Since the beginning of the Internet, English has become the fastest growing human language on Earth, ever.
There are now many times more speakers of English as a second language-- ESL speakers-- as there are those native born to speaking English. Even more to the point, there are more business and technical exchanges between ESL speakers than there are similar exchanges where all parties are native English speakers. Like it or not, English became today's "Lingua Franca" about a decade ago. Please try to keep up:-)
English is better suited to this role than any other native language. It is itself a mongrel language where most core concepts have multiple synonyms drawn from different ancient roots. And the pathway to adding new concepts from foreign languages remains wide open. "Namaste", the use of "fail" in constructions such as "he fails it", "samizdat" distributions, and hundreds more words absorbed from foreign root languages have changed English so much that a Professor of English of a hundred years ago would have difficulty understanding its daily use on blogs and forums, and would have vast difficulty in making his comments intelligible to others without first studying the new English.
English rules, but not because it is inherently better for global communications than any other language. English rules because it is so fantastically flexible that you can totally mangle all its rules of syntax and bring in any number of foreign words and still deliver a semantically valid message. English rules because its "rules" carry no more weight than mere suggestions. So you can mangle it in all kinds of ways, and still deliver something meaningful.
Slashdot is always at its worst this time of year. It's a seasonal thing, related to the start of the academic year and the great number of wannabee clever-than-thous who are suddenly thrust into new environments and forced into searching for new sources of ego food. It will get better around the Fall Quarter midterm exams.
Until then, us graybeards must suffer the little children and their antics. Some of them will mature into tomorrow's hope; others will drop out or flunk out.
I've been trying without success to make sense of the post I'm replying to. My best guess is that the poster is unaware that he does not know as much about the tools available in Linux as he thinks he does. And that his reading comprehension was, for some reason, not very good when he was looking at earlier posts.
Blender runs on Linux and contains a very good NLE (and a fantastic suite of CG tools as well). Audio clips brought into Blender's NLE can be displayed as waveforms, which makes synching the spike of the clap to the exact frame when hands come together very easy. Blender can handle any reasonable number of simultaneous audio clips (think of separate voice-over, action, and background music), as well as any reasonable complexity of overlaid video clips.
Audacity also runs on Linux and is an excellent tool for removing background noises from an audio clip. I have also used it to shift the pitch of speakers, and somewhat to extend and/or compress parts of an audio clip to better fit a video sequence.
Combined with a $300 digital videocam and a $100 digital audio recorder, you've got everything you need to make good quality 720p videos. That is not good enough to get into the wedding market, but it is sufficient for real estate sales, vacation travelogs, news and views interviews, "how to" stuff for YouTube, etc.
One last point: any live-action audio, such as recording an interview, should be cleaned up in Audacity or a similar audio editor. Since the audio will need to be handled separately from the video, there is no particular advantage in going the extra expense of wireless mic to videocam recording. And I suspect it would be easier to handle two different streams from the start than to split a combined audio/video stream into its components (think splitting MPEG4 into its component H.264 and AAC). But of course this depends on the encodings the camera uses.
Rather than spending more on a fancier videocam, I'd prefer to spend it on a second audio recorder (boom mic plus lapel mic) and/or entry level videocam (one set up for head shots and the other at middle distance.)
I probably will not buy a wireless mic since I've got a method that works. Also there are occasions when I want the sound track of interview to continue while I splice in a different video clip, and I think that would be more difficult if I was recording the audio on the camera.
This works well with speech, where the audio frequency shift is minor and much less important than the lip synch. I'm not sure how well it would work with music. As I think someone else has already mentioned, you might have to resample the audio track with Audacity to get a singer's lip synch right without screwing up their pitch.
While I do have a good video camera that will accept a microphone, more than 90% of the time I use a separate device for audio recording. It is very rare that a microphone attached to the camera can be optimally positioned. A separate audio recorder is the answer to many vexing problems.
I don't have a clapper board and if I did, I usually would still not have an assistant around to do the "take 3 (snap)" bit. But asking your subject to hold up his hands in the camera's view and clap smartly works. They also need to slowly count silently to three after the clap before beginning their spiel (the better to isolate the spike--- also makes it easier to clip the leading junk).
I'm somewhere in the lower "pro-am" range with video production-- some work for charities but nothing I would attempt to sell. And no weddings! I do 720p at 24fps using the H.264 video and mono 128 mp3 audio, mp4 wrapper. I use FOSS post-production tools, currently mostly the Blender NLE. I hope to hear some more experienced videophiles chime in here with their thoughts on what works well for them.
First Option: Search for a computer recycling center in your area. Free Geek in Portland OR was one of the first. These typically use volunteers to refurbish donated computers set up with FOSS software and provided to charities, churches, non-profits at no cost. I was one of their Build Instructors a few years ago. The volunteers would either contribute 24 hours of service to receive a free computer, or build up 5 computers from tested parts bins to earn a computer of their own, that would be their sixth build. Typically businesses that were upgrading would contribute bunches of used computers for the tax write-offs. Free Geek would sometimes get 25+ used computers coming in on a truck.
Desktop computers that would do what you want would probably cost less than $50 at a Free Geek refurbishing store, including a wifi card. It might not be too difficult to arrange some kind of free-to-deserving-students program, probably by triangulating through an Elks or Odd Fellows Lodge.
Second Option: Instead of providing computers, provide the students with their own personal thumb drives. Let them know that they can put their own music library on the thing, in addition to the school/homework folder, and they will be enthusiastic participants. They will find ways to plug in to somebody's computer, somewhere, whether at a library or a friend's house, or a neighborhood youth center.
These are not mutually exclusive.
I'd suggest talking with your IT people about whether they could put together a bundle of portable software that would handle homework requirements. I used a customized version of Portable Apps Suite several years ago, to provide clients of a workforce entry job training program with something they could develop their resumes on (and which also provided a number of useful reference files, including lists of community resources). Some of the advantages of this approach are that it encourages students to seek out community resources, and since all students are using the same software it is easier for the instructor to provide support. And again the concept that they could put their own music on the thing created instantaneous and enthusiastic buy-in.
There are a large number of open wifi connections in the USA, and some students would be able to benefit from these.
Also, a student with a $5 thumb drive can do his internet research at the library, or on a school computer or a friend's computer, and sneakernet to and from his home computer. We managed this kind of thing in the 1980s and it is much easier to now, since floppy disks have been replaced by thumb drives.
Take the computer outside, open the case, and use canned air to blow out the dust. When the can starts to get cold, do something else for a few minutes until it warms to ambient temperature (otherwise it will fizzle out before its time.)
NASA is much more interested in protecting its investment in near-sea-level infrastructure in Florida than in what might happen to Seward's Folly. No one else is doing these studies, not with the reliability NASA needs.
Florida was chosen as its primary launch site because there is a lot of empty ocean downrange. So how much will be the cost of the Cape Canaveral sea wall, and will it be more cost effective to put that money in a space plane that can launch safely from Area 51 and forget about the vertical launch engines? NASA has to do some of its planning decades out, and whether the sea will rise 20 inches or 20 feet by 2060 has a significant impact on its plans.
Any benefit to Alaskans and their hopes for a railroad bridge over the Bering Strait is secondary.
math is the manipulation of symbols in a formal language.
coding is the manipulation of symbols in a formal language.
Well said!
Critical reading skills, as developed through a conscious effort to become better at googling, are the manipulation of symbols in a natural language. This is a lot tougher than working in a more abstract formal language, but the skills transfer not only to formal languages but to a lot of frequently encountered natural problems. Such as decisions on which political candidates should get your support, or whether the latest "news" about Saint Hillary's email missives actually has any meaning.
Someone who is a self-taught programmer relying on Google for their course material is likely to be a much more interesting person than most basement dwelling geeks. Just saying.
If you want to learn to think critically, then learn how to use regular expressions effectively. No math involved, but rigorous exercises in analytics and logic.
Those who have developed the ability to think critically could easily pick up programming skills through web searches without any formal study of mathematics. The approach would rely on skills in assessing the value of various authorities instead of the skills developed in wading through proofs of theorems and other tediosities. This kind of assessment skill is not easily learned, but it transfers well to other aspects of life, such as evaluating political candidates, potential marriage partners, schools for the kids, etc.
Forget about backpacking with all the equipment you will need. It cannot be done yet. The technology is not that advanced.
Invest in a smaller 4WD or AWD vehicle with high ground clearance (critical!) and a 12 volt system. And a good power inverter-- although more and more now you can find electronics that will run directly off 12 V DC. You want a car that is small enough that you've got a good range without draining the bank account to keep the gas tank full-- plus something small can get you past tight spots where behemoth monster trucks cannot go.
While this approach will limit the places you can go, car camping can still get you as far from the madding crowd as you can get, and stay within reasonable Internet connectivity. You can day hike from base camp for delving deeper into the wilderness. You can carry more with you, such as coolers, stoves with more burners, decent dutch ovens. And you can be more mobile-- such as planning much longer trips with occasional stops at towns with grocery stores, showers, and the like.
Believe me, I have thought this through. However I ended up retiring before I figured out all the business angles. I wish you the best of luck.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Of course considering placing Jupiter in some kind of stellar classification is inconsistent and absurd. That was part of the point. But it is no more inconsistent and absurd than the current IAU definition of "planet". Which was the other side of the point.
The IAU has a number of hobgoblins it should really muzzle before their antics further erode the IAU's standing among international bodies of science.
Additionally, it should be pointed out that if the IAU was going to achieve any kind of consistency in their naming conventions, then Jupiter should not be classified as a planet, as it is either a "failed star", a "brown dwarf" or a "proto star". Which one depends mostly on your guess of what lies in Jupiter's future.
The IAU should really stick to astronomy and ask the experts to provide them with an appropriate classification scheme. Taxonomies are the proper subject of language arts, not astronomy. For proof, witness the mess the IAU has made for itself with its poorly articulated and badly conceived concept of "planet".
(The only valid definition of "planet" these days is the thousand+ year old definition still used in astrology: the visible wanderers, excluding the two luminaries (Sun and Moon). So Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn. Within its context, this definition is succinct and sufficient. Whereas those qualities are sadly lacking in contemporary astronomy's definition, no matter what context is in effect.)
Please google that word. Then, if you can, explain what you mean when you say "Solar also generates heat since it is increasing the albedo of..."
Perhaps that would provide me with an incredibly important insight that could herald a breakthrough in physics. But alas I fear that any attempt to explain that choice of words will fail, and I will remain stuck with the same old physics we've had since Einstein shook things up a bit over a century ago.
Climatology and meteorology are based on historical statistics. What both are saying right now is that we have moved out of the predictive envelope that can be derived from the data we have been collecting for a couple of hundred years. We have no scientific tools to forecast events.
We know the Earth is a homeostatic mechanism that has now been pushed beyond the responsive range of what historically have been the most reactive mechanisms of adjustment. We don't know which backup mechanisms will be engaged next, nor do we know what kind of shivers and shudders will be part of the shift in mechanisms. We are in for a wild ride, and our science has shut its eyes, unable to look ahead.
Slashdotters, some of them, have an ability that goes beyond the limitations of science. It is called "imagination". Those who train themselves to use it in a disciplined way may find ways to avoid catastrophes. Those who refuse to use their imaginations would be better served by FaceBook than Slashdot, since on FB they can find a compatible group of thinkalikes to comfortably reinforce their point of view. Slashdot, at its best, challenges established world views. Which is never comfortable.
I am not sure that I fully understand the post I'm responding to (maybe I need more caffeine).
My intended point is that slashdotters should be looking beyond the simplistic models of complex systems that are all that our current level of science can produce. Slashdot can and should be starting to shape our collective imagination to better orient ourselves wrt the highly probable future challenges that can be inferred from the simple models, even though this is all conjecture since the science cannot be done until the changes have manifested. Accepting the conclusion that we will see significant sea level rise, but dismissing it because everybody we know lives far enough away from any beach is inappropriate for a slashdotter. That's more of a FaceBook level of cognition. That's what FB is for: to provide comfortable reassurance that the things you don't like to think about don't much matter.
But thinking about whether a new nuclear power plant should be designed to withstand a couple of superstorm events every year instead of once during its service life now seems appropriate. Also the use of coal to generate electricity is dependent on the viability of railways, and if these become increasingly threatened by flooding and washouts, then what? Now that the science of sea level rise / global warming is firmly enough established, what are the on-the-ground challenges that we might expect, and how should we be influencing design decisions on infrastructure being built today that we expect to have a service life of 25+ years?
We no longer have historical data from which we can develop projections. The rules by which we design major infrastructure have just changed.
A one foot rise in sea level is going to create a lot more shallow water basins and tidal flat areas. All that increase in surface area is going to increase evaporation rates. That will result in an increase in atmospheric water vapor, which is one of the more potent greenhouse gases, which introduces a new positive feedback to global warming.
But in turn the increased atmospheric water vapor will, under some conditions, create an increase in clouds, which will lower the insolation of the land and ocean below them and tend to counter global warming. Since evaporation and cloud formation will be regional, there will be a stronger thermal differential between regions, which will make severe weather incidents more frequent and more intense.
People are going to be displaced by storm damage more than by the simple rise in sea level. If every year 3 to 5 port cities on the East Coast of the USA were hit by an incident on the level of Hurricane Katrina, what would that permanent stream of refugees look like? How could even the wealthiest nation keep up the infrastructure repairs needed to keep those cities functional?
No one knows how to model this, so there can be no scientific talk about it yet. All we can know is that somewhere along the way as the seas rise to 21 feet above their current level, these kinds of effects are going to occur. I think the flooding that will happen with a one foot rise will be enough to change the Earth's weather engine. I may be off by a few feet... or by a few inches. We'll have to wait and see.
My own anecdotal/intuitive guess is that modern HVAC technology is a major factor in the obesity epidemic.
The human body evolved with a highly sophisticated mechanism for regulating its internal temperature, that had been tightly integrated with technology such as clothing and fire up to about 1970 world wide. Then for most urban and suburban life styles HVAC technology brought about significant change. Before that happened, If it was too hot, you took off clothing, or tied a wet bandanna over your head, and sweated it out. If it was too cold-- the most common thing-- you put on clothing. In either case you burn calories, either in keeping the clothing warm or by increasing the circulation of blood through the scalp, activating perspiration systems, etc. But since 1970 the common way to adjust the internal temperature is to dial the thermostat up or down. This is now true even for farmers in their air conditioned cabs on their tractors. Farm laborers, though, who are out in the weather, do not seem to be part of the obesity epidemic.
My hypothesis is that obesity is strongly determined by the atrophy of the individual's autonomic thermal controls that we once had to use on an hourly basis, that have now been replaced by HVAC systems.
I have just come back from a 7 day / 6 night camping trip that consisted of a few short walks, a lot of sedentary photography, daytime temperatures in the high 80s and night time temperatures in the low 60s. I lost more than 6 pounds on that trip: unhappily stable at 225# before, stable at 219# after (I track my daily weights, just because). And yet I'm more active at home-- if I had not gone camping I would have done 2 or 3 bike rides of 12 to 20 miles each during that time--- and would not have lost any weight. The significant difference is that on that kind of camping trip getting out of the warm sleeping bag into the chill of the morning is a thermal challenge; sweating through several water bottles during the afternoon heat is a different kind of thermal challenge.
Perhaps now that we do not engage in thermal challenges so much as we once did, the mechanisms for controlling those have atrophied and that has led to obesity.
If anyone wants to test this hypothesis, I would be a willing experimental subject. I suggest equipping me with a full set of REI camping gear and sending me to the Hartz Mountain Antelope Preserve in the wilds of eastern Oregon for several months. My dietary needs would be covered by weekly deliveries of a couple of dozen eggs, several pounds of bacon and sausage, seasonal organic veggies from the Canby Farmers Market, assorted breads from Portland's Grand Central Bakery, and a couple of kegs of McMenamin's Terminator Stout. We can work out the other details, like the carrot cakes, cheeses, etc, later. If, with this kind of diet, I came back heavier than I left then that would suggest the hypothesis is flawed. If I weighed the same or less on return, then possibly the hypothesis is true, and someone should set me up to explore it further in a different environment, perhaps in some remote corner of the Oregon coast. But whether the hypothesis is shown to be flawed or is supported by the evidence, I would certainly benefit from the experience.
Wow, you sure know how to take things out of context, don't you?
Last I looked, web work is limited to a subset of the RGB color space, and one that is impossible to define with precision since it depends on what is common among all the different screens that will show your work. If you intend to do web design, you have to throw out everything that Adobe has put into Photoshop over the last 15 years. Because you are working with only a handful of crayons. Gimp cannot do everything that Photoshop can do, when Photoshop is being used with a high grade printer and precisely calibrated monitor. But Photoshop cannot do anything more than the Gimp can do when we are talking about the web.
You young artists need to step back and look at the limitations of the media you are using. The web is medium, and it is quite limiting; playing around in Photoshop might be a lot of fun, but it is not the medium. It is merely the tool. A lesser tool, the Gimp, will work as well, and in its simplicity it will be the more productive choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the beginning of the Internet, English has become the fastest growing human language on Earth, ever.
There are now many times more speakers of English as a second language-- ESL speakers-- as there are those native born to speaking English. Even more to the point, there are more business and technical exchanges between ESL speakers than there are similar exchanges where all parties are native English speakers. Like it or not, English became today's "Lingua Franca" about a decade ago. Please try to keep up :-)
English is better suited to this role than any other native language. It is itself a mongrel language where most core concepts have multiple synonyms drawn from different ancient roots. And the pathway to adding new concepts from foreign languages remains wide open. "Namaste", the use of "fail" in constructions such as "he fails it", "samizdat" distributions, and hundreds more words absorbed from foreign root languages have changed English so much that a Professor of English of a hundred years ago would have difficulty understanding its daily use on blogs and forums, and would have vast difficulty in making his comments intelligible to others without first studying the new English.
English rules, but not because it is inherently better for global communications than any other language. English rules because it is so fantastically flexible that you can totally mangle all its rules of syntax and bring in any number of foreign words and still deliver a semantically valid message. English rules because its "rules" carry no more weight than mere suggestions. So you can mangle it in all kinds of ways, and still deliver something meaningful.
While there are definitely Javashit programmers, Javascript has evolved into a solid programming language with some interesting pieces of elegance.
As to the Javashit programmers, that is a case of the 99% giving the rest of the Javascript programmers a bad name.
Slashdot is always at its worst this time of year. It's a seasonal thing, related to the start of the academic year and the great number of wannabee clever-than-thous who are suddenly thrust into new environments and forced into searching for new sources of ego food. It will get better around the Fall Quarter midterm exams.
Until then, us graybeards must suffer the little children and their antics. Some of them will mature into tomorrow's hope; others will drop out or flunk out.
I've been trying without success to make sense of the post I'm replying to. My best guess is that the poster is unaware that he does not know as much about the tools available in Linux as he thinks he does. And that his reading comprehension was, for some reason, not very good when he was looking at earlier posts.
Blender runs on Linux and contains a very good NLE (and a fantastic suite of CG tools as well). Audio clips brought into Blender's NLE can be displayed as waveforms, which makes synching the spike of the clap to the exact frame when hands come together very easy. Blender can handle any reasonable number of simultaneous audio clips (think of separate voice-over, action, and background music), as well as any reasonable complexity of overlaid video clips.
Audacity also runs on Linux and is an excellent tool for removing background noises from an audio clip. I have also used it to shift the pitch of speakers, and somewhat to extend and/or compress parts of an audio clip to better fit a video sequence.
Combined with a $300 digital videocam and a $100 digital audio recorder, you've got everything you need to make good quality 720p videos. That is not good enough to get into the wedding market, but it is sufficient for real estate sales, vacation travelogs, news and views interviews, "how to" stuff for YouTube, etc.
One last point: any live-action audio, such as recording an interview, should be cleaned up in Audacity or a similar audio editor. Since the audio will need to be handled separately from the video, there is no particular advantage in going the extra expense of wireless mic to videocam recording. And I suspect it would be easier to handle two different streams from the start than to split a combined audio/video stream into its components (think splitting MPEG4 into its component H.264 and AAC). But of course this depends on the encodings the camera uses.
Rather than spending more on a fancier videocam, I'd prefer to spend it on a second audio recorder (boom mic plus lapel mic) and/or entry level videocam (one set up for head shots and the other at middle distance.)
A wireless mic would solve a lot of problems.
I probably will not buy a wireless mic since I've got a method that works. Also there are occasions when I want the sound track of interview to continue while I splice in a different video clip, and I think that would be more difficult if I was recording the audio on the camera.
This works well with speech, where the audio frequency shift is minor and much less important than the lip synch. I'm not sure how well it would work with music. As I think someone else has already mentioned, you might have to resample the audio track with Audacity to get a singer's lip synch right without screwing up their pitch.
While I do have a good video camera that will accept a microphone, more than 90% of the time I use a separate device for audio recording. It is very rare that a microphone attached to the camera can be optimally positioned. A separate audio recorder is the answer to many vexing problems.
I don't have a clapper board and if I did, I usually would still not have an assistant around to do the "take 3 (snap)" bit. But asking your subject to hold up his hands in the camera's view and clap smartly works. They also need to slowly count silently to three after the clap before beginning their spiel (the better to isolate the spike--- also makes it easier to clip the leading junk).
I'm somewhere in the lower "pro-am" range with video production-- some work for charities but nothing I would attempt to sell. And no weddings! I do 720p at 24fps using the H.264 video and mono 128 mp3 audio, mp4 wrapper. I use FOSS post-production tools, currently mostly the Blender NLE. I hope to hear some more experienced videophiles chime in here with their thoughts on what works well for them.
First Option: Search for a computer recycling center in your area. Free Geek in Portland OR was one of the first. These typically use volunteers to refurbish donated computers set up with FOSS software and provided to charities, churches, non-profits at no cost. I was one of their Build Instructors a few years ago. The volunteers would either contribute 24 hours of service to receive a free computer, or build up 5 computers from tested parts bins to earn a computer of their own, that would be their sixth build. Typically businesses that were upgrading would contribute bunches of used computers for the tax write-offs. Free Geek would sometimes get 25+ used computers coming in on a truck.
Desktop computers that would do what you want would probably cost less than $50 at a Free Geek refurbishing store, including a wifi card. It might not be too difficult to arrange some kind of free-to-deserving-students program, probably by triangulating through an Elks or Odd Fellows Lodge.
Second Option: Instead of providing computers, provide the students with their own personal thumb drives. Let them know that they can put their own music library on the thing, in addition to the school/homework folder, and they will be enthusiastic participants. They will find ways to plug in to somebody's computer, somewhere, whether at a library or a friend's house, or a neighborhood youth center.
These are not mutually exclusive.
I'd suggest talking with your IT people about whether they could put together a bundle of portable software that would handle homework requirements. I used a customized version of Portable Apps Suite several years ago, to provide clients of a workforce entry job training program with something they could develop their resumes on (and which also provided a number of useful reference files, including lists of community resources). Some of the advantages of this approach are that it encourages students to seek out community resources, and since all students are using the same software it is easier for the instructor to provide support. And again the concept that they could put their own music on the thing created instantaneous and enthusiastic buy-in.
Somewhat wrong. Perhaps mostly wrong.
There are a large number of open wifi connections in the USA, and some students would be able to benefit from these.
Also, a student with a $5 thumb drive can do his internet research at the library, or on a school computer or a friend's computer, and sneakernet to and from his home computer. We managed this kind of thing in the 1980s and it is much easier to now, since floppy disks have been replaced by thumb drives.
Don't use a vacuum cleaner to clean the dust.
YES!
Take the computer outside, open the case, and use canned air to blow out the dust. When the can starts to get cold, do something else for a few minutes until it warms to ambient temperature (otherwise it will fizzle out before its time.)
What a maroon.
NASA is much more interested in protecting its investment in near-sea-level infrastructure in Florida than in what might happen to Seward's Folly. No one else is doing these studies, not with the reliability NASA needs.
Florida was chosen as its primary launch site because there is a lot of empty ocean downrange. So how much will be the cost of the Cape Canaveral sea wall, and will it be more cost effective to put that money in a space plane that can launch safely from Area 51 and forget about the vertical launch engines? NASA has to do some of its planning decades out, and whether the sea will rise 20 inches or 20 feet by 2060 has a significant impact on its plans.
Any benefit to Alaskans and their hopes for a railroad bridge over the Bering Strait is secondary.
math is the manipulation of symbols in a formal language.
coding is the manipulation of symbols in a formal language.
Well said!
Critical reading skills, as developed through a conscious effort to become better at googling, are the manipulation of symbols in a natural language. This is a lot tougher than working in a more abstract formal language, but the skills transfer not only to formal languages but to a lot of frequently encountered natural problems. Such as decisions on which political candidates should get your support, or whether the latest "news" about Saint Hillary's email missives actually has any meaning.
Someone who is a self-taught programmer relying on Google for their course material is likely to be a much more interesting person than most basement dwelling geeks. Just saying.
If you want to learn to think critically, then learn how to use regular expressions effectively. No math involved, but rigorous exercises in analytics and logic.
Those who have developed the ability to think critically could easily pick up programming skills through web searches without any formal study of mathematics. The approach would rely on skills in assessing the value of various authorities instead of the skills developed in wading through proofs of theorems and other tediosities. This kind of assessment skill is not easily learned, but it transfers well to other aspects of life, such as evaluating political candidates, potential marriage partners, schools for the kids, etc.
Forget about backpacking with all the equipment you will need. It cannot be done yet. The technology is not that advanced.
Invest in a smaller 4WD or AWD vehicle with high ground clearance (critical!) and a 12 volt system. And a good power inverter-- although more and more now you can find electronics that will run directly off 12 V DC. You want a car that is small enough that you've got a good range without draining the bank account to keep the gas tank full-- plus something small can get you past tight spots where behemoth monster trucks cannot go.
While this approach will limit the places you can go, car camping can still get you as far from the madding crowd as you can get, and stay within reasonable Internet connectivity. You can day hike from base camp for delving deeper into the wilderness. You can carry more with you, such as coolers, stoves with more burners, decent dutch ovens. And you can be more mobile-- such as planning much longer trips with occasional stops at towns with grocery stores, showers, and the like.
Believe me, I have thought this through. However I ended up retiring before I figured out all the business angles. I wish you the best of luck.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Of course considering placing Jupiter in some kind of stellar classification is inconsistent and absurd. That was part of the point. But it is no more inconsistent and absurd than the current IAU definition of "planet". Which was the other side of the point.
The IAU has a number of hobgoblins it should really muzzle before their antics further erode the IAU's standing among international bodies of science.
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify this.
Agree fully with parent post.
Additionally, it should be pointed out that if the IAU was going to achieve any kind of consistency in their naming conventions, then Jupiter should not be classified as a planet, as it is either a "failed star", a "brown dwarf" or a "proto star". Which one depends mostly on your guess of what lies in Jupiter's future.
The IAU should really stick to astronomy and ask the experts to provide them with an appropriate classification scheme. Taxonomies are the proper subject of language arts, not astronomy. For proof, witness the mess the IAU has made for itself with its poorly articulated and badly conceived concept of "planet".
(The only valid definition of "planet" these days is the thousand+ year old definition still used in astrology: the visible wanderers, excluding the two luminaries (Sun and Moon). So Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn. Within its context, this definition is succinct and sufficient. Whereas those qualities are sadly lacking in contemporary astronomy's definition, no matter what context is in effect.)
That would be silly. Just fuse 2H to form He, and sell the He for party balloons.
Or dirigibles. That would also work.
Or just vent the He. It will outgas from the planet soon enough.
Albedo
Please google that word. Then, if you can, explain what you mean when you say "Solar also generates heat since it is increasing the albedo of..."
Perhaps that would provide me with an incredibly important insight that could herald a breakthrough in physics. But alas I fear that any attempt to explain that choice of words will fail, and I will remain stuck with the same old physics we've had since Einstein shook things up a bit over a century ago.
To borrow, and mangle, a quote from B.W.:
"Psychology is not rocket science. Hell, it isn't even sociology."
So move everyone inland 20 miles... or 50...
This isn't rocket science...
This isn't any kind of science.
Climatology and meteorology are based on historical statistics. What both are saying right now is that we have moved out of the predictive envelope that can be derived from the data we have been collecting for a couple of hundred years. We have no scientific tools to forecast events.
We know the Earth is a homeostatic mechanism that has now been pushed beyond the responsive range of what historically have been the most reactive mechanisms of adjustment. We don't know which backup mechanisms will be engaged next, nor do we know what kind of shivers and shudders will be part of the shift in mechanisms. We are in for a wild ride, and our science has shut its eyes, unable to look ahead.
Slashdotters, some of them, have an ability that goes beyond the limitations of science. It is called "imagination". Those who train themselves to use it in a disciplined way may find ways to avoid catastrophes. Those who refuse to use their imaginations would be better served by FaceBook than Slashdot, since on FB they can find a compatible group of thinkalikes to comfortably reinforce their point of view. Slashdot, at its best, challenges established world views. Which is never comfortable.
I am not sure that I fully understand the post I'm responding to (maybe I need more caffeine).
My intended point is that slashdotters should be looking beyond the simplistic models of complex systems that are all that our current level of science can produce. Slashdot can and should be starting to shape our collective imagination to better orient ourselves wrt the highly probable future challenges that can be inferred from the simple models, even though this is all conjecture since the science cannot be done until the changes have manifested. Accepting the conclusion that we will see significant sea level rise, but dismissing it because everybody we know lives far enough away from any beach is inappropriate for a slashdotter. That's more of a FaceBook level of cognition. That's what FB is for: to provide comfortable reassurance that the things you don't like to think about don't much matter.
But thinking about whether a new nuclear power plant should be designed to withstand a couple of superstorm events every year instead of once during its service life now seems appropriate. Also the use of coal to generate electricity is dependent on the viability of railways, and if these become increasingly threatened by flooding and washouts, then what? Now that the science of sea level rise / global warming is firmly enough established, what are the on-the-ground challenges that we might expect, and how should we be influencing design decisions on infrastructure being built today that we expect to have a service life of 25+ years?
We no longer have historical data from which we can develop projections. The rules by which we design major infrastructure have just changed.
Oh, it will be noticed.
A one foot rise in sea level is going to create a lot more shallow water basins and tidal flat areas. All that increase in surface area is going to increase evaporation rates. That will result in an increase in atmospheric water vapor, which is one of the more potent greenhouse gases, which introduces a new positive feedback to global warming.
But in turn the increased atmospheric water vapor will, under some conditions, create an increase in clouds, which will lower the insolation of the land and ocean below them and tend to counter global warming. Since evaporation and cloud formation will be regional, there will be a stronger thermal differential between regions, which will make severe weather incidents more frequent and more intense.
People are going to be displaced by storm damage more than by the simple rise in sea level. If every year 3 to 5 port cities on the East Coast of the USA were hit by an incident on the level of Hurricane Katrina, what would that permanent stream of refugees look like? How could even the wealthiest nation keep up the infrastructure repairs needed to keep those cities functional?
No one knows how to model this, so there can be no scientific talk about it yet. All we can know is that somewhere along the way as the seas rise to 21 feet above their current level, these kinds of effects are going to occur. I think the flooding that will happen with a one foot rise will be enough to change the Earth's weather engine. I may be off by a few feet... or by a few inches. We'll have to wait and see.
My own anecdotal/intuitive guess is that modern HVAC technology is a major factor in the obesity epidemic.
The human body evolved with a highly sophisticated mechanism for regulating its internal temperature, that had been tightly integrated with technology such as clothing and fire up to about 1970 world wide. Then for most urban and suburban life styles HVAC technology brought about significant change. Before that happened, If it was too hot, you took off clothing, or tied a wet bandanna over your head, and sweated it out. If it was too cold-- the most common thing-- you put on clothing. In either case you burn calories, either in keeping the clothing warm or by increasing the circulation of blood through the scalp, activating perspiration systems, etc. But since 1970 the common way to adjust the internal temperature is to dial the thermostat up or down. This is now true even for farmers in their air conditioned cabs on their tractors. Farm laborers, though, who are out in the weather, do not seem to be part of the obesity epidemic.
My hypothesis is that obesity is strongly determined by the atrophy of the individual's autonomic thermal controls that we once had to use on an hourly basis, that have now been replaced by HVAC systems.
I have just come back from a 7 day / 6 night camping trip that consisted of a few short walks, a lot of sedentary photography, daytime temperatures in the high 80s and night time temperatures in the low 60s. I lost more than 6 pounds on that trip: unhappily stable at 225# before, stable at 219# after (I track my daily weights, just because). And yet I'm more active at home-- if I had not gone camping I would have done 2 or 3 bike rides of 12 to 20 miles each during that time--- and would not have lost any weight. The significant difference is that on that kind of camping trip getting out of the warm sleeping bag into the chill of the morning is a thermal challenge; sweating through several water bottles during the afternoon heat is a different kind of thermal challenge.
Perhaps now that we do not engage in thermal challenges so much as we once did, the mechanisms for controlling those have atrophied and that has led to obesity.
If anyone wants to test this hypothesis, I would be a willing experimental subject. I suggest equipping me with a full set of REI camping gear and sending me to the Hartz Mountain Antelope Preserve in the wilds of eastern Oregon for several months. My dietary needs would be covered by weekly deliveries of a couple of dozen eggs, several pounds of bacon and sausage, seasonal organic veggies from the Canby Farmers Market, assorted breads from Portland's Grand Central Bakery, and a couple of kegs of McMenamin's Terminator Stout. We can work out the other details, like the carrot cakes, cheeses, etc, later. If, with this kind of diet, I came back heavier than I left then that would suggest the hypothesis is flawed. If I weighed the same or less on return, then possibly the hypothesis is true, and someone should set me up to explore it further in a different environment, perhaps in some remote corner of the Oregon coast. But whether the hypothesis is shown to be flawed or is supported by the evidence, I would certainly benefit from the experience.
What the AC just said.
Wow, you sure know how to take things out of context, don't you?
Last I looked, web work is limited to a subset of the RGB color space, and one that is impossible to define with precision since it depends on what is common among all the different screens that will show your work. If you intend to do web design, you have to throw out everything that Adobe has put into Photoshop over the last 15 years. Because you are working with only a handful of crayons. Gimp cannot do everything that Photoshop can do, when Photoshop is being used with a high grade printer and precisely calibrated monitor. But Photoshop cannot do anything more than the Gimp can do when we are talking about the web.
You young artists need to step back and look at the limitations of the media you are using. The web is medium, and it is quite limiting; playing around in Photoshop might be a lot of fun, but it is not the medium. It is merely the tool. A lesser tool, the Gimp, will work as well, and in its simplicity it will be the more productive choice.