The Author, Michio Kaku, also had essentially the exact same article in the December issue of Discover. The article is right here. Very interesting read, but the engineer in me makes me laugh at the sheer impracticality if the possible methods.
I did a search on these words, and 14 of the first 15 hits were to pages with Guns N Roses lyrics. And after the 15th site? It didn't list any more, even though the top of the page said "Results 11 - 21 of 87173". Going to the next ten showed no links, while the top of the page said "Results 21 - 31 of 87173". This could just be due to server overload or some other slashdot effect, though.
I agree here. Why in the world did michael put that little commentary in the parenthesis? The initial construction of the Bhopal plant in India was greatly praised by many people, not just for the jobs it created, etc., but more so for the pesticides it would produce. These pesticides make farming, both commercial and family, able to produce much more food per area, something which a country with a poor and crowded population like India needs greatly.
Environmental responsibility is very important, but it's hard to argue against the use of pesticides when you're talking to a family that is severely malnourished because weevils and locusts have destroyed their previous three harvests.
This difference in views is similar to a fundamental difference between engineers and physicists:
Engineers feel their equations are a reasonable approximation of reality, and physicists feel that reality is a reasonable approximation of their equations.
And mathematicians? They see no relation between the two.;)
And the tannic acid also has the wonderful ability of leaching the calcium from your bones, and impairing the body's iron absorption. After living in Japan for 3+ years, where they drink green tea like we drink soda pop, I saw thousands of grandmas that had osteoporosis so bad that their upper spine could't go above parallel with the ground.
So for green tea, we know that it:
1) Contains chemicals that are effective in cleaning hard drives,
2) Contains tannic acid, which can cause calcium and iron deficiencies, AND is used in softening animal hides,
3) Contains caffiene, which has many health side-effects, even more numerous than tannic acid.
I don't see why anyone would want to drink this stuff!
In a word, yes. Polyethylene glycol is that different from ethylene glycol. Both are used as antifreeze because they are completely miscible in water, and have a much lower freezing point. You are correct that ethylene glycol is very toxic, less than a cup should be more than enough to kill you.
Those games were awesome. The final fight in Pool of Darkness, I never could beat it. I had all of my characters upt to level 30+, but the room was full of about 30 Great Wyrm Dracoliches, 30 Giant Iron Golems, 30 Bits o' Moander, and all the bosses you had fought previously. (Thorne, Tanetal, Kalistes, Gothmenes) Never did get to see the ending credits.
I agree. "The Demolished Man" was one of the best books I've ever read. I read it in a collection of award-winning science fiction back in the 50's, and through the whole thing I kept on thinking, "I can't believe this was written 50 years ago!"
Even with it being over a year since I read the book, I still get "Tensor said the Tenser" stuck in my mind sometimes.
There was a TV show in Japan a few years ago, where there was a comedian by the name of Nasubi (Eggplant) that was on a reality show where he was locked into a room completely naked, and could only live off of what he could win by sending in applications for free prizes from various contests. Not only that, but he couldn't leave until he had won 1 million yen (~10000 USD) worth of prizes. You can see the whole dillema here.
This is the kind of crazy stuff that you can only see in Japan. Japanese TV had people enduring all sorts of painful and humiliating tortures years before anything like 'Fear Factor' ever caught on in the west. Near the end of the article, the author says:
"So what was the point of the Nasubi experiment? Ostensibly, it was to test the thesis that contests had become so ubiquitous that it would be possible to live entirely on what one had won in them. This was called kensho seikatsu (Living off contests). Of course the real reason is that programs involving human suffering are extremely popular in Japan. The gambaru genre, started in the 1980's with the immensely popular show Za Gaman, a show in which university students competed in contests to see who could stand the most pain, eat the most unpleasant foods, and perform the most humiliating tasks. Denpa Shonen is a logical continuation of this trend, and the stunts are becoming more and more dangerous/appalling. Someday a Japanese comedian is going to die in a horrible accident and this sort of program will be immediately pulled from the airwaves. People are travelling through dangerous countries, fighting bulls without any training, scaring the life out of innocent victims and playing incredibly cruel practical jokes. It's inevitable that a tragic accident will happen. There will be condemnations and recriminations, and people will say that they never liked them, knew they were dangerous, and definitely never watched them. But almost everybody is watching them because they are fascinating."
I think that says alot about reality TV here in the west, too. Anyway, Nasubi's own home page (Japanese only) is located here.
I agree with this point of view also. I like a quote of Orson Scott Card's, "Every villian is the hero of the story told from their own point of view." I think this applies for every character in the story, not just the protagonist and antagonist. Card explains how he uses this idea to make his characters realistic, instead of just making 'cookie cutter' characters.
Does anyone know if this leaked source code might enable someone to finally decode NTFS? That might really help people that want to try Linux but aren't willing to give up Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
The Author, Michio Kaku, also had essentially the exact same article in the December issue of Discover. The article is right here. Very interesting read, but the engineer in me makes me laugh at the sheer impracticality if the possible methods.
www.owlsden.com/moroha
I did a search on these words, and 14 of the first 15 hits were to pages with Guns N Roses lyrics. And after the 15th site? It didn't list any more, even though the top of the page said "Results 11 - 21 of 87173". Going to the next ten showed no links, while the top of the page said "Results 21 - 31 of 87173". This could just be due to server overload or some other slashdot effect, though.
I agree here. Why in the world did michael put that little commentary in the parenthesis? The initial construction of the Bhopal plant in India was greatly praised by many people, not just for the jobs it created, etc., but more so for the pesticides it would produce. These pesticides make farming, both commercial and family, able to produce much more food per area, something which a country with a poor and crowded population like India needs greatly.
Environmental responsibility is very important, but it's hard to argue against the use of pesticides when you're talking to a family that is severely malnourished because weevils and locusts have destroyed their previous three harvests.
This difference in views is similar to a fundamental difference between engineers and physicists: Engineers feel their equations are a reasonable approximation of reality, and physicists feel that reality is a reasonable approximation of their equations. And mathematicians? They see no relation between the two. ;)
And the tannic acid also has the wonderful ability of leaching the calcium from your bones, and impairing the body's iron absorption. After living in Japan for 3+ years, where they drink green tea like we drink soda pop, I saw thousands of grandmas that had osteoporosis so bad that their upper spine could't go above parallel with the ground.
So for green tea, we know that it:
1) Contains chemicals that are effective in cleaning hard drives,
2) Contains tannic acid, which can cause calcium and iron deficiencies, AND is used in softening animal hides,
3) Contains caffiene, which has many health side-effects, even more numerous than tannic acid.
I don't see why anyone would want to drink this stuff!
In a word, yes. Polyethylene glycol is that different from ethylene glycol. Both are used as antifreeze because they are completely miscible in water, and have a much lower freezing point. You are correct that ethylene glycol is very toxic, less than a cup should be more than enough to kill you.
Those games were awesome. The final fight in Pool of Darkness, I never could beat it. I had all of my characters upt to level 30+, but the room was full of about 30 Great Wyrm Dracoliches, 30 Giant Iron Golems, 30 Bits o' Moander, and all the bosses you had fought previously. (Thorne, Tanetal, Kalistes, Gothmenes) Never did get to see the ending credits.
I can almost see it. In the near future, Copernicus City declares independance from the earth, and Heinlein's vision of the future proves prophetic.
I agree. "The Demolished Man" was one of the best books I've ever read. I read it in a collection of award-winning science fiction back in the 50's, and through the whole thing I kept on thinking, "I can't believe this was written 50 years ago!"
Even with it being over a year since I read the book, I still get "Tensor said the Tenser" stuck in my mind sometimes.
There was a TV show in Japan a few years ago, where there was a comedian by the name of Nasubi (Eggplant) that was on a reality show where he was locked into a room completely naked, and could only live off of what he could win by sending in applications for free prizes from various contests. Not only that, but he couldn't leave until he had won 1 million yen (~10000 USD) worth of prizes. You can see the whole dillema here.
This is the kind of crazy stuff that you can only see in Japan. Japanese TV had people enduring all sorts of painful and humiliating tortures years before anything like 'Fear Factor' ever caught on in the west. Near the end of the article, the author says:
"So what was the point of the Nasubi experiment? Ostensibly, it was to test the thesis that contests had become so ubiquitous that it would be possible to live entirely on what one had won in them. This was called kensho seikatsu (Living off contests).
Of course the real reason is that programs involving human suffering are extremely popular in Japan. The gambaru genre, started in the 1980's with the immensely popular show Za Gaman, a show in which university students competed in contests to see who could stand the most pain, eat the most unpleasant foods, and perform the most humiliating tasks. Denpa Shonen is a logical continuation of this trend, and the stunts are becoming more and more dangerous/appalling.
Someday a Japanese comedian is going to die in a horrible accident and this sort of program will be immediately pulled from the airwaves. People are travelling through dangerous countries, fighting bulls without any training, scaring the life out of innocent victims and playing incredibly cruel practical jokes. It's inevitable that a tragic accident will happen. There will be condemnations and recriminations, and people will say that they never liked them, knew they were dangerous, and definitely never watched them. But almost everybody is watching them because they are fascinating."
I think that says alot about reality TV here in the west, too. Anyway, Nasubi's own home page (Japanese only) is located here.
This is very similar to the history of fuel cells: they have always been about 5 years away. (For the past 30 years)
I agree with this point of view also. I like a quote of Orson Scott Card's, "Every villian is the hero of the story told from their own point of view." I think this applies for every character in the story, not just the protagonist and antagonist. Card explains how he uses this idea to make his characters realistic, instead of just making 'cookie cutter' characters.
Does anyone know if this leaked source code might enable someone to finally decode NTFS? That might really help people that want to try Linux but aren't willing to give up Windows.