Domain: uop.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to uop.edu.
Comments · 14
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Re:Two words
That sure is a lot of effort to rationalize an old book. Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint
... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?
Anyways there are contradictions within the bible itself. How is that rationalized. How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?
Also, about the flat earth thing: http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Flat_Earth.htm -
zirconia's been used this way before
1. Diamond? WTF is diamond doing in the title? Cubic zirconia's nothing like diamond unless you believe the ads of people trying to sell you rings with CZ's in them. (And if you've played with gemstones, you might be able to spot those with your bare eyes: they have a 10% different index of refraction of light.
2. Zirconia has been used for a fuel cell 'catalyst' for a while. Here's a reference to a two-year-old paper about a related fuel cell system.
3. I say 'catalyst' in the above, because zirconia's only sort of a catalyst. While the zirconia remains more or less zirconia, it's not just offering a surface for reaction chemistry: it's actually exchanging oxygen with the reactants during the reaction.
4. Still, it's interesting and weird that the electrical potential is being transferred by protons, rather than electrons (as per TFA.) I'm not familiar with that, just with holes and electrons, so that bears more reading. -
Re:Micro vs Macro
Yes, you are correct that a creator who is infinitely more intelligent than a human (literally) would probably design a flexible system as a set of physical rules that we may never be able to fully comprehend rather than a rigid predefined system. The issue is that most people that consider themselves creationists do not argue this point, they instead argue that the bible was written by God through a divinely inspired intermediary and that evolution is not described in the bible and that the earth is a little more than 5000 years old and therefore science has somehow made a mistake with regard to the age of the earth and with evolution. After having various discussions on this topic with creationist friends of mine (I'm not btw) I realized that most of their arguments stem from the idea that if one part of the bible is not 100% accurate then the rest of it is false/contaminated/wrong as well and their faith (or ego) requires that everything is solid and simple with no room for interpretation. So the ability to be flexible may not be with the religious versions of creation and evolution but rather with those that interpret those texts. If you want to look into this further, you can research Hebrew cosmology (http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/ThreeTieredUniv
e rse.htm) to see why the creation story in the bible is written this way and why the issue will probably never be fully resolved. -
Re:Gets you Al Gore!
The Bible teaches that we are all one blood (Acts 17:26).
Blacks were considered subhuman by many, so Genesis 1:26 would up being a more popular verse.
It also teaches that the earth is a sphere.
Not really, unless you confuse 'circle' for 'sphere' and ignore a bunch of other passages.
Look instead for the roots of racism and the ideas of racial superiority to Darwin. The full title of his most famous work is "The origin of species by means of natural selection; or, The preservation of favored races in the struggle for life".
Race, in the 1850s, was used to describe animal populations as well as subsets of humanity.
Aborigines in Australia were slaughtered because they were considered to be evolutionarily inferior.
They were slaughtered on a pretext. The imperial Europeans had no issues with killing humans, white, black, or any other skin colour. It isn't as if the world was racism-free before evolution was described or something. -
Re:Tire tracks, not water
Not quite. Martian weather is quite likly to blow away the tracks before anything found them.
You can get your Martian weather forecast here: http://astro.sci.uop.edu/~harlow/weather/mars.html -
Re:And the winner for 2006 is...
the ancient greeks did for sure. And the dimentions they gave was pretty close.
In fact during the middle ages most people I understand thought it round as well.
The middle-eastern view seems to be that it was flat.
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/ThreeTieredUniver se.htm /it's elephants all the way down -
You can't? Look again, then.
No, the Bible never says the Earth is a square, nor have I heard anyone claim that it does. The Bible does say the Earth is a "circle" (and the word used is "circle", not "sphere" or "ball" - in every language, including the original Hebrew). It also says that the whole Earth could be seen from the top of a tall tree or a tall mountain, which is obviously impossible for a sphere. At most, you'd be able to see one hemisphere. Clearly, whoever wrote those passages of the Bible though the Earth was a flat disc (or flat enough to be described as a "circle", instead of a sphere or even a hemisphere). This was a common belief in some less civilised parts of the world, at the time, and unfortunately the Bible served to reinforce that (false) belief.
Here:
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Flat_Earth.htm
RMN
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circle != ball;I kinda actually like the reference joking about libraries and a holy book... that's cute. But you missed a little something. Yes, scripture talks about the corners of the world, but it talks about them as the directions, north, south, east, west, not as in that the earth is a square. And funny that you would say that it IMPLIES otherwise, when it actually directly talks about the world being a circle... check out Isaiah 40:22, and in case you don't have it handy, here's a link. I also like that you talk about religion being there to subvert science. I guess I've never gotten to see scientists spend their lives trying to subvert religion either... nope, that never happens. No, I'm not trying to get a flame war started, just responding somewhat in jest to your pot shot in jest as well...
The other passage is in Daniel:
The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth; and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. (Daniel 4:10-11)
The "whole" earth? No matter how tall the tree was, even if it was only a dream, it would not have been visible from the other side of the earth.
Hopeful believers in the scientific wisdom found in the Bible ignore the verse above and point to a verse in Isaiah which they think shows that the Bible writers knew the earth was a sphere. They believe that the word "circle" could actually mean "sphere," since both are round, but they ignore Isaiah's use of a different word in another verse where he speaks of a "ball." Here are the two verses:
To whom then will ye liken God?
....It is he that sitteth upon the circle (chuwg) of the earth (Isaiah 40:18-23)
He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a BALL (duwr) into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house. (Isaiah 22:18)
The Hebrew word used in scripture for "circle" in the verse above is chuwg. If the Bible writer had meant for us to believe that "circle of the earth" meant that the earth was round, the writer would have used the Hebrew word for "ball," which is duwr. The fact that Isaiah didn't use duwr shows that he wasn't trying to tell us the earth was like a ball.
Furthermore, there exists a simple interpretation of "circle of the earth" which does not imply a spherical earth. On a hill overlooking a wide expanse free of tall trees and other hills the horizon appears as a perfect circle, 360 degrees of blue sky. If Isaiah meant to tell us the earth was a globe, he would have used another word. A circle is not a ball, nor is a ball a circle. Everyone knew what a "circle" was in those times; it meant the same then as it means today. -
Re:Laptop?!?
this is a defibrillator. You know, the thing where they say "clear" and touch two terminals to your chest. Implanted defibrillators do exist, but a lot of them are not implanted. So, as I was saying originally, "implanted defibrillator" is not redundant. wikipedia link
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Re:Solar panels?
I seem to recall seeing pictures of places that have acres of such mirrors that track the sun and focus rays/light/heat on collectors. Here are a couple links, here (middle of page) and here..
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Personal ExperienceI got my B.S. in CS in 1997, from a small school with 5 CS faculty at the time (only 3 of which were full profs). It was not a bad program, but not stellar; I managed to pick up a good internship which turned into a good job after graduation.
It was definitely harder for me to get in the door for that first job, though. I got lucky in many respects, whereas other folks from higher profile programs had an easier in. For the most part, though, I agree with the folks here saying your first job matters more than your degree. After my first job, experience and social networking were definitely more important than the degree itself.
On the other hand, I didn't want to finish with a B.S., I wanted to go back to grad school and eventually get into teaching at the college level. So after having been a part of the workforce for a few years, I applied to Ph.D. programs at several well known schools.
Despite my having very good grades and excellent references, most of them turned me down flat. I'm reasonable sure the primary reason was my undergraduate degree -- when you're competing with 9 other people for one slot in the program, it's easy to get tossed out for not having a degree from a well known university. My work supervisor at the time got his Ph.D. in CS from CMU, one of the programs to which I was applying. He wrote one of my recommendations. I got in. I think if he hadn't, they probably would have turned me away because of my undergraduate degree as well.
So I do think what program you're in does matter. It's also been my recent experience that the undergrads at the high profile program really do learn a lot more than I did in my undergraduate program. That doesn't mean it's true in all cases, but it certainly is true in my limited experience.
When I first applied to undergrad programs, I was accepted at several well-known programs, but I decided I wanted to go to smaller, more personal school instead. I liked the program I was in, but if I had a chance to do it over again, I would choose a different school.
Shorter summary: Granter of degree is not destiny, but is an important component of same.
Hope that helps!
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Re:Compiler WarningsSure, I click submit and THEN I find the answer from Google.
Check this link for a workaround that I know we use. For whatever reason, declaring a static with an exceedingly long name made it happy.
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Re:China censors people....
The value of pi is "like" 3 according to the bible! Apparently God only likes dealing in round numbers too.
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interference with light
In the article he gives an analogy of using the light through a pinpoint of a camera to show why there is no interference. That made me think of the Young's double slit experiment (which shows light interference) and makes me wonder how this is to be explained if there is no interference. Doing a quick search on google, I found a list of light interference experiments and I don't see how any of these could be explained off, and so all of this should work just like radio interference.