Random Thoughts Part 5: Time to Split Again

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The discussion revolves around various topics, including a dream about a person named Borek, reflections on the book "The Martian," and the complexities of educational systems in the US and UK. Participants share insights on the long and short scales of numbers, particularly regarding the term "billion," and discuss the differences in high school and college education between the two countries. The conversation also touches on personal anecdotes, such as perfecting a Kung Pao sauce recipe and experiences with local disturbances. Overall, the thread showcases a blend of light-hearted personal stories and deeper discussions on education and cultural differences.
  • #151
Borg said:
Speaking of winter weather, it looks like a Big Ol Snow Storm is headed for the east coast this weekend. We've haven't gotten any for the last few years so it will be nice to have a BOSS or two pass through this winter. :oldlove:

Maybe just coincidence, but it seems next storm will be named HUGO, so we will have HUGO BOSS, the first storm with a fragrance, I guess.
 
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  • #152
WWGD said:
Someone else weird enough: celebrating his anti-birthday, the day in the year farthest from his birthday ( July 17 ). And I glazed off when he started explaining why he felt the need to celebrate it. Another ride on the subway.
No mathematician, for sure. A mathematician would have called it co-birthday.
 
  • #153
fresh_42 said:
No mathematician, for sure. A mathematician would have called it co-birthday.
I heard it named that ... at Co-KFC, the Cokernel's place, while eating Co-Chicken?
 
  • #154
WWGD said:
Maybe just coincidence, but it seems next storm will be named HUGO, so we will have HUGO BOSS, the first storm with a fragrance, I guess.
Where did you see that? Hugo was retired as a Tropical Storm name in 1989 but I don't know if it applies to Winter Storm names also. This is the list that I found on the Weather Channel's site.
2015-2016-winter-storm-names.jpg
 
  • #155
WWGD said:
I heard it named that ... at Co-KFC, the Cokernel's place, while eating Co-Chicken?
co-eating! Don't forget the co-morphisms!
 
  • #156
Borg said:
This is the list that I found on the Weather Channel's site.
Here they used to call the deep pressure systems by female and the high pressure systems by male names ... until a few years ago PC ruled in.
 
  • #157
Borg said:
Where did you see that? Hugo was retired as a Tropical Storm name in 1989 but I don't know if it applies to Winter Storm names also. This is the list that I found on the Weather Channel's site.
2015-2016-winter-storm-names.jpg
I may have just imagined it, I guess.
 
  • #158
WWGD said:
P.S: Anyone else having trouble finding the scroll bar for this page?
Seems to be there... Firefox version - 43.0.4.

Scroll bar.JPG
 
  • #159
A few weeks ago, I was in a rural area of Costa Rica, in a jungle village. It was a village with mostly indigenous people. My husband and I visited a place where they make traditional pottery. No electricity is used in making these pots: they grind the clay, spin the potting wheel, and decorate the pots all by hand; they're fired in a hand-made kiln made of horse poop and clay, heated with wood.

We wanted to buy two pots but didn't have enough cash. No problem - the guy swiped our debit card in his phone, and voila we were on our way with two beautiful pots.

Today, I drove a couple hours to a car dealership near Seattle, to buy a car. The time comes to do the deed, and -- WHOOPS! -- they don't take cards. I had to drive home and back to get my freakin' checkbook. Paper checks...they needed a paper check. Sheesh.

oh and i bought a car today :woot:.
 
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  • #160
lisab said:
oh and i bought a car today :woot:.
Congratulations!
 
  • #161
wolram said:
The Chinese people work them selves to death, and their working conditions are far below the west, it is no wonder.

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/wages-china

I've actually been to these factories, and they are hardly as abysmal as people are making them out to be. For most of those workers, working in factories is far better than what they'd instead be doing (subsidiary farming). Wages aren't even that low these days, far higher than in other developing countries.
 
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  • #162
OCR said:
Seems to be there... Firefox version - 43.0.4.

View attachment 94495
Scroll bar is back, fortunately, I was using Chrome, tho.
 
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  • #163
Sophia said:
Me. the scroll bar is the same colour as page background
Are you also using Chrome? Is it back?
 
  • #164
Heard that Moore's law may not still apply. Maybe this is why I cannot find a new PC with more RAM and higher processor speed for the same price as the one I bought just a year ago.
 
  • #165
After a big issue had been made on my throwing a banana peel in a tree planted in a public street, a followup ( original place where I posted is locked): plenty of cigarette buts, regular trash, animal feces... but no banana peels.
 
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  • #166
WWGD said:
Are you also using Chrome? Is it back?
I'm using firefox on Linux. But fortunately, I noticed it is the same colour as background only yesterday after reading your post. I use that small wheel on mouse to move the page so I don't need it.
 
  • #167
lisab said:
A few weeks ago, I was in a rural area of Costa Rica, in a jungle village. It was a village with mostly indigenous people. My husband and I visited a place where they make traditional pottery. No electricity is used in making these pots: they grind the clay, spin the potting wheel, and decorate the pots all by hand; they're fired in a hand-made kiln made of horse poop and clay, heated with wood.

We wanted to buy two pots but didn't have enough cash. No problem - the guy swiped our debit card in his phone, and voila we were on our way with two beautiful pots.

Today, I drove a couple hours to a car dealership near Seattle, to buy a car. The time comes to do the deed, and -- WHOOPS! -- they don't take cards. I had to drive home and back to get my freakin' checkbook. Paper checks...they needed a paper check. Sheesh.

oh and i bought a car today :woot:.
I'm not sure about the US but here only bigger shops can afford accepting credit cards. It's quite expensive and they have to pay a fee for each transaction or even some % from the transaction, I'm not sure now.
Anyway, one would expect a car seller to sacrifice a few cents or even dollars from his profit when selling a car :-)
 
  • #168
lisab said:
We wanted to buy two pots but didn't have enough cash. No problem - the guy swiped our debit card in his phone, and voila we were on our way with two beautiful pots.

Today, I drove a couple hours to a car dealership near Seattle, to buy a car. The time comes to do the deed, and -- WHOOPS! -- they don't take cards.
Love the irony in that one. Congratulations on the new car. :smile:
 
  • #169
HomogenousCow said:
I've actually been to these factories, and they are hardly as abysmal as people are making them out to be. For most of those workers, working in factories is far better than what they'd instead be doing (subsidiary farming). Wages aren't even that low these days, far higher than in other developing countries.
The parts that disturbed me were the ones about payment of wages being 'delayed', and the abandonment of middle aged and older workers. It's one thing to be officially making a certain wage but another when that wage ends up never getting paid. Also, if, upon reaching the age of 40, employers start to marginalize you, what hope do you have for the future?
 
  • #170
I was very energetic working on my slime mold lab culture and all of a sudden the alert bell rang. Now all my enthusiasm to continue the work disappears. What the...!?:):DD.
Off I go to watch TV.
 
  • #171
Meet my first bonsai trees that I got today and Murko. His left eye is not really as dark as in this picture.
There's a towel to prevent draft from the window on the trees and seeds for birds on the left side :)
Murko was investigating the bonsais very carefully for a long time and - what a relief!- finally decided he would not eat them :) (he likes my dracenas, tough, he eats them like grass if he gets a chance!)
bonsai.jpg
 
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  • #172
Silicon Waffle said:
I was very energetic working on my slime mold lab culture and all of a sudden the alert bell rang. Now all my enthusiasm to continue the work disappears. What the...!?:):DD.
Off I go to watch TV.
How did the slime mold feel about that?
 
  • #173
Krylov said:
How did the slime mold feel about that?
Nothing but my teacher is getting mad. She actually is quite schizophrenic, if you know where to turn her on.
 
  • #174
lisab said:
A few weeks ago, I was in a rural area of Costa Rica, in a jungle village. It was a village with mostly indigenous people. My husband and I visited a place where they make traditional pottery. No electricity is used in making these pots: they grind the clay, spin the potting wheel, and decorate the pots all by hand; they're fired in a hand-made kiln made of horse poop and clay, heated with wood.

We wanted to buy two pots but didn't have enough cash. No problem - the guy swiped our debit card in his phone, and voila we were on our way with two beautiful pots.

Today, I drove a couple hours to a car dealership near Seattle, to buy a car. The time comes to do the deed, and -- WHOOPS! -- they don't take cards. I had to drive home and back to get my freakin' checkbook. Paper checks...they needed a paper check. Sheesh.

oh and i bought a car today :woot:.

Congratulations. Maybe you should have paid them in pennies to show them how convenient their payment methods are. So much for pleasing the customer.
 
  • #175
WWGD said:
Congratulations. Maybe you should have paid them in pennies to show them how convenient their payment methods are. So much for pleasing the customer.
:DD
 
  • #176
I cleaned up my mess.
I am not here to get a life or introduced a new life.
 
  • #177
Silicon Waffle said:
I was very energetic working on my slime mold lab culture and all of a sudden the alert bell rang. Now all my enthusiasm to continue the work disappears. What the...!?:):DD.
Off I go to watch TV.
You obviously had your mind on other things.
 
  • #178
Evidence suggests that I was hungry last night and ate one of my contact lenses.

I don't know how that can happen. They have absolutely no nutritional value. And I'm blind as a bat without them.

It defies all logic. Yet here I am.
 
  • #179
collinsmark said:
Evidence suggests that I was hungry last night and ate one of my contact lenses.

I don't know how that can happen. They have absolutely no nutritional value. And I'm blind as a bat without them.

It defies all logic. Yet here I am.
There is a kind of nasty way to try to recover them if they are expensive.
 
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  • #180
collinsmark said:
Evidence suggests that I was hungry last night and ate one of my contact lenses.
That's very mysterious. What was the evidence?
 
  • #181
There are more than 150 weekly meetups within 5 miles of my place. If I was unemployed and/or wealthy, I could afford to spend around 50 hours a week in different meetups.
 
  • #182
WWGD said:
There are more than 150 weekly meetups within 5 miles of my place. If I was unemployed and/or wealthy, I could afford to spend around 50 hours a week in different meetups.
I have heard ads like this all the time but have never seen anyone for real yet ? :oldfrown:
I think the organizers are doing some things far above and beyond calculus.
 
  • #184
Oh I can't watch News any more. Not because of the content but because my ears hurt from such poor language used by the reporters. They talk like 15 year olds in the street!
Oh where are those old times when they had language editors who checked that they used grammatically and stylistically correct sentences? And they also used to have speech therapists who worked on their articulation. Where are they now?
 
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  • #185
Sophia said:
Oh I can't watch News any more. Not because of the content but because my ears hurt from such poor language used by the reporters. They talk like 15 year olds in the street!
Oh where are those old times when they had language editors who checked that they used grammatically and stylistically correct sentences? And they also used to have speech therapists who worked on their articulation. Where are they now?

I feel the same way except for the radio that we have here in Australia, completely mind numbing and ear bleeding causing quality... I cannot stand to turn it on.
 
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  • #186
Sirsh said:
I feel the same way except for the radio that we have here in Australia, completely mind numbing and ear bleeding causing quality... I cannot stand to turn it on.
Yep, same here :-(
 
  • #187
WWGD said:
I may have just imagined it, I guess.
It's going to be called Jonas. Looks like it will be a big one for Northern VA. :wideeyed:

http://i.imwx.com/images/maps/truvu/map_specnewsdct-84_ltst_4namus_enus_650x366.jpg
 
  • #188
I was watching the Youtube Interview with President Obama a few days back (because SmarterEveryDay) and found myself nodding my head to:
"Peoples' motives in these mass shootings are complicated. In my mind, by definition, if you're willing to do something like that you have a serious mental health problem." - Obama

But today I got to thinking about something else I've internalized, that people are good at classifying things, including classifications like "the enemy" and "other" that remove certain inhibitions. (Not sure what this phenomenon is called or if it even has a proper name.)

How do these two ideas interact with one another? Are one or both of them poppycock?
Can (should?) other inherent cognitive biases be classified as mental health problems?
 
  • #189
jackwhirl said:
(Not sure what this phenomenon is called or if it even has a proper name.)
Social identity theory
 
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  • #190
Silicon Waffle said:
I have heard ads like this all the time but have never seen anyone for real yet ? :oldfrown:
I think the organizers are doing some things far above and beyond calculus.
Try an online search for meetups, unless you live in the south pole or middle of the desert, sure you will get plenty of hits. There are meetups on anything, from calculus to theatre, to fashion, to computers, from intro to advanced levels

http://www.meetup.com/cities/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetup_(website)

You may be able to set up your group if you cannot find one you like.
 
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  • #191
jackwhirl said:
How do these two ideas interact with one another? Are one or both of them poppycock?
Can (should?) other inherent cognitive biases be classified as mental health problems?
They sort of already are, in a soft, non-official way. It's assumed that no one is perfectly mentally healthy. The line between "normal" and "mentally ill" is drawn where a person becomes dysfunctional. "Dysfunctional" would include cases where a person is "a danger to themselves or others." So, a "normal" person might see some "other" group as "the enemy," for reasons of cognitive bias, but still have no violent intentions against them.
 
  • #192
Borg said:
It's going to be called Jonas. Looks like it will be a big one for Northern VA. :wideeyed:

http://i.imwx.com/images/maps/truvu/map_specnewsdct-84_ltst_4namus_enus_650x366.jpg
How about we use it for a name for a new cologne, to compete with Hugo? The snowy cologne, way cooler (literally) than Hugo ? Jonas: Hugo's classier brother.
 
  • #193
Most American farmers are real patriotic straight men. Look at the Bundys. Only strong men (physically and mentally) would dare to do something like that. They are the true heroes in the land of the free.
 
  • #194
WWGD said:
You may be able to set up your group if you cannot find one you like.
There's one here with more than 800 only girls ...
 
  • #195
Silicon Waffle said:
They are the true heroes in the land of the free.
Is 'hero' American slang for 'clowns'?
 
  • #196
Lawyer of man who threatened Muslims: Fox News made him do it!
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/10801948/fox-news-muslims-threat

California defense attorney Michael Malowney asked a San Diego judge to be lenient in sentencing his client, John David Weissinger, for a series of violent threats against the Council on American-Islamic Relations, because Weissinger was under the influence of alcohol — and Fox News.
Alcohol combined with Fox News is bad combination. :oldeyes:

Don't drink and watch Fox News.
 
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  • #197
fresh_42 said:
There's one here with more than 800 only girls ...
Is that a harem meetup?
 
  • #198
Silicon Waffle said:
Most American farmers are real patriotic straight men. Look at the Bundys. Only strong men (physically and mentally) would dare to do something like that. They are the true heroes in the land of the free.
Is that the Bundys from "Love and Marriage" or psycho killer Ted Bundy's family? Or some other Bundys?
 
  • #199
Astronuc said:
Lawyer of man who threatened Muslims: Fox News made him do it!
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/10801948/fox-news-muslims-threat

Alcohol combined with Fox News is bad combination. :oldeyes:

Don't drink and watch Fox News.

Why would you choose to watch Fox ( or MSNBC) unless you are drunk to start with?
 
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  • #200
WWGD said:
Is that a harem meetup?
No idea. I'm still thinking whether or not I should apply for it.
 

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