Well, first you must determine the average lifespan of a species...impossible until we survey the entire universe.
Then you must determine the average distance between populated planets.
Then you must determine the 'lifespan' of all possible transmission technologies (on average). (how long 'they' emit that kind of transmission)
Then you must determine the maximum range and speed of any transmissions, and what form those transmissions are in, which is what most of this video is about. Now we're looking in 2 small ranges of possible wave form communications for the first time. Subtract any with a maximum range lower than the distance from transmission to us (another unknowable).
Then you must determine how many ranges of not just wave form energy are we ignoring, but how many other forms of communication/emission/energy might there be that we aren't looking for or even conceiving their existence (another impossible question to answer)?
Only once ALL those (impossible) questions are answered (and I'm certain more that are unknown but important variables) can you do even preliminary calculations to determine how statistically likely it should really be to 'find' evidence of extra-planetary species/civilizations, and that number is almost definitely tiny by any standard.

To think they might be 'here' already, you must either assume they are a space fairing species (which would also indicate a species that 'raids' planets and moves on, not one that settles and/or trades, so lets hope not) or you must assume they have much faster than light travel, which if true, should mean one would expect to see aliens 'teleporting' everywhere, and likely some crazy looking evidence of the transportation method. If neither of these are true (space fairing or faster than light travel) you would not expect to ever hear or see them.
Since technology evolves, so do the types of transmissions that technology produces. To think that in the time frame a single type of transmission is used somewhere in the universe (+ travel time) we'll be searching for exactly that type of transmission form would be such an INSANELY unlikely coincidence that many would see it as proof of god (because it couldn't statistically happen naturally, like a babble fish).
What this means is, unless we become space fairing raiders ourselves, or find faster than light travel ourselves, we'll likely be alone forever, even if there is other intelligent life out there.
There's just too much to search in too many ways over too long a time span, like looking for a single protozoa in the entire ocean, when you don't know what it looks like or even what a protozoa is, and the protozoa only exists for one random week in your life time.
That's where I think they are....unfindable.

"The high-income tax increase sapped 0.25 percentage points from GDP in 2013, estimates Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania."

"Politicians who support tax increases operate under a misconception that there is little real effect, Maloney said.

“A higher tax rate reduces our ability to recapitalize and reduces our ability to expand,” he said. “You keep your forklifts a little longer, you do whatever you can to stretch the dollars you’re left with.”"

"According to Zandi’s estimates, the payroll tax cut subtracted 0.6 percentage points from U.S. economic growth, more than twice the effect of the high-income tax cuts."

“Clearly, taxes affect behavior; they affect some behaviors more than others. What has not been established is that the level of taxes has a clear and important impact on economic growth. And one reason is that this is not a well-posed question. How government activity affects prosperity depends not only on the level of taxes, but also on what the money is used for.”

"Thus, the proper answer to a question as broad as whether tax increases are “positive” or “negative” for growth is: “It depends.”"

Occasionally you can be owed credit without a coupon if you can find a 2 for 1 thats also been reduced for quick sale. (They sometimes subtract the full price of the second item, so a 50% off on a 2-4-1 item pays for itself). Too rare to feed the homeless, but my Dad once filled a shopping basket for something like 21p with that little oversight...ofc most of the food had a useby for the very next day but still

Answer: A politician in the parlance of our times.
Agree whole-hardheartedly with your synopsis, though perhaps subtracting CPS and adding to this possible equation's outcome saaaaay, a dragging by the hair approach into the public square naked to suitable stocks with a generous, rotten-vegetable-throwing 290-degree vantage??

oh yeah, ANNND the biotch ugly!

Traditionally there are separate channels (left right center etc) and if you want to make a sound come from above and slightly left an audio engineer would put a little in the left, a little in the center and maybe a small amount in reverse phase in the rear speaker. This worked but theaters have different sizes and layouts so it was never perfect.

Atmos takes a totally different approach. it can have 30-200 channels (iirc). Each speaker is on its own monitored channel and it is specifically tuned for that room. The ATMOS processor decides the exact amount of sound to each speaker on the fly from the "3d soundtrack." When making the movie the sound field is represented as a half sphere and the audio engineer places sounds around this.

What it means is that the theater shape/size/number of speakers and other factors add/subtract nothing from the experience. Not only that but each speaker is monitored for health so it can compensate and alert staff.

The important part is that with so many speakers being able to be addressed independently sounds can transition around the room completely smooth. If you had your eyes closed a helicopter circling your head and landing will transition around naturally.

There aren't many theaters that have it yet since they have to tear up the ceiling to add so many speakers (its usually every other ceiling tile front to back in two columns!). In the San Francisco Bay Area there are only three specific theater room that have it - One on the top floor of AMC Van Ness SF, One at the AMC Metreon SF and one at the Century theater in Fremont.

I know the people in this group. Frankly, I'm kind of disappointed. I think the general idea is that there is some neural process, colloquially called attention, that is fundamental and possibly indicative of intelligence in general. Many people haven't thought about it carefully, but really attention has as much to do with suppression of irrelevant information as it does spotlighting relevant information. In the visual domain, it's often thought about as masking, or background subtraction. The finding here is supposed to tap into that relationship. High IQ people found it much easier to see the motion of the smaller target, and actually showed a deficit at detecting the larger (backgroundish) object. Frankly, I think it's squishy as all get out. The correlation was relatively strong, but I felt it relied heavily on a couple of subjects. In the end, my problem is really with the whole enterprise of trying to assess an ill-defined concept like intelligence. It would be interesting if a similar finding held across other perceptual modalities however. Even I would have to bother to listen at that point.

The article doesn't say, only that they met up with three of the five... now to subtract one from the six I claimed in my description!!!

When payroll tax went up on Jan 1st, I had to subtract about $200 from my monthly retirement investments. At my average rate of return over 30 years (when I plan to retire) that's a HUGE chunk of change. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars out of my future pockets.

I thought Obama wasn't going to raise taxes on the middle class???? He's trying to raise taxes even more now!!!! How am I supposed to accumulate wealth when he keeps taking money off the top of my paycheck?

@enoch let me see, charity = helping people (preferably) in need. Disaster relief = helping people in need (due to some disaster). Help me understand why I can't compare the two.

@dgandhi did FEMA do such an amazing job after Katrina that I don't know about? Because there's a very long article on Wikipedia detailing all the criticisms, somebody should remove it.

Government is not wasteful just for being large, it's wasteful for being a monopoly. It's so easy to conceive of the evils of a single corporation becoming a monopoly, but when it comes to government, the issue strangely never comes up.

I understand that's most likely because we can't avoid government being a monopoly, it's the nature of the beast, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it smaller.

You bring up good points about division of labor. What about competition, does that matter in modern society or will that also be overlooked?

If we use this $35B figure, which is allegedly what government needs to do disaster relief work poorly, can't we bring it down by subtracting all the money wasted, or will the private corporations have to operate at the same level of exorbitance?

Does it have to be a single gigantic institution, why can't smaller organizations be triggered in unison by a big disaster?

Also, why does it have to be entirely non-profit, what about the insurance business, doesn't it revolve around risk management and dealing with unlikely events like disasters?

Yes, we pay for a disaster relief infrastructure, but we don't have a choice in the matter, and that knowledge is what makes FEMA a disaster. In our moment of most dire need, we can only count on FEMA and nothing else. They abuse their privilege by being wasteful and inefficient.

Governments are not the only organizations capable of preparing and dealing with disasters, and they're very far from being the best at it.

>> ^brycewi19:

That's an absolute thing of mechanical beauty.
Too bad it seems limited to just the multiplication function.


It can very obviously do addition. Every crank adds the number on the side to the number on the top, so just by changing the side between cranks, you've got an adding machine.

Less obvious is subtraction, not shown here. The hand crank on top pops up for subtraction. There's a red or silver ring on the crank that's exposed to make it obvious which mode you're in. Doing this engages an alternate gear set causing the number on the side to be subtracted from the total rather than added.

Multiplication, as demonstrated, is just adding repeatedly.

Division can be done by clever use of multiplication and subtraction. See http://www.isi.edu/~finn/curta/curta.html.

See the following video for a demonstration (but with no real explanation) of finding a square root:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haaCoVrGd6k

It wasn't clearly explained or animated.

Below are some of the powers of 3. Then I subtracted 17 from that number repeatedly (same as subtracting a multiple of 17) until the result was lower than 17. This result (in bold)is the final answer we're looking for. Notice that in the first 16 results, all the numbers from 1-16 are there with no repetitions. If you continue to higher powers, this exact pattern of results repeats forever (note that the three results from 3^17, 3^18 and 3^19 are the same as 3^1, 3^2 and 3^3). This relationship is the definition of "primitive root". So 3 is a primitive root of 17. After that, I think the video got a bit easier.

3^1=3 3-(0*17)=3
3^2=9 9-(0*17)=9
3^3=27 27-17=10
3^4=81 81-(4*17)=13
3^5=243 243-(14*17)=5
3^6=729 729-(42*17)=15
3^7=2187 2187-(128*17)=11
3^8=6561 6561-(385*17)=16
3^9=19683 19683-(1157*17)=14
3^10=59049 59049-(3473*17)=8
3^11=177147 177147-(10420*17)=7
3^12=531441 531441-(31261*17)=4
3^13=1594323 1594323-(93783*17)=12
3^14=4782969 4782969-(281351*17)=2
3^15=14348907 14348907-(844053*17)=6
3^16=43046721 43046721-(2532160*17)=1

3^17=129140163 129140163-(7596480*17)=3
3^18=387420489 387420489-(22789440*17)=9
3^19=1162261467 1162261467-(68368321*17)=10
.
.
.

>> ^raverman:

Somewhere around the 3:00 mark, my definition of easily explained starts to differ...

I did a little amateur investigation, a bit of reading and some numbers but you can skip to the bottom for a summary.

The plane is a Stinson 108-3, 16500 foot service ceiling, 2400 pound gross weight limit (1300 empty weight), 50 gallon fuel capacity. Thats about 1100 of useful weight (2400-1300), with full fuel that lowers it to 800 (6lbs per gallon*50 gallons=300lbs), I saw 3 men in there the 4th passenger I'm gonna assume male, so lets say 180lbs for each (200 for the pilot) that comes to 740lbs for passenger weight. That leaves 60lbs for cargo. Although I couldn't see the cargo, they were still close to the weight limit but still could have been within normal limits.

The airport Bruce Meadows (U63) has a field elevation of 6370 feet. I couldnt find the airport temperature for that day but I did find nearby Stanley Airport 23 Miles southeast of Bruce Meadows. Their METAR history shows a high of 27 Celsius/81 Fahrenheit for June 30, 2012. Definitely a hot day but was it too hot? The closest I could find on performance data shows a 675 Feet per Minute climb at 75 Fahrenheit at sea level. Thats pretty close to what many small planes of that nature can do, so I took those numbers and transposed them over what a Cessna 172N could do. The 172N has a slighty higher climb performance about 750 for sea level and 75 Fahrenheit, a difference of 75 feet ill subtract out. At 6000 feet at 27C/81F the 172N climbs at 420FPM. Taking out the 75 feet brings it to 345 FPM, now I know this isn't perfect but I'm going with what I have. The plane began its climb out at 1:13 and crashed at 2:55, that leaves 1 minute and 42 seconds in between or 1.7 minutes. 1.7*345 means about 590 feet possible gain. But the plane isn't climbing at its best the entire video, at 2:35 it is apparent something is giving it trouble, that brings it down to about 1.58 minutes climb time which is 545 feet. Theres still another factor to consider and thats how consistent the altitude at the ground was.

The runway at Bruce meadows faces at 05/23 (Northeast/Southwest) but most likely he took runway 23 (Southwest) as immediately to the north east theres a wildlife preserve (Gotta fly at least 2000 feet over it) and he flew straight for quite some time. Although the ground increases in the direction he flew, by how much is difficult using the sectional charts. That means that although he may have been able to climb to about 545 feet higher than his original ground altitude, the ground rose with him and his absolute altitude over the ground would be less than that maximum possible 545. The passenger in the rear reported the plane could only climb to about 60-70 feet above the trees. The trees looked to be around 75-100 but thats still difficult to tell. That would mean according to the passenger they might have only been about 170 feet off the ground. It could still be wildly off as we cant exactly see the altimeter.

Finally theres that disturbance at 2:35 described as a downdraft. It could have been windshear, or a wind effect from the mountains. I don't have too much hands on knowledge of mountain flying so I cant say. If it was windshear he might have suddenly lost a headwind and got a tailwind, screwing up his performance. It could have been a downdraft effect. The actual effect on the aircraft may not have been much (lets say 50 feet) but near obstacles it was definitely enough to have a negative impact.



Summary:

Yes he was flying pretty heavy but he may not have been over the weight limit

The temperature in the area was definitely hotter than standard and the altitude was high, but he still had climbing capabilities within service limits. However he didn't give himself much of a safety threshold.

He might have been able to climb about 545 feet higher than the runway elevation, but the terrain altitude rose in the direction he flew, so his actual altitude over the ground was probably smaller than that.

The disturbance at 2:35 might have been some form of windshear which has the capacity to reduce airplane performance, and with his margins of safety so low already, that could have been the final factor.

Basically he may very well have been flying within the service limits of the aircraft, but the margins of safety he left himself were very low and the decision to fly over obstacles like those trees in that mountain enviroment could be the reason this would be declared pilot error.

Other notes:

The takeoff looks pretty rough but he trying to get off the ground as quickly as he can and ride ground effect until he gets up to speed.

I cant find anything resembling a proper PoH for this aircraft but I did find some data that looks pretty close to it. However this aircraft was a model from the late 40s, so the standards of performance may not be the same as now, and the transcribing I did to the 172N could be thrown off more.

On that note, I do realize that a 172 would have different aerobatic effects with altutude and temperature than a Stinson 108, but its the closest data I could use.

I also couldnt not find balance information to get a rough idea of how the plane was balanced. The type of balance on a plane does have effects on performance.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N773C.html (The aircraft)

http://www.aopa.org/airports/U63 (The airport)

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120701X65804&key=1 (The NTSB link posted earlier)

http://personalpages.tdstelme.net/~westin/avtext/stn-108.txt (Closest thing I could find to performance data, the actual numbers are at the bottom)

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/gen_statlog-u.cgi?ident=KSNT&pl=none2&yy=12&mm=06&dd=30 (Weather data at nearby Stanley)

http://skyvector.com (sectional chart data, type U63 into the search at the upper left, then make sure that "Salt Lake City" is selected in the upper right for the sectional chart)

>> ^jimnms:

...Jeep removed weight not added. They worded it strange, but read it again, it says "Jeep-Chrysler loaded the car with 470 kilos (1 036 lbs), 132 kilos (291 lbs) under the official maximum payload." The previous tests were performed at the maximum official payload the car can carry.
It looks like Jeep could fix it with a suspension upgrade. The Jeep compared to the other two vehicles rolls farther into the turn and bounces where the other two roll into the turn without the bounce.


I was quite confident that you were wrong ...and then I actually read the documentation from the link in the description. It does seem that the initial tests were performed with the vehicle at maximum payload and then they (Jeep engineers or the testing company? both?) removed weight (100kg) for followup tests. So, thanks for setting me straight! In particular, it makes me more impressed with the other vehicles that apparently can handle the increased stress on the tires even at full payload.

That being said, some of this just doesn't seem to add up to me. It seems that after they subtracted weight, they blew the tire in a great majority of the tests (7 in 10?). That kind of failure rate, at or even below the "maximum payload" suggests that the official load ratings are screwed up. The information from the testing team says that there was some discrepancy between Jeep's listed curb weight and the actual curb weight of their test vehicle, and other weird stuff. Suffice it to say that I'm much more confused about their test procedure, the actual sequence of events, and why they were hoping to improve the results from the first (?) test by removing weight.

Interesting comments thread here all around.

I think their issue is probably based a lot of illegal immigrant workers, places using them can hold deportation over their heads, pay them a lot less, work them a lot more, and avoid minimum wage US workers.

Minimum wage is a useless tool if they can bypass it by hiring people who willfully don't seek it for one reason or another. Deportation even if they are a legal immigrant due to lack of job keeping them here on their work visa.


Then the other is the "taxes are so high" excuse, where your paycheck isn't broken down properly and they are taking things out that they shouldn't be and just blaming it on taxes. Or overtime goes unpaid because "We don't pay overtime, yet we'll work you 80 hours a week and never inform you of this." Or you work through breaks and lunch, but they subtract lunch/etc from your pay because they need to do so to appear to be meeting labor standards if anyone ever looks into them. So they can use the "He worked through lunch? We didn't pay him for it...why would someone do that? He must have taken lunch."

And people who can't speak or read english or have poor comprehension. They spend more effort on ripping these people off because whose going to listen to them? They can't communicate well enough with their employer to argue one way or the other. Non-English speaking is a huge bias in the US work force, and I can somewhat see it. But there's still labor practices, if you don't want to hire someone who can't speak English...don't. But it's easier to break labor practices and rip them off if you do, which is why they hire them.


And they get away with it because they are 1) Huge corporations or 2) So shady without seeing it first hand someone wouldn't know something is up because their reports are so full of lies. Both categories will also fuck with your unemployment benefits despite it not costing them anything to let you have them. Why? Because it makes other people in the company unwilling to risk quitting with cause and trying to draw unemployment while they pursue legal matters against them. If they can keep you poor and on the edge, you don't have the ability to do anything about...you'll be out on the street before anything happens. And it's pretty hard to do anything court related if you don't have a mailing address, plus all of the other things that will happen to you, your kids, etc if you choose to try to fight and lose your job over it.....like inability to find work ever again because you complained and they let people know you did. And good luck proving they are hindering your ability to find work or that you are on some sort of unofficial black list.


I don't doubt for a minute that what they say is 100% true. It's already taking place out in the open with CEOs and what not raking in money and driving down wages of everyone else or laying off major swathes of their work force while they post record profits. And no one in government is batting an eye at that display of greed and the questionable nature of the finance industry still dictating the terms of the economy even after they got bailed out massively and changed nothing.


Corporate corruption is going to be a bitch to handle when the government relies on it for it's donations/bribes.