TAM 7 & the Termination of the James Randi Paranormal Challenge

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TAM 7 & the Termination of the James Randi Paranormal Challenge

TAM 7 & The Termination of the James Randi Paranormal Challenge:

http://www.thirdeyeconcept.com/news/index.php?topic=9960.0 _____________________________________________________________ http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=54601&page=31

 

"I find that the high concentration of this type of person is fairly unique to this forum. I assume it has to do with the challenge, and the fact that nearly every type of paranormal belief system is skewered here. I also post on the snopes urban legend forum, where you might expect there to be a lot of similarly deluded people, but it honestly doesn't happen much there. Perhaps the specific legends debunked don't raise as many hackles as debunking schools of thought. I don't think there is anything that can be done about it. I think dealing with lunatics is inherent to JREFs mission. Individual posters can of course take themselves out of the discussion at any time. But I think prematurely banning people (even if you know they're going to eventually implode like this) is a bad idea, because it just gives them more ammunition to say the contest is rigged. Better to hear them out and just continue being rational until they either start making sense or implode."

Well said, LIAR! Why don't all these deluded skeptics take their own worthless advice for once...

EXPLODE!


 


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it's not like this whole

it's not like this whole thread is about whether NOSTRADAMUS could predict the future, eh?


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 Right on cue... I swear

 Right on cue... I swear this guy has google alerts for whenever someone says his name.  Three or four days ago, someone mentions him, and here he is.  It's like the freaking candyman.

Anyway, try again next sock puppet.

 

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Ah, so this is is the

Ah, so this is is the famous david mabus. I have heard the legend.

 

You should take notice of the smoke trails on the right side of the image. Those are used to estimate the yield of the blast. Since they are well to one side, it ought to be clear that they missed the target.

 

So how can one miss a target with a nuke? Easily. The fact is that nukes are not gigantic “scrape a city to nothing” weapons. In fact, there is one guy who survived the blast at Hiroshima who happened to be only 300 feet (100 meters) from ground zero.

 

A real nuclear weapon is at most 10 to 20 times the yield of a typical bomb as used in WW2.

 

Note that I am not in favor of using nukes. However, that must of necessity take into account that I am not in favor of using 20 two ton bombs either.

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No

         The James Randi challenge continues,   sign up and jump in anytime.  One female tried for it today-- July 12-- and failed with her psychic dowsing.   TAM7 carried it live on the internet.

 

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Another exceedingly boring

Another exceedingly boring peudo-philosophical
diatribe about a scientific subject.

Don't waste your time with this one unlesss
you enjoy verbal masterbation.


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Alright, two things:

Alright, two things:

David, you're still awesome.

 

 

Gene, you've twice now mentioned this guy who was allegedly only '300 feet' away from the bomb that exploded in Hiroshima. Uh, name? Source? If he was that close, it's pretty absurd tothink that he wouldn't have received a lethal doseof radiation unless he was in a fortified position.

As for the claim that 'most nuclear weapons are just 10 to 20 times the yield of most conventional bombs dropped during WWII', that's ridiculous. The RAF Grand Slam bomb, at 22,000 pounds, was one of the largest conventional bombs used in the second world war. Explosive yield? 6.5 tons of TNT.

lolwut.

Modern nuclear weapons are measured in terms of 'megatons' of TNT (or thousands of tons). 7 multiplied by 20 would by 140 tons, so no, most nuclear bombs are not reasonably comparable to conventional bombs. The low-ball yield for Little Boy, which was an extremely low yield nuclear weapons, was 12 kilotons (1,200 tons of TNT).  That's about 171 times the yield of the damn Grand Slam. Sticking out tongue

 

The Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever detonated, (while not a practical weapon) certainly would've melted a city off of the face of the Earth. 50 megaton yield (50,000 tons of TNT, or about 7,143 times the yield of the Grand Slam).

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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 KB, do you also have geek

 KB, do you also have geek cred on current conventional bombs?  What's the biggest and baddest non-nuke we use these days?

 

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It's a tough competition.

It's a tough competition. There's the USAF Daisy Cutter, MOAB, and MOP, and the Soviet "Father of All Bombs", a thermobaric weapon.

Honestly, I couldn't give you accurate TNT tonnage ranges for any of these toys (classified), but most guesses are around 9-10 tons for each weapon. Honestly, though, these days it's much more about the nifty 'side effects' than the raw blast power (the vacuum effect of the thermobaric bombs, for example).

 

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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 From a science geek

 From a science geek perspective, I gotta say, the bombs they're inventing these days are damn cool.  The compassionate human in me is mortified.

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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Hambydammit wrote: From a

Hambydammit wrote:

 From a science geek perspective, I gotta say, the bombs they're inventing these days are damn cool.  The compassionate human in me is mortified.

 

I'm with you on this one Hamby.  I'm a pacafist committed to non-violence whenever possible, but some of the tech that's being deployed by the military is seriously wicked awesome.

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Kevin R Brown

Kevin R Brown wrote:
Gene, you've twice now mentioned this guy who was allegedly only '300 feet' away from the bomb that exploded in Hiroshima. Uh, name? Source? If he was that close, it's pretty absurd tothink that he wouldn't have received a lethal doseof radiation unless he was in a fortified position.

 

Um yah, his name was Eizo Nomura and he lived another 37 years, dying at age 84.

 

When the bomb detonated, he was in the basement of the building that today serves as the tourist information center. Other survivors from nearby the blast were a guy in a bank and the entire staff of the local Catholic church, all of whom were less than 500 feet away from ground zero.

 

More information can be had here:

 

http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/PhotoGlryMain/pgc/Hiroshima01a.html

 

Kevin R Brown wrote:
As for the claim that 'most nuclear weapons are just 10 to 20 times the yield of most conventional bombs dropped during WWII', that's ridiculous. The RAF Grand Slam bomb, at 22,000 pounds, was one of the largest conventional bombs used in the second world war. Explosive yield? 6.5 tons of TNT.

 

Yes Kevin, I am aware that really freaking big bombs have been developed but there simply are no weapons in the megaton range in the US arsenal. In fact, the largest yield weapon in our arsenal has a yield of 450kt but it is also the least numerous of current weapons. Most of our bombs have a yield between 10 tons and 300 tons TNT equivalent.

 

In fact, of all the megaton rang bombs we ever did build, all of them were removed from our inventory by about 1964. So yah, most of the bombs that actually exist are on the small side for nukes.

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 Quote:but there simply are

 

Quote:
but there simply are no weapons in the megaton range in the US arsenal. In fact, the largest yield weapon in our arsenal has a yield of 450kt but it is also the least numerous of current weapons. Most of our bombs have a yield between 10 tons and 300 tons TNT equivalent.

 

In fact, of all the megaton rang bombs we ever did build, all of them were removed from our inventory by about 1964. So yah, most of the bombs that actually exist are on the small side for nukes.

 

...Gene, which NeoCon thinktank do you get your information from? 

You guys had the B41, a 25 MT weapon (the largest bomb ever built by the States), right up until 1976. She was retired at that point (no longer manufactured), but given that nuclear bombs don't exactly just magically disappear overnight, I believe you still have a number in your inventory.

The B53, a 9 MT weapon, is still in service; public record is that there are about 50 on standby (they were going to be retired in the late 1980s, but the retirement plan was scrapped). 

 

Now, you no longer have the Titan ICBMs or accompanying W53 warheads, so maybe that's what you mean? 

 

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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 Quote: From a science

 

Quote:
 From a science geek perspective, I gotta say, the bombs they're inventing these days are damn cool.  The compassionate human in me is mortified.

Well, you could think of it this way, Hamby:

 

A few hundred years ago, if buddy got run through with a sword, he pretty much got to fall over and die of blood loss, infection or gangrene. All of those are, I imagine, extremely painful and relatively slow ways to expire.

 

By comparison, if a fuel-air bomb goes off right in front of you, a lot of times you just die instantly of shock. Your brain just switches you off and that's it. So, framing it that way, we can pretty reasonably say that even in terms of compassion for fellow human beings our weaponry has (well, some of it) come a long way.

 

Now, frankly, I'm not actually interested in thinking of it that way. I think it's just plain fucked-up that we have such large, expensive, dangerous and (by and large) unchecked organized military bodies still lurking around, ever after centuries of being shown why they're such a bad idea. 

Of course, that doesn't prevent me from agreeing that things that go boom and/or clank are themselves very, very cool. Sticking out tongue

 

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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 ...Also, just for fun:This

 ...Also, just for fun:

This infamous footage is from the Baker detonation during the Crossroads nuclear tests. Baker was 'only' 23-25 KT of TNT (so 2,300 tons of TNT at the low range of the estimate, or 256 times more powerful than the 9 ton Daisy Cutter, one of the most powerful conventional bombs in service - yet still substantially less powerful than even just a 1 MT bomb).

Pause at 0:18 in that video, and observe the right side of the water column. The dark object being violently upended into a vertical incline is the Arkansas, a 27,000 ton, 562 foot long battleship.

 

...As I said before, in terms of raw destructive power, nuclear weapons are by no means comparable to conventional munitions. It's like trying to compare the athletic abilities of Michael Jordan to those of Stephen Hawking. 

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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Kevin R Brown

Kevin R Brown wrote:
...Gene, which NeoCon thinktank do you get your information from?

 

Primarily nuclearweaponsarchive.org and the Federation of American Scientists (fas.org). If either of those sites cannot confirm the other, then globalsecurity.org tends to be a good source for confirmation.

 

Hey, you did ask.

 

Kevin R Brown wrote:
You guys had the B41, a 25 MT weapon (the largest bomb ever built by the States), right up until 1976. She was retired at that point (no longer manufactured), but given that nuclear bombs don't exactly just magically disappear overnight, I believe you still have a number in your inventory.

 

The B53, a 9 MT weapon, is still in service; public record is that there are about 50 on standby (they were going to be retired in the late 1980s, but the retirement plan was scrapped).

 

Now, you no longer have the Titan ICBMs or accompanying W53 warheads, so maybe that's what you mean?

 

OK, I did misread the date when the last B41 was taken out of the stockpile. That being said, they did start to remove them from service in 1963 to replace them with the MK-53. As far as either of them existing in any real way, what was built once can be built again, just not trivially. As easy to say that because I live near an auto parts store, that I have several cars.

 

In any case, B41 has not been part of the world for over thirty years and I will also note that that was after the date when we stopped making weapons grade material. The fact is that weapons grade material is probably the most expensive substances on the earth, so when old bombs were dismantled, the material was recycled into newer weapons.

 

As far as the B53, yes, there are 50 empty cases in the enduring stockpile but there too, the physics packages have been removed and recycled. From what I can see, they have basically been retained as a weapon of last resort. However, they have been replaced by the B61 earth penetrator which, once again is a small bomb. My sources say that there are 3150 of those ready to drop, which is about half of our whole damn arsenal.

 

Don't get me wrong here, they are still awesomely huge bombs but even so, you started this because you did not believe me that one can survive a nuclear blast from a minimal distance and live to be a little old man. Rather than standing corrected on that, you are trying to out geek me on just what a nuclear weapon can actually do.

 

Speaking of standing corrected, we do have 650 B83 weapons that can be dialed up to just over 1MT effective yield. I don't know how I missed those before.

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 Quote:you started this

 

Quote:
you started this because you did not believe me that one can survive a nuclear blast from a minimal distance and live to be a little old man. Rather than standing corrected on that, you are trying to out geek me on just what a nuclear weapon can actually do.

Well, you can't. I don't know where you get that idea. 

 

You mention Enzo as though he took the full force of the blast, brushed himself off and walked away. He was underneath the freaking ground

That's like me trying to downplay the effectiveness of depleted uranium tank sabot rounds because you can survive one being shot at you just a dozen feet away - so long as it goes over your head. Sticking out tongue

 

I'd need more info on the people in the church and in the bank. Were they also underground? Or were they on the lee side of a larger structure that took most of the punch? Etc.

Suffice it to say, I'm rather dubious that anyone standing in the street with a clear LoS to ground zero and only 500 feet between themselves and the explosion would live to grow to a ripe old age.

 

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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That is so obvious and

That is so obvious and simple that one is forced to wonder how you inferred that from AIG's post, when he did not state it, and has never demonstrated himself to be a complete idiot.

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 There is some strange math

 There is some strange math going on here...

A megaton is a million tons of TNT equivalent.

The largest WWII bombs were nominally 10 tons equivalent - so a megaton is 100,000 times as big.

10 kilotons is 10000 tons equivalent, ie 1000 times the size of the WWII bomb.

There are weapons which can be set to around 300 tons, ie 30 times the Grand Slam, but typical ones are in the 10's of kiloton, ie 1000 times.

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