Posts by Reginald Gerard

HOT YOUNG STAR about to GIVE BIRTH, long range images show

No, because the accretion of your 'lump of rock' and the gas both rotate at the same speed.

Silicon Valley bod in no-hire pact lawsuit urges court to reject his own lawyers' settlement

Re: And then there is the effect it had on pay throughout the industry!

I can vividly recall HPs management talks in the past 13 years where they have constantly been telling us that they are paying industry comparable rates and that the employee attrition rates would indicate that management was paying fair wages. All the while they were giving themselves excessive pay rises and bonuses year upon year, claiming their peers were getting more and it was just and fair that they kept pace. It was obvious back then that there was collusion going on between the CEOs of all IT companies. You need to search the NYT archives using "google apple class action" and read the articles there, especially the links to the letters that those CEOs were passing back and forth.... It will make you sick. So much for corporate responsibility and social responsibility. All of it just hypocrisy at its most vile form.

SCIENCE and RELIGION AGREE! LIFE and Man ARE from CLAY

Re: So... (difficult if you actually are a geologist)

Well there is a Kurt Wise, B.A. (Chicago), Ph.D. (Harvard) that is infamous for the following...

"Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand."

As Richard Dawkings so rightly sums this up "he volunteers that, even if all the evidence in the universe flatly contradicted Scripture, and even if he had reached the point of admitting this to himself, he would still take his stand on Scripture and deny the evidence."

With so many in the US blind to rational thought they are in serious trouble in the long run.

http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_2.php

Space boffins boycott Kepler 'scope talks after US bans Chinese guests

...they might all start using only metric instead of imperial and metric measures when calculating space flights and actually be able to land probes on other planets instead of trying to penetrate their surface...

30 years on: The day a computer glitch nearly caused World War III

It happened to the US even earlier - in the '60s

A new radar system detected a series of possible missile launches, turns out they saw the tips of some moon mountains coming over the horizon.... but tension was low at the time and they checked their data first, before panicking.

http://servicevirtualization.com/profiles/blogs/what-the-cold-war-taught-us-about-testing

Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid: Eco, economy and diesel power

Re: If I don't need ...

Passat Estate: 2,200 kg but only w. min. 2.0l TD and 4WD

UK sitting on top of at least 50 years of shale gas – report

Re: caution

Well that isn't unexpected and the hype about the 'potential' recoverable CFs in the UK are are just as trumped up as most of the sites in the rest of Europe and the US. The New York Times has a well documented archive on the Fracking theme and a section where this topic is all too obvious. In that collection of letters from Geologists and Fracking insiders there is evidence enough that the license holders like to "pump 'n dump" their claims, leaving the companies who end up trying to recover those 'lucrative' reserves with wells that dry up far too soon and either require additional 'fracks' or have to drill even more densely in a given field, thereby drastically reducing their ROI and wasting the countryside around it.

And you pro-fracking wing nuts.... you keep forgetting about the ecological impact this is going to have on your underground and surface water resources and the impact on your local communities. The thousands of lorries that are needed to bring in water, carry out the 'produced water' (containing high salt and radiation particles) thrashing your already buggered roads. What are you going to do with the millions/billions of gallons of polluted water? Your sewage treatment plants can't deal with the salt content nor the radioactive elements, are you going to just dump it into the rivers and streams like they do in parts of the US? Hell, in the US they are now discovering that the amount of water being extracted from underground reserves is effecting farms and communities across the western states, forcing them to drill even deeper with the risk of still not finding anything. I've seen reports where over 20% of all wells have defective casings and or plugs (to protect ground water from contamination that 'could' be caused by the toxic fracking fluids) within 2 years of operation. We don't have enough potable water in this world to provide drinking water for everyone and you want to risk what you have on short term profits for the gas industry?

Is that something you want in your neighborhood ?

Your naivety continues to astound me.

Report: Foreign owners blocked T-Mobile, Verizon from NSA snoops

Re: Americans are NOT being terrorized !

So that 'bend over for industry wallets' Harper was in London trying to get a free trade agreement with the EU? He was probably also trying to prevent the EU from banning the import of tar sands oil, which the EU should rightly be doing. But then the Chinese don't give a damn about the environment so they will buy it from Harper after it has been pumped from Athabaska to the west coast of B.C. When will the first tanker accident destroy the pacific north west coastline, like the Exxon Valdes did?

Harper worries me too. Isn't he also responsible for gagging government scientists and running some kind of "Department for the Filtering of Information"?

Canada is starting to sound like its government is turning my place of birth into a Belarus or ex East Germany Stasi state.

US spyboss: Yes, we ARE snooping on you, but think of the TERRORISTS

Re: For their safety, just put everybody in jail

That could be even easier..

Just deport all Americans back to the USA, close their foreign bases and ship those troops back to where they belong, close all borders to the USA and not allow any of them to enter any other country in the rest of the world. Then create an international review process that would allow rational, progressive and liberal thinkers trapped in that country to move to a free country of their choice.

The rest of them that don't qualify (republicans, tea party supporters, rednecks and religious nutters, etc) can then continue to expand their gun rights until they have eradicated themselves from the face of this planet.

Then after 5 or 6 generations someone could be tasked to explore that vast prison wasteland with the aim of resettling it with peaceful, unarmed, tolerant, liberal and progressive humans and try once more to create a 'land of the free'.

Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

@ TeeCee (recycle)

Maybe it's that way in the UK but in Germany it is a mufti-million Euro business that makes a profit out of recycling. Just goes to show that if one is less negative about the concept, it can work when done properly.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/aug/11/world/fg-recycle11 albeit from 2002 but still relevant.

or from 2004 with more detail on how it works and why it isn't in the UK....

http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/special-reports/profits-warning-why-germanys-green-dot-is-selling-up

German boffins aim to burn natural gas - WITHOUT CO2 emissions

Re: Does anyone recognize that you can CONDENSE water vapor????

Whoa there.... Have you ever tested the PH value of that 'pure' water?

Natural gas condensation has a PH value of 2.8 to 4.9 and oil 1.8 to 3.7 - plus sulfur residue, depending on the quality of the distillate. Don't use it for drinking, washing or your plants.

In Germany smaller single family units are allowed to drain into the sewage system but larger ones (can't recall the KW limits) require neutralization before discharging into the sewage lines.

ref: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennwertkessel#Einleitung_von_Kondensat_aus_Brennwertkesseln

Android FOUND ON TABLETS inscribed with WORD OF GOD

Re: Techology and Faith

I once read a study that showed that patients who knew others were praying for them to get better more often did worse than those who were not prayed for (or didn't know they were being prayed for). This was attributed to the stress caused by the patients not wanting to disappoint those that were praying for said patient.

Just goes to show how much BS religion is and how feeble the human mind can be for succumbing to it.

Boffins shine new light on dark matter

State of the Universe?

This will probably go unnoticed as I am a day late but I'll state this for posterity.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that this might solve the question about what state the universe has.

If 23% of the universe is dark matter and it is annihilating itself and producing positrons that will annihilate all the electrons in our 5% of the universe then the logical conclusion is that sometime in the distant future the mass loss (depending on the effect of dark energy) will allow the universe to slow in its expansion and with what's left, start to contract to a point of singularity from where we originated. Or perhaps in a perpetual 'Big Bounce' where we don't quite go singular (see discussions around second law of thermodynamics). Maybe this has been going on from one universe generation to the the next and the next ...

My conclusion is that the universe has always been here so there is no creator who needs to be created. Simple. So let's get on with living in our time slot in this phase of the 'Bounce' and try to look after this tiny speck of atoms that we are living on.

The universe speaks: 'It's time to get off your rock!'

@ Alan Brown - Re: As opposed to ... wars

That russian rock has such a shallow path that it would have left the atmosphere again had it not exploded due to the sudden increase in temperature caused by it's long flight through the sky. Had it come down vertically it wouldn't have had time to heat up enough to explode and would have made a massive dent in ground.

Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming

Re: Chet Mannly

Doh.. where do you get that from? Links?

20 years ago one could snorkel the house reefs around the islands in the Maldives, all teeming with coral and fish. Last year the surface water temperatures were so piss warm it is no wonder that everything down to 2 meters is now dead and void of life. Not only a consequence of heat but also due to the overall global increase of acidity caused by the absorption of CO2

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/

http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/acidification/

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

Frack me! UK shale gas bonanza 'bigger than North Sea oil'

Re: Three questions: @Lee Dowling

You Sir, or at least your answer to "(2) just validates my comments above in the "Re: Hippies? Chemicals unknow? " reply.

Just google this:

produced water disposal

and get informed.

Thanks.

Re: Hippies? Chemicals unknow?

Maybe to those of you in the UK, others have that information....

Chemicals Used in the Hydraulic Fracturing Process in Pennsylvania

Prepared by the Department of Environmental Protection

Bureau of Oil and Gas Management

Compiled from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) obtained from Industry

http://assets.bizjournals.com/cms_media/pittsburgh/datacenter/DEP_Frac_Chemical_List_6-30-10.pdf

or

http://fracfocus.org/chemical-use/what-chemicals-are-used < this explains why they use it.

A lot of this is carcinogenic and I wouldn't want this leaching into my ground water, which can and does happen:

Water contamination caused by fracking is well-documented. In December 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released draft findings that link water contamination to hydraulic fracturing which have since been confirmed by later investigating and testing:

http://www.nature.com/news/is-fracking-behind-contamination-in-wyoming-groundwater-1.11543

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-26/diesel-compounds-found-in-water-near-wyoming-fracking-site

http://www.businessinsider.com/epa-data-links-groundwater-contamination-fracking-2012-10

It's not only the poisoned water in the ground, the millions of liters of water that lorries have to haul into each 'play' (driving through your towns and neighbourhoods, destroying your roads and lanes, polluting your air) for every frack, that then get pumped up after a frack are saltier than sea water, contain substantial amounts of radioactive isotopes and are either stored in open pits (that have leaked), pumped back into the ground in spent wells or trucked out with lorries again and disposed of who knows where. In the USA they have been dumping this into rivers and creeks or 'legally' into sewage treatment plants (that have no technology to deal with either the salt content nor the radioactive elements) which ends up killing the bio cultures in those treatment plants and results in ALL the sewage and fracking water ending up in someones river/creek/canal in an untreated state.

You also have no idea of how many of these wells are needed. It's not just one in the vicinity of your back yard, there will be scores of them all over the county, being serviced by thousands of trucks and it will turn your pristine English countryside into this:

http://www.karoospace.co.za/images/stories/fracking_6_-_jonah_wyoming.jpg

There won't be any point in singing 'Jerusalem' the next time you are at the Last Night of the Proms after the oil companies have wasted your land and drinking water.

Oh and while I'm at it, natural gas might be cleaner than coal but not fracked gas. You need to calculate the end to end cost which includes the thousands of truck/lorry trips back and forth to all the sites and the millions of cubic feet of Methane that is lost to the atmosphere due to current sloppy recovery and prevention practices in the industry, which is worse for the climate than CO2.

The enthusiasm for fracking by the apparent majority of readers on this site is appalling and disappointing. I would have expected that the above average intelligence gathered here would have spent some time on the web to read about these issues instead of displaying the levels of ignorant bliss currently on show. Start here to get some proper insight into what is really going on:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/DRILLING_DOWN_SERIES.html

You might also question why the recovery period is 15-60 years. It seems that the fracking industry has also discovered a new income source with the licensing and sales of drilling rights. There has been a lot of 'pump and dump' with regards to hyping up possible reserves then selling the licenses for a huge profit to let some other subcontractor sucker frack a site only to find that it runs out of gas in a very short time, forcing them to either drill more wells in that area and frack more often.

A lot of the operations are running at a loss since the gas price has plummeted and quite a few have already gone broke as a result.

With parts of the world going to war over water in the future (http://phys.org/news/2012-09-world-crisis-priority.html) how can anyone in their right mind think that fracking is an acceptable risk to their drinking water?

Doh

Revealed: The Brit-built GRAVITY-powered light that costs $5

Re: Attracting mosquitoes

It's the CO2 that attracts mosquitoes, not the light.

UK ice boffin: 'Arctic melt equivalent to 20 years of CO₂'

Re: You might be brilliant....

except the plants didn't think that idea through enough and didn't count on the humans eroding thousands of acres/hectares a day and turning massive stretches of land into deserts or cesspits of polluted earth that nothing can grow on.

Re: Go Canada!

and even more mosquitoes, black flies, et al, which make living there intolerable (which is why the bears and other big game are generally bad tempered all the time during the summer season)....

NASA launches armoured storm probes to the Van Allen belts

Trajectory details....

http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/apollo11-TLI.htm

Optical Express 'ruined my life' gripe site lives on

Re: Site...

Having worn extended wear lenses since I was 20, and getting dry and weary eyes every evening at 50, I decided to treat myself to a Femto-Laser procedure. They use the ultra fast laser to model a flap from the surface of the cornea instead of using a miniature dermatome to cut a flap. Then the standard laser is used to model the exposed surface of the cornea (based on maps made of the visual characteristics of the whole visual path - which also removes any astigmatism). Then the hinged flap is folded back over the freshly lasered cornea. One night with a protective lens and presto, could read the license plates from the 2nd story office. I was -6 diopter.

6 years on and I see perfectly at any distance and don't even need my reading glasses any more for the newspaper in the morning, can even read the fine print on the packaging in the shops. No issues w. night driving, better than w. glasses of contact lenses, no flares, sparkles or halos.

My only regret is that this wasn't available back in the 70/80s - when it would have given me 30 extra years of visual and living quality.

Boffins: VAMPIRE stars are PREYING on their companions

Re: Fahrenheit?

Actually this article was based on a report from the hubble.org site from 26th July.

And yes, the US scientists still use imperial measures.

One would of thought that after that Mars lander crash years ago, which was due to mixing up imperial and metric measures, they would start using international measures.

I have contacted the editors at the hubble.org site 2x, requesting that if they insist on continuing to use imperial measures that they at least include the metric ones as well, but no, they still only do the imperial ones in their articles.

Greenland melt surprises NASA Earth-watchers

Re: So what?

Check out the results and then let us know it you still think its insignificant....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RauzduvIYog

Final countdown for NASA's NuSTAR X-ray black hole telescope

At the center of each black hole is the event horizon ...

Nope. The event horizon is the outer perimeter of said black hole. The center is, well, in the center.

Solving traffic jams with maths

Re: The best way to improve traffic lights

In Canada we have the same system, blinking red = full stop and yield right of way / blinking yellow = caution - intersection w. potential crossing traffic. Here in Germany if you have a blinking yellow light you have to give way to traffic on the road you intend to cross - no forced stop. The drivers on the right of way have no idea that a crossing is ahead as there is no signal at all to warn them of a potential hazard. I find the CDN/RSA system much safer and reassuring.

Supernovae blasts shape climate, life on Earth, reckons boffin

??

"When our solar system passes through one of the galaxy’s rotating arms, it is brought closer to exploding supernovae..."

Our solar system isn't some kind of free traveling object that 'passes through' anything. We are relationally locked into our part of the galaxy just as any potential supernovae star that might be near or distant to us. There are relatively few stars or lost planets traveling 'freely' from the rotational momentum of our galactic disk.

Shale gas fracking ruled safe, but must stop at drop of a hat

I just can't fathom how isolated you people in the UK seem to be from the issues around fracking.

The point about not using fossil fuels is the insulating effect CO2 has for the climate. Fracking plays (sites), due the industries lax standards regarding emissions (thanks to Bush/Cheney for gutting EPA regulations for Fracking), contributes excessive amounts of Butane/Methane to the atmosphere. This puts unconventional natural gas at par with burning coal if you want to compare cleanliness.

Accidents? You think there haven't been enough?

http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/fracking-across-the-united-states

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/27/us/natural-gas-map.html

Man how blind can you get - but then the industry is very secretive about those kinds of stats and the government is on their side because of the potential tax revenues (if they're not giving huge tax breaks through other avenues).. and it's all about jobs..

So who gives shit about drinking water and eco systems. Start reading here:

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/fracking/since1851/multimedia/

The industry isn't in it for energy independence for our economies, it's only about making money for themselves and their shareholders and they are even willing and able to scam us all with bogus claims of efficiency and production potential. There's another bubble just waiting to burst...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-the-gas-boom-20120301

So wake up people and get yourselves informed before you've let them F up your countryside and water resources. Future wars will not be fought over oil, there won't be any of that anyway, but over water and you are willing to take that risk and leave your health and future in the hands of the gas mafia?

http://www.globalpolicy.org/the-dark-side-of-natural-resources-st/water-in-conflict.html

But then, with all the atomic power generating plants that most of you are craving for, you could easily power desalination systems and bottle your drinking water and ship nation wide via lorries.

Duh. I though IT people and techies were intelligent and informed. Can't see any sign of that here today.

Ye Bug List

Re: page load upvote | downvote - Ergonomic tip/request

Hello Drewc, first off, I agree, let the voting work from the comments page, why load a new one? It works well in the New York Times comments. Another thing that has annoyed me with the voting, has been the fact that the "Return to Forum" link is at the bottom of the page. I have the mouse in my hand to locate and click 'Up Vote' / 'Down Vote' so letting go to click on backspace is one action too much. Scrolling down the page to get to the "Return to Forum" is also a pain in the butt, I've already read the entry, that is why I am voting, and I shouldn't have to go to the bottom of the page to return. Please move the RtF to the top of the page.

Thanks and regards,

Reg

LOHAN's fantastical flying truss takes to the air

Re: two parallel rods

Ever since I saw the initial design with two parallel rods I have been wondering if that isn't a high risk launch option. There are several factors that could result in those rods not staying parallel during the course of ascent.

The rods being mounted on different parts of the platform structure 'could' result in either a convergence or divergence of the rods due to thermal changes and loading stress in the platform structure as it ascends into the colder regions of our atmosphere. This would effectively 'clamp' the craft between the rails during launch and wreaking havoc on the whole platform when the engine is ignited.

My suggestion would be to use a single rod and 'hang' the craft upside down on that rod. There is no up or down in space so the launch orientation is irrelevant.

Would hate to see this fail because it got stuck on the launch rails.

Epic net outage in Africa as FOUR undersea cables chopped

Some good cable maps of the world for those with a geography deficit

http://www.cablemap.info/

www.submarinecablemap.com

actually quite a lot more infrastructure than I expected. Probably TBits of it still dark after the collapse of the internet bubble back in 2001.

Squirrelled away: seeds survive 30,000-year winter

Smokers be ware....

you do exactly that. Polonium has a short 1/2 life and discharges quite a lot of Alpha particles. Go look it up in Google, "polonium in tobacco" :

http://acsa.net/HealthAlert/lungcancer.html

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/sources/tobacco.html

Where does polonium in tobacco come from? Phosphate fertilizers, favored by the tobacco industry, contain Radium and its decay products (including Lead-210 and Polonium-210). When phosphate fertilizer is spread on tobacco fields year after year, the concentration of Lead-210 and Polonium-210 in the soil rises. Unfortunately tobacco absorbs that quite well. Turkish cigarets are probably less dangerous because they can't afford to artificially fertilize.

What does it mean for smokers? They inhale polonium into their lungs and those atoms disintegrate in their lungs with no skin layer to protect them. Tar condensate is probably not the main reason for cancer, rather Polonium.

Tesla X e-SUV to sport monster touchscreen on the dash

Gullwing doors need less clearance than normal ones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UJ9H_ma3Bs

Try that with your standard doors....

Saudi oil minister praises renewable energy

Hey people, stop behaving like kids...

There is enough documentation about depleted fields refilling, it's happening in Saudi and Russia. Has even been reported/discussed in a previous el REG article some years back - not going to look for it....

Here is something more recent:

http://www.rense.com/general63/refil.htm

Ten... laptop accessories

A double UK plug?

Had to smirk at the DC/AC converter with that stupid huge UK socket on it.

So you'll also need a carry case for the PS with the UK plug and your double plug/socket....

btw. does the UK plug on a laptop PS still need a fuse in it? Duh.

NASA tells Voyager 2 to save its strength

I have a Panasonic rice cooker

that a GF gave me as a going away present some 31 years ago. Still working, only the neon control light has failed.

9/11: The day we lost our privacy and power

They don't need terrorists for that,

they are doing it to themselves w/o even being aware of it.

New NASA site offers solar system and time travel

Can't find any way to switch from Imperial to Metric measures...

and the feedback feature doesn't work, tried it with IE and Firefox, just doesn't display a Captcha image, won't reload or play a sound, so no way to ask/suggest if they could add a measure toggle or just default to a real scientific measures scheme.

Would help the US and UK to get used to the idea of using a WW standard and prevent future robot missions trying to penetrate remote landscapes.

Send old Shuttles to Mars, says Scotty ashes prang man

@Kanhef - Another idea

Your idea is the best one so far....

As soon as I read that I thought it would be an ideal carrier platform for big optical, IR, UV, radio and X-Ray telescope array. But not in an earth orbit. Strip it like you suggested, give it a nuke power supply, fit it out w. an array of powerful telescopes, a high capacity telemetry link and send it on a useful trajectory through our solar system with a terminal destination somewhere interesting. On the way there we could use the kit to map some our local bodies in more detail - during the fly by's - and similar to what they did with Voyager, take a parting shot of our pale blue dot as it leaves our solar system. While on its way through all that emptiness we could then use it to gather TBs of data from our Universe, perhaps discovering things that the Hubble telescope never dreamed of.

Thinking this even further, consider what this would give us if the two shuttles were used as a pair of telescopes, VLB would be given a new definition, no longer restricted to the diameter of the earths orbit and 1/2 year waiting times to merge images.

Maybe we might even get a bit closer to the edge of the big bang and discover that there is no God, which would be the best thing that could happen to mankind and peace on earth.

NASA rovers survive five years on Mars

Rover was OK, but futher exploration is pointless..

Mars has no metal core and as such, no magnetic field or magnetosphere. For that reason alone it will be impossible to create a sustainable atmosphere (solar winds will strip it clean) nor will there be anything to protect human settlements, and other organisms from the constant flux of harsh solar and cosmic radiation. It is a dead planet and will forever stay that way. All the talk about sending someone to Mars is a complete and utter waste of valuable resources that could be better spent here on Earth, exploring our own planet and finding ways to recover from the damage we have already inflicted on it. Why isn't that obvious enough to stop all this pointless discussion and planning?

There is no where else for us to go if we break this one.