"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“Fossil Fuels Kill 50,000 per year in the USA, and 2 million per year around the world.”
“The only energy source that will support a planet with six to nine billion people is nuclear.”
“If we just recycle the nuclear waste [and use it as fuel in Fast Neutron Reactors] that we are going to throw away in Yucca Mountain we probably won’t have to mine new material for 300 to 500 years!”
“This technology solves the nuclear waste problem!!!” and that is good environmental stewardship.
“The Nuclear Industry has actually been the safest industry by far! While Nuclear Energy can kill people Fossil Fuels DO KILL PEOPLE [EVERY DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY].
“What about Three Mile Island? Not one person died at Three Mile Island. It was the worst possible accident with a core melt down BUT everything worked, all the safety precautions worked. Not one person died at Three Mile Island! Yes, Really not one! How many miners die each year mining fossil fuels? Many! ”
There are over 400 nuclear reactors around the world today so it’s already with us. New reactors built in the future will be safer.
Fast Neutron Reactors rule the GREEN ENERGY landscape in many application scenarios for large scale reliable power generation. READ THIS DOCUMENT:
“Fast-neutron reactors could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear fuel, minimize the risks of weapons proliferation and markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be isolated.” – Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste (pdf), Scientific American, December 2005.
Your support and discussion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation standard for the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada is a breath of fresh air in a highly politicized and often confused debate. One point missing, however, is that the original requirement for a 10,000-year isolation time is a result of the outdated policy decision, made during the Carter administration, to not recycle spent nuclear fuel.
As two of my colleagues and I have pointed out in our article ”Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste” (pdf) in the December issue of Scientific American, if the spent fuel is recycled, the required isolation time for the true waste is reduced to less than 500 years. In addition, one is able to obtain more than 99 percent of the energy in the original uranium ore compared with less than 1 percent with the current wasteful once-through cycle.
Modern recycling of spent nuclear fuel makes nuclear power sustainable and essentially inexhaustible, minimizes the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and operates without contributing to climate change.
Gerald E. Marsh
Chicago, Nov. 25, 2005
The writer is a physicist.
Clean, renewable, eternal energy is at hand. The energy — produced by the wind, the sun, biofuels, and nuclear power — is available, completely affordable, and fully attainable within 30 years. With this message, vision, rallying cry, and call to action, this book radiates hope, optimism, and courage. This book is a blueprint for a cleaner, safer, more peaceful, and more prosperous future.
That’s the plan. Vigorously promote wind power and solar energy so that by 2040 each contributes at least 10 percent of total U.S. electrical needs. Each would then produce more electrical energy than the total consumed in Italy. Get the remaining from hydro, bio-mass and nuclear.
The United States can achieve these goals by 2040 if a diligent, committed U.S. public crafts the political will. But time is running out. The world must commit time and resources now to develop and deploy the alternative energy sources and related infrastructures we know we will need within our lifetimes. The U.S. public and the world at large, especially elected officials, need broader and deeper learning about energy issues. A perfect storm is brewing.
The atom is a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of Hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutron). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determine the isotope of the element.
The name atom comes from the Greek ἄτομος/átomos, α-τεμνω, which means uncuttable, something that cannot be divided further. The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the ‘atom’ was not indivisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.[1][2]
Relative to everyday experience, atoms are minuscule objects with proportionately tiny masses. Atoms can only be observed individually using special instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope. Over 99.9% of an atom’s mass is concentrated in the nucleus,[note 1] with protons and neutrons having roughly equal mass. Each element has at least one isotope with unstable nuclei that can undergo radioactive decay. This can result in a transmutation that changes the number of protons or neutrons in a nucleus.[3] Electrons that are bound to atoms possess a set of stable energy levels, or orbitals, and can undergo transitions between them by absorbing or emitting photons that match the energy differences between the levels. The electrons determine the chemical properties of an element, and strongly influence an atom’s magnetic properties.
The Rules of Acquisition, in the fictional Star Trek universe, are a set of guidelines intended to ensure the profitability of businesses owned by the ultra-capitalist Ferengi. The first rule was made by Gint, the first Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. The title of “Rules of Acquisition” was chosen as a clever marketing ploy (since the rules are merely guidelines) and Gint numbered his first rule as #162, in order to create a demand for the other 161 Rules that had yet to be written. The Rules are said to be divinely inspired and sacred, and thus are the closest thing to a religion for Ferengi society.[1][2] The “profit-obsessed” Ferengi believe that once their dead bodies have been vacuum-desiccated — and sliced remains sold to the highest bidders — their souls go to a “Divine Treasury” where they are held accountable for their adherence to the rules.
This evenings full feature entertainment. Enjoy. Get some popcorn, a drink. Sit back and press play and full screen and enjoy. The lines are beyond fantastic into the realm of classic. 72 minutes.
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, also known as The Head That Wouldn’t Die, is a 1962 science-fiction/horror film directed by Joseph Green and written by Green and Rex Carlton. The film was actually produced and completed in 1959, but was not released until three years later. A scientist develops a means to keep human body parts alive. When he unexpectedly must use his discovery on someone close to him, events do not go as planned.
This film has fallen into the public domain and can be freely downloaded from the Internet Archive. A gaffe during the end titles lists the film’s name as “The Head That Wouldn’t Die.”
“Fast-neutron reactors could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear fuel, minimize the risks of weapons proliferation and markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be isolated.” – 
