unreality

^ hahahaha. Don't worry I asked 'God' if he was serious about playing. He responded with a mix of incoherent gibberish and blatant racism and also said at some point he was going to make sure I went to hell. He then said that he was probably going to leave the forum soon and never come back. So don't worry DudleyDude, I think we can welcome you back safely Host: Unreality 1) filly678 2) GMaster479 3) dawh 4) DudleyDude 5) Izzy 6) Framm 18 7) yuiop 8) Glycereine 9)

unfortunately most scientists are still males, however women are breaching the field and in the past 10 years the number of women scientists has risen dramatically (1) just cooking and sex? are you saying men do laundry? Is there a root for your rampant sexism and disrespect of over 1/2 the world's population? (2) do you have any idea what micro evolution means?

littlej:

The richest man in interstellar orbit, the magnate of the solar system, the kingpin of space science, Professor Doctor Sir Martin K. Rombridge, Esquire (also vice president of a small African mining nation) is holding, tonight, in his orbital luxury cruise vessel, a high-society gala of some of the most influential people of the future. No, he hasn't been murdered... yet. A death threat is almost as serious... and leaves something to be prevented. Things like that happen something like this: A robotic servant glides over, carrying a tray with a single glass of bubbly champagne for the man with the plan Dr Rombridge himself. He lifts the glass and finds a small piece of paper stuck to the condensation on the bottom of the glass. Yes, condensation (the cruise ship has simulated gravity). Rombridge squints his dark brown, wrinkled, whiskery face and slides the limp piece of paper away from its bond with the glass. All he sees is blurry black ooze where letters should be. He flips down some glasses, squints some more. Maybe - is that an 'a'? Followed by a 't'? Yes, the first word is 'At'. Rombridge is onto something. He beckons over a servant, a human servant, to read the slightly diffused letters. "At the strike of midnight, Professor Doctor Sir Martin K. Rombridge, Esquire, Honorary Vice President of Mgubalkwala, shall be dead as a consequence of", begins the servant, then after a moment of silence frowns, as if trying to make out even hazier letters. "The rest is unreadable sir." The servant crumbles it in his hand. "Oh God," breathes Rombridge. "We have a Class B security breach. Lock up the guests in the ballroom - no one gets in or out. And lock me in my panic room. And contact the Earth-Moon Orbital Detective Agency." "Yes, sir" intone several nearby robots. "What time is it young man?" Rombridge barks. The servant looks at his watch. "I'm afraid it's 7 o'clock, sir. The party started just an hour ago." "And it ends at midnight," Rombridge frowns. ~~~ A wealth-n-stealth franchise detective vehicle parks itself smoothly in the docking bay. "I'm sorry," quips a dockhand. "We have a Class B security breach currently underway. Unless you're -" "The detectives from EMODA," said the first detective, emerging from the vehicle holding a badge. The other one got out too, hands on his or her hips, staring at the dockhand. "Suit yourselves. Last ship that goes in or out." The dockhand locks the doors, puts a release timer for midnight, and follows the two detectives into the rest of the building. They are met almost immediately by the human servant. "Thank you for coming!" he says. "The guests are all in the ballroom." "Tell us what happened then get in there yourself," said the first detective. "We'll need to interview everybody. Rombridge is an extremely high-paying customer of ours." ~~~ ~~~ Host: Unreality 1) 2) etc... The more the merrier. Sign-ups will cease in a couple days. Sign up if you want to play and get real into it because I will be sending each person a character/personality/etc. This personage will be known to everyone; however, each person will also have a secret or two about themselves that only they know. Also, two people will need to be Detectives. If you're a detective, you're in charge of asking people questions and figuring out who is the intended murderer(s). But everyone wants the huge cash reward that Rombridge would pay them, not to mention the fame, if they found the perpetrators. The two detectives are in an alliance and work as a team, but everyone else is on their own in the beginning; you can, however, form an alliance and put multiple minds together, comparing what you know/suspect/etc. The first alliance (or individual) to solve the premeditated murder wins the game. The detectives cannot break their alliance, cannot add new people onto their alliance, and cannot join other alliances. However everyone else is free to form and break alliances and even be part of multiple alliances. When PMing each other with game-related stuff, please include me in the conversation, as a host I won't be doing much, just posting updates every hour (not real-life hour but rather 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm and MIDNIGHT in the game) so if I could see what's going on behind the scenes that would really help. There's no need to officially declare an alliance in the public thread (you can if you want) but please send me a PM with the official alliance roster when you do so I can keep track. The idea is to always talk in character in the thread (and even PMs) and the thread acts as sort of the background chatter, people talking to other people and accusing other people. The detectives also ask their questions and receive answers on the public thread. Anyway all that shenanigans only begins when the game actually begins, which is after I see how many people have signed up so that I can make roles. ~~~ ~~~ Host: Unreality 1) 2) etc...

I don't know if anyone here has read the four books called 'Mortal Engines' by Philip Reeves ('The hungry city chronicles' for us americans) but you should, they're really good, anyway I just saw this today: http://www.totalfilm.com/news/jackson-to-adapt-mortal-engines and am super excited for it haha

on a different note I just stumbled across this: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2010/may/05/a_small_bag_of_marijuana_police_ One of the saddest things I've seen in a long time. I actually don't recommend watching it, it made me rather upset haha

I just saw this: http://www.phinneywood.com/2010/02/22/parent-watches-drug-deal-on-front-lawn/ I don't know if that really was a drug deal (probably) but like one of the commenters on the article noted, I myself have been in a situation that (if I had been an outside observer) looked fishy, but was perfectly legal. My question is, if you saw some kind of shady exchange go down (let's say in a parking lot), what would you do? Call the police? Write down license plate numbers? Follow them? Approach them? Do nothing?

ahaha you got me, I caught myself saying it slowly. Nice one

I agree completely with Medji, such that it really depends on how you define control, but I guess by the very fabric of the universe (forgetting human nature), the OP is correct - there will always be limits. There are fundamental limits to physics and logic.. the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, etc. edit - I should add that it's a pseudo-belief of mine that the fractal-ness of the universe suggests that fundamental laws of the universe will reciprocate up onto more macroscopic scales

I agree that religion is a flawed system, being the earliest system that humans used to try to explain the world, before we could think more for ourselves and devise systems to examine the world and test our hypotheses. That doesn't mean that the idea of spirituality is flawed... perhaps it's just an ego trip trying to make ourselves seem more important than a collection of atoms, but you have to admit that the level of intellect and self-reference we've reached is kind of awesome. Nevertheless religion does seem to me to leech of society, passed down from parents to children like a virus of the mind. (Has anyone here read 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson?)

it doesn't have to be like that, Asylum. You can live free. You can break out of the stranglehold of religion that humans have placed on themselves specifically in order to control themselves, because they are uncomfortable with the realization of pure freedom. They want answers now, simple digestible answers, not answers they have to work for their whole life. They want someone else to objectively define concepts for them. They want someone else to promise them that if they do that, this and that, they will get this and that. They've been brought up denying chaos and beauty in the world, thinking that everything happens for a reason, everything is predestined, everything is structured. They WANT to think that they have eternal life, that they will never truly die, making their life here almost an unimportant, fleeting touchdown on Earth. Religion is entirely self-imposed. You can break free.

Idealist for what?

also I don't think anyone answered the riddle of what the last digit of 9!!!!!!!!etc...!!!! is, but the answer is 0

note that the following upper/lower bounds are kind of obvious and can be shrunk inward more but here they are to start with: The upper bound of a factorial n! is n^n and the lower bound is n. the upper bound of a doubled-up factorial n!! is (n^n)^(n^n) and its lower bound is n! To prove more concisely though that n!! > n^n we need to figure out WHERE roughly n! falls in between n and n^n. Here's a little chart n n! n^n n! / n^n 1 1 1 1.0000 2 2 4 .50000 3 6 27 .22222 4 24 256 .09375 5 120 3125 .03840 6 720 46656 .01543 7 5040 823543 .00612 8 40320 6777216 .00240 9 362880 387420489 .00093 10 .00036 11 .00014 12 .00005 13 .00002 so n^n is monstrous compared to n!, get roughly twice as big as n! is getting per new step. If that's true: d (n! / n^n) / dn = - (n! / n^n) / 2 d (n! / n^n) / (n! / n^n) = -dn/2 ln( n! / n^n) = -n/2 + c ln(n!) - ln(n^n) = -n/2 + c ln(n!) = n*ln(n) - n/2 + c Testing that: n ln(n!) n*(ln(n) - 1/2) 1 0 1/2 2 .693 .386 3 I had to stop because of dinner time, I don't think this will work because the 1/2 was more of an eyeball approximation from the column, but anyway I'm thinking it's possible to prove that n!! > n^n, I guess there really isn't an elegant method, but after dinner I'll make a chart comparing n!! to n^n

both great books

oh, yeah, I was going by the rule that everyone who picks the same thing is out. Peace should def. clarify that then And slick don't even try it dude I'm #2

what do you mean? If two people pick the same number, both are out (it's like Scattegories, if both people write the same thing for that line, neither get the point). Since I am picking 2, someone else will only pick 2 if they deliberately want to lose for some reason, because they have been forewarned that I will always pick 2

Like I said in that same post, I understand where Free Speech is limited (no death threats et al) but don't think Censorship should limit it any more. As I also said in the last post, I would think that the availability of the material (1) helps the perpetrators be caught quicker and (2) raises public attention to the problem rather than sweeping it under the rug, BUT if evidence suggests that the "infamy" of the videos leads to an increased production of them then I would be against it, so like i said it's a delicate issue on the hazy part of the whole Free Speech thing just curious, what 'field' is this? Is this some kind of branch of the government?

to add to that, I will be picking 2 consistently for the whole game. Be forewarned

okay so we all have to pick a number 1 through 8, inclusive? That is, we can select one out of {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8} ? Just to let everyone know, I will be picking the number 2. If you want to lose and take me down in the process, pick 2 also.

okay so give us an example of the type of censorship you think is appropriate. Also, just curious, what country do you live in? If you don't want to say that's okay (or you can PM me), I'm just wondering about the correlation between censorship and acceptance of censorship.

what if I told you I had no values at all? haha jk, I do and I think you're right. That's really what makes someone decent, is their values and how they regard/respect themselves and the world

ok so pretty much, it seems that I won Does anyone dispute this though? Does anyone think they can trump that? The only thing I could think to do would be to replace the last two factorials with a ^9 but that would just test for a comparison of N!! versus N^9. By testing with google (putting n!! - n^9 starting with n=1 and going up until the subtracting is positive), at n=4 it goes from -18thousand or so to wayyy positive. And certainly the number before all that is 4 or bigger So yeah I really can't think of anything that can trump a 9 followed by 99 factorials Here's an interesting challenge though: what is the last digit of said number? In other words, take the modulo by 10 of the number