Nobody reads individual sentences from other books and then takes them (often out of context) as individual snacks of wisdom and truth.
Uh, yes they do. All they time. What is the modern news cycle but a collection of individual sentences (often out of context) from longer speeches or documents, then repackaged as eye catching headlines?
Western Australia did that too? I grew up in Queensland where the same thing happened.
I still call it Peanut Paste all these years afterwards. Old habits die hard.
"He saw, about five minutes’ walk away on his left, what must certainly be the Tombs, just as Bree had described them; great masses of mouldering stone shaped like gigantic beehives, but a little narrower. They looked very black and grim, for the sun was now setting right behind them.
...
There was something very uncomfortable about those great, silent shapes of stone.
...
The moon was shining brightly. The Tombs—far bigger and nearer than he had thought they would be—looked gray in the moonlight. In fact, they looked horribly like huge people, draped in gray robes that covered their heads and faces. They were not at all nice things to have near you when spending a night alone in a strange place. "
My thanks to whoever actually read though the terms and conditions and found this. Having checked that the same T&C are in the Australian branch of Eventbrite (they are) I have posted this story on a couple of theatre discussion lists I'm involved with, and had a very grateful response. An eye opener for all concerned.
But good luck getting Elon Musk to focus on the practical and eminently desirable target of the Moon. He isn't interested. It's only Mars for Elon.
The SpaceX launch manifest begs to differ. Elon Musk may have Mars as his ultimate goal and be developing the hardware to do it, but in the mean time he is busy launching communication satellites, Iridium satellites, space station resupply, military payloads - anything and everything that people will pay him to launch. If NASA were to foot the bill, he'd be more than happy to land on the Moon.
Or to put it another way, you don't need luck, just money.
The other thing that is worth remembering is that there is a lot out there as well as podcasts. Over the years I have discovered and enjoyed many Radio serials. Though not currently updating these can have huge backlogs of old programs which can be found on the likes of Archive.org or elsewhere.
I can see that this discussion is is one I'm going to have to go through in detail. I listen to a lot of podcasts, mostly on my daily commute (~ an hour each way). My current list is:
Science/Math:
Radiolab (WNYC)
Freakanomics
More or Less
Cheap Astronomy
Math Mutation
TEDTalks (Audio)
Audio Fiction:
All the Escape Artists podcasts:
Escape Pod (science fiction),
Pseudopod (Horror),
Podcastle (Fantasy),
Cast of Wonders (Young Adult)
Welcome to Night Vale
19 Noucturne Boulevard (though no longer updating this has huge backlog)
In answering this question for books it might be instructive to look at what happens in another artistic field, that of the movies. Although there are some major differences (Movies cost a lot more to make and therefore there aren't so many made each year for a start) the comparison might shed a little light.
With rating movies statistically there are a number of methods:
- and finally, "Best of" listings voted on by critics or interest groups.
I include the last not because it is really a very good statistical comparison as compared to any of the other methods, but because it is the only one analogous to the sorts of lists being considered in the Worlds Without End rankings.
To get a good statistical ranking for books or movies we need to get a comprehensive set of data that covers all (or most) of the entries, and which applies the same rankings to each. None of the rankings for Movies which I have listed really does that, but some do better than others in some ways at least. For example, ticket and unit sales cover all movies, though they have the problem that the number of people going to movies, and the price they pay per ticket, have increased over time so that the ranking metric isn't the same for all movies. It also has the disadvantage that ticket sales are not necessarily related to how good a movie is. Industry awards can probably be assumed to cover all movies released in a given year and therefore cover the whole population, but have the problem that the award givers may not cover all entries equally, and may be subject to bias. Critical judgement, whether from professional critics or members of the public, also have the problem of coverage - I personally cannot expect to be able to see every movie made, and the ones I do see will be affected by by things like advertising budgets which are not necessarily related to how good the movie actually is.
With books we do have some similar data sets. Figures for number of books printed, or sales on the likes of Amazon can be compiled, though these have the same problem of not being related to quality. I don't know of any compilation sites for professional book critics (anybody?), but there are sites such as Goodreads where members of the public can give their subjective rankings. Industry awards also exist, such as the Hugo or Nebula awards, but these have the disadvantage of being subject to politics (*cough* Puppies vs SJW anyone?). Finally, there are "Best of" lists, such as the ones cited by Worlds Without End.
Books have a problem compared to movies in that far more books get published than movies get made. While a good critic can expect to see all the movies that come out in a year (at least all those released theatrically), reading every book that is published is impossible. This eats into the quality of critical rankings out there, or even into Industry awards. Any "Best of the Year" list can't really hope to be definitive, because a book - especially a ground breaking, iconoclastic new classic - will take time to find a wide audience and be widely recognised.
For my money, I think the likes of Goodreads are probably the best bet as an objective, comprehensive and timely statistical source for
The comment that the algorithm does better at predicting personality than a person's friends will depend very strongly on how you define a friend. I have a very large number of Facebook friends about whom I know almost nothing, so I am not at all surprised that an algorithm will do better.
That's why you have Wikipedia...which will tell you that aneutronic fusion needs much higher temperatures, in addition, at least fifty times the density-time of D-T fusion, and generates three orders of magnitude lower power density.
In their paper in Physics of Plasmas they report having achieved the density and temparature necessary for aneutronic (hydrogen-boron) fusion. The new electrode will enable them to demonstrate a reaction which creates more energy than is required to trigger it - not a finished device, but one which will demonstrate its practicality and attach the funding necessary to commercialise it.
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
Irrelevant. Both the wise men and the virgin came from elsewhere.
Now I come to think of it - the wise men came from the East, which would be London in the case of Wales, while the virgin came form the North, which would be Scotland.
Perhaps your priest knew what he was talking about after all.
For those who aren't English majors (or married to one;-), 93 Escort Wagon is referring to a satirical essay written by Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public". Swift's "modest proposal" is that children of the poor Irish could be sold as food to wealthy English.
I can't tell if the authors of the article we are discussing are alluding to Swift's essay or whether they are thereby flagging their own proposal as similarly ridiculous.
My main gripe was the set up of how the city was held to ransom for an extended period of time, which simply didn't feel credible. We have a situation where the bad guys manage to hold a city of ~12 million people hostage for a period of about 6 months (not completely sure of the numbers here) by threatening to blow them up with the fusion reactor. The bad guys keep control by their initial army of outlaws who have been training in the city's sewers, augmented by the hundreds liberated from the Bastille - sorry, the prison. During this time no one is allowed to escape because of the threat to blow the nuke, a threat which is enforced from the outside, yet somehow the city manages to function after a fashion - food supplies are provided from the outside, and somehow enough order is maintained that the city doesn't simply collapse. I would expect plagues and famine and riots, not to mention fire after all the explosions at the start of the siege.
I found this all rather hard to buy. In terms of the story the extended siege is done to give Bruce Wayne time to heal up in his remote prison, and to make his spiritual journey that allows him to escape from it and return to Gotham. I find it hard to believe that such a siege with so many hostages could be maintained - this is a city after all, and would leak people like a sieve. Similarly, the maintenance of order would be a real problem in such circumstances. Least credible of all, I could not swallow that a thousand or so police offices could be trapped underground for six months, somehow supplied with food & such, then be busted out and run off to battle, fully fit and wearing clean uniforms. Really?
Did anyone else spot all the French Revolution/Tale of Two Cites references? I mean the conflict between aristocracy and underclass, the storming of the prison (the Bastille), the citizens' court against the oppressors, the final sacrifice and Bruce Wayne's epitaph, read from the close of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Interesting to see that put into a modern setting.
I wondered about some of the technology also. I thought the helicopter thing was pretty neat, though it was fortunate that the missiles fired at it were so slow that the copter could keep ahead while it outmanoeuvred them . Did Bane buy them from the lowest bidder, perhaps? I didn't really buy that the fusion core could be (a) so easily turned into a bomb, or (b) be removable from the reactor and still remain deadly without the need to keep it fuelled or maintained.
That said, there was a lot to like. I don't think I'll be in a hurry to watch this one again, though - unlike the first two movies in the series.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like BB-8 to me.
and also a perpetual motion machine to make electricity and a hologram projector to keep it hidden from outsiders.
Sounds a bit like Wakanda.
Nobody reads individual sentences from other books and then takes them (often out of context) as individual snacks of wisdom and truth.
Uh, yes they do. All they time. What is the modern news cycle but a collection of individual sentences (often out of context) from longer speeches or documents, then repackaged as eye catching headlines?
If you want to get more literary, I invite you to read the words of Shakespeare and find out just how many of his individual sentences have passed into common wisdom and truth .
Western Australia did that too? I grew up in Queensland where the same thing happened. I still call it Peanut Paste all these years afterwards. Old habits die hard.
Odd looking design. They remind me of the tombs of the ancient kings in the Narnia stories.
Quoting from the book (" The Horse and His Boy ")
"He saw, about five minutes’ walk away on his left, what must certainly be the Tombs, just as Bree had described them; great masses of mouldering stone shaped like gigantic beehives, but a little narrower. They looked very black and grim, for the sun was now setting right behind them.
There was something very uncomfortable about those great, silent shapes of stone.
The moon was shining brightly. The Tombs—far bigger and nearer than he had thought they would be—looked gray in the moonlight. In fact, they looked horribly like huge people, draped in gray robes that covered their heads and faces. They were not at all nice things to have near you when spending a night alone in a strange place. "
Maybe they'll program them in as lawn ornaments.
Odd looking design. They remind me of the tombs of the ancient kings in the Narnia stories.
My thanks to whoever actually read though the terms and conditions and found this. Having checked that the same T&C are in the Australian branch of Eventbrite (they are) I have posted this story on a couple of theatre discussion lists I'm involved with, and had a very grateful response. An eye opener for all concerned.
Like, stuffed animal cows, or like taxidermy cows? 'cause one wouldn't be enough mass and the other is a bit on the creepy side...
The herd shot round the world ...
But good luck getting Elon Musk to focus on the practical and eminently desirable target of the Moon. He isn't interested. It's only Mars for Elon.
The SpaceX launch manifest begs to differ. Elon Musk may have Mars as his ultimate goal and be developing the hardware to do it, but in the mean time he is busy launching communication satellites, Iridium satellites, space station resupply, military payloads - anything and everything that people will pay him to launch. If NASA were to foot the bill, he'd be more than happy to land on the Moon.
Or to put it another way, you don't need luck, just money.
My favourite OTR shows are:
Comedy:
The Goon Show
I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again
Just A Minute
The Unbelievable Truth
Audio Drama (SF & fantasy):
Dimension X
X Minus One
The Mysterious Traveller
Mind Webs
Lights Out
Science/Math:
Radiolab (WNYC)
Freakanomics
More or Less
Cheap Astronomy
Math Mutation
TEDTalks (Audio)
Audio Fiction:
All the Escape Artists podcasts: Escape Pod (science fiction),
Pseudopod (Horror),
Podcastle (Fantasy),
Cast of Wonders (Young Adult)
Welcome to Night Vale
19 Noucturne Boulevard (though no longer updating this has huge backlog)
ARTC
Decoder Ring Theatre
The Dunesteef
The Truth
Comedy:
The Irrelevant Show
Ask Me Another
Misc:
99% Invisible
The Allusionist
Imaginary Worlds
I don't have to: NASA lost two space shuttles with the loss of 14 lives.
The also lost three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire caused by a fire on the pad.
With rating movies statistically there are a number of methods:
- Box office takings, such as Box Office Mojo
- DVD and Video sales
- Movie audience figures (when broadcast on television or similar)
- Industry awards, such as the Academy Awards or the Baftas
- Ratings from critics, such as Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic - Ratings from general users, such as IMDB
- and finally, "Best of" listings voted on by critics or interest groups.
I include the last not because it is really a very good statistical comparison as compared to any of the other methods, but because it is the only one analogous to the sorts of lists being considered in the Worlds Without End rankings.
To get a good statistical ranking for books or movies we need to get a comprehensive set of data that covers all (or most) of the entries, and which applies the same rankings to each. None of the rankings for Movies which I have listed really does that, but some do better than others in some ways at least. For example, ticket and unit sales cover all movies, though they have the problem that the number of people going to movies, and the price they pay per ticket, have increased over time so that the ranking metric isn't the same for all movies. It also has the disadvantage that ticket sales are not necessarily related to how good a movie is. Industry awards can probably be assumed to cover all movies released in a given year and therefore cover the whole population, but have the problem that the award givers may not cover all entries equally, and may be subject to bias. Critical judgement, whether from professional critics or members of the public, also have the problem of coverage - I personally cannot expect to be able to see every movie made, and the ones I do see will be affected by by things like advertising budgets which are not necessarily related to how good the movie actually is.
With books we do have some similar data sets. Figures for number of books printed, or sales on the likes of Amazon can be compiled, though these have the same problem of not being related to quality. I don't know of any compilation sites for professional book critics (anybody?), but there are sites such as Goodreads where members of the public can give their subjective rankings. Industry awards also exist, such as the Hugo or Nebula awards, but these have the disadvantage of being subject to politics (*cough* Puppies vs SJW anyone?). Finally, there are "Best of" lists, such as the ones cited by Worlds Without End.
Books have a problem compared to movies in that far more books get published than movies get made. While a good critic can expect to see all the movies that come out in a year (at least all those released theatrically), reading every book that is published is impossible. This eats into the quality of critical rankings out there, or even into Industry awards. Any "Best of the Year" list can't really hope to be definitive, because a book - especially a ground breaking, iconoclastic new classic - will take time to find a wide audience and be widely recognised.
For my money, I think the likes of Goodreads are probably the best bet as an objective, comprehensive and timely statistical source for
NASA awarded a contract to Boeing first, but what are the odds that SpaceX will fly first?
The comment that the algorithm does better at predicting personality than a person's friends will depend very strongly on how you define a friend. I have a very large number of Facebook friends about whom I know almost nothing, so I am not at all surprised that an algorithm will do better.
That's why you have Wikipedia...which will tell you that aneutronic fusion needs much higher temperatures, in addition, at least fifty times the density-time of D-T fusion, and generates three orders of magnitude lower power density.
In their paper in Physics of Plasmas they report having achieved the density and temparature necessary for aneutronic (hydrogen-boron) fusion. The new electrode will enable them to demonstrate a reaction which creates more energy than is required to trigger it - not a finished device, but one which will demonstrate its practicality and attach the funding necessary to commercialise it.
For more detail, an interview with the project founder can be found on the Future and You podcast here.
And the temporal hypercomputer trick? That was just very cool.
Yes ... but what sort of techno geek uses the same device for 400 years and doesn't even update the OS?
It should be on Google's home page, starting Saturday.
Perhaps it's not Saturday yet where you are? Or maybe it's locked by country-code or something?
Here in Australia we got it on Friday. And we got the special on local TV at the same time as the UK.
If I shake it real hard will a free car fall out?
Just don't shake it too hard. Don't want it to fall on top of you.
This sounds like the scenario to the novel Blood Music by Greg Bear.
Why wasn't Jesus born in Wales?
Because God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
Irrelevant. Both the wise men and the virgin came from elsewhere.
Now I come to think of it - the wise men came from the East, which would be London in the case of Wales, while the virgin came form the North, which would be Scotland.
Perhaps your priest knew what he was talking about after all.
An old problem, as Dilbert discovered.
This doesn't involve eating babies, does it?
For those who aren't English majors (or married to one ;-), 93 Escort Wagon is referring to a satirical essay written by Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public". Swift's "modest proposal" is that children of the poor Irish could be sold as food to wealthy English.
I can't tell if the authors of the article we are discussing are alluding to Swift's essay or whether they are thereby flagging their own proposal as similarly ridiculous.
I didn't like it much.
I went to see the movie with my kids last night, and liked it a lot less than I expected to.
SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS
My main gripe was the set up of how the city was held to ransom for an extended period of time, which simply didn't feel credible. We have a situation where the bad guys manage to hold a city of ~12 million people hostage for a period of about 6 months (not completely sure of the numbers here) by threatening to blow them up with the fusion reactor. The bad guys keep control by their initial army of outlaws who have been training in the city's sewers, augmented by the hundreds liberated from the Bastille - sorry, the prison. During this time no one is allowed to escape because of the threat to blow the nuke, a threat which is enforced from the outside, yet somehow the city manages to function after a fashion - food supplies are provided from the outside, and somehow enough order is maintained that the city doesn't simply collapse. I would expect plagues and famine and riots, not to mention fire after all the explosions at the start of the siege.
I found this all rather hard to buy. In terms of the story the extended siege is done to give Bruce Wayne time to heal up in his remote prison, and to make his spiritual journey that allows him to escape from it and return to Gotham. I find it hard to believe that such a siege with so many hostages could be maintained - this is a city after all, and would leak people like a sieve. Similarly, the maintenance of order would be a real problem in such circumstances. Least credible of all, I could not swallow that a thousand or so police offices could be trapped underground for six months, somehow supplied with food & such, then be busted out and run off to battle, fully fit and wearing clean uniforms. Really?
Did anyone else spot all the French Revolution/Tale of Two Cites references? I mean the conflict between aristocracy and underclass, the storming of the prison (the Bastille), the citizens' court against the oppressors, the final sacrifice and Bruce Wayne's epitaph, read from the close of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Interesting to see that put into a modern setting.
I wondered about some of the technology also. I thought the helicopter thing was pretty neat, though it was fortunate that the missiles fired at it were so slow that the copter could keep ahead while it outmanoeuvred them . Did Bane buy them from the lowest bidder, perhaps? I didn't really buy that the fusion core could be (a) so easily turned into a bomb, or (b) be removable from the reactor and still remain deadly without the need to keep it fuelled or maintained.
That said, there was a lot to like. I don't think I'll be in a hurry to watch this one again, though - unlike the first two movies in the series.