Is it just me, or do these boards have a serious problem?

[Xcl4m4t10n]

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

There is admittedly a slight air of come on and just release it creeping in here on the boards; and justifiably. Development is getting long in the tooth. I find myself growing impatient a touch too yet I wait.

Hopefully soon...

 

[levi]

I hope that's because we are finally entering the final stretch, where the things we're waiting on are countable on the fingers of one hand.

 

[directive0]

Its always darkest before the dawn.

 

[rygD]

Evidence?

 

[levi]

Logic; assuming the sun is on a circular path, it'll be at its furthest projection from wherever you are at about 1-2am I think. The moon doesn't move much during the night - it's motion across the sky is mostly due to the rotation of the earth, so it's likely to provide some light during the night, but it too will have its maximum and minimum.

If d0 had said it's darkest 'just' before dawn, as the saying goes then he'd be demonstrably wrong, but he didn't say that. The minimum of lighting must be somewhere between sunset and dawn there, unless you're living through very peculiar (probably life-ending) weather conditions. But even so there must have been some minimum prior to each dawn, even if it was a few days ago now.

 

[ible]

at least where i grew up, "it's coldest at dawn" actually was usually pretty reliable.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

at least where i grew up, "it's coldest at dawn" actually was usually pretty reliable.

That makes sense because while it's dark everything is cooling off, so it's gonna be coldest when it's been cooling off all night.

 

[rygD]

Logic; assuming the sun is on a circular path, it'll be at its furthest projection from wherever you are at about 1-2am I think. The moon doesn't move much during the night - it's motion across the sky is mostly due to the rotation of the earth, so it's likely to provide some light during the night, but it too will have its maximum and minimum.

If d0 had said it's darkest 'just' before dawn, as the saying goes then he'd be demonstrably wrong, but he didn't say that. The minimum of lighting must be somewhere between sunset and dawn there, unless you're living through very peculiar (probably life-ending) weather conditions. But even so there must have been some minimum prior to each dawn, even if it was a few days ago now.

So, technically, it is brightest before dawn.

I just turn the lights on and always carry a flashlight.

 

[directive0]

Jeeze, you guys sure find the weirdest stuff to pedant out over.

 

[rygD]

Jeeze, you guys sure find the weirdest stuff to pedant out over have fun discussing.

I enjoy discussing, learning about, and sharing my knowledge of a wide range of topics. I avoid taking myself too seriously, so it allows me to include some rather strange things in the list of potential topics, although I don't think any of the ones here were that odd.

Somewhat related, the most recent episode of "How the Universe Works" was quite the let down. It focused on how the apes can potentially avoid extinction from an asteroid...I would rather hear how the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy could destroy us before we have a chance to notice what it is doing.

 

[levi]

I don't think we're in any danger from our local supermassive black hole, because in a fairly big sense we're in orbit around it. Just as it turns out to be very hard to throw anything into the sun* it'd be very unlikely we'd ever come into contact with it. I guess a slightly more likely danger is that one of the big stars near us goes supernova and turns into a medium sized black hole, which will slowly either accelerate or retard our galactic orbit, until we get eventually sucked into it. I don't think Alpha Centauri is big enough though, and I don't know our next closest solar systems off the top of my head.

* It's hard to throw anything into the sun because most paths towards it will miss it slightly and instead put it into an elliptic orbit around it instead. The most obvious way to do it; to put whatever you want in space dead still and simply let it fall is hard to do because we're already orbiting the sun at some silly speed, so you'd need to boost back first. And then that might not even work because the sun is moving in orbit around the galactic centre anyway.

 

[Autian]

IMHO mods should be less permissive on news section. I have the same issue as you and I read a lot of people complaining the same. The problem is, when it is offtopic or when it is not? Sometimes it's easy to see but other it is not.

The process of starting offtopics is a bit complicated. You could as well send a PM to the poster of the post you want to offtopic to, but where would be the fun when other people can't take part to the offtopic discussion? Opening a new Thread directly seems a bit awkward too, so one who wants to offtopic so badly ends up starting offtopics in the thread.

Threads should be multidimensional. That is, if you want to go offtopic on a specific post, you create a new Sub-Thread on it and write your offtopic stuff into the Sub-Thread. A link to the Sub-Thread would be shown to the specific post. The On-Topic thread is then no longer cluttered with off topic posts.

 

[elw3]

Sounds like a cookbook to clusterfuck this thing completely.

 

[rygD]

I don't think we're in any danger from our local supermassive black hole, because in a fairly big sense we're in orbit around it. Just as it turns out to be very hard to throw anything into the sun* it'd be very unlikely we'd ever come into contact with it. I guess a slightly more likely danger is that one of the big stars near us goes supernova and turns into a medium sized black hole, which will slowly either accelerate or retard our galactic orbit, until we get eventually sucked into it. I don't think Alpha Centauri is big enough though, and I don't know our next closest solar systems off the top of my head.

* It's hard to throw anything into the sun because most paths towards it will miss it slightly and instead put it into an elliptic orbit around it instead. The most obvious way to do it; to put whatever you want in space dead still and simply let it fall is hard to do because we're already orbiting the sun at some silly speed, so you'd need to boost back first. And then that might not even work because the sun is moving in orbit around the galactic centre anyway.

The potential concern would be the black hole becoming a quasar, as it is in an ideal situation for it. It is possible it has turned on and off this activity before (evidence suggests it may have happened multiple times). That could be a bigger problem for life than an asteroid hitting us. If I remember correctly, the one in Andromeda is huger than our own, so that might also be a problem.

 

[levi]

A quasar, as I read it, is just a black hole that's feeding. It doesn't dramatically change in mass doing this, so we're unlikely to be sucked in or flung into intergalactic space. Stuff that's close is orbiting it a breakneck speeds, and any interaction with other stuff flying around might change orbits and make part of their orbit transition within the event horizon, and if that happens they're doomed. Even if they don't get that close, rapidly shifting gravitational forces will be ripping them a new one, and bits of them with inevitable fall off them and into the black hole. It's this rending of matter that creates the radio source that defines what a quasar is from our perspective, or at least that's the current thinking. We're a hell of a long way from the galactic centre, so even if god took a cosmic pool cue and potted the sun in the direction of the centre, he'd have to be a hell of a shot taker to get us within a million miles of the thing.

Ignoring divine intervention for a minute, it seems incredibly unlikely our species will outlive the next thousand years at our current rate of progress. I think we'll just be so much worm food by the time anything cosmic happens to our little neck of the woods, personally, and in all probability, nothing will ever happen before the sun explodes and wipes out everything on the earth anyway.

 

[rygD]

Ok, the scientists were wrong.

 

[Autian]

Sounds like a cookbook to clusterfuck this thing completely.

No one wants to look up offtopic posts later anyway better clusterfucks than salad all over the place.

 

[Grench]

That makes sense because while it's dark everything is cooling off, so it's gonna be coldest when it's been cooling off all night.

I have often wondered/suspected if/that it is actually coldest -during- dawn as the initial sunlight sparks evaporation of overnight condensate (dew), raising humidity, with cold moist air feeling colder than cold dry air. Then I close up the drawstring of my mummy bag, roll over and go back to sleep.

Need to get a keyboard reference in this somehow to be fully off topic...

But, yes, hypothetically, the mods could 'be more strict' in the news section. However, if you assume that no post after EDs first one that created the thread in the news section has relevance, it is pretty easy to skip over the rest of us droning on. But then you would miss all of the Pyra Zombie posts.

An alternative would be to allow forum members to vote up/down messages - which we kind of do already with the likes... Maybe a filter to allow someone to only bother to view posts with X+ likes? The conversation might appear a bit disjointed, but it would filter out a lot of the irrelevance.

 

[rygD]

I have often wondered/suspected if/that it is actually coldest -during- dawn as the initial sunlight sparks evaporation of overnight condensate (dew), raising humidity, with cold moist air feeling colder than cold dry air. Then I close up the drawstring of my mummy bag, roll over and go back to sleep.

It seems like it is usually coldest right before or during dawn based on my experience. I have spent a good portion of my life up before dawn or working overnight. I never kept a log of temperatures, but based on my living sensors it would seem accurate frequently. I am sure it would be easy to verify, as things like this are regularly recorded now.