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Comment: Khhhhhaaaaannnnnn! (Score 1) 512

by Latent Heat (#40161303) Attached to: The Poor Waste More Time On Digital Entertainment
It is Khan Academy, people as the dude is from Middle Asia.

Kahn on the other hand, is more Middle East as Kahn (according to Wikipedia!) is a variant of Cohen as in the Kohanim, who were the priests in Solomon's Temple. To bear the family name Kahn, therefore, is a mark of descent from the Temple Priests.

Comment: Hare Krishna subset of Hinduism? (Score 1) 1171

by Latent Heat (#40160767) Attached to: Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey
To clarify my original post, I once read a book that advanced "evidence" that modern humans (not proto-humans of genus Homo or other) go back millions of years. You know, the deal about the "human footprint in the coal beds" kind of thing -- Creationists out of Western and Christian culture find such things to prove that that the coal beds are geologically young whereas the authors of this book were assuming the great geologic age and using that purported artifact to show that humans are truly ancient.

One of my points is that Fundamentalists are not the only game in town with respect to religion and the Evolution Controversy. As to attributing this book to the Hare Krishna movement, the forward to this book had Something-Something-Center for Krishna Consciousness. I took this organization to be speaking for whom we in the West call "the Hare Krishna's" rather than Hinduism in general.

I have the impression that the Hare Krishna movement does not speak for all Hindus and may even, in India, be regarded as something as an heretical sect. On the other hand, I kind of have the impression that Hinduism isn't as "uptight" about perceived heresy and deviationism as the three major Abrahamic Western religions. Correct me if I am wrong, but an observant Hindu would not be going around saying "Don't pay heed to those Hare Krishna people" but would not necessarily be endorsing everything they say. I also have the impression that the Hare Krishna movement comes out of the cultural context of Hinduism -- at least they base parts of their religion on Hindu scripture and religious culture?

Comment: What is this, "despise" Creationists? (Score 1) 1171

by Latent Heat (#40144605) Attached to: Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey
I blew off applying mod point to this thread to post.

What is this business of "despising" Creationists regarding their delight about the absence of transitional intermediates? If one is pursuing a scientific course, who cares what everyone ranging from Fundamentalist Christians to the Hare Krishnas believe or say on the subject? And yes, the Hare Krishna movement has its own religiously inspired spin on Evolution -- I came across a book once that had some kind of desire to prove the modern human race (not just earlier Homo and Australopithicans) to go back millions of years to fit in with Hindu scriptures regarding recurrent cycles.

Purely from a scientific standpoint, the Cambrian explosion, abiogenesis, even the transition from Procaryote to Eucaryote forms still require a lot of 'splainin, and there is probably more to the Cambrian explosion than some mystery process of why fossils don't last longer than 600 million years, and there are intriguing interpretation of the Edicaran fossils has being primitive forms or a dead end where things started from fresh in the Cambrian. These are all legitimate and open questions, and if some people are going "See, see you Evolutionists are all wrong!", I mean, like who cares?

Comment: My Powerball winnings (Score 1) 82

by Latent Heat (#40099511) Attached to: SETI Pioneer Jill Tarter Retires
My fantasy is perhaps more modest. I would purchase a Powerball ticket, win a couple-hundred million dollar jackpot, and then make a telephone call to Gilbert Levin, sewage plant engineer, to see if that amount of swag could put a life-sciences package on the surface of Mars.

You see, the LR (labeled release) technique was developed by Levin to do assays on treatment plant effluent without having to streak plates, which doesn't work if the levels are too low. Levin's LR on the Mars Viking Lander gave a positive life signal according to pre-determined criteria, but folks said, "Nah! That can't be!" after the fact and blamed the signal on soil oxides, a hypothesis that hasn't been nailed down either.

Levin has been wanting to fly a follow-on "Chiral LR" experiment to follow up, but NASA says nothing doing and the British agreed but crumped their South Polar Lander on Mars.

What would happen is that Gilbert Levin would be awarded a Nobel Prize, and I would be remembered as the chump who gave up his Powerball jackpot.

For this to happen I would have to actually purchase one or Powerball tickets, which I haven't done, because lotteries are a scam and the jackpots are manipulated and hyped to get fools to part with their money.

Comment: Like to see them in smaller sizes (Score 2) 529

I would like to see something that gets 50+ lumens per watt in a smaller size -- there are all kinds of applications, track lighting, accent lights, night lights where one could use a high-energy efficiency in a lower wattage lower lumens bulb.

The LEDs I have seen in the small sizes are just pi$$ weak. Compact fluorescents get less energy efficient in the smaller sizes, but I am thinking that since the big light bulbs have multiple LEDs, that you could get high efficiency at the low wattage end?

LEDs seem to have a directivity to them where they are more efficient as a spotlamp where a compact fluorescent has losses to the reflector whereas an LED seems to be less efficient as an area light, since it seems to want to throw its light in a cone anyway. One should play to the advantages of the particular tech.

Comment: Global Cooling is in TFA (Score 1) 371

by Latent Heat (#39601583) Attached to: 1981 Paper's Predictions for Global Temperatures Spot-On
That there was a concern about global cooling is right there in TFA.

The text of the article makes reference to "misconceptions regarding cooling" that were driven by "Northern Hemisphere effects up to 1970." The paper argues for Global Warming not Global Cooling, but there was enough of a buzz about Global Cooling back in the day that this paper gives it mention.

So there.

Booze is the answer. I don't remember the question.

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