Hyped up misinfo like this is good PR for a politician, and better PR when considered from the standpoint of a news editor who needs to ensure exposure.
--
I'll let you draw your own conclusions about any relationships between those three facts. Hint: "We're doing something about (insert crime here)" is *always* good copy and rarely double-checked for factual content.
I'm not going to get into this argument, but I have to point something out to you:
If you use the same highlighting (ie, bold for previous posters comments, standard text for your own) there isn't a whole lot of point in posting anonymous, is there?
Even the major train terminals are pretty much gutted and only kept for historical reasons, usually by a government entity of some sort.
That's been happening in the midwest, too, just not as fast, but it's a steadily accelerating process.
Kudos to Iowa for restoring a lot of those stations rather than razing them under for more development. They're very nearly the only midwest state that has taken an active interest in it, and the massive interest they have taken is commendable IMHO.
Most of the old rail lines in our 'hometown' are gone now. It's rare you hear a train whistle there anymore, it's drowned out by the tractor-trailers on I90:(
Minor correction: The west was best suited to ranching, the midwest was best suited to farming. The difference might seem subtle to some people, but it sure doesn't to those involved.
Didn't choke Mozilla here (512MB, Moz 1.6, Fluxbox WM, Duron1200), didn't even cause a noticeable slowdown with the system fairly heavily loaded.
I have noticed however that if Mozilla is open long enough (we're talking weeks) that large images can choke it. I rebooted a few days ago (kernel change) and restarted Mozilla of course; I suspect that makes a difference. Moz does have some memory leaks IIRC. Curious...
Shadowbearer's attempt to inject humor into this thread/time stream is likely to fail utterly due to the ability of some observers to alter what they see by merely observing.
I believe the human outlook on that is to "Take it with a grain of salt" - which is a very broad aphorism, akin to "burning the midnight oil". An ancient scientist put it very well once, in saying that the observer affects the observed. However, he was more or less universally ignored outside of the fields of physics, to the detriment of the social advancement of the species.
However, and even being that this is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (nm that all things are connected) this particular entity will bow out of the conversation, with the observation that he likely shares, along with most of the inhabitants of the 3rd planet from the star called "Sol", a certain bais.
Sorry, that was a brain fart inspired by my cats, who casually (and occasionally causally) violate our most cherished theories of how things should be:) I'm not sure they understand the theories of unaccelerated frames of reference:D
Like another poster put it in his sig once, beware blue cats moving at.9c:D
At this point in our technological development, it'd be much cheaper and easier to design spacecraft that could utilize kinetic weapons such as asteroids.
Antimatter weapons are a long, long ways in the future, thank whatever gods who watch over human idiocy, if any:)
But.. the tech will come. Let's just hope that when it gets here we aren't developing strategy to deal with it years or decades behind the introduction of it, like we did with nuclear weapons.
Right now I'm much more scared of biotechnology than any of the high energy advances, mostly because our ignorance of the effects of developments along that line far outweighs our knowledge of their effects.
Which is why we should funding such research as much as we can, rather than throwing roadblocks into the path of researching it. We need to know as much as we can, so we can counter those down the road who would use it to kill rather than help.
Biotech has the potential to be the most important advance in medical science as well as it has the potential to be the most devastating advance in military science. Either way, we simply CAN'T ignore it. To do so is just plain foolish. Those who object to such research on religious grounds should contemplate the fact that if we don't know anything about it, we cannot develop effective counters to it, either...
I don't have an easy answer for you, but my SO (who works with disabled people) suggests contacting the NOD who might be able to direct you to someone who can help you out.
At the least they might be able to put you in contact with disabled people who travel and might be willing to help out with a ride.
We live in an area with a high number of tourists, and there are a lot of them who are disabled and on the road and would no doubt be very willing to give whatever help they could.
Definitely agree with you wrt to the bus and train system, even for non-disabled they have become, to a fair amount, useless. I won't comment on the flying situation except to say it's unlikely I'll ever fly, being more than somewhat agoraphobic (def. wrt to crowds).
Given what airports and airplanes are like, it wasn't that easy for a disabled person to travel that way even before 9/11. Neither of us know for sure, but we both can't believe there isn't *someone* out there who can help. There are a a couple disabled internet gurus I know, who travel quite a bit, and who I will inquire of; if I find out anything from them I'll respond here.
Another person I know locally and just called suggested finding someone to escort you and deal with the airport authorities ahead of time and during the security checks. She's not sure as to how effective it would be, but she used to provide escort services at JFK so she at least knows (or used to, as she said:) how it works.
You would be referring to the David-Besse plant, not the Perry plant.
It wasn't a "hole" it was a crater and pitting from boric acid leakage that damaged the reactor vessel. According to some other articles I saw in a quick Google search, they have a emergency sump system that would recirculate any coolant that leaked thru that hole back into the reactor - there would have been no meltdown *
The boric acid was stopped by a stainless steel outer layer that was another of the layers of defense. It could have eaten thru that, too, but it would have taken many years, many more than elapse between the regular inspections (AMAF it was when the plant was taken down for refueling - which happens pretty seldom - that they discovered the damage) and this was a *very* unusual accident, one which has prompted a considerable amount of redesign. Note that David-Besse and similar plants are also very old designs.
*NO* power production system is safe. NOT EVER. But fission plants have a much better safety record than any of the others do, which was drinkypoo's point. Look at the coalmine disasters, natural gas production facility disasters, and other dangers we face from "conventional" energy production. Even including Chernobyl fission has killed or injured FAR fewer people and environments than any of the other technologies.
Anyway, try to make an effort to get your facts straight and read about the events you describe before fear-mongering. If nothing else it helps other people take you seriously.
BTW, I lived near and got power from a fission reactor for twelve years out of my life. Never bothered me nor any of the people who lived there, either. Of course we Minnesotans know that our winters are much more likely to kill us than a power generation plant is:) Try to remember that dying from a nuclear plant accident is orders of magnitude less likely for anyone on the planet than even dying from lightning - even if you are a golfer:)
* Although there is a question of whether the filters in the emergency coolant containment system could have clogged, this problem is being addressed and has already been fixed in many plants - this according to info that's already fairly old and fixes have been implemented.
Actually the vector they are moving in isn't as important as whether or not there is a delta V along the line between the observers. If that vector component is not 0 you will observe a doppler shift in the frequency.
You're right, but relativity has nothing to do with it. It's the fact that both of you are on the surface of the earth and your distance from each other is *not* changing unless one of you changes altitude.
Now, if you consider that you can't send a laser beam *thru* the earth, and have to rely on, oh, say, a reflective mirror ahead of or behind the earth in a solar orbit, reflecting the laser off that mirror *will* produce a distance change between the observers, because it doesn't share their frame of reference, ie one observer is moving away from it, the other toward it at any point in time. * and **
Of course you could only exchange messages when both of you have line of sight to the mirror... and the doppler shift would be danged hard to detect.
SB * Yes, their velocity would cancel out if they were both moving in the same plane relative to the mirror/solar orbit plane. But they're not, the earth's axial tilt relative to it's orbital plane assures that there will always be a slight difference in velocities relative to each other when using the mirror to bounce the beam.
Used a laser beam for visual simplification. Same thing applies to EM transmissions of any kind.
My old man was never sophisticated enough to know what a Faraday cage was, but he certainly knew how to operate the circuit breaker:) It was Hendrix and Rush that got to him the most, I think...
At least the top bands back then showed some uniqueness... everything nowadays sounds the same. Probably because it pretty much is. (note, talking about mainstream, um, stuff:)
I worked on a brush-clearing crew for a couple of months one summer back in the late 80s. We were required to wear masks and full cover disposable clothing (in 90+ degree heat) yet several people on the crew developed nasty skin rash reactions from the herbicides we were using (full spectrum stuff, diazinon IIRC, and we would go thru tens to hundreds of gallons of 15% diluted mix a day clearing 2-5 miles.)
Given the possibilities of runoff and water supply contamination, I'd say that brush clearing chemicals are *very* relevant. Not that most of these Luddite-style EM "studies" seem to take the other environmental factors in mind. Pffft.
Except that a headset cord makes a *very* poor antenna for cell phone transmissions or reception; there are very good reasons why cell phone antennae have the length they do, it has to do with the wavelengths used. They certainly wouldn't broadcast "directly into your brain" - any broadcast would be omnidirectional.
Now, this kind of thing works for FM/AM broadcasts - a lot (most?) FM/AM radio headsets use the headphone cord as the antenna - because the antenna characteristics are similar - for example, a simple FM antennae is nothing more than a long thin single conductor, very similar to a headset cord. Cut that antenna to a simple multiple of the average wavelength of what you want to receive, you improve it's ability to do so.
Electronically, any cell phone that is leaking transmission current into it's *audio* circuit is just plain broken. Oh, sure, there can be induced current in the headset cord from the transmission thru the cell phone antenna, but it's incredibly tiny - likely in the tenths of a milliwatt - for the same reasons I described above wrt to antennae design.
Now, I haven't been a ham in many years, but I don't think I'm that far off; however, anyone who wants to correct me please do - it'd be nice to see a mathematical treatment of this, wish my old '90 era DOS software worked in dosemu:)
However, I do know that a headset cord acting as an antenna for cell phone frequencies strikes me as just plain wrong (and I've not seen a shred of evidence for it in phone conversations, either; actually, in "dead" spots it seems that lowering the cell phone itself a couple of feet, especially when one is inside a car, makes the reception/transmission worse, not better. )
Also: what "tests"? I've certainly not seen any tests that "prove" this - at least not any that have any shred of decent science behind them. Links?
As to your last sentence, I'd argue that the level of technology we have right now potentially lowers our lifespan to *zero*. But that's a whole 'nother - and mostly philosophical - topic:)
I'd hope not. Installing a massive EM accelerator coil around your kitchen doorway would likely piss off the wife - it'd be a tossup between the electric bill, the damage done to kitchen appliances from induced currents, and other simple things ( "Dangit, that oven shocked me again, Joe!" ):)
Then again, it'd be a nice way to keep the portable music headsets away from the dinner table... hmmm... teenager approaches doorway listening to fave boy band on the headphones... Dad flips switch... *pffffft* "DAD!":D
Yup. It's much more complicated than that - at least nowadays - of course - they just expanded the meme a bit:) *snort* Hence my "political" emphasis.
It's quite telling that at the beginnings of the "reefer" war hemp was one of the largest industries in the US, hemp being a prime and subsidized crop during WWII.
But then my comment was intended as sarcasm and aimed at those who already know what we are talking about;) - but make no mistake, many people in the upper echelons of the "drug war" know better from an intellectual standpoint; it's just not within them to choose honesty and integrity over their careers. Not that that is anything new. After all, politics is about getting elected or appointed, not actually about doing anything. There are exceptions, but nowhere has that particular ugliness reared it's head more than in federal antidrug programs - and recently, in the "antiterrorist" rhetoric.
Even there, it's just a symptom of a larger mutifaceted disease. Baaaaa baaa baaaa _vote_ - really quite classical.
What's really scary is that most people who vote blindly aren't stupid - just seem to have little capacity to think for themselves. Personally I think TV has been one of the biggest influences in the last few decades; but then, we'll never know - it'll be up to the dispassionate analysis by historians hundreds of years from now to ferret out the real cause/effect ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an election year.
Ashcroft wants to keep his job.
Hyped up misinfo like this is good PR for a politician, and better PR when considered from the standpoint of a news editor who needs to ensure exposure.
--
I'll let you draw your own conclusions about any relationships between those three facts. Hint: "We're doing something about (insert crime here)" is *always* good copy and rarely double-checked for factual content.
SB
Kirk: Scty bme^
Scotty: What?
Guess my ancient beer can collection is worth something then :)
SB
The twists and turns of reality never cease to astound.
:)
Thanks, both of you. I'll store that in the Miscellaneous Trivia section of my mind (assuming there is a few kb left there, might have to gzip it
SB
See now, that's what I get for not having the latest and greatest tech, it didn't work
Does anyone else foresee someone in marketing somewhere putting a microphone in USB mice? I mean, why not?
Oh, shit!, did I just give away a great patent idea?
damn damn damn
I'm not going to get into this argument, but I have to point something out to you:
If you use the same highlighting (ie, bold for previous posters comments, standard text for your own) there isn't a whole lot of point in posting anonymous, is there?
SB
Even the major train terminals are pretty much gutted and only kept for historical reasons, usually by a government entity of some sort.
:(
That's been happening in the midwest, too, just not as fast, but it's a steadily accelerating process.
Kudos to Iowa for restoring a lot of those stations rather than razing them under for more development. They're very nearly the only midwest state that has taken an active interest in it, and the massive interest they have taken is commendable IMHO.
Most of the old rail lines in our 'hometown' are gone now. It's rare you hear a train whistle there anymore, it's drowned out by the tractor-trailers on I90
SB
the west was best suited for farming
Minor correction: The west was best suited to ranching, the midwest was best suited to farming. The difference might seem subtle to some people, but it sure doesn't to those involved.
SB
Didn't choke Mozilla here (512MB, Moz 1.6, Fluxbox WM, Duron1200), didn't even cause a noticeable slowdown with the system fairly heavily loaded.
I have noticed however that if Mozilla is open long enough (we're talking weeks) that large images can choke it. I rebooted a few days ago (kernel change) and restarted Mozilla of course; I suspect that makes a difference. Moz does have some memory leaks IIRC. Curious...
Nice images and smooth compositing BTW, thanks!
Cheers,
SB
It's the watchword of modern times, indeed.
SB
Shadowbearer's attempt to inject humor into this thread/time stream is likely to fail utterly due to the ability of some observers to alter what they see by merely observing.
:)
I believe the human outlook on that is to "Take it with a grain of salt" - which is a very broad aphorism, akin to "burning the midnight oil". An ancient scientist put it very well once, in saying that the observer affects the observed. However, he was more or less universally ignored outside of the fields of physics, to the detriment of the social advancement of the species.
However, and even being that this is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (nm that all things are connected) this particular entity will bow out of the conversation, with the observation that he likely shares, along with most of the inhabitants of the 3rd planet from the star called "Sol", a certain bais.
Meh, I really need to go to bed
SB
Yeah.
:D
:) I'm not sure they understand the theories of unaccelerated frames of reference :D
.9c :D
:D
Bad Universe, Bad! *Spank*
How *dare* you do what we don't want you to do!
---
Sorry, that was a brain fart inspired by my cats, who casually (and occasionally causally) violate our most cherished theories of how things should be
Like another poster put it in his sig once, beware blue cats moving at
Heinlein may have been on to something
SB
Precisely.
:)
At this point in our technological development, it'd be much cheaper and easier to design spacecraft that could utilize kinetic weapons such as asteroids.
Antimatter weapons are a long, long ways in the future, thank whatever gods who watch over human idiocy, if any
But.. the tech will come. Let's just hope that when it gets here we aren't developing strategy to deal with it years or decades behind the introduction of it, like we did with nuclear weapons.
Right now I'm much more scared of biotechnology than any of the high energy advances, mostly because our ignorance of the effects of developments along that line far outweighs our knowledge of their effects.
Which is why we should funding such research as much as we can, rather than throwing roadblocks into the path of researching it. We need to know as much as we can, so we can counter those down the road who would use it to kill rather than help.
Biotech has the potential to be the most important advance in medical science as well as it has the potential to be the most devastating advance in military science. Either way, we simply CAN'T ignore it. To do so is just plain foolish. Those who object to such research on religious grounds should contemplate the fact that if we don't know anything about it, we cannot develop effective counters to it, either...
SB
I don't have an easy answer for you, but my SO (who works with disabled people) suggests contacting the NOD who might be able to direct you to someone who can help you out.
:) how it works.
At the least they might be able to put you in contact with disabled people who travel and might be willing to help out with a ride.
We live in an area with a high number of tourists, and there are a lot of them who are disabled and on the road and would no doubt be very willing to give whatever help they could.
Definitely agree with you wrt to the bus and train system, even for non-disabled they have become, to a fair amount, useless. I won't comment on the flying situation except to say it's unlikely I'll ever fly, being more than somewhat agoraphobic (def. wrt to crowds).
Given what airports and airplanes are like, it wasn't that easy for a disabled person to travel that way even before 9/11. Neither of us know for sure, but we both can't believe there isn't *someone* out there who can help. There are a a couple disabled internet gurus I know, who travel quite a bit, and who I will inquire of; if I find out anything from them I'll respond here.
Another person I know locally and just called suggested finding someone to escort you and deal with the airport authorities ahead of time and during the security checks. She's not sure as to how effective it would be, but she used to provide escort services at JFK so she at least knows (or used to, as she said
Keep on looking and good luck.
SB
You would be referring to the David-Besse plant, not the Perry plant.
:) Try to remember that dying from a nuclear plant accident is orders of magnitude less likely for anyone on the planet than even dying from lightning - even if you are a golfer :)
It wasn't a "hole" it was a crater and pitting from boric acid leakage that damaged the reactor vessel. According to some other articles I saw in a quick Google search, they have a emergency sump system that would recirculate any coolant that leaked thru that hole back into the reactor - there would have been no meltdown *
The boric acid was stopped by a stainless steel outer layer that was another of the layers of defense. It could have eaten thru that, too, but it would have taken many years, many more than elapse between the regular inspections (AMAF it was when the plant was taken down for refueling - which happens pretty seldom - that they discovered the damage) and this was a *very* unusual accident, one which has prompted a considerable amount of redesign. Note that David-Besse and similar plants are also very old designs.
*NO* power production system is safe. NOT EVER. But fission plants have a much better safety record than any of the others do, which was drinkypoo's point. Look at the coalmine disasters, natural gas production facility disasters, and other dangers we face from "conventional" energy production. Even including Chernobyl fission has killed or injured FAR fewer people and environments than any of the other technologies.
Anyway, try to make an effort to get your facts straight and read about the events you describe before fear-mongering. If nothing else it helps other people take you seriously.
BTW, I lived near and got power from a fission reactor for twelve years out of my life. Never bothered me nor any of the people who lived there, either. Of course we Minnesotans know that our winters are much more likely to kill us than a power generation plant is
* Although there is a question of whether the filters in the emergency coolant containment system could have clogged, this problem is being addressed and has already been fixed in many plants - this according to info that's already fairly old and fixes have been implemented.
Cheers,
SB
More like the nature of human society, actually...
SB
Actually the vector they are moving in isn't as important as whether or not there is a delta V along the line between the observers. If that vector component is not 0 you will observe a doppler shift in the frequency.
:)
You're right, but relativity has nothing to do with it. It's the fact that both of you are on the surface of the earth and your distance from each other is *not* changing unless one of you changes altitude.
Now, if you consider that you can't send a laser beam *thru* the earth, and have to rely on, oh, say, a reflective mirror ahead of or behind the earth in a solar orbit, reflecting the laser off that mirror *will* produce a distance change between the observers, because it doesn't share their frame of reference, ie one observer is moving away from it, the other toward it at any point in time. * and **
Of course you could only exchange messages when both of you have line of sight to the mirror... and the doppler shift would be danged hard to detect.
SB
* Yes, their velocity would cancel out if they were both moving in the same plane relative to the mirror/solar orbit plane. But they're not, the earth's axial tilt relative to it's orbital plane assures that there will always be a slight difference in velocities relative to each other when using the mirror to bounce the beam.
Used a laser beam for visual simplification. Same thing applies to EM transmissions of any kind.
Yeah, that was somewhat hard to write
Heheh. So true.
My old man was never sophisticated enough to know what a Faraday cage was, but he certainly knew how to operate the circuit breaker
At least the top bands back then showed some uniqueness... everything nowadays sounds the same. Probably because it pretty much is. (note, talking about mainstream, um, stuff
Cheers,
SB
we had *thousands* of them.
Have.
SB
Proxmire's legacy lives on....
SB
I worked on a brush-clearing crew for a couple of months one summer back in the late 80s. We were required to wear masks and full cover disposable clothing (in 90+ degree heat) yet several people on the crew developed nasty skin rash reactions from the herbicides we were using (full spectrum stuff, diazinon IIRC, and we would go thru tens to hundreds of gallons of 15% diluted mix a day clearing 2-5 miles.)
Given the possibilities of runoff and water supply contamination, I'd say that brush clearing chemicals are *very* relevant. Not that most of these Luddite-style EM "studies" seem to take the other environmental factors in mind. Pffft.
SB
Yeah, dead birds in cornfields are such an uncommon phenomena. Especially around installations that disrupt their native habitat. /sarcasm
:)
No offense, really, but I suspect your professor was a city boy
SB
Except that a headset cord makes a *very* poor antenna for cell phone transmissions or reception; there are very good reasons why cell phone antennae have the length they do, it has to do with the wavelengths used. They certainly wouldn't broadcast "directly into your brain" - any broadcast would be omnidirectional.
:)
:)
Now, this kind of thing works for FM/AM broadcasts - a lot (most?) FM/AM radio headsets use the headphone cord as the antenna - because the antenna characteristics are similar - for example, a simple FM antennae is nothing more than a long thin single conductor, very similar to a headset cord. Cut that antenna to a simple multiple of the average wavelength of what you want to receive, you improve it's ability to do so.
Electronically, any cell phone that is leaking transmission current into it's *audio* circuit is just plain broken. Oh, sure, there can be induced current in the headset cord from the transmission thru the cell phone antenna, but it's incredibly tiny - likely in the tenths of a milliwatt - for the same reasons I described above wrt to antennae design.
Now, I haven't been a ham in many years, but I don't think I'm that far off; however, anyone who wants to correct me please do - it'd be nice to see a mathematical treatment of this, wish my old '90 era DOS software worked in dosemu
However, I do know that a headset cord acting as an antenna for cell phone frequencies strikes me as just plain wrong (and I've not seen a shred of evidence for it in phone conversations, either; actually, in "dead" spots it seems that lowering the cell phone itself a couple of feet, especially when one is inside a car, makes the reception/transmission worse, not better. )
Also: what "tests"? I've certainly not seen any tests that "prove" this - at least not any that have any shred of decent science behind them. Links?
As to your last sentence, I'd argue that the level of technology we have right now potentially lowers our lifespan to *zero*. But that's a whole 'nother - and mostly philosophical - topic
Cheers,
SB
I'd hope not. Installing a massive EM accelerator coil around your kitchen doorway would likely piss off the wife - it'd be a tossup between the electric bill, the damage done to kitchen appliances from induced currents, and other simple things ( "Dangit, that oven shocked me again, Joe!" )
Then again, it'd be a nice way to keep the portable music headsets away from the dinner table... hmmm... teenager approaches doorway listening to fave boy band on the headphones... Dad flips switch... *pffffft* "DAD!"
SB
Yup. It's much more complicated than that - at least nowadays - of course - they just expanded the meme a bit :) *snort* Hence my "political" emphasis.
;) - but make no mistake, many people in the upper echelons of the "drug war" know better from an intellectual standpoint; it's just not within them to choose honesty and integrity over their careers. Not that that is anything new. After all, politics is about getting elected or appointed, not actually about doing anything. There are exceptions, but nowhere has that particular ugliness reared it's head more than in federal antidrug programs - and recently, in the "antiterrorist" rhetoric.
:(
It's quite telling that at the beginnings of the "reefer" war hemp was one of the largest industries in the US, hemp being a prime and subsidized crop during WWII.
But then my comment was intended as sarcasm and aimed at those who already know what we are talking about
Even there, it's just a symptom of a larger mutifaceted disease. Baaaaa baaa baaaa _vote_ - really quite classical.
What's really scary is that most people who vote blindly aren't stupid - just seem to have little capacity to think for themselves. Personally I think TV has been one of the biggest influences in the last few decades; but then, we'll never know - it'll be up to the dispassionate analysis by historians hundreds of years from now to ferret out the real cause/effect ratio.
Cheers - or maybe not
SB