HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles)
Subject: Re: Time Travel and Causality Violation
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 22:46:22 EST
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <1992Dec19.031331.13741@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>In article <kRV=++#@engin.umich.edu> ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles) writes:
>>>What happens if the object I declare that I am going to put through the
>>>time machine is a Gold Brick?  If I get one, I take both bricks and
>>>leave.  The next night, I do the same thing with two bricks. After 64
>>>nights, I have enough bricks to cover california to quite a depth.
>> Yes, it teleports objects from one universe to another. In one universe,
>>you wind up with enough gold to gild the Grand Canyon, while a lot of other
>>universes lose a gold brick.
>
>Not necessarily.  They all have a time machine, and can do it to.
>
>Figure out a scheme that in universe N takes a brick both from 2N and 2N+1.
>Each universe ends up with twice as many bricks as it used to have.  (The
>mapping from "what number universe do we want to take it from" to "when must
>we do stuff with the time machine and brick" ends up rather complicated, but
>it can be done.)

>Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)

 Of course, in the traditional time-travle model, you *create* a universe
when you travel back. Thus, in order to do the 'infinite shuffle' you need
to take an infinite number of trips first...

Sincerely,
Ray Ingles
ingles@engin.umich.edu

 They said there'd be snow at Christmas; They said there'd be peace on Earth.
 Halelujah Noel, be it Heaven or Hell; The Christmas we get we deserve.
      -ELP, "I Believe in Father Christmas"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: m23364@mwunix (James Meritt)
Subject: Re: Time Travel and Causality Violation
Organization: MITRE Corporation, McLean VA
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 14:39:46 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.203246.6614@bnr.ca> bucknerb@bnr.ca (Brent Buckner) writes:
}In article <1632@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen) writes:
}>Actually the greatest argument against the existance of time travel was brought
}>to my attention by my brother:
}>
}>If it is possible why aren't we up to our ears in temporal archaeologists and
}>time tourists?
}>
}
}Quite properly, you note that this is an objection to the existence
}of time travel.  However, it is not an objection to time travel
}being possible post-1992.
}
}Consider the development of a time machine that can send you back
}in time, but no earlier than the machine itself came into 
}existence (e.g. a technology that relies upon a receiver).

OHBOY!  Sam (Quantum Leap tv show) is EXACTLY such a time machine!!!


Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3814 alt.folklore.science:4398
From: colin@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Colin Roald)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Date: 18 Dec 92 03:14:56 GMT
Organization: U(r) AstroTheory Group

Jim Kasprzak kasprj@rpi.edu writes:

> The real problem is the sorry state of our educational system, which, like
>many aspects of the US government today, seems to exist more to keep a bunch
>of bureaucrats employed than to do anything useful. We spend more on education
>and get less out of it than any other nation on the planet, and we're reaping
>today what we've sown for the past four decades.

The real problem is the low expectations of American parents, who despite
everything said about our educational system are more satisfied with their
children's progress than are the parents in any of the Asian countries.
The kids pick up on their parents' attitudes, figure they're doing ok and
continue to slide along.  The educational system has it's problems, but it
would generally work much better if the people who actually use it demanded
more from it.  See the latest SciAm for a comparative study.



colin roald rational |  he opened up his mind and popped out of the groove
   romantic mystic   |  he saw both sides of everything and found he could
  cynical idealist   |    not move.                    -- james mcmurtry
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 19:08:57 -0500 
From: "Andrew C. Plotkin" <ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: HELP! (was: Do starships collapse when flying near c?)
	<85f2qwd@rpi.edu>
	<BCR.92Dec11200710@hfl3sn02.cern.ch>

Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.sf.science: 11-Dec-92 Re: HELP! (was: Do
starship.. Bill Riemers@cernapo.cer (3157)

> To measure how fast BOB was going you
> timmed how long it took for the separation between you and
> the nose of BOB to increase by 100m.  Obviously you should
> use the same method to determine how fast you are going.
> To your horror you realize your nose isn't getting any
> farther away.  You are at rest with respect to your nose.
> No matter how high you turn-up the engines you will never
> move with repect to your  nose.  So it looks like you'll
never reach the speed of light either.

Um, by that argument you should never be able to reach the speed of 60
mph either.

Special Relativity has lots of very nice math, which produce very nice
results (many of which are counterintuitive), and you seem to have
skipped the lot.

In article <85f2qwd@rpi.edu> ncc1701@madoka.its.rpi.edu (Mark O.
Chadwick) writes:

> Shoot, you think you got it all figured out, and you see a post like this.
> Now I'm confused again.
> I thought the reason the speed of light was unattainable was
> because your mass increased as you approached c. 

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that your ship
gets shorter and shorter, so you think you're going faster (in
shiplengths per second) when you're really not (very much.) *Both* are
really just misleading simplifications. 

A slightly clearer (but counterintuitive) statement: Light (any photon
you care to measure) always moves at c, relative to you. So you can't
reach the speed of light because light is always moving relative to you.
This may be what Bill Riemers was trying to say above, but I couldn't
tell. 

--Z

(Actually, I just looked back at previous posts, and Bill Riemers seems
to know relativity. So this probably *was* what he was saying above.)

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk)
Subject: Re: Territorial Disputes
Organization: Adhocracy of Enlightened Self Interest
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 11:34:07 EST

In article <1992Dec16.123853.8267@cs.rochester.edu> 
dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:

>In article <1992Dec15.171048.27281@newstand.syr.edu> 
>pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:
>
>>However, Bussard Ramjets are just not practical, at least not at this
>>speed.  The amount of hydrogen fuel -- assuming total conversion --
>>needed to get a 10000 kg spacecraft to 0.99c is something like the
>>number of atoms in the known universe.
>
>Um, how do you compute this?  The kinetic energy of an object
>moving at 99% c is about 7 times its rest mass.

Whoops!  You're right!  Okay, assume fusion and no reactionless drives!

	--Peter Kwangjun Suk



Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: mvp@netcom.com (Mike Van Pelt)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 01:15:12 GMT

In article <9zh2gtb@rpi.edu> kasprj@rpi.edu writes:
> 1) Intelligence is not an inherited trait.

This is complete baloney.  It is obligatory PC baloney, but baloney
nonetheless.  No flames until you are prepared to prove to me that
you have taught differential calculus to a gerbil.

>There is enough variation in the chromosomal crapshoot that a
>child can wind up significantly above or below the intelligence
>level of the parents.

That, of course, is entirely true.  You can't get the first
assertion from this, though.

-- 
Mike Van Pelt          | What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth?
mvp@netcom.com         | Judging from realistic simulations involving a
                       | sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we
                       | can assume it will be pretty bad. -- Dave Barry
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Reply-To: frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Organization: Joint Center for Radiation Therapy
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 23:56:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.155034.16562@alw.nih.gov>, singley@helix.nih.gov (Erick Singley) writes...
>>        B/ With a current (15 year) history of property taxes rising at the
>>           rate of 12% a year, by the time I retire, I will be spending 100%
>>           of my income paying property taxes. Obviously I can not do this,
>>           (and continue to pay for heat, light etc. not to mention Income taxes
> 
>Obviously you can never reach 100% by increasing  numbers by a % (though 
>you could get a serious amount of .9s *grin* )

	I hope you are not doing any statistical analysis, (or any cell
	dynamics studies, etc.) It can get to 100%. case in point. Assume

	(A) Taxes rise at 15% per year.

	(B) Income rises at 1.5%/year, (which is my case, because I company
	    that doesn't sell overpriced toilet seats to uncle sam, but is 
	    forced to provide services at under a reasonable rate.)

              Effect of property taxes rising at 15.0 %/year
                   With wages rising at  1.5 %/year
                      Taxes starting at  3.0 % of income

              Year            Pay           Tax         Percent
              ----          -------       -------       -------
                0              1.00          0.03         3.00
                5              1.08          0.06         5.60
               10              1.16          0.12        10.46
               15              1.25          0.24        19.53
               20              1.35          0.49        36.46
               25              1.45          0.99        68.06
               30              1.56          1.99       127.08

   Frank R. Borger - Physicist    __       Internet:  Frank@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___      Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
  Center for Radiation Therapy   | |_) _   In biblical times a man could have
                                   | \|_)  as many wives as he could afford.
    "Birthplace of Softball"          |_)  Just like today. - Abagail VanBuren
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: singley@helix.nih.gov (Erick Singley)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 15:50:34 GMT

In article <pete.724415390@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>, pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter A
lexander Merel) writes...
>>> The real problem is the sorry state of our educational system, which, like
>>>many aspects of the US government today, seems to exist more to keep a 
>>>bunch of bureaucrats employed than to do anything useful.
>
>>Woah Jim, while I agree that the US government is noxious, the morons 
>>are breeding far faster beneath the considerably less enlightened 
>>governments that afflict most of the human race.

[Stuff relating to education system deleted]

[steps up on personal soapbox]
Hey! Watch where you point that gun! Some of us here in the "noxious US 
Gov" are working on food, drug, and health research.  Four floors in a wing 
of building 10 here at NIH are for AIDs research alone. Other branches clean up
the private sector's (and government's) chemical waste.  We are not all paper 
pushers sucking your tax dollars away while doing crossword puzzles!
[meekly steps down]

>        B/ With a current (15 year) history of property taxes rising at the
>           rate of 12% a year, by the time I retire, I will be spending 100%
>           of my income paying property taxes. Obviously I can not do this,
>           (and continue to pay for heat, light etc. not to mention Income taxes

Obviously you can never reach 100% by increasing  numbers by a % (though 
you could get a serious amount of .9s *grin* )

Erick
--
singley@clinpharm.niaaa.nih.gov
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3740 rec.arts.sf.misc:3453
From: mabw0164@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.misc
Subject: Re: Territorial Disputes
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:16:14 -0400
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.misc
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <1992Dec9.114933.14903@newstand.syr.edu>, pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:

< stuff deleted >

> 
> I would claim that this is a severe drawback to the whole concept of
> 'territory' and that a truly enlightened interstellar civilization
> would abandon the concept entirely.  
> 
> 	--Peter Kwangjun Suk


More likely expansion would be similar to European empire building of the
17th and 18th centuries. Virgin territory is always needed by growing states,
and a lot of that growth would be done through mercantilism, along with its
requirements of exclusivity. Combat would likely be done by company armies
defending company outposts or raiding the other guys establishments.

Eventually, the state would get involved in establishing its territories. In
time, the drain on the respective states would bring hostilities to a stall
and some sort of equilibrium would establish itself. Assuming, of course, that
a third party doesn't get involved with these now-exhausted states. In which
we could get a stellar version of the Hundred Years War.

The big problem I have with your "truly enlightened insterstellar civilization"
is that there is no local prototype. We have the UN, which is anything but
enlightened, and its predecessor the League of Nations. Neither has anything
approaching what you propose, and at times they've been little more than
forums in which the two major political forces could make deals. 

Nope, I just can't believe that any creature that develops even remotely 
similar to a human is going to be so devoid of personal ambition as to 
revoke the concept of territoriality. It would be nice, but I think I'll
just keep the laser cannons oiled and ready. :-)

Joe
01fortec@ac.dal.ca

PS There is always the old standy: MAD on an interstellar scale.
 

Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3849 rec.arts.startrek.tech:7071
From: pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: Time Travel and Causality Violation
Date: 20 Dec 92 04:33:08 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

In article <HrT=vTA@engin.umich.edu> ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles) writes:
>In article <1992Dec16.111449.15440@newstand.syr.edu> 
>pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:
>
>>Dear Scott,
>>
>>	I'm a-gonna toast you a little.  It's nothing personal, and we'd 
>>love to hear your input in the future.  But I've got to singe you just
>>a bit right now.
>>
[stuff deleted about gedankenexperiments]
>
> The following is an excerpt from a series of articles I posted back at
>the beginning of the term...

> Sorry to flame you a bit, Peter, but I think you were a tad premature in
>saying time travel a) is impossible, and b) of necessity leads to paradox.
>Shame on you! Haven't you ever read "By His Bootstraps," "Lifeline," and
>"All You Zombies..." by Heinlein? (BTW, paper #4 above explores the
>'multiple-universes' line from a QM perspective... interesting.)

	1) [smoldering a little around the edges]  Thanks, that was very
	   informative.  

	2) You completely misunderstood WHERE the 'little toasting'
	   was in my post.

	3) It's not defacto paradoxes that should worry one, just the 
	   mere possibility.

	--Peter Kwangjun Suk

(P.S.  This has been happening a lot lately.  Perhaps it's time for a little
visit to my Ego-Magnitude adjustment engineer...)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: General regulations?
From: morgan@arc.ab.ca (Sean Morgan)
Date: 11 Dec 92 12:57:06 MDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Alberta Research Council

In article <m2BFVB3w165w@west.darkside.com> max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max
Francis) writes:
>I was thinking that it would be interesting (and great fun) to develop a 
>set of regulations or general orders for an interstellar empire using 
>realistic physics, such as _The Mote in God's Eye_.  The orders might be 
>such like "No fusion drives to be lit at an aperture of greater than 0.01 
>mrad" or "No fusion or ion drive trails to come within 100 000 km of an 
>inhabited planet; no fusion or ion drive trails to come within 1000 km of 
>an uninhabited planet."
>
>Any ideas?

How about "No black holes (or potential black holes resulting from research
projects) allowed to have trajectories intersecting planetary bodies, or where
failure of containment would allow such intersection."  See Hogan's _Thrice
Upon a Time_"
-----------------+-------------------------------
Sean Morgan      |  ALBERTA  6815 - 8 Street N.E.
                 | RESEARCH  Calgary, AB, Canada
morgan@arc.ab.ca |  COUNCIL  T2E 7H7
From: nbull@access.digex.com (Nicholas Bull)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Title/author?? ... Thanks
Date: 19 Dec 1992 14:00:22 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

In article <1gso64INNo1c@mirror.digex.com> nbull@access.digex.com (Nicholas Bull) writes:
>Dear sci-fi readers,
>
>I'm trying to remeber the title &/or author of a sci-fi novel I
>read 20 years ago, when I was about 12.  I kind of remember the
>plot:
>
> ... 

Dear all,

Thanks for your help on identifying the book in question.  The
following reply from Richard Clark nails it:

This is Against_the_Fall_of_Night/The_City_and_the_Stars by A C Clarke.
Fall was the original, later rewritten and lengthened as City. Both from
the 50's. They may now be out of print but the text of one of them (Fall
I think) is the first half of the recent Clarke/Benford(?) 'collaboration'
Beyond_the_Fall_of_Night.
Its recently been discussed in *.sf.written. From the reviews: buy it if
you can't get the original story any other way and then don't read the
second half. I've never read the new one.

Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3767 rec.arts.sf.misc:3474 rec.arts.startrek.tech:6970
From: young@spinifex.dg.oz (Philip Young)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: Territorial Disputes
Date: 15 Dec 92 07:29:29 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science
Organization: Data General Australia

pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:
|> In message <9212101321.AA04366@phlan.sw.stratus.com> you wrote:
|> >In article <1992Dec9.120251.15046@newstand.syr.edu> you write:

|> [deleted]

|> >Try modelling this in three dimensions, and I think you'll find it even
|> >harder to get a race "hemmed in" (be fair, and use a random distribution).
|> >
|> 
|> I don't have the time to write the thing right now.  However, I have
|> been doing gedankenexperiments, imagining this.  No, it's not a likely
|> occurence.  However, the complications involved im making sure that
|> everyone has the same room for expansion get EXTREMELY complex, even
|> when you reduce the thing to such an idealized model.

Abandon the complications!  What makes you think everyone would have the
same room for expansion?  Some would be hemmed in, some may be squeezed
to extinction (New Yorkers for neighbours), some would have heaps of room.
It's just like life on Earth, n'est-ce pas?

|> 
|> Imagine a group of cosmic 'gypsies' with ships and technology like
|> the BORG -- except that they aren't so irrationaly belligerent.  
|> They'd travel through the galaxy at high speed, trading information
|> about cultures and technologies they'd encountered for raw materials.
|> They could also 'recruit' any willing and sufficiently advanced
|> beings into the collective.  Ocassionally one of their ships would
|> reproduce by mitosis.  
|> 
|> These 'gypsies' would always be welcomed by a rational species.
|> No one could hope to fight (and win) a war with them.  This race would be
|> immortal.  And they would have no need for any kind of 'territory.'
|> 
|> 	--Peter Kwangjun Suk

So they're cosmic vagrants.  Their territory then becomes their ship(s).
plus a possible defensive perimeter.  They *still* have territory.  How
would they acquire their tradable knowledge?  Who, do you suppose, would
just give these romantic vagabonds their technology, or anything
commercially or militarily useful?  They *might* sell goods and services,
but I doubt they'd ever sell trade secrets, never mind the military stuff.
I imagine they'd also get a pretty hard time if they came within spying
distance of a system-based culture. Freelance traders at best, with a
culture as likely to produce pirates as heavenly harmony.
 

-- 
Philip R. Young 
Data General Australia Pty. Ltd.
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Do starships collapse when flying near c?
Date: 16 Dec 92 00:32:29 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

flatline@uni-paderborn.de (Michael Wehking) writes:

> Does this mean that starships flying with the 'right' speed will fall into a 
> black hole anyway (the rest of the universe)?

Huh?  No, black holes can only be created through rest mass.  Like I said 
in the previous post, all frames of reference have to agree for there to 
be a black hole.  If A is travelling relative to B (or the other way 
around; same thing anyway), then A measures B's mass as greater than 
usual, while B measures A's mass as greater than usual.  But they both 
measure their own mass as the rest mass, as if they were at rest.

----------
Erik Max Francis   Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.  Coming soon:  UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail:  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117  ICBM:  37 20 N  121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP:  ..!apple!uuwest!max   Usenet:  max@west.darkside.com   464E4F5244   |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: ssammy@cs.strath.ac.uk (Paul Sammy 4th Year iE/CES)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: General regulations?
Date: 14 Dec 92 16:31:53 GMT
	<1992Dec09.084022.2405@uumeme.chi.il.us>
	<kf9r_jK00gpIQNiEh2@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: Information Engineering
In-reply-to: ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu's message of 10 Dec 92 16:39:11 GMT

>Regarding Re: General regulations?; ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Andrew C. Plotkin) adds:

>>>I was thinking that it would be interesting (and great fun) to develop a 
>>>set of regulations or general orders for an interstellar empire using 
>>>realistic physics
 > No craft transporting antimatter (either as cargo or fuel) shall land on
 > the surface of an life-bearing planet, or orbit within a half million
 > kilometers of an life-bearing planet, or set any course that will come
 > within a half million kilometers of an life-bearing planet, or set any

 Doesn't Niven's "Known Space" books mention the Belters keeping track
 of where space ships have *been*, ie their radioactive tracks through
 space, which would pose a threat to any life-form intersecting with it?

 (phew! what a long sentence!)

 Paul
--

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Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science