The Official Cool Stuff Thread
-
They made a breakthrough in fluid dynamics relatively recently (past few years IIRC). Basically, things can be described in terms of attractors and anti-attractors (i.e., things that become attractors when you run everything backwards). It apparently simplifies thinking about things a lot.
Still needs lots of compute power. ;)
-
-
-
Some places will publish anything as long as the fee has been paid, and other places (think oil company house journal) are naturally more receptive to people pushing the anti-AGW line.
Got any sort of a reference about the oil company house journal? I see a lot of whining about nefarious oil company funding of whatever boogeyman warmists conjure up, but never anything that can be backed up.
That said, skydragons (i.e., guys who deny the "greenhouse effect" are nuts).
Isn't the entire point of peer-reviewed research that it gets published in a place where people can review it and then after the reviewing process someone can decide whether it's a valid result or not?
Heh...good one.
-
Got any sort of a reference about the oil company house journal? I see a lot of whining about nefarious oil company funding of whatever boogeyman warmists conjure up, but never anything that can be backed up.
No, can't be bothered. (I don't like reading academic literature that much, even with the excellent help of Google Scholar, and today was a heavy day.) That would be more of an example of something where you'd have to be very careful because the people publishing there are very unlikely to be neutral, whether deliberately or accidentally.
It's the “publish anything” places that are the real bottom feeders, the natural homes of blowhards, axe-grinders and pseudo-scientific kooks, since the only quality control is based on ability to pay the (usually hefty) fees. Only self-publishing is below that, and then only by a whisker.
-
It's the “publish anything” places that are the real bottom feeders
Oh, yes. I totally agree with that.
No, can't be bothered. (I don't like reading academic literature that much, even with the excellent help of Google Scholar, and today was a heavy day.) That would be more of an example of something where you'd have to be very careful because the people publishing there are very unlikely to be neutral, whether deliberately or accidentally.
Yeah, no one can ever be bothered. I don't blame you. Though I think some of the big names have some explaining to do, too. But it's especially amusing to have various people who haven't toed the line accused of taking oil money or whatever. Except for the part where some people believe the accusations, of course.
-
Though I think some of the big names have some explaining to do, too. But it's especially amusing to have various people who haven't toed the line accused of taking oil money or whatever. Except for the part where some people believe the accusations, of course.
It's not that vast a problem, really. The scientists that the oil companies are most closely involved with are geologists — who basically won't be interested in global warming until it's laid down a rock stratum or two in a million years or so — and the scientists who really care about it are the atmospheric scientists, ecologists and agronomists. Of them, the agronomists are heavily industry funded, but a totally different industry :) the atmospheric scientists get a lot of military money, and the ecologists usually scrape by on government cash (as govts are the organizations most interested in what they're doing, for things like invasive species control, biosafety, long-term food security, that sort of thing).
None of this is really all that surprising when you get right down to it.
-
It's not that vast a problem, really.
The bigger problem is that people put too much trust into "peer review" and that it's so important to careers. And the literature is too invested in novel stuff and not interested in negative results or replication. And awash in shitty statistics.
-
And awash in shitty statistics.
Everyone and his dog can ask a stats package to find a curve that best fits some data.
SomeMost of what they come up with when they do that is utter BS but their magic stats box tells them that they've got a correlation so it must be correct!Journalists make scientists look smart and careful with their data.
-
their magic stats box tells them that they've got a correlation
http://i.imgur.com/xqOt9mP.png
http://i.imgur.com/q54sO25.png
http://i.imgur.com/OfQYQW8.png
http://i.imgur.com/wuFRozj.png
http://i.imgur.com/PRJk5Ql.png
http://i.imgur.com/RnhEX7v.png
http://i.imgur.com/wn53pb1.png
-
Wait, 700 people per year in the US die by becoming tangled in bedsheets? And the number is increasing?! And I'm in bed and near the US?!!
-
Good as dead. I can haz your stuffs?
-
OVER MY DEAD BOD...wait
-
Wait, 700 people per year in the US die by becoming tangled in bedsheets?
Sheet control NOW!
-
How the hell do you die from becoming tangled in bedsheets?
Unless they're tangled round your neck.
-
How the hell do you die from becoming tangled in bedsheets?
I imagine it's largely infants or very old people.
Unless they're tangled round your neck.
Yep, that's what I'd imagine.
-
house is on fire, get tangled in bedsheets in the panic, burn to death
Eating in bed, goes down the wrong way, try to get help, tangled in bedsheets, can't reach Heimlich machine
Get out of bed, tangled in sheets, trip and hit head on bedside table
-
Everyone and his dog can ask a stats package to find a curve that best fits some data. Some Most of what they come up with when they do that is utter BS but their magic stats box tells them that they've got a correlation so it must be correct!
Which is why I pity @Mikael_Svahnberg now....
Journalists make scientists look smart and careful with their data.
You would think it would be easy pickings for Journalists to do that... perhaps (some) of your journalists are better than here.
I had* to point out to a journo in Hawaii that "knots/hour"[1] made no sense...to his credit, he responded: "Oh! I didn't know that - thanks!"
*yes, I know, trying to fix the internet... "I am Don Quixote!..."
EDIT:
[1] Sigh "in the context of writing about the velocity of a boat"
-
He didn't talk about acceleration?
-
Got any sort of a reference about the oil company house journal? I see a lot of whining about nefarious oil company funding of whatever boogeyman warmists conjure up, but never anything that can be backed up.
People who complain about industry-funded studies tend to forget that power corrupts science just as surely as money, and power disguised as Doing the Right Thing corrupts even more surely.
[It looks like you guys hanzo'ed this point already, but I like the way I wrote it so I'm posting it anyway.]
-
Which is why I pity @Mikael_Svahnberg now....
I appreciate the pity, but I also happen to agree. Science is too full of people who are only interested in getting another publication so they can claim that mine is bigger than yours.
Filed under: mine's 18.
-
... but I also happen to agree.
Then I think we are agreeing to agree...
...people who are
onlyinterested in getting another publication...
From observing the professional academics I know*, the difficulty is that safe incremental results are easier to get funded...Even profs have mortgages.
*Who are all fine upstanding people who are trying to do Good.
-
Its mostly comfort. If you can get away with a minor delta and get a new paper that counts just as much as something novel, and is 1/10 of the work, of course you would.
-
and (round these parts at least) the funding sources are more interested in "practical results" so proposal writers are inclined to go with safe add-ons to their existing work.
-
It varies by funding source. Most like incremental stuff, but not all. (Most research always was incremental stuff, so that's hardly surprising.)
-
Eating in bed, goes down the wrong way, try to get help, tangled in bedsheets, can't reach Heimlich machine
How could you invent such a thing and not call it the "gut plunger"?
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itordNWNRM8
I have invented a maneuver!
-
I'm a great fan of the Picard Maneuver myself.
-
I'm a great fan of the Picard Maneuver myself.
Guaranteed to have the same effect as a Heimlich maneuver.
-
This website has a bunch of visual HTML experiments:
http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/index
-
@Jarry said:
http://glench.com/hash/#__/|#
That.
Is coolIt is cool, but
var currentFun = 'click'
inside$(document).on("ready"...)
is a barrier to linking directly to what you want to show.I'd love to see "listen" doing a spectogram using the characters from "wave2".
-
Intro to Dexter reimagined as an early 80s Polish movie. Pretty amazingly done, too
-
-
-
-
And Swipe's not exactly infullible…
-
I think you accidentally a word there
TIL Windows/Metro onscreen keyboard has autocorrect. Which doesn't know the word "reimagined".
Now, how do I turn this shit off...
-
Or add the word to the dictionary?
-
Or add the word to the dictionary
Yeah, I have a feeling it's not gonna be the last time it bites me in the ass.
And it's a ten inch tablet, it doesn't really need autocorrect, so.
-
Mine does that too and I have the keyboard attachment. Very annoying.
-
I miss Dexter. Pity they only did 7 seasons
-
I miss Dexter. Pity they only did
74 seasonsFTFY
Well, okay, 5 was not that bad. But what followed was pretty much pure insanity.
-
I quite liked either 6 or 7. Can't remember which one it was.
The series with Tom Hanks' son as the religious fanatic was awful though.
If the final absolutely-not-a-series had gone in a slightly different direction it could have been good. The whole arc was about Dexter gaining more humanity and realising he didn't have to be a monster, then it got completely shat on
-
Dexter
I never really bought the whole premise of the show. This guy's a psychopath, right? Who cuts people up for shits & giggles? Who gives a tinkers cuss what's going on inside his fucked up little pinhead?
Say what you like about Breaking Bad, but at least they took the effort to make their villain sympathetic...
-
The series with Tom Hanks' son as the religious fanatic was awful though.
The series with his son as a cop was awesome, though....Ah, yes, The Good Guys.
-
religious fanatic
That would be S6. And yep, I agree wholeheartedly.
Seventh was... meh, Isaac was a cool character, but the whole Hannah arc almost turned the series into a parody of itself.
At least at no point did Dexter the TV series reach the ridiculousness of the book series, which has the Dark Passenger as an actual metaphysical entity (and at one point Dexter investigates an eeeeevil cult related to that), one book ends with a finale on a pirate ship [spoiler]in an amusement park[/spoiler] with Dexter facing pirate cannibals, yet another consists of Dexter being an unofficial protector for a movie star and until the very finale all that happens is that he monologues about falling in love, he kinda-sorta trains the kids to be killers like himself, [spoiler]Camilla Figg (of all people)[/spoiler] gets a crush on Dexter, [spoiler]Dexter's brother[/spoiler] is alive and ridiculous, [spoiler]Doakes[/spoiler] is alive, but gets his limbs and tongue cut off and becomes a running joke, and [spoiler]LaGuerta[/spoiler] dies in the very first book.
Now that was a fun ride...
-
I've read the first few books. They are pretty ridiculous
-
Before this gets taken down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfQ_8Om4GQ&feature=youtu.be
Man, I'd watch me some Power Rangers for sure if this were made into a series.
-
Heh...totally.
-
3D printed model engine! Looks like it's actually powered by the starter motor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmK_LWOqRp8
And for part 2, he made a manual transmission too!