Re: [Vo]: Put a [Vo] tag in the message Subject line

[Pteranodon]

On Monday 12 June 2006 14:06, peatbog wrote:
> John Steck wrote:
> > Will all due respect Bill, this is a silly thing to waste time on just
> > because someone is too lazy to set up a simple filter on the address.  As
> > soon as you reply a RE: or FW: gets put in front of it... doh!
> >
> > Just my 2 cents.  8^(
>
> When I first started reading vortex, I put a filter on the To:
> header to whitelist anything addressed to vortex-l, and added one to
> move the message into the Vortex folder.
>
> I'm using mozilla thunderbird, but thought even the simplest mail
> readers could do that.
>
> > -Original Message-
> > From: William Beaty [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 5:17 PM
> > To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
> > Subject: [Vo]: Put a [Vo] tag in the message Subject line
> >
> >
> >
> > Test.   Does this work?
> >
> >
> > (( ( (  (   ((O))   )  ) ) )))
> > William J. Beatyhttp://staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]   Research Engineer
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]UW Chem Dept,  Bagley Hall RM74
> > 206-543-6195Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700

Seems Mr Bill B has changed the way ALL vortexians recieve their
web mail to the list.  Not only is there a 'vo' tag in front of all the
posts to the list, but the headers of the files are lengthened as well
as well as re mails of your posts to AOL.  All of them.  All your posts
are now going to a secret box on AOL.  I did not subscribe to AO-Hell,
and heartily object to all my Vortex mail being sent there.  I have a
Linux system and know well how to sign off of Vortex.  This unrequested
mail change has lengthened headers on all my mail with re-mails to
Vortex to unsub and resub with every mail.  All my Vortex mail goes to
a special folder in K-Mail.  This is a KDE 3.1 so it yet retains the ability
to shred and totally destroy spam.

One post from BillB sent later with only the subject line of 'vo' contained
a segment of 8 bit characters that I took to be either a virus or a silent
re-direct to a viral site.  If Bill B could cause this subject change attack
to become effective on my computer, then all of your computers are
at risk.  I will not only unsubscribe, but will have to shred all user files
under the this user.  This change may have been to Vortex's service
provider as it appears under no other list but Vortex.  Either way though
I will take no chances.  I'm supremely gratefull that my linux system 
can be set to refuse to process HTML in e-mail like.  Some newer
hyped up e-mail systems for linux like Ximian DO process HTML and
refuse to allow the e=mail user to stop this.  That is why I refuse to
do e-mail on any system but linux, and refuse to use any linux system
using kernel 2.6 or newer for any secure e-mail or browsing.  I will
now unsubscribe from Vortex and sign off this user and shred its
files 40 times using Guttmann.  That way all the virus will be dead
dead  dead and will never darken my digital doorway again.

Pteranodon

Re: [Vo]: war on curiousity

[Philip Winestone]

My own experience is that one can't put a fence around curiosity.  You 
can't say that people are allowed to be curious about science, or even 
about one branch of science, but not about anything else in this 
universe.  My experience is that there are some people who are 
fundamentally curious about everything they see or feel or hear, 
etc.  These are the really curious people.


Some people sniff and call these people names... like "moonbats."

P.


At 09:15 AM 6/26/2006 -0700, you wrote:


(( ( (  (   ((O))   )  ) ) )))
William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA  425-222-5066unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci


From SF Chronicle:


JON

- Jon Carroll 

Friday, June 2, 2006

I think several things are coming together. The first is the unannounced,
perhaps even unacknowledged, war on curiosity. The second is the equally
unacknowledged war on risk. The third is pervasive fear, most often
described as a fear of terrorists, but really a fear of anything surprising,
exotic or hard to understand. Since science demands both curiosity and risk,
and since a lot of science is hard to understand (particularly if you did
not try to learn about science because it seemed risky and you were not
curious), the prevailing cultural trends have combined to form an
unannounced but potent war on science.

Signs of that war are everywhere. Because people are afraid of science, they
can easily be persuaded to mock scientists or scientific theory. Evolution,
global warming, stem cell research -- they've all come under attack because
stupid or avaricious people have found it all too easy to use ignorance and
fear to advance their own agendas.

Sometimes these things can best be seen in microcosm. I direct your
attention to an article by Steve Silberman in the June issue of Wired
magazine. The opening sentences are arresting: "The first startling thing
Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door
with an M16. White's husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already
outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in
camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. 'Come out with
your hands up immediately, Miss White!' one of them yelled through a
megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear.
Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, 'If they were expecting to
find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys.' "

So who are Lazar and White? To what secret cabal do they belong? It's the
secret society of high school chemistry teachers and backyard science geeks.
Lazar and White are the co-proprietors of United Nuclear (remember when you
could use irony in naming your company? That was the 20th century, which is
over), a mail order chemical supply house. (Go to www.unitednuclear.com and
see for yourself.) They had fallen afoul of the Consumer Product Safety
Division -- you didn't know it had its own army, did you? -- for selling
sulfur, potassium perchlorate and powdered aluminum, all of which can be
used in the manufacture of (wait for it) illegal fireworks.

Are illegal fireworks a big problem? Well, no -- most fireworks-related
injuries come from commercially made and legally sold fireworks. But you
can't be too careful. Everything is dangerous. Naturally, these substances
have many other uses; they are staples of virtually any well-stocked high
school chemistry lab. Of course, there are a declining number of high school
chemistry labs, and college chemistry labs, and an even steeper drop in
hands-on experimentation by students, because it could be risky and besides
it's weird and useless, because knowing stuff just for the sake of knowing
stuff is silly. (We might add: Blowing up stuff for the sake of blowing up
stuff is even more pointless -- unless you work for the government and
intend to kill people. Then it's OK.)

Let's consider the importance of home chemistry experiments. As Silberman
writes: "After reading a book called 'The Boy Scientist' at age 10, Vint
Cerf -- who became one of the architects of the Internet -- spent months
blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in
Colorado, David Packard -- the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard --
concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes
about his adolescent love affair with 'stinks and bangs' in 'Uncle Tungsten:
Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.' 'There's no question that stinks and bangs
and crystals and colors are what drew kids -- particularly boys -- to
science,' says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize
for chemistry in 1981. "Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been
legislated out."

There are malign uses for chemicals too: poisons, drugs, wei

[Vo]: Methane as fuel, recycling CO2?

[Kyle R. Mcallister]

Hello all,

First off, I must say I hate the term "alternative energy." Why? Alternative 
has a sort of 'its not the greatest but its something to fall back on' kind 
of attachment to it. I think this stuff is more like "advanced" energy, but 
thats just my $0.75 (inflation, no longer $0.02)


I've heard of the possibilities of running engines on compressed or 
liquefied methane gas. Quite powerful, low pollution, much easier on the 
inner works of the engine, valves in particular. I have also read Zubrin's 
books on exploration schemes for Mars, in particular the bits about in-situ 
fuel generation, that is, making methane with resources available on the 
Martian surface.


Now my only problem with this, and why I prefer hydrogen over this, is you 
still get CO2 from burning the methane. Supposedly there is too much CO2 in 
the air. Well can't we just manufacture CH4 fuel from H2O we get from 
seawater (or whatever logical source) and CO2 from the atmosphere? Granted 
the atmosphere of Mars is primarily CO2, but it is also at a far far lower 
pressure. I would think there is plenty of CO2 available in our atmosphere 
to be used to produce automotive fuel (or gas for heating homes, cooking, 
etc.) We would then not be adding any CO2 back to the air, simply recycling 
what we have already there. The energy to do this could be obtained by wind 
farms or solar collectors.


As for the problem of transmitting all the energy from distant facilities to 
consumers not near the power plants, why can we not use the energy to make 
some high energy liquid or gas (CH4, LH2, etc.) and literally pipeline our 
energy to distant points, at no loss? Except of course whatever is involved 
in conversion/reconversion and moving it from A to B.


Is there actually enough useable (as in, we can actually really harness it) 
wind around the US to power all this? Solar?


--Kyle 

vortex-l@eskimo.com

[Jed Rothwell]

RC Macaulay wrote: "A large portion of each windfarm is "out of 
service for repairs" at any one time."


I mentioned that an EPRI study showed just the opposite: wind 
turbines require less maintenance per KWH than most other generator 
types. However, a study at a remote location with high winds did 
reveal significant costs and downtime for operations and maintenance 
(O&M). The costs were covered by the warrantee. Overall availability 
for two types of turbine was 92%. The capacity factor for this 
location was 32%, which means there is a lot of wind for a land site. See:


http://pepei.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARTCL&ARTICLE_ID=256006&VERSION_NUM=2&p=6

92% compares favorably to nuclear and combustion generation when you 
take into account the time required for maintenance and refueling. 
Other studies in Europe have shown higher availability, especially 
with the new offshore units.


This NREL report from 2000 shows downtime ranging from 43 hours to 
127 hours per month (82% to 94% availability). See: 
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/28620.pdf


Note that a lot of O&M downtime can be scheduled for times when the 
weather report shows little or no wind is expected. An unplanned 
equipment failure during high winds costs a lot of lost revenue, but 
maintenance scheduled 3 days ahead of time for a calm period costs 
nothing more than the labor and parts.


O&M costs are roughly 20 to 25% of the cost per KWH, so aggressive 
steps are being taken to reduce O&M expenses, such as improved 
computer monitoring of oil and bearing conditions.


In other wind news, Denmark is now generating 20% of its overall 
power from wind. This was formerly thought to be the practical 
limits, but improvements in the net have already been made, and they 
have spurred new plans to generate 50% of electricity from wind by 
2025. See: http://www.windpower.org/composite-520.htm


Overall Scandinavian wind power is expected to reach 17,000 MW 
(nameplate), much of it offshore, or 6.5 GW actual. This is roughly 
equivalent to 7.5 average  U.S. nukes. The U.S. has about 100 nukes, 
so this is very substantial generating capacity.


- Jed

[Vo]: Message sent to R. Park

[Jed Rothwell]

[I send Park a message a few times a year just to remind him that we have
his number. - JR]
Subject: What about the other 3,000 papers?
You wrote:
Seventeen years ago Steven Jones
imagined that cold fusion is responsible for Earth's molten
interior.  That's what led Fleischmann and Pons to rush into print
with their dumb idea. 
You write as if only one paper about cold fusion has been published.
Approximately 3,000 have been published, including about 1,000 in
mainstream, peer-reviewed journals such as  the Journal of
Electroanalytical Chemistry and the Japanese Journal of Applied
Physics (the second most cited journal in the world). They have been
published in leading plasma fusion journals, such as this:
Li, X.Z., et al., A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter
Nuclear Science. J. Fusion Energy, 2004. 23(3): p. 217-221.

Li is a contributing editor. Other prominent researchers include former
chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, Distinguished Professors
and Fellows at five universities and the U.S. Navy, former presidents of
the Electrochemical Society, two other editors of major plasma fusion and
physics journals, a retired member of the French Atomic Energy
Commission, and many top researchers from U.S. national laboratories. Are
you absolutely certain that you know more about this subject than these
people? You are certain that every single one of these papers is
"dumb" and wrong?
How many of these papers have you read?
You should not imagine these are marginal results. The authors are
unequivocal. See, for example, this paper from Amoco:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Lautzenhiscoldfusion.pdf
QUOTE:
"The calorimetry conclusively shows excess energy was produced
within the electrolytic cell over the period of the experiment. This
amount, 50 kilojoules, is such that any chemical reaction would have had
to been in near molar amounts to have produced the energy. Chemical
analysis shows clearly that no such chemical reactions occurred. The
tritium results show that some form of nuclear reactions occurred during
the experiment. The tritium produced was not nearly enough to account for
the excess energy. The expected nuclear processes would have been on the
order of 4 Mev per event. 10E17 such reactions would have been required
to produce 50 Kjoules of energy. Our measurement of tritium shows an
excess of 5 × 10E8 atoms. In other words, tritium production would only
account for about 5 × 10E-9 of the observed excess energy. The main point
of the tritium in this experiment is then that there are some nuclear
processes involved . . ."
- Jed

[Vo]: war on curiousity

[William Beaty]

(( ( (  (   ((O))   )  ) ) )))
William J. BeatySCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA  425-222-5066unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci


>From SF Chronicle:


JON

- Jon Carroll 

Friday, June 2, 2006

I think several things are coming together. The first is the unannounced,
perhaps even unacknowledged, war on curiosity. The second is the equally
unacknowledged war on risk. The third is pervasive fear, most often
described as a fear of terrorists, but really a fear of anything surprising,
exotic or hard to understand. Since science demands both curiosity and risk,
and since a lot of science is hard to understand (particularly if you did
not try to learn about science because it seemed risky and you were not
curious), the prevailing cultural trends have combined to form an
unannounced but potent war on science.

Signs of that war are everywhere. Because people are afraid of science, they
can easily be persuaded to mock scientists or scientific theory. Evolution,
global warming, stem cell research -- they've all come under attack because
stupid or avaricious people have found it all too easy to use ignorance and
fear to advance their own agendas.

Sometimes these things can best be seen in microcosm. I direct your
attention to an article by Steve Silberman in the June issue of Wired
magazine. The opening sentences are arresting: "The first startling thing
Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door
with an M16. White's husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already
outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in
camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. 'Come out with
your hands up immediately, Miss White!' one of them yelled through a
megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear.
Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, 'If they were expecting to
find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys.' "

So who are Lazar and White? To what secret cabal do they belong? It's the
secret society of high school chemistry teachers and backyard science geeks.
Lazar and White are the co-proprietors of United Nuclear (remember when you
could use irony in naming your company? That was the 20th century, which is
over), a mail order chemical supply house. (Go to www.unitednuclear.com and
see for yourself.) They had fallen afoul of the Consumer Product Safety
Division -- you didn't know it had its own army, did you? -- for selling
sulfur, potassium perchlorate and powdered aluminum, all of which can be
used in the manufacture of (wait for it) illegal fireworks.

Are illegal fireworks a big problem? Well, no -- most fireworks-related
injuries come from commercially made and legally sold fireworks. But you
can't be too careful. Everything is dangerous. Naturally, these substances
have many other uses; they are staples of virtually any well-stocked high
school chemistry lab. Of course, there are a declining number of high school
chemistry labs, and college chemistry labs, and an even steeper drop in
hands-on experimentation by students, because it could be risky and besides
it's weird and useless, because knowing stuff just for the sake of knowing
stuff is silly. (We might add: Blowing up stuff for the sake of blowing up
stuff is even more pointless -- unless you work for the government and
intend to kill people. Then it's OK.)

Let's consider the importance of home chemistry experiments. As Silberman
writes: "After reading a book called 'The Boy Scientist' at age 10, Vint
Cerf -- who became one of the architects of the Internet -- spent months
blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in
Colorado, David Packard -- the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard --
concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes
about his adolescent love affair with 'stinks and bangs' in 'Uncle Tungsten:
Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.' 'There's no question that stinks and bangs
and crystals and colors are what drew kids -- particularly boys -- to
science,' says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize
for chemistry in 1981. "Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been
legislated out."

There are malign uses for chemicals too: poisons, drugs, weird
refrigerator-eating gunky stuff. But then, there are malign uses for
automobiles, dish detergent, chicken wings. You can kill someone with a
common scarf. A household knife -- deadly. We live with risk all around us,
little germs and big bombs and crazy people. It's a wonder that the world's
population is increasing.

And a lot of what is being banned is available in other ways. A Mr. Coffee
machine has three parts -- a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker and a heating
element -- that are listed

Re: [Vo]: OT : ethanol biofuel and stupid white men

[Jed Rothwell]

Nick Palmer wrote:



http

://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business/25ethanol.html?th&emc=th

For once, this issue of the Times also presented evidence against
ethanol, "A Range of Estimates on Ethanol's Benefits." This
discusses research by Pimental and Patzek.
Even if ethanol advocates are correct, and the numbers they publish are
right, they have no case. This article quotes them: " . . . positive
output 67 percent greater than the energy inputs. But others who view
ethanol favorably are more conservative, with several estimating the net
energy benefit at about 20 percent." Oil and ethanol are used only
for transportation, mainly automobiles. We can easily achieve this level
of improvement with better efficiency, hybrids and plug-in hybrids, and
we would not destroy the ecosystem or starve millions of people to death,
the way we will with large-scale ethanol production.
- Jed

Re: [Vo]: Re:[VO]: Tiny Bubbles in the Sky

[Grimer]

At 06:58 am 26/06/2006 -0500, Richard wrote:

> We are mere mortals being accelerated just 
> as a free falling object in a vacuum. 
> The question becomes not "if" but "when" and 
> will this free fall in advances in scientific 
> discovery end in a "splat" or a "smile". 
> The when answers are given in Frank's bible 
> and not in the physics textbooks.
>
> Richard


Yeah, well. If you want to know how something 
works then RTMM (Read the Manufacturer's Manual). 

I thought I'd better bowdlerise the more 
familiar acronym, I wouldn't want to finish 
up like Oza. 

Frank

[Vo]: Re:[VO]: Tiny Bubbles in the Sky

[RC Macaulay]

Grimer wrote..
 
 
> What happens if hydrogen nuclei are spat out from a > 
high-pressure region into a low pressure region, like > orange pips at a 
school dinner table. Would it be > analogous to a temperature drop? Would 
the hydrogen > nuclei condense?> 
-> Apparently, 
what is happening in the Beta-atm. vacuum > cavities in palladium is the 
bits are speeding up, not > slowing down. No wonder people are reporting 
fusion. > Probably means that those reports of sono-fusion are > 
genuine too.
 
 
Howdy Frank..
And therein becomes a valid clue to the answer to the question.. exactly 
what is gravity?
We don't know! Can we suspect it can be explained by the Beta-atm ? 
Yes!
How do we verify ? We can't at present.
Why not?   Because the mathematics required has not yet been 
discovered. These advanced theories cannot be adequately described by lab 
experiment but only viewed through a radical new mathematical language not yet 
discovered.
Will we ever be able to verify? Perhaps. 
Explain.  There are advances in computing sciences that may provide a 
platform for discovering this new form of mathematics.
What does " form " mean? This form may not be mathematics as our present 
understanding of the term means.
Huh? We do not have a descriptive language just as we had no language for 
computers before their discovery.
We are mere mortals being accelerated just as a free falling object in a 
vacuum. The question becomes not "if" but "when" and will this free fall in 
advances in scientific discovery end in a "splat" or a "smile". The  when 
answers are given in Frank's bible and not in the physics textbooks.
 
Richard
 

RE: [Vo]: Tiny Bubbles in the Sky . . .

[Grimer]

Whilst on the subject of Beta-atmosphere 
vacua taking off the pressure that holds 
things together, why do you think things 
like salt fall apart when dropped into 
water. Water molecules are electrets, and 
consequently form a jangle of struts and 
ties with plenty of nooks and crannies 
where Na and Cl can hide away from the 
external Beta atmosphere pressure. 

The sodium an chlorine atoms fall apart 
cos they are no longer pushed together 
and so they can wander off on their own 
though the system of underground, 
oopsunderwater caves that the water 
structure provides.

Of course you can look at things from 
the bottom up instead of the top down 
if you want to - but who'd want to - 
only a reductionist chemist like my 
friend, Alfred, who when asked what 
that delicious smell coming from the 
kitchen is will reply, 

   "It is molecules impinging on your 
olfactory nerve cells." 

whereas my grandson, Edwin, answers

   "Mum's cooking apple pie."

===
ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti 
laudem propter adversarios meos ut quiescat 
   inimicus et ultor 
===

Cheers,

Frank

[Vo]: joe cell water fuel pumps

[Wesley Bruce]

A key experiment that has to be done is to take nickel sheet formed
into Joe cell cylinders chrome them and build a cell. What happens if
there is no iron at all? Is chromium the key. No-one has checked
chromium for Fleischmann/ Pons effect. Cold fusion could be driving
thermal dissolution of water, occurs at ~2000oC. If the ions
produced are stripped of their electrons then we have O+3
and +H. A non combustible cold plasma with interesting
properties. It should be hard to compress, it should hold more energy
than hydrogen and oxygen. It may be a superconducting fluid.
The assumption is that we get O2 and H2 or hydroxides. However if we
get huge temperatures and very large arcs then we get electron
stripping and the geometry of concentric unearthed plates, capacitors,
prevents the plasmas coming into contact with electrons so they can't
react chemically. When they reach the carburetor or the spark plug they
acquire electrons and they then react powerfully.


The key accusation on these machines is that they are burning
lubricants. To control for this a simple test is to build a humphrey
pump engine. 
http://www.steamengine.com.au/ic/history/humphrey_pumps/
This replaces the piston and gear box and lubricated components with
water. The explosion of the fuel/air mix pushes the the water out
trough a one way valve. The catch is that humphrey pumps engines are
low compression power plants. However if we are dealing with an
implosive fuel then the working stroke of the power plant would be the
up to top dead center not the 'pushing' down stroke.  The joe/ humphrey
unit will have no lubricants so can't be burning it.  It's an all water
system. 

Please don't try both experiments; a chrome cell and a humphrey system,
together; you multiply the complexity and if it does not work you wont
know which bit failed.

The real irritation is that this the "joe cell" is clearly a power
plant best suited for stationary application. It needs to be in a
controlled environment and the engine bay of a car is far from that. We
need to build cells and run stationary "emergency" generators from them
to power portable equipment. This can be taken to people instead of
asking them to come out to see the car in the car park.