I wouldn't worry too much about Titan bursting into flames. While there is lots of methane, there isn't very much in the way of oxygen, which you need to burn the methane. If you think about it, if the atmsophere were that explosive, a meteor would have set it off billions of years ago.
-aiabx
It took a lot of digging to find someone else who reads Sky and Telescope. You can tell it's a real nerd's magazine because it isn't full of ads for booze and tobacco. And I've never caught it out in an error, so I think it's pretty good. I also read SkyNews because I'm a loyal Canadian, and I get it free with my Royal Astronomical Society of Canada membership.
-aiabx
I pray for a giant meteorite to crush me before I need to turn to robots for friendship. Then again, a robot wouldn't drink all my good whisky while I was talking to other party guests.
-aiabx
What I really thought was cool about the Borg was that you couldn't reason with them. I'd just seen too many episodes where the aliens could be dealt with by a bit of Captain's eloquence and a glimpse of how special humanity was. How refreshing to find aliens who just didn't care what we had to say for ourselves.
-aiabx
Or "forbidden" lines in atomic spectra...they only happen in a vacuum so tenuous that the atoms aren't bumping into each other and giving up energy before they radiate at the forbidden line. They got the name because they could not be seen in a laboratory vacuum. You need to look at nebulae to see them.
-aiabx
I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer. A big contributor to positive thought is the knowledge that your friends and loved ones care. So when someone told my wife they were praying for her, even though I'm a stone cold athiest, I shut the fuck up. The last thing she needed to hear was "Prayer? That's superstitious crap. If they cared, they'd have brought you some cobalt-60". As far as I'm concerned, as long as you aren't foregoing proper medical care for some kind of faith healing, prayer can't hurt and almost certainly helps in some non-mystical way.
I don't know if it would help with schizophrenia or not. I don't know enough about how the body's healing mechanisms deal with mental illness. Still, food for thought.
-aiabx
The Old Ones don't care if we harken or not. The most we can hope for is a quick death before we are stricken with madness at the approach of Yog-Sothoth. When you eat a steak, does it matter to you if the cow worshipped you?
-aiabx
Re:Logic, Logic -- Who's Got the Logic?
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
I read it in this way: There's some food in the fridge which you may have if you are hungry. The statement implies the unspoken invitation.
-aiabx
I deliberately didn't tell, for the reason that a one line summary could sound like (to the conspiracy nuts around here) a coverup style story, which I didn't want to detract from the point I was making; that a UFO show ended with a solution grounded in the rational world.
-aiabx
anything with Hitler in it is avoided, as is anything having to do with emergency rooms, UFOs, Crop Circles, Ghosts or Psychic Powers.
I was channel-hopping one night and ran into one of those "Unsolved-Mysteries" UFO shows on Discovery. They were talking about these mysterious lights floating over Phoenix, which are apparently a big mystery in the flake world. I was disgusted to see this kind of World Weekly News crap on a science channel. But I watched it in a horrified trance. And do you know what happened? They debunked it! After listening to all the UFO nuts talking about how the only explanation is the paranormal, they spent the last quarter of the show presenting a credible, rational explanation. Yay for our side!
-aiabx
I can't help feeling that there would have been a huge political or moral price to pay for the nuclear annhilation of millions of innocent civilians. Not to mention trying to free a country of hundreds of millions from a popular (at the time) revolutionary government. It would be like a thousand Vietnams and Iraqs at once. Freedom can be worth fighting for, but don't forget that different people in the world have different ideas of what freedom means. For many Americans, it may be guns and bibles and no liberals telling their kids about evolution. For people elsewhere in the world, it might be having their own country, with no Americans in it setting the rules.
-aiabx
This kind of accuracy is fairly common in the world of telescope making. There are many amateurs capable of producing optics to that level. The trick is, they are doing it with mirrors, where you only need one amazing surface. Lenses require many more surfaces, and if they aren't perfectly matched, you lose accuracy.
-aiabx
The spokes are streams of dust held in patterns above the rings by Saturn's magnetic fields. They have been spotted from earth, but reports were not taken all that seriously until they were confirmed by the Voyager probes.
-aiabx
I gotta say, if I were a multibillionaire, this is the kind of stuff I'd do with my money. Much cooler than another gold-plated yacht or a fleet of SUV's.
-aiabx
It really is in their best interests to say nothing. All sensible corporations have a policy of not responding to rumours. If they deny the untruths, the bad truths will be apparent by the fact that they aren't denied. Best to shut up about everything that your own press office doesn't issue.
-aiabx
According to Timothy Ferris in Seeing in the Dark , the spokes were first observed visually by Stephen O'Meara, an exceptionally acute observer, and then confirmed by Voyager.
-aiabx
I'm told by a reliable source that Mozart's father used to punish him when he was bad by playing a phrase of music and not playing the last note. That would drive young Wolfgang nuts.
-aiabx
Correct. If you're using a telescope like this in a light-polluted area, one typically wraps it in a shroud to prevent stray light reflecting into the light path. Out under dark skies, you leave the tube open to allow air to circulate and bring the scope to thermal equilibrium quicker.
-aiabx
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't worry too much about Titan bursting into flames. While there is lots of methane, there isn't very much in the way of oxygen, which you need to burn the methane. If you think about it, if the atmsophere were that explosive, a meteor would have set it off billions of years ago.
-aiabx
Yes, there is a checksum built in. I think it's the 11th or 12th digit.
-aiabx
It took a lot of digging to find someone else who reads Sky and Telescope. You can tell it's a real nerd's magazine because it isn't full of ads for booze and tobacco. And I've never caught it out in an error, so I think it's pretty good.
I also read SkyNews because I'm a loyal Canadian, and I get it free with my Royal Astronomical Society of Canada membership.
-aiabx
I pray for a giant meteorite to crush me before I need to turn to robots for friendship.
Then again, a robot wouldn't drink all my good whisky while I was talking to other party guests.
-aiabx
They might raise enough money to buy a couple of sticks of chalk selling off all those Martha Stewart Scary Sounds CDs.
-aiabx
What I really thought was cool about the Borg was that you couldn't reason with them. I'd just seen too many episodes where the aliens could be dealt with by a bit of Captain's eloquence and a glimpse of how special humanity was. How refreshing to find aliens who just didn't care what we had to say for ourselves.
-aiabx
Or "forbidden" lines in atomic spectra...they only happen in a vacuum so tenuous that the atoms aren't bumping into each other and giving up energy before they radiate at the forbidden line. They got the name because they could not be seen in a laboratory vacuum. You need to look at nebulae to see them.
-aiabx
According to Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, the Cape was crawling with hot chicks (he uses the word "cookies" IIRC) during the Mercury program.
Then along came Elvis, and we all went back to being spotty kids with glasses and slide rules again.
-aiabx
So what's that 40,000 messages per friend? Theat's more than I would like to receive in a month.
-aiabx
Texas may be a different size in a world where 5 states meet at one point.
-aiabx
I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer. A big contributor to positive thought is the knowledge that your friends and loved ones care. So when someone told my wife they were praying for her, even though I'm a stone cold athiest, I shut the fuck up. The last thing she needed to hear was "Prayer? That's superstitious crap. If they cared, they'd have brought you some cobalt-60". As far as I'm concerned, as long as you aren't foregoing proper medical care for some kind of faith healing, prayer can't hurt and almost certainly helps in some non-mystical way.
I don't know if it would help with schizophrenia or not. I don't know enough about how the body's healing mechanisms deal with mental illness. Still, food for thought.
-aiabx
The Old Ones don't care if we harken or not. The most we can hope for is a quick death before we are stricken with madness at the approach of Yog-Sothoth. When you eat a steak, does it matter to you if the cow worshipped you?
-aiabx
I read it in this way: There's some food in the fridge which you may have if you are hungry.
The statement implies the unspoken invitation.
-aiabx
Well, what was the explanation?
I deliberately didn't tell, for the reason that a one line summary could sound like (to the conspiracy nuts around here) a coverup style story, which I didn't want to detract from the point I was making; that a UFO show ended with a solution grounded in the rational world.
-aiabx
anything with Hitler in it is avoided, as is anything having to do with emergency rooms, UFOs, Crop Circles, Ghosts or Psychic Powers.
I was channel-hopping one night and ran into one of those "Unsolved-Mysteries" UFO shows on Discovery. They were talking about these mysterious lights floating over Phoenix, which are apparently a big mystery in the flake world. I was disgusted to see this kind of World Weekly News crap on a science channel. But I watched it in a horrified trance. And do you know what happened? They debunked it! After listening to all the UFO nuts talking about how the only explanation is the paranormal, they spent the last quarter of the show presenting a credible, rational explanation. Yay for our side!
-aiabx
I can't help feeling that there would have been a huge political or moral price to pay for the nuclear annhilation of millions of innocent civilians. Not to mention trying to free a country of hundreds of millions from a popular (at the time) revolutionary government. It would be like a thousand Vietnams and Iraqs at once.
Freedom can be worth fighting for, but don't forget that different people in the world have different ideas of what freedom means. For many Americans, it may be guns and bibles and no liberals telling their kids about evolution. For people elsewhere in the world, it might be having their own country, with no Americans in it setting the rules.
-aiabx
This kind of accuracy is fairly common in the world of telescope making. There are many amateurs capable of producing optics to that level. The trick is, they are doing it with mirrors, where you only need one amazing surface. Lenses require many more surfaces, and if they aren't perfectly matched, you lose accuracy.
-aiabx
The spokes are streams of dust held in patterns above the rings by Saturn's magnetic fields. They have been spotted from earth, but reports were not taken all that seriously until they were confirmed by the Voyager probes.
-aiabx
I gotta say, if I were a multibillionaire, this is the kind of stuff I'd do with my money. Much cooler than another gold-plated yacht or a fleet of SUV's.
-aiabx
It's the match that's flammable. Explosively so in the presence of pure oxygen.
-aiabx
It really is in their best interests to say nothing. All sensible corporations have a policy of not responding to rumours. If they deny the untruths, the bad truths will be apparent by the fact that they aren't denied. Best to shut up about everything that your own press office doesn't issue.
-aiabx
I do!
I do!
Nope.
Not me.
You bet.
ummm.... maybe.
No way.
Yes.
No.
Why? Who's asking?
-aiabx
According to Timothy Ferris in Seeing in the Dark , the spokes were first observed visually by Stephen O'Meara, an exceptionally acute observer, and then confirmed by Voyager.
-aiabx
I'm told by a reliable source that Mozart's father used to punish him when he was bad by playing a phrase of music and not playing the last note. That would drive young Wolfgang nuts.
-aiabx
Correct. If you're using a telescope like this in a light-polluted area, one typically wraps it in a shroud to prevent stray light reflecting into the light path. Out under dark skies, you leave the tube open to allow air to circulate and bring the scope to thermal equilibrium quicker.
-aiabx