Joatmon

We have a problem in the UK. Increasing the educational opportunities leading to more people with good qualifications without increasing employment possibilities just leads to a better qualified pool of unemployed! "Almost 28% of UK graduates who left university in 2007 were still not in full-time work three and a half years later, figures have suggested." http://www.bbc.co.uk...cation-14758464

Sorry - changed my mind

Just a small detail. In different materials there is movement by what are termed positive charge carriers from positive to negative. In liquids they may be ions, in metals and semi-conductors they are known as holes. Basically a hole can be thought of as a place just vacated by an electron. Holes are rather strange as they are not really objects but spaces where objects (i.e. electrons) would be attracted to. If you are dealing with basic electrical circuits just tuck this away at the back of your mind for now. If you want more information just follow the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_carrier

I have often wondered just how much of what we do is instinctive. Although there are exceptions, we seem to be "herd animals" seeking company and avoiding isolation. In general we like a stable base we call home rather than a nomadic life. Most of us prefer the stability and certainty of one mate, our spouse, rather than philandering. We even tend to park our car in the same space in a car park we use regularly. In each of these examples we had a choice - but was there an irresistible element behind each choice forcing us in a particular direction. This missing element putting the thoughts such as "I would not want isolation so must find company", "I must make myself a safe stable location to sleep in", "It's time for me to think about starting my own family", "my car has always been safe in this parking space so I'll use it again". Perhaps we only fine tune the decisions made by our instincts.

I admire your imagination, but you have given me an idea. The floating, but anchored, structure under the ocean could presumably be basically a hollow tube. If the two ends were above sea level, i.e. on the land, then traffic could travel through the tube. What you would have is a tunnel without needing to drill through the earth and rock etc. under the ocean. This would be cheaper to make than just using the tube as a base on which to build a bridge. I imagine that providing the anchor points to keep the tube in place would be cheaper than drilling the tunnel, but I don't really know if this would be the case. Of course the tube itself would need to be very strong and perhaps flexible to some degree. It would also need to be deep enough for ships to pass over it.

This is almost certainly a hoax because the "machine" is so simple that it can easily be produced by others - and others are not clamouring to confirm that they have made similar "machines". I notice a few facts which may be pointers to a possible way this trick could be performed. The board to which the wheel is attached is positioned very carefully after being rotated. The ball oscillates up and down before the wheel starts rotating which suggests it may be under the influence of an additional (alternating) magnetic field. We never see under the table or how thick the table is. The wheel seems to be made of aluminium. I think what lies under the table may be the coils of a linear induction motor together with the electronics to control a travelling magnetic field and a battery to provide the power. If you placed a sheet of aluminium above such an assembly it would move due to the interaction of fields generated in it by eddy currents with the travelling field supplied by the hidden coils. By the same principle the rim of the aluminium wheel would be pushed in one direction and thus be forced to rotate on the spindle. So what about the ball bearing and the magnet? They may be just a diversion giving you some idea that this device works by magnetism provided by the bar magnet. Additionally the magnet holder may be used to operate a hidden switch (magnetic micro-switch for example). Of course any conjuring trick may have many possible ways of being done - but I think this idea is really quite possible.

At 74 years of age I hope you are right!

Oh dear. The Political Correctness Police will be after me yet again.

I guess I see "free" (as far as the planet is concerned) as meaning not reducing the amount of a finite resource (of the planet). i.e. of no cost to the keepers and users of those resources (us)

I suppose anything you steal or is given to you is free as far as you are concerned. The owner of the mine might disagree! (I suppose anything you steal is free as far as you are concerned).

I'm 74 with a good head of hair - anyone require my services?

Accepted and not doubted, but I think my post makes clear that I realise perpetual motion is not possible but that under the everyday understanding of free we can get energy without ourselves putting energy into a system. Any system using wind power, wave power, water flow or light would come under that everyday definition. My point, such as it is, would be that for example we don't have to burn coal.

This is a serious observation. This site attracts ideas from young fertile minds. Most of the ideas can be disregarded for various reasons. Perhaps they are not novel; perhaps they are misguided; perhaps they are even ridiculous. However, now and again perhaps an idea arises they may be of benefit in some way. It may trigger a chain of events that benefit mankind or make some business concern a lot of money. I can see more than one reason for a site such as this and so can see that the question of who owns it and why it exists might arise.

But IMO the relatively physically puny early humans, compared to other animal life, had only their intelligence as their main asset. It seems to me that a small band (say of 10 individuals) could work together to provide more than 10 times the food that one individual could obtain. Also if you killed the other humans in your group who would protect you when you slept? I still think a small cooperative group using their only advantage, intelligence, would have had more chance of survival than an individual trying to exist on his own.

Now, perpetual motion is a no no, but free energy is IMO something else. It can be free to the user because he doesn't have to provide an input. One very simple example is, or was, a clock powered by atmospheric pressure changes and temperature changes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock

You can use the above scientific information to pour yourself a nice glass of beer from a bottle without getting too much froth on the top. Start by holding the glass in one hand in an almost horizontal position and the bottle in the other hand in an almost vertical position. Now slowly rotate both glass and bottle so that beer flows from one to the other. Once the glass is at about 45 degrees stop rotating it but continue to slowly rotate the bottle until it is completely empty. As the last small amount of beer comes out of the bottle it will be necessary to further rotate the glass to a vertical position to avoid wasting beer through spillage. (and we wouldn't want that!) This takes a lot less time than glug glugging the beer and waiting for half a glass of froth to dissipate. Hope you find this "appliance of science" useful.

If you google ritual bridal chamber there is a lot of information. One example:- http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/nag_hammadi_sacrament_bridal_chamber

You seem to misunderstand the phrase "Survival of the fittest". It does not mean the fittest as applied to an individual in terms of strength, ruthlessness or any other attribute of an individual. "survival of the fittest n.Natural selection conceived of as a struggle for life in which only those organisms best adapted to existing conditions are able to survive and reproduce." Could it be that a sense of cooperation, kindness, trust and care within early groups of humans were part of what made those groups fit for survival in the harsh conditions existing at the start of human evolution? http://www.thefreedi...+of+the+fittest

I don't know how the Bible could forecast the crusades - but a Pope should be authority enough? Sorry about the blue writing - it comes from "copy and paste" Pope Urban II, in one of history's most powerful speeches, launched 200 years of the Crusades at the Council of Clermont, France on November 27, 1095 with this impassioned plea. In a rare public session in an open field, he urged the knights and noblemen to win back the Holy Land, to face their sins, and called upon those present to save their souls and become "Soldiers of Christ." Those who undertook the venture were to wear an emblem in the shape of a red cross on their body. And so derived the word "Crusader," from the Latin word cruciare - to mark with a cross. By the time his speech ended, the captivated audience began shouting "Deus le volt! - God wills it!" The expression became the battle-cry of the crusades. 2, 3 http://jesuschristsa...t/Crusades.html

Assuming you have been given those answers I see no harm in saying I think they are correct (to one place of decimals). As hypervalent-iodine says - there is lots of help here - but no answers!( At least where homework is concerned )

I haven't read the book, but I wonder if this point is what I aired in #21 in the topic "Change and time". The point I tried to make was either not understood or not accepted. I repeat the relevant part of my post:- "By the same argument consider a long pair of scissors. As you close the blades you will see the point of intersection travel along the blades faster than the speed the handles are pulled together. Now, consider a pair of scissors so designed that the two blades come together at the same time for their whole length. Could you not say the point of intersection travels instantaneously from one end to the other? " Note, nothing actually moves along the point of intersection - its just a pattern with no substance.

Yes I'm afraid that has to be admitted , but I resist as best I can because I know she treats everyone else the same way. However there were a few times in my abandoned youth when, after a celebratory night out with the lads involving alcohol, I must admit to falling quite heavily under her spell. On waking I would feel terrible and say to myself "never again"!