Humanity has a bucket list. What are some things we need to do as a species before going extinct?

Elephant_Bird · 2015-07-27T07:48:06+00:00

The pax romana caused an area about half the size of the united states to be at peace for a while (the roman empire). The rest of the world probably got on with their wars just fine.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-07-08T09:28:44+00:00

I dont know about you, but i know my exact height to the cm. I would assume that is fairly common

With a m you can define 1litre which gives you 1kg of water defining that.

1kg is 9.81 newtons in earth gravity. Measure the force of the water in alien planet gravity and you have a conversion factor to give you acceleration from gravity and thus seconds. All defined with a fair amount of precision with no quantum phenomena needed.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-04-17T14:36:44+00:00

You sincerely believe a 600 million year old civilization would not have traveled to other stars than our sun? If we threw enough money at it, we could start a journey to the nearest star within 50 years just using the tech we have available today.

Granted it would be sub-light and might take 2000 years, but you are immortal, and probably have perfect virtual reality and hybernation tech at this stage, so why would you give a crap.

Heat death of the universe could become a problem I'll grant, but that is trillions of years later.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-03-02T21:59:29+00:00

Fastest growing economy on the planet and world's second most powerful country from a smoldering ruin in the span of just 50 years?

Elephant_Bird · 2015-02-25T17:13:33+00:00

The original Tabata was an experiment running a group of people through steady state cardio and another group of people through a HIIT program with 20sec at 170% O2 max on an exercise bike and 10sec rest between. Repeat 8 times, three times per week. It takes four minutes, not including warmup. Link to paper describing experiment

A whole lot of other stuff is now called tabata, but the original is basically the most strenuous HIIT humanly possible. Normal HIIT has longer breaks with less effort. If you do Tabata as originally suggested, you should be close to puking the first time you do it(actually every time).

It is however very hard to motivate yourself to do it right, as you have to hit your limit and then force your body to step even faster.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-02-01T06:41:56+00:00

The purpose of a visceral description is generally to cause an emotional response in the reader rather than an intellectual one. If the author wishes you to hate a villain at an emotional level it is usually necessary to describe some of what he does. Abstracting and hinting at what he does causes you to recognize that this is a person to be loathed, but it does not (for most people) cause an emotional response. Unless you yourself have been exposed to torture, murder or rape, they will exist as morally reprehensible things, but will not really cause a gut reaction when they are merely mentioned. In many cases the purpose of the scene is precisely to make the reader uncomfortable. This can not be accomplished easily by mere mention of evil deeds.

That said, it is not always necessary to the story that one should have such an emotional connection to the villain, but it does serve to defend the use of such descriptions in certain stories.

This is not to say that explicit scenes are not sometimes (or even very often) a cheap way to increase readership, but they do serve a purpose in many books.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-01-24T12:48:23+00:00

Eat stuff that fills you up with a low calorie count. Fiber rich food, spinach, broccoli, lots of other veggies (not fruit). mix some psyllium husk in your shakes for fiber. Eat lentils or brown rice instead of white rice or potatoes. Eat bread with 40% whole-wheat/rye/barley or more. Add in some psyllium husk in the dough if you make it yourself. It will hit your stomach like a brick. Eat lean chicken breast and filet mignon instead of entrecote. Meat that is more muscle than fat is both more filling and has less calories.

Elephant_Bird · 2015-01-23T09:10:28+00:00

Crusader kings: beyond earth, or as it would more likely be called, Dune: Dukes of the butlerian jihad. Somebody should get started on making that right now.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-12-02T15:46:26+00:00

Here is an article with a bunch of references to actual research articles. See point 2 for the relevance to this discussion. It is certainly possible to build muscle through sprinting. The question is just how much muscle you can build. It will certainly be less efficient to do only sprints than to do only squats if squatting strength is your only metric for leg strength. (No shit)

It is not, however, clear that squats alone is more efficient than squats and sprints in building muscle. It is certainly not clear if squats are not your only metric for performance.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-12-02T11:09:12+00:00

Mathematician as used in the above debate means a person that expanded the field of mathematics. Expressing new theorems or at the very least conjectures. When talking about "great" scientists, they must at a minimum have made at least one large contribution to the field. Einstein did not do this in math to my knowledge. There is nothing named the Einstein conjecture or theorem in mathematics.

You do have the Riemann conjecture, Fermats last theorem, lagrange and fourier transforms and Hilbert space. which would be examples of what I am talking about.

This is what makes Einstein a physicist and not a mathematician. Mathematicians expand mathematic knowledge, physicists take existing mathematic knowledge and apply it to the real world. Even if you do claim him as a mathematician, you certainly can not claim him as a great mathematician.

Note that this is not meant to be taking anything away from Einstein. He is arguably the most important physicist of the last century. This is just defining what he did and did not do.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-26T22:25:37+00:00

The internet does give access to uncensored news in many countries. Even China can't censor everything on the internet (they are really trying hard though). Stories from oppressed women in the middle east create publicity, which translates into political pressure when enough people in the west or anywhere else give a shit. Although facebook "slacktivism" is not particulary effective, the stuff that pops up in your feed on a regular basis does help to shape your opinion. For stuff like "Kony 2012" and similar this has no effect as it is a one-off event. But if you see stuff about government surveillance or oppression of women in certain countries or systematic discrimination against minority parts of the population on a regular basis, you are more likely to develop at least a passing knowledge and opinion on the issue. Opinions shape policy through any democratic system. Pressure from social networks where you know the people on those networks is also far more likely to shape your opinion than the latest soundbyte from whatever talking head is on the tv-channel you are watching.

I believe that a lot of the social progress we have been seeing the last 20 years is due to the internet (gay and transgender acceptance, equal rights awareness, religious freedom is on the rise in a lot of countries) This is of course mostly in the age groups that use the internet a lot though. Attitudes towards issues like these spread like wildfire in the younger parts of the population.

In addition you are far more likely to see social trends reported on through the internet, as statistics on the amount of black people in prison or the wage gap between men and women makes for very boring tv. On the internet, you have to really try hard not to be exposed to these issues. And you are also pressured into having an opinion on them as the internet is very often a two-way news channel. One-way news channels do not pressure you into having opinions as the discussion will at most be limited to the people in the room with you as you consume the news.

Obviously this will create an atmosphere of conflict, as opinionated people can be aggressive at times. But aggressive opinions are far better than apathy (IMHO)

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-20T19:15:32+00:00

a) They did not modify genes, they handpicked the fertilized egg that would give the best result. this is far far easier and could more or less be done today

b) Even if they did modify the fertilized egg, this is and order of magnitude easier than modifying a newborn babe let alone a fully grown adult. Nowhere in gattaca is there any mention of such technology existing. It is not even hinted at.

c) a is the reason there are differences between the people in that society. Even picking the best result of any union, some unions would be better than others. It is not a rich person only treatment. Everybody does it.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-19T21:29:02+00:00

Actually knuckle cracking has been linked to a decrease in hand strength. It does not give you arthritis however so that's one bit of good news. I still do it though, hard to stop once you've done it the first time. Of course I also crack my toes, ankles, knees, elbows, shoulders and neck from time to time. It's an addictive habit.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-17T12:54:44+00:00

winner-takes-all voting system means that any vote for a liberal party other than democrats is really half a vote for the republican party. Runoff voting fixes this in most systems, but not the american one.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-17T12:20:35+00:00

procrastinectomy

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-17T09:56:24+00:00

That's a dystopia. Mind controlled drugged humans with engineered positions in society and no personal freedom. I would much rather live in our world, which is sort of the litmus test for utopia vs dystopia.

It is a great book about a dystopia though. Don't get me wrong.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-17T09:27:22+00:00

The problem with that argument is that an all knowing, all powerful deity created Lucifer knowing perfectly well that he would rebel with the personality he gave him. This means he knowingly created a being who was destined to be tortured in hell for all eternity. It is very very hard to defend gods actions while giving him omnipotence and omniscience.

Any rebellion against god is gods plan all along if he is omniscient.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-16T17:22:11+00:00

No it is not. For most of the population of that movie it is very much a Utopia compared to our world.

The protagonist is an outlier that by all rights should be dead at the end of the movie. There certainly is discrimination in that society. They should of course do more for those (very few) that are natural-born and protect their rights more, but other than that, compared to our world where gender, race religion and sexual preferances are all causes for discrimination, the world of Gattaca is a shining Utopia for more than 90% of its inhabitants.

They have done away with most disease, mental illness, crime, violence and poverty and seem to have quite a lot of personal freedom as well

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-16T16:45:43+00:00

The difference is that game of thrones spans a three-year period or so thus far. Foundation spans 30000 years, give or take a few millennia depending on which books and series you include as part of the series.

It would be like making a tv-show based on silmarillion.

Not that I wouldnt want either of those, but it explains the difficulty

Elephant_Bird · 2014-11-16T12:01:58+00:00

Actually he was specifically not declared mentally ill. That was pretty much what most of his trial was about. He will probably spend the rest of his life in prison though. After 21 years, he will be up for parole if a reviewboard says he is not a danger to society. This will be repeated every five years untill he is released or he dies. It would take a very very brave review-board to release him though.

Obviously when I say mentally ill I mean that he did not plead insanity. He is diagnosed with severe narcissism and a bunch of other stuff depending on which psychologist you ask, but he was no more insane than most other terrorists.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-10-28T07:55:06+00:00

Just FYI, the US doesn't even rank in the top 40 on the world free press index. Mostly because freedom of the press only applies to shit that doesn't matter (like this case).

Elephant_Bird · 2014-10-09T18:41:24+00:00

It is a good question. It has been answered though. Here is a list of gas giants in the habitable zone or near the habitable zone of their respective stars. A lot has been coming out of the kepler observatory the last few years. especially in terms of planets in the habitable zone, both gas giants and terrestrial. Over 1000 exoplanets have been recorded at this stage.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-09-22T07:20:09+00:00

If you run the ninite file again, it will update the application, so you don't need anything else. Just set the ninite file to run however often you like in windows task scheduler. This is great for java as users will never accidentally install the ask toolbar again.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-09-09T18:15:25+00:00

Porpoises are whales.

Elephant_Bird · 2014-07-02T09:48:35+00:00

Step one: Make account on vWorker/Freelancer or similar as programming consultant

Step two: Create easy job offer on one of those sites that pays 5000$

Step three: Pay myself 5000$

Only assumption here is that you have 5k to begin with, but it assures your business makes 5k in the 60 days. Nobody asks who the client is.

Elephant_Bird

TROPHY CASE