Random Thoughts Part 4 - Split Thread

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The discussion revolves around a variety of topics, beginning with the reopening of a thread on the Physics Forums. Participants express relief at the continuation of the conversation and share light-hearted banter about past threads. There are inquiries about quoting from previous threads and discussions about job opportunities for friends. The conversation shifts to humorous takes on mathematics, particularly the concept of "Killing vector fields," which one participant humorously critiques as dangerous. Participants also share personal anecdotes, including experiences with power outages and thoughts on teaching at university. The tone remains casual and playful, with discussions about the challenges of winter, the joys of friendship, and even a few jokes about life experiences. The thread captures a blend of humor, personal stories, and light philosophical musings, all while maintaining a sense of community among the forum members.
  • #2,401
zoobyshoe said:
Today I overheard a coffee shop owner telling someone about a customer she has who buys a small coffee and puts 14 packets of sugar in it.
At least the customer actually puts the sugar in the coffee. There is a trend in here that old ladies take 10s of packets of equal or sugar from coffee shops, just put them in their purses. And often, from the way they dress, they seem like they are wealthy, no need to steal.
 
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  • #2,402
WWGD said:
At least the customer actually puts the sugar in the coffee. There is a trend in here that old ladies take 10s of packets of equal or sugar from coffee shops, just put them in their purses. And often, from the way they dress, they seem like they are wealthy, no need to steal.

That's an interesting quirk of nature. We seem to have a streak of scavenger in our makeup ,
Sam Walton recognized it "Pile the shelves high and sell that stuff"
the abundance seems to trigger something akin to a feeding frenzy.
 
  • #2,403
jim hardy said:
That's an interesting quirk of nature. We seem to have a streak of scavenger in our makeup ,
Sam Walton recognized it "Pile the shelves high and sell that stuff"
the abundance seems to trigger something akin to a feeding frenzy.
Surely this goes back to out hunter-gatherer days when it was either feast or famine. Fall feast always heralded Winter famine and you survived by hoarding as much of the Fall abundance as possible.
 
  • #2,404
WWGD said:
At least the customer actually puts the sugar in the coffee.
But all that sugar wafts through the air via the coffee steam and in ten minutes everyone in the place is suffering from second-hand diabetes.
 
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  • #2,406
Science News

A new camera developed at MIT can photograph a trillion frames per second.
http://magazine.good.is/articles/super-fast-camera-works-at-light-speedConnecticut high school student Olivia Hallisey recently won the grand prize in the 16-18 category at the 2015 Google Science Fair. Her project — developing a quick, easy, and accurate test for Ebola — won the judges' hearts for its potential to make a big change in the world. Might work for Lyme disease too.
http://www.upworthy.com/this-teen-j...fe-saving-new-way-to-diagnose-deadly-diseases

Congratulations, Ms Hallisey! Well, done!
 
  • #2,407
zoobyshoe said:
Today I overheard a coffee shop owner telling someone about a customer she has who buys a small coffee and puts 14 packets of sugar in it.
Caffeine and massive amounts of sugar? Maybe they are trying to wean themselves off Coke.
 
  • #2,408
You know, relative to other sites, PF has surprisingly few crackpots. Websites like Quora and Reddit are completely flooded with crackpots whenever a science question is asked. You'll routinely find dozens of perpetual motion proponents and many more people who are simply spitting out nonsense.
 
  • #2,409
Muslim Boy's Message for Ben Carson: 'I Will Become the 1st Muslim President'
https://gma.yahoo.com/muslim-boys-message-ben-carson-become-1st-muslim-205324369--abc-news-topstories.html#

Shukri Abukar states, "And you will see that when I become president, I will respect people of all faiths, all colors and all religions."

The young man is quite serious and ambitious.
 
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  • #2,410
HomogenousCow said:
You know, relative to other sites, PF has surprisingly few crackpots. Websites like Quora and Reddit are completely flooded with crackpots whenever a science question is asked. You'll routinely find dozens of perpetual motion proponents and many more people who are simply spitting out nonsense.
Agreed. Let's thank the moderators.
 
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  • #2,411
Borg said:
Caffeine and massive amounts of sugar? Maybe they are trying to wean themselves off Coke.
All I can say is anyone who needs more than 12 packs of sugar in a small coffee has something wrong with them.
 
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  • #2,412
Astronuc said:
Muslim Boy's Message for Ben Carson: 'I Will Become the 1st Muslim President'
https://gma.yahoo.com/muslim-boys-message-ben-carson-become-1st-muslim-205324369--abc-news-topstories.html#

Shukri Abukar states, "And you will see that when I become president, I will respect people of all faiths, all colors and all religions."

The young man is quite serious and ambitious.

OMG! Is there a thread devoted to Carson's comment yet?

U.S. Rep. Carson: Linking Faith With Fitness For Office Is 'Asinine' [NPR]
Renee Montagne talks with Rep. Andre Carson[no relation], D-Ind., one of two Muslim members of Congress, about recent comments by Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson and Donald Trump about Muslims.

MONTAGNE: [Ben] Carson also told The Hill newspaper that sharia or Islamic law is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution, that Muslims believe religion is part of, quote, "what you do as a public official," and that some Muslims believe it is it is acceptable to, quote, "lie to achieve their goals."

Perhaps Ben Carson is not familiar with a meme older than the internet:

lips.are.movig.jpg

​
Ben Carson's file [Politifact]
Code: 
True                             0
Mostly True                      0
Half True                  (25%) 2
Mostly False               (13%) 1
False                      (50%) 4
Pants on Fire              (13%) 1

hmmm... Is Ben Carson a closet Muslim? :oldeyes:
 
  • #2,413
I just wish his political campaign would stop calling me every day. I can't wait until he drops from the race.
 
  • #2,414
Borg said:
I just wish his political campaign would stop calling me every day. I can't wait until he drops from the race.
Tell them you're Muslim.
 
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  • #2,415
WWGD said:
Tell them you're Muslim.
Maybe I should tell them I'm a muslim with an electronic clock. However, I don't live in Texas to enjoy the full benifit of that resulting show. :oldbiggrin:
 
  • #2,416
WWGD said:
We're lucky here we have these street vendors that will sell you a plate of chicken or lamb over rice for a reasonable amount, for a pretty low price. Aren't you based in Amsterdam? I am pretty sure they may have some similar over there.

Leuven, Belgium. But I literally had 0.73 euros.
About 5 short. The ATM would take me too far away (20mins at least and I was lazy).
 
  • #2,417
JorisL said:
Leuven, Belgium. But I literally had 0.73 euros.
About 5 short. The ATM would take me too far away (20mins at least and I was lazy).
Ah, the eternal fight between hunger and laziness. Most of the time laziness has won in my case. Would love to drop by Belgium, heard food is great over there.
 
  • #2,418
Is there some evolutionary explanation for why pain can reach incapacitating levels? Wouldn't it be beneficial to survival if pain levels were capped at some point, and thus would not affect one's will or ability to function?
 
  • #2,419
HomogenousCow said:
Is there some evolutionary explanation for why pain can reach incapacitating levels? Wouldn't it be beneficial to survival if pain levels were capped at some point, and thus would not affect one's will or ability to function?
I suppose the benefit that caused this to be selected is that greater pain results in faster pull away from the stimulus resulting in less injury. Of course that logic breaks down when you can't get away from the stimulus. We need a mutation where, in that circumstance, a person could dial the pain down.

However, there's the real danger people would start taking that option in all cases they felt pain, and allow themselves to get irreparably injured as a matter of course.
 
  • #2,420
zoobyshoe said:
I suppose the benefit that caused this to be selected is that greater pain results in faster pull away from the stimulus resulting in less injury. Of course that logic breaks down when you can't get away from the stimulus. We need a mutation where, in that circumstance, a person could dial the pain down.

However, there's the real danger people would start taking that option in all cases they felt pain, and allow themselves to get irreparably injured as a matter of course.

Doesn't numbness to pain set in after a while?
 
  • #2,421
I saw something I may never see again: a woman that was around 6' 10'' , which is at least 7 deviations from the mean, which is around 5' 3''. (Assuming height is normally-distributed , with deviation around 2), could not even find tables to calculate P(Z<=7), i.e., probability of having of a value less than or equal to 7 deviations above the mean is 1 ( of course, rounding off, but I don't have specialized equipment to do more accurate computations).
 
  • #2,422
  • #2,423
Part of the problem is that there are infinitely-many possible situations one can run into, and it is difficult to have
a mechanism that is optimal with respect to any situation.
 
  • #2,424
WWGD said:
I saw something I may never see again: a woman that was around 6' 10'' , which is at least 7 deviations from the mean, which is around 5' 3''. (Assuming height is normally-distributed , with deviation around 2), could not even find tables to calculate P(Z<=7), i.e., probability of having of a value less than or equal to 7 deviations above the mean is 1 ( of course, rounding off, but I don't have specialized equipment to do more accurate computations).
I saw an authentic giant woman once. Well over seven feet. She towered over a guy I knew to be 6'2". It was crazy to see him have to look up so far to meet her eyes.
 
  • #2,425
WWGD said:
Doesn't numbness to pain set in after a while?
No. I've had toothaches for days.
 
  • #2,426
zoobyshoe said:
I saw an authentic giant woman once. Well over seven feet. She towered over a guy I knew to be 6'2". It was crazy to see him have to look up so far to meet her eyes.
Maybe the one I saw was the world's shortest giant ( she was court-ordered to wear special
warning lights in her head , to avoid low-flying planes ;) ). Not entirely a joke, I think there are actual technical guidelines/cutoff points for what both a dwarf and a giant are. So one may be ( one of the) world's tallest dwarfs or shortest giants.
 
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  • #2,427
Still have no sound in my PC, neither out nor in. I bought some drivers online for $20 hoping that would do it -- no luck there -- after checking just -about everything to have some sound.
 
  • #2,428
WWGD said:
Still have no sound in my PC, neither out nor in. I bought some drivers online for $20 hoping that would do it -- no luck there -- after checking just -about everything to have some sound.
That's an odd problem. I've never heard of anyone having the sound on their PC go out.

Edit: do headphones work?
 
  • #2,429
WWGD said:
Still have no sound in my PC, neither out nor in. I bought some drivers online for $20 hoping that would do it -- no luck there -- after checking just -about everything to have some sound.

You bought drivers? Just download the ones your manufacturer provides.

Well back on topic, I smashed my toe the other day and couldn't function for most of the day due to the pain. Nothing was broken and it was just bruised. It's a good thing I live in 2015 AD and not 1000 BC or else I'd be lunch for some animal.
 
  • #2,430
HomogenousCow said:
You bought drivers? Just download the ones your manufacturer provides.

Well back on topic, I smashed my toe the other day and couldn't function for most of the day due to the pain. Nothing was broken and it was just bruised. It's a good thing I live in 2015 AD and not 1000 BC or else I'd be lunch for some animal.
Did you try an aspirin or ibuprofen?
 
  • #2,431
Aspirin is a blood thinner, don't try it for bruises.
 
  • #2,432
HomogenousCow said:
You bought drivers? Just download the ones your manufacturer provides.

Well back on topic, I smashed my toe the other day and couldn't function for most of the day due to the pain. Nothing was broken and it was just bruised. It's a good thing I live in 2015 AD and not 1000 BC or else I'd be lunch for some animal.

I did check my device driver, I updated all drivers, got the message that devices were all working fine, nothing. Then checked some you tube videos, still nothing.
 
  • #2,433
zoobyshoe said:
That's an odd problem. I've never heard of anyone having the sound on their PC go out.

Edit: do headphones work?

Ah, you Mac people, so charmingly naive. Yes, I tried headphones. I will try them again.
 
  • #2,434
Check if your computer recognizes your speakers.
 
  • #2,435
HomogenousCow said:
Check if your computer recognizes your speakers.
I am told that there are neither input nor output sound devices : " no audio devices are installed". But then I go to the device manager and there they are listed, and apparently ( according to dialog box output), all working OK, I update all drivers and keep getting an error message. Now, after rebooting, sound icon in taskbar disappeared, I cannot make it reappear, since windows has disabled that option. If windows was honest, the error message should read: " Should have bought a Mac, or learned Linux ".
Another day with windows.
 
  • #2,436
I had an issue like this before. I accidentally terminated the audio background process in task manager and it did not turn itself back on upon a reboot. I had to look up the documentation for the drivers (realtek) to re-enable them. Check your startup processes if the audio background process is turned on.
 
  • #2,437
I may have to look into SysInternals for more details, Task Managr tells me sound devices are running, but somehow are not making use of CPU. Wish they had not de-fanged Task Manager in win 8.1; used to give you much more detailed, useful info in previous versions. I wonder what the reason was for changing that.
 
  • #2,438
If you haven't tried this yet, it might be worth a shot. This won't solve the problem if something else is to blame, but it's a good intermediate step to check. (Depending on your specific version of Windows, the process might look slightly different.)

What could be happening is that the default audio output is set to something other than the device to which your speakers are connected.

Open Control Panel, and then navigate to Hardware and Sound, Manage Audio Devices.
SoundProblems_01.jpg


Then be sure that the Default playback device is whatever your speakers are connected to.

SoundProblems_02.jpg


In the example above, My sound is coming through the speaker output of the "Realtek High Definition Audio" which is the sound "card" that's actually built into my motherboard. One of the other options is the non-amplified, digitial output jack of the same device, but I don't have anything hooked up to that, so I don't use it. Also in this example are shown are the ports associated with the NVidia graphics card's HDMI outputs, but I'm not using those. Not shown (there wasn't enough room) is an option to select my Logitech USB headphones.

By the way, this is the same process I use to switch between headphones and speakers.

Look to the right of the device and you'll see some bars (in light blue above). Play a You-Tube video or some music or something that should be playing some sound. If everything is set up correctly, any active device that's turned out and working properly should show some of those bars occasionally turn green when the sound level is appropriately large. If you don't see any green ever (when something is playing sound), it might be an issue with your driver software is piping the sound to the wrong output, or the device isn't set up correctly for some other reason.

If the problem is that your device is not configured correctly, you'll have to open the software application that came with the device [Edit: In my particular example, it would be the "Realtek HD Audio Manager" software; see the bottom of the first image]. For example, perhaps the device is set up to pipe the output through its non-amplified output port instead of the speaker port (and you're expecting the speaker port as the output). The software application that came with the device might allow you to reconfigure this.

Good luck. :smile:
 
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  • #2,439
WWGD said:
I did check my device driver, I updated all drivers, got the message that devices were all working fine, nothing. Then checked some you tube videos, still nothing.
How did you hear anything on YouTube? o_O
 
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  • #2,440
collinsmark said:
If you haven't tried this yet, it might be worth a shot. This won't solve the problem if something else is to blame, but it's a good intermediate step to check. (Depending on your specific version of Windows, the process might look slightly different.)

I think he mentioned earlier thatt none of his audio devices were showing in the audio settings menu.
 
  • #2,441
I saw "37 days", a small TV mini-series (3 episodes) recently, and I liked it. It's about the quite complicated events that led to World War I. If anyone likes history and/or diplomacy drama, this could be interesting. Trailer:


Links: "37 days" on Imdb, Wikipedia.
 
  • #2,442
zoobyshoe said:
That's an odd problem. I've never heard of anyone having the sound on their PC go out.
I've had a problem in the past with driver incompatibility. I forget how I solved the problem, but I probably had to do a system restore (rollback) before the problem arose.
 
  • #2,444
Borg said:
How did you hear anything on YouTube? o_O
There were a couple of videos without sound that were easy to follow. But you're right, a few were kind of dumb in giving instructions through speech.
 
  • #2,445
Astronuc said:
I've had a problem in the past with driver incompatibility. I forget how I solved the problem, but I probably had to do a system restore (rollback) before the problem arose.
Good point, I have not set up restore points for a while now, my bad.
 
  • #2,446
collinsmark said:
If you haven't tried this yet, it might be worth a shot. This won't solve the problem if something else is to blame, but it's a good intermediate step to check. (Depending on your specific version of Windows, the process might look slightly different.)

What could be happening is that the default audio output is set to something other than the device to which your speakers are connected.

Open Control Panel, and then navigate to Hardware and Sound, Manage Audio Devices.
View attachment 89356

Then be sure that the Default playback device is whatever your speakers are connected to.

View attachment 89358

In the example above, My sound is coming through the speaker output of the "Realtek High Definition Audio" which is the sound "card" that's actually built into my motherboard. One of the other options is the non-amplified, digitial output jack of the same device, but I don't have anything hooked up to that, so I don't use it. Also in this example are shown are the ports associated with the NVidia graphics card's HDMI outputs, but I'm not using those. Not shown (there wasn't enough room) is an option to select my Logitech USB headphones.

By the way, this is the same process I use to switch between headphones and speakers.

Look to the right of the device and you'll see some bars (in light blue above). Play a You-Tube video or some music or something that should be playing some sound. If everything is set up correctly, any active device that's turned out and working properly should show some of those bars occasionally turn green when the sound level is appropriately large. If you don't see any green ever (when something is playing sound), it might be an issue with your driver software is piping the sound to the wrong output, or the device isn't set up correctly for some other reason.

If the problem is that your device is not configured correctly, you'll have to open the software application that came with the device [Edit: In my particular example, it would be the "Realtek HD Audio Manager" software; see the bottom of the first image]. For example, perhaps the device is set up to pipe the output through its non-amplified output port instead of the speaker port (and you're expecting the speaker port as the output). The software application that came with the device might allow you to reconfigure this.

Good luck. :smile:
Thanks, I appreciate it, unfortunately did not work. It seems the error message is " no audio devices are installed" , despite the fact that the microphone , speakers and stereo speakers are listed in the device manager, and are listed as working correctly, the drivers have been updated to the latest ones. So windows 8.1 seems not to recognize the existence of sound devices in the system.
 
  • #2,447
WWGD said:
So windows 8.1 seems not to recognize the existence of sound devices in the system.
I think that was problem I had, but with an earlier version of Windows. The version of Windows did not recognize the drivers or driver updates, or is was the particular computer manufacturer which had some incompatibility with a driver.
 
  • #2,448
zoobyshoe said:
That's an odd problem. I've never heard of anyone having the sound on their PC go out.

Edit: do headphones work?
Well, sound is not a sort of intrinsic property of computers; it requires the use of components like speakers, microphones, mixers, which themselves require software (drivers) , and these must be coordinated by the OS. This gives you a " non-trivial " scenario for mistakes.
 
  • #2,449
Found a new hangout spot. A Whole Foods, with the perfect trifecta: WiFi, bathrooms, and outlets -- and even a water fountain. Good deal.
 
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