Comment Re:Just great (Score 1) 123
How many five-year-old cannibals can you beat up?
Although not LA itself, the Port of Los Angeles/Port of Long Beach could potentially experience a locally generated tsunami. There is a fault line under Catalina Island off the coast of San Pedro, and a quake of magnitude 7.5 can cause landslides large enough to generate a tsunami to affect the two ports. This, however, has not happened in recorded times and is thought to be an extremely rare event. Also, the report I read indicated not all areas of the port would be overtopped by this hypothetical tsunami.
(PDF File) From the Port of LA tsunami report:
Large earthquakes (M~7.5) are very infrequent and have not occurred in the off shore area of California within historical times. Furthermore, not every large earthquake is expected to generate a tsunami based on historical occurrencesof tsunamis and seismic activity throughout the world. Based on the seismicity,geodetics, and geology, a large locally generated tsunami from either local seismic activity or a local submarine landslide would likely not occur more than once every 10,000 years
and you think that our likelihood of finding a star even closer to the Eddington limit is a slam-dunk?
The summary mentioned that this newly discovered star, observed at 265 solar masses, is much larger than the Eddinton limit, which is around 150 solar masses.
Nice try RIAA. You're telling gullible nerds to generate all possible melodies and publish them, only to come in and sue them for the melodies which are already copyrighted.
The best solution for individuals wanting to learn new music, inefficient in the short term but invaluable in the long run, is to learn how to play by ear and transcribe the music yourself. But I'm sure you've heard that before. Anyway here are some sheet music sites I know of, primarily piano.
In case anyone does not already know, IMSLP is a great site for public domain sheet music.
The world will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, whereas without Venter and patents, the we would have synthetic life in <5 (at the rate of progress in molecular biology).
That's not quite correct. The US will start working with synthetic life in a quarter century, while those countries who do not recognize US patents will start much sooner.
And you know what, if you're not happy with the state of competition in the market, go start your own printer company. No one is stopping you. Since you think profits are so easy in that inefficient market, I'm sure plenty of people will wait in line to loan you money.
Patents are one thing that stops innovators from entering established markets. But of course it's always the evil market's fault when people don't get what they want.
I don't see how the free market is the problem. Public schools just value money more than proper textbooks. Plus, even if Texas is such a huge market, they only account for 8% of total population of the country.
Perhaps the root cause of the problem is parents sitting their in front of the television for hours every day, where they are exposed to these evil advertisements in the first place.
The only rational solution is not to "vote for the lesser evil," but change voting systems so more information is extracted by letting voters give a score to all candidates. This way, if a voter prefers Nader > Gore > Bush, it's reflected in the vote. The dilemma of "choosing the lesser evil over the sure-loser" is eliminated and society is better informed on how all the candidates are ranked by the populace.
An interesting history of voting systems and arguments for why scoring systems are best can be found in Gaming The Vote by William Poundstone.
I worked on a project with a different approach where you use crappy sensors but then a lot of them.
I heard on NPR that a group from UC Riverside and Stanford started Quake Catchers to take advantage of the accelerometers included in most new laptops. A sort of "quake@home." They distribute their sensor software to anyone who volunteers and then receive relevant quake data. They also have more accurate USB sensors that they sell, and provide at a discount to K-12 schools. If schools are willing to participate, it should create a geographically distributed source of data. And it doesn't hurt that kids get to learn a bit more about earthquakes too.
The guest on NPR also talked about the USGS testing early warning systems for earthquakes, using several forms of mass communication(sans the summary's laser-in-the-sky). XKCD is always relevant.
Don't worry, there's no foreseeable cure for poverty, so there will be plenty of people who can't afford to remove colorblindness.
I think it's more like this: he solved the conjecture, and that is prize enough for him.
A purity that cannot be achieved by normal men. If that is true, shouldn't he have submitted his solution anonymously?
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
