57 replies to this topic

[Nymh]

MUD - a text based game played over the internet. Acronym is virtually meaningless, but used to stand for Multi User Dungeon, meaning more than one person can play at a time (how novel!)

Do you play MUDs? I have spent countless hours playing them over the years. It would neat to find someone else who played/plays them.

[Frizzle]

Nice to see you Lee ^^

I wish I could say the same Joe.

[Sweeney]

I wish I could say the same Joe.

Git.

[redlion]

Do you play MUDs? I have spent countless hours playing them over the years. It would neat to find someone else who played/plays them.

Yes, I've played them. No I don't play them anymore, but it's interesting to find someone else that was into the genre

[redlion]

Thought I'd bump this. Hopefully posting right after my own post will actually bump (forums are so smart these days! Codex merges my posts without asking!)

Here's a little more light reading if you've got spare time to kill in an educational way

Technological Singularity - Thus, man created machine in his own image. Then machine created a machine better than man.
Arianism - Heathens!!!!1!11one
Van Allen belts - Radiation belts composing charged particles captured by Earth's magnetosphere.
CP violation - NOT WHAT YOU'RE THINKING. Physics of antiparticle-particle interaction.
Cosmic rays - interstellar and stellar radiation, mostly subatomic particles.
Space Elevators - Still reading this. I'm not entirely sure the concept works. I mean yeah, given a strong enough cable you could make it work. Simple test - attach a coffee can to one end of a string, swing around in a circle. Tension keeps the string taut. But doesn't velocity increase the farther you get from the center of the rotational mass? So at the outside limit of the elevator, you'd be experiencing insane g-forces.

Edit: for once, my posts weren't merged Bump successful!

[jcrdude]

Edit: for once, my posts weren't merged Bump successful!

I think 24 hours is the minimum time to avoid a merge

[Sweeney]

Plus, merged posts bump anyway

I used to do it, then ninja edit out my merged post so no one ever knew

[ilovepolkadots]

Space Elevators - Still reading this. I'm not entirely sure the concept works. I mean yeah, given a strong enough cable you could make it work. Simple test - attach a coffee can to one end of a string, swing around in a circle. Tension keeps the string taut. But doesn't velocity increase the farther you get from the center of the rotational mass? So at the outside limit of the elevator, you'd be experiencing insane g-forces.

http://xkcd.com/697/
http://xkcd.com/482/
(^) might be of some help

[redlion]

Time for another bump with my quasi-random wikipedia surfings.

Ultimate fate of the Universe As in, what happens when everything, stars included, is dead.
W.D. Gann - One of the first people to use Technical Analysis. Accurately predicted the stock market crash of 1929. He's also one of the least accessible writers on TA. I've tried for a number of years to crack his code
Intelligence amplification - Making humans smarter. Biologically, computationally, etc.
North American Union - Conspiracy theory. I love pages like these not for the content, but for the category frame down at the bottom. All sorts of fun links.
Price System - Economic system involving money. Basically every economy that isn't barter/trade based. Reading this for F.A. Hayek mostly.
Ochlocracy - Rule by the people. Mob rule. Democracy devolved, essentially.
Stock market crashes - Inspired by Margin Call, I looked these up. Very cyclical. Increasing in frequency. Scary. Very Scary.
High-frequency trading - Generally computer assisted, rapid transactions. Arbitrage based trading.

[redlion]

Time for an 8-month bump. I looked this thread up instead of making another one because I'm trying to clear my tabs out I'm sitting at 16 in my general group (torrents and mail are in separate groups) and it's getting a little unwieldy.

Dainichi Nyorai aka Vairocana A buddha-body, or manifestation of core buddhist beliefs. Vairocana teaches of our preoccupation with form, and the way forward through the Dhamma(dharma).
Vajrayana Third of the great divisions of buddhism, after Mahayana and Therevada, it's principally known for including Tibetan buddhism, but also includes sects in Japan and China.
Majapahit Empire Rulers of Indonesia (and most of SE Asia) from the 1300s until it was eclipsed by Muslim rulers in the 1500s.
Founders of Religions list Exactly as it says, from the first (that we know of) to the most recent with any significant amount of followers.
History of Wales Because native Brithons get no respect
Umberto Eco Noted intellectual, philosopher and author.
Concentration of media ownership Particularly, how the trend of merger and acquisitions has become increasingly prevalent.
Apache Cassandra A no single point of failure server setup. Used by Facebook.
HipHop for PHP Developed by Facebook, this open source software will convert PHP to C++ and then to machine code, resulting in substantial increases in efficiency.
Last but not least, I finally found a term that can describe my obsession with wikipedia. When I initially made this thread, I was unaware that there was so specific a term, but needless to say I've found it at long last. Autodidacticism Basically the concept of being self-taught.

Remember you can always contribute your own links if you like, or just read and lurk if you must. I'd read any links you guys posted before finishing my own list (try working your way through 4000 years of religious leaders) but really, this post is more for my own well being than for anything else. Cheers

[ShadowLink64]

What I've looked at today (so far anyway):

cronus - Leader of the Titans in Greek Mythology... my attempt to figure out why cronus picked his username.
Munchkin (cat) - Relatively new breed of cat with very short legs.
Sunnyvale, CA - City located in Silicon Valley, where one of my dream jobs is located.
Jean Chretien - Former Prime Minster of Canada
Regenerative break - Form of braking using kinetic energy usage/storage instead of wasting it in brake pad friction
Sharlto Copley - Lead actor in movie "District 9" (the guy that says "fookin prawns"). Was determining if he was South African or not, mostly.
Bohemian Grove - Exclusive club that many world leaders are a part of. They go camping and take part in weird rituals.
Beam propagation method - A numerical method of simulating electromagnetic beams in time, as they travel through space.

I bid you all good travels on your journey of enlightenment, fellow autodidacts.

[8143FF763271]

anybody reading philosophy on wikipedia instead of plato.stanford.edu isn't worth my time lol

[Frizzle]

anybody reading philosophy on wikipedia instead of plato.stanford.edu isn't worth my time lol

con·de·scend·ing/ˌkändəˈsendiNG/


Adjective:

• Acting in a way that betrays a feeling of patronizing superiority.
  
• (of an action) Demonstrating such an attitude.

[redlion]

weird font.

I can't see his posts unless you quote him. But since you brought him to my attention.

anybody reading philosophy on wikipedia instead of plato.stanford.edu isn't worth my time lol

The thread is titled wikiphilia, as in wikipedia? If you do the math I said I had 16 tabs open and I posted, what, ten wiki links? Those aren't by any means the only things I read. For instance, I'm also reading SCOTUS Blog for the Fisher v. UT Austin discrimination case. But the thread is sorta themed. Because I use wikipedia a lot.

[Romy]

anybody reading philosophy on wikipedia instead of plato.stanford.edu isn't worth my time lol

I think you need to read this guide by PRBM.

Edited by Ivysaur, 30 September 2012 - 10:08 PM.

[redlion]

BAAAAMP.

Clearing out my tabs again, thought I'd share some of them. Reading these won't get you anything except personal edification

The Georgia Guidestones - A mysterious monument erected in Georgia state, which lists a set of (quasi-)commandments as well as astronomical data.
Libertarianism - This word is thrown about a lot, so to enrich my understanding I took a deeper look. Europeans and Americans have very different views of this word. Worth reading.
Plato's Five regimes - I wonder if the ancients actually got everything right, or if we only have the parts they weren't utterly wrong about. The terms are outdated but there's a lot of truth here.
Debt - This is one of those pages (see this post) that is more useful for the category frame than anything else.
Free Banking - This concept is very interesting, and I would consider it key to understanding Hayek's brand of Austrian economics.
Baile Átha an Rí - Athenry (as it's spelled in English) was a search inspired (believe it or not) by Medieval War II, because it's one of the settlements in Ireland. Apparently that was the height of it's influence, because now it's just a touristy town.
No True Scotsman - A fallacy that arises by amending an assertion to exclude the counter example.
Dennis Kucinich - Candidate for US President, 2004 and 2008. Congressman from Ohio.
Currency War - Also known as competitive devaluation, is a situation in which two or more countries wishing to spur domestic growth cause their own currencies to devalue (usually by the actions of the central bank) in order to generate exports and foreign currency reserves. Caused the Great Depression to worsen.
List of WB Programs - I download TV shows by the season, and I frequently have to turn to older shows to get my fix. I already went through The WB programming, but the category frame at the bottom has links to other networks' programming that I'll need shortly

That's it right now. I know, disappointing after 15 links per post earlier.

If my last post was religion and programming, and the post before that was mostly economics and physics, and the post before that was space and heathens, then I'd categorize this post as incomprehensibly categorized. Seriously, this is why I clean these tabs out. There are like, five tabs in there that have been there for weeks if not months.

Anyway, happy reading.

[redlion]

More shit to read if you're looking for a guided tour of wikipedia.

Ogma - The OG slayer of Fir Bolg
People who've won Hugo and Nebula awards - A light reading list.
Persia - Everything you think you know about Persia is wrong.
Heat death - RAWR! Entropy!
Palme d'Or winners from Cannes.
The World Serpent - a myth that is found in far flung reaches of the world.

[Tetiel]

Spoiler

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah... you're not the only wikiphile.

[Fikri]

you guys are impressive. xD most of my wikipedia reads are about TV shows, artists or films as well as countries.

[Josh]

http://en.wikipedia....er_distribution

 

Yeah, not as big of a wikiphilia as some in this thread, but that one page has been feeding me for the past week or two. I've gone as far as the definition of and history of AC/DC, Voltage, Current, etc. Now I'm reading different types of transformers and how they can be tapped to create different benefits. 

 

Now that I think about it, I tend to digest one large topic at time. A few weeks ago I was reading all about HVAC.

[Bone]

Amboise

Fobos-Grunt

Armenian presidential election, 2013

Peg Entwistle

Irish nationality law

Navassa Island

Chinese mantis

 

A smattering from the last two weeks...

[evoheyax]

Wiki has defiantly saved my life, especially when your looking for a quote for an essay. I just find the citation of what you want to use and go to that website and cite that.

[redlion]

Part of your tuition goes towards legitimate resources that can be cited on their own. You might try researching through LexisNexis or JSTOR, if for no other reason than to be able to do it.

Wikipedia is a really poor source for academic grade knowledge. It's great for public consumption because most of their articles are written as summaries of topics that are in reality much more complex. But if you're looking for cold hard facts and the people that find them, you're looking in the wrong place.

[redlion]

Alright, here's my current list.

Graham Green - Fiction writer and catholic apologist
Joint Hugo & Nebula winners - To make this list, a book has to be either really impressive or a highly improbable fluke.
William Blake - Romantic poet who keeps cropping up in the oddest places in science fiction I've been reading.
Pratityasamutpada - dependent origination, a Buddhist way of explaining causality and karma.
Tendai - Japanese form of Buddhism, based on Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings brought from China.
Stages of enlightenment - Buddhist steps to salvation.
Vipassana - Meditation technique used to gain awareness.
Visuddhimagga - The Theravada canonical text, assembled in Sri Lanka and written in Pali.
Anakantavada - Jain doctrine meaning non-exclusion of multiple-views. Essentially, there are multiple paths to truth.
Hyperion - Greek Titan, god of wisdom, light, seasons and celestial bodies, before Zeus screwed everything that walked and gave each child a season and star.
Ahimsa - The origin of non-violence. Do no harm.
Agathodaemon - The good luck daemon.
Toyama - The field of battle!
Bullrun - NSA decryption program, existence leaked by Edward Snowden.

I love this shit.

The NSA one in particular is dope info. Never type anything that you wouldn't mind made public at some point.

[redlion]

Here we go again.

H. L. Mencken was an author and journalist from Baltimore, Maryland. Smart guy.
Elmer Gantry is by Sinclair Lewis, and piqued my curiosity because of it's subject matter, namely religion.
the Alex Awards are book awards for books with young adult appeal. Interesting criteria.
the Persepolis comics were made into a movie a few years ago, but I'm interested in reading them, so I checked it out on wikipedia first...
the NSU Spider was the first production car to use a wankel engine. And it looks pretty cool.
Bulverism is what C. S. Lewis called the logical fallacy of assuming the opposition is wrong and proceeding to argue from there.
The Grammy for Best New Artist is actually sort of a joke now, because it was a curse for many who won it.
A mudra is a a sign or seal, a hand gesture with religious or mystic significance. Seen in many martial arts as well.
The Rajneesh movement is a hindu spiritual and yogic movement, with cross reach into American counterculture.

Yeah...