assassin_696

Moved to Tech and Computers :)

It's not an album, but I've bought my copy of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah (studio version and the live at Bearsville version) to try and keep the X-factor version from dominating the Christmas charts. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66500765224

I wholeheartedly agree with 1_man_army's views on Israel/Palestine. I don't particularly have an opinion on the other movements because I don't know enough about them.

It depends who I could live forever with.

Of course it has a maker - the bulb or the seed that it grew from, the rain it gained water from, and the soil it drew nutrition from. Everything that exists must have been created by something(s) before it. The universe is surely no exception to that rule, and that's the one fallacy science is unable to explain so far: How do you create something from nothing? My logical answer would be this: There must have been something there before the Big Bang. In which case, what caused that? Why should the state of non-existence be the default setting? We have not one single example in nature of "nothingness", so why must there be a time before the Universe to cause it? Does nothingness even make sense as anything but a philosophical consideration?

Skokiaan - Louis Armstrong

I can probably see people moving away from worshipping singlular/multiple deities and following set religious practices, and more to a kind of spiritual community. On the one hand, I can see more education in science highlighting the absurdities of many religious claims. But on the other hand, many scientists and people educated in science have an amazing sense of wonder at the world. It's not religion as most people would define it, but there is something very deep and reflective about it, almost bordering on naturalistic spirituality. At least, that's where I'd like to see the world move towards.

I go to a British northern grammar school, so playing rugby is pretty much the done thing. Used to play for my school and a local club, I stopped playing a couple of years ago because the training was too time consuming, but it was fun. I played full-back or flanker, more flanker towards the end.

Yeah I know. Anyone would think musical preference is subjective. And yet you made the statement like it was fact. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Am I the only one who doesn't think they sound that similar? Lazily subjective statement.

This links in with your last question about organic chemistry. I'm referring to reaction mechanisms such as electrophillic addition or nucleophillic substitution. In these mechanisms we represent the movement of electrons by curly arrows from two single dots to a carbon atom, or whatever. My point is that of course we don't really mean that what we have is two precisely defined electrons following a well defined path to a single atom somewhere, it's just a model that broadly represents what's going on. Of course we could show the movement of electron clouds, maybe show the electrons exploring all possible paths, draw everything with an associated probability wave, but I think you'd agree that this would be preposterous. My point wasn't that you should keep people blind to what's really going on in the physical world. My point is that it would be crazy to represent everything as what we really think it is. That's a little different to introducing children to relativity/quantum mechanics though. The structure of benzene was "changed" because people found that it didn't really behave like it should if there were three single double bonds, and that a ring in the centre fitted better with the observations. That's progress in science, but it's a fairly low level. It's not really the kind of paradigm change that relativity of quantum mechanics requires. Well now we're getting into the deep question of what constitutes a physical law and where you draw the line. Einstein's laws might improve on Newton's, but ultimately Einstein's laws are just approximations too to some deeper theory. This could be emphasised and realised simply through a thorough teaching of what science is, and how it constantly seeks to make better approximations to the truth. Children learn physics through experiments that they can do themselves, and in these kind of laboratory scale experiments relativistic and quantum mechanical effects are utterly negligible, so what point is there in bringing them up? If physical laws are simply theories that fit with the truth, then Newton's laws work just as well as Einstein's in school experiments, so those would be the correct ones to teach. In what sense are Newton's laws any less correct than Einstein's at the scale of v< For me at least, understanding in physics comes about through seeing the experiments and working through the theory mathematically, but primarily the latter. I think it's great that your niece has an awareness of relativity, but to be frank there's no way she could have the mathematical understanding of the theory to constitute what I consider true understanding of it. You can tell a child that the gravitational force between the two objects is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the distance from their centre of masses squared, but until they've played around with the equations and tried out different examples I wouldn't say that they really understood it. Understanding at a quantitative and qualitative level are two different things. I understand a lot qualitatively, but probably not very much quantitatively. And it's quantitative models that are tested against experiment and confirmed. I might also argue the case for the wonderful revelation that comes about when learning about "modern physics" when you have an appreciation of classical physics. It truly is a brilliant moment when, thinking you know so much about physics, come to learn that this is barely the tip of the iceberg. I don't think 10 year olds could have an appreciation for that.

Chemistry would be very hard to teach if we made an effort to represent every drawing as what it really is. The traditional Bohr model of an atom is just that, a model, which works very well for most explanations/experiments at school level. We may not know what an electron is, but organic reaction mechanisms would be very hard to draw if we tried to show the movement of electron clouds, instead of just little dots and positive and negative charges. My point is, science is just a collection of models developed over centuries to fit the data. Some are more accurate than others. But if you started talking about Einsteinein curvature and tensor fields when trying to explain gravity to schoolchildren you're just going to confuse them. I think you should stick to the models that they could easily understand and get to grips with. I would certainly applaud the introduction of any science syllabus which aims to give children an awareness of science beyond their syllabus, but since there's no way to teach that science at a level where they will understand it anything beyond a basic awareness is probably a waste of time. We both know that Newtonian classical mechanics can be developed to a level that goes way beyond most special relativity courses. And since you can't understand special relativity unless you know something about Newtonian mechanics, it makes sense to give them a firmer grounding in that before confusing them with Lorentz contractions and time dilation.

I'm pretty sure that would have to be copyright infringement, which we don't allow discussion of. Locked.

I'll list some of the other albums i've really liked now: Kings of Leon - Only By The Night The Killers - Day & Age Sigur Ros - I'm not spelling it out The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely Paul Weller - 22 Dreams Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement Hot Chip - Made In The Dark Guns n' Roses - Chinese Democracy Glasvegas - Glasvegas Giant Sand - Provisions Foals - Antidotes Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid Sun Kil Moon - April The Black Keys - Attack & Release Bob Dylan - Bootleg Beck - Modern Guilt

Third Eye - Tool

I despise the principle of conscription, but would probably be reasonably willing to volunteer myself. Although i'm sure it does the enlistees a lot of good, I don't like the principle of it being mandatory.

Tear - The Smashing Pumpkins Adore isn't my favourite album of theirs, but it's not bad.

1GB, DDR2 dual core. Pretty sure my card is pci-e but i'm not sure, anyway I can find out? I'm in the UK, sorry I forgot to mention that. If you want a budget I'd say anywhere up to £100 if necessary and worth it but as little as I can get away with realistically.

Basically I'm looking to spend a bit of money on my slightly sluggish PC so it can handle GTA IV reasonably well. I really have no clue when it comes to a lot of these things, so I don't know where the best place to spend money is. I think my computer probably meets the minimum performance requirements but I don't want it constantly freezing. These are my system stats. Dell Optiplex GX620 Intel ® Pentium ® D CPU 2.80GHz, 2.79 GHz 1.00GB of RAM Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 256MB ATI Radeon X600 150GB HD with 31 GB free I suspect the graphics card might be letting me down, but maybe not. If you could suggest the most cost effective way to upgrade it so that it handles the game better then it'd be much appreciated. Also, if you think it'll be fine with the game say and i'll leave it as it is. I don't want to spend too much because i'll probably buy a new laptop next year anyway. The system requirements are listed below. [hide=]Minimum System Requirements * OS: Windows Vista - Service Pack 1 / XP - Service Pack 3 * Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz, AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4Ghz * Memory: 1.5GB, 16GB Free Hard Drive Space * Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA 7900 / 256MB ATI X1900 Recommended System Requirements * OS: Windows Vista - Service Pack 1 / XP - Service Pack 3 * Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X3 2.1Ghz * Memory: 2 GB (Windows XP) 2.5 GB (Windows Vista) * 18 GB Free Hard Drive Space * Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 / 512MB ATI 3870[/hide] EDIT: Reading through various online reviews it seems like this is far more of a resource hog than was made out originally and is quite buggy. Hopefully the issues are being tweaked, i'm in no rush to buy it.

Yeah they told us that as well. I did bits and pieces over the summer but didn't really finish it until late September. I was an early entrant so I had the 15th October deadline anyway, and the school had an earlier deadline on top of that to check it. I wouldn't worry too much about it. The only thing that takes any real time/consideration is your personal statement. I think I nailed mine by the end but it took quite a few drafts and a lot of help.

I don't think there's a more beautiful sight in nature than a starry night. Unfortunately they're becoming increasingly rare with light pollution. I think knowing something about them only enhances their beauty as well. Nobody has said it better.

Quiet Houses - Fleet Foxes

Nice :) I'm sure I've hyped it enough but it honestly is one of the most beautiful records I've ever heard. I hope you enjoy.

[hide=] Generally, the people I know applied to around 5-10 unis. They will require a copy of your earlier school[snip..] diploma[], but it's not the only criteria (you mean your transcript?). First you need to know what degree you're going to pursue (err, vaguely... you kind of need to have a basic idea of what you like (i.e., engineering, business, science, etc.) but most people don't need to pick their degree/major until Junior year of college/uni). In almost all cases you'll need to write an application essay explaining why you should be admitted in (eh, yes and no... the essay is meant mainly to flesh you out, to make you more than just a few numbers and words on a piece of paper. An essay, depending on how well it's written, can make or break an application, especially at super-competitive schools like the Ivies) . If you were very talented in high school and have good references (2 or 3 teachers right a short essay about you for the colleges) , you may even get a scholarship & fully paid tuition (which can be a huge economic advantage, because some good universities charge $5000-$40,000 per year). (getting tuition payed for in full is very, very rare, but the vast majority of people get at least some form of scholarship/financial aid) If you apply for more specific degrees like master of arts, you will also need to provide examples of previous work you have finished (things like arts and hotel management are based more on things outside of general high school work, but the majority of applications are focused almost entirely on schoolwork and being a well-rounded person (work, extracurriculars, community service, etc.)). In addition, to be eligible you will usually have to obtain an ACT or SAT score prior to applying (for most places). At least where it concerns SAT's, there should be one each month in any given testing center (and generally the max is three times to take the test, any more uni's frown upon) . Are you from the US? You've got the right idea but you kind of sound like you're talking from Europe. [/hide] Ah I see, thanks. Not too dissimilar to the UK process then. Here it's all done through a centralised system, called UCAS. You fill the form in online putting down qualifications achieved (GCSE's, A-levels etc.) personal details, a personal statement (essay describing you want to do the subject) and then a reference from a teacher. You can apply to a maximum of 5 unis or 4 medical schools. If you get offers they'll require a certain number of A-levels at certain grades (eg. AAA) and the offer is (almost always) conditional on achieving those grades. Some universities interview, all medical schools do and the Oxford and Cambridge interviews are notorious. The difference I guess is that you have to apply with a definite degree preference, whereas you can specialise much later on in the US.

Have you got the Bon Iver record yet How2PK?