Finally, I have no idea what the remark about chemistry is supposed to mean. Yes, I understand the tremendous amount of knowledge about chemistry that arose from the study of alchemy, but what does that have to do with your argument?
I'm sure that astrologers at one time provided much of the basis of astronomical observation, but I think astrology is ridiculous. Again, so what?
The fact that alternative fuel sources, such as ethenol, require more energy to grow and refine than they produce?
Waste products produced in the production of solar cells and the fact that, even with moderate amounts of scaling up, they are not cost effective?
And, anecdotally, the propensity for many environmental activists to also be credulous believers in pseudo-science. I realize this is a sweeping generalization, but it's hard for me to shake the image of a high percentage of protestors and activists to be crystal waving believers in laughable amounts of New Age BS.
I myself have no problem in balancing contradictory points of view -- I would consider myself to be an environmentalist, but also a rationalist. TANSTAAFL.
The other day I picked up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 from the bargain bin and took it home and installed it on my XP machine.
Took off a flew for a few minutes, then the system locked up -- no Ctrl-Alt-Delete or anything else, just frozen video and no activity.
Rebooted and tried again, a few minutes later, frozen.
Went to the support site to see if there were patches or FAQs about the lockup. Lo and behold, there was one support sheet that said:
Go into winconfig (I think) and set your computer so that no programs or extra services start on reboot. This means: no firewall, no anti-virus, no anything running. I unplug my network and try this and, sure enough, MS FS runs like a champ. Unfortunately, I'm not going to do this to play a $9.95 game, so I keep trying stuff. I went to Microsoft Update and make sure all my service packs and drivers are up-to-date and they are. Then, out of curiosity, I went to my graphic card's site and there is an updated driver. I install it, restore my boot-up to everything that was there before, and flight simulator works fine.
So, with all of the security problems Microsoft has, their free support tells me to disable all network protection on my system in order to play a game when the actual problem was in my video card driver.
At least they didn't tell me to reformat and reinstall Windows.
All true, but it in no way invalidates the grandparent post -- sillier things than that have drawn the ire of environmentalists.
On a more reasonable note, remember that the manufacturing processes for many "green" technologies are themselves polluting and producing dangerous and toxic byproducts.
Yep, I've got a nice printout provided by my fourth grade son's English teacher describing this exact outline.
I will admit that this does give them some form to follow and helps focus their thoughts, as long as they are taught that this isn't the only way to do it. The proper analogy to me is that there are many kinds of poetry forms, but if you are asked to write an Elizabethan sonnet, you have to follow the rules. Therefore, I don't mind the teacher saying you must write a five paragraph expository essay following this form, but I hope she's not saying, "This is the only way to write an essay...".
Oh yeah, the final essay has to be handwritten, but I always tell my son to compose it on the computer (sometimes I type if he is in a hurry), let me (and the computer) proof it for spelling and grammar, then print it out and write it out by hand.
He tends to follow the rules too closely and I have to prompt him to change it around a bit. Most of the time his first draft looks like this:
This is my introductory sentence to get your attention. This is my topic sentence. To support my topic, I will be talking about a, b, and c. They all are important to my topic.
A is very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
B is also very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
Finally, C is very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
This is a restatement of my topic sentence. Remember that a, b, and c are all important to my topic.
Even tho' the poster didn't want to write notes on paper, I'd still have to agree that a Moleskine notebook can't be beat for a travel journal. The elastic band keeps your pages from being bent and trashed in your bag or backpack, you can keep cards and tickets in the inside envelope (mine still has some Paris metro tickets in it) and the paper is nice to write on. Oh yeah, and it has a built-in bookmark.
I just bought my wife one for her trip to Great Britain along with probably the last film camera I will ever buy. She didn't want to bring a laptop, digital camera or large 35mm SLR, batteries, chargers, adapters, etc., so she decided on an old-fashioned notebook and a good film point and shoot pocket zoom camera to travel light.
I, on the other hand, usually approach cyborg status on trips: laptop, PDA, GPSr, digital camera, etc.
I love the metric system, but I learned to use too late and in the middle of a society that refuses to use it, so I *think* in pounds, inches, etc. If I have to work a physics problem, I'd much rather work in metric.
My favorite metric relation (even though it's not strictly true by definition anymore) is the 1 cm**3 of water = 1 ml = 1 gram.
Anyway, my nine year old son was talking to me the other day about a big insect he saw. I asked how big it was and he said, "about 2 centimeters", so maybe there is hope for the future...
Well, I was going to flippantly comment that it is the correct numerical equivalent to writing out the date as, say, "November 5th, 2004", but then I realized that many (non-American) people write "5 November 2004". Do the the people who write it the latter way say "5 November" or "November 5th"?
Absolutely! Very good point. Next time terrorists kill thousands of civilians with a hijacked plane, detonate a bomb and kill civilians, or just decapitate a civilian worker to teach the U.S. military a lesson, we should just give them a big hug and forgive them...
Well, I have only read through about 10% through the comments and someone else will probably have already posted this, but it is trivial to (a) buy a song on iTunes, (b) burn it to CD-RW, (c) re-rip the song to MP3/OGG/Whatever, (d) do whatever you want with the song (for me, it is playing it on my non-iPod MP3 player).
I assume this is a "don't ask, don't tell" situation with Apple and the record companies -- they are selling protected songs with all of these good sounding (to them) safeguards on licensing, limited computer use, limited burns of playlists, etc., but, in reality, with one extra unauthorized step, they might as well be selling unprotected "raw bits".
For my part, I like it. I said for years that if I could buy a legal digitial song for $1 (with no protection), then I would never really have the urge to get any by other means and I have stuck with it. Since I signed up with iTunes, that (and the purchase of two CD's that were (a) on sale, and (b) not available yet on iTunes) is the only way I have obtained music.
Actually, I'm not sure if I would have appreciated the style and requirements of Pascal and C if I had not been programming in Basic for nearly 10 years before I got to college.
I had been using it long enough to hate the quirks and gotchas and I was ready for something better.
The TRS-80 Model 1 4K was my first computer. Then I got Level II basic. Then I got 16K of memory (woo hoo!). Then I got a C-64. Then I went to college.
A whole off-topic subthread and I'll probably be the one who gets moderated as "off-topic" but...
I really like Picasso, but I liked him even more when I found a few early works of his in an exhibition of impressionism. These were some beautiful, realistic landscapes. I realized then that he had worked and mastered the background arts of painting before venturing off into his own style and it gave me more respect for him.
Likewise, no matter how interesting Finnegans Wake is to the three people who have read it all the way through (and I'm not one of them), I would have a hard time respecting Joyce even for Ulysses if it wasn't for the fact that the stories in The Dubliners are traditional and wonderful.
Any angst ridden person with a good vocabulary can write blank verse that just might be cryptic enough to impress the literati, but can they also write a sonnet?
It's been nearly a year since I bought a PC game at full initial MSRP. Following the pattern illustrated above, I've decided that if I wait for, say, six months, that $49.95 game will be in a bargain bin for $19.99 or even $9.99.
I have bought several PS2 games in the same period. A few of them were "Greatest Hits" at $19.99, but some were ~$50.
I often fly through Atlanta when travelling and the flight from Huntsville (where I live) to Atlanta is about 35 minutes gate-to-gate (~20-25 minutes in the air).
I am always amazed at the type-A people who have their finger poised over the power button when the wheels hit the ground so they can get on the phone to talk business.
I'm not talking about the worried flyers who call their wife/mom/kids/whoever to say they've arrived safely, but the big deal makers suffering cell phone withdrawal after 30 minutes disconnection. These are usually the same people who have packed for a four day trip in oversized carry-on luggage because checking a bag would take too much time and they jump to their feet as the plane taxis up to the gate and grab their bags as if that is going to get them off the damned plane any quicker.
Sorry, had to rant (and I'm flying this weekend and already dreading it).
But, presumably if I worked in New Hampshire and signed such an agreement, then used a chat client while at work to chat with someone else (I'll even be good enough to say that the other person is in New Hamphire and so is the server), if the company saves and monitors my chat, it is still only a one party approval since the people I am chatting with have no idea and no consent to be "recorded".
Of course, remember that when D&D started the emphasis was role playing GAME not ROLE PLAYING game. The game was to see how long your character survived and how powerful it got while pretty much just going on dungeon crawls, killing monsters, and collecting treasure (like Nethack -- an yes, I realize hack, nethack, rogue, etc. were based on D&D, that is my point, they are based on the original concept of D&D).
For the game aspect to work, you had to stick to the rules, accept the random die rolls, and accept that your character might die for weird reasons.
As players became more interested in the characters and the world building than in doing cliched dungeon crawls, the rules started getting the way and/or becoming more and more complicated to handle an increasing multitude of character skills and attributes. The two extremes of this are the D&D/d20 and GURPS systems with dozens of book and the super simple systems like Fudge. I'm not sure where the diceless systems fit it as I have not read the Amber rulebooks.
I really like GURPS and I've read the d20 stuff and it seems OK, too. However, I'm either too old or too spoiled by computer games to invest the time to become a rules expect with either system. I am glad the new GURPS edition is rolling in the compendiums and vehicle rules and getting back to a one book plus any world books you want system.
Back in the day when I played a lot of RPGs (paper/pencil/dice ones), our core group of players got so fed up with the basic flaw of most systems -- the easy to manage ones weren't realistic and the realistic ones were unmanageable.
We had a big Traveler campaign going and we all were dedicated to the story and characters (in other words, we weren't munchkins or rule's min-maxers) so we decided on a basic system:
1) we would keep the characters and settings were were using 2) as in an action movie franchise, the main characters weren't going to die unless they did something *really* stupid or *really* heroic. They might fail, get hurt, get maimed, etc., but they weren't going to die from a bad roll. 3) when something fell to chance, we used percentile dice (d100) and came up with a quick and agreeable chance of success and rolled for it. The players and the GM pretty much made up the results based on how good or bad the result was.
Until we scattered around and got married and stuff, it was the most fun we ever had role playing.
Well, *I* got the idea from watching Beakman's World. I can't find the e-mail (it's been a long time), but I received a mail from Jok Church, the guy who created Beakman's World, and he told me that the design originated back in the 1950's and that variations had been published in different places. This was in response to whether I could post the instructions on the web or not. The general consensus was that it was essentially in the public domain and that he didn't mind me posting it as long as I attributed it to the BW TV show (which I did).
I've had a lot of people over the years e-mail me saying that they built a similar motor years before (1950s and 60s). I'll see if I can plow through my old e-mail and guestbook pages and find a better source.
I have some books from my childhood that have plans for motors, but they were much more complicated. I was impressed with this one because I watched the show one Saturday morning with my kids and about 30 minutes later I had the motor running. The only "exotic" component was the enameled wire and I had several spools of it in my electronics junk drawer.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I shouldn't have said or agreed with the term, "environmentalist wackos", as if all were. So no, I don't agree with Rush Limbaugh.
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Here are some citations about toxic chemicals in solar cell production. Granted, there are toxic chemicals used in almost any manufacturing process.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/man_pro_implicat
http://www.pv.bnl.gov/art_168.pdf
Here are a few articles about the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of ethanol production:
http://www.fcpp.org/publication_detail.php?PubID=
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031128.html
From the sci.skeptic FAQ, here is a definition of "New Age" beliefs (so I am not the only one who associates the two):
http://home.xnet.com/~blatura/skep_7.html
Finally, I have no idea what the remark about chemistry is supposed to mean. Yes, I understand the tremendous amount of knowledge about chemistry that arose from the study of alchemy, but what does that have to do with your argument?
I'm sure that astrologers at one time provided much of the basis of astronomical observation, but I think astrology is ridiculous. Again, so what?
The fact that alternative fuel sources, such as ethenol, require more energy to grow and refine than they produce?
Waste products produced in the production of solar cells and the fact that, even with moderate amounts of scaling up, they are not cost effective?
And, anecdotally, the propensity for many environmental activists to also be credulous believers in pseudo-science. I realize this is a sweeping generalization, but it's hard for me to shake the image of a high percentage of protestors and activists to be crystal waving believers in laughable amounts of New Age BS.
I myself have no problem in balancing contradictory points of view -- I would consider myself to be an environmentalist, but also a rationalist. TANSTAAFL.
The other day I picked up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 from the bargain bin and took it home and installed it on my XP machine.
Took off a flew for a few minutes, then the system locked up -- no Ctrl-Alt-Delete or anything else, just frozen video and no activity.
Rebooted and tried again, a few minutes later, frozen.
Went to the support site to see if there were patches or FAQs about the lockup. Lo and behold, there was one support sheet that said:
Go into winconfig (I think) and set your computer so that no programs or extra services start on reboot. This means: no firewall, no anti-virus, no anything running. I unplug my network and try this and, sure enough, MS FS runs like a champ. Unfortunately, I'm not going to do this to play a $9.95 game, so I keep trying stuff. I went to Microsoft Update and make sure all my service packs and drivers are up-to-date and they are. Then, out of curiosity, I went to my graphic card's site and there is an updated driver. I install it, restore my boot-up to everything that was there before, and flight simulator works fine.
So, with all of the security problems Microsoft has, their free support tells me to disable all network protection on my system in order to play a game when the actual problem was in my video card driver.
At least they didn't tell me to reformat and reinstall Windows.
All true, but it in no way invalidates the grandparent post -- sillier things than that have drawn the ire of environmentalists.
On a more reasonable note, remember that the manufacturing processes for many "green" technologies are themselves polluting and producing dangerous and toxic byproducts.
Yep, I've got a nice printout provided by my fourth grade son's English teacher describing this exact outline.
I will admit that this does give them some form to follow and helps focus their thoughts, as long as they are taught that this isn't the only way to do it. The proper analogy to me is that there are many kinds of poetry forms, but if you are asked to write an Elizabethan sonnet, you have to follow the rules. Therefore, I don't mind the teacher saying you must write a five paragraph expository essay following this form, but I hope she's not saying, "This is the only way to write an essay...".
Oh yeah, the final essay has to be handwritten, but I always tell my son to compose it on the computer (sometimes I type if he is in a hurry), let me (and the computer) proof it for spelling and grammar, then print it out and write it out by hand.
He tends to follow the rules too closely and I have to prompt him to change it around a bit. Most of the time his first draft looks like this:
This is my introductory sentence to get your attention. This is my topic sentence. To support my topic, I will be talking about a, b, and c. They all are important to my topic.
A is very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
B is also very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
Finally, C is very important. Reason 1. Reason 2. Reason 3.
This is a restatement of my topic sentence. Remember that a, b, and c are all important to my topic.
Even tho' the poster didn't want to write notes on paper, I'd still have to agree that a Moleskine notebook can't be beat for a travel journal. The elastic band keeps your pages from being bent and trashed in your bag or backpack, you can keep cards and tickets in the inside envelope (mine still has some Paris metro tickets in it) and the paper is nice to write on. Oh yeah, and it has a built-in bookmark.
I just bought my wife one for her trip to Great Britain along with probably the last film camera I will ever buy. She didn't want to bring a laptop, digital camera or large 35mm SLR, batteries, chargers, adapters, etc., so she decided on an old-fashioned notebook and a good film point and shoot pocket zoom camera to travel light.
I, on the other hand, usually approach cyborg status on trips: laptop, PDA, GPSr, digital camera, etc.
I love the metric system, but I learned to use too late and in the middle of a society that refuses to use it, so I *think* in pounds, inches, etc. If I have to work a physics problem, I'd much rather work in metric.
My favorite metric relation (even though it's not strictly true by definition anymore) is the 1 cm**3 of water = 1 ml = 1 gram.
Anyway, my nine year old son was talking to me the other day about a big insect he saw. I asked how big it was and he said, "about 2 centimeters", so maybe there is hope for the future...
Interesting.
Of course, the American way (which I use, but admit is faulty) is only ambiguous for the first 12 days of the month...
Well, I was going to flippantly comment that it is the correct numerical equivalent to writing out the date as, say, "November 5th, 2004", but then I realized that many (non-American) people write "5 November 2004". Do the the people who write it the latter way say "5 November" or "November 5th"?
Absolutely! Very good point. Next time terrorists kill thousands of civilians with a hijacked plane, detonate a bomb and kill civilians, or just decapitate a civilian worker to teach the U.S. military a lesson, we should just give them a big hug and forgive them...
Well, I have only read through about 10% through the comments and someone else will probably have already posted this, but it is trivial to (a) buy a song on iTunes, (b) burn it to CD-RW, (c) re-rip the song to MP3/OGG/Whatever, (d) do whatever you want with the song (for me, it is playing it on my non-iPod MP3 player).
I assume this is a "don't ask, don't tell" situation with Apple and the record companies -- they are selling protected songs with all of these good sounding (to them) safeguards on licensing, limited computer use, limited burns of playlists, etc., but, in reality, with one extra unauthorized step, they might as well be selling unprotected "raw bits".
For my part, I like it. I said for years that if I could buy a legal digitial song for $1 (with no protection), then I would never really have the urge to get any by other means and I have stuck with it. Since I signed up with iTunes, that (and the purchase of two CD's that were (a) on sale, and (b) not available yet on iTunes) is the only way I have obtained music.
I did learn some 6502 assembler prior to college due to lack of power available in the C-64 basic language.
Actually, I'm not sure if I would have appreciated the style and requirements of Pascal and C if I had not been programming in Basic for nearly 10 years before I got to college.
I had been using it long enough to hate the quirks and gotchas and I was ready for something better.
The TRS-80 Model 1 4K was my first computer. Then I got Level II basic. Then I got 16K of memory (woo hoo!). Then I got a C-64. Then I went to college.
A whole off-topic subthread and I'll probably be the one who gets moderated as "off-topic" but...
I really like Picasso, but I liked him even more when I found a few early works of his in an exhibition of impressionism. These were some beautiful, realistic landscapes. I realized then that he had worked and mastered the background arts of painting before venturing off into his own style and it gave me more respect for him.
Likewise, no matter how interesting Finnegans Wake is to the three people who have read it all the way through (and I'm not one of them), I would have a hard time respecting Joyce even for Ulysses if it wasn't for the fact that the stories in The Dubliners are traditional and wonderful.
Any angst ridden person with a good vocabulary can write blank verse that just might be cryptic enough to impress the literati, but can they also write a sonnet?
"He who would use a pun would pick a pocket."
It's been nearly a year since I bought a PC game at full initial MSRP. Following the pattern illustrated above, I've decided that if I wait for, say, six months, that $49.95 game will be in a bargain bin for $19.99 or even $9.99.
I have bought several PS2 games in the same period. A few of them were "Greatest Hits" at $19.99, but some were ~$50.
I wouldn't know whether it was slashdotted or not, my company's web filter blocked it as "porn"
I often fly through Atlanta when travelling and the flight from Huntsville (where I live) to Atlanta is about 35 minutes gate-to-gate (~20-25 minutes in the air).
I am always amazed at the type-A people who have their finger poised over the power button when the wheels hit the ground so they can get on the phone to talk business.
I'm not talking about the worried flyers who call their wife/mom/kids/whoever to say they've arrived safely, but the big deal makers suffering cell phone withdrawal after 30 minutes disconnection. These are usually the same people who have packed for a four day trip in oversized carry-on luggage because checking a bag would take too much time and they jump to their feet as the plane taxis up to the gate and grab their bags as if that is going to get them off the damned plane any quicker.
Sorry, had to rant (and I'm flying this weekend and already dreading it).
But, presumably if I worked in New Hampshire and signed such an agreement, then used a chat client while at work to chat with someone else (I'll even be good enough to say that the other person is in New Hamphire and so is the server), if the company saves and monitors my chat, it is still only a one party approval since the people I am chatting with have no idea and no consent to be "recorded".
That's about 2.99 games more than I would be able to get my wife to play...
Of course, remember that when D&D started the emphasis was role playing GAME not ROLE PLAYING game. The game was to see how long your character survived and how powerful it got while pretty much just going on dungeon crawls, killing monsters, and collecting treasure (like Nethack -- an yes, I realize hack, nethack, rogue, etc. were based on D&D, that is my point, they are based on the original concept of D&D).
For the game aspect to work, you had to stick to the rules, accept the random die rolls, and accept that your character might die for weird reasons.
As players became more interested in the characters and the world building than in doing cliched dungeon crawls, the rules started getting the way and/or becoming more and more complicated to handle an increasing multitude of character skills and attributes. The two extremes of this are the D&D/d20 and GURPS systems with dozens of book and the super simple systems like Fudge. I'm not sure where the diceless systems fit it as I have not read the Amber rulebooks.
I really like GURPS and I've read the d20 stuff and it seems OK, too. However, I'm either too old or too spoiled by computer games to invest the time to become a rules expect with either system. I am glad the new GURPS edition is rolling in the compendiums and vehicle rules and getting back to a one book plus any world books you want system.
Back in the day when I played a lot of RPGs (paper/pencil/dice ones), our core group of players got so fed up with the basic flaw of most systems -- the easy to manage ones weren't realistic and the realistic ones were unmanageable.
We had a big Traveler campaign going and we all were dedicated to the story and characters (in other words, we weren't munchkins or rule's min-maxers) so we decided on a basic system:
1) we would keep the characters and settings were were using
2) as in an action movie franchise, the main characters weren't going to die unless they did something *really* stupid or *really* heroic. They might fail, get hurt, get maimed, etc., but they weren't going to die from a bad roll.
3) when something fell to chance, we used percentile dice (d100) and came up with a quick and agreeable chance of success and rolled for it. The players and the GM pretty much made up the results based on how good or bad the result was.
Until we scattered around and got married and stuff, it was the most fun we ever had role playing.
As others have suggested, get a nice fountain pen -- you have to concentrate a bit more to use it, so there is less of a tendency to slop things down.
Keep a handwritten journal -- it ain't as much fun as a blog, but it keeps you in practice.
It didn't help my cursive, but taking a "manual" engineering drawing course certainly helped my printing quite a bit.
Woody Allen:
I took the Evelyn Wood speed reading course. I read War and Peace in 15 minutes. It was about Russia.
Well, *I* got the idea from watching Beakman's World. I can't find the e-mail (it's been a long time), but I received a mail from Jok Church, the guy who created Beakman's World, and he told me that the design originated back in the 1950's and that variations had been published in different places. This was in response to whether I could post the instructions on the web or not. The general consensus was that it was essentially in the public domain and that he didn't mind me posting it as long as I attributed it to the BW TV show (which I did).
I've had a lot of people over the years e-mail me saying that they built a similar motor years before (1950s and 60s). I'll see if I can plow through my old e-mail and guestbook pages and find a better source.
I have some books from my childhood that have plans for motors, but they were much more complicated. I was impressed with this one because I watched the show one Saturday morning with my kids and about 30 minutes later I had the motor running. The only "exotic" component was the enameled wire and I had several spools of it in my electronics junk drawer.