TheVat

Saw some complaint back there about people posting one or two liner comments. I think that's partially explained by some of us having exhaustively researched and discussed the issues around AGW, and being reluctant to keep "reinventing the wheel" in terms of discourse on a forum. IMHO, the time for chat is over, and it's time for everyone to look hard at their own carbon footprint (and methane footprint, if that's applicable) and promote green praxis. Population is going to grow for a while - that's "baked in," as @swansont noted - so it really comes down to accepting the obvious: mitigating our production of GHGs is of paramount importance, to reduce whatever climatic changes are coming (and are here) and buy us some time to prepare for the changes that are inevitable. As @Peterkin noted, and I may have mentioned earlier in this thread or a similar one, the population problem will only start to be resolved when women's rights are universally promoted and implemented. So, no, I'm not going to be rehashing Tyndall's experiment, or revisiting Arrhenius, or doing massive citation dumps on how human-produced GHGs and PM pollutants are warming the globe at a rate unprecedented in geological history. It's happening. Dust off your damned bicycle and start cranking. As some wit once said, "Cranks start revolutions."

Antivax = superstitious death cult. A brief take on the issue. When you have people who are unable to grasp why we no longer suffer (or rarely suffer) from typhus, polio, smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, pneumococcal, rubella, meningococcal, etc, then you are looking at minds in the powerful grip of a cult.

The caption for Archaea also seems erroneous, defining them as "similar to bacteria but lacking a nucleus." Erm, bacteria also lack a nucleus and are a domain of prokaryotes. Archaea have metabolic pathways that bacteria do not. I agree their mass is very tricky to gauge, given that they include extremophiles and are also among plankton.

I had to get my eyeglasses Rx changed after my Moderna shots. I think maybe it was trying to read the three pages of small print they handed me when I left. Or possibly the weeping when I didn't receive a lollipop.

It's amusing to contemplate a Drake Formula for the number of time travelers from the future we might encounter. Also Jinn objects... https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/the-philosophical-complications-of-time-travel-and-how-to-solve-them/

The least uncertainty might be with livestock, where herd sizes and poundage of marketed animals are closely tracked by most nations. Greater uncertainty would be with sampling methods applied to species that are small, widely spread and mixed in with other media, like bacteria, nematodes, fungi, etc. And such categories are more likely to have species not yet identified. And also marine species, because, well, the oceans are so vast and deep. Mollusks, for example, would seem to call for a lot of guesswork. Cool thread and graphics.

Canadians have a coin with a loon on it. I don't see how we can trust them.

Confucius era had wristwatches. I learn so much here. 🙂 Against all temptations to align with other nations, please remain British. There are some things you do better, and I'd hate to see that get watered down. The driving on the left side of the road, however, is terrifying. When I was over there, I had nightmares about being asked to drive, which mercifully never became reality. Your transit systems put ours to shame.

I can see some customer resistance to gas lines that carry hydrogen. But agree some kind of bridge is required going from NG furnaces to heat pumps, for many homeowners. What about converting NG furnaces to electrical resistance furnaces, as a sort of stepping stone? Basically just remove the burners and replace with heating coils. While the BTU cost would be higher than a heat pump, you would have just one utility for both heat and lights and therefore not have the fixed service charges from the gas company (or the safety issues that arise with leaks from pipes). There are also heat pumps, I think they're called "mini-split" systems, that can be installed outside and just go through the wall directly into a wall-mounted unit that heats one area. These are cheaper, and allow a gradual transition away from other heating systems, and don't require ductwork (which further enhances their efficiency). From my life experience, and that of others I know, getting entirely away from pipelines that carry flammable gases is something to be desired. You rarely hear about electron explosions, or people dying in their sleep from breathing electrons.

"Phi for All" is starting to make way more sense to me as a forum moniker. In the presence of such stunning punning virtuosity, it could cause my art to choke! Is it time to plantain other topic?

Are there any aspics of this topic we haven't covered? More depth can be found in collagen universities, perhaps.

The EDX analysis of high carbon content, the somewhat granular look, the interstitial O2, the diatomaceous stuff, all do seem to rule out the more exotic origins. When the term "fireball" is used it can generate confusion as that term is often used for objects heated atmospherically -- your account, @Bazil_SW, seems to suggest simply that it was on fire and may have been burning when it was ejected from its source. I wonder if a kiln stack was lined with some kind of sedimentary material (marine derived?) that was ejected in an explosion. While you would expect some public record of such a mishap, I'm not confident that all companies are scrupulous about reporting, or owning up to, embarrassing accidents. I see you were thinking along similar lines. I just don't see a cleaning operation sending material of that mass any distance (and I presume Basil would notice if he were living immediately adjacent to an industrial stack) or igniting it in this way. This all suggests to me something accidentally went BOOM.

https://www.sargentwelch.com/cms/contact_product_support I've never had much luck with identifying tech mystery objects unless I contact the company and ask for an archivist or technical librarian. I think it's a center of gravity experiment, as you do. Why Google Images fails on this is that it's too old as an active marketed item to have been uploaded, and not yet an interesting antique so a collector hasn't put it up on a hobby site or at auction.

I'm surprised a geosciences department at a university would not take an interest. Sounds like a great project for a professor to assign some graduate students to assist with. The photos/description of the pieces doesn't seem a good fit with remnants of an artificial satellite. Given the trajectory, the theory of volcanic ejecta from Iceland seems worth pursuing, and I would imagine a vulcanologist at someplace like U. of Hawaii-Manoa or Observatoire de Physique du Globe de Clermont-Ferrand would be equipped to do an analysis.

Grapes embedded in jello are okay, but I'd join in the condemnation of vegetables in jello. I've been subjected to celery slices in jello, which should be classed as a felony. Jello is perfect and complete just as it is. As Peterkin warns, just don't add proteases like bromelain because they'll break internal peptide bonds in the collagen. And who needs pineapple in there anyway? BTW, anyone noticed that pineapple can sting the throat a bit? That's a tiny bit of proteolysis going on, from the bromelain.

What on god's green earth are you blathering about?

More a film buff than TV SF. Films that really explore the deeper issues of, say, AI.... Her, Ex Machina, 2001, Moon, Blade Runner, Bicentennial Man, etc. I don't list the ones with really bad science (the kind that get NDeGT to fire up an angry blog) like Chappie or The Matrix. Like @Ken Fabian I find the science bloopers distracting. Not much TV AI stuff I'd really recommend, though I'd say both "Humans" and "Westworld" really get into the deeper questions of AI. ST has always amused with its spotty science and uneven acting, from Shatner's abdominal cramp emoting, to the reliable dullness of Jonathan Frakes. Funny, I'd never noticed the Enterprise orbiting sideways. Was never clear on why, with their teleportation technology, they'd need a sick bay. Just keep a data file of your healthy body in the transporter, then transfer the current brain into that when the body is damaged or sick. Also, make regular daily updates, "neural snapshots," of the brain, in case it's also damaged. You'd lose a few hours of memory at most.

Reality is not denied so much as it is fragmented. Every small chip, even if it poorly reflects the larger reality from which it flew off, is seized by some "influencer" on social media and treated as if it can holographically reproduce the entire world. The science deniers, for example, grabbed up chips of genuinely bad science and decided that these chips were valid cross-sections of the entirety of science. Sketchy information processing was something we could get away with as hunter-gatherers. You only need one sip from a rotten coconut to know the rest of the juice is bad, too. You may just skip the whole tree, if there are others. If you see one tiger in a bush, you can have everyone in the tribe cut a wide path around the bush - even if the tiger was a fluke and the bush will be totally safe, there's no harm in taking the caution.

Isn't there another thread started on these series? And, yes, tv has produced several exciting space adventure shows, many of which suggest that, erm, boldly going forth into space (by means of science and technology) is something that we humans are destined to do. It's hard to see humanity becoming spacefaring without embracing science, unless it turns out that astral projection is really a thing. Or flying carpets.

Thanks for a clear exposition of trickle-up (and across) which I was also trying to articulate earlier. And yes, many moral failures happen simply because policies allow the temptation to be there. If you live someplace where predatory capitalism is harder to do, like Scandinavia, then those engaged in capitalism have less opportunity to slide into quick profit-taking and tax dodging. Of course, morals and policy are somewhat synergetic - Scandinavians foster policies of cooperation and strong social safety nets because their culture and morality has been very collectivist and egalitarian going back millennia.

@zapatos Lot of people out there with soiled pants courtesy of the rich. I had friends in Oregon who watched their surrounding forest destroyed by rich people who wanted to raise some fast capital to start up some entirely unrelated business venture. Fuck stewardship, we need a quick buck, sell the raw logs to Japan. Or... Reviewing the events of 2007-08 may be illuminating. "The Big Short" is a handy primer, too, on the rich playing fun games with money and ruining people's lives. Two edged sword indeed.

I think several are homing in on the idea that money does best when it circulates. The very wealthy often convert money into inert formats, like mansions that sit empty most of the year. The working class get money and they spend it, driving demand-side economics. If they have UBI type backup, that money goes right back into the economy. You can't stimulate production unless people want and can pay for whatever is produced. (leaving aside the question of why we have to have so. much. stuff.) The nitty gritty is that taxing the rich improves the flow of money. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/23/tax-cuts-rich-trickle-down/

If I may stick an oar in the water... I am guessing the distinction is being made between relatively rare luxury items and mass-produced items. Say that I, Joseph Moneybags, invest in a yacht, a small number of people are employed for a short time, and then an even smaller group crews it, when I take outings. However, if I invest in affordable housing units, a much vaster ripple can pass through the working class, as these units are built, maintained, repaired, and also many people can become housing secure and start to build what economists call "generational equity. " It's a vast, complex topic, so I'm necessarily simplifying and leaving things out. It's really the contrast between putting wealth into personal status and pleasure, and putting it directly into a better community. No reason one can't do both, but those who focus their wealth on enriching the community tend to, IMO, find more enduring satisfactions and value to their lives. So, l'm saying we should tax someone's yacht more than we tax their 60-unit affordable housing complex. IOW, incentivize social goods, and not personal luxury.

My position is simple and nonnegotiable: I want Sandra Bullock (as seen in the space adventure "Gravity") onboard with us, and I want her to hold my hand when I get scared. She must also be scared and then we will bond as we both bravely master our fears.