The Lounge

Twitter, that brilliant marriage of self-absortion and short attention spans, is now valued at $1 billion, quadrupled since February, despite having a revenue of exactly $0 and no (public) plan to raise that number. There's no possible way this isn't a sound investment. (Also: Is it 1999?)

Does anybody here know of a program (doesn't necessarily have to be freeware) that would allow me to compose music on my PC (not Mac)? But I'm looking for something along the lines of GarageBand, which can make "real" music (piano, guitar, etc.). On second though, if you do know of a good "unreal" music maker, post the name as well...but I'm primarily looking for a "real" music player. Thanks. EDIT: I just found out about Overture, but I'm not sure if it also plays back music, or if it's just for writing. They also have something called "Garritan Personal Orchestra", but I'm not sure if that's a program or just a big collection of samples.

http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp?gclid=CIrS89aL-ZwCFU8M2godJgmJaQ Now before I present my argument on this, I want you to watch this video. Do you agree with what the creators have intended to claim? Yay or Nay? And why? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedSince there seems to be no early takers I will propose my case against the agenda behind the video: Which is encouragement of people to practice vegetarianism solely on the basis that cruelty and pain are experienced by the animals used for meat production. And that somehow eating meat is morally wrong. There was also a statement on the website that suggested that compassionate pe…

Hi, I recently managed to stumble across what is in my opinion a very funny game. It' called Forum Warz (http://forumwarz.com/) and it's a browser-based MMO parodying internet culture (with focus on trolling). However, because of the subject matter the game can be very NSFW (no pornography though). It's a game intended to be played a little every day so there are limits in place to prevent you from beating it all in one day. However, it's a great way to kill time. Even if you're not a huge fan of the game, one of it's multiplayer mini-games is incredible. It's called INCIT (http://www.forumwarz.com/incit) and basically you get to are presented with a rando…

Have you guys had this happen on your campuses? It's a thing they've started doing on our campus following in the "spiritual footsteps" of Randy Pausch and his famous "last lecture" before he died of cancer. What's really unfortunate, at least in my opinion, is that a lot of the lectures are posed as religious (or at least "spiritual") in nature. The lecture series on our campus is sponsored by the campus' "spiritual life" club. In fairness, they're still mainly focused on personal achievement and goal-setting, which I think is a good thing to talk to college students about in general. But it raises some real questions in my mind about the seemingly alleged supe…

What's wrong with it? How can we make it better? [acr=In My Opinion]IMO[/acr], it needs some radical overhaul. We aren't teaching the kids the right things and we aren't teaching them effectively. We're teaching them general "facts"(some of which, like in the History department, are untrue) when we should be teaching them how to think and how to effectively communicate that thought. I remember sitting through my math classes and physics classes bored stiff. Is the subject matter inherently boring? No. I think it is the way that the subjects are taught. Take physics, for example, we were spoon fed equations for specific problems. We memorized dozens of equations pe…

Has anyone heard of BioConference Live? Curious to see this new Life Science virtual conference. Has anyone attended a virtual conference before? Pros and cons? http://bioconferencelive.com/ I like the fact that it's free and there is no travel required. Seem to have a great agenda and speakers.

I have recently been trying to lose a little weight and generally become a little healthier. I have cut down my food intake, am being very careful with the sort of things I eat (lots of fruit and veg, very little fat etc) and I am going to the gym regularly. I started off at 98kg and after a little under a month I am down to 92kg. Initially my target weight was 85kg, which I though seemed pretty reasonable. Anyway, my wife suggested that I should check my Body Mass Index to find my ideal weight. This is calculated according to: [math] BMI = \frac{W}{h^2}[/math] where [math]W[/math] is your weight and [math]h[/math] is your height, both in SI units (kilogra…

This question is purely one of interest, but I'm wondering, what do YOU think would be the moral, scientific, philosophical implications if extraterrestrial life as simple as bacteria, were to be discovered beyond Earth? On an alternative note, I'm wondering, why is it that we humans have such an intense fascination of discovering extraterrestrial life (outside of the wierd E.T.- esque romanticism) in the first place? Any thoughts guys?

Hey everyone, For my unversity degree major project for psychology I need to collect a lot of data. I am finding it difficult to get the amount I need so i thought i might be able to get some here. It is an online survey and won't take long to complete. Any help is well appreciated. Here is survey

Some people say that if U-Bomb would not have been discovered, ww2 would have last maybe 20 years more ??

Just wanted to say hello all. This is my first post. I hope to learn a lot here.

A stupid question I know, you can't have a time machine but its always fun to think anyway! Where would you go and why? I would go right back to the start, see how the universe started. What better thing is there? Cheers, Ryan Jones

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php?page=2 Despite the R-rating (language, rather than nudity) in the article, I thought it was interesting, and some application to SFN, especially so in the Speculations forum. Just substitute "hypothesis" for "script." An underlying theme to a lot of threads there is the seeming lack of recognition by the poster (most no longer with us, for various reasons) that the many users who post here regularly are giving the benefit of their expertise. This takes time and effort; I know I have gotten some in-thread comments, PMs and reputation comments thanking me for answering physics questions, …

Now I really have seen everything. The videos description; http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/08/05

It's that time of the year again! Well it's about 3 months late than the 3 months late it was last year, but you get the idea. They're the same basic format as the last three years (just a little later again!), with nominations (this thread) for all the awards and then threads for the final votes. Please read the below carefully, and re-read your post before posting it. In this thread, you are allowed to nominate one member for each of the following six categories: Most Helpful Member: who gives the best answers in the nicest way? Most Knowledgeable Member: who displays the most consistent knowledge in any (or many) fields? Most Interesting Member: w…

lol )))

What do you think about Ghost hunters International. I think its all made up on fear of imagination. Has anyone seen such apparition ?. If there was ghosts then there is life after death ?. I think its bunk of a time wasting movie. I was in Isreal and egypt for 23 days and a friend asked if i felt anything spiritual like maybe some ghost that bumped around the Pyramids and in Holy places. My answer was that history from the past was dead and dry. Also i mentioned that he was watching too many ghost movies. SOOO !! Have you ever seen a ghost if yes ?? We are then in big trouble when we pass on .

I myself have done this this on two occasions. I have seen images of myself doing something or going someplace and see exactly what is going to happen in a few minutes. I will give you an example. When i was school age 6th grade I was walking home from the bus stop. I was about to walk from the sidewalk to my front door when I had this image pop into my head. In the image I saw myself walking into the house and my mother was right inside. The first thing she told me was that my uncle had passed away suddenly in his sleep the night before. I thought this was odd, and paused on the sidewalk for a second to reflect on this. I continued up to the house and as I opene…

So, anyone who regularly uses the IRC channel knows that a lot of new users log in and then log out if nobody says anything immediately. The average waiting time seems to be about 1 minute. So, why don't we have a cometition to see who can find the most impatient IRC user. i'll start, and its going to be a tough one to beat. Username: geistkiesel Join time: 11:36:32 10/07/09 (GMT) Quit time: 11:36:49 10/07/09 (GMT) Total time in the chat: 17 seconds. answers should be in a similar format so we can look at the logs to verify. maybe some of the people we name and shame will come back on and stick around for a while.

Just today someone convinced me I should not reopen an old postings thread. I could not figure out how to do it. ...Dr.Syntax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8TJlQlPi4s from the article: ... A magnetic power generator is basically a Free Energy Generator. It uses magnets, and magnetic force to induce l motion. It runs by itself, indefinitely without stopping, thus creating completely free electrical energy... -------------------------------- comment from youtube; Yes possible and works...working magnetic generator uses TWO batteries - one is to help disk with magnets to keep running and another to store energy and recharge the 1st battery. 100 % working scheme..no magic at all

Sounds like that's what Google cofounder Sergey Brin wants, and to a lesser degree CEO Eric Schmidt: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/03/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-on-the-future-of-search-connect-it-straight-to-your-brain/ Would you want Google wired directly into your brain?

So it turns out that if you fire up a Large Hadron Collider it doesn't create a black hole that envelops the Earth. What happens is that everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes and ten seconds. Gee! Robert Sawyer's SF novel FlashForward is coming to TV this fall. According to this Wikipedia article it'll be on ABC in the US and something called "Five" in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashForward Might be good, though it's kinda sad to see these things come at the expense of good science. I'm a huge fan of Lost, which is also very cringe-worthy from time to time. I'm always happy to see new SF shows, though. Anyway, I pasted a pr…

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