Hypography Science Forums: modest - Viewing Profile - Hypography Science Forums

I did a google search for "que the lights" and got just over 26,000 results
another search for "queue the lights" got nearly 7,000 results

I think "queue the lights" is undeniably more correct. I mean, it must be a way of saying "put 'lights' next in the queue". But, I am curious... well, in question form,

Does anyone think "que the lights" could be considered linguistically correct in American English?
Even if not, would anyone write "que the lights" just because it is the more common usage?


If you're not tired of reading... I've hit the same dilemma when pronouncing "neanderthal". The scientifically inclined and pedantically correct leave the h silent, but almost everyone else in the population pronounces the h. When I say the word, which of course isn't often, I've sometimes noticed giving a long pause before that word because I'm debating to myself how to say it. It usually boils down to who is listening.

I did the same thing the other day when writing "queue/que the dancing". It took me way too long to decide on how to write it.

Big troubles, I know.

I want to play a .swf unless the system is unable (eg iphone, ipad, ipod) in which case, I'd like to play a *.mp4. I thought i had it worked out with this:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="366" height="275" id="Project1" align="middle">
  <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
  <param name="movie" value="video/Project1.swf" />
  <param name="quality" value="high" />
  <param name="bgcolor" value="#d6dbef" />
    <embed src="video/Project1.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#d6dbef" width="366" height="275" name="Project1" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
      <video width="366" height="275">
        <source src="video/Project1.swf" type="video/swf">
        <source src="video/Project1.mp4" type="video/mp4">
      </video>
    </embed>
  <PARAM NAME="autoplay" VALUE="true" >
</object>

which plays the swf on my PCs and the mp4 on my iphone, but the fella I'm doing this for says that it doesn't work on his ipad... and that's really the whole reason I'm doing it.

So, is there a better way to do this, or can anyone spot how I've done it terribly wrong? The code / vid is on this page:

http://propertysolut...nstruction.html

and another without javascript here:

http://propertysolut...listing017.html

thanks very much in advance

~modest

Renewable energy is typically clean energy.

Fossil fuel is a limited resource. As supply diminishes price rises.

The largest, and really the only, impediment to renewable energy like solar is that there are cheaper energy sources available. It isn’t economical to use renewable energy right now because it can’t compete with cheaper methods.

We are nearly upon the precipice of peak oil and peak coal.

Given the previous four postulates, the clean energy problem (and global warming by extension) is going to solve itself shortly without intervention. Once it becomes more expensive to extract and transport oil and coal than it is to produce and transport clean energy, no one will use it... at least not in a worrisome amount.

I’m not an expert and I’m sure this has occurred to plenty of people, so I’m wondering if I’m missing anything. Why, in other words, are ‘dirty’ energy, and global warming, problems that need to be fixed with the likes of Kyoto, rather than problems which are inevitably and shortly going to shortly fix themselves?

~modest

I read something that Craig wrote in another thread...

CraigD, on 16 January 2011 - 09:09 AM, said:

and I would ordinarily agree with this completely. As far as the radiation goes, I assume Craig is referring to:

Quote

http://en.wikipedia..../Accretion_disc

But, when I read Craig's post it got me thinking along lines that I have never heard expressed before. My train of thought has led me to the conclusion that no ordinary matter could cross any event horizon intact no matter the weakness of the tidal force nor the state of (or, even, the absence of) the accretion disc.

My thinking is that gravitational time dilation as well as gravitational redshift/blueshift are reciprocal; which is to say, if a clock below me in a gravitational well runs slow by some factor and its light, emitted toward me, is redshifted by some factor due to gravitational potential, then that clock will recon the exact opposite as regards to me. My clock will run fast by that same factor and my light will be blueshifted by that same factor from its perspective. GPS clocks are a straightforward example. They run fast from our perspective via gravitational time dilation and our clocks run slow from their perspective (by the same factor) via gravitational time dilation.

So... trying to keep this short...

Imagine an observer sitting just outside an event horizon of some black hole. From our perspective, at a distance much further from the hole, the observer's clock is near-infinitely dilated toward the slow side. Its light is near-infinitely redshifted. The observer's time has nearly stopped and redshifted to the point of making it practically impossible to observe.

On the reciprocal side, the observer falling in the hole nearly reaching the event horizon must expect our clocks out here in the rest of the universe to run nearly-infinitely fast. Our light, directed the observer's way, is likewise near-infinitely blueshifted from that observer's perspective.

In a practical sense, this makes the environment near the event horizon of a black hole (any black hole) completely unsurvivable to any matter. As the observer falls closer and closer to the horizon the sky would be brighter and brighter (the intensity would increase) as all of the starlight from any particular star falling on this observer would arrive in very short order. The same would be true of the CMB.

Likewise, the starlight and the CMB which is arriving at an enormous rate is being blueshifted into shorter and shorter wavelength gamma rays.

By the time the observer has nearly reached the event horizon the environment would be filled with an unsurvivable amount of extremely-high intensity gamma rays. It would be vaporized, and worse. Molecular bonds would be broken. Atoms would be photodisintegrated. As a result, any matter trying to cross any event horizon would be converted to energy before it could reach that horizon.

If the above is true then there should be observational consequences of this. A significant portion of the radiation resulting from this matter-energy conversion should be radiated away from the black hole. Most naively, we should expect black holes to glow, or radiate, a rather-steady energy from the process.

It may be possible to predict aspects of the spectrum of black holes based on these assumptions.

Before we get that far, have I gone wrong somewhere? Is it possible for macroscopic chunks of matter to cross an event horizon?

~modest

I just noticed, oddly enough, that my cell phone gets 2 bars of reception sitting right outside my microwave and 3 bars inside with the door closed. I think cell phones use radio waves which are larger than microwaves, so I wouldn't expect it to be leaking a lot of EM radiation that my phone would be picking up on (or, at least, I would expect the radiation to be attenuated and not amplified).

Can anyone explain this? It seems a rather peculiar observation to me—has me scratching my head.

~modest