Re: [Vo]:Unsubscribe me, please

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Thanks, and thanks for all the superb work you are doing for the LENR 
community, Jed.

Lawry


> On Oct 27, 2016, at 1:38 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 2:30 PM, Lawrence de Bivort <ldebiv...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:ldebiv...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Thanks.
> 
> Lawrence de Bivort
> 
> You have to do it yourself.
> 
> To unsubscribe, send a *blank* message to:
>   vortex-l-requ...@eskimo.com <mailto:vortex-l-requ...@eskimo.com>
>   Put the single word "unsubscribe" in the subject line of the header.  No
>   quotes around "unsubscribe," of course.

[Vo]:Unsubscribe me, please

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Thanks.

Lawrence de Bivort


> On Oct 22, 2016, at 4:53 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net <mailto:a.ashfi...@verizon.net>> wrote:
>  
> Yes I was referring to high school grads for that rating, but it really 
> doesn't matter.
> 
> You are right that it does not matter for the problem of AI replacing jobs. 
> However, in a separate issue, you said that our current graduates are "dead 
> last in the world in math and science." I do not think that is true. It is a 
> statistical illusion caused by our high graduation rate. If every state and 
> every country sent 76% of kids to college the way New York does, they would 
> all be far behind the U.S. They send only a tiny elite instead. Which makes 
> them look better.
> 
> As it happens, they send most of their best people to U.S. universities. 
> Fortunately for us, these people tend to stay in the U.S. The "brain drain" 
> that began in the 1940s continues today, and the U.S. is the beneficiary. I 
> used to work with graduating classes from Georgia Tech., and I saw that. 
> Somehow, the U.S. has managed to capture the creme de la creme talent from 
> every nation on earth. Whatever we are doing right, we should keep doing it.
> 
> I am reminded of that by the recent crop of Japanese Nobel winners. Most of 
> them either studied in the U.S., made the contribution that won the prize in 
> the U.S., or they are now U.S. citizens. Shuji Nakamura, the guy who invented 
> the blue LED, became an American citizen some time ago. He wrote a book about 
> how angry he was with Japanese society and with the company he worked at. He 
> is much happier in the U.S.
> 
> So, we do not lack for engineering talent. However, as you say, that does not 
> help the burgeoning employment crisis caused by AI. It probably makes it 
> worse.
> 
> 
> It is not so much the college grads that will be losing their jobs (although 
> some like pharmacists etc will.) it is more that there won't be other jobs to 
> go to.
> 
> Yup. Big problem!
> 
> - Jed
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Future Of Solar

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hmmm. I think it is the native Americans who view the European immigration a as 
the unmitigated disaster. Of course, it was the indigenous people around the 
world who suffered from the European immigration a and colonizations. And it 
still going on in several places in the world. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 11, 2015, at 10:24 AM, Chris Zell  wrote:
> 
> In the US, we have a profound (and ironic) example of what disasters can be 
> experienced if immigration is unrestricted.
>  
>  
> We call them “Native Americans”  :)
>  

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Good thing Sailer isn't hallucinating or mind-reading here!

Hmm. His dad ran for Sudanese president. How suspicious!

Hmmm. Kid builds a clock and this means he is…demonizing the West!  


On Sep 18, 2015, at 12:31 PM, James Bowery  wrote:

> Keep providing payoffs in terms of moral authority and social status for this 
> kind of behavior and you are going to keep getting more of it:
> 
> 
> Steve Sailer: I’m sure you’ve heard about the Sudanese Muslim immigrant kid 
> in Texas who was arrested for bringing his home made electronic clock to 
> school where Islamophobes worried that it was a time bomb beeping in his 
> backpack. A reader points out that the kid’s dad is a publicity hound who 
> routinely returns to Sudan to run for President and engages in other PR stunts
> 
> S Sailer: If Ahmed were so smart, he’d know the difference between creating a 
> circuit and stripping the guts from a manufactured clock. His dad helped him 
> “make” this, and dad helped to make this “project” look as questionable as 
> possible, within the realm of plausible deniability. Whatever agenda he’s 
> advancing, it just further demonizes western society, and reminds us all to 
> be guilty for how racist we all are.
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
> Eric Walker  wrote:
>  
> Probably not.  But just in case, I will not bring something that looks 
> vaguely like a bomb to my place of work.
> 
> What if your place of work is a high school dedicated to teaching 
> engineering?!? I cannot think of a more appropriate thing to bring than an 
> electronics project. No one on the staff there would have thought this is a 
> bomb. It will not look "vaguely like a bomb" to them.
> 
> This is like saying you should not bring a hammer to a construction site.
> 
> - Jed
> 
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Let's say that the kid's clock looked like a Hollywood bomb. The kid gets 
accosted by school personnel. So far so good. But instead of handcuffing him, 
belittling him, calling the cops, and suspending him, intelligent school 
personnel would have looked at the clock seen that it was no bomb, warned the 
kid to not pretend it was a bomb, and sent him off to class. End of story. 

You don't think islamophonia and racism didn't have a major role to play in 
what actually happened? Please. 

Too many Americans have proven themselves easy to scare, and the bigots have 
stepped in and taken advantage of this. 

The result is a country in which irrationality and irrational behavior is 
excused by claiming fear. We see this in our foreign policy; we see it in the 
instance of a kid with his 
clock-that-to-some-think-looks-like-a-Hollywood-bomb-but-isn't. 

Cheers,
Larry


Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 18, 2015, at 7:24 AM, Eric Walker  wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 12:26 AM, Alain Sepeda  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> if someone with notion of electronics says that it looks like a bomb, I 
>> remove even his bachelor of science immediately.
> 
> You and Jed have both missed the point.  The skill that went into the thing 
> has nothing to do with what is of concern.  The intention is what is of 
> concern.  What does a young kid who brought such a thing to a school intend 
> to do?  Perhaps the intention was harmless, or perhaps it was other than 
> harmless.  Now the school administration has a situation to sort out. The 
> thing looked like a stage prop from Mission Impossible.  It does not look 
> like an accurate prop, or a finished prop.  But it definitely looks like the 
> makings of a Hollywood briefcase bomb.  Anyone who argues against this only 
> discredits himself, greatly.  The kid said it was just a clock.  He may have 
> discredited himself in the process, perhaps escalating things.
> 
> In an earlier time, this might have just been a harmless electronics project. 
>  In this time, there are additional considerations to be taken into account.  
> None of this is to say that there was no racism in the incident.  But ignore 
> Mohamed's race and religion for a moment, and the concerns remain.
> 
> Eric
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

So anyone's "concerns" are grounds enough for breaking the law? For unbridled 
bigotry?  Remember the mainstay of our legal system, "innocent until proven 
guilty?"  Or does your fear justify tearing up our Constitution?

Gee. I have concerns about bigots and sadists masquerading as police officers. 
Most officers are decent, caring people. But some aren't.  And polygamists! Oh 
oh. And people who believe that vaccines cause autism. Yikes!

I have concerns about a lot of things and people. But I don't call for their 
persecution because "maybe" my "concerns" might happen.

A bomb, after all, is a bomb whether it looks like one or not.

You, Eric, COULD hide your gun in your lunch pail, or in your brief case, or 
the frame of your bike, or truck of your car…. probably not. Maybe.

Believe me -- I see the nuances. They are the same nuances that cloaked bigotry 
throughout the ages. Anti-Christian bigotry during the roman empire, 
anti-Celtish, anti-Irish, anti-immigrant, anti-native peoples, anti-black, 
anti-Jewish, anti-intellectual, anti-"gook," anti-women, anti-Arab, 
anti-Muslim….it is a long list, but at its heart these "nuances" are there to 
justify anti-"anyone not exactly like me."

Lawry



On Sep 18, 2015, at 9:28 AM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Lawrence de Bivort <ldebiv...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Well, hell, Eric. 
> Will YOU build a bomb next week and kill people?  Probably not. Maybe. 
> 
> Probably not.  But just in case, I will not bring something that looks 
> vaguely like a bomb to my place of work.  Nor will I bring something that 
> looks vaguely like a gun to work.  Because I am aware it might raise concerns.
> 
> People are unable to see the nuance in this case.  I'm done trying to make 
> any further points.
> 
> Eric
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Well, hell, Eric. 
Will YOU build a bomb next week and kill people?  Probably not. Maybe. 

Maybe!  This is mere hysteria. Maybe. 
If we arrest people and harass them on the grounds of potential 'maybe's, then 
everyone should be locked up right away. 

Oh, wait. Maybe the police are maybe going to turn out to be bombers, too. And 
the jailers. So the police should lock up the police too. Because of "maybe."

Maybe your Cheerios have been poisoned. After all, it could be true. Let's 
arrest the clerk who rang your Cheerios up. Because, maybe, he is in on it. 

Of course, probably not. But maybe in your world, "maybe" is sufficient. 

Cheers,
Lawry

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 18, 2015, at 8:45 AM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Lawrence de Bivort <ldebiv...@gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Let's say that the kid's clock looked like a Hollywood bomb.
> 
> Yes, let's acknowledge this simple point, for our own credibility.  Let's go 
> further for the sake of completeness -- it's missing the explosives.
> 
>> The kid gets accosted by school personnel. So far so good. But instead of 
>> handcuffing him, belittling him, calling the cops, and suspending him, 
>> intelligent school personnel would have looked at the clock seen that it was 
>> no bomb, warned the kid to not pretend it was a bomb, and sent him off to 
>> class. End of story.
> 
> Not the end of story.  Will the kid try to put explosives in it in a week or 
> two and come back to school?  Probably not.  Maybe.
> 
>> You don't think islamophonia and racism didn't have a major role to play in 
>> what actually happened? Please. 
> 
> I haven't argued there was no islamophobia.
> 
> Eric
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

The biggest tragedy is that adults have failed to learn an important 
lesson--don't pander to your fears, don't embrace your bigotry, and don't throw 
our laws (against false arrest, and the right of adolescents to have their 
parents present when they are being interrogated) for example) and racial 
profiling.

A bomb can be hidden in a thick school book. Let's ban school books in 
schools  They are probably not a bomb. Maybe, though!!!


Blaming Ahmed for not learning lessons is blaming the victim for what was done 
to him.


On Sep 18, 2015, at 9:24 AM, Eric Walker  wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Orionworks - Steven Vincent Johnson 
>  wrote:
> 
> Ahmed gets his revenge in TIME Magazine:
> http://time.com/4038305/ahmed-mohamed-clock-mit/?xid=newsletter-brief
> 
> The biggest tragedy is that Ahmed appears to have failed to learn an 
> important lesson in the incident -- don't bring something that looks vaguely 
> like a bomb to school.
> 
> Eric
>  

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I don't forget it. I was directly affected by it.

Nor do I forget the atmosphere of bullying that the Columbine principal and 
coaches fostered in the school, and how the students-turned-killers were the 
standing target of that bullying.

When will people learn that when people are mistreated, some of them will fight 
back?


On Sep 18, 2015, at 9:22 AM, Eric Walker  wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Orionworks - Steven Vincent Johnson 
>  wrote: 
> 
> I disagree. The concerns would have vanished, if not had been greatly reduced.
> 
> You guys appear to be forgetting the Columbine high school massacre.
> 
> Eric
> 

Re: [Vo]:The Ahmed Mohamed case and distrust of experts

[Lawrence de Bivort]

" I don't want them reacting the way the ones in Texas did."

Thank you for this, Eric.

To react differently, people have to change their thinking, abandon their 
emotional and cognitive scarring from the past, eschew their bigotries, 
challenge their own assumptions and the assertions of "leaders" who prey on 
their fears.  Is it naive to suggest these requirements? 

Perhaps. But if this can't be done by those with authority, then truly our 
country is in perilous condition.

I retain the hope that as we have demonstrated in the past (e.g. 
JapaneseAmerican WWII internment, cigarette smoking, women suffrage, awareness 
of environmental damage caused by human activity) that we Americans, like 
peoples elsewhere, have the ability to discern even deeply embedded social and 
political and mental mistakes and correct our course.  

Is this naive? Perhaps.

But I would prefer to pursue a naive course of action -- no matter how small 
the odds of success are--than to accept passively a deep situation that clearly 
harms our society, endangers our kids future, and limits the manifestation of 
human qualities and aspirations.

Lawry




On Sep 18, 2015, at 10:45 AM, Eric Walker  wrote:

>  I don't want them reacting the way the ones in Texas did.

Re: Replications. Formerly [Vo]:LENR a gateway into the theory of everything.

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jed, this may seem unconventional, but has a crowd-sourcing approach been 
considered?  

I know of at least one scientific program -- small, admittedly -- that is being 
crowd-funded. A LENR proposal would appeal more broadly, I think, and might be 
able to raise adequate research funding. 

A key might be to structure the proposal with phases, so that funding and 
program phases were coordinated, thus building investor confidence.

Cheers,
Lawry


On Mar 9, 2014, at 4:36 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote:

 James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote:
  
 Given your absolutist declaration about complete lack of funding.  Zero 
 dollars you clearly don't consider the approach being taken by MFMP to be 
 valid no matter what they do but I disagree. 
 
 MFMP has a little money which they provided themselves, plus a little more 
 from me and others. Not enough to do what needs to be done, I am afraid. They 
 need an SEM and other expensive toys to do an analysis of the metal before 
 and after. Without that they are flying blind.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:Boiling at 0g

[Lawrence de Bivort]

test -- please disregard


On Nov 13, 2011, at 5:50 PM, Michele Comitini wrote:

 Quite different from what we are used to:
 
 http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2001/09/03/ast07sep_2_resources/bubble0g.mpg
 
 Full article here:
 
 http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast07sep_2/
 
 mic
 

Re: [Vo]:NASA officially responds to an FOIA request that Rossi has never proved his claim

[Lawrence de Bivort]

-
On Nov 10, 2011, at 2:59 PM, Dusty wrote:

 That sounds about right! SCAM!
 
 Mary Yugo maryyu...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/11/10/nasa-engineer-explains-why-rossi-demos-failed/
 
 According to a slide presentation given by NASA engineer Michael A.
 Nelson, which New Energy Times obtained under a FOIA request, “Energy
 Catalyzer” inventor Andrea Rossi failed to conclusively show that his
 device produced excess heat from a nuclear energy source.According
 to Nelson, a NASA engineer who investigates low-energy nuclear
 reactions and space applications, Rossi did not run his demonstration
 long enough to prove his extraordinary claim.At the Sept. 22, 2011
 LENR Workshop at NASA Glenn Research Center, Nelson explained that
 Rossi “would need to run [his experiment] for eight hours or more with
 a small E-Cat and much longer for an Ottoman [Fat-Cat] to rule out a
 chemical reaction.”   According to Nelson, it would take “three or
 more days for a small E-Cat, two or more weeks for an Ottoman
 [Fat-Cat] E-Cat and several months for a 1 MW plant.”
 
 The slide and more at the link.
 

Re: [Vo]:Krivit names some Rossi customer names

[Lawrence de Bivort]

On Nov 9, 2011, at 7:42 AM, Terry Blanton wrote:

 On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 2:57 AM, Susan Gipp susan.g...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 In Italy too
 
 Is that a bamboo bong on Lisa's shoulder?
 
 Not that I would know what a bong is, mind you.
 
 T
 

Re: [Vo]:?CENSORSHIP? re: NASA's BPP Russian version

[Lawrence de Bivort]

You guys have it all wrong.

The Iranian arsenal consists not only of the aforementioned nukes but about 85% 
of Saddam Hussein's WMD stash. These will be delivered via secret faith-powered 
gravity tunnels that now link Iran and Tel Aviv  (the Gaza tunnels are just a 
cover for this construction) and exploded under Tel Aviv on the Day of 
Judgment.  Meanwhile, Israelis have caught wind of this and are beginning to 
evacuate to, of all places, Berlin.  (See: 
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3953354,00.html for the AP article on 
this, originally published in the Jerusalem Post.)  Meanwhile, the CIA is 
increasingly worried about the Israeli nuke arsenal where there may be as many 
as 120 missing bombs.



On Sep 23, 2010, at 8:26 AM, peatbog wrote:

 That is nothing. I heard that Iran has a fleet of satellites, each
 one containing 50 multi-megaton hydrogen bombs with advanced
 late-nazi guidance systems ready to be dropped on the various
 Great Satans and waiting only for the head mullah to give the
 word as soon as he gets permission from the Israeli Knesset.
 

Re: [Vo]:?CENSORSHIP? re: NASA's BPP Russian version

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Damn. You are right. back to the drawing board.


On Sep 23, 2010, at 10:22 AM, Esa Ruoho wrote:

 doesnt sound plausible. where's yellowstone supervolcano, missing 
 suitcase-nukes and ye olde pulse..
 
 
 On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Lawrence de Bivort 
 debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org wrote:
 You guys have it all wrong.
 
 The Iranian arsenal consists not only of the aforementioned nukes but about 
 85% of Saddam Hussein's WMD stash. These will be delivered via secret 
 faith-powered gravity tunnels that now link Iran and Tel Aviv  (the Gaza 
 tunnels are just a cover for this construction) and exploded under Tel Aviv 
 on the Day of Judgment.  Meanwhile, Israelis have caught wind of this and are 
 beginning to evacuate to, of all places, Berlin.  (See: 
 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3953354,00.html for the AP article 
 on this, originally published in the Jerusalem Post.)  Meanwhile, the CIA is 
 increasingly worried about the Israeli nuke arsenal where there may be as 
 many as 120 missing bombs.
 
 
 
 On Sep 23, 2010, at 8:26 AM, peatbog wrote:
 
 That is nothing. I heard that Iran has a fleet of satellites, each
 one containing 50 multi-megaton hydrogen bombs with advanced
 late-nazi guidance systems ready to be dropped on the various
 Great Satans and waiting only for the head mullah to give the
 word as soon as he gets permission from the Israeli Knesset.
 
 
 

Re: [Vo]:Downwind Faster than the Wind (DWFTTW)

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Sailboats vary enormously in terms of their favored point of sailing.  I would 
guess that most sailboats do best with the wind on their beam (90 deg.)  My 
boat is best on that point, and I can also sail into the wind to about 28 
degrees without pinching, which is exceptionally.  Downwind is slow for me, so 
I often tack downwind, keeping main and gennie filled.

I wonder what race committees will say when a sailor shows up with this rig. 
Thinking of John's explanation, though, I suppose it will not work as there 
won't be any torque transmission from the wheels to the prop.

Right, John?

Cheers,
Lawry


On Sep 22, 2010, at 1:02 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:

 From John Fields,
 
 ...
 
 Note that with the wind pushing the cart and the pitch of
 the propeller as shown, the wind would, intuitively, be
 forcing the propeller to rotate counter-clockwise as
 viewed from the rear of the cart.
 
 However, such is not the case.
 
 What's really happening is that the wind is pushing on
 the prop, forcing the cart to move forward, and the torque
 generated by the wheels is coupled to the prop in such a
 way as to cause the prop to rotate clockwise when viewed
 from the rear.
 
 This direction of rotation makes the prop a pusher,
 and will increase the apparent force of the wind.
 
 As long as the wind is blowing from the rear, the cart
 will accelerate until it reaches wind speed, when the
 wind speed will effectively be zero.
 
 However, because of the prop's action as a pusher, the
 cart will be going a little faster than wind speed, at
 wind speed.  Then, as soon as the prop feels the
 headwind it'll stop being a propeller and will become
 a turbine, driving the wheels and accelerating into the
 headwind until, eventually, everything settles out and
 the cart reaches its speed limit.
 
 Well, I'll be keelhauled! Thanks for the clarification John.
 
 My previous suggestion of using a control vehicle fitted with a
 Viking-like sale is woefully inappropriate. It would be more accurate
 to describe this vehicle's prop as TACKING through the wind. As most
 sailors know, a sailboat tends to sail the fastest when sailing at an
 angle of around 45 degrees INTO THE WIND. (I think maximum dynamics is
 approx 45 degrees into the wind. Feel free to correct me on that
 point, maitees.) The point being: Sailing closer into the wind seems
 counter intuitive but it's the truth - insofar as sailboats are
 concerned.
 
 I can see it now. Sailors take note! This opens up a whole new
 dimension to regatta races. You heard it here first!
 
 Where's my parrot.
 
 Regards
 Steven Vincent Johnson
 www.OrionWorks.com
 www.zazzle.com/orionworks
 

Re: [Vo]:Downwind Faster than the Wind (DWFTTW)

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I am guessing that the propeller propels a belt/chain which is geared into the 
wheels.

Lawry


On Sep 21, 2010, at 1:26 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 I do not see how this can work! They are going with the wind, so if they 
 start to travel at the same speed as the wind, the propeller should stop 
 turning.
 
 Maybe I am missing something.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:Downwind Faster than the Wind (DWFTTW)

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I think we can think of this in terms of three phases:
1. Start from a dead stop
2. Acceleration to a speed superior to that of the wind
3. Post acceleration performance

1. I am guessing that the contraption just starts moving forward because of the 
push of the wind on its vertical surface, e.g. prop, structure, passenger 
cockpit, etc.
No wind = no movement
Note how slowly the thing starts to move.

2. As the wind increases the speed of the prop, it transmits more power via a 
belt/chain to the wheels, probably via a fixed gearing, but it could be variable
The wind keeps pushing the thing until its speed equals that of the 
wind. When the speed exceeds that of the wind, the thing faces a drag. I am 
going to guess that the thing moves faster than the speed of the wind for a 
(short) while due to the mass/kinetics/momentum of the prop, which continue 
after reaching wind speed/vehicle speed equilibrium and so impart some energy 
to the wheels to exceed wind speed.

3. But how long can this excess speed be maintained? The clip shows the vehicle 
slowing pretty quickly after it exceeds the wind speed. This is attributed to 
the brakes in the clip, but perhaps it is no more than drop in the 
mass/kinetics/momentum of the prop that occurs when the wind is no longer 
maintaining its speed-increasing motion.

Assuming the thing works as advertised, I suppose the vehicle could move 
downwind with an oscillating speed, dropping to the point where the prop begins 
to supply positive drive, and then re-accelerating to the point where wind 
speed is no longer sufficient to do so.

Of course, we are making one critical assumption: that the vehicle is actually 
moving straight down-wind, rather than at an angle to it. (Think of a 
gyrocopter, mounted vertically, with the wind providing the forward thrust.)

Interestingand impressive to a sailor like me who has often cursed 
down-wind speeds.

Lawry



On Sep 21, 2010, at 2:41 PM, Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

 I am guessing that the propeller propels a belt/chain which is geared into 
 the wheels.
 
 Lawry
 
 
 On Sep 21, 2010, at 1:26 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
 
 I do not see how this can work! They are going with the wind, so if they 
 start to travel at the same speed as the wind, the propeller should stop 
 turning.
 
 Maybe I am missing something.
 
 - Jed
 
 

Re: [Vo]:Video of every known nuclear explosion conducted on the planet

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Nuclear tests are expensive (as is a nuclear weapons  and delivery systems 
development effort, and its essential maintenance program).  If a country is to 
take having a nuclear weapons program seriously and technically current, I am 
going to guess that 210 tests are not out of the question.  Some of the French 
tests may have actually ones conducted by the Israelis during the years they 
and the French had a close nuclear weapons cooperation program. Keep in mind 
that the 'nuclear powers'  were and are still developing a variety of nuclear 
bombs, some small, some large; some heavy, some lightweight; and with different 
nuclear materials involved and a variety of triggers. The most interesting 
thing about the video was the fall-off of the UK's effort: it is clear that 
they essentially abandoned their effort after an initial effort.

Absolutely, positively not.   Are you referring to Israel's test off the 
coast of South Africa? I gave you a full citation on that and I am guessing 
that you haven't had a chance to read it. To say nothing of the VELA 
observations. I talked with a fellow, now retired, who was on the VELA team and 
he indicated that there was no doubt that the South African explosion was 
nuclear and that all the indicators pointed to Israel. While the US government 
publicly never forced the issue, the folks involved in the intelligence 
community are unanimous on this one.  

Jed, I don't know whether you are being sarcastic or not when you say that 
Israel would never break a major treaty the which the US is a signatory, but of 
course Israel has broken many international legal treaties and I'll list a few 
here in case you were asserting that seriously:

1. Law of the Sea
2. Geneva Conventions (in many respects and consistently over time) regarding 
occupation and the treatment of occupied population
3. UN Charter re. respect for national sovereignty and prohibition on 
belligerent war

This is only a sampling

In addition, there are many instruments of quasi-legal status that represent 
the emerging international consensus on international behavior, such as the 
founding documents of the Human Rights Commission, the Declaration of Rights of 
Children, etc.

In another email, you discuss the matter of whether an atmospheric test can be 
covert. Something is covert when there is an attempt to hide it from the eyes 
of others.  The fact that the thing is then discovered by others does not make 
it non-covert; it only means that the perpetrator was caught.  Similarly, 
underground testing is not automatically covert.  Israel's test with South 
African cooperation was covert -- and caught, as you will readily see if you 
read the Polakow-Suransky book, and look at the VELA materials.



On Jul 31, 2010, at 7:54 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
 
 France mounted a nuclear weapons program when it decided that it shouldn't 
 rely on the US nuclear umbrella and established its 'force de frappe' 
 policies.
 
 I know, but to the tune of 210 tests?!? Think of the cost! What more can you 
 learn after test #10 or 20. I don't suppose the French were developing MIRV 
 missiles. 
 
 
 Israel detonated at least one atmospheric test off the coast of South Africa 
 and in conjunction with the then apartheid/Boer government of South Africa.
 
 Absolutely, positively not. They would never think of doing a thing like 
 that. They ratified the limited test ban treaty in 1963, within months of 
 original signatories (U.S., U.K. and the USSR, who invited all other 
 countries to join). The apparent test off of South Africa took place in 1979. 
 Israel would never in a million years violate a major treaty with the U.S. Or 
 with anyone else for that matter, any more than the U.S. would.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:Video of every known nuclear explosion conducted on the planet

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I read this quickly and think it is pretty good. The FAS people do good 
research and have a lot of good sources to draw on.

Note that the 1990-2020 nuclear weapon projections are just that, projections 
made by the DIA back in 1999.  For what it's worth, I believe the estimate that 
Israel has about 80 nuclear weapons is most accurate.  But part of me wonders 
whether the magnitude of the Israel nuclear effort isn't being hyped.

For those who want to learn more about the Israeli nuclear stance, Vanunu's 
disclosure and subsequent treatment by the Israeli government is an interesting 
point of departure.

I can give more references to any one who might be interested.


On Jul 31, 2010, at 10:11 PM, Terry Blanton wrote:

 Israel's nuclear history:
 
 http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
 
 T
 

Re: [Vo]:Video of every known nuclear explosion conducted on the planet

[Lawrence de Bivort]

France mounted a nuclear weapons program when it decided that it shouldn't rely 
on the US nuclear umbrella and established its 'force de frappe' policies.

Israel detonated at least one atmospheric test off the coast of South Africa 
and in conjunction with the then apartheid/Boer government of South Africa.  
The recent book by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance; Israel's 
secret relationship with apartheid South Africa, describes the arms agreements 
and political affinity between the two countries in some detail.  Later, Israel 
and the US created a special nuclear weapons development agreement and several 
Israeli nuclear weapons were tested (underground) at US sites.  Israel refuses 
to sign the NPT treaty but, in the latest twist, demands that Iran abide by it.

Testing continues to this day and the US is still actively involved in 
developing more sophisticated nuclear weapons.

Cheers,

Lawry



On Jul 31, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 That's awful. I did not know there were more than 2,000 tests. On top of 
 everything else, what a terrific waste of money.
 
 It is a shame the U.S. conducted more than half. And why the heck did France 
 need to detonate 210 of the infernal things for?
 
 I do not see any listed for Israel but I am pretty sure they conducted actual 
 tests.
 
 The one good thing in this history was the partial test ban treaty of 1963, 
 which allows only underground tests. They do not cause much environmental 
 damage as far as I know. Tests in the atmosphere or underwater are far worse. 
 I do not know about tests beyond the atmosphere. I do not think anyone ever 
 did one. There were some in the stratosphere. Even N. Korea abides by the 
 partial test ban, and conducts only underground tests. There is something to 
 be said for that.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:LENR-CANR visit count goes over 2 million

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Congrats, Jed. Good job, and a great service to us all.

Lawry


On Jun 1, 2010, at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 I updated the download and visit count for the first time in a few months:
 
 http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#Downloads
 
 The number of visits exceeded 2,007,000. Total downloads stand at 1,574,000. 
 These are approximate numbers. They do not include most robot visits. It is 
 difficult to exclude robots so I may include some, and I may also exclude 
 some real people because they use robot collection software. The number of 
 downloads is approximate because it is surprisingly difficult to define what 
 constitutes one download.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:Two arrested in Mallove murder

[Lawrence de Bivort]

And what would be their motive?

Suppressing CF? This requires that the 'bad guys' perceive CF as a serious 
threat. I have heard it argued that the 'energy companies' would wish to 
suppress CF, but much more likely is that they will if CF shows any promise 
commercially simply buy the intellectual property up.  Given the willingness of 
CFers to spread the knowledge publicly if would not be hard, or even that 
expensive.  A cautionary strategy would be simply to take an ownership position 
in any CF venture showing promise.  Again, not expensive to do, given the 
underfunding of CF research.

Cheers,
Lawry



On Apr 2, 2010, at 10:45 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 Steven V Johnson wrote:
 
 I must admit that I remain unconvinced that there had been a
 conspiracy to silence Mallove - insofar as planning to kill him.
 
 I never believed for a second that Gene was killed in a conspiracy, or that 
 his death had anything to do with cold fusion.
 
 You would have to kill dozens of people to suppress cold fusion. Most of them 
 are old and will die soon anyway, so why go to the trouble?
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:Krivit comments on his annoying trick

[Lawrence de Bivort]

There is a lot of wisdom in Islam, Abd ul-Rahman. Many thanks for elaborating 
on the thought.

Lawrence de Bivort



On Apr 1, 2010, at 12:50 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

 At 08:22 PM 3/31/2010, Terry Blanton wrote:
 On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
 a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
 
  God, protect me from false friends, who will agree with me when I'm astray,
  and stoke the fires of my self-righteousness.
 
 . . . to further their agenda.
 
 Is that yours or a quote from an adept?
 
 Well, I wrote it and wasn't quoting anyone, but it's pretty standard stuff 
 for a khatib (giver of the sermon at Friday prayer), which I've been. It's a 
 variation on some very standard invocations, along the lines of God, protect 
 us from the urgings of our selves. The Prophet is reported as saying, when 
 victorious in battle in the world, Now begins the greater struggle (jihad), 
 the struggle with the self. The word in Arabic has a range of meanings, 
 similar to those in English for self, but it can also mean soul. 
 Classically, the self is compared with a camel, which is a animal that has 
 a reputation for utter stubbornness and meanness, the stereotype is that a 
 camel would sooner step on your head if on the ground, than to avoid it.
 
 The short of this, translated into conversational English, is that we can be 
 our own worst enemies, and if we realize this, and step away from attachment 
 to being right, to being superior, and all that, and start listening to 
 others who are giving us good counsel, we can avoid this danger.
 
 I've noticed that it's most important for me to listen to those who are 
 attacking me, because sometimes they will tell me things about myself that my 
 friends won't, for whatever reason. That I notice this doesn't mean that I 
 always do it! 

Re: [Vo]:Krivit again uses annoying trick

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Below-median IQ.

I wonder what percentage have above or below average IQs.

Does anyone know if IQ has a discovered genetic basis?  What happens to IQ as a 
person grows older?


On Mar 24, 2010, at 2:24 PM, Terry Blanton wrote:

 It's frightening to think that half of the people of the world have a
 below average IQ!
 
 T
 
 (TiC)
 

Re: [Vo]:Krivit again uses annoying trick

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Irv Dardik is no quack. He has developed an approach to human health and 
performance that is based on extensive experience with the US Olympic effort, 
an inquiring and astute mind, and a considerable track record. Like many new 
things, it has its skeptics, but I've looked into it and it makes a lot of 
sense to me given my knowledge of human systems and human performance.  Lewin's 
book is excellent, and I hope that a new book will be forthcoming focused 
technically on health and performance.

Dardik's work with Martin Fleischmann this last summer was impressive as those 
who know will readily attest.

Dardik has already done much good for people. I believe that the best is yet to 
come. He is one of the good guys.


On Mar 24, 2010, at 8:34 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

 
 This annoying trick is described on p. 62 of a marvelous little book by 
 Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (1954, now in its 39th printing).
 
 This book was printed the year I was born. As I recall, my mother gave me a 
 copy as a child with the admonition: grown-ups sometimes lie. In other 
 words, Krivit does not know any tricks that I didn't learn at my mother's 
 knee.
 
 I am fond of petite women, short poems, and little books. To learn how to 
 write, read Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. To learn how to 
 bamboozle people with numbers, read Huff.
 
 Well, I was ten in 1954, and I think I read the book before I was in high 
 school, and it made a strong impression on me.
 
 Krivit's presentation is full of deceptive polemic, and if a reader is 
 careful, it can be detected from the presentation itself.
 
 Krivit presents statements from researchers that he thinks preposterous, 
 misleading, deceptive.
 
 Slide 25:
 
 Explanation 2
 Providential Decree
 Heat and Helium-4 is the Main Reaction Channel.
 All other LENR phenomena are minor effects
 
 (-Bob Bass, March 7, 2009, Private Communications)
 
 
 They Know That
 No Other Energetic Phenomena
 Exists in LENR Cells
 
 No, that's not what Mr. Bass said. He said that other energetic phenomena 
 would be minor effects. I'm not going to come to a conclusion, myself, that 
 there are no other major effects, but the evidence is quite strong that the 
 main reaction channel is one which takes in deuterium and which leaves 
 behind helium. How it does that is entirely another matter.
 
 Krivit's slides aren't journalism. They are polemic, trying to prove his Big 
 Point. Which is?
 
 I can tell you what I think the average reader will get from it. They Are 
 Lying To Us.
 
 And then, since the people allegedly lying to us are the foremost cold fusion 
 researchers, what will this reader take away as a conclusion about cold 
 fusion? I suggest that it's likely to be that the research results can't be 
 trusted. In fact, however, the central results of the research aren't being 
 challenged by Krivit, he's going after details that seem Very Very Important 
 to him but which, overall, aren't, just as it wasn't newsworthy that 
 Fleischmann had a cold and didn't want to see him in England, which Krivit 
 turned into a Big Expose of How the Quack Doctor behind Energetic 
 Technologies is Failing to Help Fleischmann with Parkinson's Disease. 
 (Because he catches cold?)
 
 (Dardik is a quack? That's a cheap shot, and if anyone wants to know better 
 the truth, I'd suggest reading Making Waves, by Roger Lewin, it's quite a 
 story. Dardik is *complicated*.) 

Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC Wozniak reports Prius problem

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Wozniak also said that he thinks the problem is a software one, rather than a 
mechanical one.

Cheers,
Lawry


On Mar 15, 2010, at 6:14 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 This is off topic but it is related to technology, and to the latest 
 bruouhaha in the news. People have called into question the report made by 
 James Sikes that his Prius went out of control for several miles. In the 
 interest of disseminating technically accurate information, here is a comment 
 I made about that elsewhere:
 
 Sikes does seem suspicious but it is much too early to brand him a con 
 artist. I drive a Prius, but I am sorry to say there are credible reports of 
 the Prius running out of control. Most notably, Steve Wozniak, the co-founder 
 of Apple Computer, reported that his Prius went out of control. However, the 
 incident was nothing like what Sikes reported. Quote:
 
 Wozniak said he was surprised several months ago when his 2010 Toyota Prius 
 started accelerating on its own -- to as much as 97 mph -- when he used 
 cruise control to increase the vehicle's speed. He said he had to tap the 
 brakes to stop the car from accelerating.
 
 Wozniak is a superb engineer and one the most honest and decent people in 
 public life. I have no doubt he is telling the truth.
 
 - Jed
 

Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC Wozniak reports Prius problem

[Lawrence de Bivort]

LOL


On Mar 16, 2010, at 12:14 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

 Also on this subject, perhaps it is time for Toyota to re-think their 
 advertising slogan: Moving Forward
 
 - Jed
 

RE: [Vo]:DIA-08-0911-003 text

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Many thanks, Jed.

Would there be any utility to taking your text and adding some formatting to
resemble the actual report? (I'm not suggesting that you must be the one to
do it.)

Lawry



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:23 AM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:DIA-08-0911-003 text

[Here is the corrected text from the DIA report, 
ABBYY version. Unfortunately, this is not the 
underlying text in the version I uploaded. That 
has more OCR errors. I believe there are no OCR 
errors here, but I have not checked closely. - JR]

UNCLASSIFIED
Defense Intelligence Agency
  Defense Analysis Report
DIA-08-0911-003 
13 November 2009
Technology Forecast: Worldwide Research on 
Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Increasing and Gaining Acceptance
Scientists worldwide have been quietly 
investigating low-energy nuclear reactions 
(LENR)for the past 20 years. Researchers in this 
controversial field are now claiming 
paradigm-shifting results, including generation 
of large amounts of excess heat, nuclear activity 
and transmutation of elements.1,2,3 Although no 
current theory exists to explain all the reported 
phenomena, some scientists now believe 
quantum-level nuclear reactions may be occurring. 
DIA assesses with high confidence that if LENR 
can produce nuclear-origin energy at room 
temperatures, this disruptive technology could 
revolutionize energy production and storage, 
since nuclear reactions release millions of times 
more energy per unit mass than do any known chemical fuel.4,5
Background
In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons 
announced that their electrochemical experiments 
had produced excess energy under standard 
temperature and pressure conditions.6 Because 
they could not explain this physical phenomenon 
based on known chemical reactions, they suggested 
the excess heat could be nuclear in origin. 
However, their experiments did not show the 
radiation or radioactivity expected from a 
nuclear reaction. Many researchers attempted to 
replicate the results and failed. As a result, 
the physics community disparaged their work as 
lacking credibility, and the press mistakenly 
dubbed it cold fusion. Related research also 
suffered from the negative publicity of cold 
fusion for the past 20 years, but many scientists 
believed something important was occurring and 
continued their research with little or no 
visibility. For years, scientists were intrigued 
by the possibility of producing large amounts of 
clean energy through LENR, and now this research 
has begun to be accepted in the scientific 
community as reproducible and legitimate.
Source Summary Statement
This assessment is based on analysis of a wide 
body of intelligence reporting, most of which is 
open source information including scientific 
briefings, peer-reviewed technical journals, 
international scientific conference proceedings, 
interviews with scientific experts and technical 
media. While there is little classified data on 
this topic due to the ST nature of the 
information and the lack of collection, DIA 
judges that these open sources generally provide 
the most reliable intelligence available on this 
topic. The information in this report has been 
corroborated and reviewed by U.S. technology 
experts who are familiar with the data and the 
international scientists involved in this work.
Although much skepticism remains, LENR programs 
are receiving increased support worldwide, 
including state sponsorship and funding from 
major corporations.7,8,9,10 DIA assesses that 
Japan and Italy are leaders in the field, 
although Russia, China, Israel, and India are 
devoting significant resources to this work in the hope of finding a new
clean
UNCLASSIFIED
UNCLASSIFIED
energy source. Scientists worldwide have been 
reporting anomalous excess heat production, as 
well as evidence of nuclear particles12,13,14 and transmutation.15,16,17
.Y. Iwamura18 at Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy 
Industries first detected transmutation of 
elements when permeating deuterium through palladium metal in 2002.
.Researchers led by Y. Arata at Osaka 
University in Japan19 and a team led by 
V.Violante at ENEA in Italy (the Italian National Agency for New
Technologies,
20
Energy, and the Environment-the equivalent to the 
U.S. Department of Energy) also made transmutation claims.
Additional indications of transmutation have been 
reported in China, Russia, France, Ukraine, and the United States.21,
Researchers in Japan, Italy, Israel, and the 
United States have all reported detecting 
evidence of nuclear particle emissions.23,24
Chinese researchers described LENR experiments in 
1991 that generated so much heat that they caused 
an explosion that was not believed to be chemical in origin.
Japanese, French, and U.S. scientists also have 
reported rapid, high-energy LENR releases leading 
to laboratory explosions, according to scientific 
journal articles from 1992 

RE: [Vo]:Heat is the principal signature of the reaction

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jed, a point of information, from this non-scientist:

 

I understand that you are saying that heat, above all else, is the required
product, and that any other products are of secondary importance when it
comes to asserting that the effect has been produced. 

 

Separately, you are saying that experimental design tends to search for one
product - heat, or nuclear emissions, or flashes, or noise - but that if
heat has not been verified any other product leaves one uncertain as to
whether the effect was produced to begin with.

 

Is this a fair summation? Is it generally accepted within the cf community?

 

On a practical level, as I understand it, heat is likely to be the useful
product, in any case, and the other products that are suggested are less
likely to prove of technological or commercial use, though they might well
be useful, along with the heat, in trying to formulate a theory of why the
effect is taking place.

 

Am I on the right track?

 

Lawry

 

 

 

  _  

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 4:07 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Heat is the principal signature of the reaction

 

Michel Jullian wrote:




Why?  Nuclear track counts in a _dry_ SSNTD as in the 2009 SPAWAR
paper http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBosscharacteri.pdf , and
as Abd is planning now following Horace's advice, are much easier to
measure, much more sensitive, and much less disputable proofs of LENRs
than calorimetry aren't they?


Not in my opinion. I will not put words in Martin's mouth but I doubt this
is his opinion either, and it is his dictum.

Nuclear reactions were first discovered in the late 19th century because
they produce excess heat. For some purposes, sensitive calorimetry is still
the best way to detect them. I realize that for many purposes particle
detection is far more sensitive. But everyone knows that particles are
difficult to detect with cold fusion. I presume this is because the ratio of
neutrons to heat is 9 to 11 orders of magnitude lower than with conventional
fusion, and neutrons appear to be missing altogether in many cases. As far
as I know this is also true with co-deposition. I have not heard that the
SPAWAR technique boosts the number of neutrons per joule of heat, but only
that they have managed to detect the neutrons despite the inherent
difficulties. Their cells probably produce macroscopic heat, but they cannot
detect it because the equipment is optimized to detect neutrons.

The people at SPAWAR have already confirmed heat. They do not need to do
this. People starting out on this experiment do need to, in my opinion. Walk
before you run. Confirm that you have the effect first, then look for
particles. Otherwise you are probably fishing in a dry hole.

I do not think many people have been convinced by the SPAWAR results,
although of course I acknowledge these results are important. I am not
opposed to looking for neutrons! But before you look for them you should
confirm that you have a cold fusion reaction, and the one and only certain
method of doing this is to confirm excess heat.

Perhaps in the future particle detection will become the primary means of
detecting cold fusion but that is not how things are today.

Lomax suggested that audio noise or possibly light flashes may also be a
means of detecting cold fusion. Perhaps that is true. The way to find out is
to first confirm there is heat, then listen for audio noise with a
microphone. We know there is heat. We do not know if there is audible noise.
So look for what you know has to be there if the reaction is occurring, and
then look for what you suspect may also be there.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Need to reach Jeff Kooistra

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Captain Crunch, and then there were tone voice whistlers, and blue, black
and red boxes

-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 5:58 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Need to reach Jeff Kooistra

Terry Blanton wrote:

Did you know that you can still pulse dial with the hookswitch?  You 
have to be consistent and fast but it can be done.  Easier than Morse code.

Ha! A repeated hook switch flash, as they call it in the phone biz. I 
didn't know you could pull that off.

It reminds me of the early days of DTMF when people -- including some 
now high and mighty industry leaders -- were involved in ripping off 
the phone company with tone generators. Some guy was reportedly able 
to do this with a plastic whistle from a package of Captain Crunch 
cereal, circa 1972.

In the same YouTube selection as the ATT video, there is a cute 
silent movie video from the 1920s explaining how to use dial 
telephones. One of the things it points out is that with a number 
such as 3-4142 (where 3 was the office code) you do not have to dial 
the hyphen, and in fact there is no way to do it. That confused 
people then, and it confuses us now with computer entry screens for 
credit cards and the like.

There is also a stop action movie showing a dial telephone being 
assembled from hundreds of parts by an animated character. Great stuff!

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Professors who have no interest in cold fusion

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I like these lines of thought, Abd ul-Rahman.

Communities-of-practice are similar to what, as I understand it, you are
proposing and thinking.

A substantial amount of thinking and experience has now emerged around the
communities-of-practice idea, and several such communities have received
significant benefit from so organizing themselves. Many of these have been
on-line creations.

Cheers,

Lawry

-Original Message-
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 1:36 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com; vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Professors who have no interest in cold fusion

At 12:15 PM 10/25/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Many political leaders are aware that cold fusion is real, but they 
have not lifted a finger to help it because it is too controversial 
and they do not want to risk their credibility. This is appalling.

Well, perhaps. However, the real problem is in the very concept of 
political leaders. In a sane system, they are only servants. Not 
rubber stamps for popular opinion, but servants chosen for their 
character and intelligence, those who will use their intelligence to 
serve. So if action A is being considered, and is popular, and the 
servant believes that A is bogus and will fail, he or she will inform 
the employer. Us. And we need to be, collectively, smart enough to 
trust those we have chosen to be trustworthy, at least to trust them 
enough to respect their advice. We can still say, We've decided to 
do it, having considered your valued advice, and if we are wrong, we 
will not only not blame you, we will remember that you were right.

No smart employer hires Yes-men, except maybe to sweep the floor, and 
even then who threw away the Case carbon?

So ... how to develop mass intelligence? It's been considered an 
insoluble problem. I don't think it is. But if we believe that it's 
insoluble, we certainly won't find a solution, and we will reject 
proposed solutions out of hand, or at least not waste time considering them.

Kind of like cold fusion, eh? Indeed. That's what got me here. It's 
simply one more example. I'm trying to connect a community, call it 
my customers. This community is formed to advise me how to serve 
them, but I make my own decisions, I'm not going to simply poll them 
and do whatever is most popular. But whatever I do will be 
transparent, so... if I get really stupid in my old age, someone else 
can take the position independently. Nothing will be wasted. As I'll 
be a servant of the community, and to the extent that I actually 
serve it, they will support me. This is actually how business 
functions, when it's working and when the customers are awake. I 
won't own my customers and they won't own me. It's a cooperative 
effort, continuously voluntary.

(So: critical factor in whatever I set up: the customers can, to 
whatever extent they personally allow, communicate directly with each 
other; otherwise the central mechanism of communication can repress 
dissent, and even with that facility, the difficulty of initiating a 
new central communication structure and gaining participation can 
effectively repress dissent even when bypassing central control is 
still possible. Registered Wikipedia editors can email each other 
using the on-line interface, but when an editor is considered 
disruptive, and abuses email -- which can mean that they were so 
foolish as to email someone who didn't like it -- the bit that allows 
email communication can be flipped, and often is. I want a truly 
intelligent customer community, one capable of direct internal 
communication, not corruptible, always dependent for its activities 
on the individual interests of the customers, so that however it 
advises me is the best and most representative advice I could get 
from them, not just what I want to hear.) 

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hi, Abd al-Rahman,

Many thanks for your response and comments.

I read your account of your own evolution in thinking with great interest.
It is always nice to see someone thinking and acting together, with both
evolving.

I do like your idea of kits. I assume these kits would be less sophisticated
and less expensive and more numerous than those being developed by the US
government.  I wish you success.

The materials that I am advocating would be a nice complement to your
project, though they are to first order aimed at somewhat different
audiences. Both audiences are important.

I am not trying to change my colleague's thinking, as much as here I was
only reporting what his thinking vis-a-vis CF was, as I understand it. You
are right: he is fully engaged in important and demanding work, and doing a
great job at it. No one can do everything solely because it is
'interesting'.  I know; I've tried.  :D

It is silly to vilify him because he doesn't leap into CF work.

But as an intellectual exercise I have considered what it might take to get
his attention for CF, as his interest could make a significant difference in
advancing the field. 

The posters here seem to have written off Wikipedia. I think this is a
mistake: Wikipedia has emerged as the go-to place for people seeking
introductory and overview information about virtually all matters.  In my
opinion, CF should be covered, and covered in the most useful way possible.

Wikipedia has a very specific culture and set of processes that have guided
its development. Anyone wanting to get information into Wikipedia MUST work
within this framework. Not everyone can, but I don't think there is anything
intrinsic about CF that would make it harder for Wikipedia to cover properly
than it does thousands of even more controversial subjects, like the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Wikipedia does not want to be a place for
publishing cutting edge science -- for obvious reasons -- but CF is far
beyond that, now.

Cheers,

Lawry


-Original Message-
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:09 AM
To: debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

At 06:40 PM 10/22/2009, Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
I don't think books will do I what I believe needs to be done, no matter
how
well written -- because the book FORMAT will not get the job I envisage
done.  The problem is not with the content but with the format. The books
do
a good job at doing what they do. I am talking about a different task.

Less than a year ago, I was skeptical about cold fusion. I had been 
very aware of the events of 1989-1990, and, in fact, arranged to put 
$10,000 in a palladium metal account at a Swiss bank, which was about 
all the money I and my wife at the time could put together. I thought 
it was pretty safe, I didn't buy futures! And I got my money back, 
just didn't make any. I had followed the news for a year or so, and 
basically concluded that it was all a mistake, the theories that it 
was impossible were probably right, etc.

Then, being involved with Wikipedia as an active editor, I came 
across the Cold fusion article. There had been a blatantly unfair 
blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, and I started to work to undo that, 
not because of any support for cold fusion, but for fairness and 
Wikpedia policy. But I started reading the sources. Like Robert 
Duncan, I was quite surprised at what I found. The rejection of cold 
fusion had been an error; while strong skepticism had been 
appropriate, an incorrect impression arose that the basic finding of 
Pons and Fleischmann had been disproved, found to be sloppy, and that 
impression was compounded by many factors that had nothing to do with 
whether or not low energy nuclear reactions were taking place in the 
palladium deuteride system.

In the end, as had others before me, I was blocked from editing 
Wikipedia because it appeared to powerful editors there that I was 
now promoting a fringe science, even though I'd been very careful to 
only stick to reliable sources strictly according to Wikipedia 
guidelines. So, freed from any obligation or sense that I should 
remain neutral, I've started to work on an idea that came to me, 
thinking about cold fusion for more than a half a year, and about 
what could be done to educate the public and scientists.

Much focus from people in the field has been on trying to prove that 
LENR is a real phenomenon, but, in fact, there is quite adequate 
evidence, reliably reported and confirmed, to at least create a new 
preponderance of the evidence: it's real. It's there, there are books 
about it, with more appearing now, such as the 2008 American Chemical 
Society Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, with another volume 
appearing this year, I understand. Papers are appearing in mainstream 
publications, and some of the work is quite convincing.

I don't think the solution is a book

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Yes, you got it.

I would distinguish between 'dedicated skeptics' -- people who have a vested
interest in being opposed to something, and those who have yet to be
convinced and will be somewhat hard-nosed about accepting new perspectives
on something. Perhaps this latter group constitutes, say, 95% of the
'skeptics'. I would say, forget the other 5%, the effort is not worth it.

But the larger group would not be hard to 'reach', and I don't think it
would take a lot to get many of them -- say a third, to read something that
is succinct (2-3 pages?), reasonable and comprehensive. Scientists are
naturally curious and busy. Can something be created that meets at the same
time the criteria that are implied in both qualities?

-Original Message-
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:19 AM
To: debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

At 11:03 AM 10/22/2009, Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

What do you think?  Does this make sense? Do you want me to say more 
about 'out-framing'?  Or does the above give you an adequate sense 
of what I am talking about?


I think I know what you mean. It would be a piece of writing that 
systematically approaches the misconceptions that keep people from 
taking a closer look at the evidence.

It would start by stating very clearly the reasons why cold fusion is 
possible, establishing and showing a clear understanding of why it 
would be properly rejected.

Then it would carefully, and step-by-step, dismantle this.

The trick, though, would be getting a dedicated skeptic to read it. 
Perhaps you approach him and ask him for a favor, would he criticize 
this? But you'd have to have the connection with him.

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I was visiting a lab in Cambridge and met a senior, well-respected, and
highly intelligent researcher who had at MIT unsuccessfully tried to
replicate the original CF experiments. He was now quite dismissive of the
possibility of CF advances and clearly wanted to keep distance between
himself and the field, to the point of not seeking even to take a second
look at the current status of the research. 

 

It may be that some framing materials might be produced to allay some of the
meta-concerns that people in his situation still have.

 

Lawrence

 

 

  _  

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:06 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

 

I proposed adding the following footnote to the flyer:

Prof. Peter Hagelstein had NOTHING -- repeat NOTHING -- to do with this
flyer, so please do not Bash Him. We mean you, Prof. M. Keep your distance.
Woof!

To which I might add, Yowza!

I asked Peter to please bark at Prof. M. on my behalf, or perhaps bite him.
He feels this will not be necessary. He says we do not even need to include
the footnote, but he appreciates our concern.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Like it or not, he IS a scientist, and quite prominently respected as one.
And more than that, he is an influential scientist.

 

And, yes, he reached the point where he doesn't want to hear anything new
about CF. Specifically, he pointed out that he doesn't have a lot of free
time and must put his attention into those areas that seem most promising.
He did not reject the notion that there has been progress in CF; he did
assume that there probably hadn't been enough to yet bring it the amount of
credibility that might lead him to take another look at CF.  I want to
stress that this person is rational, friendly, dedicated, not uncurious, and
quite accessible. He is, in a nutshell, a good, smart and credible person.

 

By 'framing materials' I mean a written item that out-frames this basic
antipathy toward CF. That is, it presents CF in such a way that it
systematically overcomes each of the causes of the antipathy. Much of doing
this is linguistic - it requires the use of precise and well-conceived
language.

 

Lots of people believe that their only obligation in life is to tell their
side of the story. Scientists tend, I think, to carry that one step further;
many of them believe that they have fully met the obligations of successful
communication when they have explained 'the facts' and provided the
requisite documentation.

 

I am suggesting not so much that all scientists should be more generous and
more active in their communications on science, but that some should,
speaking in a sense for their scientific communities. This more-generous
communication would directly and effectively address the causes and
linguistic structures that lie behind the antipathy to CF, and the format of
this more-generous communication should reflect the actualities of human
communication, rather than the deliberately isolated formal structures of
the scientific establishment (e.g. science conferences, science papers,
etc.).  I am suggesting that it is worthwhile and important for members of
the CF community to go out of their way to communicate the emerging
qualities of CF research and knowledge.

 

I do not think this is too much to propose. After all, from its origins, CF
communication was botched. People were turned off not because they are dumb,
but because their tolerance for communication confusion and scientific
disappointment was exceeded. So in that sense, the CF community collectively
'owes' the world repair to this confusion and disappointment.  Not that
every CFer must do so, but that at least one individual should.

 

What do you think?  Does this make sense? Do you want me to say more about
'out-framing'?  Or does the above give you an adequate sense of what I am
talking about?

 

Lawrence

 

 

  _  

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:55 AM
To: debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org
Cc: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

 

Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

I was visiting a lab in Cambridge and met a senior, well-respected, and
highly intelligent researcher who had at MIT unsuccessfully tried to
replicate the original CF experiments. He was now quite dismissive of the
possibility of CF advances and clearly wanted to keep distance between
himself and the field, to the point of not seeking even to take a second
look at the current status of the research. 

I am quite dismissive of people who will not look at the current status of
the research.
 

It may be that some framing materials might be produced to allay some of the
meta-concerns that people in his situation still have.

I do not know what framing materials means. This person should read the
peer-reviewed literature and Ed's book. He will find that the experiment is
difficult. If he reads carefully he will probably learn why his own
experiment failed. If he is not willing to do this, he is not a scientist.

- Jed

 

 

  _  

From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:55 AM
To: debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org
Cc: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

 

Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

I was visiting a lab in Cambridge and met a senior, well-respected, and
highly intelligent researcher who had at MIT unsuccessfully tried to
replicate the original CF experiments. He was now quite dismissive of the
possibility of CF advances and clearly wanted to keep distance between
himself and the field, to the point of not seeking even to take a second
look at the current status of the research. 

I am quite dismissive of people who will not look at the current status of
the research.
 

It may be that some framing materials might be produced to allay some of the
meta-concerns that people in his situation still have.

I do not know what framing materials means. This person should read the
peer-reviewed literature and Ed's book. He will find that the experiment is
difficult. If he reads carefully

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jed, and others, thanks for your responses.

I wasn't clear. My apologies. This person does not rank his own early
research as being either superior or definitive or adequate. Indeed, he
agreed that his effort had been tentative and sandwiched in among other
research, that it may well have been flawed (and with me he speculated a bit
about what the flaw(s) might have been. But he was influenced by the larger
debacle into concluding that there were more promising non-CF lines of
research to be pursued.

As I said, this is not by any reach an unreasonable person. And, I think, he
is typical of many physicists and chemists when it now comes to thinking
about CF. If you can't win this fellow over, there will be many others who
won't be won over. And this means, generally, that CF will continue to
struggle under and suffer from the weight of skepticism.

CF research is needed, I think, on a much greater scale then it is now being
pursued. It will be difficult to achieve that scale in a timely way so long
as the cloud of skepticism is generally there. I am not talking here of the
die-hard 'professional skeptics', but of the great center of science, people
like to person I have been describing in these last emails. He is, I'll say
again, a good person: accessible, curious (even though he may not he as
curious as you would like him to be, or curious about the things you would
like him to be curious about), very smart, friendly and highly influential.
In other words, he and many others like him, are important to the
resurrection of CF on the scale that I believe would be desirable and is
needed.

So the efforts at ICCF-14 and -15 to summarize and make more definitive the
CF progress to date are right on target, but because they follow traditional
scientific formats and communication paths they are not succeeding in
persuading the kind of people that I am talking about. The passive
expression of data is often not adequate to convince a person to change
his/her mind.

I can understand why this reality is annoying to you and I am sure others.
It SHOULDN'T be that way. People SHOULD be proactive in questioning their
own established beliefs. I agree.

But they are NOT.

So the question presents itself: are the benefits to be gained by enlarging
the CF community to include those who made up their minds early that there
wasn't enough there to continue to pay attention (given all the other
promising lines of research that are available to them) -- are these
benefits sufficient to justify the additional and different effort to reach
them by more directly addressing the patterns of belief that they have?

I'll say again something that we all know but often forget:  Unless we do
something different, we will continue to get what we've got. 

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:32 AM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

I wrote:

If he reads carefully he will probably learn why his own experiment 
failed. If he is not willing to do this, he is not a scientist.

I am not being flippant. It is understandable that a person ranks his 
own experiment highly, but it irks me when a researcher holds his own 
work to be the only standard of truth and ignores work done by 
thousands of other people. Especially after 20 years! This person 
apparently imagines that he understood the problem completely in 1989 
and there was nothing more to learn about it since then.

Scott Little rates his own work higher than all others combined, and 
this is the one thing about him I dislike. His work is very good in 
most other respects.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jed, I will leave you to your certainties regarding the person I have been
apparently unsuccessfully trying to describe.  As you say, sometimes it is
just not possible to change a person's mind.

I have not read Ed's book, but have Beaudette's and yours.

I don't think books will do I what I believe needs to be done, no matter how
well written -- because the book FORMAT will not get the job I envisage
done.  The problem is not with the content but with the format. The books do
a good job at doing what they do. I am talking about a different task.

Cheers,
Lawry

-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:11 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Obama visiting MIT to discuss energy

Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

Like it or not, he IS a scientist, and quite 
prominently respected as one. And more than 
that, he is an influential scientist.

No. As I shall show below, when the subject of 
cold fusion comes up, this person suddenly stops being a scientist.


And, yes, he reached the point where he doesn't 
want to hear anything new about CF.

That is perfectly reasonable. Life is short and 
no one has time to investigate everything. 
However, if he does not read the literature he 
has no right to any opinion on the subject, positive or negative.


He did not reject the notion that there has been 
progress in CF; he did assume that there 
probably hadn't been enough to yet bring it the 
amount of credibility that might lead him to 
take another look at CF.  I want to stress that 
this person is rational, friendly, dedicated, 
not uncurious, and quite accessible. He is, in a 
nutshell, a good, smart and credible person.

Not with regard to cold fusion. He has no 
credibility because he has read nothing and knows 
nothing about the subject. His assumption has no 
basis. Just being an expert on the general 
subject area does not give you a free pass. 
Experimental science is always about specifics. I 
am an expert programmer in many ways but I know 
little about Internet security, except what I 
read in the ZoneAlarm documentation. So I have no 
business pontificating about that, and no 
credibility. If someone gave me a month to learn 
about Internet security I would soon know much 
more than most computer users. If this scientist 
were to take  a month to learn about cold fusion 
he would soon know more about it that I do. But 
until he does that, he knows nothing.


By 'framing materials' I mean a written item 
that out-frames this basic antipathy toward CF. 
That is, it presents CF in such a way that it 
systematically overcomes each of the causes of 
the antipathy. Much of doing this is linguistic 
- it requires the use of precise and well-conceived language.

The books by Beaudette and Storms fill the bill.


As I said, this is not by any reach an unreasonable person. And, I think,
he
is typical of many physicists and chemists when it now comes to thinking
about CF. If you can't win this fellow over, there will be many others who
won't be won over. And this means, generally, that CF will continue to
struggle under and suffer from the weight of skepticism.

He is typical. He is also probably a lost cause. 
All discoveries and inventions in history have 
opposed by people like him. With regard to cold 
fusion he has forgotten the fundamental rule, as Rob Duncan put it:

The Scientific Method is a wonderful thing, use it always, no exceptions!

I am sorry to be dogmatic but yes he is 
unreasonable. A trained scientist who makes 
assertions about experimental evidence he has not 
read is unreasonable by definition. It is hard to 
imagine a more clear-cut example of being unreasonable and unscientific.

Here is the crux of the matter. Social science 
research has shown that people's minds and 
imaginations are not unified. The mind and 
personality are not one entity. Apparently, 
multiple thought processes occur within your 
brain and they are often at odds with one 
another. In other words, a person can be 
perfectly reasonable, logical, objective and 
scientific about one subject, but just the 
opposite about another subject. The person will 
not even realize he is being inconsistent. This 
happens to everyone, albeit to some more than 
others. This is not an illness or abnormality. It 
is simply the way the mind works.

T. H. Huxley was a brilliant scientist, and one 
of the greatest educators in history. He was 
beloved by his students. He was kindly, gentle 
and as a scientist objective and fair down to his 
fingertips. And yet regrettably he was deeply 
prejudiced against black people. (Perhaps this 
was because some of his American relatives were 
on the wrong side of the Civil War.) He failed to 
realize how grotesquely unscientific and unfair 
this bigotry was. Most people in his era had 
equally bigoted views, but one would hope that 
such an enlightened person would transcend the 
limits of his time. After all, many smart

RE: [Vo]:Re: Has Vortex been Compromised?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

LOL! I suppose the poor spelling and grammar may be another tip-off!

-Original Message-
From: j...@mail941c35.nsolutionszone.com
[mailto:j...@mail941c35.nsolutionszone.com] On Behalf Of Taylor J. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 11:58 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Has Vortex been Compromised?


Michel  wrote on 10-21-09:

Steven, although hijacking the email addresses of vortex posters
would be extremely easy, without Bill being able to do anything about
it (if you don't know how, ask me privately), since I myself didn't
get the request and no other vo than Jack said he did, my guess would
be that Jack himself has an eskimo account, whose details the scammer
was trying to obtain. Or maybe it was sent indiscriminately to the
scammer's email database, eskimo or not, in the hope that it would
reach enough eskimo account holders.

This kind of scam is called phishing BTW, it's very common and most
often used to obtain access to the means of payment (paypal, bank
account etc) of the most gullible among the addressees. Nothing one
can do about it, except ignoring it.

Hi All,   10-21-09

Enclosed below is the spoof email with the
complete header.  I added the #  at the beginning
of each line of the header.

Jack Smith

---

# From spam...@singnet.com.sg Wed Oct 21 11:08:38 2009
# X-Spam-Flag: NO
# X-Envelope-From: freenrg-l-requ...@eskimo.com
# Return-Path: freenrg-l-requ...@eskimo.com
# Received: from ultra6.eskimo.com (ultra6.eskimo.com [204.122.16.69])
#   by mail910c35.nsolutionszone.com (8.13.6/8.13.1) with ESMTP id
n9KGAHv6030802
#   for tj...@centurytel.net; Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:10:19 -0400
# Received: from ultra6.eskimo.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
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#   Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:09:25 -0700
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# X-Authentication-Warning: ultra6.eskimo.com: smartlst set sender to
freenrg-l-requ...@eskimo.com using -f
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spam...@singnet.com.sg using -f
# To: helpd...@eskimo.com
# Message-ID: 1256054693.4adddfa58f...@arrowana.singnet.com.sg
# Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:04:53 +0800 (SGT)
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# Resent-From: freenr...@eskimo.com
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# Precedence: list
# Resent-Sender: freenrg-l-requ...@eskimo.com
# Subject: [FG]: Unidentified subject!
# X-MMR: 0
# X-Antivirus: Scanned by F-Prot Antivirus (http://www.f-prot.com)

Dear eskimo.com Subscriber,

We are currently carrying-out a  mantainace
process to your eskimo.com account, to
complete this, you must reply to
this mail immediately, and enter your
User Name here () And Password here
(...)  if you are the rightful owner of
this account.

This process we help us to fight against
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NOTE: If your have done this before, you may 
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RE: Mandatory Vaccinations? Re: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

[Lawrence de Bivort]

[John gave me his permission to re-post to the whole group the follow-up to
my earlier question to him regarding primary sources.}


I understand that a primary source for the assertion may not exist, which is
why I am asking for it. Much of what is sent around on the Net is invented
for pernicious purposes, and when one probes no more than one layer down,
proves itself to be such.

 
Does it not concern you that people will assume when you post something
that, short of a disclaimer on your part, you are endorsing these
assertions?  My sense is that one's credibility on-line is directly
connected to the quality of the comments we post.


Cheers,

Lawrence


From: John Berry [mailto:aethe...@gmail.com] 


Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 4:00 AM
To: debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org

Subject: Re: Mandatory Vaccinations? Re: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges
against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

 

Find a different one to take issue with, one to do with the current
situation.
I got some of it including that from:
http://www.rense.com/general86/whdo.htm

Though it has no more detail.

On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Lawrence de Bivort
debiv...@evolutionaryservices.org wrote:

I love this stuff!

 

Let's take one assertion at random:  The WHO in 1985 documented that one of
its' primary goals for the use of a sterility vaccine disguised as a
smallpox vaccine was to eliminate 150 million excess Sub Saharan Africans.
(Fact, 1985-ongoing)

 

Please provide your primary source documentation for this assertion.
Thanks.

RE: Mandatory Vaccinations? Re: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I love this stuff!

 

Let's take one assertion at random:  The WHO in 1985 documented that one of
its' primary goals for the use of a sterility vaccine disguised as a
smallpox vaccine was to eliminate 150 million excess Sub Saharan Africans.
(Fact, 1985-ongoing)

 

Please provide your primary source documentation for this assertion.
Thanks.

 

 

 

  _  

From: John Berry [mailto:aethe...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 9:45 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Mandatory Vaccinations? Re: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges against
WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

 

The Vaccine exists and will soon be trialed (note: different versions will
exist!):

 
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/22/swine.flu.vaccine.trials/index.htm
l
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/22/swine.flu.vaccine.trials/index.html

 

 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/ WHO recommends
every country to make vaccine mandatory:

http://www.naturalnews.com/026723_health_vaccines_immune_system.html

 

Military will help:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/

 

Obama believes in mandatory vaccinations:

One of the rallying parents, ...Ms. Liss said, Senator Obama, those people
rallying outside are with me. And we want to know if you will reform federal
vaccine policy. Will you come out to speak with us? 

 

His immediate and direct reply stunned Ms. Liss: I am not for selective
vaccination.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there will be no exemptions.
A certain amount of human wastage is expected.

 

With the declaration earlier this month by the World Health Organization
(WHO) that the swine flu has reached pandemic Level 6 (they had to change
the definition of level 6 to make this determination work), a whole series
of bureaucratic prerogatives have been triggered, and local, state,
national, and international agencies have been further empowered. In the
U.S., all laws and conditions are now in place to see to it that you are
forced to be injected with the new swine flu vaccine, whether you want to
be or not. In the U.S., the government is now able to mandate universal mass
vaccinations at gunpoint.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there will be no exemptions.
A certain amount of human wastage is expected.

 

3 Polish doctors and 6 nurses are facing murder charges 1. An informal
[e.g., illegal] clinical trial of the Avian Flu vaccine on about 200 Polish
vagrants resulted in 11 immediate deaths and an additional set of 20 later
deaths (approximately 15% of the test population). The doctors and nurses
involved were charged with murder. (Fact. 2008)

 

In another incident a Baxter product was found to be accidentally
contaminated.

Baxter International Inc. was in the process of applying for a contract to
provide Avian Flu vaccines to European countries in the event of an Avian
Flu epidemic. Its Austrian laboratory shipped Seasonal Flu vaccines to 18
countries in Europe. A laboratory technician tested the Baxter Seasonal Flu
vaccines sent to the Czech Republic on some ferrets killing them and
discovered that they were contaminated with a highly pathogenic version of
the Avian Flu, 72 Kilograms of it, although Level 3 precautions were in
place and such contamination could not have happened accidentally
according to experts in the field. No documentation of the destruction of
this highly infective material has been provided although the Austrian
Health Ministry insists that the deadly viral material was destroyed. (Fact
2008, 2009)

 

A WHO investigation into the Baxter contaminated vaccine issue resulted in
NO findings and in NO disciplinary actions. An Austrian investigation into
the same events yielded the same results. (Fact, 2009)

 

Baxter has been rewarded with a lead role in developing, producing and
disseminating the Swine Flu vaccine for the upcoming pandemic. (Fact, 2009)

 

Only 16 deaths initially:

Swine Flu was first identified to the public as a serious problem in
April/May 2009 when 168 persons in Mexico were confirmed by CDC and WHO to
have died from the Swine Flu. This number was later revised downward to only
16 deaths. (Fact, 2009)

 

The Philippine High Court convicted WHO (The World Health Organization) of
involuntarily sterilizing over 3 million Philippina women through the use of
vaccines. (Fact)

 

The WHO in 1985 documented that one of its' primary goals for the use of a
sterility vaccine disguised as a smallpox vaccine was to eliminate 150
million excess Sub Saharan Africans. (Fact, 1985-ongoing)

 

The WHO 5-shot vaccine programs for tetanus in third world countries in
South and Central America caused the involuntary sterilization of millions
of women. (Fact, ongoing)

 

Monsanto's MON 810 corn causes sterility according to studies published by
the Austrian Government. 

 

Monsanto's MON 810 corn contains the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus which, when
ingested, lowers the bodies CD 4 cells 

RE: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

[Lawrence de Bivort]

This sounds like another run-of-the-mill scare-story to me.

 

1.  There is no 'forced-vaccination' program being proposed.
2.  The use of live virus in the making of vaccines is routine. Some
vaccines, like the Salk polio vaccine, is made with attenuated live virus.
These kinds of vaccines tend to be more effective than those containing
'dead' virus material, such as the Sabin polio vaccine.
3.  In any case, the UN does not mandate or not mandate health programs.
And, and among its many other activities, WHO only makes non-binding health
program recommendations to its member states.
4.  In any case, legal complaints such as the one 'described' here don't
ever get filed with the FBI. They are filed in court for adjudication, or
presented to a prosecutor's office for assessment.
5.  The FBI doesn't receive communications from Austrian national in
Austria. Any communications to the FBI by an Austrian in Austria would come
thought Austria's own police or judicial offices.

 

This story sounds like one of the many that circulate through the Net,
designed to scare folks and deliberately omitting the kinds of references
and citations that would enable people quickly to check its veracity. For
example, just who and when did the CDC make such a statement? If the writer
were sincere, it would have been a natural and necessary matter to include
such references.

 

In some, the whole thing appears to be nonsense, started by someone who
doesn't know much about how the real-world works nor much about vaccines,
and whose motives are probably to promote scandal and fear, and who assumes
that there are people out there who will be gullible enough to pass it on.

 

Lawrence

 

 

 

  _  

From: John Berry [mailto:aethe...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 6:20 PM
To: vortex-l
Subject: [Vo]:Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism
and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

 

I don't think this can be considered political as no one votes for the UN or
WHO and it's a health warning not a discussion or about political view
points.

 

Short version, Swine Flu is not especially deadly and compared to the
numbers killed by regular flu it isn't a concern especially as large numbers
have been infected and recovered and like the normal flu it is only those
who have compromised immune systems that have died apparently.

 

Baxter, the company making a vaccine that will seemingly be forced on
people:

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there will be no exemptions.
A certain amount of human wastage is expected.

 

And They were recently caught putting live viruses in vaccines.

The ingredients of vaccines and risks associated with many are bad enough
but this looks very bad.

 

As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic
vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the
world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane
Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the
World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the
highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism
and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction
against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions
follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills
Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine,
alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.

Summary of claims and allegations filed with FBI in Austria on June 10, 2009

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/026503_pandemic_swine_flu_bioterrorism.html 

RE: [Vo]:I'm back

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Welcome back, Jed.

I'm hoping for clarification, too, on the appropriateness of discussion
regarding the political management of CF, vs the appropriately banned
general political discussion.

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 1:46 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:I'm back

I am back, but I think I shall refrain from posting messages until 
Bill Beaty has had time to mull things over and clarify his policies.

Regarding this kerfuffle, I wrote to Bill:

. . . If you decide to permanently move the standard toward 
apolitical postings only, I do not think I have anything worthwhile 
to contribute.

A person running a web page or discussion group has every right to 
change the standards or focus of the discussion. If you were running 
a discussion on Japanese grammar, for example, I might well 
participate. But if you decided to limit the focus to early-Edo 
period Japanese (circa 1600), while that is a perfectly legitimate 
topic, I know little about it, so I would withdraw.

Regarding the Washington Times author James Robbins, he told me he 
was serious and not sarcastic about cold fusion.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Discussion/Debate: Creating [VoT] to handle OT discussions.

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Or, one could run VoB by the rules you are proposing for VoT, and not run
any list at all for trolls posters.

Lawrence


-Original Message-
From: OrionWorks [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 1:24 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Discussion/Debate: Creating [VoT] to handle OT
discussions.

From Alexander and Ed:

 Sorry, you are absolutely right. I suggest this is the way the list can be
 handled without Bill having to get involved at all.

 Ed
 On Jun 16, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Alexander Hollins wrote:

 And at this point, this part of the conversation should move to B or
 stop completely.

Ed, didn't you unsubscribe from [VoB]?

This is precisely why I brought up my original suggestion: Is it
possible to make available a safe and supportive environment where OT
discussions CAN be worked out, be allowed to flourish in peace. I
would argue that [VoB] is an unacceptable environment. [VoB] has
turned into a cesspool where trolls are allowed to thrive and trash
the place with impunity.

Why should such relevant OT discussions be relegated to the back of the bus?

Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

RE: [Vo]:Discussion/Debate: Creating [VoT] to handle OT discussions.

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Agreed. If there is a general will to ban trolls from our discussions, why
feel obligated to provide them with a list of their own?

Clearly, there is a desire to have a list that is able to go beyond specific
science and research discussions--and VoB, troll-less, could be readily used
for this purpose.

I unsubscribed to VoB when it seemed that it had been turned over to the
trolls, and I wouldn't be surprised if others had too, so it may be
underutilized and awaiting re-invigoration.

My 2-cents worth.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: OrionWorks [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com] 


I'll just say that IMO, I think [VoB] is currently underutilized. I
think it could be used for far more noble purposes than as a shunt.

[Vo]:Politics and 'politics'....

[Lawrence de Bivort]

It seems to me that there are, for our purposes here, two very different
politics.

There is political commentary dealing with the world at large. Sometimes it
is informed commentary, sometimes it is rant, and sometimes it is mere
labeling and insult.

And then there is the 'politics' of CF, or other technologies/science.

If CF has been preoccupied over the last 20 years with anything, it is the
political dimension of how it recovers from a false linguistic and
professional start, how it reestablishes itself within the normal world of
science, how it finds funding and manages its overall evolution, how it
attracts additional scientists and labs, and how it presents itself to the
functions of governance, venture capital, and the general public.

I would guess that the CF community here in Vortex-l would like to be able
to discuss the political aspects of CF per se, and I would like to seek
clarification of this from William Beaty.

Is my interpretation of what is and what is not acceptable here, correct?

Regards to all,

Lawrence

RE: [Vo]:When two wrongs make a right -- oil and nuclear

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hi, Robin,

Agreed that carbons can be used to make carbon compounds. But, as you point
out, there is non-trivial the matter of energy consumed in the process and,
I would add, the non-trivial matter of economics.

There is a reason we aren't making carbon-based materials out of CO2. And
this same reason is the reason why we should be conserving oil for feedstock
purposes, rather than fuel.

No?

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: mix...@bigpond.com [mailto:mix...@bigpond.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 7:03 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:When two wrongs make a right -- oil and nuclear

In reply to  Lawrence de Bivort's message of Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:16:47
-0400:
Hi,
[snip]
Someday, I imagine, humankind will rue having burned oil for fuel,
realizing
that it was far more valuable as material feedstock for plastics than it is
as fuel. It may be our children who come to realize this, and they may
wonder why their parents and grandparents didn't realize it and why they
didn't insist that oil be used only as a feedstock.  
[snip]
I doubt it. A good organic chemist can make just about any carbon compound
from
just about any other carbon compound, given enough energy.
Even CO2 can serve as the source if really necessary.
So the only real limitation is adequate cheap clean energy.
Fusion in one form or another would provide this.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html

RE: [Vo]:When two wrongs make a right -- oil and nuclear

[Lawrence de Bivort]

LOL. Thanks, Horace. I was trying to figure it out. 

I like the idea: treat CO2 as an asset from which to produce a useful
material, rather than as a pollutant to be released into the environment.
That would present a double advantage.  I'll go check the website. I hope it
has some preliminary engineering and cost analyses.

Language is an odd and limited tool, isn't it, when trying to describe
reality.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Horace Heffner [mailto:hheff...@mtaonline.net] 
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2009 6:10 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:When two wrongs make a right -- oil and nuclear

I wrote: It is notable that we *can* make feed stocks from CO2 using  
algae and sunlight:

http://www.oilgae.com/

Unfortunately, most of the CO2 producing plants are in the north.
One solution might be to pipeline CO2 south.  Probably more sensible  
to build new hybrid plants in the south and ship power to the north  
using HVDC transmission and and bio-oil products using pipelines.

It just occurred to me this is confusing wording.  It should say: It  
is notable that we *can* make feed stocks from CO2 using algae and  
sunlight:

http://www.oilgae.com/

Unfortunately, most of the CO2 producing power plants are in the  
north.   One solution might be to pipeline CO2 south.  Probably more  
sensible to build new hybrid solar-algoil power plants in the south  
and ship power to the north using HVDC transmission and and bio-oil  
products using pipelines.

Best regards,

Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/

RE: [Vo]:When two wrongs make a right -- oil and nuclear

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Someday, I imagine, humankind will rue having burned oil for fuel, realizing
that it was far more valuable as material feedstock for plastics than it is
as fuel. It may be our children who come to realize this, and they may
wonder why their parents and grandparents didn't realize it and why they
didn't insist that oil be used only as a feedstock.  This is as true for
countries with large reserves of oil as it is with those with few reserves.

 

Meanwhile, electricity can serve the needs of transportation and heat - but
only if it comes from long-lasting, non-polluting sources. At this point it
seems to me that this means nuclear power, augmented as possible by wind,
hydro- and solar power. These are all technologies that we understand well.

 

But our population retains a taboo concern with nuclear power - perhaps
confounding it with nuclear weaponry - a concern that is encouraged by the
questions of waste disposal, the safeguard of weapons-grade materials, and
the safety of nuclear plant operations.  Until these questions are met, it
will be difficult for a nuclear power program to be fully embraced in the
US.

 

Are there credible answers to these three questions?

 

Lawrence

 

 

RE: [Vo]:Shanahan goes off the deep end! -- The psychology of bigotry

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Interesting hypothesis.

Some 'substitutes' for racial bigotries come readily to mind: anti-Muslim
(from evangelical Christians and current American society); anti-Semitism
(eg from the Nazis); anti-Palestinians (from Israelis). Perhaps
anti-Liberals?

The need to assert individual or group superiority, I would guess, is based
on an actual sense of inferiority, and if an individual or a group doesn't
have objective reasons to feel good about themselves the only alternative is
to assert the inferiority of others

The room that this creates for psychopathology and sociopathology is huge.

I would guess that this is a recurring phenomenon in human history and
current events.

What do you think?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: William Beaty [mailto:bi...@eskimo.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 8:11 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Shanahan goes off the deep end!

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
 I had a large insight into my own psychology, and theirs.  My inner
 bigot tells me exactly what's going on: CF-haters respond to CF
 supporters in the same way that racists respond to non-whites: with
 intolerance, with very strong feelings of superiority, and with
 buried hatred.  It's definitely an ego thing, but it seems to better
 fit the mold of race hatred.

 In the case of the late Douglas Morrison this was literally true.

That's simple racism.  But since we can't detect heretics by skin color,
and since science bigot is all about detecting inferiors ...life
becomes like a Dr. Seuss book, where they're obsessively trying to
discover whose bellies have stars.

Here's another issue.  Racism is no longer accepted in public!

So what's an insecure hater to do?  They'll need to find some other
inferiors who can be safely attacked without drawing public
condemnation.  If it's a widespread problem, then we'd expect to find
large groups of non-racist bigots who all managed to find the same
socially-acceptable victims. Then look for the usual racial slurs,
hate-group politics, self- congratulatory prose describing their own
superiority and their success at defending purity, and describing the
inhuman, inferiority of their victims who threaten to contaminate the
world with their dirtyness.  The whole racism nine yards, but directed
against caucasians.  Any groups doing this?

I notice that, in conversing with people from certain online skeptic
groups, they seem driven half insane over the question of whether I'm a
woo woo or not.

Am I one of those disgusting inferior enemy types?  Or am I a fellow
scientist skeptic, one of us?  This whole issue seems crazy unless you
look at the history of bigots, and their obsession about intermarriage and
the obvious differences they emphasize between their superior selves and
the non-white victims.

Regarding skeptics versus woo-woos, isn't there a whole spectrum?  Where
extreme examples are at the ends of the spectrum, with lots of people in
the middle?  Not to a bigot.  Either you're a skeptic colleague and
totally pure, or you're one of the dirty inferior woo-woos, with nothing
in between.  Why?  Simple: people with the wrong skin color are supposed
to be all the same, disgusting dehumanized stereotypes. And then the
bigot supplies a list of derogatory characteristics which supposedly
describes all their hated enemies.

So, if we on vortex are the dirty woo-woos, then we're all the same, and
not really human.  We're hated stereotypes, not people.  It's critical
that we be dehumanized with no chance to escape it. No woo-woos and
skeptics going out for drinks after the conference; we might accidentally
convince them that we're like them.  We woo-woos are all secretly
creationist fanatics, right?  If we deny it, then we're just lying.  And
we all hate science and want to destroy it for some inscruitable woo-woo
reasons of our own.  We all believe in phrenology AND the flat earth AND
lunar hoax AND cold fusion since we're so disgusting and mindless.  Most
important: a bigot's goal is not to treat us as students, to educate us
and heal our sad ignorance.  The bigot's goal is xenophobia: to stop us at
all costs, lest we overwhelm the carefully defended last bits of unsoiled
purity that remain on earth.


Ok, five in the morning, time to stop.



(( ( (  (   ((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  206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci

RE: [Vo]:Inventors and Uberman/polyphasic sleep

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Solo sailors at sea, and especially in shipping lanes, learn to wake up
every 20 minutes or so to take a look around the horizon. We do this whether
we are sleeping during the night or day. 

It creates a sustainable rhythm without, it seems, impairing sailing
adeptness, personal energy or boat performance.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: leaking pen [mailto:itsat...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 8:20 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Inventors and Uberman/polyphasic sleep

on the uberman sleep schedule... im confused...

After moving a couple years ago, i had a LOT of laundry to do.  to get
through it all, i spent 3 days setting my alarm clock at roughly hour
intervals.  get up with the alarm, change dryer and washer loads, fold
clothes, back to sleep for an hour.  I got about 6 actual hours of
sleep a night, and fantastic sleep.  Why spread it through the day?
why not just artificially reset your sleep schedule by waking up for
10 to 15 ever 40 minutes or so?

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 3:30 PM, William Beaty bi...@eskimo.com wrote:

  People in the uberman/polyphasic sleep community think it's a
learnable
  behavior.  Perhaps it helps to start out with unusual brain chemistry!
 
 Really?  I should look them up.

 Search for blogs,  uberman or polyphasic keyword.

 Various people have managed to trigger the Uberman sleep mode.  I did it
 accidentally while working on huge software deadlines.  It lasts at least
 for weeks, once you get into it.  You could go and work for three
 employers, if they were jobs that allowed ten-minute naps every few hours.
 Be like Tesla, coming home at 6AM to go to work on personal projects, then
 get back to Edison's company at 10AM for a full day of normal work.  (But
 did Tesla's sleep habits cause his hallucinatory and photographic memory
 experiences, or the reverse?)

 If its causing my blood sugar issues and falling asleep at work, id
 almost be willing to do something to change the  no no i wouldnt.

 That's exactly it: if you're trapped in polyphasic sleep, then you're
 hypersensitive to bread/pasta/rice/potatoes and anything full of corn
 syrup, such as spaghetti sauce.  Normal food screws you up.  Or more
 crackpotty: you have to eat living things, or meat that was cooked minutes
 ago, no leftovers (though oddly, smoked meat seems to work.) I was forced,
 FORCED I tell you, to survive entirely on nuts, artisan beer, and fresh
 salmon and herbs w/asparagus, cooked in the microwave at work.   Also I
 found that I needed larger amounts of zinc, so started taking supplements.
 Some brands didn't work though.

 letting the road itself dictate things, i get openings when i need
 them to change lanes just appearing before me, my lights are always
 green, and people pull out of parking spots right in front of me the
 moment i enter the lot.

 Ah, that's exactly the Jedi Master effect.  If you're in polyphasic
 sleep, it's as if the gods are watching you, and doling out anomalous
 synchronicity rewards and punishment based on your petty acts of self-
 importance verus saintliness.  Well, more probably your subconscious is
 awake and watching your tiny conscious personality, and giving it ethical
 lessons.


 (( ( (  (   ((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  206-762-3818unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci

RE: [Vo]:Need big list of legit heretical research

[Lawrence de Bivort]

There used to be US gov't funding some years ago, but it was discontinued. 

The fact that it received such funding is being used to bolster current
claims to credibility.

-Original Message-
From: leaking pen [mailto:itsat...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 1:02 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Need big list of legit heretical research

Remote Viewing Secrets: A Handbook (Paperback)
by Joseph McMoneagle

assuming that there is no gov funding currently.  I could be wrong.

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 7:57 PM, William Beaty bi...@eskimo.com wrote:

 Gerald Pollack, a sucessful maverick biochemist at the UW, is trying to
 collect a list of books which describe crazy fringe research projects and
 proposals not currently attracting any government funding.  My own list is
 below.  Any more suggestions?  Book suggestions, NOT research proposals.
 Also, collections of taboo topics are desired over books about
 individuals.

 (( ( (  (   ((O))   )  ) ) )))
 William J. Beatyhttp://staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/
 beaty chem washington edu   Research Engineer
 billbamascicom  UW Chem Dept,  Bagley Hall RM74
 206-543-6195Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700


 THE SOURCEBOOK PROJECT: FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE Compiled by WR Corliss

 INFINITE ENERGY MAGAZINE

 THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE Dr. Dean Radin

 FORBIDDEN ARCHEOLOGY  Michael Cremo

 SEVEN EXPERIMENTS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD, A do-it yourself guide to
 revolutionary science,  Rupert Sheldrake

 FORBIDDEN SCIENCE, Suppressed research that could change our lives
 Richard Milton

 SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AND THE MYTH OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Henry H. Bauer

 DEVIANT SCIENCE The Case of Parapsychology,  James McClenon

 DARWIN'S CREATION MYTH, by Alexander Mebane

 COSMIC PLASMAS, by Hannes Aflven

 THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE Thornhill  Talbott

 DARK LIFE  Michael Taylor

 THE DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE  Thomas Gold

 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IGNORANCE Ronald Duncan, Miranda Weston-Smith eds.


 Also, any tales of vindicated heretics?

  HIDDEN HISTORIES OF SCIENCE R. Silvers, ed. 1995

  CONFRONTING THE EXPERTS, B. Martin, ed., 1996

  THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION, W. Beveridge 1950

  SCIENCE IS A SACRED COW, Anthony Standen 1950

RE: [Vo]:letter to Shirley Jackson

[Lawrence de Bivort]

A comment and a query.

Some of the phrases in the draft seems too defensive and resentful. For
example, We have to self fund our experimental activities. 
Worse, there is also a well documented pattern of suppression of this 
technology. I will probably have to leave America in order to bring this
technology to the market.

People who place themselves on the 'oppressed victim' side of an argument
will tend to have less influence than people who place themselves in the
'insider camp' and offer ways to improve things further. 

Of course, this has nothing to do with objective reality, and everything to
do with patterns of influence, which, I think, you intend this letter to do.

Query, next to last paragraph:  Particularly since the technology to render
it nonradioactive was demonstrated over ten years ago.

Can you say a bit more about what this technology is, that would render
radioactive material non-radioactive?

Thanks.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: thomas malloy [mailto:temal...@usfamily.net] 
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 12:19 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:letter to Shirley Jackson

Vortexians;

What you you think of this letter?

Shirley Jackson, Ph D
President Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Dear Dr. Jackson;

I saw a broadcast of your address at the Bakken Museum on Twincities 
Public Television. You seem interested in innovation, so there are some 
matters that I'd like to bring to your attention.

There is a basis in theoretical physics to believe that the zero point 
energy could be cohered to provide a pollution free source of energy. 
The quantum theorist Hal Puthoff of earthtech.org has coauthored a 
series of articles which were published in Physical Review. They 
speculate about the interaction of the ZPE and matter. It appears that 
the effect can be optimized by use of torsion field physics of Nicloi 
Kozyrev.

Despite well documented replication of anomalous energy, in these 
experiments, the American Physical Society treats this technology like 
it doesn't exist. We have to self fund our experimental activities. 
Worse, there is also a well documented pattern of suppression of this 
technology. I will probably have to leave America in order to bring this 
technology to the market.

I find this behavior inexplicable given the opposition which has been 
raised to our continued poisoning of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. 
It's clear to me that we need a Manhattan Project sized effort in order 
to stop this poisoning of our environment. I have attempted to get a 
commitment from President Obama putting his administration on record as 
opposed to the continued suppression, in vain. It would seem to me that 
this is the least that they could do.

Given your involvement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I'd also 
like to mention the suppression of the use of induced nuclear reactions. 
The website, lenr-carn.org has over 3000 papers, some in the form of 
synopsis, others in the form of a .pdf document. I realize that the 
experimental results are difficult to reproduce, and that so far, no 
usable energy has been produced. However in the 60 minutes segment on 
cold fusion the APS's representative took the standard party line, 
about not seeming to care about the experimental results, his mind 
having previously been made up.

It's clear to me that if, following the experiment; you extract a metal 
which wasn't there before, and that metal has an isotopic spectrum 
containing a large amount of 2%'ers, isotopes which occur in nature in 
concentrations of less than 3%, that is anomalous. This anomaly doesn't 
seem to be clear to either Dr. Robert Park, or Dr. Zimmerman. While Dr. 
Park was initially reported to be contrite, following the 60 Minutes 
broadcast. Later he was later back spouting the party line, of voodoo 
science. Why am I not surprised? this is the APS's business as usual.

I noted what appeared to be your support for that boondoggle at Yucca 
Mountain. I can just imagine the streaks of protest that would result if 
you attempted to bury that waste in the layer of basalt in northern 
Minnesota. I don't blame the people of Nevada one little big for 
opposing it. Particularly since the technology to render it 
nonradioactive was demonstrated over ten years ago.

Dr. Park has yet to repent of his attacks on Dr. Randall Mills of Black 
Light Power, which in my opinion were as the basis of the recension of 
BLP's patent. This despite BLP's having sold licenses for it's technology.


--- Get FREE High Speed Internet from USFamily.Net! --
http://www.usfamily.net/mkt-freepromo.html ---

RE: [Vo]:OT: Manhunt in progress in Madison

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Stay safe. Might think about keeping a cell phone and whistle handy.
Flashlight, too. We'll be thinking about you and your family.

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: OrionWorks [mailto:svj.orionwo...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 7:58 PM
To: vortex-l
Subject: [Vo]:OT: Manhunt in progress in Madison

There is a full-scale manhunt going on right now for a murder suspect
last spotted in the near west side neighborhood of Madison. The
suspect was last spotted in the Hoyt Park area earlier Tuesday
morning. It's a location which includes Quarry Park. Our house is
nearby.

For details:
http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/breaking_news/451725

As I was walking home from work this afternoon I noticed a police car
stationed at the intersection of the street leading to the back door
of our house only sixty feet away. I decided to say hello to the
officer and ask him if he had heard anything new.

Bad mistake.

After stating that he had no new information I proceeded to walk home.
The officer wouldn't let me pass his car. I told the officer that my
house and my wife are only sixty feet away, and I would like to make
sure she was ok...that we're ok together. The officer suggested I go
to a nearby gas station and call my wife from there. I'm sure the
officer was simply following orders.

I pondered the officer's orders for a nanosecond. What was clear to me
was that any civic sense of obeying the officer's request had
immediately gone down the toilet the second he suggested I call my
wife from a gas station. I discretely walked around the block from the
opposite direction and snuck home, ironically through the front door.

Darlene and I are fine. So are our two cats, which BTW want to go
outside. I suspect if we were to go outside, get into the car and head
out for a spot of high-living dinning the police would not let us back
into our neighborhood. Guess we'll lie low for a while.

I suspect things may get dicey tonight when the sun finally goes down.
If I was being hunted like a rabid dog I certainly would hide out in
the bushes till dark. Complicating matters, it's my understanding the
suspect is familiar with the neighborhood since he grew up here.

We will lock our doors tonight and keep the lights on.

Regards,
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

RE: [Vo]:Wind energy breakthrough

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Virtually ALL cost-accounting ignores secondary and tertiary effects of an
operation, even though some of these might easily outweigh the cost elements
of the operation itself.

See, for a fuller treatment of this theme, ECOCIDE, on Russia's deadly
failure to include environmental and toxic impacts of its industrial and
agricultural activities.

In the 70s, the US EPA sought to enlarge the scope of accounting by the
introduction of Technology Assessment. Analytically, the task is
non-trivial, and for that and for political reasons our society, as all
other societies in the world with which I am familiar, has yet to
automatically attend to the secondary and tertiary costs of an operation.

As our species further evolves we may yet make this analytic, philosophical
and moral leap.

Lawrence


-Original Message-
From: grok [mailto:g...@resist.ca] 
Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 11:04 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Wind energy breakthrough

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Hash: SHA1


 blows strongly in the Prairie States). This is why solar makes sense,
 since even at $1 watt for the solar cell - the electricity costs 4-6
 times more than from a coal plant.

But is this the actual, real cost of coal power? Seems to me they're
highly subsidized in myriad ways -- and capitalist cost-accounting
notoriously sloughs off environmental/social costs, whenever they can get
away with it... 


- -- grok.






- -- 
Build the North America-wide General Strike.

TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
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8tMAoIbqJUoO74OsmeBYQ50bUEjJ4X+8
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RE: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Greetings, all,

Yes.  It is human nature when things are complicated and much unseen to
conclude that the situation must be caused by a cabal or a conspiracy.
Usually, though, these perplexing and often frustrating human-based
situations are the result of inadvertent patterns of interaction and
cognitive limitations.

I would add another 'cause' of these situations -- and would include cold
fusion and global warming in these -- the relative ineptitude of the 'good
guys' (however you define them!) to communicate their PoV. Too often the
'good guys' resort to attack and invective. Advocacy is substituted for
effectiveness, righteousness for influence.

As I see it, influence is solely dependent on having access to the person or
group that one wants to influence. If one has access, then only the
interpersonal and communication skills of the 'good guy' will determine the
outcome.

Does this make sense?



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:45 AM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies

thomas malloy wrote:

The notion that thousands of climate experts are engaged in a 
massive fraud is preposterous beyond words. It is conceivable that 
they are wrong, but absolutely, positively out of the question that 
they are engaged in fraud or that

The point of my posting these reports is that there is a dissident 
group of planetary scientists who question AGW.

Yes, this is common knowledge.


You won't hear their voices in the main stream media because it is 
controlled by the Oligarchy.

On the contrary, these people probably get proportionally more 
mainstream press coverage than conventional planetary scientists do. 
Just about every article on the subject mentions them.

(I mean that they are probably less than ~1% of the total, so only 1 
in 100 articles should mention them, to make things proportional. 
That's a rather silly analysis, I will grant.)

Compare this to the fraction of cold fusion scientists represented in 
the mainstream press: 0%, even though they far outnumber the cold 
fusion skeptics.

This is not caused by an Oligarchy but rather by specific people 
such as the editor of the Scientific American, the science writer for 
Time magazine, and others who are well known to me. These people are 
not politically powerful Svengalis. They are not hidden manipulators 
of public opinion. They are inept, uneducated, self-important fools 
who happen to have landed in jobs that are way over their heads. Sort 
of like George W. Bush. A relatively small number of specific 
individual people are responsible -- not some amorphous Oligarchy or 
Hidden Conspiracy. The same is true of Holocaust denial, tobacco 
company denial that smoking causes cancer, Wall Street credit default 
swaps Ponzi schemes and other scams, and other irresponsible lies and 
misunderstandings.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Years ago, the EPA was given the mandate to carry out environmental impact
assessments on large federal projects. It would have been prudent and
forward looking for EPA some years ago to have studied the impacts of
large-scale solar paneling. There was nothing -- except a lack of
responsibility and forethought -- to stop them doing so.

These impact statements are fairly rigorous efforts, involving 1) a study of
the technology, 2) a study of the environmental (defined broadly) secondary
and tertiary impacts, and 3) extensive processes for public comment and
influence. Thus the two-year estimate, and I have seen them drag on far
longer if the public parties dispute the study findings.

My guess is that there is plenty of room for constructing solar farms on a
trial basis and using them to study the impacts, while at the same time
beginning to generate appreciable amounts of electricity.  

But best of all, in my opinion, would have been an administration that was
capable of thinking effectively about the future of energy in this country
and of proactively launching superior solutions, accompanied by the
necessary regulatory studies and procedures for using the requisite public
lands.

Lawrence




-Original Message-
From: Mike Carrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 3:39 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects

No need for apoplexy, don't blame the administrators, they did not make the 
rules and Congress and the greens had only the best of intentions when 
lobbying for the protection of the land and all the green and creepy things 
thereon. When your are promoting a technology that may lead to covering 
square miles of land in our thirst for energy, it is well take a look at the

environmental consequences of doing so. *Not* doing so got us where we are.

The informaltion about Nanosolar with printed PV with 14% efficiency looks 
most interesting, but you need to deploy a few square miles to find the 
'gotchas' through wind, sand and rain.

Meanwhile watch Blacklight Power over the next few years. Utility-scale 
reactors are on their ajenda. Hydrogen from water.

Mike Carrell

FW: [Vo]:Ethanol not all bad?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

The 'evil conspiracy of Big Oil' might seem less so if there were more
transparency in their dealings with US government officials. Why do you
suppose the participants in and gist of the conversations between Big Oil
officials and Vice President Cheney were refused release to the public?

Lawrence

RE: [Vo]:Ethanol not all bad?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

The reality, I think, is that the business of governance has become too
complex for the institutions and people responsible for legislation.
Lobbyists feed into this complexity by suggesting that issues can be broken
down into independent issues, and tackled one by one with little attention
to the context of other priorities, needs and legislation, and with no
attention to their interdependencies. 

The annual budgeting process is supposed to enforce a whole-systems
perspective, but my guess is that it is too massive for any one brain to
comprehend, so the whole-systems perspective is lost, and we are left with
only the bottom-line numbers, devoid of a sense of what the content itself
of the budget is.

This is a gloomy assessment, but, I'm afraid, an accurate one.  The
situation in the US is probably duplicated in all large economically active
countries.

Back in the 70s, the National Science Foundation launched a valiant effort
to ensure that secondary and tertiary effects of technology were identified
and assessed whenever the US government considered supporting the
development of a technology. The studies, called Technology Assessments,
were not easy to carry out, and were time consuming. How much easier to make
swifter governmental decisions and keep one's fingers crossed that nothing
too bad would ensue. 

What to do?

Lawrence

RE: [Vo]:Re: New ENERGY TIMES (tm) May 10, 2008 -- Issue #28

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Greetings, all,

Without anticipating Robin's response, it seems to me that Bush as a 'plant'
in the quoted sense is right on target. 

Having observed US presidencies closely for several decades, I can say that
I have never seen a US President so easily and egregiously manipulated by
others, in this case the Middle East-focused neocons (led by Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz), and the Christian evangelicals (led by Karl Rove).

Counting down to January '09

And then will come the immense but essential job of undoing the damage of
these last eight years and rebuilding a positive role for the US in the
world.

Lawrence




-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 3:39 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: New ENERGY TIMES (tm) May 10, 2008 -- Issue #28

A person or thing put into place in order to mislead or function secretly
?
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/plant

Bush is such a plant, is that what your signature means? Had always wondered
too, was blaming my English.

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 12:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:New ENERGY TIMES (tm) May 10, 2008 -- Issue #28


In reply to  Terry Blanton's message of Thu, 15 May 2008 14:08:54 -0400:
Hi,
[snip]
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Steven Krivit [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Why is the shrub always a plant?

I think it is Donk's way of saying that your president (bush/shrub) is
no smarter than any occupant of the rose garden.
[snip]
plant has second meaning in US slang.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

The shrub is a plant.

RE: [Vo]:More rejection!

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Even in Saudi Arabia Bush is a lame duck. Hm...I wonder if the Saudi
response has anything to do with Bush's lovefest with Israel???



-Original Message-
From: OrionWorks [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 11:40 AM
To: vortex-l
Subject: [Vo]:More rejection!

CNN.com Breaking news: Saudi Arabia has rejected a plea from President
Bush to increase oil production, a top White House aide said today.

Those darn white house guys! What will they think up next!

Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

RE: [Vo]:Re: Eye of the Gyre

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hmmm...would that be fast food?

Lawry

-Original Message-
From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2008 10:39 AM
To: vortex
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Eye of the Gyre

At the risk of stirring up another Hundred Years' War,
let me opine that the British Taboo on horse meat
seems to be fairly recent, or else ignored in
Yorkshire, and now has evolved into an item of jealous
yearning ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1551693/The-merits-of-horse-meat.html

I seriously doubt that any uneaten horse was ever
tossed overboard - in the entire history of the 
Admiralty ...

However, with our beloved Kentucky Derby set to begin
in a few hours, I will refrain from any culinary
review of this gourmet delicacy ...



--- Nick Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Michel, are you absolutely sure that you are French?
 You don't want to eat 
 your horse and your English is better than that of
 most native speakers... I 
 think the point was that the *water* began to run
 out and horses drink a lot 
 of it so, to conserve supplies, they get thrown over
 first... 
 
 

RE: [Vo]:letter to Tom Valone

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Good morning,

Your letter seems truncated in this posting. Can you post the rest of it?

You mention 'peace negotiations' between Israelis and Palestinians, and
suggest that it might be The Peace. If that proves to be the case, then
indeed the laws of physics would have to be redefined.

Cheers,

Lawry


-Original Message-
From: thomas malloy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 4:43 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:letter to Tom Valone

Tom Valone, of Integrity Research Institute was interviewed on C to C AM 
on Monday.The following morning I wrote him this letter. I haven't 
received a reply. I think that Tom's agenda is selling books.

Dear Tom;

I was in the C to C audience this morning. We've been discussing various 
energy production scenarios on Vortex-L. AFAIK, while there are some 
interesting experimental results, there aren't any systems which produce 
enough energy to be cost effective. If you know differently, we'd love 
to hear about them. Live experimenters are standing by.

J R R Searle (I built them, but they flew away into space) has come in 
for some particularly scathing reviews on Vortex. As I told the Russian 
Science Fiction Author, (Alexander Frolov) we'd love to see a working 
Searle Machine, one that does any one, of his claims. I'm still waiting 
for Alexander to make a Searle machine, or any F E machine available for 
me to import.

Three British patent attorneys write the IP Kat blog. They were making 
fun of Randell Mills. They made him out to be a dotering, absent minded 
fool. This just infuriated me. I pointed out them that if BLP can do 
what they say they can do, then it's the laws of physics that need to 
change. They didn't respond. It may have something to do with my 
mentioning that some of the dumbest people I've ever met have graduate 
degrees, particularly legal degrees. Now two of them want to be 
President, too.

Joseph Newman just posted a video explaining why things are going to 
really get bad, it's going to hit the fan on 12/21/12. He sites a graph 
done by the late Terrance Mc Kinna based on the 64 combinations of the I 
Ching, done 64 times. I called his associate, his name is Joe too. I 
just left a message on his answering machine. I'm itching to read Mc 
Kinna's paper on that graph. I also itching to tell Joe, and Joseph too, 
that we Vortexians are still waiting to see his energy machine heat 
water. OTOH, Naudin posted an experiment in which the coil on a Newman 
Motor gets 2 degrees colder than the room. Some of us found this 
significant.

We, Agape New Life Ministries, are trying to bring a magnetic 
transmission to market. The prototype was built on a Ford Ranger. It has 
a small battery bank which still gives it a 200 mile range. We could use 
Lithium ion batteries, but I prefer the ultra capacitor. I'm trying to 
get in contact with EEStor. I called a number I found, I got an 
answering machine. You can't do more than express an interest in 
purchasing their product, eh?

The Ministry has a venture capital source who is interested in a clean 
energy source. I introduced him to Sterling Allen. The Boyce 
Electrolyzer was presented as an energy source, it's too bad that the 
experimental results don't live up to it's billing.

I'm investigating harvesting sea weed in the Sargassum Sea. The sea weed 
can be processed into oil. The Scottish Association for Marine Science 
researched the matter. So far they have not responded to my requests for 
information.

Back when we first met, someone mentioned Remote Viewing, and the Wall 
in 2012. That was before I met Hal Puthoff and learned about his role in 
developing it. 2012 seemed a long way off in 1992. Now it's coming up in 
a hurry. Then there's the planned peace agreement between the 
Palestinians and Israelis which may be The Peace.


--- Get FREE High Speed Internet from USFamily.Net! --
http://www.usfamily.net/mkt-freepromo.html ---

RE: [Vo]:Went to see Hillery - dropped her a note.

[Lawrence de Bivort]

One fully-loaded railroad car can carry as much (about 100 tons) as four
semi trucks. Between the cost of diesel (now around $4/gal) and the shortage
of drivers, rail transport is now significantly cheaper for distance
hauling.

 

Lawry

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 12:43 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Went to see Hillery - dropped her a note.

 

SNIP
I was watching the trains along the main line PRR on Sunday.  There was more
traffic
on the rail than I have ever seen.  I assume that fuel prices are producing
this.  Pherhaps it is
time to purcase some rail road stock.

 

 

 

RE: [Vo]:[VO] : Old Energy New Money

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Richard, have you seen any estimates of what gold would be worth if it was
not used by some as an investment strategy against currency fluctuations?
That is, if it were only used as a common material in manufacturing and
jewelry, what might it be worth?

 

Lawrence

 

  _  

From: R C Macaulay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:25 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:[VO] : Old Energy New Money

 

Howdy Vorts, 

Energy has displaced the US dollar as coin of the realm. This simple
observation permits an examination of not only the US dollar as being a
reserve currency, it also allows us another view into the fundamentals of
gold. When gold reached $ 1,000.00 per oz/troy.. it demonstrated the US
dollar has lost it's posture as a reserve currency.

 

The world does not yet have another  true medium outside of gold, so the
logical step may be to fall back on the value of a barrel of crude oil.

 The USA has operated under the Keynesian economic model since FDR. This
model ,as in all pyramid schemes, anticipates a sustained gravy train with
biscuit wheels economy where everything purchased yesterday will be paid for
in tomorrows dollars well.. err.. until.. there is no tomorrow.

A new energy formula and policy may be stymied.. not by lack of leadership..
but by lack of understanding of the medium of currency. The nations with
crude oil based economies may be the ones forced to construct a new currency
model just as the USA was forced by the great depression into the Keynesian.

 

Richard

RE: [Vo]:Moon bases or free-floating space colonies

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hi, all.

What I am thinking of are free-floating self-contained micro-gravity
permanent space colonies for quite small numbers of people -- ten-to
hundreds of thousands of people. These colonies could be produced in space
on a modular basis, and, in the end, inexpensively. Once people started
being born there, they would not be going 'back' to earth or any other
high-gravity environment for physiological reasons. These colonies would not
need contact with other colonies, though they might wish to have such. New
materials would be mined from small asteroids.

Proximity to first the Sun and perhaps down the road to other stars would
provide energy: the more energy you want, the closer you park to the sun.

Why might one wish to live in such a colony?

First, the environment. I do not see this in any way as a way of reducing
earth (over)population. The numbers and cost of lifting people make that
virtually impossible. But it is entirely conceivable that conditions on
earth may be become sufficiently unpleasant that, like other emigrants here
on earth, escape may be desirable, and, for a small portion of the
population, quite feasible. It may be that the environment provided by a
space colony, well designed and provisioned, will be superior to that
available to most people on earth.

Second, science. There will always be people who want to try new things and
new environments, much like the early air pilots, SCUBA divers or
hang-gliders.

Third, aesthetics. One of the things that strike me about people who have
gone into space is their euphoric aesthetic reaction to the experience.
There may be an aesthetic to it that attracts a lot of people, much like the
US southwest has attracted painters and poets, photographers and writers
over the last hundred years.

Fourth, business. It may be that in mining asteroids, or in micro-gravity
manufacturing (e.g. electrophoresis), economic business opportunities
emerge, serving earth or other space colonies.

Fifth, politics. As societal systems grow more complex and powerful on
earth, human beings are likely to experience a growing sense of constraints,
invasion of privacy and loss of freedom and options. Forces of control (Big
Brother) may grow in power, creating resistance, social discord and a sense
that the social contract is broken. If this occurs it may be a rational
response to create space colonies that can 'advertise' themselves based upon
differing political designs, with different configurations of freedom,
privacy, social accountability, authority and governance, investment
priorities, social values, etc., so attracting people partial to their
particular characteristics and desiring to participate in them.


There are design issues that should be addressed: the most important to my
mind is that of Requisite Variety (as per Ross Ashby's exploration of the
issue in, IIRC, CYBERNETICS). Would such a colony have sufficient variety to
keep itself growing intellectually, to say nothing of biological health?
What is the minimum critical mass of individuals needed to keep an isolated
or near-isolated colony going strong? Might a program of visits be necessary
among several colonies to meet the requirements of Requisite Variety?


Anyway, I hope this list shows that there could be a variety of legitimate
reasons for free-floating space colonies. The issue, of course, is not
whether EVERYONE would want to go, but whether a sufficient number of
people, with sufficient assets or needed skills, could come together to
order a colony be built. The initial group of inhabitants would likely be
small, and reproduction would be the way the colony grew.

Could an initial demand be sufficient to get the activity started?

Books that throw some light on these themes include:

Clarke, RAMA (four books in the sequence)

Heinlein, THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON

Cheers,
Lawrence





-Original Message-
From: Robin van Spaandonk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 10:07 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Moon bases

In reply to  OrionWorks's message of Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:10:40 -0500:
Hi,
[snip]
Robin sez:

...

 I think that there is little point in being in space just for it's own
sake. The
 only real reason to go into space is to go to other planets. If one
doesn't have
 the technology to do that, then there isn't much point.

...

I've run across this opinion many times in my life. When I was a tad
younger the opinion used to incense me to no end. 
[snip]
I think we have different definitions of space. You mean everything outside
the
Earth. I mean literally the space between things. IMO there is plenty of
reason
to got out into your space - those reasons are called stars and planets.
That's
also where I would like to go (curiosity). 

What I meant was that if you really look at your own motivations, I think
that's
also the only reason you would want to go. Ask your self this question:

If space were totally devoid of anything else other than the 

RE: [Vo]:Moon bases

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Robin, you are talking about planet-based society, right?  I was thinking
about space, and how to go there. Free floating space colonies should be
able to grow their own food. All they have to do is park close enough to a
star for photosynthesis and energy, and mine low-gravity asteroids for
materials and those things that can't be fully recycled.

What do you think?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Robin van Spaandonk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 4:18 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Moon bases

In reply to  Lawrence de Bivort's message of Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:37:46
-0400:
Hi,
[snip]
Bah!

Free-floating space stations and asteroid mining will free us from the
tyranny of gravity and the competition for territory

Lawrence
The competition for territory is not about where to put ones bed, it's about
where to put ones farm. That doesn't work so well in space. That particular
issue will be resolved when fusion energy supplies enough power to
desalinate
water allowing for the irrigation of arid and other less productive lands,
combined with a stabilization in the growth of the human population.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

The shrub is a plant.

RE: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit? Oragnization and performance

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Good morning, everyone.

Robin makes an astute observation: layers of hierarchy are also past of the
problem.

The best solution that we have been able to find is decentralization of
large organizations, but decentralization with several sub-principles.

1. Each unit within the organization must have all the functions required
for autonomous operation. (Overhead services can be shared among units too
small to afford stand-alone services, with the shared services proportioned
out per agreement among the units and those proportions under the management
authority of each unit. This way the shared services cannot play one unit
against another.)

2. Each unit is guided by a specified set of sensory specific outcomes
negotiated with senior management; these outcomes are provided with explicit
resource allocation agreements, with which the unit then operates to achieve
the outcomes. After these agreements have been made, senior management goes
away and lets the unit perform.

3. Each unit is free to negotiate with any other unit at any level within
the organization for operational cooperation, agreements reached voluntarily
by all.

4. Senior management is reintroduced into the situation upon request of any
of the units, or if the overall position of the organization itself
undergoes some change that requires it to renegotiate with its units. Such
changes include market shifts, financing shifts, technological intelligence,
etc.

Well, there is a lot more to this, but this is the gist

What do you think?

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Robin van Spaandonk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 5:21 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit?

In reply to  Lawrence de Bivort's message of Sun, 9 Mar 2008 08:52:34 -0400:
Hi,
[snip]
Partly it is a matter of Reverting to the Mean, and partly a matter of
there
being only so many genuinely brilliant leaders and with size their net
impact is diluted by the inevitable bulk of mediocre people in a large
corporation. 

Partly it is a matter of administrative systems becoming so bulky and
unwieldy that taking action and decision-making are themselves compromised
by bureaucratic values and ponderous processes.

There is another very subtle factor which plays a role in large
organizations.
Management naturally sees it as their role to make choices. A small
organization
has few people, and consequently few people proffering ideas. This makes it
relatively easy for good ideas to be selected and tried (there aren't that
many
of them). However as an organization grows decisions are frequently shuffled
up
the hierarchy until they reach top management, which is then in the position
of
having to choose between many ideas, some of which would be good and some
not.

SNIP

RE: [Vo]:Moon bases

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Bah!

Free-floating space stations and asteroid mining will free us from the
tyranny of gravity and the competition for territory

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Robin van Spaandonk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 11:22 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Moon bases

Hi,

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23346198-30417,00.html

quote: Scientists hope to put a manned station on the moon before the end
of
the century. 

Hmmm - giving themselves about 100 years to do it in, now that what I call
ambitious! ;^)

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

The shrub is a plant.

RE: [Vo]:Re: Christensen Innovator's Dilemma -- Iraq

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I would propose that in any conflict involving human value and fears that
there are always MORE than 'two sides' to a story, and that it is our
cognitive propensity to think in terms of polarities or dualisms that
contributes to the difficulties thinking clearly and the mistakes we make.

The story of Iraq will turn out to be complex, not so much because of
conditions within Iraq, but conditions within the US.

There are at least a dozen books that have already appeared on Iraq and the
US, with many more to come. I have read most of them and given my own
involvement in the policy aspects of how we got into Iraq I can safely say
that no one book has all 'the answers'. Most of them do provide some key
pieces of the puzzle, but we do not yet, in terms of publicly released info,
have all the pieces. It is also likely that some of the key pieces will be
carried to their graves by people like Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Michael
Ledeen, Dick Cheney, Binyamin Netanyahu, Eliot Abrams, etc., as well as
bit-players like John Yoo.

More books are in the works, and at least some of them are likely to be very
helpful. Others will seek to cover-up the real motives of the different
people who worked to bring about the invasion. It will take genuine study to
sift through what actually happened, but at this point I think we can say
that what happened was genuinely disingenuous as to some, genuinely ignorant
as to others, and for some not genuinely motivated by committed to US
interests.

Stay tuned!

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: thomas malloy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 5:10 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Christensen Innovator's Dilemma

Jones Beene wrote:

--- Jed Rothwell wrote:
 
  

The book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in


Iraq has been  widely recommended. I read a few
chapters and it seems excellent but I still cannot
bring myself to read it. 


I am still thinking about the article of Jim Holt,
which was posted by Jack Smith a few days ago:
  

It's been my experience that there are two sides to the story. In this 
case I would recommend The Looming Tower and America Alone as counter 
balances to what your post indicates that you believe.


--- http://USFamily.Net/dialup.html - $8.25/mo! --
http://www.usfamily.net/dsl.html - $19.99/mo! ---

RE: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Hi, Jones,

You are right, we don't generally disagree, and I would add a couple of
comments:

1. Though Ford and GM are 'giant' and -- yes -- have or had the resources
needed to reorient themselves to the changing nature of the world and
American automotive markets, they failed utterly to do so, I think, more for
reasons of internal inertia than individual stupidity. My general
proposition is that when systems, like corporations, become 'too big' that
due to the internal dynamics of bigness they come to act overall at a
mediocre level of intelligence.

Partly it is a matter of Reverting to the Mean, and partly a matter of there
being only so many genuinely brilliant leaders and with size their net
impact is diluted by the inevitable bulk of mediocre people in a large
corporation. 

Partly it is a matter of administrative systems becoming so bulky and
unwieldy that taking action and decision-making are themselves compromised
by bureaucratic values and ponderous processes.

Large complex systems, IF THEY ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL REQUISITE
VARIETY, lose the agility that a company will require to meet structural
changes in its markets. It seems to me that clearly this is what happened in
the US automotive industry. (Including Chrysler, despite the amusing and
falsely reassuring fireworks proffered by Lee Iacocca.)

2. Is this a matter for management? Yes, absolutely. But here is the
problem: management, smart as it may be individually, can itself become so
big and systemically paralyzed that management itself can no longer perform
at any level of excellence.

3. Nor is it a matter of engineering excellence being 'ignored' by
management: indeed, I suspect that many of the senior management that we can
rightly be critical of, though I would hope sympathetically so given the
systemic inertia caused by size and complexity, were indeed drawn directly
out of the ranks of the engineering group. 

4. Yup, in the end, it is the responsibility of management to deal with
these issues, and in the end US automotive management failed utterly to do
so. But it is not, in my opinion, due to their 'stupidity' but to their lack
of comprehension of the organizational dynamics that had taken over their
very large and initially successful companies.  

And in fairness to them, I would suggest that very few American (or other)
executives understand these dynamics. We have seen failures equal to that of
the US automotive industry in other industries (e.g. the newspapers,
household appliances, computers (with the wonderful exception of Apple --
that lean and mean agile machine), shipbuilding, steel, etc. We will, alas,
see more failures, until American management begins to study the dynamics I
allude to.

And, no, Ford and GM have not been clients of mine. Unfortunately.

Cheers,
Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 12:39 PM
To: vortex
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit?

SNIP

Let me say that in the context of GM and Ford, they
are giant companies which do not, or should not,
suffer those same tired realities which do keep most
of society from moving ahead at full pace ... at least
they only suffer from what is self-imposed by internal
stupidity. 

IOW - They have the money (or at least the good credit
;-) which would allow them to pursue a grander vision,
rather than the tunnel vision of maximizing short term
profitability.
 
IOW the competing priorities of Ford and GM are
those which are imposed by their own incompetent
management.

Perhaps Lawrence, who may have some contact with these
companies, will be far more diplomatic on that general
assessment, but he can speak for himself.

And- as to their internal disagreements (Ford and GM)
these too are due precisely the result of the
shortsighted corporate culture in which they chose to
perpetuate and wallow - this is a culture where the
bottom line, not the customer nor the environment, nor
the public's concerns, predominate.

In short, there may be only a small net disagreement
between my view and that of Lawrence, except that he
may be more forgiving of high level management at
these companies. 

And yes - it is too easy to be critical, or make
untested suggestions, from an armchair
perspective...  and that is one reason that in the
original posting, instead of only complaining, I chose
to introduce a concept which in fact, I know that they
have been exposed-to in the past, but have declined to
pursue.

How do I know this? Well, both companies own patents
which go part of the way there, and in addition I have
also in the past submitted RFPs to both companies,
which they declined, but for reasons which contradict
what their own patents and IP claim to be accurate. 

IOW there is a massive high level disconnect at both
companies, between management and what little creative
staff they can tolerate- and ample evidence of
Peter-Principle-type incompetence, deserving of
public scorn- even by 

RE: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC In Vitro Meat Consortium

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Many thanks for these comments, Jed. Very thought-provoking, and very
helpful.

I'll look further at ISCMNS, and ponder your points.

Cheers,
Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 3:16 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC In Vitro Meat Consortium

Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

What would inhibit the cold fusion 'community' from indeed organizing
itself
along these or comparable lines?

Actually, Bill Collis is probably doing the best anyone could over at
ISCMNS:

http://www.iscmns.org/index.htm

I would say these are the main reasons the field cannot be 
effectively organized:

Most researchers are old, tired, discouraged or dead.

Researchers have no money.

Many of them see no value in organizing.

Many feel that others in the field are doing low quality work or 
making mistakes in theory, and they do not wish to be associated with them.

Researchers tend to be rugged individualists who think they should 
tough it out and solve all problems by themselves.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC In Vitro Meat Consortium

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jed, interesting. I have been focusing on future organizational aspects of
cold fusion.

What would inhibit the cold fusion 'community' from indeed organizing itself
along these or comparable lines?

Cheers,
Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 9:57 AM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC In Vitro Meat Consortium

Somewhat off topic, I guess. See:

http://www.invitromeat.org/

I wish that people would organize cold fusion initiatives like this.


Establishment of the In Vitro Meat Consortium

The In Vitro Meat Consortium was established at a 
workshop held at the Norwegian University of Life 
Sciences June 15, 2007 (see meeting report). It 
is an international alliance of environmentally 
concerned scientists striving to facilitate the 
establishment of a large-scale process industry 
for the production of muscle tissue for human 
consumption through concerted RD efforts and 
attraction of funding to fuel these efforts.

The consortium is currently led by an interim 
steering committee with a specific mandate. The 
interim phase will end with the consortium’s 
first international symposium April 9-11, 2008, 
where (i) the consortium's organizational 
structure will be determined, (ii) the scientific 
and industrial challenges will be examined and 
defined, and (iii) strategies will be consolidate


The First In Vitro Meat Symposium

The first In Vitro Meat Consortium Symposium will 
be held at Ås, Norway, 9-11 April, 2008.

The two main goals of the symposium are to 
identify and discuss the key scientific 
challenges that need to be solved and to 
formalize an organizational structure capable of 
binding together the various efforts as well as 
facilitating the funding of necessary activities.

There is no conference fee, but we ask 
participants to cover their own travel and 
accommodation costs. The symposium provides a 
unique opportunity to make strategic contacts and 
to influence the direction of future work and 
activities. Indeed, we hope that one day it will 
be viewed as a historic meeting. . . .

RE: [Vo]:Tooo obvious for Detroit?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Mike, many thanks for this first-hand account of the practical environments
in which manufacturing takes place. One of my 'hats' is that of an
organizational performance specialist and I can say that your description
rings absolutely true. 

When embedded in complex systems, especially ones that have severe cost
constraints, the product of even the brightest brains can look pretty dumb
to those at one or two removes.

My sense is that everyone does the best they can -- all the time. It is
perhaps the greatest tragedy of mankind that we can see better ways of doing
things, but are stopped from pursuing them by the tired 'realities' of
money, competing priorities, and disagreements among ourselves.

Cheers,

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Mike Carrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 9:27 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Tooo obvious for Detroit?

I don't know if you guys have ever seriously encountered the realities of 
mass production and the mind-set that it *imposes*. For years I was involved

in mechanization-robotics projects at RCA, principally with the manufacture 
of TV picture tubes. This a complex chemical/mechanical process that at 
first appearance is nearly impossible, but they are made by the million. The

guys that manage the factory are not stupid and are in daily hand-to-hand 
combat with Mother Nature. If the yield at final inspection falls below 95%,

the entire enterprise is just an elaborate way to lose money.

I visited two plants in different parts of the country. A particular 
processing step was done differently in each plant, and the management, 
while aware of the alternative, swore that their way was best. Any novelty 
may reduce yield in unforeseen ways.

The Wankle engine has many appealing virtues, but I understand the seals are

a potential problem, requiring engine teardowns at 50,000 miles. Mazda used 
it in a sports car, and Yamaha in some motorcycles. People have been 
inventing clever IC engine configurations for many years and complaining 
about stupid management all the time. The ability to manufacture 
economically in quantity is a formidable requirement.

There are others -- microelectronics, LCD/plasma displays, VCR recorders --

which required years to evolved the manufacturing techniques to become 
reliable and economical.

It is all too easy for clueless theoreticians and developers to dismiss the 
skills of manufacturing engineering. I have lived in both worlds and 
acquired deep respect for the latter.

Mike Carrell
- Original Message - 
From: R C Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Tooo obvious for Detroit?


 Interesting thinking Jones. A proposed valveless, pistonless engine/motor 
 concept is being studied whereas the engine is ring shaped and drives a 
 cluster of embedded cavity discs positioned with the ring. The design 
 approach is to build a planetary transmission with an engine inside . 
 The transmission functions both for mechanical drive output assisted by 
 the huge torque output with the  large diameter ring primary mover and 
 also output electric power from the electric generating features.

 Designers have been stuck in the 18th century steam engine rut too long. 
 Their approach has been to build an engine and connect it to a 
 transmission. Radical new thinking suggests that we should be building a 
 transmission and fit an engine/electric generator inside. This thinking 
 would allow for the engine exhaust to serve a secondary turbine scavenging

 purpose. The unit assembly shape could  be an inclined pancake shaped 
 configuration and ... not use gears but slip discs within the planetary 
 reduction system.

 These radical new engine/motor concepts fit the theme of your post. New 
 engines must be designed for new fuels and not attempt to make new fuels

 fit present engine technology.
 Richard

 Jones  wrote,
The following suggestion, or a version of it, will be
 implemented by some perceptive auto manufacturer in
 the coming years.


 
 This Email has been scanned for all viruses by Medford Leas I.T. 
 Department. 

RE: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Jones, in fairness, your truncation does miss my point. Repost with the full
quotation beyond the '...' and I'll be glad to respond.

Lawrence


-Original Message-
From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 11:07 AM
To: vortex
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Tooo obvious for Detroit?

--- Lawrence de Bivort  wrote:
 
 My sense is that everyone does the best they can -
all the time. It is perhaps the greatest tragedy of
mankind that we can see better ways of doing things...


One the contrary, Lawrence, I strongly believe that
this is absolutely wrong... so wrong that it is not
even wrong !

...even through in fairness, let me say for the record
that I have truncated Lawrence's complete sentence
from his posting, in order to make a point that the
shorter sentiment which posted above (which is not
exactly what he meant) is perilously misguided, and
terribly counter-productive to the USA in the long
run.

One wonders if the those dedicated manufacturing
engineers at GM were doing the best they can when
they killed the EV-1 ? ... or when they went out of
their way to proclaim- when Toyota introduced the
Prius, that Detroit would never make that kind of
foolish mistake. Over and over, Lutz and Company (also
Ford) tried to denigrate Toyota's visionary effort as
little more than a money losing gimmick 

Don't get me wrong - it takes lots of manufacturing
engineers to make things work well and at the lowest
cost, but those engineers are often in that particular
job position because they are willing to forego the
cutting edge, or lack creativity, but are adapted best
to focus on the mundane, and the tried-and-true.

In reality - if you want to grow a company to its
maximum potential, especially in a competitive
industry, it takes both camps - the manufacturing
engineer and the visionary creative types, and in
equal measure, to succeed.

Toyota has that. Ford and GM, in contrast, are
companies which are dominated by manufacturing
engineers who are Peter-Principled into the required
creative or visionary slots, and in which they cannot
serve well.

The results take are now becoming evident. Toyota is
reaping the benefits of its balanced vision,
risk-taking and creativity. And its best factories, by
its own admission (interms of quality) are in the USA.

Therefore, it is my contention that it is not our
(USA) workers who are slacking, or our unions, but it
is our short-sighted upper level management, dominated
by too many accountants, MBAs and manufacturing
engineers and too few creative visionaries, who are
to blame. 

GM and Ford are sinking fast, and will be lucky to
survive the next decade, if they cannot rectify this
upper level management problem fast enough.

Jones

RE: [Vo]:Re: Compressed air car

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Many thanks.

-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 5:32 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Compressed air car

Here: http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Lawrence de Bivort [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:51 PM
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Re: Compressed air car


How do I find my way to the archives?

RE: [Vo]:Re: Compressed air car

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Many thanks, Michel. I was traveling and missed the discussion. The
introduction route that the article reports made me wonder whether this
might be 'too good to be true.'  How do I find my way to the archives?

Generally, to members of the list: 

On a much larger question, and not referring to the compressed air car, I
wonder if the energy-engine field lends itself more readily to exaggerated
(or even crack-pot) claims more than other fields?  

Is there something about it -- the universal and eternal desire for a
machine that will do anything we want to for nothing, the current worry over
energy sources, the sometimes counter-intuitive (to the lay-person)
mechanics of energy conversion, the relatively cheap entry cost for
newcomers to the field, the levels of interest and publicity that attend the
announcement of such claims, etc. -- that makes it vulnerable to successive
claims and disappointments?

Is there any particular cognitive or sociological key to the false or
exaggerated claims in the energy-engine field?

Your thoughts?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 6:15 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Compressed air car

Lawrence,

We discussed Guy Negre's CAT cars about a month ago, cf the archive look for
compressed air in the subject lines. IIRC we came to the conclusion that
out of the ~12kWh mechanical energy the 300 bar 300L compressed air tanks
can give you, about 9kWh must come from the environment (expanding air gets
cold, and heat energy is taken from the environment to bring it back to
ambient temperature and thus to its full original volume). In effect it' sa
heat pump mechanism. Also Robin judiciously noted that when you compress the
air at home, if you're clever enough to capture the equal valued (9kWh)
compression heat e.g. for domestic hot water, the 12kWh you will get only
cost you 3kWh!

The article you quote tells clearly how the auxiliary fuel is used for
longer trips: it heats the air even further to make it occupy even more
volume... I must admit that I am a bit surprised that this trick can be so
efficient that it yields 120 miles per gallon of fuel, if this is for real
the guy must have put his finger on the most efficient way to turn
combustion energy into mechanical energy!

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Lawrence de Bivort [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 9:32 PM
Subject: [Vo]:Compressed air car


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7241909.stm

An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car
that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just
350kg and could cost just over £2,500.

It will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into
the chassis.

The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes -
much quicker than a battery car.

Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an
on-board compressor will do the job.

For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a
fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on
the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.

The designers say on long journeys the car will do the equivalent of 120mpg.
In town, running on air, it will be cheaper than that.

SNIP

RE: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Good points. 

How is a small but powerful motion of something on a stationary platform
best converted into usable energy?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 4:13 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

Indeed, it doesn't seem obvious how to extract a lot of energy from the
scheme, but it might work with stationary devices (see my Ambient
temperature variations powered engine post).

Apart from mechanical energy (stressing a spring or lifting a weight), the
diurnal expansion/shrinking cycle scheme might also produce electrical
energy by pushing/pulling a piezoelectric membrane... I doubt this could
compete with Nanosolar type cheap photovoltaics, or even with classical
Seebeck type thermoelectric devices, but it might be worth investigating...
can thermal expansion or shrinking produce a significant force BTW? How
would one go about calculating this?

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Lawrence de Bivort [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:13 PM
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials


 But what use might this device be?
 
 Random 'walks' through the ocean, which seems to be what it is used for,
but
 beyond that?
 
 With only one knot of speed, no matter how it was guided, the thing if
 caught in the Gulf Stream in Florida it would end up off the coast of
 Portugal before its batteries required attention. That is, if it didn't go
 aground before then, which with a routine depth profile of 4,000 feet it
 surely would, to stay forever there on the ocean bed.
 
 Lawry
 
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:18 PM
 To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
 Subject: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials
 
 Good point. Having air inside must be indispensable anyway to offset the
 weight of the metal hull and batteries.
 
 Michel
 
 - Original Message - 
 From: Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
 Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 3:07 AM
 Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ambient temperature variations powered engine? (was Re:
 Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials)
 
 
 In reply to  Michel Jullian's message of Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:26:20 +0100:
 Hi,
 [snip]
Thanks Lawrence this makes more sense, the initial BBC article and the
WHOI
 press release stated, wrongly it now seems, that [the surface] heat is
used
 to push oil _from a bladder inside the hull to one outside_. If it's the
 other way round as the WP article below suggests (oil from outside to
inside
 at the surface), then the outside oil bladder needs not contain anything
but
 oil as I am sure Robin will agree.
 [snip]
 While I do agree strictly, consider that the oil is incompressible, and
 hence
 always takes up the same volume (almost) whether inside or outside. If the
 oil
 can be pumped into the device, then that means that there must be
something
 compressible inside the device, i.e. an air bladder. In short, it makes no
 difference where that bladder is, as long as it is part of the device.
 
 The reference I provided to the manufacturers web site, makes clear that
 there
 is at least one air bladder.
 
 Regards,
 
 Robin van Spaandonk
 
 The shrub is a plant.
 

RE: [Vo]:Re: Sez Here, Entire U.S. Could Blow Up At Any Moment

[Lawrence de Bivort]

blush  Oui, je l'avoue
Thank G-D I have rock-solid American credentials on my mother's side.

Does Michel suggest the same?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 8:59 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Sez Here, Entire U.S. Could Blow Up At Any Moment


LOL :) Are you of French ascendance as your name suggests BTW?

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Lawrence de Bivort [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 'Nick Palmer' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: RE: [Vo]:Sez Here, Entire U.S. Could Blow Up At Any Moment


 Just for the Record, MY G-D is cool with me and has promised me and my
 descendants for eternity all of France.
 I am allowed to bring up to 21
 friends with me, and have decided the best way to proceed is to sell these
 21 places to the highest bidder. What could be fairer?  I mean, what is
 Eternal Salvation worth to YOU?
 
 Just think of it: Eternal Salvation, great cheeses AND great skiing!
 And for those winners who don't like the French or having to learn French,
 my plan is simply to expel them entirely.

[Vo]:Compressed air car

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7241909.stm

An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car
that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just
350kg and could cost just over £2,500.

It will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into
the chassis.

The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes -
much quicker than a battery car.

Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an
on-board compressor will do the job.

For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a
fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on
the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.

The designers say on long journeys the car will do the equivalent of 120mpg.
In town, running on air, it will be cheaper than that.

SNIP

RE: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

[Lawrence de Bivort]

But what use might this device be?

Random 'walks' through the ocean, which seems to be what it is used for, but
beyond that?

With only one knot of speed, no matter how it was guided, the thing if
caught in the Gulf Stream in Florida it would end up off the coast of
Portugal before its batteries required attention. That is, if it didn't go
aground before then, which with a routine depth profile of 4,000 feet it
surely would, to stay forever there on the ocean bed.

Lawry



-Original Message-
From: Michel Jullian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:18 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

Good point. Having air inside must be indispensable anyway to offset the
weight of the metal hull and batteries.

Michel

- Original Message - 
From: Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 3:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Ambient temperature variations powered engine? (was Re:
Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials)


In reply to  Michel Jullian's message of Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:26:20 +0100:
Hi,
[snip]
Thanks Lawrence this makes more sense, the initial BBC article and the WHOI
press release stated, wrongly it now seems, that [the surface] heat is used
to push oil _from a bladder inside the hull to one outside_. If it's the
other way round as the WP article below suggests (oil from outside to inside
at the surface), then the outside oil bladder needs not contain anything but
oil as I am sure Robin will agree.
[snip]
While I do agree strictly, consider that the oil is incompressible, and
hence
always takes up the same volume (almost) whether inside or outside. If the
oil
can be pumped into the device, then that means that there must be something
compressible inside the device, i.e. an air bladder. In short, it makes no
difference where that bladder is, as long as it is part of the device.

The reference I provided to the manufacturers web site, makes clear that
there
is at least one air bladder.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

The shrub is a plant.

RE: [Vo]:J. Mueller: nuclear terrorism unlikely

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Maybe someone will invent a 'stupid-people' virus and do us all a favor.


-Original Message-
From: Rhong Dhong [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 7:33 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:J. Mueller: nuclear terrorism unlikely


--- Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:


 
 I agree whole heartedly. By far the most dangerous
 would be a lethal virus,
 rapidly spreading from person to person. Such a
 virus could easily wipe out a
 large percentage of the population


I don't know how far they've gotten with 'engineered'
viruses, but as a light-skinned, man, whose people are
mostly light-skinned, I would be afraid some
terroristic government might engineer a virus that
targeted light-skinned people.

Iranians are swarthy, aren't they?

Look at the bee population which has been decimated.
Is the virus that is destroying it something natural
or engineered? If they can do it to bees, they can do
it to us.

Of course, the light-skinned governments may be
thinking along similar lines, and we may end up with a
new balance of terror, with a doctrine of Mutually
Assured Destruction to keep things from getting out of
hand.

But it would be a lot more difficult to keep the lid
on such an arsenal than it is to keep nuclear weapons
under guard.

Depending on the advances in biology, such engineered
viruses may become the poor man's atomic bomb, and one
suicide 'bomber' would be all it takes to set things
off.

If even the possibility of an engineered virus is seen
as real, then it seems inevitable that governments
will work on creating such viruses, the thinking being
that if we don't have the weapon, maybe the terrorist
Iranians (or whoever the devil is) will have them and
we will be vulnerable.

If the first-world governments don't already have such
viruses, I'm sure they are working on making them. And
the Iranians and Israelis and Pakistanis won't be far
behind.

Stephen King's 'The Stand' will probably come true in
the next 10 years.


 


Be a better friend, newshound, and 
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ 

RE: [Vo]:Re: Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Here is a better explanation of how the glider works, from the Science
Notebook of today's the Washington Post:

Monday, February 11, 2008; Page A05

Motorless Sub Keeps Going

Scientists seeking to gather temperature, salinity and other data from the
oceans have long had two choices: steam out to sea on expensive research
ships or launch unmanned submersibles whose batteries typically die in a few
days.

Now engineers and oceanographers have successfully tested a novel unmanned
mini-sub that grabs energy from temperature differences in the ocean. In an
ongoing test, the thermal glider has been traveling, without a propeller,
for nearly two months.

We now believe the technology is stable enough to be used for science. It
is no longer just a prototype, said Dave Fratantoni of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod.

Made by Webb Research Corp. of Falmouth, Mass., the glider changes its
buoyancy by pumping fluid back and forth between bladders inside and outside
its hull. Near the surface, where waters are relatively warm, wax within a
chamber melts and expands, producing a pumplike force that can push water
between bladders. To ascend from frigid depths, fluid is pumped from an
inner bladder to one outside. The vessel's mass does not change, but its
volume increases, increasing buoyancy. Back at the surface, pumps are
recharged as wax melts and expands anew, even as fluid is drawn again to the
inner bladder, reducing volume and slowly sinking the vessel again.

Fixed fins convert the rising and falling into forward momentum, just as a
paper airplane's wings make it glide forward when dropped.

The six-foot craft travels about 1 mph, repeatedly bobbing up and then
sinking to 4,000 feet as it goes, fueled by a temperature differential of
about 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Instruments that can run on batteries for
months gather data from the ocean and transmit to satellites with each
surfacing.

One goal is to study climate change. And because the glider has no motor,
Fratantoni said, it is ideal for underwater acoustic studies.

-- Rick Weiss

RE: [Vo]:J. Mueller: nuclear terrorism unlikely

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Having looked at quite a few 'terrorist threat' scenarios from technical and
political PoVs, my sense is that the 'single most serious threat to the
national security of the United States' is the election of another US
president who is both out of touch with international realities and
susceptible to the manipulation of internal lobbying groups.

But, to the narrow point, a 'terrorist' atomic bomb is not at all the most
threatening of the weapons that COULD be developed and used against the US.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 3:50 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:J. Mueller: nuclear terrorism unlikely

See:

http://polisci.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/APSACHGO.PDF

ABSTRACT: A terrorist atomic bomb is commonly held to be the single 
most serious threat to the national security of the United States. 
Assessed in appropriate context, that could actually be seen to be a 
rather cheering conclusion because the likelihood that a terrorist 
group will come up with an atomic bomb seems to be vanishingly small. 
Moreover, the degree to which al-Qaeda--the chief demon group and one 
of the few terrorist groups to see value in striking the United 
States--has sought, or is capable of, obtaining such a weapon seems 
to have been substantially exaggerated.

[Vo]:Ocean glider uses ocean heat differentials

[Lawrence de Bivort]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7234544.stm

The heat differentials expand or constrict wax, which provides energy for
propulsion.

Battery power needed to sensors and communications.


Lawrence

RE: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Agreed, Jed.

We are, as a species, entering an age of globalized systems, and I think
tackling them will require a new set of linguistic skills. The language we
use in politics and policy today is still based on national models of human
organization -- one might almost say, tribal. My guess is that our language
has led us into the present pickle, and that only linguistic improvements --
and radial ones at that -- will enable us to resolve the problems we have
created for ourselves.

Cheers,
Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 5:53 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore

R.C.Macaulay wrote:

At some point in time it becomes necessary to  recognize  some 
problems have no solution tasks and simply turn your head in a 
stance of inevitiability. Al Gore has profited by profiling global 
warming and Bono the same with Africa but neither have a solution.

Africa is imploding in on itself, with any attempt to help being 
frustrated. Climate changes occur but any attempt to modify climate 
is futile. All the feeding of guilt will not solve insoluable problems.

As I expect everyone here knows, telling me things like that are like 
waving red meat at a hungry lion. Frankly, such attitudes are 
anathema to the spirit of science, technology, and America -- three 
things I hold dear. Of course I acknowledge that people are capable 
of screwing things up. Of course I know that we might destroy 
ourselves and the ecology. Heck, we may destroy the world in an hour 
with thermonuclear bombs. And it goes without saying that there are 
some potential natural disasters we cannot cope with no matter what, 
such as the Sun going nova, and there may be irredeemable man-made 
disasters such as CO2 released from permafrost -- but there isn't 
yet, as far as I know.

As things now stand, global warming and especially the situation in 
Africa are entirely our fault, and our problem, and I am certain -- 
beyond any doubt -- that we have the power to fix these problems. As 
John F. Kennedy said:

Our problems are manmade - therefore, they can be solved by man. And 
man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond 
human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly 
unsolvable - and we believe they can do it again.

Anyone who doubts that is betting against the tide of history. You 
are betting against human resilience which has survived incredible 
trials for millions of years as we came through the evolutionary 
furnace as Florman called it. And you are forgetting that we have 
transformed the whole face of the earth and we can do it again, and 
again; we have untold energy at our fingertips; the bounty of the 
whole solar system just outside our reach; and we are surrounded with 
everyday technology that people even 150 years ago would have found 
indistinguishable from magic. How can anyone doubt that we have the 
power to forestall global warming, or bring properity to the millions 
of people in Africa?!? Strictly in terms of material resources and 
physical energy, we could easily create as much wealth for all 6 
billion people as only a first-world millionaire enjoys today. The 
only thing stopping us from doing this is widespread ignorance and 
the will to act.

Are there food shortages? We could grow enough food for everyone on 
earth in an area the size of Atlanta. Is there not enough meat? In 
the last few years, my friends at NewHarvest.com have brought the 
cost of cultivated meat (meat grown in vitro) down from $100,000 to a 
few thousand dollars per kilogram. It is just a matter of time before 
meat will be as cheap as tofu, and as clean and easy to make. Do 
people in Africa lack capital? Look at what the Grameen Bank has
accomplished.

No technically educated person should claim these problems cannot be 
solved! There are only two difficulties: 1. Deciding which of the 
many solutions is most likely to work, at the lowest cost. 2. Pushing 
aside the ignorant naysayers and greedy fools who say we can't solve 
the problems and we should just give up.

Here is what we must believe and act upon, right up until the last 
member of our species goes extinct. In October 1941, after 10 months 
of war, Winston Churchill said:

. . . surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: 
never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in 
nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to 
convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never 
yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Regarding our special predicament: I don't care if Albert Gore and 
100 million scientists world-wide refuse to look at cold fusion, or 
ridicule it, or promote crazy ideas such as ethanol instead. I don't 
care about the apparently overwhelming might of Nature or the DoE. 
If we try hard enough, and we are 

RE: [Vo]:OT: Financial Terrorism?

[Lawrence de Bivort]

It would be quite a mistake to assume that terrorists are likely to be
Muslim, or that Muslims are likely to be terrorists. 

It is true that this is what many Americans believe, and that they have been
urged on in this misimpression by some who wish Muslims poorly, so let us be
doubly vigilant to avoid these cognitive traps.

The Internet is a purveyor of much information -- and much misinformation
and disinformation. 

Cheers,
Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jones Beene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 5:32 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:OT: Financial Terrorism?

Apparently, even though the Bin Laden option trades went flat 6 months 
ago, that huge (paper) loss did not deter a planned second-chance effort 
to recoup the initial loss, and create havoc in the Western economies.

 From a Blogger:
http://11amdesign.com/wordpress/?p=285

The Federal Reserve's biggest emergency interest rate cut in more than 
two decades is sparking debate as to why they slashed interest rates... 
  the first cut between regularly scheduled meetings since September 2001.

Possible Rationale (still trying to verify the details below):

Well, following hot on the footsteps of the SocGen announcement is the 
newly discovered warning -- from other sources than SocGen -- that a 
massive level of put option contracts had been placed recently. This 
time it was done differently than last Fall, so as to avoid early 
detection, as happened 6 months ago.

These options are betting that the US stock markets will crash by March 
21st. Reportedly, these are not NYSE but instead NASDAQ-100 index 
options placed through () contracts. However, crashing the smaller 
exchange would likely have a domino effect on the NYSE.

This seems to be, for all purposes, somewhat of a renewed continuation 
of the so-called 'Bin Laden' trades of last Fall. Iran may be involved 
this time. There are SocGen links to Iran.

However, apparently the Fed/SEC is wise to this scheme, and will step in 
again if necessary. (we hope)

This is being called attempted financial terrorism.

How they got a well-known bank involved in the first place, is anyone's 
guess. It will be interesting to find out if Kerviel has Arab (or 
Iranian) contacts, or has recently converted to Islam.

Currently, the March (out of the money) put contacts (100 shares each) 
is 645,250 and outweigh the March (in the money) call contacts by 
559,343 contacts, well over half a million contract or 56 billion shares 
worth ... signaling a huge imbalance, which was estimated to be able to 
crash the NASDAQ market by 30% to 40% from it current level, unless a 
deep-pocket rescue effort steps-in fist. How many of these came through 
SocGen is not known.

This may very well represent (possibly) part of an expected profit that 
the Kerviel conspiracy would have reaped, had not they not been caught 
ahead of time. The havoc that followed would be difficult to estimate.

This story is far from over, and until March 21 when these put options 
expire, the economies of the USA and Europe are still at great risk.

The good news is that if the US SEC decides to meet the risk head-on, 
that kind of intervention will finally bankrupt the Bin Laden family 
empire, and that of participating Arab enemies, who must have been 
partners in this kind of massively coordinated financial terrorism.

Jones

RE: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Interesting. How is it inadequate now? How do you think it should be
reformed?

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: Harry Veeder [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 9:31 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore

The UN security council needs to be reformed for starters.

Harry

On 28/1/2008 6:06 PM, Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

 Agreed, Jed.
 
 We are, as a species, entering an age of globalized systems, and I think
 tackling them will require a new set of linguistic skills. The language we
 use in politics and policy today is still based on national models of
human
 organization -- one might almost say, tribal. My guess is that our
language
 has led us into the present pickle, and that only linguistic improvements
--
 and radial ones at that -- will enable us to resolve the problems we have
 created for ourselves.
 
 Cheers,
 Lawrence
 
 -Original Message-
 From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 5:53 PM
 To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
 Subject: Re: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al
Gore
 
 R.C.Macaulay wrote:
 
 At some point in time it becomes necessary to  recognize  some
 problems have no solution tasks and simply turn your head in a
 stance of inevitiability. Al Gore has profited by profiling global
 warming and Bono the same with Africa but neither have a solution.
 
 Africa is imploding in on itself, with any attempt to help being
 frustrated. Climate changes occur but any attempt to modify climate
 is futile. All the feeding of guilt will not solve insoluable problems.
 
 As I expect everyone here knows, telling me things like that are like
 waving red meat at a hungry lion. Frankly, such attitudes are
 anathema to the spirit of science, technology, and America -- three
 things I hold dear. Of course I acknowledge that people are capable
 of screwing things up. Of course I know that we might destroy
 ourselves and the ecology. Heck, we may destroy the world in an hour
 with thermonuclear bombs. And it goes without saying that there are
 some potential natural disasters we cannot cope with no matter what,
 such as the Sun going nova, and there may be irredeemable man-made
 disasters such as CO2 released from permafrost -- but there isn't
 yet, as far as I know.
 
 As things now stand, global warming and especially the situation in
 Africa are entirely our fault, and our problem, and I am certain --
 beyond any doubt -- that we have the power to fix these problems. As
 John F. Kennedy said:
 
 Our problems are manmade - therefore, they can be solved by man. And
 man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond
 human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly
 unsolvable - and we believe they can do it again.
 
 Anyone who doubts that is betting against the tide of history. You
 are betting against human resilience which has survived incredible
 trials for millions of years as we came through the evolutionary
 furnace as Florman called it. And you are forgetting that we have
 transformed the whole face of the earth and we can do it again, and
 again; we have untold energy at our fingertips; the bounty of the
 whole solar system just outside our reach; and we are surrounded with
 everyday technology that people even 150 years ago would have found
 indistinguishable from magic. How can anyone doubt that we have the
 power to forestall global warming, or bring properity to the millions
 of people in Africa?!? Strictly in terms of material resources and
 physical energy, we could easily create as much wealth for all 6
 billion people as only a first-world millionaire enjoys today. The
 only thing stopping us from doing this is widespread ignorance and
 the will to act.
 
 Are there food shortages? We could grow enough food for everyone on
 earth in an area the size of Atlanta. Is there not enough meat? In
 the last few years, my friends at NewHarvest.com have brought the
 cost of cultivated meat (meat grown in vitro) down from $100,000 to a
 few thousand dollars per kilogram. It is just a matter of time before
 meat will be as cheap as tofu, and as clean and easy to make. Do
 people in Africa lack capital? Look at what the Grameen Bank has
 accomplished.
 
 No technically educated person should claim these problems cannot be
 solved! There are only two difficulties: 1. Deciding which of the
 many solutions is most likely to work, at the lowest cost. 2. Pushing
 aside the ignorant naysayers and greedy fools who say we can't solve
 the problems and we should just give up.
 
 Here is what we must believe and act upon, right up until the last
 member of our species goes extinct. In October 1941, after 10 months
 of war, Winston Churchill said:
 
 . . . surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson:
 never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in
 nothing, great or small, large or petty

RE: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore

[Lawrence de Bivort]

I understand there are considerable sweet water aquifers under large
portions of the Sahara.

Lawrence

-Original Message-
From: thomas malloy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 1:55 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared: Al Gore


 On 1/28/08, *Harry Veeder* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 wrote:

 On 28/1/2008 8:28 AM, Jeff Fink wrote:
 
  I saw a science show on Saturday that said global warming will
 cause the sahara to get green again, and then they called that a
 bad thing!  How can that be bad if it was once green?
  Let  it go.  Adapt!

 Adapt or die! ;-)

Turning the Sahara into farm land sounds great to me! Now if I can just 
find a plan for a desalinator that is powered by the ZPE.


--- http://USFamily.Net/dialup.html - $8.25/mo! --
http://www.usfamily.net/dsl.html - $19.99/mo! ---

RE: [Norton AntiSpam] RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

[Lawrence de Bivort]

It is the subordination of a principle (the Constitution) that represents
everyone (all the citizens) for a principle (God's law) that represents only
a portion of the whole (those who believe in that God).

 

Cheers,

Lawrence

 

 

  _  

From: Harry Veeder [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 12:23 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

 


- Original Message - 

From: Lawrence de Bivort [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

Date: Friday, January 18, 2008 1:32 pm 

Subject: RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee 

 Cool, if he means MY god! Not sure I'd trust his, whoever he is 
 referringto. 
 
 Do you have a source, Jed? 
 
 Lawrence 
 
 
 
 -Original Message- 
 From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 1:12 PM 
 To: vortex-L@eskimo.com 
 Subject: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee 
 
 Sorry to introduce off-topic politics, but here is an appalling 
 quote 
 from Mike Huckabee of the American Taliban: 
 
 I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the 
 Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the 
 Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living 
 god. 
 And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's 
 in 
 God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it 
 line! s 
 

Is it the God reference or the amendment reference that disturbs you?

Harry

 


 

 

RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

[Lawrence de Bivort]

grin

I'll believe it when he says 'La illah allah, wa Muhammad arrasul allah

Got the url from leaking pen:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.
html

I'll go slog through the snow for my Washington Post.

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 3:42 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

Lawrence de Bivort wrote:

Cool, if he means MY god! Not sure I'd trust his, whoever he is referring

I think he means the Koran.


Do you have a source, Jed?

The Washington Post. But it is all over the Internet by now. Here is 
a site with a video of Huckabee saying it:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.
html

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Cool, if he means MY god! Not sure I'd trust his, whoever he is referring
to.

Do you have a source, Jed?

Lawrence



-Original Message-
From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 1:12 PM
To: vortex-L@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:WAY OFF TOPIC Quote from Huckabee

Sorry to introduce off-topic politics, but here is an appalling quote 
from Mike Huckabee of the American Taliban:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the 
Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the 
Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. 
And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in 
God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines 
up with some contemporary view.

At least we know where the man stands.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:The OC Magnetic Perpetual Motion Machine

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Does the force of a magnet 'run down' as it is used? That is, does it lose
internal alignment as a result of its countering interaction with other
magnetic bodies?

Lawry



-Original Message-
From: Terry Blanton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 9:08 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:The OC Magnetic Perpetual Motion Machine

FWIW, Al is reporting over 7 hours of continuous run of his magnetic
motor over in the Steorn forum.  Replications are close to
realization.

Terry

RE: [VO]: OT: New cities of the world

[Lawrence de Bivort]

 

The children of Joseph, Judah and Esau

Can you say more about what you mean, Richard?

Cheers,

Lawry

 

  _  

From: R.C.Macaulay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 9:50 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [VO]: OT: New cities of the world

 

Howdy Vorts,

 

Family time chat during the holidays led to a discussion regarding
opportunities for young people and I sugested our grandchildren may do best
by studying the new cities that will emerge in the world.

They asked for an example and I mentioned  PERTH Australia as an example of
having most of the prerequisites. Western Australia is on the move with
mineral mining industries. One of the sleeper sides to this area is the
offshore potential both for petroleum as well as seabed mining and seafood
hatchery production

 

There are certain other parts of the world that have this potential if you
look ahead some 25 years. I was asked why I did NOT mention a single city in
the USA and my answer was our government has been totally corrupted with
little or no structure presently available for rebalancing because of the
entrenched lobbyist system of funding political candidates.

 I was asked what I thought happened to create this situation and I
responded the imbalance of the children of Joseph, Judah and Esau. HMMM

 

Richard

 

 

image001.gif

RE: [Vo]:OT: Culture and the evolving human

[Lawrence de Bivort]

There have been many studies of the relationship between cultural attributes
and economic or technological 'progress.'  I think several things can be
said about this that these studies tend to miss:

 

1.  As I see it, 'Progress' is itself a culturally defined notion. What
seems like progress in one culture may be viewed as societal
self-destruction in another. So if we are to use the term usefully, we will
have to define what we mean by 'progress'.

 

2.  Culture, like organizations, individuals, or societies, can be
viewed as a human system. That is, it will have a set of basic functions
taking place within a structure that links its different components. (Jim
Miller LIVING SYSTEMS THEORY and Stafford Beer VIABLE SYSTEMS MODEL suggest
ways to create models of these systemic functions and structures.) 

 

Human systems go beyond others in the sense that human systems involve
values, hopes for the future, fears, etc. The sum of these things is what we
call 'culture'. (I am not using the term in the sense of the arts, theater,
music, etc.) 'Progress', then would be a value that a society might or might
not place great emphasis on. 

 

3.  In the West and in Europe and the US in particular, notions of
progress have become dominated by the notion of wealth and acquisition and
so we embrace technology and the exploitation of natural resources as the
means and fuel for such economically-defined progress. But in many other
cultures, 'progress' is seen differently, and the West's definition is
viewed with emotions and analyses that range form envy, to horror, to
repudiation, to boredom. 

 

4.  Yes, the West is viewed as being in the ascendancy on a
technological, military, and wealth-generation sense. But several things may
be reversing this, including, the growing relative financial weakness of the
West, the emerging critique of seduction-and-status based consumerism, our
growing dependency on outsourcing, the growing military and medical budgets
- all of which can be seen as a form of buffering other dysfunctionalities
built into 'Western culture'.  It is not hard to imagine several other
cultures competing to replace the West's as the dominating one, along with
their various paradigms of what 'progress' means.

 

It would be a silly mistake, I think, to think that the West has found all
the answers and will retain its ascendancy indefinitely.  This is certainly
not the lesson of history, which has seen the ascendant culture shift among
the Middle East, Asia, Europe and less often, the Americas and Africa.

 

5.  It would seem to me that the only strategy that will assist a
culture in remaining fresh and vibrant and relevant generally to the
opportunities that the evolution of the world offers is one that is
intensely curious about other cultures, able to appreciate their genuine
strengths and weaknesses, and to learn form them. A successful culture must
then know how to routinely transform itself functionally and structurally
based upon a wise and expanded definition of culture and values.

 

6.  So perhaps the most viable cultures today will prove to be those
that are dissatisfied with themselves, able to learn and to change, and
determined to pursue the potential for creating a good society that lies
within their culture.

 

Lawrence

 

  _  

From: Jeff Fink [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 11:37 AM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: RE: [Vo]:OT: Culture and the evolving human 

 

Is it culture that allowed western Europe/America to develop such incredible
technology while all previous insipient techno societies such as China and
Egypt failed to mature technically?  I tend to think that freedom and the
rise of a middle class are essential.  There must be time and resources
available to large groups of people in order to amass great amounts of
knowledge through experimentation.  I don't think any previous civilizations
had those ingredients.

 

Jeff

 

  _  

From: R.C.Macaulay [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 8:38 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: [Vo]:OT: Culture and the evolving human 

 

Been reading this thread with interest at the views expressed. Anyone care
to expound on the impact of another component  CULTURE.

 What role does culture play in the grand scheme of things?

 

Richard


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9:15 AM



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RE: [Vo]: OT: Poetic N Justice

[Lawrence de Bivort]

Agreed. Also salient is the reality that different groups within 'racial'
categories seem to exhibit quite different general levels of societal
'intelligence'. Having said that, we are left with the task of developing a
metric of societal intelligence, and then assessing the actual performance
of different groups against it, to see if 'race' makes a difference.

I wonder if I am off the mark in guessing that differences between
individuals in terms of primal/DNA intelligence are much greater than the
differences among groups, and that probably any individual from any group
can easily outshine the average intelligence levels of a large unselected
group?



-Original Message-
From: Edmund Storms [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:10 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]: OT: Poetic N Justice

As usual, the debate about which race is smarter misses the important 
issue. The so called smarts of humans is made of different features. 
Some people are smart at music, others are good at math, some are poor 
spellers but can write well. In other words, we each have many ways we 
are smart and dumb at the same time. Each race was genetically created 
under different conditions. These conditions generated the obvious 
characteristics, but they also caused the race, on average, to be smart 
in different ways from the other races. As a result, each race had the 
kind of talent needed to survive in its own birthing environment. When a 
person moves from this environment into a different one, the smarts that 
were useful may no longer apply. As a result, the person may not look as 
smart to other people in the new environment. Fortunately, we all can 
learn and can make up for some of this basic deficiency. The situation 
says nothing about which race is superior. It means only that all races 
were superior in the environment that created them. We, as individuals, 
only have to make the best of this situation when our environment 
changes. We can see the consequence of this effect in the US at the 
present time, when a significant number of people support obviously bad 
policy for really dumb reasons. It would be interesting to know where 
and why these genes were created.

Ed

Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:

 
 
 Jones Beene wrote:
 
 Jeff Fink wrote:

 I read somewhere a long time ago that the offspring of interracial 
 unions
 are, in general, bigger healthier and smarter than pure breds.  
 Does any
 one know the source of that, or if it has been proven.


 It's called Heterosis or more simply hybrid vigor ... if it were 
 not true in the plant world, most of us would be starving today.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor

 There are observers who will come close to repeating Watson's logical 
 error with the premise that the world dominance of the USA is based on 
 intellectual vigor;
 
 
 Let's not forget that the entire human race has a microscopic fraction 
 of the genetic diversity found in almost every other species (cheetahs 
 being one notable exception).  The races may look very different to 
 *us*, as humans (with our powerful evolved-in ability to distinguish 
 between individual humans), but from the point of view of the genome 
 we're all very similar.
 
 It's not at all clear that there's enough genetic diversity in humanity 
 to produce any kind of interesting hybrid vigor effect, regardless of 
 what representatives are chosen.
 
 There are also very few purebred humans, on any continent, and 
 certainly not anywhere on mainland Europe, where there's been trade with 
 the four corners of the earth for centuries out of mind.
 
 

RE: [VO]: Economic models

[Lawrence de Bivort]

 

Eric Beinhocker examines a new model for economics in THE ORIGIN OF WEALTH:
The Radical Remaking of Economics and What It Means for Business and
Society. Pretty provocative and it may answer Richard's criterion.

Good weekend, all.

 

 

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