There's the problem. Anyone know how to make GUI programming more interesting?
Having worked on GUI design a bit for my own code, I would suggest that approaching it like a "human programming" problem is helpful. These are the key questions:
What tasks will the user want to complete? (e.g., configuring a printer to run on network)
How do I write a GUI that will encourage the user to make choices toward that end?
What dumb things could the user do?
The challenge (and therefore interest) is now found in answering those questions in a robust way. It is very similar to the challenge of proving an algorithm to be correct.
Unfortunately, a lot of designers seem to think that eye-candy is equvalent to a good GUI. That's a boredom-inducing approach.
Not true ... tuning is part science, part art
on
The Self-Tuning Guitar
·
· Score: 4, Informative
tuning, as it turns out, is inherently flawed. This occurs because of the "Pythagorean comma": essentially, the combination of a perfect fifth + a perfect fourth leads to an imperfect octave. Hence, there are actually multiple different ways to tune instruments, each of which makes sense in its own way. One example is "Well-Tempering" (as in Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier), which places priority on tuning keys near C. Chords like C, G, etc. played on a Well-Tempered scale sound particularly in tune, whereas chords like F# sound less well-tuned.
The most common scheme today is "Equal Tempering", in which every half-step is a multiple of 2^(1/12) above its neighbor. In this scheme, C# and Db (for example) are considered the same note, whereas in other schemes, they are not. The upside of this is that all keys sound equally "in tune"; the downside is that no key sounds perfectly in tune.
Historical note: some early Klaviers had seperate keys for sharps and flats, since those notes were not considered to be the same.
So, the "science" part of tuning is what you see in the autotuner. The "art" part is tuning the instrument to make the music sound like you hear it in your head.
Bottom line: if a guitarist tunes all of its open strings to a piano, it will not sound "in tune" to the guitarist. Of course, an autotuner can presumably be customized to taste.
So I ran this article by my wife the pediatrician. Quoth the wife:
I'm perfectly happy having informed patients suggest possibilities. The problem I run into is where patients encounter false or confusing information on the Internet and then try to tell me that I'm wrong because of something they read. The classic case is parents who refuse the MMR [measles/mumps/rubella] vaccine because there is "information" out there which links MMR vaccines and autism -- nevermind that studies in Europe with hundreds of thousands of children have
completely disproven any link between the two.
"So," says I, "what about your grandmother's first doctor, the one your parents had to fire? Where's the boundary between trusting your doc and being well-informed?" Quoth again the wife:
They could tell he was a bad doctor for reasons that had nothing to do with some deep dark secret off of the Internet. He didn't listen. He didn't see her often enough. They could tell that he wasn't offering the standard of care
If you are indeed interested in the current state of the discussion and evidence, I suggest the following:
Hugh Ross is an "Old-Earth" Christian who argues that the universe itself gives evidence for design.
Michael Behe is the point-man for the Irreducible Complexity argument.
Alvin Plantinga (link found in first post) rejuventates a much older line of thought called the "Transcendence Argument".
Those will get you started; some other time, if you are interested, I can give you links and bibliography for the philosophical side of things. Gotta go teach!
I have trouble with your post. Not an "I'm offended" kind of trouble, but an "I really disagree" kind of trouble. Here it is:
I think AC, your post comes from one who does not get it, and by rushing to the defense of religion where no assault is being perpetrated, you miss the mark completely.
Well, it turns out that parent was responding to this:
Excellent response. It's too bad religion isn't as honest in their theories.
which is certainly an attack -- it's a charge of dishonesty. Mild by/. standards, but also typical fare for this site. So, yes, there was an attack.
It is human nature to "know" how or why things are the way they are. You choose your explanation to be God. It is a nice and easy way to go about life, believing that everything has a purpose, but you do not need know what that is because you have God.
Scientists, on the other hand, have a driving desire to learn. This has nothing to do with "anti-religion" or a desire to prove there is no God. In fact, you may find that quite a few scientists do believe in God or a "creator" or what have you. They just don't try to use this "God" concept to explain away the unexplainable.
I think this severely misunderstands the state of Christian thought. If you look at the work of, for example, J.P. Moreland or Alvin Plantinga, you will see that they do not appeal to God as an explanation for the inexplicable. Instead, they believe in God because they believe that the evidence points firmly in that direction.
I teach science: H.S. Chem and Physics. I have a driving desire to learn, and I try to spark in my students a driving desire to learn and to analyze carefully, critically, and honestly. I also am an evangelical Christian (to use a loaded, ill-defined term) with an (additional) academic background in theology. I guess I would fit your description of the scientist who does believe in a God. So I have no problem with your suggestion that science and Scripture might converge on "God" as the "final answer to the Theory of Everything", and I heartily endorse your suggestion that science can give us a greater understanding of God. Indeed, I teach my students to think that way. The problem I have is that you portray scientists as neutral pursuers and purveyers of knowledge. They aren't. It turns out (speaking philosophically here) that everyone has a prior notion of the answer to the "does God exist?" question. This is why the question has been and continues to be unresolved philosophically. Our prior judgment on that question entirely colors our judgment as to what "counts" as proof of God's existence. It's a vicious circle, and philosophers have been unable to untangle it.
Scientists are no exception to the rule, and it comes out in all sorts of ways. For instance, take Richard Dawkins, chair of the "Public Understanding of Science" at Oxford. He has written extensively promoting evolutionary thought. So far, a seemingly neutral scientific question, right? But his books contain not only an scientific defense of evolution, but also several defamatory comments about Christianity. It turns out that he integrates his scientific worldview with his atheistic worldview, and uses his position to promote both simultaneously.
And so it goes in the world at large. No man is a neutral player on the "God question"; no evidence is ever evaluated without a priori judgments as to how much proof is enough proof. That is where "faith" comes in. For careful thinkers, Faith is not a substitute for evidence. Instead, it is a willingness to evaluate a certain amount of evidence in favor of God's existence, over agains
Not sure what to call disinformation that tries to counter FUD, but there should be a word for it.
The original poster is correct about short people, even those wearing seat belts, being at risk with air-bags. Children under twelve are at risk from air bags because of their height; the bag can smack them in the face. (see here: nhtsa.dot.gov). My wife the pediatrician confirms this info.
That said, I want a car with ABS and air-bags, too.:-)
There are, of course, levels of discontent. I'm at a lowish level. On the whole, I liked the movies. I also felt that they had several almost-fatal flaws, all involving unnecessary changes and additions.
Top of my list is changing Faramir from a truly noble character into a jerk (which, to be fair, was partly fixed in TTT extended).
So why do I care? Because I have been waiting for these movies all of my life. I don't read LOTR every other year just to be geeky; I read it because it I love it, much as Sam loves the Shire. When I saw FOTR, I rejoiced because Jackson visually captured Middle Earth in a richer way than I had ever imagined it.
When he modified Faramir's character, and Denethor's, and added extra material which did not significantly contribute to the story, it made me sad. I felt that in many ways, Jackson missed the warmth and nobility of Tolkein's work. That warmth and nobility are, to me, a core element of LOTR; without it, the movie is incomplete.
Anyway, the point of some of us ranters is that when you mess with something beloved, you need to be really really careful. It has nothing to do with pedantry and everything to do with loving our dreams. Jackson gets, IMO, a B+ for care. But I agree that the changes he made were partly in the sprit of "I can do a better job." And I think some humility there might have avoided some problems.
where did you get your sig? The only other person I've ever heard say that was at an acapella concert at Princeton in 1988... you aren't a former Footnote, are you?
...since you are the one that has to pay for the stamps in the first place. This scheme has a couple of drawbacks, but it is, IMO, strong in two areas:
no government decisions on what is or isn't spam, and
individual accountability (and sense of satisfaction!).
I've previously advocated this idea here, but was informed that SMTP isn't able to handle it. True, but...the alternatives are pretty much write a new transfer protocol, or else wait for the government to step in with heavy hand. I prefer the former.
I had the same reaction about water being a solvent. So, I went and checked the larger article to find out what they meant. Essentially, anything hydrogen-bonded is O.K.: water, alcohols of various sorts, while anything non-polar, like toluene or xylene is not. That means no:
Sharpies
White-Out
Permanent Markers, unless there happens to be a water-based permanent marker out there. That's a real bummer, considering that I'd rather not put a label on a CD that will later smudge or bleed. For what it's worth, I've been using Sharpies on my CD-RWs with no apparent problems. The larger article makes it clear that prolonged contact with the solvent is the real issue. So if you write on the CD with a Sharpie and then wave it around for a minute, the solvent will evaporate, leaving the ink behind. So that should be OK... But IANACDExpert.
Do you happen to know whether the Auburn reformer is intended to be a part of the tank, or is a pre-fueling, stand-alone machine? Reason I ask is that I calculate the pressure required to hold enough hydrogen to generate 3x efficiency to be about 11,000atm! That can't be good. So I'm inclined to agree with you (in spite of the article!) that the fuel has to be stored as diesel in the tank, then converted into H2 as the tank rumbles along. If so, that might provide extra energy as well: the conversion of C into CO2 releases even more energy than H2 into H2O.
I'm all for fuel cells, BTW, especially the methanol variety; I just wanted to make clear that the environmental advantages are often exaggerated in these discussions. (Witness: the large number of posts from people talking about the end of the hydrocarbon era...) Because the H2 is generated from hydrocarbons, greenhouse gases will continue to be generated. Also, some but not all claims of better efficiency are hyped. For that reason, I particularly appreciated fuelcells.org's discussion of "well to wheel" efficiency.
I went back and re-read the article, just to see if I read it correctly. And, I perused the site you recommended. I don't think the problem is my reading skills. Here are some quotes from the article:
Fuel cell technology takes a regular fuel and pulls off its hydrogen molecules, which are stored as gas.
Seems to me that the article is indicating that the H2 is stored, not generated in situ, as you indicated. (To give your claim some credit, however, the discussion of "reformers" on the site utcfuelcells.com talks about in situ production of H2.)
Here's another:
They took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.
Leaving aside the niggling problem that jet fuel doesn't actually contain CO2 or CO, this seems to make clear that the Auburn process strips hydrogen from hydrocarbons to generate hydrogen for fuel cell use. From this, I would have to conclude that the purpose of the Auburn process is to efficiently generate hydrogen to store in tanks for use in fuel cells.
Now for the numbers: octane has a heat of combustion of 5504 kJ/mol. At a 13% efficiency, that's 720kJ from one mole of octane. Now, strip the hydrogens from the mole of octane and carry them through the fuel cell reaction, assuming 100% efficiency; the result is 2569kJ, again from one mole of octane. That's a 3.5-to-1 improvement. But, according to the fuelcells.org site, a pure-hydrogen Toyota operates at 48% efficiency, "tank to wheel." Taking that number as normative, since the Auburn process does not address the "tank-to-wheel" process, you get at most a 1.75-1 efficiency ratio from hydrogen fuel cells, with actual numbers lower than that. Clearly, it's not possible to achieve an actual 3-1 efficiency ratio from "well-to-wheel", so the article's claim is wrong. So what should I, the reasonable reader, do with this conflict in information? Especially since I have already noticed several errors in fact in the article? I decided that the fuel was stored as hydrogen, and that the 3:1 ratio claimed was not fuel efficiency, but mileage-per-gallon-of fuel, and that the line
But with a fuel cell, a truck with a given amount of diesel can run three times the usual distance
was simply a misunderstanding of the claims of the Auburn group. Obviously, something's missing here. Perhaps you can fill in the details?
Sorry; I may not have been clear. Take one mole of hydrocarbons and subject it to the Auburn process. Take a second mole and subject it to ordinary high-T combustion. The amount of energy released will be (at best!) the same in both cases.
Thus, I am not claiming, and neither is Auburn, that the process is 3x more efficient than combustion.
But now consider storage: the H2 can be compressed into a smaller space than the corresponding hydrocarbons. Thus, a tank can hold the same amount of energy in only one third of the space.
Flip this around; fix the volume of the fuel tank. For this fixed volume, the tank can hold three times as much energy in hydrogen as it can in hydrocarbons. All this means, though, is that the tank has a higher-capacity gas tank, not that we have made the tank a more efficient user of gasoline.
The point, then, is that the overall process does not make a gallon of gas go any further; hence, it is not environmentally advantageous. It is battlefield advantageous, because tanks will be able to travel further without having to refuel, but it does not help the DoD one bit in terms of total gasoline used.
Unfortunately, into the atmosphere it goes. The point of this process is not to reduce greenhouse gases or improve overall fuel efficiency. The point is that since tanks have a limited fuel space, they need to be able to stuff as much power as possible into themselves before leaving for a mission. H2 (apparently) has a 3:1 advantage over hydrocarbons in that regard.
Don't rip on the Auburn University team; the article itself was badly written. For starters,
The process is chemical, and there is no combustion.
makes it sound like combustion is a non-chemical process. Combustion is, of course, a chemical process: reaction with oxygen. In the case of fuel cells, the hydrogen is allowed to react with atmospheric oxygen (or another oxidizer) in a controlled fashion. So combustion is a very apt description of a fuel cell reaction.
Also, the sentence
They took jet fuel, which is very similar to diesel, and catalytically converted it, separating out the sulfur, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the fuel cell ran.
seems to imply that hydrocarbons contain carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide within them. They don't, of course. The CO2 and CO are simply by-products of the hydrogen removal process: the carbon comes from the fuel, the oxygen from an outside source (most likely air, in which case combustion is directly involved again.)
The byproducts from this process are pretty much the same ones that come from an ordinary engine.
And then the quote you noticed,
But they realized there is already a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbon fuel
completely ignores the fact that hydrocarbons are currently the primary source of hydrogen in fuel cells. It's just badly written.
Your question is a good one, and I have no idea how the implementation works. The article described Bell Labs as implementing a "rules based approach" in their OS. That could mean that the cell phone applies a set of rules to decide whether or not to disclose your location, or it could mean that cell towers apply a set of rules...etc. The article gives precious little detail on that
But, [hypotheically speaking], if I were interested in hiding from the law, I sure wouldn't carry my own cell phone around any way. A legal order could easily open my records, too, and find out who I was calling, and then everybody in my little group would be implicated.[/hypothetically speaking]
I don't know about the rest of you, but it seemed to me that the actual article was making the opposite point --
Now that wireless companies can track a mobile phone's location, customers will want to control exactly who knows where they are and when.
Bell Labs says it has developed a network software engine that can let cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their whereabouts, a step that may help wireless companies introduce "location-based services" in a way customers will find handy rather than intrusive.
-- of the original poster's point:
AP via Yahoo reports that Bell Labs will soon announce cell phone software to reveal the owner's location to interested parties
It seems fairly clear from the article that the technology to find us is already around, and BL is unrolling software that will allow us to have a measure of control over who sees us.
I'm not any happier than the next guy about being found through my cell, and I'm glad that Bell Labs is at least pretending to care about my wishes.
[QUOTE]
You think the kind of people who panic over the infinitesimal chance of getting a bad burger are going to suddenly develop a spine when it comes to an earthquake? I don't. People can and do remain serene when the risk is ambiguous and abstract, but they'll lose their minds when it's no longer an abstraction. [/QUOTE] I almost agree with you, except for the people I've actually observed. There are different levels of risk-taking out there, and some people are just certain that really bad things won't happen to them. And, other people are desperate enough that they are willing to take huge risks. An example: my parents live just north of Houston. There is an area in their development that has been utterly flooded *twice* in the last decade. Houses have been condemned; people have had to sell at substantial loss. You might think that with that history, no one would buy or build in that area. Nope. There are re-built houses, right there, waiting for the next tropical storm to come through.
So I don't anticipate that better prediction of earthquakes will keep people in general from settling in certain areas.
However...insurance companies and mortgage companies *do* pay attention to this stuff. Their response to better prediction abilities will be to raise rates, as others have noted. Will this be good for anyone? I doubt it.
I've been teaching AP Calculus for 11 years, and I've seen the same kinds of changes on the Calculus exam. There are two types of questions on the "calculator allowed" sections of the exam: the questions where the numbers are so obviously complicated that you *have* to use a calculator, and the questions which are entirely symbolic.
Is the change to calculators good or bad? A little of both. On the one hand, GCs have allowed me to teach limits and tangent-line estimations much more effectively. On the other hand, students' algebra skills have suffered. In particular, there has been an improvement in students' abilities to deal with decimals and a decline in students' abilities to deal with fractions, both numeric and algebraic. Good? Bad? It's just different. But I find myself doing a lot more reteaching of algebra these days...
As an aside to the HP-bashers above, the real reason that TI's market share is higher is that the AP Exams are particularly friendly to the capabilities of the TIs. Accident or marketing ploy? We may never know.
Hmmm...The pdf file raised my curiosity. According to the graph on p. 11, the higher infrastructure costs have to do with software and outsourcing. MS claims that staffing costs are the same for both, but software costs and "outsourcing" costs under Linux are higher than for MS. Can this be true? And what are "outsourced costs" anyway? Does that refer to outsourced code writers? Technical support?
if anyone has specific knowledge of this area, I would love to know what they are talking about.
The aluminum melted in an astonishingly short time-within 3.5 picoseconds.
The article seems to hint that melting processes in general are equally short. But of course, melting on the macroscale does not occur in picoseconds. If you take an ice cube and place it in a 20 deg. C room, it will take a good while to melt. It's easy to see why: it takes time for individual atoms in the solid phase to acquire enough energy to shake free.
The conclusion I draw from the experiment is not that melting occurs rapidly in general, but rather that there is no "in between" transition state between solid and liquid. Now that's cool. It would be neat if they could extend this experiment to substances that have two different liquid forms, like sulfur and see whether there is an intermediate state between them. SiO2 glass might be particularly interesting. We could also investigate dimerizations and all manner of things... hmmm... to quote the article,
"Chemists think of reactions in terms of atoms moving around as bonds are broken and formed," says Jason Dwyer, a graduate student in Miller's laboratory and a co-author of the paper. "It is one of the dreams of chemistry to be able to actually watch that as it happens, and we now have a technique that lets us do that."
I agree with you, jdif. The movies are, visually speaking, exactly how I always imagined it. And, I don't mind the director changing the plot around to make books into movies. That's his job. The real problem I had was destroying the character of some of the characters. To wit:
Jackson's Elrond loses all of the warmth that Tolkien put in. The real Elrond adopted Aragorn. Jackson's Elrond seems ready to chase Aragorn off of his duaghter with a shotgun.
Jackson's Gimli is a clown. The real Gimli was a die-hard with a poetic heart (especially where Galadriel was concerned).
Jackson's Faramir is a copy of his brother Boromir, an overbearing jerk. The real Faramir was a prince: "Not if I found it by the side of the road, would I take it." (Book IV somewhere).
Jackson's Galadriel is creepy. Nuff said.
Still and all, I give Jackson high marks for what he's done. But the character changes make me very sad. As you pointed out, the overall sense of the story is lost. It is much darker now, and much more glamorous, in a negative way. *sigh*. I've waited twenty years for these movies. Guess I'll have to wait another twenty.
On a slightly related topic, does anyone know how much Jackson interacted with Tolkien's theology? (that would be Catholic, not Norse!)
As a veteran teacher of adolescents, I would offer up these points:
All kids are different. You may need to have different rules for your different kids; otherwise, the older one will feel like (s)he is being treated like a little kid. One may be more trustworthy than another one, and so might earn looser restrictions. BUT...
Be reasonable. Don't make rules you can't -- or aren't willing to -- enforce. Making a no-getting-off quickly rule is not going to work, because the enforcement of it will enevitably make you look like, or actually be, a monster. Consider:
- 15-yr. old gets personal e-mail from friend mentioning friend's personal life; - 15-yr. old happens to click out of e-mail right as you walk in; - you inquire, sensing rule violation; - 15-yr. old balks, not wanting to betray confidence; - fight ensues...
In that spirit, I would agree with having some sort of netlog that the kids know about. You can explain -- truthfully! -- that you *need* to know if some dirty old man is hitting on them, or if they are doing something that might expose you to hackers or ID thieves. You can also explain that you *want* to know if they are looking at things they shouldn't. Having such a setup will not keep them from all evil, but it will establish an enforceable house rule: no $BADTHING on our net.
But as some posters have already pointed out, the only way to wage the moral war is to discuss issues with them (prayer is also good, if you happen to be a believer). Your kids may think about porn, for example, only in terms of "is sex good or bad?" SARCASM much like some/. posts I've read/SARCASM. You can treat them like adults and get them to think about the other problems with porn: how women are often abused and/or taken advantage of to get the pix; how it creates future problems for marriage by portraying female sexuality as quick and easy; how selling sex and selling with sex is a feature even of main-stream media; how girls often react to the pressure to look sexy by becoming bulemic or anorexic.* You might even get gutsy with the 15-year old and talk briefly about your own marital relations. That would mean far more to him than pictures of Portman.
Good luck! I'm sure I'll be rethinking these issues in about 10 years. My wife just delivered our first child this past Friday.:-)
*/. disclaimer: body image is only one cause out of several for eating disorders.
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Having worked on GUI design a bit for my own code, I would suggest that approaching it like a "human programming" problem is helpful. These are the key questions:
What tasks will the user want to complete? (e.g., configuring a printer to run on network)
How do I write a GUI that will encourage the user to make choices toward that end?
What dumb things could the user do?
The challenge (and therefore interest) is now found in answering those questions in a robust way. It is very similar to the challenge of proving an algorithm to be correct.
Unfortunately, a lot of designers seem to think that eye-candy is equvalent to a good GUI. That's a boredom-inducing approach.
tuning, as it turns out, is inherently flawed. This occurs because of the "Pythagorean comma": essentially, the combination of a perfect fifth + a perfect fourth leads to an imperfect octave. Hence, there are actually multiple different ways to tune instruments, each of which makes sense in its own way. One example is "Well-Tempering" (as in Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier), which places priority on tuning keys near C. Chords like C, G, etc. played on a Well-Tempered scale sound particularly in tune, whereas chords like F# sound less well-tuned.
The most common scheme today is "Equal Tempering", in which every half-step is a multiple of 2^(1/12) above its neighbor. In this scheme, C# and Db (for example) are considered the same note, whereas in other schemes, they are not. The upside of this is that all keys sound equally "in tune"; the downside is that no key sounds perfectly in tune.
Historical note: some early Klaviers had seperate keys for sharps and flats, since those notes were not considered to be the same.
So, the "science" part of tuning is what you see in the autotuner. The "art" part is tuning the instrument to make the music sound like you hear it in your head.
Bottom line: if a guitarist tunes all of its open strings to a piano, it will not sound "in tune" to the guitarist. Of course, an autotuner can presumably be customized to taste.
I actually read it (ducks twice) and learned some Java from it ... and then went back to C programming.
"So," says I, "what about your grandmother's first doctor, the one your parents had to fire? Where's the boundary between trusting your doc and being well-informed?"
Quoth again the wife:
Bottom Line: good docs listen.
Hugh Ross is an "Old-Earth" Christian who argues that the universe itself gives evidence for design.
Michael Behe is the point-man for the Irreducible Complexity argument.
Alvin Plantinga (link found in first post) rejuventates a much older line of thought called the "Transcendence Argument".
Those will get you started; some other time, if you are interested, I can give you links and bibliography for the philosophical side of things. Gotta go teach!
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
Well, it turns out that parent was responding to this:
which is certainly an attack -- it's a charge of dishonesty. Mild by /. standards, but also typical fare for this site. So, yes, there was an attack.
I think this severely misunderstands the state of Christian thought. If you look at the work of, for example, J.P. Moreland or Alvin Plantinga, you will see that they do not appeal to God as an explanation for the inexplicable. Instead, they believe in God because they believe that the evidence points firmly in that direction.
I teach science: H.S. Chem and Physics. I have a driving desire to learn, and I try to spark in my students a driving desire to learn and to analyze carefully, critically, and honestly. I also am an evangelical Christian (to use a loaded, ill-defined term) with an (additional) academic background in theology. I guess I would fit your description of the scientist who does believe in a God. So I have no problem with your suggestion that science and Scripture might converge on "God" as the "final answer to the Theory of Everything", and I heartily endorse your suggestion that science can give us a greater understanding of God. Indeed, I teach my students to think that way.
The problem I have is that you portray scientists as neutral pursuers and purveyers of knowledge. They aren't. It turns out (speaking philosophically here) that everyone has a prior notion of the answer to the "does God exist?" question. This is why the question has been and continues to be unresolved philosophically. Our prior judgment on that question entirely colors our judgment as to what "counts" as proof of God's existence. It's a vicious circle, and philosophers have been unable to untangle it.
Scientists are no exception to the rule, and it comes out in all sorts of ways. For instance, take Richard Dawkins, chair of the "Public Understanding of Science" at Oxford. He has written extensively promoting evolutionary thought. So far, a seemingly neutral scientific question, right? But his books contain not only an scientific defense of evolution, but also several defamatory comments about Christianity. It turns out that he integrates his scientific worldview with his atheistic worldview, and uses his position to promote both simultaneously. And so it goes in the world at large. No man is a neutral player on the "God question"; no evidence is ever evaluated without a priori judgments as to how much proof is enough proof. That is where "faith" comes in. For careful thinkers, Faith is not a substitute for evidence. Instead, it is a willingness to evaluate a certain amount of evidence in favor of God's existence, over agains
Not sure what to call disinformation that tries to counter FUD, but there should be a word for it. The original poster is correct about short people, even those wearing seat belts, being at risk with air-bags. Children under twelve are at risk from air bags because of their height; the bag can smack them in the face. (see here: nhtsa.dot.gov). My wife the pediatrician confirms this info.
:-)
That said, I want a car with ABS and air-bags, too.
Regards, Jeff Cagle
There are, of course, levels of discontent. I'm at a lowish level. On the whole, I liked the movies. I also felt that they had several almost-fatal flaws, all involving unnecessary changes and additions.
Top of my list is changing Faramir from a truly noble character into a jerk (which, to be fair, was partly fixed in TTT extended).
So why do I care? Because I have been waiting for these movies all of my life. I don't read LOTR every other year just to be geeky; I read it because it I love it, much as Sam loves the Shire. When I saw FOTR, I rejoiced because Jackson visually captured Middle Earth in a richer way than I had ever imagined it.
When he modified Faramir's character, and Denethor's, and added extra material which did not significantly contribute to the story, it made me sad. I felt that in many ways, Jackson missed the warmth and nobility of Tolkein's work. That warmth and nobility are, to me, a core element of LOTR; without it, the movie is incomplete.
Anyway, the point of some of us ranters is that when you mess with something beloved, you need to be really really careful. It has nothing to do with pedantry and everything to do with loving our dreams. Jackson gets, IMO, a B+ for care. But I agree that the changes he made were partly in the sprit of "I can do a better job." And I think some humility there might have avoided some problems.
where did you get your sig? The only other person I've ever heard say that was at an acapella concert at Princeton in 1988 ... you aren't a former Footnote, are you?
Jeff Cagle
right you are...I should have checked the MSDS first instead of going by smell. Thanks, Jeff Cagle
no government decisions on what is or isn't spam, and
individual accountability (and sense of satisfaction!).
I've previously advocated this idea here, but was informed that SMTP isn't able to handle it. True, but...the alternatives are pretty much write a new transfer protocol, or else wait for the government to step in with heavy hand. I prefer the former.
Sharpies
White-Out
Permanent Markers, unless there happens to be a water-based permanent marker out there. ... But IANACDExpert.
That's a real bummer, considering that I'd rather not put a label on a CD that will later smudge or bleed.
For what it's worth, I've been using Sharpies on my CD-RWs with no apparent problems. The larger article makes it clear that prolonged contact with the solvent is the real issue. So if you write on the CD with a Sharpie and then wave it around for a minute, the solvent will evaporate, leaving the ink behind. So that should be OK
:-)
Do you happen to know whether the Auburn reformer is intended to be a part of the tank, or is a pre-fueling, stand-alone machine? Reason I ask is that I calculate the pressure required to hold enough hydrogen to generate 3x efficiency to be about 11,000atm! That can't be good. So I'm inclined to agree with you (in spite of the article!) that the fuel has to be stored as diesel in the tank, then converted into H2 as the tank rumbles along. If so, that might provide extra energy as well: the conversion of C into CO2 releases even more energy than H2 into H2O.
I'm all for fuel cells, BTW, especially the methanol variety; I just wanted to make clear that the environmental advantages are often exaggerated in these discussions. (Witness: the large number of posts from people talking about the end of the hydrocarbon era...) Because the H2 is generated from hydrocarbons, greenhouse gases will continue to be generated. Also, some but not all claims of better efficiency are hyped. For that reason, I particularly appreciated fuelcells.org's discussion of "well to wheel" efficiency.
Regards, Jeff Cagle
Here's another: Leaving aside the niggling problem that jet fuel doesn't actually contain CO2 or CO, this seems to make clear that the Auburn process strips hydrogen from hydrocarbons to generate hydrogen for fuel cell use. From this, I would have to conclude that the purpose of the Auburn process is to efficiently generate hydrogen to store in tanks for use in fuel cells.
Now for the numbers: octane has a heat of combustion of 5504 kJ/mol. At a 13% efficiency, that's 720kJ from one mole of octane.
Now, strip the hydrogens from the mole of octane and carry them through the fuel cell reaction, assuming 100% efficiency; the result is 2569kJ, again from one mole of octane. That's a 3.5-to-1 improvement. But, according to the fuelcells.org site, a pure-hydrogen Toyota operates at 48% efficiency, "tank to wheel." Taking that number as normative, since the Auburn process does not address the "tank-to-wheel" process, you get at most a 1.75-1 efficiency ratio from hydrogen fuel cells, with actual numbers lower than that.
Clearly, it's not possible to achieve an actual 3-1 efficiency ratio from "well-to-wheel", so the article's claim is wrong. So what should I, the reasonable reader, do with this conflict in information? Especially since I have already noticed several errors in fact in the article? I decided that the fuel was stored as hydrogen, and that the 3:1 ratio claimed was not fuel efficiency, but mileage-per-gallon-of fuel, and that the line was simply a misunderstanding of the claims of the Auburn group. Obviously, something's missing here. Perhaps you can fill in the details?
Sorry; I may not have been clear. Take one mole of hydrocarbons and subject it to the Auburn process. Take a second mole and subject it to ordinary high-T combustion. The amount of energy released will be (at best!) the same in both cases.
Thus, I am not claiming, and neither is Auburn, that the process is 3x more efficient than combustion.
But now consider storage: the H2 can be compressed into a smaller space than the corresponding hydrocarbons. Thus, a tank can hold the same amount of energy in only one third of the space.
Flip this around; fix the volume of the fuel tank. For this fixed volume, the tank can hold three times as much energy in hydrogen as it can in hydrocarbons. All this means, though, is that the tank has a higher-capacity gas tank, not that we have made the tank a more efficient user of gasoline.
The point, then, is that the overall process does not make a gallon of gas go any further; hence, it is not environmentally advantageous. It is battlefield advantageous, because tanks will be able to travel further without having to refuel, but it does not help the DoD one bit in terms of total gasoline used.
Unfortunately, into the atmosphere it goes. The point of this process is not to reduce greenhouse gases or improve overall fuel efficiency. The point is that since tanks have a limited fuel space, they need to be able to stuff as much power as possible into themselves before leaving for a mission. H2 (apparently) has a 3:1 advantage over hydrocarbons in that regard.
Also, the sentence seems to imply that hydrocarbons contain carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide within them. They don't, of course. The CO2 and CO are simply by-products of the hydrogen removal process: the carbon comes from the fuel, the oxygen from an outside source (most likely air, in which case combustion is directly involved again.)
The byproducts from this process are pretty much the same ones that come from an ordinary engine.
And then the quote you noticed, completely ignores the fact that hydrocarbons are currently the primary source of hydrogen in fuel cells. It's just badly written.
Your question is a good one, and I have no idea how the implementation works. The article described Bell Labs as implementing a "rules based approach" in their OS. That could mean that the cell phone applies a set of rules to decide whether or not to disclose your location, or it could mean that cell towers apply a set of rules...etc. The article gives precious little detail on that
But, [hypotheically speaking], if I were interested in hiding from the law, I sure wouldn't carry my own cell phone around any way. A legal order could easily open my records, too, and find out who I was calling, and then everybody in my little group would be implicated.[/hypothetically speaking]
-- of the original poster's point:
It seems fairly clear from the article that the technology to find us is already around, and BL is unrolling software that will allow us to have a measure of control over who sees us.
I'm not any happier than the next guy about being found through my cell, and I'm glad that Bell Labs is at least pretending to care about my wishes.
[QUOTE] You think the kind of people who panic over the infinitesimal chance of getting a bad burger are going to suddenly develop a spine when it comes to an earthquake? I don't. People can and do remain serene when the risk is ambiguous and abstract, but they'll lose their minds when it's no longer an abstraction.
[/QUOTE]
I almost agree with you, except for the people I've actually observed. There are different levels of risk-taking out there, and some people are just certain that really bad things won't happen to them. And, other people are desperate enough that they are willing to take huge risks.
An example: my parents live just north of Houston. There is an area in their development that has been utterly flooded *twice* in the last decade. Houses have been condemned; people have had to sell at substantial loss. You might think that with that history, no one would buy or build in that area. Nope. There are re-built houses, right there, waiting for the next tropical storm to come through.
So I don't anticipate that better prediction of earthquakes will keep people in general from settling in certain areas.
However...insurance companies and mortgage companies *do* pay attention to this stuff. Their response to better prediction abilities will be to raise rates, as others have noted. Will this be good for anyone? I doubt it.
I've been teaching AP Calculus for 11 years, and I've seen the same kinds of changes on the Calculus exam. There are two types of questions on the "calculator allowed" sections of the exam: the questions where the numbers are so obviously complicated that you *have* to use a calculator, and the questions which are entirely symbolic.
Is the change to calculators good or bad? A little of both. On the one hand, GCs have allowed me to teach limits and tangent-line estimations much more effectively. On the other hand, students' algebra skills have suffered. In particular, there has been an improvement in students' abilities to deal with decimals and a decline in students' abilities to deal with fractions, both numeric and algebraic. Good? Bad? It's just different. But I find myself doing a lot more reteaching of algebra these days...
As an aside to the HP-bashers above, the real reason that TI's market share is higher is that the AP Exams are particularly friendly to the capabilities of the TIs. Accident or marketing ploy? We may never know.
Jeff Cagle
Hmmm...The pdf file raised my curiosity. According to the graph on p. 11, the higher infrastructure costs have to do with software and outsourcing. MS claims that staffing costs are the same for both, but software costs and "outsourcing" costs under Linux are higher than for MS. Can this be true? And what are "outsourced costs" anyway? Does that refer to outsourced code writers? Technical support?
if anyone has specific knowledge of this area, I would love to know what they are talking about.
Jeff Cagle
The conclusion I draw from the experiment is not that melting occurs rapidly in general, but rather that there is no "in between" transition state between solid and liquid. Now that's cool. It would be neat if they could extend this experiment to substances that have two different liquid forms, like sulfur and see whether there is an intermediate state between them. SiO2 glass might be particularly interesting. We could also investigate dimerizations and all manner of things
The real problem I had was destroying the character of some of the characters. To wit:
Jackson's Elrond loses all of the warmth that Tolkien put in. The real Elrond adopted Aragorn. Jackson's Elrond seems ready to chase Aragorn off of his duaghter with a shotgun.
Jackson's Gimli is a clown. The real Gimli was a die-hard with a poetic heart (especially where Galadriel was concerned).
Jackson's Faramir is a copy of his brother Boromir, an overbearing jerk. The real Faramir was a prince: "Not if I found it by the side of the road, would I take it." (Book IV somewhere).
Jackson's Galadriel is creepy. Nuff said.
Still and all, I give Jackson high marks for what he's done. But the character changes make me very sad. As you pointed out, the overall sense of the story is lost. It is much darker now, and much more glamorous, in a negative way. *sigh*. I've waited twenty years for these movies. Guess I'll have to wait another twenty.
On a slightly related topic, does anyone know how much Jackson interacted with Tolkien's theology? (that would be Catholic, not Norse!)
All kids are different. You may need to have different rules for your different kids; otherwise, the older one will feel like (s)he is being treated like a little kid. One may be more trustworthy than another one, and so might earn looser restrictions. BUT...
Be reasonable. Don't make rules you can't -- or aren't willing to -- enforce. Making a no-getting-off quickly rule is not going to work, because the enforcement of it will enevitably make you look like, or actually be, a monster. Consider:
...
- 15-yr. old gets personal e-mail from friend mentioning friend's personal life;
- 15-yr. old happens to click out of e-mail right as you walk in;
- you inquire, sensing rule violation;
- 15-yr. old balks, not wanting to betray confidence;
- fight ensues
In that spirit, I would agree with having some sort of netlog that the kids know about. You can explain -- truthfully! -- that you *need* to know if some dirty old man is hitting on them, or if they are doing something that might expose you to hackers or ID thieves. You can also explain that you *want* to know if they are looking at things they shouldn't. Having such a setup will not keep them from all evil, but it will establish an enforceable house rule: no $BADTHING on our net.
But as some posters have already pointed out, the only way to wage the moral war is to discuss issues with them (prayer is also good, if you happen to be a believer). /. posts I've read /SARCASM.
:-)
/. disclaimer: body image is only one cause out of several for eating disorders.
Your kids may think about porn, for example, only in terms of "is sex good or bad?" SARCASM much like some
You can treat them like adults and get them to think about the other problems with porn: how women are often abused and/or taken advantage of to get the pix; how it creates future problems for marriage by portraying female sexuality as quick and easy; how selling sex and selling with sex is a feature even of main-stream media; how girls often react to the pressure to look sexy by becoming bulemic or anorexic.*
You might even get gutsy with the 15-year old and talk briefly about your own marital relations. That would mean far more to him than pictures of Portman.
Good luck! I'm sure I'll be rethinking these issues in about 10 years. My wife just delivered our first child this past Friday.
*