1

Just Chat! / Re: world peace

« on: 25/09/2005 20:17:38 »

Yea I dug up the roots. Edward Sparkman and Joseph Cummings both served in the Continental Army, Joseph from Virginal and Edward from North Carolina.

About 30 to 40 percent of England was sympathetic to the Americans before the war. King George also didn't want to raise a large army to fight the war, so paid mercenaries to do the dirty work. Kept his pole numbers higher. Toward the end of the war, he just couldn't afford to support the armies over there, and his pole numbers were way down. So he cut his looses, and signed the peace treaty.

We see that today in the war in Iraq. Bush spent his popularity capital on the war there. I can agree with the premise that democracies in the Middle East would be concentrating more on the good of their citizens and less on making trouble for the rest of the world. That would be good for Syria, Iraq and Iran. Though this adventure has not been the easy success the Administration dreamed, it might change the future of the Middle East for the better, as more people there want more freedom.

WWII had some real bad decisions with lots of loss of life. The Brits probably have forgotten about Montgomery's stupid plan to parachute behind enemy lines, and the unwillingness of American ships and planes to take risks lead to a very pitched battle at Normandy. (Only one destroyer moved into 1500 yard range to battle the hardend gun emplacements, and only 4 planes dove down to beach level to take on machine gun nests.) Lots of poor planning, but that is the way most wars go. So I am still open to see what happens in Iraq. I notice capitalism is alive and well in Iraq with the money rapidly flowing into the politicians pockets.

Some historians say the Vietnam War prevented a war in Europe. It will take a long time to evaluate the success or failure of this administration.

David

2

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Giant Viruses!

« on: 25/09/2005 19:56:19 »

Cool Info. Looks like another form of life to me, even if you just call it a super virus, this is a major change.

David

3

General Science / Re: OIL SHORTAGE PROBLEM SOLUTION

« on: 25/09/2005 19:51:00 »

The previous advertisement was not paid for.

These sparkplugs have been around for 40 years. By having a center electrode (cathode) and a ring of anodes, the gap does not open up as the anodes wear away. As for plasma, that is just an ionized gas that happens in any spark. If you wanted to change the amount of plasma you would have to change the spark coil that generates the energy and make it larger. That would lead to more breakdowns in the spark plug cables.

New sparkplugs are always more efficient, and should be changed as needed. But as for free lunches, there aren’t any. People have been working with super computers for some time to optimize the gas combustion engine. You want better mileage, buy a smaller engine, or better yet, buy a hybrid. But first calculate how high gas will have to be to pay for the additional cost of a hybrid, and the uncertain life of a new engine design.

I am on the road for the week: I will be in the South Bend, IN area and in the Milwaukee WI area, see you guys and gals.


David

4

Just Chat! / Re: world peace

« on: 25/09/2005 05:07:04 »

Hmmm, Nina is an anarcist? Or does she prefer playboy Clinton who enriched himself by pardoning rich people?[}:)]

Hard to tell, there are a lot of partisin peeps running around praising their guy instead of being analytical []

Me, I'm just jaded by it all. You get in power you are surrounded by those who want to get rich on the public dollar. So if you associate with crooks, soon you become one too. The honest politician is the one who once bought, stays bought [!]

David

5

Just Chat! / Re: Firefox or Explorer ?

« on: 24/09/2005 22:03:23 »

With the Hackers out there writing worms, viruses and other junk, I prefer non-Microsoft programs when they are as good as or better than the MS versions.

I use Eudora for email and Foxfire for web browsing. Eudora is cool because they have limited its ability to run Scripts that are the cause of a lot of infections, and although it is the second most common email program, peeps aren't writing viruses against it.

Other than that, I run ZoneAlarm and Norton, though I think I am taking a double hit as Microsoft and Norton try to protect me and slow down my computer to about half the speed it was when new.
Yea, spamware has been removed, and disk defragged. It is all the security stuff MS has had to pile on because of previous stupid decisions. I can't believe that MS was so stupid to implement stuff to help DOS (Denial of service) attacks.


David

6

Just Chat! / Re: world peace

« on: 24/09/2005 21:48:43 »

Yea, well Congress has become very unwieldy. Did they declare war in Korea? In Vietnam? In Kuwait? In Iraq? of course not. They passed the buck to the then President. In fact, weren't Roosevelt’s words something like asking congress to acknowledge that a state of war exists between the US and Japan? Wimps the lot of them!

The Supreme Court overturns laws of Congress, so congress cries about it instead of calling for impeachment hearings. Congress does not and will not exercise their given powers, and that is mucking up the whole government thing. I am not pushing for or against any one historic decision, just that Congress has not been able to actively make those decisions so it has fallen on the Supreme Court or on the President to take action. And then of course, take the criticism for that decision that Congress would not make.

Congress is beholding to so many interest groups, and so busy shoveling out my tax dollars to them, that they don't have the time to simply taxes or fix Social Security. Personally, I am going the S-Corp way so that I can minimize my SS taxes. (Pay myself $200 per week and take the rest as profits with no SS or Medicaid deductions) Why invest in a retirement account that pays no interest and penalizes you if you work when you should be retired?

Nina you grumble about Bush. He was elected to do what he is doing. Congress was elected to do what they are not doing. (Ok Bush isn't doing anything about the Mexican boarder.) And the Supreme Court is making up the law as it goes. Not really the government my 5th great grandfathers fought for.


David

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Global warming in solar system?

« on: 24/09/2005 15:35:45 »

But with global warming, Canada, Russia, the Urals, and Georgia will have much better weather for growing crops. So the people from florida can move north or learn Russian[]

It isn't so much that the ox was gored, it was whose ox was gored.

David

8

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Copenhagen Interpretation

« on: 24/09/2005 15:32:18 »

I think people instinctively reach for the term wave whenever a group of things find someway to bind together. Rather than look for what causes this binding, they forget all that has been established and call it wave behavior. To account for the wave behavior of electrons in an atom, you simply have to find what forces would cause an electron to synchronize itself with other electrons. To explain the wave behavior of photons (light and other energy levels), you only need to find what forces would cause a photon to synchronize itself with other photons. Most people deny there is any such force, but the way partials do act in harmony is proof enough to me that there must be such a force, and such a force would be the simpler explanation of the phenomena. I do distrust things that seem magical and the electron wave/partial transformation has all the hallmarks of magic..

I think you know my viewpoint, that the electron in orbit around the atom has a harmonic frequency equal to the circumference of its orbit. This reinforces the magnetic field the electron produces. If the electron is paired, then its partner is following the same frequency but half a vibration out of sync like a sine wave superimposed on a cosine wave. This would account for the stability of the electron obits, the quantum nature of orbits (no fraction of a harmonic allowed), magnetism of unpaired electrons and no magnetism of paired electrons (spin is opposite and cancels), and a host of other things.

That being said, there is one thing I am not sure of, and that is what is frequency? We say photons and often mass have frequency. But that is a measurement between events. Do photons actually move up and down like a string in their mad flight, or do they pulse? Polarization of light suggest they have a height that is much larger than their width. Anyone have an answer? I understand how you vibrate a string, how do you vibrate a particle if it isn’t a pulse?


David

9

Chemistry / Re: Periodic Table Elements....that's it?

« on: 24/09/2005 14:45:44 »

Oh yes, there are many more combinations possible, we have only tried the common and easy ones []
There are almost endless combinations of organic molecules possible as the DNA research has shown. But my field of expertise is metal so let me tell you about some of those:
In space we are experimenting with alloys of Aluminum, Silicon and Calcium to find material we might build space stations with. These materials are common on the moon, and it takes less energy to lift materials from the moon than from the earth. Calcium is not commonly used on the earth as a metal, or in combination with the common Aluminum-Silicon alloys as it is too reactive and would start fires. But in space it might be possible to form and use these new ultra light materials.

Here on earth we are taking metals and changing their structure by a cold treatment. The metal is slowly lowered to liquid nitrogen temperature which pushes many transformations to completion where as they were only partial transformations at room temperature. For an example, we found that the bearings in the Hubble and other space probes were seizing up in the cold of space. Austenite, a crystalline structure of iron and steel should have transformed into martensite or banite during normal processing, but a fraction of less than 1% didn't transform during processing, but did in the cold of space. The transformed martensite has a larger volume, so the extremely tight tolerances in the gyroscope bearings closed off and the bearing froze. All bearings going into space are now cold treated to prevent this. To a novice, it simply rearranges how the atoms arrange themselves in the mixture that we call metal.

Cold treatment is used in many other areas where ultimate performance is important. Entertainers have their horns and saxophones cold treated for mellowness, swat teams have their rifle barrels treated to get the most accuracy. Race drivers get their engine and transmission parts cold treated so they hold up better during the race. I get my razor blades treated so that they last 3 to 4 months. Drill bits have been treated to get 4 to 10 times the life (this is what convinced me as the cutting life of a drill bit can be measured very scientifically).
We are coming up with lots of different improvements in metal. Some are composition, but most are where we control how the atoms arrange themselves. We have produced a glass like structure in steel (no crystal structure) that promises to be a much better transformer material.


David

10

General Science / Re: Where did the spacetime/energy for big bang come f

« on: 24/09/2005 14:23:23 »

Some scientists have proposed that small amounts of matter and antimatter can appear spontaneously. This theory has been stretched to suggest something similar created the initial material for the universe.

As I said, it is a stretch, but it gets airtime because there aren't too many theories out there, and we don't think we can replicate it. Please remember these are theories in Science, and don't take a God made creation into account. If you prefer the God theory, there is not too much more to research unless you want to ask how he/she did it. Scientists prefer to never stop asking questions []

David

11

Physiology & Medicine / Re: stupid question. How to keep ahead in life

« on: 24/09/2005 03:14:38 »

In the not to long term you are going to need more nutriants than the heart bypass machine can supply. The liver and many other organs "doctor" our blood to keep the other parts happy. And would you really be happy if you could only look but not touch? How the girls could tease...

David

12

Just Chat! / Re: Grumble forum

« on: 24/09/2005 01:47:28 »

NLJB,

Visit India and step over the 5 year old kids sleeping in the streets, or see the old man looking into a restaurant display and knowing he can't afford anything in there. Sit on a skateboard because you have no legs and beg for money. Everyone of those people I met would  consider themselves to be rich to live in the United States. You are just spoiled because you never have been truly poor.

Free? There is no place where you are totally free. Everyplace has rules. Here in the US at least, you don't get killed for disliking the country's leader. Go down to Cuba and sound off about Castro and see what happens - a nice jail cell. Then maybe you will begin to understand how precious little freedom there is in this world where less than half of the countries are not run by dictators, and where economic success, though not guaranteed, is less punished in this country through taxation than any other free county. So here you have more freedom and more chance of success. To gripe that life isn't fair is understandable, but it wasn't exactly fair to the old man on the skateboard either.

As far as gas attendants, I have been there and done that. It paid for two semesters of college, and I got to meet all kinds of people and practice my smile []

If you want to judge the character of a man, see how he treats those who serve him.

13

Just Chat! / Re: Attraction in relation to appearance

« on: 24/09/2005 01:28:07 »

The light behind the eyes that says "someone is home", and the smile on the face that says "and you are welcomed"

David

14

Guest Book / Re: hello

« on: 24/09/2005 01:26:25 »

Reminds me of my favorite Irish toast:

To the best years of my life
spend in the arms of another man's wife
To me mom.

David

15

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Global warming in solar system?

« on: 24/09/2005 01:05:27 »

The news is now reporting global warming on Mars. Dang earthlings are contaminating everything.

David

16

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Force upon light

« on: 24/09/2005 00:15:37 »

I don't know that we have a clue as to why these buggers move so fast. This seems to be a "Feature" of our universe that massless entities move at this velocity. They appear to slow down when traveling though other materials than a vacuum, but I understand that the reduction in speed is only that the photons are being adsorbed and reemitted many times as they transverse the material, and the delays in reemission accounts for the delay, and the perceived slower speed.

The experiment that "froze" light just was able to achieve several seconds between adsorption and emission. What is strange with this phenomenon is that the light continues in the same direction with only minor dispersion. Normally, you would think that on reemission the light would be totally randomized in direction.

When a scientist says he/she knows something, it means he/she can describe HOW it works. It does not mean they understand WHY it works. We know the how of light or at least some of it. The why still doesn't make sense.


David

17

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Controling severe weather question?

« on: 23/09/2005 14:20:06 »

Not sure how chaotic it's overall movement is. In general a Strong hurricane steers due west straight into the prevaling winds (due east). In realitiy the prevaling winds vary in both strength and direction, but are generally easterly in that area. So it is a strength contest between normal wind patterns and the contra wind pattern of the hurricane.

Since the hurricane gains and looses strength over it's life, and the prevaling winds vary with the location of low and high pressure cells and the jet stream, the path it takes is very complex to calculate.

David

18

Just Chat! / Re: Do you believe in heaven and hell?

« on: 23/09/2005 05:13:11 »

NLJB, the third button in on your posts is an edit button. I keep MS Word up, paste my post into word and get most of my typos corrected. I agree that most religious people have a belief, but that is a sad thing to say.

Faith is a more difficult thing to achieve. You have faith in much of your science. You risk your life when you get into an airplane that it will actually fly. Those without understanding don't know that the risks are low. Those with beliefs in airplanes can change their minds in a hurry if someone suggests that the Aluminum wings flex as much as 20 feet on a commercial airliner and might fall off. But those who know aerodynamics, know what aerospace aluminum is capable of, climb right on board with out a worry. They have faith in their beliefs.

In another sense, if you were offered a seat on the space shuttle, you might take it, not that you believed that it is safe (it isn't), but that the reward of being one of the very few to be in space was worth the risk.

There are some with a faith in a way of life (religion or philosophy) that are willing to risk the dangers for the reward. They see confirmation in their way of life though their life experiences: good and bad. They find happiness in their way of looking at the world. These are not people who have a belief system that they can change tomorrow, but people who are committed and live their lives accordingly.

I am not saying that such faith is good or bad. Many have misplaced their trust. But that applies to science as well as religion. But you do find good people who have found happiness and know they are living life to the fullest weather they are working in a soup kitchen or rescuing people, or counseling the broken hearted. As a scientist, you at times need to run on pure logic, but don't loose sight of your humanity, and the people you love and who love you. And that is really what religion is about. It doesn't say much about science, but it does say a lot about loving your mom.


David

19

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Why do some people grind their teeth at night ?

« on: 23/09/2005 04:39:48 »

There is a stage in sleep just before we wake up where our mind is just starting to tie into the real world again. At that point we are very open to suggestion and hypnotists use it. I would think that you dreamed that because you were beginning to sense what your jaw was doing.

I have had a similar dream that I have finally been able to trace to moving my tongue in my mouth and feeling the different parts of my mouth. In my dream I am trapped in a wet warm place that was pink. Physiologist had a great time with that one until I realized it was my tongue in my mouth  lol.


David

20

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Controling severe weather question?

« on: 23/09/2005 04:30:40 »

Well a nuke would be counter productive as the storm gathers it's energy from warm water, so lets not heat the water more.

Remember weather is just nature's way of smoothing out temperature differences. I guess if we could nuke the moon out of existance, that might help.

Practically, you might be able to stear or direct the storm away from shore, and a lot of little storms might also be a way to go if you could figure out 1) how to do it, and 2) how to keep from being lynched for doing it.

David