I thought he was expected to announce Sunday -- the last possible moment before two by-elections. Kind of a nasty trick to play on all the people working the by-election day (those with political party affiliations, as well as Elections Canada workers)!
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 5:54 PM on September 4, 2008

some long user name: Hah! You're a journalist, not a commando. Come on.

StickyCarpet: wouldn't attempting to free them be cause enough for arresting her?

What the hell do you two think "attempting to free" means in this context?!?!? This is Amy Goodman we're talking about, not John Wayne.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 7:19 PM on September 1, 2008

Nazi Germany, for example, came into being through violent means, including street battles, the burning of the Reichstag, and Kristallnacht, followed by a Nazi revolution, which swept away the Wiemar Republic. It wasn't a gradual loss of freedom, it was an overthrow of existing institutions by means of violence in the streets.

That's a self-serving reading of history you've got there...

My point is that it is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:33 AM on September 2, 2008

it's all kabuki theater - both sides show up, go through their motions, say the usual things and nothing is actually changed by either side

It is all theater, but that is the entire point, so I don't see how it is a very interesting observation. And, there certainly is change. In particular, and apart from the larger political issues -- not that it makes any sense to separate those issues from the debate -- the tactics have changed. In the late 90s... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:28 AM on September 2, 2008

I wonder if that will ever make the MSM.. Probably not, it doesn't make for a nice clean story (despite the presence of "dilute" bleach -- whatever that means).

To measure the outrage though.. Personally, I expect a higher standard of conduct from the authorities (or myself, or groups I choose to associate with), than I expect of the general populace. In fact, to get all deconstructionist about it, I think that's what makes me a lefty :P... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 12:22 PM on September 2, 2008

Just start with the practices you use when your city's team wins the big game, or when the celebrity of the weak hits town. Those things do degrade sometimes too, and so you probably can't eliminate the riot gear and tear gas completely, but...
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 12:45 PM on September 2, 2008

I got the impression the episode was stopped in pre-production, not that a completed episode was pulled from the schedule (which has happened on other occasions). Am I missing something?
And, I think these sites are all misquoting, but I'm not going back there..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:40 AM on August 31, 2008

That's right Jamie- what would happen to one of these new-fangled RFID cards if we taped a mess of TNT to them and blew them sky high?

Yep, still readable!
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:41 AM on August 31, 2008

It seems they also have a tendency to degrade as the metals used do not stand up well to water, perspiration, oils from skin contact, etc..

Hmm... A metal cage shouldn't degrade too easily. However, when you are trying to block broad spectrum waves, you need to have shielding continuously on all walls. What might appear to be very minor damage is enough to allow certain frequencies to get inside easily. Also, the Faraday cages you are thinking of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 12:10 PM on September 1, 2008

"It doesn't bode well for the week ahead."
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 5:40 PM on August 30, 2008

Ya, piss jugs! Who even says those buckets were intended as weapons? I mean, with 20+ people staying in the same house....
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:09 PM on August 30, 2008

It looks like protesters with some cops standing around.

Protesters with cops barricading and detaining them, that is.. Which is problematic, because if they were causing a nuisance by being there -- and that is the minimum justification for any police action -- the cops are making the 'public nuisance' problem 10x worse.

Anyway, grandstanding police and grandstanding protesters is what you expect in these situations. Those... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:13 AM on August 31, 2008

To begin with, the Fascination talk itself was very nicely done. I love that he leaves off with an incomplete project with potential future work, and addresses the whole "I have more money than I used to, but I don't have that much money" aspect.

And then there was the rapport he had with his audience, the humble confidence, and the inside baseball look at the politics stirred up at the meeting of public discourse, science, and business.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:34 AM on August 30, 2008

Also over here, and Slashdot has the same misquote that Boing Boing has.. ARGH!
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:48 PM on August 30, 2008

This one is kind of the opposite..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:27 PM on August 28, 2008

Wow opsin, that talk has got to be posted!

In fact, I've got the post ready, but is two Mythbusters posts in the same day too much?!?!?!
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:06 PM on August 29, 2008

From the BoingBoing page:heck out the first two minutes of this clip of Mythbusters' Adam Savage telling the folks at the HOPE hackercon about how the Discovery Channel was bullied by big credit-card companies out of airing a program about how crappy the security in RFID tags is.That's a misquote. He never makes any conclusion about whether the security is crappy or not. The credit card companies quashed it (or contributed to its quashing, at least) because of the prospect of public scrutiny... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:55 AM on August 30, 2008

I had to read this thread to figure out that you can vary the power of your bombs, but once I did that it wasn't so bad.. I'm 100% sure I could have solved level 49 with enough tries, but Adam Savage and food made me quit.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:30 PM on August 29, 2008

As long as there's not a wrongful death or provable rape, it's hard to get past the blue wall.

A wrongful death won't break the wall either, though it would probably at least make the news.. Case in point, there was a wrongful death at a native protest in Ontario -- ya, Canada, were these things are supposed to be a little better -- and while there was an official inquiry, it was still a total whitewash:former Ontario Provincial Attorney General... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:01 PM on August 28, 2008

Exactly! Because you've got to know if this guy had had one of these, this guy would be the democratically elected President of China right now.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:17 PM on August 28, 2008

Tell that to the Iraqi insurgents.

Sure, if you want what's happening in Iraq to happen to your country, go ahead and have a revolution.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:33 PM on August 28, 2008

I don't think that bare ass was accidental - how long do those yachting stages last?

There was a lot of talk about that blade runner guy, and the swimmer with one leg, but nobody ever mentioned this woman - anyone know who she is?
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:49 PM on August 24, 2008

See what happens when you steal, kids?

What is really too bad about all that is, the kid who was doing the bandwidth/credit stealing had a much more user friendly interface. Ya ya, I know, it doesn't make it right.....
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:56 PM on August 25, 2008

Right, no re-education camps..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:48 AM on August 26, 2008

Not to belabour the point but... Impromptu re-education camp. That video starts out like your typical grandstanding police against grandstanding protester situation, but if you stick with it, you'll see that the police barricade the protest, the press, and anybody who might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Presumably, from what I can piece together quickly, all but about 100 targeted individuals got out after 20 minutes.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 7:46 PM on August 28, 2008

History of the Transistor:The first patent[1] for the field-effect transistor principle was filed in Canada by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld on October 22, 1925, but Lilienfeld published no research articles about his devices, and they were ignored by industry. In 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor[2]. There is no direct evidence that these devices were built, but later work in the 1990s show that one of Lilienfeld's designs... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:40 AM on August 28, 2008

I am however a little dubious about using "natural language" for tasks that are frankly not what natural language was designed for. I really don't want to program in a natural language, nor drive a car, nor do taxes. Most computer tasks are more like this than talking to a friend, and I'm not sure trying to pretend they are not is productive.

Actually, worse than counter productive, a massive fallacy. The major problem in answering the quiz... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:11 AM on August 27, 2008

We called this "Rugby Baseball". We pretty much attached the word "Rugby" to the front of any sport that we wanted to turn into a no-holds barred ass kicking fest.

Ya, I've been thinking about the rules for Rugby Curling for years :) Instead of one team sitting around while the other throws, the guys on the 'inactive' team get to try and stop/divert the incoming rock. But, the guys with the brooms become rock defenders.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:10 AM on August 26, 2008

Yippee -- 95 %. The two I got wrong were the ones about what clouds are made up of and the force that pushes electrons through wires.

Same here. I also missed the temperature one.. I guess it took me a couple of questions to get into the right mindset.

Also, it was lame! Most questions tested reading comprehension more than scientific understanding, in my opinion.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 2:25 PM on August 24, 2008

Therefore the answer would be unmuddied by the fact that you're required to waive the second law of thermodynamics on the premises but re-apply precisely the same law to the conclusion.

But, does "friction and unwanted heat transfer" account for all the energy loss mechanisms? I think it depends on what you mean by unwanted heat transfer.. I mean, a certain amount of energy has to go out the exhaust pipe, or the exhaust pipe stops working,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:18 PM on August 24, 2008

Not sure if you're being serious peeedro, but on the off chance you are.. Nope, that is "angular velocity", different vector from "velocity". So, it comes down to the same precise use of language that permeates the rest of the test.
I hate the way π renders in the MetaFilter font.. I wonder if I should request a pony :P
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 12:14 AM on August 26, 2008

π - Hmm, I didn't know about the <tt> tag, or at least I forgot about it. Still, a bit small.

The unicode showed up as something quite odd. Oh, actually not so odd.. 21 over 3C with a box around it. Heh..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:45 AM on August 26, 2008

Wow, The Smirking Chimp has changed a lot! Can it really be 4 years since I visited that site...
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 2:50 PM on August 25, 2008

There will be an amazing new discovery in physics on a par with the discovery of radio waves or the discovery of nuclear reactions.

It seems far more likely that the new discovery will be that noise (aka randomness) is "real". We just have to live with certain fundamental limits, just as with thermodynamics.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 8:28 PM on August 24, 2008

it's that the results of reading the entangled particles are completely correlated no matter how far apart they are.

Well, the way I read some of the content is that certain people are hoping for magical speed of light violating new physics, which this is not.

We already know this is true, though.

Well, I'm not a physicist, but based on certain talks I've heard, and articles I've... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 9:06 PM on August 24, 2008

The issue isn't that, it's the entangledness, that you can stretch this uncertain state across the universe.

The randomness angle is important for understanding why entanglement doesn't violate the speed of light, but I was never suggesting that entanglement ideas effect the randomness question.

Anyway, reading wiki about wave function collapse, it seems to be about avoiding duality, rather than randomness.
(more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:38 PM on August 24, 2008

ARGH! The wiki talk page on duality is a nightmare! Perhaps it would be more accurate to say wave function collapse is a way for physicists of varying opinion to avoid provoking the duality debate..

Anyway, this is way off topic now :P
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:57 PM on August 24, 2008

I don't know kliuless.. Those links have some problems.

The University of Rochester one say:Why the objects we see around us every day—in what physicists call the "classical" world—don't behave this way despite being made of these very same strange quantum particles is a deep question in modern physics.This shouldn't be a mystery to anyone.. The macro scale objects behave like the average of many billions of billions of probability distributions. That the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:15 AM on August 25, 2008

NASCAR is superior to F1 because it has better crashes.

Nonsense..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:26 AM on August 24, 2008

via dobbs, actually :)
(I was going to cross post that link too, but then I went and got lunch instead)
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2008

Astonishing! In particular, his top speed was way-fast.. In at least one sense, all this drug talk is really absurd: Bolt is doing something new.

As for drug use in general, and how ubiquitous it is.. As I said previously about The Tour:Under WADA rules you are allowed to use many "banned substances" as long as you have a "medical need", and register a Therapeutic Use Exemption. For example, almost all endurance athletes are "asthmatic".This... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:05 AM on August 16, 2008

Malor: Once the censors aren't going quite so overboard, I'll try to chase down a video of him running a 200. I'd like to see that. It looks like he'd be so far out in front that calling it a race would be a bit of a misnomer. The race, I think, would be for second place.

Surprisingly, his 200m times aren't that fast, yet.. Well, pretty fast actually, but I bet we're in for something special in the next week :P

mrgrimm:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 1:51 PM on August 16, 2008

Actually, look at that wind reading, -0.5 m/s compared to Michael Jonson's +0.4m/s, so that 19.67s run was real fast. Here's the video, of the 19.67s run, not in english.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 1:58 PM on August 16, 2008

Video, and a great little interview with Bolt, are on the CBC website (choose category: sports -> athletics. Then look for Day12: Men's 200m in the far right).

Wind: -0.9m/s
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:40 AM on August 20, 2008

The wind was blowing against Bolt by almost 0.9 m/s. The wind was blowing with Johnson by 0.4 m/s. That means that in practice, Bolt was much much faster than Johnson - extrapolating from this, effectively about 0.1s faster. No corrections are applied, but if the wind is more than +2.0m/s the time is not eligible for consideration as a record.

According to CBC, his time was rounded down to 19.30, which means it was probably measured as something like 19.303s.. The... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 5:09 PM on August 20, 2008

Actually, back in 1984, I remember some CBC reporter doing a lot of creative math - factoring population, team size, who knows what else - and determining that Canada won the Los Angeles Olympics. No sign of it online though.
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 5:37 PM on August 20, 2008

More Gwynne Dyer - Abkhazia: Russian Bluff:

If Russia one day recognises Abkhazia's independence without Georgian consent and Security Council approval, it will mean that Moscow has finally lost its faith in international law and accepted that the world has reverted to jungle.

posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:42 PM on August 11, 2008

And his most recent column - Russian triumph as Saakashvili's gamble fails:The Bush Administration's ambition to extend Nato into the Caucasus mountains is dead, which will please the French, the Germans and other Nato members who always found it bizarre and wilfully provocative.

Russians, who were the target of the provocation, will be quietly pleased with the speed and effectiveness of their Government's response. There is no great moral issue here. What Georgia tried... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 11:52 PM on August 11, 2008

the most obvious outcome of the conflict is that America has been revealed as a paper tiger that's only willing to talk the talk, not walk the walk. That means former Eastern Bloc countries will be significantly less likely to buy into American promises in the future, and hence the American encirclement agenda has suffered a serious setback.

That's a little simplistic.. What this really does is raise the stakes on every military treaty type issue... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 10:03 AM on August 13, 2008

I thought it seemed sort of mis-scored, as if it had been created for another piece of music, disconnected from the the narrative of the melody.

It was created for another piece of music..
posted to MetaFilter by Chuckles at 1:10 AM on August 12, 2008