>> ^luxury_pie:

But nonetheless he IS drawing a very intimidating picture there. I for one never realized so clearly the "place" we as a human race have in the universe. Besides the fact that he uses outdated or non-accurate scientific references as it seems. Please keep in my mind that this man is a historian and as I see it he doesn't base his whole argument on the laws of thermodynamics rather then his own abstraction of complexity and development.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't many if not all of the facts he mentions about the first "steps" of the universe currently accepted facts/ assumptions of astrophysics, if one could say so?
His train of thought seems pretty straight to the point and his conclusion is absolutely true. We are indeed destroying the "goldi-locks-conditions" that led to our existence.


I agree. Yet I wish he would also point out that in the last ten years we've found extreme life in places you'd NEVER expect. This might throw the "goldi-locks-conditions" partially out the window. This year we found life not based on carbon, but phosphorous (this is by rote memory, it may have been sulfur) and even arsenic! We may actually have quite a bit of extra-terrestrial life in our own solar system. Just not sentient (or lacking ways to create incredible machinations of the mind), yet.

What humans need to learn is that we will kill ourselves as WE need that, "goldi-locks-conditions", to live. Almost all current life except the kind I mentioned would be devastated by our actions. We WILL die, and be replaced for a good 4-5 billion years. If we get to one million I'd be surprised.

If you're talking grey-goo stuff though, then I'll give you that...as the most hilarious way to screw ourselves over... I'm just thinking of alien telescopes looking at our planet and wondering WTF is that!?!

/The last bit is my sarcastic bastard side showing through.

But nonetheless he IS drawing a very intimidating picture there. I for one never realized so clearly the "place" we as a human race have in the universe. Besides the fact that he uses outdated or non-accurate scientific references as it seems. Please keep in my mind that this man is a historian and as I see it he doesn't base his whole argument on the laws of thermodynamics rather then his own abstraction of complexity and development.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't many if not all of the facts he mentions about the first "steps" of the universe currently accepted facts/ assumptions of astrophysics, if one could say so?

His train of thought seems pretty straight to the point and his conclusion is absolutely true. We are indeed destroying the "goldi-locks-conditions" that led to our existence.

This guy is hand-waving so much about entropy, thermodynamics, complexity, etc. It really bothers me. It's such a reach to say that the second law of thermodynamics implies that complexity shouldn't emerge. I mean, obviously his own talk is exactly about numerous counter examples to this idea. But it's a straw man for him to set up in the first place.

>> ^StukaFox:

9/11 Conspiracy Theories for Dummies:
George W. Bush -- THAT George W. Bush -- for reasons known only to himself decided he wanted to knock down the World Trade Center, blame the whole thing on terrorists from Saudi Arabia and use that as a pretense to invade Iraq.
Yes, THAT George W. Bush.
He decided the WTC should collapse, so he had some people rig the building with explosives/thermite. They did this without being spotted by the people who worked in the buildings, the people who maintained the buildings, the people who secured the buildings or the people who inspect the buildings.
Then, because he's George W. Bush, he decided to sex the whole thing up by flying a couple of Boeings into the Towers. So he hired a crew of hijackers and said "Hey, you lot, would you please fly these airplanes into the World Trade Center, but don't tell anyone what you're up to while you're in training here in American flight schools? Yeah, you'll die and stuff and your names will be infamous and you'll shame your families -- but hey, look: MONEY!" Oddly, no one said no to this offer, because no one has come forth to talk about the wackiest government job interview ever.
Oh yeah, and he got some guys to fly some other planes into stuff, too, because just flying two commercial airliners into buildings wasn't believable enough as is.
So the explosive guys and the plane-flyer guys all got together on September 11, 2001, and WHAMMO!, the whole crazy plan went off without a hitch!
Then, the guys who planted the explosives, the guys who supplied the explosives, the guys who ordered the guys to plant the explosives, the guys who trained the pilots, the guys who gave the orders to the guys who trained the pilots, the guys who paid off all the guys, the guys who were in charge of making sure all the guys did their things and all the other guys who were involved in keeping all the loose ends tied up, all of them kept their mouths shut. All of them were so well-paid and so fundamentally evil that they never breathed a word of their part in the murders of almost three thousand people.
The most amazing part is that these same guys have been able to keep scientists, journalists, government investigators and peer-reviewed journals from printing a word of proof of any of this -- a conspiracy so vast that even the Democrats -- who would stand to make incredible gains by exposing mass-murder on the part of the far right -- have kept quiet about it.
But luckily, a plucky group of internet users with, no background in building engineering, physics, thermodynamics or materials engineering, have seen through this whole charade and are ringing the bell to alert a drowsy national of sheeple that shit ain't right, yo! And just as soon as they're able, they'll bring George W. Bush -- yes, THAT George W. Bush -- to account for his role in the worst conspiracy in American history, next to those faked Moon landings and Pearl Harbor.
There you have it, 9/11 Conspiracy Theories for Dummies.


What in the fuck are you talking about? Where in this thread has ANYONE said anything about GW doing this? Where? LOL you write this drivel yourself, or plagiarize it off some web site?

9/11 Conspiracy Theories for Dummies:

George W. Bush -- THAT George W. Bush -- for reasons known only to himself decided he wanted to knock down the World Trade Center, blame the whole thing on terrorists from Saudi Arabia and use that as a pretense to invade Iraq.

Yes, THAT George W. Bush.

He decided the WTC should collapse, so he had some people rig the building with explosives/thermite. They did this without being spotted by the people who worked in the buildings, the people who maintained the buildings, the people who secured the buildings or the people who inspect the buildings.

Then, because he's George W. Bush, he decided to sex the whole thing up by flying a couple of Boeings into the Towers. So he hired a crew of hijackers and said "Hey, you lot, would you please fly these airplanes into the World Trade Center, but don't tell anyone what you're up to while you're in training here in American flight schools? Yeah, you'll die and stuff and your names will be infamous and you'll shame your families -- but hey, look: MONEY!" Oddly, no one said no to this offer, because no one has come forth to talk about the wackiest government job interview ever.

Oh yeah, and he got some guys to fly some other planes into stuff, too, because just flying two commercial airliners into buildings wasn't believable enough as is.

So the explosive guys and the plane-flyer guys all got together on September 11, 2001, and WHAMMO!, the whole crazy plan went off without a hitch!

Then, the guys who planted the explosives, the guys who supplied the explosives, the guys who ordered the guys to plant the explosives, the guys who trained the pilots, the guys who gave the orders to the guys who trained the pilots, the guys who paid off all the guys, the guys who were in charge of making sure all the guys did their things and all the other guys who were involved in keeping all the loose ends tied up, all of them kept their mouths shut. All of them were so well-paid and so fundamentally evil that they never breathed a word of their part in the murders of almost three thousand people.

The most amazing part is that these same guys have been able to keep scientists, journalists, government investigators and peer-reviewed journals from printing a word of proof of any of this -- a conspiracy so vast that even the Democrats -- who would stand to make incredible gains by exposing mass-murder on the part of the far right -- have kept quiet about it.

But luckily, a plucky group of internet users with, no background in building engineering, physics, thermodynamics or materials engineering, have seen through this whole charade and are ringing the bell to alert a drowsy national of sheeple that shit ain't right, yo! And just as soon as they're able, they'll bring George W. Bush -- yes, THAT George W. Bush -- to account for his role in the worst conspiracy in American history, next to those faked Moon landings and Pearl Harbor.

There you have it, 9/11 Conspiracy Theories for Dummies.

omg i didn't even think about herbs!!! that would be amazing to dry and store my own herbs and not have to buy that expensive shit at the grocery store.

yeah so, my family and i are on very limited budget and eat about 75-85% of our food raw and unprocessed (because it's completely awesome). so i'm very interested in ways to get the most out of my produce. also, i might be trail mixes #1 fan and my son is dried fruits #1 fan. like, if there was a competitive eating competition for trail mix, i'd totally compete in that. i eat some sort of trail mix at least once a day. i think we'd use it a lot. unless it was difficult to work or the dried fruits/veggies/herbs tasted bad or didn't consistently come out right.

in your experience was the end result adequate quality? was the process user friendly?

>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^peggedbea:
i've also been thinking about investing in a dehydrator this year and making my own trail mix out the apples and berries and bananas that are "soon to go bad". has anyone ever used a dehydrator before? what do you think?

They are worth the money, IF you use them. If you only plan to make a couple batches of trail mix, then it will not be worth the money spent, If you are asking for a comparison of models I cannot help you, I am only giving personal experience, and that is using it for as you said " using up degrading fruit" but it is also a preservative means, honestly , if you can find a use for it, then they are worth the 60 or so dollars spent, but if it is just for a couple novelty dried fruit trail mix expenditures, then no, it is not worth the money.
They are excellent for storing over produced fruit/vegetables from warm months, herbs especially, you just have to have a means to make it worth the money spent, and usually with herbs, within two seasons you can justify it easily.

>> ^peggedbea:

i've also been thinking about investing in a dehydrator this year and making my own trail mix out the apples and berries and bananas that are "soon to go bad". has anyone ever used a dehydrator before? what do you think?


They are worth the money, IF you use them. If you only plan to make a couple batches of trail mix, then it will not be worth the money spent, If you are asking for a comparison of models I cannot help you, I am only giving personal experience, and that is using it for as you said " using up degrading fruit" but it is also a preservative means, honestly , if you can find a use for it, then they are worth the 60 or so dollars spent, but if it is just for a couple novelty dried fruit trail mix expenditures, then no, it is not worth the money.

They are excellent for storing over produced fruit/vegetables from warm months, herbs especially, you just have to have a means to make it worth the money spent, and usually with herbs, within two seasons you can justify it easily.

>> ^marinara:

buy a rice cooker. cook yer rice and it shuts off into "warm mode"


Or use a pot you already own, use your brain which you supposedly have operating.. and use each in a sort of symbiotic relationship, to.. measure out water, boil water, add rice,cover rice,reduce heat,time 20 (or so minutes) and save yourself 60 dollars, all the while feeling neat-o for not needing a machine to cook rice.. what next, a pasta boiler ?

Almost all energy consumed by households is avoidable waste:
* think about the way you fry eggs. 99% of the heat from the burner is going into the air, not into the eggs. This should be solved by using small device that is well insulated on all sides and has an internal heating coil.
* Ovens have a high heat capacity and shitty insulation. More energy is wasted on heating up the oven itself than actually goes into the food. This could be solved by lining the inside of the oven with silica aerogel instead of metal. If an oven is properly insulated it will not feel very warm to the touch on the outside, even after being on for an hour.
* Most of your heating and cooling energy leaks out the windows -- if their inside surface feels significantly above or below ambient during extreme weather, your heating and cooling energy is being wasted and hemorrhaging out the windows. It would literally save energy to have a webcam on the roof and display that image on an LCD inside instead of having windows, if you live in a climate with extreme temperatures (especially in cold climates, as the energy used for the LCD would contribute to heating the house). All ventilation needs can be accomplished through a small portal with a fan (and a heat exchanger, of course).
* Hot water is produced very wastefully by just dumping energy into it instead of using a thermodynamic cycle to transfer heat and produce something cold as a byproduct. Hot water could be co-produced with cold water for AC / Refrigeration much more efficiently than doing them all separately.
* Hot water goes down the drain. This should at least go through a heat exchanger, which would dramatically lessen the amount of work that has to be done to heat up new hot water. A 7 Liter per minute showerhead putting water 30 degrees F above ambient down the drain is wasting over 8135 watts as long as it is running. However, I don't know of any houses yet designed with a heat exchanger between the shower drain water and the intake of the water heater.
* Fluorescent lights. Duh. Incandescent bulbs should be banned.
* Freezers built with the door on the top will waste much less energy to the convection of air when opened, for obvious reasons.

Here ends the lifestyle-neutral list of suggestions. The following would involve sacrificing something:

* Reduce excessive lighting -- if people wouldn't fuck up their retinas by driving just after sunrise or just before sunset, or seeing specular reflections of the sun on shiny cars and buildings outdoors, they wouldn't need such bright lights indoors. A 1 watt LED is plenty for reading. Sunlight could be used in the daytime instead of artificial lights.

Living near the coast, I have to try and force myself to see an bright side in all this. One can only hope, that the detriment to the stock value of BP over this will force not only BP, but the industry at large to make changes needed to be safe and profitable. If not for the sake of the environment, for the sake of profits. If they get hit hard in the money belt, perhaps it could wake up the entire industry. That and perhaps new forms of energy will finally be getting new investment dollars. Problem is, oil really is a great substance thermodynamically speaking. It has a huge energy density for something that doesn't have to be manufactured. No other solution has really shown as easy, practical usage in over 40 years of research. I think our need for oil will last until there is none left, but until then, perhaps we can try not to coat the oceans with it.

>> ^gwiz665:

Nuclear power is the best fast and effecient substitute for coal and oil. Ideally we'd all just use solar, wind and geothermal, but this is not an ideal world and we need to end our dependence (or lessen it) asap.


Why are those ideal? They are an eye sore and take up vast amounts of space, and at times, in what used to be nice habitats. Daming up rivers and strip clearing land for wind and solar seem to be a step backwards for the goal. In my mind, the ideal is a little power plant that powers the whole world. It seems thermodynamically speaking you have 3 options: To burn stuff that is energetic, to harness small pools of energy over large amounts of space, or to have a high level energy reaction that is potentially volatile. Fusion does seem like the answer once we get it, its volatility is unlike nuclear. The volatility of fusion, from my understanding, is trying to maintain the reaction. Catastrophic failure means a reactor restart, not a meltdown. So you get high energy density, stability (of power output levels), low risk, low pollution. The same is true of fission reactors, except they aren't "as" safe, or "as" clean as some of the alternatives. But the type of clean they ARE (low co2) is exactly what we want.

The magnet line is the giveaway. Well, that and the first law of thermodynamics. ICP is never going to live that tune down.

Interesting. I love time travel stuff

This is a neat play on an Einstein idea. The basic tenants of relativity make the nature of the universe like a machine. As such, the entirety of the universe has already happened; all existence has been fated. As such, there is no real problem with events from any one time influencing events of a non-adjacent time. Meaning events from the future could be directly responsible for events in the past. This eliminates a bunch of the different time-paradox problems. However, it creates a new one that I don't know that he ever addressed, and that is the snowball of extra energy and matter for all deltas.

So, let us suppose a hypothetical universe that exists for 10 seconds and is only composed of one particle. At time 10, we send that one particle back to T = 1. And time 9.99999 we send back another particle to T=1 ect ect. You see the problem, all the sudden you have a universe at time 1 with near infinite particles. Even if we correct for paradox by having all particles return the exact moment they arrive so that our universe stays consistent in the future states with only one particle, we still have the problem that at T=1 the universe was infinitely energetic seemingly violating the first law of thermodynamics.

>> ^MaxWilder:

Thou shalt not fuck with Anonymous.


Had to up-vote just for that.

edit -

Also,

Thou Shall Not open your pie hole during "The State of the Union" speech.

Thou Shall Not use Interest in a monetary system; Follow to Law Three.

Thou Shall Not break the second law of thermodynamics; nor Law Three of the "Two Goats don't Equal Three, Man, Clause".

He brings up thermodynamics ( you could add QED into this to make it even stronger, quantum foam and what not...), but entropy would be what he is talking about. Entropy can be seen as something that is the same homogeneous "thing" (quarks, photons, hydrogen; or in the case of QED potential energies) breaking down by "physics" or the physical mechanics and properties of the universe into a less homogeneous "thing". Hence energy then particles then elements, stars, black holes, planets, galaxies, cluster groups, the universe. It never really changed it is merely entropy that distinguishes most of these things.

Time itself may induce entropy, but we still have things to figure out in that area. What QED teaches is that you don't need anything special at all to create the universe, "chance" is more than enough. Throw in time or entropy and wallah, instant mechanical system created with it's own mechanics and in superposition to anything outside to detect it unless they become entangled to us. If they measure anything our "universes" would combine into a hybrid (most likely--impossible for now to begin thinking if this would be possible).

Recently scientists have been able to "tune" cobalt niobate (the magnetic spins) into a quantum critical state (superposition) and more recently they've done the same with electrons. The magnetic "tuning" frequency they used to accomplish this was extremely close to the Euler's number: e. "Euler's number" may be linked to the appearance of entropy merely being a function of mechanics that me be described by physicists later as an algorithm. If e is linked it would explain many observable systems we already have knowledge of. You can see it already at work in multiple situations. It also has a strong correlation with: fractals, golden ratio, golden spiral, Fibonacci sequence, etc... It's also an irrational number which may cause the algorithm to seemingly never stop; you could zoom in and out on the universe and it would continually look the same in correlation with an universal algorithm.

I hoped I made my thoughts clear enough; I dumbed down a lot of the material hopefully I still get the point across. It may be that the universe is merely just potential energies with an algorithm thrown in for spice. Other universes would have their own algorithm and constants like e.

Some articles pertaining to some of this: Here, here, here, here, here, and here.