If the sun turned into a black hole, I believe the Earth would become somewhat colder and less comfortable fairly rapidly. That's besides the point, though - the most reassuring argument I've heard for the LHC not turning the Earth into a black hole is that collisions far more energetic occur all the time, when high-velocity cosmic particles collide with our upper atmosphere. If such collisions had any appreciable chance of creating a microscopic black hole, and that black hole had any appreciable chance of then going all super-happy-meal on the Earth, then it would have already happened.
A physicist can't point at a some squiggle in a particle accelerator and say "that's the gravity particle" any more than a Pastafarian can point at the Great Noodly Appendage pushing down the apple on Newton's head and say, "That's proof of my theory."
*points to a tendril of His Noodly Carapace which is waving around in my bowl of Mi Goreng* You were saying?
No, if I read correctly, they have a global-warming-is-occurring-but-we-should-stop-it bias.
I have a *true* pro global warming bias, in that I think global warming will be an interesting and necessary challenge for humanity and in the absence of wars, will be the next major driver of technological development.
...what on earth makes you think I'm from the U.S.? I believe we're making the same comment on their foreign policy in different ways. Although I must be fair and say that we haven't seen much of that kind of action since Gee Dubya stepped down.
Well, actually, scanning and then saving the scanned image IS making a copy of the work, by very definition. I would presume they're objecting to Google Books' free preview feature, in which case a polite "ahem, I believe I own the copyright to that book and I would like it to not be previewable" would be all that was required.
Any explanation for why moths fly into anything and everything? It's especially irritating when living in a warm climate with moths the size of small cars.
Pretty simple, actually. They navigate using the moon as a reference point, since it's essentially a directional light. In order to fly straight, they keep the moon at a particular point in their field of vision. Sadly, when the brightest object in their field of view is a light bulb, keeping it in the same position in their field of view results in them spiralling madly around and towards it.
So moths don't really like bright lights, candle flames etc. Lights just screw with their navigation system.
[Harry has just had an alien removed rectally] Dr. Allison Reed: It's over, it's over. You did great! Do you need anything? Can we get you anything?
Harry Block: Ice cream... I'd like an ice cream please.
Dr. Allison Reed: Okay, what flavor?
Harry Block: It doesn't matter. It's for my ass.
OK, I stood up for these guys and their 'artistic' definitions of things before, and it's hurting my soul, so to balance it out here I'm going to grump at you for your use of the term 'Mandelbrot'. It's a surname, not a mathematical object. Benoit Mandelbrot is a mathematician who was a pioneer in the field of fractal geometry. The object is known as the Mandelbrot set.
My pedantic nature is appeased. As you were, gentlemen.
Who cares if people have your DNA info? What's it good for? They can't use it to take your money or anything, you tinfoil-hatter.
Today? Probably nothing. Give it 100 years and I imagine it will be very possible to tailor a nasty virus to infect you and only you, based on your DNA. And once it can be done in a federal lab for millions, add 20 years and it'll be doable with a home PC and a few vials, and add 10 more years and you could probably do it on your cell phone. The future is a scary, scary place.
This post needs more +insightful. What a lot of people are missing by getting wound up in the maths is that it is an artistic endeavour. Their definition of "a mandelbrot" (and yes, this broken terminology bugs the pedant in me beyond belief) is nothing to do with z^2+c, and everything to do with "a pretty looking blobby thing that maintains an aesthetically pleasing and visually interesting level of surface detail at all magnifications".
Sort of makes the Schedule 1 - "no currently accepted medical use" - classification of pot seem a bit political rather than medical doesn't it?
I don't think there's much to do with drugs (with obvious exceptions for the few that are seriously addictive and physically damaging) that isn't political rather than medical.
You advocating the individual's right to choose and then take responsibility for the consequences? As a superior solution to simply accepting Big Brother's word and loving him as we do? We don't take kindly to your type round here.
I'm not condoning the use of an untested drug with unknown side effects. There's no way in hell I'd try this new compound until it had a long track record and the full effects were well known. Of course, since it makes people happy, that will probably never happen in a clinical trial because it will be banned to appease puritans.
What I was doing was strongly condemning the attitude of a publicly funded scientist who seems to believe that it is his duty to paint recreational drug use as a bad thing regardless of whether or not it is genuinely harmful.
I've had a couple of bad experiences mixing energy drinks with spirits, and I avoid it now. The problem is that enough caffeine can keep you up and mobile well past the point when you should have passed out from alcohol, resulting in you doing really, REALLY retarded things. And what you say about "powerful psychoactive drugs" is very true - alcohol is no better (or worse) than many things that will land you in jail for 20 years.
I found the comment at the end of this article very telling (even if it is about Australia, not the U.S.):
"Dealers often advertise this drug as being like ecstasy but its properties are much more similar to cocaine and amphetamines," said Professor Iain McGregor, director of Sydney University's Psychopharmacology Laboratory. "Users get feelings of euphoria, it's dancey, it's happy, a bit trippy.
"Unfortunately for people like myself and Paul (Dillon), who are here to tell people drugs are bad, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about it."
You heard it here first, folks. It's 'unfortunate' for the regulators when there "doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about" a mood altering substance.
We had two bags of Fras Siabi's finest, seventy-five pellets of vision dust, five sheets of high-powered mana residue, a saltshaker half-full of R.O.I.D.S, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of sulfuron slammer, a quart of volatile rum, a case of dark iron ale, a pint of raw embalming fluid, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the embalming fluid. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an embalming binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
(Honestly though, this is a non-story: Several government department have partially overlapping areas of control so they argue about which one has the control on those areas. Those things happen a lot, especially with the internet and other new technology. In other areas those fights have already been settled a century or so ago.)
It's not really a non-story when last I heard, there are something like 6 MILLION accounts in China. Even if each of those only pays $1 a month (they're charged on a different schedule to us) that's a $72M/year business they're talking about. No wonder there's a turf war over who 'owns' it legislation-wise.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, I thought it was a top effort!
Mutter mutter...
Look, everyone, he's discovered dark mutter!
Boy, you sure lepton that joke in a hurry.
Yeah, but it worked like a charm.
IMMA FIRIN MAH HADRON
If the sun turned into a black hole, I believe the Earth would become somewhat colder and less comfortable fairly rapidly. That's besides the point, though - the most reassuring argument I've heard for the LHC not turning the Earth into a black hole is that collisions far more energetic occur all the time, when high-velocity cosmic particles collide with our upper atmosphere. If such collisions had any appreciable chance of creating a microscopic black hole, and that black hole had any appreciable chance of then going all super-happy-meal on the Earth, then it would have already happened.
A physicist can't point at a some squiggle in a particle accelerator and say "that's the gravity particle" any more than a Pastafarian can point at the Great Noodly Appendage pushing down the apple on Newton's head and say, "That's proof of my theory."
*points to a tendril of His Noodly Carapace which is waving around in my bowl of Mi Goreng* You were saying?
No, if I read correctly, they have a global-warming-is-occurring-but-we-should-stop-it bias.
I have a *true* pro global warming bias, in that I think global warming will be an interesting and necessary challenge for humanity and in the absence of wars, will be the next major driver of technological development.
...what on earth makes you think I'm from the U.S.? I believe we're making the same comment on their foreign policy in different ways. Although I must be fair and say that we haven't seen much of that kind of action since Gee Dubya stepped down.
Well, actually, scanning and then saving the scanned image IS making a copy of the work, by very definition. I would presume they're objecting to Google Books' free preview feature, in which case a polite "ahem, I believe I own the copyright to that book and I would like it to not be previewable" would be all that was required.
"Hi, China, I'm the U.S.
Sorry but I don't want you to do that and I make the rules.
P.S. Our airforce is bored and if we don't use our nukes soon they're going to hit their use-by date. Just sayin'"
Any explanation for why moths fly into anything and everything? It's especially irritating when living in a warm climate with moths the size of small cars.
Pretty simple, actually. They navigate using the moon as a reference point, since it's essentially a directional light. In order to fly straight, they keep the moon at a particular point in their field of vision. Sadly, when the brightest object in their field of view is a light bulb, keeping it in the same position in their field of view results in them spiralling madly around and towards it.
So moths don't really like bright lights, candle flames etc. Lights just screw with their navigation system.
Should be able to find a rabid fanboy fairly easily, and use his neural cortex.
And this person is called Anil Kurmus. I'm not sure what a Kurmus is but I'd prefer not to take one anilly.
Here was I thinking of the scene from Evolution.
[Harry has just had an alien removed rectally]
Dr. Allison Reed: It's over, it's over. You did great! Do you need anything? Can we get you anything?
Harry Block: Ice cream... I'd like an ice cream please.
Dr. Allison Reed: Okay, what flavor?
Harry Block: It doesn't matter. It's for my ass.
OK, I stood up for these guys and their 'artistic' definitions of things before, and it's hurting my soul, so to balance it out here I'm going to grump at you for your use of the term 'Mandelbrot'. It's a surname, not a mathematical object. Benoit Mandelbrot is a mathematician who was a pioneer in the field of fractal geometry. The object is known as the Mandelbrot set.
My pedantic nature is appeased. As you were, gentlemen.
Who cares if people have your DNA info? What's it good for? They can't use it to take your money or anything, you tinfoil-hatter.
Today? Probably nothing. Give it 100 years and I imagine it will be very possible to tailor a nasty virus to infect you and only you, based on your DNA. And once it can be done in a federal lab for millions, add 20 years and it'll be doable with a home PC and a few vials, and add 10 more years and you could probably do it on your cell phone. The future is a scary, scary place.
This post needs more +insightful. What a lot of people are missing by getting wound up in the maths is that it is an artistic endeavour. Their definition of "a mandelbrot" (and yes, this broken terminology bugs the pedant in me beyond belief) is nothing to do with z^2+c, and everything to do with "a pretty looking blobby thing that maintains an aesthetically pleasing and visually interesting level of surface detail at all magnifications".
I honestly thought this was a joke response about the absurdity of the in-vivo angiogenetic-microphoroesis gel therocopmanders.
HAHAhahahahah...wut?
"Like having my brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick."
Sort of makes the Schedule 1 - "no currently accepted medical use" - classification of pot seem a bit political rather than medical doesn't it?
I don't think there's much to do with drugs (with obvious exceptions for the few that are seriously addictive and physically damaging) that isn't political rather than medical.
You advocating the individual's right to choose and then take responsibility for the consequences? As a superior solution to simply accepting Big Brother's word and loving him as we do? We don't take kindly to your type round here.
I'm not condoning the use of an untested drug with unknown side effects. There's no way in hell I'd try this new compound until it had a long track record and the full effects were well known. Of course, since it makes people happy, that will probably never happen in a clinical trial because it will be banned to appease puritans.
What I was doing was strongly condemning the attitude of a publicly funded scientist who seems to believe that it is his duty to paint recreational drug use as a bad thing regardless of whether or not it is genuinely harmful.
I found the comment at the end of this article very telling (even if it is about Australia, not the U.S.):
"Dealers often advertise this drug as being like ecstasy but its properties are much more similar to cocaine and amphetamines," said Professor Iain McGregor, director of Sydney University's Psychopharmacology Laboratory. "Users get feelings of euphoria, it's dancey, it's happy, a bit trippy.
"Unfortunately for people like myself and Paul (Dillon), who are here to tell people drugs are bad, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about it."
You heard it here first, folks. It's 'unfortunate' for the regulators when there "doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about" a mood altering substance.
We had two bags of Fras Siabi's finest, seventy-five pellets of vision dust, five sheets of high-powered mana residue, a saltshaker half-full of R.O.I.D.S, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of sulfuron slammer, a quart of volatile rum, a case of dark iron ale, a pint of raw embalming fluid, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the embalming fluid. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an embalming binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
(Honestly though, this is a non-story: Several government department have partially overlapping areas of control so they argue about which one has the control on those areas. Those things happen a lot, especially with the internet and other new technology. In other areas those fights have already been settled a century or so ago.)
It's not really a non-story when last I heard, there are something like 6 MILLION accounts in China. Even if each of those only pays $1 a month (they're charged on a different schedule to us) that's a $72M/year business they're talking about. No wonder there's a turf war over who 'owns' it legislation-wise.