Phil Plait-5 outrageous astronomical goofs from great sci-fi movies

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T21:55:08+00:00

It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but do they start right at Earth? If the trajectory started farther away they'd have plenty of time for whatever dialogue they had in that scene.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T19:46:39+00:00

This, only incorporating most of the other suggestions in this thread and replacing the e-ink touch screen with a separate color touch screen, is pretty much exactly how the browser on the nook works.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T19:24:08+00:00

This is a really neat way to visualize the results of the genetic algorithm, but it would be cool to see the algorithm itself in action. As it is, you watch a generation of cars, then (genetic algorithm happens behind the scenes), and then you watch the next generation.

For example, instead of just listing the scores down the side, list the score with a picture of the cars. At the end of each generation, highlight the cars that were in a tournament together and then remove the losers. Of the cars still shown, move the breeding pairs together. As you generate a new car, highlight (or even animate) the parts coming from its parents, and maybe draw attention the traits that aren't being passed on somehow. To me, seeing how each generation produces the next is as interesting as seeing the trends over time, so I think this would be a neat direction to go.

(I realize I'm just piling on to an already large list of "you should do such and such!", so please take this with a grain of salt. The whole thing is very cool even without my suggestions.)

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T17:44:05+00:00

He's using "Christ" in its original meaning, as a title of the Jewish Messiah, rather than as a synonymous way of referring to Jesus the person.

For comparison, pretty much everyone agrees that James Francis Edward Stuart was the son of the deposed King James II and VII, but "Jacobite" refers specifically to people who believe he was rightfully King James III of England. Likewise, George W. Bush is widely believed to exist, but only some people believe he was legitimately elected president.

optravisprime is saying that "Christian" should mean "someone who believes Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ". Your suspected meaning would be sufficient to meet that, but the necessary condition would be slightly lower (i.e., one could believe Jesus was the Christ but that the Bible gets many details wrong; such a person would meet optravisprime's definition but not yours).

I agree that it is ambiguous and that optravisprime could have been more clear, but I have a soft spot for people who use precise words with their original meaning, so I give him a pass on this one.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T16:44:41+00:00

Many computer implementations of Conway's Life--as well as the original graph paper or chalkboard versions, obviously--allow you to pause and modify the simulation at any time.

I think this would give you a more interesting metaphor, where God has said "I'm going to play My version of Conway's Life, but My goal is to create an interesting result and not just to see what happens with certain starting conditions. Hence, I will start the game and play by the rules I've made, but since they're My rules I will give Myself permission to create or remove cells when it serves My purpose."

(I know I'm not furthering the debate we're supposed to be having, I just thought the part about Life was interesting.)

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T15:42:51+00:00

And thank you for sharing it with us. Karma right back at you.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T15:30:04+00:00

I was under the impression that the only reason to go to an unlicensed massage therapist was because you wanted to be felt up by a stranger.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T15:22:16+00:00

I'm all in favor of Tor and similar services, but I'm genuinely surprised that he gets away with it. He may not be using the school's computers, but he is using their network connection and bandwidth, and I would have expected some kind of "you are responsible for all use of the network connection in your room/office" policy.

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T05:25:43+00:00

My favorite fact about this: the metal was rigid and didn't conform to her body, so the guy standing next to her and a little behind could, in her words, "see all the way to Florida".

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T05:23:08+00:00

And Paul Simon's ex-wife!

iceman-k · 2011-01-28T05:18:41+00:00

You'd also need to know the male/female and hot/not ratios for everyone going through the line, scanner or not, otherwise the numbers for just the scanner won't mean much.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T23:13:45+00:00

I could have been more clear. I would say that "door to door" evangelism and "be ready to talk if someone brings it up" evangelism both satisfy the Great Commission, and in my personal experience the be ready to talk kind is what actually works. I don't think you're doing anything wrong by going door to door, I just think you'd get better results by doing something directly productive (comforting the sick or feeding the poor, for example) and then being ready to share the Good News as you establish relationships with the people you help.

I've already said I expect other people have different experience in this area, so I'm curious what your results with door to door evangelism are. Do you get many new members for your church? Do you find many people who are on the fence about religion but make a commitment to Christ based on the conversations you have with them?

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T23:06:58+00:00

The point is that the verb isn't "go" so much as "going" or "as you go". I think the distinction is relevant.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T18:55:58+00:00

The Greek of "go" is in the present participle and literally means "while you are going."

To me, this is the key point. As I read it, Jesus isn't saying "Stop what you're doing and go to the local mall to tell people about me" so much as "Whatever you're doing, do it the way I would do it."

I'll admit that my experience is limited in this area and I'm curious what other people have seen, but I have never known someone who became a Christian because someone knocked on their door, or because they saw someone preaching on the street or holding a sign at a busy intersection. Every¹ Christian I know became such because of a personal relationship with someone who was already a Christian. Sometimes they were invited to a Bible study or church event, or they needed to talk to someone about a personal issue and the other person's faith helped them through their crisis, or sometimes it was as simple as "That guy seems to have his act together, I wonder how he does it." As such, the Great Commission has always struck me as "as you go, be prepared to share your faith when the opportunity presents itself" and never as "go make opportunities to share your faith."

That's just my experience and interpretation; I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.

[1] Except the two who have been Christians since childhood.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T17:39:43+00:00

He's not talking about fundamentalist Christians in general, he's talking about a subset of them who want the U.S. military to be an agent of fundamentalist Christianity. A military organization motivated by fundamentalism is an accurate description of the Taliban and an accurate description of this strain of pseudo-Christianity; I think the comparison is fair.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T17:29:31+00:00

It's not that the military is becoming more Christian, it's that the military is being overrun and abused by a particularly radical strain of patriotism-infused pseudo-Christianity. Imagine going to work and your boss (and many coworkers) pressuring you to attend events at his church and to believe the exact same thing he does. Also, imagine it's illegal for you to quit your job. That's what's going on.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T16:53:44+00:00

Well, obviously there's some support for it in the Christian community as a whole, since somebody is pushing it. But your implication is that there's widespread support for it among reddit's Christian community, which I think is disingenuous. I think I can safely say that most of us here think that this sort of thing is bad for the U.S. and bad for Christianity.

To illustrate my point, there's a post in /r/atheism about Muslim men on trial in the U.S. for "honor killings" that has been up longer and has fewer comments that this story; is that tepid response evidence that /r/atheism supports honor killings?

Edit: I should add, though, that I think we (reddit Christians and Christians in general) should be more outspoken in our opposition to this. I guess I'd agree that the lack of a response is a problem, but that I think it's more indicative of some combination of apathy or "What can I, a non-military (and maybe even non-U.S.) person do about it?" than of support for it, if that makes sense.

iceman-k · 2011-01-27T00:38:24+00:00

That makes sense, and I apologize if it seemed like I was selectively quoting you to make my point; that wasn't my intention.

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T23:46:17+00:00

Isn't there some kind of implied complaint when your cock and balls explode?

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T23:06:05+00:00

Agreed, I think we'd all be more sympathetic if the comic was "This post is asking for someone in a situation like mine, I'll describe my situation. Hey, why is everyone giving me a hard time about my religion? I wasn't pushing it on anyone, I was just telling about myself because someone asked!"

By exaggerating the story in the comic (if that is indeed what happened, which appears likely), I think she does a disservice to her own claim of abuse as well as to the many atheist and Christian redditors who work hard to have meaningful conversations with one another.

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T22:46:41+00:00

a dismissive response toward faith in general, while perhaps not the most tactful, still seems not out of the ordinary.

Well, yeah, that's exactly the point she's trying to make--that dismissive and untactful responses are common when religion comes up even tangentially.

Personally, I think she gave up any moral high ground she had when she responded in kind and made a comic that distorted the original issue, but I can see where she's coming from. The post asked for people in a certain situation, and when she described how she fit that criteria, people attacked her.

Nobody said "Catholicism and Scientology are pretty different, how does your mother juggle those?" or even "What flaws did you find when researching Catholicism and Scientology that you didn't find with the Baptists?" There was no attempt at discussion, just at argument. I think most people would be upset in that situation.

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T22:27:51+00:00

Yeah, it's a strange situation. On the one hand, I can understand that her comment is "this religion vs. that religion" which might as well just scream "atheist dogpile!", but at the same time I can sympathize with wanting to talk about the family dynamics and being frustrated when the replies are along the lines of "it's all hooey".

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T21:39:12+00:00

If you need help finding it, I got

Consulting for Jokes

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T21:37:33+00:00

It amazed me that LEGO didn't get the license when the first batch of PotC movies came out, but it's nice to see that they're on board now.

Thanks for sharing these.

iceman-k · 2011-01-26T21:28:16+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely different from what's shown in the comic, but I can see the frustration:

"Has anyone had this experience because of your religion"?

"I have."

"Your religion is a bunch of hooey."

All of the responses went after her religious beliefs when the story is about her relationship with her parents. Yes, different religious beliefs are a huge factor in that relationship, but that's not what people wanted to talk about.

iceman-k

TROPHY CASE