"WE" call them handlebars. But with throttle, clutch and steering all in your hands, it's hard to eat a burrito superme while you ride. Esp. in a full face helmet.
http://www.daytonayearbook.com (the blond has an IQ of 152)
If it comes to that, I will get certified and cruise the LA freeways on my kickstart motorcycle. That way, I can weave through the traffic jams of cars loaded with Spyware and virii.
I'll need to get a wi-fi VISA authorization installed on my '82 Harley Sturgis... and a bodyguard to protect all the cash I will be carrying
As a Mac & Win user, I'll be skipping the part about why Windows sux. You folks have that covered. I am going to point out some obscure but common reason why they don't jettison. I had to push through these issues when I learned how much I hated WinNT4. These are all anecdotal, but I expect that all will identify some truth in them:
Piracy
Starting in the late 80's before Billy G. had 7 heads and 10 horns, a bunch of us bought computers. 1 bought a Mac and the others bought or built DOS machines. One of us worked at a Windows software development firm. Guess how many of them bought their own licensed copy of Windows 3.1 when it came out? Doom 2? Quake? Pagemaker? AutoCAD? One guy bought a Packard Bell that came with WinWord 6. Guess which word processor we all used after that? Guess how many games the Mac guy got from us? By the time Win95 came out, there was about $2000-4000 worth of software on each machine that no one paid for. How can you cost justify switching to Mac? In '97, I bailed and jumped to Mac. I had to pay for Photoshop, Claris Works, Starry Night, Pagemaker, SCSI scanner that actually worked. At least 3 installed '98 off the same burned CD. But now, guess how many of them are using XP... you betcha! Zip, Zero, NADA.
But at work...
Aside from Pirating from work, often times, the work environment uses a software which is only Windows. Apps like Exacitmate, CardScan, AutoCAD, Medical, VPN clients. And before they went 'Net, my bank software was Windows only. If that's the case, it's hard to justify two computers when one MUST be a Windows machine.
The Dead Zone
Walk into any Walmart/Sam's or equivalent, buy a bucket o' bacon, 5 pounds of parmesan cheese and the latest version of The Sims shrink wrapped with 3 other lamer games. But I live in an area with Best Buy, Circuit City and still I have to drive 40 miles to buy a Mac Mouse. When generica offers Mac's or Linux, the migration will begin. And where can I get that rack in the front of Best Buy with scads of $10 software for MAC? Or does that fall under Asimov's "90% of everything is crap" rule;-)
Legacy
When Win95 came out, we still had lots of DOS stuff, we wanted to run. We've had machines given to us, we've cannibalized memory out of a machine and pitched the bones. Someone upgrades a hard drive, we get the old one. It's difficult to jump to Mac and throw away all that free stuff and our old favorites. (Tho I'm doing that with Mac's now.)
Show me, don't tell me
Aside from my obligatory Rush quote, it is the glaring flaw of MAC marketers and retail stores like CompUSA which have both Mac and Windows... Every been to CompUSA and see a Mac running MS Office? (Or Linux?) They have those cool demos, and if I were a Radiohead fan and movie editor, I'd buy it. But what about showing the public Safari? Show them MSWord X, Mac Quickbooks. Let them see how cool the apps they know are. Then show them the ADDED cost of buying anti-virus, anti-spyware, ADDED time of security patches. Tell them to put a quarter in a jar for every malware that Ad-Aware finds and make that the Mac Fund. They'll have a G5 in no time.
And finally...
I asked a friend who literally doesn't know the difference between an email address and a 'web sight [sic]' why she bought an $1100 Gateway all-in-one when she could have gotten the equivalent iMac for $999. "Gateway offered payments", $80/mo for 24 months... Yeah... Macs are expensive...
If I pay for an item with a $100 bill, and am accused of passing a counterfeit, all I have to do is pass the test of counterfeits. Is the paper the correct paper? Swipe it with that special marker. Does it lack the micro-chameleon ink? Hmmm... No. Does it lack the microthread text? No. If it passes the test of counterfeit, it is assumed to be genuine, and I am acquitted.
Is the Shroud a counterfeit? Was the cloth made in the 1300's. No. Does it use a pigment that was available in the 1300's? No. Are the threads of a weave used in 1300? No. It FAILS the test of counterfeit.
IS IT GENUINE? A shroud from first century with a dead deity's image? No test for that, but the test of counterfeit or forgery... we can do that. As I said... don't test the shroud, repeat the experiment of the genius who faked it.
All of the flaws you cite also weigh against forgery. Why didn't the forger paint the top of the head? Why did he paint the fingers elongated. Why didn't he smear the blood? Many scholars think that the Holy Mandylion of Edessa was the Shroud "folded in quarters". It was around in 525 and prolly in 57 AD.
To be honest.. I don't trust any history of these icons becuase of the issues at stake. But a simple replication attempt of forging the shroud? THAT would be worth reading!
The Challenge: Replicate the results!
If the Shroud is a forgery, it is the result of copious research, skill, and probably experimentation to get the "technology sufficiently advanced" as to appear to be "magic". THEN REPLICATE THE EXPERIMENT! We have far more advanced technology than some monk in the 14th century. Let's see the Geek community do the science and repeat the experiment whose result was the Shroud of Turin. Be sure to produce at least these characteristics:
Discoloration only on the surface of the fiber. No pigment penetration allowed.
Distance vs. discoloration intensity based on the shortest distance from source to image (The dirty bathwater phenomenon)
Use a modern fiber similar to the Shroud, but remove all of the vanillin so as to appear older than it is. Course, that means that the 14th century forger KNEW about vanillin and how to remove it to complete the forgery.
Replicate all of the forensic characteristics of a person who has died by crucifixion. Check the morgue. There are prolly a few of them around somewhere
And finally, (yes... FINALLY)
Based on the Geek Community rising to the challenge and succeeding in replicating the "Shroud Experiment", I expect to see ThinkGeek offering a "Do-Your-Own-Shroud" kits by 2007. "Amaze your friends. You too can appear to have been crucified." I'm picturing a REALLY big laser printer (that actually prints on cloth using lasers), a FireWire full-body scanner that can double as a tanning bed, and your choice of 3 shroud cloths: Latte, Mocha and French Vanillin.
What are the odds of that happening? It would take a miracle.
Disclaimer: I'm a believer. I believe the Shroud is authentic, just because I do. But work with me anyway;-)
This article is relevant to science, skeptics, believers and/.ers, because, as a geek/sci community, we are (usually) interested in science as it related to many topics. Faith, religion, miracles can certainly fall under that auspice. Why shouldn't they?
Data Point: This new finding on vanillin content and revised carbon dating which offers an older age REFUTES a previous refutation. IF the Shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus, then it should have a carbon date older than 1300. The evidence of 1988 invalidated the prospect of authenticity. This new evidence at least allows the prospect of authenticity. It would be not unlike someone disproving Michelson-Morely and allowing the prospect of Aether.
But faith need not be blind. If the date truly was c. 1300, then my 'faith' that the Shroud is authentic cannot punch through that. I have to disavow it. But now, I can again be allowed to believe. The Science has freed my faith. That is a good thing for all of us, believers and skeptics alike.
Questions: IF the Shroud were truly the burial cloth of a resurrected man/deity;-), shouldn't science be able to corroborate evidence of that? At least make observations? The Allais Effect is not understood, spurious to replicate, but is observable. Science can be done prior to understanding. Shouldn't the same be applied here? Enter the twilight zone, suspend your disbelief, quote some Rush, and pretend that a dead guy from the 1st Century named Jesus/Yeshuwa "magically" came back to life and ask these questions:
What would Scully do? If an inanimate humanoid were to be re-animated, what physical manifestations would it leave in the environs, esp. in a cloth immediately proximate to the corpse?
What does Occams' Razor leave? "Of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred." If the two theories are "miracle vs. forgery", this new data makes the forgery 'less equal' than it was. A 14th Century artist may have had the 'technology' to forge this item, but if the date is now well before that, the likely hood of forgery drops. Will it ever drop to below 'miracle'? I don't know, but the older the Shroud is allowed to be by testing, the less simple becomes the forgery explanation. Eventually, and it may already be there, it will drop to where "an unknown scientific phenomenon manifested during post-death time frame of an actual deceased person matching the record of the account of Jesus crucifixion" becomes the simpler explanation." Maybe then, the miracle becomes the simplest explanation.
WWACCS... What would Arthur C. Clarke say? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Is not the converse true also? Starglider29a's Corollary: "Any true magic can be replicated by sufficiently advanced technology." If it WERE a miracle, would it not also resemble highly-advanced technology? If we were to imagine how we in this day and age could replicate the Shroud observed characteristics, wouldn't we be simulating a miracle? Could we? Sure we could. What hypothetical miracle could Federation Technology not replicate? You know the episode I'm thinking of...
"WHY?"
If the Shroud can never prove a miracle, as it appears to record, then WHY is it here? If science cannot prove a forgery, then WHY is it here? Two reasons, I suspect:
It's a portrait. If I say "E=mc^2", you picture Einstein, right? If I say, "Love your enemies..." you picture a guy with a long hair, robe, a beard. Show any kid in America the painting done based on the Shroud. Ask who it is. They will prolly say "Jesus". If you are on AIM or Yahoo, it's easier to chat with someone you can't see if you have either an avatar, or a profile to attach yo
"The people who can hold politicians to account are the public; and with this project we are bringing cutting-edge science to the stakeholders, the public."
Sing it with me... "And the men who hold high places, must be the ones who start.. to mold a new reality.. closer to the heart."
Or, Perhaps...
"When they turn the pages of History,
When these days have passed long ago...
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow?
We turned our gaze from the Castles in the Distance
Eyes cast down on the path of least resistance!"
AF2K.com (A Farewell To Kings), my Hypernovel, the kernel of which was written in 1990, before I knew what a distirbuted grid was, addresses this issue and quotes Rush along the way. In the novel, the simulation, SYnergistic Resource for INformation eXchange (SYRINX;-) found that ecosystem collapse would occur in 2150, but that the "tipping point", the Paddler's Index, occurred in 2015.
Oddly, the 11 years to go from 378ppm to a "dangerous level" of 400ppm at 2ppm per year is 2015! Lucky guess? You decide...
What makes this post 'on-topic' is this quote from the article:
The scientists behind climateprediction.net believe their project, because it is distributed to individual PCs, can help inform people about climate change - and that, in turn could bring political change.
When one thinks about how to remedy the situation, you often end up with such resistance that the will to make it so causes "political change". That went to an extreme in the novel, trust me. The key was three-fold:
Michael Gavon made then think
Marena San Leoni made them feel
Adrienne made them get off their a55s and do something
Perhaps we need to adopt this model as well. "Knowing the answer isn't all there is... you have to get someone to listen to you. And to make someone listen to what they don't want to hear, takes a gift..."
starglider29a
author, A Farewell to Kings
http://www.af2k.com
What's the big rush? I can download it from the Apple iVid Store for my iTheater <*POP*> errr... sorry, I was dreaming.
My kids have never seen it. Ever try to explain what using a computer was like before GUI to a kid? Or that the big scary Big Brother monopolistic dude in the video is NOT Bill Gates?
Tron I = The Passion of Flynn
TRON II = The Second Coming of Flynn.
I've been thinking about a plot for that for years! Flynn needs to get as many programs as possible "backed up" before a global re-format to wipe out the binary super-virus that Dillinger/Sark/MCP have designed in his 20 years in prison for embezzlment and IP violations.
Then Flynn and Alan Bradley (get it?) re-install the programs on an entirely new OS.;-) Pick one.
And for fun, Tron gets help from a friendly program called "NO-TRON" , iconized by a guy in a button down oxford with his arms crossed, who uses his set of "Utilities" to help clean up corrupt programs.
I run several machines, several OS's, several monitors. I wish I could put the output of one or more machine's video card INTO a tiny window on my largest monitor.
Could we do a multi-processor system that splits the tasks according to their horsepower needs? The OS splits the tasks the processor that can handle it, an no more. Multilevel, Trickle UP CPU power. Say, for sake of argument, set up arbitrary CPU usage levels
A Pentium nothin' (or equivalent) relegate the slow, stupid stuff to a lesser processor, like Notepad, some sniffers... look at your Task Manager processes (or equivalents) for stuff you could be running on a 80286 and shove them to the CPU slums. This level keeps the lights on, controls the heat. It's the oil and the water pump on your Ferrari.
A Pentium ][ (or equivalent)
Runs the OS functions themselves, if they can. File transfer, TCP/IP, simple Multimedia like MP3 & CD, Virus, Spyware detection... This level replaces the Pentium ][ in your kid's room running Limewire. It's the Stereo on your Ferrari
A Pentium ]|[ (or equivalent)
The GUI, the heavy multimedia, like video, CD burning, the bloated web rendering... this level makes the UI responsive. It's the suspension on the Ferrari
A Pentium IV (or equivalent)
The Engine of your Ferrari! The monster throughput... The Doom VII, the Celestia: Andromeda, SETI:Alpha 6, Climate Prediction, and of course the rendering of the perfect sig-other on Maya. When yer not using this part, shut it down, despin the fan and listen to the sound of silence.
The offshoot of this is that there can be a Level 5, if one were to plug into a cluster. From there, you can plug into BIGGER clusters until you either reach Blue Gene/X or you ARE part of the cluster.
Space itself is made of quanta. Each quantum is the size such that it takes light one "chronon" to cross it. In areas where the energy flux is approximately the same (though a control volume), the cells merge in to a giant cell, not unlike soap bubbles. Light still passes through it in one chronon. Interesting side effect ensue as light pases between stars.
In addition, the quanta split not unlike biological cells, in essentially a 2^kt relationship. The cells, under the right (or wrong) conditional can actually be destroyed, and the energy density contain in them (we call it mass) is lost as plasma into a contusion.
In 1997, Kevin T. Bendall entered 3 chapters of an unfinished manuscript into a Warner-Aspect Sci-Fi contest which used this universe. I helped collaborate on the design of the universe, if you will. (It's on the web, you can find it.;-) We thought we were insane playing amateur cosmologists, but had fun with it. It explained some of the paradoxes of the universe as we understand it. Including much of Einstein and Hawking. We know ***WHY*** the speed of light is invariant:-D
Then silly stuff like distant supernovae accelerating away from us, the quandry of dark matter/energy and other newly found phenomena showed up. Our universe could explain much of the new data. And we began to wonder...
The story began with an accident at SLAC which removed an 8 meter sphere from the universe. Hilarity ensued. It led to the ability to slip between the cells and thus space travel (by side stepping Einstein) got us interstellar. Chaos ensued.
Every new "cosmological datum" that comes along makes us look at each other and think 'We can explain that.'
Not sure who was being called the dumb troll here, but congrats to the Anonymous Coward for being only the second person to have indicated to me that they figured out the 29a I appended an old nickname, with my tongue firmly in my cheek.
Given the precarious nature of the volcano off the Canary Islands, as discussed here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/2 9/1910241&tid=14
(I'm going to try to say this politely)...could a group with an agenda muster enough energy to "intentionally trigger" that volcano's landslide and thus trigger the Mega-Tsunami?
It is not unthinkable that certain groups who suffered loss of their own, including their own religious edifices, might wonder if they could CAUSE the same loss to other religious groups, nationalities, and their religious and governmental edifices and establishments, many many of which are located on The East Coast.
Starglider29a "I'm not saying what I'm saying. I'm not saying what I'm thinking. Hell, I'm not even THINKING what I'm thinking." -- Capt. John Sheridan, Babylon 5
I don't thump it, but I read it. You might find these verses of interest in the days of the tsunami and the 2004 MN4 "concern":
"and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea...and the third part of the ships were destroyed." Rev 8:8-9 Asteroid and Tsunami? You decide...
"And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:" Luke 21:25-26
"And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman (Prolly Israel)... And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood"
"and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth... And every island fled away... And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent" Revelation 16:18-21 Plug THAT into the Asteroid Simulator OWW!
You don't have to have a degree in astrophysics to understand The Bible, but it helps!
In the same vein as the Asteroid Simulator page (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/), is there anything that can give us some ballpark figures on tsunami wave height and speed vs. distance for a given energy? (Like an Asteroid Strike?) Using 2004 MN4 as a sample, The Impact Simulator gives this value. "The crater opened in the water has a diameter of 5.41 km = 3.36 miles"
Can we use that to estimate a wave height at a given distance?
Also, if an impact we in the Indian Ocean, what effect would be seen in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, being narrow, shallow waterways? We all remember the "shotgun blast" from the Gulf of California in Lucifer's Hammer, now don't we?
Disclaimer: I am about to cite a book which is a work of fiction. The core of it was written in 1990 for the Turner Tommorow Award contest. I was the author. The title is "A Farewell to Kings". I wrote it when I was a desktop publisher making $6.50/hr. Although familiar with much of the science of the day, the work is speculative fiction. That being said, there was a concept which has a relevance to this topic: "The Paddler's Index"
In the book, a massive computer simulation of the globe yielded a finding in which the earth becomes unable to support human life as we know it now by 2150 AD. 'Nuf said there.
However, before that time, there is an inflexion point in the environment when the damage being done (by humans mostly) becomes more than the planet can regenerate. At that stage, to quote Scotty, we are 'dead already'. The analogy is given of an impending doom, such as a canoeist approaching a waterfall, which I called the "Waterfall Index". But when the inflexion point is hit, it is analogous to when the river is flowing faster than you can paddle. thus I called it "The Paddler's Index". No matter how far away the waterfall is, you are 'dead already'.
When I wrote this in 1990, the Paddler's Index was horrifyingly close. To quote the 1990 edition, "2004! That was practically the day after tomorrow!" (Coincidence?)
The book then offered solutions to solve the problem, correct the damage, heal the regenerative mechanism, and push the deadline away. Yay!
But switch abruptly to real life... Has any study been done to try to determine if we are 'dead already'? Or if there is a point in time when we reach that? I wrote this work YEARS before the Japanese built their climate supercomputer. Have they tested to see if there is a danger?
And what if... what if someone does and learns this? What do we do? A quick browse of the postings on this article alone show one of the many proverbs I wrote to be true:
"Everything exists in 6 dimensions... X, Y, Z, Time, Money and Politics
If the Money and Politics currently impede our progress on simple, obvious, even mutually-agreed issues such as CO2, what would we do if this Paddler's Index were real?
We must begin to take the steps that we know need to be taken. Will they cost jobs? They might. How many jobs are you willing to save at the cost of a climatologic catastrophe? The jobs you save in the refrigator industry may kill the crops that your children would put in their fridgeys.
In closing, the book uses Rush quotes to reinforce the urgency of the dilemma, and humankinds reluctance to give up what they have for what they may save... Two of the best are:
"Wheels within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex
Time after time we lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see their effects"
and, of course...
"And the men who hold high places
must be the ones who start..."
Slashdot Mirror
Voice actuated throttle and braking. Maybe steering...
"faster... faster... FASTER... a little more to the right... brake... harder... Harder... OMG HARDER!!!"
"WE" call them handlebars. But with throttle, clutch and steering all in your hands, it's hard to eat a burrito superme while you ride. Esp. in a full face helmet.
http://www.daytonayearbook.com
(the blond has an IQ of 152)
If it comes to that, I will get certified and cruise the LA freeways on my kickstart motorcycle. That way, I can weave through the traffic jams of cars loaded with Spyware and virii.
I'll need to get a wi-fi VISA authorization installed on my '82 Harley Sturgis... and a bodyguard to protect all the cash I will be carrying
One pedal, and a Ctrl-key for other options. My current car already has windows, but my bike doesn't ;-)
Starting in the late 80's before Billy G. had 7 heads and 10 horns, a bunch of us bought computers. 1 bought a Mac and the others bought or built DOS machines. One of us worked at a Windows software development firm. Guess how many of them bought their own licensed copy of Windows 3.1 when it came out? Doom 2? Quake? Pagemaker? AutoCAD? One guy bought a Packard Bell that came with WinWord 6. Guess which word processor we all used after that? Guess how many games the Mac guy got from us? By the time Win95 came out, there was about $2000-4000 worth of software on each machine that no one paid for. How can you cost justify switching to Mac? In '97, I bailed and jumped to Mac. I had to pay for Photoshop, Claris Works, Starry Night, Pagemaker, SCSI scanner that actually worked. At least 3 installed '98 off the same burned CD. But now, guess how many of them are using XP... you betcha! Zip, Zero, NADA.
Aside from Pirating from work, often times, the work environment uses a software which is only Windows. Apps like Exacitmate, CardScan, AutoCAD, Medical, VPN clients. And before they went 'Net, my bank software was Windows only. If that's the case, it's hard to justify two computers when one MUST be a Windows machine.
Walk into any Walmart/Sam's or equivalent, buy a bucket o' bacon, 5 pounds of parmesan cheese and the latest version of The Sims shrink wrapped with 3 other lamer games. But I live in an area with Best Buy, Circuit City and still I have to drive 40 miles to buy a Mac Mouse. When generica offers Mac's or Linux, the migration will begin. And where can I get that rack in the front of Best Buy with scads of $10 software for MAC? Or does that fall under Asimov's "90% of everything is crap" rule
When Win95 came out, we still had lots of DOS stuff, we wanted to run. We've had machines given to us, we've cannibalized memory out of a machine and pitched the bones. Someone upgrades a hard drive, we get the old one. It's difficult to jump to Mac and throw away all that free stuff and our old favorites. (Tho I'm doing that with Mac's now.)
Aside from my obligatory Rush quote, it is the glaring flaw of MAC marketers and retail stores like CompUSA which have both Mac and Windows... Every been to CompUSA and see a Mac running MS Office? (Or Linux?) They have those cool demos, and if I were a Radiohead fan and movie editor, I'd buy it. But what about showing the public Safari? Show them MSWord X, Mac Quickbooks. Let them see how cool the apps they know are. Then show them the ADDED cost of buying anti-virus, anti-spyware, ADDED time of security patches. Tell them to put a quarter in a jar for every malware that Ad-Aware finds and make that the Mac Fund. They'll have a G5 in no time.
I asked a friend who literally doesn't know the difference between an email address and a 'web sight [sic]' why she bought an $1100 Gateway all-in-one when she could have gotten the equivalent iMac for $999. "Gateway offered payments", $80/mo for 24 months... Yeah... Macs are expensive...
You forgot "Shroud of Turin" slugfest ;-)
If I pay for an item with a $100 bill, and am accused of passing a counterfeit, all I have to do is pass the test of counterfeits. Is the paper the correct paper? Swipe it with that special marker. Does it lack the micro-chameleon ink? Hmmm... No. Does it lack the microthread text? No. If it passes the test of counterfeit, it is assumed to be genuine, and I am acquitted.
Is the Shroud a counterfeit? Was the cloth made in the 1300's. No. Does it use a pigment that was available in the 1300's? No. Are the threads of a weave used in 1300? No. It FAILS the test of counterfeit.
IS IT GENUINE? A shroud from first century with a dead deity's image? No test for that, but the test of counterfeit or forgery... we can do that. As I said... don't test the shroud, repeat the experiment of the genius who faked it.
All of the flaws you cite also weigh against forgery. Why didn't the forger paint the top of the head? Why did he paint the fingers elongated. Why didn't he smear the blood? Many scholars think that the Holy Mandylion of Edessa was the Shroud "folded in quarters". It was around in 525 and prolly in 57 AD.
To be honest.. I don't trust any history of these icons becuase of the issues at stake. But a simple replication attempt of forging the shroud? THAT would be worth reading!
and
"As soon as one does provide some credible evidence I will be willing to re-appraise my position."
This is a serious, non-rhetorical question: What would you deem credible evidence?
How would you define 'credible evidence'?
If the Shroud is a forgery, it is the result of copious research, skill, and probably experimentation to get the "technology sufficiently advanced" as to appear to be "magic". THEN REPLICATE THE EXPERIMENT! We have far more advanced technology than some monk in the 14th century. Let's see the Geek community do the science and repeat the experiment whose result was the Shroud of Turin. Be sure to produce at least these characteristics:
And finally, (yes... FINALLY)
Based on the Geek Community rising to the challenge and succeeding in replicating the "Shroud Experiment", I expect to see ThinkGeek offering a "Do-Your-Own-Shroud" kits by 2007. "Amaze your friends. You too can appear to have been crucified." I'm picturing a REALLY big laser printer (that actually prints on cloth using lasers), a FireWire full-body scanner that can double as a tanning bed, and your choice of 3 shroud cloths: Latte, Mocha and French Vanillin.
What are the odds of that happening? It would take a miracle.
This article is relevant to science, skeptics, believers and
Data Point:
This new finding on vanillin content and revised carbon dating which offers an older age REFUTES a previous refutation. IF the Shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus, then it should have a carbon date older than 1300. The evidence of 1988 invalidated the prospect of authenticity. This new evidence at least allows the prospect of authenticity. It would be not unlike someone disproving Michelson-Morely and allowing the prospect of Aether.
But faith need not be blind. If the date truly was c. 1300, then my 'faith' that the Shroud is authentic cannot punch through that. I have to disavow it. But now, I can again be allowed to believe. The Science has freed my faith. That is a good thing for all of us, believers and skeptics alike.
Questions:
IF the Shroud were truly the burial cloth of a resurrected man/deity
If an inanimate humanoid were to be re-animated, what physical manifestations would it leave in the environs, esp. in a cloth immediately proximate to the corpse?
"Of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred." If the two theories are "miracle vs. forgery", this new data makes the forgery 'less equal' than it was. A 14th Century artist may have had the 'technology' to forge this item, but if the date is now well before that, the likely hood of forgery drops. Will it ever drop to below 'miracle'? I don't know, but the older the Shroud is allowed to be by testing, the less simple becomes the forgery explanation. Eventually, and it may already be there, it will drop to where "an unknown scientific phenomenon manifested during post-death time frame of an actual deceased person matching the record of the account of Jesus crucifixion" becomes the simpler explanation." Maybe then, the miracle becomes the simplest explanation.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Is not the converse true also? Starglider29a's Corollary: "Any true magic can be replicated by sufficiently advanced technology." If it WERE a miracle, would it not also resemble highly-advanced technology? If we were to imagine how we in this day and age could replicate the Shroud observed characteristics, wouldn't we be simulating a miracle? Could we? Sure we could. What hypothetical miracle could Federation Technology not replicate? You know the episode I'm thinking of...
If the Shroud can never prove a miracle, as it appears to record, then WHY is it here? If science cannot prove a forgery, then WHY is it here? Two reasons, I suspect:
If I say "E=mc^2", you picture Einstein, right? If I say, "Love your enemies..." you picture a guy with a long hair, robe, a beard. Show any kid in America the painting done based on the Shroud. Ask who it is. They will prolly say "Jesus". If you are on AIM or Yahoo, it's easier to chat with someone you can't see if you have either an avatar, or a profile to attach yo
Sing it with me... "And the men who hold high places, must be the ones who start.. to mold a new reality.. closer to the heart."
Or, Perhaps...
AF2K.com (A Farewell To Kings), my Hypernovel, the kernel of which was written in 1990, before I knew what a distirbuted grid was, addresses this issue and quotes Rush along the way. In the novel, the simulation, SYnergistic Resource for INformation eXchange (SYRINX
Oddly, the 11 years to go from 378ppm to a "dangerous level" of 400ppm at 2ppm per year is 2015! Lucky guess? You decide...
What makes this post 'on-topic' is this quote from the article:
The scientists behind climateprediction.net believe their project, because it is distributed to individual PCs, can help inform people about climate change - and that, in turn could bring political change.
When one thinks about how to remedy the situation, you often end up with such resistance that the will to make it so causes "political change". That went to an extreme in the novel, trust me. The key was three-fold:
- Michael Gavon made then think
- Marena San Leoni made them feel
- Adrienne made them get off their a55s and do something
Perhaps we need to adopt this model as well. "Knowing the answer isn't all there is... you have to get someone to listen to you. And to make someone listen to what they don't want to hear, takes a gift..."starglider29a
author, A Farewell to Kings
http://www.af2k.com
What's the big rush? I can download it from the Apple iVid Store for my iTheater <*POP*> errr... sorry, I was dreaming.
My kids have never seen it. Ever try to explain what using a computer was like before GUI to a kid? Or that the big scary Big Brother monopolistic dude in the video is NOT Bill Gates?
Good luck...
Tron I = The Passion of Flynn
;-) Pick one.
TRON II = The Second Coming of Flynn.
I've been thinking about a plot for that for years! Flynn needs to get as many programs as possible "backed up" before a global re-format to wipe out the binary super-virus that Dillinger/Sark/MCP have designed in his 20 years in prison for embezzlment and IP violations.
Then Flynn and Alan Bradley (get it?) re-install the programs on an entirely new OS.
And for fun, Tron gets help from a friendly program called "NO-TRON" , iconized by a guy in a button down oxford with his arms crossed, who uses his set of "Utilities" to help clean up corrupt programs.
I run several machines, several OS's, several monitors. I wish I could put the output of one or more machine's video card INTO a tiny window on my largest monitor.
I could cheat and use TV out on my Mac...
Could we do a multi-processor system that splits the tasks according to their horsepower needs? The OS splits the tasks the processor that can handle it, an no more. Multilevel, Trickle UP CPU power. Say, for sake of argument, set up arbitrary CPU usage levels
relegate the slow, stupid stuff to a lesser processor, like Notepad, some sniffers... look at your Task Manager processes (or equivalents) for stuff you could be running on a 80286 and shove them to the CPU slums. This level keeps the lights on, controls the heat. It's the oil and the water pump on your Ferrari.
Runs the OS functions themselves, if they can. File transfer, TCP/IP, simple Multimedia like MP3 & CD, Virus, Spyware detection... This level replaces the Pentium ][ in your kid's room running Limewire. It's the Stereo on your Ferrari
The GUI, the heavy multimedia, like video, CD burning, the bloated web rendering... this level makes the UI responsive. It's the suspension on the Ferrari
The Engine of your Ferrari! The monster throughput... The Doom VII, the Celestia: Andromeda, SETI:Alpha 6, Climate Prediction, and of course the rendering of the perfect sig-other on Maya. When yer not using this part, shut it down, despin the fan and listen to the sound of silence.
The offshoot of this is that there can be a Level 5, if one were to plug into a cluster. From there, you can plug into BIGGER clusters until you either reach Blue Gene/X or you ARE part of the cluster.
Why not?
Space itself is made of quanta.
;-) We thought we were insane playing amateur cosmologists, but had fun with it. It explained some of the paradoxes of the universe as we understand it. Including much of Einstein and Hawking. We know ***WHY*** the speed of light is invariant :-D
Each quantum is the size such that it takes light one "chronon" to cross it. In areas where the energy flux is approximately the same (though a control volume), the cells merge in to a giant cell, not unlike soap bubbles. Light still passes through it in one chronon. Interesting side effect ensue as light pases between stars.
In addition, the quanta split not unlike biological cells, in essentially a 2^kt relationship. The cells, under the right (or wrong) conditional can actually be destroyed, and the energy density contain in them (we call it mass) is lost as plasma into a contusion.
In 1997, Kevin T. Bendall entered 3 chapters of an unfinished manuscript into a Warner-Aspect Sci-Fi contest which used this universe. I helped collaborate on the design of the universe, if you will. (It's on the web, you can find it.
Then silly stuff like distant supernovae accelerating away from us, the quandry of dark matter/energy and other newly found phenomena showed up. Our universe could explain much of the new data. And we began to wonder...
The story began with an accident at SLAC which removed an 8 meter sphere from the universe. Hilarity ensued. It led to the ability to slip between the cells and thus space travel (by side stepping Einstein) got us interstellar. Chaos ensued.
Every new "cosmological datum" that comes along makes us look at each other and think 'We can explain that.'
You have no idea...
Not sure who was being called the dumb troll here, but congrats to the Anonymous Coward for being only the second person to have indicated to me that they figured out the 29a I appended an old nickname, with my tongue firmly in my cheek.
Probably fewer than claim to be. I have spoken up on Slashdot about such things. I didn't see the Discovery Channel show. What's your question?
Given the precarious nature of the volcano off the Canary Islands, as discussed here http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/2 9/1910241&tid=14
...could a group with an agenda muster enough energy to "intentionally trigger" that volcano's landslide and thus trigger the Mega-Tsunami?
(I'm going to try to say this politely)
It is not unthinkable that certain groups who suffered loss of their own, including their own religious edifices, might wonder if they could CAUSE the same loss to other religious groups, nationalities, and their religious and governmental edifices and establishments, many many of which are located on The East Coast.
Starglider29a
"I'm not saying what I'm saying.
I'm not saying what I'm thinking.
Hell, I'm not even THINKING what I'm thinking."
-- Capt. John Sheridan, Babylon 5
You're welcome.
;-) Isn't it ironic... don'tcha think?
Though I wouldn't have said anything about this, if you hadn't, and so...
...it was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- "and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea
...and the third part of the ships were destroyed." Rev 8:8-9 Asteroid and Tsunami? You decide...
- "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:" Luke 21:25-26
- "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman (Prolly Israel)... And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood"
- "and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth... And every island fled away... And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent" Revelation 16:18-21 Plug THAT into the Asteroid Simulator OWW!
You don't have to have a degree in astrophysics to understand The Bible, but it helps!In the same vein as the Asteroid Simulator page (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/), is there anything that can give us some ballpark figures on tsunami wave height and speed vs. distance for a given energy? (Like an Asteroid Strike?) Using 2004 MN4 as a sample, The Impact Simulator gives this value. "The crater opened in the water has a diameter of 5.41 km = 3.36 miles"
Can we use that to estimate a wave height at a given distance?
Also, if an impact we in the Indian Ocean, what effect would be seen in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, being narrow, shallow waterways? We all remember the "shotgun blast" from the Gulf of California in Lucifer's Hammer, now don't we?
In the book, a massive computer simulation of the globe yielded a finding in which the earth becomes unable to support human life as we know it now by 2150 AD. 'Nuf said there.
However, before that time, there is an inflexion point in the environment when the damage being done (by humans mostly) becomes more than the planet can regenerate. At that stage, to quote Scotty, we are 'dead already'. The analogy is given of an impending doom, such as a canoeist approaching a waterfall, which I called the "Waterfall Index". But when the inflexion point is hit, it is analogous to when the river is flowing faster than you can paddle. thus I called it "The Paddler's Index". No matter how far away the waterfall is, you are 'dead already'.
When I wrote this in 1990, the Paddler's Index was horrifyingly close. To quote the 1990 edition, "2004! That was practically the day after tomorrow!" (Coincidence?)
The book then offered solutions to solve the problem, correct the damage, heal the regenerative mechanism, and push the deadline away.
Yay!
But switch abruptly to real life... Has any study been done to try to determine if we are 'dead already'? Or if there is a point in time when we reach that? I wrote this work YEARS before the Japanese built their climate supercomputer. Have they tested to see if there is a danger?
And what if... what if someone does and learns this? What do we do? A quick browse of the postings on this article alone show one of the many proverbs I wrote to be true: If the Money and Politics currently impede our progress on simple, obvious, even mutually-agreed issues such as CO2, what would we do if this Paddler's Index were real?
We must begin to take the steps that we know need to be taken. Will they cost jobs? They might. How many jobs are you willing to save at the cost of a climatologic catastrophe? The jobs you save in the refrigator industry may kill the crops that your children would put in their fridgeys.
In closing, the book uses Rush quotes to reinforce the urgency of the dilemma, and humankinds reluctance to give up what they have for what they may save... Two of the best are:
StarGlider29a
http://www.traffiscope.com/slashdot/mirror