@Throbbin: These are all rocket-testing videos:

http://videosift.com/video/Plasma-Rocket-Testing
http://videosift.com/video/Ares-Rocket-Test-Fire-At-Corrine-Utah-9-10-09
http://videosift.com/video/Nasa-methane-gas-engine-test
http://videosift.com/search?q=rocket+test

That's mega-combustion in all cases. Would they fit, yes or no? And like I said, cars have internal combustion engines. There are mini-explosions genuinely taking place inside of each cylinder in them. Now you might think it wouldn't come up, but I guarantee you, sooner or later it would. Like in the case of this video:

http://videosift.com/video/Actual-footage-from-inside-a-4-stroke-engine-Wow-cool

So if that were added, then one might legitimately claim that anything involving engines would be kosher for the Combustion channel. So it's not as common-sense as you might think.

Look, people sometimes debate shit about what belongs in all of these channels:

Femme
Lies
Terrible
Viral
Sexuality
Eia

And others. So is it so terrible to ask for clarification, or to even suggest that maybe a combustion channel might be too broad?

And the last part of my comment is tongue-in-cheek, esse. It was meant to show that I'm not being overly serious about anything. I trust that most sifters would understand that - you may not.

Medicine = Health + Science (and sometimes including Brain, and sometimes including Anatomy)>> ^MycroftHomlz:

medicine


Inspirational can be a subset of Happy, but hey, if you really want it then create it when you get your diamond, which at the rate you're going should be next week.

Sad can be a subset of Dark, but if you really want it, then see above^.>> ^bleedmegood:

inspirational or sad


And for @Throbbin, combustion? What would that cover? Anything where flame is involved? Because that would include most Wheels submissions (internal combustion). Also rockets, explosions, and marijuana, among others. Too broad, IMHO.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just the Sift librarian, and some people hate that channel with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. I guess some folks fear literacy.

Are you talking about Fracking? Or AKA Hydrolic Fracturing?>> ^budzos:
Hear me and remember this: Although solar is the logical move, we're going to see many nations start up large-scale methane extraction plants along the contintental shelves. We'll need better catalytic converters, but I'm sure that will be worked out (I hope).
The method for extracting useable methane from clathrate deposits? You pump CO2 into the ice. So it's going to be easy to paint it as a green solution. Trust me on this one...
There is a major danger of massive methane eruptions, think city-sized volumes of methane suddenly erupting from the ocean floor and becoming part of the atmosphere. Aside from that I think it might be the thing that lets internal-combustion fueled capitalism thrive long enough to completely fuck our species.

Hear me and remember this: Although solar is the logical move, we're going to see many nations start up large-scale methane extraction plants along the contintental shelves. We'll need better catalytic converters, but I'm sure that will be worked out (I hope).

The method for extracting useable methane from clathrate deposits? You pump CO2 into the ice. So it's going to be easy to paint it as a green solution. Trust me on this one...

There is a major danger of massive methane eruptions, think city-sized volumes of methane suddenly erupting from the ocean floor and becoming part of the atmosphere. Aside from that I think it might be the thing that lets internal-combustion fueled capitalism thrive long enough to completely fuck our species.

Sorry it took so long to respond, I had a busy weekend.

They are not simple probabilistic events, and they are operating off the same basic principles, that does not mean that systems do not have qualities which their component parts lack.

Does a piston have the capacity to convert petrol into kinetic energy? Does an internal combustion engine have this capacity? Which part of the engine imbues it with this power?

Systems are qualitatively different from their component parts, and some sets of systems, such as systems which decide, are qualitatively different from systems which don't

I'm going to need a definition of "decide" I suppose. It seems like you are dancing around these squishy intuitive concepts instead of having a specific physical distinction to point out. The amoeboid is composed of a lipid bilayer membrane riddled with intricate protein micro-machines that detect changes in the environment, and behaviorally compensate. To discount the intricacy of the mechanisms of genetic expression and chemical signaling that exist even in the simplest of eukaryotic organism is foolish IMHO. Many of the modern models of genetic expression, and compensation for environmental factors look strikingly similar to the connectionist network models of the brain. The computations are similar in the abstract.


You are anthropomorphizing the mold, it does move, this motion increases its chances of finding food, it survives/reproduces. It in no way displays evidence of doing any of this "in order" to accomplish some goal. If you want to suggest that evolution, as a system, displays intelligence, by selecting molds which move in certain ways, I would be willing to acknowledge that intelligence, not a consciousness, but an intelligence.

Well, more likely I'm moldopomorphizing us. What goals do we have that are ultimately distinct from survival, reproduction, and the general continuity of our species? Even something as seemingly unrelated as making music, or art could be cast as some sort of mating ritual. When you somehow separate our behavior from the rest of life on Earth it's as though you want to draw a barrier between us and them. You want to somehow separate us from the natural order. I hate to break it to you, but it just isn't so. We are just demonstrate the spatial heterogeneity of the second law of thermodynamics.


Why is context necessary for experience? What do you experience in infinitesimal time? Why should we posit some sort of experience which is entirely distinct from the type we claim to have?

I experience the moment. In fact, that's all I'm ever experiencing, although my sensation of it may run a little behind. I never experience my memory, I merely compare my experience to memory. Further, what I'm suggesting is not entirely distinct from any experience we claim to have. Some autistic individuals, for instance, report an extremely chaotic existence, in which causal models can't be formed as sensory modalities are not unified in the same way as ours. They are experienced as independent inputs, not reflective of a coherent physical world. Still, they experience it.

Physical laws are not obeyed, they are enforced. electron movements are completely deterministic, like billiard balls, they roll down hill, they don't decide if/when to do so.

Things can not be enforced without an enforcer. Further, as you've conceded the determinism of our brains, again, how are we not passively allowing the laws of nature to push us around? What exactly are we deciding?


I don't believe that you are claiming that electrons have tiny field sensors which feed into a neural network which analyzes them for patterns and then attributes meaning to them by comparing them to earlier similar sensation patterns. Perhaps you can state this more clearly.

No, I believe that by some other physical mechanism, likely involving quarks and particle physics that I admittedly have a poor understanding of, the electron receives information from not immediately proximal locations, and physically displaces itself to a location with more desirable properties given its current energy state. I don't see how that's different than cuddling up to a warm fire.


You seem to be positing that the structure of the universe is not topological, but that it is instead the consequence of 10^80 atoms all working on concert to decide what the laws of the universe are at this moment. If this is your thesis I am inclined to ask on what basis you think it is even vaguely likely that they would came to a consensus, such as they must to allow the functioning of a universe like ours.

Something like that , although I still don't like the word decide. I don't necessarily think they do come to a consensus. It's just that, as with an attractor network, or similar guaranteed convergence dynamical systems, certain macroscopic states are just more likely than others, despite chaos at the subordinate level. The reason I'd rather drop the word decide is because I don't necessarily want to open the door to something like free will. To cast it in a "God" metaphor, I imagine more of an omniscient God, than an omnipotent God.


Please provide some basis to believe that there is a phenomenal experience.

I can't other than to refer you to what I presume you to have. I could suggest focussing on your breathing, or what have you. I can point you towards literature showing that people that claim to focus on their consciousness can perform physical feats not previous considered possible (for instance monks rewriting the books on the physical tolerance of the human body to cold). Otherwise, I can't. I will say this, however, I take it to be the atomic element of inductive reason. The natural "laws" you are taking as primary are secondary. There is a simple reason for this as Alfred North Whitehead pointed out. If suddenly we were to observe all bits of matter floating away from one another, and were to confirm we were not hallucinating, and perhaps have the experience corroborated by our colleagues, it would not be the experience which was wrong, it would be the laws of nature. Experience has primacy. Matter is merely the logical consequence of applying induction to our particular set of shared experiences.


And that will persist as long as we are not talking about anything. You say "X exists". I say "What is X?". You say "You can't disprove X". And here we are talking about nothing.

I told you, in the best english I can, what X is. It's the qualia of phenomenal experience. Now I can't provide you with direct evidence for it, but I can tell you that nearly everyone I talk to has some sense of what I mean.


You must be using an alternate form of the word "believe". How can someone believe something, and simultaneously be completely unwilling to assert that it is a fact?

I take the Bayesian sense of the word. All probabilities are subjective degrees of belief. I adopt this degree of belief based on anecdotal experience and generalizations therein. None of this would be accepted as evidence by any reviewer, nor should it, and thus I wouldn't want to risk my credibility by asserting it as fact. I can believe some hypotheses to be more likely than others on the basis of no evidence, and in fact do all the time. That's how I, and all other scientists, decide what experiment to run next. I should not, however, expect you to believe me a priori, as you may operate on different axioms, and draw from different anecdotal experience. Thus, I would not feel compelled to assert my beliefs as fact, other than in so far as they are, in fact, my beliefs.

>> ^bmacs27: How are our actions not "probabilistic events?" The amoeba is operating off the same basic principals.

They are not simple probabilistic events, and they are operating off the same basic principles, that does not mean that systems do not have qualities which their component parts lack.

Does a piston have the capacity to convert petrol into kinetic energy? Does an internal combustion engine have this capacity? Which part of the engine imbues it with this power?

Systems are qualitatively different from their component parts, and some sets of systems, such as systems which decide, are qualitatively different from systems which don't

It's moving matter in order to seek out food, and even flexing its pseudopods along the shortest path between food sources in proportion to their delivery frequency.

You are anthropomorphizing the mold, it does move, this motion increases its chances of finding food, it survives/reproduces. It in no way displays evidence of doing any of this "in order" to accomplish some goal. If you want to suggest that evolution, as a system, displays intelligence, by selecting molds which move in certain ways, I would be willing to acknowledge that intelligence, not a consciousness, but an intelligence.

Why is memory necessary for experience?

Why is context necessary for experience? What do you experience in infinitesimal time? Why should we posit some sort of experience which is entirely distinct from the type we claim to have?

Electrons are "comparing" electric fields when they settle into a state, otherwise they couldn't obey their physical laws.

Physical laws are not obeyed, they are enforced. electron movements are completely deterministic, like billiard balls, they roll down hill, they don't decide if/when to do so.

As far as I'm concerned an electron is sensing an electrical field in the same way I am sensing visual band EM.

I don't believe that you are claiming that electrons have tiny field sensors which feed into a neural network which analyzes them for patterns and then attributes meaning to them by comparing them to earlier similar sensation patterns. Perhaps you can state this more clearly.

I just believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter.

You seem to be positing that the structure of the universe is not topological, but that it is instead the consequence of 10^80 atoms all working on concert to decide what the laws of the universe are at this moment. If this is your thesis I am inclined to ask on what basis you think it is even vaguely likely that they would came to a consensus, such as they must to allow the functioning of a universe like ours.

It's the sheer fact that there is a phenomenal experience, not the particular nature of those phenomena.

Please provide some basis to believe that there is a phenomenal experience.

You've presented me no evidence that I should only expect phenomenal experience in a complex organism, as you have no test for phenomenal experience.

And that will persist as long as we are not talking about anything. You say "X exists". I say "What is X?". You say "You can't disprove X". And here we are talking about nothing.

"I believe that P(X) > P(!X)". Something you shouldn't really care to contest,

You must be using an alternate form of the word "believe". How can someone believe something, and simultaneously be completely unwilling to assert that it is a fact?

>> ^bmacs27: without defining the deity, you undermine your own argument. That's why I'm an agnostic. I can't make claims about undefined terms.

But you have made a claim, that for some particular X, P(X) > P(!X). On the basis of that statement, and the assumption that you are rational, I draw the conclusion that you have some concept of what X is, or at least what its consequences are, otherwise you are making a non-sequitur claim.

That is, we experience coherent unitary stream of multi-modal sensation. There is no physical reason for that.

We claim to have this experience, I consider it highly dubious to claim, as a consequence, that it actually has some basis in fact. As for reason, I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you mean no apparatus, I don't think that it can be said with any certainty, given our current working models of the brain, that we lack the hardware. If you mean need, there are many possible reason why we, or any complex organism, might need to be able to act as if it has consciousness, it might be required for, or an artifact of, predictive thought.

Before I can explain further, I'd need to know what you mean by act.

The ability to act is the capacity to intermittently convert one type of energy into another on the basis of some trigger other than the application of convertible energy. For instance, a simple example is an internal combustion engine. If the ignition is engaged, then the engine begins to generate force by converting its fuel into kinetic energy. The engine even responds to its ignition switch, or its fuel tank being empty, and could arguably be said to be "conscious" of these things. I would not venture to suggest that the engine has any apparatus to make decisions, or to attach meaning to its simple senses, but it does, as a system, respond to stimuli in a manner distinct from that of its component parts. Each of the parts is still a billiard ball, the whole does something different, but we are not want to say that this is the consequence of some unseen force or entity.

Granted, I'm able to overcome much larger energy barriers than a single billiard ball, but I'm still running down the free-energy hill, as all physical processes are.

I disagree, you, as a system, are running pulleys and shoots to move things around, you are sinking energy to get both thinking and physical actions done in ways that individual components of you could not.

There is no free energy hill. We don't live in a free energy universe. And we are constantly applying energy against the entropic tendency of our universe. We can apply force to billiard balls to facilitate this process, but billiard balls are not a member of the class of systems which do this themselves.

I was thinking about the subject of national achievements the other day. One hundred years ago, people were for the most part not using internal combustion for transportation. In the fifty years hence, amazing advances took place. However, it seems at first glance to have tapered off since the late 60s.

My two cents: First off, we can thank the Cold War for the space race and our landing on the Moon. Second, Mars rovers anyone? That was a pretty fucking amazing feat! Third, IMO, most national (and global) achievements haven't been as outwardly observable as past achievements. For example: the internet. Personal computing. Nanotechnology. Miniaturization of every conceivable electronic device. They are all amazing achievements, but they aren't as sensational as a trip to the moon.

>> ^kagenin:
Way to confuse the issue, blankdude. And MG, here in California, smoking in restaurants is banned. And the steak is just as killer.
And I for one will welcome the day the internal combustion engine is banned from our roads. But that's another issue entirely, although Public Health is benefited for either limiting tobacco access or banning ICE engines.


Thanks for proving my point, my myopic and selfish friend. And allow me to reiterate my last point:

And some cannot wait until whatever it is you (that means you kagenin) do is banned so they're no longer forced to pretend to be inconvenienced just because they want to go out for a good steak (or whatever else they want to do, but they'll disguise it under a loftier, more pious purpose like 'safety for children' or whatever).

Way to confuse the issue, blankdude. And MG, here in California, smoking in restaurants is banned. And the steak is just as killer.

And I for one will welcome the day the internal combustion engine is banned from our roads. But that's another issue entirely, although Public Health is benefited for either limiting tobacco access or banning ICE engines.

The best part of this is that Scotty managed to make the Excelsior sound like a stalling internal combustion engine. There are so many things wrong with that!

Well after a small amount of research it appears that the nazies used Carbon monoxide as well as cyanide. so there goes his large chimney and and sealed room theory ore at minimum his necessity for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber

"homosexuals, physically and mentally disabled, and intellectuals. In early 1940, the use of hydrogen cyanide produced as Zyklon B was tested on 250 Roma children from Brno at the Buchenwald concentration camp.[4] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz.[5]
One of the destroyed crematoria at Auschwitz concentration camp

Carbon monoxide was also used in large purpose-built gas chambers. The gas was provided by internal combustion engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report).[6]"


"The gas chamber at Auschwitz I was reconstructed after the war as a memorial, but without a door in its doorway and without the wall that originally separated the gas chamber from a washroom. The door that had been added when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter was left intact.[10]"

1. I am an excellent card player.
2. I have a EEE shoe size.
3. I am close friends with some of the smartest people on the planet.
4. I love to cook for others (and do it very well).
5. I hate to cook for myself (and do it very poorly).
6. I wanted to be a jet fighter pilot.
7. I am red/green color blind.
8. I was a D&D geek.
9. I believe in Strong AI.
10. I can't get around Gödel's theorem.
11. I can stay awake longer than anyone I've ever met.
12. I can sleep longer than anyone I've ever met.
13. According to the DSM-IV, I qualify as an alcoholic.
14. I have never felt withdrawal symptoms from alcohol.
15. I am the only person in my family to attain a college degree.
16. I think internal combustion engines suck.
17. I love high performance cars.
18. My first car was a CRX. (damn that thing was fun.)
19. I have no first cousins.
20. I will never be a father.
21. I can't dance (see #2).
22. I shave dry.
23. I like to go camping, occasionally with people named David.
24. I once had sex with an RA.
25. I have sold nearly everything except for cars.

Moving freight, airplanes and battleships requires different solutions (in my opinion) then the problem of getting your kids to the hockey game.

The engines that run minivans are identical to the ones used by freight ships, freight trains, Farm implements, highway tractors, backup generators, battleships and prop planes. The same solution applies to them all. In fact, large enough ships like carriers and subs already run off electricity instead of oil because it is cheaper.


Even if energy storage technology was to rapidly become what we would need it to be, where would the energy come from if the source for more then half of our current use was to vanish?


We have enough sources of uranium and thorium to meet global energy needs for 100's of years. With any luck, we can develop renewable sources like wind,tidal and solar with that kind of time to get them ready. If we're really lucky, maybe we'll even get fusion power before that and then we are good for the lifetime of the solar system. As a bonus, nuclear is cheaper when developed on a large scale, France is making good money running over 80% nuclear power and exporting it's cheaper electricity to the rest of Europe.


A battery won't move an 18 wheeler. The only thing that will move an 18 wheeler is foreign oil, diesel and gasoline, and our domestic natural gas.

That is utter nonesense. Lookup Tesla motors, they've actually managed to use current battery technology to make a Lotus Elise that is FASTER than it's oil driven counter-part. The argument is as silly as when people felt automobiles where worthless because they couldn't go as far as a horse without a fill-up. Batteries don't need to improve too much more to be a viable replacement and then a landslide shift will take place to cheaper more powerfull electric vehicles.


In the mean time, let me know when you've found a battery that can power an ocean liner.


And this is your fundamental and underlying misunderstanding. The navy is currently using compact nuclear generators as giant batteries to power their largest ships more cheaply and without any dependence on oil. The problem for ocean liner's isn't building a battery that is big enough, it's building them SMALL enough. If a battery can be made small enough to replace the gas tank in a car, then you can power ANYTHING bigger than that car as well by using 2,10 or 1000 such batteries. Already with current laptop battery technology we are almost there. We don't need a breakthrough, a few small improvements to weight and cost and the solution is there. Anything to small to be powered by a compact nuclear generator can instead be run off of batteries without a loss in performance or ability.


The social attachment to oil is much deeper the powering the transportation to get to the grocery store or the beach. It is in every piece of food you get at the grocery store or bring to the beach. It is in the road you drive on, the oil that lubricates the engine as well as just the gas tank.


But moving goods is all still part of the transportation network. And ALL of those applications use internal combustion engines that can be replaced with only a moderately improved battery over those available today.


The agricultural attachment to oil is not just that it is used in the production and delivery of the fertilizer that grows the food to feed the citizen or just the fuel in the gas tank of the grain harvester and other farm machinery.


I grew up on a farm. The agricultural attachment to oil is again dominated by the use of internal combustion engines for machinery, which is easily replaced with a better battery.


The political attachment to oil is not just ensuring that a population have access to the cheap energy for their car, but the cheap fuel for the cheap power plant the provides the cheap electricity for to run the fridge for the cheap food brought from all corners of the earth.

Wrong, the cheap power plant runs off of coal, not oil. Coal reserves utterly dwarf oil reserves, that's why not even crazy people talk about 'peak' coal. In fact, many talk about converting coal to oil if necessary.


I'm sorry, but the entirety of the arguments you make NEVER go beyond the assumption that nothing can replace internal combustion engines and so when oil runs out everything using them is doomed. Fortunately that is not the reality we live in. Even with current technology, battery powered electric motors are begining to appear in automobiles. The military has been running their largest ships on electricty and independent of oil for decades. We are not looking at a dire need for a major breakthrough. We only need small, incremental improvements to battey technology to being able to replace internal combustion engines with batteries, and oil with electricity. Then we are free to simply expand the electric grid, which we have been doing for nearly a century already and are getting rather good at.

The primary reason it would matter if Barak Obama was a Muslim is that he denies being a Muslim. That is to say - if it turned out he was Muslim, then he'd have been lying about it. (Full disclosure: my political leanings are fairly conservative, and I agree with the Republican platform on a majority of issues. I believe Barak Obama when he says he's a Christian and I get irritated with coworkers who can't seem to rise above the conspiracy theories that suggest otherwise.) I'm aware that this isn't really the nature of the argument though, so on to my next point:

The other reason is that there are fundamental differences in the belief systems of the major religions. If a voter disagrees with the moral or ethical tenets of a given religion, then they're likely to disagree fundamentally on certain issues with a candidate who subscribes to that religion. (I also acknowledge that there are fundamental similarities, too, but a sedan isn't a truck just because they both have four wheels, cupholders and run on internal combustion.)

From a practical standpoint, what a candidate does is more important than who he is, so the argument can be made that policy and platform are more important than character or background, but it can't be disputed that what a person does is influenced by what they believe.