Dyson Mirror

You might be familiar with the concept of a Dyson Ring or Dyson Sphere. One purpose of such a construct is to capture as much of that solar radiation as possible. One of the main problems with such structures is of course the enormous amount of material required to build one.

I'm not sure whether if Dyson has thought about it himself, but after thinking about it, I think it might be possible to help cut down on the construction material problem by using what I call a "Dyson Mirror". The idea is basically something like the following:

Instead of constructing a habitable ring or sphere around a sun-like star to capture its radiated energy, it might be sufficient to construct a giant parabolic mirror like so instead:



The construct would be made of thin aluminum foil (the same as those used in solar sails) instead of the heavier materials required for building worlds. The foils in question need only be 30 to 100 nanometres thick. The energy could be collected by a large space station or satellite in space which would then convert and transmit the energy to Earth via a concentrated microwave beam discussed here (you'll have to scroll to the bottom of that page).

For a mirror at mercury orbit with a diameter, spanning 30% of that orbit (assuming a flat mirror for simplicity purposes, this is just an estimate after all), assuming a foil thickness of 50 nanometres, it would appear that the volume of material required is:

Radius of Mercury orbit = 50 million km

50,000,000km * 2 * pi * 0.3 => 94,200,000km (diameter of mirror)

(94,200,000km / 2)^2 * pi => 6.976 * 1015 km^2

6.976 * 1015 km^2 * 50nm => 34,880,000km^3

…Which translates to a piece giant cube of material that is 700km by 700km by 700km (not too bad in comparison to the volumes needed for a Dyson Ring). This is actually quite a bit smaller than Pluto. Mining out a few large asteriods might suffice (if they were made of the correct material).

Of course one has to consider the effects of light pressure on the mirror, which is a giant solar sail after all...

This is GAWD?

After reading this article from BBC, one has to wonder whether if there's anything that people WON'T believe in.

Approximate Mechanisms

Some thoughts relating to being human (or existing as any sort of evolved biological organism):

Consider a piece of paper and imagine it being folded into a triangular shape with many layers. The properties of interest here is that the piece of folded paper would be relatively hard and pointy. In fact, one can probably use it to drill through a nice block of butter or soft cheese. Given that the paper triangle can perform the said drilling task, one can now abstract the paper triangle as a "drill". But if one were to try using it to drill through a steel plate, nothing but disappointment would emerge from the process. At this point, one might say that the paper triangle is a very imperfect/poor/stupid "drill". But there is obviously another way of approaching the issue: the paper triangle wasn't specifically meant for drilling through things in the first place, and the mere fact that it can in certain cases (and thus can be abstracted as such) doesn't imply that this is its natural function. What is obviously happening here is that the paper triangle can 'approximate' a diamond drill.

Now lets apply this analogy to humans, what can a human being be abstracted as? Some of the following has been considered by various individuals in the past:

- The human being is a rational animal
- The human being is a mating machine like all other animals
- The human being is an 'imperfect' image of a perfect being
etc

Lets think about each of these in the context of the analogy above:

The human being is a rational animal:

off the bat, one can see the problem with this assertion, human beings are rarely rational. But human beings can also be rational, so what exactly is going on here? Are human beings imperfect/poor/stupid rational animals? One can certainly look at things this way, but another approach is obviously to say that the human system can 'approximate' a being that is perfectly rational.

The human being is a mating machine:

What about people born deformed without reproductive organs? Again, human beings can approximate systems meant for reproduction.

The human being is an 'imperfect' image of a perfect being:

Now this is interesting, because almost lays out the problem, but I would assert that there is one issue here: the human being can approximate many different mutually exclusive beings.

etc etc...

So now one might ask: if a human being is merely something that can approximate other specific things, what exactly is the actual form of the human being? After all, the paper in the original story can approximate a drill, but it has the original form (and thus intend purpose) of being something to write on. I would contend that in fact, this question is somewhat misguided, a being doesn't have to have ANY original form in order to approximate other things which do have some specific form. Consider the following image:

One can see that the black lines approximate a circle, but one can now ask: what is the original form of the black lines? What were they for? What are they representing in actuality? And the answer here is: nothing specific.

Culturism is the new Racism

Over the course of the past century, it would seem that racist attitudes amongs peoples have largely been rolled back by an increasingly globalized world, yet at the same time Culturism seems to have filled the gap where racism used to occupy.

Let me discuss what I mean by the term "Culturism" so you'd know what I am talking about (There are already other definitions for the term, but there are only so many words in the universe):

Culturism is:
- demanding loyalty of individuals to their native culture (and condemning those who 'mingle' with other cultures)
- rejecting, attacking, and looking down on other cultures (either implicit or explicit)
- attacking attempts to alter the culture in significant ways
- rallying social movements in the name of a culture (ie, not in the name of what is reasonable, or even what is 'good')

First let me state that I do not believe that any of the points listed above are rationally justifable (although it's a little more complicated than just that, I will leave that discussion for another day). I will refrain from bringing up specific examples of this issue as you probably already have a few in mind.

What I do want to do is to consider what might be the possible causes of this trend of replacing 'racism' with 'culturism' (which I would argue is pretty much the same can of worms that's been repackaged). Some of my thoughts on the issue are the following:

- Culturism receives far less criticism than racism due to a lack of a history of social movements behind it (people have been trying to combat racism for a long time, but when was the last time someone stood up and clearly said "let the man who wishes to switch his cultural loyalties be equal to the man who is loyal to his culture"?)

- Cultural Relativism has prevented any objective comparsion between cultures, and thus opening the door for anyone to arbitarily state that their culture is "the most superior".

- The state of affairs is such that many individuals on the planet are attracted to western culture, and this allows third world Culturists to play the role of the victim and accuse the cultural conversion of being some sort of "imperialist conspiracy" (where if someone from western culture were to enter into some third world culture, usually no such accusation will be feasible)

Some predictions about the future of Culturism:

- If nothing is done to address Culturism, it may well be that every evil that was the result of racism will also eventually be emulated by Culturism

- Given the current state of affairs, it would seem that in the short term, very little attention will be paid to the issue of Culturism, as Cultural Relativism stills seems quite prevalent

- It may will be that only after some great atrocity has been committed in the name of culture, that people will seriously turn their attention to this issue

Welcome to Puzzle Peddler Land

Greetings, I am a self-styled social commentator looking to contribute some original (and hopefully intellectual) material to the blogsphere. This blog will also include some random babble concerning my personal life from time to time, but hopefully things will be interesting overall.

Anyways, enough with the introductions, I will be returning with some actual content soon, Anon!