[Chadd1014]

The end of the Seven Days article was interesting.

Dispelling the urban legend that Amtrak is the conduit for Rutland’s heroin supply, Baker says he’s unaware of a single shipment that has arrived via passenger train since he took over as police chief in January 2012.
“It would be easy to blame New York City,” Baker says, “but it’s much more complicated than that.”

[pauldorell]

Originally Posted by ladelfina

Which is it?

There isn't necessarily an inconsistency here. I don't agree with the importance many people place on their cultural/ethnic identities, and I dislike it when they impose them on me. If the Taliban moves into your neighborhood do you just go with the flow and become a terrorist?

Originally Posted by ladelfina

Ok, so all four of you are among the "worst kind" of people, illegal or not.
Why did you come to the U.S. in the first place if you felt that way??

My parents moved here when I was 7. I had no choice in the matter.

Originally Posted by ladelfina

Paul, I generally like your comments and agree with much of what you say, but I think you are off base here with the appeal to some mythical "Ethan Allen" scenario. Your own history and family experiences belie what you write, wouldn't you say? Ethan Allen, from what little I know, was not some sort of pure character; he was a land speculator battling competing land speculators, not unlike other national "heros".

My view is that, while I consider the predominance of a particular cultural ethos in a region somewhat arbitrary, if you accept the democratic way of looking at things the people who already live somewhere legitimately have greater say on what goes on there than outsiders.

Originally Posted by ladelfina

People move for selfish reasons, and it is obnoxious to sort folks into those "more" or "less" DESERVING of mobility.

It's not really about how deserving or undeserving someone is, it's more about "This is my turf." In a perfect world there would be no countries or borders, but we're not there yet.

Originally Posted by ladelfina

To address a couple of your speculative scenarios:
• Why the hell would 2MM Québécois move to VT when they have single-payer health care in Canada?
• 2MM Mexicans are not going to move to VT unless there are 500,000 to 2 million available jobs. That's not going to happen in a state with a population of 600k.

If for some reason circumstances were to change and those conditions became different, yes, Vermonters would have a majority of French or Spanish speakers. WHAT OF IT?

See my comment above about the Taliban. Once you recognize that you are under no obligation to passively adopt whatever standards someone with no greater authority than you is trying to impose on you, you begin to draw lines. Here's another hypothetical: wealthy Han Chinese buy land in Vermont and pressure the government to change all road signs to Mandarin. Fine by you?

[pauldorell]

Originally Posted by ladelfina

Paul, this might interest you:
Thermodynamics of civilization

The article is sort of interesting, but it's very heavy on rhetorical style and actually rather pompous. 2LoT is a great attention-getter, saying "I'm a pretty smart dude who understands the deep concepts of physics." Then when you get to his prescriptions at the bottom they have nothing to do with physics. I'm a Darwinian who prefers to see things through a biological lens. The physical principles may be there in the background, but as organisms we live in a much finer-grained world. For example, is the fact that gravitational fields curve space relevant to our daily lives? I don't think so.

[FrugalYankee]

"Thermodynamics of Civilization?" Really?

My developing view is that a little-known and unacknowledged implication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (let's call it "2LoT" for short) makes the existing structure of civilization essentially a foregone conclusion - not in detail of course, but when considered as a probabilistic whole, as befits a thermodynamic interpretation. This aspect of 2LoT implies that life arises spontaneously and inevitably in response to energy gradients in open systems - given that all the other necessary physical conditions are present, of course.

I don't think I am capable of ingesting or smoking a sufficient quantity of mind altering substances to see the merit in that article. What the author understands about physics wouldn't fill a post-it note.

Thermodynamics does not address sociology or biology, it addresses energy and energy conversion. Specifically the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy increases, hence there will always be an energy loss when converting from one form to another. You burn fuel (chemical energy) to make your car move (kinetic energy), there is a loss when energy (heat) is dissipated into the surroundings. All the Second Law of Thermodyamics does is explain why there is no such thing as a 100 % efficient energy conversion. It will not explain why given water and UV energy a seed can create a plant with a complex and intricate structure, let alone why people do what they do in aggregate.

But if anyone likes this kind of stuff, here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...46751780,d.dmg

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull****.” - W.C. Fields

[pauldorell]

Originally Posted by FrugalYankee

But if anyone likes this kind of stuff, here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...46751780,d.dmg

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull****.” - W.C. Fields

Hilarious! In fairness to ladelfina, her article was at least attempting to be serious.

[FrugalYankee]

Paul, you better quit laughing.

The crowd that is trying to justify homeopathy by tying its efficacy to QM is also quite serious.
Forschende Komplementärmedizin / Research in Complementary Medicine 2006, Vol. 13, No. 3 - Towards a New Model of the Homeopathic Process Based on Quantum Field Theory - Abstract - Karger Publishers
Homeopathy is a Science of Quantum mechanics

From where I am sitting, the reason that non-scientists can get away with putting this stuff out there is that most normal people cannot grasp probability and statistics. Entropy is based on statistics. Theoretically there is no reason why a thousand jumping beans don't all jump to the same side at the same time.The reason it doesn't happen is because there are so many of them and because the probability of them going to the left or the right are equal. The human mind can't handle that and so creates this artificial construct called "entropy."

Similarly most human minds can't handle quantum mechanics because again, it involves probability. The human mind likes things to be definitive as opposed to having a 50 % probability of being here, 25 % of being there, and 25 % of over yonder all at the same times.

And because most people don't comprehend this stuff, there are always quacks and BS artists who come up with this horsepucky that belongs in the Journal of Irreproducible Results who are able to snow the masses with the jargon.

Sorry for taking my own thread OT but I saw the name of Thermodynamics being taken in vain.

[pauldorell]

Originally Posted by FrugalYankee

And because most people don't comprehend this stuff, there are always quacks and BS artists who come up with this horsepucky that belongs in the Journal of Irreproducible Results who are able to snow the masses with the jargon.

I'm probably a little older than you and remember well the gurus from the 1960's and 1970's. It seems that "enlightenment" has been replaced by "scientific miracles" - the latter actually have an older pedigree.

There's a sucker born every minute.

[ladelfina]

Entropy is based on statistics.

FY, this is laughably incorrect, and your lame attempt at diversion by invoking the straw man of homeopathy —a practice which I find ridiculous and without scientific basis—is beneath you.

It seems as though you don't want to try to understand what the author is saying, so you just lump it in with "anything woo-woo that makes no sense to me".

why people do what they do in aggregate.

What do you see happening around you all day long? Humans and other creatures struggling to corner a local and now global energy market with whatever biological, primitive or, now, industrial means they have at their disposal. As you mention, in the process of using energy for themselves, much escapes as "waste" energy (defined classically as energy which does not "do work", "work" being somewhat of a loaded term, imo). At its most basic level this waste energy is body heat for warm-blooded creatures, but we've invented ways to create waste (and increase entropy) to extremes never before possible on the planet.

I believe that humans like to pride themselves on the "order" that they are creating (building highways and airplanes and supermarkets and so forth), but in reality on a thermodynamic level they are creating a far greater amount of DISORDER and randomness. With the help of fossil fuels, now it's possible for us to move banana molecules from Costa Rica to NY, steel molecules from Germany to the US, and of course oil molecules from under the sands of the Middle East get dispersed everywhere: into the air and the oceans in the bits of plastic seabirds in the Galapagos die from ingesting. Etc. etc. To think about the origins of all these millions of products and materials and their trajectories and how they end up where they end up in a matter of months or minutes is dizzyingly overwhelming.

What it has to do with immigration is that I see population movements in that context: people trying to capture land and forests and fishing grounds; now trying to capture what? Eligibility to a university? Access to medical care? The hope of better jobs in an industrial or professional sector? What they are REALLY all trying to capture—when you strip it down to its most basic expression—is ENERGY.

If you and Paul think turf wars are going to SAVE more energy than they EXPEND by keeping people out (which I think is dubious: see the current budget for DoD and "Homeland Security"), that's fine with me. I just don't agree that it's any kind of real solution. If Han Chinese move here to the point that they are the majority population then, sure, the signs can be in Chinese, and I will learn Chinese or move elsewhere.

Just recognize your reactions as the incredibly-common "immigrants wanting to close the door behind them" phenomenon that it actually is, rather than making emotional appeals to "culture". And note that your desires are perfectly coherent with the thermodynamics of the situation: to monopolize as much energy as possible and devolve it to your own advantage. In the U.S., you have the opportunity to do the biggest, bestest, fastest job of breaking down those energy gradients.