Tom Matrullo discusses AKMA's essay on differential hermeneutics. I don't know, something doesn't sit right when Tom equates sliding semantic content to fit local understanding with Galileo's use of empirical evidence. The way science works is that the experimental evidence itself convinces everybody of the same thing, all by itself. If there is still room for differing opinions (by anybody's reasonable judgment) then the question has not yet been fully answered. Authority doesn't really come into it.
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Scientific American reports on small systems that violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - you know, the one that says that we're all going to hell and the best we can do is to drag our feet a bit? Well, it actually states that the net entropy change of a closed system is non-negative. Well it seems that for small groupings of molecules this may not be the case. A group of a few thousand molecules was immersed in water, and energy went from the cold part to the warm part.
This seems intuitive when you consider that thermodynamics is best explained with statistical models. The size of the sample in this case does not let the energy transfer come to equilibrium and sometimes a gain is experienced. Sci Am feels this could spell trouble for nanomachines. I wonder if there could be a mythical source of available energy in there.
An experiment would answer this question: conduct the bead in water trick enough times to see if the gains are balanced by losses. If so this is statistical trickery. If not ...
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This horsefly kept charging me while I was painting:
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In my search for interesting reading material in the form of blogs, I came across the recently created Salon Blogs. Salon is a wizzy name in internetland, and it's totally cool that Radio Userland is the software used. It makes aggregating those sites so easy...
But about those sites: This one, Fiasco by, uh, Gregg, is funny - damn funny in the style of Mike Swain. Well written with a good sense of the audience. Of course there is only one post, but I laughed.
Ok, this guy... Six years! Jesus! I completely understand being trashed by a relationship gone wrong. I am/have been, blah, blah, blah. Go get yourself The Eminem Show and lissena it a coupla hunnert times. Then go kill the bitch - well in your imagination, eh? Then you can go get back to it. Man! You shouldn't have wasted six hours.
Here is a nice simple liberal weblog.
This is a fellow California journaler. Cool, except that it's in Orange county, and doesn't have anything to say, yet. Greg Storey's other website is stylish (he wants you to vote it "hot") and, well, mundane. Talks about all the usual stuff.
There are a bunch of familiar names there too, some promoting Salon or Userland, some just blathering on like they do on other weblogs. I'll look in on Salon weblogs from time to time and I've syndicated the ones mentioned above, and see if the Salon brand brings anything to me the user rather than to just the vendors.
(So I guess this guy, joe, wants to get rid of the US Constitution because one bad guy got away with it. It takes all kinds to make a weblog community.)
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