Storing random gobbledy-gook for later

Journal Ra5pu7in's Journal: Storing random gobbledy-gook for later 3

Journal by Ra5pu7in on Friday February 03, 2006 @05:32PM

Just a number of random things I wanted to get down - good for thinking about more later.

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Some people have trouble pondering infinity. Some can't consider the immenseness of our known universe without feeling overwhelmed. Not me. I was sitting the other day at work and thinking about comparative sizes. I could mentally picture a marble in one hand and a basketball in the other and know about how much larger one is than the other. That started me thinking. If I held the moon in one hand and it was the size of a marble, how big would the earth be? That wasn't enough. Now I wondered if I held the earth in my hand the size of a marble just how far away the sun would be. Well, dang, can't stop there. Shrink that sun down to a marble and where is the nearest star? What would the galaxy look like from that perspective? Shrink the Milky way down to the swirls within the marble ("the galaxy is on Orion's belt" goes through my head there), and how close would the other galaxies in our cluster be. How many galaxies and cluster would remain beyond my ability to see? I love the concept of how much there is out there and how large the scale of it is. I do the same thing in reverse - trying to picture the interaction of atoms making up my fingernail for instance. Yeah, I really should look into taking some chemistry and physics classes in college - I love that stuff.

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On a completely unrelated note, seeing yet another ugly SUV, I tried to envision covered wagon manufacturers back in the 1800's competing with each other to make their wagons bigger and better. Flashy paint jobs, fat tires, wider and taller wagons. Made for a pretty funny image - especially considering them in a circle beset by attacking natives. :D

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I continue to play quite a bit of Guild Wars. About half my time is spent progressing story and maximizing the skills, armor, weapons, and ability of my top two characters. The other half is spent "farming" in the early area, giving away decent items to new characters, training new people, and answering questions (all for free). I believe that the best way to improve the gaming experience is to encourage and care for the new gamers who would become frustrated, get scammed, or otherwise find the experience unsatisfactory. Kind of a pay-it-forward approach. I've seen several of those I've helped later do the same for others, so I know it works.

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Bias - almost everyone complains about bias. Some of it is real, but a good amount is perceived. Just recently I read an article that claimed "less than 20% of" something were from somewhere. If that same article had instead said that "nearly 20% of" that same something were from somewhere, it would have come across differently. When I started thinking about the way the phrases were used with other topics, I realized that there are two sides to the coin - a bias created by how numbers are used or represented and a bias created by our own preconceived notion of where the neutral point is. The glass is half-full or half-empty is measured against an expectation that the ideal glass is full. If we expect marriages to last forever, then nearly 50% ending in divorce is a tragedy. If we expect marriages to end in divorce, then less than 50% ending in divorce is a bonus. What was the article about? The amount of crude oil the U.S. imports from Middle-Eastern countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

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Tolerance - I really need to write an essay on this. The definition of tolerance (loosely paraphrased from Merriam-Webster) has to do with allowing others to have differing beliefs from our own. But beliefs are very personal things. There is no need to allow someone else their belief - they will have it whether or not we give them permission. What is a better way to deal with differences? Is it possible for some people to accept that others who believe differently are right from their own perspective without threatening that same person's own sense of rightness? I do this. I accept other's belief in God as true and right from their perspective, without feeling threated in my own belief which doesn't include the Christian God as anything like what they believe. But then there is the line to draw - ethical? What if someone believes it is their life's mission to kill others? I certainly wouldn't tolerate that or even accept it as right. So there is something else involved. Deeper thinking on this later.

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