One downside to RTG (Radio-isotope Thermal Generators) is that radioactive elements decay, and this causes the power output to fall off slowly but continuously. And the probe wasn't deployed for 11 years after launch; it's not something that we can activate on deployment. IF the thing had landed properly, in the sunlight, the solar power would have been fine. It's too bad that it couldn't have carried both, but that would have been a hefty weight penalty at launch.
This is only practical where there are local or regional monopolies MANDATED by local governments. Cities, towns and counties have allowed, even encouraged, sweetheart deals between the regulators and the regulated. Eliminate cable and telephone monopoly powers, and allow other players into the market, and we might get internet service that's as good as South Korea's.
The only difference, of course, is that we don't expect your cell phone or tablet to relay EVERY word to the NSA. The "Echo" device would appear to do just that. We always suspected that Big Brother was going to subcontract the work; now we know who got the bid!
Wikipedia is tolerable for old or static or uncontroversial information. For example, I'm sure that the data on the masses of the 50 nearest stars is reliable.
For anything political or controversial, the Wikipedia "stewards" are hard-left. I would NEVER trust them with anything important.
If I were a teacher, I would inform every student that Wikipedia can NEVER be cited as a reference, and that doing so would be an instant F on any paper.
Yeah, I guess having electronic voting machines AND working printers is an invitation to failure, especially when a few dozen Sharpie pens is... what, fifty bucks?
I realize this is heresy, but even though I've been working with PCs on a daily basis for THIRTY YEARS, not everything needs to be computerized.
AND, paper ballots allow one to recover from gross errors. Electronic ballots do not.
The only kind of "electronic voting" that I would support would be one that allowed the voter to fill in his ballot on the computer terminal and then PRINT the ballot. The voter then reviews the PRINTED ballot, and then drops it into the ballot box. Immediate results, which is what the BigMediaMoguls want, to do breathless "breaking news" bulletins, AND a scanable paper ballot which would be the OFFICIAL ballot.
Are you certain of this? I've seen reports of the Dems doing it; this one, and Althouse in 2012 and again now. I've never seen any reports of the Republicans doing this.
True statement! When everything is data-mined after the election, one of the things that the election "consultants" (and there are no more vile people like "election consultants, whether of the Carville or Rove variety, they're still evil) analyze is the "no vote" ballots; how many total ballots were submitted, and how many had no vote for EITHER candidate.
Ummmm..... Wrong. As the mailer said, they don't know HOW you voted, but the fact that you did - or didn't - is public record. They even know whether you voted in person, or by mail. They even know if you requested an absentee or vote-by-mail ballot and didn't return it.
And the stats are extracted per PRECINCT, which is pretty darned granular.
Big computers and massive databases - especially when run out of the most corrupt White House in history - can be scary things.
Nothing new here; University of Wisconsin law prof and blogger Ann Althouse related the (apparently quite similar) mailings she received during the 2012 campaign. Those apparently worked, so it isn't surprising that the Dems would try the same dirty tricks again.
The finest single work of fiction concerning the relationship of religion to life on other worlds was Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven".
Twain's Captain Stormfield dies and makes his way to Heaven, to find that Heaven is inhabited with uncounted numbers of souls from billions of different planets; every planet has its own Redeemer, but all represent the same God.
The idea that God is human is laughable; any religion that restricts God to a single planet, or even a single galaxy, is thinking much too narrowly! If there is a God, a Supreme Being (a topic on which I reserve judgment, having no knowledge and only limited faith), He/She/It must be truly supreme in the universe(s).
Preferences vary. I was a big B5 fan of the original shows, read about them in the "lurker's guide" site first on USENET, and later on Hyperion. I'll happily go see a rebooted Babylon 5 in the theaters - even though as a big Star Trek fan (I watched them on our little TV on the original broadcasts), I haven't been to any of the rebooted Star Trek movies.
"A willing suspension of disbelief". Babylon 5 had it. Star Trek, in my opinion, did not.
Most television programs stink at dialog; because it's all written down first, and most actors can't be bothered to figure out how to make their characters speak in their own voices. Bab5 was less bad than most, because most of the episodes were written by JMS. Most TV programs are written by committee, or by outsiders, or by a rotating staff of writers.
As somebody who got INTO Babylon 5 in his 40's, I disagree; Babylon 5 was the best program on TV ever. (Barring, of course, the hot mess that resulted from the on-again/off-again cancellation of Season 5.) There were a few discontinuous episodes in Season 1, but seasons 2-4 were like old soap operas; you didn't dare miss an episode, or you wouldn't be able to catch up.
Even though I generally despise "reboots" of old favorite stories, I'm glad that JMS is doing it, and I wish him the best of luck in it.
Thanks. See? There's the scientific method working; I learned something new. Unfortunately, many of the more passionate advocates will not admit mistakes, and don't learn anything new.
" Science resolved. Nothing even to discuss. Period."
There speaks a man who knows NOTHING about the scientific method. "Science" isn't a thing, it's a process for narrowing in on the truth. The "science" is NEVER settled; there's always more to learn. Even Stephen Hawking is still changing his mind about how black holes work (or don't) and he's the guy who INVENTED the things. AGW is a RELIGIOUS belief, which is why we "deniers" are treated as heretics and apostates.
Remember, 30 years ago the existential crisis was the coming ice age, and 120 years ago, the existential crisis was that London was going to be 5 feet deep in horse manure.
That's because their claims of enviro-superiority are like medieval "indulgences", permissions to sin without penalty. So Saint AlGore flies all over the world preaching the "Stop flying!" mantra, as if he'd never heard of Skype or Webex. As Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes, "I'll believe that there's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start ACTING like it's a crisis."
Gleise 832C is another "planet" with a remarkably Earthlike "artist's rendering" of an exoplanet in a very close orbit around a smallish star. Is this a real planet candidate, or another case of "sunspot confusion"?
Ditto here. The "New planet may support life!!!! meme is so COMPLETELY overblown based on a telescope that detects occultations, and doesn't generate any images. The "artist's renderings" were way off in fantasyland, entirely unsupported by the data.
Fusion of hydrogen into helium produces a LOT of energy. Fusion of helium into carbon produces less. In physics terms, it's the "packing fraction" curve, which can show you what energy you'd get out if you fuse elements together.
Iron is at the bottom of the packing fraction curve; when you fuse other stuff into iron, you're getting out the dregs of the fusion energy, partly because it takes higher and higher pressures and temperatures for fusion to occur for heavier elements.
When you get to the pressure and temperature points where iron fuses into still heavier elements, it begins to EXTRACT energy - from the core of the star. Stars exist in a delicate balance between the heat and pressure that tries to blow them apart, and the gravity that tries to crush them together. Take heat OUT of the core of the star, and there's less internal pressure - and gravity starts to win. The core will collapse, generally abruptly, and a crushing "rebound effect" will accelerate the heavy fusion, extracting MORE energy, leading to a core collapse supernova. The star explodes, leaving a black hole or pulsar at the center and blasting a lot of the stellar material back into space.
Which is where we got the iron for our blood, or the gold for our jewelry - blasted out of a supernova. Probably MANY of them.
In astrophysics, the term "metal" normally applies to any element heavier than lithium. Carbon, silicon, even gasses like oxygen and nitrogen, are "metals". We're not talking about star remnants that are primarily iron or lead or uranium. Gold would be right out.
The problem with trying to USE Van der Waals forces for anything is that in order to stick together, both surfaces must be microscopically smooth; the sort of "smooth" that would make plate glass or mirrors look like "volcanic rock under a magnifying glass". "Reflecting telescope mirror" smooth. Making materials that smooth - and KEEPING them that smooth - is going to be a challenge.
As physics, it's pretty neat. From an engineering perspective, it's going to be a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
One downside to RTG (Radio-isotope Thermal Generators) is that radioactive elements decay, and this causes the power output to fall off slowly but continuously. And the probe wasn't deployed for 11 years after launch; it's not something that we can activate on deployment. IF the thing had landed properly, in the sunlight, the solar power would have been fine. It's too bad that it couldn't have carried both, but that would have been a hefty weight penalty at launch.
This is only practical where there are local or regional monopolies MANDATED by local governments. Cities, towns and counties have allowed, even encouraged, sweetheart deals between the regulators and the regulated. Eliminate cable and telephone monopoly powers, and allow other players into the market, and we might get internet service that's as good as South Korea's.
The only difference, of course, is that we don't expect your cell phone or tablet to relay EVERY word to the NSA. The "Echo" device would appear to do just that. We always suspected that Big Brother was going to subcontract the work; now we know who got the bid!
Wikipedia is tolerable for old or static or uncontroversial information. For example, I'm sure that the data on the masses of the 50 nearest stars is reliable.
For anything political or controversial, the Wikipedia "stewards" are hard-left. I would NEVER trust them with anything important.
If I were a teacher, I would inform every student that Wikipedia can NEVER be cited as a reference, and that doing so would be an instant F on any paper.
Yeah, I guess having electronic voting machines AND working printers is an invitation to failure, especially when a few dozen Sharpie pens is ... what, fifty bucks?
I realize this is heresy, but even though I've been working with PCs on a daily basis for THIRTY YEARS, not everything needs to be computerized.
AND, paper ballots allow one to recover from gross errors. Electronic ballots do not.
The only kind of "electronic voting" that I would support would be one that allowed the voter to fill in his ballot on the computer terminal and then PRINT the ballot. The voter then reviews the PRINTED ballot, and then drops it into the ballot box. Immediate results, which is what the BigMediaMoguls want, to do breathless "breaking news" bulletins, AND a scanable paper ballot which would be the OFFICIAL ballot.
True statement! Of course, Nixon was a piker on the corruption front compared to the incumbent.
Are you certain of this? I've seen reports of the Dems doing it; this one, and Althouse in 2012 and again now. I've never seen any reports of the Republicans doing this.
True statement! When everything is data-mined after the election, one of the things that the election "consultants" (and there are no more vile people like "election consultants, whether of the Carville or Rove variety, they're still evil) analyze is the "no vote" ballots; how many total ballots were submitted, and how many had no vote for EITHER candidate.
Ummmm..... Wrong. As the mailer said, they don't know HOW you voted, but the fact that you did - or didn't - is public record. They even know whether you voted in person, or by mail. They even know if you requested an absentee or vote-by-mail ballot and didn't return it.
And the stats are extracted per PRECINCT, which is pretty darned granular.
Big computers and massive databases - especially when run out of the most corrupt White House in history - can be scary things.
It's the "(We WISH we were the) House Majority (and maybe we will be again, but not THIS time) Pac ".
Nothing new here; University of Wisconsin law prof and blogger Ann Althouse related the (apparently quite similar) mailings she received during the 2012 campaign. Those apparently worked, so it isn't surprising that the Dems would try the same dirty tricks again.
The finest single work of fiction concerning the relationship of religion to life on other worlds was Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven".
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...
Twain's Captain Stormfield dies and makes his way to Heaven, to find that Heaven is inhabited with uncounted numbers of souls from billions of different planets; every planet has its own Redeemer, but all represent the same God.
The idea that God is human is laughable; any religion that restricts God to a single planet, or even a single galaxy, is thinking much too narrowly! If there is a God, a Supreme Being (a topic on which I reserve judgment, having no knowledge and only limited faith), He/She/It must be truly supreme in the universe(s).
Preferences vary. I was a big B5 fan of the original shows, read about them in the "lurker's guide" site first on USENET, and later on Hyperion. I'll happily go see a rebooted Babylon 5 in the theaters - even though as a big Star Trek fan (I watched them on our little TV on the original broadcasts), I haven't been to any of the rebooted Star Trek movies.
"A willing suspension of disbelief". Babylon 5 had it. Star Trek, in my opinion, did not.
Most television programs stink at dialog; because it's all written down first, and most actors can't be bothered to figure out how to make their characters speak in their own voices. Bab5 was less bad than most, because most of the episodes were written by JMS. Most TV programs are written by committee, or by outsiders, or by a rotating staff of writers.
As somebody who got INTO Babylon 5 in his 40's, I disagree; Babylon 5 was the best program on TV ever. (Barring, of course, the hot mess that resulted from the on-again/off-again cancellation of Season 5.) There were a few discontinuous episodes in Season 1, but seasons 2-4 were like old soap operas; you didn't dare miss an episode, or you wouldn't be able to catch up.
Even though I generally despise "reboots" of old favorite stories, I'm glad that JMS is doing it, and I wish him the best of luck in it.
Thanks. See? There's the scientific method working; I learned something new. Unfortunately, many of the more passionate advocates will not admit mistakes, and don't learn anything new.
Which was my original point.
" Science resolved. Nothing even to discuss. Period."
There speaks a man who knows NOTHING about the scientific method. "Science" isn't a thing, it's a process for narrowing in on the truth. The "science" is NEVER settled; there's always more to learn. Even Stephen Hawking is still changing his mind about how black holes work (or don't) and he's the guy who INVENTED the things. AGW is a RELIGIOUS belief, which is why we "deniers" are treated as heretics and apostates.
Remember, 30 years ago the existential crisis was the coming ice age, and 120 years ago, the existential crisis was that London was going to be 5 feet deep in horse manure.
That's because their claims of enviro-superiority are like medieval "indulgences", permissions to sin without penalty. So Saint AlGore flies all over the world preaching the "Stop flying!" mantra, as if he'd never heard of Skype or Webex. As Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes, "I'll believe that there's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start ACTING like it's a crisis."
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap14...
Gleise 832C is another "planet" with a remarkably Earthlike "artist's rendering" of an exoplanet in a very close orbit around a smallish star. Is this a real planet candidate, or another case of "sunspot confusion"?
Ditto here. The "New planet may support life!!!! meme is so COMPLETELY overblown based on a telescope that detects occultations, and doesn't generate any images. The "artist's renderings" were way off in fantasyland, entirely unsupported by the data.
Fusion of hydrogen into helium produces a LOT of energy. Fusion of helium into carbon produces less. In physics terms, it's the "packing fraction" curve, which can show you what energy you'd get out if you fuse elements together.
Iron is at the bottom of the packing fraction curve; when you fuse other stuff into iron, you're getting out the dregs of the fusion energy, partly because it takes higher and higher pressures and temperatures for fusion to occur for heavier elements.
When you get to the pressure and temperature points where iron fuses into still heavier elements, it begins to EXTRACT energy - from the core of the star. Stars exist in a delicate balance between the heat and pressure that tries to blow them apart, and the gravity that tries to crush them together. Take heat OUT of the core of the star, and there's less internal pressure - and gravity starts to win. The core will collapse, generally abruptly, and a crushing "rebound effect" will accelerate the heavy fusion, extracting MORE energy, leading to a core collapse supernova. The star explodes, leaving a black hole or pulsar at the center and blasting a lot of the stellar material back into space.
Which is where we got the iron for our blood, or the gold for our jewelry - blasted out of a supernova. Probably MANY of them.
In fact, the fusion of anything that produces an element heavier than iron will extract energy from the star's core, hastening its collapse.
In astrophysics, the term "metal" normally applies to any element heavier than lithium. Carbon, silicon, even gasses like oxygen and nitrogen, are "metals". We're not talking about star remnants that are primarily iron or lead or uranium. Gold would be right out.
The problem with trying to USE Van der Waals forces for anything is that in order to stick together, both surfaces must be microscopically smooth; the sort of "smooth" that would make plate glass or mirrors look like "volcanic rock under a magnifying glass". "Reflecting telescope mirror" smooth. Making materials that smooth - and KEEPING them that smooth - is going to be a challenge.
As physics, it's pretty neat. From an engineering perspective, it's going to be a problem.