CβL

Last year at uni I did a massive report on wind turbine power generation. And basically, it's been found that wind power has actually become cheaper than coal in certain sites. I also concluded that the scope for increased wind turbine efficiency was pretty big. Meaning with more development - wind power can smash coal power, and probably a lot of the other ones too. And just after reading about this possible meltdown in Japan. I can see it's just not worth having nuclear power - that entire part of the country could become massively irradiated, and we may have much worse to come. If a corresponding wind farm was demolished, the one guy walking his dog amongst them would've probably not made it, and next month most of the turbines would have been re-installed (had they even collapsed, which, they generally don't). To clarify, when I say nuclear power - I mean fission. Maybe one day when we can develop Tokamaks that can be put into the most deserted areas of the world, and then power distributed from them and supplemented with solar and wind. Maybe that's the solution. But the solution is NOT to invest in fission simply because the current trade price of uranium is low. The other side of the solution is to lower our power consumption. Have you ever seen Las Vegas at night? It's disgusting - there's so much light pollution that the sky is brown throughout the night. Have you ever seen your OWN city at night? It's not much freaking better. And that's just light fixtures. Vehicle infrastructure in areas where large proportions of the populace don't do more than drive around town (aren't these statistics what censuses are for?) needs to be created for electric vehicles. All there needs to be is a way for folk to charge their vehicle at their home, and be able to find a charging station anywhere in town. And lastly, some portable chargers for n00bs who run their batteries out. The cost of the vehicles is the only remaining hurdle. The technology for this does not exist in a viable state. But using that as an excuse for not developing the technology... that is pathetic. There are capacitors in development which can forseeably solve the acceleration issue, and there are carbon nanotube cells which can probably solve the energy density (and cost, as many countries have begun hoarding the traditional metals used for rechargeables) problem. We can probably even develop an induction recharging system so that when you're at the lights - you're charging your car! At the moment, I'm a pretty big hipocrite - I run my big PC, a big monitor, gasoline car, pay for supermarket goods (that come freighted in on huge diesel trucks), bought consumer crap, do minimal re-using, and countless other little violations. But slowly and solidly, I'm changing. Not replacing this PC. Getting the smallest monitor I can once this once carks. Starting to grow my own food. Starting to grow my own basic medicine. Buying non-throwaway items. It's not about doing a 180º; it's about doing a 1º, then another 1º, and then another 1º...

Don't ya hate it when you eat food without checking best befores, and find that it should've been binned 2 weeks ago...

Yep. I personally pot deep enough so that I don't have to use stakes or polystyrene, but yeah, deep enough and stable enough so that it is firmly in the soil. And then it should start pumping out growth. :D

First of all - I have not tried dragonsblood. But, I'm just wondering what your current diet mostly consists of?

I think you just had some bad luck perhaps. :/ The only thing that might have had something to do with it is the size of the pot. The roots when you pulled it out looked like they weren't big enough for that pot IMO. It's (almost) always better to have a small pot where the root structure can quickly dispatch of extra water. In a bigger pot where the roots are practically swimming in the sea, they have no chance of drying themselves quickly. I'd like to hear what other people think about this.

Hmmm, well a proper Trich vendor should have had good soil and good plants. So I don't see anything obvious which would've invited the rot in. I'd just use sulfur on your other plants though man, sulfur fixes everything. :D It's normal for the plant to turn brown where it's underground. But I don't know if that plant is sick or not. It looks like it's had a hard life already, so it's probably just that. What kind of soil are you using? Could it be a drainage problem with not enough pumice or so?

Keep the pup! It can definitely root. I've rooted pups 10% the size of yours. And just where did that cactus come from? If it came from a garden centre, or very wet potting mix was used at any stage, then rot can quite easily occur.

I hope our Japanese friends will be alright. But I do know they are better prepared for Earthquakes than New Zealand. Also, the 160x more energetic figure is pretty much correct. The Richter scale is logarithmic. Although after reading, Wiki says a magnitude difference of 2 is about 1000 times difference. So it could be more. I also hope they fix those reactors. I don't even know how I once supported nuclear power, things like this just highlight the danger (albeit less danger than coal). OMFG!!! Explosion reported at nuclear plant http://www.nzherald.co.nz/japan-tsunami/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503051&objectid=10711892

I agree with the rot prognosis. I'd take that pup off, dust with sulfur, and dry the pup thoroughly before potting in new mix (I'd use some fungicide if you can't figure out where this lot of rot came from). Where did your plant and soil come from - Garden Centre? And I'd also remove the base from the soil, clean the soil off the roots. Cut back the roots heavily (if not all off), and dust with sulfur. Then dry that out, and plant into a smaller pot with new soil. I reckon that your current pot is a tiny bit too big (this means the roots are not large enough to regulate the nutrient and moisture level of all the soil). If you're lucky, this base will root and throw out a few pups.

I must say I believe that the thread in question did cross the boundaries into illegal preparation. If it were more about growing Papaver spp. - well then if it were up to me, I'd allow that. Anyway Yogibear, I think that if you decide to leave, you'll be missing out on a pretty amazing forum. There's a lot of opportunities and great people here, and if you could only see that the topic you posted had the potential (if many other topics in the same vein appeared) to confuse this forum for a different kind altogether - then you see why it was deleted. It's all about precedence. If that particular topic was allowed to stay, then why should others not? And if others were - then this website would appear a lot more obnoxious than it should. And if that were to happen, I'd imagine a lot more trouble would follow. And lastly - there are enough websites that deal exclusively with that topic exclusively as well, but comparatively fewer of this kind. I hope you realize, and can apologize, and stay.

That is a beautiful collection mate! I hope you're extremely proud. Have you sown any hybrids from there yet? It'd be interesting to see what comes out.

Hutch... you have blown my mind. I have vageuly heard of the Dogon people and how much they knew of the Sirius system (among other things). I can only wonder that if this were true, then why would this alien civilization have left us? If we were educated enough to remember information about Sirius, surely we would've been educated enough to remember why these extraterrestrials left us for a few thousand years? Did we advance enough and they thought their work was done? If only history was incorruptible... then it would be a lot easier to figure things out. Edit: I have decided to do some more research. And I found this article, which seems the much more likely explanation. http://www.ramtops.co.uk/dogon.html

Wait a minute... that fossil, it looks familiar... ... ... Now the only mystery remaining is where did Falcor's arms and legs go, and why is he so tiny?

As far as I know, a slow taper is the best way for you to get back to normal. In order to perform a successful one, you need to accurately reduce the dosages slowly. For this to work with minimal discomfort, you need to know how much you are taking each day, and at what times. I suggest you closely follow an exponential taper (dose, in mg = start_dose*e^[-1*k*days], with k being a constant that you can work out with how long you think you'll need for the taper) as this is the most natural. For this you'll need an accurate scale, and if you're shaving pills - fine sandpaper. Good luck. You're in the cloud now, and you won't be able to see what the cloud was until you are outside of it.

- The currently accepted age for our universe is about 14 Billion years old. Many supermassive black holes exist which are supposedly impossible to form in 14 Billion years. Also, the universe expansion is assumed to be constant, new measurement suggests it could actually be accelerating - doubling the age right there. This age also only refers to the estimated time of the Big Bang event. Before that? All speculation. - The universe appears to be infinite in the spatial dimensions too, and there are parts which we may possibly never access on account of their relative velocity to us (superluminal speeds, or wormholes would be needed). And lastly - maths, man. Mathematics gives so many possibilities. It just makes me wonder.

The quickest turnaround time I've had for roots is a few weeks (less than a month), and then the cactus cannot be pulled out of the soil at all. I think it's a good idea to make sure that the soil does not dry out (don't make it a swamp either) while you're waiting for roots to form, as the dry soil will prevent the more fibrous roots from forming, and thicker roots will form instead. Those thicker roots have a lesser ability to absorb moisture.

I think that the whole message of death not being so bad has had far too much of an anthropocentric spin put onto it (with resurrection and eternal life in some form). For example, entropy laws do not like the idea of an ever-increasing number of spirits who each have an identity (requires information to have an identity). The way I see death has changed a lot. I used to have the standard dualistic viewpoint: there's life, and then there's death - and that life was what everyone wanted, and death was not spoken about. But the more I begin to look at the intricacies of life, I begin to see a pattern - that life and death are the same; different viewpoints of one process. They are opposite sides of the same coin or the difference between coming and going. There is no life without death. For you and me to exist - the deaths of plants and animals alike have to occur, our life depends on their death. There is no death without life. Nothing can die if it was not alive to begin with. As conservation of energy implies, this process is practically infinite. The plants you might say - they do not need to have death to live, but, they are always dying, each cell dying slowly only to be replaced. So I'm not just going to die. I'm just going to share my life back to whence it came - as I'll've had my turn with it. Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Norman Borlaug is one of the most influential people to have ever lived. Unfortunately he passed away in 2009, but I suspect that his efforts will be felt strongly in many years to come. Edit: Spelled Norman wrong, lol.

Legendary HN. :D I have got some var. Super-kabuto seedlings which are coming along nicely. Once they're developed I'll post pictures too. And also a few GC plants which I didn't grow, so not much point photographing them.

That first rock formation is epic. :D I haven't seen any arches that good out of the US.

The ribs (sinuous) and areoles (big) look cuzco to me. However, I think it is possibly a hybrid of a more textbook cuzcoensis and possibly a bridgesii/peruvianus/macrogonus because of the spine arrangement (less uniform than most cuzcoensis I've seen). Considering the guy also gave you a bridgesii, depending on his reasons for owning these plant - it could indeed be much closer to a peruvianus.

Would it be a good idea to put posters on the affected trees inside of botanic gardens (with permission)? Maybe something like:

Hello everyone. I took these photos a while ago, and just didn't upload until now. I hope someone can help me positively ID them. I have more photos as well, such as a juvenile specimen with different shaped leaves of the first plant. And more leaf shots of the second. Unfortunately none were in flower. The first species was found growing amongst gum trees on a grassy slope. The photos are from various trees, as there were a few. I suspect melanoxylon: This next tree was found in a large neglected forested area. I suspect longifolia:

Searching for "Diplopterys pauciflora" on Wikipedia results in an infinite redirection loop. Interesting.

Reality and existence are a bit too deep for me to do much but dip my toes in (without just speculating). But what I can do though, is to compare gravity, to centrifugal force. Most people, "believe in gravity." Most people (who passed HS) - don't believe in centrifugal force, as it only appears in certain reference frames, and can be reduced in a suitable reference frame to nothing. Gravity is similar. If spacetime curvature is all that is necessary to account for the effects of 'gravity', then gravity can also too be reduced to nothing. Even though centrifugal force does not exist, we can use its concepts to calculate anyway. Similarly, even though Newtonian gravity does not exist, we can use its concepts to calculate anyway. So does gravity (as the definition, not the attributed effects) exist?

Doubt essentially means to question something, that you are not sure of it (such as the existence of the yeti, or the existence of the Hutchinson effect). If you are doubtless, then you have nothing to question. Scientists question methodically (the ideal scientist anyway). Furthermore, you have made the false leap from doubt to disbelief. Doubt does not imply that you cannot believe something. It implies that you "hesitate to believe". I doubted that the world could not be deterministic (rigidly), yet here I am - confused about the ground I stand on as I tentatively step towards somewhere near Capra's worldview. Also, infinite does not equal zero. They are similar, in that they are both concepts that signify idealistic quantities. Those concepts are not false however - it is their misapplication that is. If science is a square, existence is the tangential circle outside of it. I agree with a lot of the rest of what you wrote though.