So a commercial comes on and says, "At Lenscrafters, we can measure your eyes to a tenth of a millimeter. When it comes to eyes, a tenth of a millimeter is massive." So I guess they're telling me they suck.

At the start of this school year I was admitted into the Faculty of Philosophy (or college, for North America). I attended my first ethics course and the next day we had the seminar and we talked about a much disputed abortion case and started debating whether the doctor acted within medical ethics and then whether abortion as a whole is moral. At this point the professor quoted an author and scientist native to my country and it was something to the effect that life is sacred.

I knew that this author had ties with a Nazi party and was a proponent of anti-Semitism and the Nazi ideology. I found this so ironic that I burst in laughter and said: "wasn't this man a supporter of Nazi ideology and didn't he publicly admit to being anti-semitic?"

The professor was taken aback and I could tell that the others didn't know this fact. In a split second, he brushed it off: "Bah, forget about that!" and carried on.

I let him, of course. The irony of an ethics professor disregarding such a cringe-worthy (ethical) dissonance from a well established author and scientist, native to his country, took any momentum I had and I just sat there, so amused. I was grinning and giving sniffs of laughter from time to time.

Then I asked myself this question: "Should a work of art or science be disregarded if the beliefs of the author are evil in their nature and/or are the exact opposite and/or defeat the purpose of what the work is conveying?"

For example, what if Mengele unwillingly stumbled during his "medical experiments" across the cure for a type of cancer? Would it be ethical for the medical community to work with it, but making it a taboo or shushing whenever it's brought up in a conversation?

There was a whole show on the History Channel called High Tech Hitler that documented scientific and technological advances by the Nazis (that aired on the 70th anniversary of D-Day lol). The research that found cigarettes cause cancer came largely from them.

See also V2 rockets (-> Apollo program ), jet engine airplanes, synthetic fuel, assault rifles, fission research/heavy water, etc.

I really loved math when I was younger, in my 20s. Ultimately, I found it somewhat lacking. Probably expected too much from it. I kinda miss it.

TV-Internet-iphone along those lines whats the next big invention?

*Google glass
*something on your wrist that monitors your heath and sends data to your phone (can't remember the name)
*Oculus rift
*Touchscreen table and monitor all integrated into one

imo, the major shift will be in biomedicine and nanotechnology

google glass looks pretty cool.
oculus rift looks ugly.

Nature solves Steiner tree problem.





comic version; (captions maybe needed)

Italy out of the World Cup. Biting incident by Uruguay's Luis Suarze brings angst to match. Italy's coach quits. Last two cups, Italy has been eliminated in the first round. Pope calls special Mass.

I keep interesting articles in a file, haven't added to it in years. A review has some real gems. Best info is that the following was taken from some rag called "The Promised Land", of July 9, 1992. From a compilation of news quirks that were gathered up and beamed out to the masses in a side article. Two examples form the article follow.



A British court sentenced Mohammed Jabber, 33, to three years for kidnapping a former Bangladeshi politician in east London in a dispute over a debt, forcing a chili peeper up his rectum, then photographing his suffering.


A woman in Salt Lake City dialed 911 emergency line after her husband refused to have sex with her. According to the police report, the husband rejected her advances because he was watching a basketball playoff game between the Utah Jazz and Los Angles Clippers. The enraged 27-year-old wife swung at her husband, who deflected the blows while keeping an eye on the close game. The Jazz won, and the woman was taken to the hospital with arm injuries.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I leave the veracity of the above to the reader.

England's coach quit too. Quiet desperation is the English way.

Experiments with oil drops on appear to support the De Broglie/Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics:

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality/

I know close to nothing about quantum mechanics, so I'm interested in others' opinion on this. I was under the impression that hidden variables, such as the pilot wave in the De Broglie approach, had fallen out of favour.

That's way too important to be in the drunk thread. It should be in a thread of its own. Also, pay attention to the discussion between pjcamp and Sandro Magi below the article.

BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks on to science programmes....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...rogrammes.html

Husker: way too F***ing serious for this thread.

Time for a song by Bo Diddely for Friday night drinking:

I just got to use this to demonstrate to my youngest son that him understanding something someone else explained isn't the same level as him being able to come up with that thing himself.

And this is probably the funniest version of this meme I have ever seen. I you.

Monks start brewing beer to keep abbey open (in USA):



http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/10/smal...l?iid=HP_River includes video

From above link:

Diversification is common advice for investors, but guess what? Monks have to do it too.

For more than 60 years, the Trappist monks at St. Joseph's Abbey had relied on jams and jellies to support their monastery and community work in Spencer, Mass. But a few years ago, they realized the "expense line was rising at a faster rate than our income," said Friar Issac.

So in the spirit of their heritage (Trappist monks have been brewing beer in Europe for centuries), the monks at St. Joseph decided to start a brewery. Spencer Brewery opened its doors earlier this year as the first Trappist brewery outside of Europe.

Albert Collins: I ain't drunk.............




For Friday Night.........and Monk's Ale

Yes they have a series of comic transformations of proper parts of this German movie "Downfall" about the last days of Hitler and Nazi regime in their bunkers, an otherwise great serious movie to see but very funny the way they have transformed it in youtube. In any case of course it fails if you speak German and if you like the movie. But the fact is i owe it to the comic manipulation of that movie in youtube that i actually searched to find what movie was it for real and watched it properly. I like this actor that plays Hitler. He was also in the movie "the Reader" which for me is the best Nazi crimes post war German guilt movie made and i highly recommend to adults (the younger people will focus too much on frequent sex early in the movie and miss the real thing, an excellent rare example by the way where explicit nude erotic scenes are very essential to the movie structure and in fact necessary to deliver the story from the correct angle). Also a movie that is very guilty of being emotionally manipulative with music, editing and cinematography.

Chimps are natural game theorists -- http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/1406...srep05182.html

I love it when studies demonstrate that other animals also have brains.

Better brains than humans though. When it comes to game theory.

You seem to be feeling especially gay.