I'll echo the other reply in agreeing that this would be an excellent way to revive the series. Might piss off some Trekkies, but the more hardcore of them, I think, would enjoy it. The general public TV junkies even might, as long as it had intrigue, romance, and action (which stories within this framework could certainly provide!)
Mostly I think it would make for very good and consistent plot continuation. A long war, especially one that appears hopeless, always makes for great story material, and there would be a lot of intersecting stories that could be told.
If this was to succeed, however, I think they'd have to open up the writing to a lot of the other writers who have written in that universe - and that's not a bad thing, at all. I also think that if this were to succeed, then any political correctness editing of the stories would absolutely *have* to be negated (an example would be Saving Private Ryan, maybe; I haven't seen it again since theater, so I haven't analyzed it as deeply as I could...)
You should post this on some of the ST forums. (I quit haunting them a couple years ago out of boredom, but I'm sure there are other slashdotters here who could suggest a few)
In any case, I think what you've proposed is an excellent idea...
That's an interesting story idea. One could just as easily make a serious short story out of it - by showing just how badly such actions would screw things up:)
Would have been a nice one for Asimov's F&SF magazine back when; and it reminds me of another short story, whose name completely escapes me, where two alien races came to "liberate" Earth from each other, and ended up nearly completely destroying it. Dangit, I can't even remember the introductory phrase from the story, or I could google it. Grr!
SB
PS - Taking a day off from The Schedule?;-) Good for you!
Thanks for the clarifications, this is very fascinating stuff. I wish I'd been able to hack thru more than two years of College calc; probably would've stayed with the astrophysics degree rather than switching to compsci:) Grad-level astrophys would have been *fun*;0
A question: Since gravity can and does alter the paths of photons, why couldn't it alter the path of the particles just as much?
Another: Could a pair of very massive, closely orbiting black holes provide an acceleration mechanism (not to those energies, but seems to me that they could kick particles out at very high fract-c)
I'll check out those links - thanks!
Is it possible that these particles are related to GRBs? Might explain a few of the oddities away.
The main problem is overregulation by the Federal government. Until that is addressed in a non-4-/2/8 year-manner, private space flight will continue to have to jump thru increasingly expensive hoops.
Restructure that ( and it's pretty well structured right now to keeping government contracts by major industry moguls like Boeing etc) - restructure the contract favoritism to fund - no, to just leave it the fricc alone - X-program style efforts like Rutans', and I think we'd see a huge explosion in private companies providing access at costs that NASA could never touch. I suspect that a lot of the public-at-large is figuring that out. Good!
Public perception, media spin, and insurance, I won't even touch - all three of them are so biased against doing *anything* that involves risk, that it makes me puke. Media, particularly. Not as a whole, but certain induhviduals and corpserations out there can't contemplate farther than their thumb and forefinger. Fuck the media, and if the insurance co's can't analyze long-term risk, then fuck them, too.
Countries like China, private enterprises (if the current insanity continues they will be offshored!) and Europe are going to lap us. The US is too busy contemplating it's own navel to be useful for any really serious human endeavour other than on the military side. It's not a lack of public interest, it's a lack of public participation, in the face of all the other distractions our gov has involved us in. (I'm *NOT* going to go there).
Yours in agreement ( IB extremely pissed off, my oldest friend -A) ; and lets hope that when private goes legit - if - that the best from the corps goes where they can make a diff~!
The "normal" processes which generate particles less than 6E-19, convolved with the GZK effect, would've produced a flux so freaking low we never would've seen it.
But we *have*; and given the repeated observations...regardless of the curve, there will *still* be some particles at the extreme ends. Given that our detectors are still fairly primitive, it's possible that the high-e events are statistically more likely to be detected, is it not?
If this were just one or two detector events, I might also argue that it was detector noise - but from what I read of the links, and what I've read outside of those, I don't think so. (see B) below )
Actually stuff that's formed from recombination era would be microwave background energies - because, well, that's what the microwave background is.:)
As far as I understand it, the mw background is the peak energy distribution, not the total one. It's what we built our detectors to observe because it's easiest to observe - sorting random noise from the detector noise in gamma/XR is damned difficult.
There *should* however be particles at all energies; but the ones at the far ends of the curve will be vanishingly rare. That doesn't mean they don't exist! Statistically, at least, they should be there. About as rare as proton decay:) (The statistical analysis suffers no matter how one looks at it - we have way too few good calibration sources whose characteristics are well known when it comes to high energy extrastellar sources)
"real spectrum" - until we get some serious detectors on the lunar farside, with research teams, I have this feeling that we won't be finding the *really* weird stuff. My feeling is that it will do just as much topsy-turvy in the theory field as a lot of recent observations are doing. We're still very much in our infancy as far as observatories goes - most of our science wrt to high-energy phenomena is still done from inside our atmosphere; ie, it's filtered thru our understanding and theories of particle physics. That which our orbital observatories are doing is limited by the instrumentation we can build into them.
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A) it's close:
We don't know that, because we don't have a source for those protons. Sure, there's nothing on that vector, but even ultra-high-c factor particle paths can be altered by gravitational fields - which were not mentioned in the OMG webpage)
B) That's what I suspect. Given that ultra-high energy interactions (neutron star and black hole collisions for example) are very poorly understood, this gets my vote (IANAPP but I play one on/.)
C) Maybe; but we have some reproducibility there, as another poster in this thread pointed out. More data would be nice:) and I suspect we'll see either verification or nullification of the data in the next five years or so.
I have a suspicion that we will find much higher possible energy events than we can even theorize about right now; weirder, even. That's what makes it so much fun;)
What about high c black hole collisions, as can happen in the centers of some galaxies, and especially in galactic collisions? I know we don't really know what can go on in black hole mergers/collisions, but doesn't that argue that we don't really know what energy levels can be produced?
Any reading you can direct me to?
I'm throwing out questions - think of me as a returning student with interest:)
My understanding is that smaller black holes radiate energy faster than larger ones because of the different ratio of energy per "surface area" calc thru the schwarzchild radius. Higher energy density, in effect, although that's not quite accurate either. Larger ones radiate less - and therefore decay slower - function of energy density radiated thru a ^4 surface area. (argh;)
Doesn't the law of energy conservation hold? If not, why not? The gravitational energy is there, obviously mass and momentum conservation hold.
I have to admit that most of this stuff was learned decades ago, and I'm a bit fuzzy on it. It's not my field at all anymore.
Thanks for the clarifications, tho. I was trying to simplify for the slashdot readers out there who don't follow this, but I'm not very good at this anymore:( and you deserve the informative mod more than I do!
What about mergers of black holes? Can they produce such energies (there are some who think that there are two multi-M-stellar mass black holes at the center of our galaxy - are there potential merge scenarios that can produce those energies?)
AFAIK even the decay of a very large (hundreds of stellar masses++) black hole can't produce protons with that energy. I'm not sure about mergers of galactic center black holes, tho - but I'm sure they've taken those into account.
Then again, there might be factors that we're not aware of yet in both the decay and the collisions - but I do know that black holes of those sizes (anything bigger than planet size) are extraordinarily rare because their lifetimes are measured in tens+ of billions of years.
That has entirely too much truth in it and if I had mod points you'd get a funny:) - and no, I don't care whether you are truly female, male, or a bot;)
SB (Old jokes about scientists and over-analyzing relationships are still pretty funny to some of us, even if way too many other people just don't get them:)
I wouldn't think there would be an absolute cutoff there, but a (granted very steep) curve; which means that some very tiny fraction of particles *could* make it here with those energies (and who's to say what original energy level that particle started off with?)
But either way you look at it, whatever produced that particle was one hellishly energetic event! (I'm not good enough to do the math, but what are the odds that the particle in question could have resulted from the Big Bang energies once protons and neutrons started to form from the 'soup'? I realize it would have been traveling for quite a while and the odds would be infinitely small, but still, the mw background is just an average temperature, is it not?)
One thing that bothers me about warning tones; when I'm pissed at something (frequently while reading the news online) if I start swearing to myself Pook thinks it's directed at her. I have to give her extra attention. Bandit doesn't seem to care. (Tir never seemed to care either, and neither did Mouss, the female I had for a year after Tir - she died of feline leuk:( ) But then, living alone as I mostly have, I tend to be rather, um, vehement *cough* when reading the news online and other crap during my evenings. I do wish it didn't bother Pook, tho. She does get a lot of extra attention at some times, which is all I can do...
Very much agreed with your analysis of Pavlov and a lot of other research, it more or less parallels my own thoughts. The (few) studies I've read I've found hilarious, because they don't seem to describe the animals I have experiences with. I do suspect that with cats, at least, the behavioral aspects are probably more to do with experience than dogs are, maybe 10% or more. Cats seem to exhibit much more variation in behavior, anyway. Perhaps in another twenty years I'll have some comparable data regarding felines - I keep a pretty good journal.
Parrots; aye!:) That link is a good one, seen it before. As Heinlein would say, it's a "funny always". Birds are one pet I'll never get into, however. I'd have to keep them in armored cages:) and I'm not much for caging any animal unless absolutely necessary. [ Caveat - around here - the Black Hills - my cats stay indoors unless I'm around to watch them. We have mountain lions here! They did finally get that ML; sad, tho - the local paper here headlined it "Killer Cat caught" - 'Killer cat'?? - not like it had a taste for people; although it certainly wasn't scared of 'em - I'm torn on that one ]
I'm ashamed to admit that I've read very little Vance. Sigh. So many books, so little time...
Did a little googling over my lunch hour; thought you might be interested in this. Very fascinating. A ways down the page is a description of some bobcat hybrids found in the SD area in the '50s. Apparently the female in one case was actually fertile! Makes one wonder how close in time domestics and some of the smaller wild species are related. (There had to be some point in time in the past where they diverged; at least millions of years ago tho)
Tir didn't have a stub tail like the article mentions, but he does fit a lot of the other parts of the description. (Wish I'd had this info available ten+ y.o.- back then I thought hybrids were probably pretty common)
Sounds to me like Dust and Skunk were good buddies. Obviously the collar keeps the memory alive for him. (Some) cats do seem to have very good memories - Pook is one. Out of the several vets she's visited, the only one she likes is the one who spayed her - that vet worked out of her home and was a real kind person and animal lover. T'was the only time I saw Pook actually rubbing up to a vet!
What kind of "tromping around" was he doing? I can't visualize it except as a cat doing a goosestep sort of thing:)
"Cat in a Sack" - hee! That's a strange one.
Very interesting about SoCal cats. More Siamese makes sense, given the human demographics (*grin*). I've heard that about Siamese - and Bandit has Siamese genes in him; among other things (calico of some sort also, given his markings, but he's hard to figure - although he definitely inherited some hyperness from somewhere)
WRT to what we're talking about here, is hermaphroditism (sp-argh) genetic or simply the result of wildly varying hormone levels during development? I have to admit I've forgotten most of what I learned about genetics in mammals over the years. Not even related to my fields, so to say.
Hambly is one of my over-all favorite authors. Her ability to change genres is utterly amazing. I'm behind on the B.J. books, I have Fever Season here but haven't read it yet. Abishag Shaw...I can't ever remember his name either!;0- Her Time of the Dark series of books remain my favorites of hers, however. From everything I've heard, Ms. Hambly is also a cat person...
That's a smart way of doing business; in some ways it's akin to Open Source. Assuming their photography is competent, I'd bet they do a lot of business:)
I can definitely relate to it; where I work, we help customers out by doing what work we can for them in our shop, if they don't have the tools. It's a real customer draw, especially among a lot of elderly customers who remember what old-fashioned hardware stores were like.
Service service service! Customers, their needs, opinions and wants are the most important part of any business. Too many businesspeople have forgotten that nowadays.
Always, always, always, get a set of negatives from any professional photographer who does work for you. Ask up front. If they refuse to provide them, find someone who will. Get two copies. Put one set of negs in your safety deposit box (or whatever outside backup you choose, relatives, etc)
I had a similar experience with some college pictures. Photographer went out of business and tracking down his archives proved impossible.
I've always talked to my cats, in a normal tone of voice, mostly (they also know that "Get DOWN FROM THERE!" in a death-threat sort of voice means imminent squirtgunnage - only had to do that a couple times, now the command suffices); I have to agree with you that it contributes to what they understand immensely.
Had this image in mind for a long time of someone baby-talking their cat, and the cat is sitting there thinking "Y'know, that's pretty insulting. I'm not a child.... I think I'll piss on the couch tonite.":-)
Hilarious about the parrot. I'd bet that causes all kinds of chaos. Good thing the parrot can't put the picture together, otherwise !!!!;)
IOW, ready imitation isn't necessarily thought. - exactly - and IMO where Pavlov was off the mark...
*laughs at the howling bounders comment*
Anyhoo, I'm too thoroughly work-trashed for any more deep thought tonite...later
He was certainly unique in my experience. I'm not sure what he was, but given his appearance - (huge ear tufts and large feet, both front feet with extra toes(btw Pook also has extra front toes, 14 to be exact,tho she's obviously a domestic), grey/brown speckled with a ringed tail and approx 2-1/2 feet long from nose to rear not including tail) - I've always thought bobcat. IIRC I read a few things at the time that indicated that bobcat and domestic cat hybrids had occurred before. Curious, now, I'll have to go do some googling. The library there had very little on hybrid cats at the time.
Tir had obviously had contact with people; he appeared in my life one morning in winter when I found him sleeping under the laundry room vent. Startled him when I walked up (Holy S---! Look at that cat!) but then he head-butted my hand, and after I fed him (he was pretty scrawny) he just sort of adopted me. Wouldn't come inside until the temp dropped to -40F one night, then he was there most every night. Had to build an insulated cat door into the window for him, as I didn't want him breaking glass.
I never found any of his victims at the campground, nor did I observe the fights (although everyone there certainly heard them:); but several times he hawked up coon-colored hairballs, and once brought home a coon paw and a fair amount of the forearm (left it on my bed, too, the brat!:)
Where I was living, there was a leash law for cats; I tried that *once* with him, and while I was trying to get the collar back off he tore my hand open to the bone (27 stitches). After that I reasoned that if the authorities wanted to try to catch him, they could pay their own medical bills:) Don't know how he got the (leather) collar off, but a couple hours later it was gone. Didn't ask:)
I had one run-in with the locals about him when the ACO appeared at my door, something about a complaint from the neighbors that I was keeping a "wild animal" in my place. Remarkably, Tir was on his best behavior then, and I think it was that which convinced the ACO to leave me alone (although I did get a stern warning about the leash laws, to which I showed him my scarred hand and explained. He got a good chuckle out of it). I suspected at the time that Tir had had a run-in or two with the ACO; or perhaps could just smell something. Lord knows he was a damned smart cat; he was quite adept at operating screen door latches and refrigerator doors, and no unlocked cupboard was safe:) He could also knock the top off the Weber and burned his mouth quite badly once on too-hot meat. Never did it again, either.
That's extremely interesting about Dust; I wasn't aware that hermaphrodite genes occurred in cats; tho now that I think of it, they are mammals, so of course it does. Sounds like he was pretty territorial too:)
I'll have to dig up all my old negatives and see if he's on any of them sometime. He was handsome and very formidable looking.
(In case you're wondering, I named him after a child character in one of Barbara Hambly's fantasy books; this character had inherited memories going back generations - the name seemed obvious)
Well said, but technically slashdot is a Forum; somewhere where any views can be submitted and aired.
A blog is, at base, a personal weblog.
That said, the real distinction between the two blurs at Journals; they are blogs, but cousins to slashdot, which is a forum, hosted on and linked to the forum.
So what it really comes down to, is who gives a fuck? The idiotic irony I found in the article is that online communication in groups, organized or not, or organized in what-the-fuck-ever manner, has been going on for as long as there has been textual electronic communications. It's an analog to social group communication and it's developing in parallel, if not similar, manners (pun not intended?).
WHO FUCKING CARES WHAT YOU CALL IT! Most of the mainstream media, in whose world this is being hyped right now, don't understand what a gift electronic communication around the world is, even when they are using it. But it's a "new" discovery! Well, whup-de-fucking-do! Where have these luddites been for the last four years, anyway? AFAIC we, as a country, and possibly as a race, are spending entirely too much time contemplating our navels. Don't we have better things to do? Why argue about what it is, let's use it! (Therefore lies my diatribe in response to this idiotic article, which took a miracle to make the front page on a forum dedicated to Geeks.
Damn, there are times when I'd like to disown most of the human race. We're two generations(+) into the Internet and still there are people out there, who grew up with it, who just don't understand what it means.
/rant
Oxen are slow, but the sunrise is fast.
SB
Re:I suggest...
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No, I think by "weird" he meant ironic; but perhaps I shouldn't put opinions out on the net. Silly me.
Another one is Jerry Pournelle. He was "blogging" long before it was a mainstream phenomenon (and he was hardly the first). He posts his views, often opposing views, and presents his opinion in a polite and rational manner.
I know many slashdotters don't like Pournelle; but regardless of what some might think of his personality, he has a hell of a lot of experience when it comes to the tech fields and politics.
So, whatever. Flame on.
SB
Re:Nexus of universe collapsing...
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Sigh.
Slashdot is evolving.
k
In the old days (like a year ago+) there would have been half a dozen posts replying to this, offering scripts on how to do this, and they would have been modded up.
Not sure I like the direction slashdot is going. Seems like it's becoming, to some extent, a website for Correctness (not necessarily Political) rather than just somewhere where geeks can have fun and vent. It's going to go wherever it goes, of course, short of 'divine' intervention.
(yeah, I'm pretty close to quitting. Yeah, if I do so, it's my choice, etc, etc. Not bitching, just observation. But then, I've quit slashdot before;-) Part of getting older is accepting changes in that which you love; but it's a big world and there are many things to do)
SB
Re:The sound of one hand clapping...
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*snort*
Damn, that was hilarious. Thanks...
I tend to think of it more as the sound of ten million hand jobs, myself - with a few insightful voices fruitlessly raging against the dying of the light...
SB
Re:Signal to noise ratio plan.
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Oh, yay. Googlewars over blog rankings. I really look forward to that.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll echo the other reply in agreeing that this would be an excellent way to revive the series. Might piss off some Trekkies, but the more hardcore of them, I think, would enjoy it. The general public TV junkies even might, as long as it had intrigue, romance, and action (which stories within this framework could certainly provide!)
Mostly I think it would make for very good and consistent plot continuation. A long war, especially one that appears hopeless, always makes for great story material, and there would be a lot of intersecting stories that could be told.
If this was to succeed, however, I think they'd have to open up the writing to a lot of the other writers who have written in that universe - and that's not a bad thing, at all. I also think that if this were to succeed, then any political correctness editing of the stories would absolutely *have* to be negated (an example would be Saving Private Ryan, maybe; I haven't seen it again since theater, so I haven't analyzed it as deeply as I could...)
You should post this on some of the ST forums. (I quit haunting them a couple years ago out of boredom, but I'm sure there are other slashdotters here who could suggest a few)
In any case, I think what you've proposed is an excellent idea...
Cheers
SB
That's an interesting story idea. One could just as easily make a serious short story out of it - by showing just how badly such actions would screw things up
Would have been a nice one for Asimov's F&SF magazine back when; and it reminds me of another short story, whose name completely escapes me, where two alien races came to "liberate" Earth from each other, and ended up nearly completely destroying it. Dangit, I can't even remember the introductory phrase from the story, or I could google it. Grr!
SB
PS - Taking a day off from The Schedule?
Thanks for the clarifications, this is very fascinating stuff. I wish I'd been able to hack thru more than two years of College calc; probably would've stayed with the astrophysics degree rather than switching to compsci
A question: Since gravity can and does alter the paths of photons, why couldn't it alter the path of the particles just as much?
Another: Could a pair of very massive, closely orbiting black holes provide an acceleration mechanism (not to those energies, but seems to me that they could kick particles out at very high fract-c)
I'll check out those links - thanks!
Is it possible that these particles are related to GRBs? Might explain a few of the oddities away.
Cheers!
SB
The main problem is overregulation by the Federal government. Until that is addressed in a non-4-/2/8 year-manner, private space flight will continue to have to jump thru increasingly expensive hoops.
Restructure that ( and it's pretty well structured right now to keeping government contracts by major industry moguls like Boeing etc) - restructure the contract favoritism to fund - no, to just leave it the fricc alone - X-program style efforts like Rutans', and I think we'd see a huge explosion in private companies providing access at costs that NASA could never touch. I suspect that a lot of the public-at-large is figuring that out. Good!
Public perception, media spin, and insurance, I won't even touch - all three of them are so biased against doing *anything* that involves risk, that it makes me puke. Media, particularly. Not as a whole, but certain induhviduals and corpserations out there can't contemplate farther than their thumb and forefinger. Fuck the media, and if the insurance co's can't analyze long-term risk, then fuck them, too.
Countries like China, private enterprises (if the current insanity continues they will be offshored!) and Europe are going to lap us. The US is too busy contemplating it's own navel to be useful for any really serious human endeavour other than on the military side. It's not a lack of public interest, it's a lack of public participation, in the face of all the other distractions our gov has involved us in. (I'm *NOT* going to go there).
Yours in agreement ( IB extremely pissed off, my oldest friend -A) ; and lets hope that when private goes legit - if - that the best from the corps goes where they can make a diff~!
SB
[ Angry? Moi? Neh. Not even started yet ]
The "normal" processes which generate particles less than 6E-19, convolved with the GZK effect, would've produced a flux so freaking low we never would've seen it.
:)
:) (The statistical analysis suffers no matter how one looks at it - we have way too few good calibration sources whose characteristics are well known when it comes to high energy extrastellar sources)
/.)
:) and I suspect we'll see either verification or nullification of the data in the next five years or so.
;)
But we *have*; and given the repeated observations...regardless of the curve, there will *still* be some particles at the extreme ends. Given that our detectors are still fairly primitive, it's possible that the high-e events are statistically more likely to be detected, is it not?
If this were just one or two detector events, I might also argue that it was detector noise - but from what I read of the links, and what I've read outside of those, I don't think so. (see B) below )
Actually stuff that's formed from recombination era would be microwave background energies - because, well, that's what the microwave background is.
As far as I understand it, the mw background is the peak energy distribution, not the total one. It's what we built our detectors to observe because it's easiest to observe - sorting random noise from the detector noise in gamma/XR is damned difficult.
There *should* however be particles at all energies; but the ones at the far ends of the curve will be vanishingly rare. That doesn't mean they don't exist! Statistically, at least, they should be there. About as rare as proton decay
"real spectrum" - until we get some serious detectors on the lunar farside, with research teams, I have this feeling that we won't be finding the *really* weird stuff. My feeling is that it will do just as much topsy-turvy in the theory field as a lot of recent observations are doing. We're still very much in our infancy as far as observatories goes - most of our science wrt to high-energy phenomena is still done from inside our atmosphere; ie, it's filtered thru our understanding and theories of particle physics. That which our orbital observatories are doing is limited by the instrumentation we can build into them.
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A) it's close:
We don't know that, because we don't have a source for those protons. Sure, there's nothing on that vector, but even ultra-high-c factor particle paths can be altered by gravitational fields - which were not mentioned in the OMG webpage)
B) That's what I suspect. Given that ultra-high energy interactions (neutron star and black hole collisions for example) are very poorly understood, this gets my vote (IANAPP but I play one on
C) Maybe; but we have some reproducibility there, as another poster in this thread pointed out. More data would be nice
I have a suspicion that we will find much higher possible energy events than we can even theorize about right now; weirder, even. That's what makes it so much fun
Cheers!
SB
Retroactive stupidity edit on my own post:
*decay* of black holes of those sizes is extraordinarily rare, not black holes those sizes being ex rare (they are, but it wasn't what I meant)
Doh!
SB
An additional thought here
What about high c black hole collisions, as can happen in the centers of some galaxies, and especially in galactic collisions? I know we don't really know what can go on in black hole mergers/collisions, but doesn't that argue that we don't really know what energy levels can be produced?
Any reading you can direct me to?
I'm throwing out questions - think of me as a returning student with interest
Thanks!
SB
My understanding is that smaller black holes radiate energy faster than larger ones because of the different ratio of energy per "surface area" calc thru the schwarzchild radius. Higher energy density, in effect, although that's not quite accurate either. Larger ones radiate less - and therefore decay slower - function of energy density radiated thru a ^4 surface area. (argh ;)
:( and you deserve the informative mod more than I do!
Doesn't the law of energy conservation hold? If not, why not? The gravitational energy is there, obviously mass and momentum conservation hold.
I have to admit that most of this stuff was learned decades ago, and I'm a bit fuzzy on it. It's not my field at all anymore.
Thanks for the clarifications, tho. I was trying to simplify for the slashdot readers out there who don't follow this, but I'm not very good at this anymore
What about mergers of black holes? Can they produce such energies (there are some who think that there are two multi-M-stellar mass black holes at the center of our galaxy - are there potential merge scenarios that can produce those energies?)
Thanks and inviting more comment!
SB
AFAIK even the decay of a very large (hundreds of stellar masses++) black hole can't produce protons with that energy. I'm not sure about mergers of galactic center black holes, tho - but I'm sure they've taken those into account.
Then again, there might be factors that we're not aware of yet in both the decay and the collisions - but I do know that black holes of those sizes (anything bigger than planet size) are extraordinarily rare because their lifetimes are measured in tens+ of billions of years.
SB
That has entirely too much truth in it and if I had mod points you'd get a funny :) - and no, I don't care whether you are truly female, male, or a bot ;)
:)
SB
(Old jokes about scientists and over-analyzing relationships are still pretty funny to some of us, even if way too many other people just don't get them
I wouldn't think there would be an absolute cutoff there, but a (granted very steep) curve; which means that some very tiny fraction of particles *could* make it here with those energies (and who's to say what original energy level that particle started off with?)
But either way you look at it, whatever produced that particle was one hellishly energetic event! (I'm not good enough to do the math, but what are the odds that the particle in question could have resulted from the Big Bang energies once protons and neutrons started to form from the 'soup'? I realize it would have been traveling for quite a while and the odds would be infinitely small, but still, the mw background is just an average temperature, is it not?)
SB
One thing that bothers me about warning tones; when I'm pissed at something (frequently while reading the news online) if I start swearing to myself Pook thinks it's directed at her. I have to give her extra attention. Bandit doesn't seem to care. (Tir never seemed to care either, and neither did Mouss, the female I had for a year after Tir - she died of feline leuk :( ) But then, living alone as I mostly have, I tend to be rather, um, vehement *cough* when reading the news online and other crap during my evenings. I do wish it didn't bother Pook, tho. She does get a lot of extra attention at some times, which is all I can do...
:) That link is a good one, seen it before. As Heinlein would say, it's a "funny always". Birds are one pet I'll never get into, however. I'd have to keep them in armored cages :) and I'm not much for caging any animal unless absolutely necessary. [ Caveat - around here - the Black Hills - my cats stay indoors unless I'm around to watch them. We have mountain lions here! They did finally get that ML; sad, tho - the local paper here headlined it "Killer Cat caught" - 'Killer cat'?? - not like it had a taste for people; although it certainly wasn't scared of 'em - I'm torn on that one ]
Very much agreed with your analysis of Pavlov and a lot of other research, it more or less parallels my own thoughts. The (few) studies I've read I've found hilarious, because they don't seem to describe the animals I have experiences with. I do suspect that with cats, at least, the behavioral aspects are probably more to do with experience than dogs are, maybe 10% or more. Cats seem to exhibit much more variation in behavior, anyway. Perhaps in another twenty years I'll have some comparable data regarding felines - I keep a pretty good journal.
Parrots; aye!
I'm ashamed to admit that I've read very little Vance. Sigh. So many books, so little time...
Cheers!
SB
Regarding hybrids;
:)
;0- Her Time of the Dark series of books remain my favorites of hers, however. From everything I've heard, Ms. Hambly is also a cat person...
Did a little googling over my lunch hour; thought you might be interested in this. Very fascinating. A ways down the page is a description of some bobcat hybrids found in the SD area in the '50s. Apparently the female in one case was actually fertile! Makes one wonder how close in time domestics and some of the smaller wild species are related. (There had to be some point in time in the past where they diverged; at least millions of years ago tho)
Tir didn't have a stub tail like the article mentions, but he does fit a lot of the other parts of the description. (Wish I'd had this info available ten+ y.o.- back then I thought hybrids were probably pretty common)
Sounds to me like Dust and Skunk were good buddies. Obviously the collar keeps the memory alive for him. (Some) cats do seem to have very good memories - Pook is one. Out of the several vets she's visited, the only one she likes is the one who spayed her - that vet worked out of her home and was a real kind person and animal lover. T'was the only time I saw Pook actually rubbing up to a vet!
What kind of "tromping around" was he doing? I can't visualize it except as a cat doing a goosestep sort of thing
"Cat in a Sack" - hee! That's a strange one.
Very interesting about SoCal cats. More Siamese makes sense, given the human demographics (*grin*). I've heard that about Siamese - and Bandit has Siamese genes in him; among other things (calico of some sort also, given his markings, but he's hard to figure - although he definitely inherited some hyperness from somewhere)
WRT to what we're talking about here, is hermaphroditism (sp-argh) genetic or simply the result of wildly varying hormone levels during development? I have to admit I've forgotten most of what I learned about genetics in mammals over the years. Not even related to my fields, so to say.
Hambly is one of my over-all favorite authors. Her ability to change genres is utterly amazing. I'm behind on the B.J. books, I have Fever Season here but haven't read it yet. Abishag Shaw...I can't ever remember his name either!
Cheers!
SB
That's a smart way of doing business; in some ways it's akin to Open Source. Assuming their photography is competent, I'd bet they do a lot of business
I can definitely relate to it; where I work, we help customers out by doing what work we can for them in our shop, if they don't have the tools. It's a real customer draw, especially among a lot of elderly customers who remember what old-fashioned hardware stores were like.
Service service service! Customers, their needs, opinions and wants are the most important part of any business. Too many businesspeople have forgotten that nowadays.
SB
Welcome back :)
Always, always, always, get a set of negatives from any professional photographer who does work for you. Ask up front. If they refuse to provide them, find someone who will. Get two copies. Put one set of negs in your safety deposit box (or whatever outside backup you choose, relatives, etc)
I had a similar experience with some college pictures. Photographer went out of business and tracking down his archives proved impossible.
SB
we should see the first cellphone "trojan"
No doubt. A cell phone that dispenses prophylactics would be a huge hit among the teenage crowd.
I imagine someone has probably also come up with a design incorporating cell-phone vibrators, too.
Oh wa... whatever.
SB
If it's an Urban Commando Phone, don't forget to integrate the Tazer. :)
SB
I've always talked to my cats, in a normal tone of voice, mostly (they also know that "Get DOWN FROM THERE!" in a death-threat sort of voice means imminent squirtgunnage - only had to do that a couple times, now the command suffices); I have to agree with you that it contributes to what they understand immensely.
:-)
;)
Had this image in mind for a long time of someone baby-talking their cat, and the cat is sitting there thinking "Y'know, that's pretty insulting. I'm not a child.... I think I'll piss on the couch tonite."
Hilarious about the parrot. I'd bet that causes all kinds of chaos. Good thing the parrot can't put the picture together, otherwise !!!!
IOW, ready imitation isn't necessarily thought. - exactly - and IMO where Pavlov was off the mark...
*laughs at the howling bounders comment*
Anyhoo, I'm too thoroughly work-trashed for any more deep thought tonite...later
Cheers!
SB
He was certainly unique in my experience. I'm not sure what he was, but given his appearance - (huge ear tufts and large feet, both front feet with extra toes(btw Pook also has extra front toes, 14 to be exact,tho she's obviously a domestic), grey/brown speckled with a ringed tail and approx 2-1/2 feet long from nose to rear not including tail) - I've always thought bobcat. IIRC I read a few things at the time that indicated that bobcat and domestic cat hybrids had occurred before. Curious, now, I'll have to go do some googling. The library there had very little on hybrid cats at the time.
:); but several times he hawked up coon-colored hairballs, and once brought home a coon paw and a fair amount of the forearm (left it on my bed, too, the brat! :)
:) Don't know how he got the (leather) collar off, but a couple hours later it was gone. Didn't ask :)
:) He could also knock the top off the Weber and burned his mouth quite badly once on too-hot meat. Never did it again, either.
:)
Tir had obviously had contact with people; he appeared in my life one morning in winter when I found him sleeping under the laundry room vent. Startled him when I walked up (Holy S---! Look at that cat!) but then he head-butted my hand, and after I fed him (he was pretty scrawny) he just sort of adopted me. Wouldn't come inside until the temp dropped to -40F one night, then he was there most every night. Had to build an insulated cat door into the window for him, as I didn't want him breaking glass.
I never found any of his victims at the campground, nor did I observe the fights (although everyone there certainly heard them
Where I was living, there was a leash law for cats; I tried that *once* with him, and while I was trying to get the collar back off he tore my hand open to the bone (27 stitches). After that I reasoned that if the authorities wanted to try to catch him, they could pay their own medical bills
I had one run-in with the locals about him when the ACO appeared at my door, something about a complaint from the neighbors that I was keeping a "wild animal" in my place. Remarkably, Tir was on his best behavior then, and I think it was that which convinced the ACO to leave me alone (although I did get a stern warning about the leash laws, to which I showed him my scarred hand and explained. He got a good chuckle out of it). I suspected at the time that Tir had had a run-in or two with the ACO; or perhaps could just smell something. Lord knows he was a damned smart cat; he was quite adept at operating screen door latches and refrigerator doors, and no unlocked cupboard was safe
That's extremely interesting about Dust; I wasn't aware that hermaphrodite genes occurred in cats; tho now that I think of it, they are mammals, so of course it does. Sounds like he was pretty territorial too
I'll have to dig up all my old negatives and see if he's on any of them sometime. He was handsome and very formidable looking.
(In case you're wondering, I named him after a child character in one of Barbara Hambly's fantasy books; this character had inherited memories going back generations - the name seemed obvious)
Cheers!
SB
A blog is, at base, a personal weblog.
That said, the real distinction between the two blurs at Journals; they are blogs, but cousins to slashdot, which is a forum, hosted on and linked to the forum.
So what it really comes down to, is who gives a fuck? The idiotic irony I found in the article is that online communication in groups, organized or not, or organized in what-the-fuck-ever manner, has been going on for as long as there has been textual electronic communications. It's an analog to social group communication and it's developing in parallel, if not similar, manners (pun not intended?).
WHO FUCKING CARES WHAT YOU CALL IT! Most of the mainstream media, in whose world this is being hyped right now, don't understand what a gift electronic communication around the world is, even when they are using it. But it's a "new" discovery! Well, whup-de-fucking-do! Where have these luddites been for the last four years, anyway? AFAIC we, as a country, and possibly as a race, are spending entirely too much time contemplating our navels. Don't we have better things to do? Why argue about what it is, let's use it! (Therefore lies my diatribe in response to this idiotic article, which took a miracle to make the front page on a forum dedicated to Geeks.
Damn, there are times when I'd like to disown most of the human race. We're two generations(+) into the Internet and still there are people out there, who grew up with it, who just don't understand what it means.
/rant
Oxen are slow, but the sunrise is fast.
SB
No, I think by "weird" he meant ironic; but perhaps I shouldn't put opinions out on the net. Silly me.
SB
Another one is Jerry Pournelle. He was "blogging" long before it was a mainstream phenomenon (and he was hardly the first). He posts his views, often opposing views, and presents his opinion in a polite and rational manner.
I know many slashdotters don't like Pournelle; but regardless of what some might think of his personality, he has a hell of a lot of experience when it comes to the tech fields and politics.
So, whatever. Flame on.
SB
Sigh.
;-) Part of getting older is accepting changes in that which you love; but it's a big world and there are many things to do)
Slashdot is evolving.
k
In the old days (like a year ago+) there would have been half a dozen posts replying to this, offering scripts on how to do this, and they would have been modded up.
Not sure I like the direction slashdot is going. Seems like it's becoming, to some extent, a website for Correctness (not necessarily Political) rather than just somewhere where geeks can have fun and vent. It's going to go wherever it goes, of course, short of 'divine' intervention.
(yeah, I'm pretty close to quitting. Yeah, if I do so, it's my choice, etc, etc. Not bitching, just observation. But then, I've quit slashdot before
SB
*snort*
Damn, that was hilarious. Thanks...
I tend to think of it more as the sound of ten million hand jobs, myself - with a few insightful voices fruitlessly raging against the dying of the light...
SB
Oh, yay. Googlewars over blog rankings. I really look forward to that.
Oh, wait
NM
SB