vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Electric scooter “mayhem” sounds like when cars were introduced
vaughanb's comments
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Electric scooter “mayhem” sounds like when cars were introduced
Surely a large part of the problem is thinking it's OK to leave the the hire scooters on public property wherever is convenient for the customer. Can't wait for the flying-vehicle startup.
It's another tragedy of the common.
BTW "sidewalks" are also known as "footpaths" and "roads" as "carriageways" in countries that speak British English.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Bergson’s debate with Einstein swayed the 1921 Nobel committee (2016)
No, it really is just a couple of fancy words strung together.
Let's deconstruct it:
1) Space -- Einstein has shown that it's really Space-Time 2) Mind -- there is no real agreement on what "mind" means. Brain? Consciousness? Brain is well defined, consciousness no so. 3) Time -- the 4th dimension of space-time, right?
So "Time is the Mind of Space" deconstructs to: "the 4th dimension of space-time is <something to do with thought or thinking or consciousness> of the other three dimensions of space-time."
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Since 2016, Half of All Coral in the Great Barrier Reef Has Died
>If there is no money that get infused into the local environment around the corals then less people will work to fix it.
The ocean has warmed to the point where to coral cannot survive. The reef is H-U-G-E (1,400 miles long according to the article). If there was a technology capable of reducing the ocean temperature around the reef, the waste heat the technology would create would cause more problems elsewhere.
The reef is an indication that the global warming problem has become to big for human technology to fix.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Since 2016, Half of All Coral in the Great Barrier Reef Has Died
Decades ago the reef was endangered by run-off from agriculture (fertilisers, agri-chemicals etc) and I believe this has been managed, since it's largely under human control (ie, we could stop song them tomorrow if we wanted).
There have occasionally be natural predators too, like the Crown of Thorn starfish.
The current threat to the reef is ocean warming -- a vastly different threat. There is not much humans can do in the short term to mitigate the problem.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Bergson’s debate with Einstein swayed the 1921 Nobel committee (2016)
>"Time is the Mind of Space"
That sounds wonderful but doesn't mean anything.
An interesting quote from the article:
For many, Bergson’s defeat represented a victory of “rationality” against “intuition.” It marked a moment when intellectuals were no longer able to keep up with revolutions in science due to its increasing complexity.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Turn-of-the-Century Pigeons Photographed Earth from Above
The thought that pigeons were high technology, too, is an interesting one.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Turn-of-the-Century Pigeons Photographed Earth from Above
No, 2001 was the millennium shift. The year 2000 was the last year of the decade, century and millennium.
1999 was when the party started, of course.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Gruen transfer
I'm not sure about the Gruen Effect, but can verify the Doorway Effect is real.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Autonomous braking: 'The most significant development since the safety belt'
Anti-lock brakes never yielded the accident reduction expected, primarily because drivers used the improved braking performance to drive faster in poorer conditions.
I guess the AEB works at reducing accidents because it IS autonomous and does not "improve performance".
BTW the KPI is reduction in insurance cost.
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: Credit Card Signatures Are About to Become Extinct in the U.S
> ... chip in
Unintentional pun. The US public seems to have a huge reluctance to use the chips in the cards too. It's swipe and sign.
(I'm also from Australia and signing for a credit card purchase went away decades ago. PayWave is really popular, my 89 yo mother loves it.)
vaughanb | 8 years ago | on: A swarm of submarine drones will scour the depths for MH370
Like search and rescue operations, these are essentially exercises for defence forces. You can't make opportunities like these.
vaughanb | 13 years ago | on: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space
Ah, no that's something else: shutter distortion.
This was made on a large format camera -- probably something like 4 x 5 inches -- with a focal plane shutter. The shutter has a huge distance to cover -- 4 inches -- and it takes a while for the slit to cross the whole film frame.
The camera panning on one direction caused the spectators in the background to be distorted in one direction, while the car was moving faster than the camera and is distorted in the other direction.
Its interesting to note that the distortion was mimicked in cartoons as a way to show speed.
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The banana skin (and the inevitable slip that followed) was a euphemism for slipping on horse manure in the street.