I'm a physicist who is very much into the foundational questions surrounding consciousness, and I have to say that I think that GEB is genius, and very much worth reading. In fact in a lot of ways, it is one of the books I've gotten the most out of, and I have always been annoyed by those who 'don't get it.' You just can't expect a book that tackles what GEB does to do so in a linear manner -- that would be like giving up on a zen koan because it makes no sense. Heck, even in the introduction to a recent copy Hofstadter basically laments the fact that most people 'don't get it.' I, for one, think the book is absolutely brilliant and beyond its time, and not because it cutely weaves together so many interesting subjects, but because it communicates deep and compelling insights into the nature of consciousness that few other books have come close to.
They are saying that the top quark is being produced one at a time, rather than in pairs (IAAP). It's actually subtle -- what had been observed before were 2 top quarks emerging from a gluon. Now they have observed one top quark (and another quark) emerging from a W-boson. Basically. This is not a major discovery, but it is another important showing off of the 'standard model' working very well at the energies we have so far probed.
Oh, and about isolating quarks. You cannot isolate a quark outside a hadron, but you can 'detect' the quark by observing the hadrons and leptons that it decays into, since they leave a distinct signature. The top quark is special because it decays before it even forms a hadron with other quarks.
Mediocre review from watchmen virgin
on
Watchmen Watched
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· Score: 1
I'm really surprised by the comments here, because I haven't seen anyone mention the writing. What killed this movie for me was the dialog; by the end of the movie I was blushing in embarrassment at how bad some of it was. Anyone else feel this way? I found the first 20 minutes of the movie extremely compelling (the visuals, the aesthetic, the editing, the cinematography were all fantastic), but as it went on I grew less and less enthused. I followed the plot fine, and although I enjoyed the 'watchmen' universe, I found the plot line that was mainly present in the second half of the movie pretty poor, by movie standards. Another thing I haven't heard anyone mention negatively was the sex scene. I honestly couldn't tell if it was meant to be serious or not -- it seemed so over the top to me that I thought it might be a joke. Overall I give the movie a B+.
One issue I find of merit that I don't see being addressed is the likelihood of ET life ever becoming intelligent. It seems quite possible to me that the universe is brimming with life, but that evolutionary pressures favoring life as intelligent as ours is extremely rare. Perhaps it is common for life to evolve to an intelligence that is, say on average 30 or 40 IQ points lower than ours. Even if an alien race had an average IQ of only 10 points lower than ours, it would impact the rate of technological innovation rather precipitously.
I went to UCSB as an undergrad (BS in physics, math, at the College of Creative Studies), and am now finishing my second year as a grad student in Physics at UW, so if you have any questions regarding your decision I can probably answer them. Feel free to send me a message.
UCSB had really nice weather, and some great parties, and the College of Creative studies is pretty cool, but I have to say I didn't really enjoy the social culture there, and overall I prefer Seattle. Being somewhat of an intellectual I didn't quite get my fill at UCSB. Now, had I been a surfer it might have been a different story...
From the article: "The LHC will reach an unprecedented level of energy called the Terascale (a trillion electron volts [...] This is unexplored territory, not only because no laboratory has ever reached this high..."
The Tevatron (the largest particle accelerator in the USA) has a CM evergy of 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). That, incidentally, is where it gets its name: the TEVatron.
The Ratchet & Clank series' easter eggs are fantastic. You enter a museum with where you can try out all sorts of design elements that didn't make it to the final product. As I recall, one of these Easter egg museums was so large that it had its own Easter Egg.
A violent game is different from violent movies etc in that the player is an active participant in the violance rather than a passive bystander. Part of the argument is that, from a psychological point of view (this has been empirically studied) active participation (ie actually pulling a trigger or pressing the buttons in correlation with an action) has a more profound psychological effect than passively watching the same action.
Now I personally am a complete libertarian when it comes to this issue, and think move/game ratings are absurd, but nonetheless it irks me to see people ignorant of the other side's actual argument.
It seems very likely to me that videogame violence has statistically increased the likelyhood of already troubled people committing violent crime. The point is not that it will turn normal kids into monsters, but that it probabilistically increases violence in already unbalanced people, and, for scientific psychological reasons, does so more strongly than movies and other forms of violent media.
...photographic evidence is no longer trusted? Some of these pictures look so good I cannot tell if they are real or not. Is it possible that in the near future crime scene evidence etc will be untrustworthy?
makes some pretty good audio lectures on music, history, physics, etc.
I am currently listening to the How to Listen to and Understand Great Music lecture series, which is more stimulating than the average intellectual might expect.
Yes but no one has ever tried to make the case that the G4 was competitive with the Pentium. I, for example, own a 1 GHz G4, and an 800 MHz P3. The P3 completely blows the G4 out of the water on every benchmark. And this is a 1 GHz mind you, not a 400 MHz.
"Hardware; 400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM. Supposedly the Harvard architecture of the G4 chip makes this approximately equivalent to an 800 MHz Intel Pentium chip"
Kids do stupid things. I know I did my fair share of stupid things when I was younger. Now I consider myself a highly moral, good standing citizen of society, with great future prospects. But if I had been put in jail for one of the silly things I did when I was younger, my life today would probably be a disaster, and to society's detriment.
Ok so if you take an 'average' between electoral votes and popular votes, it is arguable that 2004 was the closest. Either way my point stands that this was not a 'mandate'.
The point is that while Bush received 62,028,194 votes (the most in history), Kerry received 59,027,612 votes (the second most in history). In other words, while Bush got around 22% of the country, Kerry got around 21% of the country (also more than Clinton).
As far as I can tell, this was the closest presidential race in history, and obviously not a 'mandate.'
That's in your opinion. They don't get away with in my view, because I refuse to consume their product and to become their product.
The point he was making was that the general viewer is deceived. Look at the PIPA studies for instance...
Both of the people you mention are fundamentally pushers of opinion. There is very little in terms of opinion which meets the definition of a lie.
Actually, Bill O'reilly routinely cites 'facts' which turn out to be untrue. Such is a common example of a lie, not an opinion.
On top of all that, you are in fact able to "mod them down". Disregard their opinion, and move on to another source.
An informed individual can "mod them down", but we are talking about millions of people who do not know better, perhaps partly because they have been lied to by the likes of O'Reilly.
You need to celebrate diversity. Diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, and diversity of expression. If you can't accept a point of view, or the person giving it, then ignore that person and move on.
The point that was made was more nuanced than you have given it credit for. You have to admit that there is a problem, even if a purely theoretical one, of when a political block is able to insulate itself in a media of its prefered ideology. I argue that this is the case for conservatives -- they have largely insulated themselves in the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News, and, according to numerous studies and polls, have a severely distorted view of reality (for example believing Iraq perpetrated 911) compared with liberals. For example, liberals have been continually horrified by blatant Bush deceit (aka "Clear Skies Act" etc...), and yet the conservative population seems entirely ignorant of it.
It makes you wonder just how many other stories about ANYTHING were false but buried by these groups.
Ah, but how many stories have been watered down or buried due to pressure due to advertizing or other right-wing corporate conficts of interest? In fact, regardless of journalists' biases, the top-down corporate pressures are intrinsically right wing -- corporations make more money with right-wing tax laws for example, and so have an enormous interest in having Bush become president.
There is a wealth of evidence of the mainstream media moving farther and farther right (although it's pretty obvious when you look at the number of right wing pundits verses left wing), including numerous examples of legitimate stories being buried -- a well documented example is that of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH.
Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
Bill O'Reilly routinely uses false sources, such as when he quoted the 'Paris Review' (he made it up -- it doesn't exist). In fact long lists of his fabrications are listed on numerous websites.
The conservatives keep shouting 'Where is the outrage!??'. Well, I'm hearing the outrage in the media loud and clear, but I'm not hearing any outrage about the adimistration's lies about WMD, NCLB, tax cuts, social security. Where is the patriotic outrage about Bush cutting money to veteran's benefits, hospitals etc? These guys are pathetically hypocritical, and they are milking this for all it's worth, ignoring all the non-memo evidence that still persuasively indicates Bush being AWOL.
By the same logic, one can argue that if the media really is liberal, then this is only an argument in favor of the liberal ideology, given that journalists as a group are far more intelligent and educated and cultured than the average American. The same logic applies to the fact that middle America and the uneducated are conservative, while metropolitan areas and the college educated are (overwhelmingly) liberal.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a physicist who is very much into the foundational questions surrounding consciousness, and I have to say that I think that GEB is genius, and very much worth reading. In fact in a lot of ways, it is one of the books I've gotten the most out of, and I have always been annoyed by those who 'don't get it.' You just can't expect a book that tackles what GEB does to do so in a linear manner -- that would be like giving up on a zen koan because it makes no sense. Heck, even in the introduction to a recent copy Hofstadter basically laments the fact that most people 'don't get it.' I, for one, think the book is absolutely brilliant and beyond its time, and not because it cutely weaves together so many interesting subjects, but because it communicates deep and compelling insights into the nature of consciousness that few other books have come close to.
They are saying that the top quark is being produced one at a time, rather than in pairs (IAAP). It's actually subtle -- what had been observed before were 2 top quarks emerging from a gluon. Now they have observed one top quark (and another quark) emerging from a W-boson. Basically. This is not a major discovery, but it is another important showing off of the 'standard model' working very well at the energies we have so far probed.
Oh, and about isolating quarks. You cannot isolate a quark outside a hadron, but you can 'detect' the quark by observing the hadrons and leptons that it decays into, since they leave a distinct signature. The top quark is special because it decays before it even forms a hadron with other quarks.
I'm really surprised by the comments here, because I haven't seen anyone mention the writing. What killed this movie for me was the dialog; by the end of the movie I was blushing in embarrassment at how bad some of it was. Anyone else feel this way? I found the first 20 minutes of the movie extremely compelling (the visuals, the aesthetic, the editing, the cinematography were all fantastic), but as it went on I grew less and less enthused. I followed the plot fine, and although I enjoyed the 'watchmen' universe, I found the plot line that was mainly present in the second half of the movie pretty poor, by movie standards. Another thing I haven't heard anyone mention negatively was the sex scene. I honestly couldn't tell if it was meant to be serious or not -- it seemed so over the top to me that I thought it might be a joke. Overall I give the movie a B+.
I'd imagine you could put together a rather impressive 10000x10000x10000 cell 3D variation on Conway's game of life.
I put together one of these on my laptop a few years ago and saw some really interesting things (500x500x500 at ~1Hz).
You mean they attenuate at an r^2 rate.
One issue I find of merit that I don't see being addressed is the likelihood of ET life ever becoming intelligent. It seems quite possible to me that the universe is brimming with life, but that evolutionary pressures favoring life as intelligent as ours is extremely rare. Perhaps it is common for life to evolve to an intelligence that is, say on average 30 or 40 IQ points lower than ours. Even if an alien race had an average IQ of only 10 points lower than ours, it would impact the rate of technological innovation rather precipitously.
I went to UCSB as an undergrad (BS in physics, math, at the College of Creative Studies), and am now finishing my second year as a grad student in Physics at UW, so if you have any questions regarding your decision I can probably answer them. Feel free to send me a message.
UCSB had really nice weather, and some great parties, and the College of Creative studies is pretty cool, but I have to say I didn't really enjoy the social culture there, and overall I prefer Seattle. Being somewhat of an intellectual I didn't quite get my fill at UCSB. Now, had I been a surfer it might have been a different story...
From the article:
"The LHC will reach an unprecedented level of energy called the Terascale (a trillion electron volts [...] This is unexplored territory, not only because no laboratory has ever reached this high..."
The Tevatron (the largest particle accelerator in the USA) has a CM evergy of 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). That, incidentally, is where it gets its name: the TEVatron.
The Ratchet & Clank series' easter eggs are fantastic. You enter a museum with where you can try out all sorts of design elements that didn't make it to the final product. As I recall, one of these Easter egg museums was so large that it had its own Easter Egg.
It's kind of annoying that neither you nor anyone on the link you post mention what, exactly, this Easter egg is.
A violent game is different from violent movies etc in that the player is an active participant in the violance rather than a passive bystander. Part of the argument is that, from a psychological point of view (this has been empirically studied) active participation (ie actually pulling a trigger or pressing the buttons in correlation with an action) has a more profound psychological effect than passively watching the same action.
Now I personally am a complete libertarian when it comes to this issue, and think move/game ratings are absurd, but nonetheless it irks me to see people ignorant of the other side's actual argument.
It seems very likely to me that videogame violence has statistically increased the likelyhood of already troubled people committing violent crime. The point is not that it will turn normal kids into monsters, but that it probabilistically increases violence in already unbalanced people, and, for scientific psychological reasons, does so more strongly than movies and other forms of violent media.
But good forgery? Good enough to frame people for murder? Good enough to bribe a politician with?
...photographic evidence is no longer trusted? Some of these pictures look so good I cannot tell if they are real or not. Is it possible that in the near future crime scene evidence etc will be untrustworthy?
To all those lamenting about how untalented this kid is -- can you link to a better played rendition of the Zelda theme, for example?
I, for one, think it's pretty cool to see/hear the Zelda theme played on piano by anybody, let alone by someone halfway decent.
So if there is someone who plays this stuff better, gimme a link. Otherwise shut the hell up.
The Teaching Company
makes some pretty good audio lectures on music, history, physics, etc. I am currently listening to the How to Listen to and Understand Great Music lecture series, which is more stimulating than the average intellectual might expect.Yes but no one has ever tried to make the case that the G4 was competitive with the Pentium. I, for example, own a 1 GHz G4, and an 800 MHz P3. The P3 completely blows the G4 out of the water on every benchmark. And this is a 1 GHz mind you, not a 400 MHz.
Please comment. What am I missing?
From the article:
"Hardware; 400 MHz G4, 256 MB RAM. Supposedly the Harvard architecture of the G4 chip makes this approximately equivalent to an 800 MHz Intel Pentium chip"
Pardon me? What is he talking about?
Kids do stupid things. I know I did my fair share of stupid things when I was younger. Now I consider myself a highly moral, good standing citizen of society, with great future prospects. But if I had been put in jail for one of the silly things I did when I was younger, my life today would probably be a disaster, and to society's detriment.
Ok so if you take an 'average' between electoral votes and popular votes, it is arguable that 2004 was the closest. Either way my point stands that this was not a 'mandate'.
I don't recall Clinton calling it a 'mandate.'
The point is that while Bush received 62,028,194 votes (the most in history), Kerry received 59,027,612 votes (the second most in history). In other words, while Bush got around 22% of the country, Kerry got around 21% of the country (also more than Clinton).
As far as I can tell, this was the closest presidential race in history, and obviously not a 'mandate.'
That's in your opinion. They don't get away with in my view, because I refuse to consume their product and to become their product.
The point he was making was that the general viewer is deceived. Look at the PIPA studies for instance...
Both of the people you mention are fundamentally pushers of opinion. There is very little in terms of opinion which meets the definition of a lie.
Actually, Bill O'reilly routinely cites 'facts' which turn out to be untrue. Such is a common example of a lie, not an opinion.
On top of all that, you are in fact able to "mod them down". Disregard their opinion, and move on to another source.
An informed individual can "mod them down", but we are talking about millions of people who do not know better, perhaps partly because they have been lied to by the likes of O'Reilly.
You need to celebrate diversity. Diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, and diversity of expression. If you can't accept a point of view, or the person giving it, then ignore that person and move on.
The point that was made was more nuanced than you have given it credit for. You have to admit that there is a problem, even if a purely theoretical one, of when a political block is able to insulate itself in a media of its prefered ideology. I argue that this is the case for conservatives -- they have largely insulated themselves in the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News, and, according to numerous studies and polls, have a severely distorted view of reality (for example believing Iraq perpetrated 911) compared with liberals. For example, liberals have been continually horrified by blatant Bush deceit (aka "Clear Skies Act" etc...), and yet the conservative population seems entirely ignorant of it.
Sorry, it's the "Paris Business Review".
http://mediamatters.org/items/200412230006
It makes you wonder just how many other stories about ANYTHING were false but buried by these groups.
Ah, but how many stories have been watered down or buried due to pressure due to advertizing or other right-wing corporate conficts of interest? In fact, regardless of journalists' biases, the top-down corporate pressures are intrinsically right wing -- corporations make more money with right-wing tax laws for example, and so have an enormous interest in having Bush become president.
There is a wealth of evidence of the mainstream media moving farther and farther right (although it's pretty obvious when you look at the number of right wing pundits verses left wing), including numerous examples of legitimate stories being buried -- a well documented example is that of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH.
Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
Bill O'Reilly routinely uses false sources, such as when he quoted the 'Paris Review' (he made it up -- it doesn't exist). In fact long lists of his fabrications are listed on numerous websites.
The conservatives keep shouting 'Where is the outrage!??'.
Well, I'm hearing the outrage in the media loud and clear, but I'm not hearing any outrage about the adimistration's lies about WMD, NCLB, tax cuts, social security. Where is the patriotic outrage about Bush cutting money to veteran's benefits, hospitals etc? These guys are pathetically hypocritical, and they are milking this for all it's worth, ignoring all the non-memo evidence that still persuasively indicates Bush being AWOL.
By the same logic, one can argue that if the media really is liberal, then this is only an argument in favor of the liberal ideology, given that journalists as a group are far more intelligent and educated and cultured than the average American. The same logic applies to the fact that middle America and the uneducated are conservative, while metropolitan areas and the college educated are (overwhelmingly) liberal.