Schools are removing analogue clocks from exam halls as teenagers 'cannot tell the time'

What a stupid assumption you made there. I'm the least "hostile to creativity" person there is. There's enough randomness within the machine to not need an outside source of meaning, is all.

No, mine are $25 no-name generics. They work fine.

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hey actually have some idea what they are talking about when they spout off about other fields they know little about.

Some of them have. I was doing a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry when I got int erested in electronics, and managed to finish it. Winfield Hill was working on a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics when he got interested in electronics, and moved over to a graduate degree in electronics rather than finishing the Ph .D.

But John Larkin posts nonsense about a lot of subjects - his denialist-prop aganda driven opinions about climate change reflect an impressive level of guillible ignorance

"Penrose (and his followers, like Paul Davies) are merely wishful thinkers at best, cranks at worst."

Sounds pretty hostile to me.

In the civil twilight the sun is from 0 to 6 degrees below the horizon, during which you can move around without additional lights.

In the tropics, the sun drops vertically 15 degrees each hour.Half an hour before sunset, the sun is 8 degrees above horizon and after sunset the civil twilight lasts 22 minutes.

At higher latitudes, the sun sets at a lower angle and hence the civil twilight takes typically about 45 minutes.

In the winter, the civil twilight last about 45 minus, i.e. twice the time than in the tropics.

However, above about 60 N in the summer, there is a civil timeout all night long from sunset to sunrise. Thus going from summer to winter, the twilight period is reduced, but never approach tropical figures.

Of course, above the Arctic circle in the summer, the sun doesn't set for weeks o months.

There's a distinction between "creativity" and hand-waving nonsense. John Larkin might be the person least likely to be able to make this distinction accurately, but it is a real difference, even if John Larkin is poorly equipped to detect it.

A friend of mine has a saying for this....

"If it floats, flies, or f^cks.... RENT it!" (He's divorced twice.)

Nature *doesn't* ignore quantum superposition.

It is probably no coincidence that DNA and RNA have 4 distinct bases since that is the quantum computing equivalent of binary - you get to match 1 out of 4 in a single quantum mechanical if comparison test.

It is also probably no coincidence that the amino acids used in life closely match the theoretical limit for three nested QM comparisons.

Likewise there are conjectures that a part of the efficiency of photosynthesis electron transport relies on quantum superposition. This is plausible although still controversial at the present time.

Here is a popular level article about the subject from a few years back about the ideas by Jim Al-Khalili and Joejohn McFaddon.

Observations of that computation method suggest that it is actually a pulse based system with very good local feedback pattern matching.

It might, but until we have exhausted all other possibilities invoking quantum mysticism for everything so complicated that we don't yet understand it is no better than a "Just so story".

Occam's razor favours the simplest solution that is consistent with the observations - it isn't always right as a heuristic but it is a good way to avoid incorporating unnecessary complexity.

We can't prove it which isn't quite the same thing. It is even more tricky for deuterium or helium which has both neutrons and protons.

But we are limited by the mathematical models that we have. Physics attempts to describe nature and QCD/QED involves a lot of perturbation and renormalisation tricks that somehow work numerically but make pure mathematicians shudder. Plenty of theoretical physics methods do that...

It is pretty much certain that eventually a more complete theory will unify all the forces of nature and contain all of our present ones as weak field limiting cases. Unless and until that happens we are stuck with the models that we have at present and some work arounds for the things that we cannot actually prove within that framework.

Invoking quantum magyck for every hard problems adds nothing to the discussion. I fully expect that self awareness and human level intelligence will be an emergent property of any sufficiently complex network of computational elements. It may well be that such a network will be built in the next few decades. We are getting closer.

No one ever expected Go to be solved by a machine and yet now it is.

That's not a clock, it's a clock face blank, intended for someone to draw t he hands showing the time.

Not being able to tell the time of day is pathetic no matter how you look a t it. The morons should also know how to read Roman numerals. God only know s how you would butcher the digital coo coo clock.

I use only atomic clocks at home. I don't care how they display the time ju st so long as the seconds counter is showing. I do keep one old analog move ment for precisely the reason you don't like it, the metronome effect, whic h I use to practice measuring short intervals when no clock is available.

We don't seem to have progressed very far in this respect over the last half century. When I think back about what those guys theorising in the mid 1800s were able to come up with without any of the fancy equipment we have today it just blows me away. How they were able to figure out the structure of benzene and cyclohexane and their appropriate conformations/ Dewar structures before even Thompson's discovery of the electron. Simply amazing! Maybe they were smarter in terms of pure intelligence than we are today; better diets or something. :-/

What, you mean like Harbor Freight type stuff? They are proper DIAL calipers, though - not digital read-out ones?

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are today; better diets or something. :-/ "

I think it is lack of laziness. Mental laziness. Teaching via repitition ad nauseum, politically correct curricula, liberal indoctrination. And the ta xpayers pay for that. Not a friend of mine. his kids were not going to publ ic school AT ANY COST. We would have robbed banks if necessary. Luckily it didn't come to that and both of them did exceptionally well. One with sever al degrees and qualified for so many things he will never have to worry abo ut employment, and the other just got her (registered) nursing license (the y now require a degree) at 25 years old. He married a professional Woman wh o does not need his money and just had him a son. She is about to marry a v ery employed mathematician.

I support every tax free penny that guy ever made.

mid 1800s were able to come up with without any of the fancy equipment we h ave today it just blows me away"

Well they didn't go to today's public schools. In fact some of them never w ent to school, instead becoming an apprentice of some sort. And you had to work to get that. Just like academic requirements at the good schools every where that are worth a shit, the master had to be shown the potential of th e prospective student. And there were obviously no discipline problems, the student wanted to be there are valued the education he was getting. It was not mandatory mass production of drones like we have today but even that's gone, now they can't do anything. Actual academia was similarly picky abou t student. The ones who could not hack it got left behind so that those who could, could. And that is how it should be. EARN your education, then it h as value to you.

Yes. HF sells dial calipers. That's where I got my fractional-inch calipers. they work like a champ!

onsdag den 9. maj 2018 kl. 05.27.00 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

and if you ask a machinist they'll tell you that calipers are not for precision measurements

All depends what tolerances you have to work to.

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I buy practically everything from Amazon: scope probes, chocolate, pogo pins, proto adapters, cookies, batteries, books, heat sinks, car parts, tools, kitchen stuff.

Dial, not digital.

Actually, our production manager is an excellent machinist, and he mostly uses calipers. We build electronics, and calipers are plenty good enough.

torsdag den 10. maj 2018 kl. 02.39.54 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

digital is nice because it can do relative