bascule

Already discussed here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20763

We could put "Let Freedom Ring" on them. Hannity would love that.

That's about half their point. If that's all you took from this film you are completely missing the dissonance between the images being presented and the speaker's harrangue.

This is art. It isn't trying to be objective or analytical. I read that after my boss recommended it to me. It's an excellent book. You're looking at this entirely within the wrong light. Something tells me you're not big on artistic interpretation, are you? You sound like someone who'd try to read a belles lettres novel for informative content rather than aesthetic value. Yes, many of the "facts" presented in this film, such as Chinese "pipes" being longer than American ones are, in fact, incorrect! You do realize what a sarcastic tone is used throughout the entire movie, do you not? It's not supposed to be "on target". This is clearly a film that you have to read into to see what it's actually saying.

For the love of God someone please lock this thread... I am so tired of seeing it as the most recent in general discussion.

This film is "A translated harangue from China to the U.S.A. that laughs at our missteps" (Warning: Frothing with obscenity, in subtitles only) http://festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=402&category=DOC I thought this film was brilliant, not only in pointing out America's foibles in the international marketplace, but also pointing out how China has grown into a business juggernaut through the exploitation of its own human resources. Through some pretty dark sarcasm the film manages to make about as much fun of China as it does America. Watch it, it's awesome! What's your take?

Did the climatologists in question even write the papers that were being reported on? Even so, they may have been taken out of context by the reporter. Reporters have their own motives/agendas and lack the background to even understand the papers they're reporting on. Perhaps one of the best examples is the Webster et al. paper I referenced above, which was reported to the public as "Global warming causing stronger hurricanes," even though the paper only demonstrated correlation, not causation. And, as I added before, two papers came out challenging that assertion as well.

The King James Version is the unadulterated word of God!!!

The moral of the story: climate science reporting sucks. If you want the real story, you should be reading scientific papers, not news articles.

Yeah, probably should've linked it from the other thread. Yay! I used to work for a "global warming skeptic" (he hated being called that, by the way). I think you'll find my history of posts about global warming as taking a rather skeptical perspective (just ask herpguy, as I've argued with him more than anyone). However, I've also been wrong in my skepticism on a number of occasions (which happens when you're a skeptic... if you doubt because of lack of evidence, you shouldn't be surprised when someone manages to present evidence contrary to your position). Specifically, it's been demonstrated conclusively that the average summer areas of Antarctic sea ice are, in fact, decreasing consistently, and the data that showed aimless fluctuation were incorrect. This completely undermines my argument that the climate forcings responsible for the melting of Arctic sea ice are regional and not global in scope.

Salon did an article on the scientific accuracy of an Inconvenient Truth: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/10/truths/index_np.html Their take:

I used to watch it for comedy value in the days before YouTube and video.google. let me watch only the funny parts and ignore the rest. Nowadays, I don't watch any TV. Hannity vs. Newdow was thoroughly hilarious, though:

That's not the part I'm responding to: Redbook compliant CDs do not utilize the 20kHz-22kHz range at all.

I think they've taken the opportunity to run all the specials made contemporaneously with The Omega Code now that The Da Vinci Code has been released. Oh, I think a few of them came out contemporaneously with Pi when it talked about a mathematical code in the Torah. At least that makes a little sense, considering it was written in Hebrew.

If you RTFA you'd see it picks up very specific impluses from your motor cortex which you have to train yourself to be able to make, although they claim a very low learning curve, much more shallow than the keyboard.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/06/12/state/n153942D73.DTL&hw=judge+turns+down+atheist&sn=001&sc=1000 Do you believe "In God We Trust" on our currency represents a violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution? I recall an episode of Hannity and Colmes hosted in front of a large audience where they invited Michael Newdow. Oliver North was also there (host of FNC's War Stories program) and has his go at arguing with Newdow, producing a bill from his pocket and asking Newdow to read what it said. It's one tool that Christians use to argue that the US is a "Christian nation," despite the founders intentions to the contrary. I personally think that In God We Trust does not represent a "secular slogan" and does represent a statement that our government espouses monotheism. What's your take?

You don't think that hands, and the brains that evolved to make use to them, have given us an ENORMOUS advantage over any other creature on earth?

You'd end up with a lot of destructive interference... I don't know what it'd sound like, but the majority of the sound would cancel itself out.

No, it's not. Redbook compliant CDs have to be mastered with a low-pass filter at 20kHz.

Going along with the Teen Repellant thread... this guy posted a bunch of samples of various frequencies. How high can you hear? http://www.ochenk.com/entry.php?id=63

Indeed, and thank you for being the first to mention this. The logic I'm hearing here is "Other attempts at replacing the keyboard/mouse have failed, therefore this will fail as well." There are false pretender replacements with any ingrained technology. It's part of the technology life cycle. However it's incredibly naive to attempt to deduce from the existence of false pretenders that a technology will never be replaced. The huge difference here is: these systems are very much like a keyboard/mouse, only bypassing the need for the information from your brain to pass through your hands before entering the computer. You think of discrete bits of information you want to put into the computer. Speech recognition systems, on the other hand, have to deduce these discrete bits of information from complex constructions (words). That makes them considerably more complex and error-prone. Furthermore, noise becomes a much bigger issue, because they have to locate and filter the speaker's voice from the surrounding environment. The way I see it, more has happened with wetware development this year than in the past several decades. I see this as yet another example of accelerating change, which everyone saying "X technology is decades away" overlooks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe Wow. This is everything I've had in the back of my head, although explained in substantially more detail, and far more developed than what I've ever thought of. Take a look... here's the theory in one sentence:

This story was linked on Digg yesterday: 'Mind over matter' no longer science fiction It's yet another passive device allowing you to "type" with your brain. That alone is somewhat unremarkable, until you consider how many similar stories we've seen in 2006 alone. Here's a smattering of links to similar stories dealing with active/passive wetware applications to peruse through, if you so desire. All of these are from 2006: Big Brain Thinking: Stanford neuroscientist Bill Newsome wants to implant an electrode in his brain to better understand human consciousness Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas Jesse Sullivan powers robotic arms with his mind European boffins connect neurons to silicon chips "Mental typewriter" controlled by thought alone Now That's Using Your Brain I think it's becoming clear that brain/computer interfaces are moving from the realm of science fiction into reality. I'm especially excited by the passive systems which allow you to "type" or control a "mouse pointer". It seems like where voice recognition has failed, passive brain scanning may succeed. These systems map an impulse towards a mechanical action to data appearing within your computer. They require a bit of training, but certainly less than it takes to learn how to use a keyboard. The best part of these systems is: they can easily be turned into marketable products. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in the world who suffer some debilitating disease, amputation, or spinal injuries which make it impossible for them to type and must resort to more arcane interfaces to computers. These people will make great early adopters for these devices. Being able to interface with a computer in an equivalent manner (or faster) than everyone else can with a keyboard and mouse will be an enormous boon to their quality of life, and something you can expect a large number of them will be willing to pay for. Once this starts happening and these devices are turned into a marketable product, commoditization can't be that far off. Presently they look uncomfortable, but we can certainly expect these devices to get smaller and less obtrusive. When do you think brain/computer interfaces will replace the keyboard and mouse?