Nicholas Carr's blog, 2010-02-04:

Article carefully does not mention what IS supposed to be cool. And if the answer is "tweeting" I just have to leave the room.

It doesn't look that way, but it seems like what's "cool" is being defined by what teens and twentysomethings do...

And playing Farmville on Facebook.

Vegetables pretending to grow and sell vegetables...

Farm Town. I've been going on and on about the apparently demented horror that is Farm Town, now, for many moons.

In theory it's no worse than mindlessly knitting something you could buy for 1% of the time you spend on it, if you were being paid your normal wage. Well, 1% worse. Still, there's something ironic and sad about it, given mankind's historical struggles to escape mindless agricultural labor. So much so that it transcends ordinary time-wasting activities. It's like that Millet painting of the gleaners-- only imagine them as rich fat Americans, doing it in virtual reality, out of boredom. Rather than sending money to Haiti or The Children's fund or the Dog Pound local animal shelter. It's so mindless it makes Wikipedia-editing look Einsteinian. Twinkle users look like rocket scientists.

Well yes how else do you define cool? By what my grandfather is doing back in Åbenrå?


Rocket scientists? In Denmark 12 year olds are taught to make rockets in school. We used baking powder, vinegar and the tubes from toilet rolls. Now that is cool.

Personally, I define it by what I find interesting, not by what society tells me what is. Going by what the kids do is so cliche now. If what your gf did was interesting I would consider it cool. I have no problem going against the grain.

What is your subspecialty in astonomy? Do you think the probabability of getting a radio signal indicating intelligent life, is higher or lower, from ellipitical galaxies? And why. Is carbon a metal? Discuss what Z-1 means to you personally.

Astonishing. No relevance to my post and an obvious attempt to derail the thread. However as i'm just a naive little WR contributor Ill fall for it.

* What is your subspecialty in astonomy?
Hmm ... Specialty ... "an instrument under seal, a sealed contract". ??? Wait! American spelling of speciality. (I've had to learn English; its a bit hard having to learn American as well.) I observe variable stars and occultations by the moon and asteroids.

* Do you think the probabability of getting a radio signal indicating intelligent life, is higher or lower, from ellipitical galaxies?
No idea what ellipitical galaxies are. But probability higher or lower than what? Of Somey becoming a steward? Hard to say. I do know that we dont have the technology to detect radio signals indicating intelligent life from other galaxies and doubt that we will in the near future.

* Is carbon a metal?
Of course. As you know perfectly well, in astronomy all elements except hydrogen and helium are regarded as metals.

* Discuss what Z-1 means to you personally.
It's a model helicopter. http://www.deviltronics.com/product/41/pic...nook-helicopter

Now is it my turn to ask irrelevant questions?

* Which element is named in honour of a Danish scientist?
* Which Danish mathematician popularised the term "superellipse"?
* Whose grandmothers had the maiden names Rosenkranz and Guldenstern?
* What do you think of Danish singer Christine Milton?

Lying like a fucking rug; z is a term a day-one astronomy student would know.

No sense of humour some people. I'm winding Milton up. Yes, X is the proportion of hydrogen in an object, Y of helium and Z of metals (including carbon).

Oh and z is the ratio of the wavelength of a spectral line in an object to its rest wavelength so z-1 is the redshift. I was fooled because Milton used capital Z. A mistake that as you say a day-one astronomy student would not make.

Hvisduerdanskerjegenkinesernemlig

我很高興聽到這種說法。

Blew it there. I asked about Z-1, and should have asked about Z+1. You get a point for carbon being a metal.

Elliptical galaxies . But these nordic languages are not your native ones. How is it you missed this term? Would these be more or less likely than other kinds to be sending us radio messages?

Bohrium is the element. But what was Bohr's favorite element?

I can't imagine that anybody had two grandmothers who happened to be named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Piet Hein is mentioned in the Wiki on superellipse, so that's too easy. You dodged the subspeciality question. What topics are your research topics?

Hah! q.e.d.!

Detvarjodetjegtenktedukanbrukeoversetterenforallespåkmendetforandrerikkedetfaktumatduikkekanskriveenenestekorrektsetningpådetsomliksomskalværedittmorsmål.



ps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern

Yes, I know very well who the Shakespeare characters are. But that wasn't the question.

Indeed, there is a reason why most people, excluding the Oliver Douglasses of course, can't wait to leave the farm in search of a more (sub)urban lifestyle.
Then there is the whole question about ambition...at least in Mafia Wars you can become a Don, run a crew and build an underworld empire.

Who wants to be a farmer when it is possible to be an Emperor?!
In the RTS games I play, farming is what lowly peasants do to produce food for my troops and taxes for my coffers.
What's next? A mining sim!? Hey, at least it promises to be more exciting than farming.
Then after that maybe a forced labor camp sim...oh wait, nevermind that's Wikipedia.

I didnt. I was pulling your leg about your deliberate (?) typo. As theres no way we could detect these messages there would be no point sending them.

Fail! http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/puzzles/2.html

No I didnt. Read my earlier post please.

I hate to interrupt the smarty-pants pissing contest but I think this thread shows much of why Wikipedia is so uncool, like volunteering for extra homework. Some core aspects of cool are restraint, understatement, self direction and disregard for pleasing authority. Not very Wikipedian attributes.

Ah, but that's your opinion.

Getting back on topic on the linked article that sparked this...

They're showing that the fad of blogging is declining, in my opinion a good thing, but there's no evidence that they are any less read or even "uncool"; the study only mentions who is an active blog writer, and doesn't delve into readership demographics (although I would assume there's some correlation.) The author points to hearsay and some lame blogging jokes to bolster his claim?

I find it amusing that young adults and people my age consider Twitter akin to the Black Death, but at a fundamental level do the exact same thing in Facebook. The disconnect doesn't seem to register.

Well, Farmville and similar games are nice for those of us with youngsters. Pretty exciting when Grandma gives you a horse or fertilizes your peas.

Moms and Dads with youngsters need to get used to being considered uncool anyway, of course.


I think it's because NPR personalities were early adopters and proponents of Twitter, leading it to be early adopted by the sort of people who listen to NPR, who are, of course, nerds. Q.E.D.

I have lots of my social-networking accounts linked up, so that anything I post to Twitter winds up on Facebook too (via FriendFeed).

That's third cousin and some other kind of cousin, not grandmother. Yes, I'm aware that these names are 10% of Danish nobility.

Okay, variable stars. Then off the top of your head, can you tell me why it is, in a CV which is assumed a binary of a lower main sequence and a degenerate, gas from the Roche lobe doesn't just fall directly onto the degenerate, but takes time. Why? Simple student question.

And what about Z+1?

Check again. Its scarcely surprising that he has distant relatives with the same surname as his grandmothers.

I dont know what silly point you are trying to make but obviously the infalling gas has angular momentum with respect to the other star hence spirals round it to form an accretion disc.

Why have you changed from Z-1 to Z+1? How many more answers do you want?

And I asked you some questions. One you couldnt answer even after I gave you the answer and one you evidently also couldnt so you ignored it. What does that prove?

Wrong, wrong wrong. For a start:
Tyko Brahes paternal grandmother was Sophie Rud, daughter of Jørgen Rud and Kristine Rozenkrantz. http://runeberg.org/dbl/2/0608.html Ie. he had a Rozenkrantz great-grandmother, not grandmother.
If you were Danish, you would have known that the Rud family was also a well-known Danish noble family.

.....
My favorite name among Scandinavian nobility was always "af Trolle" ("of the trolls"). No, honestly; I am not making this name up.
Can't understand why I was reminded of this little curious fact.

You get full marks for the accretion disk angular momentum. I changed it to Z+1 to see if you were an astonomer, silly. And Bohr's favorite element was just for fun. It's halfnium, of course.

You're wrong about the grandmothers of Tyco.

I don't know the Danish Ms. Milton singer, though I see she has a Wiki bio.

Well, you're probably an astronomer. I just don't know why you felt it nessesary to lie about your linguistic background.

No, but I wouldn't expect you to understand.

Cool like Wesley Crusher! That's an argument you might get Mr. Coffee to understand.

I wouldn't think it would be a good thing for Mr. Coffee to strive for cool. It requires a certain base of stability to build the foundation needed self direction. Lacking that kind of foundation "cool" would likely be deformed into some kind ugly generalized grudge. Given that, conformity and nerdy approval seeking isn't the worse thing in the world. Maybe come back and try for some level of self direction in a few years.

It might be because most of the aspies are flocking to Wikipedia so they can get their articles on Pokemon, 4chan, World of Warcraft, lesbian sex positions, video game sex scandals etc etc published faster instead of writing some boring old gamer blog which no one will read.

Atta Troll, atta troll, atta troll.

Obvious sock account because no man is an island.