From what I've heard, 23andMe has been making claims about the accuracy of their tests, for which they've failed to provide any evidence despite being given years to do so.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=247220418

Laser arrows... explains the shitty accuracy of stormtroopers...

A great question. Can't vouch for the accuracy on this page, but it presents some interesting facts re: that and other topics related to a Nazi atomic bomb. http://www.unmuseum.org/nbomb.htm

This IS awesome. It may choke on low contrast photos of stuff with shadows, but for my use I would take my own high contrast very high resolution shots. The higher res you can perform this at the higher the accuracy on the models.

The slingshot does "hit harder" i.e. impart more momentum into the target and thus more likely to knock you down.
Intuitively this seems like it would therefore cause the most damage and for several 100 years this was the prevailing logic with muskets and cannonballs.

So much so in fact that when Charles Whitworth first introduced his rifle it was dismissed by the British army partly for having too small of a bullet. Whitworth used a smaller more stable round for its increased range and accuracy/stability (though there were also concerns about "muzzle fouling" and slower reload time).
It was believed at the time that the larger (slower) much less accurate bullets from the Enfield were more effective at actually injuring enemy soldiers, but history later demonstrated that speed and penetration can have just as much (if not more) effect on soft bodies than sheer mass and momentum.

Simply put, that large slingshot round would likely knock you to the floor in the same was as an MMA fighter landing a roundhouse square in your guts would. It might even penetrate the skin a bit and embed itself in you. What it won't do however is travel through your soft tissues at high velocity and create a large "temporary cavity" which is how most firearms do their real damage.

The 9mm etc. don't carry as much overall energy as the slingshot, but they do deliver it to a soft target much more effectively (that is to say lethally). A much more informative test would have been to fire them into ballistic clay, this would have highlighted the differences between speed, momentum and penetration much more clearly. The slingshot would leave a massive dint, the bullets would leave tunnels.

That said, the point they are making does stand to some extent. If you used that slingshot on someone that was trying to shoot you there is a good chance you'd knock them down (or at least stop them taking an aimed shot back for a few seconds). Hell you might even hospitalise them with a good shot!

It's not fair to say that the slingshot is a more "powerful" weapon but I think they did clearly demonstrate that it's a viable alternative under some circumstances. In fact for defending yourself in your own home etc. it might even be better!

Little/no risk of collateral damage (unless you miss really badly)
Very cheap
Would put most people on the floor with one good hit
No firearms licence or background checks needed
More difficult for a child to misuse (Most kids would lack the strength)
Enemy wouldn't expect it
Much less likely to kill
etc. etc.

Hell I'd get one myself if UK law wouldn't fk me over for using it.
It's illegal here to use a weapon specifically intended or kept for defense. i.e. if you grab a random object like a chair and beat up an intruder that's ok, if you have a baseball bat etc. by your bedside for expressly this purpose then it's not.
Handy then that one of my broken computer chairs happens to contain a loose 1ft long iron bar. Naturally I'd never even consider using such a thing violently, but who knows what might come to hand when faced with an intruder

(Seriously though, as broken furniture its a viable means of defence, if I kept it by my bedside as a "weapon" I'd be breaking the letter of the law by using it. Fucking stupid!)

More of a misunderstanding then, it could have been worded better but I suspect you were in rant mode at the time, and there's plenty to rant about there.
I do agree that historical accuracy is always preferable to fabrication, as long as it serves the story and fits with the theme of the film, the presence of dragons would not have served the movie Lincoln in any way, and therefore, do not belong. The very title of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter however pretty much tells us all we need to know about this film and it's treatment of history. So to me I guess, complaining about the historical accuracy of a film like 300 or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter is a bit like going to a French film festival and then complaining that all the movies are in French.
I like history and learning more about history and having more historically accurate films would never be a bad thing in my book, but they do tend to be a harder sell.
Also there should be no shame in going to see Pacific Rim, write it off as a guilty pleasure if it helps.(sorta like coke and whores on my taxes

Damn it, why can't Americans enjoy a great story without infantilizing it by adding magic and dragons?
As I understand it, the 47 Ronin is not a 'legend', it's a historical fact which needed no embellishment to be a GREAT story for a movie. It's like 300, but much worse. I had hoped the success of Lincoln might have taught Hollywood that at least attempting historical accuracy can be applauded if your subject is worthy, but it seems this lesson was lost.
And Keanu is apparently going to be Oishi, the leader of the ronin? Why not Ken Watanabe? I'm disappointed this is the treatment this great story gets from us, and I've been awaiting a good English telling of this story for decades.

But weren't they looking at "throw like a girl" to be an insult? Where as you mentioned, the pro female pitcher clearly still "threw like a girl", she had the accuracy and power for it to not matter

I tend to disagree. For example, in eric3579's video above, the pro female and male still tend to throw in the typical way, with the female mostly vertical, rotating sideways and the male going mostly horizontal, leaning forward.

Not sure what you mean by "did no better than the women..."

Ah, I see. You are focusing on "throwing ability" (accuracy, speed, etc.), whereas I'm just talking strictly about posture.

Given the (in)accuracy of your typical person wielding a pistol, even one who's got practice, running away is surprisingly pointful. Just don't run away in a perfectly straight line. If you do, then you're not truly a moving target.

Wow.

Sweeping generalisations sure are a fast way to make decisions! Somewhat lacking in accuracy though. She could make similar judgements based on, idk, say skin colour. I think we have a word for people who do that.

Accuracy is key.

@hamsteralliance - Great comment and demo file, above and beyond the call of internet forum duty!

To my ears and with my speakers, I agree with your comments. I think that I can *just* distinguish between the 224 k and 320 k, but I don't have much confidence of doing so reliably in a blind test. 128 k versus 224 k or 320 k I think I could do with a reasonably high accuracy. 320 k versus original -- I must admit I'd just be blindly guessing.

Again thanks for the demo file and going above and beyond to answer my question and letting me (and anyone else here) see real results of various settings for myself!

I'm still worried about phase. The argument is that he can represent any phase he wants. I challenge him to represent different phases of his Nyquist frequency without the reconstruction losing power. He keeps saying "band limited", which I don't believe to be exactly true. I agree, the ear can only detect powers at frequencies below 22.1k, I'm not convinced it's ability to detect phase shifts is limited in the way you would expect with a digital signal with a cutoff at that frequency. For instance, the human ear can localize an impulse with accuracy down to about 10 microseconds. I can't see how a Dirac function can be localized that accurately by a sampled wave unless the system acted like a 100K sampled system. The latter, IMHO, is supported by the neuro-anatomy. There are different mechanisms for identifying pitch and onset. The quote-unquote Calyx of Held neurons carry the phase information, and are designed to fire with astonishing precision. Much more temporal precision than would be predicted from the "nyquist frequency" of the place coding subset of 8th nerve ganglia. I understand that this is what he was trying to address with his bit at the end, but he kept insisting on "band limited" inputs. Pressure waves aren't band limited dodge-rammit.

This goes beyond my knowledge level of signals and waveforms, but it was very interesting anyway.

That being said, OK, I'm sold on the concept that ADC and back doesn't screw up the signal. However, I'm pretty sure that real audiophiles could easily listen to several copies of the same recording at different bitrates and frequencies and correctly identify which ones are higher or better quality with excellent accuracy. I bet that is true even for 16bit vs 24bit, or 192kHz vs 320kHz -- stuff that should be "so good it is impossible to tell the difference".

Since some people that train themselves to have an ear for it CAN detect differences (accurately), the differences must actually be there. If they aren't artifacts of ADC issues, then what are they? I'm guessing compression artifacts?

In a visual version of this, I remember watching digital satellite TV around 10-15 years ago. The digital TV signal was fine and clear -- almost certainly better than what you'd get from an analog OTA antenna. BUT, the satellites used (I believe) mpeg compression to reduce channel bandwidth, and that compression created some artifacts that were easy to notice once somebody pointed them out to you. I specifically remember onscreen people getting "jellyface" anytime someone would nod slowly, or make similar periodic motions. I've got a feeling that some of the artifacts that we (or at least those of us that are real hardcore audiophiles) can notice in MP3 audio files are similar to an audio version of that jellyface kind of issue.