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. That bell curve you like to force into this in order to "win" is actually a bathtub curve with a large portion of the people at or near enough identical intelligence in the middle and a much smaller portion of people above and below that middle.

I put it in a bell curve, because that's what IQ is:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=iq+distribution

https://www.google.com/search?q=iq+test+curve&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=Nzw&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=BNbIUYfRDInkiAKri4DQCA&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1354&bih=844

The IQ tests are DESIGNED to produce a bell curve.

From wikipedia: "When current IQ tests are developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less..."

Unless you can give me a test that says two people with a 100 IQ don't have the exact same intelligence than [...]

Really? 6+ billion people on earth and everyone with 100 IQ score is exactly the same intelligence. Let me guess you think everyone who is 6 foot 2 inches on their drivers license is exactly the same height too, right?

IQ tests are designed to produce a bell curve, that's how the various test scores are normalized to an IQ number.

We could take everyone who scored exactly 100 on an IQ test, and normalize their scores onto a bell curve of their own if we wanted to. You do understand what I'm saying here right?

power consumption
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=united+states+power+use+%2F+population+of+united+states
1.39 kilowatt hr / year per person in the USA
If everyone globally uses the same (similar) amount, which is reasonable, it will require about 5x more power that currently used globally. That assumes a lot of things, of course.
Projections are fun!

Note that's not 1.39 KW-Hr/Year, but is 1.39KW per person (or 1.39 KW-year per person per year), which is about 12,200 KW-Hr per person per year. This must include all sources of electrical energy usage in the USA (industrial, agricultural, etc) since my own annual residential use is closer to 1200KW-hr per person.

I think that it has been revised a few times in the last year and projections are higher than what was hoped - and no decline in the next century (although a slowing is expected).
There is a nice chart here: http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm

It is projected to reach 8.1 billion in 2025, and to further increase to 9.6 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100

power consumption
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=united+states+power+use+%2F+population+of+united+states
1.39 kilowatt hr / year per person in the USA
If everyone globally uses the same (similar) amount, which is reasonable, it will require about 5x more power that currently used globally. That assumes a lot of things, of course.
Projections are fun!

You need to work on your math: 15*4 = 60, 15*5 = 85.

You need to work on your math

15*5 = ?

Just sayin'

Your analysis contains some very important oversights:

Your numbers are taken from the US Census Bureau: 2001 & 2011.

First, let's look at the difference between 2003 & 2004, so that we can see the addition of the Department of Homeland Security. See how the total number of full time employees stays roughly the same, but the 2004 numbers have that extra section for the DHS with ~140k full time employees? Those people weren't all hired that year -- the DHS employees are already in the grand total on the top line. You were double counting them in your 2011 numbers. So let's revise your numbers to account for that:
2001: 2.7M employees with a payroll of $11.4B
2011: 2.85M employees with a payroll of $16.1B

That's a 6% increase in headcount, and a 41% increase in payroll. Still pretty big, right? Well, we ought to adjust for inflation. Looks like the $16.1B would have been worth $12.7B in 2001.

So really, we're looking at a 6% increase in headcount, and an 11% increase in inflation-adjusted payroll. It's not nothing, but it's not what you're making it out to be.

Let's go into even more detail!

By pulling up the 2008 numbers, we can see which parts are attributable to Bush, and which are attributable to Obama. Since Bush has more years of growth, we'll annualize the results.

(I did this in Excel, and you're free to download the tables from the Census website and repeat my calculations. I'm tired of making hyperlinks.)

Under Bush, the Federal Government grew at an average of 4.5% per year, with the largest contributors being National Defense, Healthcare and Law Enforcement. Under Obama, the Federal Government grew at an average of 1.4% per year, with the largest contributors being Healthcare and the Postal Service (which didn't grow much percentage-wise, but its sheer size meant that even a few percentage points put it over the top). Remember, we're talking about payroll here, so Social Security & Medicare aren't nearly as big.

So under Obama, the government payroll has actually been shrinking in inflation adjusted dollars. And remember, this is pre-sequester. Of course, that doesn't mean all of the cuts were Obama's idea, or all of the heavy spending was Bush's. But it does show that over the past several years, the government has been trimming the fat. Your "throw the bums out" approach is unwarranted.

If you take all the primes from 2 to 23, and multiply them all then and one, you get 223092871 a non-prime, with 317 and 703763 as its prime factors.

I don't, however, see how it is obvious that multiplying all the primes in a list, then adding one, should mean that the result cannot be factorised by the original component primes.

I think Dyson is a bit too pessimistic about AI. AI hasn't fulfilled the promises of human-level conversational intellect, but those promises were unrealistic. I think the problem is that people want computers to emulate human minds and human souls, when we don't even know how humans work. The solution is that computers are their own type of device, with a so-far unconscious intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence. There's even a Wikipedia article about the challenge in the perception of AI.

For example:

• Calculating trigonometric values. Used to require teams of careful researchers. Now it's done by cheap pocket calculators.
• Translating source code to machine code and optimizing it. Used to be done by hand, now the best compilers are more clever than all but the most insane of programmers.
• Finding complicated derivatives and integrals. Used to require big teams to calculate, now it's a loss leader for a SaaS product.
• Learning complicated tasks. Used to be a unique human trait, now computers use it to play video games. They just get no enjoyment out of the process.

Computers can't do what humans do, but what they do well, they do far faster, more cheaply, and more accurately than humans ever could.

My current favorite is 16! Characters...

I initially read that as 16 factorial. That's a long password... http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+factorial

There are different "degrees" of infinity but not as you define them. E.g. there is countable and uncountable infinite. But different sequences converging to infinity at different "rates" are not different degrees of infinity.

BTW, Wolfram Alpha thinks that your example doesn't converge.

How does that translate into DPI???

According to this report, the movie depicts an area of 45 x 25 nanometers. I use the body of the stickman to approximate pixels, which gives me about 30 pixels in height. Which translates to 3 * 10^7 DPI. Which will be in your iPhone 71's über-retina display (assuming dpi grows exponentially). Although it's really debatable if your eye is capable of making use of such a high resolution.

Just take the flux limit of the telescope you are using. Multiply by 4*pi*distance^2 (the area of emitting sphere), and the duration of observation, and you have the power you need to put in at the emitter (assuming an uncollimated emitter, without any atmospheric loss -- which is acceptable in radio).

Lets assume 15 mJy for the Allen Telescope Array used by SETI, and 1 hour of observation. That gives you 70 MW to emit. The Arecibo Message sent in 1974 was 1 MW, others are at the 150 kW level.

According to Wolfram|Alpha, UK butts are 1.029 times larger than US butts.

Thanks, I'll be moving to the UK now. (you other brothers can't deny)

According to Wolfram|Alpha, UK butts are 1.029 times larger than US butts.

FWIW, as requested: 120 digits (was 200 at one time, in competition with a dormmate in college. Hi Rob!)

That experience lead me to question how many digits are useful? Of course, that depends on how you define useful. Computer burn-in testing, theory of algorithms and optimizations thereof notwithstanding, I was thinking more along the lines of physical applications.

Question:What is the largest circular body that I could conceivable try to calculate the circumference of, and what is the finest measurable precision with which I could imagine measuring that with?

Circular body: observable universe : approximately 8.8x10^26m in diameter.

Minimal length: Planck Length : approximately 1.616x10^-35m.

Answer: Let's ask Wolfram Alpha to compute and confirm that for us using: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=convert+diameter+of+the+observable+universe+to+planck+lengths which produces a result of: 5.4x10^61.

Conclusion: *IF* we could measure the diameter of the universe to within +/- one Planck length, then, within significant digits of accuracy, we would need no more than 61 digits of Pi to compute its circumference.

If you've followed this far, I now have a question for you: what is the largest actual number of digits of i you have actually seen needed and in what context?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+france+vs+australia

Perhaps having 3x the number of people will make up for that? That means Aus only has 1/3 of the fibre to run, even if they are each, on average, longer.

Population density I imagine. The big cost is labor - the more density you have, the more you get done while paying the workmen in the street pretty much the same amount of money.

Last I remember the plan to do apartment buildings in a lot of places is to simply co-opt the existing telephone copper in the walls and use it for 100mbit ethernet and run a few fiber trunks into the basement.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+france+vs+australia

Perhaps having 3x the number of people will make up for that? That means Aus only has 1/3 of the fibre to run, even if they are each, on average, longer.

Australia seems to think they can convert to an almost entirely fibre network for roughly the same amount of money,....... something doesn't add up here.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=france%20australia%20landmass

WolframAlpha places the total number of people to have ever lived at around 107 billion.

Talk to ya later!

That price wasn't very specific, here's a better run down of prices Holden Commodores on CarSales.com.au. The *'s mean they're not sure if it's "on road" (meaning it's inclusive of all taxes) or not. I don't think it is. There was a similar ambiguity when I was looking up the US prices.

The cost of living here is a fair bit more expensive, property is often quite a lot more expensive unless you live quite rurally. Here's a better write up on that on the "Australian forum". Almost every American I've met has complained about the price of things here though.

Apparently the median household income in the US is $52,762 and in Australia it is $68,640. Though it should be noted this is without considering purchasing power, both are probably measured quite differently, and each is quoted in their local currencies... but it's the best I could find, without going into this more seriously.

Well, given a thousand years or so we could probably dump enough asteroid material on it to bring the mass up.

Not sure where you'd get all that asteroid material from, as if you dumped the entire mass of the asteroid belt on Mars you'd only increase its mass by 0.5%.

The Kuipler belt is much more massive, maybe 10% the mass of Earth, but that's mainly frozen ices rather than rock.

I totally agree. Look at that ship sinking under Ballmer's tenure. The shareholders must be furious over 12 straight years of billion dollar profits. http://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427ee35g2o7iim

Nice cherry-picking there, denier. How about we look at, say, the last 60 years instead? Oops. Looks like you have exposed yourself as a dishonest cherry-picker.

yo fool -- if you want to talk about climatic changes you're best not to just cherry pick the last 20 years -- the bare minimum which the signals are visible. Try adding a century to your suggested plot:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+climate+studies+last+120+years

and throwing the baby completely out with the bathwater because previous predictions were only 90% accurate instead of a strict yet arbitrary threshold of 95%? give me a break.

I'd give you the benefit of the doubt if these same tired schemes didn't come up EVERY FUCKING TIME this story hits /., but at some point it's just applying known tricks to intentionally muddy the waters.

"others know better than you" is not wrong when the others have studied it for years, have published their methodology for all to see, and actually do know better than some random crank posting to a website on the internet.

a/c because you're all fucking nuts

Ok, and how do you talk your way out of this one. Since 1990 there have been various studies on the climate. The scientific consensus in 1990 was that the temperatures on earth would rise by 0.2 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus on climate in 2000 was that it would rise by 0.18 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus in 2005 was that it would rise 0.23 degrees per decade.

The reality ? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+climate+studies+last+20+years

Now we can go through the motions if you like, but looking at that graph, is it so hard to believe that we're below every 95% certainty interval for temperature prediction made at least 5 years ago (5 years, because there was an IPCC assessment report in 2007).

Can you just remind me, because I seem to have trouble remembering my philosophy of science class. What does one do with theories whose predictions (which means measurements made AFTER publication) provide completely wrong ? And, given that climate theory has failed the only test that matters for science, accurate predictions, can you please explain to me why anyone believes it ? Please note that saying "others know better than you" is wrong, as made obvious by these "95% certain" predictions the "others" you speak of made.

$850 quadrillion is chump change to Disney.

($850 quadrillion) / (world GDP)

Result:
14257 years

Isn't it more like 40 choose 3, or about 9.9k But then, you could also not press a key, which means its more like pressing any one, any two, or any three keys, so more like 10.7k. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Sum%5B40+choose+i%2C+%7Bi%2C1%2C3%7D%5D Still, 40 keys is pretty small. Let's assume your keyboard is capable of printing out every 7-bit ascii character, you have a shift key, and every key but the space bar needs the shift to print out an alternative character. Printable ASCII ranges from 32 (space) to 126 (Tilde ~), inclusive, so we have 126-32+1 => 95 keys - 1 space bar=>94/2=47 distinct keys + space bar + shift key = 49 distinct keys. Note how you don't have an enter key, arrow keys, function keys, escape, shift, alt, or windows keys in this situation. So, really, you'd have more like 17.3k combos in this situation. Realistically, you probably have somewhere between 101 and 110 keys, with 2, 3, 6, or n KRO. So, for a cheapo board, you've got at least 5.1k combos, but for a 110 key board with full nkro, it's more like 2.5*10^30 combinations

However revenue is not the interesting part, income is. And net income for Microsoft has been falling lately to 2010 levels. See this chart. Not that this is proofs impeding doom on Microsofts part, just that business hasn't been nice to them lately. A fate they share with many other companies in these difficult times. What is interesting is that neither Google or Apple share this kind of dip.

However revenue is not the interesting part, income is. And net income for Microsoft has been falling lately to 2010 levels. See this chart. Not that this is proofs impeding doom on Microsofts part, just that business hasn't been nice to them lately. A fate they share with many other companies in these difficult times. What is interesting is that neither Google or Apple share this kind of dip.

The Batman logo itself is almost certainly a trademark and copyright violation

So is wolfram alpha infringing on trademark or copyright with this? And if not, then why should plotting that function onto some hubcaps suddenly infringe?

You can't own math.

As a readily recognized facsimile of logo can be recreated simply by a mathematical equation, I'm not sure how they can claim any sort of infringement unless they are claiming to own that sequence of mathematical operations (which is bollocks).

Alchemy can be real!

Remove a single proton from this isotope of mercury and look at what you have: 198 Hg.

1) buy bulk mercury or cinnabar ($200-ish/lb)
2) isotope separation
3) expose to particle accelerator
4) ???
5) PROFIT (sell for $2400/lb - 90% is waste by being the wrong isotope)

My guess is that you won't be able to exactly remove a proton without ejecting a neutron or completely purify the input isotope, so there will be plenty of radiation in the resulting product. I'd be concerned about the half-year half life of 195 Au and its extreme radioactivity (3500+ curies/gram - 190,000+ times higher than plutonium). It does decay to safe and stable platinum after a couple decades, so don't throw that away!

The cool part is that mercury is magnetic and gold isn't (usually... this could get complicated), so it would be possible to suspend a small sample in a magnetic field and have the finished products fall out as they were produced. The melting point of gold and mercury are vastly different, so it may be possible to vaporize the mercury instead and have the gold fall down.

Whatever is tried, it will require a prodigious amount of lead shielding and an isolated atmosphere.

Ever wonder why mercury is being removed from everything?
It may be more than just its toxicity.

More like 4.39x. But your point still stands.

Wikipedia (citing various national bureaus of statistics) states that you're four times more likely to be murdered in the USA than the UK or Australia and about 2.5 times more likely than in Canada. In addition the violent crime rate in the UK is listed as being much lower than the numbers you cite. Regarding the comparison with Australian numbers (and perhaps those of the UK) the US only records aggrevated assaults so it's apples to oranges.

For some analysis and conclusions in much more depth take a look here and here.

I really do not like how different these figures are though. They speak of spin somewhere. I tried for a third hopefully impartial source using Wolfram Alpha, but perhaps I don't know the magic keywords to pull up the crime statistics let alone graph them.

Even more fun - MPG can be converted to mm^2! Wolfram Aplha thinks so anyway.

More like 95%

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+Australia+as+a+ratio+of+the+area+of+continental+USA

But yes, I get your point :D

I'm ok with very small populations such as Luxembourg and Norway may be an invalid comparison. However comparing Europe as a whole to the US will probably have to wait 50 to 100 years more. For instance Denmark and Romania are about as similar as the state of New York vs Bolivia both culturally, language and economically. Nobody lives in "Europe", but in France or similar. The EU might be striving to become a US equivalent, but is very far today. Many countries are still also outside the union, even more outside the euro zone.

But with the danger of a flag waving contest, by which metric are Norway and Luxembourg merely close? Not in terms of economy. Even compared to New York state only.

No reason to be so defensive though. You guys still rock in terms of total economy.

Your last off-topic comment makes you seem to hold a biased grudge against Europe. What's up?

The most impressive thing is that we can actually measure this minute effect

According to Wikipedia, it's 8.74×10^10 m/s^2. If you integrate that over fourty years, that's 17000 km, or 55 ms light-speed delay, which should not be too difficult to detect.

--jch

Actually, I think he intended it as an exponential growth function, rather than a linear growth function. Badly worded, though. where day 1 = 1, day 2 = 2, day 3 = 4, day 4 = 8, and so forth.

in other words, f(x) = 2^(x-1), solve for the area under the graph from x=1->30. I'm lazy, however, and will just use wolfram alpha to solve it.

> The only thing universal healthcare brought you was waiting lines and mediocre care

Average life expectancy:
USA: 78.1 years
UK: 79 years
Germany: 79.3 years
France: 81 years

I think I'll keep my German mediocre universal healthcare.

(Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427ev8tivmaqoj )

Hm, perhaps. On the other hand, the DJIA is down only 3.4%, the NASDAQ down 6.2%, S&P down 3.2%, Nikkei dipped 6% over that time span and rebounded.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dow+jones+over+last+7+weeks&dataset=&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit

Anyways, the numbers after the holiday season are going to be the most telling. That will be interesting for sure.

Let's bring some numbers into this.

According to this page, I can get a cargo container from Shanghai to San Francisco in 18-30 days. That's a distance of roughly 10,000km,

The Hindenburg could reach air speeds of 135km/h. While modern airships could doubtless reach higher speeds, we're also running off solar power here. So let's just run with that 135km/h figure. That gives us about three days to cross the same distance.

For further comparison, a Boeing 747 can make the trip in roughly 11 hours.

So we're beating the container ship by a factor of 6-10, but the jet is beating us by a factor of 6. So we just have to have a price halfway between the two. Unfortunately, that's hard to figure out, because the container ship charges by volume, while the aircraft rates I can find charge by weight. Ultimately, though, it's a moot point, as any figure I can come up with for the costs of running a solar-powered airship will cite work by a certain Dr. M. Y. Ass.

But hey, it might be a good niche to fit into. Faster and safer* than a container ship, but slower than a jet. Someone might be able to find a good use for that.

* Assuming, of course, no Sky Pirates are encountered. Then all bets are off.

To describe the temperature of a photon is meaningless

To describe the temperature of a massive particle is meaningless.

Only by having a collection of particles (whether massive or not) that follow a particular statistical distribution can temperature be meaningfully talked about. Those distributions are different for different types of collections of particles. The one that describes ideal gasses is not the only one.

and gives the false impression that temperature can vary for a given fixed frequency of light

I suppose if you assume that X-ray is a single fixed frequency and that they were talking about single photons, but that would be as silly as thinking someone was talking about the temperature of a single particle that had a single specific energy, when obviously they must be talking about all energies of all particles in the collection.

You seem to be treating this like X-Rays are a single, fixed frequency and/or that these observed X-Rays are like a like a laser with a single output frequency.

The X-Ray range is from about 0.001 nm to 10nm. At 100mil K the spectrum is very nearly entirely in that range -- in fact nearly entirely between 10 pm and 200 pm. If you changed the temperature somewhat, the spectrum would change, but would still be in the X-Rays. So yes, temperature can vary and still be in a range of frequencies of light. 100mil K X-Rays and 90mil K X-Rays are different, in that there is a different energy spectrum.

When describing EM Radiation it makes much more sense to consider the energy of the photons in eV or to describe the entire energy amount of a discharge in joules.

.

But the photons cover a range of energies, so it makes no sense to talk about their energy in eV because there isn't just one value, and while you could talk about total emission (in Watts would probably be more interesting), that wouldn't tell you anything about the wavelength distribution.

it really added no information

The description as given is the most correct, and provides the most meaningful information.

Plus it added the chance for you to learn all these things about the concept of temperature!

X-Rays have no temperature, they are EM radiation, not matter.

I weep for whoever told you a collection of photons can't have a temperature in the same way a collection of particles can. Who was it? Was it... no one?

Black body radiation has a characteristic temperature just like the black body that produced it, however in the case of the photon gas it's the Plank's Law distribution of energy in photons rather than the Maxwellâ"Boltzmann distribution which describes the matter.

If there's any sloppiness in the title at all it's specifying just the X-rays when you'd technically have to include all photon energies to get the correct temperature, just like you would include all the particles in a gas or solid. However I think it's pretty much in the noise as far as inaccuracy goes. Unlike your statement. Sorry.

P.S. Such radiation has a temperature and *also entropy*, which is inversely proportional to temperature. So for example if you assume the earth is more or less in equilibrium with the sun, that means the total energy received is equal to the total energy output, but the temperature of the received radiation is much higher, meaning less energy, meaning the earth is emitting a net-positive amount of entropy. In case you've ever wondered how exactly the whole "the earth is not a closed system; it's powered by the sun" thing worked in terms of entropy.

And it calculates around 330 seconds (5.5 minutes)

As for where you got 4GB...

Forgot source:
http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+France+vs+us&x=0&y=0

And yes, the suggested law is beyond stupid as it is in Germany.

OJ has about 15 calories per ounce.
Coca Cola has about 12 calories per ounce.
In each case it is pretty much all from sugar but there's nothing in the law prohibiting large servings of orange juice.

Morons.

Yup, somehow the amount of calories in fruit sugar in orange juice is considered healthier than the amount of calories in the HFCS in Coca Cola. I guess the sad ones are the ones that cannot look up proper facts.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+liter+orange+juice+vs+1+liter+coca+cola+
Nutritional value is more than just calories.

Posting AC because I moderated.

Done

By definition, 4.7% (in 2011). A GDP graph indicates that's out of $15 trillion.

I think that's expenditure, not contribution.

By definition, 4.7% (in 2011). A GDP graph indicates that's out of $15 trillion.

From what I've read, "mach 1" is never higher than ~800mph regardless of altitude so he will in fact be falling faster than the speed of sound.

References:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/sound.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0112.shtml
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/elevation-speed-sound-air-d_1534.html
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mach+1&a=*MC.mach+1-_*Formula.dflt-&f2=120000+ft&f=MachAlt.H_120000+ft