Thomas Kirby

Psychologists like to dig for buried trauma. Isn't the trauma actually buried in the same places where we keep the memories that make us feel good? Whatever you ask a part of your mind to do, it will do. It will express itself the way you tell it to. If you ask it to reveal trauma, it will. If you ask it to reveal joy, it will. Maybe revealing hidden trauma is therapeutic, but isn't it true that the mind needs to spend time in comfort and more positive emotional states to recover from that? We need to spend a lot more time becoming who and what we want to be and a lot less time scratching away at ourselves trying to purge ourselves of these things, at least in my opinion.

There are a lot of quotes out there that people don't usually remember or apply but the first line of, but like "My country, right or wrong", almost none of them are relevant to this thread. The "when right, to keep it right, when wrong to make it right" part of this one: Matter and energy can neither be created or destroyed. They can only be converted from one form to another. (This means matter to matter, energy to energy, matter to energy, energy to matter.) Changes the meaning quite a bit, doesn't it? Like a lot of quotes that come in two or more parts, it means something a lot different when you have the entire thing.

So what's the large building next to the Superdome, with the same kind of cover, that didn't lose any of its roof? It looks like covered walkways from the Superdome to there.

Pangloss, telling someone to look it up and learn it for himself is the exact opposite of telling him to take my word at face value. The necessary next step for anyone who sees an important idea like this one is to do his own research and KNOW the material if he has the capacity. Reading my little research papers and opinions isn't enough.

C'mon. I don't mean it that way. I really would rather that more people researched these things and knew for themselves. What did I just say? Look this up for yourself. It takes a lot more explaining about the Carnot equation for sure, but a lot of the rest is just plain basic knowledge that should be general knowledge.

There's not much more I can say about that. The hazards of high voltage at high current are very well known. For safety reasons alone they are harder to repair, and the batteries are now high dollar speciality items instead of inexpensive commodity items like the marine batteries that you can buy for 60 USD almost anywhere. These batteries do not have to be special high power batteries because they are not the primary energy storage system. The gas tank still is. They just have to hold a charge to level the load on the fuel-based engine. A pair of 12 volt 100 AH batteries is adequate for that. Four are even better and are still very unlikely to harm anyone. I would rather just have to buy wires to pass a few thousand amps. It's cheaper anyway. We are even spending more money for more dangerous technologies. Thousands of dollars, and there's a mass of cadmium in there. I'd rather pay for the extra copper. Now, a ten year lifetime on a battery is nice, but 5,000 dollars versus three replacements at 120 to 240 dollars each time? I don't think so. Almost any idiot can pull four 12 volt batteries out of a car and install the new ones without having to worry about dying by touching the wrong part. We are still left with the need for a primary fuel source. Hempseed oil is the only oil I know of that can be made literally by hand, even building presses from wood. The return for the energy expended could be as much as a thousand to one. This makes it possible to use a fraction of the oil produced as energy to speed up the processing. Hempseed oil is really the only viable technology we have for primary production of usable energy. It is the only one that we could put on line next fall and have enough to make up for shortfalls in oil. We don't even have to modify the engines we use it in, just tune them for it.

Look up "vacuum pair formation."

I've been through Atlanta once on I-85, travelling south, during the breakfast rush hour, on short sleep, in October. If it had been raining I would be dead. High mileage cars are good if you don't overpay for them. It is indeed damn hard to get anywhere in a car that can't maintain 65 miles or better. The repeal of the speed limits has created a madhouse in many places. Maybe we need extreme technology for any sort of functional electric car. How do you pay for it, I want to know? I'm pushing the case for hemp oil in another discussion thread. It's a primary source of energy that does not require much energy to produce besides sunlight. We're better off taking a step back and using easy to manufacture plant-based fuels. Now, if the hybrid's primary fuel is diesel fuel we've got something. The high mileage isn't quite so badly needed when the fuels are renewable without expending fossil fuels or uranium. It's still very nice if we can get the speed and the increased range, and make better use of fuels that we can just plant and grow. I still don't think that 500 volt sources are necessary. I'd rather run several sets of wires to the motors and use motors with more poles. This is costly in copper but I don't really care. We can figure out ways to build better electric motors. To me the ideal electric hybrid setup would be one that could take any fuel imaginable and convert it to electricity. Steam engines are supposed to be much more efficient than IC engines and the batteries would let us take right off while the steam engine was warming up.

White man's definition of laziness: Failing to find work when there are a thousand applicants for every available job. I am a white man, too, more or less.

Horse manure. Bush has been running an "anything goes" support team for big oil, Halliburton's war machine, and the religious wrong for his entire presidency. The Patriot act has mostly been used to attack pornographers, for crying out loud, sending anti-terrorist resources in to deal with some fat computer nerd and a bunch of video tapes. There is no one who he influences who I have seen employ a lick of sense about anything.

Yes, any statement that says that Bush did wrong, to you, is a partisan political statement. This isn't about politics. This is about stopping the downhill slide.

The government allowed this kind of mess to happen, forced this kind of mess to happen, and by refusing aid from other countries, is still forcing it to become worse. This is a government that needs to be out of office, period, full stop, don't let the door hit them from behind on the way out, get our people home and take care of our country.

At the rate it's going, I think that sexual predators are going to be the least of their problems. It's sort of like being worried about being burned by a match when there's a forest fire coming your way.

Demothenes: Why don't YOU do some studies on that? Find out for yourself. That's what science is all about. Don't accept government fiat as the last word on things like this. Know your subject.

I disagree. Our government is currently refusing offers of aid from Canada. They could have saved numerous lives. There is the chance to save lives right now if someone will change their minds, and we need to know this right now. We also need to realize that the kind of incompetence that is killing the rest of New Orleans right now is an ongoing thing. We need to realize that it really is conservative policy and conservative ego that is doing this. They've known that those levees were broken for a very long time. They've known for a long time that this is the kind of thing that you don't let go of if you intend to protect lives. We've been letting New Orleans rot for a long time. The oil companies are doing fine and don't need the help that Bush has given them. New Orleans is dying and taking the country down a ways with it.

This is where we had better learn the true meaning of the term "emergency preparedness." It is not like storms like this are not predictable. Last year missed only by not having such an intense storm. The federal funds were allocated to fix the levee and then Bush took a lot of that and gave it to Halliburton. We've just lost the war in Iraq all over again. More people will have died than at the WTC. More of our people than died in Iraq. It was allegedly to protect American lives, although the weapons of mass destruction thing was proven to be an outright lie and Bush admits that it was somehow about oil even though he used to deny that, and a lot of people don't even think it was wrong. Saddam would have sold us oil at half price just before the invasion. We could have cheap gas and a lot of resources to help the people who need help now. We can't send in more troops because their hardware and a lot of them are over there, doing nothing of use to us. We couldn't repair the dikes because money, hardware, and manpower are over there. Some of those helicopters that we don't have here can pick up a thousand cases of bottled water at a time where it's dry and have them there in an hour or less, or pick them up in Kansas if they have to and run them down there, with refueling stops. A lot of the hardware that we sent over there can airlift bridges in. Some people want to interpret this as a political agenda, but we have a President who fraudulently sent us to war, prevented a major city from getting the repairs it needed before the inevitable storm flooded it, can't even talk (I saw him on CNN yesterday, it was embarassing), and doesn't seem to understand when he messes up. There are very few ways that he could make a worse disaster than he already is, and don't anyone give him any ideas. Never mind the politics and the "no Bush bashing" thing, we're in big trouble. The poor man needs to be put back on his farm and someone who can do his job needs to do it.

There are some kinds of accidents that simply need to be impossible. Emergencies will drive people to take risks, as if the last week hasn't taught us that. How about the risk not being death from trying to get your own car to run? The first time someone is stuck somewhere because a wire fell off and dies trying to put it back on, there will be a BIG wrongful death lawsuit. Anyway, we still need safe gas-saving vehicles. There is a problem in how so many people drive, like in rush hour traffic down in Atlanta. People shove their way in front of you when you could swear that there isn't room to slide a piece of paper in edgewise. You really feel the need to drive a tank with at least a six cylinder engine because of the way that people drive.

The fact that they use something like that is hard to believe, yes. The facts are easy to find on the net: Firefighters Wary Dodge Intrepid EX used 180 lb 300 volt battery Toyota Prius uses 500 volt system When you get into those voltages, they don't behave the same. 20 volts might kill a person but it has to be coupled very efficiently. 300 to 500 volts makes its own pathways.

That was the tail end of a paragraph that discussed a car battery whose voltage was 200 to 500 volts. In context the statement is absolutely correct. Touch one post of that battery, it is likely to cause death, quickly. This isn't just hyperbole, either. The person touching it is likely to also be touching the frame of the car and has half a chance of completing a circuit that way. This kind of battery will indeed push tens or hundreds of amperes. I didn't familiarize myself with the exact currents, but it takes thousands of watts to move a car at 100 kph. The hybrids that are out now do have DC batteries that supply those voltages. Even if mechanics were noted for extremely high brain function, they would still get killed once in a while. In fact it's the smart ones who think they can get away with touching potentially lethal things.

Yeah, like these days you can find an experienced adult who "understands" anything. It's not like our minds don't get pretty free exploration of our violent fantasies, even if at least some of this is in fiction. What is outrageous is forcing people to believe that any sort of sexuality is somehow harmful and only to be indulged in for purposes of reproduction. It is outrageous to censor information. I don't think that censorship has any real wordly use. Real information tends to clear up cloudy perceptions. Censorship muddies perceptions and is usually used as a tool to confuse and manipulate people.

Cpl. Luke: 200 to 500 volts DC is somewhat more dangerous than AC because it is harder to let go of. It is far past enough to kill someone. It is a touch hazard that can result in death from simply touching a part. It only takes a few milliamps of DC to stop a heart, or AC to induce fibrillation. There are tens to hundreds of amps available from a car's battery. Touching one post of such a battery is extremely likely to cause death. 12 volts at a million amps is normally hazardous only if that amperage heats something. It is not a shock hazard at all. Wet both hands, grasp large pieces of metal that are charged with 12 volts, and you will eventually be injured by chemical burns by electrolysis, a slow process. Even touching an active ignition coil is usually just a flinch hazard that causes cuts and bruises, usually only worth cussing at. I'm not sure how much you know about electricity. It doesn't sound like you know that much, if you can pardon me for saying so. A 200 volt source is harmless if it only has a small fraction of an amp available, but a human body will draw a huge amount of current from a high voltage source that can supply it. The higher voltage will literally burn conductive paths through the body, extremely quickly. A 12 volt source may have a huge amount of current available, but a living body will conduct very little of that current, on the order of microamps to milliamps, depending on how hard you try. It is considered safe. Anything up to 50 volts is considered not to be a shock hazard. This is why electric cars are dangerous to work on if they have high voltage DC sources, and safe to work on if they do not. There is not enough advantage to using the high voltage. 24 volt systems work just fine. If need be we can feed the voltage from several banks as long as we avoid series circuits, but 48 volts is all we should ever need to use in a car. It just isn't worth the risk to the mechanic or to someone who has to try to get their car started in the middle of nowhere. We may not be able to get around it if our cars have electro-gravitic propulsion systems. Currently this is not an issue. There is a lot that can be done to modify cars that people don't know exist. Of course, auto parts stores sell reprogrammers and diagnostic tools for the computers. As far as I know, cars still follow designs that let you change engines pretty much the same old ways. An inability to modify isn't inevitable. The example of the computer is that you have thousands of options. They just snap in and out. The inability to modify subassemblies is offset by their power and versatility. You get the highest capacities available for the money you are willing to spend, then use those capacities wisely. Mostly I was complaining about the inability to use some fuel saving technologies in any but carburetted systems, which are pretty much banned in the U.S. I believe the rumors about some carburettors that doubled gas mileage. Banning the device made those modifications impossible and we didn't benefit from that. As I understood it fuel injection has its difficulties and it gives only marginal and probably illusory improvements in categories like pollution and fuel economy. Fuel injection was once regarded as a way to dump gas into the engine quickly to improve acceleration but it was hell on fuel economy. It is also a way to make a four cylinder engine peppier, so you can get away from a stoplight before people start honking their horns at you. This also forces your engine to produce more pollution when you take off. Pollution tests are done with the engine idling. Overall fuel economy does improve, but not that much and at a price. A carburettor has inherently better fuel economy if you ask me. It improves fuel-air mixing and allows for leaner mixtures. It makes it more possible to match the load to the fuel expenditure. Unfortunately, unless it is forced, it simply won't allow enough air and fuel through for rapid acceleration with a small engine. That's why the four-barrel carburettors for small cars with racing engines. And if four cylinder engines were not fuel injected, they wouldn't be viable at all on the market. There simply would be no such thing as a van or pickup with a four cylinder engine because you couldn't get one of those up a hill or away from the stoplight. The hybrid improves fuel economy because it wastes a lot less of its energy and the gasoline engine can run at optimum fuel economy all the time. One thing they used to say about the Pogue type of carburettor was that you might get the fuel economy but you would have extremely slow acceleration. The hybrid gets the fast acceleration from stored energy and the fuel-based engine recharges the battery at its leisure. Hey, trains use a hybrid system for that reason.

Insane Alien, are you talking about a GFCI outlet? I'm not sure it's a good idea to use the "test" switch just to turn off the outlet, if that is the case.

Cpl., you've just contradicted yourself. Technology in computers has made it much easier for the consumer to make modifications to their machines. It's cheap and you can get the subassemblies anywhere. That is why I wouldn't want a 50 year old computer. I couldn't even wire up power for the monster, let alone modify it. I'm just lucky that decent monitors and decent cards are now more than two years old. I have what used to be thought of as a supercomputer that any wage-earner can afford, and can be completely overhauled with minimal use of technical skills. Technology should make things easier to repair (think subassemblies and great diagnostic equipment off the shelf), easier to use, and at least to some extent cheaper. They should also work better. If they don't, someone's screwing off. They should also be safe to work on. 200 to 500 volts DC is not safe to work on. Automobiles have been around for more than 100 years. This is a mature technology. Build it like we want to be able to use it and repair it and don't screw around, that's what I say.