BTW, for those of you that want to have MORE fun with the math aspect of all of this (if you want to try to figure out for example what equation you'll be using here...) go here: Wikiversity's link for Rigid Body States O' Fun! <---WARNING: LOTS of MATH!

Angular momentum, torque, and a strange geometrical shape with different areas of "spin" make for great WTF moments. I like torque the most though, it always provides the most fun through its various breakdowns in Physics...

I can defiantly see a college professor turning that little video into an impromptu test, "Watch this video: Now, assume that this thing has these dimensions and has this mass, also here are the independent velocities for the different areas (if it's a hard class will add in extra stuff like resistance, etc...)... Go ahead and tell me x, y, and, z...? You have twenty-five minutes.".

I really do like this video though. If I was a High School physics teacher my kids would understand what is happening here before they left my class. Screw honors programs and AP crap. All students deserve a chance to be great at something not just the ones that scored good on their tests in elementary (which in UTAH, this IS THE TRUTH!). Off-topic a bit, but I couldn't help it.

Happy New Year from still the Old Year. Future Me sends his drunken regards also.
Thanks for the vids, I just woke up, good start.

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
Happy New year to you :

I know geo would like to post more vids, so I'm trying to get these to sift for him. I also just really really liked them (he finds some great stuff).

Cool geometrical animation with excellent music:

http://videosift.com/video/Amon-Tobin-Calculate

Excellent, slightly dark vid, based on Alice in Wonderland:

http://videosift.com/video/The-Red-Paintings-The-Streets-Fell-into
-My-Window

Happy New year to you

I know geo would like to post more vids, so I'm trying to get these to sift for him. I also just really really liked them (he finds some great stuff).

Cool geometrical animation with excellent music:

http://videosift.com/video/Amon-Tobin-Calculate

Excellent, slightly dark vid, based on Alice in Wonderland:

http://videosift.com/video/The-Red-Paintings-The-Streets-Fell-into-My-Window

From APOD:
Upon inspection and contemplation, a leading hypothesis for its cause has now emerged. In sum, this hypothesis holds that a lightning discharge in a thundercloud can temporarily change the electric field above the cloud where charged ice crystals were reflecting sunlight. The new electric field quickly re-orients the geometric crystals to a new orientation that reflects sunlight differently.
In other words, a lightning discharge can cause a sundog to jump. Soon, the old electric field may be restored, causing the ice crystals to return to their original orientation.

TL;DR: It was aliens.

>> ^ForgedReality:

Anybody know what kind of geckos they are? I was thinking tokays, but the tail looks different. Definitely related at least. And that snake, is it some kind of green viper?


The people are speaking Thai, and Thai geckos are tokay/toukay, so I bet that is correct. Their tail does look a bit different -- most of the geckos here have a tail that gets very wide right past where it connects to the body, sort of cardioid in shape, or like an elongated second head.

As for the snake, looks like a tree viper of some kind to me, based on near the end where it extends and you can get a clear silhouette of the head. There are lots of red-throated tree vipers in my area in Thailand, but they have a more brownish green color with a geometric pattern on their backs (plus the red area around the throat) whereas this one looked pretty solidly and smoothly green. Dunno.

I'll have my wife watch and see if the people in the recording say anything definitive.


***edit:
She said they are definitely toukay, which as far as I know is just gecko in Thai. She said the snake is called a "ngoo keyow" in Thai, which just translates as "green snake", so not particularly helpful. Here is a web page with some likely suspects: http://www.siam-info.de/english/snakes_crotalidae.html

Green tree viper is probably correct, but that applies to quite a few distinct species. All are poisonous but some only mildly so for humans. Not sure if the geckos/toukay would be resistant though.

@NetRunner

I never said banks create money from nothing. They are allowed to grant someone money based on their promise to pay it back.

You're making it sound like I'm saying banks can just literally add money to their balance sheets. That is not what I'm saying.

I never said interest collected reduces the money supply. Collecting principle does. When you finish paying back a debt, the bank zeroes out the debt associated with that loan, which removes the money from the system. The interest is left over and that is what increases the money supply.

Banks bother with loans because the promise someone makes when they sign on the dotted line is the only thing of actual value in the entire system: The lender's trust and the borrower's promise. You must have that promise in order to create the money. You don't just add numbers to your balance sheet because you feel like it unless you're trying to commit fraud.

There's a difference between central bank money and commercial bank money. It's the fact that money lent out by one bank can be deposited at another bank, and that bank can make loans based on that deposit, which has not been repaid to the original bank yet. It's called re-lending. So, while each bank is not literally creating money on their balance sheets, the total aggregate interest repaid to the system is constantly increasing the money supply because that interest never existed when the process began.

I haven't been explaining it very well. Look, it's not the individual bank that's creating the $900 from $100 in deposits, it's the system overall...when you add up all the loans created by the initial $100 in Fed deposits. The ratio of publicly held money vs. Fed deposit reserves is what's important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier

specifically:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fractional_reserve_lending_varyingrates_100base.jpg

The graph shows it well. The $900 number is an approximation of the actual number, which can be obtained from the geometric series.

You can also read this document produced by the Chicago Fed branch:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Modern_Money_Mechanics/Bank_Deposits%E2%80%94How_They_Expand_or_Contract

Specifically, the part where it says "...Of course, they do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers' transaction accounts. Loans (assets) and deposits (liabilities) both rise by $9,000..."

>> ^VoodooV:

that's not really a proof though, you're just throwing up your hands and saying..."close enough"
if .9999... was 1. Then it wouldn't be .9999, it would be 1
.999... and 1.000... are as close as you can get to 1 without being 1
you're just exploiting the weakness of converting fractions to decimal notation. Notation is the key word there. 1/3 is not .333... It's an approximation and by the same notion 3 (1/3) is not .99999...
<deal with it.jpg>


You are mistaken. No, it's not the most rigid proof. But I provided a rigid proof above using geometric series that should be enough to convince everyone who knows a modicum of math.

But you are right that notation is the key word here. Namely that in the decimal representation, there is no unique way to write out each number. We have been conditioned from ground school to believe that each number can only be written in one way, but that is false. If 0.9999... is not equal to 1, what then is the value of 1 - 0.9999..., pray tell?

Also, 0.3333.... is exactly equal to 1/3. In this case, there is no other way of writing that number in decimal notation. It would have been an approximation if we had only written out a finite number of 3s after the decimal point. But we don't.

I'll weight in.

The first argument I've seen made in the last class I've seen required for a math minor is that there is no number that you can write which exactly equals pi. You can write more and more numbers which gets you closer and closer to pi, but you can't write the decimal value for pi itself, unless you had an infinitely long number written down. Infinite precision does indeed matter, so 0.9 with infinite nines is different from 1.0 with infinite zeros.

The only proof that begins to be relevant against this notion is the one presented by @Ornthoron, which is a geometric series. The geometric series he presented converges to 1 if you sum an infinite number of the series elements together. He defined his infinite series to be the equation ar + ar^2 + ar^3. However, the guy in this video didn't define any geometric series, he defined a static number: 0.9 with infinite nines.

The two concepts are explicitly different. If you wanted to take a calculus approach to the same explanation, the geometric series suggested by Onthoron would look like a line asymptotically approaching zero. Amazingly, integrating the area under that line approaches a value of 1 as you integrate more and more of the range along that number line, and equals 1 exactly if you integrate along the entire infinitely long number line. The value 0.9 with infinite nines would look like a discontinuous and flat line going from x = 0 (inclusive) to x = 1 (exclusive). The integrated area of that discontinuous line would not be equal to 1, and there is no infinitely more range to integrate along the number line. It has a definite & discrete value of the closest possible number to 1 that doesn't equal 1.

>> ^Ornthoron:

@charliem No, you are wrong.
Noone says that 0.999 = 1. What is true is that the number written as 0.(an infinite number of 9s), which we can write more prettily as 0.(9), is equal to 1. That means equal. Exactly equal. No equivalence needed.
Bear in mind that we are not talking about a number with a finite number of decimals. If we were, it would be true to say that we could get arbitrarily close to 1 without ever being exactly equal. But we are in fact talking about the infinite sum
9 (1/10) + 9 (1/10)^2 + 9 (1/10)^3 + ...
This is a geometric series of the form ar + ar^2 + ar^3 which according to the convergence theorem has the solution
ar/(1-r) = (9 (1/10))/(9/10) = 1
There, I just proved the equality for you.


Something tending to something isn't the something itself. Something tending toward 1 isn't, yet, 1. We don't live in the land of convergent infinities, we live in today. If you can right down enough .99999's that eventually turn into a 1, then I will accept that proof, otherwise, it is an estimation or an assumption. Unless you don't believe in infinite precision, that is. But even then, your left one something with a fineinte number of 9's that don't converge to a 1. Doing loop-de-loops with infinities, a reality in which humans don't and can't inhabit, is trying to abstract away the real problem...the same problem that Zeno proposed long, long ago.

@charliem No, you are wrong.

Noone says that 0.999 = 1. What is true is that the number written as 0.(an infinite number of 9s), which we can write more prettily as 0.(9), is equal to 1. That means equal. Exactly equal. No equivalence needed.

Bear in mind that we are not talking about a number with a finite number of decimals. If we were, it would be true to say that we could get arbitrarily close to 1 without ever being exactly equal. But we are in fact talking about the infinite sum

9*(1/10) + 9*(1/10)^2 + 9*(1/10)^3 + ...

This is a geometric series of the form ar + ar^2 + ar^3 which according to the convergence theorem has the solution

ar/(1-r) = (9*(1/10))/(9/10) = 1

There, I just proved the equality for you.

>> ^rottenseed:

I was referring to ascii coding and the understanding a reconstruction of Sagan's image>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^rottenseed:
This has got to be the best hoax ever...not in the enormity of how many people it fooled, or in the entertainment value gathered, but from the amount of knowledge the pranksters needed to have in order to pull it off. Not to mention, crop circles look badass...

It's much the same as all the tricks we were taught in grade school, about solving geometric problems with a compass and ruler. Crop circles just take a board and some rope.



Oh...I took it for commenting on the more general case. You're right, there is a distinct bit of geek background there.

I was referring to ascii coding and the understanding a reconstruction of Sagan's image>> ^Stormsinger:

>> ^rottenseed:
This has got to be the best hoax ever...not in the enormity of how many people it fooled, or in the entertainment value gathered, but from the amount of knowledge the pranksters needed to have in order to pull it off. Not to mention, crop circles look badass...

It's much the same as all the tricks we were taught in grade school, about solving geometric problems with a compass and ruler. Crop circles just take a board and some rope.

>> ^rottenseed:

This has got to be the best hoax ever...not in the enormity of how many people it fooled, or in the entertainment value gathered, but from the amount of knowledge the pranksters needed to have in order to pull it off. Not to mention, crop circles look badass...


It's much the same as all the tricks we were taught in grade school, about solving geometric problems with a compass and ruler. Crop circles just take a board and some rope.

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^rottenseed:
Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.

Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.
Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.
I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.

>> ^rottenseed:

Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.


Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.

Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.

I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.