Mischlings

Mine I might overwhelm it with Dream Theater; tends to happen.

Physics/Mathematics professor. I'm more likely to go into medicine as an anesthesiologist. Making $200k a year as a starting salary sounds pretty good to me. Though I would like some job in computers, I don't have enough aptitude to do well in the computer industry.

I love how everyone thinks that a close ranged weapon with no long ranged use other than being thrown is a good defence against lead propelled by explosives. There is meaning to the phrase "bringing a knife to a gun fight."

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi115.pdf So much for the US crime argument. Look from 2002 on. Since then, violent crime has been defined in pretty much the same way in all the countries mentioned. Gun control laws don't necessarily lower the crime rate. Sure, correlation=/=causation. However, if there's no correlation, then causation is exceedingly unlikely. I'm tired of that [cabbage] argument. The looser gun control laws don't mean that the crime rate is higher. Do some [bleep]ing research.

Hehe, I did the same. Read it in about 8 hours, got so pissed off at the end that I almost tore the epilogue out of the damned book. On topic, I am generally more impressed with books than with movies. As most movies are more built on mainstream success than anything else, their quality suffers, a trap into which books don't fall often. Some movies are amazing, but more often than not, trying for mainsteam appeal causes their quality to fall greatly.

And my fingers will be bleeding from trying so hard to get that song. That or I take the easy way out by doing vocals.

UW5jva60IzY That's a custom GH track, in this case, it's Panic Attack. Just to get an idea of what it might be like on Hard/Expert (4 fret chords? Yikes.) But Dream Theater and System of a Down CONFIRMED?! It's just too bad that I don't have a system they're releasing Rock Band 2 on. Oh well. At least that means they'll be on FoF for sure

Precisely, I made that point earlier in a post that it doesn't seem anyone noticed. The way it works is this: the pencil falls until the electromagnetic force between the pencil and the floor is greater than the gravitational force, causing the pencil to accelerate upwards. It continues until the gravitational force is stronger than the electromagnetic force again, causing the pencil to fall, meaning the pencil would (ever so slightly) osciallate up and down due to gravity and electromagnetic forces unless the net force is 0 where its velocity is 0. Is there something I missed that means that idea is nonsense? Because that sounds right to me, but I might have missed something.

Do you mean to say that we can convert sound energy into usable electricity? Because that sounds quite interesting. I would guess it's possible, just not in that way. I looked it up again online, and it was converted into EM radiation, then back into electricity. It used the coils in the same way, but it wasn't sound energy.

Zeno strikes again. One part of my mind tells me this: The pencil will fall until the electromagnetic force between the electrons in the pencil and the electrons in the floor is greater than the force of gravity. As the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance (Force=kq1q2/r^2), the distance between the two would never be 0, as that would create an infinite force, and therefore the two would never really touch. The pencil travels a certain distance. Let's say that it travels half the distance. Then it travels 1/4th. Then 1/8th. 1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16+...=1. That fact is incontrovertible once you understand the math behind it. According to the simpler math, the two would never touch. I won't touch on the calculus here, as I have yet to write it down to think it out, yet as far as I can tell at this moment, the two never actually would touch. The distance between the two is so small as to be insignificant for most purposes, but the two aren't "touching".

There was an article in Popular Science about this a while ago. From my sketchy memory (I'd have to dig around to find it), it worked by running electricity through a coil, which converted the electrical energy to sound energy. The sound was directed to another, identical coil, at which point it would be converted back to electrical energy. If I remember correctly, researchers at MIT were able to light a lightbulb from about 7 feet away. All this is based on an article I read ~5 months ago, so I might not be remembering things properly, so try not to burn me at the stake if I'm wrong. My memory is slightly faulty.

Dream Theater Liquid Tension Experiment (yes, I realize that 3/4 of LTE is in DT, but they're still separate) System of a Down Dragonforce The Beatles (I bet that looks out of place on this list) Metallica Linkin Park I cannot think of any more at the moment, so I can't quite round off the top 10 right now.

I don't know the other bands in the original post, but Dream Theater is far from satanic. There's only one song they've made that can in any way be interpreted as Satanic, and that's simply because it's being used as a metaphor (I'm referring to "In the Presence of Enemies", look into that song to see what I'm talking about). So no, they are not Satanic.

On my mom's side of the family, I had an uncle who literally ran away to join the circus. While there, he was repairing the brakes on one of the trucks when someone drove off - while he was still under the truck. One of my uncles has had ~4-5 houses burn down. Another uncle on that side was a gambling addict, especially when it came to the lottery. He kept track of every single Daily 3 and 4 number from the mid-'70s until he died in the mid-'90s. I also have an an uncle who shot a hole in the roof while cleaning a gun. Not sure if he's one of the ones mentioned above, though. My grandfather on that side was mistaken for Bigfoot on multiple occasions. He was also a chain smoker, lighting one cigarette off the stove and lighting one off the last for the rest of the day. He was also a heavy drinker, once being arrested for driving drunk while borrowing my mom's car. On the other side of my family, my dad grew up with a caboose in his backyard. My grandfather on that side worked on the railroad and just brought it home one day. He would also set off explosives which they used on the railroad in their backyard. With a sledgehammer. Every family member on that side of my family has the strangest sense of humor I've ever known. I've inherited the same. This doesn't even touch on the things that I do. I guess insanity is relative, just look at my relatives.

I play piano, but haven't touched one in a few years. I'm teaching myself guitar, skipping the chords entirely for a while and just playing. I can also play the ocarina by ear (not too well, but it's not like I play it all the time).

Cinnamon, onions, and popcorn. Popcorn upsets my stomach, onions give me blisters on my tongue, and cinnamon causes me to throw up every time I eat it. A less unusual but much deadlier is my allergy to formaldehyde. Formaldehyde allergy+asthma=near death.

I have good reflexes. My reaction time is approximately .1 seconds, about half the average. I have the ability to break down complicated situations. It doesn't necessarily mean that I manage to understand the situation perfectly, but I can see a lot of things that others don't by breaking it down. I am really good at making animal noises. I once had a barking contest with a dog, and a couple people weren't sure which was which without looking at me. I also do a great monkey impression, though that often leads to me falling down stairs or something similar because I end up being a little too crazy. I can do many math problems in my head, anything from arithmetic to some simple calculus problems. I work on getting better by practicing this quite often. In fact, while other people are busy grabbing a calculator or writing down a proble, I can often do it in my head faster. I am really good at sight reading music. As for playing the song as it's supposed to be played, I'd be able to pick up on it quite quickly if I ever practiced (only applies to piano, as I've never seriously played any other instruments). That is all that I can think of at the moment.

Look at my avatar. Or, if you need a larger picture...

All you did was say that you believe in non-violence and believe that examples are irrelevant. In fact, they are quite relevant, as that just might happen. You gave no reason for believing what you do. Why would I need a reason? How obvious is it that I do not condone violence to be pressed with violent "solutions". How so? If somebody's robbing me - and it's happened - there are a variety of techniques, schema's, what have you, that, through the application of your human reason, you can use to understand being robbed with compassion. I know this is all probably way over your head - people who think in terms of shooting intruders to their homes being a really hot idea tend to sneer at the mention of compassion as connected to political or legal discourse. Somebody jacks my bike, I can either go 'That's a shame. What a miserable life that person must be leading, and how much better off I am. Poor bastard obviously needed that bike more than I did, even if just to get more drugs. What a damn shame.' or I can choose to get afflicted, to slay, to lash out, to brood on my victimization, etc. etc. Stop claiming moral superiority, for one. It's possible to have far too much compassion, as you seem to do. Compassion is not always a positive attribute. If your bike is stolen, the bottom line is that you have one less bike than you did before. It's human nature to want to get it back, lash out, try and find the person who stole it and get it back. It's morally wrong to steal, no matter how or why it happened. You have the right to be angry, to take it up with law enforcement, get it back, etc. etc. I don't sneer at compassion, I just do not see being possible victim of violence as the time to have compassion on someone. Regardless of why it's happening, someone is about to assault/kill you. If your compassion has destroyed the instinct of self-preservation, I pity you.

Let me point you to a thread about this same thing: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=747536 I've already extensively, but not exhaustively, covered what I feel about this on that thread.

All you did was say that you believe in non-violence and believe that examples are irrelevant. In fact, they are quite relevant, as that just might happen. You gave no reason for believing what you do.

You're attempting to further your position by completely ignoring what I have been saying. When have I mentioned killing to keep a possession? I've already said that if you kill for that reason alone, and not to protect someone's life, it is wrong. Address why you're so opposed to that idea.

Pull up the source, it has the same graph, you can see the lines on it much better Philosophical arguments? Great, I should've realized where this was heading. When someone threatens your life unprovoked, why it happened doesn't matter. What matters is that if you don't act, someone is dead. Who's to say they won't do it again? And if, regardless of what happens, someone is getting killed, why let the one who might kill unprovoked again survive?

Hourglass - Liquid Tension Experiment

First off, correlation =/= causation. Ever notice where the majority of violent crimes are? Tell me that. Where they are, and why that would happen. And tell me which countries these are, and what other reasons they might have lower crime rates. Thing about violent crime in America is that it's a multi-faceted problem. It has more to do with our "culture" and poverty than gun ownership.