It is probably a near perfect mirror from this liquid mecury.

The big problems with liquids for telescope surfaces are -

1) gravity - the mirrors can only point straight up

2) the thermal coefficient of expansion for liquids is huge, as temps change, liquid components are dimensionally unstable

I suspect what you see is the state of the art for liquid mirrors and you shouldn't expect to see much more in our lifetimes.

Wow, I see so many viewing fails here.

1) Yes, some of these people are gun novices. But these people got more training in gun-handling and marksmanship than is required by most states in the U.S. and they STILL failed to stop the shooter.

2) The whole point of the video is that it takes hundreds of hours of training under stress (like in this scenario) in order for people to overcome their natural instincts and avoid a) freezing up or b) accidentally shooting themselves or another innocent in the confusion.

3) How many gun carriers (barring ex-military or police) have had the kind of training mentioned in Point #2? Of those that have, how many continue to put in the training hours necessary to not lose the skill?

It's all great spouting hypotheticals about how a CCW would have saved the day at Sandy Hook, but this video shows that's a patently false statement. What might have resulted in less casualties would have been a CCW in the hands of a highly disciplined individual with combat firearms training experience. How many gun carrying Americans do you know who fit that description?

And even if such a person HAD been in the school on that day, with the shooter wearing a bullet-proof vest and utilizing a semi-automatic rifle, there's no guarantee the outcome would have been any different.

More guns in the hands of undertrained Americans is not the answer. Modifying the social system so that identifying and dealing with mentally unstable individuals before they go on shooting rampages is a priority, though, would be a step in the right direction.

Let's address those, shall we?

So first you're going to stab, choke or bludgeon me?

You're welcome to try, son.

You have to get close to me. You have to over power me. You have to do this in a way that stops others from stopping you. I don't for a second believe you're capable of that.

You want to poison or bomb me?

This takes dedication, planning and materials. None of which the average unstable individual usually has. Are there a few dyed in the wool nutjobs with resources? Sure but there's a lot less of them, and having to procure the materials for the acts makes it a lot easier to catch them.
It's almost as if controlling bomb and poison making materials worked...

The US attitude to guns is what scares me the most. There are plenty of people in other countries with guns, but almost all of them have guns for a specific reason, like hunting or target shooting.

Only in the US have I met people who own guns for "home defence". As such, you get people who really don't have a clue how to safely operate a gun and who believe it's a magic talisman that keeps them safe. It's bullshit, and frankly, it's time you grew the fuck up and realised you're not in an action movie.

Who the fuck are you say the nurse was "unstable"?

What I find most interesting is not the DJs (who are unfunny idiots) or the woman (while it's sad, she was also clearly unstable that something as trivial as this would drive her to suicide).

It's the public reaction. When I first noticed this story, it was mentioned in a fluff piece in online news and the public reaction was "haha, what an idiot to be fooled like that". Then news of her suicide came through and the focus switched to a witch hunt on the DJs.

I'm willing to bet large sums of money that the people baying for their blood are the very same people who laughed about it a few days ago.

Missing his point VoodooV- Weath (comfortable, social and political environment=stable) as opposed to Poverty (constant struggle, unstable living conditions and government, etc).
Wealth provides access to information, education, and comfort in our temporarily-fucked paradigm. Unfortunately, knowledge and the leisure to pursue a higher path of consciousness is not something "endowed to all men by their creator" but something to be kept in a museum or private collection....or maybe even an entire city in ROME??? ..hint,hint??

Religions are wealthy because they have duped humans that they have a handle on their spirituality, or are a direct conduit to God herself. How do you think they got wealthy??
Oh and YES, it does take a higher education than that of a base, instinctual, meatbot (not talking about "University" per-se, either), because in order to HAVE have the questioning nature to reject religion you must first understand what it is about an institution's take on God, that you have a problem with....Harder to do that when you are poor and stupid BY DESIGN!

Religion has lasted as long as it has because people are herded, worked like cattle, and fed a continual stream of partial or outright disinformation. The average person may not have the information to make an informed decision, or even access to it.

There's a reason for the adage, "Knowledge is Power"
Control the dissemination of information and you can control a shitload of human bean!!

Oh, and a hearty down vote for Stink Uraguay's continual, smugly-smugstein rant(z). ...(everything he offers up is a rant right, and never are they either witty, or eloquent. MEH

Thank you QM for that thoughtful reply.

It just seems that the imbalance right now is in demand, not the availability of capitol to invest.


>> ^quantumushroom:

Your logic isn't flawed per se, just incomplete.
In an unstable environment like the one created by Obama and his ilk, no sane wealthy person is going to expand businesses or invest.
Lower tax rates mean more investing and more lending to entrepreneurs. It also means less "hoarding" by the wealthy, who in an electronic world can transfer monies rapidly and keep them parked elsewhere.
The idea is that even though the tax rate is lower, there is more economic activity, and thus greater revenue.
Taxation is only half of the equation, the other is spending. Government spending will certainly not stop under a Romney Administration; a continuing taxocrat-majority Congress means spending will barely slow down.

Outrage over the Ryan proposal is selective at best. His Earness has already screwed the middle-class. Here are the new taxes the middle class will be paying for Obamacare. The ink is already dry.
>> ^TheFreak:
Give me $2500 over a year and it will all be spent on household expenses in the bat of an eye, directly into the economy. Give $250,000 to a millionaire and what exactly is it going to do? How is that money going to stimulate the economy better than the millions they're already hoarding?
Someone give me a coherent argument for how an extra fraction of wealth is going to encourage these people to invest and grow anything. Show me the flaw in my logic.

Your logic isn't flawed per se, just incomplete.

In an unstable environment like the one created by Obama and his ilk, no sane wealthy person is going to expand businesses or invest.

Lower tax rates mean more investing and more lending to entrepreneurs. It also means less "hoarding" by the wealthy, who in an electronic world can transfer monies rapidly and keep them parked elsewhere.

The idea is that even though the tax rate is lower, there is more economic activity, and thus greater revenue.

Taxation is only half of the equation, the other is spending. Government spending will certainly not stop under a Romney Administration; a continuing taxocrat-majority Congress means spending will barely slow down.


Outrage over the Ryan proposal is selective at best. His Earness has already screwed the middle-class. Here are the new taxes the middle class will be paying for Obamacare. The ink is already dry.

>> ^TheFreak:

Give me $2500 over a year and it will all be spent on household expenses in the bat of an eye, directly into the economy. Give $250,000 to a millionaire and what exactly is it going to do? How is that money going to stimulate the economy better than the millions they're already hoarding?
Someone give me a coherent argument for how an extra fraction of wealth is going to encourage these people to invest and grow anything. Show me the flaw in my logic.

In reply to this comment by braschlosan:
I feel that most people could benefit greatly from even a single experience with LSD. I agree with you entirely except for people who are already mentally unstable (which is only a portion of the population)

Someone else in that thread however is very upset by what I said heh


In reply to this comment by enoch:
for those who may be a tad uptight hallucinagenics should be mandatory.
if only once in your lifetime.



dont sweat it my man.
reality is a subjective animal and everybody has their own take.people who have never imbibed may have a viewpoint that is contrary to those who have.
sucks for them...they have no idea what they are missing.

I feel that most people could benefit greatly from even a single experience with LSD. I agree with you entirely except for people who are already mentally unstable (which is only a portion of the population)

Someone else in that thread however is very upset by what I said heh


In reply to this comment by enoch:
for those who may be a tad uptight hallucinagenics should be mandatory.
if only once in your lifetime.

>> ^Kalle:

One serious question that bothers me is.. why isnt it possible to use gravity as an energy source?
Would such a machine be a perpetual motion machine?


Gravity is REALLY weak. Like 36 orders of magnitude less than the electromagnetic force. 36 orders of magnitude is massive...larger the the total number of stars in the known universe. For instance, a fridge magnet is defeating the ENTIRE gravitational force of the earth AND the sun. Gravity makes for a great way to bind the macro-universe together, but it is shit as an energy source.

Also, gravity has only one polarity...and it doesn't turn off. So for the EM force, we have 2 poles that can be switched around via electrical current to make lots of different energy related things. But for gravity, you just have one ground state, and once you are there you need to input energy to get away from that ground state...no way around that. However, what has been done and is done in certain areas is to have a closed system where you apply energy at certain time and store that energy for later. The example most commonly used is in dams, where the will pump a large volume of water back up stream (potential energy) and store it (a gravity battery if you will) and release it as a later time when demand is high. This is always a loss based way to make energy; your going to spend more pumping it back up (heat loss and other losses including evaporation) than you will when you get it back...so it is just a way to cause demand shifting towards other hours with additional entropy.

You have 4 fundamental forces to draw energy from; and 3 of those are the only practical ones. Strong (nuclear) force, the EM force, and the gravitational force (the weak force is actually the force that powers the earths core, but isn't useful to use in power generation for a similar reason gravity isn't).

The EM force is what we use in internal combustion engines and electrical motors. Chemical reactions are rearrangements of the electron structures of molecules, which makes gasoline engines possible via liquid to gas expansion pressures. Generators deal with EM fields, polarity and current which is what drives thermal reactors like coal or can drive a car with a motor via conversation of stored electrical energy(just a backwards generator). Nuclear reactors deal with the strong (nuclear) force, and combine that with kinetic/thermodynamic forces of same flavor as coal and other thermal plants.

Even gravity isn't perpetual, the orbits of ALL celestial bodies are unstable. Gravity is thought and reasonably well satisfied to travel in waves. These waves cause turbulence in what would seem calm orbits, slowly breaking them down over time...drawing them closer and closer together. Eventually, all orbits will cause ejection or collision.


As to what energy is best, I personally believe in the power of the strong force, as does the sun . When you are talking about the 4 forces and their ability to make energy for us, the strong force is 6 orders of magnitude greater than other chemical reactions we can make. The EM force is not to much weaker than the strong force, but the practical application of chemical reactions limits us to the electron cloud, making fuels for chemical reactions less energetic by a million to a billion times vs strong force fuels. Now, only fission has been shown to work for energy production currently, but I doubt that will be true forever. If you want LOTS of energy without much waste, you want strong force energy, period. That and the weak force are the 2 prime movers of sustained life on this planet. While the chemistry is what is hard at work DOING life, the strong and weak force provide the energy to sustain that chemistry. Without it, there are no winds, there is no heat in the sky nor from the core, no EM shield from that core. Just a cold, lifeless hunk of metals and gases floating in the weak gravitational force.

Sorry for the rant, energy is my most favorite current subject



(edit, corrected some typos and bad grammar)

>> ^chingalera:

Jeeeesus! Wow man, the Chinese got the United States beat on so many levels, including insurance fraud!
Proof, that the trappings of an industrialized capitalist society in the hands of repressed Asian children become unstable at room temperature ☢


Just like one video of an american religious zealot chastising gays is indicative of the intolerance of the immature and disrespectful west and their fiendish democracy?

I've got news for you - the west has been up to this and more for years.

Jeeeesus! Wow man, the Chinese got the United States beat on so many levels, including insurance fraud!

Proof, that the trappings of an industrialized capitalist society in the hands of repressed Asian children become unstable at room temperature ☢

The first thing we should do is decide, in the wake of these tragedies, what we should be talking about instead providing a knee jerk reaction.

I would have said the discussion should center around mental-health and the need for it. On that, both men have spoken, Obama through the Affordable Care Act, and Romney through the Massachusetts Health Reform Act.

BUT, in the case of the Colorado shooting, James Holmes' psychiatrist went to local authorities with concerns about this mentally unstable person. Michael Page, responsible for the most recent Wisconsin shooting, was already being watched by authorities.

The question I propose is: Why were these men who should have been monitored closer able to develop and execute elaborate plans to massacre innocent people if the authorities already knew about them?

I'll leave it at that with this final comment: an overstaffed, underworked police force was not a problem in either instance. And funding or defunding local municipalities through the raising or lowering of taxes is something both candidates have spoken on frequently.

The best comment I ever read on child abuse was one pointing out you rarely see someone hit their kid in a calmly calculated and rational manner. It's almost always a stressed/unstable parent losing their shit and lashing out, then rationalising it afterwards as being for the kid's benefit.

And hey, if the price of stopping the psychos that beat the crap out of their kids is that a better parent can't put their kids over their knee, then I'm not going to lose any sleep.