Asparagus Pee, Gooblek & Other Neat Stuff |
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Thoughts and observations of an Enneagram Type 7 INFP Beatles fan. I prefer baths to showers, late nights to early mornings, cats to dogs, and Mary Ann.
The perfect blog for all featherless bipeds.
Gooblek
is a 2-to-1 suspension of cornstarch in water. It acts like a liquid if you
move it slowly, but a solid if you hit it or squeeze it. Click below for info
on Asparagus Pee.
Recent Entries
Archives February 2003March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 January 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 March 2007 April 2007 June 2007 July 2007 February 2008
Interesting Sites zefrank.comJames Randi Ray Kurzweil's Site Internet Beatles Album Ken Wilber's Site Phsychological Self-Help Today's Front Pages Online Magnetic Poetry Doonesbury Democracy Means You Hedweb Links Weblog Resources Mandarin Design (CSS)Slacker's Guide Creative Commons CSS Properties Stylesheets Tutorial Open Source Web Design Dan's Tips My Bloginality is INFP !!!
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Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Lest my sharing of several guilty pleasures like Buffy fool you into thinking my brain's gone all soft, I've decided to reprint here a short published essay I wrote in response to a comment that was made by a fellow subscriber to The The other reader wrote "I have a question about audio feedback, if there is an increase in the amount of energy being used during feedback? There must be. If so, is the relationship between the amount of energy used to increase volume during feedback the same as energy used to increase volume by just turning it up?" Here's my reply: The power required to produce a certain increase in sound volume is a simple logarithmic curve, where each doubling of the perceived loudness (yes, perceived by a human - if Werner Heisenberg isn't in the forest when the tree falls, can we be certain that there really was a tree?) requires 10 times the energy in terms of kinetic energy. I'd be really surprised (shocked and sickened, actually) if this didn't apply to feedback squeals as well. Basically, feedback occurs through the process of escalating reinforcement. A sound is being produced that resonates with the environment in some way, in either the room or the electronics, much the same as a note is produced when you blow across a bottle. Some form of amplification is required to provide the escalation of the resonance, but as long as the amplifier and other elements of the system can provide greater output, the escalation should follow the typical dB power curve, the same as turning up the volume on a non-resonant sound. Where it gets interesting is when the limitations of the devices or the characteristics of the environment cause the feedback resonance frequency or character to change as the power escalates. Resonance itself is a strange beast, and another thing entirely. If you can determine the resonance of an object, a space, a device, a person, etc., it's not exactly what I would call feedback, but vibrations can become self-reinforcing due to the correspondence of coinciding wavefronts. I'm now thinking specifically of a story regarding Nikola Tesla when he was immersed in resonance studies where he invented a mechanical reciprocating device to provide a small hammer blow at regular intervals, calculated the resonant frequency of a large building in New York, and placed the device on the corner of the building. According to this anecdote, it worked so well that the building began to sway and he ended up shattering the device with a sledgehammer and breaking the resonance to prevent it from toppling. Whether or not this story is true, SELF-reinforcing systems are subject to runaway escalation with very little additional power input because they become chaotic in nature and it takes only 'a minimal change in the input variable' to provide a 'catastrophic change' in the resulting output, by forcing the system to another area of a strange attractor that represents the available states in phase space. This is a lot of scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo for the last straw on the camel, or Ella Fitzgerald breaking the wine glass on the old 'Is it live or is it Memorex?' commercials. This is also how lasers work. And metaphorical thinkers can see that this has ramifications for socio-political power, resonance, and feedback as well.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Friday, May 16, 2003
Here's an interesting website: Mt Everest History and facts - just all the basic stats for Mt. Everest climbs. It's amazing what human beings do and can do once someone proves it's possible, like the 4-minute mile that everyone thought was impossible, and now is practically expected.
Don't let these stats fool you though - in the best year, fully 1/16th of the people who tried to summit died on the mountain.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Monday, May 12, 2003
Friday, May 09, 2003
Here's another good personality type analysis page. The Enneagram and the MBTI: an electronic journal on the relationship between the two personality typing systems.
Just a quick follow up on Dick and Mary: Carl Reiner is writing a script for a CBS special that will show what Rob and Laurie Petrie have been doing since THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW went off the air in 1966. Reiner isn't worried about tampering with a classic, or how viewers will react to seeing Rob and Laura much older. Van Dyke will concede one thing to age, though. Reiner said they won't make him trip over the ottoman at the beginning of the show, which debuted in 1961. "No, he's too old. He'd kill himself, if he trips over the ottoman," Reiner said with a laugh. Source: Yahoo News
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
On a sadder note, it's hard to find George Wyle on Google if you don't put quotes around it, because it keeps trying to show results for 'George Clooney' and 'Noah Wyle' - I think I'm ready for Z-Gen.
Monday, May 05, 2003
Friday, May 02, 2003
I clipped this and carried it around for almost a month. Bad news, though. I got fooled by my watch into thinking that yesterday was April 31 (I'm kinda dumb about some [arbitrary] stuff, you see), so I missed the boat, though I did figure out what's what in time to post the announcement below. Any-who, here's the scoop on trading up to a clean, quiet mower this year: Mow Down Pollution 2003: All 600 of the electric mowers we had available for trade were claimed within the first hour on a first-come, first-served basis. No further registrations will be accepted. Thank you for your interest in the Mow Down! Isn't that great!? (I'm serious - I love that it only takes an hour for good people in SMUD's service area to try to do the right thing.) On the other hand, if they had the option to get more than 600 from Black & Decker, here are some interesting stats: SMUD services 1.2 Million people in a 900 square mile area, and Auburn isn't even serviced by SMUD, so why have they made me think and talk about this for the last month?
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Duh! Matters of Emphasis Special thanks to my friend Mark for the heads up on this insightful inquiry into the necessity of the Iraq war.
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