101. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134953 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 11:37 am

al-rawandi,

Irish temper? Yup, guilty as charged :o)

The point I was trying to make is that no formerly-occupied people is going to make lives better for themselves by bitching about the colonists and the past as a substitute for planning for the future.

For the record, I don't think that former colonial powers have done nearly enough; in most cases, they haven't even acknowledged that what was done in the past was wrong and apologised with so much as a shred of sincerity. I regularly meet English people who are actually proud of the "Empire", which I find quite shocking: I don't think it's a cause for anything but shame.

But, waiting around for a former colonial power to do a damn thing is foolish: it's like a robbery victim waiting for the robber to come back, give them back their wallet, and apologise. It's just never going to happen.

And I don't know whether Germany should compensate the children of Holocaust survivors. I don't have a dog in that fight. I've never even heard of it before, so I'd be loathe to jump to any conclusion.

102. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134933 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 10:57 am

al-rawandi,

You presumptuous condescending bastard.

Just thought I'd get that out of the way first.

Ireland never occupied anyone. We were oppressed, persecuted, enslaved, and starved to varying degrees for 750 years. Our population was halved from 8 million to 4 in a generation, due to famine, while the colonial occupiers allowed overseas aid to rot in warehouses and continued to extract food produce, rents, and taxes. Resentment of that colonial history is deeply ingrained in our culture.

But, what changed Ireland's fortunes was not resentment about the colonial occupation, but stable government, a couple of serendipitously favourable economic policies and successfully attracting foreign direct investment.

So, yeah, I consider myself European. Insofar as we have a common core culture that can be called European, I think it's pretty damn good.

Does that make me an apologist for colonialism? No! And I don't have to forgive anyone for the crimes of the past, least of all myself.

103. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134894 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 9:46 am

to the short sighted people who write as if europe is some kind of well-heeled, diplomatic confederation: try foisting your argument on someone who has been at the receiving end of british, german, belgian, dutch, french, etc. colonialism. i don't think that person will see european 'civilization' in quite the same elevated manner.

Ireland was occupied by the English from 1172 until 1916 (give or take a few years). I see European civilization in a pretty elevated manner. What civilization do you suggest as a better alternative? European colonial powers did a lot of very nasty things all over the world, but there isn't a damn thing we can do about it now to change the past. How long has to pass before one starts improving the here-and-now and looking to the future, or do we piss and whine about Pharoah and the bloody Egyptian imperialists forever?

104. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134712 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 6:07 am

Clodhopper: funniest thing I've read in a while :o)

But if accessibility of booze is the only problem you can find with a country I would say it doesn't have any problems worth mentioning.

I agree, but it can be a bit of a pain, particularly if there's a holiday on Monday or Tuesday, then Systembolaget can be closed for a few days (closes early on Saturday, closed on Sunday). After running out of white wine and vodka a couple of times, I learned that if you're having a few people over, you really have to lay in a huge stockpile of wine/beer/spirits just in case everyone wants to drink the same thing, then you end up with a load of alcohol that you wouldn't otherwise have bothered with, and end up drinking much more than you might otherwise: the total opposite of what's intended by having a state alcohol monopoly.

105. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134601 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 3:18 am

If you are a republican or libertarian stay waaaay clear of Scandinavia

Judging by your name, you're Swedish, but I don't see why one would want to avoid Scandinavia, really. I'd consider myself a republican (in the representative democracy, one-person-one-vote, all persons equal, no monarchy sense) and a libertarian (in the do what you like as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else sense), and while I found ID cards and all the odd little rules in Sweden somewhat bizarre at first, it all seems to work pretty well. Systembolaget, I could really do without, but I only think you'd want to avoid Sweden if you were pathologically paranoid and believed that the government was out to get you (in the tinfoil hats and black helicopters sense).

106. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133584 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 11:51 am

... the Irish Republic...

Was declared in 1919 and abolished by the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. The official name of the country (in English) is "Ireland" (Bunreacht na hÉireann, Art.4), and the official description is "The Republic of Ireland". Technically speaking, there is no entity called "the Irish Republic".

Pedantic much? me?

:o)

107. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #133360 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 6:04 am

Epinephrine,

Thanks. I was pretty annoyed when I wrote that, and I know that China doesn't really hold the pink-slip on the US national debt, but one myth deserves another :o)

108. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #133240 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 12:54 am

Not so fast. Sweden is in a demographic death spiral, like most modern welfarist states where the citizens think it's the government's job to wipe their khyber for them. Malmo will be majority muslim soon. And if Sweden were to become a US state, it would be poorer than Alabama.

Take a look at some actual statistics compiled by the UN, OECD, or WHO for Sweden, then compare them with the US: Sweden has the lowest infant/child mortality in the world, one of the best education systems in the world and free at every level, excellent universal healthcare, long life-expectancy, and a narrow poverty gap. Then take a look at how the US compares: the highest infant/child mortality of any developed nation, rampant child poverty, laughable education except for the best universities, first on healthcare spending but 27th on health outcomes, a yawning poverty gap, and a staggering national debt with China holding the deeds, high levels of violent crime including regular high-school shootings, and a government that executes and tortures people.

No Swede expects the government to "wipe their khyber" for them, you patronising asshole: the Swedes have a strong work ethic, expect what they pay for in taxes, and get it for the most part. What do your taxes pay for?

Go and learn something about the US in an international context before you go pissing on somebody else's country. Your attitude feeds the international cliché of the US as a violent sweatshop populated by fat ignorant gun-toting rednecks who only ever think of money.

And, no, I'm not Swedish.

109. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #133125 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Couldn't resist the snowclone earlier on :)

At the point where the "very clever alien" has raised a load of my relatives from the dead, destroyed galaxies on a whim, made Saturn appear and disappear, reversed the expansion of the universe, turning all measurable red-shifts into measurable blue-shifts, and passed all other conceivable empirical tests of godhood, I think I'd stop the philosophical musing about what constitutes a god and start kissing his little green ass.

110. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #133116 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 3:59 pm

I think atheists should read at least one or two of the flea books

I don't want to sound dismissive. I really do think that it's important to understand the other side of an argument as well as you possibly can, probably the old intervarsity debater in me, but I've yet to see one of them where the table of contents and the sample chapter -- which one would suppose is the strongest, made available to make you pony up the cash to read the relatively weaker stuff -- doesn't lead me pretty directly to the conclusion that it's the same old crap recycled for the umpteenth time.

I've read the Bible, I've read theist arguments, Christian apologetics, and Canon Law. How many times over do I have to read this crap before I can conclude that they're (respectively) brutal bronze-age creation myths, simplistic untestable rubbish, utterly bizarre sequences of non-sequiturs, and irrelevant bullshit?

Now, I'm an electronics engineer and I don't claim for a second to have a better understanding of biology than the next guy, but I've yet to argue with a Creationist who has heard the term "allele frequency", can reasonably accurately describe DNA, or give a cogent and even somewhat accurate explanation of what evolution really means or what natural selection, sexual selection, or (with apologies to Richard) group selection are, or what Richard actually meant by "selfish gene". The "arguments" on the other side appear to be entirely based on straw men, deceit, and gross misrepresentation. When they plainly don't bother to read about biology at the level of Wikipedia, why should I bother arguing with them? I have no magical power to make them less content to wallow in willful ignorance like swine in their own excrement.

I'm so tired of it that I've got to the stage where I just dismiss the fleas -- if any of them surprise any of us with a well-reasoned logical argument, I'm sure I'll hear about it and check it out.

111. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132941 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 12:28 pm

How would you distinguish between "deity" and "very clever aliens"?

I, for one, would welcome our new very clever alien overlords.

112. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132930 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 12:13 pm

to think that almost every one of them either participated, or condoned this sort of thing

TBH, I don't think that's entirely fair. I would be regarded as a harsh critic of the Church, and I wouldn't defend the Church or any of its bishops, archbishops, cardinals, or the Pope, all of whom conspired to facilitate the rape of children and protect those responsible, even now, from the law, but I would say that a lot of ordinary priests, probably the majority of them, simply didn't know that their colleague, two parishes away, was raping children.

Edit: grammar

113. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #132914 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 11:55 am

Sweden sounds like a mighty fine place to live.

It is indeed, IMO.

114. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #132904 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 11:45 am

Can you spot any logical error here?

Me! Me! Me! I can! I can!

Do I win a lollipop?

Do I get another one for not feeding the troll?

115. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132877 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 11:02 am

Anyone know exactly what a 'well-established spiritual life' might entail?

Membership of Opus Dei and/or obsequious willingness to defer to octogenarian male virgins, who shield child rapists from the law, in matters of sexual morality.

116. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132840 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 9:18 am

hungarianelephant wrote:

So we'll put that down as "No I won't be voting for the Soldiers of Bribery next time, thank you."

Damn straight. Even though I haven't lived in Ireland for the last couple of years, I follow Irish politics pretty closely (I usually watch "Prime Time" and "Questions and Answers" online). The last election really shocked me: the Irish electorate either don't give a damn about corruption or haven't twigged that the "Soldiers of Bribery", as you put it, haven't had a leader with even the appearance of honesty or integrity in 30 years. Apart from tribunals galore, indemnifying the Church, for facilitating and protecting child rapists, at the taxpayers' expense was a total disgrace.

Edit: spelling

117. Church is paying a high price for its celibacy rule

Comment #132786 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 7:54 am

The (Roman Catholic) Church in Ireland lost whatever respect they might have had when their facilitation of child rapists amongst the clergy became public knowledge. That they shirked even the civil liability for these crimes, with a disgusting immunity deal with the State, which made the Irish tax-payer financially liable for the rape of children perpetrated by priests, invited the opprobrium of every person with a shred of integrity on both the Church and the corrupt scumbag politicians, still in power, who brokered the deal.

Shame on the whole damn lot of them. I wish there was a hell for them to burn in.

118. Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence

Comment #132549 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 1:13 am

Honestly, anyone who trots out this hoary old chestnut equating religion -- with bell, book, and candle -- and simple disbelief -- for want of evidence -- should be ashamed.

I'm sure Richard would have no problem setting up an experimental "obstacle course" for a deity. Making Saturn appear and disappear when I click my fingers would be a decent start. Making the light from a laser pointer bend in a circle around my finger would be pretty convincing. Making all of the stars in a distant, but observable, galaxy appear, on Earth right now, to go supernova on cue would be very impressive. Lots of witnesses and videotape required.

Edit: typo

119. Physicist Neil Turok: Big Bang Wasn't the Beginning

Comment #132542 by emmet on February 25, 2008 at 12:39 am

I just didn't get Engineering mathematics very well in Uni. To say it was unclear to me is an understatement. Any tips on getting maths without doing a boat load of study?

Brian,

As an engineer with a similar experience, I don't think there is any short-cut to understanding mathematics: you just have to put in the work that your level of ability/talent/intelligence demands (people much smarter than me don't have to do as much work as I do to "get it").

The upside is that it's very satisfying. I took a course in abstract algebra last semester, and often spent a whole day working through a page or two of the course text. I never thought that my rather concrete engineering brain, used to the kind of engineering mathematics where there's always "an answer", would adapt to the more abstract material, but I've had a few lightbulb moments. I'd highly recommend it.

120. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #130610 by emmet on February 21, 2008 at 1:43 am

MPhil, Bonzai,

I'm glad I don't have a dog in that fight, although I do feel a bit like it was I who lit the blue touch-paper :o)

Roland_F,

I'm always interested in things that are correlated with religiosity (I hate that word). I'll add promine to temporal lobe epilepsy and psychosis on my list.

Edit: Or maybe not, I can't find anything relevant to religiosity about promine. Any clues?

121. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #130333 by emmet on February 20, 2008 at 10:52 am

No (dammit :), I didn't define verifiable as provable in logic, if you reread my comment you will notice I stated that nothing can be verified except logical inferences: Presupposing axioms, inference rules and premises, the conclusion can be verified.

What's the difference? You defined "objectively verifiable" with "given the axioms, the rules, and the premises, the conclusion must be true", which is a pretty good summary of basic idea of proof theory. Granted, a proof is (more formally) the tree of symbolic applications of the rules (of inference), rooted at the conclusion and terminating (if at all) in axioms, premises, or (previously proven) theorems as leaves. Your definition of "verifiable" with a sentence that summarises provability makes your definition of "verifiable" synonymous with "provable", unless you want to argue that synonymity is intransitive.

But let's not dwell on this, I'd be much more interested in how you would define "to verify"...?

To be honest, I don't think my definition matters much, and, while I find etymology fascinating, I don't think that it often constitutes a strong argument. I would use "verify" much like you use "corroborate", but I think that "verify" carries a somewhat stronger connotation of (dare I say it) "truth" or correctness and implies some kind of formality or/of procedure. I haven't given it a great deal of thought, and I confess that this might be coloured by my knowledge of "program verification" in software engineering: one would never say "program corroboration" and this sounds, to me, like a much weaker assertion.

I don't believe that "objectively verifiable" represents some kind of grand contribution to the philosophy of science or is a precisely defined technical term. My point is that, in common language, woo-mongers do talk about "religious truth" vs. "scientific truth", and say things like "that may be true for you, but it's not true for me". Such utterances, which may sound like complete rubbish to the reality-based community (that's us), are accepted by others as being meaningful.

My argument is that avoidance of ambiguous, arguably even vacuous, words like "true" and "truth" in favour of something more precise, like "objectively verifiable", which I consider stronger than "true" but weaker than "provable", is a useful rhetorical device and is not misleading, disingenuous, or dishonest in any way. I am not suggesting the extirpation of "true" and "truth" from our lexicon, but we should definitely be aware that our use of them, our opponents' use of them, and the broader public understanding of them are not the same. By using "objectively verifiable" (or similar) where possible, we get a chance to define some of the language of the discourse, rather than having the rug pulled out from under us with redefinition of words like "true" and "truth".

Edit: Corrected my wrong description of a proof.

122. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #130121 by emmet on February 20, 2008 at 5:51 am

I don't define "verifiable" as "provable in formal logic", just as provable.

You can't (in one post) have your cake, by defining "verifiable" as "proof" in proof theory, and eat it (in another) by renouncing that definition in favour of an unspecified common-language definition of proof. You did define "verifiable" as provable in a formal logic, now you say that you don't; which is it?

If philosophers of science use "verifiable" as a synonym for "provable", I shall keep that in mind if I should ever speak to a philosopher of science. Most of the scientists I know just "get on with it" and don't concern themselves with obtuse semantic distinctions between words. I can't say that it's "generally accepted" by anyone , since I lack the evidence to make such an assertion, but I certainly distinguish between "proof" and "verification" and I doubt that I am alone.

123. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #130106 by emmet on February 20, 2008 at 5:10 am

My point was that we would be -strictly speaking- lying using the term "objectively verified" or "verifiable" in connection with theories of empirical sciences, and I for one think we shouldn't lie.

You'll never win with that attitude ;o)

I think that using "objectively verifiable" (or similar) with reference to a scientific theory is perfectly acceptable. I find the idea that it's a lie to be utterly bizarre, seemingly dependent on an uncommonly stringent definition of "verifiable" to mean something more like "provable in a formal logic".

I don't think we should tell lies either, but I do think that, when we have a choice, we should use language to good effect, rather than allowing our opposition to define, and redefine, the terminology to suit themselves.

124. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #129889 by emmet on February 19, 2008 at 6:04 pm

MPhil,

I take your point, but I think you're missing mine and, perhaps, being a little pedantic.

The point I was trying to make is that debating with religious zealots using terms like "true" --- which are highly ambiguous and vulnerable to sophistry in common usage like, "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'true'!" or, "Well, do you mean scientific truth, emotional truth, or religious truth?" --- is flogging a dead horse. You need only listen to Madeleine Bunting's staggering "What do you mean by 'believe'?" in the Guardian Debate the other day to understand how utterly bizarre this kind of sophistry becomes.

The myth-peddlars unashamedly steal scientific terminology without the slightest notion of what it means: one of Richard's TV documentaries ("The Enemies of Reason", IIRC) shows how faith-healers and crystal-mongers have adopted "quantum" and "DNA".

Given these two facts, which I assert without evidence by fiat ;o), I think it's desirable to change the language of our discourse with "them" to something that has a strong common-language meaning that's less amenable to being "interpreted" into vacuousness as "true" and "believe" have been.

What I'm seeking is a "strong" alternative to "true" to avoid confusion; I'm not wedded to the particular term "objectively verifiable". I do see your point, but "extremely well corroborated" sounds far too weak. "God exists" can be argued to be "extremely well corroborated", since millions of people will "corroborate" such a statement. I think even "objectively verifiable" is a stronger assertion notwithstanding your objection to the definition of "verifiable" in terms of "true".

If we are asked what we mean by "objectively verifiable", then we can explain the concept of falsifiability and the role of experimental evidence and observations in corroborating a theory. And while your final sentence is, to my understanding, a fair synopsis of the fundamentals of proof theory, that is not the field on which the game is played. In the spirit of "don't educate the market" (unless they ask for it), I would consider a term like "objectively verifiable" to be a valuable rhetorical device.

125. Fleabytes

Comment #129867 by emmet on February 19, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Well done. Well written.

I'm deeply suspicious of "former-atheist Christians". I've often joked that when an atheist converts to Christianity, the average IQ of both groups goes up.

126. Why do we believe in God? 2m study prays for answer

Comment #129805 by emmet on February 19, 2008 at 3:32 pm

I won't mention statements like "I know I must be in love because I feel it" or "I feel God's power within me" (some people would certainly call these "truths") :)

Sometimes, I think we should give up on using "true" in favour of "objectively verifiable" as much as possible: some people may be able to claim that they "feel God's power" within them, but they cannot claim that this is objectively verifiable. It seems to me that objective verifiability is a very much stronger claim than mere truth, which is claimed for superstitions including religion, dousing, astrology, and homeopathy.

I often thought that it would be extremely interesting if we could get the entire scientific community to stop using the term "energy" altogether, instead using a completely new made-up word, say "blarg", then see how long it would take the crystal-mongers to start talking about the "blarg" of a rock, and the aura-seers to start talking about the "blue blarg" around a person.

I have no doubt that it would happen as quickly as they adopted "quantum": the charlatans and mountebanks crave scientific credibility. I wonder whether, in using "objectively verifiable" instead of "true" wherever we could, we would pull the rug out from under the apologists for superstition. We could say, "Mr. X says that Y is true, but 'true' is a useless word, which means different things to different people. All that I can say with certainty is that 'Y' is not objectively verifiable and that's what counts."

In short, it might be better to try to change the language of the discourse rather than persist in using words like "true", which are at least ambiguous and perhaps even entirely semantically vacuous.

127. Cutting Edge: Baby Bible Bashers

Comment #129369 by emmet on February 19, 2008 at 3:06 am

It was very hard to watch, like torture.

The 7 year old Floridian boy's story was particularly disturbing to me: "saved" at the age of 3, his father having terrorised him by telling him that he was going to hell for not obeying his parents. We can only imagine how vivid a picture of hell was created in the child's mind between beatings. To see him "preaching" words that he could not possibly understand made me cringe.

These children do what they do because they have been trained, like Pavlov's dogs, that it's a sure-fire way, maybe the only way, of getting positive attention from their parents. That huge crowds of people turn up to see and hear these poor brainwashed children, and think it's OK, disturbs me.

On the other hand, I think there was some cause for hope: the security man saying, "It's a shame that you bring your son into this too, sir" and the incredulity and ridicule from the crowds in New York. Too often, I think, we tar "the Americans" with the same brush and assume that, with the exception of a small minority, they would approve of this sort of thing. Not so, it seems.

128. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124353 by emmet on February 9, 2008 at 7:02 am

It seems this generator has already been debunked over at PesWiki

I have some doubts that the debunking is correct. In particular, the following passage seems to reek quite a bit:

Shorting out the coils effectively shields the steel rods from the disk's magnetic field, eliminating the hysteresis drag.

It is true that the changing magnetic field will cause losses in the steel(?) core of the solenoids due to both induced eddy currents and hysteresis, and that this will lead to Ohmic heating of the core. My intuition is that at the frequencies involved (18 magnets at 50-100rpm gives 15-30 Hz), and the likely coercivity of the steel(?), both effects would be pretty small.

In particular, a) these losses are likely to be much less (I would guess a couple of orders of magnitude) than the Ohmic losses in the shorted coil, and b) the notion of the shorted coil "shielding" the core --- the only way that I can think of for the coil to reduce the energy dissipated by the core would be for the coil to dissipate that energy itself, leading to (at best) no reduction.

I've never worked specifically with electric machines, although (more than 10 years ago) I did work with other "magnetic systems" (induction transceivers, then sputter magnetrons), so I'm neither an expert nor entirely ignorant. Though I am open to correction, I don't find the explanation in the debunking plausible.

129. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124159 by emmet on February 8, 2008 at 2:17 pm

I think a couple of years ago a company based in Ireland was working on a similar concept
... http://www.steorn.com/

From reading around, Steorn seem to be pretty infamous. Supposedly they raised 4 million euro in VC funding (from gullible fools) and all they've ever shown in public was a brass and plexiglas toy. The results of the "panel of scientists" is long overdue and nothing has been forthcoming from them for a long time.

In Devon, emmet means ant.

It's the same in Cornwall, but there it came to mean "outsider" or "non-native" in a pejorative way after people, mainly from London, drove up house prices by buying up houses in Cornwall as holiday homes. These "outsiders" were "all over the place like ants (emmets)". In Ireland, it's a real name, honest :o)

130. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124140 by emmet on February 8, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Emmet, off topic, but are you Cornish? Have a friend from Cornwall who uses that word a lot :-)

No, I'm not Cornish. I'm aware of the meaning in Cornwall, though. When I was about 3 years old and on holiday in Cornwall with the family, I got lost on the beach. A kindly local brought me back to the hotel where we were staying (I remembered the name of the owner, whom he knew), and he asked my parents what my name was, "Oh, his name is Emmet", they said. "Yes", he replied, "he told me that, but what's his REAL name?". Back then, it didn't have the pejorative connotation in Cornwall that it acquired in the 80's, and he thought it was a "pet name". It isn't, and I've the passport to prove it :o)

131. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124121 by emmet on February 8, 2008 at 12:08 pm

I'd like to point out that over 80% of PM machines involve magnets.

I'd hazard a guess that it's more than that: I can't think of one that doesn't involve magnets off the top of my head.

I read an article about a UFO nut called Bob Lazar, a charlatan who falsely claimed to be an engineer and a physicist; people had said that he "talked like a physicist", and the author pointed out that he didn't: rather, he talked the way "ordinary people" think that a physicist might speak. He used technical terminology freely and confidently, but it was utter gobbledegook. This guy is the same, but I think he's genuinely confused and misinformed rather than a mountebank and a liar.

132. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124098 by emmet on February 8, 2008 at 11:09 am

I actually think I know what's happened here, and it's very sad.

I suspect that the guy thinks that the potential difference that he measures across the terminals of a generator means that the generator is "connected" or "engaged", and that short-circuiting the generator is equivalent to "disconnecting it". He further thinks that "back-EMF" means something like "magnetic field". If you watch the videos bearing these caveats in mind, they make a LOT more sense and you're left with a very uncomfortable tragi-comic feeling of pity for a man who has ruined his life over a pretty basic, but understandable, freshman's misconception that could have been corrected with a basic course in "electric machines" 20 years ago.

By way of explanation, the "wheel of magnets" causes a changing magnetic field in the vicinity of the (1 to 7) coils arranged around its periphery. When the coils are shorted, a current is induced in the coils by Faraday's Law of Induction; this current, flowing in the wire of the coils, dissipates energy as heat due to resistive heating of the wire, and the wheel slows down. When the coils are NOT short-circuited, a potential difference develops across the terminals of each coil (this *IS* what was called "back EMF"), but no significant current will flow, little or no energy is dissipated in the coils, and there is no braking effect.

Accordingly, what is observed in the videos is exactly what one would expect from a sound understanding of basic physics: he is running between 1 and 7 little generators off the driveshaft. When he connects the two ends of a coil together, what I'd call "shorting the coil", he calls it "disconnecting the coil" (this is made clear in the 2nd "Part 3" video). Huh? That's not "disconnecting" anything, it's completing a circuit allowing the induced current in the coil to flow. It *isn't* a surprise that the motor slows down.

A "back EMF" (a largely deprecated term a bit like "cathode ray") is the potential difference which appears between the ends of a coil (in a motor or a generator, for example) by virtue of the changes in the flux cutting the coil (either by movement of the coil in a static magnetic field or by a time-dependent magnetic field). The parts about a "back EMF in the air-gap" being "magnetically coupled" in the drive-shaft are simply rubbish: the term "back EMF" doesn't mean what this guy thinks it means and even what that might be is not clear. This isn't the end of the, to be charitable, "terminological inexactitude": his toroids are not toroidal; he plainly has no understanding of magnetic reluctance; he uses "loaded" and "unloaded" exactly backwards; and thinks shorting a coil "disconnects" it in some
way.

On a relatively minor point, we simply have no idea what the actual energy consumption of the motor is, since all he appears to do is measure the RMS current with a multimeter. We don't know the power factor of the motor, nor is the phase angle between the applied voltage and the current drawn measured in any way. Thus we don't know how much of the measured current is real and how much is imaginary. TBH, I don't remember much about motors, but (the more basic error notwithstanding), a dependency of the motor's power-factor on rotational speed seems like a much more likely explanation for the small drop in measured current than a "perpetual motion machine".

Now, I'm not saying that the guy definitely didn't observe something interesting (in a phenomenological sense) but the explanatory theory presented in the videos grossly abuses terminology to the degree that it is "not even wrong" (with apologies to Pauli) and probably backwards.

What still leaves me a bit confused is trying to figure out what the "interesting bits" that grabbed the attention of an MIT professor are. I suspect that the good professor erred only in thinking that they had a common understanding of what "disconnect" means, and was prepared to ignore the other abuses of terminology in the interest of seeing whether there mightn't actually be something interesting behind it.

133. Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Comment #123585 by emmet on February 7, 2008 at 11:21 am

Dr Williams added: "What we don't want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people's religious consciences."

Exactly backwards, Dr. Williams. In fact, that's exactly what we want: where "religious conscience" is at odds with law, it must be "squared up to"; the alternative is capitulation of civil society to the capricious religious whims of every denomination.

Equality of all persons before the law is a cornerstone of secular democracy.

The only way to respect all religions equally is to respect none of them at all.

134. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #122326 by emmet on February 5, 2008 at 7:36 am

Is it just my uptight British sensibilities or does anyone else find it highly irritating when people use "to debate" as a transitive verb with the opponent in said debate as the direct object? Are prepositions in short supply on that side of the pond?

No, it's not just you.

Another one that gets my goat is intransitive use of "relevant" as in the question on a course evaluation which asked students "Was the course relevant?" ... relevant to what???

Grr...

135. Documents detail church coverup

Comment #121510 by emmet on February 3, 2008 at 2:20 pm

I think I recall a news report about an Irish priest who was criminally charged.

IIRC, half-a-dozen were either successfully prosecuted or dead when credible accusations were made. There were not nearly as many prosecutions as there should have been, due to the Church's criminal coverup and complicity of police and the prosecution service. The Government then did a dirty deal with the Church and agreed to meet the entirety of the Church's civil liability in exchange for a one-off payment of about one-quarter of a conservative estimate of their liability.

It's a horrible sordid story from beginning to end and the only good thing to come out of it was the irreparable damage to the Church in Ireland.

If you want one to illustrate how "moral" the religious zealots are, try this: http://tinyurl.com/27fxpq

136. Female Muslim medics 'disobey hygiene rules'

Comment #121454 by emmet on February 3, 2008 at 12:32 pm

How would that solution be worse than letting young doctors quit?

If this story is true, then quitting would be their own decision and, to be honest, I would welcome it --- places in medical school are in great demand amongst highly-qualified candidates who believe with deep conviction that patient care trumps mythology every time.

Any student who questions the subordinance of their personal religious belief to patient welfare should simply be fired immediately for lacking the humanistic moral and ethical fibre ever to be entrusted with the life of another person, and good riddance.

Not wishing to sound selfish, but I don't want to be rushed to A'n'E to find that the trauma surgeon won't stitch my testicles back into my nutsack because it would be "immodest" for her to see my genitals, or bleed to death because some key person is a Jehovah's Witness.

I'm with the "f**k right off, right now" crowd on this one.

137. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #121434 by emmet on February 3, 2008 at 11:56 am

Why thank you emmet, I shall henceforth be known as Grand-Doctor Weavehole Senior Fellow at the Institute of Normalcy (Sealand Branch).

Personally, I'm going to go with Supreme Tumescence of the Canadian Council of Unctuous Grandiloquence, for the time being, as a parody of the AHRCC complainant (who has a similarly florid self-awarded title) against Ezra Levant.

138. Ore. Court: Boy Has Say in Circumcision

Comment #121395 by emmet on February 3, 2008 at 11:01 am

I wish I still had my foreskin.

That's the entire point, isn't it? It's irreversible.

Since it is in no sense "urgent", the legal criterion should be "which court decision best preserves the right of the individual, currently a child, to make an informed decision about his/her own body as an adult?"

Circumcise the child and he can't get it back; leave him be, and he can always choose to be circumcised when he reaches the age of legal majority.

"Daddy", shame on him, in his newfound religious zeal, simply cannot wait to irreversibly mutilate his own son's genitals, no matter what his son might want when he's old enough to decide for himself.

How many adults bemoan the presence of their own foreskin? Its absence?

139. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #120674 by emmet on February 2, 2008 at 9:37 am

Can I be a Senior Fellow too please? Then, maybe, I will finally win the respect of my friends and peers :)

Why certainly, weavehole, the entire point is that ANYONE can be a Senior Fellow, except that on no account may any person be appointed to a position in which they have any documented competence. You can be a "Senior Fellow in Evolutionary Biology" only if your highest degree is a master's in concrete engineering.

140. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #120630 by emmet on February 2, 2008 at 6:55 am

"Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute"

Unfortunately, the average Joe doesn't know any better; to him, being a "Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute" sounds impressive, much the same as "Member of the National Academy of Science" or "Fellow of the Royal Society".

Sad but true.

We should start up an "Institute" and make everyone "Senior Fellows" just to make the point.

141. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #119442 by emmet on January 31, 2008 at 3:45 pm

Well, hearing God talking back to me, I guess.

There are very effective treatments for that nowadays.

142. MySpace: No place for Atheists?

Comment #119310 by emmet on January 31, 2008 at 1:17 pm

I'll have to do a Groucho Marx: open an account and cancel it in protest.

I'm both appalled at the blatant bigotry and, curiously, quite happy about it: frankly, I think it could be a fantastic recruitment campaign for atheism, giving it instant kudos amongst those who think MySpace is lame.

YouTube seems to be no better, btw. For the last month or so, they have de-listed all atheists from "honours" like "most subscribed", etc.

I wonder if there are any religious (or other) groups with the integrity to denounce the MySpace and YouTube anti-atheist bigotry?

143. Loneliness Breeds Belief in Supernatural

Comment #116233 by emmet on January 25, 2008 at 11:48 pm

I wonder if Sam Harris still thinks sitting alone in a cave for months is a good idea? Seems like it's apt to turn one into a religious nut-job :o)

144. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115412 by emmet on January 24, 2008 at 7:01 am

I read somewhere that pigs are not kosher simply because they are lousy herd animals, totally unsuited to the nomadic lifestyle of the Jews at the time, and that the "unhealthy" claims are post-facto rationalisations. The identical Islamic prohibition could easily just be direct plagiarism, since Mohammad seems to have been "inspired" rather a lot by previous religions.

Not sure of the veracity of the above. YMMV.

145. Ken Ham in Leicester April 2008

Comment #114850 by emmet on January 23, 2008 at 3:42 am

If an interested student society in Leicester (e.g. bio. soc.) invited every university secular society, biology society, etc. in the UK to come along, you could rustle up quite a crowd: I've seen busloads of students travel across the country for much less. Ask a major pharma/biotech company to sponsor the "counter-event". I've seen bizarrely trivial student events sponsored by banks and breweries, why not the "War on Ignorance"?

146. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #109739 by emmet on January 9, 2008 at 3:36 pm

BAEOZ,

The "argument" is plainly circular, not to mention vacuous and stupid.

The problem is that "everything" really means "everything except God": God is implicitly presupposed to exist and excluded from "everything".

Put another way, one can use the conclusion of the argument (God exists) to deny the foundational assumption: if *everything* has a cause, then God has a cause, unless God is not part of "everything" (the implicit presupposition). If God is not part of "everything", then in what sense can he/she/it be held to exist?

TBH, for the sake of your own sanity, I'd avoid getting involved in an argument so manifestly sophomoric and masturbatory, unless you enjoy playing whack-a-moron.

147. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #107608 by emmet on January 4, 2008 at 8:15 pm

My (rather childish) take:

http://emmet.caulfield.info/i/chrout.jpg