msisk6

Well, you could tell your AI of choice to read the article and explain the math. I did that with ChatGPT and it helpfully translated a lot of it into Python for me.

I have a small dog (8 lbs.) that gets seizures. I have a prescription pill for her and the dose is 1/2 a pill three times a day.

It's common in dog medicines to split pills since dogs come in a wide variety of sizes and the dose is typically based on weight.

I accidently bumped into him at the Borders Bookstore in San Rafael back in the late 90's. I was looking at the new hardbound SciFi books and he was looking at the Star Wars books on the top shelf. I just said "excuse me" and he said "no problem" and we returned to our tasks.

I've never been that interested in gemstones of any sort, but my understanding (from geology classes decades ago) is that natural diamonds on the surface of the earth result from some rather exotic processes.

First, they form deep down in the mantle around 100 miles down. The only way they get up here is through rare and violent high velocity eruption events that bring mantle material up to the surface. Most are very old, too; greater than a billion years old.

I don't recall the source of the carbon they're made from, but it's certainly not any sort of organic material like coal or dinosaurs. ;)

Or I could be totally wrong. I really have no interest in these things beyond the geology behind them and it's possible the science has uncovered new stuff since I last studied them.

Likewise, I have no idea how these synthetic diamonds are being made nowadays, but I bet that's pretty cool, too.

Years ago I gifted a bunch of computers and stuff to the Orion Society and they gave me some Wendell Berry books in kind.

Sort of ironic I first read his books because of my donation of technology.

Funny you should mention this. Just yesterday my wife and I went to the local Ikea to pick up some bookcases. I was originally just going to buy a bunch of the Billy bookcases; we have a few and know their limitations.

But then I noticed they had a much better series called the Hemnes made with actual solid wood shelves and legs so you can route power cords and clean under them. Nice.

So instead of a bunch of Billy's for $70 each I ended up with a bunch of Hemnes' for $350 each. We'll see if it's worth it when they get delivered tomorrow.

Ward Cunningham and I did something similar back in 2008.

We were both at a startup in Portland and our office was along the railroad tracks east of the Willamette. We were up on the 4th or 5th floor right above a lot of train traffic including Amtrak.

I brought in some extra Mac gear I had including one of the early iSight cameras which back then was an external device you stuck on the top of your display and connected to the Mac via FireWire. We set it up and rolled the desk over to the window in the office and turned the camera around pointing down at the tracks and Ward got to work hacking something up to do a slit scan.

It was a fun little project; the speed of the trains affected the horizontal compression of the images. We could tweak the software to expand or contract the size of the image by adjusting the number of slit scans per unit of time. Of course, that affected the exposure but I recall the camera having some automatic adjustments that gave us trouble.

That's about all we did with it. Just a quick afternoon hacking project. Neither of us thought much about it at the time so we didn't save anything.

The ship can operate for a bit on decay heat. And they have battery banks to run major systems until conditions allow running at snorkel depth on the diesel engine.

And rumor has it some of the nuclear subs may work with a Stirling engine which can operate systems on heat alone.

Whenever I see these sorts of stories I think about the civic life we're missing out on by not socially gathering with our neighbors to hunt down woolly mammoths with sharp sticks so we don't all collectively starve to death.

The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)

Looks and readability matter in writing. I always uses spaces on either side of the em-dash; looks too crowded otherwise to my eye.

I've been doing doing it that way for so long I still often use the "--" construct from way back in ascii email days.

At least I've gotten past the two-spaces after a period I learned from the typewriter. Most of the time, anyway.

I grew up behind the bowling machines. My dad was a bowling machine mechanic and worked on machines all around the midwest. He often moon-lite as the on-duty mechanic during league nights and I'd go with him.

Mostly he worked at the local 16-lane alley with ancient AMF machines. The logic was all relays in a "chassis" on each machine. Relays would fail, pins and balls would end up where they're not supposed to be, folks would roll the ball into the sweep. All kinds of stuff. As a kid was was fantastic to see. A pinsetter machine is a real Rube Goldberg type contraption. Probably lead me to being an engineer.

We had the several opportunities to buy a small-town bowling center, but looking at the economics -- even back in the 1980's -- wasn't good. Most of the operating profit back then came from alcohol sales and that's a totally different business.

Good luck! Recently Facebook has been showing me a lot of bowling content. Be cool if it's making a comeback.

There used to be a big chat pile called Snowball on the north side of Joplin near the old Eagle-Picher smelter. I once saw someone fly off the top of that in a hang glider.

My grandfather on my mom's side was a miner in the lead mines. Or so I've been told; I don't remember him as he died when I was a baby. My grandmother lived near Snowball in what is best called a shack. No indoor plumbing; had to use a outhouse. She did have a telephone, although it was a party-line; you had to check the line was clear before using it.

So, yeah, that move Winter's Bone captured the feel of the area and the effects of systemic poverty really well.

Same here; grew up in Joplin before escaping to move to California in 1988.

It was wild growing up in that area with the chat piles hundreds of feet tall towering over these little towns.

When I was in high school the drinking age across the state border in Kansas was 18 so every weekend we'd all go over to the night clubs in Galena.

For folks interested in such things, Joplin has a Mineral Museum in Schifferdecker Park that has tons of info and exhibits on the mining that went on in this area. Has some pretty impressive (and massive) mineral samples, too. It's worth checking out if you're ever in the area.

There are lots of things to test besides basic aerodynamics. And even for that sometimes you want real data to validate models before building the full size thing.

Things that are tested/validated in wind tunnels nowadays: effect of different paint and coatings, engine inlet flow, noise, tunned mass dampers, effect of placement of sensors, control surface flutter.

I don't know fireworks that well, but these appeared to be the commercial type, with a large lift-charge that lights the sky up with a lightning style flash followed by a sky burst and the house-shaking boom of the sort I usually associate with shows put on the city or whatnot. I had two of these "shows" going on just north of me and one to the south.

And I have a pretty good idea of heights around here. I mentioned I work at Boeing on flying things so I track the ones that fly over me. They're usually about 1000 to 1500 ft. AGL on approach when they go over my house and about 200 knots. Southwest has the most flights into and out of St. Louis so it's usually a 737, and those have a wingspan of just over 100 feet on the newer models.

So yeah, I'd say these fireworks were going up at least 300 feet.