The second in a line of failures

This is old. My current blog is at http://tumblr.sudrien.net/

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Scratch complete.

Please re-follow as you see fit.

http://tumblr.sudrien.net/

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Now propagating on a DNS near you

(scratch in progress)

[generiatrics-scratched000]

I broke my own "follow 128 people" rule

...

Only a matter of time before I scratch this account

[vvvarinn]

[bunnymagia]

wh

[paranoyd-androyd]

If you’ve been to a crowded airport, sporting event, or even a kid’s birthday party lately, a little peace and quiet might sound like the perfect thing to help you kick back and relax. Just don’t let things get too quiet, or you might drive yourself a wee bit insane: the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota can mute 99.99% of all sound, but visiting the silent oasis isn’t as calming as you might expect.

The room holds the current Guinness World Record as the quietest place on the planet, and companies from all over the world seek out its unique acoustic properties. The walls of the chamber are lined with sound-absorbing baffles that can capture noise and mute it in an instant. This allows companies — both Whirlpool and Harley-Davidson have visited — to test just how noisy their products are without the risk of outside interference.

But while the super-silent oasis is a great testbed for various products, it holds a darker side: silence, it turns out, can put a great strain on the human brain. Researchers at NASA test the room’s unique acoustic capabilities on humans rather than hardware. The noiselessness is used to simulate the silence of space — an environment astronauts would be well served to grow accustomed to.

What they’ve found is that when all outside noise is removed from an enclosure, human hearing will do its best to find something to listen to. In a room where almost 100% of sound is muted, people begin to hear things like their own heartbeat at a greatly amplified volume. As the minutes tick by in absolute quiet, the human mind begins to lose its grip, causing test subjects to hallucinate.

NASA then monitors how the would-be space explorers react, and whether they can get past the very obvious awkwardness of seeing or hearing things that aren’t actually there. According to lab officials, the longest anyone has lasted is 45 minutes before being allowed to hear the sweet sounds of planet Earth once again.

In the end, the chamber has proven a valuable scientific tool, just don’t plan on renting it for some peace and quiet — it may do more harm than good.

[generiatrics-scratched000]

I finally have a reason to practice with my tablet

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Notable things I learned today:

      "hanbok handstand" returns only one result on Google

Notable things I didn't learn today:

Bezier curves will scale. Come on, boss, just agree with me and let me code

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Wait

April Fools is over

I can post again now

...right?

[youmightbeanatheist]

Three shelves of Bibles. Three shelves of the exact same book with different color packaging.

Two shelves of Science books, and nearly half of them are Complete Idiot’s Guides to whatever science they’re about.

One shelf for all of Astronomy and Physics.

Not quite one shelf of Philosophy. 

And what about Darwin’s Origin of Species? Out of stock.

If you don’t understand the problem with this, then you are the problem.

[wigmund]

This.

Best way to help change this is to buy more science-oriented literature, that will encourage more publishers to print books in those fields and help prompt bookstores to give them more space on the shelves.

Encourage scientific literacy!

[generiatrics-scratched000]

To Whom It May Concern, please file this response under "The Problem Isn't what you think it is"

First, please reference that all these shelves combined only take up a smaller fraction of the store than the kids section. Not to mention all the "Adult" fictions, or Science Fiction. There are more works fantasizing about having sex with aliens around distant stars than books on those stars.

Second, Origin of Species - out of copyright. Anything you would buy would probably have been originally typeset around... 1915s? Perhaps with a more modern forward. There's no money in it.

Third, Interestingly, the Bible has exactly the same issue, with one caveat - out of copyright, but also the original wasn't in English. Even original English translations, Most notably the King James Version authorized 1611, with their "archaic*" language, are out of copyright. Yet people buy Bibles, and Publishers create new translations of the Bible, which they can have a copyright of. Add to that targeted variations - plainly visible in your photo... That's competition. That's American publishing competing for American Dollars.

Fourth, it would have been great to see how much shelf space the combination of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism - but those probably aren't the religions your regular readers are rebelling against, are they?**

(Wig, getting to a specific response)

In my last visit to the local Barnes and Nobel location, which is obviously not the one featured above, there were similar ratios of shelf space to those given. There were also similar counts of unique titles; a much better comparison of what is being published versus what is being bought.

Bookstores are businesses. Publishing is business. I agree, a higher level of Scientific Literacy would be great. However, if it comes to where money should go, I'm not entirely sure upping publisher's profits would be the best direction to push.

~

* Archaic, yet were one of the stabilizing forces in the English Language for hundreds of years.

** Please note the different definitions of "rebelling" and "reacting". I hope I have chosen the appropriate word.

[cyberspacing-deactivated2013061]

dad just said “there should be a netflix for books”

five minutes later he shouted “THE LIBRARY”

[sailorenna]

APRIL FOOL'S DAY (JPN GOOGLE MAPS)

YOU GUYS …

IN ADDITION TO ALL THE LIES COMING OUT ON TWITTER (THAT I’M TRYING TO TRANSLATE)

BUT GUYS. YOU GUYS.

THIS.

[superfantasyzone]

sometimes when i’m bored i read the Adobe® Photoshop® software trademarking laws and just laugh silently to myself

http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html

scroll to about halfway down the page and look for “Proper use of the Photoshop trademark” and laugh silently with me

[the-sleepiest-cloud]

[beesmygod]

ahahahaahaha

[generiatrics-scratched000]

No really, what do we get?

Quarters honoring states.

Dollar coins honoring Dead presidents which you can never get as change.

A penny that, now that Communism is not that big a treat, is backed by a SHIELD.

Do you even know how much that guy on the dime even did to mess with things?

I mean, look at this beauty

[idran]

let’s be honest

that coin looks awesome, but is liz really any more deserving of honoring than oklahoma or whatever

bears are though for sure

[mysticorset]

In Canada, all coins are Taco Bell. I mean, Elizabeth II.

The reverse of each side though:

Penny - Maple Leaf/Leaves

Nickle - Beaver

Dime - Boat

Quarter - Moose

Loonie - Loon

Toonie - Bear

What nobody tells people outisde of Canada, is that the reverse images are in order of danger. And if anyone ever argues that a little black duck isn’t more dangerous than a half-ton moose, well, obviously they’ve never been to Canada before.

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Though you got to admit, having that boat waiting for months

Watching your snowmobile

Just

Waiting

Can be pretty unnerving.

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Apparently this ad campaign which I just saw on the back of a magazine has been running for 3+ years

Can anyone tell me why this is a Photoshop disaster

[generiatrics-scratched000]

No really, what do we get?

Quarters honoring states.

Dollar coins honoring Dead presidents which you can never get as change.

A penny that, now that Communism is not that big a treat, is backed by a SHIELD.

Do you even know how much that guy on the dime even did to mess with things?

I mean, look at this beauty

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Do you know how quick we could clean up US/Canada currency contamination if the vending machines would JUST HANDLE BOTH TYPES

[tiredandinspird]

“Canada is scrapping the penny, ending production of the country’s smallest unit of currency this spring.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, whose department described the penny as a “nuisance” in budget documents, said the coin is now more trouble than it’s worth.

…

[dimestoreskittles-deactivated20]

Oh. Okay. That’ll do. Also, the States needs to get rid of their penny as well and put the savings towards NASA. Everyone bloody wins. :D

[idran]

John Green's tumblr: What the Death of the Canadian Penny Says about the U.S.

While yes the penny does cost more than a cent to manufacture (2.41 cents per penny in 2012, actually, not a cent and a half), that doesn't mean that each penny is a loss for the government, because pennies are used more than once.  A penny contributes one cent of value each time it's used, not just a single cent of value universally.  The economic value contributed by an item of currency is its value times the number of transactions it's involved in before it wears out or is pulled from circulation.

While I'm in favor of dropping the penny purely for convenience' sake, that argument against it is very specious.

[generiatrics-scratched000]

Well ... a physical penny is a sunk cost. A government itself does not derive any further income from its manufacture. It doesn't make any money from any currency denomination - given national debts, it loses standing as it prints and mints more money.

Also, as tumblr is rarely an original source - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-gives-up-on-nuisance-penny/article2386120/ - which does actually mention the inflation concern (while minimizing it).

It's weird Ottawa isn't mandating Swedish Rounding - it's likely everyone is just going to round up without it. Though its not like the concept of a single cent is going to go away.

It would be funny if Canadians started using US Cent coins once their own were mostly gone. The two are used interchangeably enough now near the border.