And which none of the articles actually aid in understanding.

Dumski: I'm having a hard enough time understanding my wife's ideas dammit.

Is she trying to invent a new sandwich or something?

human chimeras exist in petri dishes in European labs.


maybe...maybe..

11. Webpage layout of New Scientist

Hows about numbering the damn things so I'm not clicking on the title expecting the list (or, hell, even a slideshow) to open. The "list" look like individual articles.

Does anyone else find the Jeopardy computer boring? High level Jeopardy is as boring as high level chess because the game changes into something different (and boring).

Low level chess is about creativity and care. High level chess is about memorization and thousands of hours of homework. Low level Jeopardy is a party trivia game. High level Jeopardy is about pressing a button at the right time.

Both of these bother me because they are generally presented as intellectual competitions, because at low levels, they are.

I tend to prefer watching and participating in competitions that are interesting at all levels, though they're tough to come by. Fighting games get an extra layer of metagaming added in at some point, but at least they all test a fairly general skill, and they don't turn into an exercise in memorizing every attack animation frame for every character. (At least, that is at best a small part of the game.) Math changes gears entirely once you get past the classes engineers have to take, but that's because the material doesn't have to be dumbed down for the engineers anymore. As a field of study, it gets cooler as you learn more. Physics is similar if you ignore the excesses of pop science and sci-fi (and the whining about "infallible high priests of science" that you often hear from people who never even passed calculus).

Football is boring at low levels, but the NFL is exciting. Baseball is awesome at all levels, though the Majors are best. I've never been to an NHL game, but I've seen lots and lots of minor league hockey, so I know that game is pretty nifty, too.

Maybe there is some way to classify pursuits by how much they lose when you get good at them.

I'm still trying to figure out the rationale for the seemingly thousands of people I encounter who drive 10+ miles an hour under the speed limit in broad daylight with no weather issues, so I'm not optimistic on these ideas

/DNRTA

The neutrinos moving faster than light thing, on the very remote chance that it's true (I suspect it's not the case, but I am by no means even remotely close to expert on this topic), reminded me of that strange idea that Richard Feynman brought up decades ago, that there is just one electron in the universe and it just moves through time giving the appearance of many electrons existing. I wondered if maybe he got the idea right but it was applied to the wrong type of subatomic particle. Maybe it's really neutrinos of which there's only one and it moves across our perception of time, so that it only gave the appearance of moving faster than light when in reality we were just measuring it as it existed at a different point in time, not as it was physically traversing some distance. Sure, it sounds far-fetched as all hell, and my knowledge of physics is nowhere near advanced enough to know just how many ways in which that is wrong, but it was a pleasant thought in my mind and it isn't exactly that much stranger (probably given my admittedly limited physics understanding) than neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light.

The humans as mutts of other primates idea isn't that surprising to me, considering the other extant species of plants, fungi, animals, and bacteria that appear to show a similar type of evolutionary history. Still, I'm gonna remain pretty skeptical of that one until more evidence comes about, since unraveling our evolutionary ancestry (or, really, the ancestry of any species) is a pretty challenging task in a way that even the physics of neutrinos or the neuroscience and psychology of mapping the human brain isn't.

And speaking of which, the only other story on that list that I'm really interested in is the mapping of the human brain, since my field is heavily laden with cognitive neuroscience. This project excites me to no end, since as much as the physics stuff can help us better understand the universe in ways to manipulate it for our advantage (new technological wonders that do amazing things; for instance the MRIs that are being used to do this are a result of astrophysics research), understanding ourselves just appeals to me so much more. Plus, with the widespread prevalence of head injuries, strokes, seizures, dementias, and other various brain damages or developmental dysfunctions that cripple, debilitate, and disable millions of people every year we will no doubt be able to use that kind of knowledge to better diagnose and develop interventions (both pharmacological and non-pharmacological) to help the standard of living and ability to interact successfully in society for a very under-served and oft-ignored set of populations in the United States and around the world. Plus, this kind of knowledge could also be used to develop ways to amplify and enhance our already extant abilities - such as attention, memory, motor coordination, and so forth.

The stuff on that list I don't understand gives me a constant sense of childlike wonder and enthusiasm at all the stuff our there, and the stuff on that list I understand at least a little bit gives me the kind of feeling that a great mystery novel does and I am so excited to see "whodunit" that I can't help but smile ear-to-ear as a I try to gobble up as much literature on this stuff as I can so that one day I can do something to contribute to this stuff.

/sorry for the wall-of-text, but i really like science

Creoena: I'm still trying to figure out the rationale for the seemingly thousands of people I encounter who drive 10+ miles an hour under the speed limit in broad daylight with no weather issues, so I'm not optimistic on these ideas

/DNRTA

That's what I thought until I figured they were all just lost in contemplation on the Higgs issue. That has to be it.

/yay, optimism!

boogerwolf: 11. Webpage layout of New Scientist

Hows about numbering the damn things so I'm not clicking on the title expecting the list (or, hell, even a slideshow) to open. The "list" look like individual articles.

THIS. I couldn't even figure out how to navigate that site so I could fail to understand the mysterious concepts held within. Maybe it's some kind of intelligence test to prevent us troglodytes from accessing information that would fry our tiny brains?

Baron Harkonnen: Actually, since I have a genius-level IQ, none of those ideas were very hard to grasp at all. I like to study quantum physics when I'm not busy practicing for my third-degree black belt in capoeira, an obscure Brazilian martial art that you probably haven't heard of.

You're also a fatty, fatty two-by-four who may float like a butterfly yet CAN'T FIT THROUGH THE KITCHEN DOOR.

I love cock more than tachyons

The Neutrinos = tachyons thing is, frankly, probably wrong. Iirc the specific experiment has been reproduced once, but given that the weird result isn't really what they were looking for you're looking at a significant amount of work needed to really call the speed limit break "confirmed".

The rest of it is interesting, sure, but more of a "how to sound smart at parties" thing than a real list of scientific concepts it's particularly important to understand or even know about. I guess the difference between a scientist and a science fanboy popping up again, there.

//A science fanboy memorizes Pi to a thousand places. A scientist grunts, looks at the fanboy sideways, and asks who taught him about significant digits.

Dumski: I'm having a hard enough time understanding my wife 's ideas dammit.

/Shortened for the sake of brevity.

//And why is the word "brevity" so long anyhow?

///I'm not sure who I stole that one from. Steven Wright, perhaps?

I Am The Egg Matt Drudge Smears Upon His Body: Dumski: I'm having a hard enough time understanding my wife 's ideas dammit.

/Shortened for the sake of brevity.

//And why is the word "brevity" so long anyhow?

///I'm not sure who I stole that one from. Steven Wright, perhaps?

Abbreviated is a five syllable word that means "the shortest way to say something".

That one's mine, but you can repeat ad nauseum and claim credit for all I care or can do anything about it.

NetOwl: Does anyone else find the Jeopardy computer boring? High level Jeopardy is as boring as high level chess because the game changes into something different (and boring).

Low level chess is about creativity and care. High level chess is about memorization and thousands of hours of homework. Low level Jeopardy is a party trivia game. High level Jeopardy is about pressing a button at the right time.

Both of these bother me because they are generally presented as intellectual competitions, because at low levels, they are.

I tend to prefer watching and participating in competitions that are interesting at all levels, though they're tough to come by. Fighting games get an extra layer of metagaming added in at some point, but at least they all test a fairly general skill, and they don't turn into an exercise in memorizing every attack animation frame for every character. (At least, that is at best a small part of the game.) Math changes gears entirely once you get past the classes engineers have to take, but that's because the material doesn't have to be dumbed down for the engineers anymore. As a field of study, it gets cooler as you learn more. Physics is similar if you ignore the excesses of pop science and sci-fi (and the whining about "infallible high priests of science" that you often hear from people who never even passed calculus).

Football is boring at low levels, but the NFL is exciting. Baseball is awesome at all levels, though the Majors are best. I've never been to an NHL game, but I've seen lots and lots of minor league hockey, so I know that game is pretty nifty, too.

Maybe there is some way to classify pursuits by how much they lose when you get good at them.

Baseball is boring to watch

I'll take a stab at it...

Neutrinos:
A particle you understand doing something you don't? RENAME IT! (yay, science)

Higgs:
See neutrinos.

Rio summit:
Giving earth an environmental pilot is akin to electing president of the one world government. Either it wont happen at all or the position will be watered down so that its a job in name only. In short, the worlds coalition of corrupt governance is looking for a way to put the reigns on the US, China, and Russia, and it will probably fail at 2 outta 3 because only one of them is naive enough to buy in.

Olympics:
We'll find out someones been dabbling in genetic engineering and eugenics, but we'll be fine with it because they still aren't winning. They still wont figure out that forcing an underage child to do sport as their life's job means they wont reach their potential the same way natural talent will.
Someone elses swimtrunks will be more controversial in the end.

Humans:
Anthropologists will continue to over-complicate shiat.

The cyber election:
The facts will continue to have a liberal bias because liberals are providing the majority of them through a process of careful selection and omission. Those who talk the loudest on the internet will continue to be those who aren't voting.
Pot remains illegal despite popular opinion against the law, overcrowded jails, poor ethics, racist undertones, looming economic disaster, questionable logic and the impending civil war in Mexico, but apologists will continue to apologize for making it a non-campaign issue.

Facebook makes money:
Because people are idiots.


Mapping the brain:
Its like mapping the static on your TV set, but in more colors.
The human mind continues to baffle everyone.

Quantum throttling:
Space-time is made of wibbly wobbly stuff that no one understands and will continue to not understand.

Network theory:
Everything is connected, so don your tinfoil hat and follow us past the pay wall!

/NITFA: Umm... the rise of the most promising commercial space launch industry this last half century?
/I've given Obama alot of shiat for his poor choices, but he showed some brilliance here and should be encouraged for trying.
/Now if they'd only ditch SLS and fund the programs that are working.

I like how the neutrino and higgs ideas are leading science back to a kind of aether theory again.

NetOwl: Low level chess is about creativity and care. High level chess is about memorization and thousands of hours of homework. Low level Jeopardy is a party trivia game. High level Jeopardy is about pressing a button at the right time.

Yup. I stopped playing chess when it just got to be boring memorizing another variation of Sicilian Defense, and years later, I stumbled onto Go. There is very little memorization beyond alive/dead shapes and a few opening position, and it's much more spontaneous and creative. And because of this, even many amateur Go players can win against the world's best computer programs. The quest for a good Go computer program is much more interesting to me than Deep Blue ever could be.

Sudo_Make_Me_A_Sandwich: NetOwl: --snip-- The quest for a good Go computer program is much more interesting to me than Deep Blue ever could be.

Go is interesting but wargames battles are much, much more fun. There is still a lot of skill in these games but a run of bad luck can ruin you, and a bit of good luck at the right time can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat....

fusillade762: THIS. I couldn't even figure out how to navigate that site so I could fail to understand the mysterious concepts held within. Maybe it's some kind of intelligence test to prevent us troglodytes from accessing information that would fry our tiny brains?

If you can't count up to ten and click on titles that have > next to them, and are in a different color than the rest of the text, then yes, i think you would find the articles mind blowing.

If you thought we were the direct descendents of an ape from east Africa, hold it right there. The origin of our species is being called into question in ways that challenge the roots of our identity.

Agent Smith: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realised that humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we... are the cure."

Bacontastesgood: fusillade762: THIS. I couldn't even figure out how to navigate that site so I could fail to understand the mysterious concepts held within. Maybe it's some kind of intelligence test to prevent us troglodytes from accessing information that would fry our tiny brains?

If you can't count up to ten and click on titles that have > next to them, and are in a different color than the rest of the text, then yes, i think you would find the articles mind blowing.

Heh, there's a reason PhDs make bad technical writers.

NetOwl: Does anyone else find the Jeopardy computer boring? High level Jeopardy is as boring as high level chess because the game changes into something different (and boring).

Low level chess is about creativity and care. High level chess is about memorization and thousands of hours of homework. Low level Jeopardy is a party trivia game. High level Jeopardy is about pressing a button at the right time.

Both of these bother me because they are generally presented as intellectual competitions, because at low levels, they are.

I tend to prefer watching and participating in competitions that are interesting at all levels, though they're tough to come by. Fighting games get an extra layer of metagaming added in at some point, but at least they all test a fairly general skill, and they don't turn into an exercise in memorizing every attack animation frame for every character. (At least, that is at best a small part of the game.) Math changes gears entirely once you get past the classes engineers have to take, but that's because the material doesn't have to be dumbed down for the engineers anymore. As a field of study, it gets cooler as you learn more. Physics is similar if you ignore the excesses of pop science and sci-fi (and the whining about "infallible high priests of science" that you often hear from people who never even passed calculus).

Football is boring at low levels, but the NFL is exciting. Baseball is awesome at all levels, though the Majors are best. I've never been to an NHL game, but I've seen lots and lots of minor league hockey, so I know that game is pretty nifty, too.

Maybe there is some way to classify pursuits by how much they lose when you get good at them.

Up yours NetOwl, and you too Trebeck!!!

The Standard is breaking...