OlderSaturday Aug 16 2008, 7:41 PM
From Wikipedia: He was a scientist and physicist, an anthropologist and comparative sociologist, an astronomer and chemist, a critic of alchemy and astrology, an encyclopedist and historian, a geographer and traveller, a geodesist and geologist, a mathematician, a pharmacist and psychologist, an Islamic philosopher and theologian, and a scholar and teacher, and he contributed greatly to all of these fields =>
Abū Rayhān BīrūnīRespond
Sunday Aug 10 2008, 4:33 PM
The atomic hypothesis is the aesthetic notion that infinity sucks.
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Monday Jul 21 2008, 6:07 AM
Stuff
Something that separates us from most stuff: we contain many representations of what was, is, and is becoming.
2008-07-21 15:58:12
beex
I'm not so sure about this. every thing contains a history, and a future. we're just better at communicating it to/reading it from each other.
you can see it in the ramshackle house that is about to fall down, or the rock that used to be a mountain.
2008-07-31 16:54:02
okie
After thinking about it more, I now disagree with myself and agree with you.
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Sunday Jul 20 2008, 6:21 PM
Stench is Over
I've been planning on cleaning my room for awhile, but I'll just start packing instead...and reading
Programming the Universe...and petting
Stella 849,201 and
Miss Chalky Vespa.
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Saturday Jul 5 2008, 7:01 PM
I really hope that within my lifetime that a way is found out for us to be at more than one place at a time.
2008-07-09 10:24:33
manda
me too
2008-08-26 13:58:57
anjuli
i think that within our lifetimes we will get to be everywhere at once.
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Sunday Jun 29 2008, 6:21 PM
Fuck, I'm so hungry. FRIED MUSHROOMS?
2008-07-24 16:54:03
gina
i tried fried mushrooms the other day for the first time. they were delicious. with ranch, of course.
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Friday Jun 27 2008, 5:08 PM
Conversation Patterns, Learning, Love
In the last several years, it has become increasingly annoying to hear people asking tons of questions that can be answered with a quick internet search. This is great because we can spend more time talking about things like person-specific knowledge (like talking to an expert about their field, to Mary the local band expert, a 5 year old about pretty much anything), opinions from people you care about, or topics related to a common community. My favorite type of information that cannot be obtained easily from unintelligent sources like search engines and such is understanding given to me by someone who knows me well. Since they know me well, they can approximate incredibly well the most efficient path to the information transfer, and I appreciate anyone who freely gives their time to teach me or anyone else anything, and much love goes to you!
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Thursday Jun 19 2008, 8:03 PM
Physics, Measurement, Transforms, Uncertainty Principle
Usually, making a measurement of a quantity regarding a particle such as position is associated with having an uncertainty in another quantity, and for the case of position, the uncertainty would be in momentum. In some way, I see this as analogous to performing a discrete Fourier transform on a vector (maybe a time window of some quantity like voltage). From the discrete Fourier transform, you get out information about the magnitude of different frequencies and their phases. You might think of these component waveforms as being pulses that are like particles. There's something related to the Fourier transform called wavelet analysis, and from what I understand, wavelet analysis is sort of like performing a discrete Fourier transform with varying window sizes. I want to know what the analogous measurement of a particle or something is for performing wavelet analysis or discrete Fourier transforms with varying window size.
2008-06-24 00:27:19
okie
To self: I think, for wavelet analysis to make sense in this context, the wave function would need to be measured directly, which I believe doesn't make sense.
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Wednesday Jun 18 2008, 9:45 PM
Something About The Universe
The universe might be like a Turing machine except Turing machines have discrete symbols. The universe might be like a Turing machine with non-discrete, infinitely many (or one) symbol(s) except Turing machines are discrete entities. And so on...
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Wednesday Jun 18 2008, 8:45 AM
I think many of our dreams are about snakes and scary things like that.
2008-06-25 22:35:44
gina
when i was a kid i had a lot of dreams about snakes, tornados, flying, being lost, and my teeth falling out. but never anymore.
2008-06-27 01:37:31
okie
"Ancient civilization is hardwired into the brain." -Briggs in Entopticon
When we were born to be afraid of dangerous things. I've heard that monkeys are likely genetically afraid of snakes.
2008-07-03 12:03:36
kate
yeah, that monkey study is cool. captive monkeys that have never seen a snake before aren't scared of snakes until they see another monkey being scared of a snake. but if you replace the monkey being scared of a snake with a monkey being scared of a flower, the fear doesn't transfer.
i had a scary dream the other night about spiders and a creepy old man, but i think it was because i'd been watching too much buffy.
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