gcol

I was rather surprised to find that the mathematical definition of work did not include a term for time (living and learning!), neither distance, but more specifically displacement. Now I am wondering if there is a tricky difference between distance and displacement. If work does not include time, is it o.k. if I take a whole year to shift that pile of bricks and get paid the same as if I had done it in a week?

That's why I dont see how you can say it does the same work, if work done is force applied against time.

Yes, but it will take 7x longer, surely?

Worm gear goes on the fast shaft. It gives the greatest speed reduction in the minimum physical space, 40:1 is not uncommon, but friction is vey high.

Being wise after the event is a great political attribute. Do I smell a Mea Culpa or repentant sinner theme to an embryo retirement fund book? Should sell well in the bible belt, they just love a repentant sinner. For myself, it becomes just another entry in my list of never-ending reasons to never trust politicians/bankers/experts and anyone else who makes a living from telling me what is best for me. They are all just humans, like you and me, and just as deeply flawed. Trust only in the great God Mammon. Unpleasnt maybe, but predictable always.

Hedge funds seem to be a potentially disastrous bubble. more worryingly, they are not at the top of the pile. If a top bubble bursts, it does not bring down the underlying matrix. But the hedge fund bubble is central to the matrix. It bursts, the whole structure is alterred forever. A good article about Hedge Funds and associated high leverage dodgy dealing is here:hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3698.html (Harvard Business School)

Inasmuch as accepted business practices are often unethical (and even arguably immoral, like perhaps prostitution) I think the two are inextricably linked.

I would love to know the next bubble, preferably a short term one. A surefire way to get rich. (In at the bottom, out at the top, run off with the suckers' money and sit on it until the next bubble). The greed is good mantra will always drive the markets. Don't like it, but that is human nature. Law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. The analogy model I like is the pendulum and bandwagon. The bandwagon pushes the pendulum, but gravity always wins in the end and eventually the pendulum swings back strongly in the opposite direction. Boom and bust. Our attention (fired by tabloid headlines) is fired only by big bubbles which unfortunately are only newsworthy when they hve burst. There are many embryo bubbles growing quietly and unnoticed, and many have burst without newsworthy effects. Some are deemed to be politically, socially and culturally "good" and are puffed up and encouraged. Communism was a bubble, religion is a series of bubbles, foreign aid and social welfare too. There is a testable "Bubble Theory" lurking here somewhere, with lots of associated mathematical mumbo-jumbo. In fact, I just happen to have.... But then I would not tell you until I have made my pile from it. I wish.

The question, for me, raises another which should be answered first: Just what exactly is Legal wiretapping. Until I know that, my response is a big yawn and a shrug.

I mentioned oil and water to avoid being overtly controversial. People are free to draw their own inferences. The correct mixing of mayonnaise I believe is rather skilful and requires miuch practice. Best to buy it in a supermarket and not enquire too closely as to method and ingredients, perhaps. All hail the mighty Heinz.

I refill mine using bulk ink. If I let a cartrige run out, some jets seem to be "overheated" and cease to work. I can live with the degraded quality for draft work, but my wife often runs off a print job of around 1000 pages and does not want the print to fail halfway through, as it is usually running unattended. I therefore check-weigh the cartridges regularly and refill when about 1/3 - 1/4 full. By making sure they don't dry out, an original (not necessarily a "refurb") can last 20+ refills. I have a couple of dud colour cartridges that I top up with distilled water. They print very faint or not at all, but I don't get error messages through low colour ink. Perfectly acceptable when doing B&W only, which is 95% of the time. I occasionally top-up a good colour cart that I have been careful not to run dry, when required. our household paper usage can vary between 500 and 2500 sheets per month, and I have not bought a new cartridge in more than 2 years. Saved one helluva load of money. Printer is an old HP Deskjet 930c (vey old!)

Can they mix? Sort of. Many people say they can. About as well as oil and water.

Alright, going to show my dumbness here, but gold can be drawn into very fine threads which can be (and have been) made into cloth and rope. Surely it is just a question of how you fold and pack it, and if weight is a problem, just increase its area. So surely it is just a lateral thinking design problem?

Not all plastics are petroleum products based. Plastics made from vegetable starch are commercially available. ( think also of cassein). These are readily and naturally biodegradable. They do have commercial (profit/convenience) disadvantages however. Two that spring to mind are: 1. They are not so easy to mould/extrude using mainstream "off the shelf" mass-production machinery compared to petroleum plastics for which the processes were designed. 2. Being naturally biodegradable, their shelf-life and therefeore commercial convenience is limited. I think that as with so many "green" alternatives, a seismic shift in commercial and consumer thinking is required before such less convenient products become mainstream.

Good questions, which prompt me to ask another: Just how low can the reversal rate be and still qualify as AC current? Do we just blindly assume the normal domestic frequency? Without having any experimental evidence, Would I reasonably expect different results if current was reversed every hour or two? And supposing the current and/or voltage changed with each reversal?

Four lines of defence are suggested to help you: 1. Be an atheist or agnostic. 2. Be a cynic and or realist. 3. Be a gay. 4. Be a eunuch. Two are easy, one is a relatively painless matter of choice, and one is rather drastic. Try for two out of four as an easy starter. Your choice.

Salt is/was a traditional mild abrasive used in all sorts of mixtures to clean metal. The secret with salt is plenty of hard rubbing. Might just as well use pumice powder or toothpaste. No "secret" chemical action, as I remember it.

YT...."....if you take Nothing else at all out of the Bible, "Do as you would be done by" is really all you should ever need." It is indeed a good and useful maxim, but I do so hope you are not claiming biblical copyright for it. It can be arrived at, and was, before the biblical era, (Greek Philosophy?) by a simple process of self-interested logic.

In the broadest sense, my "faith" is agnosticism. This places no restrictions on the width, breadth and depth of my imagination, and my ability to consider any and all possibilities. I have no artificial brick walls. A belief in anything even remotely supernatural and unprovable must, ultimately, be restrictive. So I see my agnostic faith, perversely, as a personal benefit.

Interesting how this thread has concentrated on one possible very peripheral aspect of the legislation. As I understand it, a public consultation exercise was held regarding EU regulations to beef up consumer protection in general. The Parliamentary proceedings concern the introduction of these regulations. Of particular interest is the repeal of the fraudulent mediums act, 1951 which replaced the witchcraft act of 1735 and also substituted certain provisions of the 1824 vagrancy act. The spiritualist, clairvoyant mediums, and general hocus pocus industry of course saw it as a threat to its livelihood and are conducting a strong media campaign which of course has been picked up by the popular press (after all, there is not much else of importance going on in the world, is there?) By the way, and I quote from somewhere I can't remember: "Spiritualism and its associated practices is a properly constituted religion recognised by an act of Parliament". So I suppose that is the general "immunity from prosecution" for all religions. Apologies if everyone already knew this.

So why not back to simple technology? An old-fashioned waterwheel will efficiently work with low heads, relies on volume/weight, not velocity difference, and although would be larger, would surely be long lasting and reliable.

1. Does anybody remember TVP? (textured vegetable protein). That got the big public thumbs down because of poor taste and texture. Highly touted by Veggies for a while did not catch on. 2. I will concede there might be some special niche markets for an edible version (well disguised with artificial flavours and colourings, loaded with preservatives and freeze-resistant additives) then bent battered and moulded into supermarket shelffriendly shapes. (Who remembers soya links?) 3. I am curious as to the raw materials to be used, and the energy requirements for the process. I am thinking of how the rush to vegetable based petroleum substitutes is driving up the prices and lowering the availability of what to many cultures are basic foodstuffs. I fear the workings of the law of unintended consequences. Where there are bucks to be made, as usual, the benefits will be spun up and the downside buried along with the human guineapigs. An early adopter I will certainly not be.

Apologies for "shouting", but: JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING COULD BE DONE DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULD BE DONE

There is a 3D drawing/model available on Google sketchup. Load the program and search in models

Beware, YT......if there is money to be made, there is a corporate bandwagon to be ridden. As for cadavers, I think that may be a "dead"-end argument. Not many people eat twitching meat, anyway. Do you think that North Korean TTM (test-tube meat) might taste of dog?; and if it ain't kosher, what then?. One of my favourite films was Soylent Green. If you know it, you'll know what I am thinking. On this issue, I am proud to be a detractor. PETA is off its tiny in-vitro mind.