Viewing profile — bcbrown

Have you tried barkeeper's friend with a nylon scrubbie or steel wool? I've found that to be excellent, if labor-intensive, at returning stainless steel to like-new condition, even…

Absolutely, many trees have evolutionary countermeasures to fires. Some trees are very well-suited to colonized disturbed ground - they will opportunistically surge into an area af…

I'd question that definition of "pristine". The old-growth temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, have only existed for about 10-12,000 years; that's about h…

> But how much chance is there that the user actually typed Revlon with a capital R? I think practically nil. Uh....... You might want to spend a second researching what "Revlon" i…

A quick search for e.g. "Revlon legal standard" will clear that up.

You can read for enjoyment and you can read for self-improvement; either is fine by me as long as you aren't deceiving yourself. Imbuing a recreational activity with moral heft can…

I was curious how one gamifies the printed page, and it turns out this article isn't so much about books as it is social media. Turns out, if you interview people who are obsessive…

Trading insults back and forth isn't going to be very conducive to a productive discussion. Why don't you tell me a little about your theory of moral values in cultural expression …

That's some pretentious bullshit. Sneering at others because their cultural tastes don't match yours does nothing but help you feel superior to others for a few moments. And I say …

This is something I didn't fully understand until I was hired into a position of a formal role model - principal engineer on a new team of fairly junior engineers. My manager had s…

When you're using shaped charges to turn a large metal sphere into a small metal sphere, just about everything needs a high degree of precision.

HST once gave his press badge on the Muskie campaign train in Florida to a random miscreant he met while out drinking[0], who then the next day went on to terrorize everyone on the…

I love QED! That was recommended to me by the professor who caused me to change majors from EE to physics. I just looked for it on my bookshelves but I must have misplaced it somew…

I'm looking at Griffiths right now, and 9.3 Electromagnetic Waves in Matter states (emphasis in the original): "Since [the dielectric constant] is almost always greater than 1, lig…

> For another example, see speed of light in glass is slower than vacuum. I'd love for you to explain what you mean by this. Either you're mistaken or I'm about to learn something …

Life doesn't have a purpose, it just lives.

I'm not from Philly, but my mom is, and every time I went back east I ate plenty of cheese steaks. To me, the essense of the bread is a chewyness, a toothiness. The crumb is substa…

Webster's first dictionary was a one-man project and took 26 years. He learned 28 languages in order to research the etymologies. This New International is my favorite of the handf…

I'm not certain that this is exactly what you're talking about, but one of my dictionaries (Webster's New International, 1916) includes this under the entry for Authentic, which br…

This post is talking about the prevalance of the emotions of anger, bitterness, anxiety, and resentfulness online, and I think it's interesting and noteworthy how many of the comme…

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The ratio of commercial:recreational quoatas depend on the numeric value for the season, but at lower quotas the ratio skews heavily recreational. So when the run is substantial, c…

> you don't need multiple monitors to do code development if you have listing printed out Whenever I run into an especially intractable bug, one of the first techniques I attempt t…

The Master does his job and then stops. He understands that the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao.