Personally, I've seen a lot of this. "Retro" in medicine not only is hip, but it actually works. And often better than synthesized medicine.
You have to know what you are doing though, which includes knowing what modern remedies acutally do and what they were originally built for.

Example: I treaded my reflux with healing earth and baking soda (Natriumhydrogencarbonat (German term)). The regular doctor would've given me super expensive PPI and the effect probably wouldn't have been half as good. It took me basically 3 days to get my acid levels back to normal.

Example 2: Healing Earth/Healing Clay. No more anti-biotics or synthesized remedies when I have stomach problems due to an infection or stress, thank you. This stuff has upped my health measurably ever since the local RPG dealer recommended it to me back in college. I've used it to externally treat neuro-dermitis, stomach problems and acidic cold sores. This stuff does wonders. For some people it's tough to swallow though. I usually take a heaped table-spoon of dry healing clay (grain size 1 or ultra-fine) and wash it down with a glass of water. You have to brush your teeth afterwards, otherwise you'll be scrunching on what feels like fine grained sand. ... Which it basically is, in a way. :-)

Example 3: Fresh onions and fresh pressed onion juice for treating ear or throat infections. It smells, but it works. The soothing effect is almost instant, no thinking what a synthesized remedy with that effect would have to do. I use onions marinated in honey as cough syrup - it's the best there is. It's a bit of a hassle to make, so I do use stuff from the store aswell when I need it and am low on time, but the self made stuff beats the stuff from the store in both effect and taste, hands down.

These are a few examples of old-school remedies that are measurably better that the stuff pharmaceuticals try to push on you. However, there is modern medicine that I do use, albeit as an 'educated patient'. Modern anti-hystaminica for instance has gotten pretty good and effective with negilible side-effects.

Bottom line: There are remedies that have been around for thousands of years and still are the best there is for treating certain conditions, perhaps also for the very simple fact that we've evolved around those things available to us. That, of cource, doesn't mean you should shun modern medicine entirely or go all-out homepathic or some other weird stuff.

My 2 cents.

Most people's perception of how airships should behave from holes is wrong, and it's based on their experience with party balloons. The reason for the differences are:

* Party balloons are pressurized - the skin is stretched taught. The skin on airships are loose.
* Skin area (and thus leak rate) scales proportional to the radius squared, while the volume scales proportional to the radius cubed. Airships are many, many orders of magnitude larger than party balloons. Consequently the rate in which gas can leak out of a hope is drastically lower.

Even large holes in airships don't take them down quickly. Even a moderate sized airship can generally continue flying to its destination and then fix the damage and refill there.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium

Good call. The eigth circle was for fraudsters (Wall Street), but the ninth circle was for traitors (NSA, CIA, Congress, POTUS).

Wall Street is peopled with thieves, but the NSA is peopled with traitors. A person of marginal morality could work in Wall Street while turning down the NSA on moral grounds.

I'm very sympathetic to your point (I'm actually agnostic, so I tend to look at these issue through several lenses at the same time.) My take on the certainty of theism is that there's often better support for it than some will admit, but most of us don't see a slam-dunk case for it.

I do think you're missing one of my main points here, though. I agree that a certain form of harm is done to gay persons who are unable to get equivalent business accommodation for their weddings as do straight couples.

But my point was that Christians, and perhaps some other religious persons, also suffer a kind of harm: having to choose between committing acts that may be prohibited by their faith, and not being able to make their living.

I'm not arguing about a particular manner in which those two notions of harm should be balanced in public policy. I'm simply raising the point that it's not a simply matter of "harm A" vs. "no harm". To Christians, it's a matter of "harm A" vs. "harm B". Atheists, on the other hand, see it as "harm A" vs. "no harm". Or at last I think they do.

BTW, thanks for the civil discussion. You're raising good points in a friendly manner, which doesn't always happen. I really appreciate it.

I think you've got a good point. It's interesting to read through your post and see which of your conclusions are supported without the presumption of the falsity of the religious beliefs in question.

We at least agree on one point: whichever beliefs are actually correct ought to triumph. But the problem, to which I think you alluded, is that we're looking for a form of governance which is workable even when we cannot come to an agreement about whose world view is actually correct.

It's a frustrating problem to be sure. Each world view entails some notions of what's a just government. And while we'd like to be considerate of people holding views different than our own, we can't get around the need to have some particular form of governance. And that's guaranteed to violate someone's conscience, unless we all happen to be on the same page, which just isn't going to happen.

Link

I do think that the whole "University party culture" thing has seriously warped our societal view of higher education.

There are ton of people who don't view college as anything but a chance to go wild for 4 years. When I enrolled it was obvious that around half the students there were basically just a bunch of children that were finally turned loose without parental supervision.

Heck I went to a state university with 7 students from my high school graduating class (only 3 of which graduated). One girl dropped out after 1 year, but got a fast food job right next to campus (4 hours away from home) just so that she could continue to party with all people still in college.

Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation

Well crustacians are able to focus sound for murder . Beat that, cetaceans!

I hope the guy who made the picture isn't in charge. I accidentally clicked on the article. That image nearly sent me in a coma.

Wow, this is great to hear - I'd never heard of you guys before. :)

And looking at your site, I like what you're doing even more - direct 3d printed aerospikes? Pretty darn cool. What sort of 3d printing tech are you using? Have you looked into the new hybrid laser spraying / CNC system that's out there (I forget the manufacturer)? The use of high velocity dust as source material gives you almost limitless material flexibility and improved physical properties that you can't get out of plain laser sintering, and the combination with CNC yields fast total part turnaround times.

And you're working on turbopump alternatives? Geez, you're playing with all of my favorite things here.... ;)

What sort of launch are you all looking at - is this ground launched (and if so, do you have a near-equatorial site) or air launched? I'd love to see more details about your rockets, what sort of ISP figures you're getting so far, how you're manufacturing your tanks, and on and on. But I guess I'll have to wait just like everyone else ;)

I wish you lots of success! And even if you don't make it, at the very least you'll have added a ton of practical research to the world :)

Note that it's technically possible to have something like this with a slow reactor; you could for example use steam as a moderator, which will transmit a reasonable proportion of near infrared through it (the hotter you can run your fuel particles, the better transmission you'll get). But not only will you lose some light, but just the simple act of neutron moderation is a very heat-intensive process, meaning big radiators if you want big power (not to mention that the moderator itself for such a slow reactor is also far heavier than the core). The whole point of my variant is to avoid the moderator and avoid the ship having to ever capture anything but incident heat lost due to generation, transmission, reflection, etc losses.

One possibility for a slow reactor, albeit only directly applicable to the rocket mode above, is to have your propellant be your moderator, absorbing both IR and moderating fast neutrons. The fact that it's heating then becomes irrelevant (actually an advantage), since you're dumping it out the nozzle for thrust. If one wanted mission flexibility in such a scenario you could have such a moderator-ejecting rocket mode used to get to orbit, and then switch to retaining the moderator once in orbit and cooling it instead in order to make use of the fission fragment operating mode.

But a fast reactor would obviously be highly preferable so you don't have to worry about a moderator at all. :) I'm just pointing the above out because slow reactor versions have already been simulated.

Wait a minute, no, I entered it right into the calculator the first time around. Argh, this interface is confusing. Radiative equilibrium for Tunsten at its melting point 3300C according to the calculator is 92MW/m. A "cool" 1200C radiative temperature according to the calculator 2,6MW/m. According to the calculator, 10kW/m is about 380C.