>> ^Lendl:

This is why I'm NOT seeing the movie. I love sci-fi and I'm ok with a bit of non-realism but I could tell from the trailer it was going to pass my "stupid" threshold by a lot...


It's not worth seeing in theater, but check it out eventually. The effects and design are top notch. There are some shots that are breathtakingly beautiful and awe inspiring for a fan of sci-fi.

This is why I'm NOT seeing the movie. I love sci-fi and I'm ok with a bit of non-realism but I could tell from the trailer it was going to pass my "stupid" threshold by a lot...

The actinides are, generally, "safe" to handle, like those Uranium Oxide pellets. You are more likely to damage the pellet with your nasty human oils than the uranium will you...unless you eat the whole thing, but its chemical toxicity will do you more harm that its radioactive toxicity. Uranium oxide just isn't that radioactive, that is why none of the containers or work areas were shielded in this lab.



Now, if they were dealing with a "hot" substance, one that has hard gammas (like when you do MOX fuel recycling), you have to take even greater precautions because then the radioactive problems really do start to show their heads. Not only will it damage your cells faster than they can repair, but it can start to take out unshielded electronics. This is generally only true for fission products, and a few actinides like protactinium which is highly radioactive AND chemically toxic, and generally only man-made (normal occurrences are less than a few parts per trillion in the crust).



These complications are pretty good generalization to why normal LWRs are not the best way to do nuclear, they just generate far to much waste compared to alternatives. You burn less than 1% of the mined uranium in current reactor tech and fuel cycle choices. With a thorium cycle in a molten salt reactor, you can burn greater than 90%, pushing up to 99% or higher if you try real hard. This means you generate an order(s) of magnitude less waste, and that waste generally is safe after about 300 years (radiation is about the same as naturally occurring radiation). There are also other alternates that use uranium in a faster spectrum that perform better than current tech.



A second age of the atom is fast approaching. Unfortunately, those great pioneers which made this industry in the shadow of "the bomb" failed to realize the full potential of e=mc^2. If nuclear power was developed along side the Apollo instead of the Manhattan project, we might already be in that future, alas...it was not to be.



Radiation is fascinating though! I used to believe what I read in the fear news about any radiation leading to death..turns out that isn't so true after all. The planet is a far more radioactive place then you normally consider, and FAR more radioactive when our primordial ancestors evolved. In fact, there are many people living today in what are dubbed High Background Radiation Areas that seem to suffer no ill effect, and some suggest, have lower rates of cancer than other groups. More studies need to be done, but initial findings fly in the face of the notion of radiation I grew up with (that it all is bad and it all kills you!) Some have even suggested that the creator of the entire model used for evaluating radiation risk knowingly lied about it. The entire basis for today's evaluation of radiological risk is evaluated by Muller's findings as supported by the National Academy of Sciences’ of the time. And in fact, might just be based in fear instead of evidence.



Perhaps ancient man went through the same struggles as he tried to adopt fire, some impassioned move against the dangers of fire prevented some groups from using fire and advancing their way of life. Fire, though, allowed the groups that adopted it to improve their life dramatically. The energy released from a fission event is over a million times more energy rich than any energy tech we currently use, imagine what that could mean for mankind. Fusion is over 4 times that of fission (but much harder), and antimatter over 2000x that of fission (and MUCH MUCH harder). Yes, the age of the atom has only just begun, and who knows were man will be a result? Don't settle for solar dandruff, the power of the atom will reign supreme.

Oooh, cool. Let me just read through and answer what I can.

1) We had a cataclysmic overload on our server when the game launched, so it went down over the weekend of launch. If you still have issues, try closing the app completely and restarting. The daily challenge is like in bubble bobble - you gather the letters in the game, and when you have the full word you win a mystery box.

2) Yes, if the daily challenge is bugging out, you're gonna have a bad time with that mission. The easy fix is that you can pay for a mission skip in the shop, or wait for an update. -_- It should reset and work again after a full restart though.

3) The mystery box is bugged in that you can make it confused if you click with more than one finger. This makes it lose its reference to the labels etc. Essentially, yes, it's a bug and what's far worse, it's MY bug. *cry* It will be fixed in an upcoming patch. I've already done it, it's just waiting for some other features. A hard restart will absolutely fix this.

4) Headstarts: When a game starts, an icon should swoop in from the left with the headstart icons. Clicking them will trigger a big jetpack boost that sends you quite a bit forward in the level. It's great for getting big scores. If that button doesn't show up, it seems something is amiss. Again, do the full restart and try again.

5) Skip missions: There are some missions which can take a lot of time, so we made these so people have a chance to skip the ones they didn't like (or couldn't do for some reason). When you have completed a mission, the skip is removed from the store - if the mission is still completable, it remains in the store. When you complete 3 missions, you get 3 new ones and the skips come back. The plural thing annoys the fuck out of me too, but this time it isn't my mistake. That is fixed in the upcoming patch.

6) Super sneakers are hard to use. The trick is to realize that you can swipe downward while flying/jumping, which gives you quite a lot of control. The really good players in the office love them, I'm like meh. I also avoid them when I can, because I suck at controlling them, heh.

7) 2x multi: There should be a timer in the bottom on all the powerups you pick up, if there's not, then something is bugging out hard. Same advice as before. Hard restart.

You get the tokens in the mystery boxes. When you pass the thresholds, 3, 50 200 and 500, you unlock the characters. You can change characters is Shop -> Characters (switch them on the arrows, and click select). I think the bigger thresholds are very high too, but that's what the other game designers felt was right. When you get more than the threshold, they are redundant at this point. I honestly can't say if they will be used for something, but it's something we have discussed earlier.


Phew, that was a big bit. I hope you're enjoying the game, we'll have some more stuff coming out for it soon enough - if nothing else, it will fix a bunch of bugs.


>> ^Sagemind:

I have a few issues with the game.
first of all - no instructions on how to play.
- how do you get/switch characters
Daily Challenges (JIVE) (no idea what JIVE means)
says "next challenge in 0:00:00" and NEVER Changes - so no new challenges - ever.

Missions
Of the three missions, the first mission is "complete 1 Daily Challenge" (which is not checked).
The other two challenges ("Dodge 20 barriers" & "6000 points in one run") are both completed and checked. This screen never updates or changes - no new missions ever (BUG)
Shopping
Hoverboard - works fine (double tap - got it)
Mystery Box - when I find a mystery box burring game play and tap to see what it is there is text there that never goes away (it reads:"1x Yutani's UFO - tap to open") - left over from a previous reveal) The new text for every reveal since layers over top of that original text making all text unreadable. I have no idea why that old text never goes away. (BUG)
Headstart (250/1000)
Not sure how these work, there is no explanation for them. I've won several through mystery boxes but they never show that I have any and I don't know how to engage them if I had them.
Skip Missions - OK fine, but I'd rather play through, it's like paying to cheat
I only have one skip mission left (Skip mission 1) which will let me skip my daily challenge #1. The challenge is to "Complete 1 daily Challenges" other than being pluraly incorrect, I've already completed the other two challenges and this has not gone away and never will since there is nothing left to trigger this challenge.
Upgrades
Jetpack - works great (fun challenge)
Super Sneakers - haven't mastered these yet. Are they there just to kill me? my guy is so unwieldy, I can't control. I can't stay on the coins because he jumps over them instead of on them and I usually die everytime I get the shoes. I avoid the shoes every chance I get.
Coin Magnet - works great (I only wish it worked this easy in real life )
2x Multiplier
When playing the game, I can't tell if this is working, I may be missing it, but I don't see anything that tells me when this is engaged or has run out.
Characters
How do you switch the characters?
Do you first need to complete/find the items? (for the girl I have 2/3) do I gain access to her once I get 3/3? I've played quite a bt. 3/3 seems doable but the kid with the radio (3/50) the rocker guy (3/200) and alien costumed girl (1/500) would seem IMPOSSIBLE to attain. If it has taken me 5-6 hours to get 1/500, I know I will never get 500/500 before I loose interest in this game.
Also, in the mystery boxes I've had about 4-5 guitars (and likewise for items from different characters - eg. hats). Are these supposed to be counting or are they redundant and I'm supposed to be getting different items for these characters?

OK, that's all I have at the moment. I'll let you know If I see anything else.
So the two bugs I see right away:
-The issue with the challenges never advancing
-The Text issue with the writing when revealing the Mystery Box
If you know of any fixes for my issues, let me know - Thanks

>> ^radx:

"Why don't more people know about this?"
Well, why didn't more people know about the existence of the Mafia previous to Joe Valachi's testimony before Senate? The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking? Police brutality? Climate change? Peak oil? Torture camps? Civilian casualties of drone strikes?
It was/is not part of the major consensus narrative.
Similarly, churches are entities of morality, protectors of the weak. At least that's what the narrative still says. So when people hear about these atrocious acts of child abuse, they don't buy it. It doesn't fit their world view, and overcoming the inevitable cognitive dissonance would require them to a) re-examine their own beliefs/perceptions and b) act upon it. That's not an easy thing to do.
Once they cross that threshold, "I don't buy it" turns into "I've known all along". Happens all the time.

Paedophilia in the Catholic church is part of the "consensus narrative"; so much so that it's the first thing I think of when I think of the Catholic Church.

"Why don't more people know about this?"

Well, why didn't more people know about the existence of the Mafia previous to Joe Valachi's testimony before Senate? The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking? Police brutality? Climate change? Peak oil? Torture camps? Civilian casualties of drone strikes?

It was/is not part of the major consensus narrative.

Similarly, churches are entities of morality, protectors of the weak. At least that's what the narrative still says. So when people hear about these atrocious acts of child abuse, they don't buy it. It doesn't fit their world view, and overcoming the inevitable cognitive dissonance would require them to a) re-examine their own beliefs/perceptions and b) act upon it. That's not an easy thing to do.

Once they cross that threshold, "I don't buy it" turns into "I've known all along". Happens all the time.

I agree Enzo. We've passed a threshold of intelligence, one which means we could now find ways to communicate with the 1% higher species.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^ghark:
It's not made that clear in the video, but the reason he says that the plate is safe to store and handle, but not eat off is because Uranium 238 is usually an alpha emitter. Alpha radiation doesn't penetrate skin that well, but it is very dangerous when ingested and the soft tissues become exposed to it. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.

Depends on if you believe in radiation hormesis or linear no-threshold model . Most likely the truth is somewhere in-between (which by default makes hormesis "more" accurate). In the end, though, it is always best to avoid ingesting heavy metals, radioactive or not.
Learning lots about radiation as of late. There is a lot of fear factor behind it, even though our daily lives are pretty much consumed with radiation...NEATO! Bones full of radioactive carbon, potassium, you name it, you most likely have lots of radioactive isotopes of it Once again, truth stranger than fiction


I find the argument between those two models quite fascinating, they both make sense TBH. One interesting thing I found out recently was the enormous difference in radiation exposure between regular x-ray's and CT scans when visiting the doctor. It makes sense that CT scans expose you to more radiation because they make multiple passes to get a better image - however the difference astonished me - a regular chest xray would expose you to 0.06 mSv while a helical CT scan of the chest would expose you to 8 mSV - thirten hundred and thirty three times as much radiation (although the effective dose only ends up being about one hundred times as much). As a comparison point, the typical human is exposed to 2-3 mSv per year, so with a helical chest CT you're getting 3 years worth of radiation in a few seconds.

>> ^ghark:

It's not made that clear in the video, but the reason he says that the plate is safe to store and handle, but not eat off is because Uranium 238 is usually an alpha emitter. Alpha radiation doesn't penetrate skin that well, but it is very dangerous when ingested and the soft tissues become exposed to it. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.


Depends on if you believe in radiation hormesis or linear no-threshold model . Most likely the truth is somewhere in-between (which by default makes hormesis "more" accurate). In the end, though, it is always best to avoid ingesting heavy metals, radioactive or not.

Learning lots about radiation as of late. There is a lot of fear factor behind it, even though our daily lives are pretty much consumed with radiation...NEATO! Bones full of radioactive carbon, potassium, you name it, you most likely have lots of radioactive isotopes of it Once again, truth stranger than fiction

As an aside, most of the food you consume is radioactive in some way, cool huh?! Hell, most of everything you interactive with has some level of radioactive decay. There is rising evidence of the benefits of small doses of radiation. The current Linear no-threshold model in many interesting cases has failed to show direct epidemiological evidence of increased cancer rates where background radiation levels are higher than other levels. It is all very interesting stuff, a far cry from the fear factor news media make radiation out to me. Turns out, the whole world is radioactive, and it might be the energy which fuels plate tectonics . Just an interesting aside from the whole radioactive carbon element of this

Truth stranger than fiction.

i always found these vids strange cuz i wasnt anything remotely resembling inebriated when i got mine cut out, just a little sleepy was all. maybe i've got a high threshold for meds, i dunno

Okay... I haven't finished the video, but I'll give you a play by play anyway. It's not my field (I study sensory systems) so if there are any clinicians in the audience, please forgive my ignorance.

First plot: The effect she's talking about is an extrapolation from a linear model with presumably assumed uniform variance along the independent axis. If you look at the actual underlying data, presumably notated with open and filled bubbles (no mention of what size means, but probably number of samples) you see that there is a lot of "effect" extrapolated from the model despite very little obvious trend in that part of the data. In fact, there are only two or three open bubbles at all on that part of the chart presumably because it was viewed as unethical to treat severely depressed patients with placebos. Further, there is a huge (relatively speaking) variability in the efficacy among severely depressed patients treated with the drugs. This is a symptom of one of the root problems which is that clinical modeling is typically very weak. The models are often simplified not because it is appropriate or useful, but rather because it is the way that particular researcher knows how to model data.

The a priori linkage between score on some survey and a response to some chemical is, IMO, tenuous at best. Given an argument from correlation that seems to lean heavily on a magic data point or two does little to change it. To give you a sense of how tenuous this data is, consider instead fitting the lines through only the data where the effect is considered "large." As an experiment, pull up the chart, and do a "chi by eye" fit of a line through the white dots, and a line through the dark dots, but only those dots to the right of the "severe depression" threshold line. Notice that the white line would then have a much steeper slope (stronger correlation) and the dark line would have almost no correlation (that data looks pretty isotropic to me).

Alright... that's enough for one comment. Next plot please...

@hastix you've got a point, but I think the problem is that if you look at their recent track record, there's a clear double standard.

Obama says something completely, unambiguously true, and they call it half-true because they think he was implying something that, in their opinion, isn't true.

A Republican says something that's not factually true, no matter how you slice the numbers, and they rate it "mostly true" because if you substitute the incorrect word he used with the factually accurate word he should have used, it wouldn't (in their opinion) undermine the opinion he was expressing.

Essentially they've gotten into this weird sort of state where they've stopped rating things based on factual accuracy, and have instead started trying to play referee on whether the arguments of the right or the left are correct in their opinion. Problem is, they're still issuing true/false ratings on specific quoted statements, rather than saying "we agree with the right/left on this one."

Here's the original PolitiFact article on this. The first two paragraphs read:

Liberals may want to argue with Sen. Marco Rubio’s remarks at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

But they don’t have the evidence to argue with this statement: "The majority of Americans are conservatives."

First, he said a majority of Americans are conservatives. In Gallup’s poll, the number has never crossed the 50 percent threshold. Technically, he would be more accurate if he said a plurality of Americans are conservative.

Second, we should note that while more Americans identify as conservative, that has not redounded to the good fortune of the Republican Party.

More Americans than ever identify as political independents, at 40 percent. Republicans don’t even come in at second -- that would be the Democratic Party, claiming the allegiance of 31 percent of Americans. Republicans get third place, with 27 percent claiming the GOP label.

@Drachen_Jager, that's quite a straw man you've bludgeoned there, not me. Extremism is relative. Free speech in the Middle Ages could be dismissed as extremist too.

I'm sorry for talking about freedom of speech yet again, but bear with me.

The reason I often make the analogy between freedom of speech and freedom of economy is that neither of them are supposed to be extreme, they both require minimal government participation, but the more the government gets in on them past this minimum threshold, the freedom itself is threatened.

None of us in the US would ever put up with government censorship like they have in China, because we know it hinders freedom of speech in general and establishes a bad precedent. If we have people using free speech to say terribly stupid things and deceiving millions with bad ideologies, it would suck, we could do something about it, raise awareness, expose and argue incessantly against those lies, etc. but we'd never blame freedom of speech itself for it, because, even though it's the freedom that allows such lies, we know that freedom of speech can take care of it. Censoring opinions would be the worst thing to do. We all believe that an environment where people have free speech is healthy, no matter what people say, because we are optimistic about freedom of speech in that, hopefully and eventually, society's opinions will evolve and lead most people closer to the truth, whatever that truth may be. That is why people debate all the time, they are seeking the truth, and it's in a free speech environment where people have the most access to information.

Truth isn't something one can just magically make everyone have access to by stating, "Every citizen has a right to the truth", and have government control the media, TV, newspapers, and the internet, to provide truth to society. I mean, it could work for a while, or on the surface, but I wouldn't trust government with providing the truth, they'd either be too incompetent or dishonest for the job. Besides, we know that no one has authority over truth, it would be too presumptuous for anyone to say they do!

Now what happens if we apply the same thinking to another kind of freedom?

If we had a free market, not everyone would be well behaved, not at all, and whenever someone would cross the line and commit fraud, break contracts or disrespect private property, we'd need government to step in. Other than that, well, it would suck, but we'd just have to let the free market take the hit, let people learn the lesson and evolve. As harsh as that seems, people would use their economic freedom to handle the problem, they would *have* to watch their own backs if they know they can't cry to government to "censor" every bad economic behavior. It wouldn't make any sense for them to blame this bad behavior on the free market itself, even though that's what liberals do in a heartbeat, and they want laws banning everything they perceive as abuses they portray as unsolvable by the economy, not understanding that these laws end up screwing over a healthy environment, making people complacent and irresponsible. These restrictions have hard to predict and usually counterproductive consequences that distort the market and lead it to misbehave even more. I am optimistic about freedom of economy in that, whatever people do, hopefully and eventually, society's business practices will evolve and lead most people to prosperity. That's why people trade all the time, they are seeking prosperity, and it's in a free market environment where people, poor or rich, have the most access to resources.

Education, healthcare, affordable houses, things an economy provides, isn't something one can just magically make everyone have access to by stating, "Every citizen has a right to free education, free healthcare and affordable houses", and have government control the economy to provide these things for society. I mean, it could work for a while, or on the surface, but I wouldn't trust government with that, they'd either be too incompetent or dishonest for the job. Besides, politicians and bureaucrats might consider themselves authorities over how to employ society's resources, but it's the same kind of presumptuouness of thinking one owns the truth: that they have better judgement than a whole lot of people coordinating their own resources in a complex economy.

People can always argue some contrived examples where socialism apparently worked, but to me it's like someone arguing in favor of censorship. Does it have any use in society? Well, it can be helpful to maintain a dictator in power. You can weed out bad ideologies or criticisms. Propaganda to help exterminate the jews. That sort of thing. I personally think it's something a supposedly evolved society like ours can do without.

>> ^possom:

http://www.politifact.com/truth
-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/316/increase-the-minimum-wage-to-950-an-hour/


Politifact is almost trustworthy if you ignore their topline ratings, and just read the associated analysis.

From that link:

There are at least two House bills that would increase the minimum wage in some respect. The WAGE Act would set a base minimum wage for tipped employees such as waiters and bartenders. If enacted this bill would raise the minimum cash wage of such employees (excluding tips) over time from $2.13 to $5.50 an hour. Meanwhile, the Living American Wage Act of 2011 would tie the minimum wage level to the poverty threshold for a family of two individuals. Both bills were introduced early in the year and seem to be stalled in committee. The chances of either passing in committee, much less in a full vote in the House, are remote given the Republican majority.