dimreepr

Indeed the army flew itself through Pakistan. I think you'll find the army a critical element of that equation.

And yet no war was declared on Pakistan.

You do understand that an army killed bin Laden? We didn't send the girl scouts.

As I understand it he was killed in an operation led by the Central Intelligence Agency; they didn’t just march an army through Pakistan.

I mind who wins. Al Qaeda is an enemy of civilization and only the dismantling of civilization could appease it. If you don't consider al Qaeda an enemy then you don't know an enemy when you see or hear one. And, I'm sorry, but Americans aren't willing to surrender their country to make nice. They have every reason to be afraid.

You can’t fight a terrorist with an army you fight them with intelligence OBL is testament to that.

Using bullets instead of bread only ensures you have more enemies in the next generation as well as the few you have in this one.

It’s certainly a promising line of inquiry (interesting read +1) and without doubt facial symmetry in attractiveness has been well

established and is probably innate in a number of higher life forms. A caveat, though, does it explain all that we find beautiful? There are many famous examples of asymmetric art also landscapes and music. Does this further appreciation stem purely from our culture or language and can this also be found in our furry friends?

For energy transmission lasers are a possibility, as for the space tube idea; how heavy do you think the pressurised tube would be? A space elevator is far more likely I think.

Edit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/solarpower/7060015/Lasers-to-beam-energy-to-Earth-from-space.html

I think this by N K Humphries in his lecture ‘The illusion of beauty’ goes someway to answer that point.

 

If I give a hungry dog a solution of saccharine it will lap it up; if I show a cock robin a bundle of feathers with a red patch on its underside the robin will attack it; and if I show a man an abstract painting or play him a piece of music ne will, if he thinks it beautiful, stop to watch or listen. In each we have an animal performing a useful and relevant piece of behaviour towards an inappropriate sensory stimulus. But there is, I agree, a rather basic difference, namely that in the first two cases we have a good scientific explanation of what is going on, while in the third case we’re almost ignorant. With the saccharine and the red-breasted bundle of feathers we know what the artificial, illusory, stimulus corresponds to in nature and we know the dogs or the robin’s behaviour would in normal circumstances contribute to its biological survival.

 

 

One of the central problems of aesthetics has always been that, in man at least, there is no clear consensus. The point was forcefully made by Maureen Duffy in her review of Jane Goodall’s book ‘In the shadow of man’. Jane Goodall had written “But what if a chimpanzee wept tears when he

heard Bach thundering from a cathedral organ?”, to which Miss Duffy replied “what indeed if an Amazon pigmy or a 19^th century factory hand wept tears at such a minority western cultural phenomenon?”.

 

The more I find to read about human perception of aesthetics the more I find it inextricably linked to our cultural influences, driven in part by the critics. This leads me to wonder if this appreciation is

part of natural human sociability, then maybe it’s even more inextricably linked to language. Possibly the complexity of the language is tied to the strength of the phenomena?

Beauty has always been recognised as a subjective experience and that subjectivity is determined through circumstance, both external and internal, and has always been examined. But that’s not really the question here; it’s more, do animals share our aesthetic appreciation?

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9YPAeCcbkVcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA21&dq=animal+studies+of+aesthetic+appreciation&ots=57sPpOptE8&sig=pmivHs4bSIzW5HQVvwNVa6PKvso#v=onepage&q&f=false

Not only is it unlikely that there has been direct selection for these capacities, but they also share with reading and writing the status of being supported by cognitive capacities that probably evolved for other reasons. Consistent with their being capacities that require considerable training and cultural support to develop, there is wide individual and cultural variability in artistic phenomena. Yet despite this cultural boundedness and a fundamental break with biology, there is surprising species universality as well. Even though artistic expression does not “come naturally”, as does language and much social behavior, it is essentially culturally universal in some form or other.

This suggests it’s not an obvious question.

And if the thread was was about graphene then that would be relevant.

Yup my bad, externet’s post only exaggerates my mistake, and subsequent irrelevant arguments, apologies Abhay.K.

This, for me, gives rise to a fundamental question; are we the only species that can appreciate the beauty of the world around us? Does the appreciation of art/aesthetics stem from intelligence or is it innate in higher life forms?

The most extreme weather events, Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are heat driven not wind driven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huricane

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/hurricanes/

I don’t have any direct experience but essentially all you need to create a rainbow is a light source and droplets of water. As for using flames, as a light source, it would depend on what you’re burning, I think the rainbow would skew towards the predominant wavelengths of the material being burnt. The lecture is worth a good look though, it goes into great depth and details all the conditions and types of rainbow, I have recognised aspects of, and different types of, rainbows which I mostly missed prior to watching.

This is very informative on the subject.

The real question, is not are we part of a computer simulation, is more why bother to make a simulation that has the potential to discover such a simulation?

My lineage is far more difficult to trace, though no doubt, given my dark complexion, has a link to an Iberian ancestry that has nothing to do with what I think of as my English roots. How much of what I think of as my ancestry is truly English? What can any of us say, has a truly ethnic origin?

This "Graphite in the form of graphene has lots of potential in this area."

only makes slightly more sense than saying that graphite in the form of diamond has potential for making jewellery.

Agreed, graphite = graphene is as semantic as saying graphite = diamond, but as you say, makes slightly more sense; it was nevertheless a very bad start to this thread. Even so it doesn’t change the potential of graphene.

There's a lot of wishful thinking here. Now I know why US researchers are so hyperbolic when communicating results to the public, and newspapers so uncritical: it's because some readers believe them.

 

Graphite is not graphene, graphene is not graphite. Whether you have a single uninterrupted atomic layer or a disordered bunch makes the whole huge difference.

 

Conductivity is not the ability to conduct a significant current.

 

Depositing an ink that contains graphene does not make one sheet of graphene.

 

The demo with alleged "nanotube thread" shows the same mechanical and electrical properties as graphite fibre.

 

==========================================

 

Some more upstream data sources about what Rice University achieved:

http://news.rice.edu/2013/01/10/new-nanotech-fiber-robust-handling-shocking-performance-2/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6116/182.abstract

some hype less than in general newspapers, but still a bit...

 

10 times more electrically conductive than graphite - which is much worse than a metal.

No single figure about mechanical strength, so bad figures would be a reasonable assumption.

"Graphite fibres are brittle but our nanotube fibre can be bent" => A graphite fibre bends very well because it's thin too.

 

Then you can add all the inaccuracies added by newspapers, like Teijin being an Israeli company...

 

The researchers have improved the process to make a thread out of nanotubes. This is a nice result, and the thread they chose to show looks good. Gratulations.

Everything else is hype.

 

I should like to exhort you to use caution when reading such reports, even in peer-reviewed science papers.

Authors write purposely "graphene conducts well and we've printed with an ink that contains it" but it is your duty not to understand "we've printed a good conductor".

Authors write purposely "nanotubes are strong and we've made threads of it" but you reader shall not understand "we've made strong threads".

In suggesting that this technology has very exciting potential is not hyperbole, given that my links are to Manchester University; the home of graphene and a Nobel Prize, in its research, for Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov. I think it’s perhaps you that’s suggesting litotes as to its potential. Also please extend me the same courtesy that I did you and answer me directly, rather than a mixed answer that neither fully answers me or ‘Mr Monkeybat’ appropriately.

Graphite is not graphene.

Graphite is not graphene but graphene is graphite

“Graphite, the well known 3-dimensional carbon allotrope found in our pencils, is nothing more

than a stack of several graphene planes.”

 

Have you seen any significant current conducted in graphene?

 

I have no links with its research; I have, though, seen significant current through graphite.

In the spark erosion machines I once sold, up to 400 amps were used through anodes made of graphite.

 

Incidentally, nobody can produce a printed circuit from graphene.

 

Nor can nanotubes make a rope.

 

Sorry, this is not technology presently. Some day maybe, or maybe not. The uses will probably be ones we don't imagine, and I'd say: not to replace metals.

 

 

This technology is very much in its infancy, however the following,

“Already, Manchester scientists have demonstrated flexible graphene touch-screens,

graphene-based composite materials, graphene smart-windows, ultra-fast graphene

transistors, etc...”

Is why I suggested it had very exciting potential.

As for conductors, graphite is too bad. Use a metal.

Think again

http://www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk/story/properties/

"Firstly, graphene is great conductor; electrons are able to flow through graphene more easily than through even copper. The electrons travel through the graphene sheet as if they carry no mass, as fast as just one hundredth that of the speed of light."

No matter how good the chemical conductor be and easy to trace as with a pencil; circuits the way you envision are just the paths between components.

Components are not meant to be just touching the graphite or other traces, but to bond intimately to them, and as they use metallic leads; securing a reliable connection would be a nightmare.

 

Forget it !

 

In early nineties, I serviced an experimental? PCJr. ? by IBM that had its plastic cabinet internal surfaces painted/sputtered with copper and that paint etched with the components soldered onto it. So there was no fiberglass board; the PC cabinet was the board.

 

Seems it did not provide much for the future as never saw that method used again.

In terms of the OP I have to agree ‘forget it’ drawing a circuit board with a pencil, given the complexity of today’s technology and what you've outlined, it's a non-starter; however, the potential of graphene is very exciting.

i thought an idea

graphite is a conductor of electricity .....how about making a circuit by drawing with a graphite pencil

Graphite in the form of graphene has lots of potential in

this area.

I charge thee ‘(insert name) the troll’ with a quest, go forth and search the world both real and virtual, find one other soul who

actually gives a (insert expletive).

dimreepr,

 

i do not disagree, but one can be "secular" and still require the belief in a supreme being, as the Freemasons do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry#Membership_and_religion

 

Skimming through their principles and such, they seemed to align rather well with the secular humanist agenda, except for requiring the belief in some form of supreme being, (which belief in humanity is akin to) and the separation of lodges into men only and women only divisions.

 

If the dollars were backed only by those who had no principles, they would be worthless.

 

Regards, TAR2

The notes aren’t backed by the masons, whatever symbolism is on the currency.

ydoaPs,

 

Good question. Maybe there was some implied backing that had to be spelled out during the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. Raises into question what that spooky eye above the pyramid is suppose to signify. Perhaps what ever values and authority the Mesons thought was backing up the currency, had to be spelled out. I don't know. But it still leaves a question, as to the enduring value of the note, if some enduring promise is not implied, or spelled out.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Masons

The promise is implicit; it may not be spelled out, as in

the British notes but the promise to pay the bearer the face value of the note

is given by the authority of the incumbent government. This may be changed by

said gov but you will have notice.

No there are some religious followers who respect others beliefs and dont criticize other's for their's. The people who use religion to better their own lives because it helps them in someway, And dont try and force others to believe what they believe. those people are what religion was made for, because it helps them keep on a certain path. One they choose. Dosen't harm anyone but helps them.

I tend to agree with this, we atheists have to be careful not

to assume hypocrisy or even stupidity in believers as there are a great many,

liberal and scientific, religious people who ask nothing more than to be left

alone to believe what they will. Let’s be careful not to dismiss them out of

hand as cognitive dissonance effects many for a variety of different reasons;

this typically human attitude is not hypocritical of itself.