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JohnF

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Everything posted by JohnF

  1. I took the OP to be about religion, not religious groups. Religion is a thing, it is an organised belief in an unproveable doctrine. Religious groups are no different to other groups; territorial groups (nations), ethnic groups, football and baseball supporters, etc. Groups quite often fall in to conflict with each other. This has always been true and will continue to be; it occurs in the animal world too. There are always going to be people who use religion to forward their own personal agenda, people that twist the ideas of a religion to suit their own purpose or use it as a reason to attack another group. Religion is an important part of the natural selection process. All past societies of a significant size have demonstrated the use of religion. Without religion societies would have remained small. Religion gives a large group of people a common goal to work towards, a common reason to obey the rules. To some extent even science can be considered a religion. A significant number of people believe science holds the answers; they have faith in science. They do not understand how or why things work but look to the scientists as the priests that can answer their questions; they have faith in the scientists. Although science can demonstrate proof of what is taught, that proof can only be demonstrated to those with the ability to understand. For those that can not understand they are left with belief in an unproveable explanation; unproveable to them that is.
  2. Religion requires faith. The ability to have faith has given us an evolutionary advantage. Because we can have faith religion is bound to occur. As long we can have faith there will be religion. Science ignores religion because religion is based on faith alone which is not observable. Religious people attacking science just don't understand that religion requires no proof and is therefore safe from attack. There is no reason for science and religion to attack each other; they have no common ground.
  3. JohnF

    Science City

    I think such a city would be a disaster for science. Science should be open and available to everyone regardless of their understanding. Scientists, engineers, inventors, theoreticians, etc. should be close to every aspect of society. Closing a community off would remove a lot of potentially good input. The observations people make in their everyday life can lead to new ideas and solutions to problems. People outside of the scientific community would begin to distrust scientists. Science should really become more open to both the non-scientific community and perhaps even within the scientific community. For all we know the answer to nuclear fusion could be held between a biochemist, a physicist and a bread maker; but they will never talk to each other.
  4. From looking at the videos I think it needs to be high speed and a low weight cam to provide vibration rather than a thump. The vibration will transfer through the post and cause the soil to become fluid allowing the post to sink.
  5. You're all forgetting something... What if as the Earth gets bigger, so do the rulers and tape measures
  6. Denmark, Koala, Apple. But then I can see a eucalyptus tree in the garden.
  7. Perhaps the photons at the very edge of the universe just keep on going and in so doing make the universe bigger. The universe stops where there is nothing. In that way we can never experience what is beyond the universe because by being there we make it part of the universe.
  8. JohnF

    No time travel

    I would say we don't 'go forward' in time; we just travel through it. Think of a ship in the ocean. The ship is the universe and the ocean is what the universe is in. We travel with the ship through the ocean. If we build something to allow us to be ahead of, or behind the ship we will be alone; no ship, no universe. I think the same will apply to 'time travel' and we would find nothing in the past or the future because the past has gone and the future has yet to occur. But since the ocean is curved, if we could turn the ship in to a submarine we could travel the same distance in less time.
  9. I don't think you could run it at 3000rpm. Don't forget that whatever force you achieve for hammering will also be applied to the axel of the cam; that force will also transfer through to the rest of the running gear. It is only by means of the physical connections of the cam to the main unit that force gets to where you want it. At 3000rpm you would have to use a very small weight which would create a vibration rather than a thump; unless that's what you want. The vibration will transfer to the post and may damage/weaken it.
  10. I think he's talking about an offset rotating cam to provide positive and negative force. The upward centripetal force is supposed to offset the weight of the machine whilst the downward part will add to the weight. This will allow the hammering/driving action to occur. He may also need to consider the forward and backward force of the cam. I think the cam in these devices is normally used to put energy in to a spring, or lift a weight, then quick release it.
  11. Doesn't that use a vacuum? I was thinking of something for a submarine.
  12. Could you reverse the process? Apply a static charge and get water to flow; a pump with no moving parts.
  13. The image I have included here may help to illustrate how a rectangular section of stone could form the axel for two wheels. With regards to the strength of wood, the Giant Sequoia can weigh as much as 1300 tons. A proportion of that will be in the root system but there will still be a significant amount of weight above ground level. The point is that the wood at ground level can clearly hold many hundreds of tons of tree above it. The compression strength of wood is very high.
  14. The idea for aircraft without landing gear is not really meant to be universal. Light aircraft would probably not see a sufficient increase in fuel efficiency to justify the cost of remote landing gear. Aircraft development of this type would probably focus on specialised cargo carriers initially, where payload is a significant factor. In this way the public would become familiar with the concept and if such an aircraft did crash and show a greatly reduced level of damage this might further increase public confidence. As far as I can see though, the principle is sound, even if the technology to implement it is not yet available. Reducing the weight that needs to be transported is always going to be beneficial; assuming it can be done safely. It may even be possible one day to dispense with carrying the fuel and have the energy transferred wirelessly to the aircraft from satellites or ground stations. Even if it was possible I think it unlikely that for the number of different units you would need at an airport to cover the types of aircraft that land there such a system would be cost effective for very occasional use. Human life has a value that can be measured in whatever currency you care to use.
  15. Don't think of the timber being attached to the side; in it's final configuration the timber construction is wrapped around the stone. Think of the timber construction as a 'wooden tyre' that could even slip over the end of the block. Since the largest of the blocks wasn't moved we can't really discuss it properly. The three smaller ones were moved though so apply the same method to those. The advantages of the 'wooden tyre' are that you only need construct two of them. Once you have moved one block of stone they can be removed for use with another block of stone. Once you have got the whole thing moving you will require much less energy to keep it going; all you need do is equal the opposing forces of friction and gravity. The initial roll off would be easier too as you only need to move the centre of gravity past the pivot point; for an elliptical wheel once past this point it would roll on a little under it's own weight; you then just keep it rolling. You could coil ropes around the stone between these wheels without any difficulty. This would then provide the first part of a pulley; For every 2 feet you pull the rope the stone block would move one foot. It also means you would only have to prepare two narrower paths for transport; perhaps about 8 feet wide. Moving the stones from the quarry to where the wheels would be fitted might have been done by sliding them on gravel. All loose particles act like a fluid under the right conditions so the stones would have been 'floated' out of the quarry. This may not be the method used but a method was used; the stones were moved.
  16. They wouldn't make the stone with any curve; just make them as they are seen as blocks. The curve on each side is added in the form of planks. They would attach to one face first then push the block over on to it so that it kind of rocked. Then they would attach to the three other faces. The planks wouldn't even need to run the whole length of the block. They could just create a curved surround for it at either end in effect making elliptical wheels with the block of stone as the axel. The holes you mention may be fixing points for the planks that build up the elliptical profile. As for the logs underneath; not part of my solution. You are mixing two solutions here; the one I propose and the one proposed by Sisyphus.
  17. They probably did it from the inside of the building. The pillars and the building wall could have been built in unison. I do find it strange though that extra-terrestrial involvement is quite often called for simply because an ingenious building method is not understood.
  18. JohnF

    1 - 1 = 0.999

    Could the counting to 20 be based on English currency? There were 20 shillings to the pound until 1971. With 12 pennies to the shilling that would also give a reason for starting the teens at ten three. The French have unique names for numbers up to 16 then they adopt a logical approach from there, ten seven, ten eight, ten nine but in French. Maybe that is related to weight or some other frequently used system.
  19. This was shown on UK TV last night I think. It made me wonder if the prisons fall within a restricted zone too; that would create a sentencing paradox. I expect the prisons are miles away from anywhere though. In the UK most prisons are quite close to where people live.
  20. JohnF

    1 - 1 = 0.999

    I think an embarrassing problem some British people face is asking for a cigarette in the US. In Britain a cigarette is quite often called a fag We are slowly converging the British version of English with the US version. Perhaps if we renamed it from English more people would take it up as their preferred language. I would like to see the US put the 'u' back in color though. Any suggestions for a new name for English? I vote for Earthlish or more seriously, Terran
  21. How about space. If a house fly had a system of measurement like ours then... The sun would be 28,346,400,000 house fly miles away. And 93,000,000 house fly miles would be about 305,118 of our miles. I wonder how big space really is. Is there something out there that considers the Universe to be about a couple of feet from one side to the other Calculations are based on a human of 6 foot tall compared to a house fly of 6 mm long being the inventors of each measurement system.
  22. JohnF

    1 - 1 = 0.999

    Well it does if you are talking billions Ridiculous isn't it how One Billion minus One Billion can equal 0.999 Billion, but it's true. How did we end up in such a situation? In fact I think both long and short formats are wrong and they shouldn't have a new name until the current one needs to be used again. So a hundred hundred is a thousand, a thousand thousand is a million, a million million is a billion, a billion billion is a trillion and so on.
  23. Sapphire and Steele was an excellent show. Anyone remember it?
  24. If you have a look around there are plenty of examples of equipment that fulfills the more specific needs of such a suit and from what I remember it was just these specific requirements that were catered for All that he did then was interface the control of this equipment to a computer and software that managed the communication and synchronised the equipment. I think what you're after is Neo's chair from The Matrix. You'll certainly need a feeding mechanism in your suit though from the amount of time you want to spend there.
  25. The difficulty you face with this is joining the two forces together. You are more likely to find the force from the spring and the forward force from your muscle will work independantly of each other. But since the pulling back part of storing energy in the spring is greater than a forward punch you could just accept the use of stored energy in the spring. This means you just pull back and hold until ready to release. When you release you allow the spring to do all the work rather than trying to help it. When I shoot an arrow from a bow I can store far more energy in the bow during the draw than the energy I could provide in throwing the arrow. So I let the bow provide all the energy. What makes this so efficient is that the energy release is very fast.
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