Newsgroup sci.geo.geology 31600

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>One (maybe more now?) of the Shergotites appear to contain trapped 
>atmospheric gases, entrained at launch.
What???? Wait a mintue!!! I thought the meteors where supposed to be
fairly "unmarred" by the process of ejection? I thought the reports
were all such that the rocks were ejected fairly in tact, not showing
any stress from the ejection processes, and this lack of stress
answered the critics who wondered as to whether the rocks were altered
into their current state at the time of ejection (thus defeating the
notion that these rocks formed in a primordial environment very
possibly able to support life). How can you entrain atmoshperic gases
into the interior of a compact, high density rock such as the meteor
of current public interest, and _not_ have the rock's internal
structure altered in massive manner?
>  The noble gas abundances and 
>isotopic ratios (nitrogen too) are "dead ringers" for those measured by 
>the Viking landers. These data are different from Venus' atmosphere.
>These meteorites are from Mars.  
Again, a dubious statement. Noble gas abundances vary tremendously
over the face of the Earth. Don't they also vary over the face of Mars
dependant upon CO2 snow field abundance, proximity to storms, etc?
Isotope ratios in Earth samples may not be all that different either,
given the expected variations on local levels such as little chunks of
rock in core cuttings or meteor bits.
We measure all sorts of elemental abundances and take ratios of all
sorts of isotopes trying to classify and predict geo-mechanisms acting
on certain types of rocks recovered from drilling operations. Over
hundreds of samples there may exist some average values for abundances
and ratios that are characteristic for a certain depth and geographic
location.... but nothing general and universal. There is no such thing
as "the" Y isotop ratio of some species (for example). There are Y
"and something else" isotope ratios which distinguishes Earth rocks as
being from certain geographic or time series locations, though. But I
am very skeptical of interpretation of elemental abundance and ratio
data. There is far too much variance to make definitive statments
about rocks here on Earth. If we can not make definitive statements
about rocks here on Earth (in the context of elemental abundance and
isotope ratio on a micrscopic, small-sample scale) than how can we
compare samples supposesdly from Mars and claim they are so different
and distinct as to be obviously from Mars and _only_ from Mars, yet so
similar as to be identified as Earth-like in enough ways to allow for
water foramtion, carbonate formation, life, and all sorts of other
extrapolations which have meneralogical implications?
>The Joker
>(NEW)ALHA84001 generated great excitement when it was recognized as
>martian partly because it contains carbonate grains.  That these grains
>are not terrestrial is indicated by 1)the presence of cracks penetrating
>some of them 
???? I've seen thousands of pictures (thin section, SEM, core photo)
of carbonate grains with cracks penetrating the grains. These were all
from wells drilled on Earth though. Are we just drilling old Mars
meteors? Mars meteors coating the entire surface of planet Earth with
a 15,000 foot thick blanket..... hmmmmmm...... it _IS_ possible,
though. Can't rule it out. 
But what about the carbonate reef in Gulf of Mexico near the impact
site of the meteor which hit and supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs?
Were there no nearby instrusives which could have become cracked at
some point in time and filled with carbonate material, subsequently
cracked, and then blasted out during the collision? I'd expect to see
just a whole bunch of rock in the lower Gulf area that had cracks,
fractures, vugs, breccia, etc., which had become filled with carbonate
material and then cracked. Or actual carbonate grains (either micrite
or actual clastic redpositional sequences) where the grains had become
cracked and either remained open or filled with new carbonate
precipitate or silica infilling or overgrowths, etc. There must be
something about these cracks which is distinctly different from any
crack in any carbonate grain in any rock on Earth for this to be as
definitive as you indicate. What is it about these cracks in the
ALHA84001 rock that makes it a "dead ringer" for cracked carbonate
grains found on Mars? And where did we get cracked carbonate grains on
Mars to test so that we can know for a fact that the cracking of
carbonate grains on Mars is intrinsically distinct and differentiable
from carbonate grain cracking on Earth?
>and 2)an age of ~3.6Ga.  These grains are mineralogic
>evidence for liquid water on Mars at some time in the past, corroborating
>the morphologic evidence (Baker, The Channels of Mars) and previous 
>mineralogic data (the presence of iddingsite as an accesory phase in 
>Lafayette, dated to 300Ma, Swindle, et al (1995) LPSC 26 1385-1386).  
>And of course, we all know that carbonate rocks are good places to look 
>for fossils on earth.  This thought has driven some of the development 
>for future Mars probes.
Of course, this all assumes that the meteors is question are actually
from Mars. You can't say rocks A and B are from Mars because B has the
Mars-like qualities of A and A, interestingly enough, has all the
Mars-like qualities of B. 
What is LPSC? I'd like to try to obtain this paper so I can see this
for myself. Until then, I remain dubious over these explanations.
>Ejection From Mars (Spallation)--(NEW)
>Some have pointed out that tektites were melted at impact, how
>then could material be accelerated to Mars' excape velocity 
>relatively unshocked?
Here it is again. "Relatively unshocked", you say. How can you have
atmosphere entrained into the rock during the ejection process and yet
have them remain "relatively unshocked"?
>  The short answer is spallation (Melosh
>1984 Icarus 59, 234-260, 1989 Impact Cratering, pp. 71 et seq.).  
...[snip]
> This phenomenon is observed in laboratory 
>tests (Gratz, et al. (1993) Nature 363 522-524).  
Fascinating. I'll look into this. It also seems evident that such a
low pressure, high gradient shock event will act over the entire
surface. It will not preferentially seek out rock of a certain size
and effect only that rock. Indeed, if sand-sized grains of dirt or
Mars dust are also at the impact site, then these materials will all
go the way of the rocks-to-become-meteors. This is one of my points
that I made in another post in another thread. There _must_ be massive
amounts of dirt-like Mars material just floating around if we see so
many Mars meteors actually come to Earth, eh? And it is the accounting
of all the material (a material balance sort of approach) with which I
attempted to argue that "it don't add up". Either not enough Mars
material has been ejected to allow for so many Mars meteors, or there
had to be more material ejected than is observed from Mars photos for
the high number of Mars meteors to be falling to Earth. All of which
is supposed to lead to the idea that the most likely scenario is that
these meteors are actually Earth ejecta that is just falling back on
us after millions of years in a near-Earth orbit.
>Spallation is also invoked to explain the presence of intact meteorites 
>on the moon (several were found in the lunar samples).  The shock wave
>from the impact travels through the projectile as well as the target.
>When the shock reaches the "back" of the projectile, we again have 
>interference effects, which will spall material off the back of the 
>projectile at high velocities.  Since the projectile is moving very 
>fast relative to the target, the material spalled off the back is left 
>with little velocity relative to the target.
What does this have to do with the post? This statement seems at first
to indicate that entire meteorites where found intact on the Moon, but
the explanation of how this could happen suggests that only the back
side of the meteorites should survive unchanged and intact. What did I
miss here? Were these meteorites from Mars?
>  The parabolas
>have been successfully modeled as re-entering ejecta from the impact
>(see Vervack and Melosh, 1993, GRL).  
What is "GRL"?
> This phenomenon explains the 
>time dependence of the IR flux from the SL9 impacts at Jupiter, and
>ionospheric disturbances observed following high-altitude nuclear tests
>over the Pacific c. 1960.  This is all somewhat speculative until we 
>recover a meteorite unequivacally from Venus or Earth.
And if Mars can be spewing out all of this material which makes its
way the Earth so "easily", then I expect to see Earth ejecta on the
Moon, eh?
...[snip]
>Age of Ejection
>There are two ways to date the ejection event.  One way is to radio-
>isotopically date rock material that melted during impact. The 
>one case I know of this being done (on ALHA77005, Jagoutz 1989 GCA 53, 2429-2441) gave an ejection age of 15Ma, plus or minus 15Ma, not so good 
>precision (though it was a very important result for other reasons).  The 
>other way is cosmic ray exposure dating (CRE).  Cosmic rays penetrate rock 
>to about a meter.  In doing so they break nuclei to create spall products.
>The abundance of stable spall products is proportional to the time of exposure
>(e.g., how long the rock has been in space and ~1 meter in size), and the
>cosmic ray flux, which has been measured.  Measuring in the lab the 
>abundance of these spall products gives the CRE age. See Peter Henderson's
>text "Inorganic Geochemistry" for more details.
See!!! Here it is again!!! Now we're going to measure the age of
ejecta by radio-dating the rock material melted during impact!! But up
above there is an argument that rocks are "relatively unshocked"
during ejection!! How can a melted rock be relatively unshocked? And
how do you entrain atmosphere into the interior of a rock during the
ejection process while at the same time melting the surface of the
rock?
And cosmic ray dating will be inaccurate for the purpose of dating
ejection, too. All the rock on Mars to a depth of about 1 meter will
have these CR events. So you don't know if the CRE age is the age that
the rock has been in space or the age that the rock has been at the
surface of the planet _plus_ the time it has been in space. We use CRE
dating of paleolithic fragments here on Earth, too. It is amazing what
you can tell about how long a rock was at the surface millions of
years ago by use of this technique. 
>Terrestrial Age
>(NEW)This is determined in a way very similar to CRE ages.  In this case it 
>is the abundance of unstable nuclides that gives the age.  In space, 
>unstable nuclides are produced at a steady rate by the cosmic ray flux.
>They decay at a rate given by the rate constant for that particular nuclide.
>A steady-state abundance is achieved between these two processes.  Once
>on the earth, the meteorite is shielded from cosmic rays by the earth's
>atmosphere and the abundance declines from the steady-state abundance.
>The lower the abundance, the greater the terrestrial age.  The chief
>nuclides used are 14C and 36Cl.  Again, refer to Henderson.
But C14 dating is as old as the hills..... and it has its greatest use
with estimating the end of biological processes. No space travel here,
eh? And the upper limit on ability to guage age from this method is
extrmely low compared to what is required when tens and hundreds of
millions of years are being considered. Can you give a better citation
for Henderson's book?
>Orbital Dynamics
>The most recent discussion I know of is Gladman et al. (1996) Science 271 
>1387-1392.  In that paper, Gladman reports new resonances for Mars
>ejecta on their way to earth, increasing the transfer efficiency. Keep
>in mind that of the twelve martain clan meteorites, 4 are observed
>falls within the last 200 years.  Keep your eyes on the skies....
Now _this_ is interesting!!!! I'll have to dig this up first!!! But
can you quickly tell me what does "twelve martain clan meteorites"
mean? I think I know, but I just _hate_ to make unwarrented
assumptions. 
>Oldest Life Signs on Earth
>The oldest fossils of earth life date to about 3.5Ga.  At the press
>conference, this date was re-iterated.  The earliest indicators of
>life go back to 3.8Ga.  Altered carbon isotopic ratios is the evidence,
>since life is known to prefer one carbon isotope over another.
The carbon method of dating is not accurate at the Ga time frame. No
one thinks the method can be accurate at that elapse time. And the
trick is not that life "prefers one carbon isotope over another". The
mechanism is quite different than a mere ingestion preference. If all
of your evidence is grounded on such shakey basis, then all bets are
"off" as to the varacity of the proposition that meteors from Mars
fall to Earth, and that some of these meteors contain evidence of
life.
>  Consider:
>fossils of early earth life are found in the oldest rocks that one 
>might expect to preserve fossils.  Altered carbon isotopic ratios are 
>found in the oldest rocks likely to preserve such. 
This is an absolutely inaccurate statement about altered carbon
isotope ratios in the oldest rocks where fossils might be expected to
be preserved. I'm begining to think you may not know what you are
talking about.Or am I being scamed here? Is the joke on me?
Jeffrey L. Baldwin, Mind & Vision Computer Systems
"Intelligent Processing Systems for the Energy Industry"
Voice/Fax/Data: (713) 550-4534     email: mvcs@gramercy.ios.com
http://www.worldenergy.solutions/WorldEnergy/Companies/Mind&Vision;/Mind&Vision.HTML;
.
223 31601 <4vfn73$acp@taco.cc.ncsu.edu> Article retrieved; request text separately.
220 31601 <4vfn73$acp@taco.cc.ncsu.edu> article
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From: jgward@unity.ncsu.edu (James Grady Ward)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,sci.astro.amateur,sci.bio,sci.geo.geology,sci.bio.paleontology,alt.life-mars
Subject: Re: How to dig deep holes on Mars?
Date: 21 Aug 1996 19:14:43 GMT
Organization: North Carolina State University
Lines: 57
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <4vfn73$acp@taco.cc.ncsu.edu>
References:  <4ub26t$e7@news.kth.se> <320B4393.3EAD@dfd.dlr.de> <4ufh95$52h@news.acns.nwu.edu> <4ufus5$6uh@roar.cs.utexas.edu> <4ugasl$2io@nunki.usc.edu> <4ul75o$6cp@skipper.netrail.net> <4updf6$cf@news.snowcrest.net> <4vf5f1$a2t@skipper.netrail.net>
Reply-To: jgward@eos.ncsu.edu (James Grady Ward)
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In article <4vf5f1$a2t@skipper.netrail.net>, kaz@upx.net (KAZ Vorpal) writes:
>
>	Your ridiculous straw man arguments illustrate the complete 
>vacancy of any adequate defense for your stance. The fact is that, while 
>it's apparent that NASA went to Luna, they did it on money that would not 
>have been surrendered to them voluntarily, by definition. Otherwise NASA 
>should be a private industry. It is because people like you believe that 
>the consumers would not do this of their own free will that you advocate 
>raping their pocketbooks for your little pet causes.
read some history kaz, there was this little thing called the
space race.  people were in favor of it.  if you understand what
the space race was you would then realize that there is competion
in space research, it is between countries because of the scale of
work involved in doing the research instead of between companies.
you see people wanted to spend money on getting the moon and doing
it right then to make sure that they got there before the russians.
the result is the trips to the moon cost about 10 or so times 
what they should have if the people had not wanted it done yesterday.
it has been said that a trip to the moon done now with would cost
less without adjusting for inflation than the original missions did
if they just took time to plan the thing right.
>	And this is, by definition again, wrong. Value is not what some 
>egomaiacal elitist jerks define it to be, value is, as we've known since 
>the physiocrats at least (a century before Marx), that value is whatever 
>people are willing to /voluntarily/ exchange for something else.
but how do you rate value on a national level? clearly you do not value
science, but most of the country does to some degree.  try and find
some people that dont want to see any advance in technology.  they
are rather hard to find outside of a few areas.
>	Which means that if you are having to FORCE people to pay for 
>this, who would not have done it voluntarily, then you are stealing value 
>from them...the value of what they would have spent it on otherwise.
umm idiot there are several people that do not want to fund the military
but do want to fund science, there are people that want to only fund the
military.  so when you mix the whole group together it balances out to
an extent.  the government get money from everyone and then figures out
to what degree people are interested in certain things and from this
it decides how much of the combined pool of money each peice of the
budget gets.  if you really knew how amount of money NASA gets in
relation to the total budget you would realize your agruement makes
no sense.  
--
buckysan: does anyone else like ani-mayhem? 
          http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jgward/WWW/animay.html
annapuma and unapumma in 96'
 " the realization that the pursuit of knowledge can be an
   end unto itself is the beginning and highest form of wisdom"

>In article <01bb8982$00acd0a0$7e59c7cd@danger.provide.net>,
>Lord Garth  wrote:
>[snip]
[and snip again]
>> I am looking for something like monkeys with feathers, dogs with scales,
>>birds that spin webs and have eight legs, ...etc.
Enlighten me as to why the following don't count,I forgot already:
   Humans with-
              appendices
              males with nipples
              body hair
              segmental abdominal muscles
              pinky toes
              wisdom teeth
              muscles to move ears (my granpa's worked-I'll be a monkey's 
              caudal vertabrae      uncle!-sorry guys,couldn't resist)
              physiological responses to emotion suited to life in the
              wilds,not the city.
   Whales with vestigial pelvic girdles
   Pythons with vestigial hind limbs
'Cept for the emotion one,I got all these from Mitchell,Mutchmor,and
Dolphin's _Zoology_ . I want a reason why these vestigial structures
cannot be considered evidence of species in transition.I _don't_ want you
to tell me that we just don't know their function or who am I to question
the ways of the Lord. I want you to tell me why,when we see structures
that appear to be transitional between a formerly useful structure and
that structure's abscence in an environment in which it is no longer
needed,we should not take this as evidence of evolution.
Thanx,
Felix

Hello everyone,
		I heard some time ago that there was a "closed" 
newsgroup/discussion group for jobs related to geology. Could someone 
please post this to me at the address below.
Thanks in advance,
Sandy
============================================================================
Sandy Archibald                         email: sandy@stoner.eps.mcgill.ca
Dept of Earth & Planetary Science,       
McGill University                     www: http://stoner.eps.mcgill.ca/~sandy
Montreal, Quebec                        STRANRAER FC WWW PAGE
CANADA  H3A 2A7              http://stoner.eps.mcgill.ca/~sandy/stranraer.html
****************************************************************************

In <4v8ime$kgr@sjx-ixn6.ix.netcom.com> Gvwmoore@netcom.com writes: 
>
>>    Creation theory should not conflict with scientific evidence if
it
>>claims to be the truth.  As a physicist and theologian, I would
>>disagree with you that respectability is not important.  ;-)
>theologians can't be physicists. it's a law or something.
>
>
    You mean that it's against the law?

jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) wrote:
>	
>	I'm starting to plan for an eclipse cruise berth in 
>1998, and as I was thinking about this I had a thought that I
>couldn't adequately address with the tools available to me.
>	Due to the interaction of Earth and Moon, days on 
>Earth used to be shorter than they are now.  (Can be determined
>from corals.)  I believe that the Moon is moving away from the
>Earth, i.e., the average Earth-Moon distance is increasing.
>	At the present time, the size of the Moon as seen by 
>the Earth is as large as the Sun's disk as seen from the Earth.
>This allows for the exact superposition of the two that gives us
>the beautiful phenomenon of a solar eclipse.  It is also well-known
>that the Moon can be a little bit closer, causing an annular
>eclipse.
>	When the Moon was closer, there wouldn't have been a total
>solar eclipse as we see it now.  The larger apparent diameter of
>the Moon would have covered the Sun for a longer period of time.  
>The corona would likely still have been visible, but the effects like
>Baily's Beads wouldn't have been as striking.  I guess there still
>would have been a diamond ring effect.
>	So, my question boils down to:  how long ago did the apparent
>diameters of the Sun and Moon become approximately equal (as viewed
>from Earth, of course)?
>
>	JGA
>
>
>
>-- 
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----------------
>Welcome to the temporary signature file for James G. Acker!
>--->  jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
>the author and are NOT to be construed IN ANY SHAPE 
>OR FORM as the opinion, policy, or guiding principle of 
>ANY government organization or corporate entity.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------
>
   Let me get this straight... you work for NASA and you 
ask a newsgroup a question like this?  Can't you just walk 
down the hall and get a pretty good answer?  Or do you 
already know the answer, and this is a quiz?

In article <4v3naj$idh@news.inforamp.net> Dan Evens  writes:
>Please do not post this to the sci or alt.sci newsgroups. It is
>totally topic.
I guess you mean off-topic, and if so, you are wrong.  It is about as on-topic 
as you can get.
************************************************************
Bill Penrose, Sr. Scientist, Transducer Research, Inc.
   600 North Commons Drive, Suite 117
   Aurora, IL 60504
   708-978-8802, fax -8854, email wpenrose@interaccess.com
************************************************************
Purveyors of fine gas sensors and 
contract R&D; to this and nearby galaxies.
************************************************************

wenthold@jila02.Colorado.EDU (Wenthold Paul G.) writes:
>Wade Hines  wrote:
>>>What we *can* do is observe the results of the process as it happens in the
>>>world, we can model the process in the 'fast time' of computer simulations,
>>>and we can develop analogous model systems (such as self-replicating
>>>peptides). All these have been done, and support the second assumption.
>>Ah!!! No self replicating peptides. Nope. 
>"In an experiment that many thought couldn't be done, scientists at
>Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., have designed the
>first peptide that catalyzes its own replication."  CENews, Aug 12, 1996)
>They cite a paper by Ghadiri and co-workers, Nature, vol 382, p 525
>(1996).  It's recent, probably controversial, but looks like
>it has been done.
No. I don't think so (not sure what the molecules think)
What they did was to show product directed catalysis for the
reaction of A* + B -> AB
A* is an activated thioester form of A.
It works like this, AB forms dimers. Also A+B+AB forms which looks like
the AB dimer but the A and B aren't linked covalently. Still, this puts
the N-terminus of B near the activated C-terminus of A and you get
template directed fragment condensation. In this case, the template is 
the same as the product. I notice that tehy didn't do this with a free 
N-terminus for A or an activated C-terminus for B which would have
really shown some specificity and a degree of robustness to their
reaction. Don't get me wrong, it's a neat paper but it is rather
pathetic in terms of self replicating peptides.
--Wade

Jonathan W. Hendry wrote:
> 
> [snip]
>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to drill in the ice caps?
> 
This sure makes a lot of sense to me. That's one reason why in
my original question I wrote about "samples" (plural). I think
holes should be drilled at as many different locations as pos-
sible, like ice caps, dried out river beds, canyons, caves etc.
Feasability, however, is a different matter.
	George

In article <4vc3ft$cda@news.snowcrest.net>, Zepp  wrote:
[stuff deleted]
>>	Second, there is of course enormous regulation of the industry, 
>>and of every industry linked to it. Economic ignoramuses don't realize, 
>>of course, but regulation is the creator of stagnation and monopoly. 
>
>Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!  Geez, Kaz, you have got to be kidding, right?  
>Regulation is the one thing that keeps the multinationals from simply moving 
>in and declaring that they own us!!  We tried deregulating in the twenties 
>-- result was the great depression.  Reagan deregulated air travel -- and 
>promplty half the carriers went tits up, forced out of business by 
>deliberate economic sabotage, done by their competitors.  He deregulated the 
>S & Ls -- and look how much that little pecadillo cost the taxpayers.  And 
>BTW the government does earn their money, by building things like interstate 
>freeways; various huge water projects; the armed forces...
The problem is your both right and both wrong. The S&L; problem was caused
because the government deregulated them while continuing to insure them with
tax payers money. If the people depositing money in wildly speculating S&L;'s
had lost there money, instead of the taxpayer the problem wouldn't repeat
itself for atleast a generation or two :-)
In general excessive regulation benefits very large companies, because its
something they can afford to deal with. For example it costs several
thousand to get a PC board FCC approved. Nothing for IBM, but more than
enough to keep garage inventors out of the market (or atleast forces them
to break the law).

Charles Cagle wrote:
> 
> In article <4vb5s3$e1r@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, tdp@ix.netcom.com(Tom
> Potter) wrote:
> 
> >In <32182B26.167E@ic.ac.uk> Gavin Tabor  writes:
> >>
> >>Tom Potter wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Charles Cagle may, or may not be a Creationist.
> >>> That truth has not come out. ( To my knowledge. )
> >>>
> >>> The fact that Cagle might be a Creationist, Republician,
> >>> white, male, heterosexual, etc. has nothing to do
> >>> with the issues he raised. Those issues should be
> >>> addressed on their merits. ( If we want the truth to get out. )
> >>> If we don't want the truth to get out on those subjects,
> >>> we can attack the messenger and obscure his message.
> >>
> >>That may well be so - in fact I couldn't agree more. Could
> >>you enlighten me about what point he is trying to make about
> >>Martian life? I've been following this (I think) from the
> >>beginning, but I seem to have missed any evidence presented
> >>by him. Or anyone else for that matter.
> >
> >As I interpreted Cagle's original post,
> >he was trying to make the point that
> >NASA hyping life on Mars,
> >was more motivated by budget considerations,
> >than science.
> >
> >Tom Potter
> 
> Potter, you have stated the point rather well.  But I also wished to make
> it clear that some rather large leaps of faith which are not 'scientific'
> at all are directly behind this debacle.
> 
Sure - NASA has to blow its own trumpet to get funding. Look at
Apollo : the scientific, rather than entertainment, missions
were cancelled. However the claims about this meteorite are
scientific - they are testable and falsifiable. What more do
you want?
IMHO, the martian origin of the rock seems the most securely
based part of the theory. I'm more interested in the possible
biological/non-bio origin of the chemicals that are claimed 
as indicative of life. We already know that the soil chemistry
on Mars is pretty wierd. How likely is it that the various
organic compounds found have a non-biological origin??
Gavin
> --
> C. Cagle
> Singularity Technologies, Inc.
> 1640 Oak Grove Road, N.W.
> Salem, OR  97304
> 
> Ph: 503/362-7781
> 
> "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
>                 - Howard Aiken
-- 
Gavin Tabor

adam kojoian  wrote:
>Bradley Kranz wrote:
>> 
>> gnewman@iglou.com (Greg 'Bonz' Newman) wrote:
>> 
>> > You're talking about Haeckel, and 'ontogeny recapulates
>> >phylogeny'.
>> >

The one I like is "Proctoscopy  recapitulates Hagiography"
--Max the Goat-herder in "Giles Goatboy" by John Barth.
Jeff/addesign

kaz@upx.net (KAZ Vorpal) wrote:
>	First, even if there were no regulation of private aerospace 
>activities, it would still not be a free market. There is a concept 
>beyond the view of most people called mandated competition. As long as 
>the government steals money from the poor to pay for their space 
>projects, they function as competitors against a private sector who must 
>actually /earn/ the money. The government, not having to earn it, is able 
>to pay more for less and return inferior results. This makes private 
>"competition" nearly impossible, the prices become insanely inflated.
Well, tell me, how much time will pass until a mission to Mars
actually *makes* money? Not in the foreseeable future, I think. And no
company would do it only for the publicity neither, I think. So that's
what the government is for. We all give money to it (the rich give
more, the poor, less) so it does things that we all want to be done,
but that noone wants to do.
>	Second, there is of course enormous regulation of the industry, 
>and of every industry linked to it. Economic ignoramuses don't realize, 
>of course, but regulation is the creator of stagnation and monopoly. 
But regulation helps people, if the rules are well designed; if a
train company is forced to have regular lines to all cities and not
only the most lucrative ones, that's good. Complete deregulation can
also create monopolies, and worse, those are uncontrolled monopolies.
Check out the market of operating systems for PC's.

I've heard that the magnetic pole's direction will change in some time. 
Can you tell me when?

>>>    Creation theory should not conflict with scientific evidence if
>it
>>>claims to be the truth.  As a physicist and theologian, I would
>>>disagree with you that respectability is not important.  ;-)
>>theologians can't be physicists. it's a law or something.
>    You mean that it's against the law?
it 's a vested interest argument. what is meant is that physicists
shouldn't be theologians. it's unethical.

On 8/20/96 2:47PM, in message <4vcc53$jcm@orac.dmu.ac.uk>, Mark O'Leary 
 wrote:
> In article <01bb8982$00acd0a0$7e59c7cd@danger.provide.net>,
> Lord Garth  wrote:
> 
> 
> >In all seriousness can anybody identify a current complex life form in a
> >transitional state.
> 
> 
how about the english pepper moth ?
Originally this moth was a light pepper colour.
During and after the industrial revolution , this moth adapted to the more polluted 
environment of the industrial north of england by becoming coal balck in colour.
If you were to have looked at the houses in the north 20/30 yrs ago they were 
mostly black/coal coloured on their exteriors.
Over the past 20/30 yrs the coal burning has stopped & lots of people have had 
their house exteriors sand blaster clean. these houses are primarily made of 
quarried limestone.
Now it is exceeding rare to catch a dark pepper moth, they have returned back to 
their origianl colouration.
This is clearly an example of natural evolution , transforming the moth colouration 
to first suite man's pollution then returning to its original colouration after the clean 
up. If coal burning was still prevalent to day then so would be black pepper moths.
If you want to look for proof of evolution , you just have to open your eyes !!
Sean Webb

Hello,
I have been trying to develop a set of general guidelines for 
normative analysis (or any such procedure of distributing and 
combining analysis results (XRD, TEA, Leachs and other data) to find 
as close to the real mineral makeup of a sample).
So far, I have been focusing on mathmatical techniques such as used by 
P. Caritat et.al (LPNORM: A linear programming normative analysis 
code", Computers and Geosciences Vol 20,No 3 pp313-347,1994), N. Laube 
et. al. ( MODUSCALC- A computer program to calculate a mode from a 
geochemical rock analysis" Comp. & Geo. July 96) and previous work 
sited in these papers.
The problem with the approaches given in these papers is they don't 
account for the meaning of analysis results. In looking at "solved" 
examples of "normative analysis".  There is much qualitative 
"evidence" used.
My idea is that there are two parts to a normative analysis 
1)determining the mineral phases 2) determining the amounts in these 
mineral phases.  The qualitative information is used to direct 
selection of mineral phases and then quantitative information is used 
for determining the amount.
----
Does anyone know of any journal articles, papers, books, class notes 
that contain general (specific are even better) guidelines for 
normative analysis ?
What approach do most people follow when faced with a normative 
analysis problem ??  Is there a method or checklist of things to 
consider in a particular order ?
I'm totally befuddled. There seem to be infinite solutions to a 
normative analysis problem but very little lab data availble (because 
of cost).
Thanks in advance for any help solving this problem !!!!
Paul Jacyk    Paul5jacyk@aol.com
www:  http://che-ailab4.eng.ohio-state.edu/~jacyk

Mike S. Nash wrote:
> 
> Just wondering,
> 
> Has anyone had any experience with the seismo-electric effect?
 [snip]
> Wright State but I'd like some pointers.
> 
When I was doing my MS at Colorado School of Mines (ca. 1990) there was
a fellow grad student working on developing practical field techniques
for measuring the seismo-electric effect.  His name is Dong Chi, and I
think George Keller was his advisor.  I suggest you check the CSM web
site (www.mines.colorado.edu) and check the faculty directory in the
Geophysics department.  Another person working on this was Catherine
Skokan, and there may be a publication...  Phone is (303)273-3450 for
the department.
Good Luck!
If you need more pointers, email me at 75377.1533@compuserve.com and
I'll see if I can dredge anything up.
-- 
Earle M. Williams
Mining Engineer

In article <3218EEA9.41C6@theory.chem.ubc.ca>, rjm@theory.chem.ubc.ca 
says...
>
>Hi ya,
>
>hope someone hears this (looks like this newsgroup has gone the way of
>many ...)
>
>I just got back from holidays, where I collected several nice rocks
>from streams that look great when wet.  Is there any stuff (some sort
>of laquer perhaps) that you can paint them with, or soak them in, so
>they'll look "wet" all the time?
>
>
>thanks,
>
>Richard
Have you thought about having them polished perhaps with a tumbler.  This 
will give you a nice shiny finish.  You can check with your local rock 
shop.  They usually can do polishing for you or else they can tell you who 
can.  Or you could buy a tumbler and polish your own rocks.  Tumbling can 
give you a very nice natural finish without buildup of other material ie 
spray coatings, etc.   Good luck   Rhonda McCormick

>>>    "Roger Bacon (c. 1220-1292) affirmed the roundness of the earth
>>how? no map, no evidence, no sailing.
>You know, you should really do some reading instead of mumbling 
>incoherent responses.  The fact that the Earth is round can be proved 
>experimentally without the need to sail around the world.
today, yes. back then, nope, because
a>the religionists would prosecute you if you started with the theory
of a heliocentric universe
b>climbing a mountain could mean the earth is a flat disc

> 
> The genuine theist must recognise that nature is God's
> revelation uncensored by human superstition.  The Bible is a
> superstitious, self-contradictory, obscene, and frankly evil
> book that has been blamed on God in an act of blasphemy.
> 
> Eolai
> 
> Eolai
That's pushing it. The Bible is no evil book. Do you think that Hebrew 
peasants 4000 years ago would understand evolution if it were explained 
to them? The creation story was the backdrop for an explanation (albeit 
probably not a literal one) for the origin of sin. That's the point the 
first few chapters of Genesis is trying to make. The problem is that 
fundamentalists refuse to accept that the Bible, when closely examined, 
does not pretend to be a scientific document. It does not try to explain 
how God created the universe, but rather the fact that He did so. A 
literal interpretation, however, bogs us down in debates of this kind and 
prevents us from understanding the true genius of the universe God 
created and continues to create.
Jim

On 14 Aug 1996 22:51:12 GMT, "Lord Garth"  wrote:
>In all seriousness can anybody identify a current complex life form in a
>transitional state. I would think that we have many examples of this
>phenomenon in our midst out of the tens of million different species on our
>planet. Please do not cite single celled life forms since there is no
>question that these mutate to adapt to their surroundings. I am looking for
>something like monkeys with feathers, dogs with scales, birds that spin
>webs and have eight legs, ...etc. 
How about Homo Sap. Sap?
We are now transitional between our ancestors and our desendants.
Stick around for a million years or so, and you'll realize that WE are
"a current complex life form in a transitional state".
-- 
Al

In article <4vb4b2$ejr@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>, tdp@ix.netcom.com
writes
>In  Kennedy
> writes: 
>
>>Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
>>A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
>>Python Philosophers
>
>Socrates was a bugger, even when he was not pissed.
>
>I understand the Socrates' wife divorced him 
>because he was in different.
>
And why do you think the line was so perfectly apt in the Monty Python
Philospher's Drinking Song?
Lost your sense of humour? :-(
_______________________________________________________
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
Python Philosophers

In article , Henry Spencer
 writes
>In article <9i24bkAPl7FyEwMY@kennedym.demon.co.uk> Kennedy mon.co.uk> writes:
>>>  ALthough the underlying technology of
>>>television is an american invention,
>>WRONG!
>>Television was invented by John Logie Baird, of Scotland...
>
>Logie Baird's mechanical scanning, while arguably the first television,
>was a technological dead end, utterly unrelated to modern video systems.
>The underlying technology of today's television came from RCA.
Utter crap.  What you are claiming is that any system which was
subsquently superceded by an electronic alternative or any other
technology was irrelevant, whether it layed the foundations which enable
the ultimate solution to be achieved or not.
The RCA work work was based on the developments at EMI, which were not
so different from Baird's system in principle, even if there was a major
difference in implementation.  The concept of building an image up by
sequentially scanning it with a photosensor and transmitting that signal
serially to a receiving station together with the necessary
syncronisation signals was the novel idea which Baird developed.
Whether the imaging was achieved by a mechanical scanning system (as
with Bairds first designs), an electronic beam reading a photocathode(as
in a vidicon type sensor) or scanning photo-charge through a series of
light sensitive silicon gates (as in a modern CCD sensor) does not
matter, it is still based on the same concept - convert the two
dimensional image to a serial electronic signal by raster scanning,
transmit via radio to a receiver and then rescan in a compatible raster
for display.
The first commercial television broadcasts by the BBC used the Baird
system.  The EMI system which replaced it had to be fully compatible
with it, providing the same resolution at the same frame rate in the
same interlaced format and with the same line rate - the basic 405-line
monochrome TV standard.
As for the mechanical scanning system itself, your assertion that this
was a dead end technology is typically niaive - until very recently
almost every high performance thermal imaging sensor in the world use a
mechanical scanning system (and the highest performance ones still do)
which can trace its origin to Logie Baird's original work.  The thermal
equivalent of the vidicon - the pyrovidicon - has never been able to
compete in this arena in terms of performance and reliability, and
little work continues on its development due to advances in other
technologies.
Those modern video systems which provided such detailed images of bombs
being dropped through windows and chimneys so recently in Iraq were all
produced by mechanically scanned systems derived from J.L.Bairds work.
Not quite the technological DEAD END you refered to !
_______________________________________________________
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
Python Philosophers

trin@one.net wrote:
> 
> cjacobs@simplex.nl (Chris Jacobs) wrote:
> 
> >: The bible was written in poetic form at a time when most
> >: people only vaguely understood physics, so you can't criticise the
> >: physics or biology in there.
> 
> >The bible was written in poetic form at a time when most
> >people only vaguely understood sociology, so you can't criticise the
> >sociology or theology in there.
> 
> >Chris
> 
> Furthermore, the bible was written at a time when most people couldn't
> read or write.
> 
> Brian
Therefore it was written by the most intelligent!
GC