@RedSky

Crossing your fingers and waiting for the tooth fairy to fix everything is not a valid response to global crises. That is what passivity amounts to whether your eventual, hoped for remedy is shiny's simple-minded faith or failed economic models that got us into this mess in the first place, or unforeseeable scientific advances that may never come.

You've been using the most preposterously optimistic projections available, okay, let's assume they're correct and we level off at somewhere around nine to eleven billion. You want all of these people to live worthwhile, prosperous lives; well that's at least five times as many high energy consuming, 21st century humans as we've ever actually been able to support.

This coming at the end of an economic and technological bubble of readily available, dense energy supply for which we have no replacement; relative efficiency gains in spending that energy that can never be replicated (because efficiency doesn't go above 100%); casual environmental damage that cannot continue; and diminishing returns in every scientific field, where advancement is always becoming more difficult and more expensive.

This isn't a pessimistic view. Humanity has a bright future, all we have to do to secure it is stop creating more and more people out of nothing for no reason. Barring extra-terrestrial threats like meteorites, solar flares and relativistic missiles launched by hostile alien species; we have the knowledge we need to build a civilisation capable of enduring for millions of years, or burn out in a couple of hundred.

voted actual size relative to your personal self-impression and quality of comments posted to-date. Also, understood the "my" in the title as meaning 'yours.' We'd imagine your testicular condition also, to be somewhat similar to Bullet-toothed Tony's explanation of Vinny and Sol's predicament in the pub scene from the film, 'Snatch.'

Make sure you've offered the correct system of measure as well for the unemployed here, the categories offered for Rosy Palm's bachelor-tackle of this site's toddlers seem a bit too gracious...

Wowcraft Episode 2: Quest for Tooth has been added as a related post - related requested by Lilithia.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Wowcraft-Episode-2-Quest-for-Tooth

OK, is it just me but in a couple of shots doesn't Hetfield look like Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal?
Good Tune, but the vid annoys me, The exact problem I have with so many other videos.

is he missing a tooth?

I rather admire the ethics of the zookeeper. They could have made big bucks for the zoo, but instead made the ethical choice of feeding the lions. Who eat meat.

The NYT article above walks us through the reasoning for this giraffe being part of the cycle of life -- albeit the unnatural cycle of life of a caged animal. And why "selling" the giraffe into a life of isolation would have been the cruel act.

Reminds me of a situation in San Francisco Bay, years ago. I may get some details wrong. There was an island with non-native deer, I think, with no natural predators. The deer were in danger of starving to death, so those in charge decided to do a controlled hunt.

All hell broke loose and the wildlife managers caved to public pressure. At ENORMOUS cost, the deer were airlifted into the wilds of Montana, or someplace like that.

The wildlife managers were smart though -- they put tags on the deer, or locator devices, or something. More than 50% of the deer were dead within six months -- killed on the roads, mostly. They didn't know how to live in their new environment.

We are getting so divorced from common sense in our modern world.

Nature is red in tooth and claw. Things die. Lions eat meat. And why not be thrilled for the lions, that they get their natural diet for a change?

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

The methylation turns off genes, so it alters the development of the embryo without altering the actual DNA.

I'm not arguing against Darwin, he was a careful and methodical researcher who did good work. It could easily have been called Wallaceism though, had things gone even slightly differently A lot of things which are now called darwinism should probably be more properly called "Spencerism" since they derive from Spencer's "survival of the fittest" and not Darwin (or, perhaps, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. - Nature, red in tooth and claw).

Just y'all wait till 'ol choggie starts talking some shit about god, religion, and the impacted wisdom tooth up an ass-full of mouth....

The cyclists I spoke so fondly of are a small segment of the cycling population and my consternation is borne of the occasional variant described, who treat their mode of transportation like their sexuality or alternative lifestyle-choice.

MOST folks who use bikes as their sole mode of transportation are common-sense courteous and 'invisible' to motorists, this is due primarily to a properly-functioning survival circuit in the grey matter area.

It's the passionate geeks trying to serve as a shining example of conservative, earth-friendly superiors pushing that envelope between sucking-air or taking a dirt-nap. My pal who got killed during a Critical Mass ride in S.F. was not one of these, he was simply in the wrong group at the wrong time.

Oh-when I ride a bike, I ride against the flow of traffic as I do when I walk down a street-WHY? Because I want to optimize my chances of survival against the ever-growing number of lame-brains who compulsively and obsessively, text while driving. Heck, most folks can't carry-on a phone conversation, blue-tooth or not without forgetting they are charged with a 3000 lb death machine.

Erics' right when he says you are hyper-aware while riding on two wheels, be it motorized or not. You have to be if you want to live.

Take a picture-My rant here contained NO expletives or curses, I found Jesus yesterday and he told me to and I quote, "For fuck's sake, fucking cut that shit the fuck out or else!"

I kind of think its healthy to lie to them so long as its blatantly untrue. Stuff like Santa and the tooth fairy helps to teach them how to think critically, They are after all going to be lied to about much bigger and more dangerous things for the rest of their life.

It's only bad if you keep up the lie/unsubstantiated assumption past the point where they start to question it.

Learning for myself that the mythical characters from my childhood were fabrications made it all the easier for me to deal with the later revelation that almost everything else I was ever taught was a lie also.

Plus, the hilarious crap you can get children to believe is half the pleasure of having them. As a practicing Discordian/Chaos "git" wizard I'm downright envious sometimes of how easily they can slip into the "magical state of mind".

It takes me serious effort and repetition to create a convincing delusional experience, these little gits can do it without even trying!

Very good speech from Hyppönen, once again. It's funny that thru the years, his english pronunciation hasn't improved a lot.. For those that don't know, he's F-Secure spokesperson (and i guess innovator too, he's been there from the start, too bad their products are crap but with out them we would have no security at all..) They made some important inventions in the mid-90s.Some of them CIA fought with tooth and nails like 128bit encryptions claiming it's a security risk if USA can not intercept every signal they get (yes, this problem is OLD...) but F-Secure and other companies, ISPs, everyone were united in this issue and those security measures are now a commonplace...

this very same premise was dealt with in the matrix movies.
some people are so enamored and comfortable in their delusion that they will fight you tooth and nail to remain ignorant and enslaved.

He rebuild his house just for the tooth fairy???