HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: True Costs of French
Date: 23 Jan 93 02:29:13 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <22JAN93.09072878@cc4.crl.aecl.ca> camerond@cc4.crl.aecl.ca writes:
>The French policy towards fast breeders was quite appropriate at the time
>it was conceived, and it is rather unthoughtful to call it a fiasco using
>tha benefit of hindsight.  If all industrialized countries had pushed nuclear

Lovins argued that the French nuclear effort was an economic failure
in 1977. Events seem to have proven him correct. This is not hindsight.
 
>with the same vigour and general success as the French, their move towards
>fast breeders would have been seen as far-sighted and correct.

On what grounds do you call the French program a success? According to Tino,
according to EdF itself, they have had an operating profit for the last
year or two. What's the debt load? How much direct subsidy went into 
building these plants? How reliable are the plants? What's the rate of
increas/decrease of plant construction cost over the last two decades?
The French program was based on A) the technical promise of cheap energy
via a nuclear fission cycle, and B) a forecast of increasing energy use and
increasing oil costs. Both claims have been disputed for at the
last twenty years, and the critics seem to have been more accurate at
prediction than the annointed planners of the Almighty French State.

>
>It is true that the SuperPheonix has had some technical problems, but it is
>not obvious that they could not be overcome in that reactor or successors,
>if there were still the same drive and commitment to the concept. 

But, after expenditure of X billions of dollars, France had no working
breeder reactors and an apparently unsolvable series of technical
problems at SuperPheonix. Sure, it was not obvious that these problems
could not be fixed, but it was also not obvious that they could be
fixed in an economically sensible manner or at all.


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines)
Subject: Re: Methanol advance?
Originator: nickh@SNOW.FOX.CS.CMU.EDU
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 18:33:15 GMT

This new methanol process uses both mercury and sulphuric acid. In
large quantities. Not the cleanest of processes. Read Science News for
more.

Nick Haines nickh@cmu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Roads and Taxes (was Re: NEWS: True Costs of )
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 22:33:34 GMT

In article <1993Jan22.162551.15797@ke4zv.uucp>, gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
|> In article <51904@seismo.CSS.GOV> stead@skadi.CSS.GOV (Richard Stead) writes:
|> >In article <1993Jan21.120241.7316@ke4zv.uucp>, gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
|> [...]
|> Scale and responsibility Richard. Directed taxes can and do work when
|> those who levy the taxes and those who spend the taxes are closely 
|> coupled to those taxed and those who use the results of the tax spending.
|> The problem with a Federal tax is that it is too decoupled from the
|> local people paying it. Georgia is a net donor state when it comes to
|> Federal fuel taxes. We collect far more than the Feds send back. And
|> what does come back often has unacceptable strings attached.
|> [...]

I watched at length the debate on the latest large federal transportation
bill on C-SPAN. It's been a while so I don't remember the details, but as
I recall the taxes collected for the interstate system were redistributed
with the idea that states that had little infrastructure at the time (1950s?)
would get most of the money first (primarily western states) and the other
states would have to wait their turn ... I would imagine this is why Georgia
is a net donor state. Of course it probably will take far longer than
originally envisioned, but at some time Georgia should become a net recipient
state.

|> A local boondoggle paid for by Federal
|> dollars results in some DC bureaucrats getting more perks while the
|> rascals in Congress keep their jobs.

Actually, the rascals representing net donor states were arguing quite
strenuously to have more federal funds channeled their way, indicating that
the status quo was not particularly conducive to their reelection.

Larry Edwards
From: rcanders@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rod Anderson)
Subject: Re: Why not 120 VDC ?  Why invert?
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 06:17:02 GMT

In article <1993Jan23.000753.14523@michael.apple.com> ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:
>It seems like an incredibly stupid question to me, but I've got
>to ask it ...
>
>Pondering this ...  Why not just use a 120 VDC battery pack and use
>120 VDC for a bunch of stuff?  Lightbulbs don't care if they are
>AC or DC, nor do electric stoves and ovens or other resistive heat
>sources.  Some tools have AC/DC motors.  120 VDC was a common motor
>type not too long ago, so I'd expect some motors to be available
>for things like house fans.
>
If you use a 12 volt system you can start out with one set of batteries
and add capacity in parallel.  If you are on 120 volts dc you have 10
times the number of cells.  The initial cost for a 120 volt system will be
much higher. 

>Yeah, I know, you shouldn't have an electric stove or oven.  But
>the house already has one and my wife doesn't want to learn to 
>cook on gas.  (though I think it is really 220 ... more batteries...)

Gas stoves are better, They heat faster, you can see if the burner is on
and you will not have to add solar cells to use them.
Check power useage of a electric stove and see how much you will have
to spend on cells to run it.



--
Rod Anderson  N0NZO            | A life consisting exclusively of things
Boulder, CO                    | that are Good for You is bad for you.
rcanders@nyx.cs.du.edu         |                      Kelvin Throop
satellite  N0NZO on ao-16      |
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: sorgatz@avatar.tti.com (sorgatz)
Subject: Real vs Govt Energy costs (Re: Roads and Taxes)
Organization: Transaction Technology Inc.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:03:33 GMT

In article <30539@castle.ed.ac.uk> cir@festival.ed.ac.uk (C Revie) writes:
>jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>
>
>>Here is the crux of the problem.  You people in government think you know
>>more than us mere citizens and therefore have some kind of right to deny
>>us choice.  Bastards.  The thing that makes me so mad is I cannot come
>>up with a way short of an armed revolution to root you people out.
>>Maybe it must come to that.  Frankly, fuck you and your government
>>energy policies.  Richard, maybe if you'd drop the .gov off your
>>address and substitute a .com, you'd understand.
>
>>John
>
>That's what get's me about Libertarians in the USA. They think the world
>owes them a living, and that anybody who gets in their way ought to be
>shot.
>
>Two things for you to think about
>
>1) Americans pay less tax per head than any of the other G7 Nations
>
>2) Your infrastructure is knackered
>
>
>Chris

 Right. Just what I'd expect to come spouting from a socialist. Get real
Chris! Look at your own two points and think about this:

1) Americans pay less tax per person because we are free enough to tell 
the bastards in Washington DC to keep a lid on it! Unlike those of you 
that have abdicated your personal responsibility for what your government
does to you in the name of 'social progress'.

2) Our infrastructure serves those of us that work for a living quite well!
..those that refuse to get with the program are left to their own devices
and that's the name of that tune.

 Something else to consider: Look at the shambles that government-ownership
has done to the UK's industrial system: The airlines, the oil and coal firms
...need I say more?


-Avatar-> (aka: Erik K. Sorgatz) KB6LUY           +-------------------------+
TTI(sorgatz@soldev.tti.com)                       *   Think Eco, not EGO!   *
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. Santa Monica, CA  90405     +-------------------------+
(OPINIONS EXPRESSED DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF CITICORP OR ITS MANAGEMENT!)
Xref: sparky sci.physics:23572 sci.skeptic:22929 alt.paranormal:2863 alt.sci.physics.new-theories:2869 rec.arts.startrek.tech:7803
From: kring@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Date: 27 Jan 1993 18:32:55 GMT
Organization: FB Physik, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: nz11.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

I set Followup to sci.skeptic.

In article <-xq3+jr@rpi.edu>, petitc@nuge112.its.rpi.edu (Christopher Jon Petit) writes:
> As for all the ESP info---consider this.  There are many urban legends which
>involve ESP as 'saving the day'  Now, in order for ESP not to exist, EVERY ONE
>of those stories must have either an alternate explaination or be totally false
>.  But, if even one has no such explaination, and is somewhat true, then ESP
>exists in some form.

Yes, and in order for Santa Claus not to exist, EVERY ONE of the Santa Clauses
you see on the streets at the end of the year must be an imposter.  But if
even one of them is for real...

(To avoid being misunderstood *again* by a certain person with an agenda:
No, I don't want to compare Santa and PSI, I only want to show that the
argument above is less than impressive.  But at least it is new to me,
contrary to the old chestnut below.)

> Just remember---Relativity wasn't believed to exist either, until someone
>thought of how to prove its existence.

--
thomas kettenring, 3 dan, kaiserslautern, germany
Philosophy is the art of drawing conclusions from definitions that have been
chosen so that one can draw the conclusions one would like to get.
It immediately follows that philosophy is silly.
From: dima@dl.arm.msk.su (dima)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: New cross sections
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 10:30:13 MSK
Organization: Levkovsky's home

Dear Scientists!
I want to suggest for your attention the book: "Cross sections
of mass medium nuclide activation (A=40-100) by medium energy 
protons and a-particles (E=10-50MeV)", 
by PhD of Physics V. N. Levkovski (activation method, radiation 
material science; worked in the Nuclear Physics Institute, 
Kazakhstan, former USSR).
                       SUMMARY
Experimental research of more than 500 nuclear reactions activation
cross sections, depending on energy of bombarding particles, and
nuclear-physical characteristics of nuclide-targets and reaction
products are presented and classified in this book.
The book is of interest for experts in the field  of practical use
of charged particle accelerators, activation analysis, 
isotope production, radiation material testing, radiation chemistry,
space chemistry, as well as for scientists and postgraduates 
majoring in fundamental theoretical research.

The book contain: 55 pages of grafs, 87 - tables of experimental
results, 73 - phenomenological analysis, in all -215 pages.
ALL DATA PRESENTED IN THIS BOOK ARE PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME!
Price:US$50
I am Dmitri Levkovski, son of V. N. Levkovski.
After my father's death, I succeeded in having the book published in
Russia with my family's money. Now by selling the adapted for English
speaking user variant of the book(with applied translated in English
expanded contents and tables of data guide usage), I am trying to
collect money for having the book published in English.

Everybody who is interested in buying this book send me a message, please.

I would appreciate any of your thoughts(about the price also) and ideas
which might help to expand the use of this book.
Thank You!
Dmitri Levkovski  
 
 
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sawyer@utahep.uta.edu (Lee Sawyer)
Subject: Re: 2 of 4 moderators not qualified for sci.phys.research
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Texas at Arlington High Energy Physics Group
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 13:41:00 GMT

In article <C16zu7.5oq@well.sf.ca.us>, sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti) writes...
> 
>I'm for a moderated physics gorup. But looking at the posted CV only
>John Baez is really qualified by formal trainin. Johnson is next best
>but he is an experimentalist and most of stuff is theory. It would be
>good to have a separate experimental conference. Dale Bass dos not even
>have a Ph.D. and his field is not physics but engineering. And the other
>fellow is more a chemist than a physicist.

 Can we say "Badge of Honor" ? Presumably I am the "other fellow", in which 
case Mr. Sarfatti has confused my credentials with those of Dr. Johnson.
For those of you confused as well, Bill Johnson is a PhD in nuclear chemistry
and works at one of our country's premier national labs. I am a PhD in high
energy physics, with research experience at CERN, FNAL, and am now working
on the SDC detector for the SSC. But screw this - if the group is voted for,
I have agreed to help moderate the posts if it does not affect my real work,
but I will be damned if I will justify my credentials to every lame brain who
can't even read the goddamned CFV !

       ================                           
         Lee Sawyer                                  

         Dept of Physics                          
         Univ. of Texas                            
               at Arlington
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Truth vs beauty in physical theories
Date: 27 Jan 93 23:50:05
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
	<0FswXB1w165w@1776.COM><mcirvin.727989335@husc.harvard.edu>
	<MATT.93Jan25122932@physics2.berkeley.edu>
	<mcirvin.727998397@husc.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu's message of 25 Jan 93 21:46:37 GMT

In article <mcirvin.727998397@husc.harvard.edu> mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin) writes:

> >Even if you believe in Technicolor, chiral symmetry
> >breaking isn't enough: you need something to give mass to the
> >technifermions, so you've only deferred to problem to a higher energy
> >scale.
> 
> You mean "give mass to the ordinary fermions," don't you? 

No, I really did mean what I said: I agree that giving mass to the
ordinary fermions in technicolor models is a problem (and that the
proposed solutions to it are extraordinarily ugly, as well as being on
very shaky ground phenomenologically), but it isn't the problem that I
was referring to.

The point is that if the technifermions are massless, then the
technipions will be massless too, since they're just the Goldstone
bosons associated with chiral symmetry breaking.  Now that would be OK
if there were only three technipions (they would just become the W and
Z longitudinal modes), but in any technicolor model that's even
semi-realistic, you end up with more than three technipions: the only
way you'd end up with just three of them is if you only had two
technifermions, i.e., if the technicolor global symmetry were
SU(2)xSU(2).

So, somehow, you have to start out with massive techifermions, so
that, as in the case of QCD, the technipions are only approximately
Goldstone bosons.  So you're back to the same mess: since
technifermion masses aren't gauge invariant, where do those masses
come from?
--
Matthew Austern                       Maybe we can eventually make language a
matt@physics.berkeley.edu             complete impediment to understanding.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sal7@ellis.uchicago.edu (Rob Salgado)
Subject: Questions concerning Black-Hole Thermodynamics
Reply-To: sal7@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 18:56:02 GMT

I am about to study the Bardeen-Carter-Hawking paper on
"The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics" (Comm.Math.Phys. 31, 161-170 [1973]).

I have a few questions concerning black-hole mechanics and thermodynamics.
For now, I am only interested in the classical theory (i.e:
no Hawking radiation and no statistical mechanics).  
REFERENCES would be greatly appreciated.

1) What is the current status of the uniqueness theorems?
   Is there a concise formulation and proof of a general uniqueness theorem?

2) Is there any work being done on non-stationary black-holes?

3) Are there any natural geometric structures living on the event horizon?

4) What is the status of the cosmic censor conjecture?

5) Is the analogy to equilibrium thermodynamics peculiar to Einstein gravity
   in (3+1)-spacetime?  Compare/contrast with, say, (2+1)-gravity or a
   scalar-tensor theory.
-- 
Rob Salgado                              sal7@ellis.uchicago.edu
                                         salgado@suhep.phy.syr.edu (preferred)
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Truth vs beauty in physical theories
Date: 25 Jan 1993 12:32 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <mcirvin.727989335@husc.harvard.edu>, mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin) writes...
> 
>Compare this with QCD.  QCD is simplicity itself by comparison.  The
>gauge group remains unbroken down to low energies and the couplings
>are all vector couplings.  There's no fundamental scalar necessary, or
>groupings by chirality into gauge singlets and doublets.  The downside is
>that nobody can do really good calculations since the coupling is so strong.
> 
>Now, I fervently hope that this picture, which seems to be groping
>toward extreme elegance, turns out to emerge from something simpler and
>more beautiful.  But I worry that the reason the electroweak part
>of the standard model seems so much more complicated than the QCD part
>might be that it's better verified!  Might QCD turn out to require nasty
>tweaking once we get better ways to check theory against experiment?

Indeed.  QCD is much less well tested than the Electoweak sector of 
the Standard Model.  And QCD has defects, such as the Strong CP problem,
which are not near being resolved anytime soon.  I suspect, and this,
of course, is pure speculation, that the apparent simplicity of QCD
is the result more of our Strong Ingorance than due to any intrinsic
"fundamentalness."

Ultimately, we probably will begin to see better hints of whatever
simple underlying theory may exist when we have a better idea of 
the proper ingredients of such a theory.  If there comes a day when
we have some confidence that we have a list of all the particles that
exist, or, on the contrary, some proof that they constitute an infinite
set, then perhaps the simplicity of the whole thing will become more apparent.
In the meantime, I view the Standard Model as a necessary and appropriate
but probably flawed synthesis.  Thirty years of collecting data and
fleshing out the theory have allowed us to construct one coherent explanation
that accounts for many of the facts at hand.  But it is probably only 
the first of several such steps which we will take on the way to 
a complete theory.

This is getting too philophophical.  Time to stop.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.skeptic
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: re: White Paper - definition of life.
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 19:15:55 GMT


From: schultz@garnet.berkeley.edu (Richard Schultz)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sci.physics.new-
theories,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal
Subject: Re: New Physics,Healing & Paranormal 2 "White Paper"
Date: 27 Jan 1993 16:43:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu

In article <C1H5D6.6Jr@well.sf.ca.us> sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
wri

tes:

>Brian
>Josephson, a Nobel Prize Laureate in physics at Cambridge University thinks
>that complex living systems, which unlike inorganic matter are not in
>thermal equilibrium. . .

I don't know much from physics, so I really can't judge whether the
"physics"
Sarfatti presents is the babble it appears to be.  I am, however, a chemist.
It's possible, I guess, that  Josephson and Sarfatti have a really strange
definition of life (one that includes, say, the earth's atmosphere, which is
an immediately obvious example of "inorganic matter" that isn't at thermal
equilibrium).  More likely, to my way of thinking, is that this obvious
simple blunder says something else entirely about Sarfatti's competence as
a physicist.  Or rather, lack of competence.

                                        Richard Schultz

No Richard. Henry Stapp in several of his writings on quantum mechanics and
consciousness (Henry is at Lawrence Bereley Lab) has pointed out that
standard QM is really formulated for closed systems not for open systems -
although the recent work in continuous measurement of does the watched pot
boil variety is beginning to correct that.

The intent of my remark was not to give a necessary and sufficient
definition of life in terms of physics but only to point to a
necessary condition - no living system is in thermal equilibrium or
even near it but is in the far-from-equilibrium "nonlinear" region
in the sense of Prigogine - and that this feature may interact with
the quantum mechanics in surprising ways that overcome the unitarity
barrier and permit quantum connection communication between widely
separated quantum level parts of living systems- providing nonlocal
coordination needed for healthy functioning. I think that's the
sort of thing Josephson has in mind in his Foundations of Physics paper
on the subject.
From: Richard.Mathews@West.Sun.COM (Richard M. Mathews)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: ATOMS & ELECTRONS and sci.physics social progress
Date: 28 Jan 93 01:17:41 GMT
Organization: Sunsoft Inc., Los Angeles, CA.
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: astro
Originator: richard@astro

corleyj@helium.gas.uug.arizona.edu (Jason D Corley ) writes:
>Did Bill write the "informative answers"????? If so, what's his email
>address?  (I thought Carter would be a lot more likely to know the answer...)
>Hmmm...what would the email address of the white house be?
>direct-all-flames-here@org.executive.wash.gov?

Clinton's e-mail address is (or at least was)
	75300.3115@compuserve.com

     Richard M. Mathews			F oster 
					 E stonian-Latvian-Lithuanian
Richard.Mathews@West.Sun.COM		  I ndependence and
					   F reedom!
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: ATOMS & ELECTRONS
Date: 24 Jan 1993 10:10 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.196
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1993Jan23.220138.15459@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu>, mkagalen@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu (michael kagalenko) writes...
> 
>Why Earth is not crushing into the Sun ? Your answer really applys to
>the question "Why electron in the ground state doesn't radiate"  

Completely untrue.  The Earth probably has a net charge (does anyone have
any idea what it is?), as so *does* radiate EM radiation due to it's 
acceleration in it's orbit around the Sun.  However, the rate is probably
completely negligible compared to other dissipative effects due to tidal
stresses, etc.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas
Newsgroups: sci.physics