re·tard
verb
verb: retard; 3rd person present: retards; past tense: retarded; past participle: retarded; gerund or present participle: retarding
riˈtärd/

1.
delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment.
"his progress was retarded by his limp"
synonyms: delay, slow down, slow up, hold back, hold up, set back, postpone, put back, detain, decelerate; More


I have said before and before and before, you never learn. you are in a state of arrested development.

Again, this is all my opinion, which you so fantastically love to shit all over.

So take your hormonal cry baby attitude and quit nit picking at shit you obviously have no grasp on.

* return

Motorcycles seldom kill car drivers, usually the other way 'round, but I think living with the fact someone died because they hit you is bad enough. The biker won't care any more, he's dead.

Personally, I don't see any reason for motorbikes on public streets. Litre for litre (gallon for gallon) they pollute more than a car. You can take the exhaust of any motorbike, hook it up to the intake of any modern car, and the resulting exhaust will be far less toxic than the bike alone. They are not environmentally conscious in any way beyond miles per gallon, so here's a preemptive "shut up" about that.

Bike riders fall into two categories, wannabe racers and wannabe Hell's Angels. They either get off on zigzag'ing high acceleration/deceleration or they think it makes them look badass. Anything else said is just an excuse and self-delusion.

The pass of the blue car comes at 11:05 if you're interested...our protagonist has been doing a better job of braking into the corners for the first 10 minutes---getting closer and closer on each deceleration for each corner---and finally takes the blue car at a corner...

Fellow German here. I can drive as fast as I want, if I like, to start things off.
Take the following calculations. Let's say your daily route to work is 20 km. You're driving with 107 kph the whole duration. It'll take you ~11 minutes to arrive at your destiantion.

Now drive 80 kph when you're going back home. You now need 15 minutes.

This doesn't take into account that often times you're driving through towns, where you have to go around 30-60 kph and have to decelerate and accelerate everytime. So if you're going 107 tops, your average speed may vary.

I am aware that many people have to and will travel farther. I am aware that they may actually want to drive as fast they're feeling ok with. But the heightend risk is realisitcally almost never worth the time you save.

But - to me - this ad is about being aware about the fact that people make mistakes. And that your participation on the road is not some privilege. It's a risk. Reduce that risk whenever you can. It may save a life.

In the light of the current tactics of the police in NZ I get that you take it differently @ChaosEngine.

@shatterdrose

Agreed, don't film while driving and the free market is very much like a highway.

At times things zip along quickly, but the selfish motives and aggressive acceleration and deceleration of the typical commuter are the main causes of both volume-related and collision based traffic jams. In much the same way, the risky bets in a Wall Street boom result in a painful economic correction or financial traffic jam.

In fact, there's now a mathematical model that demonstrates the cause of traffic jams (the bilateral-control algorithm.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk87bwAL6PI

My understanding is that a correct autorotation is NOT accompanied by a hard landing. However, it IS very difficult to pull off (hard---what a pun!), the closest personally analogy I can think of, being docking a boat by chopping the throttle while still tens of yards away from the dock, casting it up alongside just So---with all the kinetic energy elegantly spent before kissing the dock side.

The helicopter analogy, again, to my knowledge, is that once engine failure is clearly happening, you flatten the pitch, give up the lift the blades were generating, start falling and preserve main rotor RPM as much as possible---and you get exactly one chance and one chance only to pull pitch (make the rotor blades bite the air) at just the right distance above the ground to decelerate the helicopter just as all the rotational energy of the blades finishes spending itself in generating that last, final iota of lift--and then you kiss the ground.
Or not.

YouTube description:

According to the pilot-in-command (PIC), he was performing autorotations at the lower part of the main rotor rpm green arc in part due to weight considerations. Upon entering the accident autorotation, he maintained an airspeed between 85-90 knots in the hope that extra speed would allow a more aggressive deceleration flare prior to touchdown, which should in turn further slow the rate of descent and forward speed. The helicopter's rate of descent was high, and as the PIC turned the helicopter onto the runway heading it was apparent to him that the rate of descent was excessive and that he was too low to execute either a proper deceleration flare or perform a power recovery. He attempted to level the helicopter as much as possible prior to impact to minimize the damage to the helicopter and prevent injury. The helicopter landed hard with the left skid contacting the runway first. The left skid collapsed, damaging the outboard landing gear damper attachment structure. The helicopter slid about 100 yards before coming to a stop. According to the manufacturer, the main rotor rpm range is 90 percent to 106.4 percent. At the helicopter's weight and the density altitude on the day of the accident, the main rotor rpm during the autorotation should have been above the 106.4 percent limit (red line), requiring the pilot to increase collective pitch to maintain the rotor rpm within limits. Performing autorotations at the lower part of the green arc provides less availability of rotor energy to perform an autorotation landing. The pilot should have recognized that he was not achieving the required main rotor rpm for the autorotations and terminated the maneuvers. The helicopter was within weight and balance limits.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

The pilot's failure to maintain adequate main rotor rpm during an autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing.

His demonstration is very misleading and won't protect your phone any more than a cheap $0.99 case from Amazon would.
When he hits his finger, it's stationary and that goop distributes the force of impact all around the finger.
With a falling phone...your phone is already moving. The only thing that can save it is a slow deceleration. However this goop becomes hard on impact so it'll be exactly the same as if you dropped a naked phone or a phone in a "regular" case.

Just think if we cover a car in that goop and smash it into a wall at 50mph, do you think nothing will happen to a car or people inside of it?

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it was a bit of an assumption to say that decay was constant, lets just linger with that idea for a second. We see some decay happen, and we assume its contant backwards in time. well what would be the alternative? Well, a non-constant decay, of course. The problem is just that we have no information, that is, no evidence, that the rate of decay has ever, or even can, change. Worse still, since there is no evidence, we cant say how the rate has changed. Is it decaying slower and slower, (which would imply a younger universe) or faster and faster (which would imply an even older universe) or does it fluctuate wildly? There is of course no way to tell, except to concede that there is no evidence for any of these three scenarios. According you Young Earth Creationists, the earth is something like 6-12000 years old, which would mean a MASSIVE, impossibly weird and complicated, and seemingly undetectable deceleration in the rate of decay of all known elements. Worse still, in order for the math to work out, all the different elements would decelerate at different rates, for some, again, inexplicable reason. And again, without this being detected by todays best scientists.

Are these the worst scientists then?

http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/decay-detector-gives-solar-flare-alert/

You should be careful not to let yourself become blinded by conventional wisdom. Why shouldn't you suspect that decay rates could change? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


Talk about making assumptions, about having faith All in order to make a magic book remain magic.

Oh well.

It doesn't sound like you read my comment. I changed my mind, not in spite of the evidence, but because of it. I was perfectly fine with being a theistic evolutionist.


But of course, thats just be beginning, because it just so happens that the assumption we made (that the rate of decay is constant) lines up pretty damn nicely with other known facts about the universe, like how big it is, what stars are made of, how massive they are how long they have burned, how the whole universe is expanding, how tectonic plates move, how animals evolved,

Yes, you're right, it lines up just fine with all of the other giant assumptions that have been made about how the Universe was formed, because they are all predicated on the basal assumption of deep time, and conversely, they are all used to support that assumption of deep time. It's quite a racket they have going, where the evidence is interpreted by the conclusion. Last time I checked that wasn't science.

how fossils were buried by Satan to fool us all laid down in order over the eons, genetic diversity and the relationships and relatedness of all living things.

Do you know the geologic column doesn't actually exist in reality? It doesn't sound like you do, if you think it's all laid down in a neat little order like you see in the text book. The truth is, the geologic column is entirely theoretical. You don't find it anywhere on Earth. What you do find is various layers here and there, and what they assume is that layer a is the same as layer b if they find the same fossils in them. The depths you see in the various layers of the column does not reflect reality. You can find Cambrian fossils 10 feet down in some areas, so if you went by physical depth, you can say in some instances Cambrian was planted last and not first. The amount of circular reasoning employed to describe the geologic column is astounding.

Another question is, do you understand flood geology? Please read what we actually believe before you criticize it:

http://creationwiki.org/Flood_geology


It all pans out pretty fucking nicely to an emerging picture of a universe thats 13.72 billion years old, and an earth that is about 4.6 billion years old.

But I guess all these aligning scientific facts make the baby jesus sad and must be ignored, or at least made out by believers to be "based on faith" (The very thing that, by definition, underpins the entire worldview of a believer!) So that they can dismiss it because its just faith. Oh the irony, it burns.

As I said to someone else, if you're already committed to materialist explanations, it doesn't sound like a big leap. To someone who isn't so committed, it is a bigger leap than it might appear to you. I was willing to reinterpret my understanding of Gods word for what science had to say, and still am, but not for a mountain of circumstantial evidence and a just-so story to tie it all together.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan

@shinyblurry said:
1. Constant decay rate
2. Ratio of daughter to natural
3. Beginning conditions known
4. No leaching or addition of parent
5. No leaching or addition of daughter
6. All assumptions valid for billions of years

If all of those assumptions are valid, the date can be trusted. The problem is that there is no way to determine whether all of those assumptions are true or not. And that is, if there were just one date. The experiment actually gives a range of dates, which is then further interpreted by what is called "field relationships" between the rocks. There are many technical problems with this, but I won't get into them here. There is also the problem that different dating methods give different results for the same rock, and that when we measure things we know the age of, we get incorrect dates. If we get incorrect dates for things we know the age of, why should we trust the dates it gives for things we don't?

Uh, things like constant decay rate is fare more than an assumption, and it certainly requires no form of faith to be believed in. Sure , we werent standing by actually watching the decay taking place for billions of years, but you know we have things like chemistry and physics where people have studied the properties of atoms and particles and figured out mathematically, and confirmed experimentally, the stability of different isotope-configurations This isnt a mystery or magic anymore, people know this stuff. Read some quantum chemistry that Kent Hovind didnt write.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it was a bit of an assumption to say that decay was constant, lets just linger with that idea for a second. We see some decay happen, and we assume its contant backwards in time. well what would be the alternative? Well, a non-constant decay, of course. The problem is just that we have no information, that is, no evidence, that the rate of decay has ever, or even can, change. Worse still, since there is no evidence, we cant say how the rate has changed. Is it decaying slower and slower, (which would imply a younger universe) or faster and faster (which would imply an even older universe) or does it fluctuate wildly? There is of course no way to tell, except to concede that there is no evidence for any of these three scenarios. According you Young Earth Creationists, the earth is something like 6-12000 years old, which would mean a MASSIVE, impossibly weird and complicated, and seemingly undetectable deceleration in the rate of decay of all known elements. Worse still, in order for the math to work out, all the different elements would decelerate at different rates, for some, again, inexplicable reason. And again, without this being detected by todays best scientists.Talk about making assumptions, about having faith All in order to make a magic book remain magic.

Oh well.

But of course, thats just be beginning, because it just so happens that the assumption we made (that the rate of decay is constant) lines up pretty damn nicely with other known facts about the universe, like how big it is, what stars are made of, how massive they are how long they have burned, how the whole universe is expanding, how tectonic plates move, how animals evolved, how fossils were buried by Satan to fool us all laid down in order over the eons, genetic diversity and the relationships and relatedness of all living things. It all pans out pretty fucking nicely to an emerging picture of a universe thats 13.72 billion years old, and an earth that is about 4.6 billion years old.

But I guess all these aligning scientific facts make the baby jesus sad and must be ignored, or at least made out by believers to be "based on faith" (The very thing that, by definition, underpins the entire worldview of a believer!) So that they can dismiss it because its just faith. Oh the irony, it burns.

Momentum can be conserved in a number of ways, and my thought was that if the ball is really stuck to that magnet then rather than ejecting the ball on the other side, the whole lot might just move along the track together. If you've ever played with neodymium magnets you'll know why I think that, the amount of effort required to unstick something from them is surprisingly large.
>> ^messenger:

I think ideally, as momentum must be conserved, that the ball would come in, the other ball would be ejected, and decelerated until it escaped the magnetic pull going the same speed as the incoming ball was before it started accelerating.
On a real physical track like this with friction and sound energy loss, I think the ball would be ejected, not overcome the pull of the magnet, and get sucked back pretty quick. It may strike hard enough to send the other ball out a bit, but after very few iterations, they would be all stuck together.
I haven't thought yet about the effect of the magnet moving towards the first ball as it approaches. Maybe this has no net effect at all.

I think ideally, as momentum must be conserved, that the ball would come in, the other ball would be ejected, and decelerated until it escaped the magnetic pull going the same speed as the incoming ball was before it started accelerating.

On a real physical track like this with friction and sound energy loss, I think the ball would be ejected, not overcome the pull of the magnet, and get sucked back pretty quick. It may strike hard enough to send the other ball out a bit, but after very few iterations, they would be all stuck together.

I haven't thought yet about the effect of the magnet moving towards the first ball as it approaches. Maybe this has no net effect at all.>> ^oritteropo:

Well it's only a guess, since I'm too lazy to do the calculations , but I don't think the kinetic energy from the impact would be sufficient to overcome the very large magnetic force, so click and no ball ejected.
>> ^messenger:
[...] Now I want to know what would happen if there was only one ball after the magnet. What do you think?

>> ^sillma:

There are many very simple ways just to prove immediately that it's an optical illusion, but for some reason these people just want to live in a lie and think it's a hill with messed up gravity.


While I completley agree that the effect is caused by an optical illusion I am still struggling to think of a simple method to demonstrate that it is not caused by a "local gravity distortion".

A pendulum or a bowl of water are easy ways to normally find a true level and show the direction of incline, (provided you aren't accelerating or decelerating), however in both cases a believer could argue that they are both just being pulled that way by the "backwards gravity".

(Also, sorry for replying 6 months after you originally commented.)

>> ^CaptainPlanet:

as maestro has astutely pointed out, you've errantly assumed this truck can full stop in zero time. Hurp de durp de durpidy pthhhhhhhhhhh
>> ^Jinx:
>> ^maestro156:
Seems likely to me that he'd be able to brake faster than the truck could break, and if the truck started pulling too far away leaving him exposed, he could coast on the shoulder till he can safely stop.
I'm not saying I would do this, but it doesn't seem all that dangerous. I guess the one thing to worry about would be road debris, since he can't see it coming.

I dont think its about who can stop the fastest, its about how fast you can start stopping.
He's about half a metre away from the back of that truck. He's doing 90kph. Human reaction time is about .2 of a second. Lets do the maths.
90,000m/3600s = 25m/s
25m/s 0.2s = 5m
He's going to travel 5 metres before he even starts slowing down. If that truck has to brake hard he will go into the back of it. Granted, his speed relative to the truck won't be very high but it would prolly be enough to send him arse over tit. at close to 90kph. and he aint exactly in leathers.
I'm not even sure he could stop faster than the truck. Sure, the truck is heavier, but it has 4 wheels, big thick tyres and a lower centre of gravity. Lets do the maths.
The coefficient of friction between road bike tyres and average russian tarmac is...no I kid.


No I didn't? I just assumed the truck would slow enough that he could go into the back of it. So ok, the truck travels 4.8ms, the bike travels 5m. He's now 30cms from the back of the truck, and only now is he gonna start braking. Assuming they decelerate about the same, and I'm not even sure you can stop faster than a truck on a bike, there is still a 3m/s difference in speed with 30cms of room between them. Like I said before, he won't be going very vast relative to the truck when he collides, but his wheels are still going to be spinning prty quickly and I'd guess that would be enough to put him on the pavement...or you know, the risk is large enough that I wouldn't want to try it.


And this is ignoring all the myriad other risks from travelling at 90kph blind. Maybe his attention is on somebody in a car with a video camera in the lane next to him, and suddenly his reaction to the truck braking is delayed...maybe a pothole appears under the truck. Or a puddle. I'd rather base jump than do that.