Read about oil exploration in Israel. I'm writing from mobile phone, so it's not easy to search for references. Essentially, quite a lot of companies tried 'Biblical-guided' drilling and failed.
Some oil was eventually found, using scientifically proven techniques, of course.
"Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does."
They tried, several times. And quite predictably failed.
Nope. You want to control women's bodies, not protect children. A fetus is no more "innocent life" than a flake of skin or an extracted tooth.
If you really wanted to protect children you'd be donating significant part of your income to orphanages and other charities. I somehow don't see you doing this. Abortion opponents all talk about responsibility, but somehow it applies to anybody but them.
But OK. How about a law requiring father to be castrated if a woman dies in a childbirth? After all, it should teach responsibility to men!
Well, you want to force women to conform to your "morality". Because you think that unborn children are precious.
In that case your morality should compel you to give your income to children. It'd be only fair, why the right to chose where you spend your money should be more important than the right of women to chose what they do with their bodies?
Come on. They certainly do, give some credit to 5-th graders. Especially when wealth is visible, like living in a big house or children bragging about their summer trips to Hawaii.
Of course, most athletes probably (too lazy to Google stats) earn less than engineers. However, how many high-income engineers you see on TV?
Then kids see athletic students in universities getting grades just for being present (or even for not being present) as long as they are on the team. And then they see these athletes earning more than underemployed engineers.
Sure, that's going to show them the importance of education!
"We shouldn't try to change the current situation where the top 1% takes all because there's a slightly greater than zero percent chance we could make it into that 1%?"
Nope. We should strive to change the distribution of income. So that the top 1% were not owning many times that of bottom 50%.
3) can _not_ be explained - in this case we're seeing how distributions of normal matter and dark matter differ (normal matter collides, interacts, swirls and dark matter just passes through as if nothing has happened. It's kinda hard to imagine how MOND could fix it.
And 4) is a killer for MONDs. Why? Because it stands out. If MOND is correct then gravity should behave like this: on the Galaxy scale it's stronger than Newton gravity and as you get smaller the MOND correction grows smaller, until you reach a certain threshold where corrections become large as you go smaller in scale. Until you reach yet another threshold where MOND effects rapidly drop off to undetectability.
Killing big banks won't kill lending because: 1) Classical banking does not require anything innovative. You simply give out loans using funds from deposits. It's simple, it works. 2) Banks certainly don't NEED to invest in anything risky. Usually banks require collateral to back the loan applications. 3) There are more than enough entities ready to invest in risky ventures. 4) Small and medium-sized banks with properly regulated leverage are perfectly OK.
Doing all that won't have any big effect on income distribution gap. However, it can help to make the economy more stable.
"I'd like a bit of better evidence, please, before I swallow something like that."
1) Rotational curves of galaxies. 2) Gravitational lensing - it's too strong for the amount of baryonic matter present. 3) Bullet cluster ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_cluster ). 4) Small galaxies - the smaller the galaxy the more dark-matter-dominated it is.
The first one can be somewhat explained by MOND. But MOND can't really explain gravitational lensing (duh, it's Modified _Newtonian_ mechanics) and it is totally busted by 3) and 4). Vacuum polarization is MOND-like in this regard and probably can't explain them as well.
Actually, the relationship between the amount of dark matter and normal matter in small galaxies is quite interesting. Unlike rotational curves and lensing it has an explanation that has nothing to do with gravitational properties of dark matter. Small galaxies have fairly shallow gravitational wells, so normal matter can be blown away by stellar winds and supernovae explosions. And since dark matter does not interact [much] with the normal matter, it tends to stay. Here's a nice overview: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/08/the_smallest_mini-galaxy_in_th.php
Nope. You're missing one fact - the distribution of labor costs.
Taking money from bankers in the form of nationalizing the biggest banks, I think, will bring eventual stability. Banks don't _need_ to be innovative and flexible. So why not just make the biggest banks to be state-run?
I don't know, it's just so much easier to use U-235 'starter' to bootstrap Th nuclear reaction then to build an accelerator. Besides, accelerators can compensate only a very small fraction of total neutrons.
It's certainly an interesting idea, but I don't really think it's practical.
Stands to reason - chemical composition alters the shape of electron cloud, which slightly affects the probability of nucleus to capture an electron. But it's an extremely small effect.
Warning!!! This news is just a typical STOCK SCAM!!
There's no other news about "Laser Power Systems" company, its site is a typical stock-scam site with "Investor" contacts prominently displayed along with sciency-looking text. The same exact news report has been posted all over the clueless 'tech' sites, including the Slashdot (editors, do you even know a bit of physics???).
Never mind that there's no known mechanism how a visible (or even ultraviolet) spectrum laser can affect nuclear decay. Influence on fission is also out of question with such small samples - there just won't be any appreciable fission going, and heating tends to slow fission down (by narrowing adsorption rate of slow neutrons by nuclei). Such a discovery would get an instant Nobel Prize, no less. Yet we see no publications about it.
PS: technically, one type of nuclear decay (which doesn't happen in Th-232, btw) can be affected by chemical composition. To the tune of 0.01% of decay speed.
"No, the whole attractiveness of thorium is you get nuclear heat without having to go critical."
No, it doesn't generate heat. You can NOT fission a nucleus by visible-spectrum photons. It's not possible. There's no mechanism for that.
This description from the article:
"When thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat. Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser"
"You absolutely do not need to make a nuclear material go critical to generate energy. Anything that decays naturally generates energy as it decays."
The half-life of Thorium is 14 billion years. So to get the most of the energy out of Th-232 sample you'd need to wait, oh, about 50 billions of years.
"If smacking it with a laser causes it to decay faster it doesn't matter if it isn't self-perpetuating, it still generates energy."
No, it doesn't. Visible-spectrum radiation can not even affect the electron shell of Thorium, never mind its nucleus.
Slashdot Mirror
Read about oil exploration in Israel. I'm writing from mobile phone, so it's not easy to search for references. Essentially, quite a lot of companies tried 'Biblical-guided' drilling and failed.
Some oil was eventually found, using scientifically proven techniques, of course.
"Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does."
They tried, several times. And quite predictably failed.
SMTP is described in RFC 822 dated August 13, 1982.
By 1994 e-mail was pretty much as it is right now. Maybe without current spam-blocking techniques.
Nope. You want to control women's bodies, not protect children. A fetus is no more "innocent life" than a flake of skin or an extracted tooth.
If you really wanted to protect children you'd be donating significant part of your income to orphanages and other charities. I somehow don't see you doing this. Abortion opponents all talk about responsibility, but somehow it applies to anybody but them.
But OK. How about a law requiring father to be castrated if a woman dies in a childbirth? After all, it should teach responsibility to men!
Well, you're writing on Slashdot. So you do have disposable income and/or free time.
Well, you want to force women to conform to your "morality". Because you think that unborn children are precious.
In that case your morality should compel you to give your income to children. It'd be only fair, why the right to chose where you spend your money should be more important than the right of women to chose what they do with their bodies?
Ok. How many children from orphanages in Africa have you adopted recently?
Or maybe you're selling all your disposable income to them? That would be not as good, but we can overlook it.
Come on. They certainly do, give some credit to 5-th graders. Especially when wealth is visible, like living in a big house or children bragging about their summer trips to Hawaii.
Of course, most athletes probably (too lazy to Google stats) earn less than engineers. However, how many high-income engineers you see on TV?
Yeah, sure.
Then kids see athletic students in universities getting grades just for being present (or even for not being present) as long as they are on the team. And then they see these athletes earning more than underemployed engineers.
Sure, that's going to show them the importance of education!
It is well-documented and well-known.
For example, see here: http://www3.jsonline.com/bym/news/jun01/slave26062501.asp
There was even an initiative to mandate "Slave labor free" labeling on chocolate ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0801-03.htm ) but guess what has happened?
"We shouldn't try to change the current situation where the top 1% takes all because there's a slightly greater than zero percent chance we could make it into that 1%?"
Nope. We should strive to change the distribution of income. So that the top 1% were not owning many times that of bottom 50%.
1) and 2) can be explained by MOND. Somewhat.
3) can _not_ be explained - in this case we're seeing how distributions of normal matter and dark matter differ (normal matter collides, interacts, swirls and dark matter just passes through as if nothing has happened. It's kinda hard to imagine how MOND could fix it.
And 4) is a killer for MONDs. Why? Because it stands out. If MOND is correct then gravity should behave like this: on the Galaxy scale it's stronger than Newton gravity and as you get smaller the MOND correction grows smaller, until you reach a certain threshold where corrections become large as you go smaller in scale. Until you reach yet another threshold where MOND effects rapidly drop off to undetectability.
Killing big banks won't kill lending because:
1) Classical banking does not require anything innovative. You simply give out loans using funds from deposits. It's simple, it works.
2) Banks certainly don't NEED to invest in anything risky. Usually banks require collateral to back the loan applications.
3) There are more than enough entities ready to invest in risky ventures.
4) Small and medium-sized banks with properly regulated leverage are perfectly OK.
Doing all that won't have any big effect on income distribution gap. However, it can help to make the economy more stable.
"I'd like a bit of better evidence, please, before I swallow something like that."
1) Rotational curves of galaxies.
2) Gravitational lensing - it's too strong for the amount of baryonic matter present.
3) Bullet cluster ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_cluster ).
4) Small galaxies - the smaller the galaxy the more dark-matter-dominated it is.
The first one can be somewhat explained by MOND. But MOND can't really explain gravitational lensing (duh, it's Modified _Newtonian_ mechanics) and it is totally busted by 3) and 4). Vacuum polarization is MOND-like in this regard and probably can't explain them as well.
Actually, the relationship between the amount of dark matter and normal matter in small galaxies is quite interesting. Unlike rotational curves and lensing it has an explanation that has nothing to do with gravitational properties of dark matter. Small galaxies have fairly shallow gravitational wells, so normal matter can be blown away by stellar winds and supernovae explosions. And since dark matter does not interact [much] with the normal matter, it tends to stay. Here's a nice overview: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/08/the_smallest_mini-galaxy_in_th.php
So? Linux has been rewritten multiple times by now, there is not much code left from Linux 1.3.0 in Linux 3.0
Still, WebKit clearly originates from KHTML. And multiple companies (including Google) have contributed in its development.
Nope. You're missing one fact - the distribution of labor costs.
Taking money from bankers in the form of nationalizing the biggest banks, I think, will bring eventual stability. Banks don't _need_ to be innovative and flexible. So why not just make the biggest banks to be state-run?
I don't know, it's just so much easier to use U-235 'starter' to bootstrap Th nuclear reaction then to build an accelerator. Besides, accelerators can compensate only a very small fraction of total neutrons.
It's certainly an interesting idea, but I don't really think it's practical.
Ah, she's made from Americium or Californium?
That makes sense, you only need a few grams of it to achieve critical mass.
Yup. Accelerator-driven subcritical fission is possible. In this case accelerator just compensates for lost neutrons.
However, it's not likely to be cost-effective.
Inverse beta-decay (aka 'electron capture').
Stands to reason - chemical composition alters the shape of electron cloud, which slightly affects the probability of nucleus to capture an electron. But it's an extremely small effect.
It doesn't.
It's just a typical scam.
Uhm, 1-3% margin is possible for a company with big trade volumes. But as I've said, it's definitely unusual.
And my company with 99% labor cost was just an exaggerated example. I actually completely agree with you :)
Warning!!! This news is just a typical STOCK SCAM!!
There's no other news about "Laser Power Systems" company, its site is a typical stock-scam site with "Investor" contacts prominently displayed along with sciency-looking text. The same exact news report has been posted all over the clueless 'tech' sites, including the Slashdot (editors, do you even know a bit of physics???).
Never mind that there's no known mechanism how a visible (or even ultraviolet) spectrum laser can affect nuclear decay. Influence on fission is also out of question with such small samples - there just won't be any appreciable fission going, and heating tends to slow fission down (by narrowing adsorption rate of slow neutrons by nuclei). Such a discovery would get an instant Nobel Prize, no less. Yet we see no publications about it.
PS: technically, one type of nuclear decay (which doesn't happen in Th-232, btw) can be affected by chemical composition. To the tune of 0.01% of decay speed.
"No, the whole attractiveness of thorium is you get nuclear heat without having to go critical."
No, it doesn't generate heat. You can NOT fission a nucleus by visible-spectrum photons. It's not possible. There's no mechanism for that.
This description from the article:
"When thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat. Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser"
is total junk. This whole scheme is probably a typical stock scam and the http://www.laserpowersystems.com/ confirms it.
"You absolutely do not need to make a nuclear material go critical to generate energy. Anything that decays naturally generates energy as it decays."
The half-life of Thorium is 14 billion years. So to get the most of the energy out of Th-232 sample you'd need to wait, oh, about 50 billions of years.
"If smacking it with a laser causes it to decay faster it doesn't matter if it isn't self-perpetuating, it still generates energy."
No, it doesn't. Visible-spectrum radiation can not even affect the electron shell of Thorium, never mind its nucleus.