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[hector13]

Truly a land of boundless opportunity. You can start a chemical manufacturing plant right in your Wal-Mart parking lot!

Bathroom's better apparently.

[Frumple]

Though yeah, transporting chemicals you don't know the composition of is a rather incredibly bad idea. That's how things get melted through, explode, and/or end up poisoning an indeterminate amount of people. Never move something when you don't know what its reaction to transport is.

The who is no telling, particularly without know what the chemicals are. All sorts of reasons someone might have an excess of presumably toxic waste. The how is less opaque, though. Walmart parking lots are big, usually significantly populated, and generally understaffed for something like keeping overwatch on the premises. Not hard at all to dump something off without anyone really noticing, particularly if some of the usual security cameras aren't working for whatever reason. If it's not causing actual monetary damages, it might even be cheaper to just let it slide. Occasional stopover by a chemical analyst type critter may cost less than what it'd cost to have someone keep an eye out, to say nothing of the potential issues involved with confronting someone that's been dumping chemical waste on you.

[Neonivek]

You know... with people defining anime as a animation style and not "Animation from Japan"

Does that mean Akira is no longer anime?

[Rolan7]

Oh right I wanted to weigh in on Death Note!

It is weird...  Because there was already a live action movie in 2006, and it was pretty good.
And that's why I'm sorta excited about this...  The anime is obviously Japanese, set in Japan, and that's core to its whole idea.  The 2006 movie was faithful to that, which was pretty rad for me at the time!

Now they're making a version of that... but American?  That changes a lot of the concept.  Which is arguably a pro- I already saw the 2006 movie.  I want to see how the social issues central (but not unique) to modern Japan are translated here.  We do have a crime problem, and desperate youth reaching for simple solutions to complex problems.

[Putnam]

i wanted to calculate how much 1 "unit" of dwarven power corresponds to watts

here you go

[wierd]

Ahh. Just enough to power Picard's interrogation room. (assuming 60 watt incandescent bulbs, that is 4 bulbs, plus some mood lighting.)
(THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!) ;P


As for my WTF moment today... Some batshit architectural firm floated the idea of suspending a skyscraper from a geosyncronous orbit asteroid, and dangling it into the atmosphere over New York City.

http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/space/firm-floats-plan-hang-colossal-skyscraper-asteroid-n739601

Yes, because we can totally build orbital tethers now, and dragging the damn thing through the atmosphere wont TOTALLY turn that thing into a glowing streak of molten hot metal charged with millions of watts of electrical power from induction with the magnetosphere. Totally.

*edit: Fix wrong link

[martinuzz]

You posted the wrong link (the DNC one you linked in Ameripol), I think it was still in your ctrl-c memory

[wierd]

Well, we can add that to the list too then damnit. Here I will fix it.

[Neonivek]

Oh right I wanted to weigh in on Death Note!

It is weird...  Because there was already a live action movie in 2006, and it was pretty good.
And that's why I'm sorta excited about this...  The anime is obviously Japanese, set in Japan, and that's core to its whole idea.  The 2006 movie was faithful to that, which was pretty rad for me at the time!

Now they're making a version of that... but American?  That changes a lot of the concept.  Which is arguably a pro- I already saw the 2006 movie.  I want to see how the social issues central (but not unique) to modern Japan are translated here.  We do have a crime problem, and desperate youth reaching for simple solutions to complex problems.

It is why an American interpretation is so interesting.

Heck as an example I watched both the Japanese and Taiwanese version of Liars Game... Both were seeped in the cultures they were made from (Taiwan more than Japan)... it kind of made me appreciate it more.

White Washing isn't always taking something from another country... and not setting it in that country. We cannot culturally appropriate from Japan even by the flimsy definition.

[Greiger]

i wanted to calculate how much 1 "unit" of dwarven power corresponds to watts

here you go

Wait, did you use the tool I used to use to cheat in math class to....do actual science?   Bizzare.

So if I'm understanding these numbers correctly, a single dwarven waterwheel produces 2.3 kilowatts of power.  Assuming a direct connection to the wheel itself.  Apparently enough to run a Samsung Galaxy for 2 years if stored properly. Nifty.

[Frumple]

Wait, did you use the tool I used to use to cheat in math class to....do actual science?   Bizzare.

Probably! Wolfram's pretty great. Bit of a shame it's not integrated into math classes more, as a good resource if nothing else. Shouldn't have to cheat to make use of an excellent tool, and there's a lot of folks that don't know about it that could significantly benefit, the poor blighters.

[Heron TSG]

Wolfram pretty much got me through Calc 3. I could do the math, but had a hard time visualizing the equations and making sure I had a reasonable solution. Especially for conic sections! I couldn't keep them in my headspace, so I put them in Wolfram to give me pictures to use.

[TheBiggerFish]

I have never really understood why math classes insist on not using calculators.

[Heron TSG]

My first calculus class was the only one that prevented that, and obviously the class I took on estimation and shortcuts. (Specifically for when you don't have one!) All my other professors have been pretty aware of the general availability of technology these days.

[Arx]

I have never really understood why math classes insist on not using calculators.

Most math classes of any real merit aren't aided much by calculators anyway*. You need a proper analytical package like WolframAlpha, and using those instead of understanding how to do the maths severely hurts your ability to understand further work built on the same foundation.

*In Maths 1043 at my university, it was a bit of a running gag that the lecturer didn't know what numbers were because we never covered specific cases in lectures. It was almost entirely general solutions. It was almost entirely general solutions in tutorials and tests, too, but there were actually numbers involved occasionally. Unless your calculator can solve DEs...