*length=5:39 ... yeah, the music blows. Impressive accomplishment though. Movers and sanitation engineers must HATE this street!

>> ^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)

>> ^spoco2:

Wow, those are some seriously poorly 'busted' myths.
Ride height. Seems that 11 is ludicrously low, and 16cm is still really low
Fuel Consumption. My god, she's actually trying to suggest those figures are reasonable? A Jeep Wrangler uses half that, a Ford Focus uses 6.2L/100km city, a Prius uses 3.9. My bloody people mover, an 8 seater Kia Carnival, uses 9.5.... that's an 8 seater vehicle using less than HALF the petrol this does. 22Litres per 100km is the same as a Hummer H1. It's just brainless to try to suggest this thing is not anything but ridiculously thirsty.
The car was made for everyday life? Erm... Um... She gives no evidence at all to counter that one
Not much room: 110 Litre boot hey? Tiny little hatchbacks have 3 TIMES that boot space.

Really, what a stupid video.
If the point is to have an (apparently) attractive woman draping herself over a car, just have that.
If you are going to pretend to have 'information' with your scantily clad woman, make is actual information. Even just a run down of the specs and capabilities of the car would have been better. Trying to suggest that this car is anything but a ridiculously overpowered, impractical beast for those who want to show off is missing the point of what it is.


That video was many things, but poorly busted isn't one of them.

Wow, those are some seriously poorly 'busted' myths.

* Ride height. Seems that 11 is ludicrously low, and 16cm is still really low
* Fuel Consumption. My god, she's actually trying to suggest those figures are reasonable? A Jeep Wrangler uses half that, a Ford Focus uses 6.2L/100km city, a Prius uses 3.9. My bloody people mover, an 8 seater Kia Carnival, uses 9.5.... that's an 8 seater vehicle using less than HALF the petrol this does. 22Litres per 100km is the same as a Hummer H1. It's just brainless to try to suggest this thing is not anything but ridiculously thirsty.
* The car was made for everyday life? Erm... Um... She gives no evidence at all to counter that one
* Not much room: 110 Litre boot hey? Tiny little hatchbacks have 3 TIMES that boot space.


Really, what a stupid video.

If the point is to have an (apparently) attractive woman draping herself over a car, just have that.

If you are going to pretend to have 'information' with your scantily clad woman, make is actual information. Even just a run down of the specs and capabilities of the car would have been better. Trying to suggest that this car is anything but a ridiculously overpowered, impractical beast for those who want to show off is missing the point of what it is.

I'm going to *promote the annoying as hell product placement.

This does not demonstrate just how intrusive they can get. For instance, the Chuck examples of Subway include characters waxing lyrical about the ingredients of said sandwich... it's like the show stops for a while to have a full on ad...

And the Toyota people mover sections include the titulature character going on about all the features of the vehicle, and even demonstrating them... it's painful

I'll direct you to his own words. Here is Kraus talking about redefining what the word nothing means:

"And I guess most importantly that the question why is there something rather than nothing is really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question, because both nothing and something are scientific concepts, and our discoveries over the past 30 years have completely changed what we mean by nothing.

In particular, nothing is unstable. Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics, and it's - it's fascinatingly interesting. And what I wanted to do was use the hook of this question, which I think as I say has provoked religious people, as well as scientists, to encourage people to try and understand the amazing universe that we actually live in."

Here is Krauss describing how empty space could create the Universe:

Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.

But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.

You take space, get rid of all the particles, all the radiation, and it actually carries energy, and that notion that in fact empty space - once you allow gravity into the game, what seems impossible is possible. It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it's a little trickier.

Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.

I like to think of it as the difference between, say, a savvy stockbroker and an embezzler. The savvy stockbroker will buy stocks on margin with more money than they have, and as long as they get that money back in there before anyone notices, and in fact if the stocks go up, they end with money where they didn't have any before, whereas the embezzler, of course, is discovered.

Well, the universe is a savvy stockbroker. It can borrow energy, and if there's no gravity, it gets rid of it back before anyone notices. But if gravity is there, it can actually create stuff where there was none before. And you can actually create enough stuff to account for everything we see in the universe.

But, you know, it's more than that because some people would say, and I've had this discussion with theologians and others, well, you know, just empty space isn't nothing. You know, there's space. How did the space get there? But the amazing thing is, once you apply in fact quantum mechanics to gravity, as you were beginning to allude again in the last segment, then it's possible, in fact it's implied, that space itself can be created where there was nothing before, that literally whole universes can pop out of nothing by the laws of quantum mechanics.

And in fact the question why is there something rather than nothing then becomes sort of trite because nothing is unstable. It will always produce something. The more interesting or surprising question might be why is there nothing. But of course if we ask that question, well, we wouldn't be here if that was true.

-----------------------------------------

What he said in this video is completely misleading; I'll show you his slight of hand. When he says you can take away everything, even the laws and still get a Universe, he has redefined "absolutely nothing" as a complete absence of this Universe, but not as we will see, a complete absence of anything. To explain the laws of quantum mechanics popping into existence, he postulates an external entity: the multiverse:

Well, you know, that's something I deal with at the end of the book because, you know, it's not a concept that I'm pretty fond of, but it - we seemed to be driven there by our theories, and it does suggest the last bit, because some people, indeed when I debate this question of nothing, they say, well, look, you can get rid of space. You can get rid of stuff in space, the first kind of nothing. You can even get rid of space, but you still have the laws. Who created the laws?

Well, it turns out that we've been driven both from ideas from cosmology - from a theory called inflation or even string theory - that suggests there may be extra dimensions - to the possibility that our universe isn't unique, and more over, that the laws of physics in our universe may just be accidental. They may have arisen spontaneously, and they don't have to be the way they are. But if they were any different, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. It's called the entropic idea, and it's not - it's - it may be right.

It's not an idea I find very attractive, but it may be right. And if it is, then it suggests that even the very laws themselves are not fundamental. They arose spontaneously in our universe, and they're very different in other universes. And in some sense, if you wish, the multiverse plays the role of what you might call a prime mover or a god. It exists outside of our universe.

So, again, the question is not answered. In his book, some chapters of his book are: "Nothing is something" and "Nothing is unstable". He has redefined nothing as empty space or a quantum vaccum, and when pressed, he offers up a multiverse, but fails to explain where the multiverse came from. Nothing is not something, it is not unstable, it is not empty space, it is not a quantum vacuum, and it is not a multiverse. Nothing is nothing. From nothing, nothing comes. It has no states, no properties, no existence. He has not explained how something came from nothing. All he has done is redefine nothing into something. Of course something can come from something. All he doing is playing a masquarade with definitions





>> ^xxovercastxx:
16:08-16:38

"...you could start with absolutely nothing; that means, unlike the Cardinal said and unlike some people argue, no particles, but not even empty space -- no space whatsoever, and maybe even no laws governing that space and we can plausibly understand how you could arrive, without any miracles, without any need for a creator, without any supernatural creation, you could produce everything we see."

I've swam through a few of her books,the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged,and I think her philosophy of Capitalism is Holy could work except for one basic problem:human nature. And her supporters in the GOP really don't get where she was coming from either. The protagonists of these books are people who run large companies struggling to provide their excellent products and services in spite of heavy regulations at the hands of the small minded government. They are personally involved with their companies,willing to go the extra mile and get their hands dirty in the persuit of delivering the goods and providing livings for their extended families of employees they feel responsible for. Yet the government in pettiness and jelousy scheme to thwart them in this:making the Creative Movers of Industry gasp under the strain of mad laws written by parasites to sap the energy of the Doers to feed the gluttony of the lazy masses. More or less this. Unfortunatelythis fairy story is a bit backwards nowadays...
Instead of clever creators marketing their dreams,we have souless corporations dissecting the labours of the many to feed the obscenely rich the lions share of profits,and existing only to figure out new ways of paying themselves incentive bonuses while the companies they run heave and expire beneathe them from the sheer weight of their greed. Emploees are not families to these executives,all cooporating with the mutual goal of seeing the company succeed,but disposable pawns easily replaced and forgotten,not worth providing benefits for and certainly not worth considering when cheap if not competant labour is available elsewhere.And regulations ? Taxes? Blasphemies!

Some of Rand's opinions I find valid:armies of the unambitious would swollow every dime you earn with demands for welfare and other government mandated largesses. For every brave sould with a creative spark there are a dozen happy to make them fall for the perverse pleasure of simply watching a great idea fail. These exist:but a socialism is not on the genda in this future of ours...it seems to be evolving into a new sort of feudalism where the Rich rule and the serfs provide the neccessaries. And I suppose there are entrepreneurs out there fighting the good fight,and fighting it with style and dignity for themselves and their employees.

They just don't make the headlines.

Wow, I am really quite stunned at the things people can get worked up about.

YOU are making the jump from him thinking that she's precious and wanting to keep her safe during the carrying over the threshold tradition to her being an object and his possession.

You are truly looking for sexism where it doesn't exist.

Maybe pick your battles, fight the ones that are worth fighting, because this has NO malice, NO intent to reduce the woman to an object, PURELY thinking 'Hmmm, our movers are really good at taking stuff into houses. What could be the most precious thing to this guy? Maybe his wife. Is there any occasion where he may have to take her... ooooh oooh, the tradition of taking a bride over the threshold. SOLD!'


Just lighten the fuck up. Scream and rage against Katy Perry being regarded as some sort of female role model before you rage against this sort of harmless ad.

If you actually think he's a a sexist, you need your head examined. Does he make stereotypical jokes about women? Yes. Blacks? Yes. Men? Yes. Whites? Yes. He's not a racist, and he's not a sexist. The reason he's going after Palin and Bachmann is because they're up in the GOP polls, and they have TERRIBLE ideas. Have you not seen interviews of Palin especially? She's a train wreck, and that shouldn't be a debatable topic. This is coming from someone who would consider voting for a GOP candidate next year, but there's no way I'd consider either of them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact they're females. Their ideas are terrible, and even when they're called on things they say that are clearly wrong, they stand by it proudly. Utterly ridiculous.

And I'm sorry, but those who take the bible that literally are sexists. "Make me a sandwich" is just as sexist as "Make me a sandwich, because god said so". Get mad all you want, but he's right on that. The only thing I didn't appreciate is he's equating every religious person as that crazy when they're not.

Now, to address your point about sexism historically as related to religion, I don't care, and I don't think it's relevant. It is a part of fundamentalist christianity (and many other religions) to tell women they need to be submissive to their husbands or males in society today. Nevermind historically what they did. They're doing it now. Period.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

To Bill Maher, and anyone on the Sift who thinks he has ever had a 'point' in his life... A pile of bull$#!+ wouldn't want to watch 1 second of this show because it would be afraid of getting crap on itself.
Really, BM? Really? You want to sit there and lecture people of faith about tolerance and mysoginy when you yourself are the worst mysoginist on the planet when it comes to Palin, Bachman, or any other conservative female? This twit takes the word 'sleazebucket' to a whole new low. What a lying, hypocritical specimen.
In other words - a typical neolib.
And factually ignorant to boot in regard to religion. Waste of breath to get into it, but ascribing 'mysoginy' to only religions is a typical neolib attempt to apply the time-honored tradition of retroactive standards. Mysogyny wasn't some sort of Christian invention. Nor was it even 'refined' by Christians. It was just the cold, hard, ugly, unfair way HUMANS existed for thousands of years. Women were on the short end of the stick in any facet of ancient life you want to name. But neolibs just love to sniff their noses at past problems and pretend that they only existed in the Christian world. Just ignore the fact that Christians have been (and remain) some of the strongest, most effective, transitional, and heartfelt movers of WOMENS rights, positive race relations, and yes even fair treatment for gays too.
And I notice the videosift hasn't posted the video of BM and his gay neolib buddies having a nice little joke about how they want to rape Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman.
"Tolerance". PTUI! Maher is the last person on the face of the planet with any moral authority to talk about issues relating to tolerance.

To Bill Maher, and anyone on the Sift who thinks he has ever had a 'point' in his life... A pile of bull$#!+ wouldn't want to watch 1 second of this show because it would be afraid of getting crap on itself.

Really, BM? Really? You want to sit there and lecture people of faith about tolerance and mysoginy when you yourself are the worst mysoginist on the planet when it comes to Palin, Bachman, or any other conservative female? This twit takes the word 'sleazebucket' to a whole new low. What a lying, hypocritical specimen.

In other words - a typical neolib.

And factually ignorant to boot in regard to religion. Waste of breath to get into it, but ascribing 'mysoginy' to only religions is a typical neolib attempt to apply the time-honored tradition of retroactive standards. Mysogyny wasn't some sort of Christian invention. Nor was it even 'refined' by Christians. It was just the cold, hard, ugly, unfair way HUMANS existed for thousands of years. Women were on the short end of the stick in any facet of ancient life you want to name. But neolibs just love to sniff their noses at past problems and pretend that they only existed in the Christian world. Just ignore the fact that Christians have been (and remain) some of the strongest, most effective, transitional, and heartfelt movers of WOMENS rights, positive race relations, and yes even fair treatment for gays too.

And I notice the videosift hasn't posted the video of BM and his gay neolib buddies having a nice little joke about how they want to rape Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman.

"Tolerance". PTUI! Maher is the last person on the face of the planet with any moral authority to talk about issues relating to tolerance.

Issykitty, I couldn't dislike you if I wanted to. I understood where you were coming from even without the added context of your bad day. I hope the owner is prompt in contacting you, but I so doubt that. Do you have the names of the movers who were touching your stuff? Do you have documentation or some form of proof or a photo of the object in question? Paper trail, paper trail, paper trail. Keep a log of the attempts to contact, when they've contacted you. Don't do it over the phone if you can help it, use snail mail or email, anything that can be logged.

Do you have a lawyer friend? Sometimes a strongly worded, threatening legalese type letter works.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Thank you, Prozac. I'm glad you aren't taking things personally. I appreciate your words in friendship. Yeah, I have a mind to call BBB and I am already going to post terrible reviews all over the web about the moving company. I dealt with a customer service rep who acted towards me with zero respect, didn't call me back in over a week, and then I called and fucking told her off. Now I am awaiting a call from the owner. Sorry to hear this has happened to you.

Thank you, Prozac. I'm glad you aren't taking things personally. I appreciate your words in friendship. Yeah, I have a mind to call BBB and I am already going to post terrible reviews all over the web about the moving company. I dealt with a customer service rep who acted towards me with zero respect, didn't call me back in over a week, and then I called and fucking told her off. Now I am awaiting a call from the owner. Sorry to hear this has happened to you.

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
Stepping away from everything, I'm so damn sorry that happened to you. I've been in that position and I never had what was stolen returned--vintage coats, purses, instruments. It made me feel helpless and I hate that more than anything. And it's happening to you when your support network is not there for you, and that's even worse. Take them to small claims court and I know it sounds useless, but complain to the Better Business Bureau. If they do it often, it'll add up and have an effect.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Yeah, and excuse me, but I am kind of upset, probably due to my hubby being out of town at length and being an raging hormonal cauldron. Oh, and I just moved and the movers stole something from me. I probably shouldn't be looking at stupid blogs that piss me off.

Stepping away from everything, I'm so damn sorry that happened to you. I've been in that position and I never had what was stolen returned--vintage coats, purses, instruments. It made me feel helpless and I hate that more than anything. And it's happening to you when your support network is not there for you, and that's even worse. Take them to small claims court and I know it sounds useless, but complain to the Better Business Bureau. If they do it often, it'll add up and have an effect.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Yeah, and excuse me, but I am kind of upset, probably due to my hubby being out of town at length and being an raging hormonal cauldron. Oh, and I just moved and the movers stole something from me. I probably shouldn't be looking at stupid blogs that piss me off.

>> ^Issykitty:

Yeah, and excuse me, but I am kind of upset, probably due to my hubby being out of town at length and being an raging hormonal cauldron. Oh, and I just moved and the movers stole something from me. I probably shouldn't be looking at stupid blogs that piss me off.


I'm upset too. I don't like fighting with everyone over something so ridiculous.

Yeah, and excuse me, but I am kind of upset, probably due to my hubby being out of town at length and being an raging hormonal cauldron. Oh, and I just moved and the movers stole something from me. I probably shouldn't be looking at stupid blogs that piss me off.