I think Sheldon Cooper said that what he liked most about theoretical physicists was they could go their entire career without having to prove a single thing. There's a lot of truth in that fiction, but does that it comes from fiction mean it's not true? :)

I can see where I lost some readers in my metaphor weeks ago, comparing theoretical physicists to science fiction authors. The word fiction has a literary sense, as in science fiction books, but it also has another sense, as in fact or fiction. The word theoretical also loosely means fictional, or more precisely, unproven. When I suggested that Hawkings was a science fiction author, it was a play on words meaning science that was unproven (fiction), not literally the literary "space opera" science fiction.

Science fiction authors predicted the cell phone, DNA, SCUBA gear, rockets, submarines, tanks, and the atom bomb decades before scientists proved any of it, but we don't call (literary) science fiction authors "scientists" (nor should we). One of the most unfair facts of life is literary fiction remains fiction even after its theories are proven, where theoretical science drops the word synonymous with fiction ("theoretical") and becomes science. And perhaps even more unjust, even if every theory a scientist has is proven wrong (thus being indistinguishable from fiction), they are still 'scientists'.

My point was that when you put the word theoretical next to anything else, it renders it fictional, as in not a fact, or unproven (not to be confused with the literary sense of fiction). More importantly, we should not let this fool us into giving their theories the weight of science, or power over our economy.

An expert at surgical theory is different than a surgeon. An expert in game theory is not necessarily the best poker player. An expert in bomb theory is not the guy to call instead of the bomb squad. And a theoretical physicist is... well, they can go their entire career without having to prove a single thing, which is why blindly taking their advice is as dangerous as, well, taking advice from a science fiction authors.

NFL's takingAKnee is Trump tweets

Bill Murray tells a fantastic joke that covers most of everything we are seeing today.

The joke, badly paraphrased from memory:

A man comes in to see a doctor and the doc starts him out on the standard inkblot test.

The man winces and says "a couple making love under a tree!"

The doc flips to the next, and the man says "a couple having sex on a table."

The doc flips through five more.

"sex sex sex sex sex"

The doc says "I think I know what the problem is, you're obsessed with sex."

The patient slams his hands against the table, outraged, "I'm obsessed with sex? You are the one with all the dirty pictures!"

...
What we have is an inkblot test with people seeing very different thinks. It really does NOT matter what the intent of the players is, their intent is the inkblot. Failing ratings proves millions of people are seeing something very offensive, and tuning out.

We can argue over what the inkblot (taking a knee) "really" means, but it's not going to be any more successful than telling the man that he, not the doctor, is obsessed with sex.

This is the same phenomenon we see with the inkblot called Trump. Millions see a Hitler (with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren), while others see that 'Hitler stuff' as absurd. It's an inkblot. Both are inkblots that tell ONLY what THE VIEWER sees; and what the viewer sees has NOTHING to do with the truth of the inkblot and everything to do with what's going on in the mind of the VIEWER. Inkblots illuminate the illusions in our own minds, not reality.

An inkblot is just an inkblot, they are pictures of nothing.

Football means what the viewer THINKS it means. The NFL and the Players have as much control over what "taking a knee" means as the doctor has over what a patient sees in an inkblot. And Trump has no control over what people "think" he means by his tweet. Half of America "thinks" it means the opposite of what the other half "thinks" it means.

"Taking a knee" is, literally, the NFL's version of the Trump tweets everyone says he should stop doing.

The difference is that Trump does not need the people who think he's Hitler, he already got elected without them. He actually benefits from driving them insane, he benefits from having them screaming 'sex sex sex' at everything they see, it destroys their credibility. Where the NFL can't afford to have half their audience "think" the NFL hates the police, the military, and America.

It doesn't matter what the inkblot really is a picture of, to the NFL it matters what the audience THINKS the inkblot means, and right or wrong, too many "think" taking a knee means the NFL hates America.

Charlottesville and confederate statues

The reason why Auschwitz was built is entirely different than the reason why it should never be torn down.

"Never Again"

The reason why these confederate statues were put up is entirely different than the reason why they should never be torn down.

"Never again"

I'm a libertarian. I'm "one of those" that wastes their vote every year, so my political views are generally hated by BOTH sides.

Southern states seceded before Lincoln was even inaugurated. Not until Trump have more Democrats boycotted an inauguration than Lincoln's. This fact is unsettling to an outside observer, like me.

The democrat mayor of Charlottesville declared it "the capital of the resistance" before Trump's inauguration... just as Richmond, just a few miles down the road, was named the capital of the confederacy (resistance) before Lincoln was inaugurated.

Staged violence was used to start the civil war, too.

"Never again"

Not one of the southern states had a republican governor, they were all ruled (super majorities) by democrats. The KKK was formed by a delegate to the DNC named Forrest (like in Forrest Gump). Not one democrat signed the first ANTI-KKK law, in fact, a democrat president vetoed it, but was overridden by Republicans.

The amendments to the constitution freeing the slaves, making them citizens, and giving them the vote were all done entirely by Republicans without a single Democrat senator's vote.

Auschwitz.

The Germans were not all Nazis. The average soldier believed they were fighting for their country, not to exterminate Jews. They were largely duped by their politicians.

The average confederate soldier believed they were fighting against northern aggression. They believed they were fighting for the states' rights to self-govern. Less than one percent owned slaves. Put another way, getting millions of poor southerners to fight for a plantation owners' rights to own slaves would be as hard a sell as getting the poor today to fight for the rights of millionaires to own yachts.

The average German soldier was not suited to the task of exterminating Jews. It sickened them so much that Hitler was forced into building death camps. Running rail cars, building camps, using ovens is far more expensive than firing a single bullet and letting the body rot where it falls. But the average German soldier wouldn't slaughter civilians without ruining themselves (PTSD), so the camps had to be built.

The death camps, in a way, are a testament to the reluctance to kill civilians of the average soldier. It took a special kind of evil to work at one of the camps that the average German didn't have.

Confederate soldiers were duped into fighting for a temper tantrum that the democrat party threw over the first republican president.

But they threw it for a reason.

Slavery.

The first constitution written entirely by democrats during the confederacy was the only pro-slavery constitution in history. Not one republican pen ever touched it.

3/5ths.

Anti-slavery republicans didn't want to count slaves at all. Slave-holding democrats wanted to count them as whole, even though slaves could never vote.

There was a twisted reason for this. By counting slaves as people, slave-states got extra seats in The House. Since slaves could not vote, this effectively let slave owners vote for their slaves. Sanctuary cities, all Democrat strongholds today, still use this strategy to inflate their power in House Seats.

The revolt and the Democrats' revulsion over Lincoln was largely over this issue (loss of house seats due to slavery), but this wasn't what was sold to the people.

The Democrats today Hate Trump because if he is successful in deporting illegals and building a wall, sanctuary cities lose house seats that let democrats vote on behalf of those illegals. They stand to lose as much illegitimate power as Lincoln took from them.

"Never again"

Those statues honor what confederates fought for, states' rights, and what they were duped into fighting for, slavery. It says "never again" very loudly, in a way mere words can not.

Robert E Lee.

Robert E Lee was an anti-slavery general that Turned Down Lincoln's request to fight on the side of the union. Lee bought into the 'states' rights' argument and fought out of loyalty to his state, over his country. This is an honorable thing. The first thing Lee did after the war was visit a Black Church and pray for forgiveness. His life after the war was dedicated to unification.

I lived near Monument in Va. These statues fit the area. They fit the architecture. As art, they are magnificently sculpted and a testament to the talent of the artists. They are museum quality art for everyone to see.

They may have been installed to intimidate republicans and to oppress blacks, but today they mean something very different.

Auschwitz means something different today too.

Both are testaments to people falling for the lies of politicians. Both are testaments to the fallen. Both are warnings to future generations that say "never again" in a way only they can.

As a libertarian, I fully expect both sides to hate all of what I just said, just as the duped soldiers of those two wars would.

But I hope, very soon, some will find themselves quietly praying for forgiveness, like Lee did, and work on the unification that is badly needed.

Global warming confusion

One of the main problems with environmental science, global warming, and public figures like AlGore is a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between applied and theoretical physics.

Put simply, theoretical physics -- the underpinning of global warming -- is best thought of as Dick Tracy, where applied physics is the iPhone.

Sure, Tracy may have been eventually proven right by Steve Jobs, but it was purely fictional until the first iPhone.

It was not fact.

When something is not a fact, it can be a theory based on fact, but that is still a fancy way of saying fiction.

The cold, hard truth is theoretical physicists are science fiction authors with PHDs. They don't like hearing that, and I don't like saying it, and AlGore refuses to believe it, but it is what it is. More theories will be proven wrong than proven right. String theory included. This is not to diminish their brilliance or their achievements, but merely to put it back into perspective. Because a theoretical physicist says it, that does not make it a fact any more than if it came out of a comic book.

Today, there are at least 4 different theories on quantum physics taught. People spend a fortune learning them, being tested on them, being graded on them... when the only fact we know for sure is that at least 3 of them are wrong. At least 3 out of 4 might as well be learning Hogwarts. Fiction. But because they pay money and take tests, it gives them the illusion delusion that what they are learning has value equal to the effort and price paid... when common sense says most will learn fiction, not fact.

The worst part for most of these graduates is not that they spent a fortune learning fiction (theory is fiction), but that along the way they lost critical thinking and common sense, something few ever get back.

The reality is that computer models are really video games with bad graphics, they are not facts and do not generate facts, nor should they be treated as such. They generate guesses. Nobody would turn an indie car over to the best driver of grand theft auto, nor should we give our economy over to a climate model. Sorry, that's just dumb.

Hawkings, as much as I respect the man and believe him to have a much higher than average odds of being right, he is still a fiction writer, no different than Hogwarts or Dick Tracy. It will take a Steve Jobs before his theories become facts.

Unfortunately, too many people like AlGore hear what they want to hear, and thus willfully confuse theory (fiction) with fact. It may be a fact that Hawkings said the world will end, but that doesn't mean the world will end. It just means he said it would.

Hawkings is by far the most famous science fiction author of our time, much as Einstein was in his. And like Einstein, much of what Hawkings predicts (theories/fiction) will likely be proven as facts... but until then, it is still fiction. And we, the people whose money they are spending, need to keep that fact in mind.

The only thing we really know as a fact is that theories are NOT facts, they are fiction. Theories. Nothing more. Computer models are not facts. They are guesses, as flawless and fallible as a Tesla autopilot that works perfectly until someone dies.

Applied physics is an iPhone, theoretical physics is Dick Tracy. Without a Steve Jobs, theoretical physicists are nothing more than science fiction authors with PHDs. We forget this reality at our peril, and the world is imperiled by theoretical physicists... that's a fact.

Are Environments Darwin deniers?

What's the difference between an environmentalist and a Darwin denier?

Less than you think.

Anti-humanists believe that humans are killing the planet and must be stopped to prevent the mass extinction of every living thing that will inevitably result if the temp goes up one degree.

This means, by default, that they reject Darwin.

The globe has gone up one degree already, from the end of the mini iceage (late 1800s), so we know the real world effects of what an increase looks like.

Humanity grew exponentially over this period of warming, most of this growth happened in parts of the world that saw the greatest impact of this increase. These places include Africa, China, and India. Cooler climates also saw increases in population but to lesser degrees and they were less impacted by the temp increase. There was no population explosion in Siberia or Alaska, for example.

But humans were not the only ones to benefit from this warming. Plants, animals, and insects all grew as well over this same warming period. Some, did not. This is how Darwin works. Those that fail to adapt, fall in population, where those that adapt well increase in population. Darwin is based on the real world where change always happens and nothing stays the same.

So, by focusing on the fate of each tree prevents anti-humanists from seeing the health of the forest. A thriving forest is not dependent on a specific plant thriving or failing, it just depends on biomass increasing instead of decreasing. So, if pine trees disappear from forests, that does not mean that the forest is sick, it just means something more fit has replaced pines.

And that is, in fact, what has happened throughout history. The overall biomass of the planet has increased with each degree of warming, while, at the same time, less 'fit' species faded away into nothingness. Darwin suggests that all species will become extinct at some point, replaced by something more fit, and there are almost no species that have survived unchanged throughout history, which validates that idea.

100,000yrs ago, Canada and Europe were covered under a mile of ice. Nothing at all grew or lived on all of that land. All that ice melted, slowly, over the years. This is warming. The globe has been warming for 100,000 years. That warming allowed life in all forms to populate Canada and Europe that couldn't otherwise exist because it was too cold to support them.

Darwin, in action, again. Those life forms most fit for a warming Canada, trees and grass, elk and bunnies, filled in the void that melted-ice left. The biomass -- the total weight of all living things on the entire planet -- went up, easily doubling in fact. This doubling of the amount of life happened ONLY because of the warming that melted the ice off of Canada. If the globe had cooled instead of warmed, no ice would have melted and nothing would be living on Canada.

Warming was always good for life. Darwin, 101.

The little ice age happened (depending who you read) between the 1300-1800. The Delaware and the Thames regularly froze over, something that never happens after the warming continues. During the little ice age, life struggled all over the planet. Biomass shrunk. Populations collapsed of all plants, insects, and animals. Hunting and farming were harder, this fact was recorded in books from those times.

But after the mini iceage ended, populations exploded again. The biomass of the planet continued to increase as the temperature continued to rise.

Now, specific creatures went extinct, Darwined out of existence, but the biomass (the weight of all living things on the entire planet) steadily increases with each degree of warming that is added into the system.

Not once, in the history of the planet, has warming decreased the biomass of the entire planet.

Iceages, on the other hand, have decreased the biomass of the planet each and every time they happens. With each ice age, the biomass of the planet goes down drastically, typically by more than half.

CO2 increases are always followed by explosions in plant growth when accompanied by warming. This plant growth supports increases in animal and insect life. More warmth has always meant more biomass and more life, never less.


Darwin 101: if a species can adapt favorably, it's numbers tend to increase. If it can't, its numbers collapse, sometimes to zero. A species health is often judged by their population numbers. Thus, high population numbers are, by themselves, proof of favorable conditions. Put another way, population increases ONLY happen when conditions are favorable to that creature. Population collapses happen when conditions are unfavorable AND the creature can NOT adapt.

All human high pop numbers are in warm zones with moderate winters (Africa,china,India) all low pop zones are cold (Alaska, Siberia). This is generally true of all plants, animals, species, insects, bacteria, and life on this planet (and any other)

It has never been the case that life flourishes in the cold. Decreasing global temps are always bad.

Coffee plants tend to die if they get below 50, for example.

Now, some argument can be made about deserts 'proving' that life fails when it gets too hot.

Deserts are dry (actual dictionary def), and it's the lack of water that kills, not the heat. California and Vegas are good examples of deserts that flourish with irrigation. And irrigation is one of the ways humans have directly INCREASED the biomass of the planet. It's how we adapt to an ever changing planet (Darwin).

Ice ages kill, warming trends do not. No warming period has ever decreased the biomass of the planet. It simply has never happened. There is no historic proof that warming has been anything other than good for humans AND the planet. HOWEVER, every ice age or 'cold spell' has decreased the entire planet's biomass. Now, warming trends are ended with cold spells and cold spells do kill. But warming is always accompanied by increases in life. All life.

That's Darwin, 101.

Everything changes. Everything must adapt. Those that can adapt, thrive. Those that can't adapt, die.

The endangered species list is, largely, an attempt to break this law of nature. This 'law' of Darwin.

Some creatures should be let go.

Not everything that once lived should be saved.

Giant sloths, sabertooth tigers, and mammoths have no place in today's world, and we are better off without them. I love dino movies with raptors eating people, but that doesn't mean I want raptors walking the streets like squirrels. We are better off without most of the creatures that have gone extinct. This may sound cold, but it is true. I love my grandmother, but if grandmothers never died the planet would be mile high in grandmothers in short order. Everything and everyone has their time, and when their time is over, it's done.

That's Darwin. That is simply the way it is.

If you believe warming or 'any change' MUST be bad, then you are a Darwin denier. Because Darwin is based on change being a force of nature. A needed element for growth to ever come.

And warming has always been good for humanity. Not once in human history has warming cause us harm.

as a DOC

As a .doc

Word Macro for inserting Hyperlinks for/to every page break (chapter)

This Word Macro automates the inserting of hyperlinks (Table of Contents)

It first inserts 500 spaces wherever you currently are, then replaces one for each chapter (^m) it finds, and labels it whatever the first line is.

It's a little rough but it works.

Sub HypLinkCh()
'
' HypLinkCh Macro
' Macro recorded 1/1/2002 by R
'
aStartPoint = Selection.End 'Where the cursor is now
aa = Selection.Start 'Where the TOC is to be put

CH = inputbox("Enter or I To insert 500 spaces here" & Chr(13) & _
"It Eats one chr per chapter, S to skip", , "I")
If CH = "I" Or CH = "i" Then Selection.TypeText Text:=String(500, " ")


FindNext:
Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdLine, Count:=1


Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^m"
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindAsk
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
Selection.MoveDown Unit:=wdLine, Count:=1
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdLine
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdLine, Extend:=wdExtend
If Selection.End = Selection.Start Then
Selection.Start = Selection.Start - 2
End If
Selection.Copy
aLastPoint = Selection.End

' If bb = "1" Then
' bb = "2"
' CH = "s"
' Else
CH = inputbox("enter or A to add, S to skip, X to end", , "A")
' End If


If CH = "A" Then
Selection.Start = aa
Selection.End = aa
Selection.PasteSpecial Link:=True, DataType:=wdPasteHyperlink
aa = Selection.End + 1
aLastPoint = aLastPoint + Len(Selection.Text)
' Selection.EndOf

Selection.Start = aLastPoint + 100
Selection.End = aLastPoint + 100
' Selection.EndOf
bb = "1"
GoTo FindNext:
End If
If CH = "S" Or CH = "s" Then GoTo FindNext:
Selection.Start = aa

"... there is a problem with Islam..."

Trump is feeling some heat over "...there is a problem with Islam..."

So, lets put it into context by starting with something less controversial, "There is a problem with Christianity."

Somehow, one statement is judged (by US judges) as an obvious fact, and the other is judged (by the same US judges) as racist. When someone says there is a problem with Christianity, most think of decades of Popes hiding the child-molesting priests in their midst, instead of turning them over and pushing for the maximum penalty under the law (after all, the victims of the priests were Christians too).

So, hiding child molesters and providing them with easy access to more victims is a serious problem, and when decades of Popes ignored it and tried to hide it from the public, it only made it worse and tainted the religion. The number of priests molesting children is tiny, likely inline with molesters in any other occupation, but by ignoring it and hiding it and providing the molesters with cover, the church appeared to endorse it, and their shroud of secrecy around it made it seem much more wide-spread than it was.

But what's worse is what's happening in Islam. It's preachers, or imams, are actively recruiting for ISIS. Yes, ISIS members were talked into it by Islam's version of a preacher. Almost all were recruited through Islamic places of worship. Almost all of ISIS fighters are convinced that they are fighting a religious war against non-believers. Now, the numbers of these preacher/recruiters are small, but what's being ignored and hidden and forbidden from being discussed is the elephant in the room, and it is orders of magnitude a bigger problem than some children being molested... and shielding child molesters was nearly big enough to destroy the church.

"...There is a problem in Islam..."

Its preachers and scholars are powerful recruiters of terrorists and, just like with Christianity, their main victims are their fellow believers. It should be repeated here that, just like with the child-molesting priests, the number of imams that are ISIS recruiters here is 'small', but the deaths they cause are disproportionately large.

Shias are too often taught by their imams that killing a Sunni or Kurd or Christian or Jew is the best way to serve God. Too often, Sunnis are taught almost the same thing. Palestinian children are taught that the greatest gift to God is to murder a Jew. The level of 'Islamic' sponsored/endorsed murder strictly on the basis of religion is the main problem in Islam, and it causes the deaths of tens of thousands of mostly fellow Muslims every year. That's orders of magnitude worse than a few hundred molestations and it's made far worse by ignoring it. Taking a life for any reason by almost every other religion is considered a sin.

When gays are thrown off the roof of buildings, those doing the shoving believe they are following the will of their God, because their religious leaders said so. When a suicide bomber blows up a school for girls, they do it to honor their God because a religious leader told them that girls being taught is a blasphemy before God. There's video of them quoting the Koran as justification before blowing themselves up. The terrorists clearly believe they are doing God's will and they clearly believe they are the true voice of Islam. They are not picking targets for military advantages, but religious ones. When a school full of Christian girls is taken hostage and they are given out or sold as sex slaves, there is a religious ruling by religious leaders legitimizing it on the basis of the religious beliefs of the girls and sections of the Koran are quoted as proof of its legality.

In all of the 'banned' countries, polling suggest well over 70 percent consider the use of suicide bombings against civilians of any 'other' religion or sect 'justified' by the Koran. This isn't something they came up with on their own after hours of deep thought, it was taught to them from a young age and vomited up out of reflex like others memorize the ten commandments. That is a real problem that will not simply go away by ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist. It can only be fixed by addressing it often, addressing it repeatedly, and addressing it publicly. Like a nail, it has to be pounded on the head as often as it takes to drive it in, there's no polite, PC way to do it. The church had to be humiliated and shamed into halting their practice of protecting molesters. The same, unfortunately, may be required with Islam.

It should be noted that it used to be legal in the US to murder Mormons just because of their religion, so the problem with Islam is not unique and it is not exclusive to Islam. In fact, most religions were like this hundreds of years ago, in The Dark Ages. But Islam is the last major religion to hold onto and condone the murder of other religions or sects based entirely on their beliefs. Condoning, in this case, may be rightly implied by the complete lack of outrage over suicide bombers, honor killings, stoning women, or gays being tossed off roofs, contrasted against the literal burning down of towns over a cartoon and the murder of entire Christian families over rumors that they 'might' have insulted the Koran.

This is the kind of problem that is made much much worse when ignored.

Ignoring child-molesting priests made it look like the Pope endorsed it, and that code of silence made a simple law enforcement problem into a religious coverup. Ignoring the fact that ('some') imams and religious scholars are the primary recruiters for terrorists is making it look, sound, and feel like Islam endorses and condones terrorists, and Islam's continued refusal to turn over and evict these recruiters from their ranks can and will be used as evidence that 'the pope endorses child-molesting preachers' and 'Islam endorses terrorism in the name of Islam'.

The world is waiting for the day that murdering gays because they are gay will engender the same level of outrage in Islam that the publishing of a cartoon currently does, but we all know that day is decades away ... if it comes at all. And we're not even touching on honor killings yet.

There is a problem with Islam that only Islam can solve, and Islam MUST solve it soon. Muslims must address it loudly, often, and repeatedly, it must stop making excuses and stop blindly ignoring what the rest of the world sees. It must decide to hold all life sacred, not just their particular sect. Because it is dangerously out of hand right now and, if allowed to persist, all the solutions available from outside Islam look a lot like WWIII, and nobody really wants that.

This 'God wants you to murder unbelievers' has been dropped by all other major religions and, for the most part, has been dropped by Islam inside the US. There is a path here for Islam to follow, but time is running out.

Calling people racist for pointing this out is as stupid and counter-productive as the Pope calling people racists for daring to suggest that even one priest ever raped a child.

We have given Islam a pass for 15 years, we have walked around on egg shells for fear of offending. We have pretended that there is no problem in the hopes that ignoring it will make it go away. And like a Pope that never felt any criticism over child-molestation, the leaders in Islam decided to ignore it too.

That let AlQuida become ISIS and a caliphate was born.

It may be time for some shaming.

It may be time to paint all Christian preachers as molesters, and all imams as ISIS recruiters until such time as they are shamed into getting a grip on the problem they are so desperate to ignore.

It may be time for some humiliating and some verbal bullying and a lot of uncomfortable, politically incorrect words.

It may be time to let Trump be Trump and put the bully back in the pulpit. More coddling and ignoring and pretending that their isn't a problem simply isn't going to work. And being afraid to offend Islam... well, Islam NEEDS to be offended by what ISIS is doing in its name, but it doesn't seem to be. Islam NEEDS to be offended when gays are tossed off roofs in its name, but few imams preach against it. Islam needs to be offended by stoning women for walking home with a man not related to them, in its name, but so far nothing. Islam needs to be offended every time a suicide bomber quotes the Koran before murdering, but instead statues and portraits go up in the bomber's honor. Islam need to be offended by things done in its name instead of by the names it gets called.

...there is a problem with Islam...

out on an e=mc^2 limb

Out on a limb...

No, this is not a review of a Mathew Brodrick movie.

I'm about to commit credibility suicide as a scifi author, perhaps even more suicidal than trying to review a ?three? decade old movie (a fun movie, by the way, about evil twins, crazy brothers, and a pinch of a quirky romance).

E=MC^2.

It has profound implications that reach far beyond Iran and North Korea.

For those that believe in God, the equation looks something like this.

If God created the universe, then the power of God is greater than or equal to all the energy in the universe (orbiting planets, burning suns, orbiting electrons...) plus the mass of the entire universe (from black holes to every speck of dust between the stars) times the speed of light squared.

God >= EofUniverse + MofUniverse * C^2.

A very big number, but acceptable if you believe in an all powerful God.

But if you believe only in science, then it gets a little bumpy from here.

The big bang bumpy.

According to E=MC^2, the energy that existed before the big bang is the same equation that lets you estimate the minimum power of God.

That's still a really really really big number, but this time without a good source. It's so big that it can't possibly be a 'rounding error' and looks an awful lot like a mistake big enough to prove a theory wrong. The big bang answers nothing, in other words, because it can't account for even one percent of where any of this energy came from, all it can answer is what happened to all that power after it was created.

Enter vacuum energy.

In the space between stars, that vacuum averages an atom or two every few feet. That's not exactly what anyone is really calling the source of vacuum energy. That's a vacuum in the same way that what we use to clean the floors is a vacuum. It's figurative, not literal. Vacuum energy is theoretical, namely because it doesn't exist in practice, but it's popular because it solves the God-level math error in the Big bang problem. The theory goes that true nothingness is the source of near infinite energy. Well, maybe, but I'm skeptical.

Vacuum energy

Imagine nothing, absolutely nothing for billions of light years in every direction. No energy. No heat. No mass. No nothing. (As an aside, what is the max speed of nothingness, and how would you know, and if it had speed would it still be nothingness? :)

If you dropped a particle into that much nothingness, vacuum energy would, in theory, rip it apart like a reverse black hole... much like a deep-sea fish might explode if you pulled it up onto the boat, or an astronaut might explode if he did a space walk without a suit. Or, best analogy, a helium party balloon will stretch until it explodes, usually long before it gets high enough to touch clouds. One can argue, convincingly, that the energy is not in the vacuum itself, but in the astronaut, fish, or balloon instead. Explode vs ripped apart. Exploding comes from forces within, where ripped apart are forces acting from outside. To the observer, they look the same.

So, for me, vacuum energy doesn't work, but because it solves the big bang energy problem nicely, many are deeply invested in it. But even a vacuum of one atom per cubic yard is impossible to produce here on Earth, let alone a vacuum at absolute zero, so any real answer one way or the other is unlikely to ever happen. (If you had a container that you could pump every atom out of, the container itself would be made of countless atoms, making the size of the container bigger than the sun in order to average less than an atom per foot, assuming no atoms fell off the walls of the container, which is equally unlikely)

E=MC^2.

It's so simple and elegant a formula that really the only wiggle room left in the equation is in C^2.

C, or the speed of light is a constant. But maybe not. If we could make it equal zero then we could create all the mass (m) we want and it would take (M*zero^2=0) no energy. In an absolute vacuum, the speed of light might actually be zero.

Consider, if light is a particle, then it may well be ripped to shreds in a pure vacuum. Light can't escape a black hole, so other things having a similar property are possible, if unlikely. Being instantly destroyed would give it a speed of zero. And if it was a wave, it could not pass through a medium of absolute nothingness for the same reason that sound stops traveling at the edge of space. By the way, this idea of even light particles being shredded by a pure vacuum would also give you a 'background radiation' type noise along the lines of the 'proof' of the big bang. The edges of our universe that touch into nothingness would be slowly shredded (evaporated or sublimated may be more accurate a visual representation), with some of that feeding back into the universe as background noise.

The math here works... sort of... but fuzzy.

But the instant that mass is created, the vacuum is destroyed and the speed of light gets insanely big again. And as for the instant mass, it is either put all in one place (maximum-gravity black-hole-of-all-black-holes, maximum 'vacuum energy' too) in which case it is likely big-bang exploded and the speed of light increases along a curve at the rate of the explosion... Or the mass is everywhere all at once, in which case the speed of light is instantly big and not much of a bang happens until much later. By the way, this 'dust cloud' model is how we see stars and solar systems being born, so, IF it is one of these, it's more likely a dust cloud of an atom every foot all at once (which we have billions of examples of) instead of a singularity 'big bang' that hasn't happened once outside a computer model.

An argument can be made that light would travel as a particle through a pure vacuum at the speed of light, since it would presumably enter with that speed and encounter nothing to destroy it or slow it down. Semantically, once a particle is in a vacuum it is no longer 'pure' and hence no longer exists. Put another way, if the particle exists then the vacuum can not, and if the vacuum exists then the particle can not. They are mutually exclusive, like dark or light. I buy that, but it destroys the theory of 'vacuum energy' entirely (I believe vacuum energy is wrong, but it's impossible to 'prove' it).

And some might be thinking... if mass or energy can be created 'on the cheap' wherever light has a speed of zero, then suns and black holes can make infinite mass and energy... but they don't seem to. Most explain this away by saying that the speed of light inside these super massive bodies isn't being slowed but more accurately time dilated. In other words, TIME has slowed for the photons inside such high gravity bodies and only appears slow or stopped to us outsiders; inside the black hole, from the photon's perspective, light is still screaming along, it's just time that has stopped for it instead. I kinda buy that, though it makes my head hurt.

Another 'flaw' is there's likely a zone around black holes where not only the speed of light it 'time dilated' to zero, but pure vacuums also exist, after all, black holes are considered to 'vacuum' up stars. If vacuum energy exists it should be there... but it doesn't seem to be.

So, to recap, about the only way (if you take God out of the equation) that you can create the entire universe using zero energy (because if you used any energy at all you have to then answer the 'well, where did that original energy/mass come from') is if you can somehow make the speed of light equal zero for at least a fraction of a second. Otherwise it violates E=MC^2 and you have to come up with where the mass of the universe or an even C-squared bigger amount of energy came from....

The 'flaw' of the big bang theory is the 'where did the exploding stuff come from,' and it's a God-level amount of energy/mass to explain away.


That is...Unless E=MC^2 is wrong....

Or, at the very least, it's incomplete. :)

I think there's more to that equation... and just perhaps a scifi author found it, but more on that a little later. I'm still weighing the credibility suicide of rewriting the world's most famous equation just so the ending of my book will work. I'm leaning towards it may be worth it.

the low bp fog is lifting

And the fog is lifting... but I don't want to jinx it.

For at least the last year, but most likely the last two years or more, I've had low blood pressure. By low, I mean a few times a year I would actually faint and land on the floor. Once a month a wall would hold me up.

Ideal BP is anything from 90/60 to 120/80. Average for me was in the 80s / 50s, which is well inside the fainting zone low. But fainting is not the only side effect, it also made me very lethargic and unable to focus, mentally.

Once I knew what was wrong, or more accurately the symptom of what was wrong, I did what every writer with a writer's insurance does, looked for cheap fixes on the Internet.

Salt. Check, tried it but it doesn't work well enough and comes with side effects too.

Lemon. Check, it works a little, no side effects, but doesn't keep me in the right zone.

Coffee. Check. Been doing that all along, but drinking even more coffee than I already was can't possibly be good for anyone. Any doctor in the world would say I'm taking an unhealthy or even a lethal dose of coffee already. If anything, I need to cut back on that addictive muddy water, not double up on it.

Basil. My first experiment with basil was a nightmare. I used too much and I went right past normal and into hypertension and stayed there for two days. I've never in my life experienced hypertension. It was Terrifying, but clearly this was my 'silver bullet' because it lasted for two days and a little went a long way.

I just had to get the dose right.

Because I had such a powerful reaction and it stayed in my system so long, this meant I would have to start extremely low, keep with it for a week, then increase a tiny bit and test for another week. Time consuming, but the safe approach.

I don't want to jinx it, but I think I've done just that and found the right dose.

For an entire week (since last Friday) I've been in the 90s/60s, right where I want to be.

The dose, 3/10ths a tsp per day. It sounded metric so I was pretty sure it had to be wrong :) , but that seems to do the trick and the fog that has clouded my head for the last two years is lifting.

Now, I still don't know, and probably will never find out, what the underlying problem was, but basil is covered by my insurance (10 cent seed pack at the dollar tree with my insurance card).

Oddly, after spending the last two years in a lethargic fog, returning to my real normal feels like I'm lacing my coffee with speed.

climate deniers

Re: "climate deniers"

A climate scientist, a politician, and a 3rd grader are asked to find the temperature of a glass of water.

The politician asks his largest donors what answer will be most profitable to them, and gives that answer.

The climate scientist takes twenty readings from around and above the cup, averages them together, then adds in an adjustment factor.

The 3rd grader sticks a thermometer into the cup and reads out the number.

This is obviously a joke, but as with most humor, there is an element of truth to it.

It also leads to a point rarely brought up, that maybe measuring the air temperature above the ground (cup) really doesn't tell us much of value to begin with. Perhaps a true measure would be to track the ground temperature a few feet down for a more accurate average instead. But lets set that aside for now and get to what most argue about.


1st

There are two causes, and thus explanations, for shrinking ice packs --the most cited proof of warming-- the 1st is warming. 2nd, is reduced snowfall patterns over winter. Since no month during summer has ever had exactly average rainfall, it can be assumed winters also vary wildly in precipitation too. Simply having more rain in August can decrease ice accumulation over winter. As can precipitation rates changing between night (favoring ice) and day (favoring ice-melting rain). So, for me, studies of icepacks are interesting, perhaps even suggestive... but only proof of 'varying winter humidity cycles', not global warming. That's not to say warming is not real, just that leftover winter ice ain't proof of it.

Stated another way, scientists could trigger another iceage today by building massive humidifiers and pump up the moisture over a continent during winter months (mostly at night or when it's freezing outside) thus burying the entire country under hundreds of feet of snow and ice every winter without altering global temperatures at all (100'=12" perDay over 100 days, mechanically possible at every ski resort in the world). This effect is seen with evaporative cooling towers causing snow during winter. Because it would take until November to melt a hundred feet of snow, you would get a snowball effect adding onto every additional winter... All without actually altering global temperatures directly, just altering global humidity/precipitation, and then only during winter.

In addition, record highs and lows are suggestive, but not proof either. I can have an overcast day that stays at 54 degrees for the entire 24hrs, followed by a day that starts at 75 for 5hrs, then has a storm that pummels it down to 45 for the rest of the day, averaging 51.25 degrees. Just looking at highs or lows does not give you averages and can be highly misleading. "...Record number of highs this year..." means nothing in and of itself.

2nd. We just had an election where pollsters asked 500 people and then used that to guess who would win across +3,000 counties. Wrong!!! It turns out your sample size might have needed to be in the millions to get elections right every time.

The same is true of weather, I just don't buy that we have anywhere near enough 'big data' to predict 50yrs from now with an accuracy of less than +-2 degrees. Sorry. With a planet this size and a data set as relatively tiny as the one climate models are based on, we are essentially asking two aborigines in Australia to predict who our president will be 50yrs from now.

Not really possible.

==side note===
A tale of two climate models.

The first costs $100 trillion dollars and predicts the end of the world in 50yrs because of a 2 degree climate change. With that $100 trillion expenditure, not a single person is lifted out of poverty, no poor person ever gets electricity, indoor plumbing, or air conditioning. GE makes a fortune selling windmills and solar panels and an equal number of gas peaking stations to fill in all the green gaps (when before they would have had to settle for 1/3 the profit by selling only one, far more efficient, coal or nuclear plant) Elon Musk makes another billion dollars every year in taxpayer financed subsides (later called the Musk tax on the poor to fund the hobbies of the filthy rich)

The second climate model cares nothing about 50yrs from now. Its task is modest, just a scientific version of the farmers almanac. This model tries to predict every daily high and low and rainfall for every day of next year, all around the world. If this model succeeds, farmers around the world will ship its creators buckets of cash because, by altering their crops and planting seasons to optimize to the predictions, they'll increase yields enough to end hunger worldwide... while drastically reducing irrigation costs and getting in one or two extra harvests every year, and not waste their time planting a crop doomed to fail. Farmers without access to irrigation will plant with confidence and dependably high yields, even in the most remote parts of the world.

Think of it, if you know you won't get enough rain for corn, you shift that field to something less thirsty. If you know you can count on rains late in the season, and that your first frost won't come until November 30th, that's an extra harvest right there. A harvest no farmer would ever risk today, because such a model does not yet exist.

But you see, climate scientists place all their efforts on the one that can't be tested for 50yrs, instead of the one that can lift staving people out of poverty around the world, but will get tested (debunked) every year.

A farmers almanac model, ironically enough, should be 50 times easier, 50 times less complex, and by reducing the need for irrigation and by making marginal lands farmable and by increasing production around the globe, this modest almanac model will double the carbon sequestration (more harvest = more CO2 removed) by simply sending out a calendar to every state with daily highs, lows, and rainfall clearly marked. It can achieve the goal of its over priced cousin... and make everyone rich in the process. It will lift a billion out of poverty by simply posting its predictions on line.

I can not overstate the irony here.

The makers of the "end of the world" computer model can literally end famine around the world while reducing CO2 and the need for irrigation by shifting their efforts to the farmers almanac model, BUT THEY CHOOSE NOT TOO, most likely because the almanac model will get tested every year, but predictions 50yrs out can never really be tested.

This is madness, but it is also where we find ourselves. Any time these EndOfTheWorld climate model scientists want to save the world, all they have to do is make a better farmers almanac. It's just that simple. But to date, nobody has made anything more reliable than that century old paperback.

==end of side note===

I am skeptical of a model that can predict 50yrs from now with an accuracy of +-0.1degree and zero margin of error.... yet can only predict two months from now with a 60% accuracy and even then, it's +-10 degrees every day. If you said 'it predicts a 2.1degree increase over 50yrs with a margin of error of +- 5 degrees,' I'd believe you, but would have zero motivation to do anything about it. So, for obvious --but credibility killing-- reasons, that 'margin of error' disclaimer is left out.

Sorry.

Models are not proof. Leftover winter ice is not proof. They are both suggestive, but not proof. Record highs and lows are not proof. A decade of "farmers almanac" perfect predictions would be credible, but nobody shouting "the sky is falling" has anything close to that.

Sorry.

3rd. If I wanted to scientifically get an accurate temperature of the room you are in to within two decimal points, it would be nearly impossible. A thermometer on the floor would be colder than one near the ceiling. The east window might be 10 degrees warmer than the one on the west, depending on sunshine and time of day. Near your TV and DVR it might be 17 degrees warmer than by the drafty door. Even inside the average 12x12 room, getting an accurate average of every 1.12 million cubic inches to within two decimal points would be nearly impossible... With a planet? Not a chance. 50 miles of atmosphere, churned by a 150mph jetstream, thunderstorms, mountains and trees as heatsinks and radiators, not to mention flocks of butterfly wings flapping every day. Ironically enough, probably the best way to measure the average temp of a room would be to take the temp of the furniture, not the air, something climate scientists ignore.

How many BTUs does asphalt radiate more than grass? We have asphalted the area of Texas, all solar-panel black... are you sure the warming is all coming from CO2? A tiny change in color of the oceans' (plants, plankton, oil, food coloring, iron, salt, ice, foam) can add up to ten degrees air temp change, are you sure the oceans are exactly the same color they always were? Have you bothered to add up the BTUs of all the powerplants in the world? It's not tiny. Still 100% sure the warming is entirely CO2? Burning 20 million barrels of oil a day is roughly 110 trillion BTUs by itself, if that helps.The ocean has millions of known volcanoes and thermal vents. Are you 100% sure none of the warming is from them? The variables are too many, the available data is infinitesimally small and based largely on human assumptions, the margins of error in the calculations are too high to make the output reliable, and the pricetag is too big for such a wild gamble. And lastly, it's not our money/future we're gambling with, it's the 1.2 billion poor who will shoulder 100% of the burden of the gamble (see attached link)

Maybe it is all CO2, and I'm ok with reducing our CO2 output when and if something cheaper comes along. And it will come along... But until then...

The cure may be far worse than the disease.

-------- pardon the extensive quoting but I'm away from a "real keyboard" right now and I wouldn't have said it any better anyway-------

http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/25/energy-poverty-is-much-worse-for-the-poo

Some 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2016 report. About 2.7 billion still cook and heat their dwellings with wood, crop residues, and dung. In its main scenario for the trajectory of global energy consumption, the IEA projects that in 2040, half a billion people will still lack access to electricity and 1.8 billion will still be cooking and heating by burning biomass.

But what about climate change? Current renewable sources of energy are not technologically capable of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty. Consequently, the Breakthrough writers see "no practical path to universal access to modern levels of energy consumption" that keeps the projected increase in global average temperature below the Paris Agreement on climate change goal of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. This implies that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will exceed 450 parts per million. They correctly point out that forcing poor people to forego economic development in order to prevent climate change is a "morally dubious proposition." They additionally observe that the wealth and technology produced by economic growth increases resilience to climatic extremes and other natural disasters. When bad weather encounters poverty , disaster ensues.

It is worth noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's shared socioeconomic pathway narratives for the rest of the century include one, dubbed "SSP5," in which fossil fuels remain cheap, greenhouse gas concentrations more than triple, the average global temperature increases by nearly 4 degrees Celsius, and the rate of economic growth is high. Is that future a hell on earth? Not at all.

The "development first" SSP5 agenda results in the eradication of extreme poverty, greater gender equality, and universal access to education, safe drinking water, and modern energy before mid century, along with a strong build-up of developing countries' human and social capacity. "Lower socio-environmental challenges to adaptation result from attainment of human development goals, robust economic growth, highly engineered infrastructure with redundancy to minimize disruptions from extreme events, and highly managed ecosystems," notes the SSP report. In other words, people living in this economically robust scenario have greater incomes (up from the current average of around $10,000 to about $140,000 per capita in current dollars by 2100) and have access to much more advanced technologies with which to address whatever problems man-made climate change may throw at them.

"Lifting all of humanity out of energy poverty does increase the risk of catastrophic climate change impacts to some unknowable degree," concludes the Breakthrough Institute report. "But it is untenable morally and practically to insist that global climate change targets be balanced upon the backs of the poorest people on earth."

End of quoting

-----lastly-------

Trump saying "China plot" is like "Mexico is paying for the wall" nobody voting for him takes anything he says literally. Mexico may "pay for it" with a tax on remittances, tariffs, NAFTA2.0... But nobody is expecting Mexico to literally write a check or airdrop bundles of cash. His China comment is linguistic shorthand for who is profiting at our dubious benefit. Almost nothing he says can be taken literally, it's almost entirely figurative. Besides, everyone knows global warming is a scam invented by GE to sell windmills and natural gas peaking stations :)

Actually, now that I think about it, decades ago GE was struggling to con people into windmills, since for every megawatt of overpriced wind produced you have to, on average, 'back it up' by selling 3 megawatts of highly profitable natural gas. Wind, in a real world, is best considered 'supplemental' to gas until storage becomes affordable, both of which GE was struggling to sell before buying 1/3 of the US TV networks (NBC) and dedicating it to selling "global warming" for them. After buying NBC as their propaganda arm, GE now enjoys billions in federal subsidies to trick America into a dependency on gas.

To me, windmills are the "free iPhone" scam that locks you into a 5yr plan that costs $3000 more than the same plan if you had your own phone. Free energy windmills are the free iPhone of the energy sector that tricks you into lifetime dependency on their highly profitable gas turbine peaking stations. Plus, to get a megawatt of reliable power out of a gas plant, all you have to do is buy a gas plant. To get the same out of a windmill you have to buy a megawatt of windmill AND a megawatt of gas for backup, that's twice the profit to GE per megawatt of reliable 'capacity'. Win win $$.


I'm also 'confused' on the mechanics of a gas having a 'greenhouse' effect.

The greenhouse effect was best described to me with the following:

Fill a tub with cold water, make a pot of coffee, then pour half into the tub and the other half into a Ziploc bag and put the bag into the tub.

The coffee poured directly in cooled almost immediately because of its massive surface area rubbing against the cold water.

The Ziploc will stay warmer longer because of the greenhouse effect. By limiting the surface area of the two thermal bodies to the area of the bag, instead of the area of a puddle the half a pot of coffee might make if dumped on the ground, it dramatically changes the time it takes to bring both bodies to equilibrium.

This is the same "greenhouse effect" that lets a pound of snow melt in a tub faster than a one-pound block of ice. Each snowflake melts on contact because of its massive surface area, where the block is locked into 6 sides with a billionth the surface area.

Clouds have a clingy structure that can create a layer or barrier and thus do have a physical structure that complies to the greenhouse effect, where humid air does not and has no heat trapping effect. CO2 does not seem to form a layer or pockets that restrict thermal exchanges between air molecules so... It should not have any "blanketing" or trapping effect.

Industrially, CO2 is used as a thermal exchange "fluid", this means it is fantastic at moving heat from one surface to another, the opposite of a greenhouse.

CO2 is never used in Thermoses or between panes of glass in greenhouses to "trap in the heat". In fact, none of the "greenhouse gasses" are used to trap heat in anything that, well, needs heat trapped.

Fiberglass insulation works by slowing the movement of air, but it actually Loses efficiency when that air is replaced with CO2.

If I'm missing something on the mechanics... If CO2 does clump together and mechanically forms cloud-like layers let me know. If there are thermoses out there using CO2 to keep coffee warmer longer, I'll happily eat crow, but it hasn't happened yet.

Industrially, if you want two surfaces to exchange heat rapidly, you put CO2 between them (methane works fantastically too). If you want them to exchange heat slowly, you use nitrogen or krypton. Why would that change in the atmosphere? I could go on with more examples of where CO2 is used for its properties that are exactly opposite to 'trapping heat' but I think I made the point.

I'm skeptical, to put it mildly.

But, all this said, I have yet to meet any fellow skeptic that suggests burning tires are good for you, or pumping mercury into the air is good for your skin. I have never met a skeptic that thinks burning fuels is as good for the air as taking vitamins is for your health. To the contrary, all the skeptics I meet think burning fuels is like smoking, not a healthy choice, but far from the end of the world even if almost everyone did it.

Environmentalist are shocked by hearing this, they actually believe people and businesses are actively trying to destroy the planet and their customers, intentionally. I have met environmentalists that believe forced sterilization and mandatory abortions are legitimate tools for combating climate change, one even considers genocide acceptable in the name of the climate. Every year, an environmentalist group sets fire to a SUV dealership. They do these thing and believe these things because they have lost the ability to be skeptical.

Science used to be the home of the skeptic. Being skeptical of everything used to be the scientific approach. There was a time the outcome of playing a video game wasn't considered 'proof' of anything... and computer climate models are, like it or not, just another computer game we're all supposed to take seriously.

nukes nukes nukes and other myths

I love science fiction... but unfortunately far too many scientists have based their theories on fiction instead of facts.

Since the 80s, the world has been bombarded by idiots that spout such nonsense as 'we have enough nukes to destroy the world 1,000 times over'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3917480/Could-survive-nuclear-winter-Shocking-video-reveals-black-skies-global-famine-killing-frosts-wipe-millions.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

The latest suggest that, with 'computer models' they have proven that the world would end if just 100 Hiroshima size bombs went off.

Those are around 15 kilotons. 15x100 is 1,500 kilotons. Since a megaton is 1,000 kilotons (in the metric system too) 1,500 kilo anything is 1.5 mega everything.

1.5 megatons is on the low end of a hydrogen bomb. One hydrogen bomb. The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated in the air was by Russia called the 'Tsar bomb'. How big? It was roughly 30 megatons, or roughly 2,000 Hiroshima bombs, twenty times as big as what the computer model experts demands would end life as we know it.

So, a single bomb detonated over fifty years ago has already proven that their model is obviously, irrefutably wrong.

But...it...doesn't...stop...there...

Los Vegas is within sight of where they tested (by exploding them above ground) roughly 300 nukes of all kinds, all of them MUCH bigger than the two dropped on Japan. Since the 40s, well over 1,000 nukes have been detonated, most above ground, almost all of them orders of magnitude more powerful than... You get the point, right?

But the stupidity persists. The fear mongering and hysteria over nukes persists.

And, like clockwork, we get models and reports that 'prove' that the sky is falling. Well, don't fall for it.

Entirely too many scientist make models based on fiction, not well-known fact. Willful ignorance, because they had to have looked at these above ground detonations in order to develop these models.

We have, already, detonated more than enough warheads to end life everywhere... and nothing happened at all. This is not to suggest that nukes are some sort of health food, just it is not and never has been the end of the world. Hiroshima is a highly populated state, today, with a barely detectable increase in cancer.

Nukes are not bullets. They may be weapons of mass destruction, but they are really not mass produced. They're not Fords rolling off an assembly line, they're more like science projects or custom built homes. They're all a little different, a little unique. That's why approximately 5-10 percent of them were 'test fired' outside of Vegas or other places to ensure quality controls were always maintained.

We did it.
Russia did it.
China did it.

All the nuclear powers live-test their new designs, and they test lots of them. They test and detonate and adjust and test and detonate until they feel confident that they can rely on them going off and not drop a dud.

Space X had to test lots of engines, costing millions, before anyone trusted them enough to put/bet a payload on it.

Common sense has been driven out of science. Reports like that should be a SNL skit not "news".

It plays well in fiction, and yelling the sky is falling or the world is coming to an end will bring in the federal funds... but that doesn't make it science.

It makes it fiction.

It also makes me doubt climate science models too, but that's a separate issue.

My notes on the Trump victory

Love him or hate him, what Trump did on the 8th was historic. He arguably broke a bigger glass ceiling than Hillary ever could... one most of us didn't even know was there.

First, he defeated two dynasties in a single election cycle. He destroyed Jeb Bush - probably forever - on the national stage. And that ain't small potatoes, that's Huuuge. Even more impressively, he destroyed Jeb even though Jeb out spent him 100 to 1. On top of that, Jeb was the party's 'chosen one' (much as Hillary was) and Jeb was destroyed.

Destroyed.

Jeb never got over 5%.

Destroyed. As in humiliated beyond recovery.

Trump then walked through a river of fire without getting burned alive.

The DNC literally wrote questions for reporters to ask during debates. Reporters literally printed articles written by Hillary staff on command, word for word. 95% of all reporters/editors that donated money, gave it to Hillary, and not one of them revealed it to their audience. 95%, and several were moderators. ALL of the mainstream media parent companies gave to Hillary. All of them. CNN, ABC, NBC, Google, FaceBook, Twitter, GE, FOX... all of them. Hillary broke a record for receiving money from hedgefunds and banks and corporations. Her super PACs out spent Trump 10 to 1. Hillary out spent Trump 2 to 1.

Out spent, entire networks aligned against him, with absolutely NO GROUND GAME at all, he still beat the Clinton dynasty.

He beat a Bush and a Clinton in the same election cycle and they BOTH out spent him. And by "out spent," I mean by a lot. Hillary by 2 to 1 and Bush 100 to 1. This could easily be the formula that removes money from politics forever.

This simply has never happened before. Ever. That means there IS a way to get elected to the highest office in the land without 'selling out'. It has just been done.

It just happened, and half of America missed it.

Add to that, that a very significant portion of the Republican elite were actively working against Trump, all very publicly, something that has never happened before on such a huge scale. Unprecedented.

Never in the history of the party of Lincoln has this many... Two Republican presidents and two failed candidates... All four voted against their party. That has never happened, ever... Not even Nixon had to overcome such a thing. Trump was literally betrayed by his own party... And he still won.

That is a glass ceiling that has never been broken ever before. And, like him or hate him, he just showed the world how it is done. And he did it without 'big money', massive super PACs, or a sea of dark money. In fact, he ran 1/4 the TV ads Hillary did.

It was not pretty, the first one to run through a glass ceiling is going to get cut up, badly, but he proved it can be done. And how to do it.

I'm talking to you, Gary Johnson, were you taking notes?

Prior to Trump, you could be the president only if the elites of a party 'allowed' it to happen. Today, that rule no longer applies.

Are you taking notes, Rand Paul?

Two dynasties, a fraction of the money, a tiny fraction of the TV ads, a tiny super PAC, almost all the media, banks, hedgefunds, and corporations aligned against him, with the elites of BOTH parties against him, with virtually no ground game at all, zero political experience, and to win and win this big is... it's paradigm shattering.

Unprecedented.

Huuuge.


Were you taking notes Burnie Sanders? Because this is how it's done. This is what it looks like.

It ain't pretty. It's dog-fight ugly. It's like watching a honeybadger fight a pit of rattle snakes. It ain't for the faint hearted, and it was damned sure going to get real ugly real fast. But if you dropped a kitten in a pit of snakes, it would have had no chance at all. With a honeybadger... well, it can win, but it won't be pretty and you damn sure won't want to keep it inside like a pet when it's over.

But if you have a pit of rattle snakes that you need cleaned out, don't bet on a basket of kittens or another rattler, put your money on a honeybadger, it might just be able to pull it off.

I don't think there's many Trump supporters that thought they were voting to send a cute little kitten to Washington, a town infested with rattle snakes like no other. That's why all his hissing and snarling and random violent attacks didn't put them off of Trump. They saw him for the honeybadger he always was. They saw him as the honeybadger they wanted him to be.

Now, I don't know if Trump will 'drain the swamp' any, and frankly, nobody does. I don't know if Trump is a racist, a bigot, or a xenophobe, and EVERYONE that tells you that they know he is, is lying. Because without a lie detector or psychic abilities, it isn't possible to truly know what is in the heart of someone else. Everything we THINK we know is entirely speculation at best... Rumor at worst.


Let me deviate for a second:

I knew someone that told the filthiest racist jokes I've ever heard... and he was the ONLY ONE who stopped on the side of the road, in the rain, to help a black family whose car had broken down.

If you went only by what he said or what you heard him say, he was more racist than the Klan. But on that rainy day, he stood in the rain and tried to help a black family out, then gave them a ride to where they were going, about 5 miles out of his way.

He told another racist joke after he dropped them off. But does that make him a racist? I don't know his heart any better than I know Trump's, but I can tell you that the last man on earth I would have guessed would help a black family out was the man that told the most racist jokes I've ever heard. And to them, to that family, on that rainy day, that racist white man wasn't racist at all.

Should they have refused the help and refused the ride, if they had known? Would their life have been better if they had?

Do actions speak louder than words?

Assuming that Trump is as deplorable as people believe, does that mean he is irredeemably so?

I don't know for sure, I'm not psychic, but I'd be willing to bet that the same man that opened his first golf course to Jews (unspeakable at the time) is someone who is redeemable, whatever his sins.

There are entire black communities with their collective hoods up, in the rain, waiting for some good liberal to stop and give them a hand. They've been waiting for someone to stop or for the rain to let up... for decades.

They've been waiting for a very long time.

Trump is that coming car, his signal light is on, and it looks like he's slowing down.

He may even be able to help... If someone doesn't demand he show them an ACLU card first.

Trump got more of the Latino and black vote than Romney did. It sounds like he might be getting that chance to help.


####

I'm deeply bothered by the riots from the 'loveTrumpsHate' group. There has been millions of dollars in property damage already, and several fatalities. This is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable as a society and it is making Hillary supporters look... like spoiled bigots. Bigots against conservatives.

Republicans are supposed to be 'the home of racists', yet there were NO riots when Obama won. None either time.

It pains me to point this out.

It pains me, because the Democrat party IS better than this. They are not spoiled children, they know better than this.

In the movie Forest Gump, Forest is named after a founder of the KKK, a well known Democrat. 99.9% of all Klansmen ever to run or win office have run as Democrats. They didn't just call themselves democrats like David Duke does, the klansmen won in democrat primaries in landslides, often unopposed.

And the south, where I live, became much less racist as it became much less Democrat and more Republican. As republicans took over counties, fire hoses were reserved for fires, not flesh.

I like to reject that kind of insinuation, coincidences happen all the time.

The Democrats stopped running Klansmen for office within two years of the first legal abortion clinic opening in Harlem. Coincidence. Today, Half of all black babies are aborted in NY - for a profit - by one of the Democrat party's biggest donors.

Hillary's mentor was Grand cyclops Senator Byrd, the last openly Klan senator in congress. And Bill Clinton's mentor was Fulbright, another Klansman. Obama's reverend Wright was as anti-jew as they come. That makes all three as equally racist as Trump, and it makes Trump as equally redeemable as all three of them. And if it doesn't, it means you might be a bigger bigot than all of them.

I take Trump at his word that he is pro-life because 'black lives matter too'. I think this country would be better off if he gets his chance to prove it, not by his words, but through his actions.

I doubt it will be pretty, in fact, I can promise it will get messy, and you will get embarrassed at times. Trump is like a 3yr old that says whatever comes to mind. It's mostly honest, sometimes funny or embarrassing, and every now and then, it's humbling and profound.

Politicians like to be judged exclusively by their words, not their deeds. Trump is obviously not a politician, and even as president, nobody really expects him to be 'a politician'.

He's asking to be judged only by his deeds, he's asking us to... mostly... ignore his words. His voters have already agreed to that.

He is the first honeybadger to offer to go to Washington, and most of us know it promises not to be pretty to watch.

But maybe, just maybe, he can get the job done where no one else could. A $100 million contribution could make a normal politician sell their soul, the most it will get from Trump will be a thank you form letter.

Campaign contributions are the poison that turns politicians into snakes, and we're about to find out if they mean the same thing to Trump... A man that took a billion dollar loss and just 'walked it off' and made a few more.


I said it months ago, but it needs repeating.

The most qualified person running, by far, was Gary Johnson. He was easily the safest bet in the last 8 years. As a two term governor he had the same qualifications as Bill Clinton, Bush 43, and Ronald Reagan, the three strongest economies in recent time. That's about as good as it gets, if 'qualifications' are predictive of anything.

Hillary, as a reelected senator, "co-president", and secretary of state; her qualifications most closely matched Bush 41 (CIA head, VP, Senate, WWII), Ford, and Nixon, none of which make for something to brag about.

Trump was the biggest gamble.

But the electorate knew Johnson had no chance, Hillary at best would be another Nixon/Ford/WorstBush, so, they made the most rational choice on hand.

That left exactly what happened.

If you couldn't tell, I was in the Johnson camp, for the record. I also voted for Perot twice and would do so again, zero regrets.

Anthony Weiner top 10 list

Top ten reasons Anthony Weiner checked into a sex-addiction clinic:

10: He found out that's where all the nymphomaniacs are.

9: They have free wifi and unlimited porn.

8: Their message therapy comes with complimentary happy endings.

7: It's the only place where he can talk dirty to everyone without getting in trouble.

6: It's around the corner from a whore house.

5: It's where all the fashionable politicians go just before their wife's best friend's election.

4: Someone texted him a picture of Vince Foster... By mistake.

3: He was told it was clothing optional and he was free to take as many selfies as he wanted... As long as he didn't post any of them.

2: John Podesta wrote him a blank check.

1: He always wanted to spend a week with Charlie Sheen :)

What does 'more qualified' really mean anyway? #Trump #Hillary

"Nobody is more qualified" than Hillary.

Nobody.

Obama had only been a senator for a few weeks, so clearly he was unqualified.

Bush43 had never been out of his state, so clearly less qualified.

Bill Clinton was just as unqualified as Bush 43.

But Bush 41 was far MORE qualified. CIA, VP for 8yrs, tons of public service. Decades worth.

Nixon too was far more qualified than Hillary, tons more public service and government experience.

Ford was also more qualified than Hillary.

Reagan was far less qualified as a mere actor and governor. Same with Carter.

So, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 are more qualified than Hillary, and can anyone say they were the best presidents? Thought not.

And the least qualified were a mixed bag, having both the best and worst presidents of all time.

So, is Hillary more Qualified than Trump?

Does it prove anything? Does being 'the most qualified" mean anything?

We are 20 trillion dollars in debt. Trump was once so poor, that EVERY bum on the street was one billion dollars richer than he was... and he turned that around with a vengeance and without a bailout!

Qualified?

Which qualification means the most to you?

How solar will crash the grid.

I love solar... for calculators, radios, and lots of other gadgets, it's perfect. But for the grid, it's suicidal.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/10/01/californias-renewable-energy-grid-on-verge-of-crisis

There's a reason that articles like this peg the 'tipping point' of solar and wind at around 15%, and that's because 15% is almost exactly the 'rounding error' that grid managers use to keep the lights on.

The average device (TV, refrigerator, etc) is 110-120 volts, but it will tolerate and still function on as much as 130volts and as little as 105. That's where this 15% tipping point lies.

It idea that the 'grid' can 'buy' power from rooftop solar is a horrific myth. While technically true, due entirely to laws of man, it violates just about every law of physics known. A rooftop solar system simply does not produce enough power to go more than a block or two down the grid... and it is dangerously stupid of Grid managers to even let it.

What is actually happening is, like Trump, grid managers simply write off the panels as a loss and ignore it because it's nearly impossible (laws of physics) to make it useful.

However, when it gets over 15%, it becomes 'weaponized' green power, capable of destroying the grid and your neighbors' electronics.

Net metering was a horrible scam by politicians ignoring the laws of physics in order to pander to campaign contributors... par for the course with politics.  

held hostage...

Two hours ago, I was held hostage in my bathroom. For a while, I was sure I was never going to get out of it alive.

It still makes me shiver, just thinking about it.

It all started when... when...

When a big spider crawled into the doorway, blocking any hope of escape. I sprayed it with the nearest bottle of cleaner, and instead of retreating, it charged!

I quickly found myself standing on the toilet with an empty bottle of TileX, looking for anything else.

It  charge through a wall of shaving cream, forcing me to retreat to the tub, where I grabbed the extra-tears shampoo and let him have it.

It hid behind the toilet, where I knew it could only be setting up for an ambush.

And so the standoff remained for the next twenty minutes.

In my twenties, I killed bigger spiders with a napkin. Now, two decades and some change later, I find myself hiding in a bathtub... from a spider that died at least ten minutes ago.

...

Speaking of being held hostage by bugs, BrainDead has been holding me captive this season too :)


http://m.imdb.com/title/tt4877736/

holy exploding batteries Batman!

Holy exploding batteries Batman!

My laptop had one of those Sony recalled exploding lithium ion batteries back around 2002. Fortunately, it works fine without a battery (just works like a very light weight desktop and always has to be plugged in to work)

Unfortunately, Samsung smartphones and hoverboards don't work at all if you remove their batteries, and in the case of phones, most are hard wired in such a way that you can't remove the batteries at all.

Now comes a short physics lesson.

The faster you charge or discharge a battery, the hotter it gets... And the hotter it gets, the quicker it dies  and the shorter its overall life. This is nearly a universal law of physics and thus far has never been violated.

I'll give you an example. Take a car battery. We call it dead when it can't start a car anymore. But more often than not, even if the battery is too dead to start the car, you can still listen to the radio while waiting for the tow truck to pick you up. In general, a 'dead' car battery will continue to start a riding mower for years after it's worthless for a car.

If you try to recharge an old battery too fast, you'll kill it for sure. But, if you trickle charge it, generally it'll live a few extra years.

If your car is 'out of tune' or hard to start, that'll probably take a year or two off of a typical battery's life. If it starts almost instantly, it'll add a few years to the battery's life. This is because of the near universal law of resistance. Ohm's law. Basically, the harder you work something, the hotter it gets, and the shorter it's life.

Back to the exploding phones.

All phone companies are racing to get the 'fastest' recharge and the longest battery, both for good reason. But the faster you charge (or discharge) a battery, the more 'explosive' it gets, as per the laws of physics.

Cordless drill motors and other power tools solved this by upping the voltage. This sounds counter intuitive so let me explain.

All rechargeable batteries are made up of smaller batteries, in this case 1.2volt batteries, generally 'C' sized. By going from 5 (1.2x5=6 volts) to 15 (1.2x15=18volt) you triple the overall power, but keep the same charging time, thus, you never burn-up the batteries.

You can even cut the recharge time by 2/3rds by keeping the original wattage, essentially switching from 'C' to 'AAA' ..IE, a 6volt drill (5x C sized) that takes an hour to recharge will work as hard as an 18volt (15x 'AAA') drill that charges in 20 minutes, or, the 18volt (15xC) drill that takes an hour to charge will work 3 times harder than a 6volt(5xC) drill that charges in an hour) but in neither case do they try to charge a cell made up of the larger C sized batteries in the quicker time it takes to charge the wimpy AAAs.

This is the same cell-sizing trick they use in the Tesla and the Volt and why they have insanely dangerous 400-600 volt battery packs, it's in an effort to reduce recharge time without melting the batteries.

Unfortunately, this trick does not work with phones... yet.

So, with phones, they are adding bigger batteries (at the same voltage) and trying to cook them faster in an effort to bend the laws of physics... long enough to get the phone out of warrantee. In essence they are going from AAs to Ds and trying to charge them faster than AAAs. There are ways around this, but they are very inefficient or dangerous.

Once, I left jumper cables on a car too long, I got lazy and ran inside for a cup of coffee and to warm up. Both batteries in both cars exploded. This is the inherent danger in one of the 'solutions' phone companies might choose.

Tip

If you have a 2 amp fast charger and a 1 amp slow charger, your phone battery will last longer (the number of years you can keep your phone, not actual talk hours per charge) using the slower one. But, if you just can't wait and buy a new phone every year anyway, go ahead and use the 'lightning' cable.

Milwaukee

...The laws you have to obey and those you don't....

Milwaukee reminds me of my first driving lesson with my dad.

When I was just learning to drive, we pulled up to an intersection while a dump truck was coming the other way. My father asked me, "Who has the right of way here, son?"

I quickly quoted what I had learned from drivers ED about the person to the right of blah blah blah when my father stopped me, pointed at the truck, and said, "He always has the right of way... by at least twenty tons. You may have the right of way according to some book... but that only matters if you survive the wreck, and against a dump truck you have no chance... the laws of physics trump the laws of man every single time."

There are two kinds of laws in this world. The laws of man and the laws of physics. You can break the laws of man any time you want, and you'll often get away with it. But you can't break the laws of physics... not even once.

Everywhere around the world there are laws giving pedestrians the right of way at certain times and places... and tens of thousands of pedestrians get maimed and killed by cars that did NOT have the right of way... cars that were clearly in the wrong.

Every single time a car meets a pedestrian, whether the pedestrian has the right of way or not, the pedestrian loses. The laws of man give pedestrians (an illusion of) the right of way that the laws of physics never do.

It's simple math. When one ton of steel moving twenty mile an hour hits a person, the person always loses. Period.

Ferguson.

Milwaukee.

Running from cops is like crossing a street without looking both ways first. You might get away with it dozens of times, but the first time you don't may end your life, and it won't matter at all if you were right or wrong when you're dead.

When you run from the police, black-white-young-old-man-woman-dog-bear, you are forfeiting a trial by a judge and a jury of your peers, and are instead insisting on a split-second final ruling by a man with a gun and the authority to use it at his discretion. It does not matter who you are, from the minute he stops you until the minute he lets you go, your life is in his hands just as assuredly as it is in the hands of a dump truck driver coming up at an intersection. The truck driver can choose to run the light, or his brakes can fail, and everyone except him loses.

Running from the police is no different than running a red light, j-walking on a blind curve, or trying to beat the train across the tracks... it's a stupid risk nobody should ever be encouraged to take.

It's about as useful to argue with a dump truck as it is to argue with a cop. The place to argue, the only place arguing is even remotely useful (white, black, rich, poor... this rule is universal) is in front of a judge and a jury.

OJ did not win in a Bronco, he won in a courtroom... and that was the only place he could win. The audacity of the idea that you can ever 'win' against a cop on the street is like believing a pedestrian can win against a car... but winning in court happens every day.

No pedestrian likes yielding to all cars all the time, or yielding to every truck, tractor trailer, or train simply because it's  bigger. But it's what you do if you want to live, because even if the dump truck is entirely in the wrong, you still lose. It simply isn't a battle that can be won. The laws of physics always win against the laws of man. And guns are ruled by physics, exclusively, with no appeals available to a higher court.

Calling the train racist won't keep it from running over you.

It isn't racism, it's physics trumping the laws of man. The vast majority of these blacklivesmatter events could have been won in court, had they not forfeited that right in favor of forcing a split-second sudden-death ruling by a man with a gun.

Every pedestrian that wants to live yields the right of way, all the time, even when they are right and the car is wrong. Because in the middle of the street the car always wins... the cop always wins. Don't like that? Nobody does, but it has nothing to do with racism, it's the laws of physics. Simple as that. And no laws of man will ever change it.

Sadly, what my father taught me about driving and about life will never be on any DMV test. Stop signs and lights have never stopped a single car anywhere in the world, ever. Brakes do. Being right or running fast has never made anyone bullet proof.

Being right does not mean you get to live, being safe does. And your safety is in your hands... until you stupidly surrender it to a dump truck driver or a police officer.

We fool ourselves into thinking that a law of physics can be bent to the will of the laws of man, but the simple truth is that no amount of laws will ever really give a pedestrian the right of way over a car, a car the right of way over a truck or a train, or a citizen the right of way over a cop.

Like it or not, laws of physics do not bend to the laws of man.

Ever.

Period.

There is no protest, or march, or supreme court ruling that will change it. That simply is not how the laws of physics work. Shooting at cops makes as much sense as cars cutting off dump trucks in some twisted desire to make the dump trucks more sensitive to the cars' insecurities.

But lives can be saved.

Attitudes can be changed.

And I'm not talking about the attitudes of dump trucks, I'm talking about the attitudes of pedestrians. I'm talking about the attitudes of those who have everything to lose... and so much to gain by simply respecting the laws of physics as much as the laws of man.

We teach children to look both ways before crossing the street, not because cars are racist and hunting down children for sport, but because cars can easily kill pedestrians in the blink of an eye or a misinterpreted second.

My father had 'the talk' with me too. Cops are the dump trucks or the trains of the road. Stay off the tracks, look both ways, never assume their brakes work, wait until they come to a stop first. Always yield. Always. It's not optional.

The laws of physics are not optional.

veggie factory

Ok, I've said this before... back when I wrote Patent Mine to be exact, but it's worth saying it again.

While I'm a fan of these 'indoor greenhouses' they almost always are used wrong.

As in the article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/28/can-next-generation-veggie-factories-finally-grow-a-profit/2/#598e21222896
an enormous amount of energy is wasted running the air conditioning to keep these indoor greenhouses running efficiently... ie, lights make heat, even LED lights.

But heat is only a bad thing during summer (a time when you can grow plants outside making indoors redundant!!!)

Back then, I said (Worth repeating) that the ideal indoor greenhouse would run during end of fall trough the beginning of spring... as the house heating system.

See, plants are very shade tolerant, they can go without light for a few days if needed. So if they come on when you need to add heat to a house or building, then turn off an hour latter, plants think of it like clouds. No big deal.

But growing fresh vegetables during the winter is a huge bonus, and when you consider that you can grow a few thousand heads of lettuce AND heat your home/building on roughly the same amount of electricity you would have spent JUST heating your home anyway... it's really a no brainer.

Most homes have space in basements or crawl spaces if you wanted to do a 'retrofit' or, think of a 'space-heater' model that looks like a book shelf with blackout curtains so it won't keep you up at night if it has to come on.

The problem is people want to get rich selling the lettuce at 2 or 3 times what it costs to import from 3,000 miles away and that's the only economic model they can see. When instead, the 'money' is in selling winter heaters that grow food and clean the air for free.

But then, I'm just a SciFi author, no need to listen to me :)