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weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) wrote:
>: >I agree that many would agree that a sperm is alive, but is 
>: >it a beginning before merger? 
>: Could you rephrase that please?
>Heh. Sure. Let's say, an embryo is alive. Let's also say, a sperm is 
>alive. Now, how does that apply to the question of "beginning of _new_ 
>life?" If a load of sheep sperm were to drift by a human ooctye, there is 
>no potential for beginning, right? The (non-scientific) question involved 
>here would concern the status of potentiality, I suppose.
Presumably "new life" would be a new individual life form.  Are sperm
and eggs separate biological individuals?  I would say so because they
are genetically different from the organisms from which they come. The
onset of life as a separate biological individual comes with
fertilization.  The problem is that the embryological development
sequence is "designed" for loss of "unsatisfactory" embryos which
leaves room for decisions which are not clear cut.  Science can tell
us how to intervene in the process; it can not tell us whether to.
Richard Harter, cri@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-508-369-3911
Life is tough. The other day I was pulled over for doing trochee's
in an iambic pentameter zone and they revoked my poetic license.

> meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
> 
> : Oh, I agree.  But there is more then this to it.  What moggin appears
> : not to recognize is that the more advanced theories, quantum mechanics
> : and relativity, build on Newtonian mechanics and generalize it, not
> : reject it.  This is completely different from the transition from
> : Aristotle, through Galileo to Newton, where the previous body of
> : knowledge was basically rejected wholesale and a new theory was
> : generated from scratch.
> : Now, I can't blame anybody whose knowledge of modern science is based
> : on popular accounts (i.e. about 99% of the population) for thinking
> : that modern physics completely "refuted" all that existed before. 
Well, in traditional logic, surely, if we regard a theory as the
copulative proposition
{P(i) and P(i+1)....and P(j-1) and p(j)}
then if someone refutes, say, P(j), the copulative proposition is false,
even if the copulative proposition {P(i) and P(i+1) ... and P(j-1)}
remains acceptable and part of some larger theory 
{P(i) and P(i+1) ...and P(j) and P(j+1) and ....}
 doesn't it?
It depends which you think is the more useful way of looking at it.
-- 
rafael cardenas huitlodayo
Swarfmire College, Goscote, UK

/On the date of 16 Oct 1996 20:37:46 GMT, abian@iastate.edu (Alexander
Abian) did inscribe into the group alt.atheism and unto the ether
thereof:\
>In article <54125g$m6r@hil-news-svc-4.compuserve.com>,
>Mike Turk  wrote:
>>
[snip]
>>
>>There is a large difference between immunovaccines and alteration of
>>behavior. You are comparing surgery and medicine to electroshock
>>'therapy' and mind-control.
>>
>Abian answers:
>   Not a large difference in fact a very close correlation.  Disease
>affect the brain, the brain affect the behavior!
Still doesn't make it right to alter my genes without my approval.
[snip]
>Mike Turk replies: 
>>Nature is not genocidal. Nature is not an entity and can have no
>>emotions or thoughts.
>Abian answers:
>Nature is genocidal.  Bacteria and microbes  are genocidal. And who
>creates bacteria, microbes and viruses ? The Nature, of course.  
Nature is *not* genocidal. It does not say who will live or die. It
cannot. IT IS NOT AN ENTITY. Bacteria and microbes are not genocidal;
they desire life as much as other organisms.
>Nature lets the  most powerful to survive! Nature has its "Natural
>Selection"  If a child dies of smallpox, that is the Nature's way of
>eliminatng  the weak and selecting the powerful to survive.  For Nature
>there is one value:  "which species is more toxic, more poisonous than
>the others  and that species survive. 
Untrue. Biological laws favor a balance between predators and prey,
between life and death.
>The Natural Selection of Darwin is
>fine and correct for animals without intellect.  But we human beings 
>have intellect and we will (as we have done find the way to circumvent
>"the Natural selection" of the Nature -which is based on genocidal cruelty)
>and we will impose OUR SELECTION by giving priority to HUMAN SPECIES!!!
Yes, and we will do so through immunovaccines and treatments. Not by
forced genetic alteration.
[snip]
>Mike Turk replies:
>>If anyone attempted to alter my genes without my permission, I would
>>fight with my dying breath to prevent it. I do not need your genetic
>>alterations to keep from murdering people. Murder is wrong. Harming
>>another by the initiation of force or fraud is wrong. Altering genes
>>will not make people realize that; only rational thinking can bring
>>about that realization. You are silly to think that humans kill and
>>fight wars because of a gene or two. It is not a gene that controls
>>behavior; it is a mind.
>>
>Abian answers:
> 
>  Using your own words addressed to me, I say, you Mike Turk are silly
>yourself and your answer is even sillier.  You need precisely to be
>Peace -Vaccinated  to change your behavior of insulting people.  
You need a vaccine to change your behavior of insulting me.
>  Secondly, if one demonstrates to people that some Peace Vaccine would
>eliminate the manslaughter, savage, murderous instincts of humans -
>any rational person would volunteer to be vaccinated! Only people with
>vicious nature may oppose it,  and hopefully they can be also convinced 
>that PEACE VACCINE is the solution.  History has shown that lecturing, 
>education, religion, lessons of  morality, etc.,etc did not (and do 
>not) prevent wars.  The only hope is the PEACE VACCINE.
I do not want to be genetically altered unless I am suffering from a
genetic disease. I do not consider being human a disease.
>  Many people , like you,  dramatically declare " I would
>fight with my dying breath to prevent vaccinating my child with
>anti-measle vaccine ! I do not need your vaccines ..... will take care 
>of my child"   And. Mr. Turk, many , many children die as a result of
>this kind of mentality and attitude.  I am almost sure that you were 
>vaccinated without  your permission against  smallpox, measles and perhaps
>polio and other disease.
I would not prevent the vaccination of a child against polio, measles,
etc. They do not alter the behavior of a human. What you are talking
about is a forced behavior modification. Sounds like Orwellian
"re-educating" on a genetic level. Moreover, it has not and will not
be shown that genes control violent behavior in all instances.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   ABIAN MASS-TIME EQUIVALENCE FORMULA  m = Mo(1-exp(T/(kT-Mo))) Abian units.
>       ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP GLOBAL DISASTERS  AND EPIDEMICS
>       ALTER THE SOLAR SYSTEM.  REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT  
>                     TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN EARTH (1990)
	Mike Turk
--
   /===     e-mail: jhvh-1@geocities.com
  / 111     homepage: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/6966/
    111
J H V H     A color-blind unicorn finds the left-handed virgin
    111     as the crescent moon dips twice in the same soup.
    111
  -=====-
SLACK FIRST

In article <326C02C9.371C@compuserve.com>, 101521.2451@compuserve.com says...
>Can anyone point me to a faq regarding the following train of thought;
>We are told that space itself is expanding. If this is so then anything 
>we use to measure that space (e.g .measuring rods) is expanding in the 
>same proportion, thus any distance, or angular projection we measure will 
>always appear constant. 
It does not follow from the expansion of space that measuring rods expand in 
the same way. The length of a measuring rod consisting of a fixed number of 
atoms is basically determined by the mean distance between atoms, which is 
determined by the nature of the interatomic forces. Only if those forces 
changed would the length of the rod change. 
Mkluge

Robert Fung wrote:
> 
> Paul B.Andersen wrote:
>  >
>  > You gave the answer yourself above - "t is the _phase_ delay".
>  > I guess you are measuring how much the reference signal must be
>  > delayed to be in-phase with the signal propagated through the fiber.
>              The pulse delay is measured against the reference pulse
>              calibrated with a zero-length path.
Ok. I see. My guess was wrong. You are simply measuring the delay
of the pulse through the fiber. Then you are measuring the
group-delay. (You said you were measuring the phase-delay. That
confused me, as I thought it was done by some kind of phase
comparison)
So you can calculate the group-velocity c = l/t
>  > You are measuring phase velocity.
>  > And it is the phase velocity that should be measured since n*c is
>  > the phase velocity in the fiber. You measure n*c, know n, calculate c.
>                No, as above, the pulse delay is measured. As for n=c/v,
>                I don't know how it was determined for the fiber cable,
>                is v always measured by phase velocity ?
n is by definition the index of refraction. n depend on the difference
of the wavelegth of the two media. Knowing the wavelength, it is a
simple geometrical problem to find n. Since the wavelength depend on
the phase-velocity, the v in n=c/v is the phase velocity.
This said, the n given for the fibre is probably not the
usual index of refraction, but some kind of effective n for the
fiber. A communication fiber is quite complex, with n varying
over the cross-section of the fiber in such a way that the light is
kept inside the fiber. You can regard the fiber as a waveguide
for light.
That means that you cannot really find the value of c this way.
Since c/n is the phase velocity, it does not really help to
measure the group velocity and know n.
However, it may be that the group velocity is not very different
from the phase velocity for the fiber. 
So it may well be that the error in measuring the group-delay
is more importand than the difference between phase/group 
velocity.
>               The blip on the oscilliscope has a certain width and is not
>               like a perfect Dirac delta function, so meauring its precise
>               position in time is subject to alot of uncertainties
>               like dispersion of the pulse as you mention below and
>               inaccuracies.
Right. The uncertainties of the time measurement will be roughly the 
inverse of the bandwidth of the whole system - modulator, detector,
oscilloscope. 
>        They (Wien and AE) seem to have regarded  "group velocity"
>        as a contextual term. The definition AE gives for c, the speed
>        which cannot be exceeded, is more like that of a single pulse,
>        and "group velocity" was thrown aside (see:The Collected Papers of
>        Albert Einstein vol 5. which is interesting to read for other
>        reasdons as well)
A lot has happend in information theory since 1907, so may be that what 
they called group-velocity is not the same as the definition used to
day. 
I do not know.
But it is definitly the "modern" group-velocity that can never exceed c.
The phase velocity may very well be infinite.
For light in vacuum, group and phase velocity will both be c, since 
there is no dispersion in vacuum.
Paul

In article <54e2q0$g1u@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>,
Anders N Weinstein  wrote:
>In article ,
>Andrzej Pindor  wrote:
>>accident. However, what I was objecting to was your claim that a classification
>>as suicide dpends on person's thoughts or intentions. These can never be
>>known. We can only know that a person left a suicide note, for instance, or
>>talked about suicide, etc. IOW, we only know about facts, not intentions.
>
>If we could never know an intention, then the inquiry would be pointless.
>The inquiry, to repeat, is an attempt to find evidence as to the person's
>intentions. The facts you cite are only relevant because they function as 
>data points indicating intentions; they are not collected merely out 
>of an interest in data-collection as an end in itself.
>
As David Longley keeps pointing out, you may not need to postulate any
'intentions', just notice that a certain conjunction of behaviors correlates
(better or worse) with the act of "causing death by one's own actions".
Having said that, I should also perhaps add that I have nothing against
a claim that certain conjunctions of behaviors are indicators of specific
mental states, as long as we understand mental states as states of the brain
as physical system, roughly in the same way as measurements done on any
physical system may be indicative of its internal state. For instance,
characterisitics of radiation coming from a certain object in the sky may
indicate that it is a neutron star or a black hole or like.
To give another example, when you blow into a breathalyser, what it measures
may indicate that you are in a mental state unsuitable for driving a car.
>You might say we can never know another person's intentions *with
>certainty*, but only with a probability, which might in some favorable
>cases get very high.  But then you would not have distinguished
A conjunction of certain behaviors may have a very high correlation with
subsequent "death by one's own actions".
>knowledge of intentions from scientific knowledge or any other
>empirical knowledge. For the same claim is often made regarding
>scientific knowledge and of all empirical knoweldge, that it can never
>attain a mythical ideal of certainty, only probability.
>
Absolutely right, I do not think I have ever expressed a desire for 
'certainity'. Many times I have stressed that in my view nature is too
complex for us to ever hope to know enough about it to be certain about
anything (except perhaps death and taxes :-)).
>I don't endorse that view, but the point here is that you have not
Yoi mean you believe in human ability to attain absolute TRUTH? I hope you
will grow out of it :-).
>pointed to any evident methodological *difference* between knowledge of
>highly theoretical facts in science and knowledge of others' mental
>states.
I am not quite sure what you mean above, but if the others' (and ours')
mental states are treated as physical states of the brain then there is
probably no qualitative difference (assuming I understand you correctly). 
There is a quantative difference though, the brain being probably by far 
the most complex physical system we have encountered and it is likely that
in most circumstances the behavioral indicators at our disposal are not
sufficient to specify a reasonably well defined class of brain states.
If not, i.e. if you do not consider mental states as classes of physical
brain states, then you do not appear to be talking science.
Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
andrzej.pindor@utoronto.ca                          Huang Po

In article <3267BC40.262E@primenet.com>, vanomen@primenet.com says...
>
>Did you know that science does not even know what keeps the atom 
>together?  The universe right down to the tinest atoms are held 
>together by GOD
Did you know that 100 years ago, science didn't know how to
transplant a heart, cook food with a microwave, send people
to the moon, assemble a computer, forecast the weather, or
transmit TV pictures?  The universe, right down to the tiniest
atoms is held together by something science hasn't yet described.
Maybe that description will indeed be God, but there's certainly
no evidence of that at this time.  There IS evidence that there
are quite non-God-like forces doing this instead.
___________________________________________________________________________
-- Mike Rodriguez    Finger for PGP public key.
-- MangoNet Communications, Inc.    (800) 554-0033
-- http://www.mangonet.com/
-- South Florida's Graphics and Web Design Firm.
___________________________________________________________________________

In Article,  writes:
> Path: wvnvm!mharker
> Nntp-Posting-Host: 168.216.121.66
> Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 16:20:41 -0400
> Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.misc,k12.ed.science,alt.folklore.science
> From: mharker@S207.C47.K12.WV.US
> Subject: Re: Is glass a solid?
> Lines: 60
> X-Newsreader: NEWTNews & Chameleon -- TCP/IP for MS Windows from NetManage
> References: <325777EE.6011@halcyon.com> <610.6855T48T1595@iceonline.com> <53gs5t$1qh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <540q9d$dpo@progress.prog
> Message-ID: 
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
> In Article<544ppv$hb3@phunn1.sbphrd.com>, 
> writes:
> > Relay-Version: ANU News - V6.1 08/24/93 VAX/VMS V6.2; site wvnvms
> > Path:
> wvnvm!wvnvms!news.cais.net!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!newsserver.jvnc
> ..net!netnews.sbphrd.com!news
> > Newsgroups: sci.misc,sci.physics,alt.folklore.science,k12.ed.science
> > Subject: Re: Is glass a solid?
> > Message-ID: <544ppv$hb3@phunn1.sbphrd.com>
> > From: Frank_Hollis-1@sbphrd.com.see-sig (Triple Quadrophenic)
> > Date: 17 Oct 1996 08:12:47 GMT
> > References: <325777EE.6011@halcyon.com> <610.6855T48T1595@iceonline.com>
> <53gs5t$1qh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <540q9d$dpo@progress.progress.com>
> > Organization: SB
> > NNTP-Posting-Host: frd760.fr.uk.sbphrd.com
> > Mime-Version: 1.0
> > Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII
> > X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.7
> > Lines: 34
> > Xref: wvnvms sci.misc:13221 sci.physics:152932 alt.folklore.science:20893
> k12.ed.science:5013
> >
> > In article <540q9d$dpo@progress.progress.com>,
> > disabito@rockwell.progress.com (Paul Disabito) says...
> > >
> >
> > >I'm new to this thread, so forgive me if I have missed material already
> > >covered. One day I noticed that the windows in my mother's house (which
> > >is over 200 years old) had very pronounced ripples. All of them moved
> > >in the direction of gravity. I pointed this out to her and she said that
> > >glass is like water, but just flows very slowly. She's not a physicist,
> > >so what she says is certainly not authoritative, but it seemed consistent
> > >with the appearance of the glass.
> > >
> > >If my mother is wrong, is it coincidental that the ripples all move
> > >in the direction of gravity? Has anyone observed ripples moving away
> > >from gravity?
> > >
> >
> > Your mother is almost right. In the old days they couldn't make flat panes
> > of glass (they hadn't invented the float process). So to get windows that
> > fit in the frame they'd put a rod of glass across the top of the window and
> > then use a blow torch to heat it. This would make the glass melt and slowly
> > ooze down until it completely filled the gap. The resultant windows always
> > had riples in them, but they were the best that could be achieved at the
> > time. This is why old windows always have lead around the edges, to channel
> > the molten glass without getting burnt.
> >
> > --
> > -- BEGIN NVGP SIGNATURE Version 0.000001
> > Frank J Hollis, Mass Spectroscopy, SmithKline Beecham, Welwyn, UK
> > Frank_Hollis-1@sbphrd.com         or        fjh4@tutor.open.ac.uk
> >  These opinions have not been passed by seven committes, eleven
> > sub-committees, six STP working parties and a continuous improvement
> >  team. So there's no way they could be the opinions of my employer.
> >
>    I too, have missed a lot of this discussion.  Glass is an almost magical
> material.  It is strong enough to survive high temperatures, but fragile
> enough to break when dropped.  Glass looks like a solid but is really a
> liquid.  The molecules in glass are not connected in an ordered way which
all
> solids demonstrate.
>

Richard Harter (cri@tiac.net) wrote:
: weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) wrote:
: >: >I agree that many would agree that a sperm is alive, but is 
: >: >it a beginning before merger? 
: >: Could you rephrase that please?
: >Heh. Sure. Let's say, an embryo is alive. Let's also say, a sperm is 
: >alive. Now, how does that apply to the question of "beginning of _new_ 
: >life?" If a load of sheep sperm were to drift by a human ooctye, there is 
: >no potential for beginning, right? The (non-scientific) question involved 
: >here would concern the status of potentiality, I suppose.
: Presumably "new life" would be a new individual life form.  Are sperm
: and eggs separate biological individuals?  I would say so because they
: are genetically different from the organisms from which they come. The
: onset of life as a separate biological individual comes with
: fertilization.  The problem is that the embryological development
: sequence is "designed" for loss of "unsatisfactory" embryos which
: leaves room for decisions which are not clear cut.  Science can tell
: us how to intervene in the process; it can not tell us whether to.
And nobody suggested that it should, of course. Sorry to be repetitive, 
but it's a hard point to get across, apparently. Of course, there's 
sociobiology which has ambitions to blur the distinctions we are all 
painstakingly trying to establish/maintain. But that's a different thread.
Silke

Im Artikel ,
das3y@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Douglas A. Singleton) schreibt:
>
>If he's a hard nosed experimental type take him back to
>the sink. Stir it in one direction, pull the plug and
>see which way the water goes down the drain. Now repeat
>the experiment but stir the water the other way. According
>to what's mentioned in Marion and Thornton the angular
>momentum of the water should dominate the Coriolis effect.
That only works in a fairly symmetric sink. In my bathtub it won't work,
the hose behind the drain dominates anything else, and if you give the
water a turn in the wrong direction first, it'll soon stop and turn the
other way round...
Cheerio
If you don't bite back, when a dog bites you,
it will say that you have no teeth (from Sudan).
__________________________________
Lorenz Borsche
Per the FCA: this eMail adress is not to 
be added to any commercial mailing list.
Uncalled for eMail maybe treated as public.

Matt Silberstein wrote:
> 
> In talk.origins rafael cardenas  wrote:
> 
> >
> >If the 'language' cannot be translated, it does make one wonder whether
> >it is useful to describe it as a language.
> 
> Math is a very formal, very special purpose language. As such it
> differs rather significantly from natural languages. I think it is
> useful to consider it a language since it provides the function of
> symbolic transmission of ideas. I can, however, imagine someone
> reasonable disagreeing with this point. I can even imagine changing my
> mind if a good case were made.
There is, of course, the general question whether natural language
provides the function of symbolic transmission of ideas, or whether
before the invention of writing people would have though that it did.
(I'm merely musing, not criticising your point, and I think the answer
is probably yes: cf e.g. deaf persons' sign languages.) But one of
the characteristics of natural language is its possibilities of
development, mutation, ambiguity, which, as you claim below and
Mati Meron claims in another
post, is to be avoided in maths. (In fact symbolic maths is only 
unambiguous in a particular context, and not all mathematicians would
agree with that all the time.)
> I suspect the debates are not that relevant since math is so "limited"
> a language. That is, an essential part of natural languages is the
> ambiguity, an essential part of math is its lack of ambiguity.
> 
> >As a matter of history, of course, the development of wholly symbolic
> >as opposed to largely rhetorical mathematics was a very gradual one.
> >Were pre-symbolic mathematicians mathematicians or not?
> >
> You probably have a good point here, but I lack the background to
> grasp it. Sorry. You will have to say this in a less clever fashion.
> (I know that the proceeding two sentences can be interpreted as snide,
> but I wrote them straightforward and serious.)
I was asking a straight question. What I meant can be easily exemplified
by consulting any mathematical text before the 16th century, and many
of the 16th and 17th centuries, in your university library.
-- 
rafael cardenas huitlodayo
Swarfmire College, Goscote, UK

In article <326B9DD4.765E@OVPR.UGA.EDU>, "RICHARD J. LOGAN"  writes:
>Jens Stengaard Larsen wrote:
>> 
>> Has "recognize" inadvertedly been used here in stead of somthing like
>> "cast doubt upon", or am I misunderstanding something completely?
>
>When you use relativistic mechanics, you are using procedures developed 
>by people who regognized that newtonian mechanics makes assumptions about 
>the world that, if left uncorrected, would lead to conclusions that do 
>not occur in our world.  Chief among theses assumptions is the newtonian 
>belief in preferred frames of reference.  
On the contrary, newtonian mechanics assumes that all inertial frames 
are equivalent and there is no preferred frame of reference.  The 
notion of "preferred frame" appeared when it was recognized the 
Maxwell's equations aren't invariant under Galilean transformations, 
thus seemingly indicating that they can be correct, as written, only 
in one reference frame.  What Einstein did, by replacing Galilean with 
Lorentz transformations, was to return the situation to the Newtonian 
view of no preferred frame.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Nick S Bensema  wrote:
>Chris Cracknell  wrote:
>>nickb@primenet.com (Nick S Bensema) wrote:
>>>
>>>I think I'll just modify my projection TV and put porno movies on the
>>>moon.
>>>But you know, I bet spam-advertisers will discover the way first and put
>>>billboards on the moon or clouds or something...
>>
>>Actually, the cloud canopy thing might work. I remember when I lived in T.O
>>there was a laser on the side of the CN Tower that used to project things 
>>onto the sides of downtown buildings.
>
>I would fricken' LOVE to see that!
>
>We could put the Vectrex Laser show on tour to overcast cities, or we
>could base it in Seattle and people would travel from all over, though
>they'd be pissed if it were ever sunny.  I know i always am.
This automated followup has been triggered by keyword "Seattle"
----
Actually, people in Seattle would just be confused by the snowy picture, a
result of trying to project through all this rain.  And Seattlites don't
really get pissed at the sun.  They just forget where they last put their
sunglasses[1], buy another pair, and head for Starbucks, but they sit on
the sundeck[2] or outside.  Some people put on their so-called
Dry-Pavement Treaded Tires[3] for the commute up I-5, but most people
don't bother, as they know that sun is merely an annoying meteorological
anamoly, and that Harry Wappler will soon have things back under control. 
Interestingly, however, lights on the clouds would frighten and confuse
native Seattlites.  Lightning only occurs in this area about once a year,
plus the occasional immortal taking the head of another[4].  Also, there
would be protests and other expressions of community outrage if movies
depicting only hetero-sex were projected over Capital Hill.  Also, Bill
Gates would buy the technology and project his home-movies over Mercer
Island, much to the annoyance of all the other rich people that live
there.  I also predict an increase in the number of UFOs reported there at
the National UFO Reporting Center, also on Mercer Island.  I suggest we
merely project Kevin Spacey movies on Mt. Ranier. 
1: Wearing sunglasses during a rainy week because of dark circles is never
   done in Seattle.  Dark circles are not a sign of lack of sleep, but a
   sign that the person drinks more coffee than you.  Status, in any case. 
2: A large area of concrete or wood with outdoor tables and chairs,
   occasionally plants.  Etymological origin of this term is unknown in
   Seattle.
3: Strange tires, probably a California thing, that lack the necessary
   grooves to channel gallons per second of water out of the path of the
   wheel.
4: As the time of The Gathering approaches, I expect to see this happen
   more frequently.
-- 
"Teller, don't bother me with your conscientious scruples.  This is superb
physics!"                                     -Enrico Fermi, "Day One"
                     CREDO QUIA IMPOSSIBILIS
===Louis Nick III    alt.religion.louis-nick     snick@u.washington.edu===

hype (ryanb@netins.net) wrote:
:         OK, we have two pucks a & b.  Puck a has a velocity of 30 m/s to the 
: right which we will call horizontal.  Puck b is initially at rest.  When puck 
: a hits puck b, puck a heads off into a 30 degree angle above horizontal and 
: puck be heads off in an angle below horizontal which I will call q.  This 
: collision is perfectly elastic and we will ignore friction.  I need to know 
: angle q.
Here's an easy way to see that, after the collision, the 
paths of the pucks are at right angles to each other.
First, assume that the pucks have equal masses and that 
the collision is frictionless.  Assume also that puck A 
is travelling at a constant velocity of v units/sec 
horizontally toward puck A, which is standing still.
Before the collision, the center of mass of the two pucks
is moving horizontally to the right at 1/2 v, and the 
pucks are each moving toward the center of mass at 1/2 v.  
After the collision, the center of mass of the two pucks
is still moving horizontally to the right at 1/2 v, but 
the two pucks are now moving away from the center of mass
at 1/2 v, and the line between the two pucks is no longer
horizontal.
One second (say) after the collision, the center of mass 
is 1/2 v units from the point of collision, X, and pucks 
A and B are each 1/2 v units from the center of mass.  Now,
the collision point, X, and the positions of the pucks form
three corners of a quadrilateral which must be a rectangle, 
because the diagonals are equal and bisect each other.
Consequently, the paths of the pucks after the collision
are at right angles to each other.
The answer to your question? : 90 - 30 = 60 degrees!
--Wetboy

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In article <326C1F4A.5495@optics.kth.se>, Mattias Pierrou
 wrote:
>WRon Shepard wrote:
>> 
>> In article <326B7E26.4C42@prism.gatech.edu>, gt3377a@prism.gatech.edu wrote:
>> 
>> > Could anyone tell me why if two balls are released to hit the other
>> > three balls in Newton's balls setup.  Why two balls come flying out and
>> > not just one with a increased velocity.
>> >
>> > I think it has to do with the sum of the moments equal zero, but I am
>> > not sure.
>> 
>> There are two things that are conserved (well, almost conserved) in the
>> collision, momentum and energy.  If one ball bounced out with twice the
>> velocity, then you are correct that momentum would be conserved, but in
>> this case energy would not.  The only way to have _both_ momentum _and_
>> energy conserved is for the same number of balls to bounce out as bounced
>> in.  Momentum is m*v, energy is .5*m*v^2; work through the algebra and
>> convince yourself.
What I meant simply was that before the collision described in the
question, the two balls have momentum 2m*v_0, and the single ball would
have momentum m*(2v_0), so momentum would indeed be conserved.  However
the energy before the collision is m*v_0^2, whereas the energy after the
collision would be .5*m*(2v_0)^2=2m*v_0^2, so energy would not be
conserved.
>Work through the algebra and convince yourself...
>Maybe you should do just that!
>
>Momentum conservation:  Mv0=M(v1+v2+v3)
>Energy conservation:    M/2*v0^2=M/2(v1^2+v2^2+v3^2)
>
>One solution is v1=v2=0 and v3=v0 (The one we see)
>Another is v1=-v0/3 and v2=v3=2v0/3 (which we don't see)
This is obviously an answer to a different, but related, question.  This
situation involves only 3 balls rather than 5, and the question is (I
guess?) "what conditions determine the ball velocities in the 3-ball
collision?"  You are correct in general that when it comes to the 3-body
problem, more than simple conservation of momentum and energy are required
to specify the outcome.  In this 3-body situation, if I "work through the
algebra" I find that the momentum and energy conditions require that
   v1*v2 + v1*v3 + v2*v3 = 0
So, yes, there are more than one solution to the 3-body problem consistent
with momentum and energy conservation.
>Obviously you arguments are wrong!
Well perhaps they were incomplete.  I answered a simple question with a
simple answer.  It's not the end of the world is it?
>To understand what happens, you must consider the shock-waves built up 
>by the incident sphere in the array of spheres. You would then see that 
>the shock-wave reflected from the surface of the last sphere will build 
>up a strain that separates just the right number of spheres from the 
>array. The shock-wave carries the energy from the incident sphere and 
>hence deliver it to the outgoing (sic!) spheres.
Another approach that is often taken to resolve the ambiguities of 3-body
(or N-body) problems is to consider what happens when the collision is
approximated with multiple 2-body collisions.  Momentum and energy
conservation are sufficient to completely determine the simpler 2-body
situation.  Then the limits are examined as these separate 2-body
collisions occur closer and closer together.  If a unique limit exists,
then that is the appropriate description of the 3-body situation.  If this
limit does not exist, then going beyond the rigid body and elastic
collision approximations is required.
$.02 -Ron Shepard

Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz wrote:
> Now, if we were to  put a couple of RF quartz crystals (or whatever) in
> proximity in a plasma and excite a pleasant organ pipe resonance at a
> sufficiently high frequency,
> 
>   1) could we get the enough density differentiation between nodes and
> antinodes to make a stack of optical, UV, or higher frequency etalons?
> 
I think here you will run into trouble.  The collision length for the
ions in a plasma of usual densities (<<1 atm) is typically long enough
that I would not expect it to nicely support acoustic waves at optical
wavelengths.  You would certainly be in a very complex regime to
understand, at the very least.  
Of course, in acoustooptical solids, this trick is done all the time to
make scanners and modulators for light.
Marcus Mendenhall

Darren Garrison wrote:
> Actually, you have it backwards.  Here in the US at least, we
> pronounce meter as "met-er,"  not as "met-re."  (In other words, the
> US pronounciation rhymes with "beat her" not with "oak tree")  Same
> with liter, which is not pronounced "let-re."  So it makes MUCH more
> sense to spell it the way we do when we pronounce it the way we do.
> If you pronounce the words as met-re and lit-re, then your spelling is
> better for you.  If you don't, then it isn't.
Just as a remark: The German words are also "meter" and "liter". The
spelling of these two words varies slightly from language to language
(French: metre/litre, English: both variants (US/GB)).
How about other languages?
Markus
-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu

[ science ::  war ]
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola):
| ... 
| I think it's a much better analogy than you're willing to admit.
| (Why am I unsurprised at this?  Had I ever any hope you'd admit anything?)
I had no idea you were hungry for my admissions.  If I had
only known....  But specify which admissions you would like,
and I'll try to supply them.  I give them out freely to all
who ask.
| It's not possible to meaningfully discuss war without an understanding
| of the equipment and technology -- and it's certainly not possible
| to discuss or to understand modern warfare with only an understanding
| of pila and shields.  Similarly, if you want to discuss or understand
| modern science, you need an understanding of the equipment and technology,
| (broadly defined), which includes an understanding of the underlying
| technology-of-thought-and-expression, which at this point is largely
| mathematics.  ...
Certainly.  But what is "an understanding"?  That is the
question which the analogy doesn't solve.  If I am writing
about the (American) Civil War, what do I need to know
about the _Monitor_?  Indeed, it would be good if I knew
its every dimension, the names of the men who served on it,
and how they felt at every moment of the day -- but even
the most devoted historians don't have time to find this
out, much less a lowly computer programmer like me.  Yet I
can discuss the Civil War without being told that I don't
know what I'm talking about.
Perhaps now you see the problem I've been attempting to get
at; perhaps not.  No matter, it was the occasion of a pretty
story, and that's more than we usually get out of these
things.  Let me have that list of desired admissions
whenever....
-- 
   }"{    G*rd*n   }"{  gcf @ panix.com  }"{

Pacificus wrote:
> The other questions in the post that you excerpted above still await your
> answers.
Give me a few days.  
-leonard

nanken@tiac.net (Ken MacIver) writes:
>patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola) wrote:
>>nanken@tiac.net (Ken MacIver) writes:
>>>  Isn't this a
>>>variation of the old three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and
>>>statistics (or something like that)?  
>
>>Hardly.  It's a simply question of the pragmatic limitations of
>>science -- for instance, it's completely acceptable for one
>>scientist to question another scientist's interpretations of his
>>data, but to question the data themselves is akin to violence,
>>since it implies either incompetence or fraud.
>
> Data is often questioned, either because the methods used to record
>it were ineffective or the researcher was incompetent or the
>researcher set out ot commit fraud.  
There's a much more fundamental type of questioning of data, which the
quote you mentioned above (Mark Twain?) hints towards.  Gathering data
amounts to making certain kinds of observations.  But which
observations and why?  Mundane as "data" may seem, it reflects just as
much on the collector as his subsequent hypotheses and theories do.
Collecting data depends on a set of questions (or a system of
technology, which amounts to the same thing).  Some questions won't be
asked because they are considered unfalsifiable, others just aren't
interesting for the metaphysics which underly the current science.
When the rat goes down the same corridor that he found food in last
time, an observer might think that means something.  The point isn't
about where the cheese is, but how the little rats go about looking
for it.
>  I think the conclusions that scientists draw (e.g.
>their "laws" and other such things) are what most laymen believe to be
>the practical and religious output of science.
But really the religious aspect is in how they find their cheese.
ObBook:  BG+E, #207, which was what I was looking for the other day.
Course, you can't take anything there at face value.
-- 
"Okay.  So, we got a trooper pulled someone over.  We got a shooting.
 These folks drive by.  There's a high-speed pursuit.  Ends here.  Then
 this execution-type deal."

In article <54bsg4$fq6@mtha.usc.edu>,
Mario Taboada  wrote:
>
>Until a few decades ago, the best philosophers considered it a
>necessity to be up to date with the developments in science. 
[...]
>this is in striking contrast with the situation
>today. Perhaps humanities scholars are overspecializing and they
>don't have the time or interest in keeping up to date with science.
>Perhaps science has become too technical for outsiders, but
>relativity was technical and astoundingly revolutionary in its
>day and yet philosophers were interested and able to understand it.
An information glut (in all fields) is a likely cause
of said overspecialization.  It is difficult enough to
find faculty proficient in the whole of Western philosophy,
let alone any Leibnizian or Russellian polymaths.
And burning the Alexandrian Library is not a viable
response.
(Michel Serres is a possible exception, as was the late
Hao Wang.)
On the obstensible topic of this thread I recommend Hartry
Field's _Science without Numbers_.
Cordially,
M.
"The only pure myth is that of a science pure of myth."

When a block(longer than it is wide or high) is sliding down and incline 
plane, will it have less friction if it is put on its smaller end?  And why!
Does the center of mass have anything to do with sliding friction on an 
inclined plane?

In article  gbedard@uslink.net (George Bedard) writes:
>Path: uslink.net!brainerd-dial-29.uslink.net!gbedard
>From: gbedard@uslink.net (George Bedard)
>Newsgroups: sci.physics
>Subject: friction-coefficient of
>Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 17:15:16
>Organization: Bedard Institute
>Lines: 4
>Message-ID: 
>NNTP-Posting-Host: brainerd-dial-29.uslink.net
>Summary: Does center of mass matter?
>Keywords: friction,inclined plane, coefficient
>X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A]
>When a block(longer than it is wide or high) is sliding down and incline 
>plane, will it have less friction if it is put on its smaller end?  And why!
>Does the center of mass have anything to do with sliding friction on an 
>inclined plane?

G*rd*n <+@+.+> wrote:
| > One may not blaspheme against Jefferson. ...
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin):
| I would greatly enjoy Fitch going back and identifying which post
| he thought was labeled blasphemy, and which posts so labeled it.
| Following that thread, I saw nothing that resembled this.  (I am
| less certain of the Newton thread, because I missed the start of
| it, but there, also, what I saw did not resemble this in the
| least.)
| ...
Ah, well, we've been on the Net too long and the ambient
literalism is getting to us, isn't it?  No one explicitly
moaned "Blasphemy!" when Jefferson was blasphemed.  Rather,
someone posted an article describing another article
uncomplimentary to Mr. Jefferson, which noted that he was
a racist and a slaveholder.  Now, Mr. Jefferson _was_ an
undoubted racist and slaveholder, according to what I've
read; one reads him and reads of him because he had other
qualities, not because these were absent.  Everyone knows
this.  Yet fifteen or twenty people felt called upon to
speak up in what looked to me like a purification ritual.
Now, if I were to call Jesus (or Karl Marx) a raving
necrophiliac, I'm sure I'd be ignored.  Or a racist
slaveholder, for that matter.  So it seems we have changed
our gods.  Isn't this a matter of interest to you?  It is
to me.
I have to admit (hi, Patrick!) that the Jefferson tizzy was
pretty mild next to the Newton tizzy.  But I think it had
similar qualities.  (But the Newton tizzy's isn't even over
yet -- I've caught sight of yet more earnest crusaders
soldiering up the hillside to Moggin Keep....)
-- 
   }"{    G*rd*n   }"{  gcf @ panix.com  }"{

Chris Mills (Gel6036@port.ac.uk) wrote:
:  
: You Yanks don't speakor write proper English (eg you spell metre 
: as meter and litre as liter) so stop preaching to the world when YOU 
: can't get things right.  (This is not a flame it is just something I feel
: VERY strongly about)
No flame intended either, but the "re" spellings are _French_ not English.
Check the etymology.
Stan "we speak American here- a dialect of English" Bischof
stanb@sr.hp.com

AdrianTeo@mailhost.net wrote:
>Paul Myers wrote:
>> And further, #1 is a non sequitur. Atheists _can_  and _do_ live good
>> moral lives, setting a good example for their families, etc. Being an
>> atheist does not mean one is an unethical brute, just as being a
>> christian does not mean one is a greedy, hypocritical televangelist.
>Correct. I know some atheists who are generally law-abiding citizens.
>But I have not yet met one who is living consistently with his/her
>beliefs. Many atheists are moral relativists and openly preach
>tolerance. But then, they betray their position by strongly supporting
>certain causes, arguing for right and wrong etc. Gross inconsistency!
Supporting tolerance does not contradict standing up for certain
causes and even arguing for right and wrong as long as those causes do
not interfere with another individuals ability to live his or her life
as he or she deems appropriate.  

George Bedard (gbedard@uslink.net) wrote:
: When a block(longer than it is wide or high) is sliding down and incline 
: plane, will it have less friction if it is put on its smaller end?  And why!
: Does the center of mass have anything to do with sliding friction on an 
: inclined plane?
In a word, No.
                                           Harry C.

revised PLATOON movie of 1986 for 1993
Andy Wiles: Gerd, Gerd, I like to talk to you Gerd
Gerd Faltings: Yeh what is it?
Andy: Finally got a license on R&R.; It is coming up in 3 days here. I
was thinking of going to Hawaii to see Patsy. Hey, come on Gerd, I
haven't asked you for a fucking thing over here. I was hoping you put
me on a chopper there with Ken Ribet. What do you say there
chieferooney?
Gerd: Nah, I can't do that for you Andy, we need every swinging dick in
the field. And you know that.
Andy: Come on Gerd, talk to me for Christ sake, all I'm asking for is 3
fucking days.
Gerd: I am talking to you Andy, and I am telling you no. So get back
into your foxhole.
Andy (whining) : Gerd I got a bad feeling on Fermat's Last Theorem on
this one. I mean I got a bad feeling.
Gerd: Yeh, well, we all are famous for 5 minutes.

Download article from www at  http://www.acute.com/craig

Download article from www at  http://www.acute.con/craig

In article <54g24a$52h@panix2.panix.com>, +@+.+ (G*rd*n) writes:
>+@+.+ (G*rd*n) writes:
>Certainly.  You have made an analogy between science and
>war, but it is not an enlightening analogy.  It replicates
>the question -- how much do we need to know about the
>equipment of science (mathematics) before we can talk about
>it?  Because obviously science is not equivalent to its
>equipment, just as war is not.
>
The answer will depend on the branch of science, of course.  I'll 
limit my answer to what's needed in order to talk sensibly about 
physics (in my opinion, etc. etc.).  Basically a decent understanding 
of algebra and geometry (at the level of an advanced high school 
course) and of the concepts of calculus is a bare bones minimum.  If 
you add to it some rudimentary knowledge of differential equations and 
linear algebra (vectors, matrices and such) you've enough to maintain 
meaningful conversation about most of physics.  Moreover, from this 
point on, you've a sufficient knowledge base to grasp the meaning of 
new and unfamiliar terms through analogies to these you know.
It is a bit like learning a foreign language.  Up to some point you 
learn individual words.  Once a sufficient, "critical" vocabulary has 
been established, you can start reading a text in this language and 
figure out the meanings of words you don't know, from the context.  
But your vocabulary has to be large enough to understand the context.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Matt:
>:I was responding to Gordon's comment above about the amount of science
>:necessary for discussing the philosophy of science. I gave some
>:examples of the knowledge needed and tried to answer Gordon's
>:question.
moggin:
>     No, that's exactly what you _didn't_ do -- you ignored the
>question he was addressing, about the philosophy of science, and
>switched the subject to physics, in order to say, "But you have
>to know math!"  Next the physics may disappear, the subject will
>become mathematics, and, as I suggested, there will be laughter
>about those silly people who think math doesn't require math --
>at least, that's the usual pattern.
Matt:
>>You still have not commented on the content of that post. Do
>>you disagree that you need to understand the language of physics
>>before discussing physics. And that the amount of physics you need to
>>understand depends on how you wish to discuss it?
moggin:
>     You still haven't addressed Gordon's point, which concerned
>the philosophy of science.  (That's the one I'm interested in.)
Matt:
:I am sorry that you have not understood my position. So I will try
:again. If, by philosophy of science, you mean the philosophy internal
:to the practice of science, then in order to understand this PoS you
:need to understand, at some reasonable detail, the stuff of the
:science as well. And in order to do that you, in general, need some
:math. So you can present the "fable" that Gordon posted, and that does
:give some grounds for presenting the scientific method. But it is far
:removed from the PoS in current or recent scientific work. If you want
:to understand what physicists are saying since Newton, you should
:learn calculus.If you want to understand what biologists have been
::saying this century, you probably need to know statistics. If you
:think you can study the PoS without understanding the writings and
:works of the practioners in the field the go ahead and do so. But you
:should not expect to learn very much.
     Once again you've changed the subject from the philosophy of
science to "what biologists have been saying this century" and "what
physicists are saying since Newton."  You still haven't responded to
Gordon's point.  But alright -- nobody said that you had to.
Matt:
>>>> The original critique was still far off topic. Moggin commented on
>>>>Rienmannian space having no idea of what curved space was about.
moggin:
>>>>     Just for the record, I didn't comment on Riemannian geometry
>>>>("a fruity, impertinent geometry, with a touch of oak") -- I pointed
>>>>out that its axioms differ from Euclid's.  Care to disagree?  
Matt:
>>>How is that not a comment on it? And my point still stands. You did
>>>not, and probably still do not, understand the geometries, the axioms,
>>>the use of the those axioms, or the implications of the differences.
moggin:
>>       It's a simple observation, and an accurate one.  Obviously
>>I'm not versed in geometry, and my understanding doesn't go much
>>farther -- but why should that prohibit me from saying the above?
>>(You never had a point, but this would be a good time to find one.)
Matt:
>:The point then, which I tried to help you with, was that your comments
>:were wrong and you had no idea what you were talking about.
moggin:
>     Unfortunately, you were never able to establish that, while I
>have your agreement (along with Mati's, Michael's, Russell's, Bob's,
>and so on) on the basic point you've been trying to dispute with me.
Matt:
:You made the following comment:
[moggin:]
:They're inaccurate, period.  Very inaccurate in certain cases.
:The "they" in question was Newton's Laws. I did not agree with that
:absolutist statement.
     Excuse me, but at this point it's totally irrelevant what you
do or do not agree with.  The question is whether you're right in
your claim that my remarks were wrong and I had no idea what I was 
talking about, re: Newton.  That's what you tried and failed to 
show before -- now you want to prove it by assertion.
moggin:
>   Since we're on the subject, I'll pass along the word I received
>from a correspondent.  According to him, what I said above (at >>>)
>is both right and wrong.  For one, "riemannian" isn't capitalized;
>for another, while it's true that Riemann and Euclid differ, they're
>_such_ different beasts that it makes no sense to even compare them,
>e.g., by saying that they have different axioms.  (In fact, I'm told
>that it's mistaken to speak of riemannian geometry as having axioms,
>at all.)  Further discussion on these points I leave for the better-
>informed.  (I'm sure you'll approve.)
Matt:
:You sure love to defer to authority, especially unnamed authority. [...]
     Patently false, since I didn't either cite an authority or defer
to one -- as usual, you're making shit up.  I just reported what I've
heard from one of my correspondents, and left further discussion for
people better informed on the subject than me.
Matt:
>>You still
>>do not, I suspect, understand the relationship between the Rienmannian
>>space used by GR and the Euclidean space in Classical Mechanics. And
>>yo do not understand how Rienmannian space contains within it, as a
>>limiting case, Euclidean space. Which was the original topic and one
>>that you tried to argue even though you had no idea what was being
>>discussed.
moggin:
>     The original topic was Newton -- everything else has stemmed from 
>that.  (Actually, the _original_ topic was much broader, and Newton was
>merely an example that came up, but I'm talking about this round of the
>discussion, which has focused on that example to the exclusion of any
>broader themes, until lately.)  I have a considerably better idea about
>"what was being discussed" than you -- I'm still not certain you know
>what the conversation was about.  But there are plenty of things that I
>don't understand about physics, so you're safe there.
Matt:
:By original topic I was referring to the branch of this thread that
:has been going on since the beginning of Sept. [...]
     Right -- and _that_ topic was Newton, as I just finished saying.
Matt:
>>>>>Moggin also commented on Classical Mechanics as a special case
>>>>>of GR having no idea what a limit is.
moggin:
>>>>     If that's true, and if it's important, then your criticism
>>>>should be directed at my comments -- yet you're aiming your attack
>>>>at my qualifications, instead.
Matt:
>>>It is true, it is essentially important, and I directed my criticism
>>>at your comments at the time. Now I am trying to explain what
>>>happened. And your lack of qualifications to understand what you were
>>>talking about led to make unfortunate comments.
moggin:
>>       I'm sorry that I led you to say anything unfortunate, but if
>>you were focusing on what I said, rather than on my credentials, you
>>might not get into that fix quite so often.  Anyway, what is it that
>>happened that you're trying to explain?  I have some questions of my
>>own, but I haven't seen you addressing them.
Matt:
>:I did not focus on your credentials then or now. I am using your
>:unfortunate comments as an example of what can happen when someone
>:tries to talk about something they have no idea about. 
moggin:
>     Excuse me, "credentials" isn't precisely the term -- the right
>word would be "qualifications."  Your central point here has been
>that the license to speak on a given topic should only belong to
>people who are "properly qualified," as you see it.  That's why you
>insist on focusing on how much I know about physics (pretty little,
>as I keep saying), rather than on what I said.
Matt:
:Once again, I am not talking about license. You can talk about
:anything you want. 
     No, you ordered me not to talk about either physics or evolution.
Matt:
:But without the requisite knowledge your chances of saying anything 
:valuable is slim. 
     Oh, so today you're giving odds, instead of orders.
Matt:
:And this lack of knowledge can lead to unfortunate results. For instance
:you have tried to argue that your statements were correct while discussing
:the subject with people who knew far more about the subject than you did.
      You're assuming that I can't be right just because I happen to
be arguing with people who know more about the subject than I do --
needless to say, that doesn't follow.  In this case, it doesn't even 
apply, since many of the people arguing with me accept the main point
they're disputing -- you included.  But it does demonstrate that you
evaluate an argument by the authority of the person who delivers it,
not on its merits (such as they may be).
-- moggin

In article <3282912e.2695004@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, matts2@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein) writes:
>In talk.origins meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
>
>[snip]
>>
>>Why not?  It has symbols which convey meaning, to the people fluent in 
>>this language.  Now, I wouldn't say that "it can't be translated, 
>>period".  Rather that it cannot be translated in a way that gives you 
>>a text which is comprehensible to a person not knowing mathematics.  
>>If instead of writing the integral symbol I write the word "integral" 
>>it still conveys no meaning to you if you never encountered it.  And 
>>it'll take many pages of text to convey the full meaning, that's 
>>assuming that you already know algebra and geometry.  If you don't 
>>know these either, the amount of text needed will be in volumes, not 
>>pages.
>
>A small point. Use of the characters "integral" instead of a [insert
>graceful S-looking think that I can produce here] does not translate
>the language. I transliterates, it substitutes one symbolic
>representation for another.
>
That's indeed what I had in mind, but you expressed it way clearer 
than I managed.  Thanks.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

   In the past, Russell has often enjoyed tossing names at Derrida's
work, calling it dreck, gibberish, and so on.  Unfortunately, he was
never willing, or perhaps able to back up what he had to say.  But last
week it seemed as if he was finally going to get down to brass tacks --
he announced that he had read "Signature Event Context" (in fact, read
it _twice_) and concluded that it was silly and shallow.  I was certain
that after literally years of delay, Russell was going to support his
claims.  Unfortunately, that's as far as he got:  once again he failed
to advance beyond name-calling.  But the opportunity remains -- Russell
can still try to show that Derrida is shallow, silly, and so on, using 
the essay he's aquainted himself with.  As I said to him:
     "'Signature Event Context' is the only thing you'll confess to
having read.  So take this chance to make up for past omissions: use
'Signature Event Context' to demonstrate that Derrida's work is 
'dreck,' 'gibberish,' 'shallow,' 'silly,' and so on."
     Unfortunately, Russell seems to have dropped the subject.  That's
too bad -- it would a shame to conclude that the person who states, "I
am here as a critic of postmodernism" is really just a _poseur_.
-- moggin

In article <54g5hg$7t2@sjx-ixn9.ix.netcom.com>, odessey2@ix.netcom.com(Allen Meisner) writes:
>In  meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes: 
>>
>>In article <54eaur$6i4@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>,
>odessey2@ix.netcom.com(Allen Meisner) writes:
>>>    Inertia can be explained by the law of conservation of energy. If
>>>an object had no inertia it would violate this law, since you would,
>in
>>>effect, be creating energy, rather than merely changing its form
>>>
>>I don't think this means anything.
>>
>>Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
>>meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the
>same"
>
>    Saying an object has no inertia is the same as saying it has no
>resistance to acceleration. If an object had no resistance to
>acceleration, any acceleration it is initially given, it will maintain.
>If you gave it an initial acceleration of 1 meter per second squared,
>it will maintain that acceleration, even after you withdrew the force
>that is causing the acceleration. It would therefore be creating energy
>out of nothing, in violation of the law of conservation of energy.
>Inertia is therefore nothing more than the fact that you cannot create
>energy out of nothing.
>
You don't "give an acceleration" you apply a force.  If the body has 
no inertial mass and you apply to it a final force then the result is 
infinite acceleration but it deosn't necesserily mean that its energy 
changes.  If you want to treat it relativistically then you've to take 
into account the energy-momentum relations to arrive at the proper 
result.  In either case there is no violation of conservation laws.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In article , Richard Andrew Bryan  writes:
>You are indeed correct.  I read in an issue of "popular Mechanics" that
>the speed of light is indeed a limit (in the sense of calculus) meaning
>that the velocity can be approached from both sides but never reached.  At
>the speed of light mass becomes undefined or infinite.  At subluminal
>speeds mass is a positive quanitiy while at superluminal speeds, mass
>becomes a negative quantity.  
Not negative.  Imaginary.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Lawrence R. Mead (lrmead@ocean.st.usm.edu) wrote regarding entropy:
: Except for the phenomenon of gravity. 
       I proffer that is exactly what gravitation is, an expansion
of matter, expanding just like a gas, only more controlled.
: While this is an unsolved problem,
: one might guess that the evolution of the universe *forward* in time
: is equivalent to the direction of increasing entropy. There is certainly
: a deep connection between the arrow of time and entropy, but the
: precise definition of the arrow of time is unsolved (more than one is
: possible, indeed there are several none of which are yet compelling).
        If all matter expands, then time has to continually
slow.    The perfect transparent entropy, we get infallable
gravity forever.    This model of gravitation seems to
predict everything that General Relativity does.
        I need some help with spherical geometry to formalize
the model, I have 51 years of work in this and would like
some help with it, even a little discussion would help.
Ken Fischer 

Matt:
>>>Do I want you to internalize my advice? I don't know that I care. I only
>>>proposed the standard I did because it had been asked for by others in
>>>this thread, and was the topic of a long thread months ago.
moggin:
>>     You made a recommendation, but you don't actually care if 
>>anyone follows it?  You specified what certain people shouldn't
>>talk about, but it doesn't really matter to you?
Matt:
:This is about as rhetorical an argument as exists. I recommend that
:others do something so you claim I am trying to impose my laws on
:other people. Does it matter? Probably in some ways. If you had
:followed my advice we would have had a more informed discussion. OTOH,
:I have had lots of fun with this thread. (And, btw, I am over any
:guilt I felt.)
     It looks like you're the one with the empty rhetoric -- you
began by blustering about what certain people shouldn't talk about,
but when pressed, you retreated to the position that you were only
making a "recommendation," then claimed you didn't care whether or
not anyone followed it.  So you were just woofing, it now seems.
Matt:
>>If you don't like the idea of any standards when discussing science
>>then you should talk to Gordon and Silke. It seemed to me that they
>>had asked about this once or twice.
moggin:
>     I think they know my opinion.
Matt:
:I think I know your opinion as well, but you insist on giving it.
     No doubt you would prefer to issue your edicts without hearing
any dissent.
Matt:
:I wonder why you give this opinion on the answer to the questions and
:not on the asking.
     I've no idea what that's supposed to mean.  Lorenz was writing
in a second language -- what's your excuse?
moggin:
>>But as I said, I don't think that
>>anything _should_ keep you from talking about Derrida -- if you want
>>to, then go right ahead.  I'm not interested in your credentials --
>>only in what you've got to say.  (Of course, if you've got _nothing_
>>to say, like Russell, then it would be better to keep a dignified
>>silence.)
Matt:
>>I don't have anything to say about him, which is why I haven't. You
>>have nothing to say about science, but unfortunately have.
moggin:
>     If I've got nothing to say about science, why have you been
>arguing with me for the past month or so?  Your position hasn't
>been that I've got nothing to say, but that what I'm saying is,
>for reasons you've never been able to establish, somehow _wrong_.
>(It's not surprising you've had such bad luck, since you share
>my view on the main point you're debating.)
Matt:
:Reason here has two meanings. In one sense of the word you were wrong
:about the accuracy of the respective theories and the model those
:theories propose. 
     That's your claim.  We discussed it at length, and you weren't
able to provide a good reason to believe that it was valid -- on the
contrary.  And of course you agreed with me, which didn't help your
case.
:In the other sense of the word the reason you were
:wrong is you do not understand Newton, you do not understand Einstein,
:you do not understand calculus, and you do not understand geometry.
     That presupposes I was wrong, which is exactly what you failed 
to show.  And since you agreed with me, there's reason to think I'm
right even from your point-of-view.
:And you have sufficiently little understanding that you have not been
:able to comprehend when others have pointed out your mistakes.
     Ad hominem.
Matt:
>>>I am not trying to keep you from talking or preventing you from
>>>talking. I am trying to explain when the talk is nonsense. If you wish
>>>to spout nonsense go ahead. But accept that others will laugh at you.
moggin:
>>       You're _not_ explaining when talk is nonsense -- you have yet
>>to say a single word about that.  On the contrary, you're taking the
>>concept of nonsense for entirely for granted and trying to predict
>>when it will occur, with the idea of preventing even the possibility
>>that nonsense might arise.  I think that's nonsensical, if you can't
>>guess by now.
Matt:
>>No, I am explaining why the nonsense we have seen from you occurred.
moggin:
>     False premise.  Like Russell, you find it easier to prove by
>assertion what you were unable to demonstrate.
Matt:
:Curved space, as a limit, is flat. You were wrong.
     Not at all, since I never said differently.
:At low velocity the predictions of Classical Mechanics and the
:predictions of GR agree well within experimental error. You were
:wrong. 
     Again, I never said otherwise, so that couldn't show me wrong.
Matt:
>I am sorry, when you talked about banning, I thought you meant
>banning. 
moggin:
>     So I did -- your statement above (at >>>>) shows that you desire 
>to ban people from speaking about physics unless they know calculus, 
>and to ban people from speaking about evolution unless they have what
>you feel to be a sufficient understanding of chemistry and statistics,
>"among other things" which you don't specify. 
Matt:
:You have asserted banning several times. But you have done nothing to
:show that I want that or that I support that or that I intended that
:or that other reasonable people could be expected to mean that.
     I haven't done anything except quote your own words.  Here they
are again (you deleted them, undoubtedly by mistake):  "Don't talk
physics without understanding calculus, don't talk evolution without
understanding (among other things) chemestry and statistics."  Now,
it's entirely possible that you didn't intend to speak quite so very
imperiously -- if you told me that you didn't mean what you said, I
would believe you (or at least I'd go along).  But there you are, in
black and white (or green on black), telling people what not to talk
about. 
Matt:
>>>I can't not prevent you from doing anything. I am giving advice. One
>>>of my criteria for understanding speech is understanding the language
>>>the speech was made in. After that we can discuss meaning.
moggin:
>>       But your criterion ensures that only certain discussions,
>>among certain participants, can occur -- that's what it means.
Matt:
>:Well, yes. I am saying that talking about the meaning of science as it
>:relates to science requires an understanding of the topic. I would
>:expect this to limit the discussion to certain participants and even
>:to certain subjects.
moggin:
>     There you are, then -- just as I've been saying.
Matt:
:I also won't talk about physics with a tree. That tends to limit the
:conversation to certain participants, but I am not banning a tree from
:speaking. I also won't talk physics with a non-English speaker (I am,
:unfortunately mono-lingual). I am not banning them from the
:conversation, but such a conversation would be fruitless.
     That's another matter -- I have no opinion on who you should or
shouldn't talk to.  Your business entirely.  (If you had decided not
to talk to me, that would have been fine.)  By the way -- some trees
are very fruitful, whether you talk to them or not.
moggin:
>     Be clear, then -- are you saying you don't _want_ them to be
>applied?  Or that you want everyone to apply them individually, so
>force won't be needed?  Or  what?  Right now, it looks like you're 
>performing the usual two-step.
Matt:
:I am saying that if they are not applied the content will be (mostly)
:meaningless. Much like when you actually talk about physics.
     You've found my comments meaningful enough to dispute for over
a month.  And may I remind you that I wouldn't be speaking about the
subject at all (precisely as you recommend) if you hadn't found it
necessary to argue with me, in the first place?  Apparently you felt
that it was very important to have a dispute with me on the topic of 
physics -- and now you're complaining that I talk about it with you.
[...]
Matt:
>>>I will try to state it in a way that will remove any
>>>implication of banning or control. Moggin, you are a qualified to
>>>discuss physics as I am to discuss Derrida in the original or, for
>>>that matter, any translation.
moggin:
>>       Naturally.  The question is, so what?  I don't give a damn
>>what your qualifications are to discuss Derrida -- the only thing
>>I'll care about, if you choose the address the subject, is what you
>>say about his work.  Now, if it's stupid and uninformed, I may well
>>conclude that you should have studied him more closely -- but I'm
>>not going to make that judgement in advance.
Matt:
:Let me ask you this question another way. I want to talk reasonably
:about Derrida and Decon. What should I know/read before I can do this?
     That depends entirely on you.  Do you want a reading list?  I'd
be glad to provide one, if that would help.
Matt:
>:If this is so, why haven't you bothered to address the subject of my
>:posts here? All you have done is a rhetorical diversion into banning.
moggin:
>     That's no diversion -- it's the point I'm taking up.  You won't
>allow yourself to discuss Derrida (not that I'd guess you want to,
>anyhow), because you feel you don't have the credentials (meaning the
>background, not any specific paperwork) to speak on that topic.  For
>the same reason, you feel that I shouldn't be allowed (or shouldn't
>allow myself) to say anything about science.  And my reply is that I
>completely disagree with the principle you're applying.  You want to
>judge in advance what any given person might say -- and I say, wait
>until you hear what they said -- then you'll have something to judge,
>if that's what you want to do.
Matt:
:By that principle you should start talking about a subject and then
:listen to yourself to see if you made any sense.
    "How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?"  (E.M. 
Forster)
:How about if I start
:talking Arabic and see if I make any sense. Or should I impose the
:prior restraint on myself to only speak the language I know.
     Up to you -- I don't care what principles you apply to yourself.
But by your reasoning, no one else should speak Arabic unless they've
got whatever you happen to think of as the "proper qualifications."
You won't even wait to find out if they _can_ speak it: you'll decide
in advance whether they're "qualified" to.
moggin:
>     This begins to remind me of the Sokal debate, where hordes of
>science campers were so positive about "what Sokal showed" that, in
>their view, it wasn't necessary to even confirm their judgement by
>taking a look-see.  It seems that empiricism has gone out of fashion,
>even among the science crowd.  (Not that I'll miss it, personally.)
Matt:
:I have pointed out that you made the mistakes first. The judgement of
:why the mistakes were made came later.
     No, you failed to point out the mistakes.  Now, like Russell,
you're asserting exactly what you failed to show (easier that way,
I guess).
Matt:
:Now I am not making the judgement about you and science in advance.
moggin:
>     Immaterial, since you didn't have the chance.  Your principle
>is that no one should discuss science unless they possess what you
>consider to be the necessary qualifications, just as you wouldn't
>discuss Derrida, since you don't feel yourself qualified.  And I'm
>telling you that's screwed -- of course you shouldn't be required
>to talk about Derrida, if you don't want to, but I would never say
>that you _shouldn't_ merely because you can't prove to me that you
>have the "necessary background."  Yet that's exactly the attitude
>you take about science.
Matt:
:I am not asking for proof. But if you start to say something about
:physics, and your eyes glaze over when I talk about limits, then don't
:expect to continue the conversation.
     Hey, dude, you're the one who insisting on having this pleasant
little chat -- it was your damn idea.  Anytime you want to stop will
be fine.
-- moggin

I commented to Russell Turpin:
>From what I have read of post-modernism in
>general (and Derrida in particular) I don't think this is anything
>like the case. They seem to be arguing about the status of the law of
>gravity rather than disputing it's utility, why it is useful rather
>than whether it is useful, how exactly it is used rather than whether
>it should be used - andf here's the big one - whether it could be
>replaced with something else rather than whether it should be.
>Are you suggesting that these are misguided questions?
Mati Meron replied:
That's a nice proof that they don't know what they are talking about.
The law of gravity isn't useful, nor not useful, it just is.  Arguing 
"how it is used" or "whether it should be used" is appropriate to 
devices.  But the law of gravity isn't a device.  It is there and 
that's it.  You can take it into account in what you're doing, or you 
can ignore it, at your peril, bu the way gravity acts is independent 
of philosophers ideas regarding "how it should be used".
Patrick Juola wrote in response to me:
: This seems to be yet another round of the post-modern technique of "make
: inflamatory statements then retreat to the trivial when people demonstrate
: that they have a consistent and robust worldview."
  [repeat of above quote by Andrew Dinn]
  . . .
: >Are you suggesting that these are misguided questions?
Patrick replies:
: If he isn't, then I am.  More accurately, I'm suggesting that
: these are trivial questions. To wit, here are the answers :
: 1) The law of gravity is a description of how falling objects behave; the
: idealized law of gravity, which scientists do not yet have, is an
: error-free description of how falling objects behave.
: 2) It's useful by construction; descriptions that had errors were
: observed to be less useful and abandoned.
: 3) It's used like any other equation in mathematics or physics; you
: put known values in for some of the variables and solve for the
: remaining unknowns.
: 4) The version current could easily be replaced with something else that
: did a better job of describing how falling objects behave.
: None of these are social questions.  Similarly, none of these vary
: with the beliefs, political or otherwise, of the scientists.
Well, I agree with Patrick, of course, but it appears that the
question cannot be so trivial and that scientists do not all share a
`consistent and robust worldview' as he and Russell Turpin wish to
argue since here we have Mati, a working scientist, disagreeing with
Patrick. For him the law of gravity is not a `description of how
falling objects behave' but rather `it just is', `It is there and
that's it'.
Presumably Mati will not sign up to 2) since the law of gravity is not
useful by construction but by being the law which fallling objects
obey. He may well agree on point 3) despite his statement that `The
law of gravity isn't useful, nor not useful'. Presumably he does not
intend this statement to deny the fact that one can use the law of
gravity for making predictions. But 4) will presumably stick in Mati's
craw since, the law of gravity being something which just `is', I
don't suppose he is expecting it to go away. And he certainly does not
seem to think that it is up to us to choose whether the current law of
gravity (sorry, *the* law of gravity) or some other law is more
appropriate for describing how things fall.
The questions may well be trivial but that is not to say that most
scientists are capable of answering them correctly. How many other
scientists think like Mati that the law of gravity `just is'?
Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.

Directory

nosewheeli@aol.com (NoseWheeli) wrote:
>I would appreciate help on the following problem:
> 
>Two balls, A and B, are moving on a frictionless surface. A, which has a
>mass of 8 kg, is moving right at a V of 15 m/s, and B, which has a mass of
>2 kg, is moving left at a V of 24 m/s. I know the two will colide in an
>elastic colision, so both momentum and vis viva must be conserved, but I
>can't use V`a=(2Ma/Ma+Mb)Va or V`b=(Ma-Mb/Ma+Mb)Va because both object are
>moving. I am asked to find the velocity of both balls after the collision.
>How can I do this?
>
>Thank you for your help; I truly appreciate it.
BOTH balls are moving, each in an unaccelerated path?  It sounds to me 
like only one ball is moving.  Think about it.
-- 
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm  (lots of + new)
 (Toxic URLs! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!

In article <54r814$3l1@peaches.cs.utexas.edu>, turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>-*--------
>In article ,   wrote:
>> ...  I mean space and time invariance, the belief that rules 
>> which were found in a specific time and place are valid for 
>> other times and places.  ...  I you ask me to prove that
>> gravity will act tomorrow same way it did so far, that it 
>> won't suddenly switch from attractive to repulsive and 
>> we'll just go flying away from the sun, then no, I can't 
>> prove it. ...
>
>I'm not sure that science makes this assumption, at least, not to
>the degree this suggests.  If someone were to discover that (for
>example) the cosmological constant wasn't constant, but had
>started to change slowly, physicists would *not* throw up their
>hands and say "oh, hell, we can't do physics anymore if things
>are going to change on us," but instead they would proceed to
>find a new theory that fit their observations, i.e., they would
>do what they usually do.
>
Right.  And they'll try  to find regularity in the way the change 
occurs, since once that's done, you can again describe the future in 
terms of the present.
	... snip ...
>
>I agree, of course, that there *is* a philosophical conundrum in
>how we constantly apply current knowledge to tomorrow's world,
>never knowing for sure that it will fit.  I would point out,
>though, that everyone faces this in their routine getting up and
>going out to face the world, every bit as much as physicists.
Right.  Thus I agree with what you wrote elsewhere, that it doesn't 
take more metaphysics to do science than it does just to find the 
location of your science class.  No argument on this.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Note followups ...
Brian Jones  writes
}
} Nope, Mr. Stein. Aberration of starlight would not exist if the there
} were a "carried-along light medium." 
 Precisely.  That was why the Michelson-Morley experiment came as a 
 surprise.  It had been assumed that the earth was moving through 
 the aether to explain the observed aberration. 
Keith Stein  writes:
>
>        Of course "Aberration of Starlight" would exist in a "carried-
>along light medium" Mr. Jones.  Indeed Brian, THAT IS WHAT CAUSES IT !
>Consider the following:-
> 
>              Star                                           Earth
>                *                                         A<-h->o
>
>For simplicity we will consider that the Earth's Atmosphere starts and
>ends abruptly at a point 'A', a hight 'h' metres above the earth.
 This assumption, that the aberration happens at a sharp boundary 
 between the full drag in the atmosphere and none in space is 
 contradicted by the Fizeau experiment.  It would also argue that 
 the Hubble telescope would not see aberration -- something we 
 would have heard about by now. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

  I got the idea of the teleportation when I studied about 
magnetic-field.
  So, I had several simulation about it.
  Realization of super transition was accomplished by the 
magnetic wave synthesized body field. Magnetic wave synthesized 
body field was consisted of 6 pole rotating magnet, and a fixed 
magnet. There by a consistent modulated magnetic wave with a 
specific frequency is controlled for creation, elimination, and 
teleportation. An electrical control circuit or a mechanical 
device can be applied. Experimental results showed that if 
copper is used as a standard material, Lead is the major created 
matter. Teleportation and elimination depended upon the magnetic 
wave frequency and space energy density. High voltage discharge, 
strong magnet in the reaction container accelerated the super 
space transition.
-- 
God Bless in Your Futures!
By Young Hun Chung
neosoft@users.unitel.co.kr

On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, Doug Craigen wrote:
> Peter Swedock wrote:
> > 
> > isn't quite true... what you are saying is that, were some-one to name
> > you a metal you'd be able to tell them what state (gas, liquid, solid) it
> > has AT ROOM TEMPERATURE and one atmosphere of pressure.
> 
> This isn't what he is saying.  What he is saying is that many "solid" metal 
> alloy mixtures in particular are glasses.  As such, one can find many 
> materials that look and feel just like any other metal, but which are 
> glasses.  Depending on whether one views glasses as being "solids" or not 
> (i.e. his question, what is your definition of a solid), one may need to know 
> the composition of a material to say whether it is a solid.
> 
> Personally, I prefer a mechanical definition of solid.  In this case, soda 
> lime silica glass is just as solid as steel.
AT ROOM TEMPERATURE!!!! AT 4000 degrees steel is just as liquid as water 
at room temperature!!!
I said it before I'll say it again. the STATE of a material (gas-liquid-solid)
is NOT AN INHERENT PROPERTY OF THE MATERIAL (this is first year chemistry 
folks...WHAT"S THE BIG PROBLEM UNDERSTANDING IT???!!!???) but depends on 
the environmental context.
So to answer the question... at room temperature. YES. Glass is a solid.
end of discussion.
If you want to get into discussion of 'what is a solid?"  and "what is 
'glass'?"  we can do that.
Peace,
Petr

Douglas Tricarico wrote:
[snip]
> Speaking as a Catholic boy raised in the midwest (US), I can tell you
> that the Church never once pushed for creationism of any kind.  We were
> taught (and this is 25 years ago) that the stories in the Bible were
> allegorical and designed purely as teaching stories; fables, if you
> like.
> 
> We were taught religion right after we went to science class and
> learned about dinosaurs.  None of us thought it was all that odd or
> that sprirituality was antithetical to science.
> 
> Doug
My experience with Catholic grade school was similar.
Authority for the Catholic church rests with the pope not the bible.
When the protestants split from the Catholic church they needed to
establish some basis of authority. Mostly they chose the bible. This
allowed them to renounce the authority of the pope and to establish
doctrine based on interpretations of the bible.
Unfortunately, when you base your authority on a book, you are put into
a position of proclaiming that book to be very special. It now has to be
infalible. So you declare that it is devinely inspired. That god has
made sure that every word is "gospel".
This is the root problem with bible based christianity. It gives rise to
social lunacy like creationism.

John Covington  wrote:
} 
} I have heard that light behaves like both a particle and a wave, but is 
} really neither.  
 Photons and electrons are both particles (that is, we find them only 
 in particular quanta with specific properties of m, q, spin, etc, in 
 the same sense that we think of macroscopic particles) that move 
 according to rules that are similar to those of a macroscopic wave 
 (even though what is 'waving' is a probability amplitude). 
} And that light has no mass.  
 Good enough for government work.  With apologies to tony, I would say 
 that when you want to know the mass of a particle, you look it up in 
 the Review of Particle Properties -- most recent version is in Phys. 
 Rev. D 54, 1 (1 July 1996).  It gives m < 6 x 10^{-16} eV (99.7% CL). 
 It also gives q < 5 x 10^{-30} e.  Both are "zero". 
} I've also heard the other arugment, that light has no rest mass, but 
} relativistic mass.  
 Relativistic mass is another name for energy, once popular as a means 
 of helping people convert from classical to relativistic thinking.  It 
 causes more trouble than it is worth, and is not used at all at the 
 research level.  Rest mass is misleading (since massless particles 
 are never at rest).  Mass is the name for the relativistically invariant 
 quantity that has been callled "mass" for centuries. 
} Then I've heard that light is a momentum particle, and not a force particle.
 New one on me.  A photon does carry momentum.  As the gauge boson of 
 electromagnetism, it is the force carrier for E+M.  By the way, in that 
 role, a virtual photon *can* have mass for a short time. 
} My background is the simple undergraduate engineering physics (and modern 
} physics).
 Then you are excused.  Probably a victim of the "modern" physics books 
 that are written like it is still 1920. 
tony richards  writes:
>
>May I repectfully suggest that you think about those situations in physics when
>you need to know or use the mass of an entity.
>
>IMHO on those occasions you are either interested in working out
>the acceleration of the entity as a result of exerting a force on it
>or working out the gravitational force ON or OF the entity.
 There is also the simple kinematics relating energy, momentum, and mass. 
>However, it is my understanding that light can have 'gravitational mass', 
>due to the equivalence formula E=mass*C*C. 
 That was the original idea behind calling E/c^2 the relativistic mass. 
 But, since 
>It is more complicated than this, because the energy of the light 
>contributes to an energy tensor used in General Relativity, 
 in a different way than the mass, relativistic mass is not used anymore. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <326E3F3A.448E@chem.leidenuniv.nl>,
P.J.E. Verdegem  wrote:
>Mark Gilbert wrote:
>> No.  Photons of different energies travel at different speeds in
>> material.  It is this difference in speed that enables a prism to spread
>This is not really true of course. The reason light spreads out in its
>different colours is simply because of the different refraction indices
>of the different components.
And what is the refraction index, other than 
speed of light in vacuum/speed of light in medium 
?

weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) wrote:
>
> Anton Hutticher (Anton.Hutticher@sbg.ac.at) wrote:

> : Shure, but it is not the normal use in natural science. Communication
> : would be extremely cumbersome in science if right or wrong are understood
> : in absolute terms only. And "Newton was wrong...." does talk about a 
> : scientific theory being wrong. Therefore most people will assume a 
> : certain usage of this word. 
> 
> I understand that. Whenever a thread is cross-posted between science 
> community and non-science community, however, mutual accomodations are in 
                                                ^^^^^^
So far some members of the non-science-community has errh have been less 
than accomodating.
> order. Witness the "generalization" terminology: for most people, 
> "generalizing" something means to make it _more_ applicable, to extend or 
> expand its applicability. I do not for a moment doubt that Mati uses the 
> term correctly according to sci usage, but it's counter-intuitive to the 
> rest of us.
   Talk about culture shock. Thats exactly how I use it in science and 
those people I know in and outside of science. Generalisation in its 
broadest sense means to me changing a theory ( or replacing it with a 
new one) such that the new one encompasses the old one but also is 
applicable in areas where the old one is not. So the old theory now 
is a special case of the new, generalized one and it makes sense to 
say that the old one was incomplete, but not that it was wrong (in 
the popular sense of wrong). 
(As an aside: The more general system is also said to be more 
powerful, which *has* resulted in confusion in my experience, 
because somehow "more powerful" often gets connected with "more 
specialized" in discussions with laymen).
And ""generalizing" something means to make it _more_ applicable, 
to extend or expand its applicability" 
is how I read Mati et. al�s explanations of that terms to moggin. 
Moggin uses it in a different way.
There really seems to be a communication gap.

> : > We're not quite there yet, but getting closer: it is my impression that 
> : > moggin used his own vocabulary in talking about an aspect of science; you 
> : > are saying (and I take your word for it) that scientists don't talk that 
> : > way, and that it wouldn't be useful for them to do so -- again, no 
> : > problem. However, non-scientists in a non-scientific forum are surely not 
> : > held to your rhetorical practice. 
> 
> : Moggin has been told that his use of certain words (wrong, true, etc)
> : is quite different from how they are used by scientists and is misleading
> : as long as he doesn�t tell that his usage differs. So far he refuses.
> : And non-scientists generally do not use "wrong" etc. the way moggin 
> : does, but remarkably often like scientist do.
> 
> I don't think he refuses to acknowledge that sci uses the terms 
> differently; I think he insists on using them according to his own 
> vocabulary standards. 
These are basically the standards at the time of the inquisition 
and *highly* misleading if applied to science *or in common talk*.
> That said, however, these threads have long stopped 
> being "about" moggin's use of the word 'wrong' -- it would have been just 
> fine, I think, to declare all around, "Newton was wrong according to 
> this-or-that usage of the word, and not wrong according to this-or-that."
Thats exactly what would have ended the exchange, at least for my part. 
If moggin would say "Be aware that my usage of wrong, true, generalize, 
limit... is highly obfuscating and certainly not what you would 
expect" whenever he uses it in his nonstandard way, the problem would 
be over. I suggested something like that to him, as did others, 
to no avail. 
Do you see any difference between 
"Silke, the liar, who.does not even..."
and 
"Silke, the liar (but, dear reader be aware that I have my private 
definition of liar, which may not at all be what you expect, but is 
calculated to obfuscate you and infuriate all the people whom I call 
liar without telling them this little piece of information), who 
does not even..." 
Then you may be one step ahead of moggin.
> The mobbing of moggin was hardly warranted  -- and it's the mobbing that 
> made me enter these threads, not any intrinsic interest in whether Newton 
> was right or wrong or generalized or specialized. The extraordinary 
> hostility emanating from the sci posters is still baffling me -- before 
> someone points out that I myself have quite a few hostile postings to my 
> name, yes, I know that. I have not, however, told people that they have 
> no basic intellectual integrity, that they are habitual liars, shouldn't 
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^
Who has?
> teach in their professions, etc. etc. Despite Gordon's efforts of 
> elucidating how such things happen, I continue to wonder at that course 
> of events.
Because THIS SHIT KILLS. Rhetoric in the mogginesian, ogdenian, 
swansonian style is used to create distrust to science. Now, honest 
doubt is OK; it is actually wellcome to scientists trying to communicate 
with the public (ok, thats not all of us but a majority), but rhetorics 
calculated to confuse is not. Scientists *HATE* the 
"did you know that most scientists have never stopped beating their 
wife and children" approach to discussion, especially when the 
"because most of them never started doing that" part habitually 
somehow gets omitted. If you use words in a sense the public is not 
expecting, it is your duty to define them first or at least clarify 
them as soon as you realize there are problems. Instead people (not
moggin, he just uses the same language) use carefully constructed
sentences with carefully twisted meanings to misguide hearers into
believing science is on shaky foundations. (See new age, creationism,
etc...). 
"Evolution is no fact, it is just a theory." Well,in this sense,
so is everything else, including physics. 
"Newton is wrong." Well,in this sense, so is everything else in science.
If you are using language in this manipulative way you are bound to be
criticized.
And that;IMHO, part of the reasons moggin got such a bum rap. He is 
using words like wrong, generalize etc. in his special way without 
telling anyone that he is misleading them. He resorts to sophistry, 
when challenged and to glib put downs when asked questions he 
doesn�t like to answer. Generally he gives the impression of 
preferring a "I win, because I scored more points than you" approach 
to a "lets honestly try to communicate and figure out the differences" 
approach. (What I term "lawyers" versus "scientists" approach). 
Any student doing a tenth of that twisting, evading and redefining 
would be regarded as a royal pain in the ass in any sci. department 
and would catch far more flak than moggin did. Honest debate is 
regarded a very high value in science. (Don�t tell me it aint always 
so. I know that!). Its not the questioning of scientific values (or
dearly held beliefs) per se which is infuriating, but the way he 
refused to listen and his style of poisoning communication.

> I still think my analogy is better, since, as we established above, 
> "right" and "wrong" as moggin uses them are legitimate uses of the word 
> outside of sci, just as the word "author" in an unreflected way is 
> legitimate outside of high octane lit-crit. To put Juliet into Hamlet is 
> another matter.
It is a legitimate use. However neither scientists nor the public at 
large do generally use it in the way moggin uses it. To say "Newton 
is wrong" and not tell "according to criteria by which no scientific 
theory ever can be "right", except the final one" is downright 
misleading. And his contributions show a surprising mix of knowledge 
and utter crap, like someone putting Juliet into Hamlet.

> : Culture shock?
> : Could be, but after having had several debates along the lines:
> : :"Science is wrong! Why? Because they will always have an experimental
> : :error, and if something is wrong in the millionth decimal it is 
> : :*wrong*.
> : :There is no progress in science! Why? Ptolemy was wrong, Newton was 
> : :wrong, Einstein (say scientists) is wrong. NO progress."
> 
> But you do realize that you are making this up, right? Whereas I am _not_ 
> making up that Derrida's writings have been called "shallow," 
> "gibberish," etc. etc.
Why do you say that? I was not talking about this thread specifically.
The first example, as well as an earlier one about the distance 
between earth and moon always being falsely measured (because always 
imprecise, hence no progress) are straight out of discussions at our 
university. The last one has been cast in moggins words re Ptolemy 
and Newton. But there is a recurring theme in these discussions from 
my student days till now that basically goes: Because all scientific 
theories have been superseeded by others i.e. shown to be wrong, and 
the current ones are also destined for that fate, therefore all of 
science is wrong. 
I am unfortunately *not* making that up.
> 
> : I very much doubt that this is unintentional.
> 
> "this" being, so far, a fantasy. 
"this" being the tendency to use words in strange ways, guaranteed to 
confuse, even after this is pointed out.
> : I have corrected the use of loaded words in those debates, pointing 
> : out that scientists as well as the general public have a different 
> : usage and that laymen are sure to draw wrong inferences, but to no 
> : avail. I have asked that it be explained at the beginning that 
> : certain words are used in nonstandard ways, in ways shure to mislead 
> : if not explained. No response! 
> : These words are *calculated* to mislead.
> 
> As someone said, it's a conspiracy?
No, its a lifestyle! Zeitgeist, maybe.
Anton Hutticher
(Anton.Hutticher@sbg.ac.at)
The tribe of the cheap shot finds it hard to talk to the tribe of 
earnest reasoning (Secret sayings of Confucius).

If relativity really says this, then doesn't someone have to
explain where effects of the Earths rotation come from, e.g.,
the coriolis effect?  A force which appears out of nothing? 
Richard Mentock wrote:
> 
> Peter Diehr wrote:
> > No, an "absolute rest frame" is when there is a single, unique, frame of
> > reference in which the "true laws of physics" hold.  You seem to be calling
> > every inertial reference frame an "absolute reference frame".  But (according
> > to Einstein, and the theory of relativity), all inertial frames are equivalent.
> 
> Actually, I was referring to *non*inertial frames, like the Earth at
> rest or the Sun at rest.  I wasn't calling them absolute rest frames,
> but I was saying that there didn't seem to be any problem with somebody
> else so-calling a particular one (as long as they didn't continually
> switch between two).  The gist of the quote from Einstein was that both
> Ptolemy and Copernicus could be considered right (and both did have a
> sense of an absolute rest frame).  Max Born, in his book Einstein's
> Theory of Relativity, says it explicitly (p.345, Dover): "Thus from
> Einstein's point of view Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right."
> 
> --
> D.
> 
> mentock@mindspring.com
> http://www.mindspring.com/~mentock/index.htm

> >I need to know the minimum size pore that liquid water will move through.
> >For clarification let me use the following example:  the pore size in
> >Gore-Tex fabric is small enough that liquid water will not move through it
> >on its own (adhesion/cohesion properties of water).  I am looking at
> >respiratory structures in insects and am wondering if some of the smaller
> >pores are functioning similar to Gore-Tex fabric in preventing liquid
> >water from entering the insects respiratiory system?
> >
> >If someone knows the answer to the pore size question or can refer me to a
> >text that might have it, I would appreciate it.
> >
> >Please e-mail me at  
> >markb@galaxy.ucr.edu
> >
> >
> >thanks,
> >mark breidenbaugh
> >UC Riverside
> >Entomology
-- 
Robert Velten
Entomology Dept., UC Riverside
netlevkr@pe.net, rvelt@citrus.ucr.edu

Joe Keane wrote:
> 
> So i was reading a description of fiber-optic networks, and they talk
> about the sub-channels with megabits and gigahertz, but then, when they
> get to the light band, they switch to nanometers.  Why don't people use
> the frequency of light instead; wouldn't that be more consistent?
> 
> It makes more sense to me to use bigger numbers for higher frequencies,
> not to mention that the wavelengths given are *completely wrong* since
> the speed of light in glass is not c, i mean duh...
> 
> To make it worse, there's also eV, cm^-1, kcal/mol, and so on, plus a
> factor of 2*pi moves around; how do people have intuition with all this?
> 
> red    ~= 430 THz
> yellow ~= 520 THz
> green  ~= 590 THz
> blue   ~= 630 THz
> 
> --
> Joe Keane, amateur physicist
Each individual discipline "likes" to coin their own units. I believe it
orginated somewhere around a place called "Babble" where a tall tower
was being build into the heavens by some multinational group of
engineers...
Try reading a legal document, a rental contract, an IRS report, and you
have some idea of the results of this construction....or, in otherwords,
human nature is not defined by physics.
-- 
Stephen L. Gilbert  
Consulting Services........"serving the Semiconductor Industry"      
3631 N. Hash Knife Circle   
Tucson, Arizona 85749
browse   http://www.goodnet.com/~conser   for more information
                                 please respond by email to;  
                                     S.L.Gilbert@ieee.org

Paul.B.Andersen@hia.no writes:
>
>Why should the rest of the world care if US go metric?
 Simple.  So it will be easier to find Disney World rather than find 
 yourself in Liberty City by mistake.  ;-)
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <54qujj$fje@lynx.unm.edu>, kunk@perseus.phys.unm.edu ()
wrote:
>In article <32766da5.23677736@news.pacificnet.net>,
>Louis Savain  wrote:
>>
>>  Well it's too bad that physicists, when confronted with problems
>>that severely tax the limit of their understanding, always feign to
>>not be interested in the deeper causal mechanisms responsible for
>>natural phenomena than is readily available to observer.  To be true
>>to their professed disinterest, I think they should discard almost
>>everything they know, because most of physics is already very
>>philosophical in nature.  What with spacetime, continuity,
>>discreteness, determinism, nonlocality, and all that jazz?  Is there
>>anything wrong with not knowing something?  Should not the goal of us
>>all be the pursuit of understanding?
>>
>>Louis Savain
>
>
>Try the hallowed Feynman lectures, Louis.  I believe he uses the example
>of several kinds of clock (pendulum, wristwatch, atomic spectra) and 
>shows how the mechnism of each would be affected by SR in just the right
>way to counter time dilation.
  Let me see if I understand what you wrote correctly.  Are you saying
that Feynman actually showed a physical relationship (a mechanism)
between c and the decay of subatomic particles?
Best regards,
Louis Savain

yaofei@IDEA.UML.Edu (Fei Yao) writes:
>
>I am wondering where I can find some info (or collection) of physics probems in
>popular college-level textbook (such as Holiday & Resnick? or Ohanian?) 
 There are copyright issues associated with reproducing published 
 material as such, e.g. providing the exact text of H+R problems 
 identified and numbered as they are in the textbook.  The exception 
 would be for particular books produced with NSF funds that are 
 copyrighted but available royalty free for educational use (Berkeley 
 vol. 2, E+M, for example).  We were talking just the other day about 
 whether many of those problems are themselves copyrighted, since so 
 many of them were in the public domain when the books were written, 
 but IMHO the line is drawn when you say it is "so and so, # 5-17". 
 I will note that one of the two new versions of Halliday and Resnick 
 is available on CD-ROM, complete with problems and hints (and errors). 
>                  ....                  When I try to tutor or teach some
>students in physics, instead of typing the problems from textbooks for homework
>assignments, tests and exams,  I think it would be nice to have some file(s)
>which includes lots of problems, so I can just select a few each time. 
 It would be advisable to make up your own problems rather than copy 
 them out of books.  After a short time you will have your own file. 
 If I assign a problem from a book, I just tell them the number. 
 If you look hard (well, not so hard) you will find a number of physics 
 classes on the web that provide current and old quizes and exams (but 
 with solutions in most cases).  These can be useful for studying in 
 anyone's class, but are also copyrighted, by the way.  They provide 
 an excellent resource with no work: just link to them. 
 Basic rule of the web: linking is good, copying is not. 
 I think it will not be long before most sites with such proprietary 
 information will be closed up so they can be accessed only within 
 a particular domain, by the way, since students are paying for the 
 production and maintenance of the material.  What is open and what 
 is proprietary will be carefully evaluated as mass quantities of 
 WWW class materials become the norm - perhaps replacing textbooks. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article <54oji1$jk0@solaris.cc.vt.edu>, Frank Harrison
 wrote:
>  Snip
> Fullerenes can be used to make lubricants for use in high vacuum.
   I'd love to know if anyone makes them in commercial quantities.  The
way I heard it, fullerene lubricants aren't ready for prime time just yet.
Kirk Mueller
kdmueller@ccgate.hac.com        (310)334-2586
Hughes Aircraft Co., Radar and Communications Sector
El Segundo, CA  USA
---  All comments are strictly my own.  I believe they're accurate, 
but disclaim responsibility if I happen to be in error. ---

Doug Craigen:
|> What is happening is that the metal is so hot that the liquid floats 
|> on a blanket of steam which protects it from the metal.  
Yup.
In fact, the appearance of a vaopr layer changes the "wetting angle" 
of the liquid on the interface (a function of the coefficients of 
surface tension of the different materials; in this case, metal, 
water vapor and water).  
Recall that mercury will bead on a cold surface (that is, it has a 
greater wetting angle), while alcohol will spread out rapidly on an 
air-water interface (the wetting angle goes to zero).  The equation 
that determines the wetting angle also determines the contact angle 
of water to glass in a tube (capillary effect).  
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Candy                        The University of Texas at Austin
Institute for Fusion Studies      Austin, Texas
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Isaac Brownell  writes:
>
>What is the limmiting factor on MRI resolution?  
 Field gradient.  
 Thus, indirectly, the magnitude of the largest DC field you can 
 maintain with requiried uniformity. 
>   ...              Why can't we make a high power, high frequency field 
>using a really small magnetic coil and get imaging powers great enough to 
>view cellular ultrastucture?  
 The answer is that "we" (meaning the NHMFL at FSU/UF/LANL) are going to 
 try.  Indeed, in the brouhaha over the siting decision, the fact that 
 the FSU proposal was unique in setting such a goal (developed jointly 
 between two universities that are huge rivals in just about every other 
 thing they do) was not generally noted.  
 I believe the plan is 800 MHz and then 1 GHz MRI.  
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

rbrowning@nc.acorn.co.uk (Richard Browning) writes:
>
> Would one American object when another spelt 'Light' thus: 'Lite'. 
 Only if it violated a registered trademark for the awful liquid 
 substance sold by that name.  Ah, another benefit of metrification: 
 we could export "lite beer" to europe where they could use it as 
 a water substitute. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

Anthony Potts  wrote:
>On 5 Oct 1996, Tom Potter wrote:
>> 1. When matter absorbs energy, the energy is stored
>>    in the matter for some finite time, and reradiated.
>>    This accounts for a lowering of the "speed of light"
>>    in matter. In other words, light zips along at "C"
>>    until it interacts with matter, at that point it
>>    stays a while, then it continues on its' way.
>That is not the accepted explanation. It would certainly get you a failure
>on a physics paper.
>The permittivity, and permeability of a medium appear in Maxwell's
>equations. These equations give you the speed of light in a medium.
>very simple.
>Even between atoms, the light is slowed.
>Please, if someone is looking for an answer, tell them that you are
>peddling ideas which the world of physics does not accept.
>It is duplicitous to do otherwise.
>Anthony Potts
>CERN, Geneva
I believe Maxwell's electrodynamics has been superceded by QED as the
most accurate theory of the interaction of light with matter?
Maxwells permeability and permittivity of a material are only a large
scale approximation to a  complicated interaction occuring between the
material and the electromagnetic radiation at the particle level.
I don't know exactly what, but a detailed explanation would involve
some model of the interaction of the radiation and the electrons.
For one thing, a photon moving at less than the speed of light would
have no energy according to relativity (it's rest mass is zero!].
Liam Roche

taboada@mtha.usc.edu (Mario Taboada) writes:
>
>            ....                        In the Principia, Newton
>mixes the old "geometric" methods with the recently developed calculus of
>"fluxions". Some of the things he was able to prove by pure geometry
>are simply incredible...
According to a colleague here, who has a friend that studied the 
matter for an undergrad thesis project, some things presented 
geometrically could only have been proved with the calculus and 
then converted back to the old, more familiar, geometrical notation. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In talk.origins nanken@tiac.net (Ken MacIver) wrote:
>"RICHARD J. LOGAN"  wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>2.  But this is beside the point.  I was startled by a previous posters response 
>>that religious people daily question the founding principles of their faith (at 
>>least that's the way I interpretted the posters comment) and that the practice of 
>>science was in some sense a religious enterprise. 
>
>That was me and I did not mean to startle you.  I meant that religions
>study and debate their meanings and purposes.  Separate and apart from
>that, many people do indeed treat science as a religion in the sense
>that they believe it offers the key to the origin and structure of the
>world.  
That is like saying religion is like science because both have classes
on Tuesday night. It is true, but not important to at least one of the
subjects at hand.
>
[snip]
>
>You are viewing this in much too narrow a sense.  Religion is a belief
>in a divine power as the creator of the universe.  Science is a belief
>that something other than a divine power created the universe.  
Science is a system and practice that examines observations and
develops explanations for those observations. The origin on the
universe is one of those things that has been included in
explanations. But science does not have any a priori statements on the
origin.
[snip]
>
>I did not say that science is a religion in the formal sense.  But
>science has become very much like a religion in the sense that large
>numbers of people "believe" in its infallibility and often cite
>various of its "facts" and "theories" to support both sides of moral
>issues in hopes of attracting to a position others who believe in the
>"god" of science.
>
Since science is not a belief system per se it is not defined by what
people believe it has said. It is true that many people use scientific
statements in their moral statements. That does not make science a
moral system. It is more likely that people use the scientific
statements to show how their statements are aligned with observation
rather than your "god" of science. For instance if I say it was wrong
of someone to sell poisoned food, the morality is contained in the
"wrong" but it is supported by the scientific evidence of the poison.
Matt Silberstein
===========================
Let others praise ancient times, I am glad to live in these.
Ovid

In talk.origins +@+.+ (G*rd*n) wrote:
>G*rd*n:
>| > |> Obviously "pass the 100m mark exactly 20 seconds after you
>| > |> start to accelerate" is language.
>
>Noel Smith :
>| And as Fitch so memorably told us during the Science Wars,
>| "f=ma" is "social."
>|
>| And he wonders why so many of us find this kind of thinking a
>| real hoot.
>
>One of the things moggin's recent tour de farce exhibited
>was a clearer picture of the discussion to which you allude,
>about which I was somewhat confused at the time; not about
>what I said, but about the hysterical resistance it
>encountered.  To recap my end of it:  "F=ma" is language;
>language is social; therefore, "F=ma" is social.  Everyone
>knows this.
I think the problem is this. By ' "F=ma" is language ', you mean it is
stated in language and used the statement is used in social
interaction. This is, I think, indisputable. OTOH, there is another
interpretation, that the concept behind "F=ma" is itself just a
social construct, and therefore could be constructed differently. This
is, IMHO, incorrect. And it is this second meaning that was "pounced"
upon while it was the first you defended. The subsequent confusion did
not bring much light to the subject.
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
===========================
Let others praise ancient times, I am glad to live in these.
Ovid

timo.pelkonen wrote:
> 
> tcox@us1.ibm.com writes:
> 
> >1 foot can be divided into halfs, thirds, forths sixths or twelths without
> >using fractions.
> 
> those who are metric don't use fractions..
I reply:
That may make my 5 yr old son happy when he gets to
3rd grade.   But then the schools in US are based
on 12 and or 16-17 depending on the degree.
Just think, kids could be a year ahead if they did not
have fractions.  My 6th grader thinks just the opposite
about metric.  But she does not know cups/pint/quart etc.
Steve Baker
power@startext.net

/On the date of 14 Oct 1996 09:14:13 GMT, roq@chch.planet.org.nz
(Quentin Rowe) did inscribe into the group alt.atheism and unto the
ether thereof:\
Why are scientists so concerned with preserving the conservation of energy
> >within the entire (infinite) universe, when we can't even conserve the
> >available energy on the planet?
Last time I checked the universe was Finite...expanding but finite...it's
called physics Quentin, look it up....
-- 
This has been a message brought to you by:
***********************************************************
Samuel L .Bronkowitz Productions
"Bringing you only the best in pornography,
for the whole family to enjoy..."
http://www.cris.com/~Revfunk
LRam8 (lleijs@hopper.unh.edu)
************************************************************
george gerret  wrote in article
<327054C2.3146@mpx.com.au>...
> Mike
> The "Conservation of Energy" has nothing to do with the dept of
> Energy, global freezing/global warming activists, or switching
> off un-used lights.
> This is refering to science laws, in this case, what goes in must
> come out. You can't "preserve" the Conservation of Energy: it looks
> after itself!!!
> 
> George :)
> 
> 
> Mike Turk wrote:
> > 
> > /On the date of 14 Oct 1996 09:14:13 GMT, roq@chch.planet.org.nz
> > (Quentin Rowe) did inscribe into the group alt.atheism and unto the
> > ether thereof:\
> > 
> > >Why are scientists so concerned with preserving the conservation of
energy
> > >within the entire (infinite) universe, when we can't even conserve the
> > >available energy on the planet?
> > 
> > What?! Are you suggesting that we *destroy* energy on Terra? That's
> > absurd!
> > 
> > > ________________________________________
> > > Quentin Rowe      roq@chch.planet.org.nz
> > > Christchurch
> > > NEW ZEALAND -the worlds best kept secret
> > >  .......................................
> > >  : KNOWLEDGE,  the Fruit of Experience :
> > >  : -Ferments to Myth, Distills to Fact :
> > >  :.....................................:
> > 
> >         Mike Turk
> > --
> >    /===     e-mail: jhvh-1@geocities.com
> >   / 111     homepage: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/6966/
> >     111
> > J H V H     Energetic is the goblin that fears the
> >     111     turquoise wallpaper.
> >     111
> >   -=====-
> > SLACK FIRST
> 

Christopher Michael Jones wrote:
> 
> Well as for "speakoring" proper English, there are more of us than there
> are of you.
And that makes you right, of course.
>And if you call that cockney accent you "blokes" speak over
> there "English" then you have something wrong with your brain (at least
> something _else_ wrong).
Surely the language spoken in England is more properly called "English"
than the language spoken in America.  (Actually, they are both dialects
of the same language, which is traditionally, even in America, called
"English".)
Besides, the accent a language is spoken with really has nothing to do
with what the language is called.  If you speak Swahili with a German
accent (for example), the language is still Swahili.
>By the way, in _French_ meter is spelled metre _not_ in English.
In English metre is spelled metre (at least in most places where English
is spoken/written).  In America they spell the same word meter.
-Paul

If you write a conservation of momentum eq and a conserv of KE eq
and solve them simultaneously, you'll end up with
        Ma-Mb          2Mb
Va' = --------- Va + ----------  Vb
        Ma+Mb          Ma+Mb
and
          2Ma            Mb-Ma
Vb' = ----------- Va +  -------- Vb
        Ma+Mb             Ma+Mb
Remember to plug in negative for velocity to the left.
Who the heck still uses the term vis viva?  I've only seen
that term in books written in the 19th century.
Mike Lepore in New York
                       *    *    *    *    *    *
NoseWheeli wrote:
> 
> I would appreciate help on the following problem:
> 
> Two balls, A and B, are moving on a frictionless surface. A, which has a
> mass of 8 kg, is moving right at a V of 15 m/s, and B, which has a mass of
> 2 kg, is moving left at a V of 24 m/s. I know the two will colide in an
> elastic colision, so both momentum and vis viva must be conserved, but I
> can't use V`a=(2Ma/Ma+Mb)Va or V`b=(Ma-Mb/Ma+Mb)Va because both object are
> moving. I am asked to find the velocity of both balls after the collision.
> How can I do this?
> 
> Thank you for your help; I truly appreciate it.
> 
> Charlie

Ken.S.Thompson@mci.com writes:
>
>  ...        If what you are saying holds true, then why are there
>essentially two forms of calculus?  Newtonian and the other(I can't
>remember right now but N. preaches that the (dt) is an infinate number
>where the other one states that the (dt) is only a place holder.  
 I have heard it said that we learn Newtonian calculus in the 
 Leibnitz notation because Newton's conceptual formulation is 
 easier to understand (it connects well to numerical approximations 
 or the use of graphs to inform intuition) while the proofs that 
 placed it all on a solid analytic foundation were done mostly in 
 France in the late 19th century.   
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  Raw data, like raw sewage, needs 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac        |  some processing before it can be
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  spread around.  The opposite is
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  true of theories.  -- JAC

In article , "Michael Kleiman (SOC)"  writes:
>I believe that, if anything, drafting would *speed up* the front rider.
>Some of wind drag comes from the inability of the parted air to seamlessly
>reattach as it comes off the rear of the bike/rider.  The resulting
>turbulence creates a partial vacuum that wants to get filled and thus
>pulls the rider back into it.  Teardrop shaped attachments behind a riders
>butt combat this by allowing the air to smoothly reattach.  The drafting
>rider, in similar fashion, could prevent the air leaving the front rider
>from creating a vacuum pocket.  Instead of trying to reattach behind the
>front rider, the air is now flowing over both riders and reattaching
>behind the drafting rider.  The same vacuum now exist behind the drafting
>rider but the front rider doesn't have to deal with it, so he can go
>faster.  The second rider does have to deal with the vacuum, but he is
>better able to do so because he doesn't have to part the air in the first
>place.  The effect is similar (but much smaller) to what occurs on a
>tandem.  On a tandem you have the same need to part the wind and the same
>vacuum behind, but 2 riders together battle these effects.  Correct?
>
The generally accepted efficiency figures for a two man 2up team in 
time trialling, that one drafting behind the other with a maximum
gap of 18 inches between the front and rear wheels are:
The rear rider will only have to put in 70% of the effort the would 
be needed by a solo rider.
The lead rider will only have to put in 95% of the effort that would be needed
by a solo rider. This is because there is reduced air turbulance behind
the lead rider so long a the bloke at the back keeps in close.
Obviously the the rear rider will have to echelon if the wind is 
angled or a strong cross wind.
2UP team time trialling on good surfaced straight dual carriageways
can produce fast times with the two riders swapping round at intervals
With the two bikes so close together at high speeds it is important that
the two riders trust each other and are fairly closly matched
Bill Marshall
>

Friday, the 25th of October, 1996
Gordon writes:
  So what was the problem?  Well, in the "Newton was wrong"
  fandango, we see that a statement which everyone who has
  read a high school physics text knows is correct caused a
  great outcry.  Why?  Because one isn't supposed to say
  things _that_way_; it is what I have called "blasphemy."
  Any remarks about the limitations of Newtonian theory must
  be surrounded by formulae warding off demonic influences.
You're just not getting it. The point is that what you read
in high-school physics texts are lies, and the lies are concentric
spheres which, when you go on out to the next higher sphere,
you start to see the inadequacies and the fallacies of the last.
This is the perfectly necessary and rational way of any pedagogy.
Now, lots of textbooks do (in Stephen Jay Gould's way of putting
it) the "cardboard history" of science in which Newton and
Maxwell were the dark ages before the Kuhnian "revolutions" or
"paradigm shifts" of quantum mechanics and relativity overturned 
the world. Moral of the story invariably being to make science
appear more "warm and fuzzy" and "user-friendly" to students
who go into the classroom kicking and screaming to begin with.
The corollary is that the soi-disant social critics think
they get an object lesson from science in relativism. Textbooks
do it that way, and pop science books (for obvious reasons)
do it the same way. But the fact remains that Newton is
very much alive and well in the way physics is done for real,
there is precisely nothing benighted or obstructionist about this.
And the trouble is that any "social criticism" of science that 
begins from the pop or high-school textbook notion that 
Newtonian physics is to relativity and quantum mechanics what 
epicycles are to Kepler builds on a foundation that is 
transparently wrong to anyone who knows anything about physics.
There certainly are new things in heaven and earth, Newton,
than were dreamt of in thy philosophy. I don't think any
one of your interlocutors has said otherwise. Nor have I seen
anyone disputing the fact that Newton has been superceded as
a fundamental theory. The relevant question is how much
ammunition this historical fact gives to the relativist camp.
The answer is that it doesn't give they apparently think
it gives.  
For that matter, there's an equivalent use of non-Euclidean 
geometry to point the benightedness of Euclid, or of 
non-Aristotelian logics to point the benightednesss of 
Aristotle that in my experience invariably exhibits a 
similar misunderstanding of Euclid or Aristotle to the
one we have just seen about Newton, and so it invariably
misunderstands how much the different and modern developments
are in fact underpinned by the ancient work.
                    Mike Morris
            (msmorris@inetdirect.net)

weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>>>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>>>>>weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>>>>>>>It is very rare that physicists submit to humanities journals; if you 
>>>>>>>>>are suggesting that the article should have been sent out to another 
>>>>>>>>>physicist, I whole-heartedly agree. As things stand, however, the 
>>>>>>>>>hoax proves that the grad student whom A.Ross let judge the article 
>>>>>>>>>didn't know much about either science or literary theory -- and what
>>>>>>>>>does that prove? 
>>>>>>>>That the postmodern "authorities", whose idiotic theses Sokal cites and
>>>>>>>>purports to sustain with parodic arguments, are full of shit.  Is that
>>>>>>>>good enough for you?
>>>>>>>No. What a silly thing to suggest. I cannot think of any philosopher 
>>>>>>>whose sentences cannot be made to look silly by taking them out of 
>>>>>>>context; when it comes to sentences spoken off the record, as it were,
>>>>>>>in a matter outside their field, it's so easy that only someone rather 
>>>>>>>desperate for a point would stoop so low. You're Erkenntnisinteresse
>>>>>>>(you understand I'm using the term ironically) is running away with you.
>>>>>>Your logical ineptitude is showing again.  That anyone can be made to
>>>>>>look stupid on the evidence of a single sufficiently decontextualized
>>>>>>quotation, does not entail that no single quotation can serve as a
>>>>>>sufficient proof of its author's stupidity, as witness le "sottisier"
>>>>>>de Bouvard et P�cuchet.  In effect, Sokal does for the postmodern
>>>>>>booboisie what Flaubert did for the French bourgeoisie.
>>>>>Nonsense. Sokal's hoax proves exactly nothing about Derrida. It proves 
>>>>>something about Social Text. Your work isn't done, and if you rely on 
>>>>>the likes of Sokal to do it, you are wimping out.
>>>>Derrida's assertion cited by Sokal, about the Einsteinian constant not
>>>>being a constant, proves two things.  Firstly, he is ageometretos, and
>>>>hence not a philosopher.  Secondly, he is given to pronouncing on the
>>>>basis of ignorance, and hence not a critic.  Why would you doubt that?
>>>Simple. It does not follow, and you haven't produced an argument. A) you 
>>>have no idea what he meant. B) Even if you had an idea what he meant and 
>>>even if your idea were correct, it wouldn't follow that he's not a 
>>>philosopher, since "philosophy" is not defined as "that body of work that 
>>>exhibits knowledge of Einstein." C) a critic can be ignorant of many 
>>>things he pronounces on, as long as he doesn't pronounce on them _qua_ 
>>>critic in his field.
>>Here is an argument.  A) I have a good idea what Einstein meant, and
>>an equally good idea that any reasonable interpretation of Derrida's
>>comment is incompatible with Einstein's meaning.  
>Please share your insight, then.
It is not insight, but learning, which is not something I can share with
a passive audience.  I recommend the Feynman Lectures as a good starting
point in this matter.
>>                                                     B) Since Derrida 
>>aims to debunk Platonism, since the understanding of Platonism depends
>>on the understanding of geometry, and since Einstein is the wellspring
>>of modern geometry, Derrida's ignorance automatically condemns his
>>project to failure.  
>This is fun, but it's not an argument. 
It is an argument, and a logically valid one.  Under the circumstances,
I would be willing to let fr�re Jacques off the hook if only he had
evinced minimal acquaintance with Euclid, never mind Lobachevsky or
Riemann.  Alas, it is not forthcoming.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the best portrayal of postmodern
criticism to date was presented by Nabokov as early as 1962?  The image
of a logorrhetic, vituperative, frustrated uranist, equally ignorant of
Euclid and Shakespeare, may fit Barthes a little bit better than it does
Derrida.  Then again -- I know not what really turns on the eminent
grand-daddy of decon.
>>                      C) The copyright laws imply that any critical
>>comments appearing in print of symposium proceedings are subject to
>>the speaker's release of publication rights and hence carry the
>>presumption of ex cathedra pronouncements.
>Perhaps they do; that such is enforced, is, however, amply disproven. 
>Just witness Wolin's mistranslation of Derrida and subsequent publication.
On the basis of personal experience with intellectual property laws, I
assure you that such enforcement by the owner is always possible among
the signatories to the Berne convention.
>>>>As you know, I have done my work and need not rely on Sokal to do it.
>>>>Nonetheless, if I wanted to cite a professional opinion that Derrida
>>>>was a charlatan, I would have brought up Chomsky.
>>>I don't know this at all. I'm still waiting for you to exhibit a 
>>>rudimentary understanding of Derrida's argument in "Cogito." As long as 
>>>you can't tell us what it is you object to, your objections won't be 
>>>taken seriously. 
>>In the beginning of our exchange I told you the rules of engagement --
>>each thrust is to be followed by a parry and vice versa.  By continuing
>>to argue, you implicitly accepted the conventional rules.  If you wish
>>to make a request, I will consider it after you reply to my last article
>>point by point.
>The last exchange failed. A reasonable reaction to failure is to try 
>something else.
I will reasonably consider trying something else after you reply to my
last article point by point.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food  ** www.ptyx.com ** MZ@ptyx.com 
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)

Peter Diehr:
|> All I know about him is the Nyquist sampling theorem ... the
|> acquistion rate must be at least twice the highest frequency
|> component, or else you will have aliasing effects when you do
|> your Fourier analysis.
There is also the Nyquist diagram technique of kinetic theory.
It can be used to determine, among other things, the number of 
unstable modes of an inverted population.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Candy                        The University of Texas at Austin
Institute for Fusion Studies      Austin, Texas
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Heres a silly question.  Keep in mind that I'm just a high-school student,
so please no flames.
According to Einstein, one cannot travel the speed of light, due to stuff
like increasing mass etc.  My question is, isnt speed in its self relative?
After all, in space speed needs to be measure in relation to something.
If you have point A, and point B, and two ships leave at them and travel
at half the speed of light, dont they perceive eachother passing at
the speed of light?  And cant one further argue that since everything
is moving, we can never be sure how fast we are traveling.  After all
the earth turns, orbits the sun, solar system, galaxy etc.  So my point
is that considering the massive speeds at which things move, and also
the fact that speed must be measured in comparision to other bodies, which
are in themselves moving, and also that speed would differ when viewed
from different views.  Thus, how can it be assumed that 'travel at the 
speed of light' is impossible, when speed is relative to the observer.
--
        _____  ______      _______ ______ ______ _______ _______ _______
       |     \|   __ \    |   _   |   __ \      |   _   |    |  |    ___|
       |  --  |      <__  |       |      <   ---|       |       |    ___|
       |_____/|___|__|__| |___|___|___|__|______|___|___|__|____|_______|

meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:

> 
> Hardly.  If I ask you "what time it is now" you'll say "quarter to 11" 
> or, if you've already been brought up on digital watches, you may say 
> "it is ten forty four".  I rather doubt that you'll mention seconds 
> and I'm sure that you won't get into fractions of seconds.  But this 
> is not a scientific exchange, that's standard usage.  So, according to 
> the view you seem to champion, you answer is "wrong".  Similarly, if I 
> ask for your height you'll give an answer rounded to the nearest half 
> inch (or the nearest centimeter, being an European).  Again, knowing 
> that it takes infinite number of digits to get absolute accuracy, this 
> answer is "wrong".  And, again, this is not a scientific exchange.  
> So, you see, this concept of "wrong" as used by moggin is not only mot 
> in use in science, it is also not accepted in general usage.  So, 
> where is it valid?
Gee Mati, thanks for preempting me, thanks a miiillliooon!
I wanted to ask moggin exactly those questions.
I planned to make several posts, but a tooth extraction which took
more than an hour made me decide otherwise for a few days.
I have been asking moggin questions leading to this sort of question
but he has not yet satisfactorily answered them. Now its all moot.
Ah, well, as they say: Publish first, perish last.
Isn�t it funny that the "science camp" comes up with similar attitudes
and even the same questions. Can they be up to something the pomos don�t.
Do they know something special. Naa, must be a conspiracy.
Anton Hutticher
(Anton.Hutticher@sbg.ac.at)

Paul Skoczylas:
|> Surely the language spoken in England is more properly called "English"
|> than the language spoken in America.  (Actually, they are both dialects
|> of the same language, which is traditionally, even in America, called
|> "English".)
I did a postdoc in England.  A German friend of mine there admitted 
(a few months after we'd met) that I was the *first* person she didn't 
have difficulty understanding.  The "lower class" really have a strong 
accent which is a challenge for continental Europeans to understand.
Go to a local pub after a football match and see if you can understand 
a single word of what "the lads" are talking about.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Candy                        The University of Texas at Austin
Institute for Fusion Studies      Austin, Texas
-------------------------------------------------------------------

In article <326E72E5.918@flory.mit.edu>, mott@flory.mit.edu wrote:
>...My opposition to the adaptation of the metric system in the US stems
> from cultural and language-based concerns.  Take the unit "mile"
> for example.  I can think of a tremendous number of English stories, 
> poems, songs, etc. that use this unit, while can think of none that
> use the unit "kilometer."  To change to the metric system is to turn
> our backs on this literary history.  If need be, I can convert
> one unit to another, but I favor the word "mile" (an elegant word
> that has been in English use for at least 1000 years) over "kilometer" 
> (a cumbersome word that has been around only about 100 years)...
This is one of the few points in favor of not changing that actually makes
sense.  But while the cost outlined above is real it is, IMHO, actually
fairly minor and much less than the benefit of using rational and
internationly standard units.
If we switched to metric then children would have to learn the meaning of
"mile" and a few other archaic words in order to understand some
literature.  But that is no big deal.  We already have to do that with
"fortnight" and "score" and many others (not to mention all the various
historical money units).  And today we still have to learn the metric units
in order to deal with the rest of the world in commerce or travel or to do
science.  It seems to me that we come out about even on this point.
-- 
Bill Arnett     billa@znet.com       http://www.seds.org/billa/
"I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I
search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no
longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I
take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods." -- Ptolemy

Anyone find Lloyd's recent actions funny?
He totally makes a complete fool of himself over the most trivial
physics and chemistry principles, than tries to cover up by spamming
us with library books?

G*rd*n wrote:
> 
> +@+.+ (G*rd*n) writes:
> | >I don't see how the fact that "f=ma" works in the sense
> | >that it corresponds with or models phenomena, in any way
> | >detracts from the fact that it's a social construction.
> 
> mjcarley@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Carley):
> | It is a social construction (it is written in a form,
> | mathematics, which was devised by people) but it has a
> | special status as something which you can prove
> | (`objectively') works. It is not just pulled out of
> | nowhere, it is based in something real.
> 
> Is there any ground between nowhere and real?
> What if Nature hid something?
> What is truth?
Gordon did you mum never tell you, not to bate the scientists?
For they are dangereous and quick to anger.
Also they might give up the very day you need some new technology
so as not to die.
Science is the eyes and ears and brain of the society of mankind,
trying to understand and manipulate the world it found itself in.
You can question its reality as much as you like, but can you build
a bridge that stays up without science. And will your boss expect
your, oh so clever, postmodern deconstructionist argument, that
'the bridge was meerly a illusion, so you can't sack me'.
 Look forward to saying 'would you like fries with that' for
the rest of your life.
  A man goes to court accused of speeding.
He claims to the judge that this is all an illusion it is 
meerly your dream.   
The Judge accepts his argument and scentances him to death.
For a dream has no right to life.
Barry Adams

On 24 Oct 1996, Anders N Weinstein wrote:
> In article ,
> David Yeo   wrote:
> 
> >Moreover, isn't the intentional stance simply a level of description; one
> 
> Well that's what I've been saying.
> 
> >which merely simplifies (and thus does not preclude) the physical stance? 
> 
> True it does not preclude the physical stance. I'm not sure I want
> to say it "simplifies the physical stance" -- what does that mean? More
> economical predictions? I think it's in a different line of work.
> 
By "simplifies the physical stance" I mean that it acts as a sort of
shorthand for processes which, if one cared to, one could describe in
terms of the physical stance (assuming it was known). 
In some senses it seems that Dennett uses "the intensional stance" much as
Quine uses "dispositions", i.e. as a communication device given our limited
knowledge of the physical details of the described process/event. 
Cheers,
- David Yeo (Applied Cognitive Science, University of Toronto)

moggin@bessel.nando.net (moggin) writes:
>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu):
>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck):
>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu):
>>>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck):
>>>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu):
>>>>>>[..]  In effect, Sokal does for the postmodern booboisie what
>>>>>>Flaubert did for the French bourgeoisie.
>>>>>Nonsense. Sokal's hoax proves exactly nothing about Derrida. It proves 
>>>>>something about Social Text. Your work isn't done, and if you rely on 
>>>>>the likes of Sokal to do it, you are wimping out.
>>>>Derrida's assertion cited by Sokal, about the Einsteinian constant not
>>>>being a constant, proves two things.  Firstly, he is ageometretos, and
>>>>hence not a philosopher.  Secondly, he is given to pronouncing on the
>>>>basis of ignorance, and hence not a critic.  Why would you doubt that?
>>>Simple. It does not follow, and you haven't produced an argument. A) you 
>>>have no idea what he meant. B) Even if you had an idea what he meant and 
>>>even if your idea were correct, it wouldn't follow that he's not a 
>>>philosopher, since "philosophy" is not defined as "that body of work that 
>>>exhibits knowledge of Einstein." C) a critic can be ignorant of many 
>>>things he pronounces on, as long as he doesn't pronounce on them _qua_ 
>>>critic in his field.
>>Here is an argument.  A) I have a good idea what Einstein meant, and
>>an equally good idea that any reasonable interpretation of Derrida's
>>comment is incompatible with Einstein's meaning.  B) Since Derrida
>>aims to debunk Platonism, since the understanding of Platonism depends
>>on the understanding of geometry, and since Einstein is the wellspring
>>of modern geometry, Derrida's ignorance automatically condemns his
>>project to failure.  C) The copyright laws imply that any critical
>>comments appearing in print of symposium proceedings are subject to
>>the speaker's release of publication rights and hence carry the
>>presumption of ex cathedra pronouncements. [...]
>	Jeb, on the entrance requirements at Jeb's Academy: "I say a
>fella ougther get his basics down a-fore he goes a-thinkin' 'bout the
>real puzzlers in life.  And I never heerd o' anything much more basic
>than milkin' a cow.  So if this here Derra-diddy has got a mind to do
>some philosophizin,' then he better come an' show me that he can get
>some milk outa ol' Bessie, here.  Elsewise I ain't a-gonna be wastin'
>my time."
Has Jacques Derrida been debunking milk farming practices ex cathedra?
What a versatile fellow he must be!
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food  ** www.ptyx.com ** MZ@ptyx.com 
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