Thomas Kirby

I do have some ideas for you, Bettina. First off, do not let anyone lead you around, especially me, seriously. In some ways I am a good teacher, but I do not have a lot of experience, I do not have a connection with a discipline, and it's hard for me to avoid using stilted speech patterns when I start to talk about these subjects. You need to learn to actively defend yourself from negative emotions. I may myself be the ranking expert on taking in negative events and giving them reality within myself. I'm real good at it. It is OK for you to survive and feel good. If you were the one who was attacked, how would you want your family and friends to feel, not about you being attacked, but about life in general? Would you want them to go on with their lives after a suitable period of mourning, or would you want them to feel bad the rest of their lives? I've seen what happens to people who feel bad about an incident for the rest of their lives. I already know that you don't want that. "Universal guilt" sucks. It is noble to be self-sacrificing, to be willing to take all the negative energy in the world into you so that no one else is forced to feel bad. It also hurts a lot and makes you feel helpless, and eventually used. No one who is so willing to help deserves to feel that way. I have an opinion about the right way to take care of this. You do need to take charge of yourself. You do need to set up shields. "White light" exercises help a lot. I believe the advice of some psychics, that negative energy is something that people need to get rid of and not hold on to. I do believe that emotional energy is real.

I am going by the idea that, whatever you use to control the voltage and current, you will get a substantial percentage of the energies of the electron as electrical power. The idealization is that out of 8712 watt hours generated by the decay of the tritium, you get 8712 watt hours of usable electricity. If you only get 10 percent, you get 871.2 watt hours. The actual value is probably somewhere in between. Other stuff happens when you charge a material with electrons, too. Where are the positive charges going to come from to create a flow of current?

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. The term "electron volts" has little or nothing to do with the voltage of the cell in question. It is a measure of the energy that the particle carries, or its kinetic energy. One electron volt equals 1.602 * 10^-19 joules. link An electron that carries 6500 electron volts carries 1.041 * 10^-15 joules. It then takes 9.6 * 10^14 electrons to make one joule of electricity. A half mole of tritium has 6.27*10^8 joules worth of electrons to be emitted. Half of this is about 3.14 * 10^8. 314 million joules equals about 8712 watt hours per gram. Over 12.5 years that is an average of 79 milliwatts, minus inefficiencies. However many milliwatts you get at the beginning, you get half that at the end. It would be safe to say that a battery using three grams of tritium could power an LED lamp or several, or a microcontroller, or a radio continuously for 12.5 years and longer. It could also trickle charge a rechargeable battery. The three gram cell could charge a set of batteries for a Walkman in about a day, give or take. There is one problem. The electrons continually charge the cathode of the battery when there is no load. Again, the energy of the electrons is not directly related to the voltage. The cathode will store a charge until it is drained. Also, if the device is not kept grounded, I don't know how it gets rid of excess electrons.

Well, most of what I'm going to do now is read and understand Dave's tutorial on calculus.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I think that this is what cscott is looking for: [math]y=x*3[/math] [math]f(x)=x*3[/math] [math]y=f(x)[/math] [math]y=f(x)[/math] does not show how they relate but you can go back to the definition of [math]f(x)[/math]. [math]f(x)[/math] is a token, or a label for the equation that you have labelled as f(x). You can use anything in place of the "f" as long as it doesn't cause confusion when you work out your equations. This lets you do things like this: [math]f(x)=x*3 [/math] [math]g(x)=x^2+2[/math] [math]y=(f(x)*g(x))^2[/math] It's an easy way to combine whole equations, treating them as variables. That way you don't have to multiply them out in expanded form until you are ready. You might also choose instead to multiply the results of the equations instead of multiplying the equations together.

I've read numerous of Johnny5's and MacM's posts and they go nowhere. Not only can I not see the point of what they do, I can't see what point they see in it. There is something about it that is persistent and purposeful, like the sabotage of other forums that I have seen. This sabotage was perpetrated for the express purpose or ruining an open forum. It is the first time I have seen it done by people from the "crackpot" side of an argument. To be honest, it's usually the mainstreamers. One of the latter type of miscreants is hanging around but reading his posts gives me the impression that he's not doing that job anymore. No, I will not name him. It just goes round and round and round. One year they are being the moderators attacking people who are open-minded. The next they are pretending to be the open-minded people and giving them a bad reputation. I've seen the two-pronged attack too, where moderators allowed a goon squad to act like total kooks. Johnny5 and I are the exact same mental type, except that when I speak on a topic, I will bring in a lot more real science with references. I will be as concise as I can, pack real details into my presentation, and I will, as I urged him and MacM to do, get to the point.

Now I have to admit that things seem to have changed. There have been several forums where I was mistreated. The administrators acted much like Johnny5 does, introducing inanities and keeping the "crackpot" mentally off balance while he tried to present his case using real facts and figures. Here, it seems like the administrators bend over backwards to give the other guy the best possible chance to state his case.

Well, it is really true that I didn't see enough of what he said to make the judgement that I did.

Never mind what they are calling him over at sciforums, but Johnny5 really is being quite annoying over there. I'm tempted to joke that he's like me on a good day, but no, not really. I have got to get more control over myself and my rhetoric. Would anyone believe how consistently bad my experience has been with science forums? Some of the people I have run into are nasty enough to be the cause of someone like Johnny5 or Macm. They should know better and they wear their misconduct like a badge of pride. I mention this as a possible cause because there are people out there who drive me absolutely gosh-darned crazy. I am WAY too susceptible to that. So is the possum who just dragged a yellow grocery bag into the closet and is trying to make a nest with it. (Kidding about susceptibility, not kidding about possum. I have pictures.) I owe a lot of apologies, to Phi in particular, and you've been more patient with me than I have deserved. I shall try to be a more positive contributor now. I do have to comment that there is one other forum I have visited today in which the moderators seem to act like crackpots. In my humble opinion, it is possible to be a crackpot for mainstream science just as easily as it is possible to be a crackpot for the fringe or for totally out there.

OK, but I'm not going to start kicking him around. I'm allergic to that stuff.

Oh, and Bettina, that excerpt sounded a lot more sarcastic than disturbed.

OK, well, when I get a little more time I will look at more of Johnny5's posts. The two threads that I saw looked like he was staying clear-headed and responding rationally, with mathematical arguments. He probably doesn't understand why he was banned at that particular time. I've personally had bad experiences with groups that I thought should have been more mature and knew better, but... Some of the places on the net are just amazing. Not that I'm saying that I'm all that much better, but some of them do things I just can't integrate into my world view of what responsible people do. No personal criticisms unless someone tells me that there is an appropriate place and really wants me to do it. Maybe I've been way too sensitive sometimes.

Well, there are a lot of things I find hard to believe too. Many of them would offend people if I ran down the list. No, it's pure coincidence. I ran across this forum while looking for formulae used to estimate relativistic/gravitational time dilation. I ran across one of Johnny5's posts, and his style and manner seemed at odds with the "permanently banned" notice. Added: He also looks like he defends his positions the right way.

I know I'm running on too much here, but again I have to say "just one more thing." Phi, I can't see a thing wrong with going to another forum to "preach an agenda which has been shot down by scholars everywhere else." A lot of scholars on the web shoot down "agendas" that have a lot of reason behind them, and no I don't mean people who support the extremely high evidential value of blurry pictures of Bigfoot. Maybe when this happens, the mature expert decides whether it is a good use of his time or not, and participates or not as he deems necessary. Maybe the moderators can demonstrate maturity and a sense of real class by not saving every little irritation and building them into a federal case against someone. Just letting him irritate you a tiny bit at a time until you suddenly decide that a permanent ban is necessary doesn't look like the right thing to do.

A shorter summary: I've been told that Johnny5 has been banned because "he's a crackpot" because he seems to defend his views at too great a length (even if he keeps a civil tone), he thinks too much of himself, and the unwritten law seems to be that a participant in this forum must submit to the judgement of the experts or lose his ticket to ride. These are things that more than someone sees as legitimate. I think they are a crock.

I am going to write on my monitor in big letters "Never Say It's the Last Message." I can send a picture to those who don't believe me. Bettina, yourdad, everyone, I appreciate the invitation but I just don't know. Phi, your explanation underlines my point. You talk around it a little bit, but the sum of your message is that Johnny5 should be banned because he continually challenges the experts. I read the thread. He kept a civil tone, and he had one very good point. The expert's case seemed to rest on one idea, that the factorial of 0 equals 1. That is something that definitely needed to be proven. Even zero times infinity does not equal 1. I have at least one way to prove it. Take 1-(1/infinity)^infinity. The result converges on some number slightly greater than .3678 and less than .3679. This is a case where a difference that makes no difference makes a big difference. I can't see the right of it. Challenging the experts should be zero percent of an offense, no matter how many times someone does it. The fact that Johnny had a good point as far as I can see makes this even less of a crime. Honestly, I think he does better work than I do, and is far more patient and less irascible than I. Someone really has to nitpick, as if the smaller the offense might be, the harder we must dig for it. Challenging the kind of mindset that inspires such a ban of such a personality always gets me in trouble. When I write my book, it will probably cost me a thousand sales right here in this thread. What makes me insane is that this kind of thing seems to hit me, as it did Johnny, during what seems to be the careful and legitimate conduct of legitimate business. It's been done to me to make me walk on eggshells when someone couldn't get rid of me, and to get rid of me when someone could. So what does a sane human being do when he sees something like this? What do I see but someone who will do just about anything, twist any sort of reasoning, go on authority trips, or do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo? Even if it wasn't science, life isn't about the status quo. Getting irritated at someone who challenges the status quo is not a good sign. I'm not defending Johnny5 in particular. I don't know him from the possum who crawls across my feet into my bedroom closet to get away from the cats under the trailer. I am defending the right to challenge the status quo, pure and simple. I am also offended by the "love it or leave it" attitude.

I read Johnny5's last thread here. It seems to have been an ongoing discussion in which he was trying to explain a mathematical concept to Matt Grime as he saw it. Things may be a bit different where some people are, but the discussion looked quite civil to me. Then Phi for All said this: "Enough. This thread was designed to show one member how to save time and space in his postings and has gone on now for 3 pages. Once again we have tied up a Resident expert's valuable time to solve the problems of a member who seems to relish being a problem. This is not what we're here for." I can't divine what Johnny5's terrible crime might have been. His posts seemed to me to be persistently intelligent, civil, and on topic. He seems to have been the one who questioned ideas, while one of the moderators decided he had a personality defect, visible only to the moderator, that was serious enough for a permanent ban. I am not going to speculate on or try to investigate the nature of Phi for All's problems. I think it is just best for a human being to stay out of the way of people who act like he just did. There is something truly vicious about what I saw, and I want no part of it or this board. I would be proud to be permanently banned here.