Why does everyone like Nolan's Batmobile?

Am I the only person who thinks the Tumbler looks like shit?

Military vehicles don't look like that, exhibits in a decon museum do. Vulnerabilities aside, all the exposed parts in the front wheel is going to be a nightmare to maintain and how the hell is it going to go anywhere off pavement with that kind of clearance? No wonder Wayne Industries' design was rejected by the military.

Also wtf, it has six spoilers, all offset at different angles? That's beyond rice.

Now this is what a Batmobile should look like.

edit: On the upside, thank god they didn't accept Giger's Batmobile.

I FINISHED SOMETHING WUT

Definite inverse correlation between quality and time though.


Naturally, anything significant I do must be accompanied by equal parts just dicking around.

This is for you Rob

Maybe now you can finally beat Minesweeper.

There's always a punchline

I've come to a startling conclusion that anime characters convey emotion solely through their eyebrows.

This is the face that says good morning to you.

This is the face that will save the world by overloading it with fun.

This face says, "Help! I'm about to be violated by a cephalopod!".


Whoop whoop whoop!

...

15 minutes of DoA

Peter: so, I can't help but think
Peter: ufc would be even better if
Peter: the fighters were female and hot
Ronak: lol
Ronak: so live action dead or alive
Ronak: but UFC
Peter: actually that is probably what the DoA movie is about
Peter: I need to reconsider
__________

So thus follows commentary on the first 15 minutes of the movie, courtesy the internet. I thought about screenshots, but that necessitates work.

1:25 - Oh boy, I can tell this is going to be QUALITY acting already.

2:24 - The anticipation causes me to LOL prematurely.

4:09 - If Kasumi keeps shedding clothes at this rate, she'll be naked by the end of the scene.

4:32 - Oh, nevermind. Scene transition...to one of the characters in a swimsuit showing some cleavage.

5:25 - Now she's attacked by pirates.

7:28 - Scene transition. Keeping with the trend, another character is clad only in nothing.

7:34 - ...now she's wearing a towel

8:20 - ...and now she's putting on her underwear with a porn groove in the background.

8:56 - ...and now she is fighting topless.

10:17 - Normally the panty shot here would be of note, but considering she spent the last few minutes clothing impaired...

10:43 - New scene! Plot development? If you call it that.

11:08 - New scene. IIRC, Helena was a crazy high-class French skank as opposed to some ditzy low-class teenage skank. They do remain consistent to the skank part though.

13:30 - Plot takes a dive. Literally.

15:42 - So much grabbing and moaning. 15 minutes is up!

In conclusion, from what I've seen, it will only take minor revisions to turn the entire movie into a porno. Next time I'll watch something better written. Like Ghost Rider.

The best was rainbow bread

How do you know if you're making a war film right?

If it makes you not want to go to war.

Just finishing up Band of Brothers, it's top notch.

Irony

Quite a while ago, the USAF wanted to buy 20 refueling tankers from Boeing to replace its fleet. Of course, Senators aren't pleased at all. Just 20? That wouldn't create enough jobs in their home States.

So the USAF budget was upped and they were told to buy 100 airplanes instead. The Air Force decides that with such a large contract at stake, they ought to have an open competition. The result of the competition was that the French company Northrop Grumman won.

Naturally, the government throws a hissy fit that all that money they granted to the Air Force to buy planes they don't need is going to go out of country. A shitstorm ensues; many French jokes were made.

Well, now the Government Accountability Office decided the previous competition was invalid and the Air Force should hold a new contest.

...

I hate that government.

The Great Wall isn't so great

So, it's basically the Maginot Line.

But more expensive and with less guns.

Rap is a Man's Soul

Fine

Comments are now enabled.

Stop asking already.

This makes me cry...

crobert: mit is better
crobert: because mit has actual architecture
Peter: I think loo has actual architecture
Peter: at their architecture school
crobert: which isn't even in loo
Peter: alternatively
Peter: loo has too much architecture
Peter: that's why it looks retarded
Peter: too much br00talism
_____

It was at this point that I discovered Wikipedia actually has a picture of Waterloo right on their Brutalist Architecture page.

*Massive facepalm*

Now deconstructivism, that's the kind of architecture I can get behind.

Solidarity

Decklist:
12 Island
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta

4 High Tide
4 Reset
4 Opt
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Force of Will
4 Remand
3 Meditate
3 Turnabout
3 Brain Freeze
3 Cunning Wish
2 Flash of Insight

Sideboard:
4 Hydroblast
3 Disrupt
2 Twincast
1 Brain Freeze
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Stroke of Genius

Disclaimer: This is entirely copy and pasted AKA netdecked. Sideboard is important because of Wish, Stroke is the only instant speed kill I think.

I so want to play this. Firstly it's legacy, so it'll work forever (maybe not top-tier, but still powerful). Secondly everything barring the lands and Force are pretty cheap. Force is kind of optional for non-competitive too.

It's also my style, sit around and draw cards for a while. Then combo into a Brain Freeze for 60. Plus, everything is instant speed, so you can always wait until the very last possible moment before attempting to go off. As in you can win the game in response to someone attacking you to death with damage on the stack. In fact, Reset encourages this kind of playing.

...ergo propter hoc

So here's my issue, what is the functional difference between cum hoc ergo propter hoc and post hoc ergo propter hoc?
_____

crobert: post = after, cum = with
crobert: post implies causation while cum just implies a correlation
Peter: thank you
Peter: no, I meant what is the functional difference
crobert: post needs a strict chronological sequencing
crobert: while in cum they just need to be related
Peter: in what example
Peter: would there not be some kind of chronological sequence
Peter: if causation were implied?
_____

Naturally, Wikipedia was the first source to be consulted.
_____

crobert: ok i'll just steal one from wiki
crobert:

"Sleeping with one's shoes on is strongly correlated with waking up with a headache.
Therefore, sleeping with one's shoes on causes headache. "

crobert: here you have "sleeping" and "with shoes on"
crobert: one doesnt happen after another
crobert: in fact, they're going on at the same time
crobert: as opposed to

"i saw a black cat, then crashed my car. therefore seeing black cats cause car crashse"

Peter: there is clearly a chronological sequence
Peter: Sleep with shoes ---> wake up with head ache
Peter: arrow is time

crobert: ok say you had
crobert: number of lung cancer cases has been steadily increasing
crobert: and
crobert: number of cigarettes sold has been steadily increasing
crobert: so you falsely conclude that they are related
crobert: one doesnt necessarily happen after the other
_____

So basically, I'm not seeing it. If you're implying that a causes b, then D[b(t)] must equal kD[a(t+x)]. Where t = time and {x|x ∈ R, x > 0}. The k could even be a function of a(t) or something, but you can't just say they're both positive and therefore correlate. If your k value ends up looking like a Weierstrass function, your correlation is garbage in the first place without even getting into the causation part.

Any philosophers reading this, feel free to drop me a line.

Unless your name is Kant. In which case: don't.

update:
_____
Peter: I thought of something
Peter: dead people are old
Peter: therefore time causes death
Peter: I think this is the only way around the chronological factor
crobert: <_<
crobert: you're just thinking it wrong
crobert: it works, you just think it doesnt
crobert: you have two simultaneous events
crobert: the fallacy is that one is dependent on the other
Peter: how can a cause b if they both happen at once
Peter: unless one of them is time
crobert: protip: it doesnt
crobert: that's why it's a fallacy
Peter: this is a shitty fallacy
...
crobert: what part of it dont you get
crobert: you understand that it's a fallacy right <_<
Peter: so cum hoc is the universal set
crobert: yeah i sort of said that already
Peter: but pos hoc' = half diminished
Peter: That's the crux of my issue
Peter: maybe I'm looking at this wrong
Peter: maybe it's stating the obvious
Peter: AKA 2 simultaneous events can't cause each other because it's simultaneous
Peter: AKA this is a shitty fallacy
crobert: all fallacies are shitty
crobert: give me a nonshitty fallacy
Peter: naturalistic fallacy is alright
Peter: I am going to eat my GM foods and enjoy them

The ugliest box I have ever seen

It is like the Poser Mobile of PCs.

"With the only real competition (in terms of potential volume) coming from Dell’s two gaming brands—XPS and Alienware—because HP has still not brought its Voodoo brand to Europe, Acer has the chance to jump into a gap in the market here. The system specs are well balanced and at least the European prices are very palatable: €1,699 for the “basic” Sniper, €1,999 for the Trooper, €2,999 for the Crusher and €3,999 for the Eliminator."

I think it was made for Leo.

Creatures? Madness!

Some people get confused looking at a decklist like Neo-Academy.

At this point I'm the opposite. Empty Gush? Makes sense. Quick 'n Toast? It's like a constructed Keeper.

But then I look at Rock. What? No insane card draw? No complicated mana-base? It wins with non-tribal creatures? That's crazy!

I think it's because of the Extended environment during Mirrodin, where even the goblin decks would combo off of a Goblin Recruiter engine. It's permanently skewed my perception.

LOLcats

The end is in sight...

...and it looks suspiciously like rape.


Imperishable Night Stage 6: Final B on Hard; 3 lives, no continues.

I like how my failure-success ratio on the first spell in Lunatic is ~2:1.

Now that could take a while to beat.

What happens when the science consultant to BSG gives a talk on Halo?

This.

"The apparent gravity on Installations 04 and 05 is close to that of Earth. For a Halo with a radius of 5,000 kilometers to simulate one Earth gravity, it would have to spin with a tangential speed of slightly over seven kilometers per second. That implies that the Halo would rotate once every hour and fifteen minutes, or 19 ¼ times a day."

"An object—a soldier, an Elite, a Scorpion MBT, a Warthog recon vehicle, anything—in direct contact with the surface of the ring would perceive the centrifugal force to be the equivalent of gravity. Anything not in direct contact would tend to follow basic laws of dynamics, but laws that might seem counter-intuitive at first. On the second level of Halo: Combat Evolved (a level called “Halo,” in fact), Master Chief can see a waterfall shortly after making ring-fall.

Figure 2 shows the results of computer simulations of the trajectory of one drop of water over the waterfall if it were subject to Earth’s gravity, and the trajectory of one drop of water on a Halo—assuming that the waterfall is 305 meters (1,000 feet) high and oriented along the Halo’s spin direction. We see that a drop would fall two meters farther on a Halo than on Earth. That’s not a great difference, but if the water flow were oriented perpendicular to the spin direction, it would deflect two meters to the side, which would look odd for somebody used to viewing terrestrial waterfalls."

"The ring’s spin would have an even more pronounced effect on objects with a longer time of flight. While most of the combat in Halo takes place at close range, let’s assume we want to use our M808B Scorpion Main Battle Tank, which fires hypervelocity rounds, as a piece of artillery and fire projectiles at a much greater distance. Entry-level physics students learn about trajectories—that the trajectory of a projectile fired from a cannon takes the shape of a parabola (actually, an ellipse, since the trajectory represents a partial orbit). In the absence of wind, a round fired straight up will return straight down, and completely ruin the day of whosoever fired it. Long range trajectories on a Halo would be quite different. Figure 3 shows the results of computer simulations of long-range trajectories of rounds fired from the inside surface of a 5,000-kilometer ring spinning at nineteen times per day. The assumed muzzle velocity was 1,000 meters per second. Figure 3 shows the trajectories for initial barrel elevations of thirty, forty-five, sixty, and ninety degrees above local “horizontal,” both in the direction of the ring rotation (+X) and in the direction counter to the ring rotation (-X). We can see that a round fired straight up does not, in fact, return to where it was fired, but rather eighteen kilometers downrange due to the seven kilometers per second speed that the round had before it was even fired. Note a marked asymmetry between projectiles fired in the spin direction as opposed to the anti-spin direction. Rounds fired in the spin direction have a greater initial horizontal velocity, and impact the ring sooner than those fired in the direction opposite to the ring’s spin. A rocket fired from a launcher, or a projectile from a fuel rod gun, would suffer similar deflections if it had to travel long range."


Now I want to hear his opinion on the merits of the Viper Mk II versus the Mk VII.

I am intrigued and horrified

I think this is one of the most interesting games I've ever heard of.

Of course, my hoarding tendencies* would probably make me want to shoot myself for playing this.

*This very trait is what makes me unable to play MMORPGs, because I will just keep going forever hoarding money golds.