That was the most hilarious scientific article I've read in weeks. And it included a Douglas Adams quote! Unfortunately, you're going to have to accept my undying love over mod points.
Some of it might have to do with the relationship between obesity and lack of exercise. When I am on a regular exercise regime, I find myself forced to sleep 7 or 8 hours a night rather than 5 or 6 -- otherwise I feel completely exhausted. Sedentary people may be able to get by on less sleep than the physically active.
Is anyone else having issues with their USB drives failing? I've just had to RMA my Lexarmedia JumpDrive for the second time. I'm not bouncing it off the ground or flushing it down the toilet. It has a keychain hole, I stuck it on my keychain. I'm starting to think I need to keep it in a cool dark place in a crashproof container, which sort of defeats the purpose of it being small and portable.
>The only true pressure a lot of people feel is social
I really think that corporal punishment has gotten a bad rap. What is so evil about it? Now, I'm not advocating that we maim people, or beat the hell out of them for no reason, but the reason we have pain receptors is to warn us that we are doing something which will have a negative impact on our physical bodies. Corporal punishment, in essence, is an attempt to equate damage to society with damage to the self. While it might be difficult to design a system that would not be TOO cruel, I do not find this objective to be objectionable in itself.
>How the frick is this a troll? Sorry to break it to you boys, but this's about the truest thing that's been said in this thread.:P
Exactly how is it true? Starvation in the world as it is today is not a supply problem. We produce plenty of food. Hell, in America we pay farmers NOT to grow food, to keep prices up. Starvation is a distribution problem. How many people die of starvation in developed countries? By eating a steak you are not depriving someone who is starving of food, UNLESS that steak would have otherwise magically appeared in Africa.
I can at least understand the argument that the modern meat production industry is cruel to animals, but the argument that you are adding to world starvation is, I think, not supportable with the available evidence.
>Oh, and those 'Mechs were the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You've got all this metal and
>armor...but none of it is protecting the freaking pilot.
Someone pointed out on Baen's webboard that the sad remnants of humanity might not have the manufacturing capability to build whatever they want. In that case the mechs could have been adapted from cargo handlers, i.e. the future's version of forklifts. Granted, they probably could have found the scrap somewhere to at least make some kind of shrapnel shield.
To make it even more extreme, for his page discussing this case, he states that his main construction material is stained glass, and he's a hemophiliac. Hard core.
Oddly enough, the college Clinic project I worked on last year was an attempt to convert a picture of a two-dimensional pattern to a laser pattern. I can't be too specific since the patent application is still being processed, but you can see a very brief project statement at HMC's Clinic Page (look under Oregon Medical Laser Center) Our main problem was in eliminating distortion, as we were on a limited budget and had to buy a consumer digital camera to take pictures of our sample. Also, none of us had had experience with image processing, so it was a bit of a pain. This plugin seems like it could be very useful for those in the laser marking business, as they won't have to draw extremely complicated 3D objects themselves in order to get the pattern they want to mark -- but they would need to have a 3D model of it.
There was an interesting theory proposed by Larry Niven in "Fallen Angels" (and I think I've seen it elsewhere) that proposed that we are approaching the end of an interglacial period. Several supporting pieces of evidence were provided. One of these was that scientists have detected far fewer neutrinos from the sun than they expected. He suggested that this is because the sun has stopped fusing -- that the reason for ice ages is that the sun periodically loses too much heat to continue the fusion process and that there is a period of sun contraction and cooling before the sun contracts enough to begin fusion again. This is supported by the relatively low sunspot occurrence compared to past history (geologically speaking.) According to the book, the only thing preventing glaciers from sweeping back over the planet is the adjustments to climate begun in the Middle Ages, with current levels of smog and pollution providing "seeds" for rain to form around. Deforestation and the increased albedo of human development adds to this, I seem to remember a past article about cities having their own weather due to the heat absorbed by pavement. It was pretty entertaining, since it made a strong case for ignoring the Greens and polluting to your heart's content -- it's the only thing preventing you from freezing to death!;)
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That was the most hilarious scientific article I've read in weeks. And it included a Douglas Adams quote! Unfortunately, you're going to have to accept my undying love over mod points.
Some of it might have to do with the relationship between obesity and lack of exercise. When I am on a regular exercise regime, I find myself forced to sleep 7 or 8 hours a night rather than 5 or 6 -- otherwise I feel completely exhausted. Sedentary people may be able to get by on less sleep than the physically active.
>if(viscous.meansSameAs("oily") && !viscous.meansSameAs("adhesive")
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Viscous? I would call Verisign's behavior abrasive, not adhesive.
Is anyone else having issues with their USB drives failing? I've just had to RMA my Lexarmedia JumpDrive for the second time. I'm not bouncing it off the ground or flushing it down the toilet. It has a keychain hole, I stuck it on my keychain. I'm starting to think I need to keep it in a cool dark place in a crashproof container, which sort of defeats the purpose of it being small and portable.
>The only true pressure a lot of people feel is social
I really think that corporal punishment has gotten a bad rap. What is so evil about it? Now, I'm not advocating that we maim people, or beat the hell out of them for no reason, but the reason we have pain receptors is to warn us that we are doing something which will have a negative impact on our physical bodies. Corporal punishment, in essence, is an attempt to equate damage to society with damage to the self. While it might be difficult to design a system that would not be TOO cruel, I do not find this objective to be objectionable in itself.
>How the frick is this a troll? Sorry to break it to you boys, but this's about the truest thing that's been said in this thread. :P
Exactly how is it true? Starvation in the world as it is today is not a supply problem. We produce plenty of food. Hell, in America we pay farmers NOT to grow food, to keep prices up. Starvation is a distribution problem. How many people die of starvation in developed countries? By eating a steak you are not depriving someone who is starving of food, UNLESS that steak would have otherwise magically appeared in Africa.
I can at least understand the argument that the modern meat production industry is cruel to animals, but the argument that you are adding to world starvation is, I think, not supportable with the available evidence.
>Oh, and those 'Mechs were the stupidest thing I've ever seen. You've got all this metal and
>armor...but none of it is protecting the freaking pilot.
Someone pointed out on Baen's webboard that the sad remnants of humanity might not have the manufacturing capability to build whatever they want. In that case the mechs could have been adapted from cargo handlers, i.e. the future's version of forklifts. Granted, they probably could have found the scrap somewhere to at least make some kind of shrapnel shield.
To make it even more extreme, for his page discussing this case, he states that his main construction material is stained glass, and he's a hemophiliac. Hard core.
Oddly enough, the college Clinic project I worked on last year was an attempt to convert a picture of a two-dimensional pattern to a laser pattern. I can't be too specific since the patent application is still being processed, but you can see a very brief project statement at HMC's Clinic Page (look under Oregon Medical Laser Center) Our main problem was in eliminating distortion, as we were on a limited budget and had to buy a consumer digital camera to take pictures of our sample. Also, none of us had had experience with image processing, so it was a bit of a pain. This plugin seems like it could be very useful for those in the laser marking business, as they won't have to draw extremely complicated 3D objects themselves in order to get the pattern they want to mark -- but they would need to have a 3D model of it.
There was an interesting theory proposed by Larry Niven in "Fallen Angels" (and I think I've seen it elsewhere) that proposed that we are approaching the end of an interglacial period. Several supporting pieces of evidence were provided. One of these was that scientists have detected far fewer neutrinos from the sun than they expected. He suggested that this is because the sun has stopped fusing -- that the reason for ice ages is that the sun periodically loses too much heat to continue the fusion process and that there is a period of sun contraction and cooling before the sun contracts enough to begin fusion again. This is supported by the relatively low sunspot occurrence compared to past history (geologically speaking.) According to the book, the only thing preventing glaciers from sweeping back over the planet is the adjustments to climate begun in the Middle Ages, with current levels of smog and pollution providing "seeds" for rain to form around. Deforestation and the increased albedo of human development adds to this, I seem to remember a past article about cities having their own weather due to the heat absorbed by pavement. It was pretty entertaining, since it made a strong case for ignoring the Greens and polluting to your heart's content -- it's the only thing preventing you from freezing to death! ;)