Did you read this article you linked to? It refutes this theory:
"However, even though this method is feasible and workable, it is unlikely that the GP's builders used it. The segments used by Bush had holes drilled into them to accommodate ropes which held the segments onto the block, yet none of the ancient segments found have such holes in them. How these alternative proposals fail is most clearly seen by considering the extreme case. Neither theory accounts for the movement of the fifty-ton granite slabs used in constructing the internal chambers of the GP. Considering the immense size of these monoliths, the flexible pole method would be rendered even more awkward. Forward motion would be extremely tedious--assuming that these monoliths could even be lifted by this method. Bush's idea would also be problematic. The dimensions of these slabs are not uniform, so each slab would have needed specialized circle segments. The largest monolith is about 27' x 4' x 8' at its ends.
The key failing of the cradle and the (actually extremely similar) pole theory is that it does not explain how they moved the far larger slabs that were not square blocks.
Also we have actual evidence of their methods - dragging on sledges. We have sledges, sledge tracks, and pictures of giant statues being dragged on sledges. They took the time to draw us a diagram, and people still look for other answers.
This is very interesting, and maybe that's good enough. But isn't there some evidence of what method they might have used? Wood fragments? Tracks? Tools?
I'm asking this as a completely naive onlooker. I'm sure there is research on this spanning hundreds of years; anyone want to provide a quick summary?
How about the edges of the stone blocks that would have rotated about 500 times on their way to the pyramid? There should be systematic chipping on the edges of all of the blocks if this was used. Also, this method of movement looks suspiciously like a wheel, which Egypt did not get until many centuries after the great pyramids were constructed. In a pre-wheel culture this mode of transport might not be at all evident.
Because with large scale hemp agriculture, you can always sneak in a few rows of 'the good stuff'.
No, you can't - although the belief that you can is apparently what has kept the hemp business shut down in the U.S. for 80 years (and led to Governor Arnold to veto a hemp cultivation measure in California.
The cultivation patterns are completely different. The hemp crop is grown in dense plantings that lead to tall stalks and few leaves, and then the crop is either harvested before it flowers (if an all-fiber farm) or is allowed to go to seed (if hemp seed is also harvested).
Either way there is no way that a successful drug crop, however small, can be snuck in there. (Not so drug cannabis and, say, field corn though - hiding pot among corn is an old trick).
that's why a naval blockade is a terrorist act of war, and why Japan was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor
A naval blockade is indeed an act of war. I guess you threw the word "terrorist" in there because - you like to abuse what words mean?
But the U.S. had imposed no naval blockade on Japan before the Pearl Harbor attack. The U.S. had halted U.S. trade with Japan in oil and scrap metal (but nothing else), but this is not what the word "blockade" means. A blockade is using armed force to prevent shipping (or other forms of transport) from third parties from getting entering the blockaded nation. Nothing like that was happening. The U.S. had also closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, but again, not a blockade. Japan was free to go 'round the Horn and on to Japan without interference.
Thank God money evolved before humans or else we would never exist.
True Dat.
Before money, the world population was less than a million. Now it is growing by millions a day.
Straight-up barter is not money. "Money" arises when there comes into being a standardized unit of exchange that is independent of the commodity being exchanged. Evidence for that only shows up around 3000 BCE at the earliest, at which point the world human population amounted to tens of million, not "less than a million". The early records of exchange though only involved standardized weights and measures of commodities, not an actual currency of any kind. This shows up around 1000 BC for the first time, and at that point there were on the order of 100 million people in the world.
Current world population growth is about 400,000 per day.
... It is unthinkable that a civilization that old would still be producing significant pollution (at least of a type that we are familiar)....
We often see posters on/. pitching "terraforming" ideas - perhaps creating a biosphere on a planet that initially lacks one. Evidence of terraforming projects carried out by ancient civilizations are "highly thinkable".
Consider one such proposal for terraforming Mars: by injecting "super green-house gases" - chemicals designed to maximize the greenhouse effect - into the Martian atmosphere. One top candidate for this is perfluoropropane - if we find worlds with significant concentrations of this (or other related chemicals) then this might be evidence of deliberate release.
More generally - what we are looking for in planetary atmospheres (once we can routinely analyze them) is evidence of chemical syntheses that cannot plausibly can arise from non-living physical processes. The arguments made in several posts above (as if it were some sort of refutation) that oxygen is pollution cause by photosynthetic organisms is absolutely correct - detecting large excesses of oxygen (for example) should indicated living systems. But looking for more exotic chemicals never found in nature (on Earth) is one way of looking for technological (intelligently designed) processes. It does not matter whether you choose to call it "pollution" or not, the presence of chemicals and concentrations that do not arise from non-living systems is a good way to try to detect such systems.
Also the popular form of argument seen on this page that "No intelligent species would..." or "All intelligent species would..." is fallacious at several levels. Intelligent species evolving in different star systems are in no way bound to behave the way a/. poster imagines, and one could reasonably expect different behaviors for species evolving entirely independently. We aren't looking for features that "every" alien would produce, just for features that some alien might produce that can be distinguished from non-living processes. If you never look for something, odds are you will never find it, even if it is there.
It may not count as a formal logical fallacy, I wouldn't care to argue that point, but while modifying the definitions of things after the fact (a Scotsman is someone from Scotland who *also* doesn't do X, Y or Z) may not create a logically flawed argument, but it moves it into the realm of logically true zero-information statements such as "if red is blue then elephants are unicorns". (I forget the technical term)
Exactly. The fact that the original article describes East Germany as socialist and West capitalist and then attempts to claim that as the reason subjects were more likely to cheat indicates an agenda....
Indeed there is. The Economist is a conservative periodical, although normally a sane one - and thus would be considered "left" by the former GOP of today. Here though, the temptation for a dishonest smear at "socialism" was just too tasty to pass up. By The Economist's normal standards West Germany was/is a socialist society, though like other successful western socialist societies it is also capitalist (the two aren't actually exclusive, but are commonly found together in mixed systems).
Check out the comments to this fluff piece on their website. Their readers are scathing in their rebukes for this tripe.
(Currently, since Germany has a conservative leader that The Economist approves of, it has been giving Germany a pass on begin socialist, even though the economy and governmental systems have not fundamentally changed under Merkel's chancellorship.)
De Beers never destroyed diamonds to maintain scarcity - they just stockpiled them, and then worked to create new markets in emerging economies (the United States, later Japan, then Eastern Europe, now China) and eventually sold them. At one point they had a stockpile equal to several years of sales.
Yep. The main selling point of "natural" gemstones these days is that the lab-made ones are "too perfect!"
Strictly speaking it's because they're "more unique" and therefore "rarer"....
Yet, oddly, the market for natural pearls - by which I mean ones that aren't "cultured", but are formed naturally - collapsed when farmed cultured pearls were introduced, and has never really recovered -- even though they are easily identifiable, far rarer, and "more unique" (I am quoting the misconstruction). Natural pearl production is lower today than it was a century ago. This is a good thing, since it takes pressure off of living communities of organisms, but it is also inconsistent behavior of the market/industry compared to other gemstones.
(I have an explanation for why this occurred for pearls - that "cultured" pearls are considered "real" pearls by the market - but laboratory diamonds are not considered "real" diamonds. Pearls were really, truly rare before culturing made them something everyone could buy -- thus cultured ones were accepted because they expanded the market into a mass market. Diamonds on the other hand were really, truly rare once, but that ended with the discovery of the African diamond deposits in the mid 19th century. After that time they were something everyone could buy, and required an international cartel to manage the supply to keep the price up (in addition to restricting the supply it began an unflagging sales efforts - "diamonds are girl's best friend" - to drive up demand). Artificial diamonds did not change the supply-demand situation, there was already a surplus of natural diamond, but the cartel does not wish for there to be "real" diamonds produced outside of cartel price control. Thus no one who deals in diamonds, and is thus dependent on cartel favor for their supply, will agree that an artificial one is "real".)
The F18 is 30 years old, which is like 120 in fighter aircraft years. We flew the F-86 Saber only 20 years, the F-4 phantom flew 20 (as a fighter), and these are the grey beards of the fighter world from the past. The F-18 is a fine platform, to be sure, but like it or not, it's getting really old for what it does.
Is your claim that the airframes are reaching their service life and need to be replaced by new builds, or are you claiming that an aircraft design undergoes some sort of senility independent of remaning service life?
Please explain why, for example, a new build F-15 or F-18, with 21st century enhancements, would be in adequate to do its job today if that is your argument.
I see your point, but I don't think we have time to develop anything else.
OK - I'll bite. Why not?
Is there a major war scheduled we don't want to be late for?
Is there an enemy superpower that will outstrip us militarily in a meaningful way if we don't get this plane fielded ASAP?
We really have no viable choice but to fly the F-35 for now so we need these planes in production.....
It was already argued that we could buy other NATO aircraft that are in production. This option is "viable" even if the U.S. Senators prefer to keep the pork at home.
... Anyone who needs software can stand up a software team just about anywhere anytime.
Sure, but is the business able to utilize that team "anywhere" with the same degree of success?
Many, many businesses have learned the hard way that core software development needs to be in close (as in immediate, face-to-face) contact with the business side to translate requirements (often inchoate in the minds of the execs and product managers) into concrete requirements and actual software quickly in a very competitive market place.
It varies greatly by industry, company size, and business objective of course - but often the financial and opportunity cost of trying to get the work done with remote teams, even in the U.S., much less overseas - can be unsustainable.
I have seen many businesses/business units waste months or years trying to compete using remote teams of various compositions, before finally pulling some or all of the development back to a central location, even at higher nominal cost. Witness what Marissa Mayer (not a person I would usually use as a model) did with Yahoo. What she did, she did with some very good reasons.
Arguing that all businesses should be able to use remote teams with equal success is a silly game. Woulda, shoulda, coulda - the fact is many businesses try and fail at this, and cannot afford to keep trying to make reality match theory.
There is a lot of bickering on the this page about what Libertarianism does or does not believe, or the sins of government and/or corporations, but let's cut to the chase: Is there anybody here who thinks this scheme is a good idea?. As far as I can tell in the few hundred comments posted thus far, the answer is a resounding "No!"
Among the many problems with this proposal -h is notion of the wall's construction is preposterous. This is very similar to the world's highest concrete arch dams - which require solid rock foundations. A 2000 km structure 300 meters high would have to be built as an earth dam. One plus of this is that don't need billions of tons of concrete, just lots and lots of dirt and rocks, a minus is that the base is ~4 times the width of height so this structure is a kilometer plus thick. The proposal then is essentially to build a continent spanning mountain range.
Using the Tehri Dam in India as a model (260 m tall, 575 m long, cost $1 billion) the cost per kilometer would be on the order of $3 billion per kilometer, or $6 trillion dollars total. The total number of people in the tornado belt is about 70 million, so the cost is roughly $100,000 per person in round numbers. Meanwhile an F5 tornado shelter can be bought for $3000. So at a small fraction of this cost (and environmental impact) every building in the tornado belt could have a shelter able to withstand even the most intense tornados.
The original paper also asserts that this would save money over time by reducing property damage. Annual tornado damage runs $400 million, so it would take 15,000 years for this "savings" to occur, assuming the interest on the investment is zero.
Hmmm. The Director of the NSA might encounter all sorts of information about the Big Money Boys that they would rather not be known generally. Would that information necessarily be classified? But whether or not it is, being paid NOT to disclose it would surely not be a violation of security. Wall Streeters might regard a million a month mighty cheap insurance...
...In the mid 70's? someone defected in Japan with a Mig-25, almost crashing
into a commercial jet at the Tokyo airport.
Viktor Belenko and it was Hakodate Airport in northern Japan. He overshot the runway, damaging the landng gear, but he was almost out of fuerl and couldn't go around (plus, he didn't want to get shot at).
Well of course the USAF pretty much went over it with a fine tooth comb before returning
it. They found out the environmental system sucked,
The pressurized flight suit worked fine, I've never read that it didn't (athough the current F-35 program seems to be having problems). Possibly you are referring to the sophisticated environmental system for electronics that the Mig-25 did not have because its vacuum tube electronics did not need them? The vacuum tube radar was far more powerful than any on any U.S. aircraft, 600 KW continuous, with tremendous ECM burn-through power (the F-4 had a 30 kw radar).
the build quality suffered greatly
Probably you are referring to the fact that the Soviets did not use blind rivets everywhere, as in a US aircraft, but only where they were needed? Or the fact that titanium was only used where its high temperature properties were needed?
and the engines were prone to needing replacement after a few missions.
Not when flown according to guidelines (they did have a shorter life than U.S. engines though, true).
In other words, other than speed, it kind of sucked.
How about extremely high operating altitude, out of the range of most other combat aircraft?
It has a very creditable (though limited) combat record. But 75% of all Mig-25s were recon versions, and there their performance and record is outstanding, remaining in service in India until recently. It remains one of the most successful combat reconnaissance planes of all time.
Cosmic inflation has always puzzled me - so the distance between particles of matter is slowly widening, without the particles themselves actually moving, why can't we observe this at the molecular level? Or do we? Even if its only a miniscule expansion at the smallest scales it must surely show some sign, and wouldn't it have some effect on say chemical interactions?
There are three different expansive phenomenon in modern cosmology - the initial inflation of the original symmetry breaking event, the subsequent vastly longer and slower expansion (measured by the Hubble Constant) that followed where the Universe coasted under influence of gravity alone, and then the recently discovered (and cosmically more recent) cosmic acceleration.that is now offsetting gravity.
The first event lasting a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second did indeed push all the particles then existing apart very fast, while creating lots of new particles.
The second phase of coasting, and the modern phase when cosmic acceleration kicked in, is currently pushing things apart on a cosmic scale, but not gravitationally bound structures, much less the far more strongly bound electromagnetically bound ones (atoms and molecules, and molecular agglomerations) or nuclear force bound structures.
Eventually, under current models, cosmic acceleration will strengthen to the point where it will start ripping apart these galaxy clusters. then galaxies, then star systems, then stars and bulk matter, then molecules and atoms, then nuclei,and finally composite subatomic particles themselves.
There is tones of evidence against the Big Bang also.
It is one of MANY theories, they group it under the STANDARD THEORY, because that is politically they want to push as fact, when in fact, it is not fact, and they do not teach other theories that are equally as valid. THAT is the problem with academia.
The "tones" - frequencies and modulations in the cosmic medium - support the Big Bang model quite strongly.
The signal-to-noise ratio demonstrating the reality of the Big Bang in scientific data collected over decades is enormously higher than that of the posts appearing here today where numerous ACs spout contentless skepticism and derision, and to the extent they reference facts at all, they get them hilariously wrong.
Any AC who claims lots of evidence against a well-established scientific model, but it unable to cite a single scrap of same it simply polluting Slashdot and wasting everyone's time (including his/her own).
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read this article you linked to? It refutes this theory:
The key failing of the cradle and the (actually extremely similar) pole theory is that it does not explain how they moved the far larger slabs that were not square blocks.
Also we have actual evidence of their methods - dragging on sledges. We have sledges, sledge tracks, and pictures of giant statues being dragged on sledges. They took the time to draw us a diagram, and people still look for other answers.
This is very interesting, and maybe that's good enough. But isn't there some evidence of what method they might have used? Wood fragments? Tracks? Tools?
I'm asking this as a completely naive onlooker. I'm sure there is research on this spanning hundreds of years; anyone want to provide a quick summary?
How about the edges of the stone blocks that would have rotated about 500 times on their way to the pyramid? There should be systematic chipping on the edges of all of the blocks if this was used. Also, this method of movement looks suspiciously like a wheel, which Egypt did not get until many centuries after the great pyramids were constructed. In a pre-wheel culture this mode of transport might not be at all evident.
but love science when it finds uses for hemp
Because with large scale hemp agriculture, you can always sneak in a few rows of 'the good stuff'.
No, you can't - although the belief that you can is apparently what has kept the hemp business shut down in the U.S. for 80 years (and led to Governor Arnold to veto a hemp cultivation measure in California.
The cultivation patterns are completely different. The hemp crop is grown in dense plantings that lead to tall stalks and few leaves, and then the crop is either harvested before it flowers (if an all-fiber farm) or is allowed to go to seed (if hemp seed is also harvested).
Either way there is no way that a successful drug crop, however small, can be snuck in there. (Not so drug cannabis and, say, field corn though - hiding pot among corn is an old trick).
...
that's why a naval blockade is a terrorist act of war, and why Japan was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor
A naval blockade is indeed an act of war. I guess you threw the word "terrorist" in there because - you like to abuse what words mean?
But the U.S. had imposed no naval blockade on Japan before the Pearl Harbor attack. The U.S. had halted U.S. trade with Japan in oil and scrap metal (but nothing else), but this is not what the word "blockade" means. A blockade is using armed force to prevent shipping (or other forms of transport) from third parties from getting entering the blockaded nation. Nothing like that was happening. The U.S. had also closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, but again, not a blockade. Japan was free to go 'round the Horn and on to Japan without interference.
Thank God money evolved before humans or else we would never exist.
True Dat.
Before money, the world population was less than a million. Now it is growing by millions a day.
Straight-up barter is not money. "Money" arises when there comes into being a standardized unit of exchange that is independent of the commodity being exchanged. Evidence for that only shows up around 3000 BCE at the earliest, at which point the world human population amounted to tens of million, not "less than a million". The early records of exchange though only involved standardized weights and measures of commodities, not an actual currency of any kind. This shows up around 1000 BC for the first time, and at that point there were on the order of 100 million people in the world.
Current world population growth is about 400,000 per day.
... It is unthinkable that a civilization that old would still be producing significant pollution (at least of a type that we are familiar)....
We often see posters on /. pitching "terraforming" ideas - perhaps creating a biosphere on a planet that initially lacks one. Evidence of terraforming projects carried out by ancient civilizations are "highly thinkable".
Consider one such proposal for terraforming Mars: by injecting "super green-house gases" - chemicals designed to maximize the greenhouse effect - into the Martian atmosphere. One top candidate for this is perfluoropropane - if we find worlds with significant concentrations of this (or other related chemicals) then this might be evidence of deliberate release.
Just tune in for fusion and fission bombs. Would they register on a radio telescope?
No, they would not. Only narrow beam signals would reasonably be detectable.
Mod parent up!
More generally - what we are looking for in planetary atmospheres (once we can routinely analyze them) is evidence of chemical syntheses that cannot plausibly can arise from non-living physical processes. The arguments made in several posts above (as if it were some sort of refutation) that oxygen is pollution cause by photosynthetic organisms is absolutely correct - detecting large excesses of oxygen (for example) should indicated living systems. But looking for more exotic chemicals never found in nature (on Earth) is one way of looking for technological (intelligently designed) processes. It does not matter whether you choose to call it "pollution" or not, the presence of chemicals and concentrations that do not arise from non-living systems is a good way to try to detect such systems.
Also the popular form of argument seen on this page that "No intelligent species would..." or "All intelligent species would..." is fallacious at several levels. Intelligent species evolving in different star systems are in no way bound to behave the way a /. poster imagines, and one could reasonably expect different behaviors for species evolving entirely independently. We aren't looking for features that "every" alien would produce, just for features that some alien might produce that can be distinguished from non-living processes. If you never look for something, odds are you will never find it, even if it is there.
It may not count as a formal logical fallacy, I wouldn't care to argue that point, but while modifying the definitions of things after the fact (a Scotsman is someone from Scotland who *also* doesn't do X, Y or Z) may not create a logically flawed argument, but it moves it into the realm of logically true zero-information statements such as "if red is blue then elephants are unicorns". (I forget the technical term)
The last example is called "vacuously true".
Exactly. The fact that the original article describes East Germany as socialist and West capitalist and then attempts to claim that as the reason subjects were more likely to cheat indicates an agenda....
Indeed there is. The Economist is a conservative periodical, although normally a sane one - and thus would be considered "left" by the former GOP of today. Here though, the temptation for a dishonest smear at "socialism" was just too tasty to pass up. By The Economist's normal standards West Germany was/is a socialist society, though like other successful western socialist societies it is also capitalist (the two aren't actually exclusive, but are commonly found together in mixed systems).
Check out the comments to this fluff piece on their website. Their readers are scathing in their rebukes for this tripe.
(Currently, since Germany has a conservative leader that The Economist approves of, it has been giving Germany a pass on begin socialist, even though the economy and governmental systems have not fundamentally changed under Merkel's chancellorship.)
De Beers never destroyed diamonds to maintain scarcity - they just stockpiled them, and then worked to create new markets in emerging economies (the United States, later Japan, then Eastern Europe, now China) and eventually sold them. At one point they had a stockpile equal to several years of sales.
Yep. The main selling point of "natural" gemstones these days is that the lab-made ones are "too perfect!"
Strictly speaking it's because they're "more unique" and therefore "rarer"....
Yet, oddly, the market for natural pearls - by which I mean ones that aren't "cultured", but are formed naturally - collapsed when farmed cultured pearls were introduced, and has never really recovered -- even though they are easily identifiable, far rarer, and "more unique" (I am quoting the misconstruction). Natural pearl production is lower today than it was a century ago. This is a good thing, since it takes pressure off of living communities of organisms, but it is also inconsistent behavior of the market/industry compared to other gemstones.
(I have an explanation for why this occurred for pearls - that "cultured" pearls are considered "real" pearls by the market - but laboratory diamonds are not considered "real" diamonds. Pearls were really, truly rare before culturing made them something everyone could buy -- thus cultured ones were accepted because they expanded the market into a mass market. Diamonds on the other hand were really, truly rare once, but that ended with the discovery of the African diamond deposits in the mid 19th century. After that time they were something everyone could buy, and required an international cartel to manage the supply to keep the price up (in addition to restricting the supply it began an unflagging sales efforts - "diamonds are girl's best friend" - to drive up demand). Artificial diamonds did not change the supply-demand situation, there was already a surplus of natural diamond, but the cartel does not wish for there to be "real" diamonds produced outside of cartel price control. Thus no one who deals in diamonds, and is thus dependent on cartel favor for their supply, will agree that an artificial one is "real".)
Remember, Microsoft did not learn from their 1999 fiasco, they did it again 4 years later, though only in the UK.
The F18 is 30 years old, which is like 120 in fighter aircraft years. We flew the F-86 Saber only 20 years, the F-4 phantom flew 20 (as a fighter), and these are the grey beards of the fighter world from the past. The F-18 is a fine platform, to be sure, but like it or not, it's getting really old for what it does.
Is your claim that the airframes are reaching their service life and need to be replaced by new builds, or are you claiming that an aircraft design undergoes some sort of senility independent of remaning service life?
Please explain why, for example, a new build F-15 or F-18, with 21st century enhancements, would be in adequate to do its job today if that is your argument.
I see your point, but I don't think we have time to develop anything else.
OK - I'll bite. Why not?
Is there a major war scheduled we don't want to be late for?
Is there an enemy superpower that will outstrip us militarily in a meaningful way if we don't get this plane fielded ASAP?
We really have no viable choice but to fly the F-35 for now so we need these planes in production. ....
It was already argued that we could buy other NATO aircraft that are in production. This option is "viable" even if the U.S. Senators prefer to keep the pork at home.
Yup. A giant PITA. Why don't they fix this?
... Anyone who needs software can stand up a software team just about anywhere anytime.
Sure, but is the business able to utilize that team "anywhere" with the same degree of success?
Many, many businesses have learned the hard way that core software development needs to be in close (as in immediate, face-to-face) contact with the business side to translate requirements (often inchoate in the minds of the execs and product managers) into concrete requirements and actual software quickly in a very competitive market place.
It varies greatly by industry, company size, and business objective of course - but often the financial and opportunity cost of trying to get the work done with remote teams, even in the U.S., much less overseas - can be unsustainable.
I have seen many businesses/business units waste months or years trying to compete using remote teams of various compositions, before finally pulling some or all of the development back to a central location, even at higher nominal cost. Witness what Marissa Mayer (not a person I would usually use as a model) did with Yahoo. What she did, she did with some very good reasons.
Arguing that all businesses should be able to use remote teams with equal success is a silly game. Woulda, shoulda, coulda - the fact is many businesses try and fail at this, and cannot afford to keep trying to make reality match theory.
There is a lot of bickering on the this page about what Libertarianism does or does not believe, or the sins of government and/or corporations, but let's cut to the chase: Is there anybody here who thinks this scheme is a good idea?. As far as I can tell in the few hundred comments posted thus far, the answer is a resounding "No!"
looks foolish. News at 11.
Bingo!
Among the many problems with this proposal -h is notion of the wall's construction is preposterous. This is very similar to the world's highest concrete arch dams - which require solid rock foundations. A 2000 km structure 300 meters high would have to be built as an earth dam. One plus of this is that don't need billions of tons of concrete, just lots and lots of dirt and rocks, a minus is that the base is ~4 times the width of height so this structure is a kilometer plus thick. The proposal then is essentially to build a continent spanning mountain range.
Using the Tehri Dam in India as a model (260 m tall, 575 m long, cost $1 billion) the cost per kilometer would be on the order of $3 billion per kilometer, or $6 trillion dollars total. The total number of people in the tornado belt is about 70 million, so the cost is roughly $100,000 per person in round numbers. Meanwhile an F5 tornado shelter can be bought for $3000. So at a small fraction of this cost (and environmental impact) every building in the tornado belt could have a shelter able to withstand even the most intense tornados.
The original paper also asserts that this would save money over time by reducing property damage. Annual tornado damage runs $400 million, so it would take 15,000 years for this "savings" to occur, assuming the interest on the investment is zero.
Calavar crushed your case like a bug. Nice to see you are as graceless a loser as your close-minded, and logic-challenged.
Hmmm. The Director of the NSA might encounter all sorts of information about the Big Money Boys that they would rather not be known generally. Would that information necessarily be classified? But whether or not it is, being paid NOT to disclose it would surely not be a violation of security. Wall Streeters might regard a million a month mighty cheap insurance...
...In the mid 70's? someone defected in Japan with a Mig-25, almost crashing into a commercial jet at the Tokyo airport.
Viktor Belenko and it was Hakodate Airport in northern Japan. He overshot the runway, damaging the landng gear, but he was almost out of fuerl and couldn't go around (plus, he didn't want to get shot at).
Well of course the USAF pretty much went over it with a fine tooth comb before returning it. They found out the environmental system sucked,
The pressurized flight suit worked fine, I've never read that it didn't (athough the current F-35 program seems to be having problems). Possibly you are referring to the sophisticated environmental system for electronics that the Mig-25 did not have because its vacuum tube electronics did not need them? The vacuum tube radar was far more powerful than any on any U.S. aircraft, 600 KW continuous, with tremendous ECM burn-through power (the F-4 had a 30 kw radar).
the build quality suffered greatly
Probably you are referring to the fact that the Soviets did not use blind rivets everywhere, as in a US aircraft, but only where they were needed? Or the fact that titanium was only used where its high temperature properties were needed?
and the engines were prone to needing replacement after a few missions.
Not when flown according to guidelines (they did have a shorter life than U.S. engines though, true).
In other words, other than speed, it kind of sucked.
How about extremely high operating altitude, out of the range of most other combat aircraft?
It has a very creditable (though limited) combat record. But 75% of all Mig-25s were recon versions, and there their performance and record is outstanding, remaining in service in India until recently. It remains one of the most successful combat reconnaissance planes of all time.
For reference, a standard round from an M4 rifle has about 1.5-1.65kW of kinetic energy upon leaving the barrel.
That is kJ, not kW.
Cosmic inflation has always puzzled me - so the distance between particles of matter is slowly widening, without the particles themselves actually moving, why can't we observe this at the molecular level? Or do we? Even if its only a miniscule expansion at the smallest scales it must surely show some sign, and wouldn't it have some effect on say chemical interactions?
There are three different expansive phenomenon in modern cosmology - the initial inflation of the original symmetry breaking event, the subsequent vastly longer and slower expansion (measured by the Hubble Constant) that followed where the Universe coasted under influence of gravity alone, and then the recently discovered (and cosmically more recent) cosmic acceleration.that is now offsetting gravity.
The first event lasting a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second did indeed push all the particles then existing apart very fast, while creating lots of new particles.
The second phase of coasting, and the modern phase when cosmic acceleration kicked in, is currently pushing things apart on a cosmic scale, but not gravitationally bound structures, much less the far more strongly bound electromagnetically bound ones (atoms and molecules, and molecular agglomerations) or nuclear force bound structures.
Eventually, under current models, cosmic acceleration will strengthen to the point where it will start ripping apart these galaxy clusters. then galaxies, then star systems, then stars and bulk matter, then molecules and atoms, then nuclei,and finally composite subatomic particles themselves.
There is tones of evidence against the Big Bang also.
It is one of MANY theories, they group it under the STANDARD THEORY, because that is politically they want to push as fact, when in fact, it is not fact, and they do not teach other theories that are equally as valid. THAT is the problem with academia.
The "tones" - frequencies and modulations in the cosmic medium - support the Big Bang model quite strongly.
The signal-to-noise ratio demonstrating the reality of the Big Bang in scientific data collected over decades is enormously higher than that of the posts appearing here today where numerous ACs spout contentless skepticism and derision, and to the extent they reference facts at all, they get them hilariously wrong.
Any AC who claims lots of evidence against a well-established scientific model, but it unable to cite a single scrap of same it simply polluting Slashdot and wasting everyone's time (including his/her own).