E=mc2(b14)...

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 6:43 pm

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point,and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."

"unkown source"

mr smith

foamin' at the mouth · Post by **foamin' at the mouth** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 8:52 pm

mr smith,

sometimes you are truely inspired. Too bad I can't find the crush thread.

I guess it's time to free ouselves of our slide rule collections lest we get caught with them in hand.

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 12:02 am

Thanks Foam, ditto to you.

might as well be,
mr smith

foamin' at the mouth · Post by **foamin' at the mouth** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 8:47 am

Well, I was surfing Butterflies and Wheels this morning and came across
an essay by Steven Weinberg on physlink on Anthropic principles and a designer universe http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm. It just seemed I should pass it on. A philosophical timber in our vault of heaven perhaps?

Here is an excerpt:

In any such picture, in which the universe contains many parts with different values for what we call the constants of nature, there would be no difficulty in understanding why these constants take values favorable to intelligent life. There would be a vast number of big bangs in which the constants of nature take values unfavorable for life, and many fewer where life is possible. You don't have to invoke a benevolent designer to explain why we are in one of the parts of the universe where life is possible: in all the other parts of the universe there is no one to raise the question.3 If any theory of this general type turns out to be correct, then to conclude that the constants of nature have been fine-tuned by a benevolent designer would be like saying, 'Isn't it wonderful that God put us here on earth, where there's water and air and the surface gravity and temperature are so comfortable, rather than some horrid place, like Mercury or Pluto?' Where else in the solar system other than on earth could we have evolved?

Reasoning like this is called 'anthropic.' Sometimes it just amounts to an assertion that the laws of nature are what they are so that we can exist, without further explanation. This seems to me to be little more than mystical mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if there really is a large number of worlds in which some constants take different values, then the anthropic explanation of why in our world they take values favorable for life is just common sense, like explaining why we live on the earth rather than Mercury or Pluto. The actual value of the cosmological constant, recently measured by observations of the motion of distant supernovas, is about what you would expect from this sort of argument: it is just about small enough so that it does not interfere much with the formation of galaxies. But we don't yet know enough about physics to tell whether there are different parts of the universe in which what are usually called the constants of physics really do take different values. This is not a hopeless question; we will be able to answer it when we know more about the quantum theory of gravitation than we do now.

It would be evidence for a benevolent designer if life were better than could be expected on other grounds. To judge this, we should keep in mind that a certain capacity for pleasure would readily have evolved through natural selection, as an incentive to animals who need to eat and breed in order to pass on their genes. It may not be likely that natural selection on any one planet would produce animals who are fortunate enough to have the leisure and the ability to do science and think abstractly, but our sample of what is produced by evolution is very biased, by the fact that it is only in these fortunate cases that there is anyone thinking about cosmic design. Astronomers call this a selection effect.

The universe is very large, and perhaps infinite, so it should be no surprise that, among the enormous number of planets that may support only unintelligent life and the still vaster number that cannot support life at all, there is some tiny fraction on which there are living beings who are capable of thinking about the universe, as we are doing here. A journalist who has been assigned to interview lottery winners may come to feel that some special providence has been at work on their behalf, but he should keep in mind the much larger number of lottery players whom he is not interviewing because they haven't won anything. Thus, to judge whether our lives show evidence for a benevolent designer, we have not only to ask whether life is better than would be expected in any case from what we know about natural selection, but we need also to take into account the bias introduced by the fact that it is we who are thinking about the problem.

(sorry for giving you Weinberg's words when we are supposed to compose our own but I just thought it was so well stated I had to pass it on-off to more coffee now-foam)

stuart · Post by **stuart** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 11:02 am

that's all well and good, but how do I turn that into a mobile disco bar so that I can score?

foamin' at the mouth · Post by **foamin' at the mouth** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 11:09 am

that's all well and good, but how do I turn that into a mobile disco bar so that I can score?

Hehe, Talk like Weinberg as you hand out drinks and you can probably score, Stuart.

rodent · Post by **rodent** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:43 pm

E=MC Hammer

*duck*

---
rodent (putting the HEY... stop THROWING THINGS AT ME!!! in geek)

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 4:57 pm

DID YOU KNOW . . .

* that Albert Einstein was considered retarded, Isaac Newton was thought to be a slow learner, Joseph Priestly (the discoverer of oxygen) never took a science course, and Louis Pasteur got a C in chemistry.

* that in 1876 when G. G. Hubbard learned of his future son-in-law's invention, he called it "only a toy." This daughter was engaged to a young man named Alexander Graham Bell.

* that in 1969 the New York Times published an apology for once printing derisive comments about an inventor's theory. Robert Goddard was on the receiving end of the Time's criticism of his contention that rockets could operate in outer space. The apology was printed the day after Apollo 11 left earth orbit for the moon.

* that in the early 1940's a GE engineer was charged with a task of utmost importance to the war effort: develop a cheap substitute for rubber that would be used to produce tires, gas masks, and a whole host of military gear. James Wright tackled the task diligently -- and wound up inventing Silly Putty. Good thing he didn't work on the artificial heart.

* that neither Wilber nor Orville Wright graduated from high school. However, they were both avid readers.

* that Charles Goodyear began his experiments on rubber in a debtors' prison. He was there so often that he referred to it as his "hotel."

* that Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox thought TV was just a passing fancy. In 1946 he said, 'Video won't be able to hold any market after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

* that in the fall of 1989 the Cold Fusion panel of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the DOE concluded, "The panel recommends against special funding for the investigation of phenomena attributed to cold fusion."

squarely,
mr smith

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 6:31 pm

* that Albert Einstein was considered retarded,

One urban legend makes it into the mix.

Mithra · Post by **Mithra** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 12:50 am

E=mc3

My initials...which means my dad was E=mc2

Nothing wrong with being cubed.....

Mithra

robotland · Post by **robotland** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 9:55 am

E=MC5 (Kick out the jams, muthafuggas!)

Ranger Genius · Post by **Ranger Genius** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 1:37 pm

If that article by Weinberg struck your fancy, you should check out "The Blind Watchmaker," by Richard Dawkins. Even if you think you understand evolution and natural selection, unless you've read this book or one of his others, chances are you don't. I thought I had a firm grasp of the process, but I only understood the rudiments of modern evolutionary theory. It's a real eye-opener. In the book, Dawkins (see also Randi.org, the JREF) rips the 'Watchmaker Theorem,' as it is sometimes called, or 'Intelligent Design,' (See Penn and Teller: BULLSHIT!) a new asshole with biological and logical principles. He dedicates a fair portion of the book to the weak and strong anthropic principles, as well as a very enlightening section about the nature of belief and knowledge. His prose is very approachable and entertaining by any standards, much less for a book about biology. I recommend it very highly to anyone and everyone.

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Fri May 07, 2004 10:25 am

Speak to me Albert... Say something... it's me Bippy...

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/sound/voice1.au

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Mon May 10, 2004 4:58 pm

Researchers claim table-top fusion
With little more than acetone and sound waves in a beaker, researchers from the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the Russian Academy of Sciences claim to have seen nuclear fusion. Mindful of the cold-fusion episode of 1989, however, the scientific community is reserving judgement until the results have proved reproducible.

   This is the latest apparent manifestation of sonoluminescence, whereby light is emitted by bubbles collapsing in a liquid excited by sound. Observations of the light suggest that implosions provoked by high-frequency sound could create extremely high temperatures and pressures - high enough, perhaps, to lead to conditions that could fuse two atomic nuclei.
   The researchers used neutrons to induce the formation of bubbles in liquid acetone in which the hydrogen atoms had been replaced by deuterium. Sonoluminescence resulted in the observation of light accompanied by neutrons. Tiny quantities of tritium were also detected. The researchers hypothesized that nuclear fusion had occurred, since the neutrons had different energies from those used to induce bubble formation, and tritium is an expected by-product. When the experiments were repeated with hydrogenous acetone no tritium or neutrons were observed.

Harmonically,
mr smith

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Mon May 10, 2004 5:01 pm

Sorry here's the link.

http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/42/4/11

againly,
mr smith

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Thu May 20, 2004 7:28 pm

thought is faster than the speed of light
Where are the mosnters from the ID when you need them?

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:24 pm

If I vibrate faster than the speed of light, will I change diminsions?

"This keeps me up at night...."

harmonically,
mr smith

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:26 pm

Can you create energy from prayer?

probably,
mr smith

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:27 pm

If there is a "String". Can there be an "Anti-String"?

"Now I'm really confused."

most likely,
mr smith

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:32 pm

If I bombard Anti-Harmonics toward a pot of water molecules, can I keep it from boiling. Do you create anti-harmonics just from the simple act of watching the water molecules in the pot.

"Teacher, can I be excused, My brain is full..."

cosmically,
mr smith

Tiahaar · Post by **Tiahaar** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:02 pm

Last Real Burner wrote:Researchers claim table-top fusion
With little more than acetone and sound waves in a beaker, researchers from the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the Russian Academy of Sciences claim to have seen nuclear fusion.

Soooo...if I bring a gallon of acetone and set it in front of one of those 10000watt speaker towers at RaveRaveRave camp, provoke the DJ to cranking volume to 11+, could maybe a chain reaction end said camp's expressiveness?

Just kidding!!!!

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:07 pm

I dunno, but I have heard that the glow you can see from radioactive material submerged in water comes from particles traveling faster than the speed of light...

(Apparently, the speed of light is slower in water, which allows the particles to travel faster than the speed of light. Anyway, that is pretty much what I seem to recall.)

Anyway, I think I will stay away from acetone for the time being....

nipples · Post by **nipples** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:57 am

"just from the simple act of watching"
(Last Real Burner)

In Stephen Hawkings book "A Breif History of Time", there was mention (I do believe) on molecular affect of observation.

Also, my favorite part in that particualr book of Mr. Hawkings was (and I loaned it out! dang.... have to go from memory) something about the inconsequence of atoms themselves as stacked at any given time, that they are always the same. Dunno. I'll get the book back from JEFF the FUCK.

nipples · Post by **nipples** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:59 am

Anyways, head-butts to Hawkings, You FUCKER!!!!! You ROCK!

(yes you)

love always,

nipples

nipples · Post by **nipples** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:07 am

that there was no time
all is as has ever been

nipples · Post by **nipples** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:11 am

that there were no time
all is as has ever been
please stop bother me

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:14 am

E=MO(squared)

nipples · Post by **nipples** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:16 am

Master Hawkings' appears on the Lido Deck, from 11:30-1:00 everynight.[/list]

Last Real Burner · Post by **Last Real Burner** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 10:03 am

nipples wrote:Master Hawkings' appears on the Lido Deck, from 11:30-1:00 everynight.[/list]

Where?

the Lido Deck? What?

link, please or info.

cubedly,
mr smith

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:06 am

E=mc2(b14)...

..........Weapons of Math Destruction...

Ahheemmmm....

The Anthropic Principle with your morning coffee?

score?

Just the facts M'ame...

a recommendation

Hello...Hello....Albert is that you?....

I Smell A Themecamp....Prepare to Go Industrial Strength...

Sweeeet....

Hmmmm....

Hmmmm....

Anti-Thoughts...

Re: I Smell A Themecamp....Prepare to Go Industrial Strength

Stopping is part of the Equation of Falling...