The industrial age is part of 'economic liberty'.

People were free to make inventions that use coal, or use oil, and were free to market them either as products or services.

That differs from the earlier times/case where folks were obligated to participate only in activities sanctioned by their local lords. Often where they couldn't even travel freely.

Much of the math and chemistry we have comes from centuries worth of largely superfluous [essentially hobbyist at the time] higher education of the privileged classes. (eg. Boyle's/Charles' laws being a foundation of modern internal combustion engines, not used in said form for centuries after written down).

(Note : Which still continues to be the case, what we come up with in a purely theoretical form today, ends up being used in practical application much later. Although maybe it's speeding up. eg. Relativity is used in making GPS work, and that time delta isn't quote as large.)

Once the idea of economic liberty took hold, and people were free to come up with ideas that use the universes natural/physical properties to replace 'manpower', you had the industrial revolution.



The 'honor' part plays a good role too. You can witness this still being an issue today.
You can go to parts of eastern Europe, and talk with people about jobs and respectability.

There are plenty of places where a laborer is scum, and a businessman (eg. owner, who does not himself work, but has people working for him) is highly respected.
In these places, you don't see much work getting done, as a large portion of the typical western service sectors just doesn't exist.
For example, there are ~no house painters. Showing up with paint buckets and overalls would just get you strange stares and mumbles from people around you, and parents would be saying to their kids "See, this is what happens if you don't get good grades".
If you want your house painted, you gotta do it yourself. Few self respecting people are willing to do that job.
In contrast, ask people around the U.S. about who painted their house. Odds are, they hired for it.

The effects on small business are visible too. Lots of shops, the moment the owner can afford to not come in himself, that's exactly what they do.
And on top of that, they take every chance they can get to point out to folks that 'they don't work anymore - people work for them'.

It's a culture where the people responsible for productivity are looked down on, and it has a chilling effect on productivity.

-scheherazade

I think it's also just that we're in the midst of great technological and sociological change.and it's due to the internet mostly.

if you lived in a small conservative town pre-internet, It was far more likely that you'd either never say anything, or succumb to peer pressure when it comes to voicing any dissent. Any views of alternative thinking always came from someone outside that town, so it was easier to dismiss or ignore. But when the internet puts you in touch with everyone else on the planet and it's far harder to deny thinking that runs contrary to how you think or at the very least, harder to drown it out.

We're also on the verge of some huge changes like medical technology getting better and better. Instead of relying "old wives tales" to cure what ails you. We're on the verge of massive transportation changes...the slow death of the internal combustion engine, we're not that far away from cars that will drive themselves. We also have to think more about the environment.

It's a time of HUGE change, and the people who are in power don't always like change. Even people who are not in power can often get distraught and upset at change.

That bus has an internal combustion engine, ma'am. Everywhere you go is powered by Satan.

Satan looks stacked.

>> ^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)

If we had videosift back when the internal combustion engine was invented, it would have been slaughtered as being too expensive and impractical compared to a horse.

This is yet another nail in the coffin for the internal combustion engine.

Hahah! I love how the black guy has a dark suit.

And the gunshot, as someone said. But also the fact that internal combustion engines even work on the moon.

I can upvote snowboarders, but not snowmobilers. Internal combustion engines are just so passe.

Your video, TINY: 4 stroke internal combustion engine, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 9 Badge!

>> ^Barseps:

Awwww.... how cute


Of course! Thanks, Barseps

>> ^Crosswords:

Long lecture is long. Religion is a malleable idea because it does not require proof in the scientific sense to believe. You can mold it into any shape you want; sometimes it's molded to fit the world and sometimes a person's idea of the world is molded to fit the religion (which sometimes takes the form of out right denying scientific evidence).
The problem of why so many people think religion and science can't co-exist is because there is a very vocal and active religious populations that see science as an assault on their beliefs. They don't want to see religion as malleable, they want it to be TRUTH (as they express on the bumpers of their horseless carriages powered by internal combustion engines). We, us non-believers, see this and are offended, because after all we base our understanding of the world on observable and measurable phenomena, while all their 'facts' are based on things a bunch of drunk goat/sheep herders were going on about 2000+ years ago.
As an atheist I've often given the the existence of a god/s thought, my conclusion has been it doesn't matter what I think since its subject to change at whim. I'd be most likely to see God as the watchmaker, in which case I'm benefited more by figuring out how the watch works than wondering what the maker wanted. I outright reject the God as the psycho jealous controlling girlfriend/boyfriend. 'If you really loved me you'd kill your first born, OMG you were really going to do it? I was just testing you, I wouldn't really make you do that. Now go slaughter some sheep and goats for me. No seriously... do it.'


That's all fine and whatnot... the problem is, religion is constantly retreating, and science constantly advancing.
People are rationalizing more and more. Which is pretty stupid and pathetic.
Religious people, ignorants or not, absolutely refuse to face reality. We see it every single day.
Being religious is, in my opinion, being intellectually dishonest. For example... how can someone say he/she is a christian, and then rationalize their way out from believing in most of the stuff that comes in the bible? The bible is the foundation for their belief (or it should be), yet only a complete ignorant would believe in shit as stupid as the beginning of the universe and creation of men, as described in Genesis. Or the great flood and the Moses story. etc, etc. There are people like that of course, but I doubt that it is the majority.

People are retreating from religious belief (even if unaware) and into empirical knowledge ever more.
Yet, they still consider themselves religious, even if whatever it is they believe in, has absolutely no real relation with what their religion is supposed to be about.

IF science ever reaches a point, where it can be said, with absolute certainty that god is not real, there would still be idiots trying to argue against it.

Shit... look at the amount of morons trying to discredit Evolution.

To conclude, I DO think science and religion are incompatible. One searches for the absolute truth, including the origin of the universe, how we came to be, and all that, no matter how pleasant it is (or isn't), and the other is about defending a stand, even if proven wrong (although every once in a while, they have to take a step back and admit they are being assholes. Nowadays you have the pope saying evolution is real.Oh really??? Well, that's not what it says in your holy book, you might wanna check that).

An institution such as the Catholic Church wanting to be side-by-side with science, after its "awesome" track record in support of science and knowledge, makes me wanna puke in disgust.

*Long lecture is long. Religion is a malleable idea because it does not require proof in the scientific sense to believe. You can mold it into any shape you want; sometimes it's molded to fit the world and sometimes a person's idea of the world is molded to fit the religion (which sometimes takes the form of out right denying scientific evidence).

The problem of why so many people think religion and science can't co-exist is because there is a very vocal and active religious populations that see science as an assault on their beliefs. They don't want to see religion as malleable, they want it to be TRUTH (as they express on the bumpers of their horseless carriages powered by internal combustion engines). We, us non-believers, see this and are offended, because after all we base our understanding of the world on observable and measurable phenomena, while all their 'facts' are based on things a bunch of drunk goat/sheep herders were going on about 2000+ years ago.

As an atheist I've often given the the existence of a god/s thought, my conclusion has been it doesn't matter what I think since its subject to change at whim. I'd be most likely to see God as the watchmaker, in which case I'm benefited more by figuring out how the watch works than wondering what the maker wanted. I outright reject the God as the psycho jealous controlling girlfriend/boyfriend. 'If you really loved me you'd kill your first born, OMG you were really going to do it? I was just testing you, I wouldn't really make you do that. Now go slaughter some sheep and goats for me. No seriously... do it.'

He doesn't understand how an internal combustion engine works? If only that was mentioned in the Gospels.

@kronosposeidon - I would add the qualifier that it has to be visible combustion (yes to Rocket tests, yes to the internal workings of an engine). And yes, I do understand the workings of an internal combustion engine, thank you. Many political discussions can be attributed to philosophical texts (and thus books), but we understand that folks can tell the difference. Likewise I would expect a modicum of common sense to prevail with a combustion channel.

Tongue-in-cheek eh? Sorry hombre, I didn't know librarians had a sense of humour.

Overcast - whats wrong with vicious fights over Irony invocations? This site is at its best when it roils in the midst of conflict. Keeps things interesting at least. Good point on the insects though - bugs is a better channel.

90's doesn't really excite me either, but I've heard it mentioned a few times and wanted to provide a full slate of options. I may end up regretting that.

As for indigenous - I would defer to Wikipedia: "Indigenous peoples are any ethnic group who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection."