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User: MillionthMonkey

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  1. Re:... How can they even watch the internet? on Twitter Yanks Ads UK Activists Say Could Trigger Seizures · · Score: 2

    I had occipital lobe epilepsy (i.e. in the visual cortex), and while seizures began with visual hallucinations, I was never susceptible to flashing lights. There was no response to them even on an EEG.

    The strangest case of a trigger I ever heard was the woman who had seizures every time she heard the voice of Mary Hart on Entertainment Tonight.

  2. Re:Solar *activity* not *output* on Double-Dynamo Model Predicts 60% Fall In Solar Output In The 2030s · · Score: 3

    Can you imagine solar irradiance falling by 60% over 30 years?

    Radiance is proportional to the fourth power of temperature. That's a huge dependence, so timothy and sycodon have got that going for them. Even so, we know the temperature of the photosphere is 5777 K. Since 5777 * (1 - sqrt(sqrt(1-0.6))) / (2030 - 2015) = 80, that implies an 80 degree drop every year across the entire sun, which would have been noticed a long time ago.

    These two are skeptical that Earth's atmosphere might be several degrees warmer decades from now, and they're ready to back that up with a claim that the sun's entire atmosphere is cooling down 80 degrees every year.

    And they cite a paper that didn't imply that at all. What are these guys smoking?

  3. Re:Solar *activity* not *output* on Double-Dynamo Model Predicts 60% Fall In Solar Output In The 2030s · · Score: 1

    The article is in conflict with the liberal agenda and therefore must be wrong. That's how modern science seems to be working.

    Uh, your very argument is a prime example of how modern politics seems to be working.

  4. Re:Let me guess. on Double-Dynamo Model Predicts 60% Fall In Solar Output In The 2030s · · Score: 4, Insightful
    OK, I looked into it a bit longer than sycodon and timothy apparently did, and I take that back. It doesn't appear that Valentina Zharkova is being funded by the Koch brothers or anything like that. Rather, these two misinterpreted her work to suggest that a 60% fall in magnetic solar activity means the sun's brightness will fall by 60%. Which is somewhat ironic for the following reasons-
    1. The sun actually gets slightly brighter when solar magnetic activity falls, because of the lack of sunspots.
    2. Carbon dioxide has an atmospheric half-life of about 10,000 years, so a "60% fall in solar output" over a timescale of decades won't mean much for long.
    3. The core isn't powering down (which would take approx. one million years to become evident at the surface, because the radiosphere is fully ionized and doesn't undergo convection, which means photons reach the radiopause via a random walk process). Any variation in solar output will be tempered by the stability of the heat entering the convective zone.
    4. A fall in solar output by 60% would guarantee a following rise afterwards, because of the conservation of energy, and ignoring a rise in CO2 for this reason would eventually backfire.

    So this is probably decent research, but unfortunately every right wing nut job out there is going to desperately sink their fingernails into this and deny that rising CO2 is a problem. From reading the comments of the submitter, it doesn't seem that we're dealing with a scientific genius here.

  5. Re:Let me guess. on Double-Dynamo Model Predicts 60% Fall In Solar Output In The 2030s · · Score: 1

    Of course it was. It was posted by timothy.

  6. Re:Paranoia on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    It is more stable when wet than when dry, but I observed some going off, all by itself, in the bottom of a beaker of water sitting on my bookshelf.

    Water may blunt the physical shocks, but it isn't stable under water- it has to remain under an ammonia solution. I suspect it forms some sort of NI3-NH3 complex. Pure water will abscond with most of the ammonia. When it dries out on a paper towel, I think it's the ammonia evaporating that causes the sensitivity, not the water. (Like I said, good information on this crap is hard to find... most of the research on it is done by teenagers, not chemists.)

  7. Re:Paranoia on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 2

    It seems pretty stable if you keep it under ammonia. In fact I had some in a bottle of ammonia for a few weeks. I uncovered it later and was really surprised- the black powder had undergone some sort of metamorphosis into these large bright orange opaque crystals, kind of pretty looking actually. I still don't know what that stuff was; and never found any information ever since. I guess people don't do much research into nitrogen triiodide.

  8. Re:Paranoia on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Vitamin C is a reducing agent and makes a pretty good explosive if you have an oxidizer, even a mild one like a nitrate salt. It has an electron pair that it's dying to get rid of.
    I used to make nitrogen triiodide out of iodine and ammonia. In an excess of ammonia it seemed pretty stable, but once the stuff dries out, a feather can make it detonate. I'd leave a soaked paper towel in front of some other kid's house, run off, and once it dried... kaboom! So of course, I spilled it on my shirt once, and the crystals were already going snap-crackle-pop before I could take it off. I remember my mother asking why my shirt was making such a racket.

  9. Bwahahaha! on Avira Wins Case Upholding Its Right To Block Adware · · Score: 0

    Screw you, SourceForge!

  10. Re:Coming to a neck near you ... on NIST Workshop Explores Automated Tattoo Identification · · Score: 1

    Just put a QR code on your arm that looks like Jesus.

  11. The worst reviews on Amazon on Amazon Overhauling Customer Reviews · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I have to give this book one star because I ordered it and it never arrived on time even though Amazon said it left the facility six days before it was supposed to get here!"

    "This book is typical LIBTARD crap and if you buy it you're a stupid egghead."

    "I haven't read a book in five years so when this book came out I decided to buy it. This isn't the book I thought I was ordering, this is crap written by a different guy with a similar name! Buyer beware!"

    Is it really that hard to get a computer to pick these out?

  12. Re:Nuclear Power? on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing the people who lauched it didn't anticipate that it would land in a cave on a comet when they were deciding whether to go with off-the-shelf solar panels or a brick of strontium-90- which is pretty expensive stuff.

  13. Re:Two questions need to be asked on Report: Russia and China Crack Encrypted Snowden Files · · Score: 1

    Because he is the one that arrogantly ignored the democratic process, stole a massive store of intelligence documents, incompetently encrypted them, and made them available for friend and foe alike, and then fled to be among Americas adversaries. Surely you must see some room for assigning culpability to him?

    Our own government "ignored the democratic process". Even the author of the Patriot Act says the NSA is abusing the law by collecting (i.e. stealing) such a large amount of their citizens' private information.

    The NSA didn't make the documents available to China and Russia. Snowden did.

    You're overlooking the fact that the NSA and its allies are the ones who made Snowden available to Russia in the first place.

    You mean the copies of the phone records of many, but not all, Americans? That was repeatedly authorized, including by courts.

    Once again, I refer you to the author of the Patriot Act, who says: "No public court has ever upheld document collection that is remotely close to the dragnet at issue. . . . The administration therefore admits that its bulk collection is unprecedented."

    CONGRESS. Snowden could have gone to CONGRESS. He didn't.

    If he was that naive, he'd be spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement, and we'd still be in the dark.

  14. Re:Did they have an engineer check the statics? on 3D Printed Steel Pedestrian Bridge Will Soon Span an Amsterdam Canal · · Score: 1

    I just hope they have a good QA department examine the .STL file for the bridge and find any unanticipated flaws.

  15. Re:they're not "photovoltaic sails" on LightSail Wakes Up After Silent Spell and Tries To Spread Solar Sails · · Score: 1

    Although you do still get 50% of the force from sunlight hitting a dark PV cell as opposed to being reflected. Probably not a big factor here, though.

  16. Re:Dual outages on LightSail Wakes Up After Silent Spell and Tries To Spread Solar Sails · · Score: 2

    I'm wondering if a solar sail could still work after having an Ask toolbar install itself across the top. Can the information coming back from the sail be used at all if it's being proxied through binkiland.com?

  17. Re:This should be a major embarrassment on LightSail Wakes Up After Silent Spell and Tries To Spread Solar Sails · · Score: 1

    Bill! Bill Nye! Is this you? Big fan!

  18. Re: What... on American Pharoah Overcomes Biology To Win Triple Crown · · Score: 1

    Exactly. I don't come here to read about horses! I'm more interested in Chinese doctors doing head transplants on mice!

  19. Re:Huh? on Why Apple and Google Made Their Own Programming Languages · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OTOH, it's easier to retain employees who only know "your" language.

  20. Anorgasmia on Hacking Your Body Through a Nerve In Your Neck · · Score: 2

    I heard a story about a nun who had anorgasmia- meaning she couldn't experience pleasure of any sort (not just sexual). Someone did VNS surgery on her and had the implant send pulses to her pleasure center. That produced major changes- she was super happy, quit being a nun, decided to become a prostitute, and went to Venezuela(?). Eventually her pleasure center couldn't take being hammered by electricity anymore and she started to find it annoying. Eventually she had them remove it.

  21. Re:Pfff amature on Professional Internet Troll Sues Her Former Employer · · Score: 3, Funny

    You misspelled "armature".

  22. Re:Drones!11!one!1!oneone!1!uno!1!!! on Hydrogen-Powered Drone Can Fly For 4 Hours at a Time · · Score: 2

    Hydrogen gas was used by the Nazis too...

  23. Global warming on Ice Loss In West Antarctica Is Speeding Up · · Score: 1

    "Climate change" is a term that fell into vogue after focus group studies discovered that people would worry less about "climate change" than "global warming". Can we call you a "Global Warming Denialist" instead?

  24. Re:Good to see the FCC at least considered it. on FCC Tosses Petition Challenging Its New Internet Regulations · · Score: 1

    This is how a corporation goes to heaven: First a hedge fund manager takes out a short term high interest loan from a bank through a shell corporation, then approaches the corporation's executive management and proposes [...insert references to stuff that sounds illegal but still boring as hell...] ... and since he's the first in line to get paid, he takes his management fees out and walks away with 10% of the initial loan value after the corporation has laid everyone off and entered the afterlife.

  25. Re:It's the same old lies from these H1B advocates on FWD.us To Laid-Off Southern California Edison Workers: Boo-Hoo · · Score: 1

    Everybody wants cheaper stuff. Are you ashamed of yourself when buying a cheaper consumer article ?

    Were slaveowners ashamed of themselves for getting free labor? Probably not, but being "ashamed of yourself" isn't really a relevant question to pose to people who are proud of what they did.