Newsgroup sci.physics 208396

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In article 
gree0072@gold.tc.umn.edu (Joseph M Green) writes:
> Of course there was something called intent that was not part of the text.
> That something is what we say the author had...he intended to
> do this or that and the text may represent his intention ...and more.
> Banish poor "intention" and you banish the world and this makes
> this and that more comfortable ... It's clear, for example, that Joyce
> intended this or that (use 115 or so rhetorical tropes in "Aeolus" for
> example).  Let look who will.
> 
> And did you intend "obviate?"
Not only did I not intend it, but I don't know what you're talking
about.  Am I losing my mind, is my server going haywire?  I'm missing
Harter's jokes, and reading responses everywhere to stuff I never even
dreamed, at least not memorably.  How about just explaining what
"intent" is.  Is it just whatever one has in mind prior to sitting down
to write?  Or is it whatever of that ends up getting written?  Or is it
anything that consciously comes to mind before and/or while writing? 
Or can it include later consciousness of what one's done?  Or what? 
And how trustworthy should we take authors to be on whichever of these
it is?  In a nearby thread, in rec.arts.books, called "philosophy,"
Richard Harter suggested that one might write a story with a particular
theme.  I took this idea, and sat down to write a story.  I wanted it
to be a story - to pick just one point - about a philosopher talking to
his mother about her housekeeping and ridiculing her for it and about
her meekly accepting this ridicule.  The reader, meanwhile, would be
aware that the ridicule could equally apply to the philospher.  But
when I'd written the thing I noticed that the mother came out with a
remark returning the ridicule to the son.  What's more, she seemed to
know more than most readers would on a first reading.  Now, what's the
authorial intention on this point?  And, who's the author?  I mean, it
could be Harter, couldn't it?
David
"When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the
apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person
could have written them.  When you find an answer, . . . when these
passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages,ones
you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."
Kuhn

On 13 Nov 1996 16:02:23 GMT, redsox3@ibm.net (Wayne Delia) wrote:

>I once worked on a PL/I program in 1993 along with a good friend who had
25 
>years experience with IBM, which required modifying a sorting routine
based on a 
>date field in the format YY/MM/DD. I pointed out that we needed to take
the
>turn of the century into account, but my friend said not to worry about
it - 
>because he'd be retired by then. The scary part is he was dead serious.  
This is a very common attitude.  In addition, it used to be very expensive
to store data.  Shaving 2 characters off a piece of data which occurs
often was an easy trade-off to make....back in 1970.  I plan to have 3
months worth of cash on hand, not make any airplane flights, and identify
the other things that may make life miserable due to bad data,
programming, etc.  Unfortunately, I can't do a damn thing about income
taxes; my assumption is that if I get affected, everyone else will, too. 
Misery loves company [a grinning emoticon here].
/BAH

In article <328AC06C.3814@popd.ix.netcom.com>, James Hannum Matthew P Wiener wrote:
>> Some consider that cheating.  "Real" cross products, the two vectors at a
>> time sort, work in dimensions 3 *and* 7.  The familiar 3-dimensional one
>> can be thought of as the purely imaginary part of quaternion multiplication.
>> Similarly, the purely imaginary part of octonion multiplication can be read
>> as a 7-dimensional cross product.  Most of the familiar identities hold in
>> both cases.
>Do cross products only work in 3 & 7 dimensions, or will they work
>anytime there are 2^n - 1 dimensions (where n > 1 and an integer)?
Read the paper I referenced in my article.  In particular, I have already
summarized the bit where the above question of yours was answered.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

In article <56f5ef$8f3@news-central.tiac.net>
cri@tiac.net (Richard Harter) writes:
> >>Liar
> 
> >   Like, duh.
> 
> What are you gibbering about?
In the current "debates" (as they're generously called) there are the
following two sides.  One dismisses anything new as "gibberish."  The
other attempts to appreciate anything new, and see whether it looks
like a good new way to start talking or not.  Those of us in this
second group sometimes like to say that WHENEVER anything new comes
along, the footdraggers will scream "gibberish!"  But is this so? 
What's the history of this phenomenon?  And what would explain its
newness, should we find that it is new?  Is it possible that Heidegger,
to take the most obvious example, thought in a more radically new way
than had other thinkers since Plato?  (It is documented that Socrates
was accused of gibbering.)  Or is it possible that he could have taken
the time to write more clearly?  Is it possible that some pomo writers
present us with both new ideas and unneccessary obscurantism (I think
of Foucault here, but hesitate because most people will quite wrongly
think of Derrida)?
My question is not whether the "Gibberish!" party is right.  My firm
opinion is that they're a bunch of anti-intellectual clods.  But I want
to know whether or not they have forerunners in other eras, and if not,
why not.
Yes, the stuff quoted up at the top is recognized as sarcasm.
David
"When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the
apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person
could have written them.  When you find an answer, . . . when these
passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages,ones
you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."
Kuhn

In article <5651q2$27re@uni.library.ucla.edu>
zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
> >                                     As far as eternal return, I don't
> >getcha; couldn't your proposition eternally return too, or is it
> >disposable after a single use?
> 
> The proposition never goes away; it is the concrete particular that
> must differ numerically between spatiotemporal discontinuities
So let's just have the spatiotemporal discontinuities differ
NUMERICALLY as well, and we're set, no?  I mean, as long as the
propositions are gonna be concrete.
David
"When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the
apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person
could have written them.  When you find an answer, . . . when these
passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages,ones
you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."
Kuhn

  ee?  That is a new one for me....
ain@anubis.kbfi.ee (Ain Ainsaar) writes:
>
>Can anybody tell, how to get teaching programs of physics that can be
>appplied at school for demonstrations and practical works, particularly
>at the fields where real experiments cannot be carried out, such as
>atomic physics, nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, particle physics etc.?
 "school" is kind of vague.  
 I put top priority on code that can be related to real experiments which 
 are done in class or by the students.  I will give an example at the end. 
 Failure to connect the 'theory' of physics classes to the real world is 
 a major problem -- identified in the Feynman story about his experience 
 in Brazil but there is nothing unique about that sort of problem -- and 
 needs to be addressed at all levels. 
 At the middle school level, it is hard to do better than the CD-ROM 
 based on the book "The Way Things Work".  Even a PhD who knows all 
 about gear ratios may not know how a gearbox works.  The mammoth stuff 
 is a little silly for adults, but the content is excellent. 
 There is a set of programs called CUPS developed for PCs (turbo pascal 
 with a decent interface, developed with an NSF grant based at Maryland) 
 that is available in conjunction with some workbooks.  I have not used 
 (or even seen) the books, but some of the programs work really well. 
 I especially like the electrostatics calculations since it models 
 something easily done in lab/lecture.  They are of varying sophistication 
 with some scattering problems out of nuclear physics, relativity examples, 
 and simple mechanics demos.  They are targeted at upper division 
 undergraduate for the most case, although some are useful as numerical 
 demos at the grad level. 
 Finally, there is a growing collection of JAVA applets, some very 
 sophisticated.  We used some in our Saturday Morning Physics program 
 last weekend with a lot of success.  I have a page with links to some 
 of them as well as the index pages at Gamelan and TIPTOP (and some of 
 sites ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous that we also used) 
 at 
      http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/smp-sites.html
                                                  for your browsing 
 pleasure.  I have not got around to annotating it with the ones that 
 we actually used.  I found the optics one from Taiwan to be the best 
 way get a sense of ray tracing I have ever seen.  There is a really 
 nice one for the Schroedinger wave equation with time dependence 
 and different well choices.  
 One that worked exceptionally well was the cannon from Oregon.  We 
 have a spring launcher that is very well calibrated and reproducible. 
 We set it at 45 degrees at full power and launched a ball toward a 
 small (10x20 cm) box target (foam inside so ball will not bounce out)
 about 6 or 7 meters away.  [The distance of about 20' matched the 
 20 units between cannon and target in the JAVA applet really well.] 
 At this setting, it went over the target by about a meter.  We repeated 
 it with my partner catching the ball at about that height over the box. 
 Then he fired up the applet and, with student suggestions, altered the 
 firing speed at 45 degrees until the shot went over the simulated 
 target by the same amount (about 3 units).  OK, now we have a working 
 model of our gun-target system.  THEN, again with student help, we 
 adjust the angle of the model cannon until the target is destroyed. 
 Then we set the launcher to that angle, shoot, and the ball plops 
 nicely into the box.  At a 60 degree launch angle, this is quite 
 impressive since it goes almost to the ceiling of the lecture hall. 
 Experiment --> model --> solve new problem --> test answer. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  "The half of knowledge is knowing
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       |  where to find knowledge" - Anon. 
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  Motto over the entrance to Dodd 
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  Hall, former library at FSCW. 

joyceo@computek.net writes:
>
>Does anyone know the current rankings of physics universities?  I need
>the top ten.
 The National Academy of Sciences sponsors a study periodically on the 
 ranking of physics departments that are classified as graduate research 
 doctoral institutions.  You would have to buy the book to get all the 
 details, but the requirement is for a threshold number of PhDs on the 
 order of 1/year over the 5-year reporting period.  The report includes 
 some objective measures, but the ranking was based on purely subjective 
 evaluation of the quality of the research and the effectiveness of the 
 graduate education.  The list I have is ordered by research quality, 
 that is, a measure of past reputation of the faculty and their work. 
 They are: Harvard, Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley, Cal Tech, Cornell, Chicago, 
 Illinois (at U-C), Stanford, UC Santa Barbara; Texas (at Austin), Columbia, 
 Yale, Washington, UCLA, UCSD, Penn, Maryland, Michigan, Rutgers. 
 I do not think USNews ranked physics, or if there are objective ranks. 
 For example, based on citations/faculty, UCSB should be #1. 
>What are the trade organizations for physics groups - I thought they may
>be able to help me with the above question.
 An amusing thought.  Who do we trade with?  The American Institute of 
 Physics (aip.org) has lots of statistics but does not do rankings AFAIK.  
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  "The half of knowledge is knowing
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       |  where to find knowledge" - Anon. 
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  Motto over the entrance to Dodd 
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  Hall, former library at FSCW. 

In article <328AB63D.6BB3@nwu.edu> brian artese  writes:
>>> ... Let's say we have an author with
>>> something to say; let's say he sits and writes it down.  It 'worked' --
>>> that is, he succeeded in writing down what he had to say. 
>> I believe THAT's yer problem.  What is this "success"?
>
>? *What* is the problem?  An author has something to say, so he writes it 
>down.  The pen didn't break and he didn't run out of paper, so he succeeds. 
> Did you not yourself succeed in writing your last post?  Didn't your post 
>say what you wanted to say? 
Obviously not, since you didn't understand what was being written.
q.e.d.

In article ,
Anthony Potts   wrote:
>Whilst it was fair (the rules existed before the race, he knew what he had
>to do to have a fair start), I certainly think that it should be changed
>now. It has apparently been shown (I read this in a newspaper, so I don't
>have a reference) that in controlled conditions, some athletes can
>regularly react to the gun in less than 0.1 seconds. Christie was after
>the gun (0.086s), and it is possible that he did in fact react to it,
>rather than anticipating it.
>
>I think that a study should be conducted by the governing body to see if
>the time needs to be dropped.
That reminds me--one of the runners in the Olympics (it may have been
Christie himself, but I can't remember) said that his strategy is to
start running on the "B" in "BANG", rather than the "G"!
Steve

Archimedes Plutonium (Archimedes.Plutonium@dartmouth.edu) wrote:
:   Since all things are made up of atoms, implies that the whole itself
: is one of those atoms.   
A library is made up of books, so a library is a book.
Where I come from, we call this sort of thing 'bollocks'.
Fraser

journali@sprynet.com writes:
>
>The airplane's AIRSPEED doesn't change a bit, but its GROUNDSPEED does.
 The original question was just an example of vector addition, but, as 
 noted in this reply, aircraft do compensate for cross winds.
 If you want some data, contact your favorite airline for their flight 
 schedule and compare the E-W and W-E flying times for non-stop 
 transcontinental or transoceanic routes.  After correcting for time 
 zones, you will see dramatic differences due to the jet stream. 
 Since the jet stream moves day-to-day and seasonally, there are some 
 fudge factors built in.  I have had ATL-SFO flights arrive almost an 
 hour earlier than scheduled when the jet stream location and the 
 available flight corridors were favorable. 
-- 
 James A. Carr        |  "The half of knowledge is knowing
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       |  where to find knowledge" - Anon. 
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  Motto over the entrance to Dodd 
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  Hall, former library at FSCW. 

Mr. Sarfatti may, perhaps, not understand that the following
comments, from two different perspectives, are *devastating* to
his argument..
But the probability that he will respond to my arguments is probably
no greater than the probability that the religious authorities will
respond to my challenge to debate them over whether the Revelation
of the "resurrection of the dead" includes the revelation of the
memories of previous lives.
eli27@earthlink.net wrote:
>singtech@teleport.com (Charles Cagle) wrote:
>>In article <327E5356.1FB7@well.com>, sarfatti@well.com wrote:
>>
>>>Crowell describes a kind of back-action for quantum gravity -- a
>>>Godelian self-reference. The spacelike surface is the "beable". From my
>>>general postulate that anything with back-action is capable of
>>>felt-consciousness, the way Stapp defines it, it follows that we live in
>>>a "conscious universe" at the Planck scale.
>
>It's not NEARLY as complicated as this. It only has to be understood
>that classical concepts of space and time do not apply to consciousness
>--or, at least, that there is no SCIENTIFIC basis for attributing these
>concepts to consciousness.
>
>> This answers Hawking's
>>>question about the "Mind of God".
>
>Uhhh...no such thing as a mind as a spatially localized entity.
>>
>>What took you so long, Jack, to come up with this mind blowing revelation
>>which has been essentially incorporated into Hebraic religious culture for
>>a hundred generations?
>
>Maybe he's been trying to get there through a little 'back-action' or
>something, or maybe bassackwards.
>
>>  I would welcome you to the party if I didn't know
>>that you already think that you are the host.
>>
>>>A true understanding of quantum gravity is going to involve some very keen
>>>insight into physics that can be expressed in geometric language. 
>>
>>How do you know what it is going to involve or by what means it must be
>>able to be expressed since by your own writings you come up fairly
>>clueless on the subject?
>>
>>> It must
>>>in the limit that Planck's constant vanishes recover general relativity.
>>
>>Absolute horse puckey!  Since GR would be only an approximation to a
>>better theory which would be *without* 'fields' or an 'aether', the new
>>theory only has to perform better than GR.  It doesn't have to recover or
>>subsume GR or even explain why GR seemed successful, it just has to be
>>better, more comprehensive and unify that which has lain about disparate. 
>>Naturally, it will lead to new technology, and even eliminate the
>>serrendipitus nature of physics discoveries, and act as the foundation for
>>a new and logical way to develop new technolgy, and, not least, sound the
>>death knell for a dozen disciplines which sprang from the same corrupt
>>sources.
>>
>>>General relativity is already a fairly mathematical subject with
>>>formalisms that involve Levi-Civita connection coefficients, Riemann
>>>curvature forms and Cartan structure formulas.  It is this language that
>>>allows us to formulate conservation laws; 
>>
>>No it isn't.  Quit trying to BS everyone, Jack.
>
>Oh. So I am not the ONLY one that thinks this?
This is the standard operating procedure of a *theologian* rather 
than a physicist I would suppose.
>
>>  This (mathematics) is the
>>language which allows you to obfuscate the obvious.  Since mathematics is
>>but an abstract of language itself it also can be no more than the
>>underlying physics
>
>And the underlying metaphysics of the scientific method as well.
>
>> which it seeks to describe; when it is, then it is a
>>poorly used tool at best.  In fact, mathematics can't even be the
>>underlying theory unless you ascribe some mystical property to formulae. 
>>Perhaps you think you can enunciate the hidden name of God in mathematics
>>and walk on water.  Conservation laws are based upon physical facts not
>>upon formulations.
>>
>>>and at its roots is the
>>>geometric idea that the boundary of a boundary vanishes.  Quantum
>>>mechanics is also formulated in fairly mathematical terms; with bounded
>>>operators over Hilbert spaces.
>>
>>Which is why it, too, is a ridiculous attempt at imposing a know nothing
>>approach to the inner workings of physics.
>>
>>>Most field theories in nature can be quantized because the Green function
>>>or propagator is formulated on a spacetime back ground.
>>
>>Which immediately destroys the possibility of emerging with a coherent
>>theory which is descriptive of reality if, in fact, there is no such
>>background.
>>
>>>The peculiar
>>>thing about quantum gravity is that such a propagator would describe the
>>>evolution of a three dimensional spacelike surface that foliates
>>>spacetime.  In effect there is not the same spacetime background upon
>>>which on can place a propagator. 
>>
>>If you think it is the propagator which foliates or layers a pre-existing
>>background (spacetime) then you are inserting mathematics into the 'Which
>>came first, the chicken or the egg controversy?' and imposing a
>>deterministic evolutionary development order for the universe in an
>>arbitrary non-realistic manner.
>>
>>>It is as if the thing being propagated
>>>is also the thing you are propagating it on. 
>>
>>Congratulations, Jack, you actually are getting warm here.  I am amazed
>>that the obvious answer keeps being missed by you.  When you figure out of
>>what a charged particle is constructed and that it propagates on discrete
>>elements of that same construction material maybe then you will be able to
>>pause, smile, and say, "Oh, now I get it."  Come on, Jack, the answer is
>>staring you in the face but you keep rejecting it.  Care to tell us why
>>you pathologically avoid grappling with this?  Or maybe someone could tell
>>you?  Can you spell S-U-P-E-R-D-E-T-E-R-M-I-N-I-S-M, Dr. Sarfatti, Phd.?
>>
>>> In a rough sense this has
>>>been at the heart of the problem.  There are also problems of finding
>>>properly bounded operators for quantum gravity.
>>>
>>>In one sense I think that the kernel of the quantum gravity problem lies
>>>in some profound statement;
>
>How can you be so sure that you would *recognize* a profound statement
>if you heard it?
>
>You insist on using classical concepts of space to describe conscious-
>ness.; I don't care whether you call it 3n or Hilbert, you still asssume
>that YOUR consciousness is over there and MY consciousness is over
>here. There is no scietnific basis for such an assumption. I'm not
>trying to be *profound*. I'm merely stating something that is obvious
>to me.
>
>> much as Einstein's equivalence principle is
>>>the core of general relativity. 
>>
>>Which, incidently, isn't exactly or precisely true and stands central to
>>the issue of why it is being replaced.  As for the profound statement you
>>are seeking: part of it is already articulated as Mach's Principle.  That
>>which is lacking is an equivalent utterance associated with the
>>constitution of the unit charge.  Even then, phenomenal parts, which evoke
>>a clear comprehension of the emission of EM quanta must be adduced to
>>round out the theory.
>>
>>> This statement is then formulated
>>>mathematically and the structure of the theory then emerges.
>>
>>What an approach.  The whole, which you assume is greater than the sum of
>>its parts. somehow is deducible from the parts?  You can't conceive of a
>>means where the 'whole theory' will just be intuitively grasped by the
>>diligent seeker, leaping into his mind fully formed?
>
>This has haappened before--in the Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels
>and the Koran.
>>
>>> This
>>>statement is going to clearly state how state vectors evolve under the
>>>action of a generalized parallel translation.  A mathematical formalism of
>>>this statement then should give the conservation laws associated with
>>>q-gravity.  Without conservation laws and such you simply go not have
>>>physics; and conservation laws are described according to the symmetries
>>>of algebraic varieties and geometric spaces.
>>
>>You are making it sound again like you are totally confused over what is
>>physics and what are mathematical attempts to describe the physics, of
>>which I'm now reassured is the case after having read this last paragraph.
>
>
Michael (Daniel 12:1, Sura 2:98, Column XVII of 1QM)
>

 In reply to those habitues of  who say my
 "GETTING A LIFE" article is not appropriate for this Group,
 I remind them that most unemancipated scientists firmly
 believe that the phenomonon LIFE is ENTIRELY a matter
 of physics.  PUBLIUS at 

::::: bjon@ix.netcom.com (Brian Jones)
::::: [why do] 
::::: two SRT observers obtain different time intervals for two events. 
::::: Once this has been answered, one can see that absolute clock
::::: readings cause this,
:::: throopw@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
:::: I coulda swore relative coordinate axes cause it. 
::: bjon@ix.netcom.com (Brian Jones)
::: WHAT causes the "relative coord.  axes"?
:: throopw@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
:: you really don't know what causes a line drawn on paper to be at a
:: different angle than another line?
: bjon@ix.netcom.com (Brian Jones)
: No, I mean "What causes SRT observers to have different coord. axes?"
Their relative velocites, of course.  Just as a relative angle is
what causes geometers to have different x-y coord. axes.
The two are the same phenomenon, so if you know what causes
a line drawn on paper to be at a different angle than another line,
you also know what causes SR coordinate axis to have a different
velocity than another.
Going back to the original question, a relative angle causes geometers
to derive different x-intervals between two points, and a relative
velocity causes relativists to derive different time intervals between
two events.  The two cases are the same, mathematically & analytically.
See http://sheol.org/throopw/sr-ticks-n-bricks.html
--
Wayne Throop   throopw@sheol.org  http://sheol.org/throopw
               throopw@cisco.com

Simon Read (s.read@cranfield.ac.uk) wrote:
: 
: This means that the lightning may not be a ball at all. It
: may be a toroidal field, or a dipole field, or something
: else. It may also be rotating rather fast, which means that
: our feeble eyes only see a sphere.
: 
: Maybe if someone sees a spherical light, it isn't actually
: spherical, instantaneously. I don't think the argument about
: singular points is quite so relevant.
: 
: This is not to say that I'm sur if ball lightning exists or
: not; it just can't be disproved by simple arguments about
: hair on balls.
  ????  I don't know what the above is all about but about
  a month ago I was out on the porch of my condo in
  Ft. Lauderdale when during a violent lightning storm
  I saw ball lightning for the first time: I bolt of lighning
  hit about 500 yards away. Immediately after, a reddish/orange
  ball appeared for about 5 seconds then it scintillated and
  got dimmer as it seemed to lose particles of some kind. It
  seemefd to have mass because the final particles dropped
  toward the grould. The entire phenomenon took less than ten
  seconds. It certainly exists.  PUBLIUS 
  P.S. The ball appered about the roof line of the home
  near which the lightning struck. 
                                                                : 
: Simon
: 

In article <56e91v$skb@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>,
-Mammel,L.H.  wrote:
>In article ,
>moggin  wrote:
>>
>>     .......................-- as I've mentioned before, Newton
>>imported his concept of action-at-a-distance to physics from his
>>studies in hermetic philosophy (read: religious mysticism). 
>
>What gives you this idea, I wonder? Are you just making it up?
Belay that. I see this idea is promulgated in, e.g., LET NEWTON BE .
More later, maybe.
Lew Mammel, Jr.

In article <328ACF95.3301@nwu.edu> brian artese  writes:
>>> .... Somewhere along the line something
>>>went wrong -- why did 'intent' get divorced from the text itself?
>>>Didn't we establish that the author successfully wrote down what he had
>>>to say? 
>> No.  We established that the author felt, upon completing the writing,
>> that he had succeeded in writing down what he had to say.  This doesn't
>> imply that he had actually succeeded
>
>So the author in question looks at his own text and says, 'that is what i 
>wanted to say.'  Then you come along and say, 'Not so fast there, buddy...'
Exactly.  I do indeed.
>You should understand that I don't think intent is a useless word.  It can 
>serve a useful grammatical function when talking about 'meaning' -- that is, 
>when talking about the future paraphrases that a given articulation might 
>evoke.  But this is a far cry from the psychic entity you're talking about.
>
>> Any decent text on
>> functionalist linguistics will also spend tremendous amounts of time on
>> things like "establishing shared information", &c.;, which is, vaguely,
>> the sort of thing that one does in conversation to determine exactly how
>> much of the information the speaker intends to convey is new to the
>> hearer.  
>
>Just because a speaker has doubts about how a listener will receive his 
>statements does not mean he does not say what he planned to say.
No, but it does imply that he has doubt about the message received, and
thus an implicit recognition that the same text/words can convey multiple
messages (substitute the word "meaning" if you prefer) -- and thus
that there is a functional and logical difference between the words
and the intended message.
>
>> Given the amount of difference between the message conveyed and the words
>> uttered in a dialogue/speech occurrance...
>
>Huh?  How could 'the message conveyed' ever arise from anything *besides* 
>'the words uttered'?
The message is what is received in the mind of the hearer.  The words
uttered are, well, the words uttered.  See above.
If you want an example -- I could say "So-and-so is a bastard" with
intent to convey merely that his/her parent's weren't married at the
time of his/her birth.  But it's unlikely.
>> , it seems the very height of unreason
>> to assume that people, who can't talk to one another without an extensive
>> need for error-correction and cross-checking at every stage, can somehow
>> become perfect writers capable of expressing themselves without danger of
>> error or mis-interpretation as soon as they pick up a pen.
>
>Again: errors in transmission are simply mechanical errors wherein the 
>writer/speaker does not accurately re-present the articulation as it is 
>delineated in thought.  In such cases 'intent' is the same as the thought 
>articulation -- it is not something prior to articulation.
>
>And again: the danger of a listener's misinterpretation has nothing to do 
>with the speaker's ability to transmit what he thinks.
>> >The point is:  If there really exists something called 'intent' that is
>> >*distinct* from the actual text -- and if that intent is communicable
>> >and therefore articulatable -- *why didn't the author simply write down
>> >_that_ articulation instead?* 
>> Because the author *can't*.  The author can write down an approximation of
>> his intent, from which a reader can glean his true intention.  Or not, in
>> the case of poor or willfully-stupid readers, or readers lacking an
>> the background to which the author targeted his writing, or readers who
>> jump hastily to the wrong conclusions.
>
>In other words, "the author cannot say what he means to say."  Isn't it 
>ironic that this is exactly the claim that people think deconstruction makes?
Right.  Isn't it ironic that from this (self-evident) claim,
deconstructionists seem to jump to the conclusion that the text is
primary over the inferred intent, and that any interpretation that can
be screwed out of the text is valid -- and equally valid with any other
interpretation, regardless of (e.g.) consistency with the author's
avowed meaning or other writings?
	Patrick

In <56f88b$km7@grissom.powerup.com.au> lapworth@powerup.com.au writes: 
>
>In , rmc@silver.sni.ca (Russell Crook) writes:
>>
>>
>>There are no end of mathematical models, predictions, etc. of
>>scramjets if one searches the web. But nowhere can I find anything
>>on one actually being *built*, let alone *flown*.
>>
Russians (with French help, I think) test one on the tip of a ballistic
missile; they said it worked, but if memory serves, it worked for only
a fraction of a second.
>>Given the age of the concept (I remember reading about scramjets in
the 70s),
Goes back to at least the late 1950's.
>>
>I may be mistaken, but I thought that NASA had tested a Scramjet
engine in
>their X-15 flight test programme.  I will have to check the Dreyden
Flight Research
>Centre photo archive again but I thought there was a Picture of a
Scramjet 
>powered X-15 in flight.
I think that that was a dummy scramjet, just to test the aerodynamics
of the engine.

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Stephen La Joie wrote:
> Clearly, solid has two definitions, as does "work". There's the common
> usage, which is inexact and unsuitable for scientific work, and
> the scientific definition. Here they are using the inexact definition
> to mean glass.
So the common usage of terms such as "amorphous solid" in published
scientific literature is the usage which is "inexact and unsuitable for
scientific work"?  Ha ha ha, good one!
> Yes, yes. If you go back through the usenet post, you will see
> where I clearly gave references to amorphous solid and threatened
> anyone who made such sophistic arguments like. I forget what the
> threat was. I guess I'll have to go and find out what I have
> to do to you now. :-)
You clearly care about this stuff more than I do.  Arguing semantics with
strangers provides some light entertainment for me, and lets me feel that
I'm do a very small service for the cause of public education, but making
threats?  Perhaps you should consider therapy.
> You clearly don't know the difference between a glass and
> a solid. Tho' I do admit that glass is a special case
> of "amorphous solid". Amorphous solid is an oxymoron, however.
Care to offer an opinion on "liquid crystal"?
Unfortunely I am nowhere near a science or engineering library right now,
so I don't have access to all the books on amorphous solids that I used
back when I was active in publishing research in this area.  So to obtain 
a definition of solid, I only have my old undergraduate solid state text
book to refer to:
 "Elementary Solid State Physics" - M. Ali Omar p. 2: "The atoms in some
solids appear to be randomly arranged, i.e., the crystalline structure is
absent.  Such noncrystalline - or amorphous - solids will also be
described briefly."
This reference is quite typical of what I remember a large number of books
saying.  In essence, most of what we know and can easily explain about
solids has to do with crystalline properties (Bloch states etc).
Amorphous solids are less understood, harder to understand, and considered
an advanced topic.  Like it or not though, any rigorous definition of
solid I've ever seen refers to viscosity, not molecular order.  Glass
passes the test at hundreds of degrees, let alone room temperature. 
The point someone else made about the prestigeous Journal of
Non-Crystalline Solids is another good example of how the word solid is
actually used by scientists who work in this area.  Incidently, there are
a lot of papers, in fact conference proceedings, on glass in this journal.
A simple test of what is the usage of the word among scientists: go to
your favorite index (INSPEC, Current Contents, Uncover, Physics Abstracts
..), look up "glass" or "amorphous", and see how many papers appear in
solid state journals compared with liquid of general physics journals.
As far as I can recal the discussions here, the opinion of everyone who
has indicated that they have published in the area of amorphous materials
has been that the usage of the word solid in technical writing includes
amorphous materials.  Perhaps you gave your qualifications for disputing
this before I entered the thread.
> I bet you think that quarks really do have color and
> charm, too.
Now what did I say I would do to people practising bifurcation and/or
straw man argumentation?  Oh yeah, I don't make threats!
Actually, this is a particularly bad illustration of your point.  No
physicist believes quarks to have color in the sense of interaction with
your eye to appear red - but the usage of the word in the quark context
would probably lead many physicists to say that color is a homonym.  You
are arguing as though I had said something like a "solid campaign
platform" must have a certain viscosity.  The boundaries of the definition
of solid are what we are talking about, not alternate meanings.  Now I see
why you put the smiley face after accusing me of sophistry.
|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++|
| Doug Craigen                                                 |
|                                                              |
| If you think Physics is no laughing matter, think again .... |
|    http://cyberspc.mb.ca/~dcc/phys/humor.html                |
|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++|

Judson McClendon  wrote:
>> Judson McClendon wrote:
>> >
[big snip]
>So the God who created this vast universe, and us, has put up with a
>rebellious bunch of humans for thousands of years, watching us kill,
>steal, lie, cheat and so on.  So He sends His own Son Jesus to take our
>sins upon Himself and die a horrible death on a Roman cross to pay the
>penalty for those sins.  Then He tells us that all we have to do is
>believe on Jesus and receive Him as Savior and Lord and God will
>completely forgive us all our sins and give us eternal life as a
>reward.  And you call that God a 'kill-joy'.
>-- 
Judson, god hasn't told *me* anything of the sort! If your post,
including the snip, were to have "God" replaced with ET, you would be
judged insane by many people. Myths hold no compulsion with me.
Slim
>Judson McClendon
>Sun Valley Systems    judsonmc@ix.netcom.com
Beowulf     How ceaselessly Grendel harassed.....

Michael D. Painter wrote:
> I'm more confused than ever now. If M = the solar mass then precession is
> independent of the mass of the object.
> This also implies that the orbits are circular? which they are not or
> precession would not exist.
Yes; in general relativity, more eccentric, smaller orbits have greater
perihelion precession.  In Autodynamics, supposedly, precession is
independent of eccentricity; it only depends on the Sun's mass and the
"orbital radius."  Whether or not the orbits are assumed to be circular or
whether or not "orbital radius" is another name for semimajor axis is
questionable.
> And where does this 43" come in there's no place for it in the equation
> unless the text says one thing and M is  the Mercury value.
The problem is that, supposedly (I keep saying supposedly since I have as
yet seen no derivation) in Autodynamics there is a proportionality law
(which was posted) relating the perihelion precession of a planet to the
"orbital radius" of a planet.  However, the constant of proprtionality
apparently is not calculable but instead must be gotten empirically.  In
other words, given that Mercury's perihelion precession is 43 arcsec/100 y,
they can then find their constant of proportionality is and tell you what
the predicted precessions are for Venus, Earth, and so on.
However, general relativity can tell you Mercury's perihelion precession
_from first principles_.  You don't need to plug in the perihelion
precession for another planet to "calibrate" the equation; general
relativity just tells you what it is (and what it is for the other
planets).
Furthermore, Autodynamics' supposed predictions of the perihelion
precession rates for the other planets are so high that I should think that
these would have been observed by now.  Have there been any dedicated
efforts to measuring the precession rates for non-Mercury planets?
> I make high school students show their work.
I guess they didn't learn that in the Autodynamics school.  (Amusingly
enough, there answers aren't even write.)
-- 
                             Erik Max Francis | max@alcyone.com
                              Alcyone Systems | http://www.alcyone.com/max/
                         San Jose, California | 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W
                                 &tSftDotIotE; | R^4: the 4th R is respect
         "But since when can wounded eyes see | If we weren't who we were"

moggin :
>>     .......................-- as I've mentioned before, Newton
>>imported his concept of action-at-a-distance to physics from his
>>studies in hermetic philosophy (read: religious mysticism). 
lew@ihgp167e.ih.att.com (-Mammel,L.H.):
>What gives you this idea, I wonder? Are you just making it up?
   That's right, Lew -- I made it out of whole cloth, merely to annoy you.
Looks like  it worked.  But you can rest easy -- Newton never studied
religion, and even if he did, he wasn't paying much attention at the time. 
And he certainly wasn't influenced by anything he didn't notice when he 
wasn't studying.
Cajori says:
>        The doctrine of "action at a distance" has been wrongly
>        ascribed to Newton. It is more properly due to Cotes ...
   Uh-huh.  So Cajori is correcting an idea that I invented.  Glad to see
he's reading my posts.  But you may have something interesting to
contribute.  It's possible that all the attacks on Newton were actually
misdirected -- what have you read?
>He also supplies the famous quote where Newton calls action-
>at-a-distance,
>         ... so great an absurdity that I believe no man,
>        who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty
>        of thinking, can ever fall into it."
   Right; that's from the first edition of the _Opticks_.  And as I've said
no more than four separate times, at the max, it's true that Newton was,
especially at that time, committed to the philosophy of mechanism --
which did nothing to prevent him from holding other views, as well.  As
I shouldn't have to point out, introducing the notion of gravitas in  the
_Principia_ would be enough, by itself, to commit him to action-at-a-
distance, even in the absence of any other considerations, since it's a
force that exerts itself  across space without any mechanism to account
for its workings.  As his contemporaries didn't hesitate to object.
-- moggin

TJ wrote:
> 
> Jukka Korpela wrote:
> >
> > edconrad@prolog.net (Ed Conrad) writes:
> >
> > > The  WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT FOSSIL, unquestionably, is
> > > a petrified human skull embedded in a boulder which was discovered
> > > between anthracite veins in Carboniferous strata near Shenandoah, Pa.
> >
> > I suppose no-one is fool enough to take this kind of scrap seriously,
> > but just in case...: If this kind of "news" had any truth in them,
> > and especially if they were unquestionable, we would certainly have
> > read about them in reputable scientific magazines - which would really
> > struggle for the right to publish such revolutionary reports before
> > their competitors.
> >
> > Yucca
> Speaking of human remains...Remember the freeze-dried bronze-age man
> found in the Alps a few years back. PBS did a once over lightly special
> on him. I assume much of the research has been done, but where can I
> find an account of the 'findings' on this guy? Any good books out, or
> articles? With near-morbid fascination of the very old, tj
i saw a book on it at a Barnes and Nobles bookstore in new York City.
One does exist.. i know that!
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------+
| -Pan- of Anthrox           http://www.anthrox.com |
| Console Programming and Game Information Web Site |
+---------------------------------------------------+

>  There is even a better way. You should stop using EVERY SINGLE <
> THING INVENTED BY THE WHITES... <
It's obvious none of you live in Southern California. And YOU think you 
have an immigation problem? Get real...
Boycott yourselves... put your soap boxes away... write your 
representative... and protest somewhere else.
Michael (I'm not white because I'm not dead. I'm Scot-Irish American)

dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson) wrote:
> In the current "debates" (as they're generously called) there are the
> following two sides.  One dismisses anything new as "gibberish."  The
> other attempts to appreciate anything new, and see whether it looks
> like a good new way to start talking or not.  Those of us in this
> second group sometimes like to say that WHENEVER anything new comes
> along, the footdraggers will scream "gibberish!"  But is this so? 
Let's look at this from a subjectivist perspective. If someone says
something new you either understand what he's talking about, being
sufficiently privy to his conceptual framework or you don't. If you don't
understand the person, his statements will sound like gibberish even if it
is a profound new revelation. Then we've got all sorts of options such as
asking for an explanation, acknowledging one's own deficiency on the
subject, assuming the complexity is over one's head, engage the person in
an illuminating conversation, maintaining noble silence lest we reveal our
stupidity or ignorance, try to fathom the other's frame of reference, or
even try to learn and perceive something new. Those options are of course
only open to us if we have a fair amount of self-reflective capacity and
_want_ to understand the other person. However most often that doesn't
seem to be the case and the preferred course of action is to denigrate the
other's statement as gibberish, or even attack them personally, their
"gibberish" being considered an affront to one's own intelligence. In
other words the objective is no longer (if ever it was) to express, learn
or understand, but rather to triumph over an "adversary". On Usenat that
seems to be something akin to standard procedure. Then again, I just can't
help but get the impression that much of the stuff really IS just
gibberish. But who knows, maybe I'm just revealing my own ignorance.
Tom.

In article <56a5li$ohc@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, Brian D. Jones
 wrote:
> 
> Cees Roos  wrote [in part]:
> >> We cannot measure gravity waves, but everyone believes in
> >> their existence.
> 
> >Whether everybody believes in their existence is not relevant, because
> >they have not been observed so far.
> >However, we have a theory which has explained quite a few phenomena, and
> >correctly predicted quite a few other phenomena, and which also predicts
> >gravity waves. For that reason physicists try to detect them, and  think
> >they will be able to do so, eventually. In that sense they believe in
> >their existence.
> 
> >However, in the case of absolute time, SRT is a well documented theory,
> >showing that the concept is totally redundant. It is possible to explain
> >the phenomena involved, without it.
> 
> How has SRT been "well documented"?
> 
> >[sn
> ip]
> >If you don't mind I'd rather not discuss the rest of your article, apart
> >from stating I don't agree with you. But I expect we will not convince
> >each other.
> 
> >-- 
> >Regards, Cees Roos.
> >I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than
> >to have answers which might be wrong.  Richard Feynman 1981
> 
> Maybe later we will agree?
Mr. Jones,
once more you snipped off the main part of my article. Can I have your
comments as yet?
> 
>      §§ ßJ §§
> bjon @ ix. netcom. com
> 
-- 
Regards, Cees Roos.
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than
to have answers which might be wrong.  Richard Feynman 1981

:: nguyen@clark.edu (Man Huu Nguyen)
:: I know that the world wouldn't be where it is now if it wasn't for
:: Newton's and Leibniz's original contributions to calculus. 
:: Airplanes, microwaves, etc are all derivived from calculus.  I am
:: still quite amazed at how much Newton did for math and physics.  I
:: was wondering if any of Einstein's theories have actually helped the
:: world, technologically yet? Has anyone used the theories to produce
:: useful ideas and tools?
: Peter Diehr 
: The Global Positioning System (GPS) relies on both Special and General
: Relativity.  GPS is a major new technology. 
I think it's a bit more fundamental than that.  The relationship between
"calculus" and things like "airplanes" and "microwaves" is not all that
intimate; it's just a foundational item for later technology.
With a similar strength of foundational connection, for the want of
special relativity, QED would be lost, for the want of QED, lasers and
transistors would be lost, for the want of lasers and transistors, the
internet (and usenet) would be lost, for the want of the internet, the
original question would be lost. 
Thus I find the question somewhat ironic.
Mind you, GPS is a good example.  Just doesn't adequately illustrate how
pervasive the butterfly effect on technology from relativity, IMHO. 
--
Wayne Throop   throopw@sheol.org  http://sheol.org/throopw
               throopw@cisco.com

In article <56f88b$km7@grissom.powerup.com.au>,
  wrote:
>I may be mistaken, but I thought that NASA had tested a Scramjet engine in
>their X-15 flight test programme.  I will have to check the Dreyden Flight Research
>Centre photo archive again but I thought there was a Picture of a Scramjet 
>powered X-15 in flight.
I'm fairly sure that was a ramjet, rather than a scramjet (i.e. the
flow was slowed to subsonic speeds before fuel was injected into
the flow or burnt.)
                                                           Frank Crary
                                                           CU Boulder

Patrick van Esch wrote:
> : Then again, I don't even know why I bother trying to explain anything
> : to a Belgian. I'd have better luck trying to get a barnyard animal
> : recite Shakespeare...
> 
> : Joseph Edward Nemec
> : Operations Research Center
> : Room E40-149
> : Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> : Cambridge, MA 02139
> 
> : nemecj@mit.edu
> : http://web.mit.edu/nemecj/www/
> 
> Boerken aas, ik vraag mij af of 't enige zin heeft dat ik op
> uw gelul inga, maar een zelfingenomen blaas lijkt u me wel in
> ieder geval te zijn.  In 't brussels dialect (ik ben afkomstig
> van Brussel) wil ne mec zeggen: een ventje.  Wel, da's een
> goede beschrijving denk ik.
Yes, you would think that, wouldn't you?
--------------------------------------
This is a pain which will definitely linger.
	-- Brain, after something Pinky did.
Joseph Edward Nemec                    
Operations Research Center	         
Room E40-149
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
nemecj@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/nemecj/www/

Having just learned some group theory, I am impressed
by the derivation of degeneracies and quantizations using
only group-theoretical arguments.  However, it seems to
me that the same methods should be applicable to classical
mechanics.  i.e. in quantum we have :
dx/dt =  [x,H]
dp/dt = -[p,H]
as our laws of motion; while in classical we have:
dx/dt =  (d/dp)H
dp/pt = -(d/dx)H
these seem very similar as far as invariance-of-H under
symmetry groups go.  In fact, if you take H as the classical
electron orbit problem (or the gravitational orbit, if you
prefer) then you will have the same 3-D rotation group as in
the archetypal quantum problem, which would imply spherical
harmonics and quantized motion.
Where is the mathematical difference that makes this reasoning
wrong?
--------------------------------------------
Charles Bloom       cbloom@mail.utexas.edu
http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~cbloom/index.html

moggin  wrote:
>>>     .......................-- as I've mentioned before, Newton
>>>imported his concept of action-at-a-distance to physics from his
>>>studies in hermetic philosophy (read: religious mysticism). 
-Mammel,L.H. 
>>What gives you this idea, I wonder? Are you just making it up?
>Belay that. I see this idea is promulgated in, e.g., LET NEWTON BE .
>More later, maybe.
   I already posted a reply --  read it as more polite than I wrote  it,
then.  And if the idea turns out to be a false one, I'd like to hear more.
-- moggin

Jonas Mureika wrote:
> 
> Along I-15 between LA and Las Vegas (and I assume further?), distances
> are given both in miles and km.  Is there a reason for this
> (e.g. military purposes?  The Mojave Desert is full of bases).
> Also, the mileage sign for Pasadena as you get off the 110 freeway
> at Orange Grove Blvd. says "<- Pasadena 2  (3.2 km)", for
> all metric people at Caltech?
On September 30, 1996, the California Department of Transportation has
completed its transition to the metric system.  As all plans for new
highways are now drawn in metric units, it only makes sense to give
metric distances on road signs.  You'll probably see soon many more
metric road signs, not only in California, as most other departments of
transportations have already converted, too.  The U.S. government is
clearly going metric.
For more information about the California Dept of Transportation Metric
Program:
  http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric/metricprg.html
Markus
-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu

eli27@earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> Mr. Sarfatti may, perhaps, not understand that the following
> comments, from two different perspectives, are *devastating* to
> his argument..
> 
> But the probability that he will respond to my arguments is probably
> no greater than the probability that the religious authorities will
> respond to my challenge to debate them over whether the Revelation
> of the "resurrection of the dead" includes the revelation of the
> memories of previous lives.
iligent seeker, leaping into his mind fully formed?
> >
   
Hello, Jeffrey:
As a Ph.D in Parapsychology from the University of California, Berkeley,
and an experienced radio and television interviewer, isn't it a bit
disingenuous of you to use "Mr. Sarfatti" when you are well aware of
Jack's professional credentials?
Peace be within you.
-- 
Alan
Egoless pure consciousness, unconditioned pure energy, is the uncreated
pre-existing underlying ontological ground of absolute pure being that
contains and sustains all existence including itself.

>> What a bunch of moronic blather. The most stringent test of the perihelion
>> advance predicted by GR is the Taylor-Hulse pulsar. You might recall that
>> the discoverers of this pulsar (Taylor and Hulse) were recently awarded Nobel
>> prizes. This system has a much larger perihelion advance than
>> mercury. Observation and analysis of pulsar timing has yielded fantastic
>> agreement with GR. End of discussion.
>Of course - I forgot ... everyone who is awarded a Nobel prize is
>correct by default.   Certainly, if they were handing out such
>awards in the days of Ptolemy, then he would have received a few.
No, it's the universe itself which hands out the prizes. General
relativity predicted the perihelion precession precisely. Auto
fellatio^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDynamics gets it backwards. But thanks
for sharing.

gravity is not a force, or at least if it is I've heard it often described
as a fictitious one. It is more accurate to describe gravity as a quality
or property of matter- with direct proportionality between density/mass,
and gravitational warpage of spacetime. By density I mean that as objects
are denser, the local region is more affected (i.e. black
hole/singularity, galactic cores, the sun).
gravity- a manifestation of the tendency for mass to warp the space around
it causing an illusion of attraction.
adona29693@aol.com

yes, peter, but what the heck is a twistor? spinor?
adona26963@aol.com

Lawrence Crowl wrote:
> 
> In article <327DEFA2.71B0@sni.de>, Volker Hetzer   wrote:
> >Lawrence Crowl wrote:
> >> I don't remember the numbers, but both are close (+/- 20%) to 100
> >> pounds.  Why do you care what the exact number is?
> >Because, I might have to pay for it.
> 
> You'd only ever pay for one particular size for one particular
> commodity.  E.g. a hundredweight of silk always weighs the same.
> Likewise, a hundredweight of wool always weighs the same, though
> different from that of silk.  You'll always get what you pay for.
Maybe a hundredweight is always the same (what about wet silk?), but
if you are putting your weight from a freighter (measuring your silk
in some big unit, for instance 1.5 standard freighter fillings), put
it on several lorries (each carrying several hundredweights), selling
it by the ounce (the special dry american silk ounce of course) and
use it by the grain, a lot of people have to do a lot of odd
calculations.
With the SI-System you do nothing but shifting the decimal point or
do an occasional change of the prefix.
> 
> >> Fine.  Note however, that bushels don't measure volume, they measure
> >> dry capacity.  Hogsheads don't measure volume, they measure liquid
> >> capacity.  Until very recently, you wouldn't use the same container for
> >> storing dry and liquid commodities, so there was no need to have the
> >> units be the same.
> >Yeah, you buy always two different pots. One for dry goods
> >and one for wet goods.
> 
> People _did_, because wet goods containers were much more expensive.
> Even today, we buy different containers for the stovetop and the
> refrigerator.
Of course, but when I fill something from the stovetop pot into
the fridge pot I don't want to calculate stovetop-hogsheads into
fridgepot-hogsheads, just because they are made with different materials
or from different companies.
> >Just by the way, how wet has dough to be in order to count as wet?
> 
> Does it drip out of the holes in the basket?
Depends on the dough and on the size of the holes in the basket.
Is there perhaps some special ANSI basket for comparing?
> 
> >And what's capacity other than volume (except electrical capacity of
> >course)?
> 
> Containers have capacity.  Objects have volume.
There is no difference. A container has some volume, because
it takes space (in a freighter). Whatever is in the container
has a volume, because it fills all space in the container.
And the freighter itself has several volumes, according what you
want to measure.
It is impractical to measure the "capacity" of a container in one
set of units but measuring the "volume" of the things you want to put
into
the container in a completely different set of units.
> How is our proverbial medieval farmer going to measure the contents?
> He's going to use a standard container.  Probably the one designed
> to hold the stuff he's measuring.  He has no means other than the
> standard container to measure anything.  He probably doesn't understand
> the length cubed equals volume concept.
No problem. Call your container a con.
Define:
	One con is the inner volume of the international con-prototype
	in Hinterschlumpfsdorf. The inner volume of the international 
	con-prototype forms a perfect cube in the geometrical (euklidean)
	sense. One con of platinum forms the mass-prototype. The third
	root of a con forms the length prototype.
	So lengths are measures in con^(1/3). Use the time
	it takes the platinum prototype to fall from the clock tower
	of Hinterschlumpfsdorf to its base (in vacuum) as the basic time
	unit.
	Then define your prefixes as powers of 10 and you've got a unit
	system that is almost as good as the SI one. 
> >> I hope you aren't refering to the metric system.
> >>
> >>    unit of length (meter) cubed != unit of volume (liter)
> >Wrong. There is no "Unit of volume" per se. You can measure
> >Volume in cubic meters, cubic centimeters or cubic light years.
> >And one of these units (cubic decimeters) happens to have a second name
> >(liter).
> 
> There is (as far as I know) only one volume measure with its own name,
> the liter.  It was clearly intended as the unit of volume in the original
> metric system.
You are talking about medieval farmers, and predeccors of the SI-System.
I don't want the US to change to the earliest unit system that uses the
meter,
and I don't want it to change to some old cgs-System. We are talking
about
the SI-System.
> >>    unit of mass (gram) is offset by a factor of 1000 from the standard
> >>        (and nowhere close to the mass of a unit of volume of water)
> >What has the mass of gram has to do with water?
> 
> The mass of a liter of water is very close to one kilogram.  A more
> rational system would have the mass of a liter being one gram.
A liter doesn't have mass. You measure volume in liters.
Volker

>>Given the age of the concept (I remember reading about scramjets in the 70s),
>>and the simplicity of scramjet implementation (once you have the
>>shockwave physics and heating problems out of the way :->), and the
>>obvious improvements that could be made in booster or SSTO performance
>>and cost if you could use air for your oxidizer for more of the boost phase,
Funny thing about the obvious: it's often wrong.
1. Propellants are the cheapest single item in launching
   anything to orbit. Liquid oxygen in bulk is cheaper 
   than beer. Development costs, capital, handling,
   everything else is more expensive. Spending billions to
   make the cheapest component cheaper still is senseless,
   unless the goal is to run a welfare program for aerospace 
   industry managers and engineers. To build a commercially
   successful launch system instead of a research vehicle or
   a curiosity, one must focus on (a) economy, (b) economy, 
   and (c) economy. Not performance.
2. One gets useful thrust from any variety of jet engine
   by throwing the combustion products out the back end faster
   than they entered at the front. When the incoming air is
   moving more than Mach 4 or so it's extremely difficult to
   heat it enough during the short time it's inside your
   engine so that it leaves at a noticeably higher speed.
   And when screaming along at Mach 4 you have a whopping 3%
   of the energy required for orbit, so you still need
   rockets for the other 97%.
3. Tearing along at Mach 4 you'd better be above 99% of the
   atmosphere lest you become a meteor. Precious little 
   oxidizer available up there.

r wrote:
> 
> >
> >What completes the grounding circuit in an electrical system?
> >Let's say a refrigerator shorts and the current goes to ground (thus
> >protecting anyone touching the refrigerator).
> >The current goes through a wire down to metal pipe down to the earth
> >itself, but how does it come back from the soil in the back or front
> >yard to complete the circuit to the refrigerator in the house?
> >Thanks for help and info.
> >
> Simplistically, think of the power coming down the "hot" wire from the
> power transformer and normally returning to the transformer down the
> "neutral" wire.  When you have a fault in your appliance, the current
> returns to the transformer via the ground wire (and the earth itself)altavoz: Correct, but misleading as some call earth a wire and others call
it dirt . the "earth" wire in the US is called the "bare" or ground wire.
So many millamps ( 8 ?) thru the bare will trip a GFI .
-- 
______End of text  from altavoz___________

In article  "Mr. Anonymous"  writes:
>From: "Mr. Anonymous" 
>Subject: Re: freedom of privacy & thoughts
>Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 19:34:27 -0600
>        John, as much as I would rather pound you to a pulp with my bare 
>hands, I can't help but ask you if you realize this guys just yanking 
>your fucking chain?
>        I thought in the past you were just some mildly psychotic guy 
>hell bent on spamming the shit out of everyone with your foolishness but 
>I can see what you're doing is really scary.
>        Invisable waves that can control your rectum?  You need 
>professional help John.  There are times that any and all of us 
>can/will/have go completely over the edge, and you're there pal.
>        I'm sorry John, but you are too far out there to even be allowed 
>internet acsess.  There arent any firearms or anything in your home are 
>there?  Does your family keep all the sharp edged objects in your house 
>locked up?  They should really concider it before you snap some night and 
>whack them all for being "mind control infiltrators" or something.
>        
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Mr Anonymous"                                           mordor@skypoint.com
I'd strongly recommend that everyone reading this post send John, here, who 
has been well and truly spongified, a case of Jolt Cola and a big bag of 
Cheetos (see http://www.armory.com/~deadslug/Jihad/jihad.html, the Jihad to 
Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur homepage, for details).  On the other hand, 
he's so far gone that he'd think that the Men In Black are trying to kill him 
with it.