"And despite the ban on cell phone use during flights, the researchers discovered that on average one to four cell phone calls are made from every commercial flight in the northeast United States."
There's always someone who thinks the rules don't apply to them. Even if there wasn't an interference issue, I'd still advocate a cell-phone ban on planes. Who wants to sit next to someone blathering away for an entire flight (and you know there would be people who would do that)?
I think we're pretty much in the same boat. I didn't have the Internet when I was growing up, but yeah, I had access to books and skin mags and I was able to watch adult movies. And if premarital, non-reproductive sex (with the supposedly rare female orgasm witnessed nearly all the time) and the occasional wank make me depraved, then I don't want to be "well-adjusted". These days, "well-adjusted" is barely a step above the kind of sexual repression you see in the stereotypical Arab culture.
I saw plenty of nudie pics and porn as a child and I'm pretty well-adjusted as an adult. Yes, seriously. I'm getting pretty sick of government types thinking they can run our lives better than we can.
DVD: Cheap players Cheap discs I can copy (though not always legally) I have a Blockbuster online account I can play on any DVD player I can lend to my friends (or borrow)
Next-Gen: Expensive players Expensive discs Draconian copy-protection Competing formats I don't have HD, so upgrades in quality are nil "Might" be backwards-compatible (depending on format) Might not be able to borrow (or lend)
I've already upgraded my collection from VHS, I really don't feel like laying out thousands of dollars for limited or no gains.
When dealing with radiation, most physicists like to use electron-volts (eV) instead of Joules (or m^2 kg/s^2). One eV is 1.602x10^-19 J, so Planck's Constant (h) becomes 4.14x10^-15 eV S. I ran some rough estimates using visible light (500 nm) and microwaves (about 3 cm). Visible light has an energy of 2.5 eV, or right at the low end of chemical reactions. Microwaves have an energy of 4x10^-5 eV which have no chance in hell of initiating chemical reactions. Other people have pointed out, though, that it is still sufficient for exciting molecules vibrationally, rotationally and in a couple other ways. It's still far too little to possibly cause health problems.
I've met snowballs with better chances in hell. Going up against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc etc? I wanna know what these guys were smoking and where I can get some.
In one of my upper division physics classes, our project was to measure the amount of radioactivity and identify the radioisotopes in industrial ash. I managed to identify K-40 and thorium, but the overall radioactivity was not significantly higher than the background.
I enjoyed your post. It was very clear and thought-out. I'm not an expert, but I do have a couple of points to bring up. Anthropologists have found primitive stone tools dating back to 3 million years. Granted, most of these have non-hunting applications and even the ones clearly used for butchery could be used in conjunction with scavenging. On the other hand, it is likely that early hominins were opportunistic hunters as well as gatherers and scavengers. Even chimpanzees hunt opportunistically. To me, it seems that early hominins gradually moved from pure gathering/scavenging to a greater proportion of hunting as tools improved, over the course of a couple million years, when we find Homo Erectus and Homo Neanderthalensis becoming successful hunters. While the idea of hunting mammoths with pointy sticks is laughable, it's not unlikely that early humans hunted smaller animals.
In the article, they state that the researchers studied 315 people and from that they got an extra 0.3% decline in mental ability. 315 people! Even Gallup polls survey more than 1000 people and they typically have a margin of error of 3%. I'm not a statistician, but I am a physics graduate and the rule of thumb I've always used is that anything less than a 3% deviation isn't significant, unless you've got a ton of data. 315 people showing an additional 0.3% decline (that's 1 part in 300) just doesn't cut it for me. Maybe if the researchers had followed 10,000 people and registered a 5 or 10% decline, it would be something significant.
That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation. If you were told that high water intake causes.3% more cancer, you'd laugh. That's the problem with medical studies in the media. A slight increase in disease due to some factor is greeted with all kinds of FUD. Hell, even placebos typically have a 5 to 10% effect on things.
I mean, it's not just prostitutes that get slaughtered wholesale in GTA. Last I checked, you could kill just about everyone from old ladies crossing the street to cops trying to gun your ass down. I don't see the AARP ganging together to protest the old-lady-killing in GTA.
m & g are the mass of the object & gravitational acceleration C is the drag coefficient d is density of the fluid (I'm assuming air) A is the cross-sectional area of the object
You can't get much simpler than that because C does vary.
I know from my own experience, playing games in the Total War series have piqued my interest in history and ancient combat. Of course, knowledge of hoplites and chariot archers is pertinent to the modern age. Another good history game is Europa Universalis (and its successor, EU2). Granted, these games are probably too high on the learning curve, so I'd opt for the old standbys of Civilization and SimCity (and SimEarth and SimAnt and the other Sim* games).
My first computer was an old Tandy 286 that I inherited from my parents' workplace. I never did get the damned thing to work. The 10 Mb hard drive was toast, I had DOS 5.0 on 5" floppies, but that drive was toast and I didn't have the 3 1/2" disks. But man, that thing could spin its wheels fast at a blazing 25 MHz! And it had a whole megabyte of RAM. I took that thing apart so many times to try to make it work (even though I didn't know shit about computers at the time). I guess I did get something out of the whole deal since now the first thing I do when I get a new computer is open the thing up and mod it.
I'd like to point out that magnetic field reversals and ozone depletion have little or no effect on global warming. That's a completely different problem that people often confuse.
Clouds can also have a blanketing effect as well as a reflective effect. Also, H2O is a greenhouse gas, adding still more complexity to the problem. Add in the natural variability of solar influx, changes in the reflectivity of the surface due to deforestation, changing ice cover, urbanization, etc and it becomes even more complex. Frankly, I'd rather model supernova explosions, they're a lot simpler.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because idiots on cell phones tend to talk louder than idiots talking to one another.
From TFA:
"And despite the ban on cell phone use during flights, the researchers discovered that on average one to four cell phone calls are made from every commercial flight in the northeast United States."
There's always someone who thinks the rules don't apply to them. Even if there wasn't an interference issue, I'd still advocate a cell-phone ban on planes. Who wants to sit next to someone blathering away for an entire flight (and you know there would be people who would do that)?
Altair is NOT double.
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/altair.html
http://www.solstation.com/stars/altair.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair
Damn, I'm really screwed. I'm a fundamentalist agnostic.....
"Well, now that the intros are over, can I sleep with your girlfriend? Got a cat? Can I watch it pee?"
Yeah, only if I can have a threesome with your girlfriend and her mom and watch your dog take a dump....
I think we're pretty much in the same boat. I didn't have the Internet when I was growing up, but yeah, I had access to books and skin mags and I was able to watch adult movies. And if premarital, non-reproductive sex (with the supposedly rare female orgasm witnessed nearly all the time) and the occasional wank make me depraved, then I don't want to be "well-adjusted". These days, "well-adjusted" is barely a step above the kind of sexual repression you see in the stereotypical Arab culture.
I saw plenty of nudie pics and porn as a child and I'm pretty well-adjusted as an adult. Yes, seriously. I'm getting pretty sick of government types thinking they can run our lives better than we can.
Here's the way I see it:
DVD:
Cheap players
Cheap discs
I can copy (though not always legally)
I have a Blockbuster online account
I can play on any DVD player
I can lend to my friends (or borrow)
Next-Gen:
Expensive players
Expensive discs
Draconian copy-protection
Competing formats
I don't have HD, so upgrades in quality are nil
"Might" be backwards-compatible (depending on format)
Might not be able to borrow (or lend)
I've already upgraded my collection from VHS, I really don't feel like laying out thousands of dollars for limited or no gains.
When dealing with radiation, most physicists like to use electron-volts (eV) instead of Joules (or m^2 kg /s^2). One eV is 1.602x10^-19 J, so Planck's Constant (h) becomes 4.14x10^-15 eV S. I ran some rough estimates using visible light (500 nm) and microwaves (about 3 cm). Visible light has an energy of 2.5 eV, or right at the low end of chemical reactions. Microwaves have an energy of 4x10^-5 eV which have no chance in hell of initiating chemical reactions. Other people have pointed out, though, that it is still sufficient for exciting molecules vibrationally, rotationally and in a couple other ways. It's still far too little to possibly cause health problems.
I've met snowballs with better chances in hell. Going up against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc etc? I wanna know what these guys were smoking and where I can get some.
In one of my upper division physics classes, our project was to measure the amount of radioactivity and identify the radioisotopes in industrial ash. I managed to identify K-40 and thorium, but the overall radioactivity was not significantly higher than the background.
I'm surprised it's taken this long to give them a prize.
Damn, now I'll have to put all my guns away. I was SO looking for an excuse to rise up against government censorship.
I enjoyed your post. It was very clear and thought-out. I'm not an expert, but I do have a couple of points to bring up. Anthropologists have found primitive stone tools dating back to 3 million years. Granted, most of these have non-hunting applications and even the ones clearly used for butchery could be used in conjunction with scavenging. On the other hand, it is likely that early hominins were opportunistic hunters as well as gatherers and scavengers. Even chimpanzees hunt opportunistically. To me, it seems that early hominins gradually moved from pure gathering/scavenging to a greater proportion of hunting as tools improved, over the course of a couple million years, when we find Homo Erectus and Homo Neanderthalensis becoming successful hunters. While the idea of hunting mammoths with pointy sticks is laughable, it's not unlikely that early humans hunted smaller animals.
Shit, for that amount of money, I might as well just get a new PC.
In the article, they state that the researchers studied 315 people and from that they got an extra 0.3% decline in mental ability. 315 people! Even Gallup polls survey more than 1000 people and they typically have a margin of error of 3%. I'm not a statistician, but I am a physics graduate and the rule of thumb I've always used is that anything less than a 3% deviation isn't significant, unless you've got a ton of data. 315 people showing an additional 0.3% decline (that's 1 part in 300) just doesn't cut it for me. Maybe if the researchers had followed 10,000 people and registered a 5 or 10% decline, it would be something significant.
That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation. If you were told that high water intake causes .3% more cancer, you'd laugh. That's the problem with medical studies in the media. A slight increase in disease due to some factor is greeted with all kinds of FUD. Hell, even placebos typically have a 5 to 10% effect on things.
They stole my idea!
Way ahead of you, dude. I haven't bought a CD in years....
I mean, it's not just prostitutes that get slaughtered wholesale in GTA. Last I checked, you could kill just about everyone from old ladies crossing the street to cops trying to gun your ass down. I don't see the AARP ganging together to protest the old-lady-killing in GTA.
The simplest version I've seen is found at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity
Vt = Sqrt(2mg/CdA) where:
m & g are the mass of the object & gravitational acceleration
C is the drag coefficient
d is density of the fluid (I'm assuming air)
A is the cross-sectional area of the object
You can't get much simpler than that because C does vary.
I know from my own experience, playing games in the Total War series have piqued my interest in history and ancient combat. Of course, knowledge of hoplites and chariot archers is pertinent to the modern age. Another good history game is Europa Universalis (and its successor, EU2). Granted, these games are probably too high on the learning curve, so I'd opt for the old standbys of Civilization and SimCity (and SimEarth and SimAnt and the other Sim* games).
My first computer was an old Tandy 286 that I inherited from my parents' workplace. I never did get the damned thing to work. The 10 Mb hard drive was toast, I had DOS 5.0 on 5" floppies, but that drive was toast and I didn't have the 3 1/2" disks. But man, that thing could spin its wheels fast at a blazing 25 MHz! And it had a whole megabyte of RAM. I took that thing apart so many times to try to make it work (even though I didn't know shit about computers at the time). I guess I did get something out of the whole deal since now the first thing I do when I get a new computer is open the thing up and mod it.
I'd like to point out that magnetic field reversals and ozone depletion have little or no effect on global warming. That's a completely different problem that people often confuse.
Clouds can also have a blanketing effect as well as a reflective effect. Also, H2O is a greenhouse gas, adding still more complexity to the problem. Add in the natural variability of solar influx, changes in the reflectivity of the surface due to deforestation, changing ice cover, urbanization, etc and it becomes even more complex. Frankly, I'd rather model supernova explosions, they're a lot simpler.