Dub
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Post by Dub on May 1, 2020 11:59:59 GMT -5
I don't want anyone to think that is a frivolous comment. Vox is the home of the hopelessly ideologically captured, and their metaphysical worldview is reasonably well described as "reality is a social construct". It would take more time than I have at the moment to unpack it, but one of the most supremely ironic realities in our present age is the level of intersection between the social constructionists and the "IFLS" crowd. Which is to say, they have actually convinced themselves that their constructionism is in "fact" (scare quotes because they don't define "fact" in the way you and I do) scientific. The most profound mass act of Orwellian doublethink in history is hiding in plain sight, right in front of us. All you have to do is pay attention to Ezra Klein to see it. If you want to see it in somewhat condensed form, his podcast with Sam Harris pretty much lays it all out. It is somewhere between amusing and tragic seeing the likes of them being bashed on the rocks of reality, but such bashing is inevitable. Physics is a cruel mistress. What is IFLS? I think he’s referring to I F***ing Love Science. A Web site, Facebook page and popular YouTube channel.
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Dub
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Post by Dub on May 1, 2020 12:02:36 GMT -5
I am not going to spend an hour and a half watching this. That said. How about tidal power? Temperature gradient power? Transmission of the electricity produced is the biggest hole in that that I have been introduced to. Hope y'all feel edified for watching the video. It isn’t really a political film, Doc. I think you’d find it interesting. These are important things to consider even if we challenge its premise.
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Post by TKennedy on May 1, 2020 12:08:31 GMT -5
Speaking of high school physics teachers mine was a German nun Sister Amelia who spent her teenage years under allied bombardment in Berlin and went on to get her degree in physics.
She was great, big woman and had that German rocket scientist bearing and accent.
Fondest memory? Earth science and how to remember which way stalagmites and stalactites go. She said “vell der mites go up und der tites go down”
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Post by fauxmaha on May 1, 2020 12:18:05 GMT -5
"Our Germans are better than their Germans"
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Dub
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Post by Dub on May 1, 2020 12:22:38 GMT -5
"Our Germans are better than their Germans" Well we knew that. During WWII American citizens of Japanese heritage were sent to concentration camps while those of German heritage (most people in Iowa, Nebraska, and surrounding states) remained at large.
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Post by John B on May 1, 2020 12:34:47 GMT -5
"Our Germans are better than their Germans" Well we knew that. During WWII American citizens of Japanese heritage were sent to concentration camps while those of German heritage (most people in Iowa, Nebraska, and surrounding states) remained at large. And our German POWs helped out on the farms and factories. The campus chapel where I was first married (and where my sister married) was built in part by German POW labor. www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/sep/06/kansas-housed-thousands-pows-wwii/
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Post by billhammond on May 1, 2020 12:37:09 GMT -5
Speaking of high school physics teachers mine was a German nun Sister Amelia who spent her teenage years under allied bombardment in Berlin and went on to get her degree in physics. She was great, big woman and had that German rocket scientist bearing and accent. Fondest memory? Earth science and how to remember which way stalagmites and stalactites go. She said “vell der mites go up und der tites go down” Gather round while I tell you of Wernher von Braun A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown "Ha, Nazi schmazi," says Wernher von Braun Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Vunce ze rockets are up, who cares vare zey come down Zat's not my depahtment," says Wernher von Braun Some have harsh words for this man of renown But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude Like the widows and cripples in old London town Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun You too may be a big hero Once you've learned to count backwards to zero "In German or English I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun
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Post by billhammond on May 1, 2020 12:39:02 GMT -5
Well, we knew that. During WWII American citizens of Japanese heritage were sent to concentration camps while those of German heritage (most people in Iowa, Nebraska, and surrounding states) remained at large.
Many of them quite large.
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Dub
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Post by Dub on May 1, 2020 12:40:58 GMT -5
[ Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun Ah, our old friend Tom Lehrer.
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Post by aquaduct on May 1, 2020 12:46:55 GMT -5
I am not going to spend an hour and a half watching this. That said. How about tidal power? Temperature gradient power? Transmission of the electricity produced is the biggest hole in that that I have been introduced to. Hope y'all feel edified for watching the video. I think this gets to the heart of it all. This kind of thinly veiled anger that somebody somewhere isn't doing something about "it", whatever "it" actually is. To which I say great, go for it. What about tidal power? Outstanding idea. Temperature gradient power? Go make it happen. After you find out what it's like to actually have skin in the game, we'll talk again.
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Post by TKennedy on May 1, 2020 13:04:46 GMT -5
I just listened to that song a few days ago!!
We had a German POW stay on near my home town in western NE. He worked as a farm hand and eventually got his own place and became a very successful farmer. I remember him coming to church in the the early 50’s in winter wearing this enormous overcoat and cap. He was a tall thin dignified man.
My parents helped them and my mom said that they were so poor at that time that he still wore his German army cap And overcoat. With some help from my dad his daughter became a successful OB/Gyn physician. He basically dug what turned out to be a very successful life out of the dirt starting with nothing. Neat guy.
I have kind of a hobby reading bios of Luftwaffe pilots and what they did when the war ended. Many were sitting out on remote airfields and had to evade capture by the Russians by many hair raising means. Others flew their planes out to places where they could surrender. After being released from the holding camps they returned to a destroyed Germany often with family dead and not a penny to their name. The ones read about and friends they wrote about basically came back from nothing to become quite successful. A couple still couldn’t figure out why, after Hitler’s death the allies didn’t join Germany and take out Russia!!
When I read about all the refugees that returned to destroyed countries and homes at the end of WWII and dug new lives out of the dirt I wonder if it could ever be done again in our day and age or if folks would just give up.
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Post by fauxmaha on May 1, 2020 13:16:53 GMT -5
I am not going to spend an hour and a half watching this. That said. How about tidal power? Temperature gradient power? Transmission of the electricity produced is the biggest hole in that that I have been introduced to. Hope y'all feel edified for watching the video. A few random thoughts: - All power generation is temperature gradient power. The problem is having enough entropy to make a useful thermodynamic cycle out of it. Sure, you could create a heat engine that takes advantage of something like the fact that air is cooler on top of the mountain than down in the valley (or any number of other, similar natural phenomena), but the "delta-T" is so low, you couldn't get any meaningful power out of it. - Part of my function back at Wisconsin Public Service was producing a monthly report on the costs of transmission losses. It's a ton of money...enough so that it makes economic sense to go to the considerable effort to step transmission voltage up to stratospheric levels (360kV or more) to reduce losses. Which is to say, the economic incentive to pare down transmission losses is inherent, and has been there forever. If there was an obvious, economically viable solution (ie, something like room temperature superconductors, etc) we'd be using it. - This one I hesitate to mention, but what the hell: There is a culture here where if someone were to suggest an easy, non-expert solution to a medical problem, or suggest that the news media isn't acting the way it should, much condemnation ensues, based largely on the ignorance of the speaker. And yet, when we discuss other fields (such as transportation, power systems, physics, etc), those with next to no deep knowledge of the subject feel entitled to not only comment, but to actually correct those who do have such knowledge. I'm not complaining, per se, just mentioning. But (he says with love and affection) the "why don't we just do this or that" suggestions of easy solutions to energy systems strike my ear as being indistinguishable from (to pull a current example) Trump riffing on the glories of drinking bleach. Put more bluntly, if one's knowledge of such things comes from the popular media, Vox, or the University of Google, and if you think that means that you know something about energy systems that the likes of myself and Peter haven't lived and and breathed for decades, do be forgiving if on occasion the response involves less mercy and more frustration than it should.
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Post by TKennedy on May 1, 2020 13:30:27 GMT -5
Well Jeff, a guy I know whose sister has an aunt who’s father in law is married to a woman whose son’s friend’s dad drives a truck for REA says you are wrong. 😊
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2020 13:34:31 GMT -5
I just watch the Matrix.
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Post by james on May 1, 2020 13:56:41 GMT -5
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Post by fauxmaha on May 1, 2020 14:02:54 GMT -5
Well Jeff, a guy I know whose sister has an aunt who’s father in law is married to a woman whose son’s friend’s dad drives a truck for REA says you are wrong. 😊 I know that guy. Well, I don't really know him. But my daughter's boyfriend's father knows a guy who used to be friends on Facebook with his boss.
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Post by fauxmaha on May 1, 2020 14:04:35 GMT -5
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. "
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Post by aquaduct on May 1, 2020 14:11:22 GMT -5
God, these guys are fucking idiots.
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Post by james on May 1, 2020 14:20:55 GMT -5
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Post by aquaduct on May 1, 2020 14:27:02 GMT -5
So who does this asshole actually recommend killing or forcibly maiming in order to meet his population control agenda?
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