It's not 828 ft of shelf space. Amazon description says, "the titles would tower 828 feet if you stacked them atop each other." They mean all of them standing vertically, one atop the other. Since those penguin classics are around 9 inches tall, that works out. Why you would measure books in this totally meaningless way? So that you can claim that they're "almost as tall as the Empire State Building" of course!
If I recall correctly (and I might not, it's been about 10 years since I read these books), the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin Anderson addresses this. There is a cluster of blackholes near Kessel, and so accomplishing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs requires flying rather close to these blackholes without getting yourself pulled in. In that series, there was some imperial weapons research facility hidden in the blackhole cluster.
There's some reference to the blackholes and the length of the Kessel run here.
I'm a physicist, and I wrote a report on The Tao of Physics years ago for an asian humanities class in college. It's been a while, but IIRC, the gist of my report was:
Capra notices some interesting coincidences in the way that people describe (in common language) a theory that cannot be properly described without a lot of abstract math and the way that people describe (in common language) spiritual experiences/ideas that cannot properly be described in common language, because they are extremely personal and subjective. Capra decides this means that quantum mechanics and eastern mysticism are somehow inextricably linked. While these observations were mildly interesting, he takes them to totally unreasonable lengths and ends up with a bunch of misconceptions about both modern physics and the various eastern religions that he lumps together.
I'd recommend against the book. If you want to know more about eastern religions, I'd recommend Alan Watts and/or going right to the source and reading translations of the important books for those religions. If you want to know more about modern physics I've heard from both physicists and nonphysicists that Brian Greene's Elegant Universe is quite good. I haven't read it myself, but I did watch the PBS special and it was good. Just remember that there is no empirical evidence for, nor testable predictions from, string theory (i.e., don't get too excited about it just yet).
True, but it also should not be taken literally, which I think was the original post's point. Decoherence destroys superposition for objects far smaller than a cat. If a popular treatment doesn't give the reader some notion of the domain of applicability of quantum mechanics and how quantum and classical mechanics relate, I'd say that it has done them a disservice.
So, for all of who argue that file sharing doesn't cost them money, keep in mind there are people like me. File sharins has cost them money from me, probably several hundred dollars.
Well, I'm one of the people who has bought substantially more music because I am able to hear new artists that I wouldn't have been exposed to previously. Once I find that I like them, I buy their album.
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence for a question with this many pieces.
Dark matter is postulated to account for the excessive gravity observered in galaxies (by lensing effects and velocity distributions). Like normal matter, it clumps under the effects of gravity.
Dark Energy is a uniform energy density at all points in space. It has a negative pressure and thus can explain why the universe is expanding at an increasing rate.
The post you're replying to is making a distinction between "liberal" as used by most of the world and "left." Technically in the US, since liberal and left seem to be used almost interchangably, libertarians should be classified as "classical liberals." The original meaning of liberal is one who wants to limit the role of government in all facets of life.
Libertarians are not further right than conservatives, because "right" includes a mix of economic nonintervention and social intervention. The war on drugs is an obvious "right" issue that libertarians are opposed to. Libertarians are against government intervention in either social or economic issues.
The Libertarian Party website still links to the World's Smallest Political Quiz, which will show you the two-dimensional grid for understanding how these four cardinal directions of ideology relate, once you submit your answers.
Ok, it's Sunday afternoon and this could even be amusing, so I might as well bite on a obviously trollish AC comment.
B5 did have a lot of influences. Tolkien, L'Morte d'Arthur, a number of stories from Greek mythology, stories from Babylonian mythology (which is where the name of the show came from), and so on. I'd say that none of these were as flagrant as the influence of The Ring of the Nibelung on Lord of the Rings. Tolkien added a lot to it and made an exception story that shouldn't be put down for having influences or discernable roots. There's nothing wrong with the Aeneid either, even though it is an obvious derivative of the Odyssey, far more obviously derivative than B5. I'm not going to go through the entire history of the Western cannon, but suffice to say that nothing is written in a vacuum.
The "Get yourself some books" comment is amusing. If I get any more books there'll be no room left for me in my home, not that that is likely to stop me...
"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite."
Of course, that's a quote from Babylon 5, which I would argue is storywise (ignore some of the crappy acting and effects from the first season...) of the same caliber as the Foundation series, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, et cetera. In general, I agree whole-hearted that the money would be much better spent supporting young SF authors than trying to revive series, particularly Enterprise. Just don't paint all TV science fiction with the "this is crap" brush.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=octopus American Heritage Dictionary at the top of the page claims it comes more immediately from New Latin. Merriam-Webster concurs. You can step back further to Greek or Indo-European mother tongue for the etymology, but the pluralization ought to be based on the most immediate source, or on standard English pluralization.
I know it's a small part of your argument, but it should be noted that many Ivy League schools practice need-blind admissions and give tons of financial aid to those who need it. I certainly couldn't have gone to the Ivy League school that I did without aid, considering tuition plus room and board for a year was about equal to (perhaps a bit more than) my family's net income for a year. The school gave enough aid to make it possible for me to go, and I don't even carry a large loan burden.
The people of China deserve better than the government that is thrust upon them
Well then, it's about time the Chinese had a revolution, if they agree with you. It's not as though the Chinese are unfamiliar with the notion of fighting to change governments. That is how it became a communist nation in the first place (See here).
The US is not making a lot of friends lately by pontificating about how everyone ought to be just like us and then imposing that decision upon them by force or more subtle pressures. Everyone here is assuming that the Chinese government is evil and then debating whether or not Google should do business with evil folks. Maybe we should accept that China's government is as it is and the responsibility to change it or pass judgment upon it lies not with a company from the US but with the Chinese people. I mean, self-determination is the fundamental tenant of this democracy thing that we want everyone to practice.
I'm sure a lot of countries would like to see our government changed, but that doesn't make it their responsibility or their right to get Bush out of office. We would be furious if we found out that Chinese companies operating in the US had a secret agenda to change our government. Can't deny that. How is it acceptable to say that an American company should do something analogous in their dealings with China?
Before I get flamed on how the same could be said of the Nazis, let me say that the Nazi's are an absurd example to compare anyone to, except perhaps the Mongols and a handful of other empires in human history. It's a strawman argument that evades any shades of gray.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not 828 ft of shelf space. Amazon description says, "the titles would tower 828 feet if you stacked them atop each other." They mean all of them standing vertically, one atop the other. Since those penguin classics are around 9 inches tall, that works out. Why you would measure books in this totally meaningless way? So that you can claim that they're "almost as tall as the Empire State Building" of course!
If I recall correctly (and I might not, it's been about 10 years since I read these books), the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin Anderson addresses this. There is a cluster of blackholes near Kessel, and so accomplishing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs requires flying rather close to these blackholes without getting yourself pulled in. In that series, there was some imperial weapons research facility hidden in the blackhole cluster.
There's some reference to the blackholes and the length of the Kessel run here.
I'm a physicist, and I wrote a report on The Tao of Physics years ago for an asian humanities class in college. It's been a while, but IIRC, the gist of my report was:
Capra notices some interesting coincidences in the way that people describe (in common language) a theory that cannot be properly described without a lot of abstract math and the way that people describe (in common language) spiritual experiences/ideas that cannot properly be described in common language, because they are extremely personal and subjective. Capra decides this means that quantum mechanics and eastern mysticism are somehow inextricably linked. While these observations were mildly interesting, he takes them to totally unreasonable lengths and ends up with a bunch of misconceptions about both modern physics and the various eastern religions that he lumps together.
I'd recommend against the book. If you want to know more about eastern religions, I'd recommend Alan Watts and/or going right to the source and reading translations of the important books for those religions. If you want to know more about modern physics I've heard from both physicists and nonphysicists that Brian Greene's Elegant Universe is quite good. I haven't read it myself, but I did watch the PBS special and it was good. Just remember that there is no empirical evidence for, nor testable predictions from, string theory (i.e., don't get too excited about it just yet).
Schrodinger's cat is not just a metaphor
True, but it also should not be taken literally, which I think was the original post's point. Decoherence destroys superposition for objects far smaller than a cat. If a popular treatment doesn't give the reader some notion of the domain of applicability of quantum mechanics and how quantum and classical mechanics relate, I'd say that it has done them a disservice.
So, for all of who argue that file sharing doesn't cost them money, keep in mind there are people like me. File sharins has cost them money from me, probably several hundred dollars.
Well, I'm one of the people who has bought substantially more music because I am able to hear new artists that I wouldn't have been exposed to previously. Once I find that I like them, I buy their album.
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence for a question with this many pieces.
Dark matter is postulated to account for the excessive gravity observered in galaxies (by lensing effects and velocity distributions). Like normal matter, it clumps under the effects of gravity.
Dark Energy is a uniform energy density at all points in space. It has a negative pressure and thus can explain why the universe is expanding at an increasing rate.
The post you're replying to is making a distinction between "liberal" as used by most of the world and "left." Technically in the US, since liberal and left seem to be used almost interchangably, libertarians should be classified as "classical liberals." The original meaning of liberal is one who wants to limit the role of government in all facets of life.
Libertarians are not further right than conservatives, because "right" includes a mix of economic nonintervention and social intervention. The war on drugs is an obvious "right" issue that libertarians are opposed to. Libertarians are against government intervention in either social or economic issues.
The Libertarian Party website still links to the World's Smallest Political Quiz, which will show you the two-dimensional grid for understanding how these four cardinal directions of ideology relate, once you submit your answers.
And yes, I am a registered libertarian.
Ok, it's Sunday afternoon and this could even be amusing, so I might as well bite on a obviously trollish AC comment.
B5 did have a lot of influences. Tolkien, L'Morte d'Arthur, a number of stories from Greek mythology, stories from Babylonian mythology (which is where the name of the show came from), and so on. I'd say that none of these were as flagrant as the influence of The Ring of the Nibelung on Lord of the Rings. Tolkien added a lot to it and made an exception story that shouldn't be put down for having influences or discernable roots. There's nothing wrong with the Aeneid either, even though it is an obvious derivative of the Odyssey, far more obviously derivative than B5. I'm not going to go through the entire history of the Western cannon, but suffice to say that nothing is written in a vacuum.
The "Get yourself some books" comment is amusing. If I get any more books there'll be no room left for me in my home, not that that is likely to stop me...
"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite."
Of course, that's a quote from Babylon 5, which I would argue is storywise (ignore some of the crappy acting and effects from the first season...) of the same caliber as the Foundation series, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, et cetera. In general, I agree whole-hearted that the money would be much better spent supporting young SF authors than trying to revive series, particularly Enterprise. Just don't paint all TV science fiction with the "this is crap" brush.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=octopus
American Heritage Dictionary at the top of the page claims it comes more immediately from New Latin. Merriam-Webster concurs. You can step back further to Greek or Indo-European mother tongue for the etymology, but the pluralization ought to be based on the most immediate source, or on standard English pluralization.
I know it's a small part of your argument, but it should be noted that many Ivy League schools practice need-blind admissions and give tons of financial aid to those who need it. I certainly couldn't have gone to the Ivy League school that I did without aid, considering tuition plus room and board for a year was about equal to (perhaps a bit more than) my family's net income for a year. The school gave enough aid to make it possible for me to go, and I don't even carry a large loan burden.
The people of China deserve better than the government that is thrust upon them
Well then, it's about time the Chinese had a revolution, if they agree with you. It's not as though the Chinese are unfamiliar with the notion of fighting to change governments. That is how it became a communist nation in the first place (See here).
The US is not making a lot of friends lately by pontificating about how everyone ought to be just like us and then imposing that decision upon them by force or more subtle pressures. Everyone here is assuming that the Chinese government is evil and then debating whether or not Google should do business with evil folks. Maybe we should accept that China's government is as it is and the responsibility to change it or pass judgment upon it lies not with a company from the US but with the Chinese people. I mean, self-determination is the fundamental tenant of this democracy thing that we want everyone to practice.
I'm sure a lot of countries would like to see our government changed, but that doesn't make it their responsibility or their right to get Bush out of office. We would be furious if we found out that Chinese companies operating in the US had a secret agenda to change our government. Can't deny that. How is it acceptable to say that an American company should do something analogous in their dealings with China?
Before I get flamed on how the same could be said of the Nazis, let me say that the Nazi's are an absurd example to compare anyone to, except perhaps the Mongols and a handful of other empires in human history. It's a strawman argument that evades any shades of gray.