Mowgli1647545497

Looks like a good mid-tier machine for on the cheap.

I guess it depends on what your dreams were:

 

- If your dreams were realistic its called giving up.

- If your dreams were stupid its called growing up.

 

I've met plenty of both.

My opinion if you're choosing between a GTO and WS6 buy the GTO unless the WS6 is 1/4 the cost.

I <3 desparado

 

Look at all that beautiful typing I didn't have to do.

 

+1 man

Show me one American union-ized industry thats doing better than it was 40 years ago.

 

*waits for someone to say the Actors Guild*

... and put some more air in your tire.

Thats what I was thinking.

 

Isn't 32psi abit low? I run 38-40 front and back.

I think I hurt myself trying not to laugh at work.

cable modem ftw

How about the one over on Old Henderson? Wife's favorite joint. Any ammo I can have for taking her to McDonalds instead would be useful.

GPS did not exist in the 60s

The design of GPS is based partly on the similar ground-based radio navigation systems, such as LORAN developed in the early 1940s, and used during World War II. Additional inspiration for the GPS system came when the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik in 1957. A team of U.S. scientists led by Dr. Richard B. Kershner were monitoring Sputnik's radio transmissions. They discovered that, because of the Doppler effect, the frequency of the signal being transmitted by Sputnik was higher as the satellite approached, and lower as it continued away from them. They realized that since they knew their exact location on the globe, they could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit by measuring the Doppler distortion. The converse is also true: if the satellite's position were known, they could identify their own position on Earth.

 

The first satellite navigation system, Transit, used by the United States Navy, was first successfully tested in 1960. Using a constellation of five satellites, it could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour. In 1967, the U.S. Navy developed the Timation satellite which proved the ability to place accurate clocks in space, a technology the GPS system relies upon. In the 1970s, the ground-based Omega Navigation System, based on signal phase comparison, became the first world-wide radio navigation system.

 

The first experimental Block-I GPS satellite was launched in February 1978.[5] The GPS satellites were initially manufactured by Rockwell International and are now manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Burning up comes from slowing down from orbital velocity due to friction with the atmosphere.

 

He was geosyncronous, or relatively geosyncronous. Meaning he was being held aloft relatively stationary by the balloon and not the centrifugal force of orbitting. Understand to attain enough speed to achieve a stable orbit requires a ton of velocity. Its one of the reasons the shuttle and other launches happen as close to the equator and launch out eastward - to get the added benefit of the rotation of the earth added in. His 900mph falling straight down is nowhere near hot enough to burn.

 

When the shuttle or other orbital or extra-orbital craft comes into the atmosphere they're going on the order of Mach 25 and higher. More than twenty-five times what he was traveling.

 

BTW- he wasn't in space. The boundary of what is and is not space is call the Karman Line and is around 62miles up. But even from watching the film even though it looks "spacey", if you stop to think about it you'll see why he's not in space proper; the balloon was still creating bouyant lift. It can only create lift in atmosphere (gas) denser/heavier than it.

 

This is impressive, but even more impressive is the feat of Gen Chuck Yeager, who coaxed an airplane, the production 1960s era military F-104 Starfighter (aptly named, natch) to a stall height higher than this. The plane crashed, but Chuck survived. Joe Walker holds the overall record at 107k ft, albeit in a specially prepared plane. That takes balls+skill. Riding an elevator and jumping out just takes balls. More balls than I have I'll admit.

links dead

[sarcasm]

I love unions

[/sarcasm]

Hmm. Thx. Now I gotta wonder if its removable with some tuning after. It is a california bike afterall...

Agreed. Lower rotor speeds and also larger volumes of air receive less thermal increase across compression.

I've got this canister below my gas tank (94 zx11) that the Haynes manual says is the Separator. It has tubes running to/from it - two to the tank one out downcircuit (haven't traced it).

 

I think when I was putting everything back together yesterday I got two of the tank tubes switched. When riding today I started getting a bunch of gas overflow out the top of the tank filler cap. Swapped the tubes and that seemed to stop it. So obviously the thing uses, runs off of, or causes tank pressurization.

 

So as I sit here in my office reeking of gasoline from my crotch, I got to wondering about it. But I can't find in the manual or online what its for. And I don't like not knowing what something is for.

 

What does this thing do?

 

Also, can anyone recommend someone in town that does good brake work on Kawas? I beleive I have a warped rear disk I need to replace (just got done bleeding the lines and I have a pulse in the rear). I was just going to take it over to the place on Morse.

 

thx in advance

Einstein said god does not play dice with the universe. But then Einstein never came to terms with Quantum Mechanics, indeed he ignored it for the majority of his later life.

 

Einstein said god does not roll the dice. And Einstein was wrong. Quantum Mechanics has been extremely accurate in predicting results. And as shown by quantum mechanics everything below the "grey curtain" of the Planck length is not only random, but perfectly random.

Is this a trick question?

 

Are there pictures of bewbs involved?

I see now Mensan you were right: for the purposes of this discussion an unstated "reasonable man" definition of "god" does not suffice. Because now we have gods being flung around in posts that are bound by the universe/math/logic. "Bound by" means, by definition, inside. In. Not outside. Several pages of off-the-point replies were wasted I see now. My bad.

 

Wiggs, you may either have a deep attachment to logic or feel a need to win an arguement, but I am not making an arguement. There are no flaws in what I wrote.

 

Math is elegant. It is beautiful. Just as Newtonian physics are elegant and beautiful. In the realm where its meant to work it will continue to work, consistently and without fail, forever. And sure, in the everyday philosophizing and mathematics of workaday life it is internally consistent and immutable. But just as Newtonian physics break down as you near the speed of light and you need relativity to accurately describe the rules and behavior, so too the immutability of math/logic breaks down near its edges.

 

I can break math, and I am no god: I can, with a little bit of time in my 20 year old college books, construct for you a Partial Differential Equation (feel free to google that) that has a solution. Then I can prove it has a solution. Then I can show that the solution is currently unknown. I can then show not only that it is unknown, but that it is unknowable. I can then even show the boundary (more like a transition region) at which it goes from having a known solution, to having an unknown solution, to having an unknowable solution.

 

There. Math, broken. Well, if not broken, at the very least with a little effort I'm standing on the fuzzy edge of it where it stops. It is no tool to be used to describe things beyond the system in which it is a part.

Congrats. Welcome to RWD and automotive superiority.

 

So they sell Saturns to guys now? (jk)

Nah, there are replacements for oil energy. If it stops watch how fast something takes its place. Within one year tops. Necessity mother of invention and all that.

 

Spice. There's no replacing the spice.

http://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/emot-eng101.gifTenet.

I can't spell. Especially late at night.

You have not defined "God" in your post. Scientifically you cannot prove or disprove anything without a definition of what "it" is. There are many differing opinions on "God", so you need to tell us what that is exactly.

I did't have to. I used what in weaselly lawyer-ease is known as the "reasonable man's" definition of god. But my definition of god is not the biblically described one, and I'll leave it at that.

You have also stated that light knows it's own destination, where in reality the light travels in all directions with no destination. The fact that it eventually hits something is arbitrary. It travels in a straight line, which we all know is the fastest way to get somewhere. That the line appears to move when it hits water is not a flaw with the ilght, but how it is viewed.

I didn't state light knows its destination. I was projecting anthropomorphically. Light itself knows nothing (does it? now there's a thought I'll need to ponder at lunch, hmm. But it doesn't impact what I was saying anyway). There is no flaw in the observer or the light. I'm not sure where you're getting "flaw" from. There's no trick here. But the light that goes from point A to point B does take the fastest possible path. Thats the property of that light I was describing. And while yes light goes in many directions no other light goes from A to B except the light that does. No other light arrives at B. (Oh and btw light does not go in all directions at once. It (seems to) move in discrete quantities and directions.)

 

 

Folks, please don't forget that constructs such as logic, language, proof, proving, words, insight, thought, history, observation, speech, communication, stimuli, emotion, gestalt, reasoning, etc. are too a part of the system we are in. They are components of it as much as direction, time, force, matter and energy are. They do not transcend the universe for they are a product of the universe. You hear that alot: "Math and logic transcend the universe." As soon as some guy says something to that effect you've got your free pass to start daydreaming about boobs, just be sure to nod attentively like you're still listening.

 

Some of you are still grappling with the concept that you can have both a teleological existence and a causal one at the same "time" in our universe. I know its tough to accept right away. Please consider what I mean when I say the universe is perfectly ambiguous. No amount of context will disprove either interpretation; causality (with freewill) and teleological (knowing the past/present/future all at once and without freewill). They are both valid. But you cannot do both at the same "time", pardon the pun. Well, we can't. A "god", by definition, is outside such constraints of logic.

 

Many ersatz thinkers base as a cornerstone of their worldview that such things like math and logic are immutable. Unchanging. But they too have boundaries. Take some high level math courses and you'll see where math "runs out".

 

By that I mean this; we're used to operating in areas where math is solid and immutable, that 1+1=2. Always and everywhere. You can express 1+1=2 as X+Y=Z and we know such an equation has a solution everywhere you go in the realm of real and imaginary numbers. But there are areas of math where there are only partial solutions. High math well above algebra, calculus, differential equaitions, linear algebra, and calculus of variations. Calculus on steriods. You start to find equations that have solutions only some of the time. Or where we know solutions but can't find the equation to match it. Please understand I'm not talking about equations where the solution is "false" such as X+Y=X. This is never true except where Y is zero. But "Not True" or "False" is also a solution. What I'm talking about are equations that should have solutions, but those solutions are unexistent, partially existant, or unknowable in our universe. Math aboslutely does have a fringe. An edge. And its not a steady edge either. It moves and shifts.

Now thats an astounding statement to someone who's never heard it before, and almost sounds farcical. But it is as true as time dilation near lightspeed. And as proven. Take a visit down to OSU and buy a high-end math prof (not one of the T.A.s) a cup a coffee and ask him.

Math has an edge. So too logic. I challenge anyone to learn this math, walk up to that fringe and stare beyond, and come away still confident the universe is a self-describing, self-creating and perpetuating construct.

 

And now I get to quote Einstein: "Those that have looked over the edge see the workings of God." Now that was Albert being abit indulgent, as he well knew the construct of math itself, indeed its border and fringe edge, are too both parts, components, in and of the system we're in.

 

Not every beleives in God. Stephen Hawking doesn't beleive in god. His choice is not to. But he understands it to be a choice and will tell you why he beleives so. And I don't blame him, his world is one stricken with MD and the lack of an interactive god is maybe a large factor in his view. But then there's interaction and there's interaction. I see there is freewill and I see the possibility for an existence, teleological, not bound by time but without freewill. For me, a god that doesn't interact daily in the trivial lives of me and you isn't a big deal. For me, god is interacting enough if he's not pouring the coffee down the drain, thanks very much.

 

Again, I'm not trying to push the existence of God on anyone. I'm just trying to get across the point that to beleive in such or to not is a choice and can be no more than that. And no one is stupid for beleiving one way or the other. They are being stupid when they purport to "prove" it.

The Israeli War thread got me thinking, and I can't sleep. To its time to ramble.

 

Here’s why we cannot prove there is not a god.

 

But before I say why I want to take a moment to explain that there are two ways of looking at the universe and that it applies to both views. If you don’t want to bother with the physics skip to the end where I’ll try to sum up the point.

 

But first the digression. There are two ways to look at the universe: cause and effect and teleologically. The first everybody knows. But the second takes some explaining to most folks because outside of the scientific community its not widely known. Hell in the community its not widely known even though its been around for centuries. The easiest way to start off is with a picture.

 

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/944597/one.JPG

 

you probably know this from highschool physics. Okay, heres the path a ray of light takes when crossing from air to water. The light ray travels in a straight line until it hits the water; the water has a different index of refraction, so the light changes direction.

 

Now here's an interesting property about the path the light takes. The path is the fastest possible route between these two points. Imagine, just for grins, that the ray of light traveled along this path:

 

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/944597/two.JPG

 

This hypothetical path is shorter than the path the light actually takes. But light travels more slowly in water than it does in air, and a greater percentage of this path is underwater. So it would take longer for hte light to travel along this path than it does along the real path.

 

Now imagine if light were to travel along this other path:

 

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/944597/three.JPG

 

This path reduces the percentage thats underwater, but the total length is larger. It would also take longer for light to travel this path than along the actual one.

 

Any hypothetical path would require more time to traverse than the one actually taken. In other words, the route the light takes is always the fastest possible one. That's Fermat's Principle of Least Time.

 

Fermat's principle is curious; even though its easy to explain, you need calculus to desribe it mathematically. And not ordinary calculus, you need the calculus of variations.

 

And you can build from Fermat's Principle to other areas of physics. There are lots of physical principles just like Fermats. Well, the word 'least' is misleading. You see, Fermat's Principle of Least Timeis incomplete; in certain circumstances light follows a path that takes more time than any of the other possibilities. It's more accurate to say that light always follows an extreme path, one that minimizes the time taken or maximizes it. A minimum and a maximum share certain mathematical properties, so both situations can be explained with one equation. So to be precise, Fermat's Principle isn't a minimal principle; instead its what's known as a 'variational' principle.

 

And there are more of these variational principles. In all branches of physics. Almost every physical law can be restated as a variational principle. The only difference is in the which attribute is being minimized or maximized. in optics, where Fermat's Principle applies, time is the attribute that has to be an extreme. In mechanics, it's a different attribute. In electromagnetism, it's something else again. But all these principles are similar mathematically.

 

So now you're probably saying "hang on, something about that feels odd to you, but you can't put your finger on it. It just doesn't sound like a law of physics."

 

I know exactly what you mean! I was hung up on it for weeks. See, you're used to thinking of refraction in terms of cause and effect: reaching the water's surface is the cause, and the change of direction is the effect. But Fermat's Principle sounds wierd because it describes light's behavior in goal-oriented terms. It sounds like a commandment to a light beam: 'Thou shalt minimize or maximize the time taken to reach thy destination'.

 

Don't wig out. It's an old question in the philosophy of physics. People have been talking about it since Fermat first formulated it in the 1600s; Planck wrote volumes about it. The thing is, while the common formulation of physical laws is causal, a variational principle like Fermat's is purposive, almost teleological.

 

Think about that for a minute. Okay, so lets say the goal of a ray of light is to take the fastest path. How does the light go about doing that? Well, to speak anthropomorphic-projectionally, the light has to examine all the possible paths and compute how long each one would take. And to do that, the light has to know just where its destination is. If the destination were somewhere else, the fastest path would be different. The notion of a "fastest path" is meaningless unless theres a destination specified. And computing how long a given path would take also requires information about what lies along that path, like where the water's surface is.

 

And the light has to know all of that ahead of time, before it starts moving. The light can't start moving in any old direction and make course corrections later on, because the path resulting from such behavior wouldn't be the fastest possible one. The light has to do all its computations at the very beginning.

 

The ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in. Thats what's bugging you.

 

The reason is that though almost every physical law can be restated as a variational principle, when people think about physicals laws, they prefer to work with them in their causal formulation. You can understand that: the physical attributes that people find intuitive, like kinetic energy or acceleration, are all properties of an object at a given point in time. And these are conducive to a chronological, causal interpretation of events: one moment growing out of another, causes and effects create a chain reaction from past to future.

 

In contrast, the physical attributes one thinking teleologically would find intuitive, like "action" or those things defined by integrals, are meaningful only over a period of time. These are conducive to a teleological interpretation of events: by viewing events over a period of time, one recognizes that there is a requirement that has to be satisfied, a goal of minimizing or maximizing, say. And one has to know the initial and final states to meet that goal; one would need knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated.

 

And here's where people would always get irate over teleological interpretating.

 

Is it possible to know the future? Not simply to guess at it; is it possible to know what is going to happen, with absolute certainty and in specific detail? Remember, the causal worded laws of physics are time-symetric, that there was no physical difference between past and future. Given that, some might say, "yes, theoretically." But speaking more concretely, most would answer "no", because of free will.

 

Think of the objection as the following fanciful story: imagine a person standing before the Book of Ages, the chronicle that records every event, past and future. The bookis huge. He flips thru the pages until he locates the story of his life. He finds the passage that describes him flipping thru the Book of Ages, and he skips to the next column, where it details what he'll be doing later in the day: acting on info from the book, he'll bet one hundred dollars on a racehorse and win ten times that much.

The though of doing just that had crossed his mind, but being the contrary sort, he now resolves to refrain from betting on the ponies altogether.

 

There's the rub. The Book of Ages cannot be wrong; this scenario is based on the premise that a person is given knowledge of the actual future, not of some possible future. If this were Greek myth, circumstances would conspire to mae him enact his fate despite his best efforts, but prophecies in myth are notoriously vague; the Book of Ages is quite specific, and there's no way he can be forced to bet on a horserace in the manner specified. The result is a contradiction: the Book of Ages must be right, by definition; yet not matter what the Book says he'll do, he can choose to do otherwise. How can these two facts be reconciled?

 

They can't be, is the common answer. A volume like the Book of Ages is a logical impossibility, for the precise reason that its existence would result in the above contradiction. Or, to be generous, some might say the Book of Ages could exist, as long as it wasn't accessible to readers; that volume is housed in a special collection, and no one has viewing privileges.

 

The existence of free will means we cannot know the future. And we know free will exists because we have direct experience of it. Volition is an intrinsic part of consciousness.

 

 

Change gears here. Consider the sentence "The rabbit is ready to eat." It could have two very different meanings. One meaning could be that dinner is served. The other meaning is that its probably time to open a bag of Purina Bunny Chow for Mister Floppy. Two very different meanings. In fact in the same household they're probably mutually exclusive. Only through context can you tell which interpretation is right. Get some context and you can tell.

 

Now consider the phenonenon of light hitting water at one angle, and traveling through it at different angle. Explain it by saying that a difference in the index of refraction caused the light to change direction, and one sees the universe as we people do, Explain it by saying that light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination, and one sees it in a different way completeliy. In a teleological way. Two very different interpretations.

 

The physical universe is a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every phsyical events is an utterance that can be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualified no matter how much context is available.

 

 

And now I'm finally coming to my point, thanks for reading. Almost there.

 

I've just given you, through a very long tangent, a second way of looking at the universe, the world around us. A second way of existing and experiencing existance and life itself. One thats utterly unaccessible by us humans but we know to be valid. And here's the thing: I'm in the universe with you.

 

Now consider this:

 

You're in a thermos of coffee with the lid on. Warm coffee, pleasant. You're in the thermos, you've always been in the thermos and you always will be in the thermos. Every interaction you've ever had, are having or will have is with the coffee in the thermos or the inner walls of the thermos itself. and thats it.

 

Now describe for me the kitchen the thermos is sitting in.

 

There's a basic tenant of the Scientific Method that states one cannot fully describe a system if one is embedded in said system. Its been proven time and again (think of a principle with Heisenberg and Uncertainty in its name). And yet, people would use scientific method, and point to events in this system we're all embedded in to "prove" the non-existence of god. These are very poor scientists. They break a very basic tenant of science. Indeed they're not even trying to just decipher which interpretation of the universe we know to be possible to use. No, they purport to be able to draw conclusions on matters outside the very system they're embedded in.

 

Just because all one can do is look around the inside of a closed thermos and see nothing but coffee does not mean there is no chef out in the kitchen.

 

True scientists know we cannot state conclusively from here in our thermos of coffee the existence or non-existence of a god. It, rightly so, becomes a matter then of choice.

 

For me, I choose to beleive in a god. And I'm in good company (Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and many more). I make this choice because I can look at the fact that I cannot know the future and seem to have free will to sway me to that opinion. Because I can see with math there exists a possible second way of seeing the universe. I see option. And I don't begrudge or besmirch those who choose not to beleive in a god and know it to be a choice.

 

But the ones who presume to have proven a lack of a god from the splendid views of the inside of our lovely coffee thermos, yeah I do belittle them. I have a name for them: idiots.

 

I can probably sell them the London bridge, though....

A different Cable Company...

(Hinsight) "Well I'm very sorry but we will be out tomorrow (Thursday) to upgrade you cable. Is there anything Else I can do for you?"

(ME) "DO you know that I have been waiting here for a tech to show up cause I was told Wednesday."

(Hinsight) "Like I said sir I'm very sorry but we will be out tomorrow (Thursday) to upgrade you cable. Is there anything Else I can do for you today?"

(ME) "No I guess not, just want my cable upgraded."

You worded your reply wrong. When they ask you that question you tell them what they can do for you. Example:

 

...

(Cable) What can I do for you today?

(You) You can compensate me for my time spent waiting. What can you offer to do that?

 

If they cannot or will not do so - which depends mostly on their Tech Support script (beleive me they're reading from a script or cue page) - say the following:

 

(Cable) *something to the effect of no can do*

(You) Transfer me to your manager.

The basic premise is you need to take control and steer the conversation. The moment they ask you what they can do for you they give you purview to tell them what that is. From there the conversation is on the logistics of making your wish happen or not happen and off of complaining about lost time, they can do little beyond (maybe) sympathize with you when all you give them is airing your greivance.

Jack in the Box commercials FTW