No one uses people movers at this point. There was one city in China that was looking into it years ago, but I doubt they did much about it. Never heard anything afterward.
The major downside to monorails is cost per mile. Sometimes I wonder if a system of gondolas (like at the zoo, Six Flags, etc.) would work better and be cheaper. It would definitely look cool.:)
Actually, what we have is "commuter rail", not light rail which runs on city streets. A comprehensive light rail plan was defeated in 2000. I personally voted against it because they essentially would have shut down Guadalupe for 10 years while they built the thing. I also have a hard time seeing how just having rail downtown will get people off our two major arteries, Mopac and I-35. There is a light rail plan floating around right now involving the airport, but its chances of making it to the November ballot as any-rail-now advocates would have it is slim and none. Even local liberal Sen. Watson is against that early a vote.
Back to commuter rail, the point of having the commuter rail start in Leander is to get those folks off of 183/183A and Mopac. You are correct that as of today, there are not that many people there. However, Leander is building a 2300 acre "transit-oriented development" near the rail to entice folks to ride. So, you could live in the burbs and get downtown in a reasonable amount of time (45 minutes vs 90). People are going to keep moving to Leander, Cedar Park, etc., NO MATTER WHAT. But it would be nice to keep them off Mopac, etc.
I live in NW Austin and I am going to give rail a shot. One kicker is they haven't said how much fares will cost yet. -l
P.s., personally, I love people-mover technology. You drive a munchkin car. It gets slurped up into a fast (70mph) rail line. You tell it where you want off, and it spits out your car onto your exit. There are a lot of moving parts, though, and I don't think engineering-wise it'll ever be feasible.
Subdivisions and planned communities are precisely the problem.
Depends on the plan. Here in Austin, TX, mixed-use planned communities are all the rage now. My only issue is that they don't seem to account for condo dwellers being interested in gardening. Worse, we just lost the Sunshine Community Garden to developers. This was a decent size garden used by a lot of people who lived north central. It's going to be replaced by another building.
Back to the point, you can make your residential areas have destinations included in them (retail, commercial, light industrial). They don't have to be vast tracts of houses. But your city council has to be on board with it and intentionally trying to direct development that way.
Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?
These large earth-finder telescopes are all being proposed for Lagrange points, not LEO. However, I do wonder how big the fudge factor is for being sufficiently close to the Lagrange. E.g., if these satellites are both +/- 15km with the actual point in the middle, will the shearing effects of gravity be too much for attitude correction for such a sensitive scope?
Hell, my brother's master's thesis (engineering) involves modeling the lungs and he ended up doing it in Fortran because the math libraries he needed to use were written in Fortran and he didn't want to bother with wrapper code. So there ya go. 2008 and Fortran is still being written.
-l
Re:would eBay sell craigslist on eBay or craigslis
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I noticed that after the fact and commented to my own comment, but since slashdot doesn't allow you to delete your comments, it's stuck.
-l
Re:would eBay sell craigslist on eBay or craigslis
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There is another comment that explains how they got their shares. -l
Re:would eBay sell craigslist on eBay or craigslis
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I withdraw my comment as Craigslist is not a public company. D'oh.
-l
Re:would eBay sell craigslist on eBay or craigslis
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Hostile takeover. Ebay files the lawsuit to devalue the shares. Then, Ebay buys up more and more shares to have greater control over an eventual vote. Ebay tenders an offer for Craigslist. Since it owns more, it can influence the shareholder vote more significantly. Ebay wins the auction (ha) and cancels the lawsuit.
It says that they do not roast on demand because the beans need time to "cool and out-gas". I haven't done my own roasting before, so I was wondering how necessary that really is. If it's just dangerous gases to worry about (??), why not use suction to draw them away? Is there a way to speed up the cooling process, assuming it's really necessary?
You're pretty close, actually. Mathematics is a language. I would call it the language of thought, not the language of physics. From what I know about the mind, math models it more closely than any other language.
I must note that that is a philosophical claim. At least with calling it the language of science or physics you could have said that physical models demonstrate coherence with math.
Your base assumption is that math and philosophy are closely related, which is why you mention them side-by-side in every other sentence. I don't think I can bridge that fundamental difference. To me that difference lies in the very fact of expression. If math is a language, but philosophers write in english, german, french, etc. - then these two subjects are pretty far apart.
That last sentence doesn't make any sense. Is there a word missing? It sounds like you are claiming that "Math is a language. Philosophers write in languages. Therefore, they're different.".
I suggest taking a logic class or reading a book on it. The history of logic is clearly:
Plato & Aristotle
rediscovery of Plato & Aristotle
Medieval and Middle Age development of logic
concerns that math is illogical
attempt to ground math on first order logic
set theory
partial failure of grounding math in logic
Attempts to axiomitize language and thought
The history of math is:
Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid
Rediscovery of Greeks
Medieval and Middle Age development of math
concerns that math may be inconsistent or worse unsound
Attempts to axiomitize math
Attempt to ground axioms in first order logic
Set theory
Partial failure of grounding math in logic
Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of Plato, either. He gets read cause he was there and his writings are available. That's about it. I will note that there are a number of mathematicians who are platonists, even today, who believe even strange mathematical concepts are objects in the universe.
I think the problem is that you see the problem-space of philosophy as "not math" and include logic within the confines of mathematics. Historically, this is erroneous as both developed simultaneously, with cross-pollination, and the logic-centered portion of philosophy has always been considered part of philosophy. All mathematical foundations leverage logic developed by philosophers for proofs. For example, the axiom of choice.
There is a cadre of philosophers interested in stealing the love of wisdom back from the morons. I'm just saying you shouldn't discount legitimate contributions and people who are interested in serious contributions (cognitive science, for example).
As long as philosophy is seen as a bullshit degree that stoners take, though, it will never receive the accolades it deserves for its contributions. (Attention stoners: chemistry is far better cause you can make your own drugs).
Then what is mathematics? If one says "it is the language of science" or "it is the language of the universe", one restricts mathematics in a way that mathematicians by and large do not. Mathematicians use math to describe metaphysical and non-physical properties all the time, neither of which are the proper domain of science. Cosmology is a good example of using metaphysical modeling to predict physical results. The cosmologist asks, "If there are 10 dimensions, what physical phenomena could we observe?" Philosophy and mathematics provide the tools to ask the question and do the model, science provides the tools for checking the universe.
Grounding mathematics on first-order logic was a major philosophical project of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Wittgenstein, Russell, etc.). It was half-successful: math was shown to be sound, but Godel killed any notion that mathematics was complete.
Plato, Pythagoras, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein were all mathematician-philosophers.
Logic and mathematics are tools developed by philosophers and mathematicians for analyzing thought, reasoning, as well as the universe.
This is why I think it is properly a branch of philosophy. There are a ton more.
If your real concern is that some whackos say some entirely moronic things and manage to get Ph.D's in whackoness, that's a cultural criticism of philosophy. Philosophy has always encouraged open-minded thinking and is more like, say, the Unitarian Church (all are welcome, even the whackos) versus science where it's more like the Catholic Church (all are welcome, except for the electric universe, cold fusion, aether, etc.). However, 10 poststructuralists do not undo 2600 years of history, in my opinion. I think math is still a good result of philosophical inquiry over the years.
I'm not going to go out on a limb and defend a bunch of boring, useless philosophers. I just hate for people to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a lot of decent philosophy out there. Sure, not all of it is testable (in the same way that science fiction dreams, but not always with testable premises), but there are important contributions being made in Philosophy of Mathematics, Logic, Emotion, Ethics, and Education. Most of the good stuff draws from science and makes predictions and lays out logical consequences. You can usually tell a bad philosopher when they try to wrap the whole world in a tiny box.
Mathematics is a good example of one kind of philosophy in action.
It is philosophy that tells you disprovability is a necessary axiom for science. Science uses the axiom, but is indifferent to why it is there.
Scientists engage in philosophy of science every day. That doesn't make it science and it doesn't make it verbal masturbation. The scientific method is an invention of philosophy for performing science. It itself is not science.
The biggest crime against philosophy was when the universities split philosophy and psychology and allowed glorified English and French majors to turn philosophy into pap.
I tried to explain that to a cow orker but she didn't get it. Maybe I need a Ph.D. and a chalkboard. Anyway, yeah, when I went for an LCD TV, I made sure the vertical size was the same as my old CRT. Lots more screen real estate now.:)
Slashdot Mirror
You know, it's not actually bloody in the film.
-l
No one uses people movers at this point. There was one city in China that was looking into it years ago, but I doubt they did much about it. Never heard anything afterward.
:)
The major downside to monorails is cost per mile. Sometimes I wonder if a system of gondolas (like at the zoo, Six Flags, etc.) would work better and be cheaper. It would definitely look cool.
-l
I thought all the earth-finders were being considered for the trailing-earth point (L5?)
-l
Actually, what we have is "commuter rail", not light rail which runs on city streets. A comprehensive light rail plan was defeated in 2000. I personally voted against it because they essentially would have shut down Guadalupe for 10 years while they built the thing. I also have a hard time seeing how just having rail downtown will get people off our two major arteries, Mopac and I-35. There is a light rail plan floating around right now involving the airport, but its chances of making it to the November ballot as any-rail-now advocates would have it is slim and none. Even local liberal Sen. Watson is against that early a vote.
Back to commuter rail, the point of having the commuter rail start in Leander is to get those folks off of 183/183A and Mopac. You are correct that as of today, there are not that many people there. However, Leander is building a 2300 acre "transit-oriented development" near the rail to entice folks to ride. So, you could live in the burbs and get downtown in a reasonable amount of time (45 minutes vs 90). People are going to keep moving to Leander, Cedar Park, etc., NO MATTER WHAT. But it would be nice to keep them off Mopac, etc.
I live in NW Austin and I am going to give rail a shot. One kicker is they haven't said how much fares will cost yet.
-l
P.s., personally, I love people-mover technology. You drive a munchkin car. It gets slurped up into a fast (70mph) rail line. You tell it where you want off, and it spits out your car onto your exit. There are a lot of moving parts, though, and I don't think engineering-wise it'll ever be feasible.
Depends on the plan. Here in Austin, TX, mixed-use planned communities are all the rage now. My only issue is that they don't seem to account for condo dwellers being interested in gardening. Worse, we just lost the Sunshine Community Garden to developers. This was a decent size garden used by a lot of people who lived north central. It's going to be replaced by another building.
Back to the point, you can make your residential areas have destinations included in them (retail, commercial, light industrial). They don't have to be vast tracts of houses. But your city council has to be on board with it and intentionally trying to direct development that way.
-l
Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?
-l
These large earth-finder telescopes are all being proposed for Lagrange points, not LEO. However, I do wonder how big the fudge factor is for being sufficiently close to the Lagrange. E.g., if these satellites are both +/- 15km with the actual point in the middle, will the shearing effects of gravity be too much for attitude correction for such a sensitive scope?
Not an astronomer... yet.
-l
What's next -- a ribbons based UI?
-l
Guess we'll just have to figure away to recycle all those old stars. Looks like we have some time to figure it out. :)
-l
Hell, my brother's master's thesis (engineering) involves modeling the lungs and he ended up doing it in Fortran because the math libraries he needed to use were written in Fortran and he didn't want to bother with wrapper code. So there ya go. 2008 and Fortran is still being written.
-l
Yeah, I noticed that after the fact and commented to my own comment, but since slashdot doesn't allow you to delete your comments, it's stuck.
-l
There is another comment that explains how they got their shares.
-l
I withdraw my comment as Craigslist is not a public company. D'oh.
-l
Hostile takeover. Ebay files the lawsuit to devalue the shares. Then, Ebay buys up more and more shares to have greater control over an eventual vote. Ebay tenders an offer for Craigslist. Since it owns more, it can influence the shareholder vote more significantly. Ebay wins the auction (ha) and cancels the lawsuit.
-l
And there was that guy who grew a new jaw bone on his back.
-l
You are my hero today. Excellent post!
-l
It says that they do not roast on demand because the beans need time to "cool and out-gas". I haven't done my own roasting before, so I was wondering how necessary that really is. If it's just dangerous gases to worry about (??), why not use suction to draw them away? Is there a way to speed up the cooling process, assuming it's really necessary?
Anyone know?
I love coffee.
-l
My next workstation will have eight cores. Screw all this pansy crap.
Cheers,
-l
I must note that that is a philosophical claim. At least with calling it the language of science or physics you could have said that physical models demonstrate coherence with math.
That last sentence doesn't make any sense. Is there a word missing? It sounds like you are claiming that "Math is a language. Philosophers write in languages. Therefore, they're different.".
I suggest taking a logic class or reading a book on it. The history of logic is clearly:
The history of math is:
Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of Plato, either. He gets read cause he was there and his writings are available. That's about it. I will note that there are a number of mathematicians who are platonists, even today, who believe even strange mathematical concepts are objects in the universe.
I think the problem is that you see the problem-space of philosophy as "not math" and include logic within the confines of mathematics. Historically, this is erroneous as both developed simultaneously, with cross-pollination, and the logic-centered portion of philosophy has always been considered part of philosophy. All mathematical foundations leverage logic developed by philosophers for proofs. For example, the axiom of choice.
There is a cadre of philosophers interested in stealing the love of wisdom back from the morons. I'm just saying you shouldn't discount legitimate contributions and people who are interested in serious contributions (cognitive science, for example).
As long as philosophy is seen as a bullshit degree that stoners take, though, it will never receive the accolades it deserves for its contributions. (Attention stoners: chemistry is far better cause you can make your own drugs).
-l
Then what is mathematics? If one says "it is the language of science" or "it is the language of the universe", one restricts mathematics in a way that mathematicians by and large do not. Mathematicians use math to describe metaphysical and non-physical properties all the time, neither of which are the proper domain of science. Cosmology is a good example of using metaphysical modeling to predict physical results. The cosmologist asks, "If there are 10 dimensions, what physical phenomena could we observe?" Philosophy and mathematics provide the tools to ask the question and do the model, science provides the tools for checking the universe.
Grounding mathematics on first-order logic was a major philosophical project of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Wittgenstein, Russell, etc.). It was half-successful: math was shown to be sound, but Godel killed any notion that mathematics was complete.
Plato, Pythagoras, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein were all mathematician-philosophers.
Logic and mathematics are tools developed by philosophers and mathematicians for analyzing thought, reasoning, as well as the universe.
This is why I think it is properly a branch of philosophy. There are a ton more.
If your real concern is that some whackos say some entirely moronic things and manage to get Ph.D's in whackoness, that's a cultural criticism of philosophy. Philosophy has always encouraged open-minded thinking and is more like, say, the Unitarian Church (all are welcome, even the whackos) versus science where it's more like the Catholic Church (all are welcome, except for the electric universe, cold fusion, aether, etc.). However, 10 poststructuralists do not undo 2600 years of history, in my opinion. I think math is still a good result of philosophical inquiry over the years.
Cheers,
-l
I'm not going to go out on a limb and defend a bunch of boring, useless philosophers. I just hate for people to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a lot of decent philosophy out there. Sure, not all of it is testable (in the same way that science fiction dreams, but not always with testable premises), but there are important contributions being made in Philosophy of Mathematics, Logic, Emotion, Ethics, and Education. Most of the good stuff draws from science and makes predictions and lays out logical consequences. You can usually tell a bad philosopher when they try to wrap the whole world in a tiny box.
Mathematics is a good example of one kind of philosophy in action.
-l
I wonder if there's some trade-off between fuel efficiency and lower emissions that explains this.
-l
No. That Fermilab article specifically says the "Oh My God" Particle was a "proton with an energy of 3.2±0.9×10^20 electron volts."
-l
It is philosophy that tells you disprovability is a necessary axiom for science. Science uses the axiom, but is indifferent to why it is there.
Scientists engage in philosophy of science every day. That doesn't make it science and it doesn't make it verbal masturbation. The scientific method is an invention of philosophy for performing science. It itself is not science.
The biggest crime against philosophy was when the universities split philosophy and psychology and allowed glorified English and French majors to turn philosophy into pap.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
-l
I tried to explain that to a cow orker but she didn't get it. Maybe I need a Ph.D. and a chalkboard. Anyway, yeah, when I went for an LCD TV, I made sure the vertical size was the same as my old CRT. Lots more screen real estate now. :)
-l