A couple of non-AFDB ideas as to the mystery object's identity:
One, it could be a rock partially sticking out of the sand. A lot of these white-ish rocks, from what I've seen, have various wind-blown ridges and valleys, and what we could be looking at is sand filling the valleys (giving the illusion of rods sticking up). The apparent thinness of the apparent shadow could perhaps somehow be caused by the sand around it; we can't really tell the height of the sand from those pictures (or at least I can't).
Two, it could just be an oddly-shaped rock. Let's say this white rock is volcanic in origin. (I don't know if that's plausible for rock of that color). Volcano erupts, flinging some lava into the air. It splats down, eventually hardening into a rock with odd splat-arms sticking out.
That being said, neither of those are entirely satisfactory to me. Of course, I don't really think it's some sort of creature or an artifact of an ancient martian civilization, either.
(I'm a USian but I'm going to have a guess anyway)
The problem with trying to make a profit on nuclear power is, I'd imagine, mostly a problem of PR. Nuclear energy has such a horrible reputation with the average person (with people I know, at least) that it'd be an uphill battle to get anyone to buy power from you.
I'm playing armchair sociologist here, but I'd wager it might be due in part to the current generation of power buyers having grown up under the spectre of the cold war. I mean, sure, it's probably been the target of constant assault from various groups (environmental etc), but I really doubt that stuff could take hold as deeply as it has without something else lurking behind it, some sort of very low-level distrust of anything "nuclear". The sort of distrust one might acquire by living for many years with the very real possibility that everything was going to get blown the fuck up, say.
No, of course not. This is a blatant attempt at a coup d'etat by Chief Judge Philip Pro. You can expect the federal forces to be mobilized by 2300 MST, and I'd say the final showdown in Vegas will probably happen early tomorrow morning.
I sure hope Judge Pro has been practicing with his gavel. Remember, follow through!
One thing I thought of just now is that, of all the branches of the military proper, the air force is in a unique position in that if some bit of intel was uncovered they could act on it immediately ("Oh, Mr Terrorist Dude is over at location XYZ. Quick, fly over there and get him"). Obviously the army and navy both also have planes and helicopters and whatnot, but as the air force's main concern is such things, it sort of makes sense that they'd be the ones behind information and intelligence stuff.
Oh. A more plausable explanation that I also just now thought up is that most ways of gathering intelligence that don't involve sitting behind a computer involve flying over or near an area (I think).
And I suspect that all the non-weapons technology that the military works on is for intelligence stuff. Thus, air force is the most tech oriented.
Uh huh. Blocking "spam" servers. Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence. Not that they don't do it already, mind you, but it would provide a nice, PR-friendly reason. After all, everyone wants to stop spam, right? Screw the constitution, get your shotgun, and let's go find the spammers?
Spam, child porn, and terrorists seem to be the current Horsemen of the Infocalypse. A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
It'd be impossible to get anything even approaching realistic statistics. Child porn is so completely demonized, it has such a stigma, that I would imagine that the vast majority of people involved, in any fashion, wouldn't be willing to talk about it, even in an anonymous survey or whatever.
And, as long as we're at it, why focus only on child abuse, and not just people abuse in general? As Bill Hicks used to say:
What does that mean? They reach a certain age and they're off your fucking love-list? Fuck your children, if that's the way you think then fuck you too. You either love all people of all ages or you shut the fuck up.
Don't forget Calvin & Hobbes. In the regular, reality-based strips, the artistic skill was subtle (but still very evident). However, in the ones where Calvin daydreams about dinosaurs, Spaceman Spiff, etc, it really shows. And then if you buy the books, and look at the watercolor illustrations he did (to add value to a book full of strips you'd already read in the paper), it's just stunning. Great stuff.
And then to tie this all together and make it a bit more on topic, here's a quote from The Onion AV Club's interview with Berkeley (at http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3728/avfeature _3728.html ):
O: People frequently compare you to Bill Watterson, I think in part because both your strips centered on a sense of whimsy, but also because your work left them with few comparisons. Do you think there's a valid parallel?
BB: No. He was the real thing. I was just scampering nude through the aisles before anybody could kick me out. Garry Trudeau was our greatest satirist in the second half of the century. Crazy ol' Bill Watterson created the purest comic strip, after Peanuts, probably. Or before Peanuts became a shadow. Bless him for quitting at the top. It's not easy.
Look, I love Transformers just as much as anyone else--hell, I've got the season 1 dvd set and will get more when I have some, you know, money--but it's downright silly to claim that Transformers wasn't another "commercial in disguise". It was there to sell toys, same as all the others. The only difference is that it also happened to be really cool at the same time.
Re:You misunderstand completely
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
One big and well-known website in the brotherhood dedicated to presenting these facts is apologeticspress.org. For instance, one thing I recall reading on there is that the earth moves about 18 miles/sec in its orbit and for every 19 miles I believe it was (I might have those 2 numbers switched) the earth departs from a straight line by about 0.9 inches. Now if the earth moved 0.8 inches or 1.0 inches instead, all life on earth would either freeze or incinerate. The probability of this happening by chance, as I'm sure you can imagine, or not too good. And there's 1000's, if not millions, more facts like that out there
You are absolutely right in asserting that the probability isn't so great--and not only for that; there are many, many other factors that might come into play when discussing a planet and whether or not it is fit for life, most of which are also with a low probability. But guess what? There's universe is so friggin' huge that even with those small odds it's not so surprising that it has happened, and it's also not completely out of line to think that it has happened more than once (i.e. life on other planets).
Another way to get an FBI car is to keep this in mind: it's the only gov. car that can be painted, as it's unmarked. So if you manage to grab one, head to the pay n spray to get the cops off your tail.
We have a 2.5 gig a week limit. Should one exceed that, one gets put on a very slow line, and receives an email stating such. In addition, the email says something to the effect of "we find that most people exceeding bandwidth are using p2p apps to illegally trade copyrighted content." But then, they give you a link to a study someone on campus did of the various p2p networks and how much bandwidth each uses in addition to whatever you download, plus some tips on reducing excess bandwidth use.
I guess what it comes down to is they don't give a damn about the legality or morality or whatever. They're just concerned about bandwidth use.
You want incredibly tasty food where none of the ingredients cause health problems?
Absolutely impossible (unless you consider crushed ice, with water sauce, and a nice tall glass of water an incredibly tasty meal). Alton's point is that overeating and such is the problem. Any food that is capable of nourishing you is able to cause health problems if you eat too much.
Now, I can't speak for everyone, but I can honestly say that I am much less likely to eat "too much" if the food is heavy and fatty than if it is not.
Child porn, as far as I'm concerned, is not a valid example.
Why?
(Note: Before you mod me down as -1, Sides with pervs, just hear me out).
Child porn is not really a category, worth of example, in and of itself. Child porn is an anomoly inside the 'porn' category. I consider pornography to be a form of free speech. Using child porn as the example is just as bad as the judge picking four games and basing his decision on them and them alone. There will always be exceptions, and they should be treated as such. Not as the rule.
Also, keep in mind that your examples stay within one medium. Image (cartoon rabbit) to image (child porn). Price ($1) to price ($100). This is a lateral movement, and I don't think that's what the original poster was thinking of. It's irrelevent.
Not to say that you don't have a point. You do. And I'll bet some judges will think the same thing you have. BUT I'm much more frightened about the prospect for the same though process to work in reverse. You know, prove that Bugs Bunny is just a stone's throw from being child porn. And thus be regulated/banned.
---
I really wish people would stop using child porn as the standard "let's carry this to an extreme and get a knee-jerk, emotional reaction" response. Godwin's law needs to be amended.
Scientology's power is really not that odd, considering its size and money. Scientology isn't as powerful as the Roman Catholic Church, of course, but then again, the Scientologists have never been able to pull off massive crusades or inquisitions.
And the windows can't be opened, of course, because that would be wrong somehow
Office building windows can't be opened because of disasters such as stock market crashes. Stock market crashes make people jump out of openable windows. (It's not limited to stock markets crashing, either: how much you want to bet some Enron folks would have taken a leap?)
Prep:
Obtain the following ingredients:
Iron (II) oxide, finely ground.
Aluminum powder, finely ground.
Magnesium powder.
Potassium nitrate (KNO3).
Fuse.
Mix 25% aluminum and 75% iron oxide. This is known as thermite. Set it aside.
Mix 50/50 magnesium and kno3. This will be the starter poweder. Set it, too, aside.
Remove your hard drive from the computer case and place it on a bit of wood across a metal bucket filled with sand. This is its new home, so make sure the cables reach.
Use:
When the feds come a knockin', quickly dump the thermite on your hard drive. Then, make a small pile of starter on top of the thermite, and place the fuse in this. Ignite and run out of the room. Alternatively, a sparkler (you know, the 4th of July things) can be used to start the thermite, instead of the powder/fuse. The thermite will burn around 2,000 degrees C, perhaps more. That should take care of that pesky data. It is very hard (impossible?) to put out, as it carries its own oxygen in the mix.
Don't worry about storing the thermite; it's very stable, needing high temperatures to start the reaction (hence the need for a starter). If you're so inclined, you could even build the system into your computer--nothing in there is going to make it go off. I do suggest the bucket of sand, though, as that is what should stop your lump of now-molten iron from going straight down to the floor.
--Psi
Overkill? Maybe. Fun? Definantly... if you have left overs, you can do various entertaining things with it....
My employer, a reasonably computer proficient person, got hit by sircam. Cost him 16 hours of productivity during a period when time was particularly valuable...
I'm no dummy when it comes to math, but I am merely a high school student in a pre-calculus class. Note that pre-cal is not (at least here) a requirement for graduation--it's entirely possible that there are intelligent adults in my city that have less math than I do.
So, when I had no clue what they were talking about, it means that Joe Layman two houses over, who is an aspiring "armchair mathematician", may not either.
Your explanation was infinitely more understandable. People introduce kids to basic math with such analogous statements. ("Here's 2 blocks, if I put 2 more blocks with them, how many blocks are there total?") I don't know how far you'd get saying "Ok, kids, wff x = y, where x is two real numbers seperated by an addition sign and y is the sum of the two numbers."
It really doesn't help that use Greek characters. I know that they state on the site that "Greek letters are traditionally used by logicians for variables that range over wffs", but that doesn't stop them from being confusing to me. I would have prefered they used x, y, z, foo, bar, or something along those lines. Sure, that's not how a logician would do it, but then again, the target audience of this site probably isn't logicians.
Nevermind that, at least to someone unfamiliar with Greek such as I, many of the letters (such as phi and psi) look far too similar on my monitor(and this is not helped by the inherent flaws in pixel-displayed fonts).
That said, I suppose it's better than nothing at all, and I'll probably be able to work through it. I'll just have to keep thinking of conditional statements in programming...
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
I disagree, one being familiar with swamp coolers does not mean that one is "white trash".
I lived in Farmington, NM for a few years, in one of the richer parts of town. Almost everyone uses them there.
Granted, ours was different in appearance and operation than what you've linked to here, but the idea is the same: use water in the air to cool stuff down. As Farmington (and all of New Mexico, really) is very dry, they work extremely well.
It's evaporative cooling at it's finest.
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that's simple enough, just design them without heads. Problem solved!
A couple of non-AFDB ideas as to the mystery object's identity:
One, it could be a rock partially sticking out of the sand. A lot of these white-ish rocks, from what I've seen, have various wind-blown ridges and valleys, and what we could be looking at is sand filling the valleys (giving the illusion of rods sticking up). The apparent thinness of the apparent shadow could perhaps somehow be caused by the sand around it; we can't really tell the height of the sand from those pictures (or at least I can't).
Two, it could just be an oddly-shaped rock. Let's say this white rock is volcanic in origin. (I don't know if that's plausible for rock of that color). Volcano erupts, flinging some lava into the air. It splats down, eventually hardening into a rock with odd splat-arms sticking out.
That being said, neither of those are entirely satisfactory to me. Of course, I don't really think it's some sort of creature or an artifact of an ancient martian civilization, either.
In conclusion, I don't know.
Yes. It will interfere with hailstone formation. Next question?
(I'm a USian but I'm going to have a guess anyway)
The problem with trying to make a profit on nuclear power is, I'd imagine, mostly a problem of PR. Nuclear energy has such a horrible reputation with the average person (with people I know, at least) that it'd be an uphill battle to get anyone to buy power from you.
I'm playing armchair sociologist here, but I'd wager it might be due in part to the current generation of power buyers having grown up under the spectre of the cold war. I mean, sure, it's probably been the target of constant assault from various groups (environmental etc), but I really doubt that stuff could take hold as deeply as it has without something else lurking behind it, some sort of very low-level distrust of anything "nuclear". The sort of distrust one might acquire by living for many years with the very real possibility that everything was going to get blown the fuck up, say.
No, of course not. This is a blatant attempt at a coup d'etat by Chief Judge Philip Pro. You can expect the federal forces to be mobilized by 2300 MST, and I'd say the final showdown in Vegas will probably happen early tomorrow morning.
I sure hope Judge Pro has been practicing with his gavel. Remember, follow through!
It's like that one Mission Hill where they start a club that doesn't exist and let nobody in and it becomes insanely popular.
One thing I thought of just now is that, of all the branches of the military proper, the air force is in a unique position in that if some bit of intel was uncovered they could act on it immediately ("Oh, Mr Terrorist Dude is over at location XYZ. Quick, fly over there and get him"). Obviously the army and navy both also have planes and helicopters and whatnot, but as the air force's main concern is such things, it sort of makes sense that they'd be the ones behind information and intelligence stuff.
Oh. A more plausable explanation that I also just now thought up is that most ways of gathering intelligence that don't involve sitting behind a computer involve flying over or near an area (I think).
And I suspect that all the non-weapons technology that the military works on is for intelligence stuff. Thus, air force is the most tech oriented.
Yes! The good news is you don't have to worry about condoms anymore.
The other good news is you won't ever be able to reproduce, which I think we all can agree is a boon to humanity.
Uh huh. Blocking "spam" servers. Wonder how long it'll take before this becomes the convenient excuse for blocking servers espousing such dangerous ideas as freedom and political/ideological dissidence. Not that they don't do it already, mind you, but it would provide a nice, PR-friendly reason. After all, everyone wants to stop spam, right? Screw the constitution, get your shotgun, and let's go find the spammers?
Spam, child porn, and terrorists seem to be the current Horsemen of the Infocalypse. A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
And, as long as we're at it, why focus only on child abuse, and not just people abuse in general? As Bill Hicks used to say:
Don't forget Calvin & Hobbes. In the regular, reality-based strips, the artistic skill was subtle (but still very evident). However, in the ones where Calvin daydreams about dinosaurs, Spaceman Spiff, etc, it really shows. And then if you buy the books, and look at the watercolor illustrations he did (to add value to a book full of strips you'd already read in the paper), it's just stunning. Great stuff.
e _3728.html ):
And then to tie this all together and make it a bit more on topic, here's a quote from The Onion AV Club's interview with Berkeley (at http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3728/avfeatur
O: People frequently compare you to Bill Watterson, I think in part because both your strips centered on a sense of whimsy, but also because your work left them with few comparisons. Do you think there's a valid parallel?
BB: No. He was the real thing. I was just scampering nude through the aisles before anybody could kick me out. Garry Trudeau was our greatest satirist in the second half of the century. Crazy ol' Bill Watterson created the purest comic strip, after Peanuts, probably. Or before Peanuts became a shadow. Bless him for quitting at the top. It's not easy.
Look, I love Transformers just as much as anyone else--hell, I've got the season 1 dvd set and will get more when I have some, you know, money--but it's downright silly to claim that Transformers wasn't another "commercial in disguise". It was there to sell toys, same as all the others. The only difference is that it also happened to be really cool at the same time.
You are absolutely right in asserting that the probability isn't so great--and not only for that; there are many, many other factors that might come into play when discussing a planet and whether or not it is fit for life, most of which are also with a low probability. But guess what? There's universe is so friggin' huge that even with those small odds it's not so surprising that it has happened, and it's also not completely out of line to think that it has happened more than once (i.e. life on other planets).
Another way to get an FBI car is to keep this in mind: it's the only gov. car that can be painted, as it's unmarked. So if you manage to grab one, head to the pay n spray to get the cops off your tail.
I guess what it comes down to is they don't give a damn about the legality or morality or whatever. They're just concerned about bandwidth use.
Absolutely impossible (unless you consider crushed ice, with water sauce, and a nice tall glass of water an incredibly tasty meal). Alton's point is that overeating and such is the problem. Any food that is capable of nourishing you is able to cause health problems if you eat too much.
Now, I can't speak for everyone, but I can honestly say that I am much less likely to eat "too much" if the food is heavy and fatty than if it is not.
You'll note he also didn't say he used only one floppy for his mp3s.
Child porn, as far as I'm concerned, is not a valid example.
Why?
(Note: Before you mod me down as -1, Sides with pervs, just hear me out).
Child porn is not really a category, worth of example, in and of itself. Child porn is an anomoly inside the 'porn' category. I consider pornography to be a form of free speech. Using child porn as the example is just as bad as the judge picking four games and basing his decision on them and them alone. There will always be exceptions, and they should be treated as such. Not as the rule.
Also, keep in mind that your examples stay within one medium. Image (cartoon rabbit) to image (child porn). Price ($1) to price ($100). This is a lateral movement, and I don't think that's what the original poster was thinking of. It's irrelevent.
Not to say that you don't have a point. You do. And I'll bet some judges will think the same thing you have. BUT I'm much more frightened about the prospect for the same though process to work in reverse. You know, prove that Bugs Bunny is just a stone's throw from being child porn. And thus be regulated/banned.
---
I really wish people would stop using child porn as the standard "let's carry this to an extreme and get a knee-jerk, emotional reaction" response. Godwin's law needs to be amended.
---
--Psi
Any religion can, and does, wield massive power.
Scientology's power is really not that odd, considering its size and money. Scientology isn't as powerful as the Roman Catholic Church, of course, but then again, the Scientologists have never been able to pull off massive crusades or inquisitions.
It's all relative.
And the windows can't be opened, of course, because that would be wrong somehow
Office building windows can't be opened because of disasters such as stock market crashes. Stock market crashes make people jump out of openable windows. (It's not limited to stock markets crashing, either: how much you want to bet some Enron folks would have taken a leap?)
I think it's stupid too, but there it is.
--Psi
Prep:
Obtain the following ingredients:
Iron (II) oxide, finely ground.
Aluminum powder, finely ground.
Magnesium powder.
Potassium nitrate (KNO3).
Fuse.
Mix 25% aluminum and 75% iron oxide. This is known as thermite. Set it aside.
Mix 50/50 magnesium and kno3. This will be the starter poweder. Set it, too, aside.
Remove your hard drive from the computer case and place it on a bit of wood across a metal bucket filled with sand. This is its new home, so make sure the cables reach.
Use:
When the feds come a knockin', quickly dump the thermite on your hard drive. Then, make a small pile of starter on top of the thermite, and place the fuse in this. Ignite and run out of the room. Alternatively, a sparkler (you know, the 4th of July things) can be used to start the thermite, instead of the powder/fuse. The thermite will burn around 2,000 degrees C, perhaps more. That should take care of that pesky data. It is very hard (impossible?) to put out, as it carries its own oxygen in the mix.
Don't worry about storing the thermite; it's very stable, needing high temperatures to start the reaction (hence the need for a starter). If you're so inclined, you could even build the system into your computer--nothing in there is going to make it go off. I do suggest the bucket of sand, though, as that is what should stop your lump of now-molten iron from going straight down to the floor.
--Psi
Overkill? Maybe. Fun? Definantly... if you have left overs, you can do various entertaining things with it....
My employer, a reasonably computer proficient person, got hit by sircam. Cost him 16 hours of productivity during a period when time was particularly valuable...
Dear lord, have you ever even heard of pronouns?
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
I'm no dummy when it comes to math, but I am merely a high school student in a pre-calculus class. Note that pre-cal is not (at least here) a requirement for graduation--it's entirely possible that there are intelligent adults in my city that have less math than I do.
So, when I had no clue what they were talking about, it means that Joe Layman two houses over, who is an aspiring "armchair mathematician", may not either.
Your explanation was infinitely more understandable. People introduce kids to basic math with such analogous statements. ("Here's 2 blocks, if I put 2 more blocks with them, how many blocks are there total?") I don't know how far you'd get saying "Ok, kids, wff x = y, where x is two real numbers seperated by an addition sign and y is the sum of the two numbers."
It really doesn't help that use Greek characters. I know that they state on the site that "Greek letters are traditionally used by logicians for variables that range over wffs", but that doesn't stop them from being confusing to me. I would have prefered they used x, y, z, foo, bar, or something along those lines. Sure, that's not how a logician would do it, but then again, the target audience of this site probably isn't logicians.
Nevermind that, at least to someone unfamiliar with Greek such as I, many of the letters (such as phi and psi) look far too similar on my monitor(and this is not helped by the inherent flaws in pixel-displayed fonts).
That said, I suppose it's better than nothing at all, and I'll probably be able to work through it. I'll just have to keep thinking of conditional statements in programming...
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
I lived in Farmington, NM for a few years, in one of the richer parts of town. Almost everyone uses them there.
Granted, ours was different in appearance and operation than what you've linked to here, but the idea is the same: use water in the air to cool stuff down. As Farmington (and all of New Mexico, really) is very dry, they work extremely well.
It's evaporative cooling at it's finest.
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.