Funny enough, when I was in university, some of the EE students were 
talking about these trains you couldn't stop, had a big length, and had 
to get routed around switching like this, and you had to figure out when 
to schedule a track switch to keep them from colliding.

Turns out they were talking about optical networks with optical 
switching, rather than actual trains. :-)  Very confusing for a while, tho.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:47831ea6@news.povray.org...
> pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
>> Train wheels gripping track exponentially gets looser
>> the greater the speed of the train. At c or near c the
>> track will have to move almost the entire speed of the
>> train; else the instability will overwhelm your system.
>
>> ergo: the track and train muts be coupled, else you
>> would be asking about trains and tracks on separate
>> unique vectors. (Unpredictable vectors btw)
>
>> unless of course your train wheels and track rails are
>> made of unobtanium held together in the grip of
>> stick-but-slick-enough-to-let-the-wheels-move goop.
>
>> Think dentures under a lot of strain.
>
>  I don't even understand what you are trying to say.
>
>  But if the contact with the train and the track bothers you, 
> then
> assume maglev.
>

Hmmm ... your lack of understanding must equal my dislike of
poorly done thought experiements.

Reset your conceits to some unitary object and no one
will bother you about real world dynamics.

Using atrains as your main object of conjecture implies
a necessary co-consideration of the track and the system
that the track and train comprise. To do otherwise
is laziness and sloppy. You obviously wanted a situation where
a inevitable collision of two trains served as a constraint
that was included only to heighten interest and (ahem) impact.

Much better models will serve you better to learn about
relativisitic effects.

"There was a young fellow named Fisk,
A swordsman, exceedingly brisk.
So fast was his action,
The Lorentz contraction
Reduced his rapier to a disk."


There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.

Arthur Buller    (1874-1944)

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pan <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:
> Using atrains as your main object of conjecture implies
> a necessary co-consideration of the track and the system
> that the track and train comprise.

  No, it doesn't. The length of the train doesn't depend on the properties
of the track.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Here's another alternative: using the Z Machine based on Heim's quantum 
theory...!  ;op


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 15:53:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> It's funny how many people won't deny something unintuitive like quantum
> >> mechanics or relativity, stuff that's really hard to understand properly
> >> even *with* math, but they're happy to deny the possibility of
> >> evolution, which is easy to explain without any mathematics.
> >
> >   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
> > now, but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
> > nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
> > of years.
> >
> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done. Some using
> mice, others using insects. Take a mice colony and have it live in a lightless
> environment, another in a chilly one, a third in a very hot one, a fourth in a
> place where possible living area are far from food sources. Another one
> prevented females from copulating for an increasing time.
> Do the experiment over a few decades (some are still going on after over a century).
> In the dark environment you get mice with atrophied eyes, longer wiskers and
> larger ears, and a high albinism incidence.
> In the cold, you get longer hairs, increased body fat, short tails and smaller ears.
> In the heat, shorter hairs, slightly longer and spindly paws.
> The ones that had to travel a lot devoloped longer, stronger legs, larger
> stomach. They also devoloped hamster like cheeks.
> In the last case, the longevity increased very significantly! Increases in the
> order of +200 to 300% to the life span! We are now doing that experiment in a
> very large scale: The whole Human Western and Asian populations! Asia, Europe,
> the Americas, parts of Africa and Oceanya. From the middle ages to now,
> generation time went from about 15 to 16 years to over 30~33 years...
>
> Those are called "forced evolution experiments". The key is to use speciment
> that have a short generation time.
>
> --
> Alain
> -------------------------------------------------
> There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss
> asks for a ride home from the office.

And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. Within its genes are the needed
variability. All the conditions you described seem to me to be based on hormone
production, not gene mutation or evolution.

The human population increase in life span isn't based on evolution, but on
better nutrition and heathcare. But maybe our brains "evolved" enough to
realize we needed better nutrition.

Leef_me

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Leef_me nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/09 13:58:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> Warp nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/02 15:53:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> It's funny how many people won't deny something unintuitive like quantum
>>>> mechanics or relativity, stuff that's really hard to understand properly
>>>> even *with* math, but they're happy to deny the possibility of
>>>> evolution, which is easy to explain without any mathematics.
>>>   That may be because we can check the theory of relativity here and
>>> now, but we can't go back in time a few million years to check evolution
>>> nor we can perform evolutionary experiments which require a few millions
>>> of years.
>>>
>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done. Some using
>> mice, others using insects. Take a mice colony and have it live in a lightless
>> environment, another in a chilly one, a third in a very hot one, a fourth in a
>> place where possible living area are far from food sources. Another one
>> prevented females from copulating for an increasing time.
>> Do the experiment over a few decades (some are still going on after over a
century).
>> In the dark environment you get mice with atrophied eyes, longer wiskers and
>> larger ears, and a high albinism incidence.
>> In the cold, you get longer hairs, increased body fat, short tails and smaller
ears.
>> In the heat, shorter hairs, slightly longer and spindly paws.
>> The ones that had to travel a lot devoloped longer, stronger legs, larger
>> stomach. They also devoloped hamster like cheeks.
>> In the last case, the longevity increased very significantly! Increases in the
>> order of +200 to 300% to the life span! We are now doing that experiment in a
>> very large scale: The whole Human Western and Asian populations! Asia, Europe,
>> the Americas, parts of Africa and Oceanya. From the middle ages to now,
>> generation time went from about 15 to 16 years to over 30~33 years...
>>
>> Those are called "forced evolution experiments". The key is to use speciment
>> that have a short generation time.
>>
>> --
>> Alain
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss
>> asks for a ride home from the office.
> 
> And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. Within its genes are the needed
> variability. All the conditions you described seem to me to be based on hormone
> production, not gene mutation or evolution.
Still mice or rats, yes. A new sub-race of the generic mice or rat, YES!
The observed changes do remain, unchanged, for many generations after the 
populations have been put back into "normal" environnements. There are cases 
where specimens from different environnements have become mutualy incompatible: 
they can no longer cross bread!
> 
> The human population increase in life span isn't based on evolution, but on
Not yet!
> better nutrition and heathcare. But maybe our brains "evolved" enough to
> realize we needed better nutrition.
Beter alimentation and health increase the longevity. Improve them and longevity 
increase immediately. Remove it and longevity immediately go down. There is no 
hereditary effect.

Late reproduction slow down the aging process. It becomes hereditary. It takes 
10's of generations to have an effect. For humans, it will take some more 
centuries. Remove that and the slowdown remains for 100's of generations. A few 
millenias for humans.
> 
> Leef_me
> 
> 
Evolution need many generations, usualy 100's to 1000's, in an environnement 
forcing some adaptive evolution. Recent studies show that the dodo evolved from 
the common pigeon, but no dodo could cross bread with a pigeon. Humans, chimps, 
gorillas and orangoutans only differ geneticaly by one FRAGMENT of one 
chromozome (two in the case of the gorilla: two fragments switched between two 
cromozomes).

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you hope that you can render your 
ideas on your PC before you die.
Sven Rudolph (Germany)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Warp wrote:
> >>> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> >>>> There have been some evolutionary experiments that have been done.
> >>>   So, how many fish have they converted into cats like this?
> >>>
> >>>   (I hope you get the point.)
> >
> >> It takes a long time to convert a fish into a cat. So?
> >
> >> How many complete orbits of pluto have been observed? How do you know it
> >> is really orbiting the sun?
> >
> >   Yes, both things are comparable in complexity.
>
> No, of course not. But you haven't expressed why you think creating a
> new species over the course of a few weeks or a few years couldn't
> easily lead to creating a cat out of a fish over the course of a few
> million.

Variations within species can be caused by those capable of interbreeding.
Existing animal types of cat and fish would seem to have no path to evolve
between species. Throwing the cat in the pond will make it mad or drown it,
throwing the fish in the litter box will most certainly kill it.

>All the mechanisms to make it happen are understood,

Are they now? Where can I pick up a copy of "Cat to fish evolution for dummies"?
Breeders can interbreed animals of a species and have done so for several
centuries. But the result is up to chance based on the variations the two
'parent' animals bring to the equation.

> and
> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and
> non-living environments.

Man writes a computer program and you equate that to biological evolution, why?

>
> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant
> TB is evolved from earlier TB?

Yes, it is know to exist, but how? Did the TB colony hear "humans have developed
drugs, we must mutate to save ourselves?" Or perhaps the natural variation of
the TB allowed some of it to survive?

> Do you believe that seedless grapes evolved from grapes with seeds?

Not as a normal course, this would have sealed their fate.
What is the offspring of a seedless grape?

> Do you believe that dogs evolved from
> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.

Dogs and wolves are of the same species, evolved - no; they are variatons within
the species. Man has found the traits desired and prevented the natural
varibility from being expressed in the domesticated dog.

>
> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of
> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence,

Early holders of the theory have promoted it by falsifying drawings. Others now
still tend to obfuscate the issues by saying that observed variation within the
species is somehow proof of variation between species. Others note the gene
similarity between humans and chimps. Some theorize that part of the human gene
split to make the chimp, others think the chimp choromosome merged to make
human.

Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of life".
Yet the amino acids created are short-lived under the conditions that
theoretically existed when life began. Beyond the stable creation of amino
acids are the hurdles of organizing them into anything more complex, and then
forming that into cells. Then there is the making of multicelled life.
The issues for more and more complexity seem insurmountable even for millions of
years of experimentation.

> have no alternate
> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence,

An alternate theory is that no species is a decendant from another.
All coexisted at one time but some (obviously) died out. Perhaps each animal has
its own number of chromosomes, neither merged nor split from anothers.

All these increasing complexities must be supported on the life of the amino
acids. But our science suggests that things tend to become less complex, that
is, break down with time. But still some say "That isn't how it happened, that
can't be right."

It sounds crazy that someone would accept naturally occurring increase in
complexity as the conclusion; when the exact opposite is readily observed.

But that would be OK, until they say "The debate is over."

Leef_me


> and still say "I
> don't think it could be right." It just sounds a bit crazy to me.
>
> But that's OK.
>
> --
>    Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
>      It's not feature creep if you put it
>      at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

Leef_me wrote:
> Variations within species can be caused by those capable of interbreeding.
> Existing animal types of cat and fish would seem to have no path to evolve
> between species. 

No, but that's because they're existing. Before they were separate 
species, they interbred. Then they stopped interbreeding, and changed 
more and more over time.

Kind of like how horses and donkeys can breed now, but often make mules. 
Give them a few thousand years more, and they'll be separate species.

> Are they now? Where can I pick up a copy of "Cat to fish evolution for dummies"?

Univeristy of California.

Cats don't evolve into fish. Fish evolved into cats. It took a while.

> Breeders can interbreed animals of a species and have done so for several
> centuries. But the result is up to chance

Not so much as you'd think, no.

>> technology makes use of the same mechanisms both in living and
>> non-living environments.
> 
> Man writes a computer program and you equate that to biological evolution, why?

Not only that technology. I equate the computer program to biological 
evolution because it's a simulation of evolution.

>> What would be the boundary for you? Do you believe that drug-resistant
>> TB is evolved from earlier TB?
> 
> Yes, it is know to exist, but how? Did the TB colony hear "humans have developed
> drugs, we must mutate to save ourselves?" Or perhaps the natural variation of
> the TB allowed some of it to survive?

The natural variation of TB allowed some of them to survive. Then they 
bred like mad, because the competition was wiped out, so there were now 
enough with that resistance to that particular drug to make a viable 
collection for other people to get infected.

That's why it's important to finish all your antibiotics when the doctor 
prescribes them, even if you feel better before you're done.

>> Do you believe that seedless grapes evolved from grapes with seeds?
> 
> Not as a normal course, this would have sealed their fate.
> What is the offspring of a seedless grape?

More seedless grapes. Seeds aren't the only way plants propagate.

But so what if it was influenced by humans? That doesn't mean seedless 
grapes didn't evolve from seeded grapes. Humans just provided a 
different form of natural selection, a different environment if you 
will, than they would have had without humans.

>> Do you believe that dogs evolved from
>> wolves (or whatever the appropriate order is)?  Just curious.
> 
> Dogs and wolves are of the same species,evolved - no; they are variatons within
> the species. Man has found the traits desired and prevented the natural
> varibility from being expressed in the domesticated dog.

I think dogs have much more variability than wolves do.

>> I just don't understand how you can be presented with boatloads of
>> evidence for a theory, have no conflicting evidence,
> 
> Early holders of the theory have promoted it by falsifying drawings. 

Not sure I'd say "falsifying", but yeah, I know what you're talking 
about. So?

> Others now
> still tend to obfuscate the issues by saying that observed variation within the
> species is somehow proof of variation between species. 

Not "somehow". Very clearly how.

 > Some theorize that part of the human gene
> split to make the chimp, others think the chimp choromosome merged to make
> human.

I don't think anyone well-informed any longer disagrees about which 
direction it went - you can see the duct-tape on the human chromosomes.

> Experiments have done that create amino acids, "the building blocks of life".

And this has what to do with evolution?

>> have no alternate
>> theory to propose that explains any of the evidence,
> 
> An alternate theory is that no species is a decendant from another.
> All coexisted at one time but some (obviously) died out. Perhaps each animal has
> its own number of chromosomes, neither merged nor split from anothers.

And where'd they come from? I mean, you're the one that brought up the 
forming of amino acids.  So what's your reason for thinking all these 
similar beings are completely unrelated, all appeared at the same time?

And if rabbits were around at the time of dinosaurs, why don't people 
find dinosaur fossils next to rabbit fossils?

> All these increasing complexities must be supported on the life of the amino
> acids. But our science suggests that things tend to become less complex, that
> is, break down with time.

Err, no they don't. And that's only in a closed environment anyway, 
which isn't where evolution happens. Entropy isn't about things becoming 
less complex. It's about things becoming less ordered. Less ordered is 
often *more* complex.

> It sounds crazy that someone would accept naturally occurring increase in
> complexity as the conclusion; when the exact opposite is readily observed.

The exact opposite of naturally occurring increase of complexity?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Leef_me wrote:
> And yet, the animal that results is still a rat. 

You can do it with flies, and get creatures who aren't flies, because 
the flies breed fast enough.

(Yes, they're still flies, but they're a different species of fly, and 
can no longer interbreed with the flies you started from.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message

"Nekar Xenos" <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4784dcd7@news.povray.org...
> Here's another alternative: using the Z Machine based on Heim's quantum 
> theory...!  ;op
>
http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.aspx?articleid=2739585


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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