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Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

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Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#251

Post by Maken »

WalterBright wrote: post #243
matthewmacleod wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a lazy take Walter. Almost literally everyone here is in favour of free markets, just not completely unregulated ones.

A free market requires a government that will enforce laws against fraud and force. Government also plays a role in dealing with externalities. A free market is not "completely unregulated". > Almost literally everyone here is in favour of free markets How does that fit in with single payer health care, rent control, universal basic income, calls for wealth taxes, calls to eliminate wealth "inequality", government fo…

Universal basic income is about replacing government health care with free markets.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#252

Post by rob74 »

jyounker wrote: post #240
Eisenstein wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank i…

> Why does it always have to be an accident? Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered. Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener…

Same as the famous discovery of Penicillin in a petri dish contaminated with a mold that killed off the bacteria?

...but now I'm starting to wonder how many people working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and died, because they had accidentally discovered a toxin?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#253

Post by hilux »

yread wrote: post #245
sethherr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a huge blowout. We didn’t know how to train or eat and athletes smoked and drank substantially more. Meanwhile, the gear evolutions make significant difference. But take distance running - prior to 1954, nobody had done a sub 4 minute mile. After that was known to be possible multiple people sub 4 minute miled in the following decade. If you sent a top runner back a hundred years they would be able to run…

> even with 1920s equipment Are you sure about that? Can you post a result where someone ran with leather shoes on asphalt?

Zola Budd, a woman, ran a barefoot mile in 4:17.57, which is about 10 seconds slower than the current women's WR.

The men's mile WR is about 24 seconds faster than the women's. Presumably plenty of barefoot African dudes could run a mile a lot faster than Budd did.

With the exception of the new "energy return" shoes, there's no evidence that shoes help runners run faster - probably the opposite.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#254

Post by carlosjobim »

aguaviva wrote: post #195
carlosjobim wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went through covid, just a couple of years ago. Each of us know how we reacted and how we behaved. The great war between Russia and NATO is being openly planned right now, by both sides. European and Russian media has reached a war frenzy that probably hasn't been seen since WWI.

The great war between Russia and NATO is being openly planned right now, by both sides. I don't see any basis for this view. There are indications that the two sides may be sleepwalking towards a great conflict. But neither side is specifically intending to start or escalate towards such a conflict.

Today from Russian media: "All NATO decision-makers from countries that provided military assistance to Bandera Ukraine are participating in a hybrid or conventional war against Russia… All these individuals can and should be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian state,” Medvedev said"

Every media outlet in Nordic countries talk about a Russia-NATO war within the near future or whether Russia and NATO already are at war. NATO leaders are publicly asking for more defense spending to combat Russia. If you read Nordic message boards, most users are cheerfully looking forward to "winning a war against Ruzzia", and I don't doubt that the same idiotic attitudes are found among the Russians as well.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#255

Post by ricardobeat »

mikestew wrote: post #11

In the context of the fact that, according to TFA, the pits were there all along: you'll really notice how pitted your current windshield is when you go get a new, crystal-clear one. The folks in TFA just skipped the "go get a new one" step, and for the first time took a really hard look at their windshield.

Some of the pictures in the article show several golf-ball-size holes in the windshield though. Not something that would go unnoticed.

Was windshield glass not laminated in that era?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#256

Post by whatevertrevor »

zitsarethecure wrote: post #40
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time. See: drone sightings right now. Previously: Havana syndrome.

Another good one is the "Mad Gasser Of Mattoon" incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Gasser_of_Mattoon

And also the Monkey Man of Delhi (though that urban legend wasn't confined to Delhi):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey-man_of_Delhi

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#257

Post by whatevertrevor »

mvkel wrote: post #80
Aloisius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some just learn to ignore news gossip.

Slippery slope. I posit that there are news items that deserve real cause for concern, but because we're so overwhelmed with information, we throw it into the same "gossip" bucket with the rest of the slop.

A lot of news that positions itself as "you should be concerned about this" seeks to exploit the "always alert ready to respond to an emergency" part of our brains.

In reality almost nothing truly deserves that kind of attention. But since humans are bad at separating important from urgent, news broadcasts will continue to exploit with "24/7 Breaking News".

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#258

Post by nathan_compton »

Vegenoid wrote: post #100
kryogen1c wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people, on the whole, vastly underestimate the degree to which humans are animals.

I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. History makes it abundantly clear that it is a regular occurrence for large groups of people to collectively believe things for which there is little evidence, and furthermore, to take extreme actions based on such beliefs. This applies to you too, reader. Many would read the above and fully agree…

Arguably its because in many cases mass delusion is adaptive - it organizes and simplifies how groups of people behave. Religion is a cultural mass delusion (don't worry, I'm not talking about YOUR religion, just the other ones) with significant adaptive qualities, people argue.

Even more broadly, rationality and empiricism are extremely powerful tools for understanding the world, but they are also extremely difficult and costly to use, to say nothing of their known limitations at tackling complex systems. People have to and do believe stuff just to get through their day. I think this only becomes disturbing when its just one part of the culture which decides to believe some other complex of ideas than the mainstream one.

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#259

Post by lazide »

thmsths wrote: post #9

The conclusion is terrifying in my opinion. A not yet explained phenomenon or even something as far fetched as "aliens" would have been a more comforting answer than "essentially we can all start losing our mind at once, and it takes very little to trigger it".

Why do you think introverts are the way they are?

Re: Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954 (2003)

#260

Post by Eisenstein »

nradov wrote: post #222
Eisenstein wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of my STEM classes in college did not have a textbook, or recommended a book that was kinda irrelevant to the direction the classes took. So you went through classes with no written material? You listened to lecture, took notes, and then did assignments and passed tests with no documents to study? > BTW, the discovery of the Scientific Method was a great leap forward in how to discover more knowledge. The scie…

Humans made gradual progress before the scientific method but it was slow and kind of random. If you look at the historical pace of innovation it tremendously accelerated after the scientific method became widespread.

> Humans made gradual progress before the scientific method

When was 'before the scientific method' exactly?

> it was slow and kind of random.

I would argue it wasn't random at all -- it was directed towards human needs and desires as appropriate to the times. There was never a period where humans stopped using their intelligence and problem solving skills to improve their lives in whatever ways were available.

> If you look at the historical pace of innovation it tremendously accelerated after the scientific method became widespread.

When did it become widespread? Where did it spread to? Did those places all show a similar increase in innovation in the years after?

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