the doctor wasn't really up on his paranoid schizophrenia, and he said that the memories were probably repressed. no, no they weren't they were gone completely.
but the doctor just thinks i am a computer hypochondriac, in addition to being paranoid schizophrenic.
But what does he know? And why has he been living under my porch for the last six months?
Roosevelt's 3.5 terms + Truman's 1.5 terms = 20 years, not 30 as the parent stated... but why go with the correct numbers when you can exaggerate and sound so much better?
Canada has 1/9 the population of the US, not 1/100 (approx. 35 million people compared to the US population of 300 million.) And yes, Canada has more land mass, but the dispersion is still the same as the US as both countries have large uninhabited regions and dense population clusters. The level of infrastructure in both countries is also directly comparable. So your claim that Canada isn't remotely similar because of "permafrost and those areas" doesn't really hold water.
The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animals body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animals body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.
"What's that, you say? Getting a little hot in here? We'll get you a cool glass of water... but first, let's finish negotiating the terms of your unconditional surrender."
Wikipedia's importance is its convenience to people living today as a quick overview of just about any topic under the sun.
Sure, Wikipedia may be useful as a cultural artifact 150 years hence... but by that time the early 21st century will be just a blip on the historical landscape. Only a few thousand academics and hobbyists will care about how we thought of ourselves in 2006, just as only a small number of people today really care or know much about the world 0f the 1860s.
In short, Wikipedia's present value to millions of users today is far more important then its future value to a relatively small number of folks in the distant future. All historical knowledge will be lost eventually - even if the physical data continues to exist, the accumulation of information over the coming centuries will be so vast that a detailed record of any given time will become irrelevant.
The Amazon tribe of Brazil has sued Amazon.com for $1,000,000,000, complaining that they have potentially lost hundreds of dollars in sales of beads and feminine hygiene products while having to deal with dozens of accidental hits to their website.
To remotely detect radiation from nuclear accidents or reactor operations, Argonne researchers are testing millimeter-wave radars and developing models to detect and interpret radiation-induced effects in air that cause radar reflection and scattering. Preliminary results of tests, in collaboration with AOZT Finn-Trade of St. Peterspurg, Russia, with instruments located 9 km from a nuclear power plant showed clear differences between when the plant was operating and when it was idling. This technology can also be applied to mapping plumes from nuclear radiation releases.
I was under the impression that properly functioning nuclear power plants shouldn't be releasing any kind of radiation into the air while operating, let alone enough radiocative plumes detectable from 9 km away. Then again, it is a Russian nuclear power plant, and Russians seem to have a much more relaxed attitude about that kind of thing.
Trained to be a physician, and "brought up with the scientific outlook" by his father who was also a physician, he subsequently "spent many hours over coffee arguing about God" with his friend Karol Wojtyla who taught theology in Cracow and who is now better known as Pope John-Paul II. In an interview, Lem indicated his thinking on religion: "for moral reasons I am an atheist -- for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally" (L. W. Michaelson, "A Conversation with Stanislaw Lem": Amazing (Jan. 1981): 116-19. Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, 7, 2 (1984): 218-37. Also see Raymond Federman, "An Interview with Stanislaw Lem," Science-Fiction Studies, 10 (1983): 2-14).
Feasibility of Panspermia
on
Space Lichens
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Even if a lichen or lower life form could survive for a time in the vacuum of space (with some form of protection from radiation and in hibernation mode), could it really survive the intense heat from the friction of earth's atmosphere? I've heard of extremophiles, but...
Interesting that the Weismann Institute was originally studying the possibility of "nonpolluting solar hydrogen" throught direct solar thermal decomposition of ZnO without the use of carbon as a reductant.
Unfortunately for them, the direct process was not feasible using current technology due to the high temperatures needed (1700 degrees Celsius vs. 1300 degrees Celsius for carbothermic reduction). They also had serious problems separating the reaction products from one another (gaseous zinc and oxygen) without having them recombine upon cooling. I think they were trying to rapidly quench the products using a supercooled stream of nitrogen or argon, which of course had difficulties of its own and was not scalable.
Their press releases now mention that they use a "small amount of coal" in the reaction, which is complete BS. What they fail to mention is that they are probably producing 1 mol of carbon monoxide pollutant for each mol of H2 generated... thus despite the laudable use of a solar process they are not much different from other technologies that swap carbon for hydrogen.
There are several practical difficulties with this process but obtaining super heated water is not one of them. The hydrolysis of H2O by Zn is an exothermic and self-sustaining reaction. The water is simply heated by the waste heat from the formation of ZnO.
A more pressing engineering problem is separating H2 from steam, either with a cooling/condensing loop or through filtration, and also capturing the Zno product for recycling. There is a minimum 5-8 years needed to make this kind of technology practical for the automobile.
The solution to this territorial dispute is really quite simple.
Canada should build a permanent settlement on the island - a humble cabin equipped with a satellite dish, diesel fuel tanks, a generator, and a large store of rations.
Some lucky private from the Canadian armed forces would be dispatched to guard the island in 3-month shifts, equipped with lots of pornography and a 50 calibre machine gun to scare off any encroaching Danish helicopters.
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential.
Q: What's the difference between a line of costumed Star Wars fans entering the premiere of EpIII and a line of costumed cardinals entering the conclave to pick the new pope?
A: The Star Wars line has a higher concentration of virgins.
The future of television: World Peace.
on
Television Reloaded
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Think about it. TV is the ultimate capitalism machine. It turns kids from developing countries into placid consumers instead of violent ideologues.
Those who grow up watching TV are aware that there is a much larger world around them, filled with attractive wealthy people who enjoy high standards of living. It has been statistically proven that kids living in conflict zones are much less likely to turn themselves into suicide bombers if they grew up watching MTV.
NASA should hire some of those legendary Russian engineers who kept the Russian space program alive on a shoestring budget, using inelegant but practical solutions like kerosene rocket fuel. They should also hire the entire winning X-prize team. Mothball the shuttle program, focus less on manned space missions, increase R&D co-operation with private companies. Figuring a way to get payload into orbit cheaply should be the main mission.
The power limit of 3kW over 8 hours (24Kwh) is just enough to produce 5kg of O2 by H20 electrolysis in a cell with typical efficiencies.
This shows that NASA has already anticipated the most obvious solution, which is to pass a stream of hydrogen through the regolith sample that has been thermally activated by solar flux.
The hydrogen will reduce iron oxides in the sample to produce Fe and H2O. The volatiles from the process(a mixture of gaseous H20 and H2) are cycled into the electrolysis cell and the water is electrolysed back to H2, which is recycled back into the process, and O2. The O2 is then filtered through a platinum membrane or some form of chemical filtration to produce breathable O2 with
I suspect that the winning system will be some well-engineered implementation of the above process.
The iron oxides (>5% of the sample) will be the O2 source used by most if not all solutions. Of all the oxides that are present in the sample in meaningful concentrations, they are easiest to reduce. Possible additional steps to improve efficiency: passing a magnet through the sample to separate out some of the iron oxides prior to thermal activation, or some form of density separation. The iron oxides should be relatively easy to separate, given that the JSC-1 regolith simulant is not solid rock but extremely fine-grained powder.
Another engineering challenge will be the H2/O2 filtration which will have to fast, simple and reliable. Platinum membranes are the obvious choice but chemical separation using Ag2O or other chemicals may be more economical and faster. Once the chemicals have reacted with O2 they can be thermally decomposed at moderate temperatures under 500k to give up their oxygen using readily available solar flux.
Given the power limits it seems impossible to produce a working solution that doesn't use solar flux. This leads to a number of other engineering challenges, including: a cooling system needed for some designs; a reliable solar concentrating system (using lightweight mylar-like mirrors that track the sun on 2 axes); a sealed, heat-resistant, lightweight reaction vessel with a minimal number of valves and moving parts; and a quartz aperture to admit the concentrated solar radiation.
All in all, an interesting challenge. $250k hardly seems like a sufficient reward if the challenge produces a successful working prototype!
What has Lucas done to the possibly tattered remains of my childhood?
Yeesh, I'm sick of people bitching that Lucas ruined their childhood fantasies with his subsequent movies.
If a few hours of film constituted the emotional highlight of your childhood, I'd say you have bigger issues to worry about than Lucas or his imaginary universe.
The CO and CO2 products would be electrolysed in a separate step to yield C(s)(which could then be recycled back to the process), and breathable O2.
The carbon would be reacted with various metal oxides present in lunar soil. FeO, which is up to 5% of lunar soil, is the most promising source of oxygen, given that it can be reduced more effectively at lower temperatures than SiO2, and the astronauts would likely find the resulting Fe useful. The most cumbersome part is probably be the furnace itself, which would need to have a clear glass aperture (fused silica or quartz) to admit the concentrated solar radiation from parabolic mirrors or a heliostat field outside. The furnace would have to be completely pressure sealed and be able to withstand the extreme pressure differential between the near-vacuum outside and the hot gases within.
Direct thermal reduction of oxides within the solar furnace is also possible, but this is not a feasible solution due to the extreme temperatures required to reduce most oxides (>3000k). There is an additional problem separating oxgen from the gaseous metal products, which would tend to recombine with the oxygen upon cooling. There are further problems with cooling the furnace walls, which would have be constructed with tungsten carbide or some other refractory material that is difficult enough to build on earth, let alone the moon.
Obviously, there is no elemental carbon available on the moon, but the problem of extracting oxygen may be relatively simple if one is allowed to use carbon brought in carbothermic reduction of the lunar soil in an airtight solar furnace.
I would definitely give out my password...
on
ID Theft Made Easy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
and other personal data, just for a bit of candy. Heck, I'd do it for free. I just wouldn't give them the correct password. I'd also make sure that the personal data I gave them was total BS.
So how do we know that the seemingly credulous participants in the survey weren't lying?
Go to accoona.com, and do a search for "china tiananmen square"... and see if the first 50 results or so make any reference to a little incident that happened in 1989. Hmm.
Slashdot Mirror
the doctor wasn't really up on his paranoid schizophrenia, and he said that the memories were probably repressed. no, no they weren't they were gone completely.
but the doctor just thinks i am a computer hypochondriac, in addition to being paranoid schizophrenic.
But what does he know? And why has he been living under my porch for the last six months?
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of land, And danced the seas on laughter-silvered fins;
Deepward I've fallen, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-absent fathoms...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...propelled and plummet and swung
Deep in the sunless silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting currents along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of water.
Down, Down, the long, delirious burning blue I've bottomed the current swept depths with easy grace
Where never jellyfish, nor even tubeworm grew.
And while with silent, buoyant mind I've trod
The low untrespassed sanctity of the abyss...
Roosevelt's 3.5 terms + Truman's 1.5 terms = 20 years, not 30 as the parent stated... but why go with the correct numbers when you can exaggerate and sound so much better?
Canada has 1/9 the population of the US, not 1/100 (approx. 35 million people compared to the US population of 300 million.) And yes, Canada has more land mass, but the dispersion is still the same as the US as both countries have large uninhabited regions and dense population clusters. The level of infrastructure in both countries is also directly comparable. So your claim that Canada isn't remotely similar because of "permafrost and those areas" doesn't really hold water.
Canada also has better wheelchair access.
"What's that, you say? Getting a little hot in here? We'll get you a cool glass of water... but first, let's finish negotiating the terms of your unconditional surrender."
Wikipedia's importance is its convenience to people living today as a quick overview of just about any topic under the sun.
Sure, Wikipedia may be useful as a cultural artifact 150 years hence... but by that time the early 21st century will be just a blip on the historical landscape. Only a few thousand academics and hobbyists will care about how we thought of ourselves in 2006, just as only a small number of people today really care or know much about the world 0f the 1860s.
In short, Wikipedia's present value to millions of users today is far more important then its future value to a relatively small number of folks in the distant future. All historical knowledge will be lost eventually - even if the physical data continues to exist, the accumulation of information over the coming centuries will be so vast that a detailed record of any given time will become irrelevant.
The Amazon tribe of Brazil has sued Amazon.com for $1,000,000,000, complaining that they have potentially lost hundreds of dollars in sales of beads and feminine hygiene products while having to deal with dozens of accidental hits to their website.
I was under the impression that properly functioning nuclear power plants shouldn't be releasing any kind of radiation into the air while operating, let alone enough radiocative plumes detectable from 9 km away. Then again, it is a Russian nuclear power plant, and Russians seem to have a much more relaxed attitude about that kind of thing.
Odd how different paths inetersect...
From: "Stanislaw Lem" page on "Celebrity Atheists" website, last modified 19 Jun 2005 (http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/index.php?title =Stanislaw_Lem; viewed 24 August 2005):
Trained to be a physician, and "brought up with the scientific outlook" by his father who was also a physician, he subsequently "spent many hours over coffee arguing about God" with his friend Karol Wojtyla who taught theology in Cracow and who is now better known as Pope John-Paul II. In an interview, Lem indicated his thinking on religion: "for moral reasons I am an atheist -- for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally" (L. W. Michaelson, "A Conversation with Stanislaw Lem": Amazing (Jan. 1981): 116-19. Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, 7, 2 (1984): 218-37. Also see Raymond Federman, "An Interview with Stanislaw Lem," Science-Fiction Studies, 10 (1983): 2-14).
Even if a lichen or lower life form could survive for a time in the vacuum of space (with some form of protection from radiation and in hibernation mode), could it really survive the intense heat from the friction of earth's atmosphere? I've heard of extremophiles, but...
Interesting that the Weismann Institute was originally studying the possibility of "nonpolluting solar hydrogen" throught direct solar thermal decomposition of ZnO without the use of carbon as a reductant.
Unfortunately for them, the direct process was not feasible using current technology due to the high temperatures needed (1700 degrees Celsius vs. 1300 degrees Celsius for carbothermic reduction). They also had serious problems separating the reaction products from one another (gaseous zinc and oxygen) without having them recombine upon cooling. I think they were trying to rapidly quench the products using a supercooled stream of nitrogen or argon, which of course had difficulties of its own and was not scalable.
Their press releases now mention that they use a "small amount of coal" in the reaction, which is complete BS. What they fail to mention is that they are probably producing 1 mol of carbon monoxide pollutant for each mol of H2 generated... thus despite the laudable use of a solar process they are not much different from other technologies that swap carbon for hydrogen.
There are several practical difficulties with this process but obtaining super heated water is not one of them. The hydrolysis of H2O by Zn is an exothermic and self-sustaining reaction. The water is simply heated by the waste heat from the formation of ZnO.
A more pressing engineering problem is separating H2 from steam, either with a cooling/condensing loop or through filtration, and also capturing the Zno product for recycling. There is a minimum 5-8 years needed to make this kind of technology practical for the automobile.
The solution to this territorial dispute is really quite simple.
Canada should build a permanent settlement on the island - a humble cabin equipped with a satellite dish, diesel fuel tanks, a generator, and a large store of rations.
Some lucky private from the Canadian armed forces would be dispatched to guard the island in 3-month shifts, equipped with lots of pornography and a 50 calibre machine gun to scare off any encroaching Danish helicopters.
Japan Tests New Bullet Train
Meanwhile, in other news...
North Korea Tests New Bullet
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential.
Q: What's the difference between a line of costumed Star Wars fans entering the premiere of EpIII and a line of costumed cardinals entering the conclave to pick the new pope?
A: The Star Wars line has a higher concentration of virgins.
Think about it. TV is the ultimate capitalism machine. It turns kids from developing countries into placid consumers instead of violent ideologues.
Those who grow up watching TV are aware that there is a much larger world around them, filled with attractive wealthy people who enjoy high standards of living. It has been statistically proven that kids living in conflict zones are much less likely to turn themselves into suicide bombers if they grew up watching MTV.
NASA should hire some of those legendary Russian engineers who kept the Russian space program alive on a shoestring budget, using inelegant but practical solutions like kerosene rocket fuel. They should also hire the entire winning X-prize team. Mothball the shuttle program, focus less on manned space missions, increase R&D co-operation with private companies. Figuring a way to get payload into orbit cheaply should be the main mission.
The power limit of 3kW over 8 hours (24Kwh) is just enough to produce 5kg of O2 by H20 electrolysis in a cell with typical efficiencies.
This shows that NASA has already anticipated the most obvious solution, which is to pass a stream of hydrogen through the regolith sample that has been thermally activated by solar flux.
The hydrogen will reduce iron oxides in the sample to produce Fe and H2O. The volatiles from the process(a mixture of gaseous H20 and H2) are cycled into the electrolysis cell and the water is electrolysed back to H2, which is recycled back into the process, and O2. The O2 is then filtered through a platinum membrane or some form of chemical filtration to produce breathable O2 with
I suspect that the winning system will be some well-engineered implementation of the above process.
The iron oxides (>5% of the sample) will be the O2 source used by most if not all solutions. Of all the oxides that are present in the sample in meaningful concentrations, they are easiest to reduce. Possible additional steps to improve efficiency: passing a magnet through the sample to separate out some of the iron oxides prior to thermal activation, or some form of density separation. The iron oxides should be relatively easy to separate, given that the JSC-1 regolith simulant is not solid rock but extremely fine-grained powder.
Another engineering challenge will be the H2/O2 filtration which will have to fast, simple and reliable. Platinum membranes are the obvious choice but chemical separation using Ag2O or other chemicals may be more economical and faster. Once the chemicals have reacted with O2 they can be thermally decomposed at moderate temperatures under 500k to give up their oxygen using readily available solar flux.
Given the power limits it seems impossible to produce a working solution that doesn't use solar flux. This leads to a number of other engineering challenges, including: a cooling system needed for some designs; a reliable solar concentrating system (using lightweight mylar-like mirrors that track the sun on 2 axes); a sealed, heat-resistant, lightweight reaction vessel with a minimal number of valves and moving parts; and a quartz aperture to admit the concentrated solar radiation.
All in all, an interesting challenge. $250k hardly seems like a sufficient reward if the challenge produces a successful working prototype!
What has Lucas done to the possibly tattered remains of my childhood?
Yeesh, I'm sick of people bitching that Lucas ruined their childhood fantasies with his subsequent movies.
If a few hours of film constituted the emotional highlight of your childhood, I'd say you have bigger issues to worry about than Lucas or his imaginary universe.
The CO and CO2 products would be electrolysed in a separate step to yield C(s)(which could then be recycled back to the process), and breathable O2.
The carbon would be reacted with various metal oxides present in lunar soil. FeO, which is up to 5% of lunar soil, is the most promising source of oxygen, given that it can be reduced more effectively at lower temperatures than SiO2, and the astronauts would likely find the resulting Fe useful. The most cumbersome part is probably be the furnace itself, which would need to have a clear glass aperture (fused silica or quartz) to admit the concentrated solar radiation from parabolic mirrors or a heliostat field outside. The furnace would have to be completely pressure sealed and be able to withstand the extreme pressure differential between the near-vacuum outside and the hot gases within.
Direct thermal reduction of oxides within the solar furnace is also possible, but this is not a feasible solution due to the extreme temperatures required to reduce most oxides (>3000k). There is an additional problem separating oxgen from the gaseous metal products, which would tend to recombine with the oxygen upon cooling. There are further problems with cooling the furnace walls, which would have be constructed with tungsten carbide or some other refractory material that is difficult enough to build on earth, let alone the moon.
Obviously, there is no elemental carbon available on the moon, but the problem of extracting oxygen may be relatively simple if one is allowed to use carbon brought in carbothermic reduction of the lunar soil in an airtight solar furnace.
and other personal data, just for a bit of candy. Heck, I'd do it for free. I just wouldn't give them the correct password. I'd also make sure that the personal data I gave them was total BS.
So how do we know that the seemingly credulous participants in the survey weren't lying?
Go to accoona.com, and do a search for "china tiananmen square"... and see if the first 50 results or so make any reference to a little incident that happened in 1989. Hmm.