Pliny
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I generally agree with your posts concerning economics but can't understand your view here especially with your grounding in science.Bonam, on 08 Jul 2013 - 11:21 PM, said:
One could only hope. Sadly there is no shortage of crackpots. Good for an occasional laugh, though.
You have expressed an interest in creating a robot of a sort, one that could endure long trips in space perhaps. Something that resolves problems and barriers that the human organism would encounter such as radiation.
Really though what is it you would like to transfer from the human organism to the robot? I don't know if you have ever thought about the fact that your definition of life actually makes the human organism a robot. A simple electro-chemical carbon-oxygen machine. It has taken a little while to develop through an evolutionary process and perhaps we can further improve on it by making parts out of steel or something more durable. But the current form repairs itself and and is quite flexible. What is it that you would like to transfer from a piece of protoplasm, our current robotic form, to a piece of steel?
Hi. Wild Bill. I really enjoy reading your posts. You say what you have observed and experienced, and express your thoughts about them. There are some very intelligent posters here but I personally think some haven't bothered to sort through it all and strip out expert and authoritative opinion and "theory" from fact or correlate it with experience. Frankly,they have learned their experience means nothing as it is entirely anecdotal and if it doesn't jibe with their "education" then they deny the experience. It's a sad comment that the only ones that can offer any "truth" are those that have presented a double blind peer reviewed study and one's experience can only be interpreted or evaluated through those parameters.Wild Bill, on 09 Jul 2013 - 12:24 AM, said:
Sadly Bonam, some of those crackpots get elected!
Consider McGuinty's approach to green energy, with wind and solar power subsidies.
I rest my case!
Certainly, on the subject to hand, Mark McCutcheon has some work to do to have his "theory" given any serious consideration but it answers a few questions.
Time will only tell if we have a Galileo in our midst.
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Was it Copernicus who said, when asked about the role of god in his theory of planetary motion, I have no need for a god to play any part in this!
It is still the case today! Always will be!
He obviously didn't accept the conventional definition of the time. No one has modernized it since the concept was first propounded. Maybe it just needs an update.
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What makes us think it necessary that there be a "purpose"?
What makes us think at all?
A purpose certainly isn't a necessity but it is in general prior to action, and if thought is an action then purpose generally precedes it.
kimmy, for instance, has a purpose and it generates a lot of activity from her to accomplish her purpose. A different purpose would generate different activity.
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You've gone and resurrected an old favourite thread of mine. Gee thanks!kimmy, on 08 Jul 2013 - 9:24 PM, said:
Excellent news, Pliny! Mark McCutcheon's theory is finally getting the mainstream attention it deserves!
-k
My fridge magnet is still hanging there.
And I'm not surprised that you quote Cracked magazine as your scientific reference.
Certainly, I think the theory is interesting and deserves some scrutiny especially when science can't explain my fridge magnet.
I realize your intent in bringing up this old thread but really as far as all the subjects we disagree on, economics, physics, secular humanism, etc. all I suggest is that none of them are settled and perhaps there are things we should be looking at if we want solutions to problems we are facing. Those that simply propound the status quo from a know best or erudite position certainly have an interest in maintaining it and are not likely to wish anyone actually look anywhere else.Quote
Q: How can a fridge magnet cling against gravity endlessly without draining a power source?
A: It can't ... fridge magnets are impossible according to today's science. It certainly takes tremendous energy to cling to the side of a cliff, supporting our own weight against gravity, and before long we would tire and fall. Yet a fridge magnet clings endlessly to the fridge by magnetic energy. And, as both our science and our experience tell us, such an expenditure of energy requires that a power source be drawn upon to support such effort. Yet a permanent magnet not only maintains its strength indefinitely (no theory or textbook shows the power drain characteristics of a permanent magnet as it clings against the pull of gravity), but there isn’t even a power source in sight! Endless magnetic energy apparently emanates from permanent magnets without any explanation in our science. The only explanation that any physicist will give for this mystery is that there is no mystery since the magnet isn't moving, which gives a zero result if you plug this into the Work equation – a severely flawed diversionary tactic that was exposed above. No physicist will acknowledge the error of applying the Work equation to deny the ongoing magnetic energy expenditure, nor agree that a power source is required to cling energetically against gravity.
This excerpt from an article on magnetism in Discover Magazine, Dec. 2002, further makes this point:
Moreover, asking that question [why some non-metallic objects are magnetic] inevitably lets you in on a surprising secret: Physicists are also a little fuzzy about those bits of iron alloy attached to your refrigerator. "Only a few people understand -- or think they understand -- how a permanent magnet works," says Makarova [a Russian physicist working at Umea University in Sweden]. "The magnet of everyday life is not a simple thing. It's a quantum- mechanics thing ... I'm just working as an engineer, trying to find out where the magnetism comes from."
Keynesian Economists, Pharmaceutical companies and Physicists have all invested effort in their pursuits of understanding and I doubt many, in any of those areas, have much interest in any new ideas that could prove to upset their apple carts. Just like those that had studied Copernicus were not anxious to accept Galileo.
The point to be made is to look and observe and maintain the ability to look and observe. Keynesian economics was developed and works best in a Fascist State. Pharmacuetical companies deal in drugs so their solutions all have to do with drugs and if there is different solution they will attempt to undercut it or at best ignore it. Physicists are looking for phemonomena regarding the theory of relativity and special relativity and have run into problems, with string theory and quantum mechanics as offshoot theories.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this up.
I guess I'll just remain a crack pot because there is a possibility that those subjects mentioned have stagnated and vested interests wish to keep going down the same road. It is possible that government and banks like to manipulate the economy, and there does seem to be a connection between drugs and bizarre, senseless random acts of violence, and perhaps the Higgs-Bosun particle will simply turn out to be a paper chase. Higgs, himself says that if the there is no Higgs-Bosun particle found then he absolutely knows nothing about physics. Does the whole theory really depend upon that? I know that scientists at CERN are excited about last summers find and think they have it, maybe they do, but maybe some assumedto be true fundamental has led them down the garden path.
The fact there are questions mean we still have to look.
We aren't going to get anywhere continually going over the same ground. You can just continue supporting the "truth" as you have been told and I'll just keep looking.
Your desire to help by keeping people on the straight and narrow, making sure they have only expert and authoritative data is notable. We are only interested in helping, after all. In resolving the problems we have in being human perhaps someone else will be looking as well. Time will tell.
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They couldnt do THAT either, without government intervention in the markets that force softdrink companies to charge deposits and return them when bottles are recycled.
They never used to charge a deposit and softdrink companies bought them back. It wasn't government that started that program.
But it is just an example, not meant to be THE entrepreneurial enterprise of last resort. There are a hundred things someone can do for a little cash as long as cash still exists and that may be going the way of the horse and buggy too, thanks again to the leviathan state that needs to know where every one of its precious
penniesnickels are. -
nice unrelated rant Pliny! I simply asked, given all your expressed concerns for the plight of Africans, whether you attended the conference on Africa and U.S. Imperialism? Well did you? Oh wait... is that what your latest rant is all about - amplifying that imperial reach?here is a dandy speech from that conference: Africa and U.S. Imperialism: Post-Colonial Crises and the Imperatives of the African Revolution. Pliny, Pliny, what do think about that U.S. military AFRICOM thingee? Is that ok?
yes, waldo. Even Africans don't want the 8 billion. They know that the imperialist US only too well.
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Yup! Clearly doubting the existance of a supernatural creator = gassing jews.
Actually, it was scientific genetic research that created a superior race and inferior people not "doubting the existance of a supernatural creator". That's for later.
"Thinking in generalities is not health..." then you go on to make generalities about atheists and humanists being Nazis.
You don't speak for secular humanists (atheists) and what you wrote is pretty insulting. In fact, secular humanists don't speak for secular humanists, since they have very little in common with each other. They have about as much in common with each other as everyone in the group of people that don't believe Poseidon is actually real.
And as far as your ridiculous generalization goes, I consider myself an atheist and I don't think Christians or people that believe in a God are stupid (at least not simply for believing in God). They're wrong, but that doesn't mean I think they're stupid. Some of the smartest people I know have faith in divinity. It really says something about you when you can't separate the idea of thinking someone is wrong from thinking they're stupid.
Generalities are indeed generally wrong. Glad to see you remain a tolerant and understanding individual, that like myself recognizes that no race or group of people is inferior and do not ascribe to such statements as religion has been the cause of all wars or that Christians are spreading all kinds of nonsense on the internet and that needs to be stopped. Are those generalities true? Have you ever taken issue with them?
Unfortunately, I believe that most athiests/secular humanists do see religionists as intellectually challenged and I stand by that statement.
While we should be able to voice our opinions, our likes and dislikes and even make general statements about those with differing views, it being a matter of freedom of speech, they become a real problem when they are politicized. That is what we have to be vigilant about and I see both sides of the religion/anti-religion debate becoming somewhat political.
You do not know that someone believing in a God is wrong, by the way. Or am I just being stupid?
And by the way, some of my best friends are secular humanists.Ha Ha.
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Well, kimmy, let's just continue along with having to tolerate greedy Wall Street bankers duping the public and lining their pockets. The Dodd-Frank Bill should curtail that form ever happening again, I suppose, but things will remain the same as long as money for mortgages can be created out of thin air whenever monetary policy is used to heat up the economy.
The fact is that if those greedy bankers couldn't create money out of thin air they probably would have run out and been entirely unable to provide all those unqualified greedy people with mortgages for greedy Wall street to turn into derivatives and sell to equally unwitting and greedy investors.
With all the regulatory boards and agencies that already exist how could this mortgage lending have gone unnoticed by Federal and State authorities?
Mortgage backed Derivatives were under-regulated, as you say, but the mortgage has to exist before it can be turned into a derivative. Is the creation of the mortgage the first step in the boom? How did Countrywide escape the scrutiny of the HMDA?Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_regulation_in_the_United_States
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1975, implemented by Regulation C, requires financial institutions to maintain and annually disclose data about home purchases, home purchase pre-approvals, home improvement, and refinance applications involving one- to four-unit and multifamily dwellings. It also requires branches and loan centers to display a HMDA poster.
And how about the CRA did that play a role in creating mortgages?
And how about low interest rates did that help to create mortgages? Widening the volume of "qualified" buyers?
What were the parameters that defined a qualified buyer?
No one, in government knew the quality of the mortgages being created? Barney Frank was buying them at Fannie and Freddie, didn't he know what he was buying? We know he thought all was well and wanted to keep the ball rolling. Later he co-writes the Dodd-Frank regulatory Act, what a joke. I suppose no one was more qualified to see what happened since he was basically at the forefront of encouraging mortgage creation.
The Federal Reserve is currently busy buying MBDs but watch out headlines are screaming that the GOP sequester has affected the ability of the government to police Wall Street. I guess that's just so they can later lay blame on Republicans should the new boom take a tumble (which all booms do).
Your dislike of Wall Street bankers and wishing to stick the blame on them for the whole boom and bust is rather futile in itself. While Wall Street undoubtedly contributed to the motion, as did many others the buck has to stop at regulators pushing the whole cart. It wouldn't have happened without the aid of the Federal Reserve and the monetary and social
policies of the Bush Administration and Congress who were whistling dixie as it all went down.
I know, I know it was the bankers and Wall Street who did it all.
Let's not keep on going over the same ground. Barney has managed to keep the focus on wall Street and washed his hands of the whole thing. Quite a trick surpassing anything willard could have conjured up.
The story remains - Wall Street greed creates housing crisis. Take a deep drink.
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guys, guys! Did you attend the recent conference?
Obama just gave Africa 8 billion dollars. Not enough money for some Fourth of July fireworks or White House Tours due to sequestration. But there is enough in the pot for a $100 million dollar tour to dole out 8 billion dollars to develop the electrical grid in Africa.
It's going to get more and more like that as Obama levels the playing field.
If one can't read the intent through the generalities and demagoguery you can sure see it in his actions. It's called social justice, or equality, or being fair and balanced or leveling the playing field.
Now one might say, poor Americans can't tour the White house or miss their fireworks on July the 4th...awwww.
But those are just indicators. The reality is the number of people on food stamps and disability, an unemployment rate that won't come down (and is highest among youth and Afro-Americans) and an unprecedented divide in social and political attitudes. All while numerous scandals rock the White House - there's fast and furious, Benghazi, NSA, IRS and the AP/James Rosen affair.
But it's summertime not much to report in the news....yawn...oh yeah - by the way.. BMW got hit for its hiring practices. It seems in their South Carolina operation more Blacks than Whites were being turned away. BMW was doing criminal background checks on job applicants and using them in an indiscriminate manner. Some 79 Blacks and only 6 Whites were turned away. I don't know, those numbers don't look fair to me. Pepsico apparently had to pay 3.1 million under similar circumstances awhile ago.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323495604578539283518855020.html
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move along now Pliny... you've tried this same tired talking point in the past. You can remain isolated in your comfy bubbleWorld fully believing, fully projecting, that there have been no related consequences of increased warming... no negative impacts, none whatsoever.
Not denying warming, waldo. It's proven that the temperature over the last century has risen 1.5 degrees fahrenheit (that's about .8 degrees centigrade but 1.5 is a bigger number and much scarier so we should use that). The contention lies in the anthropogenic factor.
do you think you have a 'gotcha' there, Pliny? Did you read my linked World Meteorlogical Organization (WMO) document's Foreward Section and its reference to a 'decadal perspective'... and think, 'bazinga'! Well Pliny, considering the classic definition of climate and the related period of 'averaged weather' associated with climate has actually been defined by the WMO (as 30 years), you'll need to try harder! That linked WMO document draws it's decadal perspective relative to the WMO current climate normal period as calculated from Jan 1, 1961 to Dec 31, 1990. And, of course, as discussed many times in past MLW threads, that 30 year duration has been chosen by the WMO in its considerations of filtering out any interannual variation/anomalies in the context of a climatic trending time frame period. Try again Pliny... try harder!
A 'decadal perspective'? But the global surface temperature hasn't gone up in the last decade, contrary to the predictions of scientific models. Are you sure a decade is enough time, waldo?
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Well, in fairness to Pearson and Trudeau (I'm being very fair lately), the Quiet Revolution was something that wasn't their fault but they had to deal with. Though, I know that Pearson was miffed before that at Egyptians' refual to trust Canada or its soldiers during the Suez Crisis because the Canadian flag then had a Union Jack in the fly. That triggered the eventual great flag debate; though, it doesn't explain the animosity towards the Canadian monarchy.
Perhaps he was worried that, in some future conflict between Peru and Jamaica, the Peruvians would think Canada was under the command of the Jamaicans, what with them having the same woman as queen and all...
I laughed. It was funny.
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Restated: Maybe the next step is to having someone in a job that kills jobs once they're not needed anymore.
Restated: No job is not needed anymore.
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Thank you for admitting that IPCC fans and alarmists are very troubled by criticism in popular media.
Popular media criticizing IPCC fans and alarmists!!! It's the end of the world for sure!!
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from a July 3, 2013 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) press release detailing a new WMO report: The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes
Aren't you talking about weather here,waldo? We need long term data in order to make climate change claims.
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without regard to oceans, heat transfer and ocean heat content... without regard to the >90% of warming that goes into the oceans... simply looking at the long-standing summation of global surface temperature:
global surface temperature: the area-weighted global average of (i) the sea-surface temperature over the oceans (i.e. the subsurface bulk temperature in the first few meters of the ocean), and (ii) the surface-air temperature over land at 1.5 m above the ground.
Decadal global combined surface-air temperature over land and sea-surface temperature (°C) obtained from the average over the three independent datasets maintained by the HadCRU, NOAA-NCDCand NASA-GISS.The Horizontal grey line indicates the long term average value ( 14°C).[/size]
huh! Plateau?
Holy cow!! Over the last century it has risen a whole, well almost a whole, centigrade.
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Telling Africans to stay poor is nothing new:
The Africans don't like it and neither do the first world countries.
Obama is for fair and equal and he shall legislate it so.
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There are counter examples to that. People will accept extremes when faced with extreme circumstances.
I try to dissuade people from reading between the lines, and furthermore from trying to discuss it on here because it doesn't foster a good discussion IMO. That's not to say that it's against the rules or something, but how can somebody discuss "what Obama REALLY MEANS" on MapleLeafWeb authoritatively, assuming they are not Obama ?
Well, what do I really mean, Mike?
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Rarely do you comment on another quote. I take it as a compliment.
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Wow... and here we have it... out of the blue. An indirect comparison between secular humanists and Nazis.
:lol:Not an indirect comparison at all!
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This comes down the 'coded messages' meme. It's been used before, in saying that Republicans in the South make coded anti-African American messages. So, if it's good for the Dem goose it's good for the Repub gander right ?
Politicians of all stripes have been deceitful or at best not quite forthright in what they say. I believe that Obama wishes to make everything "fair" and "equal". He is quite straightforward about that but he is not quite forthright about how he will achieve it. de Tocqueville mentions that despotism can be reduced down to the single principle that "the only condition one needs in order to reach a centralized public power in a democratic society is to love equality or to make men believe you do."
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yes, Pliny - those statements. The full statements I quoted. Not your isolated, cherry-picked, out of context, skewed, narrow-minded, myopic, single line statement that you're trying, ever so hard, to squeeze your wealth distribution boogeyman out of!
The idiocy of the statement that "everyone having their own car and mansion will make the planet boil over" is what I was pointing out. Contrary to what you think, he did say that. Whether in context or out of context, its an idiotic demagogic statement.
Wealth redistribution seems the aim from the full statements you quoted.
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Under .95 cents and showing no signs of coming back. Is the TD banker right? Is .90 cents inevitable?
I still don't think so.
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Every large economy in history has been engineered and managed to a certain extent. And the current slate of liberal constitutional democracies has not only been relatively stable over the long term, it has resulted in an absolutely gigantic strides in improving standard of life, developing knowledge, technology etc.
And you expect people to reject this for a utopian minimalist ideology that has never worked ANYWHERE except for very short periods of time until the people living in it inevitably rejected it.
I would like the liberal constitutional democracies to continue but somehow you confuse today's leviathan State with the liberal constitutional democracy that was the promise at its inception. If you see no difference, no change in the State from then to now, then nothing can be said. If the liberal constitutional democracy you so cherish has not devolved into a pigsty of special political and social interests squealing for their privilege from the public purse then what is their to be said?
I don't get where this concept that libertarian minimalist ideology will create Utopia comes from? Utopia is the promise of the Statist, the politician, the central planner, the do-gooder.
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Problem is thats not what all minimum wage jobs are. In the US theres more than 3 million minimum wage jobs where that job is the persons primary income. These people require government subsidies to work at that wage, and would require even more if they worked for less.
THAT is where the real manipulation of the market occurs. These companies should be paying these workers enough to live without subsidies, and rolling those costs into the price of their products and services. Otherwise the consumer doesnt really know how much things cost, because part of the price of these products and services is rolled into their tax bill.
The problem is the subsidies - a market distortion. Why pay a fair wage when taxpayers are anteing up to subsidize it.
It is a subsidy to employers, who can pay lower wages to have someone stick around, it only appears the subsidy is to the employees.
That entirely depends on how much the government intervenes. If they didnt intervene at all, then my guess is thats exactly what would happen. For example.... requiring VISAs for foreign workers is intervention in the labor market. If they stopped doing THAT then there would be millions of Mexicans added to the pool many of whom currently work for less than 5USD per day.
If someone can make more picking up pop bottles why would fall to that level? It will fall to the level where people are willing to work not to the level where employees set it. The millions of migrant illegal aliens in the US kept wages low for unskilled labour but it had to be above a level that attracted them.
Whether you like it or not, consumers are voters, and the things they want their government to do are PART of the "market". If people want high wages and high prices, thats their perogative. If they want low wages and low prices, thats their perogative as well.
They want high wages and low prices which is what government tries to bring them. Economically, it fails. There's a natural balance to wages and prices.
CDC study finds no benefit to salt reduction
in Health, Science and Technology
Posted · Edited by Pliny
I admit to being a salt addict. I like salty things even more than sweet things. I do think sugar consumption is way too high and sugar is a killer if over-consumption continues over a long period. What's over-consumption? Entirely a personal matter and some have a higher tolerance than others but I don't even consider raw sugar to be a food. Can't say I don't eat it though.
I have never thought salt was a big problem and have never moderated or curtailed my intake because of health concerns, as I do with sugar, but of course there is a limit to salt intake as with any food.
I remember my great Aunt who at dinner one night mentioned she had to cut out salt as it contributed to water-retention. I had read Dr. Atkins and been on the Atkins diet and thought well if you want to reduce water-retention just stop eating simple sugars and starches. Salt? Really? I, of course never mentioned it to her as it was her Doctor's advice and I would not want to override that.
I have mentioned too that I use butter and have never used margarine except for a short period in the seventies. Most of them were made with hydrogenated oils which today have been proven to be unhealthy.
I think what I got from Atkins was that there are different kinds of calories and the body will use them according to the ease with which they supply energy. Simple carbs and sugars are broken down easily by the body and supply an instant energy boost, what isn't used is stored as fat, which is another source of calories, and more easily used than calories from protein which takes a lot for the body to break down and are thus not the preferred source of energy for the body yet is essential to provide all the amino acids it needs for healthy cell-building
Just my theory. Here's an article on the salt study.
http://kfor.com/2013/07/09/cdc-admits-long-standing-error-there-is-no-benefit-in-reducing-salt/