Search found 1346 matches
- Fri Nov 28, 2014 2:11 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Police misbehavior thread
- Replies: 6520
- Views: 1026990
Re: Police misbehavior thread
So, it turns out that the prosecution lied to the grand jury about what the law actually was: http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/shocking-mistake-in-darren-wilson-grand-jury-364273731666 Basically, telling them that it was legal for a police officer to shoot a suspect to prevent them from flee...
- Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:49 pm UTC
- Forum: Gaming
- Topic: What makes a RPG a RPG?
- Replies: 183
- Views: 25457
Re: What makes a RPG a RPG?
Grop wrote:Then rage because newb is newb.
So, your typical escort quest then?
- Wed Sep 10, 2014 4:30 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Why can we see so many exoplanets?
- Replies: 6
- Views: 3220
Re: Why can we see so many exoplanets?
Most exoplanets are discovered not because the planet blocks the light from its sun, but because its gravity causes the sun to "wobble" in place, affecting the light that comes from it - often causing its redshift and hence its colour to oscillate. It's most notable if the sun is a pulsar...
- Wed Sep 10, 2014 4:04 pm UTC
- Forum: General
- Topic: Circumcision Poll
- Replies: 32
- Views: 7896
Re: Circumcision Poll
SecondTalon wrote:Sure, but that's.. displaced..quite frequently, especially during the teenage years when Mr. Random Erection pays a visit (roughly once every 82.7 minutes).
If you're not circumcised, there's enough skin available that it can remain covered while erect.
- Fri Jul 18, 2014 10:07 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Question about antimatter
- Replies: 9
- Views: 2512
Re: Question about antimatter
There's Muonium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muonium Which is a pairing of an anti-Muon and an electron, which apparently won't annihilate each other. Muons decay after a couple of microseconds, but other than that, it acts sort of like an atom, and you can make chemical compounds out of it and oth...
- Sun Jun 15, 2014 2:59 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Tesla 'open source' their patents
- Replies: 54
- Views: 12811
Re: Tesla 'open source' their patents
From now on, they themselves will have to generate the demand to justify the further development of their cells, without sharing that cost with a far larger laptop market. Or instead of waiting for someone else to do it, they could just just go ahead and build a $5B battery "Gigafactory" ...
- Fri Apr 18, 2014 11:31 am UTC
- Forum: Gaming
- Topic: FTL - ohcrapshieldsaredown!
- Replies: 361
- Views: 86562
Re: FTL - ohcrapshieldsaredown!
Also, if you get hacked in a bad spot on the end boss, and can't deal with it through other means, you can jump away from the fight and come back again.
- Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:21 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Boiling in the greenhouse
- Replies: 19
- Views: 3764
Re: Boiling in the greenhouse
Yeah, if a metal rod is heated up enough at one end to have any real effect on water at the other end, it's no longer going to be cool enough for much steam to condense on it. Even if we did have a way to magically get the heat engine working, all you're doing is moving water from one place to anot...
- Fri Feb 07, 2014 4:45 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Can you (passively) heat an object hotter than your source?
- Replies: 98
- Views: 24672
Re: Can you (passively) heat an object hotter than your sour
so being "passively" means that storing the energy is not allowed? what if you first focus the sunlight into a distance a few light-seconds away, then rotate the mirror and make them converge with a newly-focused sunlight? Sending them far away makes them more parallel, but dimmer. Focusi...
- Sat Dec 14, 2013 10:55 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Alternative Calendars
- Replies: 46
- Views: 10843
Re: Alternative Calendars
Ah, so if we wanted to avoid leap days, we'd need to change the length of every day? That still wouldn't help you with where noon ended up. One year it might be in the middle of the year, and on successive years it might be at sunrise or sunset or the middle of the night. Having it spread out acros...
- Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:38 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Segregation in the name of free speech
- Replies: 43
- Views: 8145
Re: Segregation in the name of free speech
Maybe it would be considered discrimination though if you told the person they could not speak because they wanted the audience segregated (in a way that is not discriminatory) and that this segregation was due to a sincerely held religious belief, since religious belief is one of their protected c...
- Tue Dec 03, 2013 10:35 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: In other news... (humorous news items)
- Replies: 15072
- Views: 2482959
Re: In other news... (humorous news items, etc)
Earth is in Space. Therefore everything on Earth is in Space. Fallacy of division All atoms heavier than helium were at some point, formed by supernovae. The matter ejected ended up in the vast emptiness of space until it became part of the relatively small clump of matter that is dominated by the ...
- Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:52 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: 3D visual perception
- Replies: 40
- Views: 6791
Re: 3D visual perception
Or, if we want to set the bar lower, we should at least be able to conceptualize why a 3D projection of a 4D object "rotates" in the way that it does. For example, this means nothing to me: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/8-cell-simple.gif I can certainly conceptualize ...
- Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:42 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Planetary Magnetic Field
- Replies: 5
- Views: 2237
Re: Planetary Magnetic Field
Don't know about a planet, but I'll take the opportunity to post this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma...
- Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:19 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: In continuing the trend of moronic peace prize awardings...
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4004
Re: In continuing the trend of moronic peace prize awardings
He was awarded the prize for the accomplishment of not being George Bush. An impressive accomplishment, considering 2 of the previous 3 presidents were George Bush. But in all seriousness, Obama's peace prize was supposed to commemorate that the US has moved on from its racist past and was making s...
- Sun Sep 29, 2013 2:10 am UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Replacing the Moon with a Black Hole
- Replies: 29
- Views: 8917
Re: Replacing the Moon with a Black Hole
There's an excellent-looking black hole calculator here . But its figures disagree with yours... For a 2000000 metric ton BH it gives a radius of 2.969703e-18 m, a Hawking temperature of 6.136016e+13 kelvin, luminosity of 8.908604e+13 watts, and a lifetime of 21313.06 years. For 1814369 metric tons...
- Thu Sep 26, 2013 8:03 am UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Replacing the Moon with a Black Hole
- Replies: 29
- Views: 8917
Re: Replacing the Moon with a Black Hole
To be stable in vacuum with a background radiation of 2.7K, not to be stable in warm solid matter. The rate of mass accretion will of course be much higher inside warm solid matter, but the warm solid matter is not going to be sucked into the black hole very easily. Plus, there's going to be a lot ...
- Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:31 am UTC
- Forum: General
- Topic: Thoughts for ships
- Replies: 90089
- Views: 8481440
Re: unhatched fishes and turtle excluding devices
bigglesworth wrote:No, all weapons of mass destruction are banned.SlyReaper wrote:Antimatter weapons are fine though, right? Or weapons that open a wormhole between the target and the core of a nearby star?
Go with grey goo - weapon of mass construction.
- Sun Sep 22, 2013 7:30 pm UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Violent Bible Bedtime Stories
- Replies: 501
- Views: 94758
Re: Violent Bible Bedtime Stories
LaserGuy wrote:davidstarlingm wrote:LaserGuy wrote:The Odinani faith is monotheistic, and predates Judaism AFAIK. Some variations of Hinduism are also monotheistic.
Not sure why Odinani is considered monotheistic; they're polytheists with a transcendent head deity.
So are Catholics.
Or Christians in general (angels, with a head deity).
- Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:24 pm UTC
- Forum: General
- Topic: Lucky Ten Thousand (TIL)
- Replies: 13412
- Views: 1606521
Re: Today I Learned
learsfool wrote:Seriously, nature is all kinds of awesomely screwed up.
Cordyceps.

- Thu Aug 29, 2013 4:50 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Deconstructing....a hymn
- Replies: 8
- Views: 3545
Re: Deconstructing....a hymn
Don't forget compression. Ask all of the world's religious people to write of their love of god for 75 years, and I have a feeling you're going to end up with a lot of repetition. A good compression algorithm could reduce the amount of data needed dramatically. The song's implication is that "...
- Wed Aug 28, 2013 12:43 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Deconstructing....a hymn
- Replies: 8
- Views: 3545
Re: Deconstructing....a hymn
Using 10 pt font with a 3/5 width to height ratio; 10pts x (1 inch/72 pts) x (25.4mm /1 inch) x (1m/1000mm) x (1km/1000m) = 3.53e-6km font height Area of each character = (3/5)*height 2 =7.48e-12km 2 ; The sky could be covered with 7e19 characters; Using 4 byte Unicode, I get 2.8e20 bytes. Around 2...
- Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:00 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Moon falling
- Replies: 19
- Views: 7461
Re: Moon falling
With reference to the "edge of the moon's gravity", traditional physics suggests there isn't one, but I'm guessing that the accelerating expansion of spacetime means there's a "horizon" where a dropped object would never hit the surface even as time tends toward infinity? Or am ...
- Wed Aug 14, 2013 11:27 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: There is only one* model consistent with CPT Symmetry
- Replies: 129
- Views: 38122
Re: There is only one* model consistent with CPT Symmetry
i) A binary object b is an object that has precisely two states. All binary objects are equivalent. (this can be taken as an axiom - although it can also be derived from set theory) ii) The set {b, b, b} is equivalent to all other sets {b, b, b} iii) C, P and T are each observed to have two possibl...
- Sun Aug 11, 2013 12:43 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Moon falling
- Replies: 19
- Views: 7461
Re: Moon falling
In that case, the back of my envelope suggests you'd hit at 4,000mps, or about 9,000mph. That's crater material. That seems...very wrong. A quick google search lists Baumgartner's top speed as 843.6 mph (1,357.64 km/h) during his jump. I don't know much about moon physics, but I would expect a smal...
- Fri Aug 02, 2013 1:57 pm UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Citizen's Wage
- Replies: 942
- Views: 222006
Re: Citizen's Wage
True, one can be a "robber baron" either using private or public means or...as is very common historically, some mix of both to obtain every advantage possible. I'd go further - without using State Power to trample the competition, offload the costs of negative externalities, and profit f...
- Mon Jul 29, 2013 6:03 am UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Citizen's Wage
- Replies: 942
- Views: 222006
Re: Citizen's Wage
Sure, you can tax the rich, but who invests when they know their returns will be redistributed? Everyone who invests now: namely, anyone who has money, and wants more of it. Remember, taxes only apply to profits, not returns, and not just profits on any individual investment, a loss on one investme...
- Thu Jul 25, 2013 10:17 am UTC
- Forum: Movies and TV Shows
- Topic: My Little Pony: Friendship is MAGIC!
- Replies: 1371
- Views: 322117
Re: My Little Pony: Friendship is MAGIC!
The Children of the Night animation is finally complete. 

- Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:25 pm UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Religion: The Deuce
- Replies: 5301
- Views: 566386
Re: Religion: The Deuce
So, just to clarify. When you said 'The Bible clearly states that slavery is not part of a morally perfect path', what you actually meant was 'The Bible does not clearly state that slavery is not part of a morally perfect path'? Here, I'll make this easy for you: Quote me one piece of scripture in ...
- Wed Jul 17, 2013 2:27 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: Extracting energy from a permanent magnet
- Replies: 66
- Views: 41925
Re: Extracting energy from a permanent magnet
I am not a scientist but I have made a number of physical and thought experiments involving permanent magnets. I think of a permanent magnet‘s magnetic field as an active force as opposed to a stable, inactive force This is where you go wrong. A magnetic field, like a gravitational field, is, in yo...
- Mon Jul 15, 2013 2:52 pm UTC
- Forum: General
- Topic: Is there a way to time-lock an actual, physical gift box?
- Replies: 12
- Views: 5207
Re: Is there a way to time-lock an actual, physical gift box
As a practical concern, if they're going to be on another continent, airport security may potentially have a problem with a sealed package with contents unknown by the person carrying it. Especially if it happens to be ticking and counting down. 

- Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:59 pm UTC
- Forum: General
- Topic: Thoughts for ships
- Replies: 90089
- Views: 8481440
Re: unhatched fishes and turtle excluding devices
roband wrote:Not sure where to ask this, so here will do:
Is it possible that I could see Saturn in the sky, on Sunday night from England?
As far as I could tell, with Google's Sky Map app, it couldn't have been anything else, but I'm skeptical.
Cheers.
Yes:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
- Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:31 pm UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: Volkswagen XL1: experimental car supposedly gets 262 mpg
- Replies: 8
- Views: 3455
Re: Volkswagen XL1: experimental car supposedly gets 262 mpg
Part of that seems to be from mpg ratings that include a charged battery, The XL1 has a 27-hp electric battery, which can propel it about 31 miles on its own, up to 62 mph. It can fully recharge, Volkswagen says, in an hour and a half. The maximum speed overall, using the full hybrid drivetrain, is ...
- Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:46 am UTC
- Forum: Fictional Science
- Topic: Living inside of a dyson shell
- Replies: 21
- Views: 6787
Re: Living inside of a dyson shell
Why would spinning them help? it would mean there is artificial gravity around it, without relying on unobtanium or making the sphere so massive that it has a strong enough gravity. Being massive won't help you, as far as gravity on the inside goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem In cla...
- Sun Jul 07, 2013 9:24 am UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Religion: The Deuce
- Replies: 5301
- Views: 566386
Re: Religion: The Deuce
If everyone followed the 10 commandments, this planet would actually be a pretty nice place. That's not bad for a 3000 year old text. Not necessarily. A totalitarian theocracy that imposed horrible arbitrary rules on everyone, and did horrible things to them, where people died all the time from dis...
- Sat Jul 06, 2013 2:14 am UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: An altrenative rocket technology idea
- Replies: 24
- Views: 10486
Re: An altrenative rocket technology idea
Acceleration might be a bit of a problem. Orbital speed for low Earth orbit is about 7.8km/s, about mach 23 or so. 0 to 7.8 km/s over a distance of 50km, given constant acceleration, is about 62g's over 12.8s That seems like it would be rather lethal for any human cargo. Not to mention the air resis...
- Mon Jul 01, 2013 8:10 pm UTC
- Forum: Serious Business
- Topic: Minority Veto
- Replies: 41
- Views: 12587
Re: Minority Veto
Personally I believe all bills should require support from the opposition to pass. In Canada when we elect a minority government, meaning that they have the most seats in parliament but do not control enough votes to pass bills without support from other parties it requires a certain amount of cons...
- Sat Jun 29, 2013 8:53 pm UTC
- Forum: Science
- Topic: So why can't we bulk produce space probes?
- Replies: 25
- Views: 9275
Re: So why can't we bulk produce space probes?
Au Contraire. There is plenty of reasons to send probes to other locations. Mars is a big place. This is the very reason why Spirit and Opportunity took such long journeys over the surface of Mars, as it gave them a greater range of places to study. There will always be more of Mars to explore. And...
- Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:58 am UTC
- Forum: Gaming
- Topic: Kickstarter Thread. Everything Goes Here.
- Replies: 426
- Views: 178376
Re: Kickstarter Thread. Everything Goes Here.
Seems the creator of Syndicate Wars is making a spiritual successor with Satellite Reign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5livesstudios/satellite-reign Satellite Reign is a real-time, class-based strategy game. You control a team of four agents, each with distinct and unique abilities, collectiv...
- Sat Jun 29, 2013 6:10 am UTC
- Forum: News & Articles
- Topic: The Supreme Court Neuters the Voter Rights Act
- Replies: 99
- Views: 14348