hand. A 5 Gray whole-body dose of radiation is usually fatal. The hand is less vulnerable to radiation than the body in general, however, this cannot be a good thing.
Here's my take:
multiple passes: either hand is sliced as it is inserted into the beam, or the hand explodes
single pass: might lose the hand, owner of hand might get pretty sick
--PM
If you RTFA, they mentioned that they're going to be using a different-than-standard electronic technology based on silicon carbide rather than silicon. Silicon carbide does not decompose until 2730C, per Wikipedia, wereas the Wiki article you mention states that "most" magma is around 1300C or less.
What I wonder is if you make a conventional CPU out of SiC, you can operate it at a far higher clock because it won't melt itself, thus enabling high performance CPUs or perhaps 3D integration.
--PeterM
I've had some of the same 'benefits' from riding a bicycle.
You constantly have to be on the alert for people who will negligently mow you down.
To this day, I react to lights about 20% faster than most others--I anticipate the light some by noticing the status of the opposing lights, while also being more aware of cross-traffic, and I often arrange to show up at the light just as it turns green so I don't have to fully stop. (Having to fully stop on a bicycle is a big bummer, you lose ALL your hard-won kinetic energy.)
--PM
Splitting it would be a huge win. You'd get surge access to a Gbit of bandwidth, and if everyone was "surging" at the same time, you'd get 18MB/s as you said. Considering I pay $30/month for less than 1MB/s..... Yes, I'd jump on this if I could split it.
--PM
Never heard of Alzheimers, head injuries, aging, damage from anoxia, other forms of dementia, drug induced damage, infection...? (To name a few ways of "losing intelligence already gained").
Furthermore, natural forgetting erases skills and "intelligence" too. The brain is wonderfully plastic, and if you're not using your intelligence, your brain will scrap it so it can more readily do whatever it is you really are doing with your brain.
Remember, your brain is continually recycling/rebuilding itself.
--PM
"Only dangerous for infants" minimizes the nastiness of this.
Imagine coughing so bad, for months at a time, that you:
1) Can't sleep
2) Throw up regularly from coughing fits
3) Break your own ribs from coughing
4) Burst the blood vessels in the whites of your eyes, giving you a solid-red-eyes demon look
5) Can't work
Despite having had a childhood vaccination to whooping cough, I had 1) 2) 4) and 5).
Lucky for me I had more than a month of vacation + sick leave at my job, or I might have had some nasty economic side effects from having had the whooping cough.
Get your shots people, even though you probably won't die of whopping cough, YOU DO NOT WANT IT.
--PM
If you read the article it says that the solid hydrogen was expected to disappear about 10 months after launch, and it was launched in Dec 2009. Now it's 8/10.
What's so remarkable about something being used up that was designed to be used up?
Nothing to see here, move along!
--PM
I read that he intended his proof only to be distributed to a select group of people to help him review it. Then it got away, bits being infinitely copiable.
If someone else released his proof into the wild, we can hardly blame him.
--PM
Sir,
You also forgot to factor in the cost of money. I.e., if you banked the $5000 instead, you'd have that much more money at the end of the car ownership period. In 10 years at 7%, that $5000 becomes almost $10,000 (depending on how you compound the interest.)
And then, you also forgot to factor in the cost of externalities. How much is your reduced production of CO2 going to save in reduced damage to the environment?
--PM
Let's face it: humans are poorly adapted to live anywhere but here on earth. We don't like no/low gravity, we need a huge biosphere to support us, we need a plethora of symbiotic intestinal bacteria just to digest our food, etc., etc., etc. It's very hard to take all that stuff with us and keep it all functioning in a self-sustaining (except for energy) way. The various biosphere projects have shown how difficult it is to keep a small environment balanced. I do not think we could do it long term in a reliable way.
If we want to go somewhere else, we have to become very different. Perhaps migrate our consciousness to a silicon-based implementation, or solid-state anyway, so we can deal with cold, radiation, and "eat" sunlight directly. Or at least bio-engineer ourselves to deal gracefully with zero or low gravity, high levels of radiation, etc., so we can live in orbital habitats, perhaps in the asteroid belt. It would be much easier to travel between the stars in such a form, too.
In the end, I do not think that the "humans" that end up leaving Earth will much resemble us except in intelligence. I think changing ourselves to make us more portable would be much simpler than trying to re-create all that Earth provides to support our life.
--PM
The Chinese have got very close to US carrier groups with submarines--well within 20 miles--apparently without being detected. Submarines can be hard to find.
Also, the Russians have "supersonic" underwater torpedo/missiles, too.
Carriers seem like big fat targets....
--PM
Thank you for teaching. I'm glad you personally find it a rewarding job and that you apparently can make ends meet.
However, I claim that society misses out on a lot of gifted teachers because they are unwilling or unable to trade off so much money for the sake of personal rewards, and that we are better served by incentivizing good teachers rather than heaping more requirements on them in order to enter the profession.
As to responsibility for failure, yes, by all means assign the blame where it justly belongs. I argue that we, as a society, scapegoat teachers routinely when the blame properly belongs on either student or parent.
Best,
--PM
The reason that 'the best' are not going into teaching is because it rewards poorly as a career.
The money sucks, you have to deal with people's undisciplined brats, you get blamed for kids' failures (instead of the kids and parents getting their fair share of the blame)....
About the only benefits are job security (which is evaporating slowly) and 3 months off during summer--(which is also evaporating as schools go 'year round').
Not only that, as a teacher you have to endure the meddling and mandates of everyone who wants to 'fix' the educational system, until you are a powerless mouthpiece for the official doctrine, and must also deliver the dogma-of-the-week in a specified manner.
We get bad teachers in this country (USA) because we have made it a TERRIBLE job.
If you make it HARDER for people to enter the career, as you are proposing (without offering ANY incentive), you won't have ANY TEACHERS AT ALL, NOT EVEN BAD ONES.
--PM
Hello,
Suppose you were falling into a black hole, and you didn't get turned into spaghetti (as might be possible if you're approaching the event horizon of a supermassive black hole). Would the event horizon seem to retreat before you? I mean, light can't escape a black hole's event horizon as we see it, but if you're falling in, wouldn't you be able to see further into the black hole as you fall?
--PM
The post you replied to was referring to the often-heard claim that the Air Force has kept the true maximum speed of the SR-71 a secret. I have not heard any credible report about whether the Mach 3.? number that is acknowledged is actually correct. I suppose some Soviet radar operators would know, in addition to the people in the US Government who know.
--PeterM
Hello,
The story is in error. Per this link, the plane only hit Mach 5, not Mach 6. This is still a pretty successful test, however.
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37377401/ns/technology_and_science-space/
--PeterM
Sir,
You make an interesting point. My counterpoint is this: the effect you speak of leads to a winner-take-all society. For example, the sports players that are in the top 1% of their field collect 99% of the money to be made. Minor league baseball players make diddly squat compared to the major league players.
This is due to the effect of mass media and a global society. Everyone watches the major leagues, because the media carries them, while the minor leagues are ignored. And the money follows the media attention.
So there are a VERY FEW "winners" and a lot of losers who barely scratch by.
This holds true for ALL entertainment. Many talented musicians make nothing. The top 1% of their field makes a killing.
With large companies, this is happening too. Executives are cleaning up in companies, everyone else is getting diddly.
This is leading, almost inevitably, to an insane stratification. Someone who outperforms YOU by 5% or even 1% gets paid 1000x what you do. The elite collect ALL the wealth. Everyone else just scratches by. Whole professions are dominated by a few superstars who collect all the money to be made, while the rest (who are almost as good, or BETTER but unknown or unlucky) languish in obscurity.
Yes, this is a result of supply and demand, and a result of mass media and popular culture, and is an "economic" truth. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT OR DESIRABLE. It offends me that some idiot THUG who CAN THROW A BALL 1% better than OTHER BALL THROWERS makes hundreds of millions while the doctor who saves my life by spotting and removing a melanoma makes $200k/year working 80 hour weeks and has to spend 40 of those hours filling out BS health insurance forms. (And incidentally, by catching this melanoma early, this doctor also saves my health insurer $1M in cancer treatment bills!)
This is pure social inequity and I have NO problem fixing this brokenness in the market via VERY progressive taxation at the high end. The capitalist free market is NOT holy, it is NOT moral, and it should serve HUMANS not the other way around!
--PeterM
Having an agency which uses public dollars to enhance and secure open source software for use both within Government and for the public at large makes a huge amount of sense. It's important that the Government not *own* the code, just provide patches/alerts to the project leaders, and customizations for internal Government use, as needed. (The reason for non-ownership is because, well, who *really* trusts the Government?)
In this way, software could become a public good and much cheaper in general rather than a profit center for a few companies and a millstone around the necks of most companies.
--PM
You realize that this policeman's crime affects ONE person over the course of that ONE person's life? The judge's crime affects maybe 10,000 people for their lives?
A *resistant*, *contagious* disease can be passed worldwide and affect billions. Think about how much fun smallpox, polio, TB, AIDS are. We've only successfully eradicated ONE of those. And this website is selling resistant, contagious crabs. These crabs and their descendants may possibly affect people worldwide for thousands of years and affect millions/billions of people.
Sterilized crabs are self-limiting and could be considered a "joke", but *any* contagious agent (particularly a resistant one) deliberately released has almost unlimited potential for misery.
I mean, what if these crabs get loose in Africa and, because they suck blood, open up small wounds in people and marginally (1%) increases the transmissibility of AIDS? How many hundreds of thousands will die, potentially, because of that? You don't know that won't happen, do you?
The crimes you mentioned, these are very limited in scope compared to a general crime against ALL of humanity that *deliberately* creating and unleashing a contagious, resistant disease/parasite is.
I say again, I can think of no worse crime.
--PM
Willfully spreading a contagious illness (which this qualifies as) should be illegal.
I would say that creating ANY resistant, contagious disease should be considered a crime against humanity in general and should be rewarded with a swift death.
Contagious disease is a GREAT way to inflict misery on a lot of unintended and innocent victims.
Honestly, I can think of no worse or more dangerous crime.
--PM
He got his money clean, or at least, that is mostly true. Most everyone he had anything to do with was better off for having dealt with him.
Read his wiki article.
--PM
Thanks for the backup. I also want to add that MANY of the government (or whatever bureaucratic) workforce have a good work ethic. They are just so mired in bureaucracy and poor process they can make very little headway.
Congress is partly to blame here. Want to buy ANYTHING for the Government? Well, you have to go through this Congressionally mandated checklist:
1) Is there a disadvantaged business that can supply it?
2) How about a small business?
3) Prove you're not stealing from the Government, please, and BTW, to prevent you stealing, you need 4 phases of review and 5 signatures for your purchase.
4) How about a woman-owned business?
5) Is there a mandatory vendor for which we've negotiated a price? Justify not using them. I don't care that the vendor you found costs 40% less.
6) Is this the same vendor you used last time? Justify why you're not using a different vendor, or switch vendors. The Government doesn't play favorites, you know!
7) Justify why you need this thing in the first place, in triplicate, and BTW, get these 4 people to review and sign off.
8) Prove this purchase isn't going to have a negative environmental impact. I don't care that you're buying computer software.
AND THIS ISN'T AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST.
Ever wondered how the $10,000 toilet seats came about? This is how. And a lot of it can be laid at Congress's door. If ANYTHING gets done at all, it's because of the industrious work of way, way more people than should be needed to do the job, because of Congress's rabid application of their power to create new rules for everything.
--PM
I bet the problem is budget.
"Well, we'd like to stop doing these stupid things, but we don't have money to deploy a new system."
And no one is willing to pony up the investment in modernization to save money in the long run. There are stupidities like this in every organization!
It is all about the local minimum energy state.
--PM