From: malloy@nprdc.navy.mil (Sean Malloy)
Subject: Re: How do axioms really work?
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
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Organization: University of North Texas
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Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 13:58:19 GMT

On Apr 13,  9:39pm, David Oakes wrote:
>  ! Consider the fact that only a very thin layer in the trunk of a tree
>  ! is alive -- the heart of the tree, which provides all its strength, is
>  ! dead wood. What makes dead wood different if it's inside a layer of
>  ! living tissue?
> 
> realise that yes, the interior "dead" wood will bend 
> according to whatever "law of physics" exists at tech 7,
> but the outer live wood is exempt, and can therefore
> support its own weight, and that of others
> (one of your counterpoints, if i remember)

At the point where a layer of cambium a couple of millimeters thick
is structurally strong enough to support a 50' tree, you can hang up
any pretense of rationality.

> my engineering/physics major of a wife wishes to point out that 
> everything bends before it breaks, the chipping of stone is an
> artifact of impact loading over constant loading
> (hitting it over pushing it)
> and any way, i did not say this was so in the LL,
> just a possibility at low tech (you say 2, i say 5-6)

If you move the rigidity down far enough, then you're either not going
to get the necessary impact loading, or you're going to find that
mountains don't work in your cosm, because rock will tear itself apart
before it will support the weight of the mountain above it. Why do you
think I called it the 'foam-rubber cosm'?

>  ! If you're going to change one aspect of physical law, you have to
>  ! carefully examine the change to see what other effects that it will
>  ! have on the world; they don't exist in isolation.
> 
> there is absolutely no reason that physics connot exsist in isolation,
> this is tech 7 we're talking about. continuity is at least tech 10.
> (primative scientists worked on a case by case basis -

Better not tell Aristotle that; he unified all kinds of things. Of
course, his unification was _wrong_, as proved by Galileo, Copernicus,
and others, but it was sufficient to describe the universe as
perceived by the Greeks.

>  newton was the first to "unify" different cases with one equation)
> (in TORG terms, different things WERE different, until then!)

I believe we went through this over Copernicus; does the universe
change because one man describes it differently?

> i promised that i would not get into this, but...
> 
> the wife also wishes to point out that what makes birds fly
> (the bouyancy of air - keeps leaves up as well!)
> has very little to do with forces on a sail boat
> (variable drag coefficient across the surface area)

Somebody better tell Dennis Conner and the rest of the people tacking
around west of Point Loma out here, then; _every_ textbook I've seen
that deals with the physics of a sloop-rigged sailboat uses the same
equations that are used to describe lift from airfoils.

Square-rigged ships are even simpler, because they rely on a simple
exercise of action and reaction, and there are a _lot_ of things that
would change if wind would slip freely around a sail perpendicular to
it without exerting any force on the sail.

> this would also explain why the airplane in the text did not immediately fall
> when disconected, it conforms to tech 7, and, while it cannot FLY, it
> is still a wing, and it WILL glide.
> (a twenty ton glider, but it will glide - for a little ways...)

Aside from the fact that your use of terms is sloppy in the extreme --
gliding is a specific type of flying -- this was the point I had been
trying to make earlier. The axioms of the LL prevent the engine and
instruments on an airplane from functioning, but until the airframe
itself breaks down, it's still going to _fly_; it's just that without
any way to replace energy loss from air drag, the only way to keep it
from stalling and falling out of the sky is to lose altitude. And most
powered aircraft don't have that good a glide ratio, so unless you've
got a convenient forest fire nearby for a massive updraft, you need a
clear landing area _now_.

-- 
random sig #32:
Sean Malloy                                  | Had this been an actual
Navy Personnel Research & Development Center | emergency, we would have fled in
San Diego, CA 92152-6800                     | terror, and you would not have
malloy@nprdc.navy.mil                        | been informed.
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