do you know science?

A single cup percolator????

Every single-cup arrangement I've seen has been drip.

Cheers! Rich

....

on,

...

Well, we usually call it the "Lorentz" Contraction, but nevermind that. Androcles thinks he has shown that SR predicts the Einstein Expansion, when AE had thought to deduce the Lorentz Contraction.

He cannot grasp that the "moving" rod is _at rest_ with respect to the "moving" coordinates.

I rest my case.

Uncle Ben

Simple. A plate at the bottom of the can catches water and steam when the water starts boiling, pressing the lighter mixture of water and steam up a pipe, and into the coffee grinds basket. The water passes the coffee, and goes back down. Most people would let this circular process go on too long, and that coffee tasted like shit. They solved that problem with lots of milk and sugar. Things became actually funny, when the heat was set too high. Then the water spout actually blew off the lid........

Didn't know they made septic tank drainage, ScatMan.

Perhaps. I've never had Circle K, but it must beat your septic tank drainage, DimBulb.

....

... Well, we usually call it the "Lorentz" Contraction, but nevermind that. ============================================== ... Bonehead believes with all of his desiccated neuron in Einstein Expansion yet the f****it with his head up his arse snips what his tin god says to hide from the truth.

"Let there be given a stationary rigid rod; and let its length be L as measured by a measuring-rod which is also stationary. We now imagine the axis of the rod lying along the axis of x of the stationary system of co-ordinates, and that a uniform motion of parallel translation with velocity v along the axis of x in the direction of increasing x is then imparted to the rod. We now inquire as to the length of the moving rod" -- Einstein "The length to be discovered by the operation (b) we will call ``the length of the (moving) rod in the stationary system.''"-- Einstein

"This we shall determine on the basis of our two principles, and we shall find that it differs from L." -- Einstein.

AND THE ANSWER IS...

"xi = (x-vt)/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)" -- Einstein.

Yep, xi differs from L, Greek letters differ from Roman letters.

In agreement with experience we further assume the deranged babbling incompetent cretin couldn't answer his own inquiry, he was too stupid to realise xi is greater than L when he wrote 'for v=c all moving objects--viewed from the "stationary'' system--shrivel up into plane figures', whereas his own equation shows they stretch to infinity... sqrt(1-c^2/c^2) = 0.

Right, but most will say "Of course you pull yourself down, it's OBVIOUS!" And if he trains kung fu: "I learned it from my teacher, who studied for 30 years, who learned from his teacher, who studied for 40 years, you think YOU know better than THEM?"

-- Rich

The USA is *big*. There's lots of land in most places, so things spread out. That leads to long commutes, long shopping trips, and less walking in most places. Some dense cities have more european/japanese lifestyles, namely public transit, more walking, lots of small shops close together... Manhattan and San Francisco for example.

Public transit and walking don't make as much sense in a big, spread-out suburban landscape.

That said, the most obese people live in the southeast, the leanest in the west.

As noted, the USA is big, and not monolithic in its behavior.

In sci.skeptic John Larkin wrote: ...

One of the tools in the science toolkit -- we may ignore internal details to get an overall view.

-- [Moral: stay in school]

** For Christ's sake - go learn some basic physics, d*****ad. You are totally BESOTTED with your stupid, wrong math. -- "Phil Allison" , 9 Jan 2011 14:24 +1100

I suppose there's no limit on the number of things you don't need to understand.

John

You don't get to understand anything much if you insist on handling the minutea. That's science for you.

--
[Debunking SR?]
The only problem is you can't do arithmetic,
Einstein's calculation is tau = t * sqrt(1-v^2/c^2),
ref: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/figures/img61.gif
2.2usec  * sqrt(1-0.999^2) =  0.098362 usec [OOPS!]
and NOT the measured 64 usec.
  -- "Androcles" , 30 Dec 2010 10:53:02 -0000

Not looking inside is cargo-cult science. There's actually a lot of that going around these days. It shows up as javascript programmers who don't actually understand how a computer works, or macroeconomists who have never held a real job.

How does an ipod work? Well, you just push these buttons...

Does the thermodynamics of gasses need to bother its pretty head with the minutea of "molecules"? Where do you draw the line of not looking inside a process?

Why are Americans fat? Don't you think the causalities are easier to understand if you separate the fat ones from the skinny ones, and see what they do differently?

John

...

Not looking inside allows us to compare averages, e.g. The alternative is saying things like (to paraphrase the tautology) "the variance of this sample is non-zero".

Maybe this is the diff between science and engineering.

--- [Seems like "f****it" has never seen HTML before]. Why have you posted binaries to a text-only newsgroup, f*ck wit? Would you like to see how it appears in a compliant newsreader, which all of the usenet with IQs beyond single digits use? It appears as above in the quoted text - NO IMAGES AT ALL! ROTFL -- Gillard Lies , 18 Feb 2011 22:57 -0800 (PST)

Engineers don't have to understand things; we only have to make it work. So we only look inside a process as much as we need to.

I thought scientists were the ones who try to understand why things work. Which is why they go from molecules to atoms to particles to quarks to strings, even though the last couple of steps may have no practical use.

Getting back to the fat thing, don't you think the regional variations in obesity are useful in understanding obesity? And wouldn't study of individual's weights and activities be even more useful? Or is data averaged over an entire country all you need to understand things?

John

...

I liked your example of "how does an ipod work" as an example of a science question.

No wonder you're big on "cargo cult science". I've always seen Feynman's warnings are directed at engineering just as much as psychology. :)

--
[Tautology 101:]
As noted, the USA is big, and not monolithic in its behavior.
-- John Larkin , 27 Feb 2011 15:13
-0800

Yeah, and Superman's X-ray vision can tell that Lois Lane's underpants are pink. ;-D

Cheers! Rich

I suspect taking virtually no exercise at all plays its part. It is funny to see Americans at small European hotels faced with the fact that there is no elevator and they have to *walk* up the stairs!

US visitors to Europe are noticeably a bimodal distribution with about

5% superfit who go running before breakfast and the rest who stuff their faces with plates piled high off the breakfast buffet until the food runs out. A US friend who went jogging on his first day went found his compatriots had eaten *everything* by the time he returned. Their massively increased girth seemed limited only by the need to get close enough to the table to grab more food. He didn't go jogging for the rest of his stay preferring to have some breakfast instead...

Japanese have adopted mall shopping styles in much the same way as Americans - and even drive between carparks of the same mall :(

However, in Tokyo road congestion means it doesn't make any sense to travel by road unless you have to - the subway system is comprehensive, fast and efficient. Even senior executives use it in preference - and company pays for workers commuting fees on public transport.

In Britain we now have shopping malls that are designed to be car friendly and pedestrian hostile. It isn't looking good we will all end up as legless fat car dependent blobs if the trend continues. The plot of Wall-E may not be so far off predicting the future of the West.

They did once upon a time, but it had largely died out when I was there in the 1990's. I did wonder when I was seconded if I would be obliged to take part in the legendary morning exercises. ISTR seeing it only at a handful of sites. Certainly our distributor did not and had one or two plump westernised guys who were addicted to McBurgers and KFC.

I went the other way along with my other Western colleagues and adapted to Japanese cuisine which was very profitable since the expat food allowance seemed to assume that you ate about 20oz of prime steak a day.

Considering they all smoke like chimneys, drink heavily as a part of business culture and about half lack a key enzyme for detoxing alcohol (and cows milk) their longevity is remarkable and can only really be put down to diet and universal healthcare for the entire population.

A couple of things in their diet even contain known carcinogens - notably "mountain greens" which turns out to be bracken. eg.

Regards, Martin Brown

And goes out of its way to kill the babies of the poor and under insured. It damn near happened to a colleague at a major US observatory when his wife and new born baby needed air evacuation to to a major medical centre. They spent nearly half a day arguing with the insurers over the small print. The hospital was totally obsessed with getting paid and cared nothing about the patients welfare. Luckily his medical insurance proved to be sufficient and the child survived.

America has fabulous healthcare for the rich and insured, but precious little for anyone else. Maybe this will improve under Obama's reforms.

There never was a time historically in Europe of unlimited meat, wheat and dairy products. In the Middle Ages the poor often ended up eating low grade Ergot infested wheat which has very nasty side effects.

The era of cheap meat only occurred after large scale industrial farming post WWII. Until then meat was rare and expensive luxury. You can still theoretically be transported to Oz for poaching a rabbit after dark in the UK. But Oz will no longer accept convicted criminals.

Regards, Martin Brown

You've got the basics. The wealthy in the US have access to the very best medical talent -- in part because they can afford to go anywhere and stay as long as necessary and in part also because some of the very best in medical care will refuse to accept ANY insurance and only accept cash on the barrel-head, in advance, and only a few can handle that.

(This isn't guesswork, by the way. I can name doctors and specialties and some specific cases I know personally of where wealthy people accessed services unavailable to the "rest of us" for exactly the reasons mentioned.)

It all reminds me of a story by RA Heinlein, "-- And He Built a Crooked House."

"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.

"They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, 'It's Hollywood. It's not our fault?we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew.'

"The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon '?where we keep the violent cases.'"

I might rewrite this for medical care, as:

"Americans are considered to have the best medical care in the world.

"But not for the poor or uninsured, who will point to those with full time jobs as the focus of the accusation. Those with jobs don't always have insurance, or decent insurance anyway, and will say that the reputation is derived from those in state and federal gov't positions. Those in gov't will, when pressed, admit the thrust of the charge but explain hastily, 'It's really only the wealthy who truly have access to the best medical care in the US.'

"Wealthy people don't care; they glory in it."

Jon

Especially if he watches it on a big, old 37 inch curved face CRT!

Dynamic zappus!

Pretty sure that's just GR tho.