I heard the 911 call about the "out of control" 120mph Lexus mentioned in the article on the radio last week, and all I could think was "why didn't that dumb motherfucker turn the key and shut off the fucking engine?" Years ago, I had the accelerator linkage on my Datsun 280Z freeze at full throttle because a screwdriver I left in the works. I was only "out of control" for about a second and a half before I shut the engine off and pulled over. People are fucking idiots.
I hate to interrupt your self-righteous ranting, but that Lexus didn't have a key to turn. It was push-button. Many owners don't know how to disable the engine while driving, and this guy was driving a loaner he was unfamiliar with.
Now, if you had said he should have put it into neutral, you'd have a point. But as it is, you're the idiot.
DDG-51 destroyers are Arleigh Burke class. There's 55 of them so far; none are nuclear powered.
Rep. Gene Taylor made some noise about canceling the Zumwalt/DDG-1000 class (gas turbine-powered) in favor of a nuclear Burke variant, but it hasn't happened.
Wasn't there a big show of the all nuclear carrier group that could go around the world with having to refuel?
What you are referring to is 1964's Operation Sea Orbit. You need more than a carrier and two missile cruisers to make up a carrier strike group. Nuclear-powered destroyers and supply ships were not built, and the all-nuclear Navy never materialized.
Since the last nuclear cruiser was decommissioned in 1999, the only nuclear vessels in the US Navy are aircraft carriers and submarines.
Planting a lawn in the middle of a fscking desert is not using water in an efficient manner, no matter how many days per week you're allowed to water it.
Collin County, Texas is not in a desert. It averages 41 inches of rain per year, more than supposedly wet Seattle (37").
That was to keep us from confusing him with his relative, John Adams. Same for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. I'm not aware of any case of being able to confuse Barack Obama with any other Barack Obama we've had in the White House.
Of course that's true, but that wasn't the point. The post I replied to said "I don't recall any of the other 43 presidents ever being referred to with anything other than an initial for their middle name." John Quincy Adams is a counter-example. FDR often gets the full Delano as well.
That and the conservative lunatic fringe dragged out his middle name as if it meant something sinister, or had anything whatsoever to do with the man himself. After that it has become some form of code-word for the lunatic fringe, and thus associated with them.
Of course they do, and I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that referring to a president's middle name is not a unique occurrence.
I love it when I read about some bizarre contraption in the discworld books only to discover later that it's based on some bizarre contraption in reality.
I got in an argument once with someone who thought the clacks system was completely implausible. While the mechanical devices inside are pure Pratchett, optical telegraphs really existed.
Wanna see *really cool architecture design*? Then go look at the 09 competition on this site: http://www.evolo-arch.com/
That's not cool, it's boring. It's typical architectural ego masturbation. Like an adolescent, it declares that it is overthrowing the existing paradigm while doing the same thing as all its peers. Half of it looks like an inverted Borg as imagined by H.R. Geiger, pseudo-organic tendrils attempting to assimilate the existing rectilinear city.
"There are four different antiviral drugs that are licensed for use in the US for the treatment of influenza: amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. While most swine influenza viruses have been susceptible to all four drugs, the most recent swine influenza viruses isolated from humans are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine. At this time, CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses."
Codene is actually the stereoisomer of heroin, but it doesn't fit most of our receptors so appears mostly inert.
Codeine and heroin are not stereoisomers. They have similar morphine-based structures, but not the same composition. Methylmorphine (codeine) is C18H21NO3. Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is C21H23NO5.
The more famous example is thalidomide. One isomer causes birth defects. The other is effective at countering morning sickness.
The Star-Trek planet classifications are useless. They confuse too many independent variables into one label, and don't cover all the possible combinations. You can't even make Uranus and Neptune fit them. If we looked at an Earth from an alternate timeline where life never started, the planet would not fit into any of the Star Trek classes.
If you want, we can say that Gliese 581 e is too close to its star for liquid water to exist, and thus rules out Class M.
However, take Gliese 581 d. Unless it already has life to put oxygen in the atmosphere, d has no Star Trek planet class. But if the hypothesis that it is low density is right, and it possesses an atmosphere with a greenhouse effect, then it's waiting for us to waltz over and start terraforming.
I call it "game theory politics." Namely, preserve people's rights to the utmost practical limit, and have government only involve itself in programs that would otherwise fail due to game theory considerations.
This is genius - and I have been thinking along the same lines but didn't articulate it quite as well.
Is this when one says the "newsletter"-thing? I didn't quite catch up to that meme.
While it is often used sarcastically, this would be an appropriate genuine use. As it so happens, his ideas are also intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter.
I assume this was meant as a joke, but seriously, if you were able to take out a large portion of the power grid for any sustained length of time, it would have a huge economic impact. Just from the loss of money while businesses and industries are unable to function would add up to millions, if not billions. That's not even counting the looting and rioting (come on, you know it would happen!)
Define sustained. Storm-related outages lasting a week or more are not rare, and do not lead to riots or widespread looting. This idea that power outages equal riots seems to stem from the 1977 NYC blackout, but that was a match in a fireworks factory. Most outages are just a bloody nuisance.
So in theory not only could this plane get itself up into space, but it could refuel itself on the ground as well? I don't see how adding a few onboard air compressors for ground-based refueling would hurt.
You know it doesn't run on air alone, right? It's not going to be able to make its own hydrogen. The Skylon can no more refuel itself on the ground than a conventional aircraft can.
Space exploration is hard, very hard. You might think that your job is hard, but it is just a simple high school assembly project compared to space exploration.
I'm sorry, but after reading that all I could do is wonder when the style would settle down a bit and start telling me things I really need to know.
Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.
What the f--k are you smoking and where can I get some?
If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society? If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses. I mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.
You're kidding, right? Shortages and rationing are the manifestation of scarcity, not its absence.
I get the impression that you're not really grasping the idea of a world with no scarcity. It doesn't exist, but maybe it could.
If you successfully eliminate scarcity the economic system becomes largely irrelevant. If there is no scarcity in food production, there is no reason to stop every man, woman, and child from walking home with as much steak as they can carry. If there is no scarcity in automobile production, everyone can drive a Maserati. In a post-scarcity world, supply is essentially infinite, thus the price is zero.
Well, if we keep finding new ways to encode information and to engage in computation, it's conceivable that someday, everything in the universe could be used for computing.
I believe he was also Gutierrez in the Freakazoid series.
Roddy MacStew: At least let the boy go!
Gutierrez: No.
Roddy MacStew: Why not?
Gutierrez: Because he tasks me! He *tasks* me! Around the moons of Vega, I chuckle at thee. Around the suns of Andromeda, I chuckle more at thee. Revenge is a dish best served with pinto beans and muffins! Kirk, oh, friend, I... Oh!
Yet, it has been the few, the daring to be different, not the ones feeling safe in the crowd, that have contributed the most to major knowledge in the early history of experimental and observational science.
Other early scientists, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur and others also had to fight the majority status quo establishment, but were finally, after a long uphill battle proven to be right.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- attributed to Carl Sagan
Somebody has not explained relevant arguments to you.
The geologic timescale is irrelevant as the context here is implicitly the human timescale. This earthquake swarm does not indicate an eruption in the lifetime of any person now living.
(the bad news being that it doesn't indicate that it won't erupt either)
Slashdot Mirror
I heard the 911 call about the "out of control" 120mph Lexus mentioned in the article on the radio last week, and all I could think was "why didn't that dumb motherfucker turn the key and shut off the fucking engine?" Years ago, I had the accelerator linkage on my Datsun 280Z freeze at full throttle because a screwdriver I left in the works. I was only "out of control" for about a second and a half before I shut the engine off and pulled over. People are fucking idiots.
I hate to interrupt your self-righteous ranting, but that Lexus didn't have a key to turn. It was push-button. Many owners don't know how to disable the engine while driving, and this guy was driving a loaner he was unfamiliar with.
Now, if you had said he should have put it into neutral, you'd have a point. But as it is, you're the idiot.
The idea of a SDV (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Derived_Launch_Vehicle [wikipedia.org]) seems a lot better idea to me than this massive new launcher
You know that the "massive new launcher" is the Ares series listed on the page you linked to, right?
I thought the new destroyers were also nuclear.
DDG-51 destroyers are Arleigh Burke class. There's 55 of them so far; none are nuclear powered.
Rep. Gene Taylor made some noise about canceling the Zumwalt/DDG-1000 class (gas turbine-powered) in favor of a nuclear Burke variant, but it hasn't happened.
Wasn't there a big show of the all nuclear carrier group that could go around the world with having to refuel?
What you are referring to is 1964's Operation Sea Orbit. You need more than a carrier and two missile cruisers to make up a carrier strike group. Nuclear-powered destroyers and supply ships were not built, and the all-nuclear Navy never materialized.
Since the last nuclear cruiser was decommissioned in 1999, the only nuclear vessels in the US Navy are aircraft carriers and submarines.
Planting a lawn in the middle of a fscking desert is not using water in an efficient manner, no matter how many days per week you're allowed to water it.
Collin County, Texas is not in a desert. It averages 41 inches of rain per year, more than supposedly wet Seattle (37").
That was to keep us from confusing him with his relative, John Adams. Same for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. I'm not aware of any case of being able to confuse Barack Obama with any other Barack Obama we've had in the White House.
Of course that's true, but that wasn't the point. The post I replied to said "I don't recall any of the other 43 presidents ever being referred to with anything other than an initial for their middle name." John Quincy Adams is a counter-example. FDR often gets the full Delano as well.
That and the conservative lunatic fringe dragged out his middle name as if it meant something sinister, or had anything whatsoever to do with the man himself. After that it has become some form of code-word for the lunatic fringe, and thus associated with them.
Of course they do, and I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that referring to a president's middle name is not a unique occurrence.
Bob Jacobs, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at NASA, says the story's fiction.
(via Phil Plait)
I don't recall any of the other 43 presidents ever being referred to with anything other than an initial for their middle name.
John Quincy Adams?
I love it when I read about some bizarre contraption in the discworld books only to discover later that it's based on some bizarre contraption in reality.
I got in an argument once with someone who thought the clacks system was completely implausible. While the mechanical devices inside are pure Pratchett, optical telegraphs really existed.
Wanna see *really cool architecture design*? Then go look at the 09 competition on this site: http://www.evolo-arch.com/
That's not cool, it's boring. It's typical architectural ego masturbation. Like an adolescent, it declares that it is overthrowing the existing paradigm while doing the same thing as all its peers. Half of it looks like an inverted Borg as imagined by H.R. Geiger, pseudo-organic tendrils attempting to assimilate the existing rectilinear city.
*There are some reports that anti-virals are ineffective, I think they're hysteria.
The US Centers for Disease Control say the following:
"There are four different antiviral drugs that are licensed for use in the US for the treatment of influenza: amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. While most swine influenza viruses have been susceptible to all four drugs, the most recent swine influenza viruses isolated from humans are resistant to amantadine and rimantadine. At this time, CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses."
Codene is actually the stereoisomer of heroin, but it doesn't fit most of our receptors so appears mostly inert.
Codeine and heroin are not stereoisomers. They have similar morphine-based structures, but not the same composition. Methylmorphine (codeine) is C18H21NO3. Diacetylmorphine (heroin) is C21H23NO5.
The more famous example is thalidomide. One isomer causes birth defects. The other is effective at countering morning sickness.
So, is it an M-Class planet or not?
The Star-Trek planet classifications are useless. They confuse too many independent variables into one label, and don't cover all the possible combinations. You can't even make Uranus and Neptune fit them. If we looked at an Earth from an alternate timeline where life never started, the planet would not fit into any of the Star Trek classes.
If you want, we can say that Gliese 581 e is too close to its star for liquid water to exist, and thus rules out Class M.
However, take Gliese 581 d. Unless it already has life to put oxygen in the atmosphere, d has no Star Trek planet class. But if the hypothesis that it is low density is right, and it possesses an atmosphere with a greenhouse effect, then it's waiting for us to waltz over and start terraforming.
I call it "game theory politics." Namely, preserve people's rights to the utmost practical limit, and have government only involve itself in programs that would otherwise fail due to game theory considerations.
This is genius - and I have been thinking along the same lines but didn't articulate it quite as well.
Is this when one says the "newsletter"-thing? I didn't quite catch up to that meme.
While it is often used sarcastically, this would be an appropriate genuine use. As it so happens, his ideas are also intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter.
I highly doubt they will be transporting the heat directly.
The article says "district heat". That means they are transporting the heat directly as a utility. It's a somewhat common setup in much of Europe.
I assume this was meant as a joke, but seriously, if you were able to take out a large portion of the power grid for any sustained length of time, it would have a huge economic impact. Just from the loss of money while businesses and industries are unable to function would add up to millions, if not billions. That's not even counting the looting and rioting (come on, you know it would happen!)
Define sustained. Storm-related outages lasting a week or more are not rare, and do not lead to riots or widespread looting. This idea that power outages equal riots seems to stem from the 1977 NYC blackout, but that was a match in a fireworks factory. Most outages are just a bloody nuisance.
If a bear craps in a virtual forest, and there is nobody to hear him break wind, can you see the Pope from there?
Only if the Pope is clapping with one hand while tying buttered toast to the back of Schroedinger's cat.
So in theory not only could this plane get itself up into space, but it could refuel itself on the ground as well? I don't see how adding a few onboard air compressors for ground-based refueling would hurt.
You know it doesn't run on air alone, right? It's not going to be able to make its own hydrogen. The Skylon can no more refuel itself on the ground than a conventional aircraft can.
Space exploration is hard, very hard. You might think that your job is hard, but it is just a simple high school assembly project compared to space exploration.
I'm sorry, but after reading that all I could do is wonder when the style would settle down a bit and start telling me things I really need to know.
Never lose sight of the ultimate goal: eliminate scarcity. Pointless make-work jobs are a bug, not a feature.
What the f--k are you smoking and where can I get some?
If you eliminate scarcity, then why should anyone work? For the benefit of society? If you eliminate scarcity, the entire economic system collapses. I mean, really, good luck, but someone else already tried that.
You're kidding, right? Shortages and rationing are the manifestation of scarcity, not its absence.
I get the impression that you're not really grasping the idea of a world with no scarcity. It doesn't exist, but maybe it could.
If you successfully eliminate scarcity the economic system becomes largely irrelevant. If there is no scarcity in food production, there is no reason to stop every man, woman, and child from walking home with as much steak as they can carry. If there is no scarcity in automobile production, everyone can drive a Maserati. In a post-scarcity world, supply is essentially infinite, thus the price is zero.
Well, if we keep finding new ways to encode information and to engage in computation, it's conceivable that someday, everything in the universe could be used for computing.
And we can use it to answer The Last Question.
Besides a Corgi has many times the personality of Keanu Reeves and is in serious danger of up-staging the main actor.
There's a serious danger that the set furniture will upstage Keanu Reeves.
I believe he was also Gutierrez in the Freakazoid series.
Roddy MacStew: At least let the boy go!
Gutierrez: No.
Roddy MacStew: Why not?
Gutierrez: Because he tasks me! He *tasks* me! Around the moons of Vega, I chuckle at thee. Around the suns of Andromeda, I chuckle more at thee. Revenge is a dish best served with pinto beans and muffins! Kirk, oh, friend, I... Oh!
[fixes tie]
Gutierrez: I'm sorry...
The other major names on his economic team are Reagan CEA member Lawrence Summers and Reagan Fed Charman Paul Volcker
Note that Volcker was first appointed by Carter.
Yet, it has been the few, the daring to be different, not the ones feeling safe in the crowd, that have contributed the most to major knowledge in the early history of experimental and observational science.
Other early scientists, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur and others also had to fight the majority status quo establishment, but were finally, after a long uphill battle proven to be right.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- attributed to Carl Sagan
Somebody has not explained relevant arguments to you.
The geologic timescale is irrelevant as the context here is implicitly the human timescale. This earthquake swarm does not indicate an eruption in the lifetime of any person now living.
(the bad news being that it doesn't indicate that it won't erupt either)