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Search: Posts Made By: lpetrich
Forum: USA Politics 18th May 2019, 11:26 AM
Replies: 335
Views: 13,659
Posted By lpetrich
National Popular Vote...

National Popular Vote (https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/home) -- the homepage of that initiative. If enough states pass it, they will give their electoral votes to the popular-vote winner.

It...
Forum: USA Politics 18th May 2019, 10:49 AM
Replies: 335
Views: 13,659
Posted By lpetrich
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 68...

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 68 (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp) by Alexander Hamilton.

He argued that the Electoral College was good because electors are likely to have...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 29th November 2018, 05:58 AM
Replies: 57
Views: 4,661
Posted By lpetrich
One would not use a Kibble balance for...

One would not use a Kibble balance for *everything*, just as a primary mass reference. One can use it to calibrate secondary mass references, like the way that the International Prototype Kilogram...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 24th November 2018, 07:32 PM
Replies: 57
Views: 4,661
Posted By lpetrich
The redefinition of the ampere involves fixing...

The redefinition of the ampere involves fixing the elementary charge. This was done so that with the fixing of Planck's constant, the Josephson-effect constant and the quantum-Hall-effect constant...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 24th November 2018, 07:28 PM
Replies: 57
Views: 4,661
Posted By lpetrich
The seven SI base units are the meter, kilogram,...

The seven SI base units are the meter, kilogram, second, ampere, mole, kelvin, and candela.

They started out with separate physical realizations, but they now have only one. The second is now the...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 24th November 2018, 06:57 PM
Replies: 57
Views: 4,661
Posted By lpetrich
pound avoirdupois...

pound avoirdupois (https://www.sizes.com/units/pound_avoirdupois.htm) -- the ordinary English-unit pound, defined in 1963 to be exactly 453.59237 grams. The US pound was earlier defined to be...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 24th November 2018, 06:14 PM
Replies: 19
Views: 1,884
Posted By lpetrich
Hemimastigota -- from Greek hemi- "half" and...

Hemimastigota -- from Greek hemi- "half" and mastix "whip" -- "half a whip". Referring to the organism's flagellum (Latin for "whip"). It's one of several difficult-to-place organisms that branched...
Forum: Education 26th August 2018, 07:17 PM
Replies: 49
Views: 5,917
Posted By lpetrich
For my part, I am only fluent in English and...

For my part, I am only fluent in English and autotranslator.

Wikibooks:Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, open books for an open world...
Forum: International Skeptics 10th April 2018, 06:17 AM
Replies: 95
Views: 39,441
Posted By lpetrich
December 28, 2017: vBulletin 3.X End of Life -...

December 28, 2017:
vBulletin 3.X End of Life - vBulletin Community Forum...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 9th February 2018, 02:04 AM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
Quick intros: Not So Strange New Worlds - NASA...

Quick intros:
Not So Strange New Worlds - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope (http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/video-audio/1685-ssc2018-04v1)
Imagining the Planets of TRAPPIST-1 - NASA Spitzer Space...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 21st January 2018, 02:06 AM
Replies: 407
Views: 58,616
Posted By lpetrich
A new and complete system of arithmetic :...

A new and complete system of arithmetic : Composed for the use of the citizens of the United States. : Pike, Nicolas, 1743-1819 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 20th January 2018, 04:59 PM
Replies: 407
Views: 58,616
Posted By lpetrich
Is Myanmar Finally Going Metric? >...

Is Myanmar Finally Going Metric? > ENGINEERING.com (https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/15351/Is-Myanmar-Finally-Going-Metric.aspx) noting Myanmar may finally adopt a standard...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 16th January 2018, 11:49 PM
Replies: 98
Views: 15,107
Posted By lpetrich
To address that issue, I collected some...

To address that issue, I collected some statistics on Chess960's possible initial positions.

Knights, bishops, and queens are evenly distributed, being as probable in one square as in another....
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 12th January 2018, 06:01 PM
Replies: 98
Views: 15,107
Posted By lpetrich
From the looks of it, AlphaZero is using a very...

From the looks of it, AlphaZero is using a very atypical strategy. Could that be contributing to its success?

It would be interesting to see how well it does with chess variants like Crazyhouse,...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 9th December 2017, 11:33 AM
Replies: 98
Views: 15,107
Posted By lpetrich
AlphaGo and AlphaZero learn by playing lots and...

AlphaGo and AlphaZero learn by playing lots and lots of games with themselves, using those games to train their neural networks.

[1712.01815] Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 16th November 2017, 09:47 AM
Replies: 16
Views: 8,494
Posted By lpetrich
Carl Sagan had been written to by lots such...

Carl Sagan had been written to by lots such people. From "The Demon-Haunted World" (Ch. 6: Hallucinations):

Most such mathematical problems are mainly of theoretical interest, but there is one...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 20th October 2017, 12:24 AM
Replies: 199
Views: 21,811
Posted By lpetrich
I suspect that self-driving cars will be rolled...

I suspect that self-driving cars will be rolled out only gradually. Self-driving trucks and buses and the like are likely to come alongside self-driving cars. I've seen speculation about a convoy of...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 20th October 2017, 12:09 AM
Replies: 35
Views: 7,663
Posted By lpetrich
More seriously, this has been a problem for...

More seriously, this has been a problem for theories of the origin of the Moon. That celestial body is mostly rock, with a smaller fraction of iron than what the Earth has. Yet it is very short of...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 20th October 2017, 12:04 AM
Replies: 4
Views: 2,603
Posted By lpetrich
This event was seen in gravitational waves as...

This event was seen in gravitational waves as GW170817, as a gamma-ray burst as GRB 170817A, and in visible, radio, and X-rays as AT 2017gfo.

This event got a lot of headlines because of its...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 24th September 2017, 08:37 PM
Replies: 16
Views: 8,494
Posted By lpetrich
A free-energy machine? I'll believe it when I see...

A free-energy machine? I'll believe it when I see it. Free energy suppression conspiracy theory is about alleged conspiracies to suppress any of

Renewable-energy technologies
Cold fusion
...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 20th September 2017, 06:05 PM
Replies: 16
Views: 8,494
Posted By lpetrich
The Secret Life of Alien Contactee George Hunt...

The Secret Life of Alien Contactee George Hunt Williamson [FULL VIDEO] - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GBxy3UcsSA)
A documentary on his life.


There is a book that may contain some...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 21st August 2017, 04:21 PM
Replies: 469
Views: 70,150
Posted By lpetrich
I'm in Lebanon, OR, about 69 mi directly south. ...

I'm in Lebanon, OR, about 69 mi directly south.

Some pictures of totality:
http://lpetrich.org/Science/Pix/Total%20Eclipse%20of%20the%20Sun%20--%202017-08-21%2010.18.52.jpg...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 21st August 2017, 03:57 PM
Replies: 469
Views: 70,150
Posted By lpetrich
I saw it. I prepared in advance by getting...

I saw it.

I prepared in advance by getting some eclipse glasses some weeks before, but then I saw warnings about how some of them were fakes. I decided that they might still be useful -- if one...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 2nd August 2017, 01:21 PM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Most likely the emergence of a community of...

Most likely the emergence of a community of people interested in them.

Mysterious airships, foo fighters, and ghost rockets came and went without provoking the emergence of a community of...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 29th July 2017, 03:17 PM
Replies: 225
Views: 45,417
Posted By lpetrich
List of reported UFO sightings mentions some that...

List of reported UFO sightings mentions some that go back to antiquity, like marching armies in the sky (Josephus, The Jewish War) and ships also in the sky (Livy, History of Rome).

Plutarch, in...
Forum: Religion and Philosophy 22nd July 2017, 11:38 AM
Replies: 31
Views: 9,448
Posted By lpetrich
I've found this: Is E = Mc 2 a sexed equation?...

I've found this: Is E = Mc 2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light o...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 21st July 2017, 09:42 PM
Replies: 225
Views: 45,417
Posted By lpetrich
Some people have actually tried that, by teaching...

Some people have actually tried that, by teaching sign language: Transcript of the Chat with Koko, 4/27/98 (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel/kokotranscript.html) -- very limited.

So might some super...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 21st July 2017, 08:05 PM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Seems to me that it's connecting the dots. Like...

Seems to me that it's connecting the dots. Like if an object seems to disappear, it must have sped off at some superspeed.
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 21st July 2017, 05:57 PM
Replies: 225
Views: 45,417
Posted By lpetrich
What's the Psychosocial Hypothesis?

What's the Psychosocial Hypothesis?
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 21st July 2017, 10:16 AM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Some people go further than being UFO contactees....

Some people go further than being UFO contactees. Vivenus Starchild and Omnec Onec claim that they are both Venusians who adopted the forms of Earthwomen, one who committed suicide and one who got...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 21st July 2017, 10:06 AM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
I've illustrated GA's notions in some pictures at...

I've illustrated GA's notions in some pictures at this link: What is Venus like? (http://lpetrich.org/UFOs/Venus.xhtml) -- I won't hotlink them, so you'll have to go there.

I used pictures of...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 15th July 2017, 09:15 AM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Yes, why not anything like this? Meteor Hits...

Yes, why not anything like this? Meteor Hits Russia Feb 15, 2013 - Event Archive - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmXyJrs7iU) in Chelyabinsk.
It turned out to be yet another...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 12th July 2017, 03:32 PM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Brookings Directory at nicap.org...

Brookings Directory at nicap.org (http://www.nicap.org/brookingsdir.htm) links to a PDF version of the 1960 Brookings Report. Much of it is on stuff like communications and weather satellites, so...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 12th July 2017, 01:12 PM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
skyeagle quoted this in post #33: That is...

skyeagle quoted this in post #33:

That is often cited as a reason for the alleged coverup of the alleged extraterrestrial-spacecraft nature of UFO's. But I don't buy that. If the UFOnauts don't...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 12th July 2017, 12:29 PM
Replies: 225
Views: 45,417
Posted By lpetrich
skyeagle409 brought up some radar-visual UFO...

skyeagle409 brought up some radar-visual UFO cases. However, Philip Klass states about such cases:

In other words, nearly all radar-visual "combined sightings" are coincidences.

PK also...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 24th June 2017, 03:35 PM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Yup. Spy balloons were supersecret back then. ...

Yup. Spy balloons were supersecret back then.

That case also illustrates a problem with UFO secrecy: some of the secrecy is because the UFO's are some of *our* stuff that various governments have...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 24th June 2017, 09:03 AM
Replies: 314
Views: 57,032
Posted By lpetrich
Happy 70th UFO Anniversary!

Happy UFO Anniversary Day! This is the 70th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold's sighting of nine Unidentified Flying Objects flying in a line near Mt. Rainier in Washington State, US.

He described...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 4th May 2017, 11:46 AM
Replies: 2
Views: 1,671
Posted By lpetrich
Bullet Cluster: [0704.0261] Constraints on the...

Bullet Cluster:
[0704.0261] Constraints on the Self-Interaction Cross-Section of Dark Matter from Numerical Simulations of the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657-5 (https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0261)
...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 29th March 2017, 06:23 PM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
I checked on the five spacecraft that are headed...

I checked on the five spacecraft that are headed out into interstellar space. Here are my estimated velocities at Solar-System infinity for them, velocities relative to the Solar System's barycenter:...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 29th March 2017, 05:39 PM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
One can save on rocket fuel or some equivalent by...

One can save on rocket fuel or some equivalent by traveling slowly, but there's a problem. One has to have an interstellar velocity of at least 10 km relative to the Solar System, or else one will be...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 24th March 2017, 01:23 AM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
Titled link: NASA’s starship could reach Alpha...

Titled link: NASA’s starship could reach Alpha Centauri in just two weeks - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx2aLvtIUII) -- that's the Alcubierre drive, and it's VERY speculative. It...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 23rd March 2017, 12:32 AM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
Two weeks? Where did you get that from? ...

Two weeks? Where did you get that from?


Planets are much more massive than asteroids, so they won't get affected very much.
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 22nd March 2017, 07:12 PM
Replies: 77
Views: 11,577
Posted By lpetrich
There is a further problem: distinguishing the...

There is a further problem: distinguishing the planets from their stars. Even in the infrared, the planets' stars will outshine them by a big factor. I've seen a proposal for getting around that...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 5th February 2017, 01:26 PM
Replies: 18
Views: 4,016
Posted By lpetrich
Summary of my previous post: high-pressure...

Summary of my previous post: high-pressure metallic transitions have been observed or predicted for several nonmentals.

Metallic helium in massive planets...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 5th February 2017, 12:56 PM
Replies: 18
Views: 4,016
Posted By lpetrich
For metallic hydrogen to be metastable at low...

For metallic hydrogen to be metastable at low pressures, it would have to have a big energy "hump" to climb to become molecular hydrogen. I don't think that anyone has convincingly shown the...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 4th February 2017, 04:41 PM
Replies: 43
Views: 3,659
Posted By lpetrich
(irrigating with seawater) Some...

(irrigating with seawater)



Some descendants of land plants can tolerate seawater, like seagrasses (Seagrass genome sequence lends insights to salt tolerance -- ScienceDaily...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 3rd February 2017, 03:27 AM
Replies: 63
Views: 14,225
Posted By lpetrich
Philip Klass claims in "UFOs Explained" that late...

Philip Klass claims in "UFOs Explained" that late in World War II, USAAF pilots doing bombing missions in Japan would sometimes see "searchlight airplanes" following them. Some of them fired on those...
Forum: General Skepticism and The Paranormal 3rd February 2017, 03:25 AM
Replies: 18
Views: 5,126
Posted By lpetrich
It's interesting what a reverse progression psi...

It's interesting what a reverse progression psi research has had. From ghosts to psychic powers, and weaker and weaker psychic powers at that. Quite the opposite from what "real" science does.
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 3rd February 2017, 02:42 AM
Replies: 18
Views: 4,016
Posted By lpetrich
That reminds me of something. I've been looking...

That reminds me of something. I've been looking for stuff on pressure-induced metallic transitions in general. That is because with high enough pressure, ordinary matter becomes "degenerate matter",...
Forum: Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology 3rd February 2017, 02:24 AM
Replies: 43
Views: 3,659
Posted By lpetrich
(irrigating with seawater) Does saltwater...

(irrigating with seawater)

Does saltwater ruin soil in any other way besides making it salty?

Or would seawater irrigation fail because water evaporating would leave too much salt behind? If...
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