darth_logical

I am wondering, for very large ship keels (cruise ship, container ship, etc), do the ship building companies have facilities to pour/construct the keels themselves, or is this done by separate foundries? If done separately, does anyone know the names of any of these foundries which make very large ship keels?

When speaking of two people who graduated from the same college or university, is there one word you can use to refer to that connection? ("common alumni" or something to that effect, but one word or term)

Years ago I remember playing with a website where you could build virtual geometric shapes/frames out of lines, and the lines were 'springs' which became longer and shorter corresponding to a sine wave at the bottom of the screen. If you built carefully, you could make little walking shapes, or Ferris wheels, various wire-frame animate objects. You could adjust the strength of each spring, and gravity too. Does anyone remember this site or know if it's still up?

I am a life-long english speaker, but someone recently asked me if there is a rule for when to pronounce the "ed" at the end of a word and I realized I was not sure what to tell them. For example, "revealed" is pronounced a little like "reveal-d", but "tasted" is more like "taste-ehd". Does anyone know a/the rule for determining when you do and don't emphasize the "-ed" in english?

A windmill takes alot of steel to make, and is not always a very efficient energy source. I'm wondering if anyone knows about how long it would take to recuperate the energy spent in its creation, given a common model of windmill and average set of wind conditions, etc.

I live on the second floor of a two-story apartment. I would love to get a punching bag, but am worried that it will make too much noise for the people downstairs. This is a long shot, but has anyone here dealt with this issue before? Any suggestions as to a good model I can get? I don't want to get penalized for messing with the apartment so I don't think I can mount one into the ceiling.

Ok, we all understand. If I'm in a real fight, I'm not going to try to knock the person down with a fancy 360 inside crescent kick.

But, in my decade or so of Taekwondo training, I learned many, many other techniques (joint-locks, arm-breaks, punches, elbows, etc) which would be effective in that situation.

I can only assume people are looking at sport taekwondo and then stereotyping an entire martial art discipline by what they see there. I'm sorry, but watching fights on TV does NOT make you an expert in judging whether one is always completely effective against another.

I understand that there are a huge number of TKD schools across the nation, and sadly, many of them are indeed belt factories, but don't write off an ancient, efficient, and deadly martial art just because of that.

PS: I'm not looking for polemics, "because it sucks" is not an answer, it's a commentary on the intelligence of the answerer.

I have noticed that there seem to be a few very prevalent patterns of thought (among serious answerers) in Answers, and I wondered if anyone else had observed this as well, and what conclusions you drew from it.

Recently I've been increasingly attracted to rock (hard rock, not pop rock) groups that incorporate a minor (what you might call eastern, perhaps) sound into their music.

Does anyone know of bands that use this sound that I might enjoy?

I'm open to recommendations.

Thanks.

I'm not allowed to chat while at work, and I don't want google chat to keep automatically trying to connect as if I'm trying to do so.

Is there any way to disable the auto-connect feature?

I've looked in my settings but didn't see that listed as an option.

I have played the piano for several years, and especially enjoy Classical. Lately, I've been interested in learning to play Jazz as well, but I have a feeling that there's much more to it than just memorizing Jazz songs. What have you all found to be the best approach/theory to take in learning Jazz for the piano? Thanks-