splat

20 ms·

121.
by splat 14y ago
The reason is that the flux from any particular star goes as 1 / distance^2, but the number of stars observed in a patch of sky increases like the distance^2. The two cancel each other out. An easier way of thinking of it is to think about
122.
by splat 14y ago
I think the presence of saliva has a major effect on inhibiting tooth decay. I'm not sure how applicable in vitro experiments would be.
123.
by splat 14y ago
> What would happen if we required someone like Warren Buffet to ignore the news? I think that's missing the point a bit. The OP was pointing out that there is an opportunity cost of consuming the news. For the OP, the return on his t
124.
by splat 14y ago
I remember a similar sort of story, though it's probably apocryphal. The Japanese ambassador was dining with Queen Victoria at a very formal dinner. Towards the end of the dinner, the guests were given a small bowl of warm water with whic
125.
by splat 14y ago
Fixed link: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/radiat...
126.
Sally Ride, first American woman in space, has died at 61(sallyridescience.com)
199 points by splat 14y ago|33 comments
127.
by splat 14y ago
Well, they did study the bacterium M. genitalium .
128.
by splat 14y ago
I seem to remember that water in some agricultural regions of Indonesia was allocated based on a certain religious ritual called Subak. Apparently, although it appears to be an inefficient system, villages which experimented with supposedl
129.
by splat 14y ago
A million photons would be overkill for a solid detection. A standard CCD saturates at about 65,000 counts (or about that many photons, assuming the efficiency is high). A source that is detected well enough to do interesting measurements
130.
by splat 14y ago
Taubes has written a bit about salt before. Unfortunately, the only thing he's written that I can find that goes into more detail is this Science news focus article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/281/5379/898.full It talks about the
131.
by splat 14y ago
If we're after a common language, why not Esperanto? It's simpler than English and certainly simpler than Mandarin.
132.
by splat 15y ago
To be fair, nearly all ground-based observatories in the US are privately owned and operated. (Actually, they're almost all owned and operated by those evil corporations!) Most of the money that funds these observatories ultimately comes
133.
by splat 15y ago
Interestingly, there was a long fight in the field of cosmology from ~1960 until ~1990 as to whether the Hubble constant was 50 or 100. It wasn't until within the past twenty years or so that the community began to agree upon the now-accep
134.
by splat 15y ago
A few other amusing notes: 1. Hubble's draftsman made an error while preparing his famous diagram. From Figure 1 of his paper ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1931ApJ....74...43H ), you'll notice that the vertical axis is in "km" rather tha
135.
by splat 15y ago
Actually, most major experiments in particle physics these days (including the OPERA experiment) avoid this sort of confirmation bias by being run "blind." The scientists write all of their data reduction pipelines before taking any actual
136.
by splat 15y ago
I wouldn't do this if that person were a federal agent. Lying to a federal agent is a serious felony. (Of course, you shouldn't ever say anything of substance to a federal agent without a lawyer.)
137.
by splat 15y ago
I suppose that technically it's a tax on the transfer of your assets after your death. But unless you have no assets at all, it's hard to die and not transfer your assets to anyone.
138.
by splat 15y ago
I won't deny that it's a term of propaganda, but how is it misleading?
139.
by splat 15y ago
I would be curious if one could quantify this by perhaps traveling on several domestic flights in the US and in France of similar lengths and record how often a child cries to see if there is a statistically significant difference between t
140.
by splat 15y ago
That sounds similar to this Abstruse Goose cartoon: http://abstrusegoose.com/51
141.
by splat 15y ago
Have you tried using gvim? It has the best of both worlds.
142.
by splat 15y ago
These chords progress in units of 2. So you start with your triad (1st, 3rd, 5th). For the 7th chord you add the 7th, naturally enough. The next chord is then a 9th chord, so you add a 9th interval, but it wraps around modulo 8, so it's
143.
by splat 15y ago
It's admittedly been a while since I've read Brave New World , but I don't see the connection at all. Care to elaborate?
144.
by splat 15y ago
I am reminded of Ramanujan's proof that the sum of all positive integers is -1 / 12. The Wikipedia article has a fascinating excerpt from his letter to Dr. Hardy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%80%...
145.
by splat 15y ago
Yes, this is an example of the Matthew Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect_%28sociology%29
146.
by splat 15y ago
Prison guard unions would be one. The War on Drugs is a major contributor to the sad statistic that the US has more prisoners than any other country on the planet (not per capita, more prisoners, period). That means good business for pris
147.
by splat 15y ago
While internet voting could perhaps help, I think a much simpler and more powerful change would be to switch to a Condorcet method of voting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting ) Nothing would do more damage to the two-party s
148.
by splat 15y ago
In astrophysics, anything more than 15 years old is considered "archeoastronomy."
149.
by splat 15y ago
As another (recent) Caltech grad, I'll take a stab this. The Caltech intro calc class is very heavily proof-based. We started with easy problems that had nothing to do with calculus like proving that 1/sqrt(3) is irrational, went into eps
150.
by splat 15y ago
In astronomy, anyway, LaTeX is the default. It's probably different in other fields which is why the broader journals use Word.

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