Newsgroup sci.physics 216242

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Who needs the sun. Life obviously began in hot vents in the ocean. All you
need is liquid water, some microporous cracks to set up a self-replicating
local chemical process on the surface of those cracks, and a bunch of
minerals.
-- 
Phone: 995-2558
EMail: crishvid@mail.islandnet.com
"It was the bottom of the barrel and I scraped it. But I didn't care.
I had her"
Robert Mitchum voice over, "Out of the Past"

ez@annap.infi.net writes:
> On Thu, 09 Jan 1997 21:02:34 GMT, megaflowjunkie@enterprise.net
> (Eleanor, the Megaflow Junkie) wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 30 Dec 1996 15:04:16 -0800, David Neil 
> >wrote:
> >>Well, your theory is very interesting.  Regardind the "sea of light
> >>bit",light(if in the form of waves) needs particles to "wave off of",if
> >>that makes sense.  But there is nothing for light to wave off of in space,
> >>because it is just space.  So, how can we see the light from the stars? I
> >>don't think anyone is quite sure how.  Maybee your space being a substance
> >>theory can expand the reason of how light travels in space.
> >
> >Isn't this just the theory of the Ether..?
> >					-  Eleanor, THE MeGafLow JUnkiE
> >
> >transgender: a tired label		gender punk: a way of life >8^)
> >
> >gothcode 3.0A:  GoPS6CS]5[6)7($Mu2 TFeNrZ8 PSaPe B9/21BK"3z1 cBK(DBR)p8
> >V7s M3p2wD ZGo!!MePuFan C8o a26- n6 b54 H175 g6!0689A mEa2@Z7 w6LAT v1E
> >r7E p71555Ed D46 h7(TFeCyAn) sM10M SsYy k6Bm N0988JN HsS*1 LukKent4
> On Thu, 09 Jan 1997 21:02:34 GMT, megaflowjunkie@enterprise.net
> (Eleanor, the Megaflow Junkie) wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 30 Dec 1996 15:04:16 -0800, David Neil 
> >wrote:
> >>Well, your theory is very interesting.  Regardind the "sea of light
> >>bit",light(if in the form of waves) needs particles to "wave off of",if
> >>that makes sense.  But there is nothing for light to wave off of in space,
> >>because it is just space.  So, how can we see the light from the stars? I
> >>don't think anyone is quite sure how.  Maybee your space being a substance
> >>theory can expand the reason of how light travels in space.
> >
> >Isn't this just the theory of the Ether..?
> >					-  Eleanor, THE MeGafLow JUnkiE
> >
> >transgender: a tired label		gender punk: a way of life >8^)
> >
> >gothcode 3.0A:  GoPS6CS]5[6)7($Mu2 TFeNrZ8 PSaPe B9/21BK"3z1 cBK(DBR)p8
> >V7s M3p2wD ZGo!!MePuFan C8o a26- n6 b54 H175 g6!0689A mEa2@Z7 w6LAT v1E
> >r7E p71555Ed D46 h7(TFeCyAn) sM10M SsYy k6Bm N0988JN HsS*1 LukK
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I believe space is similar to the so called ether, in that being a
> substance. The ether theroy predicted that the ether would travel in
> one direction and so could be detected on that basis. I think it can
> move in many directions, similar to water. Light as waves, gavity as a
> whirl pool. This may sound of the wall but maby can compress as well,
> forming matter or other substances. I think it`s fun to think about
> and who knows maby in some fashion it could be true and proven.
> After all the Greeks predicted the world to be round and it`s size
> within 100 miles over 2000 years ago.
> 
> Bill
> P.S. what the %%# dose transgender have to do with physics.
------------------------------

kautz@ecf.toronto.edu (KAUTZ RICHARD W) wrote:
>In article <32DBF50D.167EB0E7@mit.edu>,
>I'm finishing up a PhD in communications engineering, specializing in 
>wireless multimedia LANs. In this field, there is a lot of underlying 
>theory that gets used day-in, day-out and we are very marketable. I've 
>seen people with bachelor's degrees and years of experience put together
>a system that was beyond their training, and it wasn't very pretty. It was
>a mishmash of standard techniques that weren't suitable for the application,
>and never did work right. Perhaps it helps to state which field you're 
>talking about when you talk about PhD holders?
Agreed.
And one should also define what "useless" means.
I find liberal arts PhDs worthless from a marketing angle, but the
cultural enrichment attained from studying one discipline in such
depth cannot be measured in dollars.
As for the discipline that started this thread, economics, I could be
said that the study of any topic for one's own enjoyment is probably
the best reason to strive for a PhD.  And lest anyone make the
argument that economics is a worthless field, I think that Adam Smith,
at the very least, would have been greatly surprised.
Geo
If atheism ever becomes a capital offense,
then I want to be regarded as the Charles Manson
of atheism. - Geo

> wrong. religion is teleological and uses faith to understand its
> teleology. thats religion. the other is empirical and uses evidence.
> science is not voodoo.
Well, actually, science *does* depend on faith. The primary basis of
acceptance of theory in the world of science is Ockham's razor--that the
simplest explanation which explains known phenomena is also the truest.
Why should we think so? Only because it is aesthetically pleasing to the
human mind to think so. The belief that the validity (or lack thereof)
of "truth" should be judged by what the human mind finds most
aesthetically pleasing (i.e., that the simplest explanation that
explains known phenomena is also the truest) *is* a form of FAITH. There
is no evidence to prove it, only our desire to believe it.

ags@seaman.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman) writes:
>One nit.  The expression 0^0 does indeed have a value, which has
>nothing to do with limits.  This is discusses in the sci.math FAQ,
>which gives several reasons why 0^0 = 1, at least in the case where the
>exponent is considered to be an integer.
You cannot give reasons in mathematics, except for reasons why (actually
how) we know something to be true.  0^0 is indeterminate--possibly on
all the reals, possibly only between 0 and 1.  
>My favorite reason:  0^0 is the cardinality of the class of functions
>mapping the empty set to itself, which is one.
That's certainly one of the uses of 0^0.  But not the only one.
>Dave Seaman
-Travis

rick wrote:
> 
> Just FWIW it's worth,
> 
> Can anyone really define "tonality"?  I've taken the obligatory courses
> in school that purported to teach it, but no one can really
> tell how Mozart's music works, or Beethoven's or Bach's.  The
> music that is academically "tonal" isn't worth listening to.
> The stuff that is easy to analyze by some schoolish conception
> of "tonal" is rubbish. The people that have it boiled down to
> rules can't write anything at all, and the rules are stupid,
> always 'broken' by the real composers.
> 
> So are we talking about "tonality" at all here? I think not. We
> are talking about a dance of musical components that have some
> acoustic similarity to one another but are really quite individual
> and defy analysis.  [This means *you*, Schenker!]
> 
> My $.02,
> 
> Rick St. ClairRick, your posting is very funny. I didn't understand a word of it but it 
made me laugh.

I was just wondering, suppose two persons were 10 light years away
from each other, and they were strong enough to hold a 10 light years
long rod that could not be stretched nor be contracted.  if 1 of the
person pulls or pushes the rod, will the person 10 light year years
away immediately sense the change?  IF he was able to do that, then
wouldn't that be regarded as FTL comm?

Newton's 3rd law in "plain English":
If, by whatever mechanism, body A exerts a force on body B;
then by that same mechanism body B will exert an equal but oppositely 
directed force on body A.
In vector notation:  F(A on B) = -F(B on A) .
Bob Sciamanda
Dept of Physics
Edinboro Univ of PA

Erstwhile graduate student has the following for sale:
Pls add $2 shipping.
Berestetskii, Lifshitz, Pitaevskii, Relativistic Quantum Theory,
Part 1. Pergammon Press, 1971.  Very Good.  pgs 1-375.
Part 2. Pergammon Press, 1973.  New.        pgs 376-616.
   Excellent condition, hardcover. Both parts, $35.
   These two together comprise "Volume 4" of the Landau and
   Lifshitz series.
Gasiorowicz, S. Elementary Particle Physics. John Wiley & Sons (1966)
Very Good except cracking at rear edge of binding. 613 pgs. $8.
   This has lots of useful stuff in  it: QFT, topics in QED, infrared
   divergence, graphs with loops, classical beta decay stuff,
   eightfold way, baryon resonances, pi-nucleon scattering,
   form factors, ...  Well known author.
A. A. Abrikosov, L.P. Gorkov, & I.E.Dzyaloshinski, Methods of Quantum
Field Theory in Statistical Physics, 1963 edition, Dover Publications
(1975)  Very Good. 352 pgs. $8

In article <5biscu$a6b@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>,
Jeff Candy  wrote:
>
>Bruce Salem:
>
>|> The income distribution changes
>|> in the U.S. in the past 20 years is evidance that so-called
>|> free market economics benefited a small minority and that it leads
>|> to winner-take-all processes that disadvantage many more then it
>|> benefits. It is the power of timly access to information and the
>|> flow of information that causes this.
>
>A free market system is the only rational system.  Perhaps 
>this is why laissez-faire is so poorly understood, and so 
>often maligned.
	You don't offer any argument for these assertions. I
think that we do not in fact have laisses-faire economics, even
after Regan, but that we still have a "Mixed" economy in which
some of the regulation has been undone. What change 
has happened? Technology, notably the personal computer has
changed the relationship between labor and management. It has
created a labor force that has not become collective, yet. One
on which all the risks of small business has been pushed with
none of the benefits. The tax laws certaintly don't favor the
white collor migrant worker or the temporary contract worker.
This change really has little to do with government politics,
yet it is revolutionary and it is the source for cynicism in
our current setting. People feel very much less secure and
yet true to American mythos, they speak of the opportunity and
play down the risk. We will see what the tune is after the
next downturn, and remember that Americans are again putting
all their eggs in one basket, as happened in the 1920s. If
the Stock and Bond Markets crash, which could happen this
year, all hell could break loose.
Bruce Salem
-- 
!! Just my opinions, maybe not those of my sponsor. !!

Chris Koenigsberg  wrote:
>Disclaimer: I'm coming from rec.music.compose rather than sci.physics,
>though I have studied musical acoustics. This crjclark guy has been
>baiting us for a while. I should just ignore him but I'm taking the
>bait once again, sigh...
All that cryptophysics and harmonic resonance mumbojumbo ("Look, Peverill!
We played this New Age tape and the orange peels in the marmalade have
all unknotted themselves!....") and he *still* can't hear the clue phone
ringing....
At least it's flushed out a few folks who correctly divined how Pythagoras
came up with 81/64 and the suggestion that some lurkers have actually *read*
a little psychoacoustics - look on the bright side.
So, should we tell the harmonic rez folks about all that pesky data which
suggests that folks actually *prefer* wide octaves (or tune to 'em)? Or we
could play 'em Bill Sethares' music, which mounts a rather convincing case
for modifying the standard views of "consonance" to take timbre into account
when constructing arguments for sensory consonance.
Naah. If we do *that* poor lil' Tinkerbell buys the farm.
-- 
When I pronounce the word Future,/the first syllable already belongs to the
past./When I pronounce the word Silence,/I destroy it./When I pronounce the
word Nothing,/I make something no nonbeing can hold./ (Wislawa Szymborska)
Gregory Taylor WORT-FM URL:http://www.msn.fullfeed.com/~gtaylor/RTQE.html

Try Tom Stoppard (Anglo-Czech playwright). He has written
several plays which feature characters to whom
Science/mathematics and/or philosophy or the philosophy of both
areas of knowledge are central.
I recall a play called Arcadia which, if memory serves,
features quantum mechanics. 
-- 
Tony Richards            'I think, therefore I am confused'
Rutherford Appleton Lab  '
UK                       '

> >|> The income distribution changes
> >|> in the U.S. in the past 20 years is evidance that so-called
> >|> free market economics benefited a small minority and that it leads
> >|> to winner-take-all processes that disadvantage many more then it
> >|> benefits. It is the power of timly access to information and the
> >|> flow of information that causes this.
> >
> >A free market system is the only rational system.  Perhaps 
> >this is why laissez-faire is so poorly understood, and so 
> >often maligned.
> 
> You don't offer any argument for these assertions. I think
> that we do not in fact have laisses-faire economics, even
> after Regan, but that we still have a "Mixed" economy in
> which some of the regulation has been undone. 
There's not really such a thing as a "mixed economy"; what
"mixed economies" usually refers to is a capitalist economy
where the state is part of the tool of monopoly capital to
favor one business and/or industry over another.
A "mixed economy" is as much a chimera as a "free market" or
a "social democracy," a diversion, a sidewhow in the battle
between socialism and capitalism, between freedom and fascism.
-- 
Cheers!

 LADIES & GENTLEMAN !!!!
IT'S THE BATTLE OF THE MILLENIUM !!!!
CREATION VS. EVOLUTION!!!
This is going to be a caged, no holds barred match, to the death!!!!
In one corner we have EVOLUTION, who brings with it an assortment of
weapons, including : records,  fossils, actual proof, and even a bit
of faith & belief.
In the other corner we have CREATION, who brings---wait a minute,
CREATION is pulling something from out of a sack, it's a....it's a....
It's a book ?!?  CREATION has brought a book to use in battle. And yes
a bit of faith & belief. 
 It's unbelievable the way they are going at each other folks !  It's
a battle royal.  Who will win this grudge match?  Who will suffer from
their loss?   We may never know.  Let's watch & see, and pray ours is
the victorious one, which ever that may be.  

(posted & emailed)
Herman Rubin  wrote:
> 
> In article <01bc034b$0f28e4a0$22b32e9c@goldbach.idcnet.com>,
> goldbach  wrote:
> >[...]
> >The numeral, which is
> >a symbol-similar to a word in its use, is the means
> >which a mind symbolizes the concept so that it can
> >use it as a unit for purposes of thought.
> 
> This is a grave error.  It is the cause of much misunderstanding
> of mathematical concepts by far too many people.  The use of
> numerals is a means of communication, and the use of these to
> think about numbers is one of the reasons why people cannot
> handle mathematical concepts.  The number which is represented
> as "30" in the usual way, or XXX in Roman numerals, or as 36
> in octal, or as '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' in tick marks,
> or as 11110 in binary is the same number, and its properties
> are the same, no matter how it is represented.
The properties of the number are the same, regardless of the 
system of numeration, yet what one can do with it (as in other 
fields of endeavor) may well depend on the notational system 
used.  It is my impression that the ancient Greeks, though their 
geometry was well developed, did not do nearly as much with 
arithmetic because of their klutzy (i.e., inconvenient) numbering 
system.  Numerical ideas were not as easy to express as they 
might have been with a different system, and this hampered 
mathematical thought.
We use and manipulate algebraic equations (using a notation 
which was not available to the Greeks) to solve problems,
often without giving any thought to the physical interpretation 
that one might give to intermediate results.  There is no need
to keep in mind the interactions of, say, four variables.
Given modern notation, all we need do is translate a suitable
problem into standard algebraic notation; then the standard
operations on the symbols, plus a bit of insight, lead one 
quickly to a solution which is easily translated back to 
physical terms.  The notation serves well for communication 
(e.g., for convincing someone that one's solution is valid) but 
also for providing a mechanism for deriving a solution, even 
without any need for communication with someone else.  Sometimes 
one needs only a result and does not need to formulate a proof.
-- 
                      -- Vincent Johns
Please feel free to quote anything I say here.

Peter Berdeklis wrote:
> You and the quarters you are carrying are at the same potential as the
> cage, well above the potential of the ground.
Why?
-- 
D.
mentock@mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~mentock/index.htm

Gregoire wrote:
-> >Erwin Schroedinger: [...]
-> 
-> >Bertrand Russell noted [...]
-> 
-> >Ludwig Wittgenstein: [...]
-> 
-> >However, the eternity of the present does not mean time can just be
-> >"eliminated", as Ken Wilber [...]
-> 
-> >Perhaps to awaken in the Absolute Present (which is, of course, already
-> >here and now), one would have to *see through* a lifetime's worth of
-> >illusion-building.
DaveHatunen spoke for the hoi polloi:
-> That's sure a lot of high-flown fancy verbiage just to say "Tomorrow
-> never comes".
-> 
And yesterday never was.
The question is the possibility of experience of an actual herenowness.
-- 
Greg Nixon 
"Creation is thus nowever, coming straight out of the Voidness of this timeless Moment‹and thus creation is not the creation of things, of material, or of substance, but the creation of dualisms."
(Ken Wilber, The Spectrum of Consciousness, p. 100).
"Be cheerful while you are alive."
(Ptahhotep, 24th century B.C.E.)

>>>   If the US had been a parliamentary form of government where all
>>>politicians are elected and not these cabinets that linger from one
>>>administration to another and really run the government. Then,
>>>hypothetically, is it  highly likely that the Vietnam War would have
>>>never occurred? Or if it had, would not a parliamentary form of
>>>government gotten the US out quicker? One can argue that the US Vietnam
>>>War was chiefly the result of foolish advisors to the president.
>>>
>>
>>Interestingly enough, while the US was busy getting bogged down in
>>Vietnam, the UK was engaged in fighting in Borneo, in remarkably similar
>>political situations. The UK military position wasn't as good as that of
>>the US; the Borneo border was massively longer than that which the
>>Americans had to deal with, and the terrain very much harder.
>>
>>Nonetheless, the UK was successful.
>>
>>One can debate why this should be; however, there was no great "anti-
>>war" debate in the UK. I suspect that this was in part because of
>>different attitudes.
>>
>
>
>I suspect the UK was successful because Borneo is not next-door to China.
>The UK did not have the restrictions on elminating the insurgency's main 
>base of operations (N. Vietnam for the US) that the US did.  
>
>
On the other hand, Britain didn't have the resources to throw at the
problem that the US had. No Operation Rolling Thunder, for example. If
the US had restrictions on actions against N Vietnam, it had an
interesting way of displaying those restrictions.
>>>  Perhaps this is a great research inquiry as to see which form of
>>>democracy is superior-- the US or the UK parliamentary.
>>>
>>>  In a parliamentary system, the likelihood of foolish advisors doing
>>>so much damage is minimized, I suspect.
>>>
>>
>>If only. You don't live in Britain, do you?
>>
>
>
>A PM can pull all sorts of stunts on his own in Britain.  Aside from
>Borneo, there was an effective undeclared war between Britain and the
>early Bolshevik government for a while.  Britishers can probably come up
>with numerous examples of the parliamentary system failing to prevent 
>Vietnams.  
>
Very many. That was why I said "If only," when the poster suggested the
very foolish notion that "In a parliamentary system, the likelihood of
foolish advisors doing so much damage is minimized." It was why I
guessed that this poster didn't live in Britain.
One doesn't need to go back to the 1920s to come up with examples of
foolish advisors getting Britain into a hole.
>And then there's the fictional example of PM Urquhart, who starts a war 
>in Cyprus to build his memory, the phrase "Frances, this could be our 
>Falklands" dripping from his wife's lips.....
>
And one certainly doesn't need fictional examples.
-- 
Alison Brooks  
O-

In article , Rich Rostrom  writes
>Alison Brooks  wrote:
>
>
>> Interestingly enough, while the US was busy getting bogged down in
>> Vietnam, the UK was engaged in fighting in Borneo, in remarkably similar
>> political situations. The UK military position wasn't as good as that of
>> the US; the Borneo border was massively longer than that which the
>> Americans had to deal with, and the terrain very much harder.
>> 
>> Nonetheless, the UK was successful.
>> 
>> One can debate why this should be; however, there was no great "anti-
>> war" debate in the UK. I suspect that this was in part because of
>> different attitudes.
>
>The main difference was that there was no land border with a Communist
>state a few miles away. The Communist guerrillas in Malaya were forced
>to operate entirely on their own resources. The Viet Cong were supported
>by hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese troops and lavish quantities
>of arms.
>
Mind you, the US and other forces deployed a fair number of troops and
used quite a lot of arms. Britain, on the other hand, had rather
restricted resources to play with. My understanding is that, in Borneo,
on average, 1 British soldier had 2 miles of border to keep track of.
Numbers of helicopters deployed by Britain was very low.
Lots vs lots on the one hand, and little vs little on the other.
>The Borneo border was exposed; but the Indonesian side of it is far
>more remote from any civilized base area than was the inland border of
>South Vietnam. Sarawak was not the key part of Malaysia, and the
>infiltrators had relatively little local support. (My understanding
>is thyat he Dyaks took to collecting the heads of the infiltrators.)
>
And this is one of the key points: the infiltrators had relatively
little local support. The British forces went to some considerable
trouble to win the "hearts and minds" of the local inhabitants. As a
result, they and not the insurgents received the local support.
-- 
Alison Brooks  
O-

Raoul Golan (raoul@ind.tansu.com.au) wrote:
: David K. Davis wrote:
: > 
: > 
: > If you mean to be serious, I would say first that numerals are just
: > notation for numbers and are therefore social constructs. Numbers,
: > however, have a significance beyond social convention. Pi, I believe
: > will be discovered by intelligent life where ever and whenever it arises.
: 
: That sounds like a definition of intelligence to me, rather than an
: insight on the universality of mathematics.  If we came across a race of
: beings which could come up with literature of the caliber of Dante or
: Milton, say, and yet had not "discovered" Pi, some people may consider
: them intelligent.  You, on the other hand, wouldn't.  So it all boils
: down to what your definition of intelligence is.
: 
: You say potato...
: 
: -- 
: Raoul Golan, Telstra IND | "I'm not a couch potato!  I go to the mall!"
: raoul@ind.tansu.com.au   |   - Pay TV customer, "Gateway to the Future"
No, no, no. The point is not that discovery of Pi is some supreme measure
of intelligence, but rather that Pi is in some sense objective and there
waiting to be disovered by whomever - it is not a social artifact. We
think of things existing physically, located in space somewhere. But where
does Pi exist? That's why I speak of the "space " of logical possibility.
There's an intermediate kind of example: the electron. Electrons exists
througout the universe and are, as far we know, absolutely identical. They
are all perfect instantiations of one electron. Does this general
electron, apart from its zillions of instantiations, exist? One has to say
yes in recognition of this identity across the universe. There is
something very abstract about the electron and yet it exists, exists
everywhere, and is real. Pi may not have any one perfect instantiation,
and yet it too exists, exists everywhere, and is real. Modern physics has
made clear how tenuous is the boundary between the realms of abstract
logical space and real physical space. I think the modern physicist must
feel that they are trying to discover how nature does mathematics.
-Dave D.

In article <32ddf066.1015272@news.hkstar.com>, alextsui@hkstar.com (Alex Tsui) writes:
>I was just wondering, suppose two persons were 10 light years away
>from each other, and they were strong enough to hold a 10 light years
>long rod that could not be stretched nor be contracted.  if 1 of the
>person pulls or pushes the rod, will the person 10 light year years
>away immediately sense the change?  
No.  And if it isn't in the FAQ, then it should be.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In article <32DF038F.F54@ballistic.com>, Richard Farley  writes:
>> wrong. religion is teleological and uses faith to understand its
>> teleology. thats religion. the other is empirical and uses evidence.
>> science is not voodoo.
>
>Well, actually, science *does* depend on faith. The primary basis of
>acceptance of theory in the world of science is Ockham's razor--that the
>simplest explanation which explains known phenomena is also the truest.
>Why should we think so? Only because it is aesthetically pleasing to the
>human mind to think so. The belief that the validity (or lack thereof)
>of "truth" should be judged by what the human mind finds most
>aesthetically pleasing (i.e., that the simplest explanation that
>explains known phenomena is also the truest) *is* a form of FAITH. There
>is no evidence to prove it, only our desire to believe it.
That's not faith, only practicality.  Given a set of explanations all 
of which explain known phenomena, all of them may be considered 
equally true.  If so, why not to use the simplest one.
If you search for real faith in science, you've to look deeper.  Like 
the faith that said "known phenomena" indeed exist.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

In article <5bn73u$h4v@newshost.nmt.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.nmt.edu (Victor Yodaiken) writes:
>
>The Glenn Gould connection proves that the Canadians are behind the
>whole conspiracy. It's well known that the Canadian  Cabal has 
>worked behind the scenes to manipulate human history since before
>the last dinosaurs died.  Hockey, Laurence Welk, Glenn Gould, 
>the sinister red uniforms of the mounties, the mystical maple
>leaf symbol, the Bronfmans, the Trudeau/Rolling-Stones "affair",
>the Northern Lights, the "rainbow" bridge, all those
>dead baby seals  --- it all adds up, eh?  
>
Not to mention the frigid Canadian air mass that's sitting on top of 
Chicago right now.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Hello everyone,
I'm hoping somebody out there has equipment not being used, being replaced,
maybe broken and in need of a few parts.  In particular I'm looking for
equipment for the evaluation of friction/coefficient of friction, extreme
pressure properties, and/or wear properties.  Looking for purposes of
comparing metal working fluids and various other oils.  If you personally
have or know someone who has Pin & Vee Block testers, 4-ball Wear/Extreme
Pressure testers, Timken machines, poor man's falex, etc. and looking for
interested parties, drop me a line or call 612-429-1100.
Thank you,
Bob

 > From: daveg@halcyon.com (David B. Greene)
>> Face" crowd as kooks and charlatans. But at least he had a change
>> of heart 
>> before he passed away calling NASA's dismissal of the face as a mere
trick
>
>Could you supply a source and the exact quote? That would be super.
 > REF: The Demon-Haunted World (Random House, NY, 1995)
 > 1. (p.53) "There was an unfortunate dismissal of the feature by a
 > project official as a trick of light and shadow, which prompted a
 > later accusation that NASA was covering up the discovery of the
Yes, it was unfortunate in that it was a minimal response to a feature
hindsight suggests spew-age fruit-loops would go ga-ga over.
 > and others - some of them contract employees of NASA'] were fairly
 > CAUTIOUS and deserve to be commended for advancing the subject.
Correct procedure - Put this aside and look at it when the work is done.
> OTHERS were less restrained, deducing not only that the face was a
> genuine, monumental sculpture [...]" (emphasis mine).
This is Sagan's `change of heart'? That the `believers' position was
unsustainable and unwise? The suggestion in your post was that he had
decide *NASA* had made an error.
 > [...]. But I might be wrong. [...] These features merit closer
 > attention with higher resolution. [...] Even if these claims are
 > extremely improbable - as I think they are - they are worth
 > examining."
Yes, along with every other photograph of the planet - Did he indicate
what priority should be given to this `investigation'?
 > 4. (p.56) "Unlike the UFO phenomenon, we have here the opportunity
 > for a  definitive experiment. This kind of hypothesis is
 > falsifiable, a property  that brings it well into the scientific
 > domain."
In other words, the ETH proponents have finally stuck their neck out and
made outlandish claims that can _readily_ be demolished, have as all
others where they have produces supposed `artifacts'.
Your article was clearly designed to suggest that he had decided that the
`face' was a probably a genuine artifact. Your quote in `support' of this
clearly indicate to me that he thought NASA had made errors in
counteracting the delusions of a few people desperate to find any support
*for* their beliefs [a procedure which is never scientific].
If you are going to join Conrad in claiming [on the most subjective of
interpretations] that dead people support your claims [such support as was
not forthcoming or claimed when they were alive], could you at least have
the decency to wait until they are cold.
--
|Fidonet:  Terry Smith 3:800/846.23
|Internet: Terry@gastro.apana.org.au
|
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.

In article <32DBAAC5.15D6@weirdness.com>, Robert Wenzler  says:
>
>Gary Cruse wrote:
>>              Nah, time is just to keep everything
>>              from happening at once.
>
>Maybe everything IS happening all at once. Time may be a way to sort it
>all out.
Very interesting assertion!  But its a very dificult concept to
grasp and put into words.  
Example//// Simple one!
A glass of water sits on a table. Not knowing its futures tense,
let's look at its past tense.
It is all of the following:
It is full of water.
Full of water
partly full of water
empty of water / filled with air
Hot and pure glass
.... sand
.... rock
.... gas
.... energy
.... nothing
   and all of the various forms between.

>         This does allow me to wonder if then the ticks
> of a clock would vary according to some formula using
> the speed of light as a maximum velocity, but I still
> feel that an observer with the clock will still have
> 60 heartbeats per minute as usual.
The observer will always have 60 heartbeats per minute whether the time
slows or not because if it slows for the clock it slows just as much for
him and it looks the same to him because his hart beats slower and 1 minute
is longer.

Im Artikel <5bm08g$kqg$1@news.be.innet.net>, root@power7200.ping.be
(Operator) schreibt:
>lbsys@aol.com writes:
>>What did your boss say to refrain from looking at the sink??
>
>Well, the vortex in the sink (one sink) was turning in the right
>direction, so he was only saying: "Kijk !  Kijk !" which is, freely
>translated, equivalent to: "Look ! Look !" :-)
=|:-) 
Unfortunately there's no way to turn a question mark into a rethorical
question mark, which is why I used two of'em..... But Patrick's ever so
sincere.... :-)
>>Hmm. Couldn't we use this HUGE torque to turn a generator???? :-)  I
knew
>>the fish would come back one day. You ever said that father eskimo had
no
>>problem whatsoever to stop the pot from turning around, there would be
no
>>torque excerted and thus no generator driven. Gotcha! No? Shit :-(....
>>
>
>Ha !  But the torque would have wanted to lift the fish vertically
>out of the horizontal plane...
Phheeeew - I knew you would say this - and I hoped you would, as it is
obviously right :-)
>>How many mechanical experiments did you ever do in your life?
>
>Just a guess: 90 ?  +/- 1 a week, during the last 3 years of engineering
>school ?
Fair enough.
>>>Those nutation motions (which contain the whole 
>>>secret of the gyroscopic effect) are really really tiny.
>>
>>How tiny? I mean, is there anything you can say like: if your gyro's
axle
>>has a length of 10 cm and is spinning at a rate of x rpm with a disc
>>weighing y kg, then the free end of the axle is not allowed to nutate
more
>>than 0.x mm to make the thing drop like a stone? But if it can nutate
>>about 1 mm, it will happily keep itself up more or less? Sorry, but to
>>anyone with a little bit of mechanical intuition, that sounds rather
>>ridiculous. Yeah, I know, gyros are ridiculous :-)
>
>The problem is that this is the solution of a rather complicated
>equation, and I don't just know an analytic approximation.  You can
>look up the general solution in "Classical Mechanics" by Herbert
>Goldstein.  It should take me a few hours to get back into that
>and I have other things around my head at the moment. 
Understandable and I won't force you to do that. Just one question: So you
have that fair mechanical understanding by having carried out heaps of
experiments. And you have that (arrrrgh, envy) real good grip on maths and
theory. Do you "understand" that your suggestion (...if the bolts are
rigid enough, it'll drop like a rock...) sounds really counterintuitive?
Is there the tiniest possibility that the eqns do have a second solution?
Anything like that?
Cheerio
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly deformed.
Lichtenberg, Sudelbuecher
__________________________________
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.

"Michael D. Painter"  wrote:
>Which is meaningless tripe since the same argument applies to the coffee
>cup I just set down and the car which just drove by.
Exactly my point. Sheesh! Can't you guys spot a satire without it
being peppered with smilies and disclaimers?
-- 
Paddy Spencer        Parallax Solutions Ltd (http://www.parallax.co.uk/)
"A (pseudo)random number generator is much like sex: when it's good it's 
wonderful, and when it's bad it's still pretty good." -- G. Marsaglia

In article ,   wrote:
>tomcool@ix.netcom.com (TomCooley) writes: 
>> Actually the jews are not behind atonality.  It was conceived by the
>> United Nations along with the council on foreign relations, the
>> trilateral commision and glenn gould(his humming on his recording is
>> certainly atonal).  It is part of a plot to establish one world
>> government.  On many occasions I have seen black helicopters with huge
>> speakers blasting schonberg's 12 tone music.
>
>And don't forget Stockhausen's piece for string quartet, with the
>players riding over the audience in 4 BLACK HELICOPTERS!!!!
The Glenn Gould connection proves that the Canadians are behind the
whole conspiracy. It's well known that the Canadian  Cabal has 
worked behind the scenes to manipulate human history since before
the last dinosaurs died.  Hockey, Laurence Welk, Glenn Gould, 
the sinister red uniforms of the mounties, the mystical maple
leaf symbol, the Bronfmans, the Trudeau/Rolling-Stones "affair",
the Northern Lights, the "rainbow" bridge, all those
dead baby seals  --- it all adds up, eh?  

Timothy J. Ebben wrote [in part]:
> John Harries wrote:
> > What is the EPR paradox?
> But the experimental proof rests in a set of experiments performed in 
> the early '80's by Alain Aspect.
> An atom in an excited state decays by emitting a pair of photons.  
> These particles are emitted at specific, predictable angles.  
> Detectors are set up to filter out extraneous particles and only respond 
> when a matched pair of particles is detected by apparati separated in space.
> An analysis through classical physics gives one prediction of the results 
> that would be obtained by repeating this experiment several times.  
The prediction is a Bell inequality - the appropriate one for the experiment;
it is a relation between joint probabilities:
that both detectors would register a photon, P( A+, B+), 
or only `A' registers while `B' doesn't, P( A+, B- ), etc. 
(Certain inequalities may also use individual probabilities:
that `A' registers, P( A+ ), 
that `A' doesn't register, P( A- ) = 1 - P( A+ ), etc.)
(All of those are of course defined after correcting for non-ideal 
efficiency of the detectors)
It must be noted that all Bell inequalities (i.e. as they are applied
to different experiments) include joint probabilities for detector
responses >>not<< from two photons of the same pair but from individual
photons from >>different<< emmissions, even when (one of) the angles 
are set differently.
Let's say the angle of B is changed from V to W while A remains set to U
and we'd like P( V, W )_indirect.
That means that those joint probabilities are >>not directly<< measured
but inferred as a correlation between detector responses.
> QM gives a completely different answer [than what the Bell InEq. predicts.]
- when (and because one is) using the correlation values 
P( V+, W+ )_indirect = cos^2( angle_V - angle_W ), etc. 
which are a QM-result (correctly) describing a direct measurement of
joint probability (on a photon-pair emitted together), 
or 
(correctly) describing a indirect measurement of joint probability 
(with individually emitted photons) for the following experiment:
Single Photon Source ~~~~~>    Polarizer   - - ->  analyzer V   or  W
 - Select some angle phi for the Polarizer.
 - With the fixed angle_V measure the rate R_V( phi ).
 - Change V to W; with the fixed angle_W measure the rate R_W( phi ).
 - Increment phi >>by an infinitisemal amount<<; repeat.
 - Obtain by >>integrating<<:  
   cos^2( angle_V - angle_W ) 
          = Integral_[0..2pi]{ d_phi R_V( phi )*R_W( phi ) } * 2 / R_Source
   (normalized and corrected for the 50% average transparence of the polarizer)
> The experimental data supports the QM answer.
The experimental raw data consists only of the >>directly measured<< joint 
probabilities (ideally efficiency corrected). Which formula one uses for
P()_indirect is a matter of analyzing those data. 
> Well, the because gets a little complicated, but the crux of it is that if
> one accepts the implications of QM, one must sacrifice either locality or
> objectivity.
To anybody who is unhappy with this interpretation I suggest:
P( V+, W+ )_indirect 
     = [ P( U+, V+ )*P( U+, W+ ) + P( U-, V+ )*P( U-, W+ ) ]/Norm
Norm = P( U+, V+ )*P( U+, W+ ) + P( U-, V+ )*P( U-, W+ ) + 
       P( U+, V+ )*P( U+, W- ) + P( U-, V+ )*P( U-, W- ) +
       P( U+, V- )*P( U+, W+ ) + P( U-, V- )*P( U-, W+ ) +
       P( U+, V- )*P( U+, W- ) + P( U-, V- )*P( U-, W- )
(Where, integration of the products of infinitely many correlated 
measurements which are separated by the setting phi of the polarizer 
is replaced by 
the sum over the products of two correlated measurements which can be 
separately categorized by the corresponding result measured by detector U)
It can be shown that with this definition Bell's inequalities 
are always satisfied.
Regards,                                                 Frank  W ~@) R

perhaps these so called constants are simply units which we can
only measure exactly by a constant numery system
i mean that there may be a relationship like this
 c=ae the fact is that with the current system we can not mesure
exactly the constants becouse it is not quanted so unless we use 
the constant itself we will always miss something 
MAYBE:-)

On 1997-01-16 cliff_p@actrix.gen.nz(CliffPratt) said:
   >>   Says who?
   >Says about 6 million experiments, the orbit of Mercury, etc, etc...
   The orbit of mercury does not make C a constant.
   6 million experiments does not make C a constant.
   Never ever changing, now that would make C a constant.
   Please give a reference to one of Einsteins papers/books where he claims
   the velocity of light is a never changing constant.
   Be carefull not to mistake the laws of propogation of light for more than
   what they are.
   He states in places that, for instance, your measurement of the velocity
   of light will be the same as my measurement of it.
   Does that require C to be a constant over time?
   I think not.
   He also states that all light travels at the same speed, an apparent
   contradiction with the first statement, and the heart of relativity.
   This too does not require that speed to remain a constant over time.
--: actions on the edge
Net-Tamer V 1.08 Beta - Test Drive

On 1997-01-16 5bkid6$6le@goofy.snet.net said:
   >That is not true.....the clocks appearing slower and faster is not
   >due to the doppler effect.
   It is true, if you take the time to read what I was replying to.
   He was talking about time-dialation being nothing more than
   a dopler affect ... I explained that his dopler affect corrected
   itself.
   >The whole twin paradox is explained clearly in the book 'About
   >Time' by Paul Davies.
   The whole twin paradox is not a paradox at all.
   (why do people call it a paradox? A paradox is something contradictory)
--: quality never goes begging
Net-Tamer V 1.08 Beta - Test Drive

Alex Tsui wrote:
> 
> I was just wondering, suppose two persons were 10 light years away
> from each other, and they were strong enough to hold a 10 light years
> long rod that could not be stretched nor be contracted.  if 1 of the
> person pulls or pushes the rod, will the person 10 light year years
> away immediately sense the change?  IF he was able to do that, then
> wouldn't that be regarded as FTL comm?
Hard to say really. Your supposition of an infinitely rigid rod already 
places your thought experiment into a universe which is either not 
described by the theory of relativity, or where causality is not a 
property. You would have to tell us its actual properties to get a 
meaningful answer. There can be no such thing as an infinitely rigid rod 
in a universe where relativity is correct, and causality preserved.
Sylvia.
-- 
**** Sending me email? Note, my real email address is sylvia@zip.com.au, 
**** and not as specified in the header.
**** I consistently approach the administrators of systems from which I
**** receive junk mail.

On Thu, 09 Jan 1997 21:02:34 GMT, megaflowjunkie@enterprise.net
(Eleanor, the Megaflow Junkie) wrote:
>On Mon, 30 Dec 1996 15:04:16 -0800, David Neil 
>wrote:
>>Well, your theory is very interesting.  Regardind the "sea of light
>>bit",light(if in the form of waves) needs particles to "wave off of",if
>>that makes sense.  But there is nothing for light to wave off of in space,
>>because it is just space.  So, how can we see the light from the stars? I
>>don't think anyone is quite sure how.  Maybee your space being a substance
>>theory can expand the reason of how light travels in space.
>
>Isn't this just the theory of the Ether..?
>					-  Eleanor, THE MeGafLow JUnkiE
>
>transgender: a tired label		gender punk: a way of life >8^)
>
>gothcode 3.0A:  GoPS6CS]5[6)7($Mu2 TFeNrZ8 PSaPe B9/21BK"3z1 cBK(DBR)p8
>V7s M3p2wD ZGo!!MePuFan C8o a26- n6 b54 H175 g6!0689A mEa2@Z7 w6LAT v1E
>r7E p71555Ed D46 h7(TFeCyAn) sM10M SsYy k6Bm N0988JN HsS*1 LukKent4
On Thu, 09 Jan 1997 21:02:34 GMT, megaflowjunkie@enterprise.net
(Eleanor, the Megaflow Junkie) wrote:
>On Mon, 30 Dec 1996 15:04:16 -0800, David Neil 
>wrote:
>>Well, your theory is very interesting.  Regardind the "sea of light
>>bit",light(if in the form of waves) needs particles to "wave off of",if
>>that makes sense.  But there is nothing for light to wave off of in space,
>>because it is just space.  So, how can we see the light from the stars? I
>>don't think anyone is quite sure how.  Maybee your space being a substance
>>theory can expand the reason of how light travels in space.
>
>Isn't this just the theory of the Ether..?
>					-  Eleanor, THE MeGafLow JUnkiE
>
>transgender: a tired label		gender punk: a way of life >8^)
>
>gothcode 3.0A:  GoPS6CS]5[6)7($Mu2 TFeNrZ8 PSaPe B9/21BK"3z1 cBK(DBR)p8
>V7s M3p2wD ZGo!!MePuFan C8o a26- n6 b54 H175 g6!0689A mEa2@Z7 w6LAT v1E
>r7E p71555Ed D46 h7(TFeCyAn) sM10M SsYy k6Bm N0988JN HsS*1 LukK
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe space is similar to the so called ether, in that being a
substance. The ether theroy predicted that the ether would travel in
one direction and so could be detected on that basis. I think it can
move in many directions, similar to water. Light as waves, gavity as a
whirl pool. This may sound of the wall but maby can compress as well,
forming matter or other substances. I think it`s fun to think about
and who knows maby in some fashion it could be true and proven.
After all the Greeks predicted the world to be round and it`s size
within 100 miles over 2000 years ago.
Bill
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew H. Fields) wrote:
>>In fact the third is not a stricly consonant interval.
>>In our experiments the fourth looks more consonant than the third to
>>our little neurons. It's also interesting that there's no difference
>>between major and minor third.
>
>Ah, but for another 600 years the fourth was considered strictly
>dissonant, while all thirds were considered consonant.  Why so?
mmh... if I remember well the fourth was used before than the third...
However this is not so important, as there's non such difference; for
us it is important the fifth and the octave, and the fundamental bass;
that's enough to prove the consequences.
>You must be careful not to build circular or false assumptions
>into your neural and cochlear model.  In particular, the question
>of what neural response counts as "consonance" or "dissonance"
>might beg  such questions as "what is pleasure".
No, probably you've misunderstood me (or I've explained it bad).
I'm not speaking of neural responses and associating it to our
feelings: I say that the neurons organize themselves in order to
answer to the input signal in certain way, and this is a spacial
organization.
So they recognize the pattern's identity, similarity and proximity
with others. This happens because of the pattern, not because of the
model. The pattern is valid, as it is well known.
The model just suppose that they are completely free to do what they
want, and that the input signals are all equally weighted.
>I'm aware of the acoustical phenomenon but not of a scientific
>connection between that and the various syntaxes and styles in which
>harmonic choices are made.
That is the question.
For many times it has been considered an acoustical phenomenon, while
it is a psychoacoustical phenomenon.
Its physic existence it's so weak that we consider it influent in our
acoustical learning.
But it is present at an higher level, right in the organization of
learning process.
The connection has been explained many times (inpast and present
harmony theories), just starting from false assumptions like presence
of this fundamental bass in our external ear, in the instruments
body,....
>I can hear the fifth harmonic in many instruments, particularly
>human voice and organ pipes. And I can hear the lower tritone
>and other tones in carillon bells sometimes... so?
So these are particular cases; not because I don't want to consider
them :-) , but beacuse to justify a certain learning we need a strong
exposure to some event.
If we hear the fifth harmonic, this happens seldom.
However we used it in our simulation, but there was no difference in
the results as there's enough information in the first three.
You can hear it in human voice?
Probably in human singing, but not in speaking.
Consider how much time we spend listening to singing and to
speaking...
If we should build our musical knowledgment only on our exposure to
music and instruments, we couldn't explain how people without any
musical experience have perfectly acquired the fundamental concepts.
We need something else, more frequent and strong.
I think this is sound's pattern, and our experience is derived mainly
from listening to human voice (speaking).
Bye!!
  '_   Francesco Iannuzzelli
  | )   ianosh@mv.itline.it  
__|/   PGP keyID 0xE01BCA6D
\ |   http://www.map.it/ianosh
 \|  <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
  '

In article <5bm0to$kqg$3@news.be.innet.net>
root@power7200.ping.be (Operator) writes:
> In article <5baia1$alk@eon.odyssey.com.au>,
>         stamos@thepla.net (The Stamos family) writes:
> >Is there any way i could learn or be tutored over the Internet? I live in 
> >Australia and in my final year of High School (HSC), and in desperate help in 
> >the physics department. Could anybody help?
In person help is what you really need. This could be expensive. You
might try offering money (or some form of reimbursement) to someone in
your physics class who gets A's. This is no time to be shy!
Can you ask the teacher for help?
If all else fails post your questions here.

In article ,
David Kastrup   wrote:
> In computer "real" math those laws *are* already broken.  Putting
> infinity into computer numbers does not do much harm anymore, thus.
> Or a special number NAN or so (what would be the typical result for
> 0/0).
0/0 should be computed as INDEF(inite).  NAN (not-a-number) is
reserved for "values" which truly cannot be real numbers, such as
the sqrt or the log of a negative number.
Yes, there is a difference:  if you add, subtract, or multiply an
INDEF with an INF, you'll get an INF.  But if you do the same with
a NAN and an INF, you'll get a NAN.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch@saaf.se     psr@net.ausys.se    paul@inorbit.com
WWW:     http://www.raditex.se/~pausch/    http://spitfire.ausys.se:8003/psr/

(posted & emailed)
meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
> 
> In article <32DD16E9.1BE1@cnas.smsu.edu>, Shyang Hwang  writes:
> >Dave Seaman wrote:
> >>
> >> I have read that the original purpose of BASIC was to teach beginning
> >> programming students about concepts of assembly language, [...]
> >
> >Are you sure?  I don't see how the concepts of assembly language can
> >ever be taught by teaching BASIC.  Rather, I think BASIC was developed
> >so that people did not have to learn the concepts of assembly language
> >and still be able to program a computer by using an English-like
> >language.
> >
> No, that's not quite the reason, since English-like languages already
> existed by the time BASIC was developed.  The specific rationale
> behind BASIC was the need for an "English-like" language which can be
> used on machines with very limited memory.  Thus all features which
> already existed, in FORTRAN for example, but were not considered
> absolutely essential, were sacrificed to save space.
I don't claim to have any special insight into John Kemeny's 
reasoning in implementing BASIC, but one huge advantage of using
it was the ability to run programs from terminals that might be
in several rooms around the campus, or at the opposite end of the 
country.  People used it both ways.  There was no need to buy 
separate computers; Teletype terminals were a lot cheaper than
a computer (though a terminal was more expensive than a PC is today) 
and put computing power into the hands of many people who could not 
otherwise afford it.  Long-distance phone bills could eat up one's
budget, though.
BTW, limited memory is no reason not to use FORTRAN, etc.; I used
FORTRAN on a Control Data 160 computer with 6K bytes of memory 
augmented by some virtual memory (in the form of punched paper 
or Mylar tape).  It wasn't blazingly fast, but it produced useful 
results.
-- 
                      -- Vincent Johns
Please feel free to quote anything I say here.