I really thought I'd be a lot more bothered by this video than I turned out to be. This really isn't as horrific as videos where workers are having a good time torturing animals (like kicking them across the room, etc.).

It's not that I just don't care those little guys are suffering so much, but I guess it's an unfortunate aspect of nature. Lots of animals do equally or even worse things to other animals when they're eating them in the wild.

Humans as a species are carnivores. Many people can use their high level thinking to try smothering that fact, but there's no arguing with nature. And unfortunately ugly things have to be done to all things that are eaten (whether plant or animal).

Consider for a moment if M. Night's hypothesis in "The Happening" is true and we discover that plants do feel pain and suffering. Would people stop eating those as well and just eat synthesized food for the rest of their lives?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Looking at the way the poll is going, I'm thinking the majority wants us to stick with what we're best at ...

As a milder alternative to a full-fledged branching out of content types - I like the idea of allowing Sifters to create longer more comlex posts that are not just a single video - maybe a few videos that get across a message- interspersed with text and pictures, more of an "article" type format. I could see it being useful for newsy political posts or other complex concepts.

We have a lot of passionate subject matter experts on the Sift - I would like to give them more of a voice to synthesize content- beyond just a single video that says "I like this".

As a couple of people mentioned, it could really be just something like a Sift Talk or blog post with voting allowed, also with the potential of it being published to the front.

Lots of good ideas in this thread to work with.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'robots, france, disco, star wars' to 'robots, france, disco, star wars, silver, masks, 70s, synthesizer, melodic, french' - edited by Eklek

So what exactly is the point here? A conference is held, apparently to discuss what to do in the unlikely event swine flu turns out to be a serious epidemic? All of these are rational responses to an outbreak of a dangerous, contagious disease. What should they be discussing? Making informational packages containing instructions on synthesizing swine flu vaccine so everyone can make their own, in their own homes? Reminding everyone to stock up on bullets so they can shoot the infected?

Seriously, if you anticipate a widespread epidemic of a potentially deadly disease, it is prudent to discuss what to do with the bodies and how best to curb the spread of the disease. I don't see what the issue is here, apart from rampant paranoia.

All these people screaming fake is hilarious. I guess the synthesizer craze of the 80's was a long time ago for people who weren't born until just yesterday.

The awkwardness of performing preprogrammed synthesizers and samples.
Upvote for 808 State though.

Fantastic. The Mellotron was strictly not a synthesizer though; it played back prerecorded samples from magnetic tapes. You can see the tapes in action at 2:22.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dream, theater, any, colour, you, like, pink, floyd, cover, rock, music' to 'dream theater, pink floyd, cover, synthesizer, guitar, space rock, progressive' - edited by Eklek

The word "Hippopotamus" comes from Greek for "River Horse." The Greeks though them to be a relative of the horse, but recent research shows that their closest living relatives are actually whales.

I'm not terribly surprised that a hippo raised from birth around humans could be reasonably tame. Even though they are known to be very aggressive, they're still very intelligent.

>> ^rougy:
Hippos are pretty quick on their feet.


That they are, although the they aren't exactly distance runners, you'd still need a head-start on them.

>> ^Wikipedia:
Even though they are bulky animals, hippopotamuses can run faster than a human on land. Estimates of their running speed vary from 30 km/h (18 mph) to 40 km/h (25 mph), or even 50 km/h (30 mph). The hippo can maintain these higher speeds for only a few hundred meters.


Other neat facts:

On the National Geographic Channel television program, "Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr", Dr. Brady Barr measured the bite pressure of an adult female hippo at 1,821 lb (826 kg)

...

Their skin secretes a natural sunscreen substance which is red-colored. The secretion is sometimes referred to as "blood sweat," but is neither blood nor sweat. This secretion is initially colorless and turns red-orange within minutes, eventually becoming brown. Two distinct pigments have been identified in the secretions, one red (hipposudoric acid) and one orange (norhipposudoric acid). The two pigments are highly acidic compounds. Both pigments inhibit the growth of disease-causing bacteria; as well, the light absorption of both pigments peaks in the ultraviolet range, creating a sunscreen effect. All hippos, even those with different diets secrete the pigments, so it does not appear that food is the source of the pigments. Instead, the animals may synthesize the pigments from precursors such as the amino acid tyrosine.


Cool!

I hadn't heard that good a text-to-speech synthesizer before; Not great, but it sounds like the problem is mostly in the rhythm of a sentence.

They have an inherently superior material that can take away the overheating problem engineers face today at every aspect of miniaturization and you're presenting a technical difficulty to the manufacturing process...

From wikipedia:
Natural blue diamonds containing boron and synthetic diamonds doped with boron are p-type semiconductors. N-type diamond films are reproducibly synthesized by phosphorus doping during chemical vapor deposition. Diode p-n junctions and UV light emitting diodes (LEDs, at 235 nm) has been produced by sequential deposition of p-type (boron-doped) and n-type (phosphorus-doped) layers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond#Electrical_properties

Tags for this video have been changed from 'moog, synthesizer, theremin, screen savers, robert moog, bob moog' to 'moog, synthesizer, theremin, tech tv, screen savers, patrick norton, robert moog' - edited by Stingray

"The band received permission from the electronic music German band Kraftwerk to use the main riff from their song "Computer Love" (German: Computerliebe), from their 1981 studio LP Computer World (German: Computerwelt), for "Talk", replacing Kraftwerk's synthesizers with guitars"

^and what about this:
Neural Noise Synthesizer (NNS) presents an entirely new way to use noise. NNS generates noise that is specially structured to stimulate the brainwaves of the listener.

NN, muito obrigado!!

>> ^HollywoodBob:
I'm wondering if there's a chemical interaction from the worms, perhaps something they excrete, that is the source of the beneficial properties. If there is, chances are that it could be synthesized.


Apparently parasites excrete immuno-suppressive chemicals since they are foreign proteins inside your body. If you get hamburger stuck in your teeth and your gums get swolen - I think that's an example immune reaction to a foreign protein and why cows make such poor parasites. Drug companies are working on synthesizing it but I find it odd that people (some of whom actually die from these things) are going to wait 10-20 years before a product is brought to market when these worms are harmless except in really unusual circumstances and can't in any reasonable way be passed to another human being in any country with toilets.