1

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 08:00:49 »

And why are people constantly surprised by climate change? It always has and always will. What we have got wrong is overpopulating marginal land.

The air speed indicator on a small plane has a green band, within which the aircraft will fly to its design limits in any likely conditions. Above that is a yellow band where you can fly in calm air but any violent manoeuver or heavy turbulence can cause damage. You don't knowingly enter cloud or fly behind a mountain in the yellow arc.  Quite simply, we have pushed agriculture and population into the yellow band. And there is a red band, where sustained flight will certainly cause damage and the aircraft may become uncontrollable. You can't blame the air - it's your own damn fault if you leave the green zone.

2

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 07:47:36 »

" Politicians and campaigners have said water company bosses should be stripped of their multimillion-pound bonuses until they fix leaks and build reservoirs."

Absolutely. When the disgraceful EU insisted on privatising everything, the French government paid  private companies to process and distribute water but the material asset still belonged to the nation, so waste and failure could be punished. Not so in the UK, where the stuff that falls in your garden, or even  on your farm, doesn't actually belong to you but to a private company that can charge you whatever it likes for whatever it hasn't wasted. And of course there is no competition. Anglian Water is now installing huge pipes to bring water from further north but the contents will be subject to trading, not sharing.

3

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Today at 07:36:26 »

Re: Vanuatu. The problem is that small island communities are most vulnerable to climate change (hence the extinction of Easter Island and  Minoan cultures, long before anything anthropogenic hit the headlines) but least able to control the magic carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere - it all comes from somewhere else. So they have to develop resilience rather than making religious sacrifices to the hypothetical carbon god. And that is why the British Isles would be a good place to experiment with resilience on a "technical" rather than "laboratory" level, in the hope that the rest of the world would eventually adopt the demonstrated policies at an "industrial" level. 

4

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is there any truth to different ethnic groups having advantages in sports?

« on: Today at 07:25:01 »

My brother moved to an altitude of about 10000 m

Not on this planet, surely (Everest - 8,850 m)?    Plenty of folk live at 1000m above sea level but chronic oxygen depletion begins at 2000m. That said, "lowland" athletes frequently train at altitude to improve their oxygen-carrying capacity for a competition. Short stature (hence faster circulation) seems to be a characteristic of mountain peoples, who might struggle to keep up with longer legs at low altitude.

Lung tidal volume is significant for sprinting and middle-distance running but the limiting factor beyond 1500 meters is heat dissipation. "Tall and skinny" wins the aerobic, isothermal marathon because he has a larger surface to volume ratio than a weightlifter or ruggerbugger who could beat him in an anaerobic, adiabatic 100m.

Swimming is different! Excessive heat loss becomes a problem in marathon events, so whilst sprint swimmers  look much like sprint runners, endurance swimmers carry a bit more fat.

So race is indeed important in racing. Whilst the extremes overlap, the median body shape and height of different human groups does indeed differ even under controlled diet and exercise conditions so you are more likely to find a marathon champion among East Africans than any other group.

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New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: Yesterday at 23:51:28 »

PS it just occurred to me that you could look at x-ray refraction in terms of momentum transfer. Visible light just wiggles the electrons a bit so the wavelet analysis gives you a reasonable model of forward propagation, but x-ray photons transfer significant momentum, so conservation demands that the forward displacement of the substrate electrons is compensated by a lateral deflection of the propagation vector.     

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Is there any truth to different ethnic groups having advantages in sports?

« on: Yesterday at 23:36:12 »

Some time ago I recall reading about the pivot length of the calcaneum giving some advantage to East Africans in distance running, but I suspect that cultural differences are more significant than anything else. Face it, most proper sports were developed and codified in Britain but most medals and competitions are won by Australians and New Zealanders.

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Just Chat! / Re: I've been visited by aliens got proof!

« on: Yesterday at 10:45:59 »

What an interesting start to your day! No wonder you missed several hours of sleep - or are you a night worker?

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New Theories / Re: Why light change its' speed and direction during refraction?

« on: Yesterday at 10:41:56 »

I think confusion has arisen in several minds by failing to distinguish between speed and velocity.

The path of a photon is the direction of its velocity vector. Its speed depends on Maxwell's equation v = 1/√εμ (note v is a scalar) and in free space c = v₀ in all directions

For visible photons incident on a medium, v (vector) tends towards the normal, and as propagation depends on collective electron movements within the material, the refractive index generally increases with increasing photon energy (dispersion).  But as Deecart has pointed out,  ε < 1 at very high frequencies so the propagation direction can tend away from the normal, depending on the propagation mode, even if v (scalar) < c. 

Interesting? Only that the phenomenon was completely described by a Peterhouse man 40 years before x-rays were discovered.

9

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: Yesterday at 08:50:28 »

I'm less inclined towards the multiple-vote system, though it did occur in a small way in the UK for a while as businesses and universities had additional votes in parliamentary elections, and there is an interesting mobile vote: members of the armed forces (whose real addresses are state secrets) can choose which constituency to exercise their vote in. There was a campaign during the Iraq invasion to persuade the military to choose Sedgefield, and unseat Tony Blair.   

But the Marxian ideal of mandated representation  was adopted by trade unions around the world many years ago. No self-dissolving political party is required, and it's ultimately up to the entire membership to elect and deselect their paid officials.

10

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 14/08/2022 12:15:55 »

As for the idea of 'representative democracies'. They don't work any longer. We had it naturally in our hunter gatherer groups, but that was another game, and a game in where you had close social contacts with your group. They knew each other.

 In a small group, everyone can have an equal or even a weighted vote (worth reading chapter 1  of Neville Shute's "In The Wet" where he describes the seven-vote system) but you won't make much progress if you ask 40,000,000 UK voters how income tax should be structured.

Old Jewish saying: "if you want three opinions, ask two Jews", and I'm pretty sure the rest of the electorate can find reasons for nonconsensus on anything.

Which is exactly why I propose the trade union system, where every representative is positively mandated by 19 people he knows and must satisfy - or at least explain why their point of view can't prevail. It means that good ideas from the grass roots can develop and gain momentum, whilst meaningless promises, party manifestoes and catchphrases have no effect.

I had an interesting experience as a union rep in the civil service. At the end of a fairly routine workshop meeting (30 folk), a woman asked "can we have soft toilet paper?" Much laughter, but someone said "seconded", so I had to put it to the vote. Unanimous, so I had to take it to the branch level (10 of us representing about 5000 people) where it was approved and I was mandated to take it to national level, where the representatives of 150,000 scientific and technical staff agreed, with an exception for small ships (the soft stuff is useless on a fisheries research vessel in a Force 8 ). So it became policy. Question then arose - what if management disagreed?  According to the rules, I would then have to present it to the national Trades Union Congress (representing around 5,000,000 workers at the time)  and if they agreed (why not?) it would become Labour Party policy and hence eventually law.   

Management response was conciliatory, sort of. We were told that the hard stuff would be replaced wherever practicable with soft stuff as stocks ran down. Two years later, no apparent change, so I asked how much hard stuff was in stock. Apparently Her Majesty's Government  maintained a hangar full of toilet paper on an air force base, so it could be supplied within 24 hours to the military or embassies anywhere in the world. But that was a long time ago, and if you visit any UK government establishment today, you can bless Hilary and Andy (physics) for proposing the motion, and Steve (marine engineering) for the amendment.

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Just Chat! / Re: How many people have studied history?

« on: 14/08/2022 08:43:26 »

As would the intended future victims of mass shootings.

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New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 14/08/2022 08:40:46 »

Entirely understandable. Historic "Country" measurements are over land surface (and mostly treeless airfields since 1910). "World" measurements are averaged mostly over water (much higher specific heat capacity) and ice (never above 0 deg C) and are frankly not credible before 1970.

13

Just Chat! / Re: What medical breakthroughs can we attribute to Nazi Germany?

« on: 14/08/2022 00:37:23 »

None.

The rest of the world learned that

mass hysteria is easy to generate and can lead to considerable acts of pointless self-sacrifice and

there is no limit to human depravity.

In response, the Nuremberg principles of medical ethics were set down, ratified by the Helsinki Protocol, and fairly widely ignored in the USA for the next 30 years.

14

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 13/08/2022 15:35:41 »

hitting the biggest driver of it existing today, our fossils use.

By 2040, the population will have increased a bit and they will all need feeding. So you have 18 years to develop, build and sell around 40,000,000 electric tractors, the windmills or solar panels you need to make them go, and the capacity to make 2,000,000 a year to replace the ones that break. But you may not use fossil fuels to make them.

And that's just the surface of the problem. You need trucks to transport the food from farm to consumer, even assuming that everyone lives at home and has food delivered. If not, you will need to make another 1,500,000,000 electric cars and vans, plus all the infrastructure to generate and distribute the electricity. But you can't burn any fossil material in their manufacture..

Fact is that the present population cannot be sustained at its current standard of living without fossil fuels.

15

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 13/08/2022 15:24:52 »

So, what is your solution?

Sorry I missed this bit of the conversation. I am actually in favor of representative democracy for reasons of efficiency, but the means of selecting and mandating those representatives needs to dynamic and responsive. The model I prefer was described by Marx and Engels and is used by trade unions everywhere. We can discuss where it went wrong, later.

Quite simply, you divide the electorate into groups of 20 neighbors - street committees. Each SC mandates one member to the parish committee, which now represents 400  electors, say around 1000 humans, with some level of common interest in publlic services. Now mandate a rep to the district committee, which has financial authority and liability on behalf of 20,000 people to organise primary health care, waste disposal, etc. and is encouraged wherever possible to collaborate with adjoining districts, particularly with regard to primary and secondary education. And also to mandate a representative to the county, organising services for 400,000 folk, with significant local tax-raising powers. Each county now mandates two representatives to a national parliament of around 300  people - quite enough to ensure informed debate and decide  on major national policies.

The difference is that  nobody represents a political party. Your job it to represent the mandate of the geographical committee that selected you. Every delegate can be recalled and replaced by those who sent him, if they don't think he is representing their best interests. The 300 choose their own chairman (who doesn't make policy or pretend to be head of state, but signs the Acts on behalf of a simple majority)  and specific departmental heads, whose job is to implement the consensus policy in each executive ministry. Failure to enact the consensus leads to replacement unless said "minister" can explain the failure to parliament.

16

New Theories / Re: what is temperature?

« on: 13/08/2022 11:33:08 »

You did!

Like the man said, if you are trying to efficiently stimulate a quantum phenomenon, you need to use tightly specified photons. LED spectra are fairly narrow but difficult to modify, unlike a tuneable laser. 

17

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 13/08/2022 11:26:26 »

the factory, which is planned to employ 3,000 people by 2028 in an area previously left behind by industry. "

"left behind by industry" is a rubbish excuse. I presume they are talking about the battery megafactory intended to replace Coventry airport. Fact is that manufacturing died in Coventry because The Glorious Thatcher raised bank interest rates and encouraged people to "invest" in second-hand houses instead of re-tooling primary and secondary industries, and the airport which used to employ a few thousand folk building testing and repairing all sorts of military and civilian vehicles (not just aircraft) went downhill along with the car and truck factories (another 100,000 employees) nearby.  The phenomenal wartime output of Coventry (the Luftwaffe had good reason to try to destroy the town) sustained an entrepreneurial ethos into the early 1970s but with German and American banks lending at 5% and UK bank rate at 15%, there was no way that local manufacturing could afford to modernise and sell at a profit.

So who will determine the specification and reap the profits of these new batteries? The only volume car manufacturers in the UK are Japanese, German and Indian.

Interestingly, the above economic analysis came from the CEO of a battery manufacturer in the 1980s, when asked to justify moving his entire production of rechargeables to Germany! 

18

New Theories / Re: An essay in futility, too long to read :)

« on: 13/08/2022 11:10:04 »

Methane is once again considered a immediate threat

But it's highly combustible (you use it to cook and generate electricity!)  so it won't survive a forest fire.

19

Just Chat! / Re: Best self-defense for women?

« on: 12/08/2022 23:31:30 »

.....once you have managed to open your handbag and found it among......er.......whatever it is that The Boss apparently needs to carry everywhere.....

Which brings me to a serious point. Why don't women have pockets? Or when they do, why don't they keep important stuff in them? Anyone old enough to remember "Cagney and Lacey" probably wondered how Lacey always got her man by running in heeled shoes whilst extracting a gun from her shoulder bag. 

And on the subject of movie cliches, how on earth did plots evolve before mobile phones? Shakespeare limited himself to one "enter a messenger"  per act, but "I've got to take this call" now occurs even more frequently than "he has a right to know" and "I don't want to involve the police".

20

The Environment / Re: Will there be another ice age?

« on: 12/08/2022 17:46:09 »

Since the CO2 curve always lagged behind the temperature record, history suggests that CO2 is not the driver of temperature. And the seasonal variation of recent Mauna Loa data suggests that temperature still drives CO2, not the  other way around.