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[jasong]

I started this thread for the purpose of discussing what's in the xkcd comic and also the Tuesday "What if?" stuff.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/36/

The topic this time is oobleck(kind of). If you don't know what it is, don't google it until you have at least a couple hours to goof off. Seriously, make sure you have a lot of free time ahead of you, it's nerdy nirvana when you first discover videos on this stuff.

Anyway, people say it's a "special" substance. I disagree, I think it's a perspective thing and exists with a lot of liquids. To a cockroach, water behaves very much to him as oobleck behaves to us. Jmo, feel free to disagree. Basically, I'm saying it's your perspective from a time and size perspective. If you speed up time and use large enough objects, the earth's atmosphere can appear to behave like a liquid, with droplets and everything. Tt could even happen with things like rock if you increase the gravity a bunch and use super-dense objects to splash it.

Please post your opinions, flames and bunnies balancing random things on their head.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by jasong

I started this thread for the purpose of discussing what's in the xkcd comic and also the Tuesday "What if?" stuff.

Please post your opinions, flames and bunnies balancing random things on their head.

You have way too much time on your hands.

Must be nice.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by jasong

If you don't know what it is, don't google it until you have at least a couple hours to goof off.

I didn't know what oobleck is. Your advice was disconcerting to me, though, because I didn't know what "goof off" means either. Googling that (you didn't say this wasn't allowed) turned up vague meanings about shirking responsibility or horsing around, and while I'm used to doing both of those I still couldn't understand how precisely to spend "a couple of hours" on it.

Anyway, I finally decided to ignore your advice and just google "oobleck". Thanks for the interesting pointer. BTW: the cartoon you linked to is amusing too.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I didn't know what oobleck is. Your advice was disconcerting to me, though, because I didn't know what "goof off" means either. Googling that (you didn't say this wasn't allowed) turned up vague meanings about shirking responsibility or horsing around, and while I'm used to doing both of those I still couldn't understand how precisely to spend "a couple of hours" on it.

Anyway, I finally decided to ignore your advice and just google "oobleck". Thanks for the interesting pointer. BTW: the cartoon you linked to is amusing too.

Goof off simply means to use your time in an undeniably useless way. For example, some people enjoy gardening, but you accomplish something with that even if it is relaxing to some, so it isn't goofing off. OTOH, playing Call of Duty is definitely goofing off, especially if you do it a lot.

Off-topic: think I need a saner sleeping schedule, I just made 3-4 very Freudian typos in that last paragraph. I say Freudian because I put in similar sounding words instead of straight up typing mistakes. Put gambling instead of gardening for example.

[Brian-E]

Okay, but why should our experience of discovering what oobleck is be in any way enhanced by first spending a couple of hours doing something useless first?

(Feel free to be as Freudian is you like.)

[jasong]

Originally Posted by chalsall

You have way too much time on your hands.

Must be nice.

It's only nice when you have a choice in the matter. Because of my mental illness, bad things would happen to my mental health if I tried to keep a full-time job.

I've decided to simply avoid buying expensive things instead of getting a job because of the unemployment rate in the US. That being said, I wish I was a more organized person and would stick to my idea of educating myself using Internet resources.

I've done a small bit of research into self-education and simple managed to frustrate myself. I keep hoping that I'll be able to afford a tablet at some point to where I can Skype(or something similar) with an online mentor to help me get organized and teach me different science and math concepts with a shared workspace type setup. Obviously, I'd need an online mentor to do that. I figure I should wait until the tech is available before I start begging people to mentor me. The tech might already be available, I recently learned my Sony S tablet is way more accurate than I originally thought, so I'm going to buy a stylus to see what I can do with it.

My mental disorder has to do with social anxiety, so my education would probably focus on learning enough to do online projects, probably using BOINC if I manage to learn what I want to learn. Hard work doesn't affect me anymore than anyone else, but unpredictable social situations take way more of a toll than they would on an average person, and the well-paying jobs usually require a lot of those.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by jasong

Please post your opinions, flames and bunnies balancing random things on their head.

It's not random things, it is specifically a pancake on a bunny's head. This allows faster acceleration than a turtle with a disk. Variations exist involving fruit, butter or maple syrup (in the northern hemicake).

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

BTW: the cartoon you linked to is amusing too.

The link inside the cartoon, the one pointing to the guy with the speaker, is the only interesting thing... I have to try this... I have a couple of really big speakers from my old car, somewhere in the shed (no, I am not a "car with the biggest speakers" fan, they were very old already and the membrane deteriorated by the hot tropical sun, so the guys in the service shop told me to change them, which I did few years ago, chose a very cheap replacement, disappointing the guys at the shop who imagine they can do some money with the easy-to-cheat farang). The experiment would be really interesting for the kids...

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by jasong

It's only nice when you have a choice in the matter. Because of my mental illness, bad things would happen to my mental health if I tried to keep a full-time job.

I call bull shit.

Some of my best employees were socially inept.

It can easily be argued I am also.

The most important thing is to get the job done. Using whatever tools and methods are available.

[only_human]

The Big Bang Theory: Non-Newtonian Fluid (HD)

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by chalsall

I call bull shit.

Some of my best employees were socially inept.

It can easily be argued I am also.

The most important thing is to get the job done. Using whatever tools and methods are available.

Socially inept != having a mental illness (though the latter's manifestation often includes the former).