mistermack

On 8/10/2022 at 9:46 PM, MigL said:

As Many as 80,000 Russian Forces Killed, Wounded in Ukraine: Pentagon | World Report | US News

That report is just meaningless propeganda. 

"Russia has endured as many as 80,000 casualties since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, according to the latest assessment from the Pentagon of the steep costs Moscow has paid.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told reporters on Monday that the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the fighting is somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000. Kahl, effectively the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon, added that the number “is pretty remarkable given that Russia has achieved none of Vladimir Putin’s objectives in Ukraine.”

Firstly the word wounded is almost meaningless. Secondly, he doesn't say how he knows. ( He just guessed of course ) Thirdly "None of Putins objectives" ???   Putin has nearly all of the east, and a substantial land bridge now to Crimea. He controls all of Ukraine's ports in that ships can only come and go with his permission. And Ukrain now has no prospect of joining Nato, because it has territorial disputes running that will never end. 

And of course, he now has sky high prices for his oil and gas, and Europe is suffering hugely economically. And his economy is doing very well, in spite of the propeganda put out about the Russian economic disaster. Imports are hugely down and exports are up in value, because the Ruble is now so strong, and commodity prices are so high. 

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I'd suggest you read 'the sermon on the mount' and ask yourself, honestly, what is Jesus trying to teach and how much he expects to earn from the punter's; it's the sort of question an atheist/scientist should ask, if he didn't want to be a believer. 😉 

I'd suggest you stop taking what people say as the true picture. Every pedophile priest there has ever been has preached a similar message to Jesus, from the pulpit. It didn't reflect what they were up to behind the scenes. In any case, the religion, as I have said, doesn not have a monopoly on being good, nor does it deserve any credit for it. Humanity is responsible for all of the good and the bad.

The sermon on the mount had some good bits. Probably it was written by Matthew. It's doubtful that it ever happened, or that there was a real Jesus figure to preach it. But that doesn't matter. There are good bits and bad bits in it. It really doesn't matter. I meet good people, who say good things. I don't have to worship them, or pretend that they are supernatural beings. 

Jesus preached about hellfire, according to Matthew. What an asshole. Follow me, or you will burn for all eternity. Nice. And he concludes by warning against false prophets, when he (or Matthew) knew perfectly well that that is exactly what they were. 

There are some very nice, good people, and good messages in all religions. It doesn't justify the lies and woo. The good bits would still be there without it.

Edit to add :

What I meant about heroin to children is that teaching them the religious doctrine when they are young gets them hooked, and you can't justify that by saying that they are later taught "how to think". Once you are hooked by religion, the evidence shows that most are hooked for life. And the religious teachers know this perfectly well, that's why they like to start on the kids as soon as they can talk. 

And I certainly don't accept that religious teachers teach "how to think". 

Teachers of the academic study of religion might teach people to question, in some schools, but you can't count that as teachers of religion. 

28 minutes ago, iNow said:

asking why they weren't "totally loyal" and wouldn't do anything he asked regardless

Stalin's generals were pretty loyal too. Of course, American generals don't risk their own deaths, and those of their families, if they are less than totally loyal. That might make a slight difference !   😄

Can't believe those prices. This is Tesco prices, after the current inflation :

Note these are kilo prices, not pounds.

6 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

...and some old Brits still preserve the illusion that they have an empire for when the Lion wakes up....

Of course, nobody likes losing. I was just dangling a worm, to see if Swansont would bite. 

A great many Germans never accepted that they lost WW1.  That was a major factor in the build up of the Nazis, and cost over fifty million lives. 

Trump really reminds me of the early Hitler. He's not as good a speaker as Hitler, but he does know how to appeal to the less gifted and the baser instincts. And he treats the law like Hitler did. Uses it when he wants, and ignores it when he wants. I really hope that they nail him for it, because he really is too dangerous to have his finger on the button.

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Just like with academic teachers, when you are young they teach you what to think, and as you age and progress they teach you how to think.

I don't accept that that applies to religious teachers. None that I have ever heard anyway.

But in any case, that's a bit like feeding kids heroin when they are young, and then teaching them how to live with addiction when they get older. 

53 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

A good teacher tell's you how to think, not what to think; 

What planet are you from? That's not how religious teachers operate. In fact, it's the exact opposite. 

1 minute ago, zapatos said:

That's awfully cynical. It presupposes that the people woo'ing don't believe. Whether they are foolish to believe or not, if they do believe, then what they are doing is not about trying to dupe people; it is about enlightening people.

I think there's a big difference between what people profess to believe, and what they actually believe. Priests in private often talk of their doubt, in private, to each other. But you would never know that, from what they say in public, to the punters. 

If you have doubts in private, and profess no doubt whatsoever in preaching the doctrine as truth in public, then you're lying. Maybe to yourself as well. 

14 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

One of my favorite cheeses they promote in my local stores is called Cotswold, a double Gloucester with chives and onion they claim is from the UK. Is this a real English cheese, or is this like English muffins over here?

Well, Double Gloucester is an old English cheese, very popular, with quite a lot of variations on the basic theme. And Gloucester is an historic Costwold city. ( the cotswold hills are overlooking) . So it's a popular variation, (popular here too). 

Have you ever seen the annual cheese rolling? It's an absolutely mental race down a very steep hill, chasing a Double Gloucester cheese. It takes pace about four miles from where I live :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6hiCbK2T-8

17 hours ago, Peterkin said:

But he will never admit to incompetence;

Maybe it's an American thing, not admitting you lost? 

The BBC just minutes ago did a piece on the 1972 olympics, and covered the dramatic gold medal basketball match where the USA lost for the very first time, in the last three seconds, to the USSR.

They refused to admit they lost, and the silver medals were never accepted, and are still locked up in a vault in Switzerland, fifty years later. Very Trumpish. 

8 hours ago, Peterkin said:

So why didn't they plug in the ordinary cheddars and mozzarellas  people can actually afford to eat on a daily basis?

Jarlsberg is the biggest imported cheese in the US according to wiki. It's probably cheap enough over there, but we get ripped off over here. It amazes me what people pay for foreign cheese in the UK, when we have the two best cheeses in the world made here at a fraction of the price. 

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

When taught correctly

You're not the pope by any chance???          That's the attitude of the catholic church. Don't think for yourselves, WE will tell you what to do. 

And think.

3 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

why did he put me in the red,

I didn't. Maybe the person who's + you removed objected? I certainly didn't anyway.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

ust because someone thought about (designed) how best to live a good life, that ultimately benefit's everyone, suggests it wasn't cynically designed to dupe, anyone...

That's totally irrelevant. My comments are about the core religious beliefs, not the accompanying "be good" message, which doesn't need an invisible friend to enforce it. Justifying the bad, with accompanying good bits, is like saying that HItler wasn't so bad, because he was good to children and abhorred animal cruelty, and was thoroughly anti-smoking. 

It's all irrelevant to the core message. 

Religions don't own "being good". Or deserve any credit for it. It's always been a strong component of human nature. 

If you want the credit for being good, then own up to the bad, because religion has loads of it. 

But for me, it's irrelevant. Using woo to dupe people is what religion is about. The accompanying good and bad are just part of human nature, and would happen anyway.

On 8/11/2022 at 3:55 AM, OldChemE said:

Evolution does not weed out all disorders because the causes of some disorders are evolving as well.

In a way, that's what people are suggesting for allergies. If a lifestyle with too much hygiene applied to young babies is responsible for the increase. 

In that case, allergies may have been lurking all along in our dna, as a tendency, but only became an actual disorder when the lifestyle evolved. Evolution is not going to weed out a tendency so long as it doesn't evolve into a disorder in a significant number of cases. 

Correction above, the temperature rises above the dew point, not what I wrote. 

I found this about Australia in Encyclopedia Britannica, there's a marked difference between winter and summer, but there appears to be planty of onshore wind in the summer, in the north. They do say though, that the humid layer is often shallow, and so doesn't hold enough humidity to provide much rain. 

https://www.britannica.com/science/monsoon

3 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Not really. For one thing, it wasn't designed: it grew and evolved and was adapted for cultural, as well as corrupted and subverted for political and economic reasons.

Something can be designed bit by bit. And designs can evolve. Like my car. Brakes, windscreens, tyres, seats, engines, all evolved over time, but all were designed, sometimes many times over.

The concept of heaven, somebody made it up. As with hell. As with virgin births. All designed to APPEAL to their target audience. There's very little about Christianity that wasn't designed to produce a desired response in the punters. 

Just because it was done piecemeal doesn't mean it's not designed. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Or you can use the country’s own currency, the rupee

I wondered that, but it's still out by a factor of two for GDP. 

Maybe it's in Rupees, adjusted for purchasing power. It's still well out, but not by so much. It's rare to quote a GDP in anything other than dollars these days. 

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

This is where atheism and critical thinking part company; you smugly decide an entire, history of philosophy as weak minded; and so dismiss Taoism, Buddhism, Jesus etc. by equating it with scientologism and the westboro baptist church, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water... 

Your comprehension has let you down yet again. I did not dismiss what you listed. I said "especially when the doctrine has been specially designed.... etc." 

As usual, you take two and two and make five. Try to make more effort to respond to what is actually written. 

As far as Jesus goes, yes, it's designed to appeal to the weak minded. Promising a blissful life after death, so long as you obey our rules today. That's aimed straight at the weak minded. However, religious weak mindedness is made, not born. It  takes years of indoctrination to make people swallow that crap. 

The others, I don't know, and don't want to know, what they are pushing. But I assume the worst till I find out different. Because every spiritual belief I've come across so far has been bollocks.

38 minutes ago, observer1 said:

even if usa bans beef nothing will happen to india as the total export of beef from india is 3.17 billion and india's gdp is 147.35 trillion. A scratch in comparison

What currency are you quoting? GDP is usually quoted in dollars, and for India GDP that's $3.5 trillion approx.

11 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

I am a bit skeptical of the promise of large scale weather modification. I think the reason that central Australia is desert is a persistent lack of on-shore winds capable of carrying moist air into the interior, not lack of evaporation over oceans when we get them. There is a preponderance of high pressure systems due to Hadley cells, that drop dry upper level air down over desert areas, with prevailing low level winds blowing coast-wards and/or blocking on-shore winds as a result. I think that is the case for the Sahara and other desert regions too. Mountain ranges and their rain shadows can be a big factor for some deserts too.

Thanks. You would obviously do some pretty intensive surveys of the onshore winds situation before siting anything like this. I would imagine that a country like Australia would already have all of the wind info in it's Meterological department going back years, so you would just have to analyse the existing data to see if it was suitable. Other countries might have less detailed info, but it wouldn't be hard to get a rough idea of whether an installation was a non-starter. 

I know that some deserts do have regular onshore winds, because they have animals that rely on a fog that rolls in every morning, rather than rainfall. That indicates that as you say, there is humidity in the air, but when the sun gets strong, the dew point rises, so the fog droplets evaporate again. 

If as you say, there is dry air coming in at altitude and dropping down on desert areas, then that would probably mix with and reduce the humidity of any existing moist air, dropping the dew point and preventing it from forming clouds. But the dew point depends on humidity, so if you have raised the humidity artificially, the balance might be shifted enough to allow cloud formation, where there was none previously. 

If you were contemplating giving this a go, you would need to model the results before you started, and have a trial to establish how much you can raise humidity using various spray methods. 

Just now, kenny1999 said:

How about the Sun? When will it burn to the end?

About 5,000,000,000 years from now, although it will get uncomfortable a bit sooner than that. 

8 minutes ago, kenny1999 said:

Approximately how long will it take for the earth to spin down to an extent that is going to affect human's life? Is there any estimation?

I can't give an estimated figure, but I think it would take much longer than the human species remains recognizable to us. Our species is about 200,000 years old. In another 200,000 years, the spin will have hardly changed. 

Unless we get hit by something big, that is.

I use a wireless Logitech mouse/keyboard deskset, I find them very good, but you don't get forward and back buttons on the side of the one I have. 

Every once in a while, the mouse would play up, and I had to pull out the usb reciever, and push it back in. It was then ok for four or five hours. Eventually, I got fed up of getting up and walking to the computer to do the pull out/replace procedure, so I got a usb extension cable, and kept the reciever close to hand. That appears to have cure the problem. It hardly ever needs pulling out and replacing back in now. 

With the new mouse, I can't help with exotic metals. I would try a thin sheet of lead on the base, or maybe make a steel mouse pad, and glue some thin neodymium magnets on the base of the mouse. You can get them pretty cheap on ebay, and they can be as thin as 2mm or even less.

The reason that I thought that this might be feasible, it that it uses free energy from the environment to break the water/salt bonds, and to condense the evaporated vapour. The energy input of the pump is just a method of increasing the surface area of the water. The molecules of the dry air would be knocking the salt/water bonds apart, just like they do on the surface of the sea. It might be that having tried it, they would find that it would take too much energy to atomise the water, to make it an economic prospect for a country.

But if it did work, the economic benefits for a country like Australia would be enormous. Australia has such vast tracts of land, nice and flat, ready made for productive agriculture, and all it's lacking is water. Any of this new rainfall would be ultimately available for use, because if it fell on open land, it would either evaporate and fall again as rain, or soak down to the ground water level, and improve the level and quality of that. The ground water across much of Australia is already quite salty, and getting more salty with use.

15 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

This company sounds interesting: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/666725

Thanks, that's an interesting link. I have a couple of reservations though. They are quoting a situation where you have large quantities of waste heat going spare, like the reverse osmosis plant, and that's how they are quoting a cheap price of a third of established systems. 

In other systems, using hot air would be quite energy intensive I would think. But even if it's just a bit more competitive, it has a big and growing market to aim at. 

Because of the energy requirement, I doubt that it would be economic at climate level in the way I was aiming at. But the principle of spray evaporation is clearly a goer. I was inspired by the huge decorative fountains that are installed in various locations, but in reality, all you need is a spray that evaporates a good proportion of the feed water. It could be just a metre high, or whatever gives the most evaporation for the least input power. 

Maybe you could spray a fine layer of water onto a black surface, and let the sun and wind dry it off.

7 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

You might want to consider unforeseen consequences. Depending on the scale of the operation - say, the Sahara - you might risk turning the Mediterranean into another Dead sea.

I think even if that was a factor, it would take millions of years. 

8 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

But here's an alternative:

I don't think that's been thought through. Seawater would ruin the Sahara underground water deposits, and it wouldn't promote growth, it would kill vegetation.