Posts by GrimJack

I am not going to work through your proggie (I'm lazy)
Insert intermediate result prints after each calc step and step through the routine and watch what happens to your numbers.

We traveled through Mexico a lot when we lived is Arizona; we never drank the water. One thoughtless moment, we rinsed the grapes and suffered for a couple of days for our lapse. Otherwise, we ate tacos from curbside vendors with no problems. Sometimes it was cheaper to drink beer than bottled water. Truth be told, we might wait until the gunfire subsides in the border towns before we would travel the border towns again.

Try overstock.com - it is a refurb but...

I am listening to Kodo
Full group with fife/flute

If you post there like you post here, I am betting that they voted you off the island.

Some people tend to think that mankind is the ultimate purpose in the evolutionary process, and yet we are in a sort of death-spiral that may lead to our extinction.
The universe will not miss us and evolution will continue without us; selection for intelligence might be an evolutionary dead end.

I guess that if you get lemons, make lemonaid:
Finger
Legs
What body mods would you use?

I have adblocker so I got to miss the commercial; that was pretty good! I was expecting the opening to the 5th but I wish I really remembered the code but it was fun.

The game is not just rock paper scissors; the point is to force your opponent to throw what you want. I heard one of the participants talking with what-his-name on NPR's All Things considered. As the guy explained the complications of the game and the things that people know about the game - yadda,yadda,yadda "a woman will always throw rock first" yadda,yadda,yadda said some more stuff. He filled the NPR guys head with so much 'stuff' that he beat him every time. It is somewhat like a magician 'forcing' a card pick.

I ran across this essay over on a paleoAnthro blog and this looks like a good time to insert it into the conversation:

We tend to think of genetic drift as a random process. Random processes operating repeatedly over time are called “stochastic,” and changes in gene frequency under genetic drift are certainly that.

Since entropy is a measure of uncertainty, it might seem natural to think that stochastic changes in gene frequency would increase the entropy in a population. After all, the gene frequency in a population under genetic drift will be more and more uncertain over time. So, considering the frequency of a single allele as the system, genetic drift appears to increase entropy over time.

But even this simple system isn’t quite so simple as it might appear. Sure if you start out knowing the allele frequency, then genetic drift will increase your uncertainty over time. You will become less and less able to say that it lies in any given interval. But what if you don’t start out knowing? What if all you know is that the locus has been subjected to t generations of genetic drift?

As t increases, the probability of fixation of the locus also increases. The net effect is to reduce the entropy in the system – going from uncertainty about the allele frequency to more and more certainty that it will be either one or zero. The only thing that will stop this process is some other evolutionary force …

I just finished pork, yellow potatoes, and onions.

Ooh! <flashing big rock on finger> He loved me so much that I used the insurance money to turn the peanut butter that killed him into this ring.

What if the brain power of 2,000 users were harnessed to produce HAL? When shut down, is this what it would sound like?

Scientists are working on the prospects of makinng diamonds from
peanut butter, by the use excessive pressure nth times greater than that at the centre of the earth. Not a joke.

They have been making diamonds from carbon under those conditions for 20 or more years. Not sure why they would use peanut butter - diamonds are pure crystalline carbon and peanut butter would have too many impurities to be of any use.

The leftover 5 sausage scramble from this morning's breakfast at The Rooster.

I have a beautiful (grand marnier and couvasier) in a brandy snifter heating over a candle for my dessert.

Evolution according to Fat boy slim ;)

Thank you! I had not heard/seen that before.

>> The big bang wasn't a gas ball. - Rashakil Fol

According to this I think it was

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the universe supported by the most comprehensive and accurate explanations from current scientific evidence and observation.[1][2] As used by cosmologists, the term Big Bang generally refers to the idea that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past, and continues to expand to this day.

Well, we do not actually have a definition of the infinite density and temperature during the Planck epoch (the time from zero to approximately 10^−43 seconds) but it eventually formed a quark/gluon plasma and a mysterious process, baryogenesis, violated the conservation of baryon # leading to a predominance of matter (vs. anti-matter). This happened at about the 10^-6th seconds and here is where the huge ball of gas is formed

This really depends on what mind is, what memory is, how our brain/body/mind really work. We do not know what the basic building block of the mind is - when you play a computer game what you perceive is different from what you perceive when you look at the code for the game (when you see the game environment can you predict the code vice versa when you look at the code can you predict the game environment).

The Brain/Body/Mind interface is a soup of hormones, memories, experiences, and stuff we have no concept of yet. The brain floats in spinal fluid, protected by the 'blood/brain' barrier; connected to the world by a bundle of nerves called the spinal cord. The inputs include the basic 5 (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) and a plethora of others like pressure, hot, cold, and so on. Keep in mind (pun intended) that the brain is split into 2 hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum and all input is routed to both sides (the 8th cranial nerve crosses to the opposing brain hemisphere under the jaw approximately where the front of the tongue attaches).

But I digress

I think that I am trying to say that if you had the ability to read other peoples minds - their thoughts would not make any sense to you (at least below the level of the super ego). There fore you could see the conclusions but never how they got there, but you could …

Interesting - ADD figures in there somewhere I suppose.

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 47%
Visual : 52%
Left : 57%
Right : 42%
GrimJack, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your "centrist" tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.

Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.

Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.

The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimen- sionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you "intake it all" and store it for processing later.

Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at …

I can't tell if anyone saw this - I can't believe this does not incite some comments!
Did you all see it and say "bor-ing"?
If you knew Rod Spence, would you feel comfortable talking with him?
If you and he were sexually compatible, er - would you?
Would you log in to a such a live-streaming web-site?
Did anyone see Brother From Another Planet?

Finally - an answer to your programming question.

I did not know where to put this so....

EyeBorg Project
Oddly enough:

He adds that people who know about the project are increasingly “freaked out” about being around him.

I can't possibly understand why. So, considering the amount of money that can be made on certain live-blogging web-sites, do you think that someone might be tempted to sacrifice an eye for 'streaming' income?

What cliches do you like?

I'll keep an eye on you
"I hear eyeballs clicking" (USMC drill instructor quote)
I will keep an eye out for you (privacy advocates)

Did anyone else see The Brother From Another Planet, and the camera trick used to 'show' what the eye saw?

Yea, and the "righteous" get so upset when they're told that we've
descended/ascended from animals; well, there are plenty of instances, throughout history, and even today, where our behavior, were it to be compared to animal behavour, would do animals a grave injustice.

This doe not actually make much sense - I am sure that zebras think lion behavior is terrible and carrots do not like rabbit behavior. There is no inter-species yardstick and there is nothing humans do that can't be found in nature (our tech is just tool-using).

Maybe we can out with humor

Here is a really good idea - let's outsource tax collection. Don't you just love the Bushies' sense of humor.

It is at the end of the first paragraph. To make it easier it is this section:And what percentage of these branches are allocated to the different life forms on this planet? And thats something thats still evolving itself and that we're still learning about. There's a greate deal of diversity out there that we know nothing about.

I do not understand this queston - there has been no problem found in any of the DNA trees studied so far in that

1. All the DNA strands studied so far have identical handedness
2. Most of the Linnaean taxonomy (started in 1790) has been verified via DNA

An example of Linnaean taxonomy for people:

• Domain: Eukarya
• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Subphylum: Vertebrata
• Class: Mammalia
• Cohort: Placentalia
• Order: Primates
• Suborder: Anthropoidea
• Infraorder: Catarrhini
• Superfamily: Hominoidea
• Family: Hominidae
• Genus: Homo
• Species: Homo sapiens

True but....?
It is amazing just how much we do not know

Question 2 - I would not accept any of those answers so I stopped there.

But then I do not live in the UK

Well to help prove my case below I have a quote directly from a recorded documentary about darwins theory which says the 'max planck institute' is researching if some of our ancesters came from space. So from 'max planck institute' point of view there is a great possibility of some of our ancesters comming from space and one day they will find proof.

You must have put the wrong quote in. there was nothing in your quote to suggest ancestors came from space. I would rather have a link to the Max Planck Inst. than a quote from a documentary that only mentions the words Max Planck Inst. - do you understand the difference?

Well, here is a pretty good summation of why there is a problem in the US and the world.

I agree because from a documentary I've seen on darwins theory, apes are like our brothers and sisters on the ancestry tree.

they are more like distant cousins

I think researchers are still looking for the common ancester of apes and humans which they are investigating weather the common ancester even came from earth or space (or at least some of our ancesters).

Not really true - there is no consideration given to the possibility of descent from space. We have quite a bit of 'hominid' (considered the common great ape ancestor) evidence. If you are interested, you can see the fossil evidence here - this includes some of the creationist arguments. The concept of the 'missing link' was mostly a media invention rather than a scientific concept.

I assumed (probably wrongly) every American knew USSC (US Supreme Court).

I understand how easy it is to make assumptions that is why it is considered good form to always use the full title the first time (there are 297,000 hits for USSC). I had never seen those initials used before (or at least not noticed it before) and I have been a US citizen for over 60 years.

Banning outsourcing is unconstitutional because it limits our freedoms (the 10th Amemdment)

Hunh? Why can't the Federal gov ban the Fed gov from outsourcing?

that's disgusting. what kinda sick enviornment did you grow up in?
and that guy who says they're 15: shut up and get lost kid

Who the heck are you talking to?

Hey it looks pretty interesting - but i would wait for the 'new/improved' model (ie most bugs found)

I have actually thinking about bio feedback of this sort.

'go ask Alice when she was just small'

Laos is the most bombed country in the world.

Oh, Yeah! I remember a photo essay about life after the 15 years of carpet bombing; one pic in particular stood out - the walls of the man's house was built entirely from different sized artillery brass!

The Plain of Jars is situated in Xieng Khuang Province in the east of Laos, an area which was clusterbombed beyond oblivion during the war years. There are craters all over the hillsides and unexploded ordnance still being slowly swept out. A roaring trade in post-military scrap metal supplements the incomes of subsistence farmers, and old artillery shells get recycled as troughs for animals, as flowerpots and as decorations to impress naïve young ladies. This is a fragment of the munitions collection at my guesthouse, apparently all gathered in the area.

David Letterman

John Waters was such leader!

Oxford University Press came out with a "Smelly old History" scratch and sniff series that included Victorian serf, Viking socks, Frontier outhouse. I gave a set (there were 12 I think) to some really young nieces and nephews..

I was thinking Union of Soviet Socialist Corporations

Tin foil hat recommended.

Tin foil is sooo last century - you need Velostat - please, please go immediately to the directions page.

Old school
See here for head-to-toe coverage, sleep gear - as seen on tv!

Oh, man! I don't know if I want to smell what happens when i sneak up behind some guy, slit his throat (actually, the Marine Corps trained us not to slit throats but to drive the knife up behind the jaw, through the jugular and into the brain - much quicker and more effecient - oops, I bet you did not want to know that<sorry>), and he voids his bladder and intestine - or when I spray that guy over there with a flamethrower.

I had a good chuckle at your, "leave it to stew in its own bio-mass.
Yea, it's not the most lucid piece of writing you'll find, but if cwarn2 has given it his best shot, then I think we should give it the respect of a reply, so here goes. The point that he was making, I think, is: Did the interbreeding of the whites, who arrived in Australia in the 1800s, with the native black race, cause the black influence to be removed, or weakened, in the resulting offspring? I'll attempt an answer: We are in the area of Genetics now.
The change that is noted in the colour of skin, is due to the fact that, at conception, when the male and female cells unite, there is a larger geneitic pool to select from ie. the combination of the Aboriginal and white or European. In some cases, the offspring will be almost white, suggesting that the white genes are dominating the black but, in that same relationship, the next or future offspring, might be totally black. So, it isn't a question of one set of genes trying to dominate the other but, rather, the fact that there is now a bigger gene pool to select from so, at a given circumastnce it would be, one or the other. This larger gene pool creates more diveresity, which in turn, strengthens the speciest. This is the opposite of Hybriding, or inbreeding, which creates a more pure racial strain, …

I think you are right -- Obama was probably talking about outsourcing US government contracts. Too bad he doesn't expand that to outsourcing all other jobs in US too, but that would quickly be declared unconstitutional by USSC.

I am sorry but I do not get USSC - a quick rule of thumb is whenever you use an acronym, the first reference should include an explanation.

I know what he meant - I was going on about what the president meant.

A few years back while scouring a river bank for dino bones.
I came across a cube of sandstone 2 ft by 3 ft by 1 1/2 ft.

Anyway. I gave it a hit with my hammer and split it in two. Being in the muck
the stone only partly opened and I could see bone. We left looking for more and
just before leaving we pulled it out of the mud and opened it up. There was a
small section showing a skin imprint. As soon as I got home. We took a chisel to
it and exposed much more of the mummified then petrified skin.

This could be a major find.

Do I have to get a paleontologist degree before I reveal the location, to get any
credit?

Contact Jack Horner care of Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman MT. He was a truck driver who found dino nesting sites that proved they were social.

Well there has been a case sort of like that during the 18th century when the European settlement took place in Australia. That is if you notice in some countries where people have migrated such as Australia, all the people in Australia before the 18th century were black but after the white people came to Australia and cross bread with the blacks, it then produced mainly white people. So yes there use to be a second type of human species with the same origin before the 18th century but then both species cross bread eliminating most of the blacks. At least that is my opinion on how it happened.

At first glance, there appears to be so much wrong with this paragraph that I do not know where to start - so I will just leave it to stew in its own bio-mass.

A family girl?? Is that why her Avatar has been changing?

And what happened to Nichito -- is that avatar available?

Wrong. They were doing that in the early seasons, at least before season seven, possibly as far back as season four; and they've completed nineteen seasons (almost done the twentieth) plus three more on the The Tracey Ullman Show; 22 years old on April 19th.

It is entirely possible I misunderstood what you meant by "that explain what happened between marriage and kids" but almost every major character's entire life could be mapped out by season 10.

What I meant is that during the first 10 years, Bart was an accident and they had to get married - now quite often, Marge or Homer will say something about what they did and the story will take place after they got married but before they had kids; and sometimes things will take place before they got married that imply that Marge went to college or Homer went to SA -- whatever.

Ok, so why don't we still see apes evolving? Some half man, half ape? What stopped the process? I haven't seen anything lately of it.

It hasn't stopped. It happens to bacteria on a scale we can watch and record (see earlier post) but since evolution happens over generations, we can only observe changes that happen over 1,000s of generations so even shrews with a generation of a month would have to be studied 80+ years.

Human generations are generally considered to be 20 or 25 years, fly generations are months. a generation is defined as the time from an organism's birth to when it begins producing the next generation

I understand the process of evolution that we can push everything away and say that we forced ourselves where we are today, that basically environment created us. But how could that have happened? You telling me that nothing existed in space for millenia's yet one day pop Sun created itself, earth created itself, then built an oxygen supply, after that an ameba crawled from the ocean and soon sprouted legs and then before you know it ape, and then from that man. Why dont we still see that happening today? What stopped that process?

no one is saying that - that is called a 'Strawman' argument where you set up a strawman then knock it down - considered bad form in most debates and/or discussions

It never happened that way thats why, but I respect others thinking, please dont think I want to …

Here is proof that there is no evolution:

They say that we only ever use 12% of our brain. The other half is never used.

With evolution we would use 100% of our brain.:)

Sneek, I blew right by that joke! Heh,Heh - Pretty good!

Yea. I wonder why those scientest don't test evolution by iscolating living creatures in a controlled environment and see if they adapt to the environment like evolution suggests. That would save the time and effort at looking for fossles to prove evolution.

Er, this has already been mentioned in this thread, see for a brief mention and another brief mention re MRSA. Bacteria are short-lived animals that live in colonies; if you poison the colony but leave some alive - those left alive are the ones that are more resistant to the poison. The colony rebuilds itself but now most of the colony are from the resistant population so when you try to poison the colony again, you only kill the least resistant and just reinforce the trait for immunity. Eventually, you have MRSA which now kills 19,000 Americans each year. MRSA used to be confined to hospitals(!) but eventually started to colonize prisons and now is found pretty commonly on the streets. Our skin has evolved over the millennia to protect us from this sort of thing but once MRSA gets past the skin (either through a cut or scratch or the mucosa) and finds its way into the blood stream and the entire body becomes infected.

So I would suggest that anyone who denies evolution might be a poor candidate for the medical field.

You might ask "How does explain evolution?":
Evolution works over long periods of time and gets pretty …