Monday, February 27, 2023
JOANNA A. wrote:
Yes and no. I have yet to read a critique of Rand that happens to mention the fact that at the end of "Shrugged" the way by which this elite manages to survive is by having discovered some infinite, magical source of energy so that they no longer need.....wait for it....workers.
It is actually very funny: for the first time in literature....the deus ex machina is replaced by the prole ex machina.
Joanna
^^^^^^^^
CB: Perpetual motion machines; overthrow of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
However, robots don't buy cars ,or take out mortgages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
Perpetual motion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Perpetual motion (disambiguation).
Robert Fludd's 1618 "water screw" perpetual motion machine from a 1660
wood engraving. This device is widely credited as the first recorded
attempt to describe such a device in order to produce useful work,
that of driving millstones.[1] Although the machine would not work,
the idea was that water from the top tank turns a water wheel
(bottom-left), which drives a complicated series of gears and shafts
that ultimately rotate the Archimedes' screw (bottom-center to
top-right) to pump water to refill the tank. The rotary motion of the
water wheel also drives two grinding wheels (bottom-right) and is
shown as providing sufficient excess water to lubricate them.
Perpetual motion describes motion that continues indefinitely without
any external source of energy.[2] This is impossible in practice
because of friction and other sources of energy loss.[3][4][5]
Furthermore, the term is often used to in a stronger sense to describe
a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, a "hypothetical machine
which, once activated, would continue to function and produce work"[6]
indefinitely with no input of energy. There is a scientific consensus
that perpetual motion is impossible, as it would violate the first or
second law of thermodynamics.[4][5]
Nikola Tesla noted that we are immersed in a variety of energetic
fields, so that cases of apparent perpetual motion can exist in
nature, but such motions either are not truly perpetual or cannot be
used to do work without changing the nature of the motion (as occurs
in energy harvesting).[7] For example, the motion or rotation of
celestial bodies such as planets may appear perpetual, but are
actually subjected to many forces such as solar winds, interstellar
medium resistance, gravitation thermal radiation and electro-magnetic
radiation.[8][9]
The flow of electric current in a superconducting loop may be
perpetual and could be used as an energy storage medium, but following
the principle of energy conservation the source of energy output would
in fact originate from the energy input with which it was previously
charged.
Machines which extract energy from seemingly perpetual sources—such as
ocean currents—are capable of moving "perpetually" (for as long as
that energy source itself endures), but they are not considered to be
perpetual motion machines because they are consuming energy from an
external source and are not isolated systems. Similarly, machines
which comply with both laws of thermodynamics but access energy from
obscure sources are sometimes referred to as perpetual motion
machines, although they also do not meet the criteria for the name.
Despite the fact that successful perpetual motion devices are
physically impossible in terms of the current understanding of the
laws of physics, the pursuit of perpetual motion remains popular.
----- Original Message -----
Bruce Bartlett fb:
Remarkably insightful review of Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers.
Atlas is probably the best-selling POS in literary history.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback
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