4 signs your house may be on fire:

1) You might find there is the smell of smoke or that you have difficulty breathing or seeing clearly.
2)You might hear crackling. Other sounds to look out for are fire alarms, and/or people yelling "Fire".
3) Feeling hot, perhaps even to the point of pain, even on cold days. If you experience this heat in your house and not elsewhere it may be another sign your house is on fire.
4) A spreading, bright incandescent light in places that you would not normally expect to be luminous .e.g furniture, floors, walls etc.

Am I being unfair?

Besides, everybody knows the real 4 are:
1)You can't agree which way the toilet roll goes on the holder (and/or refuse to use the holder)
2)Snoring
3)Cheat-guilt (Where one has a secret affair, succeeds in keeping it secret, but fails to forgive themselves)
4)Not laughing at my jokes.

They are definitely the most awesome when they are directly above you. Also everytime you start to pick up some pattern they change, ever so slightly. One that's so luminous is not very common.

I liked your Lumineers post They must've been in town lately, because they did a gig for triple j:

This image probably shows illumiunation effects which appear to move faster than light speed. It is an illusion only of course.

Imagine if you took a coffee can and cut a slice out of one side. Next, put a quadrillion watt light bulb inside it, and start to spin the can once per second.

It spins the light beam around like a lighthouse does. If you move far enough away from the can, the moving pattern of shadow and light from the can will move faster than light speed.

Several astronomy "motion" videos like this illustrate super-luminal light effects like that.

Luminous being is he, not this crude matter.

@Barseps has reached to luminous Gold Star Membership!

Congratulations!

I study this stuff. It's strange that Mericans have this romanticised view of their Constitution, Bill o rights, Puritans and the founding fathers, but the humans were just human, and the documents were just documents: Imperfect. Not holy writs and prophets. The USA did not get rich and prosperous on its founding father's ideals, but the backs of slave labour, massive natural resources and comparatively few wars at the beginning.

To think that "As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings" means one should look at the beginnings and say: "Wow everything was awesome then!" is romanticising history. All that stuff I mentioned above which you ironically called 'obtuse blindness' is deeply ingrained not only in the US' history but also the constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I have read both documents, unfinished drafts, rewritings, documents about the discussions and much more such tedious stuff: It's all deeply political, partisan even then and not! perfection. I know that it's much easier to think that libertarianism is the goto-solution for everything, but it isn't. Nothing is.

Says the guy who doesn't know what a market is.

But I guess those founding fathers and framers of the Bill of Rights were just a bunch lunkheads.

Ironic quote of the day:
"As one of Jefferson’s favorite books, Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ so luminously argued, there is no surer sign of a country’s cultural and political decay than obtuse blindness to its unmistakable beginnings." - Simon Schama

Ted is a great scientist. His life work as revolved around materials perception. He's also the guy behind this baddassery: http://www.gelsight.com/videos/

As many of you probably realize, almost every visual illusion was designed to illustrate some mechanism, or function of the visual system. This illusion is one of my favorites. It illustrates that the purpose of the visual system is not to directly "read out" luminance values from your retina, but instead to correctly interpret the reflectance properties of materials in the environment. Most often it's the properties of the materials themselves, not the properties of their illuminant which are important. However, the signals reaching your brain will depend drastically on both, and it is actually a relatively complicated process of 3d-scene reconstruction in order to parse out the reflectance properties you are interested in. Of course, the point of the illusion is to demonstrate just how automatic and subconscious this process is despite the obvious complexity.

Oh, okay, so you believe everything you read. That's not very intelligent, or at least it's not very SMART. The bible was written hundreds of years ago, and has since been translated and re-translated to and from dozens of different languages. Individuals and groups in power throughout different points in history have taken it upon themselves to modify the bible, adding and omitting pieces here and there to suit their agenda. They knew that gullible sheep, unable to think for themselves, are easily swayed by religion, and what better way to control a populace than by attacking their very basis for the way they live their lives?

God pre-exists everything. We know God exists because He lets us know, and He would let you know that if you sought Him out. The New Testament was written 2000 years ago. The Old Testament is at least 1000 years older than that. We have copies of the early manuscripts so we know what the original bibles looked like. So the translations today are accurate, and this idea that they are corrupt is just outright false. Yes, man has used the bible for evil ends, but this is no different from anything else man does. The very reason that Jesus Christ came to Earth is because man is so desperately wicked and needs Gods redemption.

Additionally, if one is intelligent, and they believe in ancient myths, obviously they're going to be some of the greatest minds the world has ever known, right? That's why all the geniuses of the world are devout Christians or whatever religion you want to name, right? WRONG.

NASA is not run by rocket scientists who go to church on Sunday. Great inventors and genius-level individuals such as Stephen Hawking are not religious specifically BECAUSE they are intelligent. They are able to think for themselves, not be told what to think.

Some of the greatest minds in history were devout Christians..and some of the greatest scientists:

Francis Bacon - Originated the scientific method
Johannes Kepler - Laws of Planetary motion
Galileo Galilei - Father of modern astronomy
Nicolaus Copernicus - Heliocentric Universe
James Clerk Maxwell - Electromagnetic field
Neils Bohr - the Atom
Louis Pasteur - germ theory of disease
Rene Descartes - Philosopher and mathematician
Issac Newton - Invented classical mechanics
Max Planck - Founder of quantum mechanics

A lot of modern science is built on the backs of Christian thinkers, as you can see, and that is just a short list. Today, around 10 percent of scientists believe in God. At least 50 nobel laureates believe in God. Now, if you want to talk about great thinkers, how about Albert Einstein? He believed in God. Although not a Christian, here is what he had to say about Jesus:

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
"Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?"
"Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot!"
"You accept the historical existence of Jesus?"
"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."7

Of course, religion and science are completely unrelated topics, and one does not have to be non-secular in order to be a scientist, but typically, the two mindsets would conflict, as religionists base their beliefs off of emotion and other irrational concepts. Scientists use a thought process, experimentation, and ruling out possibilities in order to come to conclusions and figure out FACTS about the universe around us. There are scientists who believe in the possibility of a god, but it takes a different form than that of some all-seeing being that created everything. I'll never try to explain that to you, though, as you're too blinded by foolish nonsense that has been force-fed to you since childhood.

I will leave you with this though: Adam and Eve. Here's some fruit. I'm going to tempt you with it, and then create a snake to TALK to you and tell you you should eat some of it, and THEN I'm gunna come back and be all "OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK?! I SMITE THEE FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!" just to fuck with humanity. Wow. You worship a pretty evil, and vindictive force. Why would you want to do that? The fucker's up there just fucking with us like a little kid with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. Jesus christ, you must really enjoy misery. I'll take the reality of humanity surviving on our own acquiescence and compassion over that bullshit any day!

I base my belief off of personal revelation. I was an agnostic my entire life and raised without religion, and I was a secular humanist and a strict materialist who didn't see any evidence for God or spirit. God woke me up to the truth and let me know He is real. If you want science facts, you only have to examine the first page of the bible:

In the beginning (TIME) God created the heavens (SPACE) and the earth (MATTER)

And God said, “Let there be light (ENERGY),” and there was light.

It took mankind 3000 years to catch up and figure out the Universes foundation is based on these principles. There is also no better description which uniquely fits the big bang theory. Creation ex-nihilio, which is creation from nothing.

The serpent you're referring to was Satan. God put the tree there because He gave mankind free will to follow His commands or not. He also warned them of the consequences if they ate of the fruit. Adam and Eve decided to disobey God and believe the lie because Satan promised them they would have Gods power if they did it. So, instead of trusting God, they lusted after His power and betrayed Him. That's why they were kicked out of the garden. Their sin brought death into the world.

No, God didn't damn us for eternity. It's the very reason God sent His son Jesus to die on the cross, to save us from this fate we created and redeem mankind. So we could have eternal life with God again in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are sinners, and the wages of sin is death. Gods gift of salvation is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Games that Issy likes

-Pain - Slingshot a dude into different hazardous environments. It's sick, funny and strangely satisfying.
-Echochrome - MC Escher: The Game
-Lumines - A hip and addictive take on Tetris
-Chime - (not yet on PS3) is another puzzle game with some nice music
-Pacman CE and DX - Pacman on X
-Rockband/Rockband Beatles - Good times.

She also got a couple of hours of enjoyment out of the free PS3 virtual space 'Home', but it's pretty lame overall.


Other recommendations

-Little Big Planet - Fun for two players with tons of clever user generated content.
-Heavy Rain - an extremely exiting interactive movie, but unlike most interactive movies, this one doesn't suck.
-Flower - beautiful and unique gaming experience. I wish there were more games like this.
-LocoRoco Coccoricco - a weird Japanese game, where you are a butterfly trying to coax these little smiley faces to follow you. Very unique gameplay and design.

>> ^shole:
>> ^SunTzu:
flying around the planet at thousands of miles an hour, a man who puts his life in danger to further the knowledge of mankind.

what do they actually even do up there?
i now i'm being ignorant and that they probably do a lot of great stuff but we never specifically hear about any of it
there's never been a news story like "bananas made of jam invented on ISS! astronaut Jamforbrains gets nobel for being awesome!"


Rofl..

He's probably involved in various zero gravity experiments up there, acting as proxy on behalf of people on earth who come up with new questions as to what happens if you do this in zero gravity. I don't know the specific purpose of the ISS unfortunately, but i suspect your question is a bit like asking "Why are you looking through this telescope at the moon?"

And the answer is, who the hell knows what you'll find? Why did we sail around the world and discover new countries, new species of animal.. why do we still search for new species? Why do we test those species of plant and animal to see what they do, what they're made of, what properties they have? Why step outside of our front door?

Because if we didn't, we'd never have invented the wheel or mastered fire.

Imagine how much shit we've found in our own oceans that we didn't know about a few hundred years ago. Imagine what we've done with that new knowledge.

Can you possibly begin to imagine the sort of shit we might find out there in space, which is infinitely bigger than our ocean?

Imagine if you'd asked marie curie why she was messing around with a luminous material? "Did you make a banana made of this new material? Stop wasting your time!" And we've just lost the x-ray machine.

Cmon, man.. that sort of question depresses me.. of all the amazing things we've found out through stargazing, through expeditions into space (the hubble deep field picture, to me, is worth all the money on earth) the one thing that would validate such a trip, to you, is a fucking jam banana?

^The interesting thing is, at all times during human history have we been crashing towards Andromeda. Our whole existence plays out while we are in "free fall" towards something. If we speed up to astronomical time, it will just be two luminous clouds intertwining, but during that time civilizations, species, worlds have come into existence and gone again.

The sheer scale of it all is staggering.

>> ^Payback:
I was kinda noticing how, to me anyway, the shades actually look like gradients (each panel, not the whole thing) without the pencil, darker on the left side than the other.


That's because of the mach band illusion (pointed out in that link posted by berticus). The mach band illusion can be seen with any slight step change. The cause is well worked out and has to do with the fact that the retina primarily encodes contrast instead of luminance. What happens is that the edges are amplified making the adjacent side appear brighter/darker accordingly. As you move away from the edge, you perceive the appropriate brightness. That creates the gradient effect you pointed out.