i saw this computer at Best Buy earlier today and i can’t get over the fact that someone thought that this was a good idea. some guy at acer thought it was a good idea to pitch this design, and some guy thought it was a good idea to give it a thousand dollar price tag. what a world we live in
I work at Best Buy and I literally have never sold one of these. It’s garbage. You can’t use the fucking touchpad without messing with the keys.
What in fuck
A wave and a circle are both two-dimensional projections of a helix.
What. My… What. My whole life… has been… a… what?
either my chem teacher didnt read my about me paragraph or he just really doesnt care
you win everything
- Teacher: You failed a test.
- Me: You failed to educate me.
- teacher: tell me one thing about yourself that most people do not know
- me: no
how do you make friends in college do i just grab onto someone and scream YOU’RE MINE or what
college should be like 50 dollars
maybe i’ll just move to China where college literally is like 50 dollars.
(Source: iremadegofollowmynewblog)
I’m struck by how closely the criticisms of Edward Snowden mirror those launched against Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. I can only assume that we’ll see these same critiques launched against each leaker or whistle-blower from now on.
Pretty much immedately upon learning of Snowden’s identity, he was labeled “a grandiose narcissist” by Jeffery Toobin in the New Yorker. Toobin also suggests that Snowden is disingenuous when he claimed he needed to do the right thing upon learning of what he considered to be governmental abuses:
What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention.
Also mirroring the Wikileaks discussion, Toobin argues that Snowden’s leak was reckless and irresponsible. Rather than being selective about the information he would release, he leaked indiscriminately. Someone who really cared about the good of the nation, Toobin implies, would only leak the really terrible stuff that also wouldn’t do any damage to our security or prestige.
And my good colleague Richard Moberly writes in the New York Times that Snowden shouldn’t be protected by our whistle-blower laws because he subverted the democratic process. Moberly, like Toobin, argues that Snowden blew the whistle on programs that were legal, that were sanctioned by all three branches of our government (including the democratically-elected ones), and — what’s more — that our government has legal avenues available for people like Snowden to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. He concludes:
Although we may not like the decisions that our leaders made regarding the N.S.A. program, the choice before us is whether we would rather live with their judgment or encourage unelected, unaccountable people to decide instead.
I’m not convinced that Moberly is right about the choice. It seems to me, instead, that the choice is between knowing exactly what our government is doing, on the one hand, and relying on the government to tell us, on the other. While our fear or our complacency might have allowed for the creation and expansion of programs like this over the past decade, Snowden’s actions have, I hope, brought home to us exactly what we’ve allowed.
For some people, there won’t ever be anything noble or heroic about someone who leaks information. I suppose that’s why they turn to the same lines about narcissism and recklessness, because the whistle-blowers aren’t simply falling in line. But blowing the whistle on governmental overreach or outright abuse, saying “no” when everyone else seems to be saying “yes,” doing the right thing in the face of tremendous risk and cost, standing up to the powerful when you believe their actions are harmful to us all … well, those are the kinds of actions we ought to celebrate when we see them.
“In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
At first, I wanted to make something to be able to chew on my pen without making it dirty. When looking at the pen, I noticed you only really use the ink. The rest of the pen is just there for a better grip. I’m one of these people who always chew on their pens and pencils and it got me thinking. Since we don’t really need the top part of the pen, is it perhaps possible to design an edible pen? That was my goal, a pen you can chew or maybe even eat. I collected some pens and tried to find out what exactly on the pen makes it so good to chew on.
With this information I made three different molds and started trying out different types of sweets, the breaking point and which one chew the best. When I found the right shape and sweets I made a final model in peppermint flavour. The candy which is used doesn’t stick on anything and doesn’t melt in your hands. It’s a bit like those colourful candy bracelets. It contains 22 pieces and the whole pen is filled with edible ink. The only thing which isn’t edible is the small tip you write with. When finished, you throw it away or put in a new refill tip.SHUTUPANDTAKEMYMONEY.JPG
I think a lot of people on tumblr need to see this.
I bet you did.
Did you estimate what mpg your car is getting? Did you figure out how many hamburgers you could get for six bucks? Did you think about how long it would take you to get somewhere given the speed and distance? Did you plan a meal so all the components would be done at the same time? Did you encounter anything on sale? Did you figure out how many groceries you could get for how much money you had?
There are about a million other daily, unconscious tasks that use algebra or at least algebraic thinking. Just because you weren’t writing out an equation or employing variables doesn’t mean you weren’t using the skills that algebra and other math courses taught you.
Science and math aren’t important because you’re going to need to know the exact steps of photosynthesis or the quadratic formula. They’re important because they teach you scientific and mathematical literacy and rational thinking, and that is sorely needed in a world where charlatans and cheats or people with a political or religious agenda can get away with all manner of pseudoscience and bullshit because people don’t have enough scientific literacy or critical thinking skills to accurately weigh the arguments or even discern where they fail logically.
So study math and science, and art, and literature, and history, and politics, not because you’re going to need it or it’s going to do something specific for you, but because an uninformed populace is bad for the world.
Re-Blogging for perfect comment.
(Source: n3on-nov3mb3rs)
via science-junkie:
Prince Rupert’s drop
The prince Rupert’s drop is a truly amazing thing.When molten glass hits cold water, its outer surface cools rapidly and shrinks as it solidifies. Since the center is still fluid, it can flow to adjust to the outer shell’s smaller size. As that center eventually cools and solidifies, it also shrinks, but now the outer shell is already solid and can’t change its shape to accommodate the smaller core. The result of this is a high amount of internal pressure, as the inside pulls the outside from all directions the glass is set to release a lot of energy. If you break the thin glass at the tail, a chain reaction travels like a shock wave through the drop. As each section breaks, it releases enough energy to break the next section, and so on, shattering the whole drop in less than a millisecond. At the same time The glass can be extremely strong aswell glass breaks when tiny scratches pull apart and spread into fractures. Since the surface is compressed by internal stress, scratches can’t grow, and the glass is very difficult to break.
Credits: ScienceCubed - http://sciencecubed.tumblr.com/
People, if you haven’t seen Destin from Smarter Every Day shatter these things at 130,000 frames per second, you haven’t truly lived.
