imatfaal
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Posts posted by imatfaal
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miketempleton has been banned as a sockpuppet of mpc755
edit
as has blueskynile
Note: all the following have also been banned as other sockpuppets in the past. We hope he/she loses interest in spamming us with crackpottery soon
mpc7555
mpc866
gravitational-aether
incompressible.fluid
milkywayhalo
deformationcontinuousmedia
s_luke52
leia
incompressible-fluid
delayed-choice
max_planck
liquidspacetimes
smithjohn52
johncave
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Once again, they are beyond parody.
To be honest proposals for new laws like the above make me think for a second (but only for a second) that maybe owning a firearm to protect myself and my family from the government isn't such a bad idea. Then I come back down to earth and realise what a wingnut plan that is - and how glad I am that I do not have to suffer the liberties of the land of the free
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Moderator Note
Hijack regarding real vs ideal nature of spheres split off to new thread
Fred Champion - from memory you have been asked before not to interrupt threads with your own speculations and new ideas; instead open a new thread (you can include a link to the old thread that prompted your branch in the OP. Do NOT just go off at a tangent and post new ideas and supposition
No need to respond to this modnote - report if you think it is unfair
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I have committed the sin of leaving my last book half-finished.
Instead I read The Quantum Universe, revised 2nd ed. by Tony Hey & Patrick Walters which is a neat primer on quantum mechanics.
And I read Egg, by Richard Burton, which is a children's book with marvelous photographs of various species in the act of hatching.
I currently read Molecules, by Peter Atkins, which is a collection of descriptions of various molecules, where they are found in nature, what they usually react with, and their products.
I cannot remember which was the first book I left half finished - but doing so was immensely liberating and has cut down on me spending too much time reading tripe in the mad hope that it will get better.
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This moderator is interrupting a conversation with another moderator. Why not let the moderator knowledgeable on the subject and in the middle of this discussion make that decision.
This question was raised in a report - and it is a valid question which might as well be answered here.
The staff avoid moderating conversations in which they are already involved at a substantive level - this is an attempt to avoid any bias or perception of bias. It is the division of procedural from the substantive - we are very strict about this in the main fora and slightly more relaxed in Speculations. But even in Speculations we try to avoid moderating threads in which we have been personally involved if at all possible
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I wonder if they are large scale wind breaks. It is the sort of thing that the mad collectivisors might write large across even a huge land mass - would actually be an all right idea compared to some of their other deadly brainwaves. Fields work better with hedgerows - so don't waste space by having lots of little hedgerows have three big ones every hundred miles or so
btw you can street view the third one. There seems no elevation at all
I think they are very old defensive forest lines like the Zaoksk Zaseka Line
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"White Lies" was okay, but then I watched some of "Across The Tracks" and disliked the hackneyed bad boy image.
He is a real stereotype - and know what you mean. But that was 1983 and maybe it was a little fresher then.
ie he was doing his bad boy of rock stuff with Bruce Springstein, Neil Young etc before most of the bad boy rockers had picked up their first plastic guitar
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My bad. imatfaal posted an artist, but I thought it was a song.
Grizzly Bear is good though. "Southern Point"
Grin were going before I was born - so I can understand you not knowing them. But Nils is still playing solo (will try and see him in the Cadogan Hall again in October), with the E Street Band, and with special projects; he is a bit of a maestro on the guitar. Not the best voice in the world but a consumate instrumentalist - the acoustic version of Keith Don't Go is worth listening to
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Bloody hell. Are you me? My thoughts precisely.
Edit: realized that we probably have discussed these authors at one point or another. But yeah, those were my absolute favorites and I was glad finding China Mievielle, but have not found another "go-to" author. Due to time constraints I have gotten more picky in the books that I get, since I really want to enjoy that time that I got...
I got myself in the trap of not having enough time to read what I wanted a few years back - the kindle cured that. Always having a book to hand meant that 5 minute gaps became reading opportunities. I buy books on kindle at a silly rate and read a fair percentage - I also do not worry about abandoning half way through if it just isn't doing it for me. I use audible as well so that exercise time and travel time is also reading time
I presume you have "done" William Gibson - his early stuff is just revolutionary.
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I wished he had written more books. But then, maybe if he did I wished he didn't. Also now that Terry Pratchett died, my list of living favorite authors are getting slashed heavily....
Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett - two of my absolute favourites gone far too early; and of course Douglas Adams all those years ago
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Hi I'm Don I work in education.
Good user name Don. Writing on page which goes left to right and then right to left like ploughing oxen - learnt that on holiday in Crete many moons ago. On the mad chance you learnt of it in the same place - did you know that they have recently decyphered the Codex of Phaistos; the spiral clay tablet?
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Why is a contradiction a deal breaker, are there no explainable contradictions observed to still be logically sound, for reasonable comparison? Sorry, if its a dumb question, or too off topic.
It is a good question.
First it must be understood that this is refering to a full contradiction - not merely a situation in which previously seemingly contradictory events have occured. A vindaloo taken from a fridge could be both hot and cold - but that is merely linguistic silliness; I am sure you can think of other examples in which 'contradiciton' could be used sensibly in many areas.
But we are looking at the contradiction that A both is and isn't - ie that A no longer is A.
Our basic logic framework tells us that any sentence that says that A is equal to not A is inherently false. One of the reasons we do this is from the position that A equals not A we can prove anything we like. Any set of axiomata and logical progression that reaches an inescapable logical contradiction must be flawed
This is a formal discussion on the matter
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contradiction/
Most of the above thread is based on Western - Aristolean logic. Some Eastern philosophies embrace contradiction (this has lead to their spurious and erroneous grasping of the pop-science of quantum theory) - but in my opinion this changes their philosophy to more approximate poetry and clever language usage. The logical power of an argument based on agreed assumptions and steady non-controversial steps is lost if you do not have the law of non-contradiction.
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Reading China Miéville's the City & the City. A crazy setting with two cities existing unseen around one another.
Do some digging and find there's a whole area within my own city I didn't know about... What the?
I live in London and Un Lun Dun is quite believable - I love China Mieville esecially embassytown and the iron council series. I hope you are just starting reading him cos then you have a great few books ahead of you.
Comments on Moderation
in Suggestions, Comments and Support
We have been asked why a post was trash-canned. The post immediately followed my request that we should get back on the topic and move away from discussing reaction-less drives; the post which was trash-canned was on reaction-less drives.
Ongoing topics have a central theme which may vary organically over time but sudden sideways branches are considered hijacks - even if this branch is started by the OP. One Speculations thread per topic otherwise we will never get answers given to the important questions raised in this forum. These are not blogs nor public streams of consciousness - there is a need for academic discipline.
And raising questions of dogmatism and lack of imagination is just poor form - the post would have been trashed if the physics had been well established; it is taking the mickey to immediately write a post on X immediately after being asked to no longer post on X.