Althouse: At the Snowman's Café...

February 19, 2021

At the Snowman's Café...

... enjoy the conversation.

162 comments:

narciso said...: Deja vu

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/02/19/bergdahl-files-lawsuit-claiming-undue-command-influence-by-trump-mccain/; 2/19/21, 7:09 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Why must snowmen always be white?; 2/19/21, 7:12 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I hear one of the forts being renamed is going to be called Fort Bergdahl.; 2/19/21, 7:13 PM
narciso said...: Waging the war on math, in the comments

https://mobile.twitter.com/FDRLST/status/1362829701933195271; 2/19/21, 7:15 PM
Display Name said...: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeNKLXmg/

Well... I thought it was funny.; 2/19/21, 7:17 PM
David Begley said...: Picnic Point!; 2/19/21, 7:18 PM
mockturtle said...: Why must snowmen always be white?

Shhh. They'll be banned soon enough.; 2/19/21, 7:23 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Instant mashed potatoes makes snowmen better.; 2/19/21, 7:27 PM
narciso said...: Another interesting offering

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLXWsaVgbW-/; 2/19/21, 7:28 PM
NCMoss said...: I can't smell; oh no, Covid!; 2/19/21, 7:29 PM
Yancey Ward said...: The Texas Blackout is simple to explain- Texas simply didn't have enough dispatchable power available from traditional sources to cover peak demand with a comfortable margin. They failed to have this dispatchable power available because they become too dependent on windmills and too confident the dispatchable power they did have would be able to supply 100% of rated capacity on demand- neither of these beliefs is reasonable. Texas has 53 GW of dispatchable power- they needed 70 to weather events like this. Gas fired plants of the modern era can be fired up pretty quickly, but they are completely dependent on the gas supply not being interrupted for any reason- it isn't easy to store the required natural gas for emergency use like you can at a coal fired plant.

The sad thing is that the response is likely to make the power infrastructure even more fragile.; 2/19/21, 7:30 PM
Josephbleau said...: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is now at an end. Americans that don't work for the government must make less to elevate others we like. China knows what is best for America. Let them do it to us! You need to know that you don't need to know. We will consider your input...later, after the decision is made. Hale to the beyond pale chief!; 2/19/21, 7:34 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Here is a good trivia question:

Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?; 2/19/21, 7:37 PM
Breezy said...: I love seeing snow creatures out and about... Joie de vivre. Joie de la neige.; 2/19/21, 7:39 PM
DavidUW said...: Texas apparently has a power grid that's heading to California levels of unreliability.; 2/19/21, 7:42 PM
narciso said...: Neptune sometimes out orbits pluto.; 2/19/21, 7:44 PM
Humperdink said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/19/21, 7:46 PM
Yancey Ward said...: If Toomey is threatening to resign, then call his bluff.; 2/19/21, 7:48 PM
Humperdink said...: Our PA county Republican committee censored Pat Toomey (D-Coward) last night.

It was rumored by sources:

> Toomey is threatening to resign, in which case Governor Tom Wolf (D-Nursing Home Stuffer) will appoint his replacement. And...

> Toomey has a job lined up with the US Chamber of Commerce.; 2/19/21, 7:48 PM
stephen cooper said...: Instant mashed potatoes is the most underrated of fifty cent meals, it puts ramen to shame .... just add some crumbled up beef jerky or some wasabi powder .... OR SOUR CREAM or spicy Andy Capp hot fries, if you like sour cream or Andy Capp hot fries; 2/19/21, 7:50 PM
Whiskeybum said...: Good Grammar rule for Feb. 18:

Avoid modernisms that sound flaky.

(Ok – so it’s a day late. Althouse didn’t post an ‘official’ café post last night, and the one that was used like a café post came out around noon, so what can you do?); 2/19/21, 7:50 PM
Whiskeybum said...: Good Grammar rule for Feb. 19:

Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.; 2/19/21, 7:50 PM
Original Mike said...: That's no man.; 2/19/21, 7:51 PM
Yancey Ward said...: He is beholding the nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.; 2/19/21, 7:52 PM
Original Mike said...: "Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?"

Since Pluto isn't a planet (grits his teeth), I would think Uranus.

(Averaged over how much time?); 2/19/21, 7:55 PM
Josephbleau said...: "Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?"

Easy, the answer is the classification object of the minima of the euclidean distance between all planets/Neptune over the time specified with respect to Neptune. This can be solved in many ways...; 2/19/21, 7:56 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Averaged over a long enough time that the results reach equilibrium. Let's say 10,000 years.

You probably get the same result averaged over a shorter time, but 10,000 is nice large number.

And Uranus or Pluto are not the right answers. However, I have now told you enough to make a solid guess, haven't I?; 2/19/21, 7:57 PM
Ken B said...: Of course now it’s sexist to oppose Neera Tanden.; 2/19/21, 7:59 PM
Original Mike said...: OK, I'll guess Saturn.; 2/19/21, 8:00 PM
Yancey Ward said...: It isn't Saturn either.; 2/19/21, 8:01 PM
Original Mike said...: Or maybe Mercury.; 2/19/21, 8:01 PM
narciso said...: Well tombaugh had an elementary understanding when he discovered pluto in 1930?; 2/19/21, 8:01 PM
StephenFearby said...: NY Post

Columbia professor: I do heroin regularly for ‘work-life balance’

'Carl Hart is a Columbia University professor of psychology and neuroscience. He chairs the psych department and has a fondness for heroin – not only as a subject of scholarly pursuit but also as a substance for personal use.

At 54, the married father of three has snorted small amounts of heroin for as many as 10 days in a row and enjoyed it mightily – even if, as he recalls in his new book “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear” (Penguin Press), he’s experienced mild withdrawal symptoms “12 to 16 hours after the last dose.”

But, as Hart sees it, the discomfort is a worthwhile trade-off.

“There aren’t many things in life that I enjoy more than a few lines by the fireplace at the end of the day,” he writes, pointing out that the experience leaves him “refreshed” and “prepared to face another day.”

Hart, who studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on humans, finds his use of the narcotic to be “as rational as my alcohol use. Like vacation, sex and the arts, heroin is one of the tools that I use to maintain my work-life balance.”'

'...It’s not just heroin that keeps Hart centered, he claims. The prof is also a fan of the effects brought on by MDMA (better known as Molly or ecstasy) and methamphetamine (a drug that has caused the most overdose deaths in nearly half the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In describing MDMA, he recalled “intense feelings of pleasure, gratitude and energy.

“When I’m rolling, I just want to breathe deeply and enjoy it. The simple act of breathing can be extremely pleasurable.”

He even found pleasure in snorting a version of so-called bath salts, a synthetic cathinone that’s been linked to disturbing behavior from barking to breaking into homes. Hart’s assessment: “unequivocally wonderful.” In his book, he recounts the effects as being “euphoric, energetic, clearheaded and highly social … niiiiiice.”

So nice, in fact, that he writes about wanting to take the drug ahead of “some awful required social event, such as an academic reception.” A rep for Columbia has not returned The Post’s request for comment on Hart’s illegal drug use.'

https://nypost.com/2021/02/19/columbia-prof-i-snort-heroin-regularly-for-work-life-balance/

Wikipedia:

"...He also uses the intersection of his understanding about the systemic racism inherent in drug criminalization, in combination with his extensive knowledge about drugs, to combat mainstream stories which perpetuate myths of black (and other minority) inferiority.[29]"; 2/19/21, 8:02 PM
Original Mike said...: I can see how it could be Mercury.; 2/19/21, 8:02 PM
Inga said...: Here is my youngest grandson and his snowman today.; 2/19/21, 8:02 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Explain Mercury.; 2/19/21, 8:02 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Yancey Ward said...

Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?

They are all equally close, as they all average to the position of the sun.; 2/19/21, 8:05 PM
Josephbleau said...: Give me a model specifying the position of the planets in three dimensions and I can calculate the answer to your question (Copernicus did this right?). Since I don't care which planet is closer I won't.; 2/19/21, 8:07 PM
wildswan said...: If you look closely, you will see that that is a light-charcoal colored snowman. Monet showed us how to look at sky-reflecting or shadowed objects.; 2/19/21, 8:11 PM
Original Mike said...: "Explain Mercury."

When it's on the other side of the sun from Neptune it isn't much further away than when it's on the same side.; 2/19/21, 8:11 PM
Rick.T. said...: Saw the first three episodes of The Lone Ranger on Circle TV this after from...1949! Saved the future Silver from certain death by Buffalo with a single shot from a 45!; 2/19/21, 8:15 PM
Joe Smith said...: "Why must snowmen always be white?"

Better than yellow...; 2/19/21, 8:15 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Note that planets' orbits are not circular, but elliptical. If that was all there was to it, then the planet whose orbit ellipse extended in the same direction as Neptune's would be closest. However, orbits precess, so the ellipses change which way they point over time, so this all averages out.; 2/19/21, 8:18 PM
Rick.T. said...: Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?
———————
It would have been funnier if you had posed the question about Uranus.; 2/19/21, 8:19 PM
DavidUW said...: At 54, the married father of three has snorted small amounts of heroin for as many as 10 days in a row and enjoyed it mightily – even if, as he recalls in his new book “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear” (Penguin Press), he’s experienced mild withdrawal symptoms “12 to 16 hours after the last dose.”
>>
What about his hemorrhoids?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2074872/
The Narcotic Bowel Syndrome: Clinical Features, Pathophysiology and Management; 2/19/21, 8:20 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Here's another planetary trivia question: to the nearest day, how many times does the earth revolve around its axis in a year?; 2/19/21, 8:20 PM
Harsh Pencil said...: Well, since we are playing the "closest to" game, Which state is closest to Africa?; 2/19/21, 8:22 PM
narciso said...: Massachussetts i think.; 2/19/21, 8:24 PM
Harsh Pencil said...: Nope; 2/19/21, 8:25 PM
Yancey Ward said...: It is Mercury. Mercury and Neptune are never separated by more than the radius of Neptune's orbit plus the radius of Mercury's orbit while Neptune and Uranus are separated, at the maximum, by the radius of Neptune's orbit plus the radius of Uranus' orbit (when they are on opposite sides of the Sun). Additionally, Mercury is never very far from the Sun, relatively speaking, when it is at maximum elongation from the Sun when viewed from Neptune- think of the two planets making a right triangle with the Sun, and the distance is the hypotenuse which is roughly equivalent to Neptune's distance from the Sun given r(nep) is much greater than r(mer). Now think about the situation with Neptune and Uranus making a right triangle with the Sun- that hypotenuse is quite a bit longer than the radius of Neptune's orbit. In short, Uranus and Neptune spend a lot more time much further apart than Neptune and Mercury ever do. The same applies to every planet- Mercury is the closest to all of them averaged over time, and for the exact same reasons.

Pluto was the only questionable one due to it having the highest orbital eccentricity and orbit outside of the planetary plane, but calculations from its actual orbit taken over a millenia have also confirmed Mercury is its closest neighbor on average.; 2/19/21, 8:26 PM
Original Mike said...: I like it Yancey. I'll have to try it on my observing buddies.; 2/19/21, 8:29 PM
Josephbleau said...: "Well, since we are playing the "closest to" game, Which state is closest to Africa?"

Ill take the risk in asking by what metric? how are we measuring correlation?; 2/19/21, 8:30 PM
Narr said...: Lots of genocide talk around here lately.

One of the interesting aspects of genocide rhetoric is the way it inevitably conjures up Hitler and Nazism AS IF any country in the world went to war against them because they planned or were committing genocide.

Every country that had a real choice made war on Nazi Germany for traditional and understandable reasons of state, and would have been as much or little justified in doing so if the Hyperkrauts had never murdered a single Jew, Gypsy, or imbecile.

Certainly there were individuals and groups moved by idealism to oppose Hitler, but there is no case on record of any country making war against Nazi Germany because of their mistreatment of the weak.

Narr
The world doesn't work that way; 2/19/21, 8:31 PM
Original Mike said...: Not ignoring you, IiB. Did you really mean 'revolve' rather than 'rotate'?; 2/19/21, 8:37 PM
narciso said...: Chinese regard the turkic peoples in cinjiang as alien, they conquered them as far as the era of ruxi in the mid 18th century taiwan is ethnically chinese but politically alien, it was a portuguese colony if memory serves and hong kong similarly as the british prize for the opium war; 2/19/21, 8:38 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Yes, the orbits are ellipses, but the eccentricity of the orbits of all the planets is pretty small except for Mercury and Pluto- in short, if you viewed the orbits scaled on a piece of paper, you wouldn't be able to tell they weren't circular except for those two planets- you would even have a hard time proving it with a standard ruler (I have actually done this before as an exercise from an astronomy textbook).

The calculations did, of course, account for eccentricity and precession over time, but the effects are quite small and irrelevant.; 2/19/21, 8:40 PM
narciso said...: Xinjiang was again incorporated into the Chinese empire when it was conquered by the Mongol leader Genghis (Chinggis) Khan in the 13th century. The Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644–1911/12) successfully asserted control over the Xinjiang region, defeating the resistance of stubborn tribes in the north and sending loyal Muslims from Gansu to settle in the oases of northern Xinjiang in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1884 they formed the xinjiang province; 2/19/21, 8:41 PM
Narr said...: I've seen that Carl Hart fellow on CSpan a few times, I think. Very clean and articulate.

One of my wargaming buds years ago was a medical student, who used to ride with me to our meetings. He said that his pharmacology instructor said that the difference between heroin and alcohol was essentially this-- that any person could maintain their mind and skills if addicted to heroin IF they received pure product and proper dosing, but that a life of alcohol addiction would be shorter and physical and mental decline certain.

Kind of makes sense, I thought.

Narr
Guy musta been a Libertarian; 2/19/21, 8:43 PM
FullMoon said...: Churchy LaFemme: said... [hush][hide comment]

Instant mashed potatoes makes snowmen better.

Especially good in Stouffers SnowMan Soup.; 2/19/21, 8:45 PM
Narr said...: Ironically, and unless I'm very much mistaken, some of the best of Mao's troops were Uighurs from Xinjiang.

Narr
Just goes to show you; 2/19/21, 8:46 PM
narciso said...: That from britannica entry, similar to russia they had a break away regime after the 1911 revolution; 2/19/21, 8:46 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I might have guessed MA as a second or third guess. My first two guesses would be Maine or North Carolina, not sure which order I would put them in. 4th guess would be Florida. Now I am going to go look it up.; 2/19/21, 8:46 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Ken B:

Of course now it’s sexist to oppose Neera Tanden.

Neera Tanden is a perfect example of so-called "horseshoe theory." She is despised by the "far-left'" and the "far-right" because she is the epitome of the DC establishment. She's a corporate Democrat and neoliberal. Glenn Greenwald has been one of her biggest critics. He represents that faction of the left that despises the Democratic Party and the neoliberal faction that dominates it. A similar faction dominates the Republican Party.

A good example of the horseshoe in action is Greenwald appearing as a guest on Tucker's show. The intersection of their two respective audiences is the sweet spot. The Bernie bros and the Deplorables have a common enemy in the neoliberal political establishment that dominates the country. Perhaps it's impossible to to stich those two constituencies into a political coalition, but given the alternative, people should at least be trying.

As long as people stay wedded to the outdated notion that there is a monolithic "Left" out there that they must oppose at all costs. There's an establishment left and an anti-establishment left, and the latter are worth forming a strategic alliance with.; 2/19/21, 8:52 PM
Harsh Pencil said...: Yancey is correct. Maine. By closest I mean the usual definition. From what state can you travel across the globe to a point in Africa traveling the shortest distance. Maine juts way out eastward, more than enough to make up for the extra distance south you have to go.; 2/19/21, 8:53 PM
Michael McNeil said...: A few days ago I posted a comment proposing (electric-gasoline) vehicle hybrids as an individual solution to the intermittent and unreliable public power supply which increasingly appears to be a feature of the modern “woke” world.

Now I see that Texans are indeed utilizing the new Ford F150 Hybrid (often acquired ahead of time for that very capability) to power their homes during the recent storm- and cold-engendered power outage.; 2/19/21, 8:57 PM
Michael K said...: his pharmacology instructor said that the difference between heroin and alcohol was essentially this-- that any person could maintain their mind and skills if addicted to heroin IF they received pure product and proper dosing

William Halsted became addicted to cocaine during experiments with local anesthetic. Osler took him on a long sea voyage before he began at Johns Hopkins. The voyage was reputed to have cured him of his addiction. He was the world's greatest surgeon until his death in 1922. When Osler died and his papers were opened, it turned out that Halsted had been a morphine addict the rest of his life. It is even speculated that his meticulous technique, which was famous, was the result of his addiction.

After the use of narcotics like heroin was banned, Hopkins was allowed to use up its supply and it was used in Labor there for decades until they ran out in the early 30s. Before epidurals, it was probably the best anesthetic for labor.; 2/19/21, 8:57 PM
narciso said...: Who besides greenwald and perhaps michael tracey is critical of the regime.

No the uighurs had a complicated relationship with the kuomingtang mao treated them like stalin treated the chechens; 2/19/21, 8:57 PM
Narr said...: Some people call this city Memfrica.

Narr
I just call it home; 2/19/21, 8:58 PM
DavidUW said...: anti-establishment left, and the latter are worth forming a strategic alliance with.
>>
No. The "anti-establishment left" is a bunch of commies.
once in power, they become the establishment, as they have to, and they just speed up the thievery.

They should be swinging from lampposts with their establishment brethren.; 2/19/21, 8:59 PM
FullMoon said...: Product placement is annoying. How much was the writer paid by Jockey?

While his wife, Huma Abedin, travels the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton, the disgraced ex-congressman has been sexting with a busty brunette out West — and even sent her a lurid crotch shot with his toddler son in the picture, The Post has learned....

Weiner was clearly aroused by his conversation with the 40-something divorcee when he abruptly changed the subject.

“Someone just climbed into my bed,” Weiner wrote.

“Really?” she responded.

Weiner then hit “send” on the cringe-inducing image, which shows a bulge in his white, Jockey-brand boxer briefs and his son cuddled up to his left, wrapped in a light-green blanket.

“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman wrote.

Moments after forwarding the photo, Weiner freaked out over the possibility he had accidentally posted it publicly — just as he did during the infamous episode that forced him to resign from Congress in 2011.

“Ooooooh . . . I was scared. For half a second I thought I posted something. Stop looking at my crotch,” Weiner wrote back....

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/08/weiners-wiener-is-back-in-news.html; 2/19/21, 9:05 PM
chuck said...: Which planet, averaged over time, is closest to Neptune?

I'll guess Neptune :); 2/19/21, 9:06 PM
Francisco D said...: 3-4 months ago, liberal Democrats I know were saying that Trump rushed the vaccine and that Pharma was just in to for the money.

Now they want to cancel people who don't get the shot.

Hmm.; 2/19/21, 9:19 PM
Michael McNeil said...: One can also hike the Appalachian Trail in Maine, then go to Africa — Morocco — and hike that same mountain range!

This is because Maine and Morocco were actually touching, a couple of hundred million years back, when Africa/Europe and North America collided (South America too further south) as a result of plate tectonics, closing the predecessor ocean to the Atlantic and raising what was then the highest mountains in the world (much like the Himalayas, and for the same reason). Then those united-in-Pangaea continents were ripped apart again as the new Atlantic Ocean opened up.

Thus, the Appalachians in e.g. Maine are the exact same mountain range as the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria.; 2/19/21, 9:23 PM
chuck said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/19/21, 9:28 PM
chuck said...: Now they want to cancel people who don't get the shot.

I blame Trump.; 2/19/21, 9:30 PM
The Godfather said...: @ HarshPencil: Maine is the closest US State to Africa, but Newfoundland is even closer (and if Mr. Madison's War had worked out differently, that would have been the right answer).; 2/19/21, 9:32 PM
narciso said...: First of all they are ovals second they are on different planes so you have to look at things in three dimensions.; 2/19/21, 9:32 PM
narciso said...: It also has to do with the curvature of the earth.; 2/19/21, 9:37 PM
Narr said...: Excellent observation, Michael.

Plate tectonics is fascinating stuff, and IIRC McPhee and even Bryson write well on the topic. The story of the theory and how it finally prevailed is a classic.

Here's a fun little test: from where you sit on the planet right now, if you went to the EXACT spot opposite on the sphere, through the center of the earth, where would you emerge? See how close you get without checking.

Narr
On your honor!; 2/19/21, 9:50 PM
Original Mike said...: Recently got a great new book: "Plate Tectonics" Frisch, Meschede, Blakey. It's upping my amateur geologist game.; 2/19/21, 9:53 PM
chuck said...: Neptune at distance 1 from Sun, other planet at r, looks like the average of sqrt(1 + 2rcos + r^2), which I think has a minimum of 1 at r = 0. So Mercury.; 2/19/21, 9:56 PM
Josephbleau said...: After the use of narcotics like heroin was banned, Hopkins was allowed to use up its supply and it was used in Labor there for decades until they ran out in the early 30s. Before epidurals, it was probably the best anesthetic for labor.

Thanks, a very interesting story I appreciate the depth of your comments; 2/19/21, 10:00 PM
chuck said...: @narciso I was assuming they were close enough to moving in a plane and circular to not need to worry about it once Pluto was out of the picture. Is that not the case?; 2/19/21, 10:05 PM
Rory said...: Covid question: I came across an older man today who had fallen on his porch. Never met him before. I tried to lift him, my arms locked around him from behind, but couldn't get him up. So I called the paramedics and they took care of him. The other thing I did was run into the house, look in a couple rooms, and get him a blanket. As part of the call, they asked if he had been exposed to covid, and he said no.

I went home, showered, sanitized, gargled. My plan is to wait a few days for symptoms, keeping an extra distance from people. Does that seem reasonable? It seems plausible he hasn't been exposed, he has very long hair and may have been holed up. No coughing. I'm in the group that can be vaccinated, but haven't been blessed with an appointment yet.; 2/19/21, 10:07 PM
J. Farmer said...: @narciso:

Who besides greenwald and perhaps michael tracey is critical of the regime.

Matt Taibi, Jeremy Scahill, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Jill Stein, Yanis Varoufakis, Nathan J. Robinsn, Matt McManus, Slavoj Žižek, Bhaskar Sunkara, and the writers who contribute to Sunkara's Jacobin. It and Current Affairs are probably the two best left-wing publications right now.; 2/19/21, 10:14 PM
Rory said...: "from where you sit on the planet right now, if you went to the EXACT spot opposite on the sphere"

Somewhere near where MH30 went down.

I bought a house about 15 years ago, with a thirty year (360 month) mortgage. Began a little geography game where I "moved" the house one degree west every week, so when the globe was circled the house would be paid off. It was fun looking up and down the next line of longitude each month for an interesting town to "visit." The game finally got disrupted by refinancing to 15 years, then selling the house.; 2/19/21, 10:18 PM
Josephbleau said...: As a PhD level Statistician I would caution people against making great claims on little evidence, MS Texas A and M, Univ IL PhD; 2/19/21, 10:21 PM
Birches said...: I think you'll be fine doing what you're doing Rory. After 5 days you're probably in the clear. For sure by ten days.; 2/19/21, 10:39 PM
Birches said...: Good of you to help out a stranger.; 2/19/21, 10:39 PM
Ken B said...: Farmer: “ There's an establishment left and an anti-establishment left, and the latter are worth forming a strategic alliance with.”

Amen. I have always got on well with that kind of old leftie. They respect discussion. Their complaints are often well taken too (its their analysis and prescriptions that are hopeless.)

I agree an alliance is possible, and urgently needed. IF conservatives can get past some obstacles. You can see the obstacles to such an alliance here on this blog. Not to mention names but Kichael M for example.; 2/19/21, 10:43 PM
Ken B said...: Narcisco
Check out the World Socialist Web Site.
They veer off into crazy fairly often but they are honest, and very anti woke and anti Biden and anti NYT. They are people one can work with.; 2/19/21, 10:45 PM
320Busdriver said...: So TX wind turbines will probably need winterization measures to avoid a repeat of this weeks meltdown. VOX has a good article contrasting IA wind farms. They make a lot of electricity in IA.; 2/19/21, 10:49 PM
Ken B said...: Joseph: “ As a PhD level Statistician I would caution people against making great claims on little evidence,”

Sound advice but kinda funny. The whole point of your discipline is making claims on little evidence! Once you have enough evidence — ocean size data sets — simple techniques work.; 2/19/21, 10:51 PM
Big Mike said...: @Josspheu, does the men’s room in Altgeld Hall still smell like it’s the other end point for the sewage system?; 2/19/21, 10:54 PM
Ken B said...: 320
Yep. Turbines can be winterized. They didn’t winterize them because they thought a storm like this happens once a century. I think that's jbad risk management, since 1% is a big risk for a disaster, but you can rationally argue it’s cost effective, as long as people take precautions.
In Ontario we had most of the province without power for days in the big ice storm 8 years ago. It’s hard to prevent lines coming down. So it’s a tradeoff. You cannot protect against everything.; 2/19/21, 10:57 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "William Halsted became addicted to cocaine during experiments with local anesthetic."

Interesting. As I was reading your comment, Mike, the story sounded like the main character of the Cinemax series, The Knick which ran for two seasons about 6-8 years ago. Very good television series. I looked at the Wiki entry and they do say that the main character was partially based on Halsted.; 2/19/21, 11:01 PM
Mark said...: Covid question: I came across an older man today who had fallen on his porch. Never met him before. I tried to lift him, my arms locked around him from behind, but couldn't get him up...I went home, showered, sanitized, gargled. My plan is to wait a few days for symptoms, keeping an extra distance from people. Does that seem reasonable?

A week or so ago following a snow/ice storm, I was walking to the condo parking lot when an older woman slipped and fell. After having her lie still for a minute or two to make sure she was OK, and after a few more minutes of her friend and I trying this way and that to get her to her feet supporting one arm, eventually I got around to the back and with my arms underneath both of hers, we did a 1, 2, 3 and she was able to get up. She thanked me and we went on our way. None of the three of us were masked.

I went to wherever it was I was going and did whatever I was going to do. Never once did it occur to me to go into hazmat mode and worry if I had been exposed.; 2/19/21, 11:04 PM
320Busdriver said...: Are the kids in Madison, Milwaukee, et al in school yet?

If not, why not. When?; 2/19/21, 11:11 PM
narciso said...: One of the interesting thing about the expanse, was it realistically showed how interplanetary warfare would manifest.; 2/19/21, 11:12 PM
Mark said...: "from where you sit on the planet right now, if you went to the EXACT spot opposite on the sphere"

Well, Rory only quoted an excerpt, not the whole thing, so I already looked it up before finding out I wasn't supposed to.

Anyway, the answer is Augusta, Western Australia.

When, as a four-year-old growing up in Ohio, we talked about digging a hole all the way to China, if we had succeeded in going all the way through the earth, we would have unpleasantly found ourselves in the middle of the Native American Ocean.; 2/19/21, 11:12 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: The results of Florida's no-lockdown policies compared to New York's and California's lockdown policies; 2/19/21, 11:13 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Yeah, I would guess I would be in the Indian Ocean on the exact opposite side of the globe. I base this on the knowledge that the Indian Trappes were described as being on the exact opposite of the Yucatan meteor that is theorized to have kill the dinosaurs. So, from Oak Ridge, that is rougly 1500 miles south of where the trappes are in India (I have no idea without looking where in India the trappes are) and about the same longitude.

Oak Ridge coordinates are 36°0′37″N 84°16′11″W, the opposite side should be 36 0'37" S 95 44' 49" E if I am doing this right.; 2/19/21, 11:14 PM
Mark said...: Twice now I've tried to watch The Expanse (first episode). Latest time only last night. Both times I got confused as to what was happening, consequently lost interest, and gave up.; 2/19/21, 11:15 PM
Yancey Ward said...: If I have done the calculation correctly, this is the exact opposite point of the globe from Oak Ridge, TN.; 2/19/21, 11:17 PM
DavidUW said...: In the realm of mechanical watches, there are several, the cricket, the memovox.

But none have the ability to distinguish am from pm oddly enough and so the alarm rings twice a day.

The glashutte diary has the ability to set a single day alarm a month in advance but it’s not a daily alarm

Mechanical watches have am/pm indicators and there are also 24 hour watch dials.

Why is there no mechanical alarm watch that can be set to just one daily alarm at say 4 am or 4 pm.; 2/19/21, 11:18 PM
Mark said...: My mistake. Augusta is merely the closest city to the opposite side of the world. Once again, the real opposite side is rcocean.; 2/19/21, 11:20 PM
narciso said...: No wsws are not good people, if trotsky had won out he would have done the same to stalin, he latter just got the drop on him. The november 17th werent anymore merciful.; 2/19/21, 11:25 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Mark,

The Expanse is a great show, so give it another try. It is a complicated story with many levels, so I understand it is hard to follow. The first 3 seasons will be worth it. I was less enchanted with the 4th season (it got bogged down too long planet side with what I found to be a somewhat boring storyline), and I haven't had a chance to binge the 5th one.

Mars and the Earth are in a system cold war, with the asteroid belt citizens caught in between. The Thomas Jane character is hired to find a rich Earthman's daughter who has disappeared. He finds that a substance was found that transforms matter, biologic material and inorganic matter, in non-random ways- it is a kind of nano-technology whose purpose isn't immediately obvious and it seems very weapon-like, and the humans everywhere want to use it as such. Its ultimate purpose is only revealed in the third season.

The show isn't for everyone, but it is by far the best at trying to show what a true space-faring human civilization would be like. Things like inertia and gravity, or its lack, are not ignored.; 2/19/21, 11:27 PM
narciso said...: Yes those elements also just the cinematography is incredible, james corey are actually two writers for rr martin, but the byzantine intrigues come from there.; 2/19/21, 11:30 PM
narciso said...: Paolinis latest borrows some elements from corey; 2/19/21, 11:31 PM
Owen said...: Michael K, Michael McNeil, Yancey Ward: great comments and puzzlers tonight! Thanks. Regarding Maine/Morocco: yes, the local geology here in SE CT is part of “Avalonia,” the land mass that was split by the Atlantic when it formed. Plate tectonics is very cool.; 2/19/21, 11:33 PM
Original Mike said...: antipodesmap

I like the graphic.; 2/19/21, 11:34 PM
Joe Smith said...: "One of the interesting thing about the expanse, was it realistically showed how interplanetary warfare would manifest."

Not an expert there, but they get a lot wrong for dramatic effect.

But on the warfare part, why use missiles that can be evaded?

Why not use lasers that are targeted with computers that never miss?

For dramatic effect, of course...kind of like 'Star Wars' storm troopers who can't hit the broad side of a barn.; 2/19/21, 11:39 PM
Yancey Ward said...: As much as I despise some of things he has done, I give Jeff Bezos great credit for saving The Expanse from cancellation and giving at least 3 additional seasons over what SyFy did.; 2/19/21, 11:40 PM
narciso said...: I guess they considered lasers arent as effective, energy weapons like particle beams might more damaging; 2/19/21, 11:42 PM
narciso said...: Imagine if teslas lightning gun has been adapted in mid 20th century; 2/19/21, 11:44 PM
Joe Smith said...: "Things like inertia and gravity, or its lack, are not ignored."

Except they have one character launching herself into space from one ship to another without a suit.

She's exposed for at least 30 seconds. Spoiler: she survives.

The temperature of space is -450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Every atom in her body would cease to move in a few seconds. By the time she hit the other ship she would explode into a cloud of frozen dust...awkward.

Other than that, totally realistic : ); 2/19/21, 11:45 PM
Joe Smith said...: "I guess they considered lasers arent as effective, energy weapons like particle beams might more damaging"

The point being, that beams of any kind, targeted by computer, would never miss.

But then there'd be no drama...

Oh, they still do the fiery engine noises when the ships fly by.; 2/19/21, 11:47 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Joe,

You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal."; 2/19/21, 11:47 PM
narciso said...: You really wouldnt hear those sounds. But were meant to hear them, space and beyond back in tbe 90s tried to incorporate some elements (for instance the cockpit with the airlock was modular); 2/19/21, 11:51 PM
Yancey Ward said...: So, what is the best home generator one can buy for power outages? I would want one that power the home appliances easily for 2 weeks with enough fuel.; 2/19/21, 11:53 PM
Ken B said...: Music by Robert Moran https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kVseUSGiXCy9GaGhsSjZYCdld9kWPlWwE; 2/19/21, 11:59 PM
Joe Smith said...: "You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

I know...I get it...dramatic effect.

But what cracked me up were reviewers on IMDB arguing that she really could have survived : ); 2/20/21, 12:01 AM
Yancey Ward said...: How long could a person survive in vacuum in orbit at the distance of the belt from the Sun? I honestly don't know. I imagine the tissue damage from just the gas swelling in the body would be nearly lethal, but again, I don't know. Surely these experiments have been done somewhere on some animal.; 2/20/21, 12:04 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Since I am indifferent to the killing of old people, we could run tests on Ken B.; 2/20/21, 12:06 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I do have to give credit where it is due- I really like the first of the pieces in the Robert Moran link- Points of Departure.; 2/20/21, 12:07 AM
eddie willers said...: Plate tectonics is very cool.

To show how "scientific consensus" is oftimes balony.

When I was in grade school (mid fifties) all us kids would look at a globe and say, "Hey, you could slide S. America into Africa", and then be told by our teacher,"Just a coincidence. Continents don't move".; 2/20/21, 12:16 AM
Joe Smith said...: "How long could a person survive in vacuum in orbit at the distance of the belt from the Sun?"

I think once you inhale and -450F hits your lungs it's kind of over. And good luck holding your breath once exposed to that kind of temperature.

Think of the science experiments where something (an apple, let's say) is frozen in dry ice at 'only' -109F. After a short time it will shatter like glass.

Absolute zero is -459F...atoms almost stop moving completely.; 2/20/21, 12:17 AM
Yancey Ward said...: But is it -450 F in the radiance of the Sun? I know on the surface of the Moon, the temperature can reach 200+ F in the daytime. What would the temperature be on the sunside surface of Ceres, for example?

Of course, you couldn't hold your breath- it would probably be sucked out of you in an millisecond, and if you resisted, your lungs would rupture anyway.

I don't disagree- you would probably be a dead man after 5 seconds even if you didn't die instantly and managed to get repressurized.; 2/20/21, 12:26 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I like the second piece, too- Angels of Silence. Will listen to more tomorrow.; 2/20/21, 12:28 AM
Gospace said...: Yancey Ward said...
So, what is the best home generator one can buy for power outages? I would want one that power the home appliances easily for 2 weeks with enough fuel.

Minimum 15 KW diesel generator with extra fuel tank. At full load, you'll need an extra 500 gallons of fuel storage for a 15 KW model. And- likely you couldn't operate everything at once. Full load for the 20 KW you'd need an extra 700 gallons of storage.

I get by with 5.5 KW gas generator. Operate it for an hour every 4-6 hours to keep house warm, refrigerator and freezer cold. I can run any one small cooking appliance, the boiler, fridge and freezer, the well pump (a huge draw) and a few lights.

https://www.generac.com/generaccorporate/media/library/content/all-products/generators/home-generators/protector-series/15-50kw_protectorsellsheet-web.pdf

If you really want to run everything without worry about brownout, you need to calculate your load if everything comes on. Electric or gas water heater? (My water is heated by the boiler). Electric or gas stove? Actually, for emergency cooking, have an outdoor propane grill with a few extra bottles. Electric heat or NG or oil? Do you need AC powered up in the simmer or can you live without it?; 2/20/21, 12:33 AM
Ken B said...: Yancey
Yes, I like that one best too from that album. Moran has written some lovely music. The Trinity Requiem, written for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, is a wonderfully beautiful piece. It’s on YouTube.; 2/20/21, 12:34 AM
Gospace said...: eddie willers said...
Plate tectonics is very cool.

To show how "scientific consensus" is oftimes balony.

When I was in grade school (mid fifties) all us kids would look at a globe and say, "Hey, you could slide S. America into Africa", and then be told by our teacher,"Just a coincidence. Continents don't move".

Still that way in the early 1960s. Something that was obvious to every kindergartener everywhere took a while to be accepted by the serious and educated geologists and other scientists.; 2/20/21, 12:36 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I could live without the AC, but my mother could not. Electric stove, but we do have a gas grill.; 2/20/21, 12:38 AM
Rt41Rebel said...: I propose an experiment. Subject one troll poster to an instantaneous full vacuum at room temp, and another troll poster to -450°F at normal pressure, and see which one can still type 'Trump' on a keyboard.; 2/20/21, 12:38 AM
Joan said...: She'd probably be fine, although not conscious after 15 seconds or so. 30 seconds isn't such a stretch.

I researched this question years ago for my FarscapeWeekly ezine after John Crichton took a similar jaunt in the middle episode of the Look at the Princess arc. NASA used to host an "Ask an Astrophysicist" page which is now inactive, but they have archived the responses. This page deals with humans and space travel, and one of the questions is about how unprotected humans respond to the vacuum of space. There have been animal experiments but also a couple of accidents of people being exposed to a vacuum and living to talk about it.

You will die eventually, of course. But you won't freeze instantaneously because we're not such great thermal radiators -- its mostly conduction that transfer heat from us, and of course in space there's nothing to bounce off of you to conduct heat away. Our skin also has enough tensile strength to keep us contained, so your blood isn't going to boil away. Your saliva in your mouth probably will, though. So it's not too crazy to have a character survive.

Regarding plate tectonics, Bryson's Brief History of Everything chapter on it is great, but the Amoeba People's Continental Drift song, The Posthumous Triumph of Alfred Wegener, is my students' hands-down favorite science song. History of science is my favorite thing to teach, so teaching intro to geology is a blast. The paradigm shift around plate tectonics was massive but it really did take a lot of old geologists dying off for the theory to be accepted. I remember reading about a survey in the 1980s, thirty years or more after Hess's work on seafloor spreading had been heralded, where some significant percentage of American geologists were still skeptical of plate tectonics. I always tell my students the Earth is really, really old but our understanding of it is still in its infancy. There's still so much we don't know.; 2/20/21, 12:38 AM
Gospace said...: Joe Smith said...
"Things like inertia and gravity, or its lack, are not ignored."

Except they have one character launching herself into space from one ship to another without a suit.

She's exposed for at least 30 seconds. Spoiler: she survives.

The temperature of space is -450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Every atom in her body would cease to move in a few seconds. By the time she hit the other ship she would explode into a cloud of frozen dust...awkward.

Noting to conduct the heat to- it would have to be carried off by radiation. Which takes longer than convection and conduction. 30-60 seconds is the generally accepted max time for transfer without suit in vacuum. First- breathe everything out and keep your mouth open. Keeps you from exploding.; 2/20/21, 12:40 AM
Joe Smith said...: "But is it -450 F in the radiance of the Sun?"

Don't think it matters...take a rocket up 1,000 miles and I don't care if the sun is shining on you or not...still gonna be damn cold.

From a quick search:

"Outer space is a vacuum. Space vacuum, of course, is not perfect, because even in interstellar space there are 5-10 hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter.

However, the gas molecules in deep space are too sparse and are far apart to regularly collide and transmit energy.

Thus, even when the Sun heats them with infrared radiation, heat transfer through conduction is not possible. Similarly, convection, which is a form of heat transfer that occurs in the presence of gravity, is important for heat dissipation throughout the Earth but does not occur in weightless space."

So it seems like that if you're in an almost perfect vacuum, heat sources don't help too much...; 2/20/21, 12:40 AM
Joan said...: Something that was obvious to every kindergartener everywhere took a while to be accepted by the serious and educated geologists and other scientists.

It was obvious, but until the ocean floor was mapped post-WWII and the mid-ocean ridge was discovered, no one proposed a mechanism by which it could happen. Wegener piled up reams of evidence the continents had moved, but he was ignored because the mechanism he proposed was, frankly, preposterous.

And it wasn't until the age of the ocean floor rocks was analyzed and the magnetic stripes were identified that the seafloor spreading hypothesis was confirmed. It all makes so much sense now but the evidence was lying under miles of water. You can't really blame them for working with the data they had available.

Now Nicolas Steno and James Hutton -- those guys were both really something for putting together disparate ideas and figuring out fossilization and the rock cycle.; 2/20/21, 12:44 AM
Joe Smith said...: "It was obvious..."

But but but...the science was settled®!; 2/20/21, 12:47 AM
StephenFearby said...: Good Read:

Inside Wikipedia's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried

"The days of Wikipedia's robust commitment to neutrality are long gone," co-founder Larry Sanger said.

'Wikipedia pages related to socialism and communism contain stark examples.

The two main pages for "Socialism" and "Communism" span a massive 28,000 words, and yet they contain no discussion of the genocides committed by socialist and communist regimes, in which tens of millions of people were murdered and starved.

"The omission of large-scale mass murder, slave labor, and man-made famines is negligent and deeply misleading," economics professor Bryan Caplan, who has studied the history of communism, told Fox News.

The pages include plenty of history, Caplan noted, and are not confined to just philosophical claims. But the history focuses on flattering claims.

Wikipedia’s Socialism page announces: "The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century."

It ignores a man-made famine in which Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin commandeered the food from regions like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, leaving millions to starve to death even as the Soviet Union exported grain to foreign countries...'

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wikipedia-bias-socialism-pages-whitewashed; 2/20/21, 12:55 AM
walter said...: J. Farmer said. The Bernie bros and the Deplorables have a common enemy in the neoliberal political establishment that dominates the country
--
Take a couple current issues: Immigration, energy.
Gonna need an industrial level stitcher...perhaps Spandex.; 2/20/21, 12:56 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: What happens when you wake up naked in outer space…

(Aside from being very embarassed).; 2/20/21, 2:24 AM
gilbar said...: But on the warfare part, why use missiles that can be evaded?
Why not use lasers that are targeted with computers that never miss?

have No Idea what show you're watching... BUT
HARD to make a laser beam carry a 10 megaton warhead...
pretty EASY to make a missile carry one

on the other hand; have to get Pretty close (in astronomical distances) to use missiles
on the other other hand; same's true (in astronomical distances) for lasers; 2/20/21, 5:18 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: That's quite a snowman, Inga! Grandchildren are wonderful, aren't they? We're blessed with seven of them, ranging from 18 months to almost 7 years.; 2/20/21, 6:42 AM
Mr. Forward said...: My optimistic thermometer on the east porch has doubled to 2 degrees. There are no negative negative numbers on the 10 day forecast. End of Winter.; 2/20/21, 7:34 AM
wildswan said...: "From what state can you travel across the globe to a point in Africa traveling the shortest distance. Maine juts way out eastward, more than enough to make up for the extra distance south you have to go."

Significance in US history.
The Grand Banks fishing grounds are closer to the Azores and Portugal than anyone realizes and fishermen from Spain, Portugal and the Azores were working there very soon after 1492, establishing a market for the fish. The English began buying Spanish wine from Malaga in the 16C and needed a product to trade for Spanish currency and fish was such a product. John Slaney was an English merchant building up this trade in 1615. Spanish friars came to him and said that they were sheltering a kidnapped Indian named Squanto from the far north coast of North America. If Slaney returned that Indian to North America, the Indian could interpret with his fellow tribesmen, helping Slaney set up a trading station / fishing station near the Grand Banks. Slaney took Squanto to London where he taught him English and showed the advantages of trading with the English. Then Slaney sent Squanto to his fishing station in Newfoundland. This was 1200 miles by land from Squanto's home and the local New foundland tribal group was hostile to everyone. But there Squanto found a ship captain who knew him from the John Smith expedition and knew where he came from. It was agreed to return Squanto to New England because he could be an interpreter there. When the ship returned him, Squanto found that his entire village, Patuxent, had died of the new diseases to which they had no resistance. He went and lived with relatives. A year later he heard that an English group was at Patuxent. These were the Pilgrims. Their settlement was failing to establish itself in an unknown land, they were, in fact dying away, when Squanto came walking out of the forest and said: "Welcome, English friends" and showed them how to survive and trade.
If this account is correct, Squanto was seeking to help establish a trading station near his own tribe. He got back home and he assisted the Pilgrims for the same reason: because he, the Spanish and the English were aware of the need for such interpreter / diplomats to establish a trading station. People don't think of Massachusetts and Newfoundland as being close to Spain and Portugal but they are closer than people realize and their fishing grounds connected them with those two countries and their trading partners very early on. Squanto's travels and actions make sense within this trading pattern. It has never made sense to say that he, an Algonquin speaker, a man of the Stone Age, "made his way" from Malaga, Spain to London, England; or to say that an entire ship and crew was diverted from its proper trading route to return him by a long, slow sailing voyage of 1200 miles to his home for no economic reason. The Puritan emigration of 1630 was a different thing entirely than setting up a trading station. But Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to prosper and the Pilgrims taught the Puritans and so his story has a meaning so far beyond his own purposes than an understanding of his purposes has been lost.

Map https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/grand-banks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Banks_of_Newfoundland; 2/20/21, 7:38 AM
boatbuilder said...: William Halsted’s story sounds like the inspiration (in part) for Stephen Maturin of the Master and Commander novels.; 2/20/21, 7:50 AM
Iman said...: Planet Claire.; 2/20/21, 7:54 AM
Narayanan said...: Yancey Ward said...
It is Mercury. Mercury and Neptune are never separated by more than the radius of Neptune's orbit plus the radius of Mercury's orbit while Neptune and Uranus are separated, at the maximum, by the radius of Neptune's orbit plus the radius of Uranus' orbit (when they are on opposite sides of the Sun).
---------============
well explained
most easily demonstrated by drawing Mercury-Centric[ered] or Neptune-centric[ered] sun+planets system.; 2/20/21, 8:36 AM
Michael McNeil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/21, 8:40 AM
Michael McNeil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/21, 8:45 AM
Michael McNeil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/21, 8:47 AM
Michael McNeil said...: “Things like inertia and gravity, or its lack, are not ignored.”

Except they have one character launching herself into space from one ship to another without a suit. She's exposed for at least 30 seconds. Spoiler: she survives. The temperature of space is -450 degrees Fahrenheit. Every atom in her body would cease to move in a few seconds. By the time she hit the other ship she would explode into a cloud of frozen dust… awkward. Other than that, totally realistic : )

____

Joe, You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. “Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”

Joe: Completely wrong. And Yancy: You too, for buying into it. (Do you really think Arthur C. Clarke in doing 2001: A Space Odyssey would make that kind of silly mistake? No way!)

The fact is that the vacuum of space — lacking air and almost any matter whatsoever — is much closer to having no temperature than any particular temp such as absolute zero. In space, the most important means of losing temperature here on earth — conduction and convection — are unavailable. All that can occur to reduce your (floating in space) temperature is radiation — and that's a slow process. Moreover, if the sun is shining (as it always does in space within the solar system), that adds to your temperature — but, once again, slowly.

As far as how long a human body can survive in vacuum, indeed those experiments have been done (on chimpanzees, as I recall) — and the answer is about a minute (with consciousness lasting about half a minute).

As stated, what's described to occur in The Expanse (which I haven't yet seen) sounds perfectly plausible, just as in 2001.; 2/20/21, 8:48 AM
Lurker21 said...: "Heroin keeps me centered."

Yeah ... Centered on getting more heroin.

Gotta get more heroin.

Going to get more heroin now.; 2/20/21, 9:51 AM
Fritz said...: Ken B said...
Joseph: “ As a PhD level Statistician I would caution people against making great claims on little evidence,”

Sound advice but kinda funny. The whole point of your discipline is making claims on little evidence! Once you have enough evidence — ocean size data sets — simple techniques work.

As a retired user (and abuser) of statistic, I would differ. The whole point of the discipline is to quantify the level of certainty in conclusions drawn from a given data set, regardless of whether the data set has a little or a lot of data.; 2/20/21, 10:14 AM
DavidUW said...: Now Fraudci says that vaccines reduce transmission.

Waiting for idiot inga to flip flop too and say she always thought that.; 2/20/21, 10:26 AM
Joe Smith said...: "As stated, what's described to occur in The Expanse (which I haven't yet seen) sounds perfectly plausible, just as in 2001."

My main point is, I don't think anyone can withstand taking a single breath at -400F...I'm not a doc, but I've got to believe your lung tissue would be toast, as it were.

Assuming you did everything right, it sounds like you could survive about 15 seconds without writer's 'tricks.'

You've convinced me (with caveats)...

https://youtu.be/Jy0299W67cU; 2/20/21, 11:25 AM
Michael McNeil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/21, 3:18 PM
Michael McNeil said...: My main point is, I don't think anyone can withstand taking a single breath at -400 F… I'm not a doc, but I've got to believe your lung tissue would be toast, as it were.

I didn't earlier critique all your points such as this one, but in my view (sorry) it provides yet another illustration that your physical intuition in this department requires and deserves an upgrade.

It's true that if one were to breathe in air (nitrogen + oxygen) at a temperature of, say, a few degrees warmer than -300°F. (nitrogen boils at -320°F. [77 K], and oxygen at -297°F. (90 K]) at standard pressure — it would nearly instantaneously freeze your lungs.

Why? Because air (these gases) is a substance, which therefore has a temperature — together with incorporating significant heat capacity — but containing little actual heat, at -300°F. temperature.

If one were to breathe in such super-cold gases, heat would promptly flow (via conduction and convection) from the alveoli of one's lungs into the breathed-in air, quickly warming it up — and in inverse proportion freezing your lungs.

Now, consider the same thing, except this time breathing vacuum rather than super-cold air.

The (near) vacuum of space contains essentially no substance, and hence (as noted before) has effectively no temperature. While one can regard that nullity as being extremely cold (such as at or near absolute zero), it's also true that (within the solar system, as well as probably nearly everywhere else) what particles there are traveling through space are generally moving quite fast, which indicates high temperature, not low.

But whether one regards space-vacuum as being cold or hot, either way vacuum — containing no matter — has basically zero heat capacity.

Hence, if one “breathes vacuum” (a misnomer, since vacuum is non-material — essentially the alveoli and passages of your lungs contain a void), what happens? The alveoli cannot lose heat to the vacuum — as the vacuum cannot accept any heat. There is no such thing as conduction or convection through vacuum. (Vacuum, indeed, makes an excellent insulator, which is why it's employed as the insulating layer in thermos bottles.)

All the lung's alveoli can do to cool off (with one exception I'll get to) is radiate at infrared frequencies — which is all then re-absorbed on the far side of each alveola, with no temp. change.

It's true that — with the former (14-psi) air pressure released from pressing in the lungs and on the skin — the body's blood will then probably begin boiling: producing bubbles of vapor in the blood, together with vapor which escapes from the lungs. Such bubbles in the blood might eventually (if one lived that long) produce a stroke or heart attack.

Beyond that, passing from liquid-water to water-vapor consumes heat.

{Continued on the next page: page 2}; 2/20/21, 3:21 PM
Michael McNeil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/20/21, 3:24 PM
Michael McNeil said...: {Continued from previous page; page 2}

As an aside, let me mention a somewhat similar misapprehension I've seen folks encounter concerning lakes of water on the planet Mars. There's evidence that vast quantities of water may have been released, from time to time in past eras, from natural underground reservoirs on Mars — which then roared away downhill, eroding great river valleys and canyons that we can see from orbit, then ponding in lakes and seas.

How could such lakes of water persist on Mars? Mars' atmosphere is too thin to support liquid water. thus any water released in liquid form is automatically above the boiling point. I've seen folks often imagine that such lakes and even seas would flash instantaneously into vapor.

Not so, though — lakes would freeze. As the surface of the lake(s) start to boil, heat is correspondingly sucked out of their water — until, rather quickly, at least the surface of the lakes freezes thick enough to obstruct further boiling.

Water continues to sublimate (go directly to vapor) from the frozen lake surface, though, but at a far slower pace — and then only until dust and perhaps other debris is blown onto the lake surface, obstructing further sublimation. Such a dust- and debris-covered “lake” (or glacier) could last for a long time — indeed, we appear to see any number of them on Mars, many of which likely have been there for millions of years.

=–=–=

Back to the problem at hand. In the case of a human floating unprotected in space, something similar would be happening in the lungs. Water vapor released from the (probably slowly) boiling blood in the bloodstream and lungs, as it escaped out the nose and mouth, would carry away heat.

Thus, the lungs (likely a considerable time after death), and indeed probably the body as a whole, would ultimately freeze, but I believe it would take some while.; 2/20/21, 3:28 PM