theothermkn

41 ms·

211.
by theothermkn 12y ago
I wish I could agree, but there are a few howlers in there. The significance of compressibility at low speeds around typical airfoils (M < .3 and no slots or blown flaps) is truly negligible, and the flowfield can be very finely approxim
212.
by theothermkn 12y ago
One warning to the novice is that his experiments all take place at a very low Reynolds number. It's very difficult for neophytes to visualize flow at these scales, not least because the shape of the viscous boundary layer is on nearly
213.
by theothermkn 12y ago
Any frustration that shows in my reply is not particular to you. It's just that folk ideas about fluids insinuate themselves everywhere with sometimes irritating confidence. (For example, the book you cite!) You're right about the
214.
by theothermkn 12y ago
I'm in the Seattle area. I might get down to SF in a bit for my job, though.
215.
by theothermkn 12y ago
> FWIW the words pull and push are used in sailing training to emphasize the importance of keeping the leeward flow attached when going to weather. Ding ding ding! Sailing is a practical matter, for nearly all sailors. It's nearly a
216.
by theothermkn 12y ago
> The keel generates its righting moment through lift also and not only its wieght btw, since a sailboat moves through the water at a slight angle. Actually, with the boat heeled over, the lift produced by the keel is both below the hull
217.
by theothermkn 12y ago
This is the strangest folk non-explanation of lift I've ever encountered. > So the wind is actually pulling the sail, not pushing it. A handy distillation of fluid dynamics is, "Just like you can't push string, you can&#x2
218.
by theothermkn 12y ago
Propellant, in the form of liquid oxygen and kerosene, is about as expensive as milk. For a vehicle with 2% mass fraction, and assuming that the entire vehicle is fuel in order to place an upper bound on fuel costs, that's 49 parts fue
219.
by theothermkn 12y ago
I don't know if Rich Hickey said it first, but he said it well when he noted that programmers get really upset when the parenthesis is on the left side of the function name, instead of the right side. DoSomething(an_arg, another_arg);
220.
by theothermkn 12y ago
This is an easily-pierced trope of this kind of discussion. "But now that the majority of the movie-watching public has a pretty good idea of how computers work, having a "hacker" enter some kind of 3d virtual reality world t
221.
by theothermkn 12y ago
There's a blithe decadence in insisting that the details of movie-making fantasy conform exactly to your expectations. It's also suspicious that the complaint is aimed at mainstream movies, rather than, for example, pornography fo
222.
by theothermkn 13y ago
Yeah. This was striking to me, too. The article delegitimizes burnout as being only the result of dysfunctional coping strategies. There is no exploitation of labor? There are no dysfunctional organizations? Any job is potentially fulfillin
223.
by theothermkn 13y ago
"[D]irect and testable assertion" sounds scientific, certainly. It would be interesting to hear how you would flesh that out, though. For example, when they say "no evidence exists," don't we immediately run into th
224.
by theothermkn 13y ago
> Not just “sit around and do nothing”, because that's still just relaxing. I mean after that, when you're ready to be useful to others again. What would you do then, if you didn't need the money, and didn't need th
225.
by theothermkn 13y ago
The depth of replies was too deep in the other thread, so I have to respond to your questions from over there in this thread. The answer is that I've given up on you as a person. The "'tard" quote was from Idiocracy. Rig
226.
by theothermkn 13y ago
In interpreting an article about Marxism, we shouldn't "interpret it in some explicitly Marxian [sic] context?" I have been giving you way too much credit.
227.
by theothermkn 13y ago
Don't worry, scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.
228.
by theothermkn 13y ago
We're having a rough time here because you're still not being charitable in your construction of the original author's meaning. This is a skill that takes time and practice, so I'm not surprised. It's also a skill t
229.
by theothermkn 13y ago
I'm completely comfortable having a set of conversational values different from yours. I want people to engage critically with the meanings of people's utterances, whereas you are content to let them proceed rhetorically by exploi
230.
by theothermkn 13y ago
> I'm sorry, but that's just nuts unless you can point to a society - of any sort anywhere - that contains no anxious people. When we analyze the statements of others, we more or less always have to interpret their meanings bef
231.
by theothermkn 13y ago
QED. Your first sentence shows no consideration at all of the effect of material advances on launch vehicle safety. Your use of the phrase "tremendous accelerations" shows no understanding of the accelerations actually produced ev
232.
by theothermkn 13y ago
While space elevators make for a fun toy gedanken for space enthusiasts who don't have an engineering background, they will never happen for one primary reason: As soon as you have a material out of which you can build a space elevator