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SH3RL0CK

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Posts posted by SH3RL0CK

  1. I'm a moron. I think what I did was instead of alternating like this :copper, soaked paper, nickle.

     

    I did this: Copper, nickle, soaked paper...

     

    Duh! hahaha...I don't have much experience in electronics and that sort of thing. You'll hafta excuse my stupidty..

     

    Hmmm...I'm not so sure that is your problem.

     

    if I understand correctly, what you should have done is: cu/paper/Ni/Cu/paper/Ni...

     

    you did: Cu/Ni/paper/Cu/Ni paper...

     

    Isn't the second (what you did) just the reverse polarity of the first (what you should have done)? Or am I missing something here?

  2. Forget the coins and find larger pieces of dissimilar metals. Preferably rods or pipes of such metals - or for the copper you might be able to use the wire itself (if it isn't tinned copper).

     

    One possible problem is that because of the small size of the coins, the contact point between the wire and the coin occurs (taped) under the water, which leads to all sorts of possibilities. Even if you are keeping it above the salt water, taping is not a good way to make an electrical connection. By using larger pieces, you should be able to make far better electrical connections. And you should use something better than tape, perhaps soldering.

     

    EDIT: Another problem with using coins is that their exact metal isn't entirely pure. They are generally alloys and their composition changes over time. For example, pennies used to be primarily made from copper, until after 1982 when they were (and still are) made from zinc.

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(United_States_coin)

     

    Years Material

    1793–1857 copper

    1857–1864 88% copper, 12% nickel (also known as NS-12)

    1864–1942 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)

    1943 zinc-coated steel (also known as steel penny)

    1944–1946 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)

    1946–1962 bronze (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc)

    1962–1982 brass (95% copper, 5% zinc)

    1982– present 97.5% zinc core, 2.5% copper plating

     

    So if you are trying to generate electricity from a penny you should keep in mind it might not really be copper that you are using...

     

    To summarize my suggestions:

    1) Select materials whose composition is actually known, and

    2) Make good electrical contacts to these metals

    3) Make these electrical contacts outside the salt water so ONLY the metals of interest are part of your voltaic cell.

  3. I thought the "sweet spot" was 0 Hz.

     

    If all you are trying to do is validate your belief that certain frequencies are better than others, then you will need some kind of frequency generator. A computer sound card will work, and is cheap, but the power output is relatively low.

     

    How about using a sound amplifier (such as normally powers stereo speakers) where you should be able to apply more power (at a still relatively cheap cost)?

  4. I read it the opposite way. I think Obama's intentions are constrained by political necessity. If he makes a really dramatic break from Bush era policies and an attack happens, then that would be devastating to him politically and to any hope of reform in how we treat these prisoners.

     

    Now that is something I had not fully considered...but if an attack (at least on US soil) happens, he will probably take the blame anyway so I'm not sure this slow process serves him any better.

  5. In view of results, I acknowledge, it's a largely symbolic shift. But I think its a very important one, as symbols are really what govern us in a modern democracy.

     

    Well, if you are the detainee who has been tortured, I very much doubt you would very much care about the symbolism. Nor would you care very much that Guantanamo was closed if you were locked up in Bagram air force base or some other hole in the ground.

     

    Also, keep in mind that it could also be said symbolism is really what governed Nazi Germany...Goring was a brilliant propagandist for the third reich.

     

    The public is, rightly, repulsed by torture. Of course now that at least some of the workings of the US government (CIA, private contractors, etc.) have become known to the public Obama will give his best impression of trying to stop this for as long as he can do so. That is his play, politically, just as hiding it for as long as possible was Bush's political play. But I personally doubt he has any intentions for a real change.

     

    And maybe the Bush/Obama policies are really the best ways to deal with the problem of Al Queda? It is difficult for me to imagine a radically different approach by the USA given my understanding of the current situation.

  6. My thoughts on this matter are along the lines of a recent op-ed:

     

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/08/30/is_bush_lurking_in_obamaland_98092.html

     

     

    From the article:

    the Obama administration has - on issues both foreign and domestic - adopted as its own some of what the president's supporters refer to derisively as "Bush-era tactics."

    ...

     

    - On anti-terrorism policies, the Bush administration was criticized by civil libertarians for its lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach to detaining terror suspects. Now Attorney General Eric Holder has said that, should a prisoner intend to harm the United States, "we will do all that we can to ensure that that person remains detained." The Obama Justice Department has also followed the lead of its predecessor in arguing that the 600 prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan (aka "Obama's Guantanamo") may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts. And, it tried to quash a lawsuit challenging the rendition policy and warrantless wiretap program - just as the Bush Justice Department had done earlier...

     

     

    Yes these appear to be wrong choices to me. However, the fact that despite the rhetoric and campaign promises and the incredible political damage this has done to the republican party overall, Obama continues these tactics is a sign of something (but I'm not sure what). I think both Cheney/Bush and Obama feel these choices are a necessary evil; maybe there is more happening behind the scenes than is publically available?

  7. It is astounding how much we do not know regarding these types of issues. To restate what I think is the original question: Is this a case of overdiagnosis today? or is it just some underdiagnosis in the past?

     

    I would like to add it might also be possible that these mental conditions are indeed more prevalent today than they were in the past. Maybe something has changed in the environment to make mental illnesses (perhaps artificial hormones in the water?) more prevalent?

  8. Looking at the data in a different way is still looking at the data, though.

     

    True. But then scientific consensus does include the meaning and interpretation of the data and this is subject to peoples opinions. You can look at the data scientifically in many different ways but come to different conclusions.

     

    Let me give an example of what I mean. Lets say a scientific study of a proposed power plant will diminish the population of an endangered frog by 5%. The power plant is badly needed and will reduce overall CO2 emissions, but we also do not want to make the frog extinct.

     

    Is this reduction of frog population acceptable? Scientific consensus could state this large reduction in population puts the frog at an unacceptable risk of extinction. Or scientific consensus could state this meager reduction in numbers does not put the frog at risk of extinction. Or scientific consensus could state that regardless of the extinction or not of the frog, the power plant is still worth this (perhaps due to beneficial reduction of CO2).

     

    The truth of the matter is that although we might know the exact effects of a proposed action, the costs/benefits of such actions even from a scientific point of view will still be very much opinion.

  9. Well, if my experience is typical, and the actions of my neighbors, the neighbors of my friends and colleagues, and pretty much every community within a 100 mile radius of me is considered "typical," then I can guarentee your point is mistaken.

     

    Case in point: People running their sprinklers every day for 4 hours at a time to keep their lawn green during a season where we've experienced months of drought and are running low on fresh drinking water... Where our lakes have been drained so extensively that the levels are low enough to close all of the docks and reveal stolen cars abandoned in the lake bottom... and yet the sprinklers just keep running as if they will never run out of water... and don't even get me started about golf courses which consume more water in a single day than four average families in an entire year...

     

    [/rant]

     

    I understand that this mindset is changing, especially among younger people, but since you mentioned "typical middle class," I just had to point out that it is not what you describe... What you describe is still relegated to the margins of our (American) society... at least, at present.

     

     

    Interesting.

     

    It may be there regional differences. I've always lived in parts of the country that generally get quite a bit of rain. The grass does not usually need watering to stay green, so when dry spells arrive, most people don't bother watering. During these times, the grass might go brown, but it will turn green again when the rain returns in a few weeks. I sense some irony in that people living in wet areas of the country are more frugal with water than those living in dry areas...

     

    It may be we have different perceptions on who are the middle class. Maybe I am considering the rich, those you are calling the middle class?

     

    If I get some time I might research the typical water usage of people in the USA.

  10. Sorry if I am insulting... but the "American way" is not to conserve water... it's to get more water. People only think about their bank account, and as long as the price of the water is just a few percent of the total expenses, then that's just affordable. I bet the total money spent on water for the average household in Las Vegas is less than 1% of their income.

     

    Make water 10x more expensive, and native plants will become popular (and a public outcry will also be heard).

    I agree to a point. I think the typical, middle class American does conserve water; which would be the majority of Americans. I certainly take care not to waste it. However the rich and the business class (run, oddly enough, by the rich) seem to me to be more wasteful (especially if there is a dollar to be made). Most of the water used in the desert southwest is for industrial and agricultural purposes. I don't see a real problem with agriculture, but I object to using this precious water for rice and cotton rather than crops which require less water when water is in short supply. With Industry, why should the industries requiring lots of water be built in a desert?

    On topic again:

    I don't think that you can easily start exporting large amounts of water from Canadian lakes and rivers without having a large impact on the ecology. Perhaps you can remove water from rivers that have nearly arrived at the sea? I would be very cautious to remove water from an area that is all natural (without artificially maintained water levels).

     

    I agree a massive diversion of water from fresh water lakes and rivers would harm the ecology (look up the history of mono lake for an example). For this reason I don't see Canada (or the great lakes states) permitting this.

     

    Maybe it is possible to divert (and desalinate) large quantities of water from oceans without ecological harm?

  11. Why would a super intellect declare that no one may interfere with us because interfering is wrong?

    The only answers I have to this question are religious. Because there is no possible technical reason I can think of that a Most Superior Intellect would be concerned about us.
    Wouldn't they have to interfere with everyone else in the universe to enforce that belief?
    of course.
    It doesn't take super intellect to see that this is totally contradictory.
    It isn't necessarily contradictory. The Most Superior Intellect wouldn't necessarily care too much about an inconvenience to a Moderately Superior Intellect to acheive their goals (whatever these are) in regards to us.
    Besides, a Dyson Ring four hundred million miles from Earth would hardly interfere with us. We've only been able to send a handful of probes out that far in all of our history. We would live on Earth and sextillions of these beings would live out there using the energy of the Sun that we don't.
    Well we might be able to detect a Dyson Ring at this distance. If not now, maybe at some point in the future. A Most Superior Intellect might consider even the possibility of detection of other intelligent life an interference.
  12. Arch - I've been thinking about part of what you said:

    You are assuming that a half a septillion beings would somehow submit to a super government decision ...

     

    Perhaps there is some vastly most superior intelligence who declares earth (and nearby space such that we cannot detect ETIs) off limits (except perhaps in a controlled manner) and has the means with which to enforce this absolutely.

     

    But then, what would be the reason? My answers to that (at least all the possibilities I can think of now) become religious in nature.

  13. At some point in their expansion they simply notice that the energy required to spread out further than some limit, such as 1,000 light years, is a wasted effort.

     

    But what makes the home star so unique that the aliens must stay within a certain distance of it? While further expansion might be 1,000 light years from the original star, it might only be a couple light years from an already inhabited star. Additionally, the nearby star might have many more resources with which to construct whatever is needed for further expansion than the home star anyway.

     

    Did the USA and Canada decide not to expand into the West because it was just too far from England and Europe?

  14. Yeah, I agree changes are coming to this part of the country. And I agree it is logical to look and perhaps even inquire about buying and shipping (via pipeline?) water. Ocean desalination is another possibility. But with regards to the Southwest USA it seems to make more sense to me to do a better job conserving the water they already have than go to these extremes to get more water.

     

    Just fly into any city in the region and you will see many lush, green golf courses. While some homes and businesses have yards which consume very little water by using native plants, many still require daily watering. Isn't all this a waste of precious water? maybe they could use astroturf if they insist on the look of grass? And I've already mentioned the thirsty crops grown in the region; why shouldn't less water intensive crops be grown instead? Using water is fine if you have it, but the desert southwest probably doesn't have the water to continue the way they have been going.

  15. The most advanced ones, the ones that can harvest every bit of energy from their home star, have no limits on creating safe, comfortable habitats in their own neighborhood. They could use material from planets, moons, and asteroids, in their solar system to create space-cities on barren planets, or inside hollowed out moons or asteroids that rotate creating the kind of gravity they are accustomed to. They would have unlimited resources for building such mega-cities within maybe a few dozen light years from their home planets. If they need more space, they simply create more space-cities. They have no need for traveling a thousand light years, maybe not even 100 light years.

     

    But the total amount of matter (including all planets, moons, asteroids, even dust...) around a single star is finite. Also the total amount of energy available is finite. Therefore the total number of aliens that can live in a single solar system is limited and finite. The large but finite amount of matter and energy in a single solar system is a limitation, is it not?

     

    Once they have applied themselves to all the matter around a single star, and are using all the energy from the star, and if they are to continue to grow the logical choice is to go to the next star...and so forth until they colonize the entire galaxy; then the neighboring galaxies...

  16. Airbrush,

     

    I think I see a few flaws in your logic, maybe you could correct me if I am misunderstanding anything...

     

    Around the aliens home star there is NOT an unlimited number of habitats available. The number is very large, yes, but with the assumption of growth, it is inevitable that the aliens must eventually arrive here if they are capable of interstellar travel.

     

    Now it is possible that you are correct and interstellar travel is not possible (though we already know how, in theory, several ways to do so). Maybe there is some technological barrier for every possible means of transport that it can't be done. Even still, they could probably send robotic probes and/or their radio waves could eventually be heard.

     

    Or it is possible that an alien species would decide to not colonize and limit its population (but I doubt it because they would then inevitably become extinct when their home star dies). Maybe they decide to expand a bit, then quit - though I don't see why they should stop expanding. And would all species that arise decide to limit its growth like this?

  17. The answer is actually very complicated, the chances of survival, like all things, depends on the details.

     

    For example, if your plane is flown by Captain Sullenberger, survival is 100% so far. No one has yet died in any of his crashes.

     

    http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6606410

     

    Is the crash falling 30,000 feet or simply the plane running off the end of the runway? Exactly what type of crash are we talking about?

  18. Why do you think the US needs the water as badly as you imply? The US has great reserves of water as well, bordering with Canada most of the great lakes (with the exception of Lake Michigan which it completely within the border of the USA). And should water truely become scarce in parts of the USA, we can adapt our usage as an alternative to importing water. We are growing vast quantities of water-intensive rice and cotton in the deserts of the US southwest, certainly we could reduce water consumption by growing less water intensive crops there if really needed.

     

    Can you elaborate on the tensions in the artic. Sealanes would probably be handled just as they are in the other oceans. Perhaps there are resources there, but this is unproven. And if there are, international law defines how Russia, Canada, and the other nations can recover these resources (though I seem to recall the USA hasn't ratified one specific treaty, it shouldn't affect the relations between the Russia and Canada however).

  19. I tend to view the Fermi paradox as more of a rhetorical question used to point out the rarity and uniqueness of the earth (and by extension, us). Either there are no advanced civilizations, or such civiliations are deliberately hiding themselves (except perhaps in specific, controlled ways). Both of which implies some kind of uniqueness and rarity as it would probably take considerable work on the part of an advanced civilization to hide itself (including its own past as it developed).

     

    Instead of asking "where are the advanced civilizations" I think Fermi paradox means we should be asking what is it that makes us so unique?

  20. In addition, I think it is worth noting that most planets of other star systems are gas giants very near the star. This is in contrast to our solar system where the gas giants are much further out, which does make me suspect our solar system might be somewhat "different".

     

    However, the observation that most extrasolar planetary systems have large gas giants near the star is because these types of planetary systems are easiest to find. It will be some time before we will have an accurate survey of other planetary systems.

  21. Wouldn't it be great if we could check the decay of particles from past events and compare it to the decay rates observed today? Wait, we can!

     

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

     

    From the article:

    [edit] Relation to the atomic fine-structure constant

    The natural reactor of Oklo has been used to check if the atomic fine-structure constant α might have changed over the past 2 billion years. That is because α influences the rate of various nuclear reactions. For example, 149Sm captures a neutron to become 150Sm, and since the rate of neutron capture depends on the value of α, the ratio of the two samarium isotopes in samples from Oklo can be used to calculate the value of α from 2 billion years ago.

     

    Several studies have analysed the relative concentrations of radioactive isotopes left behind at Oklo, and most (but not all) have concluded that nuclear reactions then were much the same as they are today, which implies α was the same too.[7][8]

     

    While this case study isn't conclusive, its very convincing to me that the decay rates haven't changed over time.

  22. Considerably less but maintained for hundreds of years (for an extremely "local" trip on the scale we are discussing), not just the days or weeks required to get up to (and down to) speed.

     

    So are we then in agreement it isn't a technological barrier but rather a question of scalability (i.e. size the ships sufficiently that the fuel needed to maintain the speed is carried in addition to the fuel to speed up/slow down along with everything else you need to bring)?

  23. For unintended consequences that run counter to the goals, then yes. Those have to be actual unintended consequences though, as opposed to foreseen ones that were considered trivial, and played out to be as such from their point of view. Doesn't mean you find them trivial but if they do it can't really count against their design.

     

    Then these goals would have to include unstated (but perhaps obvious) objectives as well as simply the stated goals. A narrowly focused goal can sometimes easily be reached by compromising things which were never originally stated, and which may have been taken for granted by some people who initially supported the goal. But only in hindsight is it possible to see the tangential effects and decide if the end goal was worth whatever costs were incurred (including the unexpected, unintended costs).

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