One of the things that really puzzle me is how people can get worked up over the most absurd things. Take the Affordable Care Act. There has been a concerted effort by those opposed to this reform to scuttle it by whipping up anger against any and all aspects of it. I find it really despicable how far some states have gone to prevent people from signing up for health insurance under the new system. [Read more…]
In an effort to improve its image using social media, megabank JP Morgan Chase invited people on social media to tweet questions to them in advance using the hashtag #AskJPM and that Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee would take an hour to answer them.
They got a good response all right, an avalanche of questions which were predominantly snarky and angry. See more here and here. The hashtag is still active and the hits keep coming. [Read more…]
We may have a solution to the autoplay problem that has been annoying some readers. Thanks to everyone who provided data on whether they had autoplay problems with the embedded videos, the culprits may have been identified. After going through and tabulating all the responses, a pattern emerges and here is what I found. [Read more…]
I wrote recently about my great distaste for the Cleveland Indians logo of Chief Wahoo and how as long as they kept the logo I was perfectly content if they never won a single game again, let alone win the World Series. I have been totally unconvinced by those who say it is harmless or even meant to honor Indians. [Read more…]
I am fascinated by the way language evolves and so enjoyed this animation from the British Open University that in just ten minutes gives a flippant but informative history of the main steps in the development of the English language and the origins of many of the words and phrases that we use. [Read more…]
Angular momentum is a hard concept to teach in introductory physics courses. This is partly because it is a quantity known as a vector that has both a magnitude and a direction, and adding and subtracting and multiplying vectors is more complicated than with scalars, like mass. Other things like force and velocity are also vectors but in those cases the directionality at least is intuitively obvious. The direction of the force vector is in the direction along which the force acts and the direction of the velocity vector is the direction in which the object is moving. [Read more…]
Religious martyrdom is an odd thing. If someone is killed because of that person’s race or ethnicity or sexuality, that death is deplored but people who share the victim’s targeted identity do not see the death as a vindication or a badge of honor of that identity. On the other hand, religions seem to revel in their martyrs, as if having someone die or be killed for their belief somehow makes that belief more worthy. [Read more…]
Bill Watterson, the creator of the iconic and much-loved Calvin and Hobbes that was syndicated from 1985 to 1995, walked away from one of the most successful comic strips in US history at the height of its popularity, when he felt that he had said and done all that he could with that particular medium. Thanks to my daughter, who was an even bigger fan of the strip than me, we now own all the C&H anthologies and they remain fresh upon re-reading. [Read more…]
I have been bemused by the efforts of Republicans to make the death of the US Libyan Ambassador and his associates at Benghazi into some kind of major scandal and cover up. You may recall that Mitt Romney tried to do so in presidential debate and got the wind knocked out of him. And yet, the search for the smoking gun continues. [Read more…]
NOTE: To see how to solve the problem, please see this later post.
Some readers are complaining that some videos are auto playing (which is of course highly annoying), even though the embedding code I use is supposed to not do that. Others say it is not autoplaying for them. Since this is not a universal problem, we need to narrow things down in order to try and solve it. So can readers (even those not experiencing this problem) please post in the comments this basic information? (I know some have done so earlier, but if you could do so again, we can have all the information in one convenient place for easier analysis.)
Once we narrow down the problem, maybe we can find a way to get rid of it, though I will likely need help since I am not a techie.
Thanks.
UPDATE:
Here are two Daily Show clips embedded differently. Can people please check and see if either or both auto play? The reason I ask is that I shifted from the second to the first method a couple of months ago when some people complained about the autoplay, hoping it would solve the problem. Now some are complaining that autoplay started a couple of months ago and I want to see if the problem lies (at least partly) with that change. If the change did not solve the original problem but created a new problem for others, then I will revert to the original embedding method.
Clip 1:
clip 2:
The Daily Show
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