Have you ever tried a smart car? I think you would be suprised. I'm 6'5'' and ~20 stone. I also have very long lower legs. I cannot fit in a hummer or an escalade(the big SUV i've tried), but i do fit in the SMART car. Of course it only seats two.
Many of the small european and asian cars are suprisingly roomy. I can fit in the megane, the golf, even the Yaris (verso version).
In Europe(especially France) that niche is filled by cars like the Reanult Kangoo. They can lug an awful lot of stuff and if you really need it you can attach a trailer. The ~70 hp diesel will give you around 40 mpg in urban conditions.
>the ATLAS control room >and if you have time, stop by for a tea in building 40:-)
Blatant ATLAS propaganda.;-P No no, you should come to the computing centre, or CMS.
In all seriousness I agree with my colleague above. Microcosm is worth a visit, but the must-see is one of the caverns(ATLAS,CMS). They are not quite so impressive now that they have been filled completely with detectors, but still very interesting. As mentioned in another post above the control rooms and computer centre will probably stay open to the public in some fashion, but once the LHC starts, the caverns will become radioactive. I can't remember the official cool down numbers but it is on the order of months.
If they are fully booked (and i expect they are) I would try one of the other experiments. Like Isolde, compass or the anti-proton collector.
I also think that just seeing the site is an interesting experience. (It is very different from Dan Brown's description for example)
>Semantics, pff. Get close enough to that tiny particle, and 1/r^2 is going to win every time. uhm, the electromagnetic force also follow a 1/r law.
If we do a back of the envelope calculation: Let's say a proton vs a black hole created by the LHC. Let's assume that the full energy of the LHC creates the black hole: mass of black hole: 2.49572642 × 10-23 kg mass of proton: 2.49572642 × 10-23 kg charge of proton: 1.602 176 53(14) × 1019 C
so for gravity we have: F= (6.67e11 N m kg * 2.50e-23 kg * 1.67e27 kg)/r ~ 2,78e-60 N m^2 / r for electromagnetic: (interacting with another singly charged particle) F = 9.00e9 NmC * (1.60e19 C) / r ~ 1,44e-28 Nm / r
That is, the electromagnetic force is 100000000000000000000000000000000 times stronger than the gravitational force if the proton is the same distance from the black as from another singly charged particle (electron/proton etc.). Or, the proton would have to be 1e16 times closer to the black hole than another particle for the forces to be comparable. Not bloody likely.
These calculations are done classically and we are getting to the microscopic scale, so QM should be taken into account, but that's not possible for gravitation at the moment.
Gravity is such a weak force on the microscopic level. It's not even possible for black-holes to form at that scale(1e14 TeV) unless there are multiple rolled up dimensions like the string theorists believe.
As has already been stated in other comments. If black holes can be created in the LHC they can be created in the cosmic ray bombardment of the atmosphere(much more massive black holes). So the fact that the earth is still here after billions of years suggests that the LHC is perfectly safe in this respect(I wouldn't recommend fondling it while its running though, unless you want superpowers).
I fail to understand why people who create "art" has the right to earn such enormous amounts of money?
I have not seen or heard of any rich research scientist. There are certainly none were i work. We earn enough to put food on the table and that is it. There is no patent or copyright protection of our work(you cannot copy three consecutive notes from a piece of music, but you can sure copy more than three symbols from our math) and yet science is created. How can this be? The framework which aim was to promote intellectual pursuits is not valid for hard science. It is too important for humanity that we can all share in scientific advance.
Then what is the point of intellectual property? If it is deemed such a hindrance for progress that it must be invalid for the "important" fields? Why must we have special protection for music, literature, art, inventions when pure science is exempt?
Furthermore the exemption has shown that the protection is not necessary. Basic research is still being done. Even if I only earn the same as a nurse or a police officer. But that is OK. I get to earn a living at doing what I think is interesting. Why should it be different for artists?
Let me reiterate: There is no permanent storage facility anywhere on the planet! We might have some really good ideas, but they haven't been implemented yet.
>stop putting more pollution into the air As I told you we are trying to do that in the Nordic countries. More than twenty percent of Denmark's power supply is from wind energy, which has a much smaller CO2 footprint per unit power delivered than any other current technology(including production, installation and operation). On the order of a factor 3-5 less than nuclear. We are also working on reducing the footprint of coal fired plants. In fact if the Norwegian research is feasible for mass production we can get the pollution level of a coal-fired plant to the same level as a nuclear plant(CO2 wise).
>And don't say... what if they leak. Second law of thermodynamics working against you there, and water supply contamination is much worse than global warming.
>You've never seen how these things work. >You have no idea (seeing that you've ignored everything) how thorough the research has been. >How much testing has been done. I don't? Thanks for clearing that up. Now why did I become a physicist? and why am I and have I been working at nuclear research facilities and institutes. Boy, are they going to have egg on their faces when they discover that I am completely incompetent.
The pollution problems from power production are being solved, without the need to go to nuclear(fission) power which brings a whole slew of new problems. The real problem is the transportation sector. We have no denser and easier to utilize energy source than petrol. It is also not feasible to achieve the same level of filtering as with power plants.
In the Scandinavian countries the coal plants are filtered and a large portion of the SOx and NOx and other poisonous compounds are recaptured and used in the production of concrete and cement. This way the byproduct are used in industrial production instead of just spewed into the air.
The Norwegians have just demonstrated a recapture rate of 95% of the CO2 produced by a coal power plant. They also use their offshore oilfields to pump the CO2 back into the oil depots.
Coal plants need not be as bad as you suggest.
My problem with nuclear is the waste. I am confident that it is possible to run a power plant without any major risk of disaster with modern technology. The waste however is incredibly toxic. We are not talking "rising temperature may be caused by humans and lead to an increase in water levels". It is deadly. Also, there is no permanent storage facility anywhere on the planet. Noone has designed such a thing yet. That problem must be solved before we even consider building more nuclear facilities.
I'll go for the whale cock one. Except we are talking nano tubes and across multiple trans-dimensional universes
I just bought myself a thinkpad x61s. Lovely little machine. It came with 1Gb of RAM and Vista Business edition. I also bought a ram upgrade to 2 Gb. Unfortunately it has not arrived yet so I am stuck with the wonder of vista at 1 Gb.
First booting the thing. It takes around 10 mins before it is in a usable state, or so my watch tells me. I believe it is much more but vista projects a small pocket in which time no longer has meaning, because I could swear I saw a couple of glaciers speed by.
Then when it finally starts it has already used 90% of the ram and has happily begun swapping to the hard drive. Which means I have 30 minutes before the battery dies.
And then I have three icons in the system tray telling me which wireless networks i am connected with. Thank you very much I really need the same information thrice and I wonder whether you would be kind enough to take up another 50 Mb of ram to tell me again. (I concede that this might be lenovo's/intel's fault)
Then we have a full microsoft office install including a SQL server running. Just not authorized. Because the authorization code that my workplace has for office 2007 apparently is not valid for the pre-installed version of office. Now I have to deinstall everything, and install it again from the CD's at work. Then you have to brave the whole "are you sure you want to remove office"/"allow/cancel"/"special privileges continue"/"take a hit of the whale cock" before it is actually gone. after the machine is rebooted you are greeted with a slew of silly balloon messages and windows telling you that windows has changed the boot-up and "some services have not been started" and "do you want to start them?". No I f'ing want you to shut up and do what you are told, without the town crier declaring it with a trumpet fanfare before and after.
Now I just live in constant fear of pressing or clicking something that will start memory system thrashing.
It has been an interesting learning experience though and I'll see how much the extra ram helps. But for as long as possible I am sticking with XP and Ubuntu on my other machines.
>Producing hybrids without some proper framework in place is irresponsible.
I totally agree, but I want us to work out that framework not just disallow hybrids.
In nazi germany(yay Godwin) Jews were treated horribly. Was the correct and moral course of action:
a) Rework the laws and society such that Jews were treated as equals?
or
b) Ban jews from having children?
I am sure you would agree that the first option is the only moral one. What is it then that makes the difference with hybrids? A different order of magnitude with hybrids? I have a hard time imagining anything an order of magnitude worse than the almost successful attempt at wholesale extermination of a race during the 1940's.
I agree that it is going to be problematic and there probably will be some people who will never come to terms with having hybrids living among us. But, I believe it will be a minority. Most Germans today have no problem living with Jews and most white americans can share a bus with black people. We cannot let society be governed by a minority of nutters.
>Who gets to decide what is human and what is not?
We all do. It is not a requirement that we treat a new species badly, nor is it a requirement that you need to be a different species for you to be treated inhumanely(vividly demonstrated by a couple of regimes 60 years ago.)
I think an interesting result of human/animal chimaeras would be a better understanding of what sentience and consciousness is. Which hopefully would force us to begin a species rights movement. There must be some criteria based on mental capacities by which we can justify why human rights apply to humans but not to buffalo for example.
>I don't think humanity is currently ready to answer those questions.
Maybe not. But the wrong way of getting to that point is sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I'm not listening".
We are already creating GMO's. We have bred horses, cows, dogs & more to exhibit traits we want. Now we are just considering adding human traits. I do not think there is anything inherently unethical about playing with DNA. It is just chemistry. Ethics become a problem once the being is brought to term. Then we must have a set of rules/laws regarding how it must be treated and its rights.
I will argue that if we have rules like this then bringing this new "human" to term will not be any less ethical than the scenarios I outlined earlier.
>But allowing a human hybrid to come to term (If possible) I am against.
I will never understand that point of view. If that being is secured a place in a good family (as pet or child), then what is the ethical problem? Why is it more moral for a child to be created by rape? A crack whores illicit child? A drunken chance encounter? a one night stand?
What is it people abhor so much about a child or a new species created on purpose?
I do not understand your climate argument for public transport and biking? The countries with arguably the most widespread use of both in developed countries are the netherlands and the scandinavian countries. Not exactly the best weather in the world.
Population dispersion is more of a problem, and bikes will not be a solution for the mid-west any time soon. But it is fine for major american metropolitan areas. Manhattan would be ideal for bikes. So would many other american cities I have visited. I also think that you believe that distance is a bigger problem than it realy is. I commute 20 km by bike every day. In sunshine, rain or snow. I also have plenty of friends that commute much further(the longest is 80km) than I by bike. At rush hour it takes about the same time by car and bike, and you get a workout for free. Studies have shown that just 30 minutes of mild sports (like a brisk walk) a day greatly reduces the chance of cardiovascular disease. So from a socioeconomic viewpoint it is very smart to have good infrastructure for bikes. It pays for itself.
Now i agree that i would never consider to use the bike in the US as it is today. I am afraid i would get run over in about 3 seconds.
That electricity comes from coal in the US might be right, I do not know the details but i'll take your word for it. A coal power plant can be much more efficient than a car engine, especially if the waste heat is used to heat residential areas. So an electric car might pollute in the end, but probably much less than a normal car. Another bonus is that the airpollution is concetrated at the plant not at where there are most people/cars. There are also many other ways to produce the electricity: solar, wind, nuclear.
The reason could be that while a diesel does indeed can use less fuel than a petrol or a hybrid per driven kilometre and produces less CO2. Diesel and in particular biodiesel in the research I have seen have a much higher rate of particulates in its exhaust as well as other poisonous gasses. I bike to work and I hate diesels. Their exhaust is much worse than that of ordinary cars. They often also smell of Fluorine.
I do not understand this new obsessiveness over CO2 it is not nearly as toxic as many of the other gasses released by a combustion engine. Yes, it might be a factor in climate change, but we know that the other gasses are carcinogenic and that they are the cause of many types of allergies and asthma. The latest results from a study conducted in Copenhagen showed that living or working near the main roads is equivalent to smoking a pack a day and that after only 8 hours the blood chemistry of the subjects changed and after 24 hours there were evidence of genetic damage. The major culprit was believed to be the particulates.
The only long term solution is electric/hydrogen powered cars combined with proper public transport and good infrastructure for bikers. unfortunately the electric cars are a long way off.
It is possible to do multiple schedulers. I created a fair-share scheduler, i.e. each user on the machine gets equal slice of the CPU. This i wrote into the kernel and then made it optional. Root could then write a 0 or 1 to a file in/proc/ to turn it on or off. This will ofcourse cost some overhead, so for most people sticking with the scheduler they favour is probably better.
Well, you used something that came from the CERN collaboration to write your question. I would say that WWW has certainly changed the daily life of almost all of us, and the economic boom that it caused through the 90s has certainly been a bountiful repayment of our investment.
Cheers, Qc_dk Ps. I used to work at cern and with the 10'000 men and 2 women there, there certainly was a lot of large hardon collisions. I believe you USians call it cockblocking.;)
I would recommend you to look into the nordic tradition of folksong. Around the end of the 12th century it became popular among the ladies of the nobility to write down the songs sung among the common people. They are generally found in 4 categories riddervise (knight songs) about courtly life and love historiske (Historical) take a guess, yes about historical events and people tryllevise (magical songs) about magic anf supernatural creatures kæmpeviser (giant songs) about mythical events especially norse mythology
The two first are not religious in nature, the two last are more religous although not directly. They are more about the "trauma" of a society going from norse mythology to christianity.
I do not think you are right in your assertation that music was religous in nature until the baroque period. I think it is an integral part of human nature, just as religion is, but separate from it. What I think we are seeing is that it was not until the printing press that anyone but the religous establishment and their cheap and educated monk labour force (:-)) was able to actually pass on their music. Except for some areas where there was a strong oral tradition of not just telling stories but actually singing them, which is what the nordic folksongs are. We have just been very lucky in the nordic countries that the upper class suddenly became interested in pop music with secular content, so to speak.
This singing tradition still lives on in Denmark at least, I cannot speak for the other scandinavian countries. It is still a tradition that a guest at birthday parties or anniversaries who are close to the host of the party will write a song about the life and character of the couple or birthday boy. This tradition is not strong in my family, but i can still sing from memory five of the old folksongs above and probably 20 more old (100-300 years old, not 800) danish songs.
If you are interested, a danish band called "Sorten Muld" has released an album of reinterpretations of some of these old songs. Since the music to many of them has been lost, they have done the music in a sort of trip-hop style. Worth a listen in my opinion. The text and a reasonable english translation can be found here: http://www.noside.com/nsd6035note.html
They are generally very dark melancolic songs, which is true of most of the folksongs. The refrain is only repeated in all the verses in the first song, but they should be sung in all the verses. Note that the refrain does not always fall at the end of the verse.
Another interesting fact is that rap battling (as in hip hop culture) already existed in viking age. In the sagas there are examples of vikings "rapping" rythhmic rhymes insulting the opposing viking (and his momma) before a fight.
Whats the difference between a weasel and a huge worm?
You only want one of them in your pants!
Badam ching. I will not be here all week as there are a couple of nasty looking guys with a funny looking jacket over there, and I rather suspect they are not here to have chat about the veal.
That is only because you insist on using the non SI unit RPM. The SI equivalent is Hz or 1/s. SI is designed to make conversions from one physical property to another easy, ie without the need of conversion factors.
That's not to say that they are always the easiest to use. Where I am now (High energy physics department, Niels Bohr Institute) for most of the calculations going on here it is a lot easier to have velocities measured as fractions of c for example. That makes any equation that contains c a lot easier( relativity: E=gamma*m gamma=1/sqrt(1-v^2)).
Since electrons have a rest mass not equal to zero. It is in fact impossible for an electron to move at the speed of light. According to the theory of relativity at least.
I remember calculating the average speed of an electron in an electrical wire as part of a physics exam. I cannot remember the exact speed but the order of magnitude was around 1 m/s.
Ofcourse it is not really the speed of the electrons that matter but the speed of propagation of the electrical field, which is the same as the speed of light.
Interestingly I have made similar research into the alledged intelligence of the mammals known as Hu-Mans on Evil Lair island.
I put the test subjects in an enclosed humid (some would say extremely moist environment). After about a minute of furious activity the subjects took to floating languidly at the top of the container. No coaxing would illicit a response even an offer of a million dollars in "Evil Lair" store credit was passed up on.
My conclusion is that the large human brain is more of an adaptation for mammals to live in a waterless environment than a sign of real intelligence.
Chief Researcher, Evil Corp somewhere in the pacific
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever tried a smart car? I think you would be suprised. I'm 6'5'' and ~20 stone. I also have very long lower legs. I cannot fit in a hummer or an escalade(the big SUV i've tried), but i do fit in the SMART car. Of course it only seats two.
Many of the small european and asian cars are suprisingly roomy. I can fit in the megane, the golf, even the Yaris (verso version).
In Europe(especially France) that niche is filled by cars like the Reanult Kangoo. They can lug an awful lot of stuff and if you really need it you can attach a trailer. The ~70 hp diesel will give you around 40 mpg in urban conditions.
Then why did you mention the Finns?
Death by Axe! RRRAAAAAAARRGGGGGGGggg.. umm, btw. What's your address?
I believe NYCL is one them here young whippersnappers. Get of my Slashdot. *shakes fist*
Low ID waving contest begins now.
The power of Neal compels you!
>the ATLAS control room :-)
;-P
>and if you have time, stop by for a tea in building 40
Blatant ATLAS propaganda.
No no, you should come to the computing centre, or CMS.
In all seriousness I agree with my colleague above. Microcosm is worth a visit, but the must-see is one of the caverns(ATLAS,CMS).
They are not quite so impressive now that they have been filled completely with detectors, but still very interesting. As mentioned
in another post above the control rooms and computer centre will probably stay open to the public in some fashion, but once the
LHC starts, the caverns will become radioactive. I can't remember the official cool down numbers but it is on the order of months.
If they are fully booked (and i expect they are) I would try one of the other experiments. Like Isolde, compass or the anti-proton
collector.
I also think that just seeing the site is an interesting experience. (It is very different from Dan Brown's description for example)
disclaimer: I worked at cern(but not with ATLAS).
>Semantics, pff. Get close enough to that tiny particle, and 1/r^2 is going to win every time.
uhm, the electromagnetic force also follow a 1/r law.
If we do a back of the envelope calculation:
Let's say a proton vs a black hole created by the LHC.
Let's assume that the full energy of the LHC creates the black hole:
mass of black hole: 2.49572642 × 10-23 kg
mass of proton: 2.49572642 × 10-23 kg
charge of proton: 1.602 176 53(14) × 1019 C
so for gravity we have:
F= (6.67e11 N m kg * 2.50e-23 kg * 1.67e27 kg)/r ~ 2,78e-60 N m^2 / r
for electromagnetic: (interacting with another singly charged particle)
F = 9.00e9 NmC * (1.60e19 C) / r ~ 1,44e-28 Nm / r
That is, the electromagnetic force is 100000000000000000000000000000000 times stronger than the gravitational force if the proton is the same distance from the black as from another singly charged particle (electron/proton etc.).
Or, the proton would have to be 1e16 times closer to the black hole than another particle for the forces to be comparable. Not bloody likely.
These calculations are done classically and we are getting to the microscopic scale, so QM should be taken into account, but that's not possible for gravitation at the moment.
Gravity is such a weak force on the microscopic level. It's not even possible for black-holes to form at that scale(1e14 TeV) unless there are multiple rolled up dimensions like the string theorists believe.
As has already been stated in other comments. If black holes can be created in the LHC they can be created in the cosmic ray bombardment of the atmosphere(much more massive black holes). So the fact that the earth is still here after billions of years suggests that the LHC is perfectly safe in this respect(I wouldn't recommend fondling it while its running though, unless you want superpowers).
And, it would be easy to integrate a hot butter spray into the metal detector we all have to go through anyway.
I fail to understand why people who create "art" has the right to earn such enormous amounts of money?
I have not seen or heard of any rich research scientist. There are certainly none were i work. We earn enough to put food on the table and that is it. There is no patent or copyright protection of our work(you cannot copy three consecutive notes from a piece of music, but you can sure copy more than three symbols from our math) and yet science is created. How can this be? The framework which aim was to promote intellectual pursuits is not valid for hard science. It is too important for humanity that we can all share in scientific advance.
Then what is the point of intellectual property? If it is deemed such a hindrance for progress that it must be invalid for the "important" fields? Why must we have special protection for music, literature, art, inventions when pure science is exempt?
Furthermore the exemption has shown that the protection is not necessary. Basic research is still being done. Even if I only earn
the same as a nurse or a police officer. But that is OK. I get to earn a living at doing what I think is interesting. Why should it be different for artists?
Let me reiterate:
There is no permanent storage facility anywhere on the planet! We might have some really good ideas, but they haven't been implemented yet.
>stop putting more pollution into the air
As I told you we are trying to do that in the Nordic countries. More than twenty percent of Denmark's power supply is from wind energy, which has a much smaller CO2 footprint per unit power delivered than any other current technology(including production, installation and operation). On the order of a factor 3-5 less than nuclear. We are also working on reducing the footprint of coal fired plants. In fact if the Norwegian research is feasible for mass production we can get the pollution level of a coal-fired plant to the same level as a nuclear plant(CO2 wise).
>And don't say... what if they leak.
Second law of thermodynamics working against you there, and water supply contamination is much worse than global warming.
>You've never seen how these things work.
>You have no idea (seeing that you've ignored everything) how thorough the research has been.
>How much testing has been done.
I don't? Thanks for clearing that up. Now why did I become a physicist? and why am I and have I been working at nuclear research facilities and institutes. Boy, are they going to have egg on their faces when they discover that I am completely incompetent.
The pollution problems from power production are being solved, without the need to go to nuclear(fission) power which brings a whole slew of new problems. The real problem is the transportation sector. We have no denser and easier to utilize energy source than petrol. It is also not feasible to achieve the same level of filtering as with power plants.
Why do you allow such plants to be built?
In the Scandinavian countries the coal plants are filtered and a large portion of the SOx and NOx and other poisonous compounds
are recaptured and used in the production of concrete and cement. This way the byproduct are used in industrial production instead
of just spewed into the air.
The Norwegians have just demonstrated a recapture rate of 95% of the CO2 produced by a coal power plant. They also use their offshore oilfields to pump the CO2 back into the oil depots.
Coal plants need not be as bad as you suggest.
My problem with nuclear is the waste. I am confident that it is possible to run a power plant without any major risk of disaster with modern technology. The waste however is incredibly toxic. We are not talking "rising temperature may be caused by humans and lead to an increase in water levels". It is deadly. Also, there is no permanent storage facility anywhere on the planet. Noone has designed such a thing yet. That problem must be solved before we even consider building more nuclear facilities.
I'll go for the whale cock one. Except we are talking nano tubes and across multiple trans-dimensional universes
I just bought myself a thinkpad x61s. Lovely little machine. It came with 1Gb of RAM and Vista Business edition. I also bought a ram upgrade to 2 Gb. Unfortunately it has not arrived yet so I am stuck with the wonder of vista at 1 Gb.
First booting the thing. It takes around 10 mins before it is in a usable state, or so my watch tells me. I believe it is much more but vista projects a small pocket in which time no longer has meaning, because I could swear I saw a couple of glaciers speed by.
Then when it finally starts it has already used 90% of the ram and has happily begun swapping to the hard drive. Which means I have 30 minutes before the battery dies.
And then I have three icons in the system tray telling me which wireless networks i am connected with. Thank you very much I really need the same information thrice and I wonder whether you would be kind enough to take up another 50 Mb of ram to tell me again. (I concede that this might be lenovo's/intel's fault)
Then we have a full microsoft office install including a SQL server running. Just not authorized. Because the authorization code that my workplace has for office 2007 apparently is not valid for the pre-installed version of office. Now I have to deinstall everything, and install it again from the CD's at work. Then you have to brave the whole "are you sure you want to remove office"/"allow/cancel"/"special privileges continue"/"take a hit of the whale cock" before it is actually gone. after the machine is rebooted you are greeted with a slew of silly balloon messages and windows telling you that windows has changed the boot-up and "some services have not been started" and "do you want to start them?". No I f'ing want you to shut up and do what you are told, without the town crier declaring it with a trumpet fanfare before and after.
Now I just live in constant fear of pressing or clicking something that will start memory system thrashing.
It has been an interesting learning experience though and I'll see how much the extra ram helps. But for as long as possible I am sticking with XP and Ubuntu on my other machines.
- rant done
>Producing hybrids without some proper framework in place is irresponsible. I totally agree, but I want us to work out that framework not just disallow hybrids. In nazi germany(yay Godwin) Jews were treated horribly. Was the correct and moral course of action: a) Rework the laws and society such that Jews were treated as equals? or b) Ban jews from having children? I am sure you would agree that the first option is the only moral one. What is it then that makes the difference with hybrids? A different order of magnitude with hybrids? I have a hard time imagining anything an order of magnitude worse than the almost successful attempt at wholesale extermination of a race during the 1940's. I agree that it is going to be problematic and there probably will be some people who will never come to terms with having hybrids living among us. But, I believe it will be a minority. Most Germans today have no problem living with Jews and most white americans can share a bus with black people. We cannot let society be governed by a minority of nutters.
>Who gets to decide what is human and what is not? We all do. It is not a requirement that we treat a new species badly, nor is it a requirement that you need to be a different species for you to be treated inhumanely(vividly demonstrated by a couple of regimes 60 years ago.) I think an interesting result of human/animal chimaeras would be a better understanding of what sentience and consciousness is. Which hopefully would force us to begin a species rights movement. There must be some criteria based on mental capacities by which we can justify why human rights apply to humans but not to buffalo for example. >I don't think humanity is currently ready to answer those questions. Maybe not. But the wrong way of getting to that point is sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I'm not listening". We are already creating GMO's. We have bred horses, cows, dogs & more to exhibit traits we want. Now we are just considering adding human traits. I do not think there is anything inherently unethical about playing with DNA. It is just chemistry. Ethics become a problem once the being is brought to term. Then we must have a set of rules/laws regarding how it must be treated and its rights. I will argue that if we have rules like this then bringing this new "human" to term will not be any less ethical than the scenarios I outlined earlier.
>But allowing a human hybrid to come to term (If possible) I am against.
I will never understand that point of view. If that being is secured a place in a good family (as pet or child), then what is the ethical problem?
Why is it more moral for a child to be created by rape? A crack whores illicit child? A drunken chance encounter? a one night stand?
What is it people abhor so much about a child or a new species created on purpose?
I do not understand your climate argument for public transport and biking? The countries with arguably the most widespread use of both in developed countries are the netherlands and the scandinavian countries. Not exactly the best weather in the world. Population dispersion is more of a problem, and bikes will not be a solution for the mid-west any time soon. But it is fine for major american metropolitan areas. Manhattan would be ideal for bikes. So would many other american cities I have visited. I also think that you believe that distance is a bigger problem than it realy is. I commute 20 km by bike every day. In sunshine, rain or snow. I also have plenty of friends that commute much further(the longest is 80km) than I by bike. At rush hour it takes about the same time by car and bike, and you get a workout for free. Studies have shown that just 30 minutes of mild sports (like a brisk walk) a day greatly reduces the chance of cardiovascular disease. So from a socioeconomic viewpoint it is very smart to have good infrastructure for bikes. It pays for itself. Now i agree that i would never consider to use the bike in the US as it is today. I am afraid i would get run over in about 3 seconds. That electricity comes from coal in the US might be right, I do not know the details but i'll take your word for it. A coal power plant can be much more efficient than a car engine, especially if the waste heat is used to heat residential areas. So an electric car might pollute in the end, but probably much less than a normal car. Another bonus is that the airpollution is concetrated at the plant not at where there are most people/cars. There are also many other ways to produce the electricity: solar, wind, nuclear.
The reason could be that while a diesel does indeed can use less fuel than a petrol or a hybrid per driven kilometre and produces less CO2. Diesel and in particular biodiesel in the research I have seen have a much higher rate of particulates in its exhaust as well as other poisonous gasses. I bike to work and I hate diesels. Their exhaust is much worse than that of ordinary cars. They often also smell of Fluorine.
I do not understand this new obsessiveness over CO2 it is not nearly as toxic as many of the other gasses released by a combustion engine. Yes, it might be a factor in climate change, but we know that the other gasses are carcinogenic and that they are the cause of many types of allergies and asthma. The latest results from a study conducted in Copenhagen showed that living or working near the main roads is equivalent to smoking a pack a day and that after only 8 hours the blood chemistry of the subjects changed and after 24 hours there were evidence of genetic damage. The major culprit was believed to be the particulates.
The only long term solution is electric/hydrogen powered cars combined with proper public transport and good infrastructure for bikers. unfortunately the electric cars are a long way off.
It is possible to do multiple schedulers. I created a fair-share scheduler, i.e. each user on the machine gets equal slice of the CPU. This i wrote into the kernel and then made it optional. Root could then write a 0 or 1 to a file in /proc/ to turn it on or off. This will ofcourse cost some overhead, so for most people sticking with the scheduler they favour is probably better.
cheers,
Christian
Well, you used something that came from the CERN collaboration to write your question. I would say that WWW has certainly changed the daily life of almost all of us, and the economic boom that it caused through the 90s has certainly been a bountiful repayment of our investment.
;)
Cheers,
Qc_dk
Ps. I used to work at cern and with the 10'000 men and 2 women there, there certainly was a lot of large hardon collisions. I believe you USians call it cockblocking.
I would recommend you to look into the nordic tradition of folksong. Around the end of the 12th century it became popular among the ladies of the nobility to write down the songs sung among the common people. They are generally found in 4 categories
riddervise (knight songs) about courtly life and love
historiske (Historical) take a guess, yes about historical events and people
tryllevise (magical songs) about magic anf supernatural creatures
kæmpeviser (giant songs) about mythical events especially norse mythology
The two first are not religious in nature, the two last are more religous although not directly. They are more about the "trauma" of a society going from norse mythology to christianity.
I do not think you are right in your assertation that music was religous in nature until the baroque period. I think it is an integral part of human nature, just as religion is, but separate from it. What I think we are seeing is that it was not until the printing press that anyone but the religous establishment and their cheap and educated monk labour force (:-)) was able to actually pass on their music. Except for some areas where there was a strong oral tradition of not just telling stories but actually singing them, which is what the nordic folksongs are. We have just been very lucky in the nordic countries that the upper class suddenly became interested in pop music with secular content, so to speak.
This singing tradition still lives on in Denmark at least, I cannot speak for the other scandinavian countries. It is still a tradition that a guest at birthday parties or anniversaries who are close to the host of the party will write a song about the life and character of the couple or birthday boy. This tradition is not strong in my family, but i can still sing from memory five of the old folksongs above and probably 20 more old (100-300 years old, not 800) danish songs.
If you are interested, a danish band called "Sorten Muld" has released an album of reinterpretations of some of these old songs. Since the music to many of them has been lost, they have done the music in a sort of trip-hop style. Worth a listen in my opinion.
The text and a reasonable english translation can be found here:
http://www.noside.com/nsd6035note.html
They are generally very dark melancolic songs, which is true of most of the folksongs. The refrain is only repeated in all the verses in the first song, but they should be sung in all the verses. Note that the refrain does not always fall at the end of the verse.
Another interesting fact is that rap battling (as in hip hop culture) already existed in viking age. In the sagas there are examples of vikings "rapping" rythhmic rhymes insulting the opposing viking (and his momma) before a fight.
Whats the difference between a weasel and a huge worm?
You only want one of them in your pants!
Badam ching. I will not be here all week as there are a couple of nasty looking guys with a funny looking jacket over there, and I rather suspect they are not here to have chat about the veal.
That is only because you insist on using the non SI unit RPM. The SI equivalent is Hz or 1/s.
SI is designed to make conversions from one physical property to another easy, ie without the need of conversion factors.
That's not to say that they are always the easiest to use. Where I am now (High energy physics department, Niels Bohr Institute) for most of the calculations going on here it is a lot easier to have velocities measured as fractions of c for example. That makes any equation that contains c a lot easier( relativity: E=gamma*m gamma=1/sqrt(1-v^2)).
Cheers,
qc_dk
Since electrons have a rest mass not equal to zero. It is in fact impossible for an electron to move at the speed of light. According to the theory of relativity at least.
I remember calculating the average speed of an electron in an electrical wire as part of a physics exam. I cannot remember the exact speed but the order of magnitude was around 1 m/s.
Ofcourse it is not really the speed of the electrons that matter but the speed of propagation of the electrical field, which is the same as the speed of light.
Why not go all the way and require a Gowachin court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowachin
I'd be in the stands with some garden implements in case SCO is found "innocent", or even better the lawyers.
Sorry about that. I thought you were refering to this article: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/45360&rss=1 That will teach me not to post before the morning coffee and torture.
Interestingly I have made similar research into the alledged intelligence of the mammals known as Hu-Mans on Evil Lair island.
I put the test subjects in an enclosed humid (some would say extremely moist environment). After about a minute of furious activity the subjects took to floating languidly at the top of the container. No coaxing would illicit a response even an offer of a million dollars in "Evil Lair" store credit was passed up on.
My conclusion is that the large human brain is more of an adaptation for mammals to live in a waterless environment than a sign of real intelligence.
Chief Researcher, Evil Corp
somewhere in the pacific