Re: High strength fibers for high pressure tubes.

In article <Xns9645209236EF1WQAHBGMXSZHVspammote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bz <bz+sp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Mitchell Jones <mjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> news:mjones-62105F.01420327042005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
> > In article <Xns9644D4EEDCBWQAHBGMXSZHVspammote@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> > bz <bz+sp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> Mitchell Jones <mjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:mjones-
> >> 740551.20301826042005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> >>
> ....
> >
> > ***{Treating fishing grounds as a commons has been the prevalent system
> > for thousands of years. In spite of that, the fishing grounds are for
> > the most part not yet barren. Given that fact, it seems a bit odd to
> > claim that, if we were to implement the restraints of a private property
> > system, everything would suddenly go straight to hell. That's like
> > saying that a building is on fire but you shouldn't turn in an alarm,
> > because as soon as the fire trucks arrive, the place will instantly burn
> > to a crisp! --MJ}***
>
> I am saying that switching to private ownership of the commons isn't
> magically going to change the direction we are going.
>
> It won't make things worse, it won't make them better.
>
> Education can make things better and it doesn't require a change in the
> system. It just requires educating people.
>
> Educate them and they will change the system.

***{"Education" is the cause of the problem, not the solution. When the
state controls "education," people are taught to worship the state.
That, more than any other single thing, is what is destroying the world.
But there is no way to undo what has been done. Once a person has been
turned into a state-worshipping fool, he is impervious to reason. There
is no power of persuasion or force of logic that can deflect him from
his course. He will support the enslavement of mankind to his dying day,
and there is nothing that you or I or anyone else can do about it. When
enough such creatures have been created, the collapse of civilization is
guaranteed. Period. End of story. --MJ}***

[snip]

> > ***{Under capitalism, owners act with good sense, or else they go broke
> > and are replaced by someone with the sense they lacked. The hard part is
> > restoring the capitalistic system, in a world that has become quite
> > literally insane, where politics and economics are concerned. The
> > chances of it happening, I'm afraid, are essentially zero. The world
> > will cling to its false political and economic beliefs just as the
> > ancient Romans clung to theirs, until the system collapses, and a new
> > dark age begins. We may not like that state of affairs, but there isn't
> > a damn thing you, or I, or anyone can do to stop it. It's a freight
> > train coming straight at us, and we are chained to the tracks. And
> > that's all there is to that story. --MJ}***
>
> We can EACH work to educate everyone we can. It MIGHT make a difference.

***{Nope. Too many of them, and too few of us. What we need is a
frontier, like the American West used to be, where independent minded
people could live "out of sight and out of mind of those unwilling to
live and let live." But the escape route into space has been blocked.
The altruistic thieves preferred to spend the money on winos, retards,
drug addicts, cripples, the undead in nursing homes, and on the
destruction of the minds of their own children. Hence we are bottled up
on this prison planet called Earth, and, thus far, no escape is
possible. --MJ}***

> >> When there is a riot going on, no one cares about property rights.
> >>
> >> You expect private property to be a magic wand, solving all problems. I
> >> am trying to point out that it won't work that way fast enough.
> >>
> >> I wish you were right. Wishes don't do it however.
> >
> > ***{It would work if it were implemented. It will not, however, be
> > implemented, because people are ego involved with their beliefs. They
> > will not change their minds when it becomes clear that the strongest
> > arguments lie with the other side. Instead, they insist on totally
> > conclusive proof. They won't believe the horse they are riding is dying
> > until he is dead, and their attitude toward their political beliefs is
> > the same: they will not accept that the present system is unsustainable
> > until it collapses. And, of course, by then it is too late to matter.
> > --MJ}***
>
> I fear you are right.
>
> >
> >> I do have a magic solution that WILL work FASTER than yours, IF we can
> >> do it, and we only have a few years opportunity left.
> >> Move industry into space.
> >
> > ***{By means of some gigantic government boondoggle, I suppose. Raise
> > taxes enormously, give the money to NASA, and collapse the economy? Get
> > the money by simply printing it up, give it to NASA, and watch the
> > resulting hyperinflation collapse the economy? If you mean anything like
> > that, I'm against it.
> >
>
> That is not what I mean.
>
> I mean we all realize what must be done and decide to do it.

***{We need a frontier. If we had one, we could simply go there, and let
the fools stay back here and enslave one another. I wouldn't give a damn
what they did, if I didn't have to be in the middle of their craziness.
What about you? Would you head out into space and take your chances, so
you could be free, if you could get there? I sure as hell would. --MJ}***

> > On the other hand, if you mean get the goddamned government out of the
> > way, abolish all government regulation of industry, science, and
> > technology, including especially the regulation of nuclear power, shut
> > off all public funding of "education," end all government grants to
> > science, industry, and technology, then I'd be for that in a really big
> > way. Do that, and we'll have colonies on the Moon, Mars, and the
> > asteroid belt in 20 years. Do that, and the life expectancy of the
> > average newborn will be 200 years by 2050.
>
> YES.
>
> >
> > Of course, it ain't gonna happen. People are too stupid to permit it to
> > happen.
>
> I fear you are right.
>
> >> Mine the asteroids. Eliminate an economy based on
> >> lack of things.
> >
> > ***{Meaning what? There are no limits to human wants.
>
> The only limited resource will be the human mind.

***{Not true. We are finite beings. Even in an infinite universe, our
access to minerals is limited by our means of transportation, by the
extraction technology available to us once we get to them, and so on.
And similar considerations apply at each stage in the production
process, as we turn raw materials into useful goods. All resources, not
merely the human mind, are limited by nature itself, and will always
remain so. Like it or not, we must choose some goals and set aside
others, due to inescapable limitations on what we, as finite beings, can
do and have. --MJ}***

> > That's simply a
> > fact. On the other hand, there are limits to what a given person can
> > have, imposed by reality.
>
> If you want a solid gold car (though why you would want it is anyones
> guess, you could have it). Or one carved from a single syntetic diamond.

***{We will always and inescapably remain, whatever our level of
technology, finite beings who must choose some things and set aside
others. We can do and have more and more, as technology advances, but we
will never reach a point where we can do everthing we want to do and
have everything we want to have. Our desires will always exceed our
capabilities. It's simply the way life is. --MJ}***

> > Result: our wants are always going to exceed
> > what we can have
>
> I will tell you the secret of true happiness:
>
> Learn to want what you have, as much as you used to want it before you had
> it.

***{That's just silliness. How much one values a thing is affected by
evidence. You have less evidence about a thing when you are in the stage
of wanting it, than you have after you have possessed it for awhile. The
woman you thought you wanted to marry may turn out to be an impossible
nag, or she may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.
Either way, you should adjust your opinion to the facts as you obtain
them, rather than trying to force your view to remain the same, in spite
of the evidence. --MJ}***

> >> Clean-up the earth and restore it as a park.
> >
> > ***{Meaning bulldoze everyone's houses, destroy all their property,
> > everywhere on Earth? Run them out into space, even if they don't want to
> > go? Kill them if they insist on remaining on Earth? Surely you jest.
> > --MJ}***
>
> Who said anything about FORCING anyone?

***{You didn't say that, of course. But there is obviously no way to
turn Earth into a park unless the people leave, and the vast majority
aren't going to leave unless they are forced to do so. You and I might
move into space at the first opportunity, but most people won't.
--MJ}***

> If I had a nice place to live in L3 or L5, I would enjoy restoring my
> current properties in La and Wy to pristine condition. It would be a good
> hobby. I could watch my box turtles roam my property without my house in
> their way.

***{Maybe so, but if you were on L3, your neighbors would probably have
turtle soup. :-) --MJ}***

> >> Of course, it probably won't happen.
> >
> > ***{Hopefully not.
>
>
> > I prefer capitalism,
>
> So do I.
>
> > despite the fact that it does
> > not just benefit me and the people I like, but also the people I do not
> > like. I would prefer a more evolved world, in which the average person
> > was of much higher quality than the present norm, but getting there by
> > means of mass murder does not set well with me. Open up space to
> > colonization, and the worthwhile people would leave Earth in droves,
> > just as they left Europe after the discovery of the New World. The
> > conformists, losers, and scum, however, would mostly remain behind.
> > Given that state of affairs, the only way to turn Earth into a park
> > would be to kill them all. --MJ}***
> >
> >> If it doesn't happen in the next 50
> >> years, it will never happen because we will have burned up hundreds of
> >> millions of years worth of stored solar energy and done it in a couple
> >> of hundred years.
> >
> > ***{Incorrect. All the oxygen in the atmosphere was released by
> > photosynthesis. The formula for photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 6H2O + solar
> > energy --> C6H12O6 + 6O2. I suggest that you do the following: (a)
> > compute the amount of O2 in the atmosphere, (b) assume all of it was
> > produced in accordance with the above equation, (c) compute the amount
> > of carbon that was freed up when that O2 was released, and (d) compare
> > to the total amount of carbon used as fuel since the industrial
> > revolution began. If you do that, you will find that enough carbon
> > remains in the Earth to support more than 100,000 years of usage at
> > current rates of consumption.
>
> All the carbon is not in useable form. In fact, most of it is not. Calcium
> carbonate does not burn very well. There are many other carbonate from
> which we can not extract energy.

***{Free oxygen (O2) is a highly reactive substance, and, as such, was
not present in the primordial atmosphere of the Earth. Photosynthesis
stores solar energy in complex carbon compounds by removing oxygen and
releasing it into the atmosphere. The forms of carbon that remain can be
burned to extract energy. That's why we refer to them as fuels. When
they are burned, the oxygen that was originally released into the
atmosphere is removed. And if all of the carbon fuels on Earth produced
by photosynthesis were burned, *all* of the oxygen in the atmosphere
would be removed.

The implication of the above is that the amount of unburned, "free"
oxygen in the atmosphere is a lower limit measure of the amount of
carbon fuel remaining on the Earth that has not yet been burned. Hence
the fact that there is some carbon on Earth in forms that have already
been burned is irrelevant. What we are interested in is the amount of
unburned hydrocarbon fuel remaining on Earth, and, since the oxygen
presently in the atmosphere was freed up to produce that fuel in the
ratio of 32 mass units of free oxygen to 12 mass units of carbon in the
fuel, it follows that 12/32 times the mass of the oxygen in the
atmosphere gives us the minimum measure of the amount of carbon
contained within combustible fuels on Earth.

The above described state of affairs was discussed in detail roughly two
months ago on sci.physics, in a thread originated by Hanson. As I
recall, the name of the thread contained the words "peak oil." If you
are unwilling to do the described calculations yourself, I suggest that
you go back and read the various posts in that thread. When you do so,
you will discover that, in fact, the Earth possesses *at minimum*
sufficient reserves of hydrocarbon fuel to support more than 100,000
years of usage at current rates of consumption. That means "peak oil" is
pure unadulterated environmentalist bull***, and that the very real oil
crisis that we face is not due to unavailability of hydrocarbon fuels,
but to restrictions on access enacted at the behest of the very same
environmentalists who are presently howling about "peak oil."

--Mitchell Jones}***

> > Bottom line: we haven't even scratched the
> > surface, insofar as the utilization of stored solar energy is concerned.
> > That's not to say we don't face a crisis; but the crisis is one of
> > access, as determined by "green" (meaning red) politics, rather than one
> > of supply. --MJ}***
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