And another thing -- most abortions are done in the first few weeks of the pregnancy. The foetus isn't even big enough to fill a tablespoon at that point. There isn't even any significant brain development. If you're stopped from giving blood because a test determines you have some undesirable viral DNA in your blood at the time, then is that so different than you stopping yourself from having a kid if a test determines there's undesirable DNA in the foetus, which is technically part of the mother anyway at that point?
>The fact that a fetus is being destroyed is not, in my opinion, the part that makes eugenics nasty. The part that makes eugenics nasty is what it means for the remaining children.
What does it mean for the remaining children? They were the ones who didn't have the undesirable characteristics, remember?
Look, caring for a severely mentally impaired child can be a real drain on the family. Remember that case of the parents who wanted their young daughter's ovaries removed and her growth stunted, because she was already a vegetable, and had no consciousness anyway, so they wanted her kept small to make it easier to care for her.
Ultimately, if you chose to have the fully healthy kid over having the vegetable kid, then does it make you a monster?
What crap. Same old Russia-baiting BS. The US has gone out of its way to damage relations with Russia. Look at how Yeltsin's concentration of powers and suppression of political opponents was vigorously supported by the US -- just as long as he was dismantling Russia, the US didn't care. But as soon as someone isn't playing ball with Uncle Sam, then the diatribes start. Sorry, but there's no credibility in that.
Uh no, their tests are in response to NATO building missile shields right next to their borders. As for poisonings and political opposition, it seems like Europe has centuries of history in trying to impose governance on neighboring regions, which doesn't give them a whole lot of credibility in giving human rights lectures to those same areas.
I'm thinking of inventing Quantum Histrionics. That's when everyone goes ga-ga over my latest quantum announcement, so that I can issue an IPO and walk away a millionaire -- over and over again.
I'm sure there are plenty of non-Muslim people who object to the foreign policies of Islamic countries/groups, and yet you don't see suicide bombings happening against them.
No, the answer is not appeasement, otherwise then everyone will be threatening suicide bombings anytime they want something.
I don't care about all this high-fallutin' life finding. I'm interested in finding a planet that's like our beautiful Earth, and not genetically altering myself so that I can live on a volcanic vent like exotic bacteria.
We should want more Earths, so that we can have more green pastures to graze in and enjoy ourselves on. We can't get there from here anway, you say? Bah, where there's a will, there's a way. Once people see there are other places worth getting to, they'll set about finding ways to get there. Even if they have to probe physics more deeply, to find ways past the limitations that currently bind us.
There's no reason why we can't look for deeper physics that could be useful for interstellar travel. Certainly, once we find other worlds beckoning us with their beauty, we'll feel all the more motivated to do so.
Hmm, so you're using aluminum to turn water momentarily into hydrogen, only to turn it back into water moments later through combustion? What did you need the hydrogen for then? Why don't you just extract the energy directly from the aluminum in one conversion step instead of 2? The more conversion steps you have, the more losses. The fewer conversion steps, the better.
Selective Laser Melting. It's a relatively new rapid prototyping technology which uses laser beams to melt powdered metal or plastic, so that it can be formed layer-by-layer into 3D parts.
So this would be an example of what this polariton laser would be good for, because the polaritons can generate the laser much more efficiently than conventional electron population inversion. Your power requirements would be reduced by 90%, and possibly even more.
Hi, I want to explain something here. This thing produces normal lasers, that are the same as the lasers we already know and love. The difference is that it can produce them using much less power input. The traditional method of electron population inversion requires more energy input for the amount of laser beam you get out. This new polariton method can make the same amount of laser for less energy inputted.
For laser-confinement fusion, you'd want that kind of energy savings. Or SDI, or that ballistic missile interception laser mounted on that Boeing aircraft.
I'm even wondering if those desktop particle accelerators based on laser-wakefield effect wouldn't also benefit.
Anything that requires a high-power laser beam could benefit from this new polariton laser method. A turbine is already going round and round like a polariton, and is distinct from the discrete reciprocating motion of a piston, or the population inversion of electrons.
Again, a more energy-efficient laser sounds like it could be used for nuclear fusion, or even just for more energy efficient consumer electronics (eg. DVD players)
Isn't Laser-TV supposed to be coming out this Xmas? I'd read that Novalux is working on improving the power of their Necsel laser modules for that purpose. If polariton lasers are 10 times more efficient than laser diodes and can operate at room temp, then maybe they'd fill the bill.
So this thing is like a BEC, but it's made of "excitons" (electron-hole pairs) plus the photons causing the excitation. But these "polaritons" are so short-lived, I'm wondering what this invention could be practically used for. They're calling it a "quasi-equilibrium" system, because it's more of a dynamic equilibrium.
Could this "polariton condensate" be used to probe "quantum foam", or spacetime, or something? They've already said it's more energy efficient than a laser. Surely something this exotic must be able to confer on us some useful ability, that it would have some practical application -- even if only for research purposes.
When I think of an exciton-photon combination as compared to electron inversion, then it reminds me of the difference between a turbine and a piston engine. This "polariton" thingy (exciton-photon combo) would be more efficient than the laser in a way that's analogous to how the turbine is more efficient than the piston explosion. I'd think that the key to maximizing its advantage is by stimulating the excitons with the highest energy photons possible. That way you're maximizing your energy savings from this more efficient process.
Hmm... so maybe it might be useful for laser-confinement fusion after all. Maybe it could be used for laser-based rapid-manufacturing, etc. Whatever it is, you'd probably want it for a short-range application, due to the brief lifespan of the polaritons.
I'm wonder what the most promising practical applications of this new matter could be.
What are its constraints and limitations? How much energy-density or power-density can it handle?
Since lasers are being used in experimental development of confinement fusion, and since this polariton-filled matter is supposedly more energy efficient, I'd wonder if this new matter could be used to facilitate laser-confinement fusion.
Or is it just meant for low-power applications? DVD-players, maybe?
As an Asian, I'm absolutely glad that Sarkozy won. May I point out that he himself is a son of immigrants, and not the anti-immigrant caricature that the story blurb would have us believe.
Vive la France! By voting against the socialist and fundamentalist-sponsored hoodlums and other opponents of assimilation, the French people have chosen a path for future progress and prosperity.
Try doing a search on NYT articles about Russia. Theirs is a mirror-opposite censorship. They never print anything nice about the place, and anytime there is something relating to good news, they'll go out of their way to downplay it.
To me, it smacks of ethnic prejudice, as well as Cold War bias masquerading as "liberalism".
There are certain ethnic groups that the NYT hates, even while it heaps adoration on others. Any NYT article on Islam and Muslims invariably features them holding teddy bears, flowers and fluffy bunnies. Any NYT article on Russia invariably shows some old lady moaning about how Putin stole her pension money after ass-raping her. Conspicuously, the NYT will never report anything negative on the European Union (because Brussels is filled with saints, no doubt.)
The NYT is an EU embassy on US soil. They are an Atlanticist bastion.
People don't run newspapers like that to report the news. They run them to promote a particular political agenda. The NYT was originally derided as being "owned by Catholics and run by Jews." Now the Jews have been kicked out -- except for the docile ones, naturally -- and thus its remaining agenda is quite obvious. You'll now never see a positive article from NYT on Israel. Take a look at old articles from NYT on Israel, and you'll see a glaring difference.
I'm a longtime NYT reader, and it's excruciatingly obvious where their biases lie.
"You weeel take deees plane to Aaafgaaaneeestaaan, or I weeeeel --"
"BEEEP - Please kindly press 1 for service in Spanish, 2 to leave a message, 3 to speak with a customer service agent, or 0 to repeat this message again..."
No, I think it was referring to Tamils having been a sea-going people, rather than their Brahmins specifically. Tamils are a coastal community, and had settled Sri Lanka as well, across the sea. Tamils are also credited with having invented the Base 10 numbering system and the Zero, which were passed on to Western civilization by contact with the Arabs.
I'd once read that MRI studies were done on Chinese Mandarin speakers, and it was found that speaking Mandarin stimulates the same areas of the brain that are used in mathematics. I wonder if anyone has thought to study Tamil speakers to see if it does anything similar. It's a very rapidly-spoken language. Sometimes I wonder if certain linguistic characteristics haven't given some cultures an edge in certain mental skills. You never know, it could be possible.
There are engines which use ceramic lubricant that has much higher heat tolerance. This permits the engine to run at much higher temperature and also greater thermodynamic efficiency.
Plug-in Hybrids that are mainly oriented towards the electric propulsion side of things would be a good idea. Because people would naturally be inclined to use the plug-in electric overnight charging, since it's cheaper. But for those times when you're running out of juice on the road, it would obviously be desirable to be able to pull into a fuel station for a quick and convenient refill. If liquid fuel helps you do that refill more efficiently and conveniently than an electric recharging station when you're away from home, then fine. Let the mass market decide which way they find better.
Can you maybe use this thing for accelerating other exotic particles, like muons? I'd read that muon colliders are being researched because they as point particles might arrange for cleaner point-collisions with enough kinetic energy to serve as "Higgs factories". A "Higgs factory" device which could produce lots of Higgs particles might then make it much easier to find/study the "God particle". (Even exploit it?)
Because laser wakefield / plasma wakefield accelerates things so quickly and so suddenly, perhaps it would enable muons to be accelerated and collided sooner, before they have a chance to decay. And the small size of these wakefield accelerators might make them more economical and feasible.
My understanding is that India was specifically looking for cryogenic technology, not unlike what the Space Shuttle uses, and that's no good for ICBM's since it takes a very long time to fuel up, and the fuel is hard to work with. Even though it has a better chance of getting you to the Moon, LOX/LH2 is overkill for what an ICBM needs anyway.
I think it's good to see a variety of nations and companies trying to get into space, because more players on the field increases the chance of scoring goals. It's a tragedy and a crime against scientific progress that nobody's gone back to the Moon in over 30 years, much less beyond it.
Hmm, this VTVL idea seems to me to be a deliberate attempt by Bezos to position his endeavor for eventually taking a trip to the moon. First they go for LEO trips, and then later they decide to use the same spacecraft to touch down on the Moon.
After awhile, they could set up a small base, then eventually a Disneyland/Hotel/etc.
So IMHO, the guy is planning his tech tree carefully. That means this spacecraft is not intended as SSTO. That's why Bezos wants Delta-IV engineers, so that he can build a comparable booster on which to perch this spacecraft, to get to LEO.
Slashdot Mirror
And another thing -- most abortions are done in the first few weeks of the pregnancy. The foetus isn't even big enough to fill a tablespoon at that point. There isn't even any significant brain development. If you're stopped from giving blood because a test determines you have some undesirable viral DNA in your blood at the time, then is that so different than you stopping yourself from having a kid if a test determines there's undesirable DNA in the foetus, which is technically part of the mother anyway at that point?
>The fact that a fetus is being destroyed is not, in my opinion, the part that makes eugenics nasty. The part that makes eugenics nasty is what it means for the remaining children.
What does it mean for the remaining children? They were the ones who didn't have the undesirable characteristics, remember?
Look, caring for a severely mentally impaired child can be a real drain on the family. Remember that case of the parents who wanted their young daughter's ovaries removed and her growth stunted, because she was already a vegetable, and had no consciousness anyway, so they wanted her kept small to make it easier to care for her.
Ultimately, if you chose to have the fully healthy kid over having the vegetable kid, then does it make you a monster?
What crap. Same old Russia-baiting BS. The US has gone out of its way to damage relations with Russia. Look at how Yeltsin's concentration of powers and suppression of political opponents was vigorously supported by the US -- just as long as he was dismantling Russia, the US didn't care. But as soon as someone isn't playing ball with Uncle Sam, then the diatribes start. Sorry, but there's no credibility in that.
Uh no, their tests are in response to NATO building missile shields right next to their borders. As for poisonings and political opposition, it seems like Europe has centuries of history in trying to impose governance on neighboring regions, which doesn't give them a whole lot of credibility in giving human rights lectures to those same areas.
To be honest, I'd read some study that showed men with longer ring finges are more likely to have explosive tempers and beat their wives:
e ngth.html
http://www.livescience.com/health/050203_finger_l
I'm thinking of inventing Quantum Histrionics. That's when everyone goes ga-ga over my latest quantum announcement, so that I can issue an IPO and walk away a millionaire -- over and over again.
I'm sure there are plenty of non-Muslim people who object to the foreign policies of Islamic countries/groups, and yet you don't see suicide bombings happening against them.
No, the answer is not appeasement, otherwise then everyone will be threatening suicide bombings anytime they want something.
I don't care about all this high-fallutin' life finding. I'm interested in finding a planet that's like our beautiful Earth, and not genetically altering myself so that I can live on a volcanic vent like exotic bacteria.
We should want more Earths, so that we can have more green pastures to graze in and enjoy ourselves on. We can't get there from here anway, you say? Bah, where there's a will, there's a way. Once people see there are other places worth getting to, they'll set about finding ways to get there. Even if they have to probe physics more deeply, to find ways past the limitations that currently bind us.
There's no reason why we can't look for deeper physics that could be useful for interstellar travel. Certainly, once we find other worlds beckoning us with their beauty, we'll feel all the more motivated to do so.
I think this announcement is motivated by Joost unveiling their service.
I think they're just trying to catch upto Joost.
Hmm, so you're using aluminum to turn water momentarily into hydrogen, only to turn it back into water moments later through combustion?
What did you need the hydrogen for then? Why don't you just extract the energy directly from the aluminum in one conversion step instead of 2? The more conversion steps you have, the more losses. The fewer conversion steps, the better.
Okay, I know -- here's a good application:
http://www.mcp-group.com/rpt/rpttslm.html
Selective Laser Melting. It's a relatively new rapid prototyping technology which uses laser beams to melt powdered metal or plastic, so that it can be formed layer-by-layer into 3D parts.
So this would be an example of what this polariton laser would be good for, because the polaritons can generate the laser much more efficiently than conventional electron population inversion. Your power requirements would be reduced by 90%, and possibly even more.
Hi, I want to explain something here. This thing produces normal lasers, that are the same as the lasers we already know and love. The difference is that it can produce them using much less power input. The traditional method of electron population inversion requires more energy input for the amount of laser beam you get out. This new polariton method can make the same amount of laser for less energy inputted.
For laser-confinement fusion, you'd want that kind of energy savings.
Or SDI, or that ballistic missile interception laser mounted on that Boeing aircraft.
I'm even wondering if those desktop particle accelerators based on laser-wakefield effect wouldn't also benefit.
Anything that requires a high-power laser beam could benefit from this new polariton laser method. A turbine is already going round and round like a polariton, and is distinct from the discrete reciprocating motion of a piston, or the population inversion of electrons.
Here's another good article I found:
http://optics.org/cws/article/research/27439
Again, a more energy-efficient laser sounds like it could be used for nuclear fusion, or even just for more energy efficient consumer electronics (eg. DVD players)
Isn't Laser-TV supposed to be coming out this Xmas? I'd read that Novalux is working on improving the power of their Necsel laser modules for that purpose. If polariton lasers are 10 times more efficient than laser diodes and can operate at room temp, then maybe they'd fill the bill.
Okay, I found this other article about this discovery, and thought it was pretty good. It's worth a read:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/5/17/1
So this thing is like a BEC, but it's made of "excitons" (electron-hole pairs) plus the photons causing the excitation. But these "polaritons" are so short-lived, I'm wondering what this invention could be practically used for. They're calling it a "quasi-equilibrium" system, because it's more of a dynamic equilibrium.
Could this "polariton condensate" be used to probe "quantum foam", or spacetime, or something? They've already said it's more energy efficient than a laser.
Surely something this exotic must be able to confer on us some useful ability, that it would have some practical application -- even if only for research purposes.
When I think of an exciton-photon combination as compared to electron inversion, then it reminds me of the difference between a turbine and a piston engine. This "polariton" thingy (exciton-photon combo) would be more efficient than the laser in a way that's analogous to how the turbine is more efficient than the piston explosion. I'd think that the key to maximizing its advantage is by stimulating the excitons with the highest energy photons possible. That way you're maximizing your energy savings from this more efficient process.
Hmm... so maybe it might be useful for laser-confinement fusion after all. Maybe it could be used for laser-based rapid-manufacturing, etc.
Whatever it is, you'd probably want it for a short-range application, due to the brief lifespan of the polaritons.
I'm wonder what the most promising practical applications of this new matter could be.
What are its constraints and limitations? How much energy-density or power-density can it handle?
Since lasers are being used in experimental development of confinement fusion, and since this polariton-filled matter is supposedly more energy efficient, I'd wonder if this new matter could be used to facilitate laser-confinement fusion.
Or is it just meant for low-power applications?
DVD-players, maybe?
As an Asian, I'm absolutely glad that Sarkozy won. May I point out that he himself is a son of immigrants, and not the anti-immigrant caricature that the story blurb would have us believe.
Vive la France! By voting against the socialist and fundamentalist-sponsored hoodlums and other opponents of assimilation, the French people have chosen a path for future progress and prosperity.
Try doing a search on NYT articles about Russia. Theirs is a mirror-opposite censorship. They never print anything nice about the place, and anytime there is something relating to good news, they'll go out of their way to downplay it.
To me, it smacks of ethnic prejudice, as well as Cold War bias masquerading as "liberalism".
There are certain ethnic groups that the NYT hates, even while it heaps adoration on others. Any NYT article on Islam and Muslims invariably features them holding teddy bears, flowers and fluffy bunnies. Any NYT article on Russia invariably shows some old lady moaning about how Putin stole her pension money after ass-raping her. Conspicuously, the NYT will never report anything negative on the European Union (because Brussels is filled with saints, no doubt.)
The NYT is an EU embassy on US soil. They are an Atlanticist bastion.
People don't run newspapers like that to report the news. They run them to promote a particular political agenda. The NYT was originally derided as being "owned by Catholics and run by Jews." Now the Jews have been kicked out -- except for the docile ones, naturally -- and thus its remaining agenda is quite obvious. You'll now never see a positive article from NYT on Israel. Take a look at old articles from NYT on Israel, and you'll see a glaring difference.
I'm a longtime NYT reader, and it's excruciatingly obvious where their biases lie.
"You weeel take deees plane to Aaafgaaaneeestaaan, or I weeeeel --"
"BEEEP - Please kindly press 1 for service in Spanish, 2 to leave a message,
3 to speak with a customer service agent, or 0 to repeat this message again..."
No, I think it was referring to Tamils having been a sea-going people, rather than their Brahmins specifically. Tamils are a coastal community, and had settled Sri Lanka as well, across the sea. Tamils are also credited with having invented the Base 10 numbering system and the Zero, which were passed on to Western civilization by contact with the Arabs.
I'd once read that MRI studies were done on Chinese Mandarin speakers, and it was found that speaking Mandarin stimulates the same areas of the brain that are used in mathematics. I wonder if anyone has thought to study Tamil speakers to see if it does anything similar. It's a very rapidly-spoken language. Sometimes I wonder if certain linguistic characteristics haven't given some cultures an edge in certain mental skills. You never know, it could be possible.
There are engines which use ceramic lubricant that has much higher heat tolerance. This permits the engine to run at much higher temperature and also greater thermodynamic efficiency.
Plug-in Hybrids that are mainly oriented towards the electric propulsion side of things would be a good idea. Because people would naturally be inclined to use the plug-in electric overnight charging, since it's cheaper. But for those times when you're running out of juice on the road, it would obviously be desirable to be able to pull into a fuel station for a quick and convenient refill. If liquid fuel helps you do that refill more efficiently and conveniently than an electric recharging station when you're away from home, then fine. Let the mass market decide which way they find better.
Can you maybe use this thing for accelerating other exotic particles, like muons? I'd read that muon colliders are being researched because they as point particles might arrange for cleaner point-collisions with enough kinetic energy to serve as "Higgs factories". A "Higgs factory" device which could produce lots of Higgs particles might then make it much easier to find/study the "God particle". (Even exploit it?)
Because laser wakefield / plasma wakefield accelerates things so quickly and so suddenly, perhaps it would enable muons to be accelerated and collided sooner, before they have a chance to decay. And the small size of these wakefield accelerators might make them more economical and feasible.
What do you think?
My understanding is that India was specifically looking for cryogenic technology, not unlike what the Space Shuttle uses, and that's no good for ICBM's since it takes a very long time to fuel up, and the fuel is hard to work with. Even though it has a better chance of getting you to the Moon, LOX/LH2 is overkill for what an ICBM needs anyway.
I think it's good to see a variety of nations and companies trying to get into space, because more players on the field increases the chance of scoring goals. It's a tragedy and a crime against scientific progress that nobody's gone back to the Moon in over 30 years, much less beyond it.
heh, I think he meant to say 'indigenously' (ie. locally) after the Russians backed out of their supply contract.
Hmm, this VTVL idea seems to me to be a deliberate attempt by Bezos to position his endeavor for eventually taking a trip to the moon. First they go for LEO trips, and then later they decide to use the same spacecraft to touch down on the Moon.
After awhile, they could set up a small base, then eventually a Disneyland/Hotel/etc.
So IMHO, the guy is planning his tech tree carefully. That means this spacecraft is not intended as SSTO. That's why Bezos wants Delta-IV engineers, so that he can build a comparable booster on which to perch this spacecraft, to get to LEO.