 sj |
||
|
||
BS: Random Traces From All Over
|
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Aug 09 - 02:59 PM Thanks, Paco! "The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern. Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a "beauty race" that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans. In a study released last week, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts. He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had. This builds on previous work by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who found that good-looking parents were far more likely to conceive daughters. He suggested this was an evolutionary strategy subtly programmed into human DNA. He cited two findings from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a US government-backed study that is monitoring more than 15,000 Americans. The measurements include objective assessments of physical attractiveness. One finding was that women were generally regarded by both sexes as more aesthetically appealing than men. The other was that the most attractive parents were 26% less likely to have sons. Kanazawa said: "Physical attractiveness is a highly heritable trait, which disproportionately increases the reproductive success of daughters much more than that of sons. "If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men." " Women Are Getting More Beautiful, TImes Online |
|
Subject: Retirement income planning raleigh From: GUEST,Rune Date: 14 Aug 09 - 03:02 PM Hello! I was wondering if anyone could help me by giving me some arabic preyers so I can copy them out as I am making a torah for school! Please email me or reply on this Guestbook! Thank you! I love the website by the way!. I am from Uruguay and bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Unfortunately, jobs never pay you enough to work without enjoying life." With best wishes :-), Rune. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 16 Aug 09 - 12:16 AM PhysOrg.com) -- Excavations led by a University of Toronto archaeologist at the site of a recently discovered temple in southeastern Turkey have uncovered a cache of cuneiform tablets dating back to the Iron Age period between 1200 and 600 BCE. Found in the temple's cella, or 'holy of holies', the tablets are part of a possible archive that may provide insights into Assyrian imperial aspirations. "The assemblage appears to represent a Neo-Assyrian renovation of an older Neo-Hittite temple complex, providing a rare glimpse into the religious dimension of Assyrian imperial ideology," says Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP). "The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world, and its lasting influence on the political culture of the Middle East." The cella also contained gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects. Partially uncovered in 2008 at Tell Tayinat, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Palastin, the structure of the building where the tablets were found preserves the classic plan of a Neo-Hittite temple. It formed part of a sacred precinct that once included monumental stelae carved in Luwian (an extinct Anatolian language once spoken in Turkey) hieroglyphic script, but which were found by the expedition smashed into tiny shard-like fragments. "Tayinat was destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 738 BCE, and then transformed into an Assyrian provincial capital, equipped with its own governor and imperial administration," says Harrison. "Scholars have long speculated that the reference to Calneh in Isaiah's oracle against Assyria alludes to Tiglath-pileser's devastation of Kunulua - ie, Tayinat. The destruction of the Luwian monuments and conversion of the sacred precinct into an Assyrian religious complex may represent the physical manifestation of this historic event." Those who do know their history are doomed to repeat it... A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 16 Aug 09 - 08:48 PM ON THE night of 30 June 2005, the sky high above La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands crackled with streaks of blue light too faint for humans to see. Atop the Roque de los Muchachos, the highest point of the island, though, a powerful magic eye was waiting and watching. MAGIC - the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope - scans the sky each night for high-energy photons from the distant cosmos. Most nights, nothing remarkable comes. But every now and again, a brief flash of energetic light bears witness to the violent convulsions of a faraway galaxy. What MAGIC saw on that balmy June night came like a bolt from the blue. That is because something truly astounding may have been encoded in that fleeting Atlantic glow: evidence that the fabric of space-time is not silky smooth as Einstein and many others have presumed, but rough, turbulent and fundamentally grainy stuff. It is an audacious claim that, if verified, would put us squarely on the road to a quantum theory of gravity and on towards the long-elusive "theory of everything". If it were based on a single chunk of MAGIC data, it might easily be dismissed as a midsummer night's dream. But it is not. Since that first sighting, other telescopes have started to see similar patterns. Is this a physics revolution through the barrel of a telescope? Such incendiary thoughts were far away from Robert Wagner's mind when the MAGIC data filtered through to the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich, Germany, the morning after. He and his fellow collaborators were enjoying a barbecue. Not for long. "We put our beers aside and started downloading the full data set," says Wagner. It was easy to pinpoint the source of the data blip - a 20-minute burst of hugely energetic gamma rays from a galaxy some 500 million light years away known as Markarian 501. Its occasional tempestuous outbursts had already made it familiar to gamma-ray telescopes worldwide. This burst was different. As Wagner and his colleagues analysed the data in the weeks and months that followed, an odd pattern emerged. Lower-energy photons from Markarian 501 had outpaced their higher-energy counterparts, arriving up to 4 minutes earlier (Physics Letters B, vol 668, p 253). This should not happen. If an object is 500 million light years away, light from it always takes 500 million years to get to us, no more, no less. Whatever their energy, photons always travel at the same speed, the implacable cosmic speed limit: the speed of light. Perhaps the anomaly has a mundane explanation. We do not really understand the processes within objects such as Markarian 501 that accelerate particles to phenomenal energies and catapult them towards us. They are thought ultimately to have something to do with the convulsions of supermassive black holes at the objects' hearts. It could be that these mechanisms naturally spew out low-energy particles before high-energy ones. Or they might not. "The more fascinating explanation would be that this delay is not intrinsic to the source, but that it happens along the way from the source to us," says Wagner. What piqued the interest of Wagner and his colleagues was that the MAGIC observations were showing just the sort of effect that quite a few models of quantum gravity predict. Physicists have been on the lookout for experimental signposts to the right theory for the best part of a century (see "Quantum gravity: why we care"). Physicists have been on the lookout for signposts to the right theory of quantum gravity for the best part of a century "All approaches to quantum gravity, in their own very different ways, agree that empty space is not so empty after all," says theorist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy. Many models based on string theory suggest that space-time is a foamy froth of particles, and even microscopic black holes, that spark up out of nothing and disappear again with equal abandon. The alternative approach favoured by Amelino-Camelia, loop quantum gravity, posits that space-time comes in indivisible chunks of about 10-35 metres, a size known as the Planck length. (...) (New Scientist) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 16 Aug 09 - 10:55 PM Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago. Because the new device, called a "spaser," is the first of its kind to emit visible light, it represents a critical component for possible future technologies based on "nanophotonic" circuitry. The color diagram (a) shows the nanolaser's design: a gold core surrounded by a glasslike shell filled with green dye. Scanning electron microscope images (b and c) show that the gold core and the thickness of the silica shell were about 14 nanometers and 15 nanometers, respectively. A simulation of the SPASER (d) shows the device emitting visible light with a wavelength of 525 nanometers. (Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University) Such circuits will require a laser-light source, but current lasers can't be made small enough to integrate them into electronic chips. Now researchers have overcome this obstacle, harnessing clouds of electrons called "surface plasmons," instead of the photons that make up light, to create the tiny spasers. Findings are detailed in a paper appearing online Sunday (Aug. 16) in the journal Nature, reporting on work conducted by researchers at Purdue, Norfolk State University and Cornell University. Nanophotonics may usher in a host of radical advances, including powerful "hyperlenses" resulting in sensors and microscopes 10 times more powerful than today's and able to see objects as small as DNA; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; and more efficient solar collectors. "Here, we have demonstrated the feasibility of the most critical component - the nanolaser - essential for nanophotonics to become a practical technology," Shalaev said. (PhysOrg.com) -- |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 17 Aug 09 - 08:49 PM A new technique for cloaking objects from all kinds of waves is illustrated with animation on http://vimeo.com/5406206. An explation is at Phys.org. ..."We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source," says Graeme Milton, senior author of the research and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Utah. "It's a brand new method of cloaking," Milton adds. "It is two-dimensional, but we believe it can be extended easily to three dimensions, meaning real objects could be cloaked. It's called active cloaking, which means it uses devices that actively generate electromagnetic fields rather than being composed of 'metamaterials' [exotic metallic substances] that passively shield objects from passing electromagnetic waves." Milton says his previous research involved "just cloaking clusters of small particles, but now we are able to cloak larger objects.""... |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 18 Aug 09 - 02:04 AM 1909 Aviation Week at Rheims PARIS For the next week the eyes of the whole world will be turned towards Rheims. The capital of Champagne has shown a keen sense of actualité and realized that the psychological moment in aviation had come, and that the art of flight is now out of its swaddling clothes and able to take its place in a well-ordered creation. The Rémois have also shown themselves, now as ever, good business people. The first aviation meeting is an event in the world's history, and as such can count on the attendance of thousands of strangers, so that commercially it will have its reward — a well-deserved reward, be it said — for its enterprise. 1934 Hitler Promises Strong Régime HAMBURG Speaking in the grand Council Chamber of the Hamburg Rathaus tonight [Aug. 17] Adolf Hitler outlined to the German people in his only speech during the present referendum campaign the kind of government he will give them as an absolute dictator of the Third Reich, in which he will combine the powers of both Kaiser and Dictator. The Nazi Leader promised his audience of uncounted millions of Germans, who listened-in on a nation-wide radio hookup, an authoritative régime resting upon the confidence of a united German people and independent alike from private interests and shifting parliamentary majorities, and so capable of taking decisions at long range. His reign, Hitler promised, would be based on two pillars — the National-Socialist movement, serving as a political support of the government, and the Reichswehr as its military buttress. (From the NYT's wayback page) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Aug 09 - 05:20 PM MT, August 10, 2009 - Saw large rectangular shape with 1-2 constant white light in front & one rotating/blinking red light towards the rear. MUFON Case # 18834. I was a security officer waiting for my relief to show up at 2345 hours, in Troy, Mt. on August 10, 2009. While waiting for him I looked skyward & saw this object moving left to right across the sky North-South? About this time my relief arrived & I pointed this object out to him. He claims to have seen UFO's before & when he saw this object he went running down the street to tell two other security officers watching another site. I don't believe the other two security officers witnessed this event, but we did. It was a large/huge rectangle shaped object (reminded me of a gigantic gum eraser) with 1-2 constant white lights towards the front & one rotating/blinking(not sure which)red light towards the rear. Absolutely no noise & stayed at a constant speed. It was probably in view for 5-10 minutes & then disappeared over a mountain range. The sky was clear & starlit. It appeared to be between the North star & our observation. We were standing on Spokane Avenue in the middle of the city of Troy, Mt. Never having observed a "UFO" before I can't tell you what it was, but it WASN'T an airplane and didn't see any wings! My initial reaction was "gee, look at that" The following days up to today I'm starting to get more excited. I'm more of a maybe there is-maybe there isn't type of person. This sighting is pushing me towards a believer. - Bill M |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:06 PM Asceticism is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you. — Ali Ibn Abu Talib |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 09 - 12:18 AM Here is an interesting presentation of what the different dimensionalities mean in theory--1, 2, 3, 4,6, 8, 10 dimensional space, etc. Unfortunately they seem to have no form idea of what "a dimension" really is. I assume this is because they cannot disentangle space from viewpoints, and viewpoints are notoriously uncooperative, tending toward volatility, creativity, opinions, and other things anathematic to good science. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 09 - 10:46 AM I agree that dimensions are challenging to picture at certain points. but In my mind.. :,) As people, we do have an easy time of understanding the viewpoint of scale. We can even come close to unbelivable differences in scale. I spend time observing concepts of a "theory of everything" supposedly where Einstein left off. Twelve years ago I envisioned the multiverse in which some types of universes spawn other univeres through Massive Black Holes, that may or may not create offspring universes of their own. Some of these "offspring" seem to only interact with the parent universes weakly through residual gravity. Picture it like a fractal tree dropping seeds in which some new trees sprout and some do not. Eventually older universes die out. Since then... I have gone on to visualize , as we all can, how the very small resembles the very large like an atom with electron orbits and solar systems with planetary orbits. Along the continuem of the very small to the very large there are several apparent breaks in which resemblance between different scales and the "our human life experience" SEEM to break down, as in the quantum scale. I believe this is only an illusion and the fractal laws of organization are still at play but along the lines of our own thought processes or dreaming. Today we have arrived at string theory in which tiny membranes vibrate in various shapes and frequencies. On the very large fractal scale of size and shape there are membranes of seperate universes which we call 'Branes', Strings begin again to resemble the very large branes of entire universes. While mathmatics can easily juggle differnt dimensions with different numbers, the human mind can get jumbled. However the human mind can in fact get a hold of these concepts of dimension merely by picturing it as a matter of size/scale as easily as we can magnify a fractal with a computer. Amos, you once postualted a great fractal attractor of the universe. Getting a hold of that equation would make quite a computer program indeed. Afterall, life is a self organizing process just as a simple fractal is mathmaticly self organizing. The Large Hadron Collider is a tool which could help us see a larger picture but is still too weak to create a universe. It is theorized that as little as 23 kilgrams of mass subjected to black hole like pressure is enough for the matter to pinch itself out of our universe/dimension and start expanding into its own seperate space time continum. Voila/Eureka! Is that new universe real or artificailly man made? It won't matter to the new universe, it simply 'is' by then. This idea is great stuff for future ethicists, don't you think? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: bobad Date: 27 Aug 09 - 10:50 AM Gene replacement therapy works in monkeys By Marlowe Hood (AFP) � 21 hours ago PARIS � US scientists have replaced genetic material in monkeys using a method that could prevent dozens of incurable hereditary diseases from being passed from mother to child, said a new study on Wednesday. "We think this technique could be applied very quickly in humans, and that it will work," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led a team of researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. "Many of the procedures we developed could be simply mirrored to existing clinical in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures used in humans," he told journalists by phone. In experiments on rhesus monkey, hereditary material was removed from an egg containing defective mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, and inserted into a healthy donor egg stripped of its own heriditary package, called a spindle. The modified eggs were then fertilised with sperm, implanted in females and carried to term. "So far we have produced four infants by this method" -- named Mito, Tracker, Spindler and Spindy -- "and they are all healthy," said lead author Masahito Tachibana. In humans, the new procedure would allow a couple to have a child who is biologically their own, but who is free of any condition associated maternal mtDNA. Mitochondria, found in the fluid inside an egg cell, are tiny structures that produce energy to power the cell's activities. Unlike DNA, which is a merger of male and female chromosomes, mitochondria are transmitted exclusively from mother to child. Over the last 20 years, mtDNA has been directly linked to more than 150 incurable human conditions. Earlier studies have estimated one newborn in 200 carry mtDNA mutations which -- even if they do not cause disease in that individual -- can become more concentrated over generations. One in 3,500-to-6,000 people are thought to have mutations in the mtDNA that may or will cause disease. Some are rare and crippling degenerative disorders uniquely caused by mutations in mtDNA. MERRF, for example, begins in childhood and leads to epilepsy, muscle wasting, deafness and dementia. Another condition, known by the acronym LHON, causes blindness, impaired coordination, mild dementia and heart defects. But mtDNA have also been linked to cancer and diabetes, along with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's. Whether mutation in mtDNA can cause any of these diseases by itself, or whether it always acts in concert with other genetic or environmental factors, is still unclear. In either case, though, the technique could pave the way for gene replacement therapy that simply removes disease-causing mitochondria from a family's hereditary chain. "This type of therapy actually involves replacing genes in germline, which will be translated to the next generation," said Mitalipov. So-called "germline gene therapy" has long been a holy grail of medicine, but making it work has proven far more difficult than once anticipated. At this point, the barriers to clinical trials on humans are more legal and financial than scientific, the authors said. Human gene replacement therapy is banned in many countries, including the United States and Britain, due to safety and ethical concerns. "So far, this procedure looks really efficient and safe," said Mitalipov. "We believe that the data we have now are sufficient for FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) approval." Because clinical gene therapy clinical trials -- if approved -- cannot be federally funded in the United States, Mitalipov said he is seeking private money to set up a new laboratory. Copyright � 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:11 AM Amos post " ON THE night of 30 June 2005, the sky high above La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands crackled with streaks of blue light... It was easy to pinpoint the source of the data blip - a 20-minute burst of hugely energetic gamma rays from a galaxy some 500 million light years away known as Markarian 501. Its occasional tempestuous outbursts had already made it familiar to gamma-ray telescopes worldwide." __________________________________________________________________ A 4 minute time distortion? Truly remarkable! These may be the first astronmers to quantify a focused gravity time wave. (I have made illustrations of these hypothetical waves) If the inverse square law applies...the time distortion would be much greater the closer to the enormous cataclysmic explosion. Imagine "Surfing" the gravity time wave closer to its source, but not so close as to be incinerated by gamma rays, one might be able to go "somewhen" and not just somewhere. Amos stop it; you're gonna make my brain explode. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 09 - 11:35 AM bobad, I wrote a novel 8 years ago called "The Best Intentions" about gene line therapy in which a company Genvac Inc. sold "Gene Vaccines" that would be passed on to all their future descendents. Healing all future descendents as well as oneself was heralded as the greatest medical breakthrough of all time in which at first only the super wealthy could afford the treatment. plot: It wasn't until the seventh generation that the true danger of gene vaccines became known, and several more generations until we knew why. The second part of my plot was used in the screenplay 'The Last Mimzy'. Now that scientists are starting to break their vow to keep their hands off gene line therapy... Perhaps now is the time I should submit the entire book to a publisher. My ongoing problem is I still haven't found an editor that could help or understand my stories since I know with the right help these stories could be good enough to reach into the future like Jules Verne. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: GUEST,seth in Olympia Date: 28 Aug 09 - 03:00 AM Amos, this thread is more than just a thread.It is amazing. Thank you so much. seth |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 28 Aug 09 - 11:28 AM Thanks, gents! Also from the NYT: On Aug. 28, 1963, 200,000 people participated in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. On Aug. 28, 1828, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author considered one of history's greatest novelists was born., Following his death on Nov. 7, 1910, his obituary appeared in The Times. On August 28, 1886, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about a scandal involving the Department of Public Works in New York City. 1609 English sea explorer Henry Hudson and his ship, the Half Moon, reached present-day Delaware Bay. 1828 Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was born near Tula. 1917 Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House. 1922 The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City. It was a 10-minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid $100. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 28 Aug 09 - 11:32 AM Other dimensions are of course more than just a different scale in size as I said earlier. Do you want to see as a 4th dimensional being could? As humans we get a sense of the 4th dimension as a passing of time but if you were a fourth dimensional being what would your wqorld look like? poof - you are now 4 dimensional and have somthing akin to eyes. You are driving down the interstate highway. You pass other cars but what you see is all the visible sides of the cars you pass all at once. In 3D you would first see the back of a car then the side and lastly in your rear view mirror. But as a 4th dimensional being you see every observation as a discrete whole. A wrap around vision is just the everyday way you "see". Beings and places you know well are seen as an entire enhanced wrap around 3D with the addition of all the changes that have happened and going slightly past the present and seeing what you soon see in the future. You don't actually see the future which has not yet occurred but your 4D mind smooths out the experience so you see the whole memory of the landscape. Just like in 3D you expect where the ball will land when you drop it but it still may take an unexpected bounce. Now as a 5 D person you seein a direction that realizes the future more literally than it was seen in 4 D. Beyond 5 D or more dimensions, you would have a sensory organ far different than eyes so lets call them knowing ports. From your knowing ports you know every point in directions both small and curled up within other dimensions, and large dimensions spread out around other dimensions in such a way that every point in space is in contact "virtually touches" every other point in space. Naturally in higher dimensions you know that a single object can and is in two or more places in space at the same time. This "knowing" is as natural as we see a bird on a branch and the next time we look it has flown away. In higher diminsions you may even be able to go/know past event horizons of black holes... but beyond that if you try to enter another universe you become a fish out of water in the way we as 3D beings find it challenging to see in directions we can not physically point to. By the way the energy required to go out of our universe and pass into the brane of another universe would be near the total energy of a universe. So while it is mathmatically certain other intelligent beings exist somewhere in our universe in great numbers and variety over various time spans, it is virtually impossible to be visited by aliens from another universe, unless their universe has different laws that more easily allow for such travel. In other words they may be able to get here from there but we can't get there from here. yet |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 28 Aug 09 - 12:06 PM exerpt from 'Best Intentions' by Don Hakman Forward: With new knowledge we need new wisdom To guide mankind with new ethics to last We need new myths that apply to the world and not just fight each other over whose religion was soiled The cost of conquest is lost on each generation. Exploiting resources or each other is a sad veneration. Man against nature nature against man God casting man from Eden Such confusing commands The ineffable is beyond the gaze of our scientists Our civilization has forgotten what truly did exist. No doubt there was wisdom and inventions like magic that let anyone go anywhere. That they are lost is tragic Ethnocentricity like electricity is a brief spark in time like ruins that were once a city. Since the last apocalypse there are hints in folklore for you. Its not that the good books collapse, In some ways they are too new. Presently our scientists have taken a vow to not pursue germ line therapies which can add or subtract new genes and life instructions in a person and subsequently change the genes for all of their thier children and so forth into the future. One can only expect that there will at least person to break that vow. In our near future we joyfully began the quest to rid man of all disease with gene vaccines. After 7 generations problems begin to emerge. The wealthiest families whose ancestors were able to afford the Gen Vac gene vaccines were the strongest healthiest with an envious longevity for generations until the weakest links which multiplied with each generation reached a tipping point. The unvaccinated meek should have inherited the Earth but after years of mandatory vaccinations and endless war for New World Order it was evident that not even back breeding could restore an uncorrupted genome. It was really never given a chance since back breeding was officially condemned by the government. Many felt the decision was a racist covenant. The state argued the scant few unvaccinated populations were synonymous with terrorist enemies of the state and they should not be integrated with the general population or elevated to a genetic savior of mankind status. After several more generations any reference to curing the deficiencies caused by the gene vaccine was met with complete skepticism. Some labeled the disaster as the Humpty Dumpty Syndrome. Eventually Human fertility is challenged to the point where clones are considered by some to be a more viable alternative. There always seemed to be a consensus against the creation of human clones. Like an act of ultimate inbreeding, cloning was considered taboo until it became the lesser of two evils. In the beginning genetic science crept in on kitten paws. There were some ethical concerns and political interference regarding stem cells but over time the greater good and competition arguments won the day. There is nothing wrong with genetic science or the stem cell in particular. It is us, it is food or it is an enemy. That has always been the way for all life. In extreme circumstances people learn the same lessons as the Aztec, the familes at Donner pass and soccer team in the Andes. People often asked why we didn't see it coming. There were a few visionaries. There was a Dr. Ellen Broadbarn who said from the outset, "Ethics committees are innately ill equipped to predict the unknowable". Like a balloon as the young were squeezed the old bulged out the other side. Without the fertility crises perhaps the advances in longevity would have been delayed for centuries. Despite the hopelessness of many there are a few undaunted explorers who span thousands of years to explore the illusive nature of health and a science that stretch the borders of immortality in the real world. If there was an answer to prolong the existence of humanity, it was feared it might be somplace where no man could go. Such a place might be a God like 4th dimensional mastery of time. The good and evil done with such powers has always been a matter of concern. One man's good is another man's evil. Good and evil are the temporal giants that man has wrestled for millions of years. To a timeless immortal, good and evil is not a struggle, but only building blocks. Should man become nearly immortal, there are questions to be asked, answers to be questioned, heaven to be praised and eventually, hell to be paid. We have eaten the apple of knowledge and will find ourselves desperately gorging ourselves with more apples to atone for our early mistakes. No evil was done intentionally. For the most part we all had the best of intentions. In the year 2100 we still have our intentions at heart. Ch.1 Genetic Vaccines, a form of recombinant DNA modification, were hailed as the singular greatest advancements since ORTs; organ regeneration transplants. ORT hearts, lungs and livers were only a close third to the second greatest advancement of knitting nerves together with crystalline. Although crossed nerve pathways often left the "healed" with strange new synthesethia challenges but at least paraplegics could walk and the nerve blind to somewhat see. Some claimed these advancements actually hindered an evolution of a survival of the fittest. Some religious sects called it a medical evilution but were marginalized by all those who wished to enjoy good health for themselves and children. Gene Vaccines had an advantage over traditional vaccines by passing on the disease resistance to the next generation. They were proven quite powerful and at times seen to have an ability to adapt a resistance to similar strains of disease be it bacterial of viral that the original vaccine had not been designed to combat. It was not that traditional vaccines were not strong enough but rather that the pathogens got the upper hand and often mutated into even more powerful bugs. There were many outstanding examples of success with the Gene Vaccine method. Originally researchers at the U.N.S.F. Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases created a mouse by adding a gene from a parasite that causes malaria to the rodent's genetic code. Delivering the protein isolated from the mouse's milk produced immunity from malaria in 98% of the human subjects. An opposite approach was to transplant genes of naturally immune individuals into people of low or no immunity. In a way the people were now the mouse. People were not just getting a protein of protection but their very genes were changed. This so called Genetic Vaccine technique was extremely profitable since the people with the super immune genes were paid nothing while drug corporations patented the genes for the minimal cost of identifying them. The prices they demanded for Gen. Vac. were justified with the idea that the vaccine was not just for the individual but all their ancestors. Passing on immunity occurred in only a minority of cases at first but was refined in later years. It did not appear that the bugs were getting an upper hand in this technique. Gen Vac was of course not without its detractors. Initially the Gen Vac hype didn't inflame conservatives but they had found a leader (or visa versa) with Dr. Broadbarn. Her notion that genetic vaccines would cause humanity to lose its soul one gene at a time was thought to be a religious argument. In reality each genetic addition sometimes subtracted tiny bits of one's original genome. Few people were alarmed. One molecule at a time out of billions was virtually nothing but after dozens of regenerations, small changes were being multiplied. She painted humanity's greatest hope to be disease free, with a broad brush of eugenic abuse. Depending on your view she focused, inspired or duped millions of followers. Her hypothetical conclusions were so far out in many cases she was easily scoffed at or manipulated by Gen Vac proponents and was eventually made to say, on a popular late night talk radio show, "I prefer people die of preventable disease, for the common good". That pretty much did her in. She was even likened to Kevorkian, a euthanasia provider who died in prison centuries ago. Over the next 50 years the few vaccine mistakes never caused alarm. The only scandal that people remembered was the fact that the very first Gen. Vac. treatments were made available over the course of seven years at the price of $1,000,000 per person. The arguments and justifications raged for years. The most common argument one heard was that there was not enough for everyone so the rich were subsidizing the eventual mass Gen. Vac. inoculation when stocks were available. Truth was there could be enough replicated in six to eight weeks to inoculate the world against seven of the deadliest pathogens known to man. The benefits so far outweighed the risks that medicine was in a supreme golden age. The one area that remained most difficult and was suspected of growing epidemic was infertility and embryonic disorders. With such dramatically increased life spans and survival rates, some considered occasional fertility challenges a blessing in disguise. The worry about population explosion had become moot. The elephant in the room could not be ignored any longer. The breakthroughs of immortality research began to outweigh the concerns of infertility. Every aging heart new there was no replacement for youth no matter what justifications could be made for the miraculous benefits of virtual immortality. The gradual horrific extinction of youth was often tossed aside with the common catch phrase, "Old age beats the alternative". As longevity records were being broken, childbirth by any means was accepted as being an exceedingly rare and blessed event. Even when fewer than ten percent of couples could have children there was no outrage. People hoped an environmental culprit would be caught and fertility would return. Those that were infertile felt a personal deficiency and had little or no urge to lash out or call attention to themselves. Some of the infertiles actually felt an undeserved guilt that they were trading the lives of their children and future generations to fulfill a quest for personal immortality. The fertility research that did continue was multifaceted, exclusively funded by the state and of course beyond secret. Deep in the class four bio weapon lab, Amos was taking a break and was saving posts for the mudcat forum when his shift was over and he could return to the surface next week. He pasted his last saved post with flourish and swung his arm overhead arcing down on 'Enter' which pasted: Classical thinkers, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Diogenes Laertius (c. 235 BCE), expanded this principle to include an aversion to destruction, but continued to limit its application to the motivations of non-human animals. Diogenes Laertius, for example, specifically denied the application of the term to plants. Before the Renaissance, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274 CE), Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308 CE) and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321 CE) expressed similar sentiments using the Latin words vult, velle or appetit as synonyms of conatus; indeed, all four terms may be used to translate the original Greek ὁñìÞ. Around 1700, Telesius and Campanella extended the ancient Greek notions and applied them to all objects, animate and inanimate.[8] First Aristotle, then Cicero and Laertius each alluded to a connection between the conatus and other emotions. In their view, the former induces the latter. They maintained that humans do not wish to do something because they think it "good", but rather they think it "good" because they want to do it. In other words, the cause of human desire is the natural inclination of a body to augment itself in accordance with the principles of the conatus. Ch.2 |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 30 Aug 09 - 03:41 AM OK its 3 AM and I just pieced together an idea based on the Amos post of an observation of a 4 minute discrepency in the time it took gamma rays to reach Earth from a super nova source as seen this July. (The high energy particles arrived 4 minutes after the low energy parcicles instead of the other way around) I speculated that surfing that energy wave could equate to some form of time travel. Not just having time slow down at great speed compared to a staic observer and therefore going into the future at a younger age, but rather having a means to go back in time compared to a static observer. Going back in time for 4 minutes or perhaps days. While trying to bring this idea to a logical outcome I realized that you can't surf a wave that you don't know is coming. Afterall you have to be going near the speed of light to catch this gamma (time/gravity) wave. Then Eureka. What you need is instant faster than light communication which can in fact CAN be done with quantum entangled particles since what you do to one partical will happen to the other particle NO MATTER how far away it is. With enough of these entangled parlcles acting as sensors you might be able to get advanced warning of where one of these waves is passing and in what direction. Now you can meet that gamma time distortion wave and surf it for whatever period of time you are able to keep up with it. Getting towed into the wave at near the speed of light is certainly a challenge but even at half the speed of light you should be able to be within the wave for 8 minutes based on the one we observed this July. I assumed that the effect of the wave would be stronger the closer it is to its source so there is reason to believe that the time distortion could be great. Even 4 minutes is a lot of time to create advance action - ahead of time. With super Novas happening throughout the universe all the timea galactic network of travel could be possible. The thing about this kind of travel is that you have to wait for a wave and seems more risky than trying to catch an 80 ft wave. Since it is now 3:30 AM, I can be forgiven if all this appears to be total absolute nonsense in the light of day. Maybe people who like science fiction would like the above idea. Today Garrison Keilor said certain people like science fiction because they aren't doing that well on Earth. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: bobad Date: 01 Sep 09 - 07:48 AM Poland Marks 70th Anniversary of WWII Beginning GDANSK, Poland (AP) -- Officials from across Europe and the U.S. gathered in northern Poland on Tuesday to mark the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, bringing together former foes to honor the tens of millions killed in the conflict. Earlier, Polish leaders met at dawn on Gdansk's Westerplatte peninsula to mark the exact time the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, in the war's opening salvo, shelled a tiny Polish military outpost housing the navy's arsenal. Red and white Polish flags fluttered as the officials at 4:45 a.m. (0245GMT) placed wreaths at the foot of the monument to the defenders of Westerplatte. An honor guard looked on. ''Westerplatte is a symbol, a symbol of the heroic fight of the weaker against the stronger,'' President Lech Kaczynski said. ''It is proof of patriotism and an unbreakable spirit. Glory to the heroes of those days, glory to the heroes of Westerplatte, glory to all of the soldiers who fought in World War II against German Nazism, and against Bolshevik totalitarianism.'' Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned of the dangers of forgetting the war's lessons. ''We meet here to remember who started the war, who the culprit was, who the executioner in the war was, and who was the victim of this aggression,'' Tusk said. ''We meet here to remember this, because we Poles know that, without this memory -- honest memory about the truth, about the sources of World War II -- Poland, Europe and the world will not be safe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representatives of the two countries that invaded Poland in September 1939, were scheduled to take part in the commemoration later in the day. Merkel told Germany's ARD television Tuesday that her country would never forget the ''causes and effects'' of the war. ''Germany triggered the Second World War,'' she said. ''We brought endless suffering to the world.'' Within a month of the Sept. 1 attack, Poland was overwhelmed by the Nazi blitzkrieg from the west, and an attack two weeks later from the east by the Soviet Union, which had signed a pact with Hitler's Germany. Putin downplayed Russia's responsibility, saying that other countries had also negotiated with Nazi Germany before the war broke out. He emphasized instead the Soviet Union's role in fighting the Nazis. ''Today is a special day ... the day of the beginning of the second world war during which Russians and Poles together were fighting against one enemy, the Nazis,'' Putin said. Tusk acknowledged the Red Army's defeat of the Nazis in Poland and vowed his nation and Russia would investigate the ''painful elements of our common history.'' ''If, in the past, it was possible for the Poles and the Germans and the Russians and the Germans, for God's sake, why isn't it possible for the Poles and the Russians?'' he said. ''This meeting today ... is another step in building the fair foundations for an increasingly good dialogue.'' The initial German attack on Poland started more than five years of war that would engulf the world and result in the slaughter of more than 50 million people as the German war machine rolled over Europe. Poland alone lost 6 million citizens, half of them Jews. During the German occupation, the country was used as a base for the Nazis' genocide machinery. It was home to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Sobibor and other death camps built for the annihilation of Europe's Jews. At the height of the war, the European theater stretched from North Africa to the outskirts of Moscow, and pitted Germany and its allies, including Italy, against Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States, along with a host of other countries, including Polish forces in exile. The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945, with Germany's unconditional surrender. About 20 European leaders and officials, including French Premier Francois Fillon and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, will join Merkel and Putin for the ceremonies. The U.S. will be represented by National Security Adviser James Jones. The delegation, which is lower-ranking than that of most European nations, has disappointed some in Poland who view Washington as a historical ally. U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said it was no indication of a chill in relations between the two nations. ''There are very deep and extensive ties between the U.S. and Poland. We are bound by, by not only ethnic and cultural ties, but also by our membership in NATO,'' he said. ''We appreciate the, the tremendous sacrifice that the people of Poland made in World War II.'' |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Sep 09 - 11:37 AM Murray Gell-Mann, who firstposited the notion of the quark, is still alive and working in NEw Mexico. According to Science News: Gell-Mann, meanwhile, remains active in research at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, where he continues to pursue ideas that are sometimes at odds with establishment views. He is particularly interested in linguistics, for instance, and collaborates with researchers at Santa Fe and in Moscow studying distant (in time) relationships among human languages. "In that collaboration we seem to be finding more and more evidence … that a very large fraction of the world's languages, although probably not all, are descended from one spoken quite recently … something like 15,000 to 20,000 years ago," Gell-Mann says. Language surely originated much earlier than that, he says, but most languages still around today may have descended from this mother of (nearly) all mother tongues, tentatively labeled Borean (as in "the north wind"). Of course, many experts resist the idea. "For some reason, in this country and in Western Europe, most tenured professors of historical and comparative linguistics hate the idea of distant relationships among human languages, or at least the idea that those can be demonstrated," Gell-Mann says. "They put a tremendous burden of proof on anyone who wants to say that languages are related in this way, by this common descent." And so once again Gell-Mann faces what he calls the "negative principles of the establishment." "Eventually I think everybody will be convinced that these relationships really exist," he says. "In the meantime, we're fighting one of these battles." And just as there's no evidence of constituents of quarks, there's no evidence that Gell-Mann will stop fighting such battles anytime soon. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Sep 09 - 10:45 PM and then processed into fuel. But the process is expensive and difficult. Now a company in Texas, LiveFuels, Inc., hopes that it will be able to change all that. The idea is to create a biofuel based on the oils from the fish that eat the algae. LiveFuels plans to make use of natural food chains in order to get biofuels. Gas 2.0 reports on the facilities used by the Brownsville company: The company-who develops renewable algae-based biofuels-has a test facility in Brownsville, TX. At the location they have 45 acres of open saltwater ponds which will be used for optimizing the algal production.... LiveFuels plans to grow a mix of regional species in low-cost, open-water systems. The algae will be "harvested" with filter-feeding fish and other aquatic herbivores. The idea is that the fish can harvest the algae, grazing on it, and then those fish can in turn be processed for the biofuel base. This is a different approach from current algae-based biofuel processes that may have some merit. After all, something similar is being done in Greenland, where sharks caught in fishing nets are being processed as biofuel. It will be interesting to see whether this process saves on costs and creates a more cost-efficient biofuel. © 2009 PhysOrg.com The verdict by Britain's prestigious Royal Society came little more than three months before a UN showdown in Copenhagen on how to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change. John Shepherd, a professor at Britain's University of Southampton, who chaired a 12-member panel which assessed the evidence, said geo-engineering was filling a perilous political void. "Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems -- yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them," he said. The report cautiously said some geo-engineering schemes were technically feasible but were shadowed by safety worries and doubts about affordability. Provided these questions were answered, such projects could be a useful tool as part of a worldwide switch to a low-carbon economy, it said. But, the report warned, other geo-engineering schemes are so costly or so freighted with risk and unknowns that they should only be considered a last-ditch fix. Just five years ago, geo-engineering was widely dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as quirky or delusional. As recently as 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned of its potential risk and unquantified cost. But the schemes are now getting a serious hearing in many quarters, helped by mounting evidence that climate change is advancing faster than thought while progress towards a carbon-curbing UN treaty is moving at glacial speed. Supporters say geo-engineering can buy time to let politicians hammer out a deal or wean the global economy off polluting fossil fuels. The report, "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty," was based mainly on peer-reviewed literature. It took a year to carry out, and the Royal Society came under fire from green groups who accused it of handing a cloak of respectability to a once-mocked scientific fringe. Ibid |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Sep 09 - 10:46 PM (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists using a continent-wide array of radio telescopes have made an extremely precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity, and their technique promises a major contribution to a frontier area of basic physics. Ads by Google Brainy Online Dating - No more need for small talk. 100% Free Online Dating. Join today - www.BrainiacDating.com How to make electricity - A shocking secret electric co's don't want you to know - www.Power4Home.com "Measuring the curvature of space caused by gravity is one of the most sensitive ways to learn how Einstein's theory of General Relativity relates to quantum physics. Uniting gravity theory with quantum theory is a major goal of 21st-Century physics, and these astronomical measurements are a key to understanding the relationship between the two," said Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri. Kopeikin and his colleagues used the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to measure the bending of light caused by the Sun's gravity to within one part in 30,000. With further observations, the scientists say their precision technique can make the most accurate measure ever of this phenomenon. Bending of starlight by gravity was predicted by Albert Einstein when he published his theory of General Relativity in 1916. According to relativity theory, the strong gravity of a massive object such as the Sun produces curvature in the nearby space, which alters the path of light or radio waves passing near the object. The phenomenon was first observed during a solar eclipse in 1919. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:18 AM In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole. What happened in 1859 was a combination of several events that occurred on the Sun at the same time. If they took place separately they would be somewhat notable events. But together they caused the most potent disruption of Earth's ionosphere in recorded history. "What they generated was the perfect space storm," says Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first begin to understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma physicists like Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million kilometers (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every second. But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close inspection of the Sun's surface reveals a turbulent tangle of magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma dappled by dark, roving sunspots. Once in a while--exactly when scientists still cannot predict--an event occurs on the surface of the Sun that releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, an explosive burst of very hot, electrified gases with a mass that can surpass that of Mount Everest. What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled. "With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said Tsurutani. "Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes," he noted. Below: SOHO coronagraphs captured this movie of a coronal mass ejection (CME) heading toward Earth on Oct. 22nd. NOAA forecasters expect the CME to cause a geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth on or about Oct. 24th, but not as severe as the superstorm of 1859. see captionNot only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth's upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more -- including potential disruptions of electrical grids and communications systems. Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. "The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space storm happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people it could, and it could very well be even more intense than what transpired in 1859. As for when, we simply do not know," he said. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 03 Sep 09 - 10:51 AM N THE summer of 1997, an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, owned by the US government picked up a strange sound. For a minute, it rose rapidly in frequency; then it disappeared. The hydrophones, a relic of cold-war submarine tracking, picked up this signal again and again during those summer months, then it was never heard again. No one knows what made the sound, now known as "The Bloop" (hear it at www.thebloop.notlong.com). It's not the only mysterious sound heard in the ocean. In May 1997, hydrophones picked up the "Slowdown" sound. Over the course of about 7 minutes, it slowly dropped in pitch, rather like the sound of an aeroplane flying past (www.theslowdown.notlong.com). Its origin has been only loosely pinned down: it seems to have originated from somewhere off the west coast of South America, and could be heard from 2000 kilometres away. So what's behind the strange noises? The Bloop sounds like it might have been created by an animal, but it is far louder than any whale song, so a marine creature that made it would either be bigger than any whale, or a much more efficient producer of sound. The most popular speculation about Slowdown is that it was caused by the break-up of Antarctic ice - which means it might give an indication of climate change. There is still no consensus, however, and these two mysteries are just a drop in the ocean, according to Sharon Nieukirk of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We have hydrophones in the Atlantic, the Arctic, off Greenland, in the Bering Sea and in the Antarctic now, and I am constantly amazed at the variety of sounds coming from the sea," she says. "There are hundreds of mystery sounds." (Hear more at www.oceansounds.notlong.com.) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 04 Sep 09 - 04:23 PM Yet if the Wittgensteins were among the most cultivated and privileged of families, they were far from the most cheerful. Hermine, the oldest child, never married and became increasingly depressed and reclusive as she grew older; Gretl, the most intelligent, most adventurous daughter -- immortalized in a painting by Klimt that now hangs in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich -- entered into a disastrous marriage with an impoverished American who turned out to be a paranoid hysteric, is rumored to have consulted Freud about her frigidity, and spent most of her life searching restlessly for a cause or project to devote her energies to. Nor were the sons any happier. This fascinates me; it is my opinion that Wittgenstein was not, in fact, a genius, but a raving neurotic. His linguistic philosophy was unmanageable and unproductive, and a burden on the minds of his readers. It does not surprise me that he was the scion of a top-heavy, fabulously well-to-do family, nor that he did not handle it well. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 07 Sep 09 - 02:07 PM A relatively nearby galaxy that closely resembles our own Milky Way can be seen edge-on in a new image. Observations of the galaxy, NGC 4945, suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region. But that's where the similarity seems to end: NGC 4945 has a brighter center than the Milky Way; the look-alike's center likely harbors a supermassive black hole that is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. The new portrait of NGC 4945, which lies some 13 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus, was taken by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. NGC 4945 appears cigar-shaped from our perspective on Earth, but the galaxy is actually a disc many times wider than it is thick, with bands of stars and glowing gas spiraling around its center. Other spiral galaxies, like ours, are similarly flattened and typically contain a central bulge of stars around a black hole. Special filters on the telescope isolate the color of light emitted by heated gases such as hydrogen, showing sharp contrasts in NGC 4945 that indicate areas of star formation. Other observations have revealed that NGC 4945 has an active galactic nucleus, meaning its central bulge emits far more energy than calmer galaxies like the Milky Way. Black holes gravitationally draw gas and dust into them, accelerating and heating this attracted matter until it emits high-energy radiation, including X-rays and ultraviolet light. Most large, spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, host a black hole in their centers, though many of these dark monsters no longer actively "feed" at this stage in galactic development. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 08 Sep 09 - 12:38 PM FOLLOW THE GREEN DOT As one stares only at the cross what is there will fade away into nothingness. Only the after image of what is no longer there is visible as a green dot. This is the result of the bio chemical nature of vision taking place in our retina. Look away however and both the real image and the after images overlap revealing the virtual and real co existing for a short time. One can imagine this is also the tricky nature of human perception in other aspects of life. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 08 Sep 09 - 01:25 PM No question it is! A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 08 Sep 09 - 08:49 PM The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said Tuesday. The turbine known as Hywind, which measures 65 metres (213 feet) tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, lies some 10 kilometres (seven miles) off the island of Karmoey near the Scandinavian country's southwestern coastline, the company said. It rests upon a floating stand that is anchored to the seabed by three cables. Water and rocks are placed inside the stand to provide balast. StatoilHydro plans to test Hywind over the next two years before it looks to set up any more floating wind turbines with international partners. StatoilHydro sees Japan, South Korea, California, the east coast of the United States and Spain as some of the potential markets to where this technology could be exported. Hywind can be used in waters from 120 metres to 700 metres deep allowing it to be placed much further away from the shore than static wind turbines already in operation. StatoilHydro's Anne Stroemmen Lycke told AFP that the floating turbine has "great advantages." "It is not so easily seen from the coast, it can be placed in areas not used by others," she said. "We could use such wind turbines in countries where coastal waters are very deep or where there is little space left for land-based turbines," Stroemmen Lycke added. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 09 Sep 09 - 08:10 PM A skull that rewrites the history of man It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia... By Steve Connor, Science Editor Wednesday, 9 September The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man. The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia – before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man. Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa. But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago. The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus – Homo – outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus." Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, where he gave the British Council lecture, Professor Lordkipanidze raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens – modern man. ...(Independent, UK)) Full story here. My, my, my!! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Sep 09 - 02:11 PM Britain passes intelligence test, belatedly apologizes to Turing: It took an online petition signed by more than 30,000 people to make it happen, but the British government has finally apologized for the homophobic hounding that helped drive computer science pioneer and WWII hero Alan Turing to an early grave in 1954. A statement issued Thursday by Prime Minister Gordon Brown reads in part: "Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ?gross indecency' — in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence — and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison — was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later. "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction. ... On behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better." Nowadays, Turing is most closely associated with the Turing test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence and the prestigious technical award that bears his name. His code-breaking work came as one of the mathematicians, engineers, linguists and puzzle fiends who were brought together during the war at the super-secret Bletchley Park intelligence facility. Now managed by a trust, the historical site has struggled for years to scrape together enough money to keep it from falling further into disrepair. Computer scientist John Graham-Cumming, who started the Turing apology petition, is among those suggesting that the government could add substance to its sentiments by restoring Bletchley to a condition that would better honor Turing and all the others who labored anonymously on its grounds. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Sep 09 - 02:22 PM The magic of Mathematicians -- a slide show provides interesting comments and photos of those who live in the universe of Math, where most of us rarely wander far. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Sep 09 - 02:28 PM The Great Australian Adjective: I thought he would be an alright bloke for the job so I appointed him... I didn't consult me bloody cabinet! Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke commenting on his appointment of Governor General Bill Hayden, 14 October 1999 So I went into the kitchen, and came face-to-face with a big bloody roo. Mr Olsen, Toorbul, Sunday Mail, 23 July, 2000 That bloody crocodile has just bitten me! Victim tells of croc attack terror, News.com.au, 8 April 2005 So, we have met the future of men's tennis. He is blue-eyed, blond, wears his cap backward, says "mate" and "bloody" a lot and looks as if he'd be perfect in the Olympic halfpipe Hewett Walks Open Road, LA Times, 18 March 2002 "Gallipoli was a bastard of a place," he said. "I never understood what we were fighting for. All I could think of was that I never wanted to go back to the bloody place." Albert White, aged 100, Brisbane, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 2002 |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Sep 09 - 02:29 PM David Harold Blackwell, Mathematical Statistics University of California, Berkeley "I came across one of my old papers the other day and I could barely understand it. I thought, 'Wow this guy is good! How could he think of that?' The mind changes. When I look at what I've done, I'm impressed. I've been very lucky." |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Sep 09 - 03:46 PM LOS ANGELES — Gertrude Baines, who lived to be the world's oldest person on a steady diet of crispy bacon, fried chicken and ice cream, died Friday at a nursing home. She was 115. Baines, who remarked last year that she enjoyed life so much she wouldn't mind living another 100 years, died in her sleep, said Emma Camanag, administrator at Western Convalescent Hospital. The centenarian likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. "I saw her two days ago, and she was just doing fine," Witt told The Associated Press. "She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently." Born in 1894 in Shellman, Ga., Baines claimed the title of the world's oldest living person when a 115-year-old woman, Maria de Jesus, died in Portugal in January. "I'm glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more," Baines said in November after casting her vote for Barack Obama in the presidential election. "I enjoy nothing but eating and sleeping." The oldest person in the world is now Kama Chinen, 114, who lives in Japan, according to Dr. L. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks claims of extreme old age. Chinen was born May 10, 1895, Coles said. The oldest person who has ever lived is Jeanne-Louise Calment, according to Coles. She was 122 when she died Aug. 4, 1997, in Arles, France. Baines outlived her entire family, including her only daughter, who died of typhoid. Baines worked as a maid in Ohio State University dormitories until her retirement and has lived at the Western Convalescent Hospital in Los Angeles for more than 10 years. "Living that long is like winning the genetic lottery," Robert Young, a scientist and senior consultant with Guinness World Records, said at her birthday party in April. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Sep 09 - 01:06 PM "Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, has decreed a new holiday for his country: Programmer's Day. Appropriately enough, it will be celebrated on the 256th day of the year: September 13th (September 12th for a leap year). Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions? Should the rest of the world follow suit?" |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Sep 09 - 02:08 PM The history of wire-tapping before and after Federal involvement. Interesting timeline on on face of little brother. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Sep 09 - 05:41 PM PhysOrg.com) -- A tiny bit of genetic material with no previously known function may hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, researchers at Yale School of Medicine and Sichuan University in Chengdu, China report in two papers in the September 7-11 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the papers, Alan Garen of the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale and his colleague Xu Song explain how cancer may overcome an organism's natural "stop sign" for cell division. During early development, stem cells give rise to other cells that differentiate into all types of tissue. New cell division and proliferation stop as the organism matures. However, cancer can hijack this process and trigger the uncontrolled cell division that produces cancer tumors. One mechanism that stops cell proliferation is a family of tumor-suppressor proteins (TSP) that bind to and block the function of proto-oncogenes, or genes that have the potential to trigger cancer. Garen's team working with mice found that an RNA molecule from an area of the genome that does not produce proteins prevents a type of TSP from inactivating these incipient cancer genes. The TSP protein they studied, called PSF, is virtually identical in mice and humans, he said. The Yale team succeeded in preventing the formation of tumors in mice by either increasing the amount of PSF or decreasing the amount of the non-coding RNA in a cell. "The tumor cell stops proliferating and the tumor regresses in a mouse model of cancer, suggesting that both procedures could be the basis of a clinical protocol," Garen said.... (Phys. Org.) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Sep 09 - 05:46 PM Here are some guys trying to figure out how to rtell where the unknown unknowns are: "In their study, James Crutchfield, Physics Professor at the University of California at Davis, and graduate students Christopher Ellison and John Mahoney, have developed the analogy of scientists as cryptologists who are trying to glean hidden information from Nature. As they explain, "Nature speaks for herself only through the data she willingly gives up." To build good models, scientists must use the correct "codebook" in order to decrypt the information hidden in observations and so decode the structure embedded in Nature's processes. In their recent work, the researchers adopt a thorough-going informational view: All of Nature is a communication channel that transmits the past to the future by storing information in the present. The information that the past and future share can be quantified using the "excess entropy" - the mutual information between the past and the future. Since the present mediates between the past and future, it is natural to think that the excess entropy must somehow be stored in the present, the researchers explain. And while this is true, the researchers showed that, somewhat surprisingly, the present typically contains much more information than just the excess entropy. The information stored in the present is known as the "statistical complexity." The more information Nature must store to turn her noble gears, the more structured her behavior. The information that manages to go unaccounted for - the difference between the stored information (statistical complexity) and the observed information (excess entropy) - is the "crypticity". It captures a new and under-appreciated complexity of a process, something that goes above and beyond what is directly measured in observations. At a more general level, the researchers provide an explicit way to understand the difference between simply making predictions from data versus modeling the process's underlying structure. "The results are at the crossroads of several research threads, from causal inference to new forms of computing," Crutchfield told PhysOrg.com. "But here are a couple of things we highlight: One can look at all of nature as a communication channel: Nature communicates the past to the future, by storing information in the present. In addition, information about how a system is structured can be available in observations, but very hard to extract. Crypticity measures the degree of that difficulty. Even in equilibrium there are temporal asymmetries." Although excess entropy, statistical complexity and crypticity are straightforward to define, their direct calculation has been a long-standing puzzle. Crutchfield, Ellison, and Mahoney developed a novel approach to its solution. The process, interpreted as a communication channel, is scanned in both the forward and reverse time directions to create models for prediction and retrodiction. By analyzing the relationship between predicting and retrodicting, they were able to uncover not only the external, time-symmetric information (excess entropy), but also the internal, asymmetric information (statistical complexity and crypticity). By looking inside Nature's communication channel, they discovered a rather non-intuitive asymmetry: Even processes in equilibrium commonly harbor temporally asymmetric structures. "The basic idea is that a process can appear to not transmit much information from its past to its future, but still require a large amount of hardware to keep the internal machine going," Crutchfield said. "For example, imagine that you have two coins: Coin A is a fair coin and Coin B is slightly biased. Now the output of this process is a series of heads and tails. That's all the observer gets to see. The observer doesn't know when A is used or B is used. To an observer this process is very close to a fair coin - the heads and tails from B just don't differ much in their statistics from the heads and tails from A. So, the observed process has little mutual information (the heads and tails are pretty much independent of the past). That is, the process has very low excess entropy. Nonetheless, there is one bit of internal stored information: Which coin, A or B, is flipped at each step? You can take this example to an extreme where you have hundreds of internal coins, all slightly biased, all slightly different in their bias, and therefore distinct coins. The large number of coins gives you an arbitrarily large statistical complexity. But the small biases mean the excess entropy is as close to zero as you like." These fundamental results should impact research across a wide range of disciplines, from statistical modeling to novel forms of computing. As the researchers explain, when a process contains hidden information, the process cannot be directly represented using only raw measurement data. Rather, a model must be build to account for the degree of hidden information that is encrypted within the process's observed behavior. Otherwise, analyzing a process only in terms of observed information overlooks the process's structure, making it appear more random than it actually is. "In statistical modeling, if you ignore a process's crypticity, you will conclude that nature is more random and less structured than she really is," Crutchfield said. "We suspect that this general principle will be seen (or is even operating) in many scientific domains, from biosequence analysis to dark energy modeling."" (Ibid) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 14 Sep 09 - 11:34 AM Received 29 April 2009; revised 8 August 2009; published 8 September 2009 Quantum Darwinism recognizes that we—the observers—acquire our information about the "systems of interest" indirectly from their imprints on the environment. Here, we show that information about a system can be acquired from a mixed-state, or hazy, environment, but the storage capacity of an environment fragment is suppressed by its initial entropy. In the case of good decoherence, the mutual information between the system and the fragment is given solely by the fragment's entropy increase. For fairly mixed environments, this means a reduction by a factor 1-h, where h is the haziness of the environment, i.e., the initial entropy of an environment qubit. Thus, even such hazy environments eventually reveal the state of the system, although now the intercepted environment fragment must be larger by ~(1-h)-1 to gain the same information about the system. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 14 Sep 09 - 12:21 PM "In some sense we can begin to understand human emotions like happiness the way we might study the stampeding of buffalo," Christakis said. "You don't ask an individual buffalo, 'Why are you running to the left?' The answer is that the whole herd is running to the left. Similarly, you can see pockets of unhappy and happy people clustered in the network. They don't even know each other necessarily," but their moods rise and fall together. The subconscious nature of emotional mirroring might explain one of the more curious findings in their research: If you want to be happy, what's most important is to have lots of friends. Historically, we have often thought that having a small cluster of tight, long-term friends is crucial to being happy. But Christakis and Fowler found that the happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren't necessarily deep ones. The reason these people were the happiest, the duo theorize, is that happiness doesn't come only from having deep, heart-to-heart talks. It also comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness. When you frequently see other people smile — at home, in the street, at your local bar — your spirits are repeatedly affected by your mirroring of their emotional state. Of course, the danger of being highly connected to lots of people is that you're at risk of encountering many people when they are in bad moods. But Christakis and Fowler say their findings show that the gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should — mathematically — add to your store of happiness. "If you're at the center of a network, you are going to be more susceptible to anything that spreads through it," Fowler said. "And if happiness is spreading more reliably, then on average you're going to be catching happy waves more often than you catch sad waves." Full article on the contagion of happiness here (NYT) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 14 Sep 09 - 08:03 PM Researchers from the Helmholtz Centre Berlin, in cooperation with colleagues from Dresden, St. Andrews, La Plata and Oxford, have for the first time observed magnetic monopoles and how they emerge in a real material. They publish this result in the journal Science within the Science Express web site on Sept. 3. Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles proposed by physicists that carry a single magnetic pole, either a magnetic North pole or South pole. In the material world this is quite exceptional because magnetic particles are usually observed as dipoles, north and south combined. However there are several theories that predict the existence of monopoles. Among others, in 1931 the physicist Paul Dirac was led by his calculations to the conclusion that magnetic monopoles can exist at the end of tubes - called Dirac strings - that carry magnetic field. Until now they have remained undetected. This is a schematic diagram of the neutron scattering experiment: Neutrons are fired towards the sample, and when a magnetic field is applied the Dirac strings align against the field with magnetic monopoles at their ends. The neutrons scatter from the strings providing data which show us the strings properties. Credit: HZB / D.J.P. Morris & A. Tennant Jonathan Morris, Alan Tennant and colleagues (HZB) undertook a neutron scattering experiment at the Berlin research reactor. The material under investigation was a single crystal of Dysprosium Titanate. This material crystallises in a quite remarkable geometry, the so called pyrochlore-lattice. With the help of neutron scattering Morris and Tennant show that the magnetic moments inside the material had reorganised into so-called „Spin-Spaghetti". This name comes from the ordering of the dipoles themselves, such that a network of contorted tubes (Strings) develops, through which magnetic flux is transported. These can be made visible by their interaction with the neutrons which themselves carry a magnetic moment. Thus the neutrons scatter as a reciprocal representation of the Strings. During the neutron scattering measurements a magnetic field was applied to the crystal by the researchers. With this field they could influence the symmetry and orientation of the strings. Thereby it was possible to reduce the density of the string networks and promote the monopole dissociation. As a result, at temperatures from 0.6 to 2 Kelvin, the strings are visible and have magnetic monopoles at their ends...." From Phys.Org. Diagrams and the original article can be found here. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 14 Sep 09 - 08:10 PM FIRST-EVER CALCULATION PERFORMED ON OPTICAL QUANTUM COMPUTER CHIP, September 03 (PhysOrg.com) -- A primitive quantum computer that uses single particles of light (photons) whizzing through a silicon chip has performed its first mathematical calculation. This is the first time a calculation has been performed on a photonic chip and it is major step forward in the quest to realise a super-powerful quantum computer. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news171213314.html |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 09 - 10:00 AM Inspired by the high profile of its Christian American counterpart, Muslim creationism is becoming increasingly visible and confident. On scores of websites and in dozens of books with titles like The Evolution Deceit and The Dark Face of Darwinism, a new and well-funded version of evolution-denialism, carefully calibrated to exploit the current fashion for religiously inspired attacks on scientific orthodoxy and "militant" atheism, seems to have found its voice. In a recent interview with The Times Richard Dawkins himself recognises the impact of this new phenomenon: "There has been a sharp upturn in hostility to teaching evolution in the classroom and it's mostly coming from Islamic students." The patron saint of this new movement, the ubiquitous "expert" cited and referenced by those eager to demonstrate the superiority of "Koranic science" over "the evolution lie", is the larger-than-life figure of Harun Yahya. Operating from Istanbul, Yahya is the founder of the Science Research Foundation, an impressive publishing empire that boasts more than 60 websites dedicated to his writings. It provides documentary films and audio recordings in fifteen languages, including Turkish, English, Russian, Amharic and Arabic, and claims to sell more than half a million books a year, including the infamous 850-page, fully illustrated Atlas of Creation, which was sent free in two volumes to dozens of universities, libraries and prominent scientists (including Richard Dawkins) across the world. In painstaking detail, with a mass of photos, graphs and statistics interspersed with verses from the Koran, the Atlas purports to prove that Darwin was utterly mistaken, that each plant and animal was created intact, and that no modification through natural selection ever took place. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 09 - 11:46 AM "Possibly as an act of vengeance, a history professor--compiling, verbatim, several decades' worth of freshman papers--offers some of his students' more striking insights into European history from the Middle Ages to the present. History, as we know, is always bias, because human beings have to be studied by other human beings, not by independent observers of another species. During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged. Church and state were co-operatic. Middle Evil society was made up of monks, lords, and surfs. It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection. After a revival of infantile commerce slowly creeped into Europe, merchants appeared. Some were sitters and some were drifters. They roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organized big fairies in the countryside. Mideval people were violent. Murder during this period was nothing. Everybody killed someone. England fought numerously for land in France and ended up wining and losing. The Crusades were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ) from the Islams. In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by inflected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France and Italy. The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to northern Europe. Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll! It became sheik to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredable churches with great art bulging out their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike. The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man's quest for ressurection above the not-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century. After the refirmation were wars both foreign and infernal. If the Spanish could gain the Netherlands they would have a stronghold throughout northern Europe which would include their posetions in Italy, Burgangy, central Europe and India thus serrounding France. The German Emperor's lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years. Louis XIV became King of the Sun. He gave the people food and artillery. If he didn't like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives. Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation. In Russia the 17th century was known as the time of the bounding of the serfs. Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his government with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. Orthodox priests became government antennae. The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism. France was in a very serious state. Taxation was a great drain on the state budget. The French revolution was accomplished before it happened. The revolution evolved through monarchial, republican and tolarian phases until it catapulted into Napolean. Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Throughout the comparatively radical years 1815–1870 the western European continent was undergoing a Rampant period of economic modification. Industrialization was precipitating in England. Problems were so complexicated that in Paris, out of a city population of one million people, two million able bodies were on the loose. " Full article at The Wilson Quarterly |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 09 - 11:59 AM An interesting analysis on why we can't build affordable housing the way our grandfathers did. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 09 - 08:13 PM PhysOrg.com) -- Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual properties could cause energy to flow continuously between different regions of space, resulting in a runaway transfer of energy. If an advanced civilization were able to construct a device to capture this energy, it might finally possess its own "perpetuum mobile" -- or perpetual motion. Ivanov, from both the University of Cambridge and the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, has analyzed this possibility in a study accepted to Physics Letters B. The idea is that a one-dimensional exotic fluid, whose unique properties such as violating the weak energy condition in particle physics, leads to a scenario in which there is a light cone with regions of negative and positive total energies. Ivanov has calculated the equations of state which give a continuous energy transfer from the negative regions to the positive regions, resulting in what he calls "perpetuum mobile of the third kind." However, Ivanov conjectures that theories "plagued" by solutions involving continuous energy flows should be discarded as inherently unstable. The concept of exotic matter - matter that violates certain physical laws - is not new. Exotic matter is at the basis of many intriguing theoretical possibilities, such as wormholes, time machines, and even so-called cosmological doomsday models of the universe in which the universe's energy density continually increases. Here, Ivanov shows that, in a class of models containing a certain kind of exotic matter, there could be ever-expanding regions of space with positive and negative total energies. Since the absolute values of the energies in both these regions grow indefinitely with time, the energy of the whole physical system is conserved. "In the setting outlined in the paper, the perpetuum motion is a new effect, as far as I am aware of," Ivanov told PhysOrg.com. "But the number of published papers on exotic matter is quite large, and therefore, there could be some papers on this unknown to me. "There are so-called cosmological doomsday solutions where an expanding spatially homogeneous universe filled by an exotic matter evolves in such a way that the density, and accordingly, the energy density, grows with time," he explained. "The energy density may even grow infinite during a finite period of time - the effect dubbed 'the cosmological doomsday.' However, the notion of total energy is, in general, rather ambiguous for the universe as a whole, and in any case one should accurately define and use the energy associated with a gravitational field when considering cosmological solutions, so in this case it is not clear (for me, at least) whether this situation may be called 'perpetuum motion' or not. In my case, the fluid expands in a flat space-time, where the notion of energy is well defined, so one can use standard definitions to classify solutions." |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 16 Sep 09 - 12:54 PM WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system but none of them have been proven to be solid until now. A team of European astronomers has confirmed that a planet discovered earlier this year about 500 light years away is more than a big gas ball. One of the scientists describes it "as close to something like the Earth" that's been found so far. Scientists have long figured that for life to begin on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on. So, experts outside the team say finding such a planet is a big deal. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 20 Sep 09 - 05:17 PM From Science NEws: Depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol dependence and marijuana dependence affect roughly twice as many people as had previously been estimated, a new study finds. Nearly 60 percent of the population experiences at least one of these mental disorders by age 32, say study directors and psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, both of Duke University in Durham, N.C. That figure probably gets higher by the time people reach middle age, Moffitt suggests, as additional people develop at least one of these four ailments for the first time. In a paper published online September 1 and in an upcoming Psychological Medicine, Moffitt and Caspi present results from a study of more than 1,000 New Zealanders assessed for mental disorders 11 times between ages 3 and 32. This study took a prospective approach, following people as they aged, and assessed prevalence rates based on long-term data. Moffitt's team focused most intensely on the period from age 18 to 32, when these disorders first start to appear. Earlier prevalence estimates for mental disorders in the United States and New Zealand relied on self-reports and therefore adults' ability to remember and willingness to recount their own past emotional problems. "Like flu, if you follow a cohort of people born in the same year, as they age almost all of them will sooner or later have a serious bout of depression, anxiety or a substance abuse problem," Moffitt says. It comes as no surprise that, compared with one-time survey responses, the new prospective study identified considerably more people who have had mental disorders, comments epidemiologist Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School. But self-report responses remain valuable, he says. Evidence indicates that individuals who report past mental disorders in surveys display an increased likelihood of developing such ailments in the future. Kessler directs ongoing U.S. surveys of mental disorders based on self-reports. Half of the people diagnosed in the new study had a mental disorder for a relatively short period or in a single episode. Moffitt nonetheless regards these cases as serious, since short-term symptoms often led to work problems, efforts to get mental-health care or suicide attempts. |
