http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?board=swank The Swank Lounge - Bento and Starchky - The Forum en-us Bento and Starchky - The Forum Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:05:43 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss YaBB 2.4 Revision: 1.28 30 http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1337959100 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1337959100 <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/25/us/spacex/index.html?hpt=hp_t1" target="_blank">http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/25/us/spacex/index.html?hpt=hp_t1</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/25/when-a-dragon-mated-the-space-station/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29" target="_blank">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/25/when-a-dragon-mated-the-space-station/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29</a><br /><br /><a href="http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/25/spacex-orbital-mission-just-the-beginning/?hpt=hp_c1" target="_blank">http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/25/spacex-orbital-mission-just-the-beginning/?hpt=hp_c1</a> http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1290974514 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1290974514 <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis" target="_blank">Finally, the US Government and intelligence services gets to swallow that bitter pill of failure</a>. I hope someone stuck it up his ass first. http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1272518865 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1272518865 Check <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/" target="_blank">this</a> out. It's the culmination (or the first step, depending on how you look at it) of a very ambitious long-term project initiated by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram" target="_blank">Stephen Wolfram</a>. Called <i>Wolfram|Alpha</i>, it constitutes an attempt at "making all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone." What this means is apparently more or less that, that if you type something in, the site attempts to compute it for you, for which purpose it uses millions of lines of code, terabytes of data and 10,000 servers, which the project's creators aim to fill with "all objective data; [...] every known model, method, and algorithm."<br /><br />I tried asking how many inhabited worlds currently exist in the Milky Way Galaxy that are not only capable of sustaining intelligent life, but also capable of communicating with us, and the app actually gave me a definitive answer in the form of a concrete number. Depressingly, considered the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox" target="_blank">vastness of space</a>, it was rather low.<br /><br />I also asked it <a href="http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html" target="_blank">if entropy can ever massively be decreased or reversed</a>. That particular answer was both awesome and highly amusing. <img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/smiley.gif" border="0" alt="Smiley" title="Smiley" /><br /><br />Check it out, it's pretty cool stuff. Actually, communicating with the program is at the same time both difficult and somewhat spooky. Difficult because you have to formulate the question in a precise enough manner for the program to be able to understand what it is you want, and spooky because of the vast knowledge to which the search engine has access. Sometimes, it actually manages to give concrete answers to questions which you did not really expect to get a straight answer to. In fact, it reminds me of the computer in a <a href="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/doodles/the_almighty_machine.doc" target="_blank">short story</a> I previously translated. <br /><br /> <b>Quote:</b><br /><div>There are moments when your thoughts stand still. For a few minutes, I had the freedom to ask whatever I wanted; perhaps to gain answers to riddles that have confounded man since the dawn of time. I sat and wondered how much Doctor Sarkar had found out, how much he even bothered to investigate. I searched in my memory for something that I myself had wondered about. But memory failed me. Then I asked, again at random: How many inhabited worlds are there in the Milky Way?<br /><br />     The machine refused to answer my question the way I had formulated it. First, I had to make clear what I meant by the word “inhabited”. I tried and failed. The machine was also confused by how I used the world “creature”. </div><br /><br />Funny how life imitates art sometimes. http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1270385847 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1270385847 It's kind of an art. You usually start as a boy with making homemade firecrackers/bombs. Then you either quit it when you get older or start getting interested in how to make beautiful effects instead. It takes some time to learn, yes. <br /><br />White is made by different metals or metal compounds. The white Bengal and stars are made white with something called antimony trisulfide. It's a compound of sulfur and a metal called antimony.<br /><br />For all colours but white you must usually use a metal salt that is transferred into gaseuous chloride of the salt; barium for green, strontium for red, copper for blue, sodium for yellow, calcium for orange etc. The Electric Magenta stars are made of a composition containing both strontium nitrate and copper carbonate. If I had used only strontium nitrate for the colour, it would have been intensely red instead, like the last part of that second Bengal.  <img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/cool.gif" border="0" alt="Cool" title="Cool" /> http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1268827219 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1268827219 <b>Quote:</b><br /><div>Funny how there seems to be absolutely no correlation between being a successful businessman (or actor, for that matter) and being of sound mind. In fact, being successful and being sane seem to have very little - if anything - to do with one another.   </div><br /><br />The same goes for scientists. The line between madness and genius is indeed a thin one. <br /><br />Take for example Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever, who once stabbed himself in the eye with a needle just to see what would happen. <br /><br />William Buckland, the geologist first to describe a dinosaur, had as a life goal to eat every animal in existance. This included portugese man-o-war. He also ate the petrified heart of french king Louis XIV. <br />Oh, and he was also a priest.<br /><br /><br />Nikola Tesla, the man who managed to send wireless electricity 2 miles and light 200 light bulbs in 1899, had phobias of round objects, hair, jewelry and the touch of another himan beings. His best friend was also a bird.<br />Tesla invented earthquake machines, death rays and and things that shot huge bolts of lightning all over the place.<br />He was the closest thing to a mad supervillain professor the world have ever seen. http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1263666269 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1263666269 Multimedia File Viewing is not available on RSS Feeds!!  You need to <a href="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?action=login;sesredir=num~1263666269"><img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Buttons/English/login.png" alt="Login" title="Login" border="0" /></a> or <a href="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?action=register"><img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Buttons/English/register.png" alt="Register" title="Register" border="0" /></a> !!<br /><br />"What? No! We said that was the last time!" http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1250609512 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1250609512 damn...it wasn't http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1247392917 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1247392917 Thanks very much, guys! It means a lot to me! <img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/smiley.gif" border="0" alt="Smiley" title="Smiley" /> http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1239053612 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1239053612 Lazytown was fun.  <img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/grin.gif" border="0" alt="Grin" title="Grin" /> I guess two months in jail if you ever got it showed for the public in Sweden today. A $100 million lawsuit from the Black civil rights movements in the US, probably. And honestly, it's not like it's completely untrue... <img src="http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/cry.gif" border="0" alt="Cry" title="Cry" /> http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1233370016 Bento and Starchky - The Forum/The Swank Lounge http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1233370016 Thank you.  Everything you say is true of course.  I watched the Pinter speech and it was dead on.  I don't think anyone will go after Bush and our "leaders" have even less inclination to attempt to try him for war crimes or anything else.