Yeah, my analogy isn't perfect, but analogies never are :-)

With the examples I used, the choices are made to fit in with a peer group. With the question of sexily/provocatively/whatever dressed women, it's a lot more complicated, and I won't claim to begin to understand it as I'm not in that position. All I really know is that the vast majority of women don't appreciate lewd comments no matter how they're dressed, so even if the horndog part of my brain lights up at someone wearing something skimpy (and yeah, it will), I'm going to keep my those thoughts to myself.

These comments are fun. Sounds like a bunch of old men, sitting on the porch yelling at the kids on the street.

"Stop foolin' around with that wood out there. Don't jump your bicycles over that! Get out of the road!!"

Take risks when you're young because the negative consequences are mostly restricted to your own stupid self. Later in life you'll have too many responsibilities and obligations. We've given up a lot in our modern societies. By sanitizing and padding our life experiences, we've lost the connection to the deep animal part of our brain.

There are still places in the world, even first world industrialized nations, where public ritual includes personal risk. Community celebrations that tap into our hidden animal instinct with displays that overwhelm all the senses. This is a powerful way to build a deep sense of tribalism and community, to draw people together into a supportive whole.

Tomorrow many of us will enjoy the July 4th celebrations. Sitting comfortably in our folding chairs with portable BBQs and coolers; behind ropes and guard rails designating a safe area to stand...emergency response vehicles in attendance. We'll enjoy our safe, convenient family activity then curse the traffic on the way home, inside steel boxes with triple air bags. Later on we'll feel slightly unsettled by the neighbor kids setting off bottle rockets around the block. Somewhere else in the world, they'll light a bonfire the size of your house and sing songs while they watch the young people trying to see how far they can walk into the flames. They'll feel the heat, see the light up close, sense danger and ultimately give up a piece of themselves to the crowd and the untamed thing that lies below sensibility.

I'll take the bonfire please.

> I've always wondered why they don't put countdowns
> to green lights and red lights.

all our lights up here have them, i rather like them. I dont think they are seconds, some faster unit. It is possible though that my psyche is on slow-mo though. They are visible from far enough away that they help with braking decisions -- when the roads are good. They are small enough that on very icy days you cant read the numbers until you are too close to stop.

^Upvoted^
*Doublepromote
*Quality

*Adds to playlist, lights up ciggie & watches again

Thanks for posting

First off you're the third person on here that I've gotten into a discussion about guns. All 3 have called me names while I continue to be polite.

Second your bigoted comment is very offensive not just to me who works with special needs adults but anyone with down syndrom, says a lot about you.

Third, while I used to light up a joint at the end of the day and chill out and have nothing against it, I like to take my guns to the range to "take the edge off, to relax after a hard day." What I do with my guns is legal and fun. Legal gun owners are not the villians that bigots and others try to potray them as.

Guns are used in so many sporting ways I can't even list them all but the olympics is a big one.

You've already been called out on your knowledge of history so I won't bother.

I live in Canada and have been raised by a very "left wing" family. I have a close hippy aunt and uncle who live in a community of american draft dogers. My parents always vote for the left. I grew up with those ideals and choose to work with people with autism. Doesn't pay much but it's satisfying and giving back, so your comment about me being "right wing" is pretty far off.

Legal gun owners are not evil. They want the same things as most people including the best tool for self defense (which we're not allowed to use in Canada). We in Canada like to hunt and target shoot at paper. Nothing about that is evil. Learn some facts instead of making bigioted sweeping comments.

Good day.

Cutting back on light pollution isn't too hard if lighting and building designers and the like would just care. For highlighting a building, rather than have lights pointing up, put the lights under the eaves pointing down. (I actually don't get why people light up their houses so much, especially if there are street lights nearby as well, that makes that much more light for a thief to have in the house without having to use a flashlight or turn on lights or anything else to give away their activity, plus it just doesn't make sense to me to highlight a house 99.999% of the time) Along the sidewalk of the local shopping center strip, they have these big 3' round lights shining light in all directions, but if they simply capped it, and had a reflector on top to direct light down and around, they could achieve better light distribution for pedestrians for far less energy, a win all the way around for them. Light is still reflected off the ground up, but isn't as intense. Street lights can be made to cause less glare and direct light better, which again saves energy while keeping the light needed for the road just as good if not better. The problem is, those fixtures aren't widely used yet, so they cost more than the normal ones (supply and demand working out there, plus just gouging). I would bet that even a major city could greatly cut their light pollution down without sacrificing safety, and perhaps increasing it, and saving energy with just a few steps. Problem is most people don't know much about it, nor care, save for those of us who would love to have a nice telescope, but find it hard to justify especially when the skies nearby aren't dark enough... Really just need to start modifying zoning laws and restrict accent lighting and do better on street lighting where/when needed (and cutting it when not needed, which is perhaps far more often the case, since it is usually just a security blanket while not providing any security at all)... But yeah, since that isn't likely to happen, not much is likely to happen and those of us wanting to see the night sky in its glory are stuck with long drives...

Stay tuned for version 2.0 when he adds poison tipped mini-crossbow bolts.

Have to say though, if pulling a sword on someone didn't give them cause for concern, seeing and hearing it light up definitely would.

Edit: Oh boy, wall of text crits for 10k.

His explanation was rather short and somewhat misleading. Maybe they thought a proper explanation would have been too dry or too lengthy to be of any interest for a sufficient number of their viewers.

tl:dr

If all rotor settings are indicated to be correct, a feedback loop within the circuit indicated a subset of correct connections on the plugboard, even if the initially assumed connection turned out to be wrong. It didn't show all connections, but enough to run it through a modified Enigma to determine if it's a false positive or in fact the correct setting. If it was correct, the rest could be done by hand.

----------------------- Long version -----------------------

Apologies in advance. We had to recreate parts of the Bombe as a simulation, but a) it's been a while and b) it was in German. I'll try to explain the concept behind it, hopefully without screwing it up entirely.

The combination of clear message and code snippet (2:25) is called a crib. This can be used to create a graph, wherein letters are the vertices and connections together with their numerical positions are the edges.

For example, at position 1, "A" corresponds to "W". So you'd create an edge between "A" and "W" and mark that edge as "1". At position 4, "B" corresponds to "T", so there's the edge marked as "4". All edges are bidirectional, the transformation at a specific position can go either way.

Once your graph is finished, you check for loops. These are essential. Without loops, you're boned. In this case, one loop can be found at positions 2,3,5 in form of "T->E->Q->T".

Here the Bombe comes into play. It uses scramblers, each combining all three rotors plus reflector of an enigma into one segment. This way, one Enigma setting is functionally equal to a single scrambler.

Now you can use those scramblers to create an electrical circuit that corresponds to your graph -- scrambler = edge. All scramblers are set to the same initial configuration. The first scramber remains at in the inital configuration, while the second and third get configurations in relation to their edge's numerical value. Configuration in this case means the value of their internal three rotors, so there are 26*26*26 possible settings within each scrambler.

It's basically a sequence of three encryptions.

Example: in our little TEQ triangle, the first scrambler (TE, 2) gets a random starting position. The second scrambler (QE, 5) gets turned three notches, the third scrambler (QT, 3) gets turned one notch. The initial configuration might be wrong, but only the relation between the scramblers matters. A wrong result simply tells you to turn all scramblers another notch, until you get it right.

You have a possibly correct setting when the output matches the input. Specifically, a voltage is applied to the wire of letter "T", leading into the first scrambler. And on a test register attached to the last scrambler, the wire of letter "T" should have a voltage on it as well. If the setting is incorrect, a different letter will light up. Similarly, all incorrect inputs for this particular setup will always light up a different letter at the the end, never the same (thanks to the reflector). If output equals input, you're golden. And if several loops are used, all with the same input/output letter, each of their outputs must equal the input.

To reduce the number of false positives, you need as many connected loops within the crib as possible.

So far, that's an Enigma without a plugboard. To account for that, they introduced feedback loops into the circuit. In our small scale case, the output of the third scrambler would be coupled back into the input of the first scrambler. The number of loops determines the number of possible outcomes with each specific setting. All of these are fed back into the first scrambler of each loop.

The plugboard, however, changed the input into the system of rotors. Instead of a "T" in our example, it might be a "Z", if those two letters were connected on the board.

A random hypothesis is made and fed into the machine. If the scramblers are set incorrectly, a different letter comes out at the end of each loop and is in return fed back into the first scramblers. Result: (almost) everything lights up. If you start with a good graph, everything will light up.

-----
A key element for this was the "diagonal board", which represented a) all possible connections on the plugboard and b) the bidirectional nature of those connections (AB = BA). Maybe it can be explained without pictures, but I sure as hell can't, so "a grid of all possible connections between scramblers and letters + forced reciprocity" will have to suffice.
-----

If, however, the setting was correct, a wrong hypothesis for the input connection merely meant that everything except the right connections was lit up.

Let's say the fix point of the loops in our graph is the letter "T". We assume that it's connected to the letter "Z" on the plugboard. A voltage is applied to "Z" on the test register, and thereby inserted into the circuit at the first scrambler. Loop #1 applies voltage to the letter "A" on the test register, #2 lights up "B", #3 lights up "F". These three outputs are now fed back into the first scrambler, so now the scrambler has voltage on ZABF, which in return lights up ZABF+GEK on the test register.
This goes on until everything except "U" is lit up on the test register. That means three things: a) the settings are correct, b) the hypothesis is wrong, c) "T" is connected to "U".

Reasons:
a) if the settings were incorrect, the entire register would be alive
b) if the hypothesis was correct, only the letter "Z" would be alive on the register
c) due to the feedback loop, the only way for the output to be "U" is if the input was also "U", and the reciprocity within the system makes it impossible for any other input to generate the output "U". Since "T" was the fix point for our loops, "T" is connected to "U".

Similarly, if the initial hypothesis is correct, everything on the test register except "U" stays dead.

The diagonal board provides registers for every single letter and allows the user to pick one as a test register. During operation, all the other registers serve as visual representations of the deductions based on the initial hypothesis. So you actually get to see more than just the initial connection, all based on the same concept.

since you started with the cancer analogy -- that's like saying you're going to start smoking (more) because you're afraid you'll get cancer from second-hand smoke. and since everyone else is already smoking cigarettes the best way to deter other people from smoking is to light up yourself. doesn't make any sense, does it?

>> ^grinter:

>> ^deathcow:
Panorama Done!
frame 1920 of 1920
back LCD lights up
<< NO MEMORY CARD >>

I shot some sun rays breaking through the early morning mist over the mountains around Machu Picchu. It was gorgeous - dream lighting - and about an hour later realized that the camera was set to a ludicrously high ISO. I was devastated. I can't imagine how that guy would have felt if something had gone wrong.


Man... bummer... I hope you got some pictures you liked out of it anyway.

I shot a few hours of a galaxy through the telescope the other day with the ISO set on AUTO. Also a bummer but nothing compared to your story.

>> ^deathcow:

Panorama Done!
frame 1920 of 1920
back LCD lights up
<< NO MEMORY CARD >>


I shot some sun rays breaking through the early morning mist over the mountains around Machu Picchu. It was gorgeous - dream lighting - and about an hour later realized that the camera was set to a ludicrously high ISO. I was devastated. I can't imagine how that guy would have felt if something had gone wrong.

Panorama Done!
frame 1920 of 1920

back LCD lights up

<< NO MEMORY CARD >>

>> ^mentality:
Isn't high level fencing aggressive because it doesn't matter if your opponent hits you as long as you hit them first? That sort of scoring system seems to naturally favor the one with the aggression and initiative.


Generally yes, it doesn't matter if your opponent hits you as long as you hit them first. There are "right of way" rules to establish who has the initiative and the right to attack, and in fencing as a sport there are actually judges to make rulings on whether or not a touch should be thrown out because the attacker didn't have the right of way. It can get confusing.

Basically, whoever attacks first takes the right of way, but their opponent can take it back by successfully making a parry. It gets gray when both people attack at nearly the same time, their swords/foils/whatever touch but not enough to deflect a touch, and both attacks hit. Usually they wear vests with sensors to light up and say who got hit first, but I think a judge can overrule that if they think that the person that got hit first had tried to parry/riposte the original attack.

I'd tend to say that just further explains my stance that it can't really be "realistic"; if it were an actual duel we wouldn't need judges and electric vests to say that person A or B touched first and therefore "won". Instead, they'd both be dead and we could safely say they both lost.

Lots of that light has to do with the fact that not only is it instantly VERY hot , but that there is ALSO ionized gases that get created into a plasma that doesn't last very long (due to energy or heat absorption speed), but it will light up really good with the color all depending on the material hit (carbon based stuff as said above, so the photons you see are from the "energy range" released in the energy exchange through the atmospheric gases and tree/pole/whatever hit).

Good luck to you! Hope that does good things for you =).

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^draak13:
Apologies for the fiery comment earlier; I do prefer an actual discussion as you're marching on with. No beef against physicists, either...I'm an electical/biomedical engineer turned analytical chemist/physicist =).
Sorry to hear about your scoliosis. Apart from a shoulder issue, I don't really have too much that separates me from ideal at this point. Nonetheless, as humans, the good many of us fall within the portion of the distribution that this stuff matters. This is clearly indicated by her results, which are supported by the foundations of countless other experiments many learn about even in introductory psychology courses.
Your comment about us choosing to act differently from our body language is extremely valid on all levels of neurophysiology. For example, a person can lift their arm, or a person can imagine lifting their arm while keeping it still. In both cases, the primary motor cortex lights up the same way, though in the case where the person keep their arm still, the signal is inhibited further down the pathway. That's an example rooted in the old brain, and there are certainly examples within the higher level cognitive portions of the brain. Smiling makes us feel happy, and we often feel happier simply by smiling, but we can choose to be happy while not smiling, or choose to be sad while smiling.
In this case, what was described was a method in which we can bring out dominant behaviors in ourselves through our body language feedback. For those who are do not have a naturally dominant personality, this is an excellent way to step into the shoes of a slightly more dominant self. Continuing with your comment, her 'make it until you become it' conclusion is very much a person choosing to act in a more dominant way, without the need for the postures to make it so. Once those neural pathways are better understood within ourselves, it's much easier to call upon them and make that conscious decision as necessary. Until then, many less dominant people have an easily accessible means to explore themselves with a slightly more dominant attitude.
>> ^criticalthud:
i grew up with a pretty gnarly scoliosis. Body language that wasn't strained or uncomfortable was nearly impossible.
Most of us have distortion in our spines that effects who we are, how we move, and how we present. Perhaps you do not, but ignoring the physical realities of the species to pretend that how we are perceived is mostly a conscious choice, is understating the matter.

and sorry if i came off as a snot.
as to the vid, honestly i find a presentation of "ease" in a person to be the most attractive, rather than dominance.
as for the scoliosis, been working hard at it for 12 yrs and we're over some big practical hurdles. By understanding neurology this way (in terms of pressure and compression), we're quickly gaining on being able to dynamically change the spine.
to explain, in short:
i imagine you are familiar with thoracic outlet syndrome? - basically a compression of the brachial plexus at the clavicle and rib 1, which results in an interruption and weakening of the nervous signal, weakness in the hand, pain etc. To solve it, doctors cut a hole for it. From that, we can take an understanding that compression of neurology is a fairly bad thing.
But if you look at the main branches of neurology, what you'll note is that the nervous system at some point in the body always runs through a bone space (interosseous space). Between vertebrae, between ribs, etc. Over time and trauma these spaces compress, resulting in variances in compression all throughout the body, thus varying neurological feed all throughout the body. The neurological system is a fluid system. As you vary compression, you vary the pressure within the fluid system. These variances in pressure and fluid transfer start dictating our tendencies. How we move, how we look, who we are.
anyway, here's some of it
www.ncrtheory.org
so far, the practical end (manual therapy) is proving the theoretical. I'm just balancing neurological space. pretty unbelievable. today is a big day. wish me luck.