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Freeman Dyson Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#261

Post by BoorishBears »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #258
BoorishBears wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were comparing her by proxy with yourself >”that I tend to get attention for all the wrong reasons routed in my gender.” You’re clearly trying to imply the merit for her would be the fact she’s a black female, why even bother trying to imply otherwise

I engaged the comment with a comment of my own out of respect, not hostility. If I really desired to shut the discussion down, I would not have added to it. I would have flagged it and downvoted it. I appear to be the highest ranked openly female member on Hacker News. I appear to be the only openly female member to have ever spent time on the leader board. I was homeless for nearly six years. I hit the leader board…

You haven’t engaged with anything I said, just listed fairly meaningless things that, I don’t know, were supposed to garner sympathy?

Or maybe somehow hardship qualifies you to downplay the incredible acts she committed with “I hate when people do the same thing to me because my being female is totally comparable to being a black female at NASA in pre-desegregation south”?

So don’t worry, you won’t be engaging with me at all.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#262

Post by kbutler »

davedx wrote: post #248
kbutler wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would you spend (or spend to convince the government to spend) to keep your billions-of-dollars-worth-of-real-estate viable? Building sea walls is a trivial cost compared to moving (and giving up the real estate to the sea). Ask the Netherlands - 26% of the country is below sea level - up to (or down to) 6.7m below.

The Deltaworks project did not have a trivial cost, and the Ministry of Water in the Netherlands is deeply concerned about how we will mitigate further sea level and river level rises.

"Altogether the Delta Works cost nearly 5 billion Euros." http://www.deltawerken.com/The-Delta-Works/1524.html

"The South Holland coast region is home to approximately 4 million people who live below normal sea level" https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/what-do-civ...

Roughly 1300 Euros per person protected. How much would it cost to move those people? And what is the total value of the real estate where they live/work/farm?

So yes, "Building sea walls is a trivial cost compared to moving (and giving up the real estate to the sea)."

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#264

Post by saijanai »

photon_lines wrote: post #192
astrophysician wrote: post #5

About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…

Actually, he was one of the main motivators for me to do something which I just finished today: to explain what Maxwell's equations mean in simple terms. I read his paper a few months ago explaining why Maxwell's equations were so hard to grasp, and I was awe struck at how great of a writer and communicator he was: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4317784_Why_is_Maxw... Rest in piece Mr. Dyson - you're a lege…

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1049/ic.2007.1146

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#265

Post by saijanai »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #136
theothermkn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's slightly interesting about Dyson Sphere's is that spherical shells of matter exert exactly no gravitational pull at any point in their interiors. That is, the integral of gravitational pull over the whole shell is identically 0 for every point inside the shell.* This goes for any force that falls off by the inverse square rule, e.g. the electrostatic force. In short, there's no practical way to stick…

> there's no practical way to stick an atmosphere, much less a civilization composed of life forms that depend on gravity, to the inside of the sphere Why not spin the sphere? Given the immense surface area, it wouldn't even matter that the centripetal force would only be strongest around the 'equator'. So, the plan would be: 1. Create a giant rotating sphere around our Sun. 2. Create a ring world around the 'equator…

Why not just a ring, instead?

It's been done, of course...

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#266

Post by EForEndeavour »

pedrosorio wrote: post #188
EForEndeavour wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the large total surface area of the asteroid belt overwhelmed by drawbacks like unusability of most of it for most purposes (uneven, unstable, unshielded, etc.), and the fact that humans do really poorly in microgravity?

That sounds about right. You should check this out of haven’t yet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)

Thanks for reminding me that I really need to get around to starting Season 4!

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#267

Post by slavik81 »

slavik81 wrote: post #220
jey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have psychological hurdles to even using a cane. Something like "I raised N children, I powered through my career, I have been a strong independent human being as far as I can remember, why should I use a cane?"

You occasionally see Richard Guy walking around our mathematics department with hiking poles. The man hiked a mountain in his 90s, but he's 103 now and it seems those days are past. It reminds me to watch where I'm going, lest I end a living legend.

RIP Richard Guy. https://science.ucalgary.ca/mathematics-statistics/about/ric...
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