>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^AeroMechanical:
As a related note, someone told me that a hydrogen atom is similar in relative scale to the solar system, with the sun being the nucleus and the earth being the electron. I dunno if that's right or not, but it's pretty cool anyways. Maybe Pluto was the electron. Back when it was still a planet.

That interested me.. if you're interested;
Accepted radius of a proton (nucleus of hydrogen) is 0.88 10^-15 m
Radius of sun = 6.96 10^8 m
Divide radius of sun by radius of proton to give how many times bigger the sun is than the proton = 7.91 10^23
Radius of an orbiting electron = 0.0529 10^-9 m
Multiply orbital radius of electron by our scale factor = 4.2 10^13 m.
We're 1.4 10^11 m away from the sun (that's the value of an astronomical unit, it's as good as you can ask for when talking about orbital radius, cos it's not a circle). So it's out by a factor of 300ish. (cos i rounded here and there)
Pluto's orbit is very eccentric (more elliptical than circular), but at its closest, it's about 4.4 10^12 m away from the sun. Out by a factor of 10 there. Or getting close to a factor of 5 at its furthest. Getting close, but still a pretty big difference.
^ all subject to change when (not if) i notice i've dropped a clanger

A factor of 300 is actually not that bad when you're talking about such big numbers.

How about "refusing to think"? That should make a really big number, and thus be far more important than anything they listed.

Fuckin morons.

The concept of life outside of earth ought to be part of everyone's reality. I don't know about alien spacecraft actually visiting us and shooting beams of light into missile silos. If aliens were studying us it'd probably be accomplised by something like remote viewing through a wormhole or some such. In other words completely undetectable. What I am almost certain about is that alien life must exist. To me, looking out at the universe and believing we're the only life that exists is like one speck of sand believing it's special and magical among all the other specks of sand in existence. The numbers are against the presence of life here being unique. Most likely, life is commonplace. And I believe that intelligence is simply the logical result of self-organizing biology... intelligence leads to greater energy capture which is the immediate purpose of biological self-organization. In most cases you probably only get one intelligent species on a life-bearing planet at a time, but there are more planets out there than stars. Which is to say, a lot of cases.

Back to the wormhole thing. There's a theory that, at some point in the future, humans will develop remote viewing technology. That is, the use of wormholes to peer through time and space, giving an undetectable *live view* of events from the past. Not exactly visiting the past, more like snaking a SWAT team camera through time via wormholes. Now, according to the rules of big numbers, given the existence of remote viewing technology in the future, and future extending for millions and billions of years... every single moment of every single person's life is probably being directly observed by someone in the future. Of course, more important moments are being watched by billions or trillions of people from the future. But on average, every moment is watched at least once. Think about that shit.

Arthur C Clarke wrote a book around this concept called The Light of Other Days. Needless to say, the ultimate, ultimate extents of the technology in the book are pretty mindblowing.

>> ^Zyrxil:

First of all, they just blatantly imply 100% of all car accidents were caused by drunk driving with that 35,000 lives lost in car accidents figure

You beat me too it!

Wow, 35,000 people! That's a big number! Let's not worry about the numbers' relevancy, it looks scary so people will watch our ad! And upvote us on Videosift!

(For a country the size of Brazil, 35,000 doesn't sound that high and according to Wikipedia, they're below average.)

"Upvote before it get's taken down! Only 913 views when sifted!"

But wait, there's more! If you vote right now we'll throw in a second leaked Iron Man 2 sneak peak trailer for free! That's right, FREE! (simply pay shipping and processing). All you have to do is click on the little up arrow above the big number at the top left-hand corner of the screen. That's click on the little up arrow above the big number in the top left-hand corner of the screen! VOTE NOW!!!

Cmon Glenn. You're an entertainer not an economist. Leave the big numbers for the big boys, mmk?

Can we not have one political show that is rational?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

This guy is amazing. *promote Daiichi. Big number 1

I always think I understand big numbers, I certainly make the effort to try, but this visualisation really impressed me. Nicely done.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
A question for the sift: Does anyone find joedirt's commentary on this site to be interesting, funny or in any way worthwhile? Personally I'd say no, but I'd be curious to hear other opinions on the matter. Discuss.


Well, take away the ranting aspect of it and look underneath. As someone who moderated a forum of thousands of threads for 2 years I had to deal with trolls every month. You can see the patterns:

Certain threads attracted more experienced users than others, guess what the more experienced users did when a troll entered the thread? they ignore, or simply give a "troll alert" so that everyone realized the situation and proceeded to ignore. The troll's post was forgotten as the conversation kept going or the other outcome was that the troll was a noob troll and proceeded to spam or break other rules. THIS is the moment where other measures where applied by me and other moderators. (bans, post deletion, etc)

Sometimes the troll will give up on that thread and move to another thread where there were more kids or new members or just inexperienced users. Obviously everyone made a big deal out of their comments and took the troll's bait, this led to further trolling, disrespect from all the members, etc.

If a troll wants to troll, no ban will stop them, it takes just minutes to make another account, or move to another thread, etc.

So yes saying IT'S THE INTERNET. While is not a solution nor valid justification for their acts, is in part, realistic. One troll will go away, another will come back. You have to understand this and don't fall into getting too oversensitive.

When I moderated, I could ban, IP ban, delete entire rows of comments, nuke accounts, label users as trolls, hide/edit comments, had a list of reports made by users whenever a troll appeared, basically any tool you can name to deal with disruptions in the forums and yet, not one month went by that I had to deal with a troll.

But you know why I had to deal with them as a moderator every month? because the site was so big (2 million or so of users from ages 13 up to 57+ years old) that obviously there was a constant flow of people who were newbies or did not know who did the trolling, etc.

Now, Videosift does not have a staff of moderators, it does not have a high number of trolls. Seriously like joedirt said BE GRATEFUL THAT AMONG THE HUGE AMOUNT OF RETARDEDNESS THE INTERNET HAS Videosift is a place where the Good/Bad post ratio is pretty good if not excellent.

Plus, the amount of people who actively comment here is not a big number, not really. And this community has brains. I cannot tell you the number of times, the threads of this site saved me from puking due to the stupid bullshit I had to monitor as a forum moderator.

Therefore the Ignoring tactic has much more chance of working.

So while I do not support joe's rant per say. underneath there is some amount of realism.

Some opinions are not trolling, and yes we need to keep the level of respect around the community in check, but let's think with a cold head or we could end up blowing things out of proportion or taking unnecessary steps that in the long run may end up being futile.

Based on my experience, this place, has all the factors necessary to deal with a troll by simply ignoring them.

Yeah.. brought to you by the same people that oppose the Kyoto protocol, deny the health effects of second hand smoke and promote deregulation of health care insurance.

Yay.

This article sheds some light on why numbers like +0,8C or 3% are really big numbers. Key word, 'Tipping point'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions

>> ^MarineGunrock:
Our notes aren't made of paper. And Americans have never had a problem telling them apart. That's what the big numbers are for, FYI
And we have dollar coins. But morons hold on to them like they're special because they think they are - so you never see any of them. But I would MUCH rather carry a $1 bill that weighs a few grams versus a coin that weighs half a damn pound.


What are they made of them? They seemed pretty easy to tear to me. Also, you may be able to tell them apart by the numbers, but put a stack together and try to quickly pick the 20 instead of the 1.

Try it again when you're blind

Blind people should be able to tell money apart by touch. They can here because every note is a different size, every coin is quite a different size/shape/thickness... The movie Ray showed that he only wanted to be paid in the one denomination so he could tell them apart... and that's the problem, they're all the damn same.

Wait a minute. They claim 30% of every dollar you spend is "directly attributed to federal corporation taxes and/or federal income taxes." Does that mean personal income taxes? Because they count those as part of the 25% of what you earn going to the government. That would be double counting those taxes. If the 30% doesn't include personal income taxes - they are way off (actually, they are way off if you include personal income taxes).

The National Income and Product Accounts for 2007 shows individuals spent $9.73 trillion on goods and services (Personal Consumption Expenditures). The government collected $370 billion in corporate income taxes last year. That's 3.8% of every dollar spent. Pretty far from 30%. But let's assume they also included the employer portion of FICA. That ~$435 billion. So that's $805 billion the government collected in corporate income tax and the employer portion of FICA - or 8.3% of every dollar spent by individuals. Still pretty far from 30%. (And all this assumes corporate income taxes cause higher prices which is contrary to common economic belief.)

So let's assume everything - corporate income taxes, employer and employee portions of FICA, and personal income taxes. That totals $2.4 trillion for 2007. A big number but still only 24.6% - not 30% - of every dollar spent by individuals. And if you count personal income taxes and the employee portion of FICA here, you can't count them again when figuring how much more you would get in you paycheck.

I haven't looked at all their other claims but it appears they were way off in their estimate of the salary of the average federal worker ($106,579 average?!? Come on...)

I'm no fan of taxes or big government but I would like to deal with the issue using facts and the truth.

Our notes aren't made of paper. And Americans have never had a problem telling them apart. That's what the big numbers are for, FYI

And we have dollar coins. But morons hold on to them like they're special because they think they are - so you never see any of them. But I would MUCH rather carry a $1 bill that weighs a few grams versus a coin that weighs half a damn pound.

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
actually my eyes are crap... I had to put my eyes up to the screen.

so did I. I used to have 20/15. I think this one is just blurry from compression. But yeah, getting old sux.

Why did they have to use Roman numerals? Why not just the date in nice big numbers we use now? As for not putting the tags? It's ok... I bitched about it a month or so ago...but I got teased enough...I just slip them in all quiet like now

I meant I catch it on lots of other vids and have been helping the mission, but I never seem to remember for my own. Must be a short term memory thing.

actually my eyes are crap... I had to put my eyes up to the screen. Why did they have to use Roman numerals? Why not just the date in nice big numbers we use now?
As for not putting the tags? It's ok... I bitched about it a month or so ago...but I got teased enough...I just slip them in all quiet like now