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From: Richard Maine on 14 May 2010 17:27 DMcCunney <plugh(a)xyzzy.com> wrote: > * Ian Gregory: > > According to folklore the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumblebee > > should be incapable of flight but scientists never claimed that they had > > evolved an anti-gravity organ or anything like that. It was always clear > > that we simply didn't have an adequate grasp of aerodynamics, fluid > > dynamics, biomechanics etc to explain such a complex phenomenon. > > IIRC, those "proofs" treated the bumblebee as a *fixed wing* monoplane. > No surprise they cranked out wrong answers. Yeah. It isn't even as though it was particularly complicated. More like whoever proposed such a proof was particularly simpleminded. Or perhaps they never meant it seriously, which seems the most likely explanation. It is a bit hard to imagine that anyone who knew enough aero to come up with such a proof would not also see the gaping hole in it. I could almost see it as a classroom illustration of what happens if you misapply rules. Though some people are awfully dim, so I can't rule that out. Sure enough, if you make a rigid model of a bumblebee with the same weight and throw it in the air, it won't fly for beans. Neither will a helicopter. -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
From: Peter Flass on 14 May 2010 17:46 Patrick Scheible wrote: > DMcCunney <plugh(a)xyzzy.com> writes: > >> * Michelle Steiner: >> >>> And, despite almost universal opinion to the contrary, I include Heinlein's >>> The Number of the Beast. >> I wouldn't, but I don't share the near universal condemnation. While >> it's one of the few RAH books I have no particular desire to *re-read*, >> it has its moments. >> >> RAH wrote this one when an assortment of authors were retconning their >> material to make it part of a overall universe (like Michael Moorcock >> subsuming all of his work under the Eternal Champion theme.) RAH liked >> to play games with solipsism, and did so with a vengeance in NotB, tying >> together not only everything *he* had ever written, but everything >> anyone else had ever written, too. I almost fell off my chair when I >> realized what he'd done. > > I enjoyed NotB too. I think it worked a lot better than, for > instance, Asimov's later attempt to link the Robot series and the > Foundation series. > > -- Patrick Most of the recycled stuff isn't very good. I look at it as a combination of an author's wanting to tie everything up, his need to add to his retirement fund, and, to be fair, probably his fans' demands for "more." Zelazny's "Amber" series seems to me to be an example of an interesting book with a good premise that turned into a very boring series.
From: Wes Groleau on 15 May 2010 08:35 On 05-15-2010 07:43, Timothy Mathews wrote: > A baseball reporter asked Whitlow Wyatt (many credit him with inventing > the curve ball) about a top scientist's claim that the pitch was nothing > more than an optical illusion. Said Wyatt, "Well, you just ask your > expert scientist to stand behind a tree sixty feet sixty inches from me > and I'll whop the hell out of him with my optical illusion!" It would be foolhardy of the scientist to agree to such an experiment. But it would also have been stupid of him to pass up the opportunity to put an object of similar size behind that tree and challenge Wyatt to "whop the hell out of that" Did he? -- Wes Groleau Quote from a learning log http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/barrett?itemid=1386
From: AES on 15 May 2010 14:27 > Even if Obama goes 2 terms, a manned Mars trip is not going to happen. Even if Obama (or George Bush, or any other president) went 10 terms, a manned Mars trip is not going to happen. Even if Obama (or George Bush, or any other president) went 10 terms, even an _attempt at_ a manned Mars trip is not worth wasting _any_ funds on. > The Moon has been canned as well. The Moon, by contrast, is obviously a rather easily do-able trip. It's just equally not worth doing. [How can anybody on a _computer_ group, for God's sake, even think that at this point a manned excursion to the Moon it's worth wasting funds on.)
From: Patrick Scheible on 15 May 2010 15:13
AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> writes: > > Even if Obama goes 2 terms, a manned Mars trip is not going to happen. > > Even if Obama (or George Bush, or any other president) went 10 terms, a > manned Mars trip is not going to happen. > > Even if Obama (or George Bush, or any other president) went 10 terms, > even an _attempt at_ a manned Mars trip is not worth wasting _any_ funds > on. In 1929, who would have predicted a moon landing 40 years later? I would say no Mars landing for the next 10 years for sure. But if it became a funding priority on the level of the Apollo Project it might be possible as soon as 20 years from now. However, it's difficult to get that level of funding for a project that won't bear fruit for 20 years. -- Patrick |