I'm in Falls Church, and 24 hours ago I was in manhattan.

I'd reccomend taking the subway to manhattan, getting on the Boltbus (at 7th and 30-something), which will drop you off near metro center in DC. Then you can take the orange line to Vienna, which is a half hour by car from Herndon.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 6:14 PM on July 22, 2008

If I could piggyback on this... could someone suggest resources for underingstanding the navajo "morning run"?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 5:06 PM on July 22, 2008

I have done hours long radio shows on this theme, but since it's late, I'm going to post the only track you really need.

Muscles - Ice Cream
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 12:07 AM on July 17, 2008

groBes (the "B" is really a german way of writing a double ss sound) means big. malheur is french and means... displeasure or upsetness. "me has no backups" seems to be decrying the cats failure to store his digital data in a redundant manner. I believe the gestalt message is one of polyglossial regret - the cat is now sad having lost it's data.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:59 PM on July 15, 2008

I look forward to the academic treatises on lolcat code switching grammars.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:00 PM on July 15, 2008

I'll honor your pleases. I wish you the best. This book meant a lot to me.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:22 PM on July 15, 2008

Act as if you are going to throw something at them. When they flinch, ask them why. Go from there.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 1:56 PM on July 15, 2008

Don't do that. Here's why:

Objectively we can never fully know if anything is real or not. All of this could be a dream, or a hallucination, or a computer program ala The Matrix (or more classically, The Allegory of the Cave.) As such we can never fully know the "truth" of anything.

Meh, solipsism.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 2:08 PM on July 15, 2008 marked best answer

Magical thinking is easy; science is hard. Science evangelists don't want to admit that, because they fear -- rightly -- that they'll lose their audience. But that doesn't make it not true.

I guess I'm a "science evangelist" because in my personal experience and those of many I've known, magical thinking leads to cognitive dissonance eventually. It's not a pleasant way to live. But more than that, I think being out of touch with the world... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 2:34 PM on July 15, 2008

Science isn't a belief system. It doesn't conflict with religious thought.

No, but reality, as illuminated by scientific inquiry can conflict with religious thought.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 2:37 PM on July 15, 2008

You will be one of thousands of 19 year old girls wandering around Manhattan not getting murdered that night! Have fun! (I'll be one of those 19 year old boys doing the same)
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:38 PM on July 14, 2008

Hurt her now or hurt her later, but the way you're going, it's certain to happen. She is not going to die without you, and vice versa. You are both going to die a slow, torturous death together. Get out.

A Million Times, Yes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 6:22 PM on July 14, 2008

If TPS is right that it's the venue-as-bar situation, I think it's pretty clear there is no way to talk myself in to this without putting the owner in huge legal jeopardy they have no incentive to take on behalf. I've been googling, but I can't find it anywhere.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 3:48 PM on July 13, 2008

Stimulants like ritalin and cocaine can put users in to a state of near-manic self-confidence.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 12:26 PM on July 13, 2008

If you're working for a democratic candidate, you should be using some interface to the Voter Activation Network. Build The Hope, amongst others, lets you order by street name and print out a google map of houses along with these lists. You can also set up page breaks between different streets. Then it's up to the canvasser to shuffle their various street lists around and plan how to go through them. It's not ideal, but you get good at it pretty quickly.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2008

VoteBuilder is the other interface that's used often. Someone from your campaign should be able to get you access. I don't know what other political groups use for their voter files.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2008

Also, canvassing often happens in groups, so it's good to keep everything is nice modular chunks (street by street, in house number order, only streets within walking distance grouped in to a turf).
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:16 AM on July 13, 2008

Fwiw, I think it might sound substanceless because it is.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 12:40 PM on July 12, 2008

I'm not sure I fully understand what your post is asking. There seem to be two questions here...

What are the dimensions of the universe?

If you mean the dimensions as in size it's not something we know a lot about. There are a multitude of theories, none particularly better supported than the others.

But then you list a bunch of things that are incomparable. So I... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:04 AM on July 11, 2008

I think you're being seduced by words, a common modern affliction :-)

First of the "diachronic" dimension of which you speak is an abstraction there is no compelling reason to believe exists physically. I don't know about you, but I perceive time moment by moment, in a constant flow, sandwiched between past a present. I have no direct experience of past or future things. The timeline is a good way to visualize our memories and predictions...... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:29 AM on July 11, 2008

As far as light and sound go, they are simply specific phenomena that occur within our good ole' 3-dimensional world. Every acoustic or optical phenomena we've observed (with the exception of a few quantum things that some people are happy with for the latter) can be completely described within the mathematical framework of 3-dimensional space.

Sound is nothing more than the movement, the bunching together and spreading apart, in 3 dimensions, of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:42 AM on July 11, 2008

BirdD0g: Please, don't just make stuff up. If you look up saturation you'll see it's color-specific brightness. So you could measure the brightness of white light (which has a wide array of pure colors within it) and you could also measure the brightness of those components individually.

In a musical analogy, anything but pure sine waves can be decomposed in to sine waves (here is why). The sine waves, just as with light, are the pure constituents of more complicated... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 12:15 PM on July 11, 2008

Hyperphysics
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:26 AM on July 10, 2008

Yeah, the immediate response would be hella dorky.

You should make clear to him that you find him physically attractive. Just be honest about what does it for you. It's probably going to make more sense being more sexual than not about it. I doubt men care too much about appearing handsome, but would like to hear that they turn you on.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:28 PM on July 9, 2008

Getting a tattoo is something people are often apprehensive about, because in a sense it's "permanent". Some marking is likely to remain with you a long time. That said, they're done on an incredibly unstable canvas. I had to look up just now how they stay in place at all. While it's pretty remarkable, they ink still bleeds, loses definition, warp as your skin wrinkles, and eventually fall apart completely.

I've long thought about getting a tattoo whose message... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 9:26 PM on July 9, 2008

Human die-off! Food shortages, complete collapse of the US economy/our monetary system (not just a recession or depression, but much worse). And that this stuff might start happening very soon.

While skeptical of the more extreme claims, some of these scenarios seem plausible to me. I am not depressed.

Even if the economy takes an epic plunge... I'll still be better off than my grandparents in the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:43 AM on July 9, 2008

James: Gay, Not In To You, Possibly Confused.
You: Very unfortunate situation, time to move on.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:22 PM on July 7, 2008

I've got this revolutionary invention, I just need some seed money... we're based out of Ghana and due to some pesky laws it would be best if you sent a money order...

Nah, I'm joking. Get a financial advisor.

I really don't want a financial advisor. Self management is important to me.

You might have this image in your head of yourself telling guys in a bar about how shrewdly you "boned up"... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:20 PM on July 7, 2008

What sorts of considerations does one have to think about when thinking about getting married?

If you were asking for advice on buying a car, we'd all ask you how you planned to use it... what your motivation for getting a car was. What's your motivation for entering in to a relationship?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 9:00 PM on July 4, 2008

I live in Boston, so is there a group of nerdy, smart women out there in their 20s and 30s I just don't know about?

Harvard and M I freakin' T are just over the chuck river. If ever there were a place to find "nerdy" women...
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:09 AM on July 3, 2008

Be Honest. Do Not Hook Up Again. Accept that there will be some awkwardness. Give him space.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 12:37 AM on July 3, 2008

We just did this, actually.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:52 AM on July 1, 2008

The study was conducted by Dr. Philip Zeskind, a developmental psychologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va. Using a sophisticated acoustical analysis, he determined that the range of a normal baby's cries is from 450 to 600 cycles a second, a measurement of the frequency of the sound wave. The 600-cycle cry occurs when a baby is in sharp pain; the 450-cyle cry indicates lesser levels of discomfort. The ordinary cry of a baby is acoustically near the note A below... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:21 AM on July 1, 2008

(I found that article by googling... the rest of it mentions a lot of scary sounding things correlated with it. Go see a doctor/neurologist stat.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 11:24 AM on July 1, 2008

Call your state level Obama office.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 10:56 PM on June 30, 2008

When my dad was a kid he had two cousins we'll call lars and sven. When they were about 12 years old, their father (my dad's uncle) was divorced from his wife and relinquished custody of his kids. Those kids were subsequently renamed at age 13 or so... so they were now Tom and Bob Smith instead of Lars and Sven Eriksson.

My brother's name is "Lars". This is considered a little weird in my family.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 9:48 AM on June 29, 2008

Class Goat: It was thinking about those phenomena that prompted me to wonder this in the first place. Your explanation of the functioning of the cochlea is great! I'll have to read up on that...

The sinusoid, being the ratio of a uniformly rotating radius' components, is the purest repetitive series. Any other signal is not as "clean" ie. contains a degree of discontinuity in the signal.

I think it has... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 7:53 PM on June 28, 2008

dixie flatline: Hmmm, perhaps I spoke to soon. My hunch is that you could find a (or more likely, a class of) polynomial function that, defined piecewise would be periodic, differential, and continuous at all points. Maybe norabarnacl3 can elaborate?

Assuming the sine/cosine functions are unique in that regard, I still don't understand what the significance of that would be.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:09 PM on June 28, 2008

ssg: It's not really that physical systems "react to sinusoidal forces"; it's that the behaviour of many, many systems is sinusoidal. It's the nature of the universe.

I think your phrasing is better, but I don't think our statements disagree.

ochenk: You are begging the question.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:17 PM on June 28, 2008

adipocere: Heaviside functions can be said to represent some electrical phenomena (in reality, a totally discontinuous jump is not possible). The integral of that is a ramp function. That's basically how sawtooth wave generators work electrically. I'm not sure if that counts as "natural".

You can build sines out of square waves

If you squint! But yeah, mathematically, an infinitude of square waves can be made to add... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:23 PM on June 28, 2008

I'm just saying I believe there's a definite mathematical sense in which sine is the "simplest" (or "smoothest") periodic function (by nature of the continuity of its derivatives), and that this holds regardless of whether the sine wave does or does not appear in nature.

Right. This is pretty much what I was trying to ask, and I'm inclined to agree with you, but I can't justify it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:29 PM on June 28, 2008

anadem: I always describe it as light put on the end of a helicopter rotor. If the helicopter moves vertically, it the light traces out a sine. Not all that related to the question though.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 9:03 PM on June 28, 2008

If your system is trying to generate a square wave for example what you tend to end up with is a very close approximation made out of sine waves right? Isn't the capacitance of the medium going to smooth out your sharp transitions into smooth sine waves?

Not exactly. We can view that transition as being made up of component sinusoids (when thinking of things in the frequency domain), but in the time domain it's exponential.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 9:22 AM on June 29, 2008

selfmedicating: dude, I came in here to post my trademark line, and you have to steal my thunder. :-)

To answer the question: No, but man, that's interesting.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:49 PM on June 28, 2008

Also, if the university tries to blockade them, they can survive longer by drinking it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 8:47 PM on June 28, 2008

Oxytocin?
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 7:23 PM on June 28, 2008

Maybe you're just watching the wrong films? I've had no problem following some really complicated films (you know, stuff with time travel paradoxes and concurrent dream sequences) but comparatively simple films I occasionally get lost in because they don't hold my interest. The hallmark of any good fiction is that you're drawn in and want to expend the effort needed to follow it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 7:07 PM on June 28, 2008

Het Paard is one of the best game (as in, mental sport, not D&D) shops in the world. I bought a wonderful goban there, and if you play any of the games they cover, or are in to puzzles, it's a must visit.

It goes without saying that all manner of soft drugs, including peyote/mushrooms/weed are available.

Ride a bike! It's the best city in the world for it. Bikes are EVERYWHERE.

Rent a kayak and tool around the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 3:59 PM on June 27, 2008

Thievery Corporation - Truth and Rights

"The prostitutes gather at the top of Constitution Avenue to dictate what I can say or do"
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 3:50 PM on June 27, 2008

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - This Land

(they use the origional lyrics, which are more critical of the US)
posted to Ask Metafilter by phrontist at 3:53 PM on June 27, 2008