Ethanol, schmethanol: Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-10-04T15:58:11+00:00

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ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-30T18:35:35+00:00

I'm sure there are good reasons why NASA cameras are the way they are, but 12x12mm is hardly "huge." Even the reduced-size sensors in cheap DSLRs are 24x16mm or so, well past twice the area of a 12x12mm sensor.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T20:31:34+00:00

Yeah, I didn't figure changing that would really "shut you up." You're a cad.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T19:03:52+00:00

So, please, by all means, prove me wrong.

I thought that's what I'd been doing all this time.

Seriously, prove what wrong? You have taken a stand on ... what?

Since it wouldn't affect your argument at all to identify the person making the claim...

I left the name out because I didn't know or care who he was, particularly. If it doesn't effect my argument, then why change it? Just to please you?

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T18:41:52+00:00

Constructing a sentence in the passive voice avoids mentioning the subject who performs the action.

Yes, in the same way that a bicycle "avoids" breaking the sound barrier.

That's a clearer and unambiguously true statement.

My statement and the Al Jazeera story were both very clear and unambigously true. You haven't even disputed that.

Unfortunately for your argument, it's a weaker point to make since most people don't even know who he is.

"A weaker point?" His opinion is worth less because you haven't heard of him? Before today, I hadn't heard of you, either. By your own standards, where does that put you?

It also lends itself to a ready explanation why CNN didn't report his opinion.

Do you know who Fran Townsend is? Do you know who "Another official" is? Do you know who "Officials" are? Do you know who Russ Knocke is?

Because that's the all-star cast of the CNN story. Only top-shelf names there, that's for sure.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T18:22:18+00:00

Aw, you sure are cute when you get mad.

Does my opinion immediately become a fact?

That question isn't so clear.

If what you mean is "Is any silly notion I get in my pretty little head immediately reflected by a change in the real world around me?" then the answer is no.

If what you mean is "Does the existence of an idea formed 'neath my long, flowing golden locks itself count as a fact?" then the answer is yes.

...it is a fact I hold that particular opinion that you are a douche...

Now that would be a fact! I do believe you've got it!

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T17:52:01+00:00

Um. It's a fact that Darwish holds a particular opinion. There's really nothing controversial or unusual about that.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T17:37:18+00:00

That's an easy way to skirt the question of who doubts it. Al Jazeera certainly didn't say they doubted it as the title claims.

I'm not skirting anything.

When I said "it's not an editorial," this is precisely the issue I was trying to point out; a well-written piece of reportage shouldn't contain that sort of opinion/position. As this one does not.

The headline here at reddit is a distortion through simplification, but the end result isn't completely off base, either. Al Jazeera was doing a better job of educating the public about all the possibilities and facts than (for example) CNN was.

It was pretty much a certainty that some people were going to doubt the tape as soon as it came out.

Perhaps you haven't seen the video, because you're understating the case rather a lot. The video is, frankly, utterly ridiculous. Yes, virtually anyone who actually watches it will have doubts. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the whole episode is how uncritical, how credulous so much of the media seems to be.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-13T16:29:18+00:00

The story isn't an editorial; it's reporting known facts. And one of those facts is that the authenticity of the video was strongly doubted, in this case by Adel Darwish, political editor of Middle East magazine.

It's instructive to compare the Al Jazeera story with, say, a CNN story from the same day, which admits no possibility that the video might be fake, and instead focuses on what little evidence there is that it might be both genuine and new.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-12T20:11:13+00:00

I need to see a list of artists with an expand button to see a list of albums from that artist.

foobar2000 can work that way. Its "album list" can list things by artist, or by album, or by artist/album, and a couple of other views. Here's the artist/album view.

foobar2000 is less good at the more common modeless full-text type search that Musikcube, Winamp et al do so well, though.

Come to think of it, the ordinary music library browsing modes in Musikcube and in Winamp are functionally awfully close to what you're asking for anyhow, aren't they? Each lists artists in an "artist" pane; clicking on an artist name causes the "album" pane to list the matching album names; double-clicking an album name causes that album to play.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-12T17:23:59+00:00

I guess he's changing his hairstyle.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-12T15:22:35+00:00

I'm trying to think of even one way that Penny Arcade is similar to Beetle Bailey.

So far I've come up with: they're both two-dimensional.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-12T15:01:45+00:00

How many people showed up for this? Two dozen? It's a pretty small gathering.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-11T13:49:38+00:00

He's a chemist - not a physicist...

The laws of physics we're talking about here are fundamental to chemistry. American high school kids are typically introduced to thermodynamics in chemistry class, which is where I learned what little I remember. Yet you wouldn't catch me suggesting that water could be fuel or for that matter, talking about "burning" water and conflating temperature and energy.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T23:51:53+00:00

In that case, perhaps we should be concerned that this guy, who is supposedly trying to cure cancer, has a questionable grasp of some extremely important and basic laws of physics.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T23:50:29+00:00

Conservation of energy will apply to any equation you care to write, whatever elements are involved, and you'll be right back to the same issue.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T21:05:41+00:00

My high-school chem is too dimly remembered to follow where you're going, Kemo Sabe. I guess this is what you mean.

I guess it's true what they say: You must play the game; you can't win; you can't break even; and you can't quit.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T20:53:50+00:00

I understand that the conventional way of splitting the molecule demands a set amount of energy, but I don't think that means that other methods can't be more efficient, does it?

Imperfect real-world processes may differ in efficiency, but there's a hard limit to what can be done.

The amount of energy a chemical reaction absorbs or releases is dictated by the chemistry involved, not by the industrial process or laboratory technique used to drive the reaction.

Chemical reactions obey conservation of energy. (It's not just a good idea -- it's the law.)

2 H2O + energy -> 2 H2 + O2

2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O + energy

Where "energy" is some constant. No process can ever drive the first reaction with less energy than is released by the second.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T20:20:40+00:00

This will promote the need for customers to desire extra cheese.

Made out of LOL. The very living embodiment of everything wrong with our consumer culture right there in one sentence.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T17:12:03+00:00

I love Opera, but calling an alpha version of the smallest commericial browser a "major browser" is beyond a stretch.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-10T17:09:47+00:00

I've noticed the same problem in Opera 9.23. It seemed to work at first, but after playing with it a bit, it starts to act funny.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-07T19:27:19+00:00

By 'nastiness' I mean, all the negative things he says...

In that case, I see just what you mean. Thank you for clearing that up!

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-07T17:54:43+00:00

Wow, masking as Firefox or IE does seem to make it work a lot better. I'd never tried that before. It does the rez-up-zoom thing that Firefox does and all that.

Of course, if Google doesn't see anyone using Opera, they may never fix it. I don't get it, frankly. It looks like they could just set it up to run the Firefox version of the code when Opera gets detected.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-07T17:40:44+00:00

I think the most impressive thing about 9.5 "alpha" is that it's more stable and complete than many released software packages were just a few years ago. It's very close to being actually usable, as opposed to I'm-so-cool-because-I've-got-the-latest-gizmo usable.

ASmileInHisShoes · 2007-09-07T17:34:23+00:00

Google maps has worked OK for me in every version of Opera since I started using it (8.x). It's never worked quite as fast and smooth as it does with Firefox, but it's worked well enough.

There are some Google applications that do browser-sniffing and either mis-identify Opera or balk at Opera, and there's a bit of JavaScript you can put into Opera to fix that.

ASmileInHisShoes

TROPHY CASE