sethoflagos

Though perhaps @exchemist or @CharonY might be able to explain the striking overnight colour change in my brew: Fermentation appears to be progressing normally. Ingredients are filtered borehole water, fresh root ginger, natural (non-centrifugal) cane sugar, champagne yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae ex-bayanus) and, as of yesterday, juice of two lemons.

A little earlier. An early breakfast became the norm in England around the turn of the 16th century. Throughout the mid- to late-mediaeval period, it was sneered at by the 'gentry' as being for those who engaged in manual labour in the morning ie. the agricultural peasantry. Bread and beer isn't such a bad way to start the day I think.

A similar situation arises in the Sudanian Sahel and Acacia Sahel belts of West Africa where long, practically rainless dry seasons limit land productivity almost as effectively as the boreal winter. This contrasts sharply with the year long productivity of the equatorial coastal belt just a few hundred kilometres to the south where survival depends not on storage and rationing of food and water through lean times, but on defence of the home range. The differences this has produced both culturally and physiologically over the millennia can be quite striking.

A single 5.6 litre cork topped drinks dispenser (of all things) appeared in one of our more upmarket shops this week. Gave me the chance to kill two birds with one stone. ... Getting s ginger beer production line underway and piloting my makeshift airlock idea. Seems to work.

Perhaps more to the point, if we managed to construct a near perfect z-transform for the universe, it could in principle generate the initial boundary conditions (values of 'fundamental constants'?) necessary to create some arbitrary future state (eg universe lifetime>>10100 years, biology). As it is just maths, and maths does not in principle require a universe to be valid, that perfect z-transform would have some sort of existence at t<=0... Simulpost. Apt since we're into simulations here.

I was quite taken with this earlier line of thought you introduced. It reminded me of some statistical studies I engaged in when I was working more or less exclusively in the process control field. Process control generally aims to reduce the standard deviation, and hence the variance, of some property of a product stream. Being familiar with constructing material and energy flow diagrams as for processes, I began sketching out variance flow diagrams in an attempt to quantify where the variance went because it clearly didn't vanish: it dissipated in the conversion of electrical inputs to heat; instrument air signals to low pressure exhaust etc. It soon became apparent that these were diagrams of entropy flow. While it was possible to shunt variance around into various streams, it always grew in total, because total entropy always increased with time. Is it just a coincidence that entropy increase and causality flow in the same direction? Is causality determinable in an isentropic process? Anyway, your post prompted me to have a quick look at the entropy of electron capture decay. It improved my understanding of the weak interaction and the function of electron neutrinos, so thanks for that.

Sort of. But let's get real. Your reservoir is also supplied by groundwater springs and rainfall runoff from the surrounding hills. Consumer demand is variable, subject to diurnal and various other cycles. The reservoir is 400 miles away and your level readings are supplied by some old bloke who plods up there and back each morning, and sends you the results by carrier pigeon.

Say we wanted to control the average surface temperature of the planet to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels on a long term basis. Whatever we do, we are denied immediate access to the resulting output that may take many decades to fully present itself. So any attempt at pure feedback control is almost certain to swing chaotically between too-little-too-late and whoops!-too-much. You simply cannot dial in a significant gain value and maintain stability (I have the tee-shirt). The only real option available is some form of feedforward control of the Smith Predictor type. But that requires a really accurate climate model; full knowledge of all influencing factors; and ruthless elimination of... let's call it 'noise'. Thinking about it, yes, there are some philosophical issues to address.

You're not answering the question I asked. Feedforward control requires a model (or implicit model) that predicts the effect of a change in input signal on the output. Since there isn't a hint of retrocausality here, why would a philosopher have any interest in it from a causality perspective? Chapter and verse at: Feed forward control ... and Smith Predictor control where feed forward is a significant component in a system with major industrial relevance (control of distillation towers, paper machines etc)

I've tried accessing the site from a few different VPN locations, and some are giving Error 503: Backend fetch failed. Googling this seems to suggest the website server may be experiencing unusually high traffic.

I can see the relevance of feedback (both +ve and -ve) but what is the context for 'feedforward' here? Let me illustrate with a current topic. Our new short term resident 3i/Atlas is a potential causal factor for a number of possible events. Its disturbance of the local gravitational field may disturb some small orbiting satellite. If that orbit is inherently stable due to say orbital resonance, then the system will tend to generate reaction forces that oppose and possibly reverse any change in satellite trajectory. These reaction forces would be an example of negative feedback. A weakly bound satellite whose orbit is merely metastable may find that the disturbance is enough to send it spiralling out of its orbit at an ever increasing rate as the reduction in gravitational attraction with distance is effectively a repulsive force acting in concert with the initial transient. This is a positive feedback response. So far so good. However, a feedforward response (afaik) implies foreknowledge of a future disturbance from equilibrium which maybe countered by creating an opposing disturbance in advance. So if our best models of solar system mechanics had predicted that 3i/Atlas was going to plough into earth head on, we could potentially launch some countermeasure to deflect the object and reduce its effect. This would be an example of feedforward control. Nature does do feedforward, but only in living systems afaik. A spooked gazelle may run for its life to avoid becoming dinner. A stranded octopus may 'sprint' over rocks to find a deeper pool. Or is that just an inborn reflex? The inanimate parts of the universe seem content just to let stuff happen.

... or at least a quasi religious emotional reaction to ideas that seemed even slightly contrary to his world view. https://vevmo.com/sites/default/files/upload/not-listening-gollum.gif

Ah, we're back to the teleology you mentioned in the OP. What do you expect from such people? Rationality? Rather reminds me of the 1948 Zhdanov decree where Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, and others were castigated for formalism (as opposed to Socialist Realism). This, of course, spilled across the border into Poland where Lutoslawski and Panufnik were similarly censured plus Kodaly in Hungary. Other than Krakus gherkins, these were some of the finest products to come out of the Eastern bloc in the mid-20th century and should have been paraded as major achievements. Though I admit that Lutoslawski's concession to Socialist Realism, his Concerto for Orchestra is one of my all time favourites. But then, I also like Wagner. There's no accounting for taste, is there.

No, not at all. The economic analysis of capitalist production in Das Kapital is just objective algebra. The dialectics stem from the class conflict over who gets to pocket the surplus value and the subjective moral judgments associated with that. As @Otto Kretschmer states, these two aspects are quite separable. Your bible stories seem utterly irrelevant. Drivel. DM is a philosophical approach to the resolution of conflict through creation of a new 'synthesis'.

Just for an update, the okra ferment I tried with a version of your suggestion (close fitting glass cup as a 'floating roof') worked a treat with not a hint of yeast pellicle. So thanks for that. And the surface vegetable oil barrier I used on a jalapeno brew worked fine too. I scooped out the now quite spicy oil for recycling prior to refrigeration and the peppers are just right. No oily texture or off-taste that I can detect. Might still work on the fermentation air-lock though: I've got the ginger beer plant up and running...

Me too. And also I believe the current UK government. This is from their Action Plan for achieving Nett Zero by 2030 published on the UK government website: This gets little media attention due to their bias, but I think it's very hard to fault. Far from compromising the implementation of RE, the OP project is clearly an integral part of a much bigger picture that puts RE at the heart of UK power generation. It deserves our general support even if we have some small qualms about individual elements of it. Let's leave the mindless mudslinging to the wealthy vested interests and their lackeys in the right wing media.

Bad kahma all round, I'd say

I guess. Must have forgotten to plug the empathy simulation chip into the autism socket this morning. Apologies @Ken Fabian , it was an unfair comment. I do have a positive view of this project due as much to its local socioeconomic significance as its role in carbon disposal. There's no reason for you to see it in the same light.

... or advising me to stop wearing tights.

You don't seem to have taken on board a single point I made. Fine. Apparently, that's how discourse works these days.

I can assure you that my pickle does not have thrush.

I find this guy very good. https://youtu.be/ZGFpBU37riM

Yup. Acres of greenhouses using the waste heat in the cooling water. Just to put this CCS project in perspective, some back of envelope calculations. 12 million tonnes per annum of CO2 is: 1 million tonnes per month, ~36,000 tonnes per day, 1,500 tonnes per hour, 25 tonnes per minute, ~400 kg/s. Picking a liquid CO2 density of 800 kg/m3 off the top of my head, that's 0.5 m3/s. For a pipeline velocity of 1 m/s, internal x-section of 0.5 m2 sounds very much like bog standard 36" ND pipeline. 200 bar sounds like a reasonable pressure, so 2*107 N/m2 * 0.5 m3/s = 10 MW Couple of Siemens multistage barrel pumps? In the greater scheme of things, this is a very typical pipeline job. A single operating company could easily take this in their stride. For a G7 nation? Peanuts.

Me too. But forgive me if I go on to play devil's advocate for what follows Are you seriously suggesting that going beyond nett zero and removing CO2 out of the atmospheric cycle is undesirable? Why? Why are you introducing this neoliberal BS? Unlike a household economy, the UK government has the Royal Mint. If it needs money for capital investment, it can print it. For wood chips? How do you arrive at these figures? The UK no longer produces power from coal (and please give them credit for that landmark achievement). How does the project in question impact fuel transport costs or combustion efficiency? There are no ongoing CCS costs. What fuel costs are ongoing remain unchanged by the project and are therefore irrelevant to the topic. What point are you trying to make here? Over 250 million years of self-evident containment of the southern North Sea gas fields not long term enough? This is no more than an argument from incredulity. And flies in the face of hard geological evidence. After decades of neoliberal economic austerity and the severe negative impact on growth of Brexit, some would argue that this is a good thing. Another neoliberal mantra. More of a Keynesian myself. Right now, the UK is paying for wind farm capacity simply as rolling reserve to offset the recent large reductions of power generation rotating mass to maintain mains frequency and keep the grid stable. This will become an even more critical issue as the transition to EV proceeds. A holistic approach isn't just a matter of preference; under the circumstances, it's obligatory. Sorry for taking you to task a little here, but do you think the 'other side' would be less robust in their arguments?

A tetrahedral stack of 35 spheres?