axoplasm wrote:

Maybe, just maybe, air conditioning is the only way fragile organic beings like ourselves can survive an urban environment built primarily for the convenience of machines

Or maybe, just maybe, a/c is the only way many of us will survive as the globe heats up from global warming.

Ask those 11,000 that perished in France in 2003 from the heat wave there- trapped in stifling, non a/c bldgs. Most with bloated, reeking corpses by the time they were found, with maggots oozing out of the eyes, ears etc.

At least the French have awakened and no longer buy the "a/c ain't good for you" codswallop. It has now been installed thorughout Paris apts, especially for the elderly.

Heat is nothing to fart around with - and unless one is in excellent health and has good heat balance mechanisms - playing around trying to get along without it is idiocy.

This is not the nostalgic world of yore, or the fifties or 60s. More virulent, and prolonged heat waves (including less cooling at night) have occurred since 1985 than in all the recorded years before - going back to 1895.

nukeeular wrote:

The published results of many of these tests suggest that the initial intention of any experiment nets the intial desired conclusion. Meaning; you will find what you seek. In nearly all facets of quantum and astrophysics

Actually no, You cannot find whatever you seek - since what you can actually model physically will be constrained by the physical principles at work.

For example, I will never ever "find" a hollow star, since such an entity would controvert the principle of hydrostatic equilibrium that obtains for stars.

I will never find an anti-matter galaxy in the Local Group cluster.

I will never find a photon subject to Fermi -Dirac statistics rather than Bose-Einstein statistics.

I will never find an electromagnetic wave that travels faster than c, the speed of light, or which always displays a 90 degree polarization.

Note also, NO experiments however contrived will demonstrate ANY of the above.

There are some things we will never ever find, no matter how much we "intend" to!

Biden is such a bloviator, it's almost pathetic. The best thing this mouthy moron cold do is take himself out of the race and let the serious contenders have at it. He knows he hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell - and that was signed, sealed and delivered from the time he smacked down Anita Hill and helped that fool Clarence Thomas into the SC. How time flies....or not.

Having said that, yeah Joe, we know we in the left blogosphere don't "own" the Dems. How could we when most of us don't have enough money to donate $5 to even one candidate? How can we compete with all that corporate cash that actually buys y'all?

But just bear in mind that slices both ways: you don't own us either, and we won't be drumbeaten into voting for y'all merely because you believe we have no other options.

Sometime, pyrrhic victories are better than none at all - especially when you're up against a corporate funded one party state - with each "party" presenting one face of the same, corporate-owned coin.

This farce - it's not a war but a bloody occupation akin to what the Nazis did in WWII- was lost from the moment the grinning ape "resident" mounted 'shock and awe' in March of '03.

I saw the innocents' bodies - burned, mangled - on news clips coming over Deutsche Welle, CCTV (China) and the BBC. It sickened me and I thought to myself: "The stupid arrogant fuckers have already lost this".

Seeing the mangled and incinerated bodies of children in Iraqi hospitals reinforced this. The small boy with both legs torn off, the 4 year old girl with both eyes burned out, and third degree burns over most of her body, the young pregnant woman disembowelled by American shrapnel. The later images of Abu Ghraib and out of control troops kicking in doors and dragging people out in the middle of the night - went further.

"They've already lost the people's hearts and minds, just as in 'Nam" I thought.

And still do.

There is NO fucking way out except to declare victory and leave.

We had to do it in 'Nam and we will have to do it here. There isn't the money left in the Treasury - given the hundreds of domestic needs, to support this insanity any more.

I hope at least this time, Americans learn their lesson (which they should have after 'Nam') and we have no more Pax Americanas.

Larry wrote:

Your body grows used to the heat and it is much less of a shock going outside when your apartment temperature is close to the temperature of the outdoors.

What a pack of codswallop! In fact, as the ambient temperature exceeds body temperature (98.6F) it becomes more and more difficult to cool - e.g. by perspiration, and serious health problems soon mount. It is no accident that more people die from heat than from cold.

In addition, a prominent aspect of global warming is not just hotter days, but also HOTTER nights. This will ramp up in the future, especially as the urban "heat island" effect magnifies. (Urban areas like NYC are found to be 8-12 F higher than surrounding areas)

In 12 years, NYC will see days hitting 122F regularly in the summer - and lasting longer, and nights will never go below 100F.

I want to see you adapt to that, bozo!