Re: Evangelical environmentalists
But with Christian charity, please forgive typos. I am on the fly at a library. Erik
Re: Evangelical environmentalists
I posted on this issue earlier. A useful link is: http://www.creationcare.org/
Re: There is No Tomorrow, by Bill Moyers
please forgive typos and glitches in my post -- i'm trying to work in a library seated next to a woman who is a spinning vortex of mucus. erik baard
Re: There is No Tomorrow, by Bill Moyers
Jed and I both spent some time in Japanese culture, and he may greatly disagree with me. As I see it, Japanese militarism centralized Shinto worship to an unprecedented by putting greater emphasis on the role of the Emperor. After defeat and occupation, state-sponsored Shinto was taboo (and Americans deliberately cut the emperor down to size while leaving him on the throne for stability's sake), but a spiritual void remained. Christianity, ironically, had a strong foothold...in Nagasaki. So while Christianity took off in Korea, it didn't spread much in Japan. Instead, Japan has sprouted one New Age sect after another, some more harmful than others. Many are politically influential though because they can drive voters to candidates. During the height of Japan's corruption in the 80s and early 90s, companies would donate cash to nonprofit front groups for religious sects (often peace groups) who would push believers to vote for candidates who would in turn grant favors to the donating companies! Erik Baard
Re: There is No Tomorrow, by Bill Moyers
Okay, there are several arguments here with which I disagree, but this will take us way off topic! :) Erik
Re: Concord Monitor: Mallove murder unsolved
Hi All - A woman was killed by crossfire across the way from me early last year. A few weeks later I heard gunshots and ran out the door to see if I might help, but the victim was a young man on the sidewalk, his brains blasted out. His vacant eyes stared up into the light pre-dawn rain when they rolled him onto the stretcher. A man at my subway stop, also just around the corner, had his face blasted inward. And a homeless man was sliced and stabbed to death quietly off to the side of our plaza. Hey, my rent is cheap at least. But the point is, not one of these cases has been solved. It's sad but true that families will often have no resolution. My family was lucky, when my 23-year old uncle was murdered days before Christmas and two weeks before his wife gave birth to their first child. His killers were picked up at another murder scene just hours later. But I can also say that two decades later the police were still probing around my former step father for a murder they believed he commited in 1974 (no, we didn't know about this when my mother married him). The fact is that outdoor scenes make life difficult; that much more chaos and complexity. And robberies gone bad, because of their impersonal nature, are terribly difficult unless the killer boasts or confesses. The fact is, however, that Eugene Mallove was not a large threat to the world order. He might have been correct, but he was not alone in his beliefs nor even the primary scientific mind behind Cold Fusion. I know of no other advocates who have been silence with fear as a result of his murder either. Cold Fusion has lost a passionate and articulate advocate. The talented circle of people involved with this movement will need to continue without him. But spinning vague conspiracy theories are more likely to hurt his family then bring them justice. Erik Baard
Re: Response to murder conspiracy theorists
I mean, simply, that the ideas generated by Newtown and Einstein arose from creative interpretation and addition to earlier work, observation, and thought, and if those two individuals hadn't proposed what they did, someone else would have. Eventually. It's the "eventually" that makes us grateful -- maybe progress would have been delayed decades or even hundreds of years. Mills feels the same way about his work -- he got their first, but someone else would have arrived at it eventually. Also, he is very humble and impersonal aboutthe fact that much of his character and insights are the result of preparation by circumstance. Heknows he's much smarter than most, but doesn't make claims to being a unique light in that regard. Erik Baard
Re: Response to murder conspiracy theorists
In a message dated 8/12/04 8:48:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Gene pissed off a lot of people To be honest, I've thought hisrather determined nature, amply demonstrated in various clashes,might have caused him to resist robbery and respond with anger. It's from this point of view that envision the above statement playing into his death. Sadly, not his more noble fights. Erik Baard
Neutrinos Linked to Dark Energy
THE FOLLOWING RELEASE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, IN SEATTLE, AND IS FORWARDED FOR YOUR INFORMATION. (FORWARDING DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT BY THE AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY.) Steve Maran, American Astronomical SocietyFROM: Vince Stricherz(206) 543-2580[EMAIL PROTECTED](NOTE: researcher contact information at end)For Immediate ReleaseJuly 27, 2004NEW THEORY LINKS NEUTRINO'S SLIGHT MASSTO ACCELERATING UNIVERSE EXPANSIONTwo of the biggest physics breakthroughs during the last decade are thediscovery that wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos actually have asmall amount of mass and the detection that the expansion of the universe isactually picking up speed.Now three University of Washington physicists are suggesting the twodiscoveries are integrally linked through one of the strangest features ofthe universe, dark energy, a linkage they say could be caused by apreviously unrecognized subatomic particle they call the "acceleron."Dark energy was negligible in the early universe, but now it accounts forabout 70 percent of the cosmos. Understanding the phenomenon could help toexplain why someday, long in the future, the universe will expand so muchthat no other stars or galaxies will be visible in our night sky, andultimately it could help scientists discern whether expansion of theuniverse will go on indefinitely.In this new theory, neutrinos are influenced by a new force resulting fromtheir interactions with accelerons. Dark energy results as the universetries to pull neutrinos apart, yielding a tension like that in stretchedrubber band, said Ann Nelson, a UW physics professor. That tension fuels theexpansion of the universe, she said.Neutrinos are created by the trillions in the nuclear furnaces of stars suchas our sun. They stream through the universe, and billions pass through allmatter, including people, every second. Besides a minuscule mass, they haveno electrical charge, which means they interact very little, if at all, withthe materials they pass through.But the interaction between accelerons and other matter is even weaker,Nelson said, which is why those particles have not yet been seen bysophisticated detectors. However, in the new theory, accelerons exhibit aforce that can influence neutrinos, a force she believes can be detected bya variety of neutrino experiments already operating around the world."There are many models of dark energy, but the tests are mostly limited tocosmology, in particular measuring the rate of expansion of the universe.Because this involves observing very distant objects, it is very difficultto make such a measurement precisely," Nelson said."This is the only model that gives us some meaningful way to do experimentson earth to find the force that gives rise to dark energy. We can do thisusing existing neutrino experiments."The new theory is advanced in a paper by Nelson; David Kaplan, also a UWphysics professor; and Neal Weiner, a UW research associate in physics.Their work, supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy,is detailed in a paper accepted for publication in an upcoming issue ofPhysical Review Letters, a journal of the American Physical Society.The researchers say a neutrino's mass can actually change according to theenvironment through which it is passing, in the same way the appearance oflight changes depending on whether it's traveling through air, water or aprism. That means that neutrino detectors can come up with somewhatdifferent findings depending on where they are and what surrounds them.But if neutrinos are a component of dark energy, that suggests the existenceof a force that would reconcile anomalies among the various experiments,Nelson said. The existence of that force, made up of both neutrinos andaccelerons, will continue to fuel the expansion of the universe, she said.Physicists have pursued evidence that could tell whether the universe willcontinue to expand indefinitely or come to an abrupt halt and collapse onitself in a so-called "big crunch." While the new theory doesn't prescribe a"big crunch," Nelson said, it does mean that at some point the expansionwill stop getting faster."In our theory, eventually the neutrinos would get too far apart and becometoo massive to be influenced by the effect of dark energy any more, so theacceleration of the expansion would have to stop," she said. "The universecould continue to expand, but at an ever-decreasing rate." ###For more information, contact Nelson at (206) 543-2027 or[EMAIL PROTECTED]; Kaplan at (206) 685-3546 or[EMAIL PROTECTED]; Weiner at (206) 854-7277 or[EMAIL PROTECTED]
