Janus

3 minutes ago, Ralien said:

Ok , but what about at night when we see stars that are in patterns such as big dippers , these paterns are constant and have been forever . Wouldn't these patterns change if stars were moving about ? 

Let's give an example of how the distance between stars and their relative speeds work. Alpha Centauri is the closest star to our own, at 4.3 ly. this is equal to 4e13 km. Our Sun orbits the galaxy a ~230 km/sec.  That's 7e9 km per year.  If this were the relative speed between Alpha Centauri and ourselves, then after 100 yrs, Alpha C would have shifted just 1 degree in position.  But we don't move that fast relative to Alpha C.  Alpha C, along with all the other stars in our local neck of the galaxy, orbits the galaxy along with us.  They are not like the scenery we drive past on the road, but like other cars on the road keeping more or less the same pace as us.  So the relative speeds between the stars is much smaller than that 230 km/sec, and their apparent movement in the sky that much less noticeable.

17 hours ago, swansont said:

They were offended, but have no right not to be offended. Those who didn’t like it could simply not watch. (Only those few physically there wouldn’t have that option). I feel offended by certain aspects of organized religion, but it’s not a problem since nobody is forcing me into a church. 

I read something earlier today about how Christians in the US feel persecuted when their beliefs are minimized or dismissed, but that’s just the privilege of freedom to practice religion, and having their beliefs amplified institutionally. It’s not actual persecution. It’s manufactured outrage, and they have to go looking for things to be angry about.

And I claim that this is not a right. You are assuming it is, but give an example showing it isn’t

Who?

The Olympics "outrage" was even more so a manufactured one because the "offending scene" wasn't even about what the people offended claimed it was. It was not a representation of the "Last Supper", but of another painting based on Roman mythology.

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

Johnny Quest? 

4 hours ago, DrmDoc said:

Fascinating! My son is an animator who's honing his craft while currently producing a DC fan film.

Cartoon Network's, The Venture Bros, did a very humorous take on Jonny Quest...they called it the "Walking Eyeball." 

I'm a pure hobbyist, so just do it for fun.  I mostly stumble around trying to figure things out for myself.  Of course, this often leads to my doing things the hard way, simply because I don't realize that there is a simpler, quicker method. Kudos to your son, I don't think I would ever try to take on a project that big. About the longest thing I've attempted was this recreation of a sequence from a "Lost in Space" episode, and most of the work involved was with the models, since the animation was pretty straight forward.

Using my new found skill set, I went back to revisit an old animation. It actually was the first ones I did using a bone rig to do a "walking" animation. I chose it because it was both simple and from one of my favorite cartoons growing up; Jonny Quest. While my original merely had it walking across the frame, this time I added an element from the actual episode, where it takes a hit from a tank, recoils, shakes it off, and then continues on. (And in case you're wondering, the heroes were able to defeat it in the end) I've added some sound effects to up the ante.

TIL how to "chain" animations together in Blender.    Just to explain bit:.   When you animate, there are times when certain actions, ( like walking) is a simple repetition of the same motions.  And rather than have to manually assign these motions over and over again, Blender allow you to automatically cycle them.   So once you've animated a particular set of motions, you can have Blender just repeat them over and over again. So example, left foot forward, then right foot forward, left foot forward...   The problem is that unless you tell Blender to stop, your character will just keep walking forward forever. And if you do put a limit on how many times to cycle the animation, After it hits the limit, everything jumps back to the beginning.   What if you want the character to stop walking across the floor and begin to climb some stairs? You just can't add a new set of motions, as Blender treats them as part of the original cycle.  (instead of walk forward 10 steps, then start the stair climbing cycle, you get: Take two steps forward, then climb two steps, take two steps forward... ) This bothered me for quite a while. There are way to get around this but they can be tedious, And I knew there should be an easier way.  Today I found it, and its been there all along.  It turns out that there is a editor you can open that will turn any animation sequence into an "Action". So you can take your "walk 10 steps forward" and convert it to an action in this editor. Then, when you go back to the animation editor, you are back to a "clean slate". While all your objects are still there, all the motions you gave them are gone, and they are where they would be at the end of the the action. In other words, if you had your character walk forward 10 steps, it will be where it would have ended up after doing so. You can now assign it an animation set (climbing steps, for example) using the same cycling trick as before.  This can then be converted into an action and appended to the end of the previous action.  Repeat as needed.  Here is a simple example:

The first action is a descending stairs animation cycled until it reached the floor, then an action to bring the trailing leg to floor level, then a repeated forward walking forward cycle action, an action to lift one leg onto the first step, and lastly a repeated stair climbing cycle. It may not look like much, but learning how to do this opened up a whole new world of animation possibilities for me. (BTW, the color pattern on the floor is due to optimizing the animation file to make it as small as possible.)

42 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The "browning of America" seems to be what triggers the nativists.  Two of my grandparents came from far northern lands where those emigrating were pale, Protestant and quickly learned English - they got zero nativist resistance.

On the other hand, my grandparents, who also came from a far North land, were pale, blue-eyed, and Protestant, met with a fair amount of resistance. Apparently, they weren't the "right type" of pale, blue-eyed Protestants.

10 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

If you consider it “fun” to mock minorities within your society and events in history that caused a lot of suffering, then you are clearly lacking an appropriate moral compass.

 

Like the "fun" of calling a Finnish person a "China-Swede" while lifting up the sides of your eyes with your fingers. 

On 12/31/2024 at 4:45 PM, Jim S said:

It seems to me the new year should have started about 10 days ago, at the point when the days are the shortest. How did this day become the start of a new year?

Also what is the point of having 12 months - why not just have four "seasons" each about 91 days long.

Just random thoughts I guess.

 

It's a long story. At one time, the year started with March with the period now taken up by January and February just called Winter. This is September, October, November and December, are now the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Months, even though Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec are prefixes for 7, 8, 9, and 10. (there were also months with the prefixes of 5 and 6, but Julius an Augustus Caesar got their hands on them.)  

I remember at the time getting a letter from my pension plan early on, assuring me that they had already updated their systems to avoid any issue.

On 12/8/2024 at 9:08 PM, DeepBlueSouth said:

"Poproszę trochę kokainy."

from a very old English-Polish book: "A Trip to the Dentist"

[sorry if I misread the thread, this is simply the most useless phrase I remember from any language learning of my own!]

Duolingo teaches the phrase: Norjalainen on viikini, ja suomelainen on velho. ( The Norwegian is a viking, and the Finn is a wizard.) Now while there is a storied event that this refers to, it is not a phrase that is likely to come up in normal conversation.

4 minutes ago, TentPeg78 said:

Yes, I agree with you CaptainZen. Gravity is not a theory that I go along with, I am very sceptical especially about the proof that is said to 'beyond reproach'.

Is light distortion the only proof supposedly showing this theory to be true..? 

I don't believe a rock 'acquires' gravity by growing in size. Seems like nonsense to me.

I seems like nonsense because it is.  Objects do not "acquire" gravity, as they've always had gravity. The gravity of a single rock is just very, very, weak.  Join two rocks together, and their gravitational fields add together.   The more rocks added, the greater the sum of their fields. 

10 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Same in German, so this is a familiar concept.

In Norwegian, there’s no definite articles either; instead, definiteness and number are marked via noun declination:

pike - young girl

piken - the girl

piker - girls

pikene - the girls

Sometimes these can be irregular also. It does have indefinite articles, though.

Finnish:

tyttö - girl ( base/subject)

tyttöä/tyttön - girl(object)*

tyttöt girls(subject)

tyttöjä/tyttöt girls(object)*

* I am looking at the girl - katson tyttöä    I see the girl - Näen tyttön  (Tyttön is also the possessive for girl,  tyttön makki -A girl's dress)  In the same way. I am looking at the girls- katson tyttöjä and  I see the girls - Näen tyttöt 

4 hours ago, Genady said:

Are the last three languages North Germanic while Finnish is not?

Yes, In addition, Finnish isn't even an Indo-European language, but is Uralic instead.

9 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Finnish is on my personal list of languages I’d like to learn (to some degree) before this old brain begins to fail me

I’m fairly fluent in Norwegian, and can at least understand and read most Swedish too, plus some Danish. Problem here is the large number of local dialects, some of which are very different from the standard form of these languages, particularly in Norway. Is it the same in Finland?

Just out of interest.

  Here is a map for the spoken "I" in different regions of Finland. https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?t=60834

In the birthplaces of my grandparents, they are Mää/Minä (right on the border between the two), mä, and miä.  Now that's today, and I don't know how this differs from when they were born.( though since they didn't seem to have any trouble communicating with each other, it must not have been an issue.)  'Minä' is the formal/written form.

However, they aren't used all that often.  Verbs are conjugated according to the pronoun they are used with, so for example " I am going" = minä menen, while you are going is sinä menet. Because of this, the pronoun is often left out, and just menen or menet alone are used.

A couple of peculiar things about Finnish are:

No articles(the/a/an)  

Limited use of prepositions, but uses "cases" instead. (metsä= forest, metsässä = in the forest)

Cases are applied to more than just the noun. ( for example;  old forest = vanha metsä, while in the old forest = vanhassa metsässä

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed +1, all we really need to comunicate in another language is a smile and a willingness to try; the minute we start to think that we speak it like a native, is the minute we start to piss the natives off...

It would be hard to pull off "talking like native" as a tourist in Finland, largely because the common spoken language differs somewhat from the written/formal that you'd be taught in a language course.  For example "minä olen"( I am) is "mä oon"  or Kello on kakskymmenta yli yksi"( the time is 20 past 1) is Kello on kakskyt yli yks.  (BTW, 'y'  in Finnish is always a vowel and is pronounced similar to the 'u' in 'cute'.)

9 hours ago, LuckyR said:

If you're interested in maximizing your chance of having a helpful conversation (which, after all is the central point of learning a language), then learning to ask in the person's native tongue will accomplish this. Asking in English will not.

If you are asking another person in another country if they speak English, you are indicating that you want to converse in English, which is not going to help you in learning their native tongue.  If you are truly interested in improving your language skills, you might try requesting that they speak in that language rather than English, even if they can. For example "Haluaisin puhua suomea." ( I would like to speak in Finnish.) If they say something you don't get, you could say "Anteeksi, en ymmärrä. Hitaasti, ole hyvä." (Excuse me, I don't understand. Slowly, please.)

5 hours ago, Genady said:

Interestingly, it seems that it went through the transposition between 'l' and 'r' twice.

First, from 'taler' to 'tarel':

(тарелка - Wiktionary, the free dictionary)

Then it flipped again:

(talerka - Wiktionary, the free dictionary)

This might explain the Finnish spelling. I heard that Finnish can act as a "freezer" of sorts for older words. If they borrow a word from another language, it doesn't tend to change, even if it later evolves in the mother tongue.  So, if the Finn's borrowed it when it was in the 'taler" form, it stayed that way.  An example is tuoli (chair) which comes for the old Swedish, "stuoli".   Since then, Swedish for chair has become stol.

20 hours ago, exchemist said:

I only know one word of Finnish, which is hissi, for a lift. I used to go regularly to Vaasa, to visit Wärtsilä, who make a lot of the world's big marine and powergen diesels and for some reason that word stuck in my mind from the hotel I used to stay in. 

19 hours ago, Genady said:

I also know one word in Finnish: 'talerka', a plate. I remember it from childhood because we had a Finnish set with this word on it and it was funny as it seems to be a misspelled and mispronounced Russian word, 'tarelka' (тарелка), a plate. Now I wonder which way the "misspelling" went and who in fact was dyslexic.

I'm sure both of you know 2 Finnish words, the other being 'sauna'.   As far as "plate" goes, lautunen is the common Finnish word, so I'm going to assume 'talerka' is a loan word from Russian. I'm not exactly sure for the reason for the change in spelling for this one. With others, it's to compensate for sounds/letters that aren't in Finnish, or to make it compatible with the Finnish case endings.  For example, 'siideri' for 'cider'.

19 hours ago, Genady said:

Every language has homonyms. In most cases, they are unambiguous in a context/sentence.

These aren't homonyms, as they have distinct pronunciations.  Though Finnish does have it's homonyms(kuusi = six or spruce tree.  Voi = able to, butter, or "oh"), it doesn't have those like right,write, and rite.  In Finnish, if the word is spelled differently( even slightly) it is pronounced differently.

For example, Koira(dog) and Kissa(cat) are how you spell/say these words when they are the subject of the sentence, but Koiraa and Kissaa is used for  when they are the object.  The difference in pronunciation is that with the latter 2 you carry the ending a bit longer.  And this slight difference can actually effect the meaning of a sentence.   "Koira etsi Kissaa" and 'Kissaa etsi Koira" both mean that a dog is looking for a cat. The word order, unlike in English, doesn't matter here, So when spoken, the meaning relies on the subtle difference between the "a" and "aa" endings.

3 hours ago, studiot said:

Pronunciation is a potential stumblig block in any foreign language.

 

Some years back we were on holiday in the Canaries.
We had a hire car for the holiday.

Up in the hills we had a puncture.

Finding a garage in a little place where only Spanish was spoken, I dug out my trusty phrase book.

The similarity between pinctura (puncture)  and pictura (respray) only came to light when they managed to ask

What colour did we want?

Or take kuka and kukka in Finnish, the first means who, and the second means flower. The only difference in pronunciation is that with the second, both ks are pronounced. Or vettä, viettä and viettää ( water, export, and  "spend"/"celebrate"/ "lead" .)

For while now, I've been slowly trying to learn Finnish, since it was the natural tongue of all my grandparents.  However this isn't going to be strictly about that but abut learning languages in general.

They often start by teaching you a few simple phrases, that may come in useful, (hello, my name is... etc.)

One of those phrases is often along the lines of "Do you speak English(or whatever language you normally speak)?

For example, in Finnish, this would be "Puhetko* englanitia?"

After some thought, I realized that there is no real reason you need to know how to say this.

If you were in Finland and wanted to ask someone if they spoke English, you could just ask in English. If they do, they will understand you, and answer in English, and if they don't, they'll say something like "Ei"( no), or "en ymmärrä"( I don't understand), or give you some other indication that they don't.  Either way, you've got your answer.

Now, I can see where it would appear more polite to ask in Finnish( or in whatever the language is where you are), but in a purely logical sense. it is not strictly necessary.

And of course, the one thing you definitely shouldn't do if you get the second response is to ask the question again, but LOUDER.... AND....SLOWER.

  *or "puhutteko" if you being formal or addressing more than one person.

Here are some equations that may help

Where:

t =Earth time

T= ship time

d= distance

v = velocity

a= acceleration

For brevity:

ch = hyperbolic cosine

sh = hyperbolic sine

th = hyperbolic tangent

t=(c/a) sh(aT/c) = sqrt[(d/c)² + 2d/a

d=(c²/a) [ch(aT/c)-1] = (c²/a) (sqrt[1+(at/c)²]-1)

v= c th(aT/c) = at/sqrt[1+(at/c)²]

T= (c/a) sh^-1(at/c) = (c/a) ch^-1[ad/c² +1]

21 hours ago, swansont said:

Saw an interesting comment on Bluesky - there are undoubtedly women respondents in every poll who will vote for Kamala but can’t say that to a pollster in front of their Trumpy husband.

I do know that, of as late, the pre-election polls have consistently predicted that Republicans would fare much better than they ended up doing in the election. So something does seem to be askew.

Just for fun, if you wanted the tidal influence to equal that now exerted by the Moon, you'd have to increase the orbit by a factor of 30, putting it somewhere in between the orbits of Himalia and Lysithea, with an orbital period of over 250 days.

If Earth orbited  around Jupiter at the moon's present distance from Earth, then it would orbit Jupiter once every 1.43 days.  Assuming it starts with its present rotation rate, then Jupiter would cross the sky every 3.33 days.  However,  it would be undergoing nearly 27,000 times the tidal forces it does now, and this would likely drive a great deal of geological heating and tidal braking, and tidal locking would be the eventual outcome.  It wouldn't be a pleasant place to live.

On 10/3/2024 at 8:09 AM, swansont said:

How much fuel would one need?

How do you deal with the issues of traveling at high speeds? (collisions, radiation effects)

Assuming a 100% efficient "Photon drive", you would  need a fuel to mass ratio of 886 to 1 in order to just do a trip to Vega (27ly), stopping there. (this doesn't include a return trip)

The center of the galaxy would require one of 955,000 to 1, and the Andromeda galaxy 4.2e9 to 1.

Since 100% efficiency is not in the cards,  in reality, these would be significantly higher

.