swansont

Most poll questions are, but that doesn't mean that it's the only way to formulate the question, nor does it guarantee that asking it in a different way won't give you different results. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is a straightforward question. But it's not a yes or no question.

What? I thought the first amendment was "article the third," and the "defective" part was "article the first." You appear to be using the terminology inconsistently. The amendments are the ones that were adopted in some discussions, but they are the proposed amendments in others. I also don't understand this part of your post on TownHall/DailyKos: But the transcript says: Note: The following text is a transcription of the first ten amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the "Bill of Rights." What's "inexplicable" about that? It clearly explains what is included in the transcript: the Bill of Rights. The measures not ratified were not transcribed.

I think Pangloss pointed out one problem is another thread — you damage the economy if this happens too drastically, too quickly. The transition to more fuel-efficient cars will take time. It's also unpopular, so you'd need politicians with spines, and they are in short supply. You could further mitigate the regressive nature of it if the proceeds were used to subsidize public transportation, and you could also subsidize clean energy systems and high-efficiency autos while production ramps up, to make them cost-competitive now rather than later. But we're there already, so the idea of a gas-price floor is interesting. What surprises me is there's leverage here with "oil money finances terrorism" that isn't being used. Why is congress futzing around with a one- or two-year extension on solar power, when it could be played up as a replacement for oil, bolstering development of a decent electric car? (could it be that oil money finances a lot of politicians?)

What's the example? You've also got the "dropout" option. Those are the two common behaviors. edit: the "school" square is for someone claiming (false) authority based on their extensive background. Hence the listing of their schools and degrees.

Normal supply and demand dynamics assumes a free market. Having a cartel as a major player kinda ruins that.

When you don't have a workshop, you take what you can get.

tsolkas suspended for one week for continued trolling; violations of rule 2.8: posting essentially duplicate messages without engaging in discussion of the original topic.

All of the papers you have mentioned that have the fractions in them discuss the fractional Hall effect. Not baryon and meson structure. Outside of that context, they are not Jain fractions, etc., they are just fractions. Why the mass increase is A/(A+1) when you add a proton or neutron has already been discussed. I can remove a proton, neutron or alpha, or even split a nucleus into pieces, which is support for standard physics. Does CLF predict and explain why some fractions in a particular element are stable, or explain why some isotopes are more abundant than others?

Excuse me while I whip this out

Electrons can collide with other electrons or they can collide with the atoms in the metal. Collisions cause accelerations, and anytime charges accelerate they radiate energy, and energy given up to the atoms (ions) shows up physically as increased vibration, and manifests itself as an increase in temperature, which (going back to the radiation again) is a loss of energy.

Accelerating electrons, like in a discharge tube, to impinge on the atoms will do a pretty good job, as long as you have the right pressure. Large enough for there to be targets to hit, but small enough you can get a current to flow.

You guys couldn't have waited until tomorrow, could you. <sigh> Anyway. Overkill? NO SUCH THING ! Go with the trebuchet.

No, it's not. If you have a hot cathode, you "boil" off electrons and accelerate them, and once they have KE > the ionization energy, they can strike an atom and ionize it (or possibly excite it with less energy) and you get a cascading effect, and the recombination results in emitted light. Neon lights are probably cold-cathode, though. You can get surface ionization, possibly assisted from the field, of a coating on the cathode, and this gives you the electrons that cause ionization. And/or you put in some other gas with a lower ionization potential to help get things started. Also, the material on the cathode can be a material that gives off secondary electrons, like in a photomultiplier. And thermal collisions between atoms can give you the occasional ionization, which will act as a seed for the cascade once you turn the voltage on.

I don't do this sort of stuff, so this is a bit of guesswork; if we think classically for a moment, the electron and proton are separated by about .529 nm, and we have a 13.6 V potential difference, which is a field of 2.57e8 V/cm that you must overcome. I see numbers in various articles for field ionization of 1e7 - 1e8 V/cm for heavier atoms where (again classically) you'd have a larger separation of the electron and screening. So that's probably in the ballpark. Such large fields are often generated with intense lasers rather than a capacitor-type configuration. Some applications use a surface with a large work function to get you part of the way there, so that in the presence of the external field you can get surface ionization. edit: Ha! "Field ionization of hydrogen occurs at approximately 250 MV/cm" so my little calculation was right! http://www.archive.org/stream/encyclopedicdict017808mbp/encyclopedicdict017808mbp_djvu.txt

Of course, certain filters need to be on the front of the telescope so you can align it without going, "Auugghh!" A colleague had a scope out recently and we saw sunspots, and then he redirected it and we saw Venus. It was just a bright dot, but I'd never seen it at lunchtime before.

And that's why references to scientific papers are desired. As it stands, there is nothing here to separate it from a whole pile of crackpot garbage. A fantastic claim with no evidence or scientific support, just a nebulous explanation.

This thread isn't an analysis of their work, it's an exploration of yours. You are claiming a relevance over all systems, not just the fractional Hall effect. It would appear that you can make any piece of data fit, which basically makes it useless as a scientific model or tool. It's not falsifiable.

If someone sends me a "friend" request and I accept, am I obligated to help him move?

I'm not sure that LENR-CANR passes as peer-review in the normal sense of the term. While there are a number of experiments that have detected "something," it's reproducing these experiments that seems to be the problem. That's a big hurdle one must overcome to be mainstream.

That's talking about a superconducting transition in a solid. Bose-Einstein Condensates, as the term is normally understood, are formed from a gas. I was under the impression that superconductivity was a Fermionic state (BCS theory). Even if there is a Bose-Einstein description, it's a poor use of the jargon — we're not talking about the same thing.

Then you should have no trouble coming up with some legitimate references.

Sorry, but wikipedia is not an acceptable substitute. Ions in a BEC? How would one do that with the repulsive forces present?

So you just find the nearest fraction that works? And since any two numbers can be expressed as a fraction, you will always be able to find a fraction, even if the numbers end up being wrong. Completely ad-hoc.

I read the quote. I understand the quote. The quote is irrelevant. 435 is arbitrary, and the statement not a strawman, only if there was no reasoning presented in support of the limit. Was Rep Lozier the only member of congress who stood up to debate the measure? It's a strawman because the statement "If 435 was thought to be the appropriate size when the population was 91 million (per the 1910 census), should it be increased to reflect the fact that the total population has since more than tripled?" implies that the decision was based on population size. Where is your evidence that it was? I can easily believe it was based on logistics of government, for various reasons brought up in this thread. That the congressional members felt that 435 was big enough, and more representatives would be detrimental. IOW, why did the measure pass? What were the arguments in favor of it? All you've presented is one dissenting view. The Constitution says "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand" which means that Congress gets to set the rules on how to enumerate representatives. There is nothing unconstitutional about capping the number. —— The point of all this? I think the appeals to the past — the article that was never added, the objection of a representative — weaken the argument. There are plenty of old ideas that don't fit today, and plenty of situations the founding fathers did not foresee. That's why we have amendments to the Constitution. Give me an honest assessment of how this will make government better . Right now it just seems like an appeal to nostalgia.

We need references to the original claims in order to evaluate it. Links to vague summaries on websites and in popular magazines don't help so much. Your second link makes it clear that this is a Podkletnov experiment, and nothing to do with BECs.