Update 2024-03-27: Greatly expanded the "Samples" page and renamed it to "Glossary".
Update 2024-04-04: Added 5 million mid-2011 posts from the k47 post dump. Browse (mostly) them here.
Update 2024-04-07: Added ~400 October 2003 posts from 4chan.net. Browse them here.
Welcome to Oldfriend Archive, the official 4chan archive of the NSA. Hosting ~170M text-only 2003-2014 4chan posts (mostly 2006-2008).
'Erbert : "How can you blow up a balloon using only a bottle and a few kitchen ingredients? Science has the answer!"
What you need :
Small empty plastic bottle, vinegar, small balloon and baking soda.
1) "Allow me to help you, 'Erbert!"
Carefully pour half a cup of vinegar into the plastic bottle.
2) "I'll do it!"
S-T-R-E-T-C-H!
"No, I'll do it!"
Stretch the neck of the balloon a few times.
3) "Wrong balloon, 'Erbert"
Teacher : "VINEGARY SPLUT!"
Use the funnel to fill the balloon a bit more than halfway with baking soda. If you don't have a funnel you can make one using paper and some tape.
4) Quickly and carefully stretch the neck of the balloon over the opening of the bottle without letting any of the baking soda out.
5) FLIP
Pick the balloon up so the baking soda falls into the bottle and begins to mix with the vinegar.
6) "Ooooh!"
SWELL!
FIZZ!
FIZZ!
PROD!
"Have you lost weight, Fatty?"
Your fizz-inflator is alive!
Science Bit : The Baking soda and the vinegar react with each other to create a gas. The gas takes up more room than before, so starts to fill the bottle and then the balloon making the balloon inflate!
Paris - Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology said they had built a prototype device that converts stop-start movement into power.
Waves, walking and dancing could one day be harnessed to drive sensors, mobile gadgets or even electricity plants, said professor of materials science and engineering Zhong Lin Wang.
Scientists in the United States said that such clean reliable power lies within reach, thanks to a smart way to harvest energy called tribo-electricity.
The term "tribo-electric" refers to electricity created from friction between two substances, causing a charge of electrons to be transferred from one to the other. Because tribo-electric is so unpredictable, it has been generally shunned as a power source in favour of magnetic induction - a turbine driven by nuclear - or fossil-powered steam or water.
But in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Prof Wang's team said they had overcome key hurdles to converting a haphazardly generated electrical charge into current.
Solutions-focused coaching results in proactive and high-performing sales teams.
Coach your sales to find their own solutions
RECENTLY, I was delivering a programme for the government sales unit of a national telecommunications company about selling in price-conscious markets.
I quoted Socrates, who said, "I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think," and there were some sceptical looks among the account managers.
"We need to learn how to qualify leads," I imagined them thinking.
I elaborated: "It might be more helpful if you thought through this situation rather than me giving you a solution, because what works for me (and other sales professionals) may not work for you. Let me help you think this through."
Then, I had the unit working together in a group exercise and they experienced the benefits of solutions-focused sales coaching.
Here are some powerful questions you could ask that will help your sales team overcome day-to-day challenges and find their own solutions:
Platform
Start with building the platform, where your sales team is now (not qualifying leads).
You could ask: "What do you want to achieve? What would be the payoff for solving this problems?" How will you know that we have made some progress?
"Future Perfect"
Help your sales team see how the future will be different when the problem is no longer there.
You could ask: "What if this problem went away overnight? How would you know? What will you be doing? What would be the first small signs?"
Counters
These help your sales team members start seeing the strengths they already possess, that will help them move towards the solution.
You could ask: "When does this solution happen already? What are examples of the solution happening already, complete or in part? Which parts of your 'future perfect' happen at the moment? What are you already doing that's helping? What's working for you?"
Affirm
Even the most challenging situations have positive examples of coping that can be drawn out and affirmed.
You could say: "I'm impressed with how you reached the decision-maker." You could then ask: "How did you do that? When you've faced situations with gatekeepers before, how have you handled them?"
Scaling
Scaling questions can help measure how close your sales team is to desired goals, ranging from the "worst the problem has ever been" (zero) to "the best things could possibly be" (10).
You could ask: "On a scale of 0 to 10, if 10 is the 'future perfect' and 0 is the complete opposite, where are you now? What tells you that you are at 'n' on the scale rather than a 0? What is the highest you've ever been on that scale? When was that? How did you do that?"
Small actions
The goal is for your sales team to repeat what has worked in the past and gain confidence in making improvements in the future.
You could ask: "Suppose you were one point higher on the scale. How would you know you were one point higher? What would you be doing more of, less of, or differently? What's the next small step for you to take?"
Review
Asking your sales team members to summarise their action plan will result in greater accountability and ownership.
You could ask: "What actions will you take as a result of our conversation? How can you stay on track?" Reassure them that by sticking to the plan, you are positive they are going to succeed!
Working with sales leaders and professionals, I have noticed that solutions-focused sales coaching helps teams focus on what's working, and results in more autonomous, proactive and high-performing sales teams.
There are 3 core issues that most people face when trying to achieve success in anything they want, and if you sort those out, your whole life will change.
The 3 issues are:
1. They cant get the laws of success to work for them or;
2. They don't know what to do as theres so much information or;
3. They don't have the time or energy to put things into place
To help solve those issues, introducing Niraj Naik and John Vincent, founders of Peak Power Hypnosis - a new twist in activating the laws of manifesting and success and achieving amazing mental and physical performance.
Peak Power Hypnosis is a collaboration amongst some of the top minds in the self-help field that takes into account all the latest research to re-program and change the subconscious mind.
Columbus, Ohio - If you make your way to the Center of Science and Industry to see The International Exhibition Of Sherlock Holmes, which opened last Saturday, there is a new mystery.
You are meant to follow in the footsteps of the fictional detective described by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, as "the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen". The case involves a seaside murder (which you are asked to solve), a smashed bust of Napoleon (which you must piece together), a blood-spattered wall (which you must interpret by creating similar spray patterns), a burnt worm in an ashtray (do not ask) and marks on the sand (which you try to replicate using a rotating footprint machine).
Before investigating that case (which, admittedly, is a pale shadow of the originals), you have already been led through a lushly imagined reconstruction of the detective's Victorian sitting room at 221B Baker Street.
This semi-immersion in a fictional universe might seem in keeping with contemporary intoxication with this Victorian dynamic duo: Robert Downey's two recent Holmes films, the BBC's startling re-envisioning of the characters in Sherlock, and the escapades of a New York-based sleuth with a female Watson in the TV series Elementary.
And, indeed, the exhibition ends with contemporary fanboy Holmesiana, including a costume worn by Lucy Liu as Dr Joan Watson in Elementary, an electric prod brandished by Downey in Sherlock Holmes and an "explosive vest" Moriarty forces onto Watson in Sherlock.
This 10,000 sq ft exhibition will tour eight other cities in North America before heading overseas.
And while the show does not solve the mystery of how Holmes, after more than 125 years, still grips obsessively at people's brains, most of it is so informative, thoughtful and amusing that the viewer glimpses what a revolutionary figure he was.
The evidence is in the exhibition's first half, which is devoted to the creation of Holmes and the nature of his era. It includes not just Conan Doyle manuscript pages and early publications but also a preserved heart with a stab wound (from 1831) and a "tibia and fibula with osteomyelitis (bone infection)". There is a discussion of botany, photography and ballistics. How, out of all this, did Holmes evolve?
Some fictional predecessors appear in a display of "shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls".
"What a swindle," Conan Doyle wrote in 1888, soon after creating Holmes. A fictional detective, he noted, typically "obtains results without any reason". Conan Doyle was inspired instead by Edgar Alan Poe, whose stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin made him "the master of all". The real inspiration came at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, where Conan Doyle enrolled in 1876 at 17. His teacher, surgeon Joseph Bell, became the model for Holmes.
Conan Doyle recalled watching Bell scrutinise a patient in street clothes before beginning a conversation a conversation which anticipates the deductions of Baker Street: "Well, my man, you've served in the army." "Aye, sir." "Not long discharged?" "No, sir." "A Highland regiment?" "Aye, sir." "A non-commissioned officer?" "Aye, sir." "Stationed at Barbados?" "Aye, sir."
The first collection of Holmes stories was dedicated to Bell. Diagnosis of disease became the model for Holmes' diagnosis of crime.
One gallery here surveys the advances of the late Victorian era which made the modern detective possible. The Kodak box camera turned the photo into a tool (and into evidence). Fingerprints were analysed. The telegraph provided instant communication. And forensic science advanced. "The common maggot," you read, "has a fixed life cycle, and when its eggs or larvae are found upon a dead body, scientists are able to work backward to calculate the time of death."
WITH one rub of his lamp, Aladdin could command an intelligent being to fulfil all desires. His genie was a spirit. But the dream of powerful and intelligent artificial servants has also encompassed physical beings. Now, it is becoming a reality built of silicon, metal and plastic. But will clever machines prove beneficial? Or will they be Frankenstein monsters?
This is the question raised by The Second Machine Age, a new book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This predicts that we will experience experience "two of the most amazing events in human history: the creation of true machine intelligence and the connection of all humans via a common digital network, transforming the planet's economics". "Innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, tinkerers, and many other types of geeks will take advantage of this cornucopia to build technologies that astonish us, delight us, and work for us."
What distinguishes the second machine age from the first is intelligence. The machines of the first age replaced and multiplied the physical labour of humans and animals. The machines of the second age will replace and multiply our intelligence. The driving force behind this revolution is, argue the authors, the exponential increase in the power (or exponential fall in the cost) of computing. The celebrated example is Moore's Law, named after Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel. For half a century, the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip has doubled at least every two years. Similar progress has occurred elsewhere.
The authors argue that after half a century of progress we are seeing leaps in machine intelligence. As computing power grows exponentially, computers are managing tasks deemed beyond reach a few years ago. Soon, they predict, machine intelligence will be everywhere. They offer as a parallel the story of the inventor of chess who asked to be rewarded with one grain of rice on the first square of his board, two on the second, four on the third, and so forth. Manageable on the first half of the board, the reward reaches mountainous proportions on the second. Our reward will grow similarly.
Yet, to paraphrase a celebrated 1987 quip about computers by MIT economist Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate, we see information technology everywhere except in the productivity statistics. Trends in output per hour in the US are quite mediocre. Indeed, after an encouraging surge in the 1900s and early 2000s, growth has subsided again. Recent performance in other big high-income economies is worse.
One possible explanation is that the impact of these technologies is overhyped. Not surprisingly, the authors disagree. Indeed, they argue that far from being exhausted, the possibilities are boundless: "Digitisation makes available massive bodies of data relevant to almost any situation, and this information can be infinitely reproduced and reused."
If so, why are measured increases in output so modest? The answers offered are: the plethora of cheap or free services (such as Skype or Wikipedia), the scale of do-it-yourself entertainment (Facebook, for instance), and the failure to account fully for all the new products or services. Before June 2007, an iPhone was out of the reach of even the richest man on earth. Its price was infinite. The fall from an infinite to a definite price is not reflected in the price indexes. Again, the "consumer surplus" in digital products and services - the difference between the price and the value to consumers - is often huge. Finally, measures of gross domestic product also underestimate investment in intangible assets.
It seems quite plausible that the proliferation of new gadgets and the rise of the digital economy with its uniquely low marginal costs have had a far bigger effect on welfare and even GDP than current measures indicate.
Yet, worries remain. The information age has coincided with - and must, to some extent, have caused - adverse economic trends: stagnation of median real incomes, rising inequality of labour income and of the distribution of income between labour and capital, and growing long-term unemployment.
Among the explanations are: fast-rising productivity in manufacturing, skills-biased technical change, the rise of global winners-take-all markets, and the role of rental income, particularly from intellectual property. Think of the difference between the cost of developing Google's search algorithm and its value. Globalisation and financial liberalisation are also at work, both also boosted by new technologies.
The book says this is just the start. Much routine brain-work will be computerised, as happened to clerical work. Middle-income jobs could hollow out further. The outcome could be still more polarised incomes, with a tiny group of winners and a vastly larger group struggling below. In 2012, for example, the top 1 per cent of Americans earned 22 per cent of all incomes, more than double their share in the 1980s.
There are good reasons why people should be disturbed by this. First, the lives of those at the bottom might get worse: The authors note that the life expectancy of an American white woman without a high school diploma fell five years between 1990 and 2008. Second, if income becomes too unequal, opportunities for young people dwindle. Third, the wealthy become indifferent to the fate of the rest. Finally, a vast inequality of power emerges, making a mockery of the ideal of democratic citizenship.
In the distant future, thinking machines may even overwhelm our sense of ourselves, just as the best human chess players now know they are not the best on earth. But well before that, the authors suggest that income inequality is likely to increase further, tarnishing the silver age of opportunity the book also promises.
Big challenges arise, then, both now and in the future, if we are to ensure the new machines do not become our Frankenstein monsters. These have big implications for public policy on property rights, education, taxation and other government measures that aim to promote human welfare.
A Westland student society for mathematics scholarship and excellence.
The Mathematics Society of Westland was started 1976 by Dr. Laura Trautz to provide enrichment and challenges for students who demonstrate a strong interest and ability in mathematics. The club meets every Monday year-round in Cilo Hall. At club meetings, students work both on their own and in groups to solve problems from multiple areas of mathematics. There are also presentations of topics deemed to be of special interest to our members.
The Society supports travel by students to mathematical and scientific meetings, workshops, conferences and symposiums throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. In recent years our members have attended events sponsored by the American Algebraic Institute, the Northwestern Canadian Physics Club and the University of Krakow.
