*backup=[...snipped...]

Yeah, different vid. This one is "Keep your camera on":

Half in the Bag was not so sympathetic...

Put a cellphone next to a speaker and you'll get that sound occasionally as the cellphone communicates with the tower. So yeah, electromagnetic interference. More info:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/17586/why-cell-phones-make-speakers-go-blip-blip-blip-buzz

@jimnms

I'll address by paragraphs:

(1)

The reason I suggested that you are implying that the US is more violent by nature is because statistically it is far more murderous than a country of its socio-economic development should be. Have a look at Nationmaster tables of GDP/capita and compare than to murders/capita in terms of where the US sits.

If we take the view that you are suggesting that we should simply reduce violence globally then that is a laudable goal but it would suggest that the US is abysmally failing at this currently. I happen to believe this reason is gun availability. I see no reason to believe this abysmal failure comes from gross police incompetence or any other plausible factor, rather the gun ownership and availability that sticks out like a sore thumb when you compared to other countries such as those in the G8.

(2)

I think that we would be both agree that there are more gun enthusiasts in rural areas. Many of those would also own collections of guns for recreation rather than merely what self protection would require. The article below cites a study from 2007 by Harvard that says 20% own 65% of the nation's guns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/19/tragedy-stresses-multiple-gun-ownership-trend-in-us/1781285/

There is no reason to suspect that these people are any more violent than your non gun-owning folk. The issue is not so much ownership levels, but the availability that feeds a would-be criminal's capacity to carry out a crime.

While actual ownership levels might be lower, guns can no doubt be purchased for cheaper and within a closer proximity in densely populated cities. This availability feeds the likelihood of them being employed as a tool to facilitate a crime.

This is also incidentally a key misunderstanding of the whole gun debate. No one is (or should be at least) implying that recreational gun owners are the problem. It is the necessity for guns to be freely available to gun enthusiasts among others for them to enjoy this hobby that causes the problems.

(3)

Building on my above point above, gun control shouldn't be seen as a punishment. There is no vidictiveness to it, merely a matter of weighing up the results of two courses of action. On the one hand there is diminished enjoyment of legal and responsible gun owners. On the other hand there is the high murder rate I discussed earlier, which really can't be explained away any other way than gun availability.

Let's do a back of the envelope calculation. Australia and the US are culturally relatively similar Anglo-Saxon societies. Let's assume for the sake of argument that my suggestion is true. Referencing wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The homicide rate in Australia is 1.0/10K/year and 4.8/10K/year. Let's say that gun availability explains 2/3rds of the difference. So we're talking about a 2.5/10K/year increase. Taking this against the US's 310M population this represents 7,500 more deaths.

Now to me, the issue is clear cut. The lives lost outweight gun enthusiast enjoyment.

And it's not just to me. There is a very clear reason that the vast majority of developed countries have made gun ownership incredibly difficult. I can guarantee, at some point they have done this back of the envelope calculation for their own country.

(4)

You raise the comparison to cars. See my workings above. With cars, they obviously provide a fundamentally invaluable benefit to society. The choice every society has made is to instead heavily regulate them. The reason there is no outcry to impose heavy restrictions on them is because there already are.

- Being required to pass license tests.
- Strict driving rules to follow.
- Speeding cameras everywhere.
- Random police checks for alcohol.

Can you think of any further regulations plausibly worth trying with cars that could reduce the accident death rate? I struggle to think of anything else effective that hasn't already been implemented.

With guns there are dozens of options not yet tried.

- Rigorous background checks.
- No gun show exemption.
- Assault weapon restrictions.
- Restrictions of ammo such as cost tariffs.

The list goes on. Imagine if we lacked the regulations we do on cars and there was a NCA (National Car Association) that was equating requiring to pass a driving test to tyranny.

(5)

I don't think there's much irrationality here. The US is clearly more murderous than other G8/OECD countries. To me, Occam's Razor explains why.

As for the comment on focussing on tragedies than the large issue, see my previous comment. You're missing the point that it's not just the gun sprees that are the problem, it's the steadily high murder rate. Mass shooting are just blips in this.

(6)

I will have a read through this.

I vote BLIP.tv™ for most fucked embed interface yet on the internet!!

My favorite of the list is Greatbatch, and his story really gets to the value of inspiration and curiousity as an inventor. He was just making a device to record heart beats, and put in an incorrect resistor for his circuit, resulting in a oscillating blip in his recordings. Instead of going 'fuck! I made the goddamn thing wrong! So I threw it on the grooooound!' No he said, 'Woah, thats neat, I have sort-of a built-in time guage that is very regular in my recordings, and can see how irregular the heart beat is ... wait a minute...', and then proceeded to work on the completely crazy idea of an implantable, miniature device to electrically stimulating the heart to keep it beating evenly as people just walked around.

I'd argue that its basically impossible to accidentally invent something. You have to be bright enough to recognize something interesting, and curious enough to follow it off in the direction it leads.

So to be on the safe side they should cry wolf every time they get any sort of blip?
Does this mean if someone gets hit by lightning when it was only supposed to be a light rain, the Meteorologists better get a lawyer?

The only question I have would be, "Were they incompetent?" Because, if not, then you can't blame them - they can only read the data and make educated guesses based on the data. I don't think anyone has ever successfully predicted the size of an earthquake before it has happened.

This sounds more like a witch-hunt and scapegoat scenario.

Genji,

I appreciate your words, Ezra, thank you. Let's say that you're right, that my life is meaningless, and that I am the one who determines what is true. Do you know what I would determine to do? What I would determine to do is to do the same things I am doing right now. Even if I knew Jesus Christ was not God, I would still determine to follow His blueprint for the ideal person, because following that blueprint has radically transformed my life for the better. There are many who aren't Christians who feel the same way, that Jesus got it right. If I wasn't a Christian, I would follow the ideal He set forth, summed up in the great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. To turn swords into plowshares. To pray for your enemies and hold banquets for the homeless. To walk two miles when someone asked you to walk one. To give the shirt off your back to someone else who needs it. To love everyone unconditionally, and see every person as fundamentally worthy of my respect. That is what my life about it, and I wouldn't consider that to be a wasted life, even if I was wrong.

I've also lived the alternative. Contrary to what you say, I was never really afraid of death. I can't say I liked the idea of death, but I accepted it; and so I was resigned to triviality, and meaninglessness. I was also content to go to the grave with those beliefs. Like everyone else, I got by on my dreams, my relationships, and whatever gratification I could get out of the moment; I indulged in the pleasures of sin freely, and felt little shame.

So I didn't come to be a Christian out of fear, or a need to be comforted. I came to be a Christian because God touched my life and shook me from my agnosticism. He showed me I wasn't quite as smart as I thought I was. He showed me that the material reality is but a thin veil covering a much greater truth. He showed me that the truth was always staring me right in the eyes, but I was too blind to see it. What He showed me was that He had always been there, my entire life, and that many of the things I wrote off as coincidence really were not.

You see, it is perfectly reasonable and rational for me to believe there is a God. He has simply given me too much evidence to deny it. It's not a convenient belief that fills in all the scary things about life; rather, it is my reason for being, my logos. It is also my eternal gratitude to the Creator for rescuing me and loving me even though I don't deserve it. To know God is to know truth, to know who you are, and why you're here. To know God is to have hope for your future, and an ever present peace and contentment. You believe I am fooling myself, but I say that even if you're right, it is a life worth living, a life well enjoyed, a life that hopefully will touch many others in positive ways. If that is the only meaning I die with, its worth it to me.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Shiny.
Accept it. You're an ape.
You're a conglomeration of amoeba.
Your life is a just a blip in the twinkling of the universe.
There is probably no god or gods.
There's probably no purpose or reason for your existence.
You are the being that gives purpose or meaning to your life.
When you realize that.
When you realize that there's not supernatural sky daddy to hold you when you're scared or confused..
You'll understand that you've been talking all this nonsensical religious babble in order to establish that purpose.
That the only reason you and jihadist are so adamant about your own personal interpretation of the essence of the abyss..
Is to distract yourself from the fact that your life is just another series of events in this long chain of entropy, chaos, disorder.
The only reason you're so religious is because you're an ape that's too scared to accept your death and the triviality of your existence.
One day, I hope you'll realize this.
On that day, you'll be "born again" just like you were when you accepted "Jesus Christ" and Christian doctrinal teachings.
On that day, you may become self-actualized..
And from then on, understand that we homo sapiens are very lucky.
For we, among few other animals, are able to choose their life's meaning and purpose.
Please don't waste yours.. being a religious troll on the interwebs.
Your brother,
Ezra.

Shiny.

Accept it. You're an ape.

You're a conglomeration of amoeba.

Your life is a just a blip in the twinkling of the universe.

There is probably no god or gods.

There's probably no purpose or reason for your existence.

You are the being that gives purpose or meaning to your life.

When you realize that.

When you realize that there's no supernatural sky daddy to hold you when you're scared or confused..

You'll understand that you've been talking all this nonsensical religious babble in order to establish that purpose.

That the only reason you and jihadist are so adamant about your own personal interpretation of the essence of the abyss..

Is to distract yourself from the fact that your life is just another series of events in this long chain of entropy, chaos, disorder.

The only reason you're so religious is because you're an ape that's too scared to accept your death and the triviality of your existence.

One day, I hope you'll realize this.

On that day, you'll be "born again" just like you were when you accepted "Jesus Christ" and Christian doctrinal teachings.

On that day, you may become self-actualized..

And from then on, understand that we homo sapiens are very lucky.

For we, among few other animals, are able to choose their life's meaning and purpose.

Please don't waste yours.. being a religious troll on the interwebs.

Your brother,
Ezra.

>> ^VoodooV:

so did they or didn't they?
every article I've read announces they've found it! but in the article itself they backpedal and say that they're pretty sure they found it.
I loves me my science but they are notorious for hyping up stuff like this only for the hype to not measure up.


They found a blip which is a particle that resembles the Higgs, they have yet to determine if it is a boson. Bosons are usually the force carriers, so this is important if it is the fit into the understanding of what the Higgs is in the standard model (a force carrier for mass). If it turns out to be a fermion, or crazy worse, a lepton (very improbable), then we will have to go back to the drawing board for the standard model. Also, the Higgs is seemingly lighter than predicted, this causes some math issues with zero-point energy. With as much as a full gigaelectron volt difference between the 2 detectors for the Higgs, there is still a lot of work to do. That isn't to understate the importance of this, there is something going on.

Similarly, we can instantiate in enough physical rules to get the "chance" universe you describe going, and its rules could get it to the current state either determinalistically or with some element of randomness. I guess I understand how you're using "chance" here... but I don't know that it's terribly useful. Why should "what humans can predict" be of any relevance philosophically? And if we're using it that way, couldn't we similarly describe God's actions as chance? I mean, surely humans (or angels) can't predict everything he's going to do. Chance seems like a pejorative when applied to God.. and to me it seems like a pejorative when applied to the operations of the universe (except where, again, that operation is actually random).

However, again, I don't think this difference is terribly important. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just see things very differently.

The difference between chance and design is the most important distinction there is. If you don't like the word chance, I will use the word "unplanned", or "mindless". An unplanned Universe has no actual purpose; it is just happenstance. Meaning, your life is just a product of mindless processes, and concepts like morality, justice, and truth have no essential meaning. It means you are just some blip on a grid and there is no rhyme or reason to anything. It also means you will never find out what happened or why it happened because no one knows what is going on or ever will. This will *always* lead you to nihilism.

A designed Universe, on the other hand, does have a purpose. A purposeful Universe means that life was created for a reason. It means that there is a truth, a truth that only the Creator knows. Which means that all lines of inquiry will lead to the Creators doorstep, and that trying to understand the Universe without the Creator is completely futile. It is like looking at a painting with three marks on it..you could endlessly speculate on what the painter was thinking when he painted it. However, no matter how clever you were, you don't have enough information to be sure about anything. To refuse to seek the Creator would be to stare at that painting your whole life trying to figure it out when you have the painters business card with his phone number on it in your pocket.

I don't think you're phrasing this in a terribly fair way. Yes, many people assume there's a natural explanation for abiogenesis. This is partly because having another explanation introduces arbitrariness into the system. Say I'm a geologist and I discover Devil's Tower. It's really weird, but my inclination from the very start is that it was formed by similar processes to ones that have explained weird things in the past. Even if I can't postulate even a guess as to why it has those weird columns, I'm not crazy to guess that eventually we'll figure out an explanation that doesn't involve, say, new physical laws or aliens. (And it's certainly not helpful to say "maybe it was made in the flood").

The whole thing is arbitrary to begin with. Naturalistic explanations are assumed apriori, and then the evidence is interpreted through the conclusion. That isn't how science works. You come to the conclusion because of the evidence, not the other way around. I would also note that you would never accept this kind of reasoning from a creationist. Neither does a mountain of circumstantial evidence prove anything.

Abiogenesis is a bigger problem and it's also one that's "lost to time" a bit. It almost certainly requires a mechanism we have yet to identify (or a mechanism someone has guessed at, but hasn't provided good details or evidence for). But, like Devil's Tower, there's no reason to expect that mechanism won't be identified - or that it will require significant changes to our understanding of the rest of science. Again, there's plausible ideas already floating around, and I think we'll probably recreate the process (though likely not with the same actual process) within the next 30 years or so.

Anything sounds plausible, apparently, when you have billions of years to play with. As the earlier quote said, time itself performs the miracles for you. How do you know that the mechanism hasn't already been identified but you have rejected it?

http://creation.com/devils-tower-explained

No... that, I think, is probably our strongest point of disagreement. I'm very much OK with "I don't know", and literally everything I believe has a bit of "I don't know" attached (kind of similar to how everything you believe in has a bit of God attached).

I'm not worshipping ignorance or something - knowing IS better than not knowing. But I'm also not scared of not knowing things - and I'm certainly not just going to pick something and believe in it because I don't like having some of my answer pages blank.

For you, is Scientology better than "I don't know"?

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't know isn't a theory. What most atheists mean when they say "I don't know" is "I know it isn't the Christian God, but otherwise I don't know". The next thing they say is, you believe in God because you're afraid. That I "chose" God because I am scared of death, or because the Universe is too big and scary for my mind to handle the uncertainty of not knowing.

I have to say that this idea of a bunch of hokey. The Christians I know believe in God because they have a personal relationship with Him. It has nothing to do with making a choice..God chose us. He would chose you too, if you were open to Him.

Neither was I afraid of death when I was an agnostic, and I wasn't afraid of saying I don't know (that's why I was an agnostic, because I didn't know). I believe in God because He revealed Himself to me, and that is the only reason. If He hadn't, I would still be an agnostic.

It is credible to believe that the Universe was designed and created by God. We can see that whomever made the Universe is unimaginably powerful, intelligent, exists outside of space and time, etc. Scientology isn't credible and explains nothing. God can explain everything.

Also, thanks for using the big boy version of the Bible. I quite like the Bible artistically, but I can't stand some of the new translations (despite whatever benefits some parts may have in terms of clarity).

Most of the new translations butcher the scriptures. They remove entire verses, words, water down meanings, or just flat out mislead. I can't stand them either. The KJV is the best word for word translation that we have, and although the language is archaic, it is comprehensible with a little research.

>> ^jmzero

>> ^CoreyStup:

We had a similar ride in Louisville, KY at Kentucky Kingdom (closed in 2010) although it was often broken and was removed in 2005. The Quake was the first of its kind from Vekoma (Waikiki Wave).
I rode it many times while it was still operating. It wasn't all that much fun, but our out of town guests always loved it.
Video of The Quake


The Quake looks much faster than this ride. The forces on the arms must be immense.

We had a similar ride in Louisville, KY at Kentucky Kingdom (closed in 2010) although it was often broken and was removed in 2005. The Quake was the first of its kind from Vekoma (Waikiki Wave).

I rode it many times while it was still operating. It wasn't all that much fun, but our out of town guests always loved it.

Video of The Quake

Hence, the link to this article

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/majorana-fermions-found.html

>> ^messenger:

Sounds interesting but this blip tells me nothing.