Yep. A physicist trying to explain a balanced line to other physicists, without knowing the word for it.

Haldane would be spinning in his grave.

Nope, I don't mean amnesty. Way to show you have zero understanding of the real problems with the immigration system.

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I happen have built more than one counterpoise.

The point they're missing is grounding of the "asymmetric" half of the antenna, and that's to keep a static charge from building in the antenna that'll zap through your electronics (or you) for safety reasons.

Sometimes. But you're missing what a Counterpoise does.

Cite?

I just did some searching and found dozens of articles that put that rule of thumb at 15 years, and a fair number that put it at 20, but none that said 10.

Granted that as applied to Lucas' development it's a distinction without a difference, because Lucas would have to use a rule of thumb of about 150 years.

A more interesting question for those who would say "yes", if you could get them to answer it, is "Suppose that everything was true, except that they were there illegally, and they were white Canadians?". I think the truth that most who sneer at illegals won't admit to is that it's not just about their illegal status, and in fact it's not even mostly about their illegal status. It's mostly about race and culture.

If that weren't the case, why not fix the illegals' status by providing good options for them to get on the right side of the law? Because the law isn't really the issue.

Grid-tie inverters that do all of that are necessary for this to work at all, long before you get to questions about supply and demand management.

I don't know, but it's certainly higher than "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is the standard for legal conviction.

With that said, if you want to establish "beyond a shadow of a doubt" as the standard for capital punishment, I'm good with it in theory. In practice it'll be even more expensive than what we do now, and odds are you'll never execute anyone because the standard is impossible to meet. Which I guess may make it inexpensive, because no one will bother trying. But I don't think abolishing capital punishment is what you actually want.

So you're recommending that we solve the problem that the standard of proof is uncomfortably low for taking irreversible action by lowering the standard of proof. Keep in mind that the standard includes not just the stated standard for the one trial, but also the structure of the system of appeals, etc., which is in place to ensure that that trial was conducted correctly, and the appellate process also deals in shades of gray.

Lowering the standard as a way to solve the cost problem is fine for you, since you apparently have no doubts about the possibility of convicting innocent people, but it will inevitably increase the percentage of the population that opposes capital punishment, because they do have doubts. Again, I think that's not what you want.

Bah. I form my own opinions, and my opinion is that the current process with all of the appeals in place is fairly good but very expensive. It's still not perfect, mind you, as evidenced by the number of death row convictions that have been overturned (often MUCH more than one year after the conviction), but I don't believe perfection is possible, and I don't believe that we should do nothing just because we can't do it perfectly. So, if cost is irrelevant, then I don't object overmuch to the system we have, and I also wouldn't object to your "beyond a shadow of a doubt" system, assuming you could build one that works.

Damn, I wish I would have patented that and all its quantum magic...

I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...

Clearly you missed the bit where they invoked quantum mechanics, surely that explains away all the inaccuracies, like the fact you can already buy chip scale dielectric antennas

The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.

Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?

The point of my comment is that the results of the pilot program will be suspect because the people running it will likely not be qualified to do a good job (i.e. just like how the people running the ipad procurement project). The pilot program will appear to go really well, then when it comes time to do the full program that is a total cluster fuck, an investigation will reveal that the pilot program was also flawed but it was not noticed (due to incompetence) or covered up (due to corruption), or both.

Either way California *could* stand to be a little more self sustaining. It doesn't seem California is able to supply their own anything. 25% of their electricity is purchased from Arizona, and even then they still have rolling brownouts because they can't meet the demand.

I'm largely in agreement with your arguments, but this claim is nonsense. Confidence isn't boolean, it's a continuum. It makes perfect sense to talk about degree of confidence, and one can have enough confidence to imprison but not to execute.

FWIW, my opinion is that I have no moral problem with execution following a proper trial with an appropriate standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt is good), but I'm opposed to capital punishment because it's a waste of money. It ought to be cheaper than life imprisonment, but because execution is final we add a raft of additional legal processes, with the idea that they help to raise our confidence in the correctness of the conviction enough that we're okay with taking this irreversible step. There are two problems with that: First, the additional processes still don't actually increase our confidence enough and second, they actually cost more than caring for the accused for the remainder of his or her natural life.

That second point is, IMO, fatal to the concept of capital punishment. If it's cheaper and easier to just lock them up until they die then the only possible justification for the death penalty is the theoretical deterrent effect, but no one has ever shown any compelling evidence that the effect is significant.