Member: walk2work

Thanks.

My hope is that we can have open discussion, without concerns over heresy charges or hurt feelings.

You have helped me, and I appreciate it.

Richard

posted by richardbsmith at 12:30 pm (EST) on Jun 25, 2009

Carla,

I sincerely apologize if I have offended you in any way. It was not my intention and I ask for your forgiveness. I will try to be more careful with my words in the future.

You have my utmost respect and I always look forward to your comments. They have been for me very encouraging.

Richard

posted by richardbsmith at 9:42 am (EST) on Jun 25, 2009

Heh heh. I'm glad you get a laugh out of it! I'm not really sure what's supposed to be happening in that picture; it's just one of the random things I've found while trolling the internets.

posted by weener at 7:15 pm (EST) on Jan 21, 2009

Siler City bound, eh? It's rather small potatoes, but there IS a used book store, Paperbacks Plus, run by a neat lady named Pat. It's at 208 E Raleigh Street, phone # 919 742-4033. They have a website, www.paperbacksplus.com. I just looked at it - it doesn't say too much, but I'm impressed anyway. She's got lots of mysteries, romances, SOME general fiction and lots of sections I haven't really looked at.

To eat? Besides Brownie Lu's, there's Hayley Bales (steakhouse) in the same building as Best Foods Cafeteria (seriously Southern food - beware!) You have to walk through a "gift store" to get to both - be careful of your sugar levels - the stuff there is also VERY southern, with a serious Christian bias, and very cutesy.

The N.C. Zoo is two towns east in Asheboro. I live in one town west, Pittsboro. In Pittsboro there are quite a few antique stores on Hillsborough Street, and north of town about 8-10 miles is "Fearrington Village" - lots of specialty shops and a bookstore called McIntyre's Fine Books and Bookends. They have a 5* restaurant too - very expensive, very nice. McIntyre's always has interesting books. North of me is Chapel Hill, which has the University of NC with museums, exhibits, fairly decent shopping, movie theaters, etc. And, then there's Raleigh, Durham, Cary, etc.

Hope this helps some.

karenmarie

posted by karenmarie at 4:31 pm (EST) on Dec 30, 2008

I wish I could recommend more; But I don't know what all your volume contains. I've seen it in the bookstore- unfortunately I already had several other volumes which contain most of Lovecraft's stuff. I would have purchased it, otherwise. My favorite collection is "Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft."

posted by monohex at 9:28 pm (EST) on Oct 14, 2008

It means entropy per volume. As the universe expands (and the expansion accelerates), the overall entropy will increase, but it may decrease locally because of the decrease in entropy density. I'm not sure if that is really a problem (I'm not an expert on this cosmology stuff), but I've heard people talk about it.

posted by yapete at 10:57 am (EST) on Oct 8, 2008

I had a feeling you were thinking of the universe. A bubble is a good model. There is an interesting discussion right now in physics, what the observed accelerated expansion of the universe will do the entropy (or at least the entropy density). So this is very much of interest to the cosmologist (but in that arena I know hardly more than you do - I took some General Relativity as an undergrad, but have forgotten 90% of it).

posted by yapete at 6:16 pm (EST) on Oct 7, 2008

"Would it be accurate to say that the entropy of a wave increases as it dissipates? A wave is propagated through a medium (I'm not thinking of light, here, but a wave like in water), and the wave would represent a local ordering of that medium. But then, as it peters out . . .

Would it be accurate to say that the entropy of a bubble increases as the bubble expands? I make this assumption because I'm pretty sure that there's a big increase in entropy when a bubble bursts."

Wow, tricky questions. The bubble is a bit easier. If we think of the bubble as simply expanding, then yes, its entropy increases. This is because its molecules are now more dispersed (they occupy more volume), and entropy increases when the size of a system increases.

The waves are tricky. First of all, of course, if a wave dissipates, overall entropy of the water + environment increases, simply because of friction and heat generation. But your questions is a bit more subtle: If we compare water with a wave traveling through it to water without the wave, which has the higher entropy (we assume same volume, temperature)? If both have the same energy content, then the water with the wave would have lower entropy for the reason you state. The water without the wave, but with the same energy, would have to have a lot of random motion.

In terms of a good layperson book on this stuff, I am not a good person to ask, as I have learned it all from textbooks (i.e. by doing the math and then trying to understand what the math is really telling me - this took many years and is still going on). I know there are books by Peter Atkins: "The second law" http://www.librarything.com/work/177598 or "Four Laws that drive the universe" http://www.librarything.com/work/3922451, or a book by Hans-Christian von Baeyer "Warmth disperses and time passes" http://www.librarything.com/work/31772.

Disclosure: I have not read any of these books myself, but they have good ratings on librarything (3.6 - 4.5).

posted by yapete at 3:45 pm (EST) on Oct 7, 2008

Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment. I pointed out Mouse Guard to my mother and she loved it (she's a watercolour artist).

...now I just need to add another book to my library so it no longer says 666 :)

posted by anysia at 10:55 pm (EST) on Oct 2, 2008

Thank you for joining Pro and Con (Religion). I hope this is a place where the comfortable are afflicted and the afflicted are comforted. Let’s go it with all seriousness, but I hope we can have great fun at the same time. If I were God, I would part the waters of distance, and instantly transport us all to this great pub I used to frequent in Germany with a group of other Auslanders, but alas, I am but a lowly mortal, and so we have to do this via the internet.

All I ask is that every one remain respectful, even if there are times when you are spewing your coffee over the screen.

posted by Arctic-Stranger at 1:46 pm (EST) on Oct 2, 2008

Hey,

I recently discovered the Christianity group and read your latest in "Should belief in God be rational?" I'm too tired and incoherent to make any sensible points on anything deep, so I haven't posted in the group yet, and I definitely understand you not wanting to be yelled/preached at. But your mentioning wanting to understand reality as it really is made me think I should say something.

I may or may not understand you correctly, but personally I'm always disappointed in how little people seem to care about the way things really are. Objective truth and the existence of same. I figure if something isn't totally true, for everyone, then there isn't any point in believing it at all. Forgive me if he's been recommended to you already, but have you read any C.S. Lewis? His work was the reason for my conversion from Wicca to Christianity, because he made it clear to me that there can only be one answer. He does deal with more general topics than I sometimes want, so I'd also recommend Show Me God by Fred Heeren, which deals with astronomy and science.

Hoping I was of some relevance,
Fate Fortuna

posted by FFortuna at 12:57 am (EST) on Sep 14, 2008

Hi,

I'm not going away, except to, like, church in the morning.

Thoughtfulness is for me usually a matter of coincidence rather than purpose. I do, however, try to stay attentive.

Although I'm temporarily stepping back from process theology, a few authors on the matter whom I will keep in mind are Charles Hartshorne, Daniel Dombrowski, and David Griffin. In particular I think I ought to look at Hartshorne's Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes.

Robert

posted by Mr.Durick at 9:59 pm (EST) on Sep 13, 2008

Thanks for the comment you left. I had contacted the local public radio stations but they have only a limited licensing agreement which allows them to play only a very limited number of mucis genres (mainly classical and jazz) so they turned me down.

posted by Beukeboom at 4:10 pm (EST) on Sep 13, 2008

I am sorry for what you correctly characterized as abuse in my post on which you commented. You were right to call me on it. The last sentence was a gratuitous insult, the "haughty" accusation was out of line, and the overall tone of the post was unnecessarily aggressive. If I had it to do over, I would have written in a much more civil and less emotional manner. I do not intend this as anything like an excuse, but it just happened that the two points you posted, especially in combination, make me particularly impatient: but that is obviously my problem, not yours.

I especially regret that my outburst seems to have repelled you from further participation in discussions there. I will notify the readers of that thread that I have sent you this apology and invite them to read it here.

On the other hand, I am confident that the argument of the post was powerful and worthy of serious consideration, although I do not blame you if you choose not to return to it. Although nothing will repair the damage my intemperate words did, I invite you to suggest your preference between the following. Would you rather I edit the post for civility, or leave it as it is with the apology noted?

posted by criels at 6:24 pm (EST) on Sep 10, 2008

WHAT! TOO MUCH TIME ON LT? Wash your mouth out with soap, young lady. I won't have that kind of talk in my house.

Seriously, thank you for the kind comments, it's always nice to be appreciated. That thread was fun but it really put me on the spot to keep up with the posts, so I was secretly a little thankful when it died out. My wife keeps threatening to resurrect it.

Unca A.

posted by MrAndrew at 12:00 am (EST) on Sep 7, 2008

Dear walk2work: I'm sorry to hear that you are reading old threads. Have you considered getting a hobby?

Unca Andrew

posted by MrAndrew at 8:56 am (EST) on Sep 6, 2008

Not to derail the worldbuilding thread, where you wrote "Tiptree did (IMHO) such a good job of bringing to life a completely alien form of existence. I had never before read a book that really tackled world-building (if that's the sci-fi/fantasy term), only books that had mostly human characters in strange places. Not to push any buttons here, but truthfully, elves and dwarfs are still very humanoid. But the Tyrenni are nothing like human, and that intrigues me.

I also really liked CJ Cherryh's world-building from Faded Sun: Kesrith and found both the mri and the other race (can't remember their name) very well crafted as alien races"

If you liked Faded Sun you should try alot of Cherryh's other SF and fantasy she does some really very belivable aliens. The Chanur Saga, starts with Pride of Chanur is very good, or the Foreigner series (Foreigner). Her short stories are also packed full of completely alien aliens.

posted by reading_fox at 10:11 am (EST) on Aug 18, 2008

Carla: I was most impressed with your recent post on Happy Heathens about the nature of God. After all the tussles with language that modalursine and ArcticStranger have wrestled with, you put the definition of the nature of deity in a nutshell. Concise, accurate, and well-written. Thanks for your valuable contribution to the discussion. We may disagree on the existence of God, but I appreciated your views.

posted by RachelfromSarasota at 11:56 pm (EST) on Jul 20, 2008

Jeg er meget imponeret over at du stadig kan skrive på dansk efter 25 år!
I forgot my school french the moment I stopped studying:-)

posted by amberwitch at 4:21 pm (EST) on Jul 8, 2008

Good luck with cataloging your books. It took me some 8 months to get 4,000 books in.

posted by vpfluke at 5:29 pm (EST) on Jun 9, 2008