Regarding sequels, I never actually said they were worse. I said it showed a lack of creativity, which I admit usually means the same thing. But I do not think a "near-universal" phenomena needs to be argued about.
I admit to taking a lot of physics in school. But I know some history of physics and I have been exposed to some decent philosophy. So I admit some advantage, but it seems to me many people know about fundamental physics discoveries. I would assume you know about general relativity and quantum mechanics existing, thought you might not know the dates. It seems to me you do not have to be a physics person to know about fundamental theories.
Regarding web development, I am a bit up on that, though I assume you know more about it than I. You are confusing new tools with new fundamental theories. Or perhaps you are confusing engineering with science. Anyway, "change" is not what I am talking about.
Pessimism. I admit to baiting you. I think this is the best of all possible worlds and always has been. This sort of identifies my philosophical preferences, and it's meaning is rather technical. Take it as meaning it is always possible to meet necessity, and so you might have a future, though it is not guaranteed.
I got a raise last week. Congratulations on the raise. You must be really good at your job. You are dealing with microeconomics. Your future will be determined by larger phenomena, which do not even seem to be on your radar screen. I will go out on a limb and predict another major economic downturn this year. There is some possibility of it happening this month.
Our crash is nothing compared to 1929 crash. Hmm, our crash is still happening and the fundamentals are worse than in the great depression. You cite 1929, which was the stock market crash. This has some significance, but was not the start and not the end. It was most immeadiately the result of the earlier pound sterling crash, which was the reserve currency of the day.
Orders of magnitude. I would not agree with orders of magnitude. In the 1820's we had a fairly sane economic system. For instance, we had a national credit bank, eventually destroyed by the New York financial interests. We were doing a lot of infrastructure development, mainly canals. I suspect people were pretty much happy. If you are less precise on time, I might be inclined to agree.
I know a little history. I disagree that everything in the past sucked hard. Our successes are rooted in the past. Often in the profound ideas generated by a few of the elite. But for the average person, life often tended to suck hard.
History is an interesting topic. There are a lot of theories of history and they give different results. A common one these days is sort of the present as a thin bubble and the next instance is determined by what is in the bubble. I reject that approach. Since you repeatedly cite your historical knowledge, you might have a position on theory.
I never said the modern world was horrible. Some extensive parts have been and are. I think you would have to agreed with that. An easy example is a lot of Africa. Also, I suspect I would use a more extensive time frame to define modern. For instance, I consider the post world war II period as that of current events. Again, it is a theoretical consideration, but I think quite useful.
Good question. The photoelectric effect was explained about 1905 by Einstein as involving the quantitization of energy. This is where he made his reputation in the field. Skipping a lot of important people, in 1921 we had Schrodinger's equation. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) came along in the 1940's. Quantum entanglement comes out of these theories.
Memristors and nanotechnologies do not count because they are not fundamental. They often reveal new phenomena, but for an explanation people go back to QED.
Now Einstein objected to quantum mechanics. He observed "God does not play dice". I share his inclination. On the other hand, he objected to spooky action at a distance, Yet, that has been reduced to a commercial product. And I regard reduction to engineering as tending to show that we actually know something. So since we have had transistors, I think it fair to say we have know something about microphysics. Indeed, microphysics and some kinds of astronomy are really the places to look to for new fundamental discoveries. But I advise against confusing the existence of new and better tools with fundamental discoveries. The tools tend to make possible the fundamental discoveries, but they are not the same thing.
I did go on to comment on the prevelence of sequels. This is hard to miss even if you do not go to movies. Anyway, I was just commenting on the irrelevance of the straw men that were set up.
I notice you did not comment on my example, which was in physics. I think you have no future, know it in your heart, and cannot face it. So you attack someone who gives you a partial explanation of why. Or do you believe the media's reassurance on the economy? If you do not, how bad do you think it will get? What happened? What are you doing about it?
It is pretty easy to cite examples you would probably find credible.
For instance, there has not been a new fundamental science discovery in sixty years. The current dominate TOE is string theory which with 30 years of work has not produced one testable conjecture. In fact it is so political dominate in the physics departments that you cannot get a job unless you sign on to it.
As far as your examples are concerned, I am not much into music, but consider Ode to Joy to be a culturally universal anthem of freedom and thus superior to the Beatles. Still I have enjoyed the Beatles on occasion. I especially like "Here comes the sun".
Modern painting is a complex subject, but I respect (darn, blank on his name) statement that modern art was the hope of the world. I think he is wrong. One reason is the art world is well-documented to be more about who you know than how "good" you are. Actually I used to own an original piece of Japanese abstract art.
I do not go to movies, watch TV or do DVD's. I figure I have better things to do. So I am not sure what the current offerings are like. But I understand sequels are often produced, which does not much reflect creativity, except perhaps originally by marketing. I suspect Hollywood is hard to defend, but most attacks on it seem to be by right-wing crazies. They may have the right idea, but are too ignorant to say anything fundamental.
I probably do most of my communication in emails. I like it because it is asynchronous. It is my preferred method of communications. I think I plead non-guilty there. My preferred workstation is OpenBSD so I am pretty much a computer nerd.
Anyway, these are your examples, not mine. I would tend to cite more substantive things. Ultimately, it is a philosophy issue, a two thousand year old social disease. But for current events I would trace it to 1945.
So, I do not think I am saying what you think I am saying.
On your sig, English dictionaries have a lot of definitions of free, and as I understand it, none that exactly match free as in free software. That is why people who need to be precise say gratis and libre. You are playing nominalist.
Not all your fault. The current English dictionaries are probably the result of the ongoing long-term cultural deterioration. I would expect that really old English dictionaries have the meaning.
Energy density is not a bad measurement, but a minimum energy density for the world should be at about the energy density of the United States, for instance. Anyone know what that is?
Energy density has a better meaning. Consider that simply emperically, increased energy density in physical phenomena reveals new phenomena and generates new industrial processes. So we should reject solar power as a dead-end. Straw burning is simply insane. I hear there are about 100 promising novel approaches to fusion, that could all be tested out for a total of one or two hundred million dollars. Why has it not happened?
ah, lighten up. Some people are just do-gooders. Some people want more money than the next guy. Taken in moderation, both are useful to society; in excess, dangerous.
Note though that some of the greedy ones have created whole so-called sciences and ideologies to justify their greed as an unalloyed good. These dominate us. As a result, our country is in dire straits.
This is a good monetarist argument, but I find it hard to make predictions about reality based on something that is not real. The fundamental issue in economics is the nature of wealth. People early on tried land and gold. Here I am being a little cynical, but I think it fair to say the Soviet Union tried the sweat of the worker. Now the question is deliberately obscured as inconvenient.
I claim the monetarists says wealth is money. Gambling money, farm money, all the same. But we know the Weimar Republic had plenty of money. We have plenty of money. Sort of adapting to your view, I claim that at the present time, adding money to M1 increases non-productive sinkholes by more than the addition, thus even the hyper-inflation of M1 simply makes the matter worse. The debts cannot be paid.
You managed to have a bit of observational sanity. However, you would be better off rejecting monetarist theory. Try this. The physical economy is deflating, the money supply is hyper-inflating. Debt is increasing faster than money. So, big crash.
The historical analogy is to Wiemar Republic 1923. So we will have a blowout this year, perhaps as early as this month. Reasonable people differ on how bad it will be. This month I am looking at the October 19th to October 25th period specifically.
Anyway, at times I have favored Glass-Steigel approaches and I think you would have also. These would have been good say as late as 2007. Now they would be a joke.
I have heard figures that 30% of private health care dollars in private insurance goes to administration and profits. I see various numbers for medicare, but they are always in the neighborhood of 1%. Even with illegal type fraud, as opposed to the socially sanctioned free market variety, I think government run health care is a good idea, but for broader reasons not to be done in the middle of a depression.
A personal tidbit: I used to belong to Group Health. It is a coop formed about 1948. The local AMA hated it and tried to destroy it. But to the point, they get by without high-priced executives.
While I am on the subject, I note that it was good medical care. I would guess better than yours. They do without some common concepts such as "gatekeeper".
Probably the best thing to do right now is simply make HMO's illegal again.
All this is true, but happens in the superstructure. These people are basically parasites on the physical economy, that actually generates the wealth that we live on, and they tend to destroy the physical economy. The forcasts I follow say we will have another major economic downturn this year, most probably in October.
As covered in the Morning News Tribune, based in Tacoma WA, a Fircrest family was bedeviled by some one who had the tech, probably a kid by speculation, to listen in, turn on the phone, take pictures, etc. This was a few years back. I believe the tech worked even when the phone was off.
More recently, the government got a conviction of some NY mobsters by listening in on their cell phones during their meetings.
The extra electrical transmission capability is so the speculators who jacked up the electrical cost not too long ago can continue to operate and do it again more effectively.
This is a full featured accounting package that runs on Linux and other things. In Linux, it is character oriented. The package is designed to be customizable.
I would call Lamarckian a useful shorthand for a class of largely ignored phenomena. For instance, there is a Russian plant, maybe a flax, that if you grow it in poor soil, it has one morphology, and you grow it in good soil, it has another morphology. Except if you grow it in poor soil and plant the seeds in good soil, the children plants has the morphology associated with the poor soil. Kind of cute. This sort of unreasonable result is where good scientific advances come from. And since it is so unreasonable, you have a hard time getting tenure by studying it.
I do not know if there has a been a detailed explanation of that case, but we now know that some organisms have multiple genomes that can be switched among. So the flax? is probably something like that. Not really Lamarckian with that explanation, but with no explanation, it support a Lamarckian view. Similarly, in the original story, if you leave out the subtlies of the explanation, then it supports a Lamarckian view.
Try entertaining the idea that Lamarckianism was legit science at its core, but got taken over by politics and wrecked. Ozone hole anyone?
Ironically, some of the earlier disadvantages of steam had already begun to be ironed out. The use of condensers, to trap escaping steam and reconvert it to water in the boiler, made constant refilling unnecessary. The "flash boiler" made it possible to use only the amount of steam needed at a given time. An electric starting device, to replace the pilot light, enabled steamers to run in less than two minutes, in summer or winter. The annoying problems associated with steam propulsion were more or less under control.
But it was too late. Companies like White and Locomobile--and over 100 others--gave up on steam as a power source. The Stanleys' company, which had been sold in 1917, was one of very few still making steamers. In 1925 they decided to give up. Ford had conquered.
What was lost? Mainly, an ingenious and clean power source. It is possible to say that today's automobiles might be running on steam if someone as brilliant as Ford had favored it. There have been attempts since F.E. and F.O.'s time to construct viable steamers. But automotive history, built on billions of dollars and millions of hours, has relegated the steamers to museums. Maybe the Stanley Steamer should be the car of the future, rather than the car of the past.
Gasoline may be a good choice, but I claim the reason it was chosen was that it was an abundant waste product of other industrial processes. Steam cars were otherwise very attractive. Here I speculate: Rockefeller bought some politicians to bring gasoline online.
I think this shot would have been the first proof of concept of the solar sail idea to have successfully flown. There was a previous try that failed. Nasa thought about it in the 1970's and will fly some in the 2010's.
Solar sails are useful even for interstellar flights, if you have a big laser kept at home to drive it. Presumedly a smaller laser would take you past Jupiter to the outer planets.
This last shot wanted to demonstrate steeribility.
People have the idea that natural resources are natural. Actually, a little reflection will yield the insight that natural resources start out as a matter of human intellect. Or, maybe taking a simpler tack, a resource is not a resource until we learn how to use it as a resource.
The parent is particularly simple minded in that he does not mention breeder reactors. This oversight probably represents a world view of everything is scarce and always will be.
The parent notes that uranium processing uses a lot of oil. This is a fine point, except what is I think true is that it uses a lot energy. Given the topic, a confusion of oil and energy is suggestive of a lack of clarity. In any case, the useful number is a ratio of energy output to energy input over the life cycle of the device. I seem to recall that a nuclear power reactor has about a ratio of 5. This result is actually a very good one, since many alternative energy proposals are down around 1.
Current science likes to be reductionist. It likes it so much, there is not room for much else. If you are a reductionist, then the human mind is a machine and you spend some of your time redefining creativity so that whatever a human does that is creative is the sort of trick a machine can do.
Suppose, perhaps from observing your own creative mental processes, the above scheme does not work for you. One thing you can do is add some semi-mysterious property to the brain. Not too mysterious, else you would end up something other than a reductionist. Here a proposed quantum mechanical overlay to the brain would come in handy.
Hmm, maybe this is unique to me. I just thought that a finite set of finite particles is analogous to a finite axiomic set. By analogy from Godel, the human brain, if a finite set of finite particles, is then either contradictory or incomplete with respect to truth. Ah well, I probably stole it from Penrose.
OpenBSD has native support for AMD64. It even ships on their CDROM. The ports collection is tested in AMD64. Since the OpenBSD ports collection programs are installed by compiling, I am inclined to think OpenBSD mostly just works. I have my AMD64 on order and my main concern is SATA drivers.
It is true that the Europeans do not reasonable have the space for suburbia. But when I was stationed in Germany during a late unpleasantness, I would characterize it as cities, rural, and very protected forests. And I was intending to contrast rural to urban. Suburbia has a different set of problems than rural. For rural, the phrase rural idiocy was invented. And whatever the Atlantic author's options, he treated cities as something positive, refering to word "civics", rather than something that is to be tolerated for the lack of options. And I think the appelative "city-builder" is highly positive.
"I don't think anyone sees cities as "sinful, bad evil that should be fled at all cost"."
It is hard to make an accurate statement about "anyone". How hard is it really to go from opposing the electrical grid to opposing cities? Or for a fundamentalist thinktank to observe that when third-world rural women move to the city, the women because less conservative religiously.
I think last month's Atlantic had a Frenchman reprise DeToncville. One of his observations, on seeing the desolation that is Detroit, is that US citizens do not really like cities, like the Europeans do.
I do not want to violate Goodwin's law, and the parent's points are good, but the defining characteristic is austerity. The police state tactics are there to enforce austerity. A certain variety of liberal likes the austerity, but bemoans the "necessity" of police state tactics.
I am a little political and it happens I get a phone call everytime a mainstream politician violates Goodwin's law. Only two or three occurances so far, but it might be a trend.
oh, I use rimuhosting also. Very good tech support. And for me it is cost effective. VPS is a nice way to go if you have some Linux tech chops. I do not have a lot of Linux tech chops, but get along fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for your reply.
Regarding sequels, I never actually said they were worse. I said it showed a lack of creativity, which I admit usually means the same thing. But I do not think a "near-universal" phenomena needs to be argued about.
I admit to taking a lot of physics in school. But I know some history of physics and I have been exposed to some decent philosophy. So I admit some advantage, but it seems to me many people know about fundamental physics discoveries. I would assume you know about general relativity and quantum mechanics existing, thought you might not know the dates. It seems to me you do not have to be a physics person to know about fundamental theories.
Regarding web development, I am a bit up on that, though I assume you know more about it than I. You are confusing new tools with new fundamental theories. Or perhaps you are confusing engineering with science. Anyway, "change" is not what I am talking about.
Pessimism. I admit to baiting you. I think this is the best of all possible worlds and always has been. This sort of identifies my philosophical preferences, and it's meaning is rather technical. Take it as meaning it is always possible to meet necessity, and so you might have a future, though it is not guaranteed.
I got a raise last week. Congratulations on the raise. You must be really good at your job. You are dealing with microeconomics. Your future will be determined by larger phenomena, which do not even seem to be on your radar screen. I will go out on a limb and predict another major economic downturn this year. There is some possibility of it happening this month.
Our crash is nothing compared to 1929 crash. Hmm, our crash is still happening and the fundamentals are worse than in the great depression. You cite 1929, which was the stock market crash. This has some significance, but was not the start and not the end. It was most immeadiately the result of the earlier pound sterling crash, which was the reserve currency of the day.
Orders of magnitude. I would not agree with orders of magnitude. In the 1820's we had a fairly sane economic system. For instance, we had a national credit bank, eventually destroyed by the New York financial interests. We were doing a lot of infrastructure development, mainly canals. I suspect people were pretty much happy. If you are less precise on time, I might be inclined to agree.
I know a little history. I disagree that everything in the past sucked hard. Our successes are rooted in the past. Often in the profound ideas generated by a few of the elite. But for the average person, life often tended to suck hard.
History is an interesting topic. There are a lot of theories of history and they give different results. A common one these days is sort of the present as a thin bubble and the next instance is determined by what is in the bubble. I reject that approach. Since you repeatedly cite your historical knowledge, you might have a position on theory.
I never said the modern world was horrible. Some extensive parts have been and are. I think you would have to agreed with that. An easy example is a lot of Africa. Also, I suspect I would use a more extensive time frame to define modern. For instance, I consider the post world war II period as that of current events. Again, it is a theoretical consideration, but I think quite useful.
Well, I agree with you about the media.
Good question. The photoelectric effect was explained about 1905 by Einstein as involving the quantitization of energy. This is where he made his reputation in the field. Skipping a lot of important people, in 1921 we had Schrodinger's equation. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) came along in the 1940's. Quantum entanglement comes out of these theories.
Memristors and nanotechnologies do not count because they are not fundamental. They often reveal new phenomena, but for an explanation people go back to QED.
Now Einstein objected to quantum mechanics. He observed "God does not play dice". I share his inclination. On the other hand, he objected to spooky action at a distance, Yet, that has been reduced to a commercial product. And I regard reduction to engineering as tending to show that we actually know something. So since we have had transistors, I think it fair to say we have know something about microphysics. Indeed, microphysics and some kinds of astronomy are really the places to look to for new fundamental discoveries. But I advise against confusing the existence of new and better tools with fundamental discoveries. The tools tend to make possible the fundamental discoveries, but they are not the same thing.
I did go on to comment on the prevelence of sequels. This is hard to miss even if you do not go to movies. Anyway, I was just commenting on the irrelevance of the straw men that were set up.
I notice you did not comment on my example, which was in physics. I think you have no future, know it in your heart, and cannot face it. So you attack someone who gives you a partial explanation of why. Or do you believe the media's reassurance on the economy? If you do not, how bad do you think it will get? What happened? What are you doing about it?
It is pretty easy to cite examples you would probably find credible.
For instance, there has not been a new fundamental science discovery in sixty years. The current dominate TOE is string theory which with 30 years of work has not produced one testable conjecture. In fact it is so political dominate in the physics departments that you cannot get a job unless you sign on to it.
As far as your examples are concerned, I am not much into music, but consider Ode to Joy to be a culturally universal anthem of freedom and thus superior to the Beatles. Still I have enjoyed the Beatles on occasion. I especially like "Here comes the sun".
Modern painting is a complex subject, but I respect (darn, blank on his name) statement that modern art was the hope of the world. I think he is wrong. One reason is the art world is well-documented to be more about who you know than how "good" you are. Actually I used to own an original piece of Japanese abstract art.
I do not go to movies, watch TV or do DVD's. I figure I have better things to do. So I am not sure what the current offerings are like. But I understand sequels are often produced, which does not much reflect creativity, except perhaps originally by marketing. I suspect Hollywood is hard to defend, but most attacks on it seem to be by right-wing crazies. They may have the right idea, but are too ignorant to say anything fundamental.
I probably do most of my communication in emails. I like it because it is asynchronous. It is my preferred method of communications. I think I plead non-guilty there. My preferred workstation is OpenBSD so I am pretty much a computer nerd.
Anyway, these are your examples, not mine. I would tend to cite more substantive things. Ultimately, it is a philosophy issue, a two thousand year old social disease. But for current events I would trace it to 1945.
So, I do not think I am saying what you think I am saying.
On your sig, English dictionaries have a lot of definitions of free, and as I understand it, none that exactly match free as in free software. That is why people who need to be precise say gratis and libre. You are playing nominalist.
Not all your fault. The current English dictionaries are probably the result of the ongoing long-term cultural deterioration. I would expect that really old English dictionaries have the meaning.
The parent is right on.
Energy density is not a bad measurement, but a minimum energy density for the world should be at about the energy density of the United States, for instance. Anyone know what that is?
Energy density has a better meaning. Consider that simply emperically, increased energy density in physical phenomena reveals new phenomena and generates new industrial processes. So we should reject solar power as a dead-end. Straw burning is simply insane. I hear there are about 100 promising novel approaches to fusion, that could all be tested out for a total of one or two hundred million dollars. Why has it not happened?
ah, lighten up. Some people are just do-gooders. Some people want more money than the next guy. Taken in moderation, both are useful to society; in excess, dangerous.
Note though that some of the greedy ones have created whole so-called sciences and ideologies to justify their greed as an unalloyed good. These dominate us. As a result, our country is in dire straits.
This is a good monetarist argument, but I find it hard to make predictions about reality based on something that is not real. The fundamental issue in economics is the nature of wealth. People early on tried land and gold. Here I am being a little cynical, but I think it fair to say the Soviet Union tried the sweat of the worker. Now the question is deliberately obscured as inconvenient.
I claim the monetarists says wealth is money. Gambling money, farm money, all the same. But we know the Weimar Republic had plenty of money. We have plenty of money. Sort of adapting to your view, I claim that at the present time, adding money to M1 increases non-productive sinkholes by more than the addition, thus even the hyper-inflation of M1 simply makes the matter worse. The debts cannot be paid.
You managed to have a bit of observational sanity. However, you would be better off rejecting monetarist theory. Try this. The physical economy is deflating, the money supply is hyper-inflating. Debt is increasing faster than money. So, big crash.
The historical analogy is to Wiemar Republic 1923. So we will have a blowout this year, perhaps as early as this month. Reasonable people differ on how bad it will be. This month I am looking at the October 19th to October 25th period specifically.
Anyway, at times I have favored Glass-Steigel approaches and I think you would have also. These would have been good say as late as 2007. Now they would be a joke.
I have heard figures that 30% of private health care dollars in private insurance goes to administration and profits. I see various numbers for medicare, but they are always in the neighborhood of 1%. Even with illegal type fraud, as opposed to the socially sanctioned free market variety, I think government run health care is a good idea, but for broader reasons not to be done in the middle of a depression.
A personal tidbit: I used to belong to Group Health. It is a coop formed about 1948. The local AMA hated it and tried to destroy it. But to the point, they get by without high-priced executives.
While I am on the subject, I note that it was good medical care. I would guess better than yours. They do without some common concepts such as "gatekeeper".
Probably the best thing to do right now is simply make HMO's illegal again.
All this is true, but happens in the superstructure. These people are basically parasites on the physical economy, that actually generates the wealth that we live on, and they tend to destroy the physical economy. The forcasts I follow say we will have another major economic downturn this year, most probably in October.
As covered in the Morning News Tribune, based in Tacoma WA, a Fircrest family was bedeviled by some one who had the tech, probably a kid by speculation, to listen in, turn on the phone, take pictures, etc. This was a few years back. I believe the tech worked even when the phone was off.
More recently, the government got a conviction of some NY mobsters by listening in on their cell phones during their meetings.
The extra electrical transmission capability is so the speculators who jacked up the electrical cost not too long ago can continue to operate and do it again more effectively.
This is a full featured accounting package that runs on Linux and other things. In Linux, it is character oriented. The package is designed to be customizable.
I would call Lamarckian a useful shorthand for a class of largely ignored phenomena. For instance, there is a Russian plant, maybe a flax, that if you grow it in poor soil, it has one morphology, and you grow it in good soil, it has another morphology. Except if you grow it in poor soil and plant the seeds in good soil, the children plants has the morphology associated with the poor soil. Kind of cute. This sort of unreasonable result is where good scientific advances come from. And since it is so unreasonable, you have a hard time getting tenure by studying it.
I do not know if there has a been a detailed explanation of that case, but we now know that some organisms have multiple genomes that can be switched among. So the flax? is probably something like that. Not really Lamarckian with that explanation, but with no explanation, it support a Lamarckian view. Similarly, in the original story, if you leave out the subtlies of the explanation, then it supports a Lamarckian view.
Try entertaining the idea that Lamarckianism was legit science at its core, but got taken over by politics and wrecked. Ozone hole anyone?
http://www.trivia-library.com/b/history-of-the-sta nley-steamer-steam-powered-car-part-2.htm
From the article:
Ironically, some of the earlier disadvantages of steam had already begun to be ironed out. The use of condensers, to trap escaping steam and reconvert it to water in the boiler, made constant refilling unnecessary. The "flash boiler" made it possible to use only the amount of steam needed at a given time. An electric starting device, to replace the pilot light, enabled steamers to run in less than two minutes, in summer or winter. The annoying problems associated with steam propulsion were more or less under control.
But it was too late. Companies like White and Locomobile--and over 100 others--gave up on steam as a power source. The Stanleys' company, which had been sold in 1917, was one of very few still making steamers. In 1925 they decided to give up. Ford had conquered.
What was lost? Mainly, an ingenious and clean power source. It is possible to say that today's automobiles might be running on steam if someone as brilliant as Ford had favored it. There have been attempts since F.E. and F.O.'s time to construct viable steamers. But automotive history, built on billions of dollars and millions of hours, has relegated the steamers to museums. Maybe the Stanley Steamer should be the car of the future, rather than the car of the past.
Gasoline may be a good choice, but I claim the reason it was chosen was that it was an abundant waste product of other industrial processes. Steam cars were otherwise very attractive. Here I speculate: Rockefeller bought some politicians to bring gasoline online.
I think this shot would have been the first proof of concept of the solar sail idea to have successfully flown. There was a previous try that failed. Nasa thought about it in the 1970's and will fly some in the 2010's.
Solar sails are useful even for interstellar flights, if you have a big laser kept at home to drive it. Presumedly a smaller laser would take you past Jupiter to the outer planets.
This last shot wanted to demonstrate steeribility.
People have the idea that natural resources are natural. Actually, a little reflection will yield the insight that natural resources start out as a matter of human intellect. Or, maybe taking a simpler tack, a resource is not a resource until we learn how to use it as a resource.
The parent is particularly simple minded in that he does not mention breeder reactors. This oversight probably represents a world view of everything is scarce and always will be.
The parent notes that uranium processing uses a lot of oil. This is a fine point, except what is I think true is that it uses a lot energy. Given the topic, a confusion of oil and energy is suggestive of a lack of clarity. In any case, the useful number is a ratio of energy output to energy input over the life cycle of the device. I seem to recall that a nuclear power reactor has about a ratio of 5. This result is actually a very good one, since many alternative energy proposals are down around 1.
Current science likes to be reductionist. It likes it so much, there is not room for much else. If you are a reductionist, then the human mind is a machine and you spend some of your time redefining creativity so that whatever a human does that is creative is the sort of trick a machine can do.
Suppose, perhaps from observing your own creative mental processes, the above scheme does not work for you. One thing you can do is add some semi-mysterious property to the brain. Not too mysterious, else you would end up something other than a reductionist. Here a proposed quantum mechanical overlay to the brain would come in handy.
Hmm, maybe this is unique to me. I just thought that a finite set of finite particles is analogous to a finite axiomic set. By analogy from Godel, the human brain, if a finite set of finite particles, is then either contradictory or incomplete with respect to truth. Ah well, I probably stole it from Penrose.
OpenBSD has native support for AMD64. It even ships on their CDROM. The ports collection is tested in AMD64. Since the OpenBSD ports collection programs are installed by compiling, I am inclined to think OpenBSD mostly just works. I have my AMD64 on order and my main concern is SATA drivers.
It is true that the Europeans do not reasonable have the space for suburbia. But when I was stationed in Germany during a late unpleasantness, I would characterize it as cities, rural, and very protected forests. And I was intending to contrast rural to urban. Suburbia has a different set of problems than rural. For rural, the phrase rural idiocy was invented. And whatever the Atlantic author's options, he treated cities as something positive, refering to word "civics", rather than something that is to be tolerated for the lack of options. And I think the appelative "city-builder" is highly positive.
"I don't think anyone sees cities as "sinful, bad evil that should be fled at all cost"."
It is hard to make an accurate statement about "anyone". How hard is it really to go from opposing the electrical grid to opposing cities? Or for a fundamentalist thinktank to observe that when third-world rural women move to the city, the women because less conservative religiously.
I think last month's Atlantic had a Frenchman reprise DeToncville. One of his observations, on seeing the desolation that is Detroit, is that US citizens do not really like cities, like the Europeans do.
I do not want to violate Goodwin's law, and the parent's points are good, but the defining characteristic is austerity. The police state tactics are there to enforce austerity. A certain variety of liberal likes the austerity, but bemoans the "necessity" of police state tactics.
I am a little political and it happens I get a phone call everytime a mainstream politician violates Goodwin's law. Only two or three occurances so far, but it might be a trend.
oh, I use rimuhosting also. Very good tech support. And for me it is cost effective. VPS is a nice way to go if you have some Linux tech chops. I do not have a lot of Linux tech chops, but get along fine.