I wouldn't dare calling it an account of human history, humanity is way, way more than just the few Christian tidbits recorded in Bible.
It is an account of human history. Any student of history knows that to get a decently accurate view of history requires reading many, many histories. The accounts will contradict each other in places and reinforce each other in places. The truth of the matter is that if you weren't there, you'll never be sure of what really happened and what didn't. The Bible certainly counts as an account of history, or more accurately several accounts of history, and also includes (obviously) religious text and works of art.
Even if you view the religious stuff as hogwash, by looking at it you gain knowledge of the cultural context that the authors were working in, and you can see the effects that it had later on those who subscribe to it. Like it or not, the Bible is an important part of Western culture, and marginalizing it as "fairy tales" only shows that you're more interested in your ideal version of the world than reality.
Most of the discussions here produce no new ideas; they're about forming connections among existing knowledge. Your comments may have been original text, but they produce no value. I'll take cut-and-paste information over that any day.
I did some ratings, and having a musical background I intentionally listened for and voted up stuff that was more adventurous. There were one or two that had some very nice dominant 7ths in them--not too far off the beaten path (since they're in every blues song ever) but more interesting to my ear.
I stopped rating for the night because I noticed I was getting bored with the single-note drone that underlay all the loops I heard, which made it hard to distinguish among many loops. Something almost identical to what I rated a "4" twelve loops ago was now only worth "3" because it was too familiar. It's like hearing a song overplayed on the radio--it lost its shine. (Which really goes to show you just how much variation is in a piece like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, but I digress.)
It's a cool project. Despite my comments above I'm impressed with the variety that is present in the hand-picked sampler you linked. I especially enjoyed what came out of your third population of students, too; it has a lot of character.
Really? I hope orchestral music counts as music. Bowed strings and brass are closer to sawtooth waves, flutes and woodwinds are squarish. Plucked strings *can* approach sine waves, but you're still going to have harmonics that change the timbre, which really just means "the shape of the wave."
Of course, with the use of synthesizers all over the place now, quite a lot of music makes use of pure and modified waves of all types.
That's a very interesting observation. I think it's worth mentioning that "consumers" rarely fought for openness; we just want some end product and we want it cheap and immediately. Perhaps if we'd been less intellectually lazy it never would have gotten to this point.
What we really need is a giant freaking RESET button. Everybody's debt and credit is now at 0. You have what you have, start over. And be smarter this time.
The root of our problem is the insurance industry.
That's an awfully simplistic explanation. I am very much against the current health care legislation for a number of reasons including the one you mentioned, but the truth is that the problem has many roots; including the insurance industry, hospitals, government, and patients themselves. NPR's This American Life did a show on it that highlights the complexity of the issues. There's plenty of blame to go around and IMO the insurance companies deserve less blame than government, which through wage freezes essentially kicked the insurance companies from a primary market of individuals to a market of corporations. Hospitals vary their charges (sometimes by a factor of 10) for identical procedures depending on how many patients use that insurance company. Doctors are afraid of liability if they don't run a requested test even if it's in the patient's best interest to remain untested.
The health insurance industry doesn't get off easy--there's a second show devoted entirely to it. It's a huge mess. But here's the thing: they're not really like the financial industry. They seek profits, like everyone else, but they have been demonized. Their hands are tied by hospitals, and they are left with the choice of raising premiums for everyone or dropping the policies of people in areas where they have little clout with hospitals. IMO their biggest failing is that they don't care about the patient: they approve lots of unnecessary procedures because much of their profit lies in the volume of claims they process.
"Clusterfuck" is an appropriate term, because it's a whole lot of things gone wrong all at once. Without having a clear understanding of the problem, you can be sold a bill of goods like the current legislation. You've seen through this bill, but enough people haven't that it's still creeping along. It's important to get the shape of the problem so that if we get rid of this bill it won't be replaced by something equally awful.
Oh I'm in full agreement about the frivolous crap. I don't think government should be funding space missions either, but the amount spent on that is unquestionably a pittance compared to all the other stuff; that and the value we get from NASA make it a very low priority to concern my political self with. I just enjoy the knowledge they bring back from the stars.
ASRGs would give TiME sufficient energy to support a very capable instrument suite and a direct-to-Earth communications system to get its data home. The generators - TiME would carry two - could conceivably sustain several years of service on the lake surface.
Would 500W be enough? You seem to know what you're talking about, but I suspect NASA does too. It would be interesting to find out how (and if) they overcame the objections you raise.
There are a number of good reasons for doing this.
The primary objective of the mission would be to determine the precise chemistry of one of these lakes; but also to do meteorology, to help scientists better understand how the "methane-ologic cycle" on Titan actually works.
It would give scientists the opportunity to study shared climate processes at work under very different conditions.
"If we have models that will work on Earth and on Titan then we can be much more confident that those models understand the fundamentals of what's going on," explained the researcher from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
"The photogenic appeal and the mystique of exploring a sea on another world speak for themselves, but there is a genuine practical application to do with the science that will help us address problems here on Earth."
Plus it's already been under study for two years, and it would test a "novel power system," the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator.
ASRGs would give TiME sufficient energy to support a very capable instrument suite and a direct-to-Earth communications system to get its data home.
Not to mention that Titan looks like one of the best nearby candidates for life, specifically in its seas and not on its surface. Landing on Titan's shores is apt to be far less interesting than in its seas.
They actually captured the same two people twice! There's a grassy patch near the lower right of the image that contains two bright red flags. Zoom in on those, then pan up and to the right to the sidewalk. There's a column with ads on it and some people walking to the left and right of that. Two of them are clearly doubled. I hope they get to see themselves.
I don't care about the headline or the record. I think it's a neat image in its own right.
Which obvious signs are you referring to? We are inundated as a society with killing. Movies, TV, news, video games, music, even the fucking opera is usually about killing. So now we're unstable when we parrot all these horrible things that we see every/hear day? You're not unstable if you watch killing, but you are unstable if you write about it...
Your last sentence is the most important one. What has changed most is the medium. Before people felt the need to express themselves at near-strangers using text, a medium notoriously bad at correctly conveying emotion without a lot of hard work, talent, and luck, the sort of outbursts unearthed from TFA by DJRumpy would have been delivered passionately, in person, amongst friends. The friends, seeing the outburst delivered in such a rich medium, and having a good working knowledge of this woman's personality, would in the vast majority of cases easily discern whether she was seriously disturbed and dangerous or only blowing off steam.
Contrast that with a Facebook post that shows little more than text on a page. Facebookers are willing to friend just about anyone they barely recognize, and that goes double for college campuses. These people, and the teachers and authorities later alerted to the post, have little to no frame of reference in which to place the comments made. We as a whole tend to be cautious when it comes to strangers, and when the only data are a few notes threatening attack, the stakes are high.
I'm approaching my late twenties and like many of you grew up online. To me those posts barely register because I've seen and used such expression enough to understand the medium and the likelihood that she's just blowing off steam. Still, by posting that content in that context, it's also obvious to me that her risk of bringing the wrong sort of attention to herself is also high. This looks to be just another case of someone who doesn't understand the privacy ramifications of putting her information online.
Well...it depends on what you mean by "louder." Compression boosts the volume of quiet sounds, so while the peak volume of the commercial isn't any higher than the peak volume of the show (think explosions, gunshots, yelling etc.) the average volume certainly is. In other words, the woman who is explaining to you the wonders of $DEVICE is speaking in a normal tone of voice elevated to the volume of a shout. I'd call that louder.
"Through" is just another way of saying "into and then out of." And I doubt anyone would be around for the second part, so "into the earth" works for me. =)
I don't buy it. Compare that video with this one. If the game was playing at full speed on the emulator and it is only the video that is slow, then why does the background music play at the same speed in both videos? The only way for that to happen is if the game is running slow.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't dare calling it an account of human history, humanity is way, way more than just the few Christian tidbits recorded in Bible.
It is an account of human history. Any student of history knows that to get a decently accurate view of history requires reading many, many histories. The accounts will contradict each other in places and reinforce each other in places. The truth of the matter is that if you weren't there, you'll never be sure of what really happened and what didn't. The Bible certainly counts as an account of history, or more accurately several accounts of history, and also includes (obviously) religious text and works of art.
Even if you view the religious stuff as hogwash, by looking at it you gain knowledge of the cultural context that the authors were working in, and you can see the effects that it had later on those who subscribe to it. Like it or not, the Bible is an important part of Western culture, and marginalizing it as "fairy tales" only shows that you're more interested in your ideal version of the world than reality.
blond beauties in bikinis
2-out-of-3 good enough?
Well, ONE one of them is blonde.
Most of the discussions here produce no new ideas; they're about forming connections among existing knowledge. Your comments may have been original text, but they produce no value. I'll take cut-and-paste information over that any day.
Sure, and that's very useful for analysis. Doesn't change the fact that a square wave sounds very different from a saw or sine wave.
Do you classify the colors of objects you encounter by listing their spectral analysis?
I did some ratings, and having a musical background I intentionally listened for and voted up stuff that was more adventurous. There were one or two that had some very nice dominant 7ths in them--not too far off the beaten path (since they're in every blues song ever) but more interesting to my ear.
I stopped rating for the night because I noticed I was getting bored with the single-note drone that underlay all the loops I heard, which made it hard to distinguish among many loops. Something almost identical to what I rated a "4" twelve loops ago was now only worth "3" because it was too familiar. It's like hearing a song overplayed on the radio--it lost its shine. (Which really goes to show you just how much variation is in a piece like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, but I digress.)
It's a cool project. Despite my comments above I'm impressed with the variety that is present in the hand-picked sampler you linked. I especially enjoyed what came out of your third population of students, too; it has a lot of character.
Right. All regular waves are abstractions. It's like a pure line or circle: it doesn't exist except as an idea. A very useful idea.
Really? I hope orchestral music counts as music. Bowed strings and brass are closer to sawtooth waves, flutes and woodwinds are squarish. Plucked strings *can* approach sine waves, but you're still going to have harmonics that change the timbre, which really just means "the shape of the wave."
Of course, with the use of synthesizers all over the place now, quite a lot of music makes use of pure and modified waves of all types.
Oh I know where they came from. That doesn't make the slogan any less unpleasant to the ear.
Stupidest auto slogan ever. I thought it was a joke ad the first time I saw it, but no...that's their tag line.
Subaru is trying to outdo them now with "Love...it's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru."
*shudder*
No you didn't.
That's a very interesting observation. I think it's worth mentioning that "consumers" rarely fought for openness; we just want some end product and we want it cheap and immediately. Perhaps if we'd been less intellectually lazy it never would have gotten to this point.
What we really need is a giant freaking RESET button. Everybody's debt and credit is now at 0. You have what you have, start over. And be smarter this time.
The root of our problem is the insurance industry.
That's an awfully simplistic explanation. I am very much against the current health care legislation for a number of reasons including the one you mentioned, but the truth is that the problem has many roots; including the insurance industry, hospitals, government, and patients themselves. NPR's This American Life did a show on it that highlights the complexity of the issues. There's plenty of blame to go around and IMO the insurance companies deserve less blame than government, which through wage freezes essentially kicked the insurance companies from a primary market of individuals to a market of corporations. Hospitals vary their charges (sometimes by a factor of 10) for identical procedures depending on how many patients use that insurance company. Doctors are afraid of liability if they don't run a requested test even if it's in the patient's best interest to remain untested.
The health insurance industry doesn't get off easy--there's a second show devoted entirely to it. It's a huge mess. But here's the thing: they're not really like the financial industry. They seek profits, like everyone else, but they have been demonized. Their hands are tied by hospitals, and they are left with the choice of raising premiums for everyone or dropping the policies of people in areas where they have little clout with hospitals. IMO their biggest failing is that they don't care about the patient: they approve lots of unnecessary procedures because much of their profit lies in the volume of claims they process.
"Clusterfuck" is an appropriate term, because it's a whole lot of things gone wrong all at once. Without having a clear understanding of the problem, you can be sold a bill of goods like the current legislation. You've seen through this bill, but enough people haven't that it's still creeping along. It's important to get the shape of the problem so that if we get rid of this bill it won't be replaced by something equally awful.
Oh I'm in full agreement about the frivolous crap. I don't think government should be funding space missions either, but the amount spent on that is unquestionably a pittance compared to all the other stuff; that and the value we get from NASA make it a very low priority to concern my political self with. I just enjoy the knowledge they bring back from the stars.
It's certainly a better use for 400M than bailing out a bunch of banks...
Seriously. $400M here, $400M there...pretty soon we're talking real money ;)
Actually, someone posted below that the ASRG is rated at 140W, so the total would be 280W. Looks like your power estimate is spot-on.
TFA says this:
ASRGs would give TiME sufficient energy to support a very capable instrument suite and a direct-to-Earth communications system to get its data home. The generators - TiME would carry two - could conceivably sustain several years of service on the lake surface.
Would 500W be enough? You seem to know what you're talking about, but I suspect NASA does too. It would be interesting to find out how (and if) they overcame the objections you raise.
There are a number of good reasons for doing this.
The primary objective of the mission would be to determine the precise chemistry of one of these lakes; but also to do meteorology, to help scientists better understand how the "methane-ologic cycle" on Titan actually works.
It would give scientists the opportunity to study shared climate processes at work under very different conditions.
"If we have models that will work on Earth and on Titan then we can be much more confident that those models understand the fundamentals of what's going on," explained the researcher from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
"The photogenic appeal and the mystique of exploring a sea on another world speak for themselves, but there is a genuine practical application to do with the science that will help us address problems here on Earth."
Plus it's already been under study for two years, and it would test a "novel power system," the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator.
ASRGs would give TiME sufficient energy to support a very capable instrument suite and a direct-to-Earth communications system to get its data home.
Not to mention that Titan looks like one of the best nearby candidates for life, specifically in its seas and not on its surface. Landing on Titan's shores is apt to be far less interesting than in its seas.
They actually captured the same two people twice! There's a grassy patch near the lower right of the image that contains two bright red flags. Zoom in on those, then pan up and to the right to the sidewalk. There's a column with ads on it and some people walking to the left and right of that. Two of them are clearly doubled. I hope they get to see themselves.
I don't care about the headline or the record. I think it's a neat image in its own right.
Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical
Dammit, how many times to we have to explain that there's no sound in space!?
Wow, what are you smoking?
Lint from The Turtleneck.
Which obvious signs are you referring to? We are inundated as a society with killing. Movies, TV, news, video games, music, even the fucking opera is usually about killing. So now we're unstable when we parrot all these horrible things that we see every/hear day? You're not unstable if you watch killing, but you are unstable if you write about it...
Your last sentence is the most important one. What has changed most is the medium. Before people felt the need to express themselves at near-strangers using text, a medium notoriously bad at correctly conveying emotion without a lot of hard work, talent, and luck, the sort of outbursts unearthed from TFA by DJRumpy would have been delivered passionately, in person, amongst friends. The friends, seeing the outburst delivered in such a rich medium, and having a good working knowledge of this woman's personality, would in the vast majority of cases easily discern whether she was seriously disturbed and dangerous or only blowing off steam.
Contrast that with a Facebook post that shows little more than text on a page. Facebookers are willing to friend just about anyone they barely recognize, and that goes double for college campuses. These people, and the teachers and authorities later alerted to the post, have little to no frame of reference in which to place the comments made. We as a whole tend to be cautious when it comes to strangers, and when the only data are a few notes threatening attack, the stakes are high.
I'm approaching my late twenties and like many of you grew up online. To me those posts barely register because I've seen and used such expression enough to understand the medium and the likelihood that she's just blowing off steam. Still, by posting that content in that context, it's also obvious to me that her risk of bringing the wrong sort of attention to herself is also high. This looks to be just another case of someone who doesn't understand the privacy ramifications of putting her information online.
Well...it depends on what you mean by "louder." Compression boosts the volume of quiet sounds, so while the peak volume of the commercial isn't any higher than the peak volume of the show (think explosions, gunshots, yelling etc.) the average volume certainly is. In other words, the woman who is explaining to you the wonders of $DEVICE is speaking in a normal tone of voice elevated to the volume of a shout. I'd call that louder.
"Through" is just another way of saying "into and then out of." And I doubt anyone would be around for the second part, so "into the earth" works for me. =)
I don't buy it. Compare that video with this one. If the game was playing at full speed on the emulator and it is only the video that is slow, then why does the background music play at the same speed in both videos? The only way for that to happen is if the game is running slow.