Good conversation points Yogi.

Hurting people isn't a freedom of speech issue. He stalked her and tormented her. If he'd done it by distributing flyers it would still be criminal, not protected speech.

I don't think that vigilantism is justice, but when someone does something bad to someone else, IMO they give up the expectation that others won't do that same thing to them. In other words, while I wouldn't be the one who maliciously distributes his info, he has to accept that it's fair by virtue of his own actions.

Thanks for being honest and open about your feelings relating to judgement of her suicide. You've made most of my argument for me already, but I'll add a couple things. First, you say, "... I don't think words is a good enough reason." You say it like words are just painless electric signals produced in our brains from oscillations of our eardrums, and so shouldn't cause anxiety. I can't disagree more. I was bullied as a kid for two years, and looking back, I'm really thankful that it was almost all physical and exclusion. It hurt, and I felt powerless, but the people bullying me didn't spend a lot of effort attacking my character aside from calling me fag. They also didn't begin to ruin my social life by turning entire schools against me, even after moving. And even if it weren't that severe, to a teenager, any words that contain some ring of truth will stick. And teens are extremely self-conscious, so anything negative they will accept as probably accurate.

Second, you say, "...without good reason". The word "good" is itself a judgement. That guy told Amanda since she was 12 that she was never going to have any friends, and he had made sure of it. She had never known any other social reality, and it seemed like the torment was literally going to last forever. To a bullied 15-year-old, the time when things will be better is probably four years away. To me that's nothing, probably you neither. I'm going to be 40 in four years, and it feels like it's next door. Yet for me at 15, 19 was an imaginary concept. Having no friends at 15, in our primitive brains, equals certain death. It wasn't a logical decision any more than hooking up with some guy with a girlfriend who said he liked her.

Finally, and this isn't my strongest point here, you say that you went through hard times and never thought suicide was the answer. For you. You're not the yardstick the rest of the world is measured by. I could equally ask you why you didn't kill yourself when clearly Amanda thought it was the answer. People are just different.

Less to argue with you, and more to move along your internal debate.

As for me, I'm not exactly settled in my full opinion, but I can say I respect the decision to commit suicide. This article by Michael Landsberg about his friend, hockey player Wade Belak's suicide was formative for me. In it he says, "People kill themselves when the fear of living another moment outweighs the fear of dying at that moment." People with loving young families and without any "obvious" problems find reason to kill themselves. I have to acknowledge that reality in any personal opinion of suicide.>> ^Yogi:

This is a very sticky subject especially if you don't understand all the nuance. I mean it's about freedom or speech which Americans cherish rightly but it's also about not acting like a complete dick, which it seems most Americans still cherish. Now tormenting or abuse I think is much different than me coming on here and telling @Sagemind to go kill himself because he smells.
I'm not sure if I agree with Anon releasing this persons info either. Maybe it makes you feel good in the revenge center but is that really how we want justice to work?
Personally I also have an issue with someone who committed suicide. I'm still exploring it because I don't think it's right for me to tell someone how they should react to things, especially when given differences in upbringing or simple brain chemistry. I guess I'll just say that I think suicide is quitting, I don't like it and I don't really respect people that do it without good reason, and I don't think words is a good enough reason. This is my experience from my life of horror and feeling like utter shit a lot of the time. I never thought that ending it would be an answer and I don't necessarily understand those that do. Sorry I didn't want to cede the intellectual ground but I felt I had to be honest and maybe that'll start a conversation about how other people feel about people who commit suicide.

>> ^messenger:

So would two pendulums of the same length hung from the same string (like on the Wikipedia page) be considered in phase, even though they have opposite patterns? What about the Wilberforce pendulum? Is it considered to be in phase?>> ^crotchflame:
You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.



The two pendula on a string can be put into motion where they are in phase but they aren't phase locked because they don't have to stay that way. Like the example being shown on the wikipedia entry, they are mode coupling where one oscillates but loses amplitude as the other begins to move - this is the motion it will be in if you start one of them but not the other. If you set them both swinging at the same time from the same height they would be in phase but if you then perturbed them they would go into a more complex modal behavior so you couldn't say they are phase locked.

The Wilberforce is the same - if you just twist the spring, it will be twist back and forth for a while until it loses energy to the pendulum motion; it will eventually stop as the pendulum takes over and then it will start coupling back the other way. You can put the system in phase where the rotations and the swings are aligned in phase but the strong coupling allows them to share energy more rapidly and to take on more complex modal interactions.

So would two pendulums of the same length hung from the same string (like on the Wikipedia page) be considered in phase, even though they have opposite patterns? What about the Wilberforce pendulum? Is it considered to be in phase?>> ^crotchflame:

You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.

>> ^messenger:

I'd imagine very few of them phase lock, no? Most of them result in chaos, I'd think, assuming a double pendulum counts as coupled oscillation.>> ^crotchflame:
>> ^draak13:
Actually, the answer is known as coupled oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation#Coupled_oscillations

Oscillators have to be coupled to phase lock but not every coupled oscillator phase locks.




You're right: a double pendulum is a coupled oscillator and is a good example. It's a coupled oscillator with multiple normal modes that can give it a complex motion even for small oscillations where it isn't chaotic - some would argue that at larger amplitudes it's no longer a simple oscillator so a lot of the terminology in use here doesn't apply. The point is that it doesn't settle into one coupled mode that is stable against perturbations the way phase locked oscillators would.

I'd imagine very few of them phase lock, no? Most of them result in chaos, I'd think, assuming a double pendulum counts as coupled oscillation.>> ^crotchflame:

>> ^draak13:
Actually, the answer is known as coupled oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation#Coupled_oscillations

Oscillators have to be coupled to phase lock but not every coupled oscillator phase locks.

>> ^draak13:

Actually, the answer is known as coupled oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation#Coupled_oscillations


Oscillators have to be coupled to phase lock but not every coupled oscillator phase locks.

>> ^messenger:

Up. The answer is always up. It's a law. In this case, it's the amount of energy randomly dissipated through sound, the unwinding of the springs, and other movement. Unless you're being cheeky, in which case pretend I said something witty and didn't just kill the joke by explaining it.>> ^crotchflame:
Ah phase locking: http://salt.uaa.alaska.edu/dept/metro.html
Here's one to ponder: is the entropy of the system going up or down?



I was being a little cheeky. The entropy is going up but not only because of dissipation in the metronomes themselves: even if they were perfect, the system's entropy would increase as the coupled oscillators synchronized. I like it because it's a system moving towards what seems to be a more ordered state as the entropy increases.

Another free example: the gravitational collapse that turned a disordered molecular cloud into our current, well-structured solar system generated an enormous amount of entropy.

Actually, the answer is known as coupled oscillation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillation#Coupled_oscillations

>> ^Auger8:

What the HELL was that!? LOL


Two out of date brands trying to stay relevant.

>> ^TheGenk:

>> ^therealblankman:
Until the moment the universe stops expanding, or until the moment when monkeys fly out of my butt (whichever comes first of course) this will remain a pack of lies.

I'd say "lies" does not apply here since all the so-called PMMs in here, like the description more or less states are using an external source of energy: earths gravity.
So technically, they are not PMMs.
edit: Wait... I just destroyed my own argument... "lies" applies since they are not PMMs.

Hmmm... you might want to re-think the whole "Gravity being used as an external source of energy" thing. That's not what's happening here as gravity can not be used in such a sense. You can certainly use gravity as a way of converting potential energy into kinetic energy, but such energy is always quickly dissipated as heat. The classic example of this is having a mass at the top of a ramp and releasing that stored energy by allowing the mass to roll down that ramp. Once that mass reaches the bottom of the ramp, with perhaps a few oscillations until the energy is completely expended, then that's it- the "machine" comes to a complete halt and all the energy is spent. These machines in the video seek to return the mass to the top of the ramp over and over again without using outside energy to do so, and without losing any energy within the system itself, which is impossible.

Never have I enjoyed oscillation more.

Negative chronitom particles ejected at high velocity from phased plasma amplifier interact with low entropy bosons crossing the warp manifold event horizon. These bosons, now drained of trigonometric energy, collide with the gravimetric shielding surrounding the fusion relays thereby inducing oscillations in the ship's hull integrity field, thus producing low frequency oscillations in the ship's artificial atmosphere.

edit: Hm, that was supposed to be in response to raverman. Well, that doesn't make any sense now.

>> ^Zyrxil:

It's the Quantum Calmness Generator installed on all Starfleet ships to promote harmony and wellbeing between Borg attacks.

I have never so rapidly oscillated between laughter and being grossed out.

>> ^MaxWilder:

Aren't they supposed to flex a little bit like that? It's when they get to oscillating that they get out of control and fall apart.


Yeah, they are. You definitely don't want resonance.

Aren't they supposed to flex a little bit like that? It's when they get to oscillating that they get out of control and fall apart.