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Comment Re:Friction Caused by Buffeting Winds?! (Score 1) 206

by hedpe2003 (#38902479) Attached to: 3,500 Year Old Florida Tree Dies of Natural Causes

My best guess is that it would be a localized wind pattern caused by a hill, valley, etc or even buildings if its anywhere near a city. it doesn't take much. Combine it with exceptionally dry air and it wouldn't take much for static electricity to start arcing. If there's any source of flammable gases such as hydrogen or methane beign stuck in the tree, it would take that much less of a spark to ignite.

However, I'm still betting on lighting or a stray cigarette.

We've had dry conditions lately here in central Florida - with the respective fire warnings given with the weather, so this sounds reasonable.

Personally my best guess at the cause is the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. In absense of an observer - there both was a fire, and was not. Then add in dry conditions... and some lady's observation... and BAM. Wind waves collapse and cause a fire.

Ok, I’m not normally one of the guy’s who says this... but The hell is this doing on Slashdot?.

Does that satisfy your news for nerds desire?

Comment Some Interesting Ideas (Score 1) 399

by hedpe2003 (#38839349) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Techie Wedding Invitation Ideas?
So I was looking for one link in particular for you that I thought was cool, and ended up with 3. Not as geeky as embedded circuits, but I'd consider it paper hacking, and rather brilliant at that. :)

Now this one just cracked me up. Less impressive, much more geeky:

Comment Re:May We Live in Interesting Times. (Score 1) 210

by hedpe2003 (#38386500) Attached to: LHC Homes In On Possible Higgs Boson Around 126GeV
I'm going to have to agree with the GP here. In my opinion, it's not about caring about the fate of humanity, it's about a combination of three things

1) An acceptance of your own mortality.
2) A recognition that your life is only significant to you and those that care about you or what you've done; and so the same thing can be said for all of humanity. No matter how advanced and great of a civilization we can have in the future, we will just be mere specks in the grand scheme of the universe, 99.99...% unaffected by our presence.
3) If your entire past, present and future sphere of influence (people, places and things) disintegrated with you, then no person is left behind and no task is left undone.

And this coming from an eternal optimist, hoping to some day make a difference. (Incompatible? I don't think so)

Comment Re:"Decoherence" (Score 1) 135

by hedpe2003 (#38306078) Attached to: Quantum Coherence Found Fueling Photosynthesis

"Thermodynamically irreversible" means that it's practically impossible to make the environment go back to the exact state it was when it interacted with the system, much like it's practically impossible to unscramble an egg. This means that the system is hopelessly entangled with the environment and can never go back to the way it was before, when the branches of its wavefunction could interfere with each other. This has a real physical effect that happens regardless of whether or not someone is watching.

You're right in saying that the system is hopelessly entangled with the environment, but there is no way of telling how it is entangled without observing either the system or the environment. Which in effect, just makes the system bigger itself (to include both the system and the environment which has interacted). Once you observe one, the state in which it has collapsed to can be extrapolated down.

Comment Disrupting the Bacterial Communication (Score 1) 433

by hedpe2003 (#38098158) Attached to: Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe
I was sent a TED Talk which touches on antibiotic resistance not too long ago. It was a study about how bacteria communicate with each other, and the ways in which you could stop that communication all together. It's incredibly interesting, and may solve the problem of antibiotic resistance all together if something really comes of it.

The talk was almost 3 years ago now. Does anyone know anything about this research?

Bonnie Bassler on how bacteria "talk"

Comment Re:Why is it bad ? (Score 1) 990

by hedpe2003 (#37843646) Attached to: The Real Job Threat

Only the person who owns the machine gets the profits of it.

And the sales guy who sold the machine, and the receptionist at the company where the sales guy works, and the engineer who designed the machine, and the workers who manufactured the machine (or the engineers who designed the automation of the manufacturing of the machine), and the programmer who programmed the machine, and the software engineer who designed the programming, and the tech writer who wrote the tech specs, and the trainers who trained the product, and the all of those peoples' managers.

You would greatly increase the job market (and raise the median income significantly) in this country with every one burger flipper replaced by technology.

Yeah, but what if one guy did all of that? eh?

Glad I could put that to rest...

Comment Re:In other words, we should give up. (Score 1) 2247

by hedpe2003 (#37779572) Attached to: Ron Paul Suggests Axing 5 U.S. Federal Departments (and Budgets)

I wonder why Ron Paul doesn't talk about slashing the military budget, it would appear the potential savings are enormous?

I'm no liberterian... but it appears to me, as president, slashing the military budget would be easy. He's made the point that "on day one" he would bring all of our troop’s home. He's talked a lot about the cost of the military overseas. These things, as president, are a lot easier to do than cutting government programs.

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