1. 'Space elevator' would take humans into orbit

Comment #259773 by pyjamaslug on October 3, 2008 at 10:51 pm

debacles,
You are right to be sceptical. This is a beautiful idea but it depends on achieving a steady state which might not be readily possible.

I have always been impressed with Clarke's idea of using the excess centripetal force of an object in extra-geocentric orbit to hold up a cable which we could then climb up to enable us to escape efficiently from earth's gravity but it does seem to depend on a number of difficult to achieve conditions. The strength of the cable is only one of these but even that is not really within reach. The nanotubes referred to are not 'nano' only in diameter but also in length so the researchers also need to address the problem of making them long enough to reach the objective.

Also, any civil engineer will tell you that 'strong enough' is not strong enough since safety standards require that any load bearing structure must be built with a factor of safety appropriate to the task. In the case of critical structures like bridges this can be many multiples of the actual strength needed to theoretically do the job. For bridges I seem to remember that the FOS is 5; what would it be for something like this? Pretty extreme, I am guessing.

All this and we have not even begun to consider how we would elevate the cable to a height and with an angular velocity which would begin to counteract gravity.

I think the only feasible solution would be to grow a cable downwards from the anchor point to earth, which explains why the article refers to the base being in orbit rather than on earth, but how would we get the materials up there in the first place? How much energy is needed to elevate 33,000 km of cable to geostationary orbit? Maybe we could manufacture it on the moon, given that we have already established the required infrastructure there. Unfortunately that requires a major effort in its own right, sharing little overlap with the space elevator concept.

So we still need the cranes, I'm afraid.

Peter

2. Earliest reference describes Christ as 'magician'

Comment #259768 by pyjamaslug on October 3, 2008 at 10:10 pm

I would be more impressed by this if the phrase as reported was actually written on the artifact.

The sixth character on the pot is conveniently omitted from the discussion - maybe because it really can't be fitted into the narrative.

For those of you with no greek, the "delta iota alpha" part looks ok, and the Chi (X) has been rendered as "ch", which is not necessarily accurate but generally accepted, then we have a plain rho, but what is the next character? The author seems to have developed a blind spot at this point.

I can't tell with certainty what it is but it could be a crude pi or more likely gamma. So what do we make of a sentence which reads "dia xrg" or "diaxrp"

Does not compute.

Also, is that a U or an N? 'ton' is a valid greek word all on its lonesome, whereas 'tou' needs to be combined with something else to make sense. The latter gives more possibilities so the journalist has gone for that by default, however given that the inscriber seems to have made an effort to write a lower case sigma, then differentiating between the U and V (the greek form for N) should have been no problem.

I call bullshit on the whole story; a little more scholarship will tell us what this pot is, but as of now I don't think anyone can make any firm statements.

Peter

edit "latter"

3. Beetle drive

Comment #239502 by pyjamaslug on August 29, 2008 at 6:44 pm

Onthophagus taurus?

bullshit beetle?

just wondering......;->

4. Double-checking Dawkins

Comment #93000 by pyjamaslug on December 1, 2007 at 11:20 pm

@ Jack Rawlinson: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an incurious man in possession of a narrow mind must be in want of a life.

Peter

5. Double-checking Dawkins

Comment #92996 by pyjamaslug on December 1, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Would it not have been easier to read the bit where Dawkins says he is using an apple IIe (which has a 6502 processor) and then look up the memory map to see where the speaker was located?


@stereoroid: one of the oldest storage mediums was magnetic core memory which consisted of a huge number (perhaps a thousand) of annular magnets woven into a fabric of current carrying conductors. By activating the conductors, it was possible to physically flip the magnets one way or the other,accompanied by a little 'chik' and thereby store a bit of information. Since it was possible to sense the orientation in similar fashion, the stored information could be read. Tremendous stuff, and powerful, in its way.
Now, what you have here is an electromechanical system which vibrates back and forth under the influence of a program and I am sure you know where this is going by now...
Let's just say that given the fragility and cost of such core memories, early development of memory based audio transducers was vehemently discouraged.

Now let's see if young master Graham-Cumming can reconstruct that! I, for one, would be hugely impressed.

6. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #82600 by pyjamaslug on October 26, 2007 at 10:41 pm

oh, dear.
After watching the video I have to report that Hitch was utterly and comprehensively creamed. Sorry if that offends but it seems there is a lot of wish fulfillment going on here. He made his usual points cogently and politely but his debating style was no match for D'Souza who understands much more completely that the last word is the winner, and that the crescendo of the emotional high leaves a more lasting impression than the quieter satisfaction of a point well and completely made.

We learn from our experience, and Hitchens admitted early on that he found D'Souza a most formidable opponent; I would say that he is right and that this is nothing to do with the quality of the arguments put forward but everything to do with the way they are phrased and the targets they are aimed at. As an aside, I would complain that the debate format was not helpful but in other circumstances (and with the same moderator) Hitchens has had no problems.

Yes, I observed that D'Souza's techique is mere demagoguery but there is something to it. So what did he do which was so effective? simply put, he kept to the belief which Hitchens referred to and pushed his assertions as factual and beyond contradiction. His basic point (totalitarians aside) that we cannot understand the universe or our place in it without god was the underlying theme and it is a basic weakness of Hitchens' position, if viewed from the standpoint of a christian.
The fact is that we do *not* understand the universe and this leaves an opening for theists to insert their speculations. This is what D'Souza did, of course, but the point is that he did it in such a way as to make the rational viewpoint look irrational and the magical viewpoint look reasonable.
I would be very interested to see an honest discussion of how to combat his points.

Peter

7. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #20872 by pyjamaslug on February 6, 2007 at 9:33 pm

Hmm, well I think you are being too hard on Paula Zahn. She asked repeatedly what it was about this tiny number of atheists which caused the panelists to react so defensively and feel that they are somehow threatened by them. No answer was given and any intelligent observer would be able to tell that the panelists were simply raving bigots who neither understand nor respect their own constitution.

It's an old and effective technique called giving someone enough rope to hang themselves. I will go out on a limb here and "vehemently suspect" Ms Zahn of atheistic sympathies!