| Irony meter = broken |
[Dec. 8th, 2008|02:18 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | news, religion | ] |
| [ | coordinates |
| | Berkeley | ] |
| [ | audio signal |
| | "Carol of the Bells" -- Trans-Siberian Orchestra | ] |
This article about the Washington atheist sign at the capitol building is fun reading. Apparently, they're protesting the "hate speech" of declaring that:
"religion is but myth and superstition"
The ironic part? The same folks are holding signs that say "Atheists go to hell" and have preachers saying "It is time to chase out of the house of God all the unbelievers and evildoers". Well, not to mention there is certainly a credible case to be made that if saying "religion is a myth" is hate speech (untrue), then saying "unbelievers go to hell" is certainly a stronger form of hate speech.
(To be clear, I don't think it is ... I just think its brainwashing. It becomes hate speech when they think that unbelievers *should* go to hell).
Oh fundies. Always a source of entertainment.
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| On silly politicians and Nuclear Power |
[Nov. 24th, 2006|01:25 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | news, nuclear, science | ] |
| [ | coordinates |
| | Glendale | ] |
| [ | thoughts |
| | relaxed if minorly annoyed | ] |
| [ | audio signal |
| | "Davy Jones" -- Pirates 2 | ] |
GAH politicians need to learn science. Its amazingly counter to stereotypes that the only truly viably progessive energy policy is preferentially republican (though they still do a lousy implementation. We need to remove funds from hydrogen research until we have nuclear power, and divert ff funds to nuclear, as well. I swear, we need a NucE or ChemE person in one of those high positions). Little stupidities on this have been running so high as of late that I think I'm going to have to dredge up my senior project paper and post it online and link it up. If I call it an NMR are you going to stop getting MRIs? Guess what, it is NUCLEAR magnetic resonance. Scary word, but really its OK!
The short of it? Yucca Mountain is as close a perfect solution as it gets people, embrace it! |
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| Activate Cloaking Device .... |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|08:48 pm] |
So, the Romulans were just really really slow. That is, humans have a prototype microwave cloak as of 2006. I find this fascinating. This has two huge implications other than OMG INVISIBLE. That is, these are the ultimate Faraday cages. You put someone in 2.4 GHz-tuned invisibility cell, and, suddenly, you're impossible to contact. The cell towers just don't see you there. Also note this can be expanded, so that you can use this technology to shield things from EM blasts ... the EM blasts just don't see what you're shielding at all.
Finally, I think it is worth pointing out that the visible one is the most important. When you have a visible cloak, you can use the visible cloak to cloak portions that cloak the non-visible parts of the EM spectrum. Thus, one can render something completely invisible in the electromagnetic by nesting frequencies outside of the visible and then encapsulating the whole thing in a visible-wavelength-cloak.
I also expect this technology will spur alternative detectors. Obviously this technology will not be released to the public for a long while, or, if it is, in only a super-neutered form. One can cloak a bomb in this, and suddenly terrorists around the world rejoice. It is a tool with enough possibilities that twisted folk can really abuse it. So, of course, should a foreign power use this, we need some way to detect something outside the EM. Some insane neutrino sensor? Some gravitic sensor? Both normally need HUGE apparatuses. Something that measures weak and strong interactions with unprecedented precision? I wonder how a MASER would work against the cloak. Is it coherent upon exiting the cloak? If its not, one needs collimated light beams of varying frequencies (read: many lasers) in conjunction with sophisticated computer systems to analyse the deviance from [orginal] coherent laser output when passing through a cloak, and then measure that deviance from the wrong side of the beam, no less! The implications of this are simply astounding.
Heh, this also adds a second method (other than a Dyson Sphere) for a civilization to hide itself. I wonder how well this conceals radiating objects .... and what it does with said radiation. Does it just get captured in its chamber?
Thoughts?
[0100: Minor Edit] |
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