Tis video / show is retarded.

the clay pigoin is shot at the same trajectory each time so the guy just has to launch the ball at a certain time interval after launch into the same position.

obviously that's still hard but you would hope that sumone that throws balls all day for a living could do this.



the program makes out that he is working out where to throw the ball and aiming at the target when in reality he could be blind folded and told to throw the ball at a spot a certain amount of time after a noise and you would get the same result.

>> ^messenger:
So, how is you believing that you have a superior intellect to someone who believes in God not pride?

Read it again. Nobody claimed to have a superior intellect to anyone else. The contrast is between using our intellect and not using it. As Galileo famously put it, "I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." Now, he was talking from the perspective of a person of faith who simply didn't believe the bible or church teachings anymore but certainly did still believe in God. We are speaking as people with sense, reason and intellect who don't see sufficient evidence to come to the conclusion that God might reasonably exist.

It's the entire contention that someone who believes in God is not using their sense, reason and intellect that is prideful. Did you know that 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians believe in a personal God? Some extremely intelligent people believe in a Creator, and they can back up their beliefs with logical evidence. You see theists through a grossly distorted lens created by your own prejudice, and it blinds you. Galileo, by the way, did believe the bible; what he didn't buy is the catholic interpretation of it, and rightly so.

>> ^messenger:
Since there is no empirical evidence for or against Gods existence, how do you calculate how likely or unlikely His existence is?

The lack of evidence for existence is a non-concrete kind of evidence for the lack of existence. So the overwhelming lack of evidence for God is a bloody strong case. Everywhere we look in nature, we continue not to find God.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Although I think there is evidence, such as fine tuning and information in DNA. In any case, do you honestly believe you can point an instrument at God and say "there he is!". Is this idea not fundamentally ridiculous? I think what youre confusing is mechanism with agency. You think because you describe a mechanism, how something works in a mechanical sense, somehow it rules out an Agent. God says He upholds the entire Universe; that He is the one that keeps the atoms from flying apart. How does mechanism rule out Gods agency?

Not only that, but if God created the Universe, do you realize that the entire Universe is evidence of Gods existence? The question I would put to you is, how would you tell the difference? How would you know you're looking at a Universe God didn't create? What would you expect that to look like?

What about the laws of logic? Where do they come from? If they're only in our brains, subject to constant flux, then what is rationality? It isn't anything you can trust if what you believe is true. Therefore all of your arguments fall apart. You have nothing in your worldview that can explain it, yet I can explain it. I know there is an omnipotent God who made us in His image, and we are rational beings because He is a rational being.

>> ^messenger:
Please, stop talking about science. You really do not understand it. You sound like a religious sceptic spouting crap about the bible. Really, what you say about science is just non-verified faither talking points. All science is based only on observation and drawing generalized inferences from that. "Theories" are just that. The strength of a scientific theory is roughly [how well it predicts other things] ÷ [how many things you have to just accept]. The belief in a particular atomic structure for oxygen has many predictions, which are testable and have largely been shown reliably true. So the atomic structure of an oxygen atom is a generally accepted theory, even though we will never be able to sense it directly. It's scientific. On those same grounds, the theory of evolution is also a strong theory in science. It has very few conjectures (three simple ones, I believe I heard Dawkins once say), it generates predictions, the predictions are testable, and they affirm the theory. Saying that evolution is untestable is as ridiculous as saying we haven't investigated every oxygen atom, so the model of the atom is untestable, and therefore unscientific.

If you understood it better than I do then you would know what macro evolution is. The scientific method uses empirical evidence, which comes from empirical experimentation or observation. There is no experiment to prove macro evolution, nor can it be empirically observed. It is simply an unjustified extrapolation from micro evolution (which is proven beyond a reasonable doubt), and based on nothing but inferences from *circumstantial* evidence and not evidence based on empirical observation.

Many people have this conception that the theory of common descent is as certain and proven as 2 + 2 = 4, or as Sepacore put it:

"once claimed to be a book of literal truth, becomes more and more metaphorical as science stomps its way all over the human races ignorance of the universe reaching greater level's of understandings that are testable through mathematical predictions"

That is certainly how it is taught in schools, as absolute fact, and that's why I believed it too. It's when you stop looking at their conclusions and see the actual data they base them on that you will get the shock of your life. Yes, you're right, the theory makes a few predictions, all of which have turned out to be wrong..such as this:

The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout nature depends on the very process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually take the places of and exterminate their parent-forms. But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

Darwin

Darwin predicted that for his theory to be true, there must be innumerable transitional forms in the fossil record. What have we found?:


"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, .., prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's prediction. Nor is the problem a miserly fossil record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.
N. Eldredge and I. Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, pg 45-46.

What we find is that creatures appear in stasis, and enter and leave the fossil record abruptly with no changes.

Another prediction is a start from simple to complex, with an increase of diversity of the phyla over a long period of time.

"Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably longer than the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer."
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1st edition, pg 307.

What we find is that all of the phyla we have today all abruptly appeared in the "cambrian explosion"

"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs ... "
S. Gould, The Panda's Thumb, pg 238, 239.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for how poor a theory macroevolution actually is, but you won't have a shortage of true believers in it, even though they don't even understand what evidence it is based on. I do know something about science, and although I am a layman, I am perfectly capable of understanding of what makes a sound theory, and what doesn't. I would believe in macroevolution if the evidence supported it. Not only does it not support it, but it actually argues against it. It is shocking to someone who has been indoctrinated (like I was), but if you want to talk about fairy stories, macroevolution is a whale of a tale.

Actually I guess that could work.

I think the badge levels should double at each level.

Badge level 1 - 100 points total.
Badge level 2 - 300 points total.
Badge level 3 - 700 points total.
Badge level 4 - 1500 points total.
etc.

That should really keep them within a suitable range over time.
>> ^maatc:

I just thought about this because of all the "damn, you beat me by 20 minutes" comments and I thought it would be great to have some kind of mechanism to reward the early birds.
Here is how I would do it:
As soon as a video hits the "Top Videos" list, sifty can go back and check who were the voters #2 to #9. Points could be 9/10 for voter #2, 8/10 for voter #3 and so on up until 1/10 for voter #9.
(Why not voter #1 and voter #10? I think the first voter should not get 10/10, as he is usually the original poster, who gets rewarded with a star anyway when the video hits the top list, and I think voter #10, who gets it out of queue is already covered by the Assisters badge.)
Points add up in the background over time and induce the early adopter badge at certain levels. If that level is set at reasonable intervals it would not lead to "ridiculous levels" either.

I just thought about this because of all the "damn, you beat me by 20 minutes" comments and I thought it would be great to have some kind of mechanism to reward the early birds.

Here is how I would do it:

As soon as a video hits the "Top Videos" list, sifty can go back and check who were the voters #2 to #9. Points could be 9/10 for voter #2, 8/10 for voter #3 and so on up until 1/10 for voter #9.
(Why not voter #1 and voter #10? I think the first voter should not get 10/10, as he is usually the original poster, who gets rewarded with a star anyway when the video hits the top list, and I think voter #10, who gets it out of queue is already covered by the Assisters badge.)

Points add up in the background over time and induce the early adopter badge at certain levels. If that level is set at reasonable intervals it would not lead to "ridiculous levels" either.

Just to clarify/echo the content of the video, they do not have a camera that is actually capable of taking 1 trillion frames per second. They are simulating that ability by having a laser continually shooting pulses of light, and then having the camera take a picture at a different slice in the travel of the photon by moving the mirror accordingly. Eventually the mirror captures every relevant interval of the path of the photon, composites the images, and generates an animation like the one with the soda bottle. Very clever piece of science and engineering.

...some cropped web page....

Let's take a look at the process through which lightning is known to be formed. Lightning occurs because of a difference in charge between a storm cloud and the ground.

First, the base of a cloud sends down a little electric discharge, called a stepped leader. It descends to the ground in steps, each about 50 yards (about 46 meters) in length. This process is extremely fast and impossible to see with the naked eye. Each step is less than a millionth of a second long. The interval between steps works out to about fifty-millionths of a second. This process can only be observed with the assistance of extremely quick-exposure cameras.

The stepped leader generally moves at about 75 miles per second (120 km/s) towards the ground. A typical trip duration is 20 milliseconds. Atoms pass along electrical charge much more quickly than sound vibrations.

The stepped leader carries tons of negative charge. As it nears the ground, it induces enormous quantities of positive charge in the earth, especially at the tips of tall objects. Because opposites attract, the stepped leader and the negative charge at the ground reach towards each other and quickly meet. The path from storm cloud to the surface is complete and "the floodgates are open", so to speak.

Because the cloud is filled with negative charge, it has a lot of current to offer to the newly created discharge path. This charge quickly moves from being distributed throughout the cloud to being concentrated at the point where the stepped leader first dropped from the cloud, into the ground or an elevated object. This discharge is called the return stroke, and is what we think of when we hear the word "lightning".

The return stroke takes around 100 millionths of a second to reach the ground. The immense flash generated is enough to leave an afterimage in our eyes for seconds at a time, giving us the illusion that the lightning flash is longer than it really is. In reality, our eyes cannot resolve any of the steps involved. We only see the final product - a lightning bolt.

It'd be even more frightening if they remained quiet until she was well within their ranks, then just shouted one word. Perhaps "Occupy" and then went silent again. Keep it on completely random intervals so you're just jumping out of your skin each time they do it.

A. We have been running counter-cyclical deficits. You can say what you want about the "shell game", which I btw don't agree with as a characterization, in the mid to late 90's, but compare that to the deficits run post 9/11. There's a marked difference. Compare George W. Bush deficits of the mid 2000's to what Obama has done. When the economy tanked, deficits grew, not stayed the same or shrunk.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/us_deficit_100.png

I completely agree with you we have failed to run surpluses when the economy has been prospering. That is absolutely the case, but you definitely see swelling of deficits in response to recessions in the chart above. That's a Keynesian idea, even if it is shared with the monetarists.

B. Yeah, I'm sure. Granted, LOL @ Ballmer from time to time.

D. Individuals may be skeptical of the FDIC right now, but we're speaking of the influence systemically of the FDIC. This past financial crisis was all about a credit crisis. Part of why the recession occurred occurred was an eroding of available credit due to pervasive fear and mistrust, a lot among banking institutions of each other. The last thing we needed was a run on the banks, and that was very largely avoided. The FDIC was a huge reason for that. Had there been, more banks would have gone under, and banks still surviving would have been even more irrationally tight on lending. That would have been absolutely disastrous. There's little doubt in my mind we would have seen 20% unemployment.

>> ^bmacs27:

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.
B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"
C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.
D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.

B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"

C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.

D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.

Wait, did he say the Mac II startup sound is a tri-tone interval? Sounds like a perfect fifth to me, i.e. C with G as opposed to a tri-tone interval of C with Gb.

Did I misunderstand him? I worked on the Mac II and IIfx for years and heard that tone a thousand times. I recall a discordant sound if you tried to boot the Mac with no memory or an incorrect memory configuration but that's the closest to a tri-tone that I can recall.

>> ^pho3n1x:

hand-eye coordination and rhythm. it also probably helps get your body used to being in an arms-up guard position for extended periods of time.


Exactly this.

Couple speed back with jump rope interval training, heavy bag interval training, sparring, and shadowboxing and you're well on your way to being a decent boxer. Take away sparring and the competition of boxing and you have an excellent work out.

>> ^raverman:

Put your speakers out the window.
Pump it up to full volume.
Watch the UFO's roll on in...

They'd have to have knowledge of our scales. They could prolly work it out but our best chance would be equal intervals. Oh, and probably radio waves would travel a lil further

A. Octave B. 5th C. Tritone

Whenever you hear a pitch, there are also a number of much softer, sympathetic pitches that sound. These are called overtones. (Here is a graphic of the overtone series: http://www.deandrummond.com/oton1.jpg) Overtones are very soft, and usually only the first few are (barely) detectable to the ear - although factors like instrument construction, peculiarities of the performance space and other notes sounding at the same time can affect the production of overtones. The first two in the overtone series are an octave and a 5th, so when ^ Karen Cheng plays the octave and the 5th, the overtone series is reinforcing those pitches, which gives those intervals a very 'pure' sound.

The tritone is the 10th overtone in the series, and occurs 3 and 1/2 octaves above it's root pitch, which means that it is not only very soft, but more often than not, out of the range of human hearing. Although a naked tritone is odd sounding by itself, it is used to create many beautiful, lush and complicated harmonies. Hundreds of years ago, the tritone was considered the interval of the devil by the church and it's use was forbidden. That quickly faded away as western music began to come into its own as an art form. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and almost every other notable western composer have used the tritone often in various harmonic contexts.

The oft used chord progression she uses at the end is I V vi IV, which is similar to the Pachabel cannon progression used in a similar video (I V vi iii IV I IV V).

(/theory lesson)

I like how they redrew the "district" lines for the stores between 2009 and 2010!

I'm also curious as to what kind of statistical analysis they use to compare the years between each other and what they're confidence interval would be to see if there would be a significant change or not.

All of these numbers are meaningless without stating p values and standard deviation (and a few I probably forgot). But hey, increasing numbers always look good when you want to make a point, right? (BUY BUY BUY)

The infertility is caused by the ambient heat generated by the laptop. The function of the scrotum is to keep the testicles at a slightly lower temperature than the rest of the body. This lower temperature is more ideal for spermatogenesis, and anything that alters that temperature homeostasis is bound to have negative effects on sperm production.

The cancer risk? I'd like to see the medical journal that proved this and look at their numbers to see what kind of confidence interval and power they're working with to try and prove this. Honestly almost everything can be linked to causing cancer, and from my understanding of this they probably are linking long-term physical damage (ie. Toasted Skin Syndrome) and how that can lead to faster cell turnover which can increase cancer risk.