Having read the paper

The authors - reportedly - don't work for the inventor's company, and the experimental test was therefore purportedly independently conducted. They ran two tests of differently designed devices and a "dummy test." The second test was apparently because the first device melted down part way into the test cycle. All told they recorded over 200 hours of anomalous out put. The experimenters were limited by lack of access to the interior of the device, which meant that essentially they were black boxing it. "We put this much electricity in over resistors ... we estimate this much came out based on infrared imagery and calculated convection transfers." The irritating thing is that they provide two "Ragone" plots and neither do they indicate the E-Cat storage or output, simply asserting it is off the scale of the chart. I suspect that again the maker wants the actual efficiency kept quiet. The authors do say that no known natural process can explain this at present.

How can they?

"Seriously, seriously, you don't think the discipline of climate science might, just *might*, take the sun into account?"

How can they? That would mean they actually understand how the sun works, which is far from a forgone conclusion. What's more it would also mean that they understand how the climate works, also far from proven. In fact, the last 10 to years of data imply the opposite. Consider for instance that temperature should increase one degree per doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere per current AGW theory, which pretty much insists that only CO2 is of significance as a GHG - there other gases such as methane and water vapor that are far more efficient, but AGW theory pretty much subjects them to serf-hood to CO2.

Now consider this reductio ad absurdum: During the last glacial maximum the average global temperature was very roughly 8 degrees C below the present mean. If we were to employ that simplest of models - CO2 is the sole important influence, and that temperature varies directly according the concentration of CO2, increasing or falling one degree C per doubling or halving of the concentration, then green plant productivity quit when the mean global temperature dropped to one degree below the present mean and didn't not resume until the temperature returned to that level. That's because half the present level reduces atmospheric CO2 to a point where green plants can't really produce hydrocarbons any longer - not enough carbon available. Two degrees colder should have seen a massive extinction event. Eight degrees colder and there's no way to account for the present existence of life on earth. None of this happened. That means, at the least , that the planetary climate cannot be nearly as simple as AGW theory assumes. Granted climate models are really more complex - I did say this was a reductio ad absurdum - but the common talking point is that there's one degree of warming per doubling of CO2, a proposal that is false to fact, regardless of how "sophisticated" the models employed are.

Right now given that no one of any theoretical orientation seems capable of fine grained forecasting of either weather or climate trends, its pretty clear that there really is no "theory" of climate, just some not very good hypotheses.

Re: 140 laptops onboard

Space - in the shipments sent up to assemble the ISS. Just as mass is an issue, so is space. Laptops can go where large formats won't. You want to also look back to the planning stages of the original shuttles and lunar vehicles. The original shuttles were designed with a system that used core memory and fairly slow cpu. A GRiD Compass lap top carried aboard and was customized for use forcasting orbital paths and LOS communications.

Re: Fuming

What version would that be?

Re: @Mad Mike OOPS!

"Note that I'm not advocating any jail time, however because they did this on school property, I think that its fair that the school does something."

Problem is that the school probably is caught between a rock and a school board. Simply disciplining the girl for not asking for some help - there are precious few chemistry teachers that don't like explosives - would be about right, but some half-witted parent will consider the action "completely inadequate, think of the children!" Likewise, the board is elected and wants the parents to support their easy check every month, so the board has to look "serious." At the other end is the city, county and state, all of whom are in similar straits. The bottle was not a "desctructive device," nor did she manufacture an explosive per se, but still, it did make a noise. I wonder if the teacher can still generate hydrogen and capture in test tube, then ignite it with a match?

Re: OOPS!

"Correlation is not causation."

That's true. In fact, if you look at British crime stats, you'll discover that use of guns in crimes has increased with each law banning or controlling fire arms. What causes the laws are politicians anxious to look responsible and effective, and thus relectable. Probably what should be banned are politicians.

Re: OOPS!

My brother and I demonstrated that nearly any available fine powder will ignite gloriously under the right conditions. We used to blame burns in the table cloth on my parents smoking habit - heh.

Re: Are they dealing with AGW too.

Don't forget convergent evolution. The biggest visual difference between some icthyosaurs and beaked dolphins is the orientation of the tale flukes.

Urban myths

The difference between a reasonably factual account and an urban myth is that the myth is characteristically "pimped" out to make a better story and to illustrate the teller's opinion of whoever the subject of the cautionary tale was. At the same time, I have seen a story labeled an "urban myth" where the events as told were reasonably close to something I personally experienced while doing a stint at a hell desk. Since I know for certain that the story was not about my own experience, it follows that the "myth" mirrors parallel events or extrapolations from common knowledge to expectable outcomes. I really did take a call from a woman who had mistakenly placed the mouse from her shiny, brand new computer on the floor in the expectation that she would operate it like the foot control of a sewing machine. It took a confused 30 to 40 seconds to figure out what her problem was and have her move the mouse to a more appropriate position.

Sorry??

Astonishing how little is known about America. "Sorry" in the context of the story is simply short hand for "please don't sue me." The apology was probably even delivered by a lawyer.

unmitigated baloney

That is pure drivel. Mistaken shootings are by police officers by and large. There are a lot of guns in the US according to statistics, but only a fraction of a percent are carried either openly or concealed. If they were, "mass shootings" would be far less one sided. There've been two "vigilante" shootings in the last several decades and one of those, Bernard Goetz, was not mistaken, just illegal. According to New York law and in keeping with British views he should have let himself be mugged, injured and possibly killed. That is the moral "high road" and looks so much better than simply shooting the perp. Looking at Britain, which has one of the toughest sets of laws controlling guns in civilian hands in the western hemisphere. Astonishingly the use of guns in crimes including homicide has increased steadily since the passage of those laws.

Passengers

I've been in social trouble because I don't generally talk while driving - not even to passngers. Talkers may get peeved if they think that not killing anyone is more important than whatever they're most excited about at the moment.

Re: They should be shot

Goes for bicyclists and pedestrians too. Just saw two pedestrians texting while walkng today nearly in the soup. One wandered right into traffic and came within a foot and skid marks of wearing tread marks. Just froze and stared when the tires started to squeal. The other tripped on a curb after crossing the street and destroyed her phone, at least she appeared to be collecting pieces from the side walk. I've also seen a bicyclist take out a trash can while texting.

Re: Once again, people miss the point ...

"Once again, people miss the point ... "

Yep, e-readers need batteries.

Re: What a joke

Your opinion ignores that those inalienable rights aren't simply in effect between individuals and governments. If the right is truly "inalienable" then no individual has the "inalienable" right to violate another's rights either. Yet we repeatedly see criminals defending themselves with the excuse that THEIR rights were the ones violated. Criminals place themselves outside the law - their defense is that the law is for others - like you and I. They can violate your privacy, steal your identity, loot your bank accounts, but as long as they keep their behaviour "private," they should be treated as well as their victims? Think about a burglary, with or without violence. Consider the privacy lost by the victims when they have to call the police and have an evidence team work through the household. That privacy was also stolen by the thief.

The problem is that historically, political activity has often been conflated by government agencies (treason, sedition, political opposition, and disagreement with politicians) with what might be termed interpersonal crime - mugging, burglary, identity theft, etc. Some political crimes are really serious while others are almost a matter of opinion. Interpersonal crime causes real harm. If the fool was stupid enough to broadcast his actions on a cell phone, too bad. If he were being pursued for using speech the government disapproved of, that would be a different story.

Rights??

I can argue pro and con, but I think the basic take away is that if you are a crook, and you want security, you should be handling it yourself. I like the concept of "outlaw." If you decide to live outside the law, why grant you constitutional rights? The 4th Amendment pretty specifically protects the home and parallel British law is the direct ancestor of the US 4th Amendment. There's little or no protection of vehicles in comparison as long as probable cause exists. Broadcasting your criminal activity over a cell phone is - ah - criminally stupid.

I don't much like the general concept of what the Feebs did, but strictly speaking, they can argue that probable cause existed, that the "search" was effectively equivalent to using dogs to track a suspect, or a telescope to find a small target in a large landscape, or simply sitting in the brush along a game trail and listening. Since the sucker was using identity theft I would think it appropriate to let the victims that were audited by the IRS when they submitted "dual" returns. I'ld vote for grievous bodily harm.

Re: Is it me?

There a number of things to note. For instance, not all the hover craft have any wake. There are also some retouch halos that indicate someone was manipulating the appearance of the of the spray thrown up by the HCs. The there's the giant Wookie standing near the farther HC on the beach.

Humour shortage

I occasionally find myself inclined to ask some humourless individual whether the absence is a genetic defect, of if they had it surgically removed.

Re: Personally,

Atolls are the result of volcanic islands *sinking*, due to both crustal motion away from an ocean ridge spreading center and to sea level fluctuations such as the drop and rise of global sea level during the Pleistocene. This is a fact of geology and is inevitable. Because atolls are low lying, and the chief means by which they stay - how briefly - above sea level is the action of storms and waves washing coral boulders and sand inland. Also there were outposts and colonies on a good many islands by the middle of the 19th century and any port also maintained a tide gauge. So, there are a surprising number of records from Oceania.

Re: Control emissions?

The putative reasoning would be that since wood is a "renewable" resource that captures CO2 from the atmopshere, burning that wood is "neutral." Burning fossil fuels, or generating CO2 from limestone for carbonated drinks makes additional carbon available and thus ain't "neutral." If they insisted on carbonation being generated from natural fermentation Coke and Pepsi would be carbon neutral too.

Beer, because it really is carbon neutral

Most domesticated food animals ...

would probably be fine if they weren't fed terminal diets intended to fatten them. Not sure about Britain, but in the US cattle are fed corn when they reach the feed lot, which they are NOT evolved to eat. It causes all kinds of problems in the rumen. The diet boosts their cholesterol loads and is also the reason that they are regularly given antibiotics. Grass-fed cattle are considerably healthier.

Re: 'Filth'

And where, pray, did you learn your alphabet?

Re: It's an improvement......

They STILL run those gecko ads.

Ah, but ...

Are they really Mom's? Indeed, are they all capable of being moms?

You have got to be jesting

In the US many small businesses do business with city, county, state or federal agencies who _require_ documents in MS defined formats. These agencies want to be able to review, mark up, and return such documents for finalization. Attempting to change horses in midstream can be astonishingly expensive. MS has worked to distance itself from older interface types and the younger office help don't know anything else. The owners ... who knows what they think? My boss wants "something in a box." Never understood it, but that's the response when I mention switching. The one point where we continue to disagree is that I will not do statistics with Excel - or any spreadsheet for that matter. R is the tool of choice. Pointing out that R is used world-wide by governments and companies, simply gets a glassy, "but it's off the internet. What about viruses?"

When I work at home, I usually use LO, but heavily formatted Word docs frequently mutate into catastrophic states, so I retain a functional copy of Office one a Windows machine that's rarely booted.

But...

In order to know whether you are "violating" the moronic trademarking of a store layout, you would have to bloody visit one. I've never been inside an Apple store and never plan to enter one. Bad enough walking into a Verizon shop.

Re: Operating "Up to" 25% of the time.

"You'd think windmills in the UK would be quite reliable."

They're not located near Parliament. Obvious.

Paradox

Borland pretty well ruined Paradox, and dBASE IV as well. But, the lack of backward compatibility was something Microsoft did with Access as well. I recall being pretty well stuck in Israel and screaming at an MS support person when they said, "oh, you can't do that any more." I wanted to carry over unchanged values between records. Turned out you really can do it, but, it was no longer a trivial bit of code. In the first iteration or two the process was as simple as it was in dBASE. But with the third(? - around 2000) iteration the company decided to "help" all MS users by switching over to VB without fully implementing the capabilities of the system it was replacing. Paradox was and still is in many ways vastly superior, and for coding and quick apps, the dBASE-based languages (dBASE, Foxpro, Quicksilver, ..., were all way better).

Re: it's 42

Plainly, that is the wrong question.

Re: I don't expect this to change anything

Read that again. That passage is CYA language from a scientist who doesn't want to walk the plank on his grants by fully contradicting the current faddishness. In fact, while "studies" have shown one thing, other studies have shown the precise opposite. Last fall another study of satellite data concluded that in fact, while Greenland's ice seems to have thinned around the edges, it also appeared to be gaining elevation along the crest. So in fact we know precisely what we knew before the studies were undertaken, which is precious little.

As for what the Eemian interstadial tells us, it is that no ecological catastrophe ensued from warmer temperatures. It also tells us that the present, regardless of which the thermometer is moving, not "unprecedented" in any sense. In fact, if you plot Holocene temperatures since the peak temperatures - about 8 kya - the trend is downward, which suggests that this interstadial will never see an Eemian-like climate.

Re: Engineers often simply lack understanding of emotional situations

Sales people need to be able to lie convincingly, like lawyer and politicians. Engineers are simply pragmatic.

Re: That blooper always annoyed me...

You plainly either didn't read the text accurately or the authors lied. The parsec, which does stand for "parallax second" is a standard unit of distance in astronomy equivalent 3.26 light years roughly. A bit of research indicates that it has been in use since 1913.

Do you know ...

how the Millenium Falcon was powered and propelled? No? Then it wasn't important. In fact, are those actually clear ports on the MF or are they repeater screens? If the latter then how would you know what they would show? I would agree that a "starbow" would be a cool effect, but seriously.

Re: Chet Mannly

DO you know what the change in marine pH was? Because, if you don't, you should probably look up some useful terms like "buffering," "acid" vs. "alkaline," find out about neutral pH, etc. The only legitimate fact is one you missed. The warmer water is the less gas it can hold in solution. That includes - wait for it - oxygen. Any change in sea life is far more likely to be due to lower oxygenation, not acidification - the oceans are alkaline and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

That is a hypothesis rather than a fact. What is a fact is that Kevin Trenberth has complained about the "missing" energy. Since it _assumed_ that it has not yet left building, the obvious conclusion is that the oceans have it, though Trenberth actually said the data had to be wrong. Right now, globally the oceans are cooler than they have been for a considerable while. For example see this: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.1.14.2013.gif. Over half the marine surface shows a cool anomaly.

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Blindingly obvious move is to run trenches or berms across fields to increase drainage rates. In arid lands this is done to concentrate run off on field areas in wadis - the Negev is a good example where migratory Bedouin farmers and herdsmen have practiced this for centuries. In regions that are better watered, the same methods is sometimes employed to limit and collect sheet run off and direct it to channels more quickly. That reduces erosion on sloping fields that are already ploughed. Once saturated the entire slope might move, which would be bad. The strawberry growing areas around Watsonville in California are occasionally designed this way if there are serious sloped to deal with. Much of the area is short on clay and has an unfortunate vulnerability to gravity when wet.