Dungeon Master Forum

They think that the error might have made them underestimate the speed though, they were actually faster than originally thought.

Still, if there was an error like that I certainly would not trust the results yet.

(Edit: P.S. not sure what has happened to my avatar.)

oh_brother wrote:(Edit: P.S. not sure what has happened to my avatar.)

There's nothing wrong with it. Except it's hopelessly and pathetically slower than light of course but it has always been so meh.

My webspace has been temporarily locked out because I went over my space limit, and rather than actually just stopping the transfer of files due to space, it's far easier to instantly suspend my account.

So yeah, OB's avatar probably lives in cache and propigation right now, but is otherwise not available

Big hammer should do it! But I knew this would happen, timing errors!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... -GXO_urMow

it's a tech advancement, but I'm now thinking how this will impact study in science and in space as we're talking large displays with the ability to display what is seen far away. an interesting idea, especially if you mounted several cameras on the inside and outside of the shuttles and had that info projected back onto screens where you would have a larger number of people than could fit in the shuttle actually participate.

"In this case it enhances it [the landscape]."

:facepalm:

Call me stupid, but as a teacher I prefer the old good chalk and a blackboard. And if I use the digital projector, I always turn the "interactive" part off. I also use a wooden stick to show things on the screen - a device that I call "a wooden laser." All this modern technology is killing the content (as gen. Stanley McChrystal said, the Powerpoint has killed the art of presentation). Well, this, or I'm simply getting old.

well, teaching in a digital medium, I can not escape it obviously.. however, because we record each and every class via a mic and the movement on the screen, we find that student retention is much higher than when we just wrote on the board in the past.. however, this is only true when the revisit those videos.. this leads to a lot of comments like "did you watch the videos" when answering questions in class

Honestly though, with this process, we've also limited the amount of one on one time within class to those who simply don't understand, as opposed to those who didn't hear, or weren't paying attention, or late.. or missed class.. etc. This makes us tonnes more efficient in our teaching. An additional element to all of this tech is when we have a few schools branching out to the outer areas of the community where students find the commute difficult and can not find accomodations closer. We find these schools offering online classes where students log in to a domain and see a webcam and screen cam image of what's being done in class and the teacher can take over their screen and help them.. if you were to enhance that to a point where you can see their whole body as well as the ability to transfer screens and so on.. you can communicate more effectively.. the only thing that can't be done this way is purely physical. For example, it's unlikely that martial arts would be taught this way

Anyway, I'm 38 now.. I'm positive this direction provides a lot of potential in enhancing learning.. and so I doubt your "too old" excuse works Just a matter of different views

I think that from a point of what you teach, something like google earth should be highly valuable as a tool. I mean, while forcing ones imagination to work for them can be good.. if they do it for everything the won't have any worldly knowledge to ground it in. If a person runs through a text book describing every type of stone and dirt sample in existence.. it's unlikely that when he get's out into the field he'll be as well trained as someone who has worked virtually with such materials. to be able to see them, and see how they change rather than simply read about it. Those kids learning about dinosaurs in their "natural" environment is a great tool to make them have fun (increases interest and thus retention) and if such info was accurate, if they were to have a time machine and go back they would be considerably more prepared

Well, of course you're right, Cows! We also use cameras to record our lectures and put them on the intranet for the students, I also try to use the various "new media" and keep in touch with the development etc.

I was only trying to say that:

1. Certain people around me tend to concentrate / rely too much on technology and various gadget finesses; whereas the content, the substance, the matter itself is pushed to the background and sometimes even vanishes.

The key, as usually, is in finding the balance between the subject and the form. But of course it always depends on how you teach, whom (and how many students and how old) do you teach, and what (subject) do you teach.

2. The "landscape enhancement" sentence in that video really made me mad, so perhaps I overreacted. Sorry for that - I sounded more one-sided that I wanted and really am.

well, rather than get mad at their enhancement, think of what they could have done from your point of view that would have shown the students more information, like cross sections of trees, pattern recognition to name those trees and other local flora and fauna. the ability to press a button to slide through layers of earth below them to know if the land they are on is more rock or more clay.. how many meters down is it.. etc. Doesn't have to be dinosaurs imagine geographical studies and information linked and downloaded via sattelite and gps positioning

it was a toss up to put this in cool vids or science.. but this won out.. I loved the whole Ted talks relating to this wireless transfer of power.. here's a demo of similar type but with a twist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnqdL1ZF6kI

Interesting stuff, you have to admire the passion of someone to spend so much time with that (especially since he is a student and it directly relates to his course).

When I saw this thread bumped I thought it was about the Higgs boson. Seems like they finally found that one (though I doubt it would have received quite as much coverage if someone had not called it the "God particle").

Well, the question is what we do with this higgs boson info.. does it lead to new power sources? replicator technology? (free food for everyone ) are we heading towards a star trek kind of future? or will someone use it to make a better bomb

did everyone watch the landing of the "curiosity" last night? or this morning depending on your time zones

I start to think as we go boldly towards the future, and all the exciting things ahead of us, about the things we've also lost. What have we left behind that maybe should not have been left?

There is an interesting episode of farscape where john breaks into 3, one more advanced in evolutional terms and one far regressed.. and of course current time.. The found with intelligence a lack of compassion was present, and with lack of intelligence more compassion and even over all more passion and emotion was present. It's a flight of fancy I know and don't know that gaining of intelligence means that we lack in compassion.. but certainly we do get very busy and don't "stop and smell the roses" as we did.. many parents look to others to raise their children for them as they go off to work and earn, earn, earn... then being exhausted from the day barely interact with their child.

Also on an evolutionary scale, we've lost a few bits and bobs as well... though they sometimes come back and say hello in the random person. I for example have had a cyst where there used to be a functioning scent gland.. and so it became again a functioning scent gland.. I had it removed because well.. it's not needed.. i don't need to mark my territory, and I don't need a specific.. smell I also have excellent night vision.. I don't think of this as an advancement evolutionarily.. but rather a regression to a time when humans didn't work by the light of a thousand street lights.. of candles.. night vision is needed. Many friends had the appendix cut out because it went wrong.. but this organ was supposed to help us digest heavy plant materials.. so we could eat barks and such.. and really.. why don't we have recipies that contain bark? why didn't we keep the ruffage as part of our diets.. so much to the point that we evolved to disclude it's use.

When we send these people out to mars, and over each generation... what will they lose? what will they gain? How will we evolve and will we lose something we need? How will society evolve.. will it be an us against them sort of emotion towards those who live off planet and those who keep to their roots on earth?

I wonder..

I would strongly disagree with farscape if it implies that intelligence reduces compassion - if anything I would imagine it is the opposite. Advances in reason can wipe out superstitions and dogmas - things which have tended in the past to inflict pain on others (e.g. witch hunts, human or animal sacrifices, treating mentally ill as "possessed" rather than just in need of help, etc.). Having a more reasonable, or enlightened, society would have to be good for the inhabitants.

As for advances in society making us all more busy, perhaps that is true to an extent. Maybe people are more caught up in work than they were in the recent past (not sure about this, but maybe). But legislation is brought in to make work hours more manageable, working conditions have minimum standards, and I would imagine that people have more free time than they did during the industrial revolution or beforehand.

That is not to say that all progress is good, and for everything you gain you tend to lose something else. But I don't think there ever was a golden era when people could enjoy life and not worry about work. Just swapping one set of worries for another, hopefully easier to handle, set.

As the fate of future colonies on Mars...I don't know. Maybe it would end up like the USA breaking off from Britain: they would have a revolution and declare independence from the US, or China, or whoever.

Very wise words, Brother! I agree almost completely.

Except, of course, that we always have to be extra careful about "Having a more reasonable, or enlightened, society would have to be good for the inhabitants" because it very much depends on the definition of "reasonable" and "enlightened" - sometimes it's more complicated (see e.g. Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" with the totalitarian regimes and their atrocities being a result of an efficient "modernity"). But generally I do agree.

Re free time: broadly and very generally speaking, historically the amount of free time has followed (with many regional, social, gender, seasonal and other differences) a "U" curve, with hunters and gatherers having basically a lot of "free" time ("working" only a few hours a day), agricultural and industrial societies only a little free time (European medieval farmers working more than 10 hours a day, 6 days a week; similarly, in industrialising societies, e.g. in Europe in the 19th century, the factory workers would work for more than 10 or 12 hours a day, 6 days a week) and an increasing amount of free time in "post-industrial societies" (workload 35 to 40 hours a week; with many exceptions of course).

Okay, yeah, "reasonable" is very broad, and means different things to different people. I don't have a good definition, but...I don't know, when I say reasonable I mean people basing their opinions on evidence not authority (from religion/tradition/government or similar), and so no discrimination against different races, equal rights for women, no stigma attached to things like homosexuality, and so on. And in the modern world these things have improved, I would say in part because of advances in evidence-based reasoning. Not saying that the modern world is great, we still do lots and lots of things wrong, and we still do equality wrong, but we do it far less wrong than they did in the past. Or as they currently do in less "advanced" societies.

Interesting about the U-curve. I guessed industrial and agrarian societies would have been working long hours, I didn't know that hunter-gatherers had it so easy!

oh_brother wrote:I didn't know that hunter-gatherers had it so easy!

Well, this "so easy" living included also very high mortality rate and (hence) very low life expectancy + empty stomach too often for my taste. Although, mortality rates were even higher in later agricultural societies (higher densities of population, poor sanitation, living closely to animals, etc.).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2qPWc32 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Xp6c-EvqY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_mLumx-6Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu0WmR4n-t0
cyborgs?

or robots?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en ... bjP_0&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ySljCcn ... re=related

Or perhaps a mix.. here's your new pet plane? just remember to hide the cheese factories..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXncJZCMog0

It's so rare to find and exobiological article that is not full of ignorance or devoid of imagination that this one is worth mentioning: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/3615/full

nice

Fascinating article. I would say that it is likely that life is out there, perhaps in lots of places. With the estimates used in the Drake equation, it was thought that there could be thousands of advanced civilizations out there (capable of using radio), never mind less advanced cultures or animal or primitive life. Really makes you think...when you look up at the stars, maybe there are some that are shining on alien civilizations.

"The four universal Fs of evolution are fur, photosynthesis, flight and…mating!"

Hehehe!

practical science.. but yet no.. we won't use that.. because our ignorant non-adapting rule system says so..
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-math-profe ... atent.html

However one of our provinces is talking about reproducing niagra falls.. for more clean energy.. goodness knows what that will do to local ecosystems though..

This article about curved mirror is BS.

Not impressed by maths, 101 physics lecture , optics for dummies. Nothing new about wide angle, a questionable US patent.

Facts: I happened to drive a car with such a curved side mirror. Never again. Much unsafe because "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." and eye fatigue.

I am glad to know: "In the United States, regulations dictate that cars coming off of the assembly line must have a flat mirror on the driver's side.".

As others have noted, it may remove the blind spot and give a wider field of view, but it's unsafe due to distance compression.

Do you want to see more stuff that looks further away, or see less stuff more accurately?

I agree. Anything that gives a distorted view of what's happening is not good imo.

apparently people just looked at the image and didn't actually read.. It offers minimal distortion. That silver car *IS* really far away.. this is not making things zoom way out.. it's just offering a greater viewing angle. This allows you to see more. Look at the image again carefully.. it's pretty impressive.

"It's not hard to make a curved mirror that gives a wider field of view – no blind spot – but at the cost of visual distortion and making objects appear smaller and farther away. Hicks's driver's side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver's side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks's mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable"

This said, I also hate that people seem to enjoy seeing half their car in their side view mirror instead of using it to see the traffic. You should BARELY see your car in your side view.

Is there any information why the meteor did explode with such power?

cowsmanaut wrote:apparently people just looked at the image and didn't actually read.. It offers minimal distortion. That silver car *IS* really far away.. this is not making things zoom way out.. it's just offering a greater viewing angle. This allows you to see more. Look at the image again carefully.. it's pretty impressive.

"It's not hard to make a curved mirror that gives a wider field of view – no blind spot – but at the cost of visual distortion and making objects appear smaller and farther away. Hicks's driver's side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver's side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks's mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable"

This said, I also hate that people seem to enjoy seeing half their car in their side view mirror instead of using it to see the traffic. You should BARELY see your car in your side view.

I did read the article. I also looked at the image closely and made my own decision based on what I saw. There may be less distortion then a traditional curved mirror, but there is still significant distance distortion based on what I saw. So it still comes down to you get a wider viewing angle at the expense of smaller reflections in the mirror. It comes down to simple physics. A wider field of view on the same sized viewing area means the objects appearing in the viewing area must be smaller, and thus closer then they appear by definition, otherwise that wider field of view could not possibly fit into the viewing surface.

Is there any information why the meteor did explode with such power?

Not that I'm aware, but it makes sense. An object of the size of that meteor entering our atmosphere as fast as it was would be releasing a tremendous amount of energy, and displacing a lot of air, so it makes sense that all that displaced air and released energy would produce quite a substantial shock wave, which is essentially what an explosion is. Once again Hollywood gets it wrong when it comes to where the danger comes from when a large, fast moving object from space enters our atmosphere comes from. The direct impace and crater is far from the only danger from such an object, the shock wave it generates is very hazardous and damaging, as the Ural Mountains meteor demonstrated quite well.

A meteor's speed is measured in miles per second, and the core is of cold from being in space. So breaking apart with such force is probably to be expected given such rapid changes in the surface and core temperatures going through our atmosphere. And indeed, my understanding was that the significant amount of the damage was actually from the shockwave happening in such a desnsely populated centre rather than anything else.

The fact that there is at least one object falling from space every day is quite scary when you realise there is a lottery's chance of it hitting something!