Author: DB

I asked ChatAI a question:

Instruction: Answer a paradoxical but logical question about a magic sword that can cut anything in the world, except that there is thing that it cannot cut.

Reply: One possible answer to this paradoxical but logical question is that the magic sword is able to cut anything in the world, including itself. The thing that it cannot cut is therefore the act of cutting itself, as it is impossible for an object to cut itself without also being cut in the process.

Another possible answer is that the magic sword is able to cut anything in the world, except for things that are already cut or divided into two or more pieces. In this case, the thing that the magic sword cannot cut is anything that has already been cut or divided, as there is nothing left for the sword to cut.

Yet another possible answer is that the magic sword is able to cut anything in the world, except for things that are infinitely small or have no physical substance. In this case, the thing that the magic sword cannot cut is anything that is not physically present or that has no physical form, as there is nothing for the sword to interact with or cut.

The Traditional Answer

The traditional answer is the first answer that ChatAI gave, and I wonder whether it was specifically directed to read up on paradoxical questions or whether it pieced the reply together from other information that it has.

We hiked for four days before reaching the summit. When we emerged from the trees, we were met with an early-morning fog that extended far beyond our range of sight. We turned back and clung to safety in the forest, hanging like bats in the canopy. How had we been so misled? The mist enveloped us, cooling our bodies and favouring us with breaths of cold damp air. Jonah climbed down and started a fire on the forest floor. Could I smell the fire from high up in the trees or was I fooling myself?

My arms were tiring rapidly.

What was I supposed to do when the food ran out? I didn’t owe these people anything. You know what I was thinking – If I could go back now, do you think I wouldn’t jump at the chance?

The storm was still off in the distance, horizon to horizon black with rain.

When Jonah asked me, did I want to go on or go back, I didn’t know what to say. A jumble of words, each one trying to get in first. Where to begin? What caused what? Who did what because of what? Did it start here or back in Paris?

Danny’s last dying breath was a curse. He cursed them all, and wished them all to go to hell like he was surely going. I didn’t want to end up the same way.

Lignite, sometimes called ‘brown coal’, is a soft, brown sedimentary rock that is essentially compressed peat.

It is a poor fuel compared to other types of coal. It produces less heat and more carbon dioxide and sulphur. And some brown coal contains toxic heavy metals that get burned off or remain in the fly ash after burning.

It is used almost exclusively as a fuel in steam-electric power stations.

Lignite Or Bust

If lignite is all you’ve got then that’s what you burn, up and until someone points out what a bad idea it is environmentally.

The Garzweiler surface mine in Germany is an opencast lignite mine. It’s huge, a long scar stretching north west to south east covering 48 square km.

And now for the bad news. It’s going to get bigger.

Because Russia turned off the gas tap, RWE who own the mine need more space to strip out more brown coal. So an array of eight wind turbines near the Garzweiler mine are being removed to increase the opencast area so it can mine more lignite.

Under its licence, Energiekontor, which owns the wind turbines, has to dismantle the turbines by the end of 2023. Why, I don’t know.

Three turbines have gone, already.

I guess that if the lignite mine did not need the space, then eight new wind turbines could have gone up. But that’s not what’s happening.

So no Russian gas, but dirty brown lignite.

What is the overall balance of environmental cost? It’s worse, that’s clear. How much worse, I don’t know. But lobbyists at COP27 are promoting gas as a clean fuel…

Britain?

What is the effect on decisions made in Britain?

You know how people are influenced by their environment?

Well, when the British Government wants to open a new coal mine, and someone in the EU wants to say that’s bad, the Minister (Michale Gove MP) can say ‘Look who’s talking – look what you have done at Garzweiler 

Report in the Guardian 7 December 2022
The UK will build its first new coalmine for three decades at Whitehaven in Cumbria, despite objections locally, across the UK and from around the world.
Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, gave the green light for the project on Wednesday, paving the way for an estimated investment of £165m that will create about 500 new jobs in the region and produce 2.8m tonnes of coking coal a year, largely for steelmaking.
The mine will also produce an estimated 400,000 tones of greenhouse gas emissions a year, increasing the UK’s emissions by the equivalent of putting 200,000 cars on the road.
The vast majority of the coal produced will be for export, as most UK steel producers have rejected the use of the coal, which is high in sulphur and surplus to their needs.

Some problems are overwhelming, the problem of energy escaping from shops with open doors is easily solved. Shops (with few exceptions) put fear of missing out on potential customers above the desire to conserve energy – whether heating or air conditioning,

No shop would feel disadvantaged if all shops were required by law to close their doors so as not to leak their energy to the outside world.

I have started a petition to UK Government to ask them to debate legislation to push this win-win solution along.

The petition:

To save energy, require shops to keep their doors closed during opening hours.

What I want Government to do:

Introduce legislation requiring all shops to close their doors (that is, not open wide) during opening hours. This proposal is not solely about the current high cost of energy, but about wasting precious energy and the costs of producing it on a planet that is warming uncontrollably.

Why I want Government to do it: 

We all understand that shops need to be welcoming to customers, but customers should quickly realise that a closed door does not mean a closed shop. Shops (with few exceptions) put fear of missing out on potential customers above the desire to conserve energy – whether heating or air conditioning, No shop should feel disadvantaged if all shops were required by law to close their doors so as not to leak their energy to the outside world.

Note that you have to be a UK citizen to sign the petition.

Click this link to sign the petition:

The Impetus For This

For years my wife, Tamara, has been speaking to managers in shops and supermarkets talking to them about the heat they let escape through the doors they leave open wide. By keeping at it, she has seen the attitude of shop managers change over the years from ‘who is this person coming to make my life difficult?’ to be more positive and understanding.

And who wouldn’t change their attitude once they see the bigger picture about the risks to Earth’s environment.

They say that if you want to sell something to a customer you have to bring it to their attention eight times before it penetrates the layers of consciousness.

So this is me acknowledging that Tamara has kept on and on, and not been dissuaded. 

We know there is legislation on closed doors in other countries. How hard can it be for Government to legislate on this? So I made a start with a petition. 

In December 2021 the Speaker of the House of Commons called in the police to investigate drug use in the House of Commons – cannabis and cocaine.

One could imagine different scenes:

It could be politicians taking drugs to get through the day, taking them openly because they know they are among friends

It could be politicians surreptitiously smoking near open windows, even in the depths of winter, blowing away the telltale smells. Or snorting in the toilets.

It could be politicians gathered in groups to delve deeply into how to help the populace, taking drugs in a shamanistic way to increase their ability to be responsive to novel ideas

It could be politicians in drunken, drug-fueled orgies like the last days of the Third Reich, when everyone knew they were going to hell.

And what came of it? Nothing, as far I can tell.

Then in May this year, the ex-Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten told Andrew Marr on TV that drugs so common that MPs have been known to snort cocaine from their desks.

But now in December 2022, swab tests showed cocaine at a residence of former Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Ah well, it’s only drugs. I mean, what is the penalty in British law for possessing those?

Possession of cocaine is a criminal offence which can lead to imprisonment for up to seven years, or an unlimited fine.

Fission is nuclear reactors and atom bombs. Take a heavy element that has a radioactive variant and smush a lot of it together, As each atom gives off radioactive particles, they either zip off into space or they hit another radioactive atom and trigger it to send out a radioactive particle. Smush enough of it together and it will be certain that most particles will hit other atoms. That will cause a chain reaction. Control that by carefully maintaining the distance between the bits, and you have a nuclear reactor. Smush them all together, and you have a bomb.

There are two problems to overcome when making a bomb. One – the reaction blows apart the material, which stops the reaction. Two – how to get the bits smushed together at the right time, over the target and not before?

The solution is to put the radioactive material in a heavy casing to prevent it blowing apart before the reaction can really take hold. We are talking millionths of a second here. And to get the material together in the right place over the target, put most of the material in a case at one end of a tube with a cavity in it.

Put the remaining material at the other end of the tube. When you get to the target, set off a conventional explosion that drives the remaining material at high speed into the cavity in the rest of the material.

That’s fission. It is predictable, and all it needs are the right materials – like Uranium and Plutonium – elements at the dense end of the Periodic Table, with atoms packed closely together just itching to give off their particles.

Fusion

Fusion uses elements at the light end of the Periodic Table, materials that are very abundant but more difficult to trigger. Hydrogen is the lightest element, and it has two radioactive variants. You get them by sifting seawater.

Smush all the radioactive hydrogen together and nothing will happen. You have to encourage it with energy, exciting the material with temperatures more than three million degrees Celsius. That’s the level of energy needed to get the radioactive hydrogen to fuse to start a chain reaction, make a helium nuclei and give off energy. The trick is to get the reaction to give off more energy that is pumped into it. and that is what has been in the news, with scientists at the Livermore Laboratory getting a tiny bit of radioactive hydrogen to give off more energy that was pumped into it.

If it works at scale it is worth it because one kilo of radioactive hydrogen is equal to ten million kilos of fossil fuel.

The Downside

A cheap source of energy might encourage mankind to can carry on as before – look Ma, no pollutants. But we are using up the materials – land use – raw materials for making things – etc – that make that future possible, and we are running out of road. And cheap, clean, energy sources don’t solve that problem.