Bill Angel

No one is to blame but Dylann.

Dylann Roof walked into a church, was welcomed by the participants of a bible reading group, sat an listened to the meeting for a period of time, and then point blank gunned them down in cold blood. No number of confederate battle flags or civil war memorials made Dylann incapable of understanding cold blooded murder is wrong.

 

No one is to blame but Dylann.

 

 

I agree, and I don't believe that the Confederate battle flag ever stood for the type of action that he took. It would have been more appropriate for him to have posed holding a Nazi swastika or Nazi SS banner than a flag of the Confederate military.

An excellent book that I just finished reading is

 

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos

http://www.polaroidland.net/the-book/

 

Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, was a role model for Steve Jobs, and the author develops a picture of Edwin Land that illustrates some of the similarities in how Land and Jobs ran their respective companies and promoted their products. The book isn't just about personalities however. The author makes an effort to explain to a general audience how the different systems for instant photography that Polaroid developed worked, as well as each of the systems' strengths and weaknesses.

Since copper and nickel are fairly similar the eutectic mixture will contain very little nickel.

It won't show up on a diagram that includes the whole 0 to 100 % range of Ni.

the fact remains that the addition of a small quantity of nickel to copper will lower the mp.

In a few cases, the melting point of the alloy can be worked out approximately by arithmetic. For instance, if copper (melting point 1,083C) is alloyed with nickel (melting point 1,454C) a fifty-fifty alloy will melt at about halfway between the two temperatures. Even in this case the behaviour of the alloy on melting is not simple. A copper-nickel alloy does not melt or freeze at one fixed and definite temperature, but progressively solidifies over a range of temperature. Thus, if a fifty-fifty copper-nickel alloy is liquefied and then gradually cooled, it starts freezing at 1,312C, and as the temperature falls, more and more of the alloy becomes solid until finally at 1,248C it has completely solidified. Except in certain special cases this 'freezing range' occurs in all alloys, but it is not found in pure metals, metallic, or chemical compounds, and in some special alloy compositions, all of which melt and freeze at one definite temperature.

See http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/ess3/alex2.htm

The melting point of copper is apparently RAISED by adding nickel to it.

This young woman is learning to solder at the National Electronics Museum near Baltimore. Perhaps a soldering expert can identify what kind of soldering iron she is using.

Interesting exposition about whether it is meaningful in physics to talk about particles possessing negative mass : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

In my opinion the 'theories' that Acme posted are not pseudo-sciences, but failed scientific theories.

They were 'established' using methodology which has since been shown to be invalid or used incomplete information/data.

They are equivalent to the pre-Rutheford, raisin-pudding model of the atom, the Ptolomaic solar system, the aether, etc.

The fact that some people have developed a cultish belief system around them is just sad.

Research into "Cold Fusion" has been termed by some to be an example of "pathologic science".

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

My understanding is that scientists can use supercomputers to successfully simulate the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. A bomb like that is a complex system in which quantum effects play an important role.

An excellent biography of Joseph Stalin is "Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Montefiore

The book discusses the brutal rivalries and corrupt activities that existed in Stalin's government/entourage.

And according to one observer:

Putin's level of control of the Russian state is comparable to that which Josef Stalin held until his death in 1953. It is no wonder Putin has made efforts to rehabilitate him [stalin] to a respectable figure, not a murderous and paranoid dictator.

See The Secret Speech and Putins Cult of Personality

He had legitimate grievance against Kuwait, and had been manipulated into thinking the US would stand aside or even support him - he was, after all, the most Westernized power in the Islamic world, and an enemy of Iran, and had been installed with the help of the CIA originally, and was easily convinced the US looked on him with favor; whereas Kuwait was a backwards Islamic thugocracy running on oil where women had no rights. Here: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/april.html

 

This was all common knowledge by 2003.

 

One part of the transcript that you cited was particularly interesting:

Journalist 1 - Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador?(Ambassador Glaspie does not respond)

 

Journalist 2 - You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn't warn him not to. You didn't tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite - that America was not associated with Kuwait.

 

Journalist 1 - You encouraged this aggression - his invasi on. What were you thinking?

 

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.

The transcript makes it sound as if the US Government thought that Saddam could be appeased in much the same way that Western European powers thought that Hitler could be appeased before war was actually declared when he invaded Poland.

I have just watched an excerpt from Al Azhar University speech by Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh Al Sisi. You can feel some "novelty" in what he says - instead of usual shifting of responsibility and blaming everything on America, he recognized that something is wrong with Islam. He did this in a very subtle way, yet his message is clear. If he was just a normal Egyptian and not a president with the military on his side, he would be put to jail for blasphemy.

 

Just watch, it's short and powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEhNarfrlec

 

He won't be put in jail for blasphemy, but he will likely end up on the same "hit list" that Anwar Sadat was put on. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Anwar_Sadat

Sorry, "misconception of greater significance"? That implies there was a misconception involved in getting us involved in WWII. That Japan attacked the US and was allied with Germany and Italy was not a matter of intelligence gained under duress. It was clearly and openly available information.

By "misconception of greater significance" I was referring to two misconceptions that served as the basis for invading Iraq: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he had links or an alliance with Al Qaeda. I would rate the second misconception to be of greater significance than the first (possession of WMDs). Others might disagree.

Germany was already a democracy before Hitler. And the false pretense for declaring war on Germany was what, exactly?

The USA declared war on Germany because the USA was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and Germany was an ally of Japan. I think that the misconception of greater significance that propelled the USA into the war with Iraq was that Iraq was an ally of Al Qaeda, which had attacked the USA on 9/11.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations_timeline

What about the delusion that you can invade a country on false pretenses, expect to be hailed as liberators, set up a democracy, have it work from the outset, and be out in just a couple of years? That level of delusion?

The Allies destroyed Nazi Germany, set up a democracy in West Germany, and that country didn't descend into chaos the way Iraq did.

Historically most marriages were arranged by parents. This idea of people marrying for "love" is a recent development in human history.

It's also being argued that Mexican drug cartels rank as organizations equal in barbarity to ISIL(ISIS), and the focus on ISIS is the result of Islamophobia. But I haven't seen any fact checking either supporting or refuting this analyst's assertions.

See http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/isil-vs-mexican-drugcartelsunitedstatesislamophobia.html

ISIS has been getting away with a horrendous murder rampage across Syria and Iraq, but now they went too far burning the Jordanian pilot alive. Beheading is tame in comparison. Jordan is reacting saying they will revenge this murder.

 

That ISIS video showing the death by burning of a Jordanian fighter pilot could be considered an example of "sadistic pornography".

I'd like to hear your thought about this. I guess it is the fact that the insect is flying that causes the charge. But then how does a plant, or even a spider's web ( http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/2812/20130705/spider-webs-react-electrically-charged-insects-increasing-capture-chances-video.htm ) become charged negatively, and emits (from where?) its electrical field?

The discussion about spider's webs is interesting, as is the assertion that " rapid thread deformation [of the web due to insect's electrical charge] enhances the likelihood of physical contact, and thus of prey capture."

But I'm skeptical about the paper's conclusion, that the effect has an impact on prey capture rates.

The flight path of insects like flies is highly erratic. They don't have to be attracted to a sticky surface or thread, or have the thread deform, to get trapped by it. I have had a problem with fly infestations in my bedroom, and a couple of strips of sticky long flypaper suspended from the ceiling are VERY effective in clearing the room of these insects. The reason is that these flies are executing a three dimensional random walk all over the room, and with time will encounter these long sticky strips, even though these strips' areas (their collision cross sections, i.e. their length times their width) is miniscule compared to the total volume of the room.

Carl Jung in his essay After the Catastrophe (1945) discusses the situation of the Germans and the Nazi phenomenon.

A couple of observations from Jung could be relevant to the soldiers' artistic work documented in the article from the National Geographic (see link in previous post):

 

"...the tide that rose in the unconscious after the first World War was reflected in individual dreams [of my German patients], in the form of... mythological symbols which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty: in short, all the powers of darkness."

 

"I was able to... observe how the uprush of dark forces deployed itself in the individual test-tube. I could watch these forces as they broke through the individual's moral and intellectual self-control, and as they flooded his conscious world."

A quote from Carl Jung on the subject of "masks":

 

The persona, for Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world"a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual".

 

One wonders what Jung would have thought about the masks created by these veterans, as their intent in creating them was to reveal, rather than to conceal, aspects of their true nature as individuals.

 

See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/veterans-art-therapy_n_6526040.html

I don't think that there is a uncontroversial standard for being good at physics and mathematics. The people called "string theorists" would consider themselves good at physics and mathematics. And while it could be conceded that they are clever in the way that they use mathematics, physicists such as Laurence Krauss don't consider their work to be of value in terms of being relevant to the important issues in physics, because their predictions can't be verified or refuted by measurements or experiments.

Most custom fitted hearing aids are now fabricated using 3D printing.

See https://audicus.com/3d-print-your-future-digital-hearing-aids/

Here is another good application of 3D printing:Custom 3d printed orthotic insoles. http://www.sols.com

I had a custom set made the old fashioned way. This kind of product can improve the comfort of wearing shoes for many people. It did for me.

There is the argument that the "wicked" satire of Charlie Hebdo was RACIST against Arabs and/or Muslims. It is comparable to white people using the N word.

 

As for satire, I grew up reading "Mad Magazine" which is critical of everyone.

Some of organizations whose activities and exhibits interest me, such as local art museums, post to Facebook, as do several companies whose software applications I utilize. Facebook's personal social networking feature is for me of secondary importance.