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Comment Re:We aready have this (Score 1) 33

I solder SMT components by hand as well. Don't even need a microscope; just head-mounted magnifier glasses is plenty. Make sure you have good light and plenty of flux and you're good to go.

But the problem is the board. Sure, if you have a finished design already, and you intend to actually use it in the future, then sending off for a finished PCB is good. But if it's just a hobby, and you're prototyping or just playing around to better understand a particular circuit, then spending a good chunk of money and weeks of time for a board is simply not feasible. You really want to set something up, try it, then tear it down and try the next idea.

With that said, I don't know that this is the answer either. Hand-drawn does not sound precise enough to handle SMT, and a whole separate device just making prototype boards sounds like too much money and space for a hobbyist. Perhaps the answer is desktop mills that become cheap and precise enough that you can use them to cut out boards from copper blanks along with other building tasks. At least that would not be a single-purpose gadget.

Comment Re:Wrong Focus (Score 1) 132

The cornerstone of it is the dusty fission fragment rocket, so I'd start there. Another key aspect is the use of a accelerator-driven subcritical fast reactor rather than a critical slow reactor. Lastly it's a variant of a nuclear lightbulb, albeit (as mentioned) without the primary drawbacks of them (containment and radiation blackening of the chamber blocking the light). This latter aspect is due to the spectrum changes of fused silica (I can't find a paper on short notice that shows the IR spectrum, but you can see that for most types of fused silica / fused quartz, there's little loss of transmission on the red side of the spectrum; this holds true but is even more pronounced in the IR range).

Comment Re:Different conceptions of harm? (Score 1) 1168

I see most of your point.

But by this ruling, no Christian cake baker anywhere in the country (or in that district? I forget the scope of the court) has the freedom to avoid this act of compelled religious speech and still make their living.

This was my original point: there's an argument over what constitutes harm. I think irreligious people are inclined to not see this as a matter of forced blashphemy, or to not care. Some religious people, depending on their theology, are inclined to see it as such, and to have a big problem with it. I.e., the two sides see the debate as being very differently framed.

Comment Re:Different conceptions of harm? (Score 1) 1168

I don't think any rational person assumes ...

I disagree. I think that some rational persons, in particular many religious persons, consider themselves accountable to God for all symbolic activity in which they engage.

This view is supported in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:20, which calls Christians to be ambassadors for Christ. Engaging in a form of symbolism is an act of speech.

The Old Testament / Hebrew bible is full of strictures against engaging in symbolic support of claims that the Lord is not in charge of everything and worthy of exclusive worship.

Thought experiments involving role-reversal are useful for everyone in this kind of discussion. Would you consider it okay for the law to compel a Muslim-owned advertising company to write "Islam is wrong. Mohamed was a militant con artist" all over a city's billboards? If not, why not?

Or would be okay, on your view, to force a Jewish-owned movie-making company to produce and promote a movie claiming that the Jews had it coming in the Holocaust, if it could somehow be shown in court that the submitted script was a guaranteed money-maker for them?

My contention is that some Christians consider writing messages counter to their theology to be objectionable in the same way. And that the very debate about whether or not it's sufficiently a matter of compelled religious speech is itself a question whose answer depends on one's religious viewpoint.

Comment Re:Please ready Hobby Lobby before commenting (Score 1) 1168

They don't (and shouldn't) have the "right" to have Hobby Lobby buy them contraception.

Their employer doesn't "buy them contraception", it just buys them health insurance. And at that point, they can start minding their own business about their employee's personal lives. Why should details about your health care still be under the influence of your employer's religion? Your employer has no business deciding if you shouldn't get insurance coverage for a circumcision.

Comment Re:Different conceptions of harm? (Score 1) 1168

Encouraging them in their sinful behavior. A gay wedding is a celebration, which I take as an affirmation that the thing being celebrated is good and worth of encouragement.

On some Christians' view, that's like having a celebration of giving a 6 year old a loaded gun. It puts them and those around them at heightened risk of death.

Comment Re:Tangible harm trumps imagined harm (Score 4, Insightful) 1168

Exactly how is a religious person being harmed here?

If you assume that their religious view is false (which is a judgment the government is not supposed to make), then I'd say the religious person is being harmed in precisely the same manner as that of a gay person who can't get his/her cake decorated with a certain message: it's simply a matter of hurt feelings.

If a religious person's view is true, then you're forcing them to have an alienated relationship with God (the Christian view), or by apostate (I think a Muslim view, but I could be wrong), and at a heightened risk of eternal damnation.

A religious person's imaginary rules for themselves are not and never should become my problem.

A religious person could argue that an atheist's imaginary world view should not be his problem either. My point in saying that I can't see how to have a clear separation of church and state in cases like this. Secularists win and religious persons lose, or vice versa, as far as I can tell.

Comment Re:Different conceptions of harm? (Score 2) 1168

There is absolutely no reason to treat these law abiding citizens as second class citizens in places of business.

I think you're perhaps missing part of my point.

I agree entirely that there are downsides to allowing business owners to make such distinctions. The point about black Americans is very valid.

But my point was that your dismissing a certain notion of harm, as perceived by religious persons. They consider themselves to be held accountable to God for their choices.

You're correctly arguing that gay people suffer a certain kind of harm by a business refusing to do a certain kind of business on their behalf. I'm saying that you're dismissing the harm done to religious persons by demanding them to violate their consciences and/or their obedience to God (on their view).

Comment Re:Wrong Focus (Score 1) 132

Used an online calculator earlier but clearly I had entered something in wrong last time because the results it's coming back with this time are different (and much lower). Tungsten could radiate around 10kW/m around its melting point. Graphite could do 14,5kW/m at its sublimation point. Hafnium carbide, 17,2kW/m at its melting point (though ceramics are brittle and probably not suitable).

An ideal near-term radiative solution for minimizing mass in this regard would involve a working fluid in carbon tubes carrying a thermal fluid out to carbon radiators.

There's also radiator concepts that don't use solids at all - various kinds of droplet radiators.

Comment Different conceptions of harm? (Score 3, Insightful) 1168

I think something irreligious non-libertarians miss in these discussions is the notion of harm.

I'm guessing that they see clear harm to a gay person in having a business refuse to perform a particular service for them.

But they see no harm in forcing a religious person to choose between being faithful to God and making their living.

In reality, gay people can usually find another place to get a cake decorated, and religious people can actually write the requested message on a cake. But irreligious people are making the value judgment that the former is less tolerable than the latter.

As far as I can tell, that prioritization is itself a religious judgment. It's saying that it's more wrong to refuse to blaspheme, than to blaspheme. That strikes me as very much an Enlightenment era notion of morality.

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