Random Information

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:53 pm

Gee, I thought that we were supposed to do hit and runs here--you know odd fact and kapow off to another thread. But ti's taken on a life of it's own.

Nightterror · Post by **Nightterror** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:54 pm

Hey we gave you NAFTA - show some appreciation.

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:56 pm

Well, it's sort of become a place to throw something out that you don't quite think warrants its own thread. A much-needed asset.

Nightterror · Post by **Nightterror** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:03 pm

liquidating corporations that distribute installment obligations to shareholders in exchange for stock must currently recognize gain or loss from the distribution.

bullD · Post by **bullD** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:10 pm

two trips to the world famous San Rafael dumps yesterday cost me $135.00. I did however gain a nice layering of dust on my truck and self.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:16 pm

bullD wrote: the world famous San Rafael dumps

Prey tell, on what does the fame rest?

It's not designed by someone famous like the marin civic center, is it?

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:19 pm

There's a state park here called "Mount Trashmore." It's really only a 100-ft or so hill, but mountainous compared to the surrounding terrain..It's an old dump that's been covered with dirt. Heh, heh.

sparkletarte · Post by **sparkletarte** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:28 pm

Friday Freakouts tend to be a common occurance on message boards, at least ones I've been on. Coincidence?

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:30 pm

After 40 hours of working for "the man" our brains are jello. Until we fortify them with tequila. Or Play-Doh.

bullD · Post by **bullD** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:34 pm

theCryptofishist wrote:
bullD wrote: the world famous San Rafael dumps
Prey tell, on what does the fame rest?

It's not designed by someone famous like the marin civic center, is it?

conservationists, recyclers, dump owners, the whole lot from around the world come to see this dump because they do an amazing job with recycling. The place has been written up in many famous periodicals and newspapers because of it.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 2:40 pm

bullD wrote:
theCryptofishist wrote:
bullD wrote: the world famous San Rafael dumps
Prey tell, on what does the fame rest?

It's not designed by someone famous like the marin civic center, is it?
conservationists, recyclers, dump owners, the whole lot from around the world come to see this dump because they do an amazing job with recycling. The place has been written up in many famous periodicals and newspapers because of it.

One write up

Patience · Post by **Patience** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:04 pm

My taint itches.

bullD · Post by **bullD** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:45 pm

theCryptofishist wrote:
bullD wrote:
theCryptofishist wrote:Prey tell, on what does the fame rest?

It's not designed by someone famous like the marin civic center, is it?
conservationists, recyclers, dump owners, the whole lot from around the world come to see this dump because they do an amazing job with recycling. The place has been written up in many famous periodicals and newspapers because of it.
One write up

he he he, nice. and the not so famous...

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:18 pm

Patience wrote:My taint itches.

Hmm, I only know ONE other person that calls his perineum his "taint". Is that you?

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:25 pm

My opinion:

Corporations are the newest form of life. They are not formed of DNA, but pure thought, and they live off of DNA based life forms. They will take all DNA based life forms and reduce them to 'profit', which to the Corporation, is food. They will consume all life. They take their parasites (often called 'employees') and use them until they are unusable, and then discard them. They mainly produce waste and poison, however, they can be considered a life form.

Until something better comes along to supplant them, they will continue to thrive, until they consume all of the resources on this planet...

IMHO

gigglesnort · Post by **gigglesnort** » Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:08 am

It's the last weekend of deer season in arkansas. Markansas is continuing his mission to take down enough meat to feed himself through til next fall, when it opens up again.

Ha! the beau hunts with a bow.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 12:40 am

This is JUST fucking amazing.

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:48 pm

Yup... fucking amazing... and yet there are those that would call this 'junk' science... simply because they cannot accept that such things as 'emotions' can be measured the same way that heartbeats can...

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:49 pm

I wrote to ask if an egg could be placed at the event. No response yet.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:51 pm

I would have called it junk too ... if Princeton wasn't involved.

samtzu · Post by **samtzu** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:53 pm

geekster wrote:I would have called it junk too ... if Princeton wasn't involved.

I'm hip... it sounds like they are not trying to skew the data, but to actually gather accurate data... and I have an egg or two I would like to get in there...

But, then again, the I Ching was developed about three-four thousand years ago to do the same thing... if applied properly...

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 12:00 am

samtzu wrote:Yup... fucking amazing... and yet there are those that would call this 'junk' science... simply because they cannot accept that such things as 'emotions' can be measured the same way that heartbeats can...

I think I am one of them, it is really hard for me to agree this is plausable... interesting, yes.

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 12:04 am

samtzu wrote:My opinion:

Corporations are the newest form of life. They are not formed of DNA, but pure thought, and they live off of DNA based life forms. They will take all DNA based life forms and reduce them to 'profit', which to the Corporation, is food. They will consume all life. They take their parasites (often called 'employees') and use them until they are unusable, and then discard them. They mainly produce waste and poison, however, they can be considered a life form.

Until something better comes along to supplant them, they will continue to thrive, until they consume all of the resources on this planet...

IMHO

sounds like my television

joel the ornery · Post by **joel the ornery** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:18 am

Razor

So far, the biggest business story of 2005 is Procter & Gamble's 57 billion dollar acquisition of Gillete. What in the world are they getting for that amount? Well, from an engineers viewpoint, if you'll pardon the pun, they're getting the cutting edge in razor technology.

The Edge razor developed by Gillette about ten years ago is a technological marvel that cost three-quarters of a billion dollars to develop. Here's the story.

For a long time razors used only two blades, but manufacturers quested for the holy grail of a three-bladed razor because it cuts more hair, yet doesn't irritate the skin. Sounds simple, but it really is very high tech engineering.

It started with an engineer building a special microscope to magnify freshly shaved chins forty times - a microscope outfitted with a laser for measuring the amount of hair cut by each razor stroke. Using this info Gillette engineers wrote a computer program to model shaving, which let them test out new razor designs.

They learned how a razor works: As it strokes the chin it makes the skin bulge, forcing hairs up and out. The blade catches a hair, pulls it up, and slices through it, after which the hair starts to retract.

In a two bladed razor, the second blade catches the hair before it can retract fully, and cuts it again. Using their computer the engineers could see that a third blade would cut about 40% more hair - but that this extra blade would get too close and tear the skin slightly.

They discovered that by tipping the third blade at an angle to the other two blades it would cut the hair, but not tear the skin. This in turn presented a problem: How to pack all three blades into a compact razor.

They tried making the blades thinner, but they become too fragile, to the point where a hair would actually break or blunt the edge. So, they used a high-tech diamond coating for the blades, making them stronger than steel and able to cut hair better than anything else in the world.

To coat the blades they created a special factory with an environment cleaner than any surgery ward.

This cost about three quarters of billion dollars - all that to make a simple razor that you buy for just a few dollars. Its quite a technological feat. Small wonder, the great investor Warren Buffett - and a major holder of Gillette stock - called Proctor & Gamble's acquisition "a dream deal" that'll create the "greatest consumer-products company in the world."

Copyright 2005 William S. Hammack Enterprises

Rabbi Dali Rick · Post by **Rabbi Dali Rick** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:34 am

geekster wrote:This is JUST fucking amazing.

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649#121

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

I do something similar to this using my balls. I been trying to get local scientist to investigate and get some hands on experience with this odd testicular phenonoma .

ballsy,
the rebbi

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:53 am

Rabbi Dali Rick wrote: I do something similar to this using my balls. I been trying to get local scientist to investigate and get some hands on experience with this odd testicular phenonoma .

ballsy,
the rebbi

I just hope you never have an "out of body" experiance.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:56 am

samtzu wrote:My opinion:

Corporations are the newest form of life. They are not formed of DNA, but pure thought, and they live off of DNA based life forms. They will take all DNA based life forms and reduce them to 'profit', which to the Corporation, is food. They will consume all life. They take their parasites (often called 'employees') and use them until they are unusable, and then discard them. They mainly produce waste and poison, however, they can be considered a life form.

Until something better comes along to supplant them, they will continue to thrive, until they consume all of the resources on this planet...

IMHO

Pretty scarey metaphor.

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:58 pm

Well, this is interesting.

Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
by Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David
from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. 1999 Dec Vol 77(6) 1121-1134

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

Doesn't remind you of anyone around here, does it?

spectabillis · Post by **spectabillis** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:03 am

Ranger Genius wrote:... Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.

So 62nd is the high end and 12th is low. This was confusing for me because I remember so many pscyhe analysis' base the scale as 12th being the top 12th percentage and not the bottom... on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being highest and not 10.

Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Seems a pretty straight-foreward conclusion, for most people I would replace 'metacognitive' with 'introspection' or 'self-reflection.' But I understand the target audience is for professional medical experts well versed in the terminology.

Any chance you remember the link for this?[/quote]

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 5:16 am

Unfortunately, the link I was given for the actual study is broken, but maybe a hunt would be fruitful. I got the link complements of James Randi's weekly update at the JREF. It's here: http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/77/6/1121. I should have put it with the original post. My bad. Metacognition is a more specific term than either of the two you suggested. It refers to the ability to understand one's self. I think the closest you'd get in layman is "self-discernment."

And percentile means "percentage of scores at or below." So if you get the 12th percentile, twelve percent of people who take the test score at or below the level you did. So 95th percentile means ninety-five percent score at or below, five percent score higher. It's a fairly standard method of measuring relative scores.