Great post, but you forgot one critical thing that guarantees no one will stick their necks out for those being slaughtered:
They don't matter.
It's harsh, but true. What is going on is a strictly local affair in a place with few if any Europeans, no significant resources that the world still needs, and is too poor to fund terrorist misadventures outside their own border.
No one has any material interest in seeing this stopped. It's morally questionable to put the sons and daughters of any nation on the line to fight in a conflict that the mother country won't benefit from at all.
I say 'questionable' because a moral argument could be made for intervening, and a moral argument could be made for staying out.
The folks who cry out for intervention also need to remember that the only way we can be sure to stop this genocide is to kill enough of the aggressors that they know we're serious. Simply showing up has been proven, time and time again, to not do the job.
I believe we have a blockade around North Korea to prevent this sort of thing.
If I remember correctly, Libya caved a couple years ago and swore off nukes after we intercepted a shipment of bomb production machines from North Korea to Libya.
I don't think much comes and goes from North Korea on the sea without our say so. And I'm reasonably certain China isn't too keen on land shipments of nuke material over their border.
There isn't a substantial amount of difference between US theocrats running DNS and Chinese autocrats running DNS
Sure there is. One is your imagination running wild, and the other is shit the chinese prove every day. The third option, the UN, is the devil you don't know (with respect to this issue), and I think we all know that canard, eh? Considering that everyone turns a blind eye to UN troops turning refugee camps into child brothels, among other things, I'd say the whole organization is suspect.
The US is no longer fit to lead the free world in anything anymore. This is not a troll. It really isn't.
Uh huh. Well considering no one else will step up to the plate, the rest of the world doesn't really have a whole lot of options, does it?
And you say 'moving to the right' like it's a priori a bad thing. Try to remember that slashdot isn't a 100% leftist circle-jerk, mmmkay?
I'm sorry, but when has the US Government *ever* had a hand in something that turned into a stable, transparent and accountable organization?
When compared to the alternative by anyone other than starry-eyed international idealists, the US Government starts to look pretty damn good.
The US Government's control has resulted in the internet being a near-perfect bastion of free speech. With all the "Hate speech" and "Don't criticize the Government" laws you see in many other countries around the world, do you think giving them a hand in the matter would really improve things?
For all of ICANN's imperfections, the internet remains a largely free and unrestricted place.
It would be a shame to turn over control of it to an organization (UN) even more beaurocratic, bloated and useless than the US Government, as they would likely regulate the internet into the ground.
Well, they end right there at the point where people happily exchange freedom for that so called "security".
When it comes to airports no one has happily exchanged freedom for an illusion of security.
Everyone knows that 95% of what the TSA does is idiotic and pointless. Passengers know it. Airlines know it. The TSA personnel themselves know it.
In fact the only useful thing they could do nowadays is keep explosives off of airplanes.
The only other thing they could do is the El-Al routine of pre-flight brief interviews and don't let potentially troublesome people fly.
Have you noticed anyone defending the TSA here or anywhere else? No, I don't think so.
So how did we end up with the current state of affairs? Well, the answer lies in Beaurocratic bullshit and the sue-happy country we live in.
Every Beaurocrat, from the elected to the apointed, needs to be seen accomplishing something. So after 9/11, our elected Beaurocrats create the TSA to make it look like they're doing something and earning their paycheck.
Okay, fair enough.
So they appoint a head of the TSA. The head of the TSA needs to deliver some kind of performance, and that includes taking steps to make sure 9/11 never happens again.
Now, he can't very well say 9/11 will never happen again because the passengers have learned the new game, ala flight 93. Why? Because there would be no goddamn point to his job if he managed to convince congress of that very true statement.
It takes a better man than most here to be recieve a prestigious, high paying appointment to your own huge agency, and then turn around and say
"This entire affair is retarded. The tactic is already obsolete. Let's screen for explosives and possible constituent chemicals better, copy El-Al's ("Not invented Here syndrome", anyone?) interviews, and call it a day."
You know why? It involves little additional personnel and a bunch of big equipment purchases and that's it. Hardly the typical beaurocrats response when given a big mandate and a big budget to go with it.
His only tool is the big government hammer, so to him, everything looks like a nail.
Then he sets his big goals to his beaurocratic luitenants, who come up with beaurocratic solutions that the head guy approves, then they hire people on down the line to the foot soldiers to make this entire bullshit affair work.
They have to be seen doing something, and if the right solution doesn't really involve them, damn near everything they do is idiotic.
A big government tries to solve it's problems with more big government.
The fact that the proper, proven methods (Flight 93 and El-Al's interviews) don't involve them won't make them stop anytime soon.
Avoiding this entire mess requires a paradigm shift in the way we think of government, though that shift would be back to the original version of things. That paradigm, if you will, is this:
1. A large, powerful government is inherently abusive. Even if it's programs are bourne out of benevolance or a citizen mandate, it is abusive. 2. This abuse from a powerful goverment results sometimes from malice and often from incompetence. 3. The more government is expected to take of things with it's immense power, the less it's citizens will seek to take care of themselves, and the more they will tolerate the abuse (like a beaten child with no where to turn). Ref: Great Britain.
The other factor is also lawsuits. We all know about that shit.
I think you mean two orders of magnitude off, not 100.
That being said, how far off were we when this idea was first concieved, or practical work began? A factor of 1000? 10,000 ?
Anyway, we do stuff like this because it's fun and achievable. Most people who follow this sort of thing know that material strength of tether is the current limiting factor, and there is ongoing research in this field.
But there are plenty of people who don't have the expertise to contribute to the material strength problem, but they can sure have fun screwing around with climbers, can't they? The work has to be done sometime anyway.
Okay, in my opinion, this statement is a big warning sign you should be more careful commenting about what obeys the laws of physics and what doesn't....
This being Slashdot and all, I guess I see why you think it's fine to claim the latter while admitting the former.
Did you get beat up alot at school? And now find being a dick on the web is the best way you can make up for it?
Like pretty much every popular forum on the web, this site is for pointless pontification about topics few of us will ever get involved in, and fewer still have any clue what's going on.
This place is a waste of time. Everyone here should know that. So not only do I think it's fine to claim the latter while admitting the former, I know it is. So don't be a wise ass.
Anyway, beyond the snide comments, thanks for your reply. I suppose a little occasional education is the only value one might draw from here.
After reading the critiques here and at some U of Texas physics site, the best I can figure is that this setup may be plausible as weak thruster, and is plausible as a strong levitator.
If you take a couple of magnets and place like poles together, they push away from each other until they're too far away to push anymore. Yet no material has been exchanged between them, and no particles have been thrown out one and hit the other.
That's the best analogy I can draw- this is like setting up a repulsive magnetic field without magnets. The precise physics are above my pay grade, but viewing it in this manner doesn't appear to violate any laws of physics.
(For those of you who didn't RTFA, it states that the thrust dissapears if the 'engine' actually moves. I think I might have had that bit in my original submission, and Zonk cut it out.)
The ban on Cell phones on planes was originally an FCC rule, not an FAA rule. A cell phone that has a Line Of Sight to many, many, many towers can gum up the works. A plane full, or several plane fulls of cell phones with LOS to hundreds of towers can bring down the network.
As they touch on in the article, as more and more money is spent in the healthcare sector, the cost of insurance will continue to rise. A huge problem in healthcare is that the decision to pay is largely seperated from the decision to use services. This is true wether it's an insurance company you're dealing with, or a government payer.
When you go see a doctor for any old cold, bruise, cracked rib, or any number of certain things, the doc is gonna tell you the same thing your grandma would have: you just have to suffer through it. Since those on insurance or socialized healthcare don't have to pay the doctor much if anything, they don't weigh their appraisal of the injury against the doctor's price of services.
They just use the services. However, when you do this, you increase the demand for a doctor's service, and like any industry, this leads to an increase in price.
Healthcare is not a right, it's an industry, subject to the same laws of supply (but not demand, as i've explained) as any other.
To provide healthcare, you need: 1. Highly educated people at all levels 2. Constant research into new methods and devices 3. A manufacturing arm that requires raw materials, production and distribution. 4. Expensive endpoints to deliver services and goods to the consumer.
If you take those four points abstracted, that describes a great many industries. Healthcare is just another industry, and the emotional attachment to good health is the only thing that makes it seem different.
Emotions do not change the laws of supply and demand.
My solution? Well, if I was self-employed, I'd go with a catastrophic health insurance plan- one were the yearly deductable is a hard $3000-5000. Until I reach that limit, I would pay everything. Over it, insurance pays. I'd just have to be sure to have enough saved money on hand to cover the deductable. Such a plan (if widely participated in) is likely to be much cheaper than the standard ones you see around.
Oh, and another thing about insurance: Any successful health insurance plan depends on the participation & payment of young single men to stay afloat. We don't use services unless we have to, for the most part, and hence our payments can go to larger consumers of healthcare- ie men with children, women, etc. (Don't call what's true sexist, btw.)
Some folks have already tried to run a business with all variety of materials reclaimed from a landfill. Trouble is, cleaning it up enough so that anyone will tolerate the material being in their factory removes any other ecological or financial incentive to use it.
Well, we can tell one place blizzard saves some money....
Re:With all due respect to the man ...
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
We're identified with a jingoist leader that 50% of us opposed. Even those of us who challenge the stereotypes and work to change things (though I am a fatass, so I guess one strike) get to deal with the constant barrage of negative images.
Of course, living in the wealthiest center of power in the western world certainly has advantages, so I can't complain, but I've never really found it possible to take pride in my country the same way others do. I wouldn't be upset at all if we were identified with a loveably corny and passionate conservationist and educator. I know Steve Irwin represented a stereotype, but I've never thought of it as a particularly negative one.
Yeah, we all get it, you hate Bush. How about not bringing it up in unrelated threads?
You've got to be a real bore at parties, tying everything to politics and probably blaming every unpleasentry in your life on Bush.
You demand violence to stop violence that was meant to stop violence. You do realize your idea only helps the problem spiral, right?
You realize the police use force or the credible threat thereof to enforce laws, don't you? If your alternate plans for dealing with these eco-terrorists involve the police, you are merely sub-contracting the violence. Never forget that.
Now, in general , it is right and good to let the police maintain order insomuch as they can enforce the law. However, when they fail to maintain order, that does not mean that violence is no longer the proper and moral method of maintaining or restoring order.
Historically, vigilantism only rises when law enforcement fails. It is better than letting evil rule the streets.
If you don't want to see vigilantes, see to it that law enforcement can and does act.
He says all those important things, and you attack his GRAMMAR. Did you consider that he may be thinking about more important things? Like, I don't know, ANYTHING ELSE.
The animal research still needs to be done, and because of assholes like these, it's all going to china.
In China, the concept of human rights is laughable- do you think the government there gives a shit about animals? Or that they would hesitate to beat down any Animal Liberation Front jerks, quite literally?
There should be laws against this kind of behavior, they should be enforced, or there should be a local law enforcement culture that encourages a violent beat down of people who carry on this type of harrasment campaign.
Congratulations, morons. You will accomplish the opposite of what you intended- more animal research, and no government oversight to ensure they are being treated even vaugely humanely.
Ebay has been around long enough that everyone knows about it, both buyers and would-be sellers.
Competition is fierce between sellers, especially any twits who bought a 'how to make money on Ebay kit' and are trying to do it full time- and buyers will jump sellers to save a buck or two- there is absolutely no loyalty on ebay.
I'm an occasional seller and very occasional buyer on ebay, and I like to be sure to be able to sell my stuff. Since I'm not trying to turn a profit on new items, just unload stuff I have and don't need for a few bucks I can be pretty cheap.
What do I do? Put the starting bid waay under the going price (but at a price I'm willing to sell it at), and the buyout slightly under the going rate for an item. Usually it gets bid up close to the buyout/going rate, I sell my item, and everyone is happy.
I cannot imagine trying to run a normal business this way.
That being said, Ebay is soaking their sellers for more fees lately and this cut in profit margins isn't helping them at all.
A few years ago I had the benefit of working on a now-defunct college sattelite program. The venture was dying and all five of us left on the project new it, so we started screwing around with the time we had left on the payroll.
I shit thee not: The Professor, in charge of a sattelite project at a respected University, had us working on a magnet-powered generator. His theory- and this was a man who led the design of a fairly sophisticated machine that was well grounded in existing science- was that we could use up the magnetism to keep it spinning and generating electricity.
The idea was that the energy wasn't free; the magnetic field would decay and weaken as it ran.
I'm an ME, not an EE, nor had i studied magnets for any length of time, so I really didn't know enough to say it was complete and utter bullshit. I'm certain it is, but nonetheless we ordered some magnets & bearings and screwed around with them from time to time.
Of course we didn't get anywhere before I graduated, and the program finished dying not too long after that.
Just goes to show you that making it past high school, or a bachelors degree, or a masters, or a PHD (in some physical science, I forget which) does not insulate you from being a crackpot.
Slashdot Mirror
Great post, but you forgot one critical thing that guarantees no one will stick their necks out for those being slaughtered:
They don't matter.
It's harsh, but true. What is going on is a strictly local affair in a place with few if any Europeans, no significant resources that the world still needs, and is too poor to fund terrorist misadventures outside their own border.
No one has any material interest in seeing this stopped. It's morally questionable to put the sons and daughters of any nation on the line to fight in a conflict that the mother country won't benefit from at all.
I say 'questionable' because a moral argument could be made for intervening, and a moral argument could be made for staying out.
The folks who cry out for intervention also need to remember that the only way we can be sure to stop this genocide is to kill enough of the aggressors that they know we're serious. Simply showing up has been proven, time and time again, to not do the job.
I believe we have a blockade around North Korea to prevent this sort of thing.
If I remember correctly, Libya caved a couple years ago and swore off nukes after we intercepted a shipment of bomb production machines from North Korea to Libya.
I don't think much comes and goes from North Korea on the sea without our say so. And I'm reasonably certain China isn't too keen on land shipments of nuke material over their border.
There isn't a substantial amount of difference between US theocrats running DNS and Chinese autocrats running DNS
Sure there is. One is your imagination running wild, and the other is shit the chinese prove every day. The third option, the UN, is the devil you don't know (with respect to this issue), and I think we all know that canard, eh? Considering that everyone turns a blind eye to UN troops turning refugee camps into child brothels, among other things, I'd say the whole organization is suspect.
The US is no longer fit to lead the free world in anything anymore. This is not a troll. It really isn't.
Uh huh. Well considering no one else will step up to the plate, the rest of the world doesn't really have a whole lot of options, does it?
And you say 'moving to the right' like it's a priori a bad thing. Try to remember that slashdot isn't a 100% leftist circle-jerk, mmmkay?
I'm sorry, but when has the US Government *ever* had a hand in something that turned into a stable, transparent and accountable organization?
When compared to the alternative by anyone other than starry-eyed international idealists, the US Government starts to look pretty damn good.
The US Government's control has resulted in the internet being a near-perfect bastion of free speech. With all the "Hate speech" and "Don't criticize the Government" laws you see in many other countries around the world, do you think giving them a hand in the matter would really improve things?
For all of ICANN's imperfections, the internet remains a largely free and unrestricted place.
It would be a shame to turn over control of it to an organization (UN) even more beaurocratic, bloated and useless than the US Government, as they would likely regulate the internet into the ground.
Yeah, second that. I sold it back to gamestop for store credit less than a week after buying it.
When it comes to airports no one has happily exchanged freedom for an illusion of security.
Everyone knows that 95% of what the TSA does is idiotic and pointless. Passengers know it. Airlines know it. The TSA personnel themselves know it.
In fact the only useful thing they could do nowadays is keep explosives off of airplanes.
The only other thing they could do is the El-Al routine of pre-flight brief interviews and don't let potentially troublesome people fly.
Have you noticed anyone defending the TSA here or anywhere else? No, I don't think so.
So how did we end up with the current state of affairs? Well, the answer lies in Beaurocratic bullshit and the sue-happy country we live in.
Every Beaurocrat, from the elected to the apointed, needs to be seen accomplishing something. So after 9/11, our elected Beaurocrats create the TSA to make it look like they're doing something and earning their paycheck.
Okay, fair enough.
So they appoint a head of the TSA. The head of the TSA needs to deliver some kind of performance, and that includes taking steps to make sure 9/11 never happens again.
Now, he can't very well say 9/11 will never happen again because the passengers have learned the new game, ala flight 93. Why? Because there would be no goddamn point to his job if he managed to convince congress of that very true statement.
It takes a better man than most here to be recieve a prestigious, high paying appointment to your own huge agency, and then turn around and say
You know why? It involves little additional personnel and a bunch of big equipment purchases and that's it. Hardly the typical beaurocrats response when given a big mandate and a big budget to go with it.
His only tool is the big government hammer, so to him, everything looks like a nail.
Then he sets his big goals to his beaurocratic luitenants, who come up with beaurocratic solutions that the head guy approves, then they hire people on down the line to the foot soldiers to make this entire bullshit affair work.
They have to be seen doing something, and if the right solution doesn't really involve them, damn near everything they do is idiotic.
A big government tries to solve it's problems with more big government.
The fact that the proper, proven methods (Flight 93 and El-Al's interviews) don't involve them won't make them stop anytime soon.
Avoiding this entire mess requires a paradigm shift in the way we think of government, though that shift would be back to the original version of things. That paradigm, if you will, is this:
1. A large, powerful government is inherently abusive. Even if it's programs are bourne out of benevolance or a citizen mandate, it is abusive.
2. This abuse from a powerful goverment results sometimes from malice and often from incompetence.
3. The more government is expected to take of things with it's immense power, the less it's citizens will seek to take care of themselves, and the more they will tolerate the abuse (like a beaten child with no where to turn). Ref: Great Britain.
The other factor is also lawsuits. We all know about that shit.
These would need a robot climber to carry helium tanks up to the baloons...
Or maybe just a really, really long hose.
I think you mean two orders of magnitude off, not 100.
That being said, how far off were we when this idea was first concieved, or practical work began? A factor of 1000? 10,000 ?
Anyway, we do stuff like this because it's fun and achievable. Most people who follow this sort of thing know that material strength of tether is the current limiting factor, and there is ongoing research in this field.
But there are plenty of people who don't have the expertise to contribute to the material strength problem, but they can sure have fun screwing around with climbers, can't they? The work has to be done sometime anyway.
Okay, in my opinion, this statement is a big warning sign you should be more careful commenting about what obeys the laws of physics and what doesn't....
This being Slashdot and all, I guess I see why you think it's fine to claim the latter while admitting the former.
Did you get beat up alot at school? And now find being a dick on the web is the best way you can make up for it?
Like pretty much every popular forum on the web, this site is for pointless pontification about topics few of us will ever get involved in, and fewer still have any clue what's going on.
This place is a waste of time. Everyone here should know that. So not only do I think it's fine to claim the latter while admitting the former, I know it is. So don't be a wise ass.
Anyway, beyond the snide comments, thanks for your reply.
I suppose a little occasional education is the only value one might draw from here.
After reading the critiques here and at some U of Texas physics site, the best I can figure is that this setup may be plausible as weak thruster, and is plausible as a strong levitator.
If you take a couple of magnets and place like poles together, they push away from each other until they're too far away to push anymore. Yet no material has been exchanged between them, and no particles have been thrown out one and hit the other.
That's the best analogy I can draw- this is like setting up a repulsive magnetic field without magnets. The precise physics are above my pay grade, but viewing it in this manner doesn't appear to violate any laws of physics.
(For those of you who didn't RTFA, it states that the thrust dissapears if the 'engine' actually moves. I think I might have had that bit in my original submission, and Zonk cut it out.)
The ban on Cell phones on planes was originally an FCC rule, not an FAA rule. A cell phone that has a Line Of Sight to many, many, many towers can gum up the works. A plane full, or several plane fulls of cell phones with LOS to hundreds of towers can bring down the network.
As they touch on in the article, as more and more money is spent in the healthcare sector, the cost of insurance will continue to rise.
A huge problem in healthcare is that the decision to pay is largely seperated from the decision to use services. This is true wether it's an insurance company you're dealing with, or a government payer.
When you go see a doctor for any old cold, bruise, cracked rib, or any number of certain things, the doc is gonna tell you the same thing your grandma would have: you just have to suffer through it. Since those on insurance or socialized healthcare don't have to pay the doctor much if anything, they don't weigh their appraisal of the injury against the doctor's price of services.
They just use the services. However, when you do this, you increase the demand for a doctor's service, and like any industry, this leads to an increase in price.
Healthcare is not a right, it's an industry, subject to the same laws of supply (but not demand, as i've explained) as any other.
To provide healthcare, you need:
1. Highly educated people at all levels
2. Constant research into new methods and devices
3. A manufacturing arm that requires raw materials, production and distribution.
4. Expensive endpoints to deliver services and goods to the consumer.
If you take those four points abstracted, that describes a great many industries. Healthcare is just another industry, and the emotional attachment to good health is the only thing that makes it seem different.
Emotions do not change the laws of supply and demand.
My solution? Well, if I was self-employed, I'd go with a catastrophic health insurance plan- one were the yearly deductable is a hard $3000-5000. Until I reach that limit, I would pay everything. Over it, insurance pays. I'd just have to be sure to have enough saved money on hand to cover the deductable. Such a plan (if widely participated in) is likely to be much cheaper than the standard ones you see around.
Oh, and another thing about insurance: Any successful health insurance plan depends on the participation & payment of young single men to stay afloat. We don't use services unless we have to, for the most part, and hence our payments can go to larger consumers of healthcare- ie men with children, women, etc. (Don't call what's true sexist, btw.)
Damnit. I've had that up there for years and now someone tells me. Oh well, guess I should have checked or noticed it right from the start.
Some folks have already tried to run a business with all variety of materials reclaimed from a landfill. Trouble is, cleaning it up enough so that anyone will tolerate the material being in their factory removes any other ecological or financial incentive to use it.
High availability hosting is very expensive too.
Well, we can tell one place blizzard saves some money....
Yeah, we all get it, you hate Bush. How about not bringing it up in unrelated threads?
You've got to be a real bore at parties, tying everything to politics and probably blaming every unpleasentry in your life on Bush.
It's not only selfish, it shows you're already mad as a hatter!
(I hope everyone gets it)
You demand violence to stop violence that was meant to stop violence. You do realize your idea only helps the problem spiral, right?
You realize the police use force or the credible threat thereof to enforce laws, don't you? If your alternate plans for dealing with these eco-terrorists involve the police, you are merely sub-contracting the violence. Never forget that.
Now, in general , it is right and good to let the police maintain order insomuch as they can enforce the law. However, when they fail to maintain order, that does not mean that violence is no longer the proper and moral method of maintaining or restoring order.
Historically, vigilantism only rises when law enforcement fails. It is better than letting evil rule the streets.
If you don't want to see vigilantes, see to it that law enforcement can and does act.
He says all those important things, and you attack his GRAMMAR. Did you consider that he may be thinking about more important things? Like, I don't know, ANYTHING ELSE.
Only a pinko commie would have a sig like yours.
Time between when the story was posted by the editors and someone blames bush.... 19 minutes.
Is that a new record?
The animal research still needs to be done, and because of assholes like these, it's all going to china.
In China, the concept of human rights is laughable- do you think the government there gives a shit about animals?
Or that they would hesitate to beat down any Animal Liberation Front jerks, quite literally?
There should be laws against this kind of behavior, they should be enforced, or there should be a local law enforcement culture that encourages a violent beat down of people who carry on this type of harrasment campaign.
Congratulations, morons. You will accomplish the opposite of what you intended- more animal research, and no government oversight to ensure they are being treated even vaugely humanely.
I'm only looking out for myself, like any seller on Ebay. =)
Ebay has been around long enough that everyone knows about it, both buyers and would-be sellers.
Competition is fierce between sellers, especially any twits who bought a 'how to make money on Ebay kit' and are trying to do it full time- and buyers will jump sellers to save a buck or two- there is absolutely no loyalty on ebay.
I'm an occasional seller and very occasional buyer on ebay, and I like to be sure to be able to sell my stuff. Since I'm not trying to turn a profit on new items, just unload stuff I have and don't need for a few bucks I can be pretty cheap.
What do I do?
Put the starting bid waay under the going price (but at a price I'm willing to sell it at), and the buyout slightly under the going rate for an item. Usually it gets bid up close to the buyout/going rate, I sell my item, and everyone is happy.
I cannot imagine trying to run a normal business this way.
That being said, Ebay is soaking their sellers for more fees lately and this cut in profit margins isn't helping them at all.
A few years ago I had the benefit of working on a now-defunct college sattelite program. The venture was dying and all five of us left on the project new it, so we started screwing around with the time we had left on the payroll.
I shit thee not: The Professor, in charge of a sattelite project at a respected University, had us working on a magnet-powered generator. His theory- and this was a man who led the design of a fairly sophisticated machine that was well grounded in existing science- was that we could use up the magnetism to keep it spinning and generating electricity.
The idea was that the energy wasn't free; the magnetic field would decay and weaken as it ran.
I'm an ME, not an EE, nor had i studied magnets for any length of time, so I really didn't know enough to say it was complete and utter bullshit. I'm certain it is, but nonetheless we ordered some magnets & bearings and screwed around with them from time to time.
Of course we didn't get anywhere before I graduated, and the program finished dying not too long after that.
Just goes to show you that making it past high school, or a bachelors degree, or a masters, or a PHD (in some physical science, I forget which) does not insulate you from being a crackpot.