string theory

I loved your first paragraph. That is kind of my ideal for this blog, we know we disagree, but it is interesting to see why the other guy thinks the way he does. I wonder too, if I hadn’t gone to college and had been hanging with other people if my opinion of the war would have been different.

I suppose I have an enemies list, but I always name them, I don’t call them the mysterious THEY, and I have allies too, and I think they are always fighting it out between them and I don’t think that there is any one group calling all the shots. I don’t think of the govt as a unified power calling all the shots. It’s my friends and enemies duking it out and sometimes my side wins and sometimes the other side wins.

The main problem with windmills is that we could cover the world with them and still not have enough power. Solar power seems more promising, but I think the main problem with it is transporting all that energy from the deserts to the city. It’s not like we can decide to go for fusion and get it. We all want a cure for cancer, but deciding we want is not enough.

That string theory thing is an interesting issue. When Galileo first matched math with science it was a great step forward, and thereafter math was applied to science with great effect, and then at some point, around relativity, they tended to do the math first and then look to see if it matched the universe. Some of the subatomic particles were predicted by math and when they looked for them where their math said they would be, they found them. With string theory they just did the math and they discovered that they could describe the universe with math alone. Well sort of, there were always these things that didn’t work out, but then they did more complicated things to explain that. It was sort of like the elaborate math that was done to explain the path of the planets in terms of a stationary earth, until Copernicus showed that they could be more easily explained if you just assume that the earth moves around the sun.

I guess science was impressed about the way that string theory almost explained the universe so they decided to follow that path, and scientists who were not string theorists were looked upon as heretics and they had a hard time getting their degrees and funding. Lately there has been a backlash against that because string theory never quite explained everything, and they couldn’t find any way to test it, so maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it didn’t make any difference as far as the universe was concerned. I know this goes against my somewhat fanatical belief in science, but I have to add that they did correct themselves eventually.

The main thing you do when you roll your own is you avoid the taxes on store boughts since materials are taxed at a much lower rate then manufactured cigarettes. There was a sort of scam going on for awhile with these roll your own stores where you selected your tobacco and then they put them into the machine and the buyer pushed a button and the cigs were all rolled. When they became popular and the state wasn’t getting its taxes the state stepped in and put a stop to it.

I’m a little short today because I am leaving for Missouri this morning and won’t get back until Monday.

One thing I wanted to say was the other night I went to Beaglesonia and saw a short posting from you and I thought oh no now I’ve done it, I got too argumentative and now I have pissed off Beagles and this might be the end of the blog. When I came back to the blog in the morning I saw that you had added more to your posting and I was relieved. I just want to say that I’m sorry that I am always trying to turn this into debate club, but I can’t help myself, but maybe I should try to be more civil.