HN user

mousethatroared

251 karma
Posts0
Comments206
View on HN
No posts found.

I'm pretty sure I can do a risk reward for rabies and have it come on top for the shot. You know, rabies having 100 % mortality rate.

Flu, not so easy (and an ongoing topic of research)

What's unbelievable? That someone with a graduate degree in engineering who sends their kid to private school has a circle of friends that includes medical doctors and other researchers? Or that there are medical professionals that aren't insufferable authoritarians?

- Adjuvants. As a materials researcher I think it's nuts we inject nanoscale alumina in our blood.

- Regulatory structure. Why can't I sue a vaccine manufacturer? Limit awards, if you necessary, but if I cant sue I cant get discovery.

- Effectiveness. The flu vaccine's effectiveness is statistical artifact. See healthy vaccine bias

- Historical effectiveness. I had a civil engineer smugly point out that his profession had ended more diseases than biology. So I looked it up. Civil engineering did more to end communicable diseases than vaccines.

- General dishonesty of the medical profession. I don't expect my Advil to be 100% safe; I don't expect my vaccine to be either. I dont expect my medical health officers to lie about it though (see mRNA and the long dismissed myocarditis risk)

Ive had a bone marrow biopsy done. Those are done fully awake with no anesthetic except for the skin incision.

You literally feel the push of the sharp needle cutting through your bone. Slowly. methodically. Half a millimeter by half millimeter every time the practitioner puts her weight on the needle.

Then, as they aspirate the marrow, you feel as if your balls are being sucked into your hips.

Then, despite the pain, I volunteered to sign up as a bone marrow donor.

Please, call me an idiot if you must, but don't explain away my distrust of vaccines with cowardice.

"which is if there’s no compelling evidence, it’s safe to say it doesn’t happen."

I call BS.

Until there was compelling evidence that antidepressants cause suicidal ideation it's safe to say it doesn't

Until there was compelling evidence that contaminated water causes cholera it's safe to say it doesn't

Until there was compelling evidence that dirty hands cause maternal death it's safe to say it doesn't

Until there was compelling evidence that lack of sunlight causes neo-natal jaundice it's safe to say it doesn't

These examples span centuries, including the 21st, that were vigorously rejected by experts

But it's perfectly valid to question results that don't make sense, and the role of the supposed expert is to explain why it does.

After all, off in a democracy an expert expects to be paid by taxpayers to make decisions that affect the taxpayer the expert should be, at the very least, be able to explain himself in an intelligible manner.

Thats the bare minimum of expectations. I also expect the taxpayer funded expert to provided full access to his data, notes and analysis software.

Im considered an expert in thermodynamics, materials science and E&M. The people that pay me routinely don't understand what I'm working on, but they expect me to explain myself.

@tlocke

But that isn't a mathematical expression. At best, it would appear to be energy * maximum_Carnot_efficiency (for heat engines anyway)

But it seems not to be adding very much, since Carnot efficiency depends on delta_(T). The OPs point that exergy doesn't depend on T is tautological since T has already been accounted for by the Carnot expression.

What is exergy? The one time a mechanical engineering colleagues tried to explain it to me, he reached the wrong conclusion on the problem we were working on.

I haven't seen it in any physics thermodynamics book, and only mech eng. seem to know what it is, and then only in the US.

Faires (undergrad MIT Thermo book from the 50s) makes no mention of it as far as I can tell.

"that is, it produces 35 W of cooling per 1 kW consumed."

No, they don't. First, without defining a delta T, efficiency is meaningless (unless its a Carnot cycle).

Second, the efficiency is (depending on op. point) higher than 100%. See [1]. You can pump 20 W of thermal power with 2 A @ 4 V = 8 W

20 W of cooling for 8 W of work, or an efficiency of > 200%. This is common to all refrigeration cycles, and frankly for a puny 10C, it sucks.

[1] https://www.datasheethub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/data...

COP has to be compared at the same delta T. The COP of a loss less refrigerator is infinite at Delta T = 0

And you dont get to stack Peltiers to increase COP, only to increase delta T.

Still, Peltiers are super cool and I have some ideas for their use od they get slightly better. Advances are super welcome.

I have two problems with EVs:

- I believe they're more immoral than ICE vehicles. They're existence displaces batteries for hybrids (yes I did the math)

- They're not practical for me for my use scenario. I have kids.

That's beautiful about your uncle. Becoming a well paid classical musician is very rare, he must be very good; your grandparents did well.

When I was in undergrad there was this 16 year old street urchin (for that's what he'd become) who'd hang out with us. He was a foster kid, and his was a life long story of abuse and neglect.

He was a nice kid too and, despite all the drugs he took, he could have been very smart.

What contrast good parents make.