So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases? Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
Good questions.
The "worst cases" are the effects on the body taken as per capita. Toxins don't rely on population statistics for the damage they cause. Alcohol gets into every cell. It is toxic at all levels of the system. Burning tobacco contains over 15,000 chemicals. We know what about 10% of them do. More than 90% of them are toxic.
In the cases where legalization was tried, there was a small increase in soft drug use, and no reliable evidence for increase in hard drug use.
Again, bodily harm is toxic effects, not affected by number of users. There were no more users. Withdrawal is a physiological effect, also not affected by population statistics.
Number of users and the problems that occur before and after legalization parallel number of users and problems during and after alcohol prohibition. In fact legalization/de-prohibition removes drug use from the realm of criminal activity, which carries its own set of dangers to health and well being, both user and victim. It also tends to put it under government oversight, preventing much of poor manufacturing toxicity and adulteration.
You seem interested enough to ask such questions, why are you not interested enough to read the (free) book and find the answers yourself? You can argue words all you like. The book contains real, referenced, and peer reviewed data. I'd be interested in your arguments with those.
(Full disclosure: the book contains some data about drug use changes after legalization; similar data has been obtained by legalization attempts subsequent to the book).
This, and many other phenomena occurring due to overpopulation/pollution/etc. didn't make it into the previous story "This Is The Way The World Ends". The ones that did make it were for the most part enormous explosions and such (alien invasion? come on.) Those things are highly unlikely but spectacular. The truth will be spectacular only in retrospect, if there is anyone left to retrospect.
I find it highly unlikely that the current US military mindset, which emphasizes communications, operations and intelligence security to an enormous degree, would allow truly critical systems to be accessible via a commonly available worldwide network. Such systems would have no connections with any outside networks.
I find it far more likely that the US maintains low security systems on the internet and allows them to be compromised, with some sensitive but not crucial information "lost", along with a large amount of plausible but false intel. Such 'seeded' intel serves to mislead an enemy, while public knowledge of such intrusions serves to convince the people and the government of the need for more funding, etc.
Examples from history: the Navajo code talkers were able to pass along information that was known to be intercepted, but undecipherable. When the US wanted something known, they made it decipherable. One such 'fact' was that a ship called the USS Indianapolis was in the north Pacific. The ship was located by the Japanese and sunk, a sacrifice of secrecy. The real USS Indianapolis had traveled from Pearl Harbor directly to Tinian, carrying the first atom bomb. Due to the security (the successful secrecy of the Indianapolis) conflicting with the seeded intel (the sunken fake Indianapolis), the real Indianapolis was sunk and missing for 3 days before survivors of the Japanese torpedo attack were found. Due to the delay, 500 of the 800 men were killed by sharks.
While not above sacrificing materiel and lives in the name of security, the US military is not about to allow another Indianapolis to happen. All crucial intelligence is maintained separately from 'common knowledge', low priority/security information and seeded intel.
On the other hand, the US military conducts itself in large part for psychological effect. The single most compelling reason for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan were "psychological effect" (National Archives: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. â" 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M.," n.d., Top Secret; Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100). Pretending to be attacked without risking lives or equipment, or even having to prove it happened (any such 'proof' being easily fabricated) is superb propaganda with which to beg for more funding.
Almost invariably when people talk about 'how the world ends' they're actually talking about human extinction. Equating the two is the sort of massive species specific ego trip that prevents people from solving the deadly problems they create, and lets them create more daily by allowing them to evade responsibility. In most scenarios the world, if not the majority of the biosphere, will continue in a more or less normal fashion. Even is such as the planetary collision that created the moon, some parts of the biosphere survived and repopulated the planet. After most of the scenarios the Earth will continue with very little evidence remaining of the very intense but very brief infection of its surface. We might fare better if we took our example from rhinovirus rather than Ebola. Killing your host is not beneficial to survival.
There's a bit in the new version of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' that illustrates this problem in human thinking. When asked why he came to "our planet", Klaatu responds incredulously "YOUR planet?"
The Judeo-Christian argument that 'God gave man dominion over all the animals and plants' makes the same mistake (and is probably to origin of this broken thinking). It is often taken to assume that "dominion" means 'permission to use and abuse at will without repercussion' instead of the more accurate "control or exercise of control; sovereignty". The latter implies responsibility for the outcome due to application of control. No rights exist without a concominant duty. The right to live on this planet requires exercise of the duty to preserve it, at the very least by not using more than the fair share of resources. Argue against it with words all you like, Nature will respond by evolving the biosphere to include or exclude us without saying a word, or listening to our assertions of dominance or pleas for mercy. I'm betting this will be the primary message of TDTESS, with Klaatu standing in for Nature (though I'm betting he ends up cutting us some slack).
200 years ago Thomas Malthus estimated the sustainable carrying capacity of the human environment to be two and a third billion persons. I haven't seen a convincing argument with a significantly greater estimate that doesn't mistake technology as it is currently practiced (ie. non-renewable) for sustainability. We're less than 1.5 years from having 3 times Malthus's estimate.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and a gag and a cough and a choke, and pandemics and starvation, and "natural" disasters of our own making, and the oxymoronic "wars for survival" for dessert.
Due to an accidental needle stick while working in surgery, I contracted hepatitis C. I didn't know it until my liver almost stopped working. The way I found out about it was being told that I'd totaled my van the day before as well as having two other accidents. In all 3 cases the police came and didn't detect any evidence of intoxication. And I wasn't intoxicated. But I was anesthetized. I was taking prescribed amounts of Ativan and Benadryl. My liver wasn't clearing them out of me, and they built up to a level that made me a fully functional zombie. I've since had another episode of amnesia caused by medication, and my liver is running at 100% now. I took Ambien, and ended up 2 days later finding out that I'd spent the previous 2 days eating all 30 days worth of the stuff, forgetting that I'd taken any previously. The first dose caused it. And it's even listed as a side effect: "can cause sleep walking with no memory of the event". It's not sleepwalking, but it's a good description anyway.
The most distressing case of amnesia I ever saw was an educational movie about a man who had been an orchestra conductor, had been in an accident, and due to the whiplash effect of the brain inside the skull, sustained brain damage in the hippocampus, where memories are formed. The best (or worst, you decide) example of what a person goes through was shown in the movie as he wrote in his journal "I have just woken up. I have only just this moment become aware." Over, and over, and over, day after day.
I once visited a man in a nursing home who had amnesia. He was due to all the thiamine (vitamin B-1) being washed out of his hippocampus by alcohol. Commonly called "wet brain", its clinical name is Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. It appears almost exactly like Alzheimer's. You can tell the difference by giving the person a list of words to remember. Later, ask them to recall the words, and neither can. But give the first two letters of the words, and the W-K patients can recall the words. They have implicit memory -- they can remember, but they don't know they remember. The Alzheimer's patients can't recall even having been given the list if shown the complete list later. As I spoke with this man, he frequently interrupted and asked me my name, what I do for a living, and similar questions, and asked these same questions again every couple minutes. He never once caught on to the fact that I was his son, and I didn't bother to tell him, because he wouldn't have remembered it just a few minutes later.
"The Consumer Union's Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs", 1972, Consumer's Union
I usually detest peoples' hyped up assertions such as the title of this post, but in this case I think it's almost subdued in comparison to the facts of the matter.
Due in large part to the contents of this book, marijuana was almost legalized... during the *Nixon* administration. Yes, that's when us long hairs were making a lot of noise about many things, including drugs. But we had very little power then. It wasn't us who was attempting to change the law.
Reading this book is like finding out that the tin foil hat crowd was right all along. This story is a conspiracy theory that happens to be true. This book provides the evidence, with references. It is an even handed historical recounting. It's hard for some people to believe it's even handed because the conclusion and its supporting evidence are so drastically lop sided.
The summary is that the war on drug users started as and continues to be conducted for the economic benefit of the drug manufacturers and sellers that can guarantee sufficient tax income to the government. And more recently for the direct benefit of the government since they can now seize any property belonging to anyone they care to arrest.
I was a substance abuse counselor for 3.5 years, and addiction remained one of my main interests through my PhD and beyond. The worst bodily harm comes from two drugs that are both legal: tobacco and alcohol. The worst withdrawals come from these two, plus another legal drug (or class thereof), benzodiazapines (valium family). I would rather a person use any drug, legal or illegal, other than these 3. Withdrawal from tobacco won't kill you, but the other two can.
The bottom line is the URL for the book. If you care about this subject, no matter what side of any part of the argument, you really should read this book in order to learn how things came to be the way they are. It is one of the best, but certainly not the only, example of psyops (psychological operations) perpetrated by the US government on its own citizens. That's not hyperbole -- I studied that subject too.
TAAS: Who? No matches to TAAS or Talmage when searching Personal Spaceflight http://www.personalspaceflight.info/ or Encyclopedia Astronautica. The latter is particularly notable, as the NASA history office recommended it to National Geographic when they were looking for some historical data. TAAS apparently recognizes itself though: taascompany.com
Stability: "With the center of gravity now well behind the center of lift, the parent vehicle will be unstable and pitch up." All true, basic aerodynamics. Specifically AEROdynamics. This will be true in the atmosphere. If the vehicle is in the atmosphere, there's no reason to rely on structural aerodynamics, because the vehicle has control surfaces. A much safer ejection sequence would be to kick the capsule forward, lower the flaps for aerobraking, trigger any other brakes that may exist, lower the elevators to "nose" down the main vehicle. Bring it down and away from the capsule under control is far safer than hoping instability won't backfire and somersault the tail over and forward, into the capsule.
Wings and Reentry: "Wings are the most efficient means of air transportation and air-breathing engines are the most efficient form of propulsion. A vehicle that takes advantage of these two components will be the most efficient. The wings also play a role in orbital transfer maneuvres and reducing thermal loads during re-entry."
The fastest atmospheric speed ever achieved was Mach 9.6 by NASA's X-43. The "wings" were integral to the airframe. Nothing that pokes out from the body like those imagined for the TAAS thing would stay attached at anywhere near that speed. And nothing running at lower Mach could possibly make it outside enough of the atmosphere to accelerate to orbital speed unless it were carrying an enormous fuel load to make up for lack of lift since the wings wouldn't be working any more.
As for reentry, the wings would absolutely be a hindrance. The greater surface area (as compared to the body alone) would result in much more aerodynamic compression heating than any amount of radiative cooling that could possibly occur. Now, if they were to use the wings as ablative cooling, by having them absorb heat and then get ripped off by the high Mach forces, it might just bear itself out to be as silly as the rest of the article.
A couple details to put some of this in context: Low Earth orbit speed is around Mach 25. The temperature of the X-43's leading edges approached 4,000 degrees. The SR-71's reached 3,300 at Mach 3.3. The nonlinearity in the speed/heat comparison was due the the X-43 flying much higher (110,000 ft); less air, less heat generated.
The same things have been done with mirrors, the subjects' hands and the experimenter assistant's hands. It's so simple and common that it's been used to demonstrate cognitive mapping in undergrad classes. I did so 10 years ago.
The only new item in TFA is use of video cameras placed at eye locations and equivalent ocular presentation. In TFA they manage to do the same as has been done before, except they use a lot more of very expensive equipment. Science marches on, though not necessarily forward.
To imply that the process is somehow flawed because it consumes more energy overall than it produces is a trivial, straw man argument. The alternative would be a net positive energy, ie. perpetual motion/"free energy".
However, Kendall does imply the fact that the existing hydrogen production models consume hydrocarbons that are usable in the present form without additional processing. A hydrogen production method that does not use fossil fuels would be a boon. One that relies on fossil fuels serves only to perpetuate most of the present problems.
> If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design."
Wrong. There exist very rigorous standards for simpilicity and complexity, having to do with how complex the calculations necessary to describe the phenomenon being examined. But in keeping with the tone of TFA, we'll stick with the acceptable generalizations.
As in TFA, the SETI-d00d was standing in for software doing pattern matching. For there to be a pattern, there had to be something less than random presentation of components of the environment. The regularity of the man made artifacts stands as example of obvious patterns, ie. simplicity.
Space is a random distribution of points or spots of light, the intensity of which is also random. It is the opposite of simplicity. To describe this random/random distribution would require the phenomenon itself -- there is no computational short cut that can be used to describe it.
As to whether simplicity or complexity actually better represents ID remains a subjective assertion with no proof possible, until and unless as Hawking says, we can "know the mind of God." So far God seems intent on us discovering the rules or creation via our own intelligence rather than His/Hers/Its, being content to exhibit the best proof of Intelligent Intent by remaining entirely absent, providing us with the opportunity to proceed as if He/She/It did not exist. And since actually not existing would produce the same result, the logic behind the above 'evidence' falls apart.
Give me a God that can create a rock He/She/It can't lift and then toss it over the shoulder without a second thought. Such a God would create a universe of which could be said: "Is an electron a particle? No. It is a wave? No. Is it both? No. Is it neither? No." -- Neils Bohr But again, a universe could exist with these characteristics independent of a purposeful creation.
That's the general term I'm used to for medical, psychological and similar self-induced symptom anxiety. TFA is just a blatant attempt to claim a piece of it for themselves, when the cause is the same whether it's internet based or Babylonian cuniform on clay tablets.
The source of the discomfort is plain old cognitive dissonance. Some people are more prone to it than others, for a number of reasons. They're the same ones who intend to relieve the anxiety by learning what they can about why they don't feel well. But being prone to the dissonance, they instead find a rationale for the anxiety that's worse than any real cause, and it backfires and they fall into a feedback loop.
In psychological and psychiatric training, it's more common for the symptomitis sufferer to diagnose their relatives than themselves.
It would have been simply an inter-tribal pow wow dance, but I would have been laughing and yelling "We told you so! For 500 years we told you it was medicinal! Are you going to listen now?"
Unfortunately I didn't make the deadline. On the other hand, none of those on YouTube had their work on the Big Screen: "Why, they just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's disease." -- 'Thank You For Smoking'
How can anyone take a study seriously that supposedly examines visual perception by talking to people over the phone? They learned nothing except that some people answer questions over the phone a certain way. That study design leads to the error of forced responses, producing responses where none would have been forthcoming except for the question having been asked. Such answers have nothing to do with any perceptual ability, bias or preference.
Just because a substance is implicated in a particular phenomenon does not mean that the phenomenon is present where ever that substance is. There are compounds that are human neuromodulators that are also found in plants. Nobody would seriously take this to mean plants require neuromodulators.
TFA even states that the same compound was found in a region of space NOT likely to be conducive to the formation of life. TFA goes on blithely unaware of this statement before and after its appearance, because to be otherwise accurate TFA would have to simply state an organic compound found in some regions of space has been found in another.
There's a reason Playskool and other childrens' toy makers produce toy versions of real things. Young children want to parrot behaviors such as using a computer, but they do not have the cognitive ability necessary to use a computer or even differentiate between the real and toy versions. Children this young do not have the ability of abstraction (see Paiget's stages of childhood development for details). Giving a child this young a computer would be to give them a very expensive Playskool version, for all they could do with it. In fact the Playskool version would have some built in functions that the child could learn from, unlike a real computer.
Don't give him a computer. Give him something to play with outside. Then put your own away and go out and play with him. Trust me, if you don't you'll regret it later. And later comes sooner than you think.
Nothing I can find that answers directly to the details in TFA, it is after all original research, but I find a few that are probably among the present research's predecessors, which relate the fact that various collogens are unstable and unfold or 'melt' at temperatures less than 65C, including human lung tissue that's unstable at body temperature. I used "skin melting temperature" -- other search terms may prove more fruitful.
Eric's a fine stunt specialist with a lot of experience and his jetpack work goes way beyond regular stunt work. But there is a stuntman who rightfully earned and uses the name "Rocketman", and it's not Eric Scott. The real Rocketman built many stunt devices, including Evel Knievel's. He also headed the team to build and fly the first amateur rocket to cross the internationally accepted altitude defining "space". Of course he's not going to fault Eric for the press's inevitable use of the name "Rocketman" -- they do it every chance they get. But these other guys get called that and then that name forgotten. But Ky Michaelson http://www.the-rocketman.com/rocketmanhist.html remains THE Rocketman.
TFA quotes a 1999 article regarding effects of contrail cirrus on climate. That was, of course, theoretical. Due to the few days of no planes above the US following 9/11, we have clear climatological data regarding contrails. Contrail cirrus serves to reflect daytime sunlight back upwards, and night time terrestrial heat radiation back down, the net effect being to reduce the variance in temperature changes over time.
There is no reason to waste aircraft fuel running microwave generators to ameliorate an effect which is not a problem.
I don't think they're using invisible to mean "imperceptible". More like they're using it to say "typically we detect molecules by looking for their terahertz radiation. this method makes them invisible using that method." By your definition, not being able to interact with ANYTHING else really means the object doesn't exist. My invisible friend really takes exception to that.
They're not saying it by saying it? Masking a particular frequency doesn't make something invisible. Radiation impinging on the object being passed through as if the object weren't there, that's invisible. Obviously they're not saying imperceptible because they're talking about using the device as a detector.
Theoretically an object could exist that couldn't interact with anything. Practically this is impossible as everything in the universe was part of a singularity initially and thus entangled. By Bell's theorem everything retains this entanglement via "spooky action at a distance". Perfect isolation or undetectability is impossible.
But to make it up to you, my invisible friend has taken yours to lunch.
Putting something where it can't be seen is not the same as making it invisible. Making it unable to be seen at a particular frequency does not mean it can't interact with something else, for instance gravitationally with the 'corral'. That would make it detected.
If the above were not so, all your friends who didn't happen to be within eyesight would be invisible. Nothing wrong with that as long as you're willing to accept the notion that just because your friends are invisible doesn't mean they're imaginary.
At best, in complete isolation, the molecule would be both visible and invisible. It would be in Schroedinger's cat box.
My (step)daughter had a similar reaction to math and science until she got far enough into college to get involved in some real work. She needed the challenge to make it interesting. Once she got challenged she latched onto it and won't let go. It was easy to see this in our case, she has operated on challenge since her 8 years of Montessori school. She went from there to college, at age 14 (that one was a self-induced challenge; she got herself in and was accepted before we ever found out). Now she looks for trace metals in neural tissue from Alzhiemer's, using the X-ray source at Brookhaven.
Once you've got some nuts and bolts results in hand, and especially if you're seeing something nobody's ever seen before, IMO science becomes the coolest thing you could possibly do. In the process, math gets yanked into it, and that becomes interesting because it Finally Does Something.
If the young lady in question responds similarly to challenge, I'm betting what she needs is to get her hands dirty up to the elbows in some real science.
> And then he invoices Toyota for complying with > each and everyone of them to the tune of the > same dollar amount their bill is.
And each of the owners bill Toyota for the labor of removing them. And then they bill Toyota for a new non-Toyota car, since theirs can't be publicly viewed. Yeah, I know not all the wall papers were by owners, but if just those owners did this, it'd get Toyota's attention.
And send the invoices to someplace in Toyota other than the legal department. This smells like another case of Lawyers Gone Wild. I'll bet the PR department would have a hissy fit if they started getting invoices with copies of the take down request, and they'd go into overdrive on damage control, then call in the guys in the top floor offices. I'm betting they big wigs either don't know, or else were fed a line by legal and will cave at the first sign of backlash.
Slashdot Mirror
So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases? Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
Good questions.
The "worst cases" are the effects on the body taken as per capita. Toxins don't rely on population statistics for the damage they cause. Alcohol gets into every cell. It is toxic at all levels of the system. Burning tobacco contains over 15,000 chemicals. We know what about 10% of them do. More than 90% of them are toxic.
In the cases where legalization was tried, there was a small increase in soft drug use, and no reliable evidence for increase in hard drug use.
Again, bodily harm is toxic effects, not affected by number of users. There were no more users. Withdrawal is a physiological effect, also not affected by population statistics.
Number of users and the problems that occur before and after legalization parallel number of users and problems during and after alcohol prohibition. In fact legalization/de-prohibition removes drug use from the realm of criminal activity, which carries its own set of dangers to health and well being, both user and victim. It also tends to put it under government oversight, preventing much of poor manufacturing toxicity and adulteration.
You seem interested enough to ask such questions, why are you not interested enough to read the (free) book and find the answers yourself? You can argue words all you like. The book contains real, referenced, and peer reviewed data. I'd be interested in your arguments with those.
(Full disclosure: the book contains some data about drug use changes after legalization; similar data has been obtained by legalization attempts subsequent to the book).
This, and many other phenomena occurring due to overpopulation/pollution/etc. didn't make it into the previous story "This Is The Way The World Ends". The ones that did make it were for the most part enormous explosions and such (alien invasion? come on.) Those things are highly unlikely but spectacular. The truth will be spectacular only in retrospect, if there is anyone left to retrospect.
I find it highly unlikely that the current US military mindset, which emphasizes communications, operations and intelligence security to an enormous degree, would allow truly critical systems to be accessible via a commonly available worldwide network. Such systems would have no connections with any outside networks.
I find it far more likely that the US maintains low security systems on the internet and allows them to be compromised, with some sensitive but not crucial information "lost", along with a large amount of plausible but false intel. Such 'seeded' intel serves to mislead an enemy, while public knowledge of such intrusions serves to convince the people and the government of the need for more funding, etc.
Examples from history: the Navajo code talkers were able to pass along information that was known to be intercepted, but undecipherable. When the US wanted something known, they made it decipherable. One such 'fact' was that a ship called the USS Indianapolis was in the north Pacific. The ship was located by the Japanese and sunk, a sacrifice of secrecy. The real USS Indianapolis had traveled from Pearl Harbor directly to Tinian, carrying the first atom bomb. Due to the security (the successful secrecy of the Indianapolis) conflicting with the seeded intel (the sunken fake Indianapolis), the real Indianapolis was sunk and missing for 3 days before survivors of the Japanese torpedo attack were found. Due to the delay, 500 of the 800 men were killed by sharks.
While not above sacrificing materiel and lives in the name of security, the US military is not about to allow another Indianapolis to happen. All crucial intelligence is maintained separately from 'common knowledge', low priority/security information and seeded intel.
On the other hand, the US military conducts itself in large part for psychological effect. The single most compelling reason for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan were "psychological effect" (National Archives: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. â" 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M.," n.d., Top Secret; Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100). Pretending to be attacked without risking lives or equipment, or even having to prove it happened (any such 'proof' being easily fabricated) is superb propaganda with which to beg for more funding.
Almost invariably when people talk about 'how the world ends' they're actually talking about human extinction. Equating the two is the sort of massive species specific ego trip that prevents people from solving the deadly problems they create, and lets them create more daily by allowing them to evade responsibility. In most scenarios the world, if not the majority of the biosphere, will continue in a more or less normal fashion. Even is such as the planetary collision that created the moon, some parts of the biosphere survived and repopulated the planet. After most of the scenarios the Earth will continue with very little evidence remaining of the very intense but very brief infection of its surface. We might fare better if we took our example from rhinovirus rather than Ebola. Killing your host is not beneficial to survival.
There's a bit in the new version of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' that illustrates this problem in human thinking. When asked why he came to "our planet", Klaatu responds incredulously "YOUR planet?"
The Judeo-Christian argument that 'God gave man dominion over all the animals and plants' makes the same mistake (and is probably to origin of this broken thinking). It is often taken to assume that "dominion" means 'permission to use and abuse at will without repercussion' instead of the more accurate "control or exercise of control; sovereignty". The latter implies responsibility for the outcome due to application of control. No rights exist without a concominant duty. The right to live on this planet requires exercise of the duty to preserve it, at the very least by not using more than the fair share of resources. Argue against it with words all you like, Nature will respond by evolving the biosphere to include or exclude us without saying a word, or listening to our assertions of dominance or pleas for mercy. I'm betting this will be the primary message of TDTESS, with Klaatu standing in for Nature (though I'm betting he ends up cutting us some slack).
200 years ago Thomas Malthus estimated the sustainable carrying capacity of the human environment to be two and a third billion persons. I haven't seen a convincing argument with a significantly greater estimate that doesn't mistake technology as it is currently practiced (ie. non-renewable) for sustainability. We're less than 1.5 years from having 3 times Malthus's estimate.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper,
and a gag and a cough and a choke,
and pandemics and starvation,
and "natural" disasters of our own making,
and the oxymoronic "wars for survival" for dessert.
Due to an accidental needle stick while working in surgery, I contracted hepatitis C. I didn't know it until my liver almost stopped working. The way I found out about it was being told that I'd totaled my van the day before as well as having two other accidents. In all 3 cases the police came and didn't detect any evidence of intoxication. And I wasn't intoxicated. But I was anesthetized. I was taking prescribed amounts of Ativan and Benadryl. My liver wasn't clearing them out of me, and they built up to a level that made me a fully functional zombie. I've since had another episode of amnesia caused by medication, and my liver is running at 100% now. I took Ambien, and ended up 2 days later finding out that I'd spent the previous 2 days eating all 30 days worth of the stuff, forgetting that I'd taken any previously. The first dose caused it. And it's even listed as a side effect: "can cause sleep walking with no memory of the event". It's not sleepwalking, but it's a good description anyway.
The most distressing case of amnesia I ever saw was an educational movie about a man who had been an orchestra conductor, had been in an accident, and due to the whiplash effect of the brain inside the skull, sustained brain damage in the hippocampus, where memories are formed. The best (or worst, you decide) example of what a person goes through was shown in the movie as he wrote in his journal "I have just woken up. I have only just this moment become aware." Over, and over, and over, day after day.
I once visited a man in a nursing home who had amnesia. He was due to all the thiamine (vitamin B-1) being washed out of his hippocampus by alcohol. Commonly called "wet brain", its clinical name is Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. It appears almost exactly like Alzheimer's. You can tell the difference by giving the person a list of words to remember. Later, ask them to recall the words, and neither can. But give the first two letters of the words, and the W-K patients can recall the words. They have implicit memory -- they can remember, but they don't know they remember. The Alzheimer's patients can't recall even having been given the list if shown the complete list later. As I spoke with this man, he frequently interrupted and asked me my name, what I do for a living, and similar questions, and asked these same questions again every couple minutes. He never once caught on to the fact that I was his son, and I didn't bother to tell him, because he wouldn't have remembered it just a few minutes later.
"The Consumer Union's Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs", 1972, Consumer's Union
I usually detest peoples' hyped up assertions such as the title of this post, but in this case I think it's almost subdued in comparison to the facts of the matter.
Due in large part to the contents of this book, marijuana was almost legalized ... during the *Nixon* administration. Yes, that's when us long hairs were making a lot of noise about many things, including drugs. But we had very little power then. It wasn't us who was attempting to change the law.
Reading this book is like finding out that the tin foil hat crowd was right all along. This story is a conspiracy theory that happens to be true. This book provides the evidence, with references. It is an even handed historical recounting. It's hard for some people to believe it's even handed because the conclusion and its supporting evidence are so drastically lop sided.
The summary is that the war on drug users started as and continues to be conducted for the economic benefit of the drug manufacturers and sellers that can guarantee sufficient tax income to the government. And more recently for the direct benefit of the government since they can now seize any property belonging to anyone they care to arrest.
I was a substance abuse counselor for 3.5 years, and addiction remained one of my main interests through my PhD and beyond. The worst bodily harm comes from two drugs that are both legal: tobacco and alcohol. The worst withdrawals come from these two, plus another legal drug (or class thereof), benzodiazapines (valium family). I would rather a person use any drug, legal or illegal, other than these 3. Withdrawal from tobacco won't kill you, but the other two can.
The bottom line is the URL for the book. If you care about this subject, no matter what side of any part of the argument, you really should read this book in order to learn how things came to be the way they are. It is one of the best, but certainly not the only, example of psyops (psychological operations) perpetrated by the US government on its own citizens. That's not hyperbole -- I studied that subject too.
It's available in its entirety at: http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/cu/cumenu.htm
TAAS: Who? No matches to TAAS or Talmage when searching Personal Spaceflight http://www.personalspaceflight.info/ or Encyclopedia Astronautica. The latter is particularly notable, as the NASA history office recommended it to National Geographic when they were looking for some historical data. TAAS apparently recognizes itself though: taascompany.com
Stability: "With the center of gravity now well behind the center of lift, the parent vehicle will be unstable and pitch up." All true, basic aerodynamics. Specifically AEROdynamics. This will be true in the atmosphere. If the vehicle is in the atmosphere, there's no reason to rely on structural aerodynamics, because the vehicle has control surfaces. A much safer ejection sequence would be to kick the capsule forward, lower the flaps for aerobraking, trigger any other brakes that may exist, lower the elevators to "nose" down the main vehicle. Bring it down and away from the capsule under control is far safer than hoping instability won't backfire and somersault the tail over and forward, into the capsule.
Wings and Reentry: "Wings are the most efficient means of air transportation and air-breathing engines are the most efficient form of propulsion. A vehicle that takes advantage of these two components will be the most efficient. The wings also play a role in orbital transfer maneuvres and reducing thermal loads during re-entry."
The fastest atmospheric speed ever achieved was Mach 9.6 by NASA's X-43. The "wings" were integral to the airframe. Nothing that pokes out from the body like those imagined for the TAAS thing would stay attached at anywhere near that speed. And nothing running at lower Mach could possibly make it outside enough of the atmosphere to accelerate to orbital speed unless it were carrying an enormous fuel load to make up for lack of lift since the wings wouldn't be working any more.
As for reentry, the wings would absolutely be a hindrance. The greater surface area (as compared to the body alone) would result in much more aerodynamic compression heating than any amount of radiative cooling that could possibly occur. Now, if they were to use the wings as ablative cooling, by having them absorb heat and then get ripped off by the high Mach forces, it might just bear itself out to be as silly as the rest of the article.
A couple details to put some of this in context: Low Earth orbit speed is around Mach 25.
The temperature of the X-43's leading edges approached 4,000 degrees. The SR-71's reached 3,300 at Mach 3.3. The nonlinearity in the speed/heat comparison was due the the X-43 flying much higher (110,000 ft); less air, less heat generated.
The same things have been done with mirrors, the subjects' hands and the experimenter assistant's hands. It's so simple and common that it's been used to demonstrate cognitive mapping in undergrad classes. I did so 10 years ago.
The only new item in TFA is use of video cameras placed at eye locations and equivalent ocular presentation. In TFA they manage to do the same as has been done before, except they use a lot more of very expensive equipment. Science marches on, though not necessarily forward.
To imply that the process is somehow flawed because it consumes more energy overall than it produces is a trivial, straw man argument. The alternative would be a net positive energy, ie. perpetual motion/"free energy".
However, Kendall does imply the fact that the existing hydrogen production models consume hydrocarbons that are usable in the present form without additional processing. A hydrogen production method that does not use fossil fuels would be a boon. One that relies on fossil fuels serves only to perpetuate most of the present problems.
> If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design."
Wrong. There exist very rigorous standards for simpilicity and complexity, having to do with how complex the calculations necessary to describe the phenomenon being examined. But in keeping with the tone of TFA, we'll stick with the acceptable generalizations.
As in TFA, the SETI-d00d was standing in for software doing pattern matching. For there to be a pattern, there had to be something less than random presentation of components of the environment. The regularity of the man made artifacts stands as example of obvious patterns, ie. simplicity.
Space is a random distribution of points or spots of light, the intensity of which is also random. It is the opposite of simplicity. To describe this random/random distribution would require the phenomenon itself -- there is no computational short cut that can be used to describe it.
As to whether simplicity or complexity actually better represents ID remains a subjective assertion with no proof possible, until and unless as Hawking says, we can "know the mind of God." So far God seems intent on us discovering the rules or creation via our own intelligence rather than His/Hers/Its, being content to exhibit the best proof of Intelligent Intent by remaining entirely absent, providing us with the opportunity to proceed as if He/She/It did not exist. And since actually not existing would produce the same result, the logic behind the above 'evidence' falls apart.
Give me a God that can create a rock He/She/It can't lift and then toss it over the shoulder without a second thought. Such a God would create a universe of which could be said:
"Is an electron a particle? No.
It is a wave? No.
Is it both? No.
Is it neither? No." -- Neils Bohr
But again, a universe could exist with these characteristics independent of a purposeful creation.
That's the general term I'm used to for medical, psychological and similar self-induced symptom anxiety. TFA is just a blatant attempt to claim a piece of it for themselves, when the cause is the same whether it's internet based or Babylonian cuniform on clay tablets.
The source of the discomfort is plain old cognitive dissonance. Some people are more prone to it than others, for a number of reasons. They're the same ones who intend to relieve the anxiety by learning what they can about why they don't feel well. But being prone to the dissonance, they instead find a rationale for the anxiety that's worse than any real cause, and it backfires and they fall into a feedback loop.
In psychological and psychiatric training, it's more common for the symptomitis sufferer to diagnose their relatives than themselves.
It would have been simply an inter-tribal pow wow dance, but I would have been laughing and yelling "We told you so! For 500 years we told you it was medicinal! Are you going to listen now?"
Unfortunately I didn't make the deadline. On the other hand, none of those on YouTube had their work on the Big Screen: "Why, they just found that smoking can offset Parkinson's disease." -- 'Thank You For Smoking'
How can anyone take a study seriously that supposedly examines visual perception by talking to people over the phone? They learned nothing except that some people answer questions over the phone a certain way. That study design leads to the error of forced responses, producing responses where none would have been forthcoming except for the question having been asked. Such answers have nothing to do with any perceptual ability, bias or preference.
Just because a substance is implicated in a particular phenomenon does not mean that the phenomenon is present where ever that substance is. There are compounds that are human neuromodulators that are also found in plants. Nobody would seriously take this to mean plants require neuromodulators.
TFA even states that the same compound was found in a region of space NOT likely to be conducive to the formation of life. TFA goes on blithely unaware of this statement before and after its appearance, because to be otherwise accurate TFA would have to simply state an organic compound found in some regions of space has been found in another.
Wouldn't you prefer never to have existed if you knew you would be subjected to mental retardation, health complications, and a short lifespan?
"Good point. You may go." -- Your friends, Orange Roughy (140 years), Bristlecone Pine (4500 years), Galapagos Tortise (150 years).
To preempt complaints regarding non-human intelligence, we defer to Douglas Adams on the subject of humans, dolphins and digital watches.
There's a reason Playskool and other childrens' toy makers produce toy versions of real things. Young children want to parrot behaviors such as using a computer, but they do not have the cognitive ability necessary to use a computer or even differentiate between the real and toy versions. Children this young do not have the ability of abstraction (see Paiget's stages of childhood development for details). Giving a child this young a computer would be to give them a very expensive Playskool version, for all they could do with it. In fact the Playskool version would have some built in functions that the child could learn from, unlike a real computer.
Don't give him a computer. Give him something to play with outside. Then put your own away and go out and play with him. Trust me, if you don't you'll regret it later. And later comes sooner than you think.
Firstly, 65C, isn't that the just above the heat of a warm bath, and doesn't a sauna reach up to 110C ? Second, since when does a skin melt?
Who can give some more indepth information about this?
PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
Nothing I can find that answers directly to the details in TFA, it is after all original research, but I find a few that are probably among the present research's predecessors, which relate the fact that various collogens are unstable and unfold or 'melt' at temperatures less than 65C, including human lung tissue that's unstable at body temperature. I used "skin melting temperature" -- other search terms may prove more fruitful.
Eric's a fine stunt specialist with a lot of experience and his jetpack work goes way beyond regular stunt work. But there is a stuntman who rightfully earned and uses the name "Rocketman", and it's not Eric Scott. The real Rocketman built many stunt devices, including Evel Knievel's. He also headed the team to build and fly the first amateur rocket to cross the internationally accepted altitude defining "space". Of course he's not going to fault Eric for the press's inevitable use of the name "Rocketman" -- they do it every chance they get. But these other guys get called that and then that name forgotten. But Ky Michaelson http://www.the-rocketman.com/rocketmanhist.html remains THE Rocketman.
TFA quotes a 1999 article regarding effects of contrail cirrus on climate. That was, of course, theoretical. Due to the few days of no planes above the US following 9/11, we have clear climatological data regarding contrails. Contrail cirrus serves to reflect daytime sunlight back upwards, and night time terrestrial heat radiation back down, the net effect being to reduce the variance in temperature changes over time.
There is no reason to waste aircraft fuel running microwave generators to ameliorate an effect which is not a problem.
... just consider the fact that all the water on Earth has been through at least one animal at least one time. It's ALL urine.
You may squeam at will.
I don't think they're using invisible to mean "imperceptible". More like they're using it to say "typically we detect molecules by looking for their terahertz radiation. this method makes them invisible using that method." By your definition, not being able to interact with ANYTHING else really means the object doesn't exist. My invisible friend really takes exception to that.
They're not saying it by saying it? Masking a particular frequency doesn't make something invisible. Radiation impinging on the object being passed through as if the object weren't there, that's invisible. Obviously they're not saying imperceptible because they're talking about using the device as a detector.
Theoretically an object could exist that couldn't interact with anything. Practically this is impossible as everything in the universe was part of a singularity initially and thus entangled. By Bell's theorem everything retains this entanglement via "spooky action at a distance". Perfect isolation or undetectability is impossible.
But to make it up to you, my invisible friend has taken yours to lunch.
> "The comic book is the new spec script in Hollywood"
!new:
Heavy Metal 1982
Judge Dredd 1992
The Fifth Element 1998
That's just a few of the more enduring successes.
It just occurred to me that "Unbreakable" is Bruce Willis's second (at least) film from a comic. I wonder if he's a fan?
Putting something where it can't be seen is not the same as making it invisible. Making it unable to be seen at a particular frequency does not mean it can't interact with something else, for instance gravitationally with the 'corral'. That would make it detected.
If the above were not so, all your friends who didn't happen to be within eyesight would be invisible. Nothing wrong with that as long as you're willing to accept the notion that just because your friends are invisible doesn't mean they're imaginary.
At best, in complete isolation, the molecule would be both visible and invisible. It would be in Schroedinger's cat box.
My (step)daughter had a similar reaction to math and science until she got far enough into college to get involved in some real work. She needed the challenge to make it interesting. Once she got challenged she latched onto it and won't let go. It was easy to see this in our case, she has operated on challenge since her 8 years of Montessori school. She went from there to college, at age 14 (that one was a self-induced challenge; she got herself in and was accepted before we ever found out). Now she looks for trace metals in neural tissue from Alzhiemer's, using the X-ray source at Brookhaven.
Once you've got some nuts and bolts results in hand, and especially if you're seeing something nobody's ever seen before, IMO science becomes the coolest thing you could possibly do. In the process, math gets yanked into it, and that becomes interesting because it Finally Does Something.
If the young lady in question responds similarly to challenge, I'm betting what she needs is to get her hands dirty up to the elbows in some real science.
> And then he invoices Toyota for complying with
> each and everyone of them to the tune of the
> same dollar amount their bill is.
And each of the owners bill Toyota for the labor of removing them. And then they bill Toyota for a new non-Toyota car, since theirs can't be publicly viewed. Yeah, I know not all the wall papers were by owners, but if just those owners did this, it'd get Toyota's attention.
And send the invoices to someplace in Toyota other than the legal department. This smells like another case of Lawyers Gone Wild. I'll bet the PR department would have a hissy fit if they started getting invoices with copies of the take down request, and they'd go into overdrive on damage control, then call in the guys in the top floor offices. I'm betting they big wigs either don't know, or else were fed a line by legal and will cave at the first sign of backlash.