Comment Re:Not really (Score 1) 103
Or maybe they named it after an Antarctic explorer because the crater is at the south pole of the Moon...
BZZZT! Arrogant asshole is WRONG.
ice evaporates in a vacuum
Ice doesn't evaporate in a vacuum, it sublimates at pressures below 611 Pa.
the area is permanently dark and therefore extremely cold?
even in persistent shadow,
Oh now you acknowledge the persistent shadow. Whatever happened to
the solar heating of the Lunar day
?
the moon still does not get as cold as a Jovian satellite!
Really now? The Moon's coldest is around 70 K. I think it's a safe assumption that a permanently shadowed portion would be around that temperature, since there's no atmosphere to distribute heat. Of the Jovian satellites, only Europa's coldest is colder than that, at 50 K, and its mean temperature is 102 K. Ganymede's coldest is just as as cold as the Moon, at 70 K, and its mean temperature is 110 K. Callisto's and Io's coldest are both warmer than the Moon's, at 80 K and 90 K, respectively. Metis, ~123 K. Andrasta, ~122 K. Amalthea, ~120 K. Thebe, Themisto, Leda, Himalia, Lysithea, Elara, Carme, Ananke, Pasiphae, Sinope, ~124 K. Carpo, S/2003 J 12, Taygete, Eukelade, S/2003 J 5, Chaldene, Isonoe, Praxidike, Iocaste, Harpalyke, Thyone, Euanthe, Euporie, Callirrhoe, Megaclite, Autonoe, Eurydome, Sponde, S/2003 J 2, no data. Looks like Jovian satellites are a good 50 K warmer than our Moon's cold spots.
Your actual mistake, you pathetic excuse for a ganglion, is that you not actually anywhere as brilliant as you like to think you are, as evidenced by your choice of nickname. As you yourself admitted:
I can't imagine that there can be much anywhere near the surface.
No, you really can't imagine much of anything at all, can you?. Us ambulatory molds, on the other hand, can engineer train and traffic networks.
Like several craters at the moon's south pole, the small tilt of the lunar spin axis means Shackleton crater's interior is permanently dark and therefore extremely cold.
A MiniPad?
SO the 10" will be the
I sure hope that Apple can keep their products
I seriously don't think Google will be cramping Apple's style, but considering the tech press, well, you never know what they say on their rags.
Then again, Apple does stay on bleeding edge technology.
I can't wait for the New iPad with Wings(tm)
A hand job and a kick in the balls is better than two kicks in the balls.
That would make a great sig.
And I was careless. Aristotle believed that knowledge was acquired by sensory experience, unlike Plato who thought that some kind of higher realm was primary and the observed world was, as Yeats put it "a spume that played/upon a ghostly paradigm of things". Aristotle's claim, as I observed in the second half of the sentence, was to have proposed looking at Nature for knowledge; this was quite revolutionary in a world in which people saw a deus in just about every machina. Although his cosmology was pretty strange, he at least had the idea that probably one cause accounted for the movement of things in the sky - his "that which moves without movement", [/. Greek fail]
Agreed. His thoughts on knowledge and observation were quite a leap for the Greeks.
But why cite Wikipedia when there is so much better information on early history of science?
It's rather convenient
The article you cite describes Alhazen as an "early Islamic scientist" whereas he was pre-scientific,
Ah, there I must disagree. Alhazen, in his Book of Optics , ca. 1020, presents us with one of the earliest descriptions of the scientific method. He built on Aristotle's empiricism, but insisted on experimentation as a means to test hypotheses. He also introduced the ideas of scepticism, criticism and even the concept of Occam's Razor. Unlike Alhazen, Aristotle never bothered to test the obvious (to himself), common-sense ideas he derived from observation. One example of this was the idea that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. It would probably seem intuitive to anyone lacking a foundation in basic, mathematical physics. That idea persisted some 2,000 years, until Galileo disproved it experimentally.
as was Francis Bacon (to whom I am very distantly related, so I have some interest in the subject).
That is very cool! I've been fascinated with him since I was a kid, when I read about him possibly being the real author of Shakespeare's works. Nowadays, I think his verified contributions to science and philosophy are far more interesting.
Descartes described the experimental method but was a long way from following it. You can argue that Aristotle, by proposing the validity of sensory experience as a clue to understanding the world, was the father of experimental method (experience and experiment have a common root) or you can argue that Galileo was (he actually did experiments to test his ideas), but to try and claim that the moment of truth lies somewhere in between ca. 350 BCE and ca 1600 CE is to try and measure accurately using a jelly stick.
I guess there wasn't one moment, one great leap forward. It was an accumulation of thought building upon previous thought that brought us here. But with Aristotle, this is where one of my pet peeves comes in. My exploration into philosophy started with this book called Great Works of Philosophy. The first chapter was Plato, and I found him circuitous, arbitrary and boring. I called it the most tedious thing ever to be written. The second chapter was Aristotle, and when I was done with him, I apologized most profusely to Plato's ghost. Compared to Aristotle, Plato's work was utterly profound. That second chapter was the most pointless, rambling and self-absorbed drivel I have ever encountered. The excerpt was from Poetics, and Aristotle had summarily sucked the life, the beauty and the essence from one of the things I love dearly, poetry.
Your distant relative Francis Bacon despised Aristotelean philosophy, and expressed his disdain:
[A]nother form of induction must be devised than has hitherto been employed, and it must be used for proving and discovering not first principles (as they are called) only, but also the lesser axioms, and the middle, and indeed all. For the induction which proceeds by simple enumeration is childish. (emphasis mine)
Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, says of Aristotle:
There was nothing in his style to indicate that Aristotle was ever one to doubt Aristotle. Phaedrus <the book's narrator> saw Aristotle as tremendously satisfied with this neat little stunt of naming and classifying everything. His world began and ended with this stunt. The reason why, if he were not more than two-thousand years dead, he would have gladly rubbed him out is that he saw him as a prototype for many millions of self-satisfied and truly ignorant teachers throughout history who have smugly and callously killed the creative spirit of their students with this dumb ritual of analysis, this blind, rote, eternal naming of things. Walk into and of a hundred thousand classrooms today and hear the teachers divide and subdivide and interrelate and establish “principles” and study “methods” and what you will hear is the ghost of Aristotle speaking down through the centuries—the desiccating lifeless voice of dualistic reason. (emphasis mine)
Those two quotes summarize why I personally refuse to attribute to Aristotle the scientific method, mankind's greatest tool for thought, learning and discovery. He never doubted himself (Descartes), never gathered more data (Bacon), never experimented (Alhazen/Galileo), and never applied math (Descartes/Newton). Aristotle looked at the world around him, neatly divided, classified and categorized it, but when he wondered "why?" about anything, he'd take whatever was in his head as fact and called it a day.
Aristotle was the "father of the experimental method" - he advocated looking at Nature.
This is only half-correct. Aristotle formalized empiricism, but never performed or advocated experiments. The core idea of the scientific method, using experiments to test hypotheses, would first be seen among early Islamic scientists like Alhazen, further developed by Francis Bacon and formalized by Rene Descartes in Discourse on the Method. Any of the three would have a better claim to the title "father of the experimental method" than Aristotle.
Of course you do because it doesn't fit your conspiracy theory. When you look at the facts, non existent market-share for itanium, HP paying Intel to continue production of itanium, you understand why Oracle dropped it.
Considering that as of 2011Q1, Itanium demand was still growing and annually bringing in several billion dollars in revenue, I wouldn't use the phrase "non existent market-share" to describe it. Larry basically sabotaged HP's Itanium business out of sheer spite.
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