I presume that 911 calls could be screened, allowing the operator to take over. It's easy enough to set up on Asterisk, and obviously when the screening capacity is up, they can go straight through.
I'm not claiming that it doesn't work universally. But it can only work when the subject knows what you're after. What you're saying that it universally works, or else I just don't understand your rather plain words. It can't be true, unless you can magically ensure that everyone knows everything.
I think I have an example that shows cracks in your argument. Say I supposedly broke into a safe, containing highly sensitive papers, that uses 1000th through 2000th decimal digits of PI as the combination. From other good sources you know that it can be shown that the suspect had the combination memorized and not written down, and someone trusted told you that it could be me breaking in. You want to interrogate me, using torture as applicable, to show that I indeed knew those digits -- ergo I'd be likely to have broken in (very few people know so many digits of PI, and fewer still are expected to be picked up by your trusted source).
Now the truth is that I don't know those digits, and I'm very bad at memorization so it'd be pretty hopeless to expect me to know those cold, even though I in principle could come up with a way of computing them with paper and pencil.
So you work me hard ("correctly" as you say), and after a while perhaps I could, maybe, get at those numbers if tortured long enough and in the right way, but it'd be completely false that I knew those numbers before the interrogation started. So even though you got some information out of me, it's completely useless, and you have little in the way of knowing: you've changed your subject.
Even by-the-book torture alters the subject of your observation, and sometimes that's enough to completely fool oneself: you get verifiably good information, but it's still completely false inasmuch as it pertains to the ultimate reason for the interrogation. I could perhaps give you the digits of PI, but I didn't know them before the ordeal has started, so I couldn't use them to break into the safe. Similarly, some people may start to recall certain things if you use proper techniques, but they could have been well unaware that they even knew such things before hand -- so they could have been unable to use such knowledge, even if it turned out they had it. Sometimes it's the knowledge you're after, sometimes it's the knowledge of having knowledge. Different things, of course.
So you have to be very careful, as you obviously know.
No matter how uneasy, not-quick and not-cheap the torture is, you won't get information that isn't there. That's all I claim, yet you somehow feel the need to muddy the waters.
I'm very clear: I claim that there is/was a bunch of people in Gitmo who in fact know nothing, and who are held solely on an informant's paid (in money or in kind) claim that they, to the contrary, do know something.
You can have $1 billion per detainee and use all the tricks that anyone knows, or had known (think ancient tribes who maybe had better/other tricks we haven't found yet) -- if the detainee doesn't know, you won't get to know either. You may kill the detainee, break the bank, go insane, what the eff ever. The only way to get the information you seek is if the detainee has infinite lifetime, and he/she starts enumerating all possible stories. By the infinite monkey theorem, you will get what you're looking for, but it's hard to say whether it'll happen before our Universe dies a heat death.
If you argue otherwise, you should hand your geek card back.
You torture them because you believe they have the information. As long as you hold on to that belief no matter what (IOW, you're stupid even when told so), then there's nothing for the prisoner to do other than to make stuff up. If they don't, they will presumably die -- they don't have the information in the first place.
So, it's not a delay if you torture someone who feeds you misinformation for lack of the real information you seek. It's your problem, not prisoner's problem. You will either kill them, or get misinformation, but no matter what you won't get the information you want if they don't have it.
The problem with torture is that it has a way of making up information where there is none. If you're convinced your guy has the information, but he doesn't, then torture is an element of a random story generator. And there's pretty much no way of telling the quality of information that you receive.
Case in point: I think that a big problem with some Gitmo inmates is that they were set up by bounty hunters, and they are simply wrong people in a wrong place at the wrong time. Torture is useless here, because they know nothing in the first place, and the "solid information" they provide is solidly random, if that.
I agree that the "greats" of science were no heroes, and made mistakes (duh). But the problem is that their writings in original, raw form, are no teaching materials -- at least for someone who tries to understand that material for the first time.
I'd spend hours on some homework problems that had typos in them (or in the solutions at the end of the book, in some cases) -- I'm the one to blame my own mistakes before giving up, so it'd take a lot of work to verify things this way and that to finally be pretty damn sure that I did it right, and the text was wrong. This is of course a useful experience, but not everyone has virtually unlimited time to do things this way. Some college kids have to work more than one job, you know.
Oh boy, whoosh. We're both promoting the same thing. It's pointless to read original manuscripts in cursive. That's what I said.
You think I say that reading original texts is useless in general. What I say is that dealing with silliness like someone's handwriting and his mistakes is stupid. The typeset, edited versions are there for a reason. If I want to read Newton, I won't even bother with the original typeset versions, I want something that has been proofread, edited and doesn't bother me. I have read both Newton's and Euler's texts, but I just didn't bother with originals, the latter were detracting me with technicalities of period's typesetting, symbolics, and what not.
Nowhere did I say that reading skills are useless. I said that learning how to read someone's obsolete handwriting is useless. The transcriptions, especially edited transcriptions, are there for a reason. If I were a high-schooler who wanted to learn calculus from say Leibniz's manuscripts, I'd be also tripping on mistakes in his manuscript. So not only I'd have to overcome the hurdle that is the reading of his chickenscrawl, I'd also have to deal with his mistakes. This is useless in itself: you're just repeating the work that has been done by a qualified editor, more than once.
In English, the most common words have spelling inconsistencies, so in English you have to learn 1000s of words, and perhaps a 1000 exceptional/unique spellings. In Chinese, you still have to learn all the words, but instead of learning how to spell them, you learn how to draw them. Sure, maybe drawing is a bit harder, but don't pretend there's any difference in how much you have to learn -- there isn't, not that much.
Phonological decoding -- the "phonics" as it's called in the U.S. -- is an important part of reading. It is the process that carries you from letters, to sounds, to a word (a concept). You need it in order to decode words you have never seen before. If you lack that skill, you are not a good reader, you're dyslexic. The other part of reading is taking up all the words into sentences, and decoding the meaning of a sentence. It is very simple to test those two processes in an objective, repeatable manner (using chain words and chain sentences tests), and good readers must be good at both aspects.
There is what's called hyperlexia -- where phonological decoding has taken over. Those are kids who can read with perfect fluency, but when asked what they were reading, they have no recollection whatsoever. When they were learning to read, their phonological decoding was so good that it perhaps overwhelmed the sentence decoding. Or, even simpler, the kids were expected to read nicely aloud. Nobody ever bothered to reinforce understanding, and they learned to do just that. I have personally seen a hyperlexic 10 year old. Good luck to him with his schoolwork:(
Then there is the proper dyslexia -- where phonological decoding is very poor, but the reader copes by memorizing shapes of the words -- just like if they were in an ideographic writing system. Japanese and Chinese don't have this problem when they deal with ideographic text.
We're in the same boat. It seems that there is a particular class of learners, to which we both belong (seemingly Feynman did, too), that cannot learn without being able to apply the knowledge somehow. This is the context you speak of. I can, usually, look at that context and try to figure out the underlying mechanisms (the "theory"), but going the other way without the context is pretty much pointless.
This lead me to many unforgettable "aha!" moments in grad school. I was taking an extremely well prepared course in applied linear algebra. At one point, there was an assignment where we had to show that the Fourier basis was in fact one, and also was orthogonal. Demonstrating it takes a couple of lines, once you know how to check for orthogonality in a vector space of functions. At that point my thought was: "so that's really why we can do Fourier transform (and its inverse), and all that -- it's just a way of finding components of a vector!". I was lucky: the course was two quarters long, and coincided with me starting the grad school. It was an incredibly useful foundation that came very handy in a lot of engineering. I've learned some applied calculus later while taking two quarters of a numerical methods course. I recognized that a lot of it I tried, in vain, to learn while taking undergrad physics. It was no fun back then.
The calculus and some elements of linear algebra that were taught in high school were pretty much useless -- they aspired to take you to a higher level, trying to get you to memorize various techniques for integration, etc. What was the use of it -- I don't know. It's not like it's one's everyday work to just integrate weird functions that you pretty much don't get to see anywhere else but in an undergrad-level calculus course. Never mind that the techniques were always peddled as gospel, with no explanation of where they came from. It was frowned upon for a student to come up with an alternative way of doing things. I remember getting a particularly poor grade on one test in high school, where I used iterative anti-derivation to integrate. I came up with the technique on my own -- this was before you could just look such things up online. My mind was somehow revolting against memorizing a bunch of techniques and tricks I didn't understand, it was less work to come up with a scheme that worked, and where I could prove that the results were in fact correct.
All symbolic derivation I really care for in a career in engineering can be done using maple, mathematica or, to some extent, maxima. When it comes to real life equations, say, in robot kinematics, doing symbolic work by hand is a sure way of driving an expensive robot arm into the floor (hopefully in simulation, but still). It's pointless -- if you need to work on such equations, symbolic math software is a requirement. Whatever problems you end up solving on a test/exam in class are artificially simplified so that the test will fit in the time allotted, and the grader won't have to find mistakes in pages of derivations. IIRC, a simple thing such as the Jacobian of the kinematic matrix in a real-life universal industrial manipulator may run a couple of pages when printed out. You can't even copy it by hand without likely making a mistake or two; forget about having to actually derive it -- it's not worth it. Not that it cannot be done, but it's simply not worth it, and it's pointless.
Even taking an elasticity course (again, I was lucky: the course was extremely well prepared, by a great teacher), I could base most of my work on very basic calculus and linear algebra. Knowing how to deal with simple trig functions and polynomials is all it ever took, it seems. Only in numerical methods things got a little more interesting, but then it was still entirely applied and the proof was always in the pudding: either the numerical algorithm worked, or it didn't. Sometimes just proving that it worked was a challenge, and I loved it. A course where getting a 60% grade earned you an A, but then homework was essentially a side job (think 20+ hours per week).
I agree. The calligraphy and the archaic language are just barriers to entry, and can be entirely dispensed with without diminishing the value of the original work. The only use of such obstacles IMHO is to instill the sense of superiority in people who went over such hurdles, for no good reason, really. Those are completely mindless barriers that are well past their prime. Feynman had the rational view of this, and I agree with him:
The next paper selected for me was by Adrian and Bronk. They demonstrated that nerve impulses were sharp, single-pulse phenomena. They had done experiments with cats in which they had measured voltages on nerves.
I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors, the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I hadn't the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the nerves or to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate student who was looking for a "map of the cat."
When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We know all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.
Maybe you should just type everything. These days one can get a tiny inkjet printer like Kodak Diconix (batteries fit into the main roller) for nothing, and the cartridges will last for a while. All you need, then, is a custom app that will position the paper based on your swiping motions, and then print what you need printed. I'm sure it can be done to be at least as effective as any handwriting.
An alternative is to print. If you practice, printed letters can come out pretty quickly.
Cursive is an idealization that has, just like you said, little use because it only exists in the classroom. Noone writes cursive as taught; those who insist write much slower than they otherwise would. Handwritten notes are typically for one's own perusal. For communication with others, one better print or type; when printing capitalization can be had by scaling the letters.
Offtopic rant: I think that aluminum fuel cells won't take off all that easy if the name is already taken. For some reason the racing industry felt an urge to make themselves feel better (IMHO), and borrowed an aviation term (jets typically have wet fuel cells in the wings). If you google for aluminum fuel cells, all you'll find are racing fuel tanks made from aluminum. Sigh:
I know it's kind-of idiotic, especially for academic journals. In a typical journal where they publish any sort of equations, they usually want a press-ready version to be submitted -- say in latex, using their own style file. Whatever the editor usually does is pretty insignificant. It's common that the editor finds nothing wrong and the article gets printed as-is.
As for Shakespeare's plays -- even though they were used only as an example here -- be careful. Old texts often undergo serious editing before being published, and the edited version is quite definitely not in public domain. That's the reason why journal article preprints are usually freely distributed by the authors, while the final, edited and published version would be illegal to distribute. Same goes for translations: even though a translation is a work derived from another work in the public domain, it's still by itself subject to copyright law protection.
I was only giving helium as an example of a gas that's hard to handle. Small molecules => leaks like hell. Hydrogen is of course worse, but helium is no picnic.
I agree. But I'd presume that the fire is less likely to reach the interior if there's a nice hole burned out in the trunk, and the fire shoots straight up. This versus a ruptured gasoline tank that cooks you in a firestorm. I have to locate a video that demonstrates that, I remember seeing it somewhere on the tubes.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I said that "if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank". I was quite precise. Given that a fire and/or explosion is imminent, I want hydrogen in the tank. That's all I said. I spoke nothing about how likely a fuel tank fire/explosion is vs. same for cryo or compressed hydrogen.
Expanding on that: while helium is not flammable, as soon as the cells rupture the helium would have quickly escaped upwards, creating a draft that pulls the air in. If the fabric was in any way flammable, that would spread the fire.
I've read somewhere that the Hundenburg skin wasn't really as flammable as everyone claims (this seems to be a half-myth), although it definitely wasn't non-flammable, nor did it have any flame suppressants added to it.
The nice thing about hydrogen is that if something leaks in your hydrogen-fueled car and there's a fire, it'll hopefully quickly burn through the metal and shoot straight up. Compare that with a gasoline fire that's most likely to spread under the car once the fuel tank ruptures -- you end up well done with a crispy skin to boost. Personally, if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank.
I do agree on all your other points, though -- it's an immense pain in the ass, even worse than helium, and with hydrogen everything seems to be a sieve unless you pay good attention. With helium it's slightly less so AFAIK, even though it's still painful.
This is very, very interesting. Me & my wife have been to U.S. hospitals for surgeries and if something like this had happened, it was very well hidden. Kept secret, almost. With no practical indication of it ever occurring.
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I presume that 911 calls could be screened, allowing the operator to take over. It's easy enough to set up on Asterisk, and obviously when the screening capacity is up, they can go straight through.
I'm not claiming that it doesn't work universally. But it can only work when the subject knows what you're after. What you're saying that it universally works, or else I just don't understand your rather plain words. It can't be true, unless you can magically ensure that everyone knows everything.
I think I have an example that shows cracks in your argument. Say I supposedly broke into a safe, containing highly sensitive papers, that uses 1000th through 2000th decimal digits of PI as the combination. From other good sources you know that it can be shown that the suspect had the combination memorized and not written down, and someone trusted told you that it could be me breaking in. You want to interrogate me, using torture as applicable, to show that I indeed knew those digits -- ergo I'd be likely to have broken in (very few people know so many digits of PI, and fewer still are expected to be picked up by your trusted source).
Now the truth is that I don't know those digits, and I'm very bad at memorization so it'd be pretty hopeless to expect me to know those cold, even though I in principle could come up with a way of computing them with paper and pencil.
So you work me hard ("correctly" as you say), and after a while perhaps I could, maybe, get at those numbers if tortured long enough and in the right way, but it'd be completely false that I knew those numbers before the interrogation started. So even though you got some information out of me, it's completely useless, and you have little in the way of knowing: you've changed your subject.
Even by-the-book torture alters the subject of your observation, and sometimes that's enough to completely fool oneself: you get verifiably good information, but it's still completely false inasmuch as it pertains to the ultimate reason for the interrogation. I could perhaps give you the digits of PI, but I didn't know them before the ordeal has started, so I couldn't use them to break into the safe. Similarly, some people may start to recall certain things if you use proper techniques, but they could have been well unaware that they even knew such things before hand -- so they could have been unable to use such knowledge, even if it turned out they had it. Sometimes it's the knowledge you're after, sometimes it's the knowledge of having knowledge. Different things, of course.
So you have to be very careful, as you obviously know.
Logic whoosh.
No matter how uneasy, not-quick and not-cheap the torture is, you won't get information that isn't there. That's all I claim, yet you somehow feel the need to muddy the waters.
I'm very clear: I claim that there is/was a bunch of people in Gitmo who in fact know nothing, and who are held solely on an informant's paid (in money or in kind) claim that they, to the contrary, do know something.
You can have $1 billion per detainee and use all the tricks that anyone knows, or had known (think ancient tribes who maybe had better/other tricks we haven't found yet) -- if the detainee doesn't know, you won't get to know either. You may kill the detainee, break the bank, go insane, what the eff ever. The only way to get the information you seek is if the detainee has infinite lifetime, and he/she starts enumerating all possible stories. By the infinite monkey theorem, you will get what you're looking for, but it's hard to say whether it'll happen before our Universe dies a heat death.
If you argue otherwise, you should hand your geek card back.
Nope.
You torture them because you believe they have the information. As long as you hold on to that belief no matter what (IOW, you're stupid even when told so), then there's nothing for the prisoner to do other than to make stuff up. If they don't, they will presumably die -- they don't have the information in the first place.
So, it's not a delay if you torture someone who feeds you misinformation for lack of the real information you seek. It's your problem, not prisoner's problem. You will either kill them, or get misinformation, but no matter what you won't get the information you want if they don't have it.
You would be right if you weren't so wrong :(
The problem with torture is that it has a way of making up information where there is none. If you're convinced your guy has the information, but he doesn't, then torture is an element of a random story generator. And there's pretty much no way of telling the quality of information that you receive.
Case in point: I think that a big problem with some Gitmo inmates is that they were set up by bounty hunters, and they are simply wrong people in a wrong place at the wrong time. Torture is useless here, because they know nothing in the first place, and the "solid information" they provide is solidly random, if that.
I agree that the "greats" of science were no heroes, and made mistakes (duh). But the problem is that their writings in original, raw form, are no teaching materials -- at least for someone who tries to understand that material for the first time.
I'd spend hours on some homework problems that had typos in them (or in the solutions at the end of the book, in some cases) -- I'm the one to blame my own mistakes before giving up, so it'd take a lot of work to verify things this way and that to finally be pretty damn sure that I did it right, and the text was wrong. This is of course a useful experience, but not everyone has virtually unlimited time to do things this way. Some college kids have to work more than one job, you know.
You used a general way of solving a problem instead of memorizing a contrived way of solving a particular example. Cool in my book!
Oh boy, whoosh. We're both promoting the same thing. It's pointless to read original manuscripts in cursive. That's what I said.
You think I say that reading original texts is useless in general. What I say is that dealing with silliness like someone's handwriting and his mistakes is stupid. The typeset, edited versions are there for a reason. If I want to read Newton, I won't even bother with the original typeset versions, I want something that has been proofread, edited and doesn't bother me. I have read both Newton's and Euler's texts, but I just didn't bother with originals, the latter were detracting me with technicalities of period's typesetting, symbolics, and what not.
Nowhere did I say that reading skills are useless. I said that learning how to read someone's obsolete handwriting is useless. The transcriptions, especially edited transcriptions, are there for a reason. If I were a high-schooler who wanted to learn calculus from say Leibniz's manuscripts, I'd be also tripping on mistakes in his manuscript. So not only I'd have to overcome the hurdle that is the reading of his chickenscrawl, I'd also have to deal with his mistakes. This is useless in itself: you're just repeating the work that has been done by a qualified editor, more than once.
In English, the most common words have spelling inconsistencies, so in English you have to learn 1000s of words, and perhaps a 1000 exceptional/unique spellings. In Chinese, you still have to learn all the words, but instead of learning how to spell them, you learn how to draw them. Sure, maybe drawing is a bit harder, but don't pretend there's any difference in how much you have to learn -- there isn't, not that much.
I think you're misunderstanding things.
Phonological decoding -- the "phonics" as it's called in the U.S. -- is an important part of reading. It is the process that carries you from letters, to sounds, to a word (a concept). You need it in order to decode words you have never seen before. If you lack that skill, you are not a good reader, you're dyslexic. The other part of reading is taking up all the words into sentences, and decoding the meaning of a sentence. It is very simple to test those two processes in an objective, repeatable manner (using chain words and chain sentences tests), and good readers must be good at both aspects.
There is what's called hyperlexia -- where phonological decoding has taken over. Those are kids who can read with perfect fluency, but when asked what they were reading, they have no recollection whatsoever. When they were learning to read, their phonological decoding was so good that it perhaps overwhelmed the sentence decoding. Or, even simpler, the kids were expected to read nicely aloud. Nobody ever bothered to reinforce understanding, and they learned to do just that. I have personally seen a hyperlexic 10 year old. Good luck to him with his schoolwork :(
Then there is the proper dyslexia -- where phonological decoding is very poor, but the reader copes by memorizing shapes of the words -- just like if they were in an ideographic writing system. Japanese and Chinese don't have this problem when they deal with ideographic text.
We're in the same boat. It seems that there is a particular class of learners, to which we both belong (seemingly Feynman did, too), that cannot learn without being able to apply the knowledge somehow. This is the context you speak of. I can, usually, look at that context and try to figure out the underlying mechanisms (the "theory"), but going the other way without the context is pretty much pointless.
This lead me to many unforgettable "aha!" moments in grad school. I was taking an extremely well prepared course in applied linear algebra. At one point, there was an assignment where we had to show that the Fourier basis was in fact one, and also was orthogonal. Demonstrating it takes a couple of lines, once you know how to check for orthogonality in a vector space of functions. At that point my thought was: "so that's really why we can do Fourier transform (and its inverse), and all that -- it's just a way of finding components of a vector!". I was lucky: the course was two quarters long, and coincided with me starting the grad school. It was an incredibly useful foundation that came very handy in a lot of engineering. I've learned some applied calculus later while taking two quarters of a numerical methods course. I recognized that a lot of it I tried, in vain, to learn while taking undergrad physics. It was no fun back then.
The calculus and some elements of linear algebra that were taught in high school were pretty much useless -- they aspired to take you to a higher level, trying to get you to memorize various techniques for integration, etc. What was the use of it -- I don't know. It's not like it's one's everyday work to just integrate weird functions that you pretty much don't get to see anywhere else but in an undergrad-level calculus course. Never mind that the techniques were always peddled as gospel, with no explanation of where they came from. It was frowned upon for a student to come up with an alternative way of doing things. I remember getting a particularly poor grade on one test in high school, where I used iterative anti-derivation to integrate. I came up with the technique on my own -- this was before you could just look such things up online. My mind was somehow revolting against memorizing a bunch of techniques and tricks I didn't understand, it was less work to come up with a scheme that worked, and where I could prove that the results were in fact correct.
All symbolic derivation I really care for in a career in engineering can be done using maple, mathematica or, to some extent, maxima. When it comes to real life equations, say, in robot kinematics, doing symbolic work by hand is a sure way of driving an expensive robot arm into the floor (hopefully in simulation, but still). It's pointless -- if you need to work on such equations, symbolic math software is a requirement. Whatever problems you end up solving on a test/exam in class are artificially simplified so that the test will fit in the time allotted, and the grader won't have to find mistakes in pages of derivations. IIRC, a simple thing such as the Jacobian of the kinematic matrix in a real-life universal industrial manipulator may run a couple of pages when printed out. You can't even copy it by hand without likely making a mistake or two; forget about having to actually derive it -- it's not worth it. Not that it cannot be done, but it's simply not worth it, and it's pointless.
Even taking an elasticity course (again, I was lucky: the course was extremely well prepared, by a great teacher), I could base most of my work on very basic calculus and linear algebra. Knowing how to deal with simple trig functions and polynomials is all it ever took, it seems. Only in numerical methods things got a little more interesting, but then it was still entirely applied and the proof was always in the pudding: either the numerical algorithm worked, or it didn't. Sometimes just proving that it worked was a challenge, and I loved it. A course where getting a 60% grade earned you an A, but then homework was essentially a side job (think 20+ hours per week).
I agree. The calligraphy and the archaic language are just barriers to entry, and can be entirely dispensed with without diminishing the value of the original work. The only use of such obstacles IMHO is to instill the sense of superiority in people who went over such hurdles, for no good reason, really. Those are completely mindless barriers that are well past their prime. Feynman had the rational view of this, and I agree with him:
The next paper selected for me was by Adrian and Bronk. They demonstrated that nerve impulses were sharp, single-pulse phenomena. They had done experiments with cats in which they had measured voltages on nerves.
I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors, the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I hadn't the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the nerves or to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate student who was looking for a "map of the cat."
When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We know all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.
Maybe you should just type everything. These days one can get a tiny inkjet printer like Kodak Diconix (batteries fit into the main roller) for nothing, and the cartridges will last for a while. All you need, then, is a custom app that will position the paper based on your swiping motions, and then print what you need printed. I'm sure it can be done to be at least as effective as any handwriting.
An alternative is to print. If you practice, printed letters can come out pretty quickly.
Cursive is an idealization that has, just like you said, little use because it only exists in the classroom. Noone writes cursive as taught; those who insist write much slower than they otherwise would. Handwritten notes are typically for one's own perusal. For communication with others, one better print or type; when printing capitalization can be had by scaling the letters.
Okee dokee, so assuming 50% fuel cell efficiency, how does the energy cost compare between gasoline and aluminum?
Offtopic rant: I think that aluminum fuel cells won't take off all that easy if the name is already taken. For some reason the racing industry felt an urge to make themselves feel better (IMHO), and borrowed an aviation term (jets typically have wet fuel cells in the wings). If you google for aluminum fuel cells, all you'll find are racing fuel tanks made from aluminum. Sigh:
I know it's kind-of idiotic, especially for academic journals. In a typical journal where they publish any sort of equations, they usually want a press-ready version to be submitted -- say in latex, using their own style file. Whatever the editor usually does is pretty insignificant. It's common that the editor finds nothing wrong and the article gets printed as-is.
As for Shakespeare's plays -- even though they were used only as an example here -- be careful. Old texts often undergo serious editing before being published, and the edited version is quite definitely not in public domain. That's the reason why journal article preprints are usually freely distributed by the authors, while the final, edited and published version would be illegal to distribute. Same goes for translations: even though a translation is a work derived from another work in the public domain, it's still by itself subject to copyright law protection.
I was only giving helium as an example of a gas that's hard to handle. Small molecules => leaks like hell. Hydrogen is of course worse, but helium is no picnic.
I agree. But I'd presume that the fire is less likely to reach the interior if there's a nice hole burned out in the trunk, and the fire shoots straight up. This versus a ruptured gasoline tank that cooks you in a firestorm. I have to locate a video that demonstrates that, I remember seeing it somewhere on the tubes.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I said that "if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank". I was quite precise. Given that a fire and/or explosion is imminent, I want hydrogen in the tank. That's all I said. I spoke nothing about how likely a fuel tank fire/explosion is vs. same for cryo or compressed hydrogen.
Expanding on that: while helium is not flammable, as soon as the cells rupture the helium would have quickly escaped upwards, creating a draft that pulls the air in. If the fabric was in any way flammable, that would spread the fire.
I've read somewhere that the Hundenburg skin wasn't really as flammable as everyone claims (this seems to be a half-myth), although it definitely wasn't non-flammable, nor did it have any flame suppressants added to it.
The nice thing about hydrogen is that if something leaks in your hydrogen-fueled car and there's a fire, it'll hopefully quickly burn through the metal and shoot straight up. Compare that with a gasoline fire that's most likely to spread under the car once the fuel tank ruptures -- you end up well done with a crispy skin to boost. Personally, if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank.
I do agree on all your other points, though -- it's an immense pain in the ass, even worse than helium, and with hydrogen everything seems to be a sieve unless you pay good attention. With helium it's slightly less so AFAIK, even though it's still painful.
This is very, very interesting. Me & my wife have been to U.S. hospitals for surgeries and if something like this had happened, it was very well hidden. Kept secret, almost. With no practical indication of it ever occurring.
A disposable account on Centos5, using firefox. Should be good enough methinks.