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Hardy Hulley:
>>>>>>> If by relativity, you mean Einstein's theory, then Derrida's claim
>>>>>>> that the Einsteinian constant "is the  very concept of 
>>>>>>> variability" is surely false. If you are referring to some other 
>>>>>>> theory of relativity, then his claim is meaningless.
moggin:
>>>>>> Your post ran back and forth between the claim that Derrida
>>>>>> writes only nonsense and the complaint that his work contains an
>>>>>> over-abundance of meaning.
Hardy: 
>>>>> Over-abundance of meaning is tantamount to nonsense. Consider the 
>>>>> number of interpretations available for the Book of Revelations. 
>>>>> Actually, that brings me to an interesting point - I wonder what 
>>>>> Nostradamus would have made of Derrida...or Derrida of Nostradamus, 
>>>>> for that matter. I sense fertile ground for satire here - a dialogue 
>>>>> wherein Derrida deconstructs Nostradamus' interpretations of 
>>>>> himself.
moggin:
>>>> I see -- you think that anything which can receive more than
>>>> a single intepretation  is therefore "nonsense."
Hardy:
>>> A non-sequitur - you have, without the slightest compunction, asserted 
>>> an equivalence between "over-abundance of meaning" and "more than a 
>>> single interpretation".
moggin:
>> Here's the basis:  "Over-abundance of meaning is tantamount
>> to nonsense. Consider the number of interpretations available for
>> the Book of Revelations."  Of course, it could be that you allow
>> multiple readings so long as their number doesn't multiply to the
>> point that they become an "over-abundance."  If that's the case,
>> I can only wonder how many you permit (three? four? five? eleven?
>> seven? twenty-three? forty-six? a hundred and sixty-two?  Seven
>> thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight?), and how you arrive at
>> the figure.
Hardy:
>Initially, you asserted that my position was: "Anything which can
>receive more than a single interpretation is therefore nonsense". This
>you did by conflating "more than a single" with "over-abundance" - a
>very elementary mistake.  Now, in a vain attempt to evade the inevitable
>rotten eggs and tomatoes, you have stealthily changed your tack. "How
>many" possible interpretations before we reach "over-abundance", you now
>want to know. This is strictly pre-school stuff, and I'll respond in the
>only way which does your puerility any justice. How many bees make a
>swarm, and how would *you* arrive at the figure? (Or, perhaps you'd like
>to assert that swarms don't exist).
   No, I want to ask why they're nonsensical, how small they have 
to be before they turn into sense, and how you know.   Given your
thinking, the entire Bible is nonsense, since it's given rise to an
immense number of different interpretations -- in fact, _any_
text which allows for more readings than you happen to consider
suitable would have to go in the bin along with it.   And how many
that _is_ remains an open question -- all you've established is
that it's somewhere between one and what you label as an "over-
abundance."  Why  don't you get back to me after you've given this
some thought?  There's no point in embarrassing yourself.
moggin:
>>>>>> Here, however, you don't seem to have any trouble finding an
>>>>>> exclusive meaning and declaring it false.
Hardy:
>>>>> I note, wryly, that you're in need of an introduction to the
>>>>> conditional. Observe the leading "if" in the passage you quote - I
>>>>> didn't claim to have isolated an "exclusive meaning" for anything.
moggin: 
>>>> And I reply, on pumpernickel, that I clearly observed the "if."
>>>> Had I known you were obtuse, I would have written, "Here, however,
>>>> you don't seem to have any trouble locating a premise which allows
>>>> you to find an exclusive meaning and declare it false."  Instead, I
>>>> credited you with enough intelligence to follow along.  My error.
Hardy: 
>>> So now "locating a premise which allows you to find an exclusive 
>>> meaning" is equivalent to "finding an exclusive meaning" (or, in 
>>> symbols, (P=>Q)<=>Q). Your error (as you put it) is in fact a trivial
>>> misapprehension of elementary logic, apparently compounded by cavalier
>>> dishonesty.
moggin:
>> The only error here lies in your reading.
Hardy:
>Yet more dishonesty. There is no denying that you asserted an
>equivalence between "locating a premise which allows you to find an
>exclusive meaning" and "finding an exclusive meaning". Think what you
>will, gollum, your own words have condemned you.
   Think what you will, they don't.
Hardy:
>>> Furthermore, even your modified assertion is false. I hadn't located a
>>> premise, *allowing* me to find an exclusive meaning - the very 
>>> meaning, to which you refer, *was*, in fact, the premise of my 
>>> statement.
moggin:
>> I'll try re-phrasing my point.  Although you claimed that
>> Derrida's work was nonsensical, nonetheless you were able, when
>> it suited you, to make sense of one of his comments.  And when
>> did it suit you?  When you wanted to press an attack.
Hardy:
>Firstly, I didn't claim that Derrida's work was nonsense, I claimed that
>it was *either* nonsense *or* false. So, even if you are right that I
>had managed to interpret his remark, the interpretation I discovered
>still rendered it false. Hence, the point you are making is of no
>interest.
   No, you repeatedly compared Derrida to a random word generator.
Yet when you thought you saw an opportunity to score some points,
you claimed that the statement in question was false or nonsensical.
Which is to say that you set aside your claim that Derrida was mere
gibberish  when you found it convenient to do so.
>Secondly, in my initial statement I said: "*If* by relativity, you mean
>Einstein's theory, *then* Derrida's claim [...] is surely false". That
>doesn't mean that I *have* managed to "make sense of his comments", and
>found them to be false. It means: "*assuming* that I interpret his
>comments in a certain way, he is wrong". Your puerile attachment to
>indefensible positions, aggravated by your vacuous apprehension of
>elementary propositional calculus, has now reached alarming proportions.
   "Here, however, you don't seem to have any trouble locating a 
premise which allows you to find an exclusive meaning and declare
it false."  
Hardy: 
>>> Lastly, let me add that you were already flogging a dead horse with 
>>> your original claim ("you don't seem to have any trouble finding an 
>>> exclusive meaning and declaring it false"). My position, all along, 
>>> has been that Derrida's comment is either false or unintelligible. 
>>> Your startling discovery that I may have isolated an interpretation 
>>> which does, in fact, render his stupid remark false, is silly (though, 
>>> hardly inconsistent with my expectations).
moggin:
>> See above.
Hardy:
>The "above" doesn't address my point - it only assists me in compiling a
>very unflattering assessment of your mental adroitness.
   The above went directly to your point.  Your difficulty with Derrida 
turns out to be even simpler than I thought.
moggin: 
>>>> Why ever should those be the only possiblities?  It's easy to
>>>> imagine that Hyppolite asked an unclear question that Derrida was
>>>> able to understand, regardless, or which Derrida thought he was able
>>>> to understand.  Happens all the time in conversations.
Hardy:
>>> Yes it does - usually in silly conversations.
moggin:
>> In all kinds.
Hardy:
>Judging by the nonsense you have taken to disseminating until now, I can
>only conclude that you are drawing deeply on personal experience here.
   Your judgements are inconsequential.
moggin:
>>>> Now let's look at Derrida's words again.  (Again remember that
>>>> we're ignoring the bulk of both Hyppolite's question and Derrida's
>>>> reply in order to focus on one, particular detail.)  Derrida says:
>>>>      "[It] is not a constant, is not a center.  It is the very
>>>>      concept of variability -- it is, finally, the  concept of the
>>>>      game.  In other words, it is not the concept of some_thing_ --
>>>>      of a center starting from which an observer could master the
>>>>      field -- but the very concept of the field which, after all, I
>>>>      was trying to elaborate."
>>>> You no longer have to assume that Derrida is talking about c,
>>>> so you no longer have to conclude that his statement is meaningless
>>>> or false.  We're left to figure out what he _is_ talking about, but
>>>> it's now possible that he's making an arguably valid observation
>>>> about certain elements of relativity -- in other words, that there
>>>> exists an [it] which fits his comments.  Maybe you could make some
>>>> suggestions.  Personally, I'd guess he's referring to the lack of
>>>> absolute space and time.
Hardy:
>>> After much elaborate sleight of hand, all you've managed to tell me is
>>> that, if we're exceedingly charitable towards Derrida, and assume that
>>> "Einsteinian constant" is not in fact Einstein's constant, then his 
>>> comment *need* not be false. You still don't have a clue as to what 
>>> Derrida is actually saying *about* the "Einsteinian constant". 
>>> Consequently, you stand absolutely no chance of determining what the 
>>> "Einsteinian constant" actually is. In fact, your grand hypothesis is: 
>>> Derrida says that for some constant c, and some predicate P, P(c) 
>>> obtains.
moggin:
>> There was nothing elaborate about it at all -- I just paid
>> some attention to what Hyppolite and Derrida were saying to each
>> other.  That allowed me to remove the premise of your reading,
>> which prevented you from understanding them, and replace it with
>> one that makes more sense, if you accept my interpretation (and
>> I don't see you arguing with it). There's no need for charity
>> toward Derrida, since the term "Einsteinian constant" came from
>> Hyppolite -- on my reading, Derrida corrects it.  And although
>> you don't seem to have noticed, I also handed you a clue to the
>> meaning of Derrida's reply.
Hardy:
>The "premise" (and I quote you with trepidation, for it has already
>become clear that you don't understand the relationship between
>antecedents and consequents in conditional expressions) to which you
>refer was that "Einsteinian constant" means, in fact, just that -
>Einstein's constant. This didn't render Derrida's remark unintelligible
>to me, as you allege, but merely false.
   I didn't say it was unintellible to you.  (It's not _quoting_ you've 
got to worry about -- your problems lie in reading.)  I said that 
you're having trouble understanding it.  And in fact your assumption
prevented you from grasping Derrida's statement:  it required you
to read it as either nonsensical or false. 
>I haven't resisted your attempts to replace the conventional
>interpretation of "Einsteinian constant" with something more fanciful,
>because it hasn't been necessary. But, since you insist, I will. You've
>offered "lack of absolute space and time" as a possible interpretation.
>Explain, then, to what extent is such a concept Einsteinian, and to what
>extent is it constant?
   I already suggested that it was a misnomer.  As I've pointed out
before, Hyppolite offers the term, and Derrida corrects it -- Silke 
made the same observation.   By now I have to figure you're making
an argument-from-stupidity (a tactic that must be natural to you).
>Furthermore, committing yourself to a project of finding an alternative
>interpretation for Hyppolite's (and Derrida's - since he didn't object
>to the words "Einsteinian constant" being used, and continued to refer
>to them throughout his statement) use of a pretty well-understood
>concept, *just* because the conventional interpretation means that
>Derrida was wrong, is weak scholarship.
    Either you're being dishonest, or you don't have any idea what
you're talking about.  Derrida uses the term "Einsteinian constant"
just once in his reply, and immediately corrects it.  So much for 
your "scholarship."
Hardy: 
>>> I'm flabbergasted. How can you possibly spew shit like: "We're left to
>>> figure out what he _is_ talking about..." and "it's now possible that 
>>> he's making an arguably valid observation about certain elements of 
>>> relativity", and offer it as a defence of the truth and 
>>> intelligibility of Derrida's claims?
moggin: 
>>     You claimed that what Derrida said was wrong or meaningless;
>>I showed that you were full of crap.  Mission accomplished.   If
>>you want to go on to discuss what he meant and whether it's true,
>>you don't need an invitation; but I gave you one, anyhow, along
>>with my guess about his meaning.  Your response was to say, "I'm
>>flabbergasted," and accuse me of spewing shit.  Well done.
Hardy:
>I say: "Derrida's remark is wrong, or meaningless". You say: "No, if we
>interpret him in a certain way, he *need* not be meaningless or wrong -
   Right.  Therefore your assertion that he must be either wrong
or meaningless is false.  Or haven't you caught on yet?
>we just have to figure out what he _is_ talking about". Well, my dear
>gollum, *until* you have figured out what he *is* talking about, how do
>you know that its meaningful or true?
   The usual way:  by examining it.  Or hadn't that occured to you?
>You may well consider your mission accomplished, but *you* certainly
>are not.
   Agreed that you're full of crap.
moggin
>> If you want to go on to discuss what he meant and whether it's true,
>> you don't need an invitation; but I gave you one, anyhow, along
>> with my guess about his meaning.  Your response was to say, "I'm
>> flabbergasted," and accuse me of spewing shit.  Well done.
Hardy:
>Again, the very fact that you concede, here, that we may still "discuss
>what he meant and whether it's true", clearly indicates, by your own
>admission, that you have not yet falsified my claim that Derrida's
>remarks are either false, or meaningless. 
   Of course I have.  You asserted that they were one of the two.  By 
showing they they could easily be neither, I disproved your claim.
>If you have demonstrated that Derrida's words are meaningful *and*
>true, why must we discuss anything? Why must you "guess about his
>meaning" still? My accusation still stands.
     Apparently you've forgotten your accusation, which is now
six feet deep.
Hardy:
>>> It's time to stop dithering - do you, or don't you know what Derrida 
>>> meant in his much-quoted conversation with Hyppolite? I have claimed 
>>> that what he said was either false, or meaningless - my claim awaits 
>>> falsification.
moggin:
>> I already showed that your claim was false, and told you
>> what I thought he meant.  Your reply, such as it is, is above.
Hardy:
>Falsifying my claim entails finding an interpretation for Derrida's
>remark which is both reasonable and true. 
   No, it requires demonstrating that his comment isn't necessarily
meaningless or false.  And that's exactly what I did.  Case closed.  Of
course it still _might_ be either one; so might any statement -- if
you claim it is, you'll have to prove your point.
-- moggin

cri@tiac.net (Richard Harter):
:Who was that masked man from Crete, anyway?
   Ask him and he'll tell you.
-- moggin

In article <56cgo1$jlp@panix2.panix.com> +@+.+ (G*rd*n) writes:
>G*rd*n wrote:
>| > > I don't see anything unscientific in belief in abductions
>| > > by aliens, given the information available to the average
>| > > person.  I heard Dr. Sagan complaining about such beliefs on
>| > > the radio, and yet all he could come up with as a counter
>| > > was appeal to authority -- not a very good
>| > > argument.
>
>dlessard@btg.com:
>| The radio interview you heard must have been a short one, or perhaps you
>| only heard a piece of it.  To get the full flavor of Sagan's arguments,
>| get
>| a copy of....
>
>No doubt Dr. Sagan can present other arguments.  I am
>pointing out that he chose not to do so in the case I
>mentioned, but appealed to authority -- famous, government-
>approved scientists in white coats don't believe in them,
>so you shouldn't either.  He might as well have cited
>Biblical texts.
You're contradicting yourself, Mr. Fitch.  You've already backed off
from the claim that "all he could come up with as a counter" to "he
chose to present as a counter."  I don't suppose the argument that he
chose was at all related to the medium through which he was arguing?
Broadcast media are notorious for only being able to convey sound bites
and appeals to authority, rather than lengthy reasoned discourses.  The
audience expects that, the producers expect that, the people involved
in the arguments expect that -- it seems that everyone expects that
except for someone with a science-is-religion axe to grind.
	Patrick

vanomen  wrote:
>Superstition?  I call it Faith.  God gave us a free will to decide on 
>our own.  YOu have decided your way and I mine.  2 things to think 
>about though
>#1 If I am wrong and there is no God?  WEll  worst case I have still 
>tried to live a life and set an example for my family of a way of life 
>that is steps and leaps above the way most people live and treat each 
>other
>#2 However if I am correct and there is a God(which I am sure there 
>is) then I have eternal Life.
 Not if the god is Krishna or Thor or Isis or Satan or the King of
Leprechauns.

If this is a heavy string, those programmers and graphics freaks
among us could have some fun simulating it. If it's a massless
string, I wouldn't know where to start.
Which did you have in mind?
Simon

	This has nothing to do with anything.  But philosophers can't help
but give vent to what is already intrinsic to themselves.  And what is
intrinsic to themselves is an aggregate of astrological predispositions.
Derrida's sun sign is Cancer, I believe...and well, I'm not going to fill
you in on the significance of this...only to say that those who find
resonance with his ABNEGATIONS are similarly situated from an astrological
point of reference.  I don't know if philosophers share with physicists
that DREAM of a unifying blanket statement that will SUM EVERYTHING UP
(they probably don't), but all one philosopher and its school of thought
can sum up is an ASPECTIONAL position, an aspectional position of temporal
infinitude and unassailable legitimacy; and I'm not speaking
relativistically here either:  the question is not of  all truths being
EQUAL, the question has to do with a finite number of TRUTHS being
INTEGRAL.    

Hardy Hulley wrote:
> If you bothered to read what I wrote before you started
> hyperventilating, you will note that it is quite consistent with your
> little rave. 
No... Your characterization claimed that the 'first principle' of 
deconstruction was that an author's text obscures some 
already-established thing called 'intent.'  Writers like Derrida or de 
Man would never propose such a naive schema.
Why naive?  Let me answer this way:  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.  Let's say he 
publishes this writing and you and I read it.  We talk about the text, 
and perhaps at some point you say, 'I know what this author means.'  
Another way to say that is, 'I know what this author means to say,' or 
'I know what this author intends to say.'
Such a statement does not merely claim to have read the actual words of 
the author, to which we all have access.  The statement does not simply 
point to *what* the text says; it claims to have apprehended something 
else:  the 'intent' of the author.  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?
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?*
In other words:  it's not deconstruction that claims that there is a 
'problem' with communicating *what* one has to say; it's not 
deconstruction that has posited the text as an 'interference' to 
communication; what causes the 'problem' is this goblin called 'intent' 
that humanists feel so compelled to protect.
By throwing out 'intent' deconstruction doesn't _cause_ a problem 
regarding communication -- it obviates one.
-- brian

Richard A. Schumacher (schumach@convex.com) wrote:
: >>: Hmm, he knows the secrets of the universe but can't run his
: >>: newsreader. This does not inspire confidence. Even Einstein
: >>: could ride a bicycle.
: >>
: >>Yeah, but he couldn't be depended upon to remember to put his pants on in 
: >>the morning!
: >Do I detect a bit of insecurity here? Perhaps my  stuff  is too
: >sophisticated for you two to comprehend?
: Yes, exactly. I can only judge the value of a theory by comparing
: it to the real universe in which we live. 
        That may be correct for an engineer or an experimentalist,
but it is certainly not true for theoretical physics, any model
that is self consistent has value, even if it is only used as
a reference, or to generate or precipitate new ideas and experiments.
        I do not agree with any of the concepts of absolute motion,
absolute space, aether or E-Matrix or any other name, or absolute
velocity, but the number of threads and number of responses gives
Mr. Seto and the others more incentive to continue beating a tired
horse.
: Since your notions clearly
: do not describe that universe, we'd have to consider your notions as
: an isolated abstract system. And I ain't got time for that 
       Many widely accepted notions have not accurately described
the universe, but they have been useful for the time and era that
they were popular.
       To claim that only true and correct notions are worthy of
consideration fails to appreciate the many early scientists and
their work that was essential to provide the stepping stones
for the path that brought science to where it is now.
       In fact, some of the more useful models are the most
untrue, the one most prominent is Newtonian gravitation, and
there certainly is _not_ a mutual "attraction" of matter. 
       But I do agree that the notions of absolute physical
dimensions is totally out of place in a relativity newsgroup,
and is not new-theories as these notions dominated science for
hundreds of years before scientists found out that it was
totally and patently wrong.
Ken Fischer
P.S.    Please write a bug report to the author of your
     mail programs if they accept sci.physics.new-theories
     as a valid newsgroup, it must be "alt.sci....."

In article <568s1k$mb2@agate.berkeley.edu> of Tue, 12 Nov 1996 03:48:04
in sci.physics.electromag, 
"C.K.W. Wyllie"  wrote:
>       I've spent a half hour searching with 3 search engines and a half
>dozen good Physics Reference/Start pages, but I am unable to locate an on-line 
>index for the Inst. Phys. Conf. Ser. series of publications. 
> ...
Try either E-mail to pwld@ioppublishing.co.uk (you don't want pwld, but
pwld will be able to forward it to the right part of IoP or IoPP, or Web
http://www.iop.org . That should work; otherwise, mail physics@iop.org .
Copying by E-mail.  Note one group is moderated; I've cut it & will post
there separately.
-- 
John Stockton, Surrey, UK.  JRS@merlyn.demon.co.uk  Turnpike v1.12  MIME
    http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/

Ed Nuhfer  wrote:
>vanomen wrote:
>> 
>> It will be to late when you are dead to repent.
OK, I repent. What's next?
Slim
>Venom from Vanomen.
Beowulf     How ceaselessly Grendel harassed.....

meron@cars3.uchicago.edu wrote:
> Science doesn't deal with Truth and, as was already pointed to you, it
> doesn't demand more faith in what's really real then what you need to
> cross the street.  Lets face it, this bogeyman of science as religion,
> proclaiming the Truth and pursuing the nonbelievers is an image you've
> created for yourself, no more than this.  And now you're fighting
> against a figment of your imagination.  Well, have fun and count me
> out.
If this were true, why has Sokal attracted such a following?  Forced to 
retreat from his _Lingua Franca_ claim that he has somehow devastated 
the work of 'dozens of French intellectuals,' he now repeatedly says his 
goal is to reinstate a respect for objective Truth that's been 
undermined by postmodernism.  He explicitly avoids allegiance with the 
God's-eye-view kind of objectivity; yet 'truth' and 'reality' are the 
repeated lyrics in his refrain.  The same is true of the Sokalites on 
Usenet, from whom I have yet to hear a discussion of these issues that 
did *not* rely axiomatically on these terms.
-- brian
_________
Don't be paranoid.
It makes you look suspicious to the authorities.

Harry H Conover wrote:
> 
> Stephen La Joie (stephen.a.lajoie@boeing.com) wrote:
> : Harry H Conover wrote:
> : >
> : > While I continue to seriously doubt that anything but mechanical
> : > failure was responsible for the crash of TWA Flight 800, the following
> : > scenario (totally unsupported by physical evidence) has crossed my
> : > mind.
> :
> : Gee, the FBI, FAA and NTSB are still gathering evidence. So
> : far, no clues or very weak clues. And you "seriously doubt"
> : anything but mechanical failure? Based on what? Does you're
> : left big toe tingle when it's mechanical failure and your
> : right big toe when it's pilot error?
> 
> Well, in the final part of this point you come dangerously close
> to stating the same tentative conclusion as I have.  Lacking
> strong evidence of external forces at work, or pilot error,
> only mechanical failure appears to remain as a possibility.
Nothing points to mechanical failure. There isn't a part that
they can point to as a first cause. All we have is a center
fuel tank explosion, and it exploded in a wierd way.
> Also, given the official reports that there is strong indication
> that the central fuel tank suffered an explosion, and that
> suspicious 'petaling' was noted on one of the fuel level sensors,
> it would appear that the mechanical failure hypothesis is a bit
> more than idle speculation.
Pleeeze. You don't know. Maybe you don't know that you don't
know. But you don't know.
> : I'm asking, since a real scientist or engineer would say
> : "I don't know" when they don't have enough information.
> 
> Evidently, you're not a scientist.  Ever hear of a hypothesis?
As Alex Trebeck would say, "BUZZZ! You failed to phrase you
answer in the form of a question."
> I thought I had added sufficient caveats to my post to make it
> obvious that it what I was doing.
What you were doing is starting to point fingers in ignorance.
Gee, that's fun. But don't do it in public, okay?
> e.g. Evidence: The plane exploded in mid-air.
>      Hypothesis 1:  It was struck by a missile of unknown origin.
>      Hypothesis 2:  It suffered an explosion due to mechanical failure.
>      Hypothesis 3:  An on-board bomb was involved.
>      Hypothesis n:  ....n something elses speculated as a cause.
> 
>      Next, close examination of the evidence may confirm or
>      eliminate certain of these theories...however...without
>      advancement of a hypothesis to be tested against the evidence,
>      all the forensic data in the world is little more than a
>      collection of curious observations.
> 
>      Generally speaking, scientific investigation operates this way.
Excuse me? You have no evidence for any cause. So, your reasonsing goes
like this: We have no evidence for 1, 2 or 3. Therefore it must not be
1 or 3, and must be 2.
Ha ha. 
> : If you have another theory of mechanical failure that hasn't
> : already been gone over, lets hear it.
> 
> While I can't take credit for it, the mechanical failure hypothesis
> that I've heard advanced deals with mechanical failure of a fuel level
> sensor leading to production of a spark sufficient to ignite explosive
> vapor in the central fuel tank.  Had you been following the reports
> of the investigators, you might have heard the same report.  (As I
> understand, the investigators are planning to stage an attempted
> explosion of a 747 fuel tank to determine if, in fact, the evidence
> produced by a staged explosion is consistent with that recovered
> from the wreckage.)
Yes, they know that the fuel tank exploded. Now, why did it explode?
1, 2, 3 or n?
> : > I recall one news report citing an (airline pilot?) observer claiming
> : > that he saw a decending streak of light (perhaps a meteor) heading
> : > towards TWA800.
> 
> Some reports had it heading up, some down.
> 
> :
> : I thought it was a navy pilot who was on the ground who
> : saw a red streak going upward. The red color was not
> : characteristic of a Stinger missel. As for the "meteor"
> : remark, well, the likelyhood of a meteor stiking the plane
> : is just about as likely as a catastrophic mechanical failure
> : on a well maintained airplane. That's better than 10^-9.
> 
> How often are the fuel level sensors replaced on an airframe
> over 20 years old?
Probably every D check. Sooner if the MTBF calls for it. Are you
saying that TWA forged their maintenance documents? Strong words.
> : > Given that a ground (or ship) fired Stinger type missile would be
> : > unlikely to reach the operating altitude of the TWA aircraft, what
> : > about the possibility of a missile launched from another aircraft?
> : >
> : > To date, I have read absolutely no speculation on this possibility.
> : >
> : > Could something like a Stinger be launched from a small, general
> : > aviation class aircraft without the 'back-blast' seriously damaging
> : > the aircraft from which it was launched?  Today, I posed this question
> : > to a number of private pilots (some familiar with Stinger) and the
> : > answer was a unanimous and resounding "YES, it could have been
> : > done that way!"
> : >
> : > Some suggested that it would not be difficult to sling the Stinger
> : > launcher under the wing (improvised hard point mount) or even from
> : > the landing gear of certain types of aircraft.  Even the possibility
> : > of someone leaning out of the aircraft door and firing the missile
> : > could not be excluded (provided that they were careful not to blow
> : > off the wing while doing so).
> : >
> : > I asked about the 'sight picture' and was told that "it isn't needed,
> : > because stinger emits an audible beep on target lock-on."
> : >
> : > Someone even remarked how easy it would be to improvise a 'cotter
> : > pin' type mounting for it, so that after firing, simply pulling a
> : > cord would detach the launcher and drop it into the sea!
> : >
> : > Lots of other more technical discussion followed, but the overwhelming
> : > consensus was: "Yes, it could have been done this way."
> : >
> : > The only negative that I received on this hypothesis was that since
> : > Stinger is heat-seeking, it would have likely impacted an engine and
> : > not the central airframe.
> : >
> : > Still, the hypothetical ease of such an attack is, to put it mildly,
> : > an interesting speculation.  Certainly one far more credible than
> : > the notion that the Navy downed TWA 800 with a missile.
> : >
> :
> : You have a very vivid imagination. I'm sure that you'd make
> : a very creative terrorist should you take that bent. ;-) But
> : I've heard that the color of the UFO's tail was the wrong
> : color to be a stinger, and the presence of (unexplained)
> : explosives has not yet been determined. Based on that, I think
> : that the airborn stinger missle theory can be disregarded at
> : least until there is more information.
> 
> Quite likely (disgruntled scientists are only a bit more stable
> than distruntled postal workers, and potentially far more dangerous).
> I agree with your assessment that the probability
> of a missile being involved is quite unlikely.  Still, most of the
> arguments posted against Stinger's involved the missiles altitude
> limitation.  As a scientist/engineer, I was simply posting the
> description of a fully possible workable method which eliminates that
> objection.
> 
> Like you, I realize that so far no evidence of a missile or explosive
> has been detected in the recovered wreckage.  If we rule out pilot
> error, does anything but mechanical failure remain as a possibility?
Sabbotage, terrorist acts, meteor strikes, errant missles are left.
We do have eyewitness's unexplained red streak near the airspace of 
the airplane just before it blew up. Some military guy saw it.
Heck, we don't know what THAT is, so it you reason it must be 
airplane mechancial failure.
>                                       Harry C.
> 
> ps.  As you are already aware, 'mechanical failures' are not limited
>      to really gross structural failures such as an engine falling
>      off (previously happened) or even parts falling off the aircraft
>      (as reported by the press happening at various locations surrounding
>      major airports.)  A fuel level sensor worn to the point of producing
>      sparks would be more than adequate to get the job done!
1) The fuel tank doesn't have enought oxygen in it to support 
combustion. Neat idea to keep the oxygen level down below the 
flash point.
2) They pretty much ruled out any chance of anything in the
fuel tank that has been recovered as being able to cause a spark.
One fuel pump, last I heard, was still missing. However, the FAA
said it doesn't look like a fuel pump could have caused the
accident. "Duh."
3) Anything that can cause catastrophic loss of the airplane,
such as causing it to blow up, has to have a probability of
less then 10^9. That is, basically, it ain't gonna happen.
4) The navy has accidently shot down 747s before. They aren't
10^-9.
Just playing the odds, you'd have to bet that the navy hit
the fuel tank with an unarmed missle, rupturing the fuel tank
(Not all missles are heat seeking...) and providing
spark in an oxygen rich atmousphere. However, all we have for 
evidence of that is a prior incident, Salanger's memo and an 
eyewitness (navy officer?) who saw a red streak go to the airplane 
just before it exploded.
Opps! Let me phrase it as a question: Did the navy fire
an missle without an explosive payload that hit the 747 
and rupture it's center fuel tank, causing a spark and 
bringing the plane down?
And I'd have to say, I don't know.

In article <56a9j2$l4h@sulawesi.lerc.nasa.gov>, Geoffrey A. Landis In article <55tclo$jsr@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu> Bryan W. Reed,
>breed@HARLIE.ee.cornell.edu writes:
>>In order to pick out a unique (to within minus signs) direction
>>that's perpendicular to all vectors in some linearly independent set
>>S, you need S to have n-1 elements (where n is the dimensionality).
>>That's why you need three vectors in 4 dimensions to form the "cross
>>product."  Or whatever the generalization of the cross product is called.
>Cross products really only work in 3 dimensions.
Cross products of the kind described by Bryan Reed work in any dimension
3 and up.
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.
See the nice little paper:
W S Massey "Cross products of vectors in higher-dimensional Euclidean
spaces", AMER MATH MONTHLY, 90 (1983), #10, pp 697-701.
Massey's first theorem is that bilinear maps R^n x R^n -> R^n such that
the result is perpendicular to the factors and the norm of the result
is equal to the area of the parallelogram spanned by the factors is one
of these two products.  His second theorem is if we instead assume the
product is continuous, keep perpendicularity as before, but only require
that the product of linearly independent nonzero vectors is nonzero, then
again, we have one of these two products.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

Jim Carr wrote:
> caesar@copland.udel.edu (Johnny Chien-Min Yu) writes:
> >
> >Current mind control operators are carrying out the social
> >revolution to U.S. with the communism theroy
> 
>  Are you sure that what you wrote is not itself a result of the
>  application of mind-control techniques by the shadow government
>  running the United States?
> 
>  They could be using you to publicize it on Usenet right after they
>  used Pierre Salinger to discredit stuff appearing in newsgroups as
>  a way of keeping it secret.
> 
>  Be sure to wear a conical aluminum-foil hat at all times.
Yes, yes, conical is important! To effectively harness corona discharge
to remodulate and re-radiate any collected interphasic electrophoretic
magnetostatic uvuloresonant microwaves, a cone of angle between 17.5 and
22.5 degrees is specified in my engineering CRC, with the tip extending
at least 60cm above the temples, and with a nonconducting elastic strap
securing it below the chin; to maximize corona discharge, a tinsel
pompom about 5cm diameter should be attached at the peak (if you doubt
me about the pompom, just look at the designs of the most effective
lightning rods; it helps a lot). If you wear this during an electrical
storm, make sure you trail a sturdy grounding strap and/or always be
accompanied by someone taller than yourself (including the hat).
Jim

In article , Ken Fischer  wrote:
>P.S.    Please write a bug report to the author of your
>     mail programs if they accept sci.physics.new-theories
>     as a valid newsgroup, it must be "alt.sci....."
Alas, this would not be a good idea. The most a newsreader can reasonably
do is checking that there is at least one valid newsgroup in the list.
The reason for this is that not all news servers carry all newsgroups
(probably none do), and so the program cannot know that the newsgroup
name is invalid elsewhere.
Greetings,
Ørjan.
-- 
Sign up against spam at 

> NASA dropped a few $(US)billions into the "China Clipper."  It was to be 
> a hypersonic plane which
Assuming you are talking about the National Aerospace Plane (NASP), it
never flew anything; it was a paper-pushing exercise the likes of
which we hopefully will never see again, given recent changes at NASA.
> The mathematical models (and the scramjet windtunnel/testing
> facilities) also imply that building/flying one for test purposes
> should now be realistic (and indeed a logical next step in order to
> buttress the math).
Well, the obvious question is "fly it on what?".  Assuming we are
talking about faster than Mach 3 or so, you can't just strap it onto
an existing research aircraft.
I believe that NASA is planning to announce some kind of air-breathing
X vehicle soon (with in the next year or a few, maybe sooner).  But I
don't any any solid information on that (probably there is no solid
information).

Paul D. Shocklee (shocklee@rogue.princeton.edu) wrote:
: A free neutron has a lifetime of 900 seconds.  So why don't neutron
: stars decay?  I assume that it's the same reason that neutrons in stable
: nuclei don't decay - it's energetically forbidden.  But how, exactly?
Hate to follow up my own post; makes me feel like Archimedes Plutonium.
But, after sending this, I looked up the answer, and it actually is
pretty cool, so I thought I would share it.
So it turns out that the reason neutrons do not beta decay inside
neutron stars is that neutron stars are not composed solely of neutrons.
There is some equilibrium density of electrons and protons (and possibly
other particles, which I'll come to in a minute), since the reactions
n -> p + e + nu-bar_e and p + e -> n + nu_e can convert neutrons to
protons and vice versa.  (The neutrinos escape.)  We can make the
approximation that each species of fermion fills up its own Fermi gas,
to some level.  Then, the condition for the neutrons to be stable
against beta decay is that the electron Fermi sea should be filled up to
a momentum greater than the maximum momentum of the electron emitted in
neutron beta decay.  Then, there won't be any states available for an
emitted electron to occupy, so it won't be emitted!
(You can put numbers behind all of this, of course, and if you want the
full explanation, it's in Weinberg, _Gravitation and Cosmology_, section
11.4.)
Now comes the cool part.  Suppose that we let the electron Fermi level
become larger; now *other* particles besides the neutron can become
stable.  For instance, the muon becomes stable if the Fermi momentum is
greater than about 53 MeV, because then the Pauli principle will block the
emission of electrons in the process mu -> e + nu + nu-bar.  In fact, if
we let the Fermi momentum become even greater, say bigger than the muon
mass, then it becomes energetically favorable for electrons at the top
of the Fermi sea to be converted into muons (with the neutrinos
escaping).  Thus neutron stars of even moderate mass (as shown in
Weinberg) will have lots of stable muons running around inside of them!  
But then, why stop at muons?  You can also stabilize hyperons and various
excited states of nucleons; the fun never ends! :)
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|    Paul D. Shocklee - physics grad student - Princeton University    |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 	  That which does not kill me makes me smarter,                |
|		    except oxygen deprivation.                         |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Publius (publius@gate.net) wrote:
[The usual]
...But what a singularly ironic heading for Pubicus to post...
--
******************************
Czar
EAC Minister-without-portfolio
******************************
   Me fail English?
   That's unpossible!
             - Ralph Wiggum
******************************

Jasper Li wrote:
> 
> A 3rd year Aerospace friend of mine asked me one day how he could explain
> why a Curling rock curls in terms of some ficticous force acting at right
> angles to the direction the rock was travelling.  I couldn't figure it
> out and the problem is still bugging me.
> 
> Physically, why does the rock curl?  And how can it be expressed
> mathematically?  As a horizontal force, or a moment?
If you can find the archives of PHYS-L, there was a discussion of this back 
in Dec of '91 or '92. If I recal correctly, it is very much like why a curve 
ball curves etc.  The spinning of the rock means that at the rock/liquid/ice 
interface one side of the rock is moving faster relative to the ice than its 
linear speed and the other side is moving slower.  Your aerospace friend 
should know the appropriate fluid relations to take it from there.
|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++|
| Doug Craigen                                                 |
|                                                              |
| If you think Physics is no laughing matter, think again .... |
|    http://cyberspc.mb.ca/~dcc/phys/humor.html                |
|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++|

In article <569e7r$m74@dscomsa.desy.de>,
Patrick van Esch  wrote:
>Gary (gspratley@enterprise.net) wrote:
>: If the range of a force is determined by the mass of it's guage boson,
>: why is the strong force limited to the nucleus.  If the gluon is
>: massless how come the strong force is not infinite
>
>Good question :-)
>The answer: because the range of a force is not just determined
>by the mass of its gauge boson.  Of course heavy bosons don't get
>far, but it is not because they're light that they can.
>The reason is that QCD is a non-abelian gauge theory, meaning
>that gluons couple amongst themselves. This confuses the simple
>Yukawa picture ( 1/r.exp{-r/r_mass}  with r_mass = m_gauge.constant)
>You get lots of screening effects and so on.
>Moreover, the long range of the strong force is not understood
>from first principles as this is very deep in the non-perturbative
>domain of QCD.
What about gravity. In some sense it can be thought of as a
non-Abelian gauge theory (it bears the hallmark signature
of a non-Abelian theory that it's force carriers should self 
couple i.e. gravity couples to mass-energy so it couples to
everything including itself).Yet gravity has a long range force.
Of course the big difference is that the gravitational coupling
is very weak while alpha_strong  is large. So maybe it's
not the Abelian versus non-Abelian nature of the coupling that
determines if you have long range forces, but rather it's the
strength of the coupling that matters. In fact Wilson in his
original 1974 PRD paper on lattice gauge theory suggests
that a U(1) gauge theory might have a massive gauge boson if
its coupling became large enough (e.g. if QED did not have
a coupling of order 1/100 but rather say of order 1 or 10
the photon might be massive). I don't fully understand this 
which is why I keep bringing it up hoping that someone
can talk about it a bit more.
Doug
.

G T Clark (gtclark@tattoo.ed.ac.uk) wrote:
: 	Are you sure? I haven't had a chance to test it in both
: hemispheres and on the equator myself, but I've seen some very
: convincing film made by someone who did.
And I've seen a film about a little E.T. who wanted to phone home...
Come back after you've read what the FAQ says about the bath-tub.
Kris
--
Kris Croes - mailto:croes@imec.be - http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~croes/
"Due to budget cuts the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off" 

DB wrote:
> 
> vanomen  wrote:
> 
> >Superstition?  I call it Faith.  God gave us a free will to decide on
> >our own.  YOu have decided your way and I mine.  2 things to think
> >about though
> >#1 If I am wrong and there is no God?  WEll  worst case I have still
> >tried to live a life and set an example for my family of a way of life
> >that is steps and leaps above the way most people live and treat each
> >other
Yeah, and example that they should live in fear of the boogy
man. That they should escape reality, and not embrace it. And
you will have been annoying the rest of us. Most of the wars
this world has seen has been over "religious" differences. 
If I were God, perhaps I'd damn all the believers out of hand.
> >#2 However if I am correct and there is a God(which I am sure there
> >is) then I have eternal Life.
> 
>  Not if the god is Krishna or Thor or Isis or Satan or the King of
> Leprechauns.

In article <3289DD5A.75C9@nwu.edu> brian artese  writes:
>No... Your characterization claimed that the 'first principle' of 
>deconstruction was that an author's text obscures some 
>already-established thing called 'intent.'  Writers like Derrida or de 
>Man would never propose such a naive schema.
>
>Why naive?  Let me answer this way:  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.  Let's say he 
>publishes this writing and you and I read it.  We talk about the text, 
>and perhaps at some point you say, 'I know what this author means.'  
>Another way to say that is, 'I know what this author means to say,' or 
>'I know what this author intends to say.'
>
>Such a statement does not merely claim to have read the actual words of 
>the author, to which we all have access.  The statement does not simply 
>point to *what* the text says; it claims to have apprehended something 
>else:  the 'intent' of the author.  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; and as a matter of fact, I find
your hypothesis that "he succeeded in writing down what he had to say" to
be implausible at best, since it implies that he's a perfect writer.
Take any glance at a linguistics or psycholinguistics text and you'll
find innumerable examples where a person's "intended utterance" and
"actual utterance" are widely varying; these are often but not always
lumped under the heading of "slips of the tongue."  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.
Given the amount of difference between the message conveyed and the words
uttered in a dialogue/speech occurrance, 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.
>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.
	Patrick

ricka@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) enunciated:
>In article <56bhid$eng@ren.cei.net>,
>Lee Kent Hempfling  wrote:
>[deleted]
>>In reference to the above inquiry:
>>
>>For starters:
>>1) Cells damage... no reboot possible
>>2) ALL tests to date have been with LIVE animals
>>..freeze a live creature and it tends to remain alive... no duh! For
>>awhile.......hmmmmm
>>3) ALL scams... I mean scientific cryonic freezings have been done
>>    on DEAD humans. LIFE IS NOT THERE TO REBOOT ON THAW!
>> (sorry had to put the caps in to make the original poster happy)
>>4) Example: Freeze a computer. Unfreeze it. What do you have? A cold
>>  computer. But if there was no programming in it when it was frozen
>>there won't be any in it when it is thawed. Magic is not a reality
>>gang.
>>5) BUT....(sorry I did it again)... scams and money making frauds
>>_are_ a reality. And what better way to play the fraud than on a
>>subject that can not be refuted with fact. +Maybe+ +someday+ +perhaps+
>>science will +find+ a way to +bring the dead back to life+........
>>this is playing on the same crud cults have played on for centuries.
>>Taking advantage of the poor and about to be dead. Don't give them
>>hope of an afterlife...... give them hope of anotherlife. Bull.
>>F) (just checking to see if you're still awake) Cryonics is science
>>being used as a replacement for cult religion so scam artists can rule
>>the pulpit again.....
>>G) Freeze an organ and the organ will be damaged. COOL it and it will
>>be preserved. Now.... freeze a head and hope it will grow another body
>>or perhaps be put on another body or perhaps, who knows what else is
>>told to the poor and bewildered rich folk who can't take it with them
>>so they opt to leave them with it.......but you know something?
>>A scam is a scam is a scam. The sad part is that many otherwise
>>intelligent people will fall for a deception not because they KNOW it
>>to be a possibility but because it supports their HOPES.
>>
>>Fire away!
>>
>Dear Mr. Hempfling
>Please remember all the above criticisms the day your doctor
>says you're dying and there's nothing current medical therapies
>can do. Just repeating: It's a scam, it's a scam, it's a scam...
I am dying. We all are. I will not opt for one person or one group of
high rolling artists telling me there will be hope for me to return as
a living breathing entity after the life in me has somehow chosen
otherwise. I am not gullible. I am also not stupid. Far from it. So
suffice to allow me to say the above comment to please remember all
these criticisms when its my turn will not disuade me now now will it
disuade me on my death bed.  Life is something I cherish. I will not
toy with it. I will not proclaim that I can somehow win over it. Life
ends. And when it does there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Holding out hope for a scientific maybe is absolutely ridiculous in
the light that when the life is gone, son, it is gone. I find more
credence in an afterlife potential in a spiritual manner than I do in
a physical manner. I can not prove that a spirit life is not me. I can
prove that a physical life is not alive when it is dead. There is
animate and there is inanimate matter constructs. An inanimate matter
construct (liek a rock) can never be dead as it never was alive. But
an animate matter construct can be dead, it just can not be alive
again. The matter does not cease to exist the life does. So now...
freeze away, all those poor souls of hope and ignore the life. All it
is, is a replacement for a physical based religion instead of a
spiritual based religion. Spirit, I can only wonder about but when a
physical animate becomes inanimate there is no argument. Freeze away
my friends... all you are doing is paying some scientific con artist
for the ability to use fanzy toys and very cold techniques to do what
every chain letter does. Give hope based in absolute nothing.
>Thank you
>[heh, heh, heh...]
>Boy, there's gonna be a lot of room once all the morons are gone.
>Death: nature's technique for spotting the terminally stupid.
This is a totally ridiculous and very unscientific statement. It
sounds just like the religious falderall of the rapture. Cryonics
seeks to put the body where the soul can not tread. Rapture seeks to
put the body where only the soul can tread. Go figure. One can not be
proven any more than the other. But one can be pointed out to be
nothing different from the other. The church calls for money to be
paid to get the poor dead soul to a higher ground. HA! Cryonics calls
for money to be paid to get the poor dead body to a colder ground. HA!
I hate to break the news to you but death is not a choice. Face it.
YOU are going to die and nothing you can do will change that. Nothing
you can do, nor pay for, can bring you back in a physical body when
there is no life inside it.
But far be it for me, or any other attempt at logic to stand in the
way of a person's hope. One can place hope in the position of
potential or one can place hope in the position of control. If you can
control it then it is not hope. It is hype.
The machine this company has built from the patent application plans
is a thinking machine without programming. It is a physical thing.
Turning it off simply clears all memory and shuts down the function.
Turning it back on permits new memory and another function. But we CAN
turn it on and off at will as its "life" is nothing more than a
battery. Once that power source is removed from the living structure
it is gone. You, nor anyone else, can turn it back on when IT IS NOT
THERE to be turned on.
No matter the amount of blind belief in science (which is a very bad
thing to do) will change that. It will only change the money from the
pocket of the person going to die to the pocket of the person still
alive. The last laugh, my friend is with the bank. Not the person
being faced with mortality's lesson.
One can not change reality to fit one's hopes. One can change one's
hopes to fit reality. But there is no money in it.
Cheers!
Fire Away!
lkh
Lee Kent Hempfling...................|lkh@cei.net
chairman, ceo........................|http://www.aston.ac.uk/~batong/Neutronics/
Neutronics Technologies Corporation..|West Midlands, UK; Arkansas, USA.

ricka@praline.no.neosoft.com (RHA) enunciated:
>In article <56bhid$eng@ren.cei.net>,
>Lee Kent Hempfling  wrote:
>[deleted]
>>In reference to the above inquiry:
>>
>>For starters:
>>1) Cells damage... no reboot possible
>>2) ALL tests to date have been with LIVE animals
>>..freeze a live creature and it tends to remain alive... no duh! For
>>awhile.......hmmmmm
>>3) ALL scams... I mean scientific cryonic freezings have been done
>>    on DEAD humans. LIFE IS NOT THERE TO REBOOT ON THAW!
>> (sorry had to put the caps in to make the original poster happy)
>>4) Example: Freeze a computer. Unfreeze it. What do you have? A cold
>>  computer. But if there was no programming in it when it was frozen
>>there won't be any in it when it is thawed. Magic is not a reality
>>gang.
>>5) BUT....(sorry I did it again)... scams and money making frauds
>>_are_ a reality. And what better way to play the fraud than on a
>>subject that can not be refuted with fact. +Maybe+ +someday+ +perhaps+
>>science will +find+ a way to +bring the dead back to life+........
>>this is playing on the same crud cults have played on for centuries.
>>Taking advantage of the poor and about to be dead. Don't give them
>>hope of an afterlife...... give them hope of anotherlife. Bull.
>>F) (just checking to see if you're still awake) Cryonics is science
>>being used as a replacement for cult religion so scam artists can rule
>>the pulpit again.....
>>G) Freeze an organ and the organ will be damaged. COOL it and it will
>>be preserved. Now.... freeze a head and hope it will grow another body
>>or perhaps be put on another body or perhaps, who knows what else is
>>told to the poor and bewildered rich folk who can't take it with them
>>so they opt to leave them with it.......but you know something?
>>A scam is a scam is a scam. The sad part is that many otherwise
>>intelligent people will fall for a deception not because they KNOW it
>>to be a possibility but because it supports their HOPES.
>>
>>Fire away!
>>
>Dear Mr. Hempfling
>Please remember all the above criticisms the day your doctor
>says you're dying and there's nothing current medical therapies
>can do. Just repeating: It's a scam, it's a scam, it's a scam...
I am dying. We all are. I will not opt for one person or one group of
high rolling artists telling me there will be hope for me to return as
a living breathing entity after the life in me has somehow chosen
otherwise. I am not gullible. I am also not stupid. Far from it. So
suffice to allow me to say the above comment to please remember all
these criticisms when its my turn will not disuade me now now will it
disuade me on my death bed.  Life is something I cherish. I will not
toy with it. I will not proclaim that I can somehow win over it. Life
ends. And when it does there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Holding out hope for a scientific maybe is absolutely ridiculous in
the light that when the life is gone, son, it is gone. I find more
credence in an afterlife potential in a spiritual manner than I do in
a physical manner. I can not prove that a spirit life is not me. I can
prove that a physical life is not alive when it is dead. There is
animate and there is inanimate matter constructs. An inanimate matter
construct (liek a rock) can never be dead as it never was alive. But
an animate matter construct can be dead, it just can not be alive
again. The matter does not cease to exist the life does. So now...
freeze away, all those poor souls of hope and ignore the life. All it
is, is a replacement for a physical based religion instead of a
spiritual based religion. Spirit, I can only wonder about but when a
physical animate becomes inanimate there is no argument. Freeze away
my friends... all you are doing is paying some scientific con artist
for the ability to use fanzy toys and very cold techniques to do what
every chain letter does. Give hope based in absolute nothing.
>Thank you
>[heh, heh, heh...]
>Boy, there's gonna be a lot of room once all the morons are gone.
>Death: nature's technique for spotting the terminally stupid.
This is a totally ridiculous and very unscientific statement. It
sounds just like the religious falderall of the rapture. Cryonics
seeks to put the body where the soul can not tread. Rapture seeks to
put the body where only the soul can tread. Go figure. One can not be
proven any more than the other. But one can be pointed out to be
nothing different from the other. The church calls for money to be
paid to get the poor dead soul to a higher ground. HA! Cryonics calls
for money to be paid to get the poor dead body to a colder ground. HA!
I hate to break the news to you but death is not a choice. Face it.
YOU are going to die and nothing you can do will change that. Nothing
you can do, nor pay for, can bring you back in a physical body when
there is no life inside it.
But far be it for me, or any other attempt at logic to stand in the
way of a person's hope. One can place hope in the position of
potential or one can place hope in the position of control. If you can
control it then it is not hope. It is hype.
The machine this company has built from the patent application plans
is a thinking machine without programming. It is a physical thing.
Turning it off simply clears all memory and shuts down the function.
Turning it back on permits new memory and another function. But we CAN
turn it on and off at will as its "life" is nothing more than a
battery. Once that power source is removed from the living structure
it is gone. You, nor anyone else, can turn it back on when IT IS NOT
THERE to be turned on.
No matter the amount of blind belief in science (which is a very bad
thing to do) will change that. It will only change the money from the
pocket of the person going to die to the pocket of the person still
alive. The last laugh, my friend is with the bank. Not the person
being faced with mortality's lesson.
One can not change reality to fit one's hopes. One can change one's
hopes to fit reality. But there is no money in it.
Cheers!
Fire Away!
lkh
Lee Kent Hempfling...................|lkh@cei.net
chairman, ceo........................|http://www.aston.ac.uk/~batong/Neutronics/
Neutronics Technologies Corporation..|West Midlands, UK; Arkansas, USA.

Riccardo Casimiro Storti (zordan@ozemail.com.au) wrote:
: I have a question if someone could help, not quite related to what your
: talking about.
: 
: Is momentum always conserved during interactions (say..fluid flow through a
: nozzle)?
: 
You must carefully define the *system* to know whether or not it is. In 
an *isolated* system (no net external force) momentum is always conserved.
If there is an external force, it is not.
-- 
Lawrence R. Mead (lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu) 
ESCHEW OBFUSCATION ! ESPOUSE ELUCIDATION !
http://www-dept.usm.edu/~scitech/phy/mead.html 

cryofan@brokersys.com (Randy) wrote:
> 1
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>a1pianist@aol.com (A1Pianist) wrote:
>>>AN ARTICLE IN THE MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CRYONICS SOCIETY(1994?) 
>>>(PUBLISHER:ETTINGER/UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS) IN CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA
>>>ANNOUNCED THAT RESEARCH INVESTIGATING THE STRUCTURE  OF CONSCIOUSNESS
>>>POINTED TO BIOLOGICAL/ORGANIC ORIGIN.  HAS ANYONE READ THE ARTICLE OR KNOW
>>>THE WORK DONE IN MAKING THIS DETERMINATION?  TOM FARESE, 2319 GRANADA
>>>COURT, PINOLE, CALIFORNINA 94564.  THANKS.
>
>
>>You have this handicap with your shift lock, don't you?  Perhaps you 
>>ought not impress it upon those of us with even minimal keyboard skills
>
>>Cryonics is New Age bafflegab, a hind gut fermentation ranking with Kryon 
>>(Whoa!  Correlation!), quartz crystals, and homeopathic gobbledygook.  
>>God created liquid nitrogen for cooling vac line traps, not heads bobbing 
>i>n a dewar like some sort of demented cyro-lava lamp.
>
>
>I have been researching cryonics for a year or so and am looking for
>constructive, science-oriented or logical criticisms of such. Can you
>give some reasons for your negative opinion of cryonics?
Get yourself a PVT phase diagram for water.
All you need do is take living tissue and freeze the bulk solid without 
killing the cells or bursting them when the water freezes, eventually 
thaw likewise, and not kill the tissue in the interim.
The brain is solely fueled by aerobic respiration, is a goodly sized 
lump, is protected by the tight junctions of the blood brain barrier...  
All you need do is, over a period of 180 seconds maximum diffuse in a 
cryprotective agent and drop the temp by 230 degrees kelvin.  Don't 
disrupt either the aqeuous or lipid compartments when you do it.
Try it with a mouse - they're small.
If you diddle with a living person it is homicide.  If you do it with a 
dead person you can add resurrection to your shopping list.
-- 
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!

In <3286DD62.775C@eurocontrol.fr>, Steve Jones - JON  writes:
>Hindsight is a wonderful thing, take Lord Byron who said of Dickens
>"Future generations shall wonder why we held him so high".  Or NY Times
>article on Twain which said "In a 100 years time only the 'Jumping Frog'
>will be remembered".  100 years ago Jules Verne wrote "From Earth to the
>Moon".   
Dickens? Twain? Verne? Never heard of 'em. :-) Actually, I'm currently 
re-reading Twain's "Letters from the Earth" and other censored short stories,
and my wife is getting annoyed at my constant muttering "This man is a genius." 
>Small minds can never envisage change, they cling to the "now"
>as perfect.  If you want a modern example, just look at IBMs latest
>assertion that the year 2000 won't be a problem for them.
On behalf of the company that employs me, I can assure you that the year 2000
won't be a problem for IBM. It will, however, be a problem for anyone else who
uses IBM hardware and software... wait a minute... IBM's the biggest customer of
IBM hardware and software! Oh shit...
(Actually, and officially, I do not presume to speak for the brilliant upper-level
management of the I.B.M. Corporation, in whom I have the utmost confidence, as
far as they know.) 
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.     
Wayne Delia, redsox3@ibm.net
"Don't take me! I have a wife and kids! Take *them*!"  - Homer Simpson

shocklee@rogue.princeton.edu (Paul D. Shocklee) wrote:
>Paul D. Shocklee (shocklee@rogue.princeton.edu) wrote:
[snip]
>But then, why stop at muons?  You can also stabilize hyperons and various
>excited states of nucleons; the fun never ends! :)
Unless the mass of the neutron star exceeds Chandrasekar's Limit (about 
1.4 solar masses) and it collapses into a black hole.
Wheels within wheels...
-- 
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!

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In article <56asn6$6v9@thor.atcon.com>,
Nicholas Lawrence Kehoe  wrote:
>I'm a grade 12 physics student. Recently we were asked to discuss in class
>wheather or not the 0.1s reaction time rule was fair or not in the 100m
>race. We had to say if it was fair to eject Linford CHristie from the race
>this summer.
>
>	Was it fair? Did he jump the gun?
>
>I'd like any ideas or aguments. I'm especially interested in the accuracy
>of the 0.1s reaction time rule for starting!
It certainly was fair because the rule was established before the
Olympics and would have been applied to any runner.  In fact, they
reported on the broadcast at the time that Christie himself had
pushed for the implementation of such a rule.
Whether the rule is reasonable is another question.  I don't have any
hard data of my own, but the 0.1 second rule was supposedly
established after some kind of experimentation.  I think it might be
possible for some people to trigger an arm motion within 0.1 seconds
of hearing a signal, but if the sensors on the starting blocks are
only sensitive to the runners' first leg motion then I think 0.1
seconds is probably quite reasonable.
Whether Christie jumped the gun is yet another question.  Does anyone
know what Christie's two false start times were?  If they were much
below 0.1 seconds (I think at least one of them was) then we can be
sure he jumped the gun.
Steve

Jerry  wrote:
>Tim Hollebeek wrote:
>> 
>> In article <32853A38.38E7@gte.net>, Ash  writes:
>> > I read in a science book that there is a greater posibility of a
>> > printinng press exploding and forming webster's dictionary completly by
>> > accident; as opposed to the world being created from some dead matter.
[snip]
>Comments from Jerry:
[snip
>  However the story is more complex than that. Our universe is composed of a spectrum 
>of energy from our light speed toward infinite light speed. Over an infinity of time,
>we get universes of God alone where all the energy is at the highest light speeds and
>only standing waves of energy form.
[snip]
"Never argue with an idiot.  Casual passersby cannot tell the 
difference."
   1) "God did it."  Where do you go from there?  Supplication?  6000+ 
years of religion and a million-plus deities did not bring forth the 
flush toilet.  God turns a blind eye (or whatever) to Hitler's 
concentration camps (12 million murders), Stalin's Gulag (20 million 
including Mushik famine), Mao's Great Leap Forward killing 30 million by 
famine, Africa right now...  What makes you think It gives a shit about 
smaller stuff?
   2) "Science."  The thing speaks for itself.
   3) "Pseudoscience."  Cargo cults only benefit the priests.
Thomas Aquinas can blather until the sun burns down.  Anything which 
accounts for the creation of the manufacturer can just as easily account 
for building the package.
-- 
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"  The Net!

G*rd*n wrote:
| >| > > I don't see anything unscientific in belief in abductions
| >| > > by aliens, given the information available to the average
| >| > > person.  I heard Dr. Sagan complaining about such beliefs on
| >| > > the radio, and yet all he could come up with as a counter
| >| > > was appeal to authority -- not a very good
| >| > > argument.
dlessard@btg.com:
| >| The radio interview you heard must have been a short one, or perhaps you
| >| only heard a piece of it.  To get the full flavor of Sagan's arguments,
| >| get
| >| a copy of....
(G*rd*n) writes:
| >No doubt Dr. Sagan can present other arguments.  I am
| >pointing out that he chose not to do so in the case I
| >mentioned, but appealed to authority -- famous, government-
| >approved scientists in white coats don't believe in them,
| >so you shouldn't either.  He might as well have cited
| >Biblical texts.
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola):
| You're contradicting yourself, Mr. Fitch.  You've already backed off
| from the claim that "all he could come up with as a counter" to "he
| chose to present as a counter."  I don't suppose the argument that he
| chose was at all related to the medium through which he was arguing?
I'll bet dollars to dogbiscuits you knew that "all he could 
come up with" was a common hyperbolic cliche.  He could,
after all, have recited the Sephirah Yetzirah backward 
while standing on his head.
It was precisely his choice vis-a-vis the medium that I
was pointing out.  The result of appealing to authority
in regard to the question of alien abduction is to invite
other appeals to other authorities, some of whom confirm
alien abduction.  For instance, in the Bible, St. Paul says
he was caught up into some supernal realm or other (as
I recall) -- maybe aliens did it.
| Broadcast media are notorious for only being able to convey sound bites
| and appeals to authority, rather than lengthy reasoned discourses.  The
| audience expects that, the producers expect that, the people involved
| in the arguments expect that -- it seems that everyone expects that
| except for someone with a science-is-religion axe to grind.
This is not the axe being ground at the moment; although
I'm not a big Sagan-watcher, it has not been my impression 
that he is a major proponent of scientism.  I was just
wondering why he did not recommend skepticism and
examination of the available evidence, instead of 
faith.
-- 
   }"{    G*rd*n   }"{  gcf @ panix.com  }"{

On 12 Nov 1996 23:56:46 GMT, devens@uoguelph.ca (David L Evens) wrote:
>Ken H. Seto (kenseto@erinet.com) wrote:
>: On 7 Nov 1996 03:01:57 GMT, devens@uoguelph.ca (David L Evens) wrote:
>: No. What I mean is that the satellite is not rotating so the antenna
>: can locked onto a specific direction and enabling it to detect the
>: dipole. On the earth's surface, the antenna is subjected to the
>: rotating motion of the earth and thus the direction of absolute motion
>: is continuously changing. In other words, there is no specific
>: direction that you can locked onto. This means that all the directions
>: are the same and that's why you cannot detect the dipole on earth.
>
>So you are claiming that we cannot determine how the Earth is moving at 
>any time.
No. What I said was that the earth's direction of absolute motion is
changing continuously due to its confinement to the geometries of the
local E-Matrix. This process is known to us as gravity. I think what
you are referring to is the observed relative motion. Of course you
can determine how the earth is moving relative to another body and
this relative motion is caused by its own absolute motion interacting
with the absolute motion of the relative object.
Ken Seto

Steve Emmerson wrote:
> In article <562gs3$k2k@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>,
>         bjon@ix.netcom.com (Brian Jones) writes:
> > If two events occur, how many different distances are there between
> > them and how many different time interval are there between them?
> There can be an infinitude.
> > And if you say more than one in either case, then why?
> SRT, as you clearly know.
The number of distances is infinite also in the Newtonian
kinematics, unless the time difference is zero. But there
the number of time differences is one.
------------------------------------------------------------------  
   Mikko J. Levanto            !           Tel. +358 8 551 2448  
   VTT Electronics             !           Fax  +358 8 551 2320 
   P.O.Box 1100                ! 
   FIN-90571 Oulu, Finland     ! Internet: Mikko.Levanto@vtt.fi 
----------- VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland -----------

Dean Povey wrote:
> In AD gravitation, the perihelion advance for each planet is
> proportional to the square root of the division of the solar mass by
> the orbital radius power 3.
> 
>              Tp = sqrt(M / r^3)      [ditto: DGP]
Care to derive this?
> If the Mercury value is taken as 43" . . . .
Do you _actually_ mean that Autodynamics can't predict Mercury's perhelion
precession without being given it?  That's not very impressive.  Right
there general relativity has a head start on you.
> [These] values are equal to Hall's empirical values and close to the
> expected values calculated by Newcomb.
Empirical values and expected values?  I don't see observational values.
-- 
                             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"

On Wed, 13 Nov 1996 13:43:44 GMT, bjon@ix.netcom.com (Brian D. Jones)
wrote:
>devens@uoguelph.ca (David L Evens) wrote [in part]:
>
>>: >>Anyway, if light has no real (or absolute) motion, then how does it
>>: >>get to here from the stars? And what type of light motion is source
>>: >>independent, absolute or relative?  It makes no sense to say relative
>>: >>because "Relative to what?" cannot be answered.  But let's go on to
>
>>: >I will answer it.  Relative to any observer whatsoever. That was easy!
>
>>: And meaningless.  (What does "Light's speed relative to any observer
>>: whatsoever is independent of the light source" mean?)
>
>>Actually, the meaning is quite simple:  All observers, regardless of 
>>inertial motions, observe that all light from all sources moves at 
>>precisely the same speed.
That's not true. It should be as follows:  All observers, regardless
of inertial motions, observe that all light from all sources moves at
a constant speed. In other words, light has an absolute speed. But
this absolute speed speed is not the familiar 'c' because 'c' includes
the absolute motion of the earth Lab. in which the measurement was
made. The relationship between 'c' and the absolute light-speed (Ca)
and the absolute motion (V) of the earth lab is as follows:
                          c = Ca*Sqrt(1-V^2/Ca^2)
Ken Seto

Dean Povey wrote:
> In AD gravitation, the perihelion advance for each planet is
> proportional to the square root of the division of the solar mass by
> the orbital radius power 3.
> 
>              Tp = sqrt(M / r^3)      [ditto: DGP]
Care to derive this?
> If the Mercury value is taken as 43" . . . .
Do you _actually_ mean that Autodynamics can't predict Mercury's perhelion
precession without being given it?  That's not very impressive.  Right
there general relativity has a head start on you.
-- 
                             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"

weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) writes:
>>>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
>>>>>>weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria  Weineck) wrote:
>>>>>>>If I may quickly interfere here in my usual conciliatory voice:
>>>>>>>I think that, yes, Zeleny is right: both Destruktion and deconstruction 
>>>>>>>have an etymological connection to destruction; he is right further in 
>>>>>>>claiming that Derrida and Heidegger are very attuned to implications 
>>>>>>>of this sort -- to deny that there is any link whatsoever strikes me 
>>>>>>>as problematic.
>>>>>>I appreciate your interference, but calling Derrida's self-serving
>>>>>>lie `problematic' is still, umm...  "problematic" -- for reasons I
>>>>>>suggested by my analogy with Jorg Haider.  Do you seriously expect
>>>>>>Derrida to remain morally unaffected by inheriting his critical
>>>>>>methodology from a Nazi and sharing it with a Nazi collaborator?
>>>>>Yes; as much as I don't accuse Aristotelians to be pro-slavery. 
>>>>Why ever not?  Philosophers such as Bernard Williams in _Shame and
>>>>Necessity_ -- have made THAT argument.  What sort of superiority --
>>>>and surely the intellectual variety could be ruled out right away --
>>>>entitles you to dismiss them without consideration?
>>>You says I haven't considered it? I'm familiar with the argument; it 
>>>doesn't interest me, and I think it's fallacious. Next thing you'll argue 
>>>that everybody who thinks Nietzsche is worthwhile will contract syphilis. 
>>No germ or poison can contaminate reason as much as the belief that some 
>>men are natural slaves.
>So?
So your hysterical analogy is quite worthless, as usual.
>>>I find much of Heidegger's approach to metaphysics problematic, and I 
>>>have no interest in constructing apologetic arguments about his 
>>>involvement with the Nazis -- yes, he was a Nazi, and, yes, part of his 
>>>philosophy reflects this or is at least connected to it. That does not 
>>>constitute a critique of his philosophical work yet; it certainly does 
>>>not constitute a critique of _Derrida's_ philosophical work. As you damn 
>>>well know.
>Response?
You know where to find my critique of Derrida's philosophical work.
Feel free to join in.  In this thread I am exclusively addressing his
moral failure.  To recap:
Derrida:
"The word _déconstruction_ ... has nothing to do with destruction."
Derrida:
"Deconstruction ... is simply a question of ... being alert to the
implications, to the historical sedimentation of the language which we
use."
Gasché:
"The main concepts to which deconstruction can and must be retraced
are those of _Abbau_ (dismantling) in the later work of Husserl and
_Destruktion_ (destruction) in the early philosophy of Heidegger."
Deconstructively speaking, we have a contradiction.  Hence Derrida is
lying, cqfd.
>>>>>>If so, what good is his alleged sensitivity to "historical
>>>>>>sedimentation"?
>>>>>It's good when it's subtle; your brand is indeed worthless.
>>>>Subtlety is no substitute for truth.
>>>It's a good approach to it, though. 
>>It is in no way superior to honest reason as an approach to truth.
>Honesty and subtlety are not mutually exclusive; I consider your response 
>a non-response.
You implied that my brand of deconstructing `déconstruction' was
worthless for want of subtlety.  Consider your claim refuted by your
own subsequent turn.
>>>>>>	Zeleny's problem is that he cannot distinguish between throwing a 
>>>>>>>bomb at a church and taking it apart piece by piece, lovingly, to see 
>>>>>>>how it is made. The latter does involve, to introduce a new term, 
>>>>>>>dismantling, and it is a destruction to the extent that any 
>>>>>>>interference with a structure is a destruction because it doesn't 
>>>>>>>leav its object unchanged.
>>>>>>ANY interference with a structure is a destruction because it doesn't
>>>>>>leave its object unchanged?  Are you really implying that each time
>>>>>>you eat your Wheaties or take your morning shit, read a newspaper or
>>>>>>write your Usenet screed, you destroy your body or your mind, by dint
>>>>>>of interfering therewith?  Would you care to reconsider your claim
>>>>>>after a leisurely walk through Liddell & Scott on metabole?  
Response?
>>>>>>                                                              At any
>>>>>>rate, Heidegger dismantles the Spirit, Logos, and Reason, to replace
>>>>>>them with -- WHAT?
>>>>>Yes, I am -- which is precisely why your objection is so worthless; 
>>>>>deconstruction is destructive precisely to that degree --- that is, it 
>>>>>is destructive in such obvious and negligible ways that to point out 
>>>>>that it is destructive and trying to build your case on it bespeaks your 
>>>>>vindictive fantasies rather than any understanding of what is at stake.
>>>>Half of my family was murdered by Heidegger's party comrades.  What
>>>>makes YOU so sure of your entitlement to the high moral ground in
>>>>denouncing my "vindictive fantasies"?  What have YOU got at stake?
>>>Half of my family belongs to slavic Untermenschen; another part (a small 
>>>one) is gypsy; my husband is Jewish and my children according to 
>>>Antisemites the result of Rassenschande --  so what's your point?
>>First tell me what entitles you to the high moral ground.
>You introduced the terrain; you graze it. Since you introduces your 
>family history, I introduced mine -- but it's you who seems to think it's 
>relevant. Explain yourself.
I introduced my family history to put in context my moral concerns,
which you so charitably characterized as "vindictive fantasies."  As
far as I am concerned, your ethnic provenance is irrelevant to moral
standing -- but perhaps you feel differently.  So answer the question
already.
>>>>>"What does he replace them with?" -- Why, do you think philosophy is like 
>>>>>restocking the shelves in a supermarket? Oh, gee, these Wheaties seem 
>>>>>stale, let's put some Cheerios in instead? As soon as you stop asking 
>>>>>"what is" in favor of "what is it good for," you're in trouble. Get your 
>>>>>reassurances somewhere else -- Commentary would probably suit.
>>>>What a jolly good show of non-partisan demagoguery.  Now would you
>>>>kindly point out an instance when I stopped asking "what is" in favor
>>>>of "what is it good for"?
>>>It's implied in your suggestion that critique should reshelve the 
>>>metaphysical storehouse.
>>Non sequitur.  Quidditative inquiry depends on the availability of its 
>>tools and subject matter alike, as surely as pragmatic concerns depend
>>on an expectation of benefit.
>So tell us what your point was in the dramatically capitalized "WHAT?"
First you answer the question.
Cordially, - Mikhail | God: "Sum id quod sum." Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum."
Zeleny@math.ucla.edu | Popeye:   "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum."
itinerant philosopher -- will think for food  ** www.ptyx.com ** MZ@ptyx.com 
ptyx ** 6869 Pacific View Drive, LA, CA 90068 ** 213-876-8234/874-4745 (fax)