Acme
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Posts posted by Acme
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On 1/8/2018 at 4:58 PM, Raider5678 said:
Also, if you're avoiding screws, it's also interesting to learn how to fit wood together like this:
This way you can avoid using wood glue. Often, it'll be a tight fit that you have to tap together with a hammer, but the idea that you
Finger joints are glued, not friction fit. One of their advantages is providing more gluing surface than miter or butt joining.
iNow, you can make a simple jig for your table saw to cut these joints if that doesn't offend your Zen.
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On 11/19/2017 at 6:29 AM, DrKrettin said:
Does this all work for other bases? Would it be casting out of 7s in octal, or casting out of Fs in hexadecimal?
Presuming you mean if casting out works in other bases without any regard to the OP and Primes, the answer is yes. Note that in base ten the digital root is congruent mod 9. (Note that numbers divisible by 9 return 9 for the digital root and 0 for mod 9, but the results are congruent) Similarly, casting out 7s in octal is congruent mod 7, e.g. 97 in octal is 141 and the digital root in octal is 1+4+1=6 and 97 mod 7 = 6. In octal, a number with a digital root of 7 divides evenly by 7. This holds for all bases. I have no proof but recall seeing one some years ago.
As to binary, all digital roots = 1.
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1 hour ago, Endy0816 said:
...I'm hoping to find something I can use to get to or from some of the more distant islands around the state with. At least half of the trip the wind is likely to be cooperating well enough.
Looked at kytoons, might be an idea.
TIL, Ben Franklin flew kites without his clothes.
Depending on country and/or state, you should find out what flight rules you have to follow in addition to boating rules. Here are the applicable rules in the US. > PART 101—MOORED BALLOONS, KITES, AMATEUR ROCKETS, UNMANNED FREE BALLOONS, AND CERTAIN MODEL AIRCRAFT
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1 hour ago, Handy andy said:
I had some friends who used a kite from a surf board as a light wind sail to get them across the doldrums. My friend attached himself to the deck and launched the kite, it worked and flew high enough not to be disturbed by the air from the ocean swell as a normal spinnaker can be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitesurfing Flying a kite from a deck is hard work on the arms.
A sail I want to buy in the near future is a parasailer but that requires a mast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasailor#Parasail but it has some very easy to handle features.
A combination of using a helium balloon built into a kite giving the sail some rigidity and buoyancy when the wind drops might be a good idea, and could catch on, I suspect someone has already thought of it.
Ben Franklin pulled himself across a lake using a kite, as well as pulling himself on ice skates.
QuoteI found that by lying on my back and holding the stick in my hands. I was drawn along the surface of the water in a very agreeable manner. Having then engaged another boy to carry my clothes round the pond, to a place which I pointed out to him on the other side. I began to cross the pond with my kite, which carried me quite over without the least fatigue and with the greatest pleasure imaginable.” During the winter Franklin also used kites to pull him along while ice skating. source
Kite/ballon hybrids do exist and are called 'kytoons'.
QuoteA kytoon or kite balloon is a tethered aircraft which obtains some of its lift dynamically as a heavier-than-air kite and the rest aerostatically as a lighter-than-air balloon.[1] The word is a portmanteau of kite and balloon.
The primary advantage of a kytoon is that it remains in a reasonably stable position above the tether point, irrespective of the strength of wind, whereas ordinary balloons and kites are less stable.[1]
The kytoon has been used for many purposes both civil and military. source
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45 minutes ago, Itoero said:
Can you give the example of how I moved the goalpost? So 38% of 324 mil is not 123 mil?
Curses on the multiquote! As Area54 corrected me when I brought this data to light, it was 38% of adults and adults are about 260 million, so the 38% is just under 99 million. This is still over a third of adults who believe Earth is only 10,000 years old and God created it just as we find it, to answer Dim's earlier challenge. 
To Area54's earlier reply to me, I'm fine with people getting comfort with their belief in a god, but not fine when acting on their belief brings discomfort to others and/or is set in opposition to facts and critical thinking.
Here's a link to Area54's correction.
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1 hour ago, Area54 said:
Thank you for the data Acme. My own estimate, made without benefit of real data, but vague recollection of population numbers and reported YECs in polls, computed more with my gut than my head, was 95 million. The one thing I was sure of was that it was less than 140 million, hence my challenge.
One might also consider the following. The poll would have been a poll of adults. If we assume - worst case - no one under the age of 15 was interviewed then the population sampled was 80% of the 325 million, i.e. roughly 260 million. 38% of that is 99 million, which is trending towards my gut wrenched number.
Of course this is all incidental to your important point, describing the "still considerable, if not worrying, number". I tend to find the number terrifying. If it was down around 20 million it would be merely frightening. It would need to be less than 5 million for me, for it to be merely worrying. If it went above the 140 million itoero suspected I would lose control of my bowel movements.
Thanks again for the data. Perhaps iotero will grace us with an acknowledgement of his error.
Damn new editor won't allow me to toggle to text mode and parse your reply. Arrrggghhh!
Anyway, your are correct to make the adjustment for adults; my bad for not taking the time to do that. Perhaps between that and the fact that on the 38% "...Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years.", our bowels will not befoul us and merely threaten.
As to the more general question of the thread, vis-à-vis the belief in a god, we may also take some comfort in that such belief is also on the wane in the US according to the Demography of the United States Wiki page.
QuoteIn a Pew Research Survey performed in 2012, Americans without a religion (atheists, agnostics, nothing in particular, etc.) surpassed Evangelical Protestant Americans with almost 20% of Americans being nonreligious. If this current growth rate continues, by 2050, around 51% of Americans will not have a religion.
A survey conducted in 2014 by the same organization indicated that the percentage of Americans unaffiliated with a religion rose to nearly 23% of the population, up from 16% in 2007
At the same time, Pastafarianism is on the rise. Flying Spaghetti Monster preserve us! All hail his noodly appendages. As is written in the Pastalms of the The Loose Canon:
Quote1 The Flying Spaghetti Monster is my chef; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to sit down at full tables: he leadeth me beside the busy kitchens.
3 He restoreth my appetite: he leadeth me in the paths of excellent cuisine for his name's sake.
4 Arr, though I walk through the kitchen of the empty cupboards, I will fear no hunger: for thou art with me; thy noodles and thy meatballs they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my meal with sauce; my platter runneth over.
6 Surely flavor and deliciousness shall follow me all the minutes of my supper: and I will dwell in the dining room of the Flying Spaghetti Monster forever.Always my pleasure to provide and per se purvey germane data.
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55 minutes ago, Area54 said:
Why are you moving the goalposts. Your assertion was about Christians. You didn't specify a particular subset.
Please provide evidence to support your contention that the USA has more 140 million YECs. If you can't please state that you were mistaken.
Who necromanced this 2 year old thread!
Anyway, I'm no Iotero -thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster- but I can lend some support to the 140 million figure. First, Wiki says that of July 1, 2017 the US population was 325,350,377. source Second, Wiki says in their page on Young Earth Creationism:
QuoteA 2017 Gallup creationism survey found that 38% of adults in the United States inclined to the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years. Source
Lastly, my calculator tells me that 38% of 325,350,377 is 123,633,143 people. So, not 140 million, but still a considerable, if not worrying, number. Whether these folks would label themselves YECs would be fodder for another poll.
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5 minutes ago, EdEarl said:
They're just helping you turn it:)
I've got racoons and opossums. Cats take care of the mice.
It's possible to exclude little critters.
Rats are not mice and you better use a metal container or the rats will just chew through. While vegetable matter composts well enough, animal matter does not.
As to cats, letting them run free results in the death of billions of birds and other small critters every year. Not a good idea. While it's not illegal to allow cats to run free in my area, it is legal for homeowners to live trap them and take them to the animal control station. If one doesn't have a live trap, animal control will rent you one.
Another note on the OP; wash your canister after every use. No buildup, no mold.
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Just now, EdEarl said:
Compost your scraps rather than putting them in the trash bin.
Then be prepared to kill the rats that your compost attracts.
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Try boric acid. I had to kill some heart-rot fungus in an Oak slab I was using for dendrochronology and while it took several applications it worked like a charm. I found a bottle of boric acid crystals in the drug section of a department store, but you might also find it at a farm/garden supply outlet.
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True but is that conditioning or because those things we squash are not conscious and we inherently know that?If we accept/presume all living things are conscious, then most people implicitly accept degrees of consciousness. [Most] people think nothing of squashing the life out of a mosquito, whereas [most] people would not squash the life out of another person.
Inherently knowing about consciousness is conditioning of consciousness. This is not to say some conscious creature -humans included- can not reflexively, i.e. instinctually, squash a mosquito that has bitten them or even alighted on them, without any conscious consideration of the squashee's consciousness. See withdrawal reflex
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If we accept/presume all living things are conscious, then most people implicitly accept degrees of consciousness. [Most] people think nothing of squashing the life out of a mosquito, whereas [most] people would not squash the life out of another person.
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Pyramids are 3-dimensional; polygonal numbers are 2-dimensional. They are not interchangeable.
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I am however curious as to what advances we have made.
Well, sounds like you have made similar searches to mine so what we found is what we found (or didn't find as the case were). In the general sense of evolution, I see no reason why instinct or consciousness or curiosity should be any different in the way they evolve(d) than any other attributes of evolved creatures. While interesting, I'm not losing any sleep over the issue.
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Asking the question again and again in slightly different forms is useless. Nobody yet knows, and those claiming they do are talking through their hats.I'll join the club also.
I'm as far removed from an expert as can be.
I do know however that my two housecats, who never go outside ( I live on a busy street ) except for the odd visit to the vet, are deathly afraid of things overhead. Turning on a ceiling fan will make them scurry for cover, even if you're carrying them in your arms, yet they have no fear of fans below their level.
How did they learn to be afraid of overhead predators if they've never experienced that particular danger ?
By what mechanism does an ancestral memory become an instinct ?
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From what I have been reading the last couple of days, the short answer is that nobody [yet] knows. Seems there was a flurry & flap over the claim it was an epigenetic effect, but the consensus was that the idea was not well supported. I haven't saved any of the links I read, but I searched the phrase 'evolution of instinct' to find them.So here is a question to stir the pot.
What process allows a species to develop instincts regarding an evironmental change?
...
As to not having expertise, you're in good company.
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Just pointing out that the process you described is known as divination. It -divination- has been lauded and decried for as long as lauding and decrying have been around. In any case, divination is not scientific and so hardly admissible as evidence in a presumably scientific discussion. (And per my quote, not admissible in a Christian discussion either.) Good luck, keep that thumb up, and if you get a ride may it not be with a psychopath.]
Jeremiah 14:14
14 Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
I sincerely hope that is not me. I am just a lowly individual , with an inquiring mind desperately trying to find his way in this immense cosmic sea.
Doing the thing he only knows how to do . That is. ' ASK his way in this puzzle of life ' .
Unfortunately for me , the things I want to know ' how it works ' , is EVERYTHING !
Then, when I find an answer , all I want to do , is jump up and down with glee, and want to tell everybody .
Millions of people pose questions on the Internet every day , and get answers every day .
Nowerdays , We accept that as normal .
I seemed to have tapped into a universe wide, time wide mechanism , that can answer some time wide , universe wide questions . Maybe that is the nature of the Cosmos , namely it is time wide and universe wide network of 'knowledge ' and capable of answering time wide and Universe wide questions , should you care to ask ? ( this all sounds a bit " Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy " ish )
...
Mike
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Wile's proof agrees with you that there are no solutions to [math]x^n+y^n=z^n, n>=3[/math].You guys spill out alot of contradictions. Some of you say it always works some of you say it never works, and then all sorts of bs in between. It never works for n>=3. Wiles "proof" is some big bs I assure you.
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Ps . I imagine anybody reading this will think I have gone ' Stark , Staring , Bonkers. ' . But I have not , and it works !
So perhaps there is evidence from what I have said , which has penetrated an upward step in the HEIRACHY.
Jeremiah 14:14
14 Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.
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I agree with th elast part of your post but not the highlighted portion. A fly is a product of natural biology. Every individual fly must survive independently and be successful enough to reproduce. A fly grows to be and lives 100% autonomously. They have been doing so for millions of generations. Your laptap is not autonomous and does nothing independently. Even machines we (humans) build to mimic autonomous behavior do not have the ability to grow, develop, adapt, change, and etc as a fly does.
People absolutely project magical properties on to consciousness in my opinion. One error is separating the mind from the body. The two are one in the same in that both are required for awareness of any kind.As such an man made device, even one designed to be autonomous, cannot oversee their own physical changes, reproduction, and adaptation.
Hofstadter -and so I- would beg to differ on the bolded. Just because no sufficiently complex artificial net has not yet been confirmed to be conscious, does not mean it can never be so. After all, at some point Earth had no conscious life and yet here we and the flys be now.
(At the risk of being called out for appeal to authority, I appeal to authority.
Douglas Hofstadter profile @ Indiana University
College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Cognitive Science
Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature
Director, Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition)
Education
•B.S., Mathematics (with distinction), Stanford University, 1965
•M.S., Physics, University of Oregon, 1972
•Ph.D., Physics, University of Oregon, 1975•Thesis advisor: Gregory H. Wannier
•Thesis area: Theoretical solid-state physics
•Thesis title: “The Energy Levels and Wave Functions of Bloch Electrons In a Homogeneous Magnetic Field”
Awards
•Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction category), 1980
• American Book Award (Science Hardback category), 1980 for Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
• Guggenheim Fellow, 1980-81
PS I have made a couple new posts that were appended to post #16 and so did not appear separately.
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I am, in fact, familiar with it, and I don't think that it offers an actual explanation as to what consciousness is, where exactly it comes from or why it exists at all, and it certainly doesn't do so in a scientific way, which requires a testable model of consciousness in order to qualify.As I just said, strange loops are a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness, so no.
Also as I said, you will have to read Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop (and Gödel, Escher, Bach) to make your own determination of whether or not his model is up to your snuff. What have you got to lose?
Mmmmm....does 'familiar with it' mean you read it, or just read about it? In any case you're under no constraint to accept Doug's or my contentions and certainly as a conscious being you are free to form your own conclusions. I don't see any scientific refutation from you however, rather you just offer "I don't think...'.
As I alluded when I first posted, Hofstadter's work is the best take I have run across that meets the criteria set out in the OP, as well as Phi's mod note. I encourage readers to fully explore these neat, if not difficult, ideas.
At it's most basic, couldn't it be defined as that minimum state which gives something operational autonomy in making decisions/responses to stimuli? This can apply to non-living systems as well. They contain algorithms which allows them to respond to stimuli in a variety of ways, which is the decision-making part. I suppose one could go through all the living taxa, from bacteria, and work through them to the one that is deemed to be conscious. I've read worms are conscious, so one could analyse all the behavioural algorithms that they use and this might be the starting point of consciousness and say "This is what consciousness looks like at its most basic in algorithmic terms". Would this be a useful, empirical approach to nailing it down? I think what we should be looking for is the minimum rule set that makes something 'conscious'; no airy-fairy philosophical or metaphysical stuff to confound the definition.
Here again, Hofstadter's approach is to allow for a continuum of consciousness, i.e. some things are more conscious than others. The worm is more conscious than the bacteria and less conscious than we peoples. He also makes clear that given the variability of consciousness within peoples, the judgment of where things rank is a subjective result of that variability itself. A strange loop, ain't it?
Addendum:
Hofstadter says he wrote I Am A Strange Loop in good part because folks -me among them- didn't understand that Gödel, Escher, Bach was about 'I', that is consciousness. My copy of GEB was lost in a fire and I just went searching the webernet for an inexpensive replacement copy. There to my amazement I found it is now downloadable as a PDF! Woot woot!! Here's the addy: link removed
What's more, I also found that I Am a Strange Loop is also now available as a free PDF. Woot woot woot!!! >> link removed
Notice: I am presuming these PDFs are authorized by the author and respect his copyrights. I have dropped Doug a note to check, and if they are not authorized I will have staff remove the links.
I do have a hardcopy of the latter and I'm on my third read so I thought I would throw a passage from my current place into the mix here to bolster my claims. Mind you that no mere snippet is going to answer all you dear tender readers' questions, anymore than some snippet of Wile's proof would explain the whole. Both are structured, progressive, logical arguments leading to conclusions and to the best of my knowledge constitute scientific investigations.
Anyway, FWIW:
Chapter 13: The Elusive Apple of My "I": pg. 179
Our keenest insights into causality in the often terribly confusing world of living beings invariably result from well-honed acts of categorization at a macroscopic level. For example, the reasons for a mysterious war taking place in some remote land might suddenly leap into sharp focus for us when an insightful commentator links the war's origin to an ancient conflict between certain religious dogmas. On the other hand, no enlightenment whatsoever would come if a physicist tried to explain the war by saying it came about thanks to trillions upon trillions of momentum-conserving collisions taking place among ephemeral quantum-mechanical specks. ...
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Precisely. And to clarify 'he', Fermat proposed the theorem/conjecture & claimed he proved it never works (saying the proof is too long for this margin), while Wiles actually did prove it never works.Actually, the whole point was that he proved it NEVER works.
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As I just said, strange loops are a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness, so no.Are all self-referential systems conscious then?
Also as I said, you will have to read Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop (and Gödel, Escher, Bach) to make your own determination of whether or not his model is up to your snuff. What have you got to lose?I'm asking not for the mathematics of self-referential systems (i.e. Strange loops) but for a mathematical model of consciousness based on the math of strange loops that gives testable and accurate predictions about consciousness.
Without that, we don't "know" consciousness is a strange loop, nor does consciousness being "a strange loop" tell us anything particularly useful about what consciousness is. It's just one neat idea among many.
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Are you asking me to give the evidence, or asking if it exists?Empirical evidence that consciousness is a strange loop?
I would say no inasmuch as a strange loop is a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. Hofstadter points to Escher's print 'Drawing Hands' as a strange loop, but this does not imply that the drawing is conscious.Can you use the definition of a strange loop to tell whether something definitely is or isn't conscious?
Again I'd say no for the same reasons I just gave above.Can you even use it to give an accurate probability of whether something is conscious?
Here I will say yes. I'll give a quote from MathWorld to support my answer, but if you want to understand the full argument you will have to read Hofstadter (presuming you have not) and make your own determination. Lead a horse to water and all that.Is there a mathematical model that describes the process by which consciousness arises based on it being a strange loop?
Strange Loop @ Wolfram MathWorld
A strange loop is a phenomenon in which, whenever movement is made upwards or downwards through the levels of some hierarchical system, the system unexpectedly arrives back where it started. Hofstadter (1989) uses the strange loop as a paradigm in which to interpret paradoxes in logic (such as Grelling's paradox, the liar's paradox, and Russell's antinomy) and calls a system in which a strange loop appears a tangled hierarchy. ...
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Woodworking: Amateurs, Craftsmen, & In-Between
in The Lounge
Posted · Edited by Acme
Gotcha. A dado head for your saw will speed up the hogging and leave a smoother cut than a saw blade.
Dado Heads @ Finewoodworking
How to cut tenons on a table saw