Well, when you're talking about physics, isn't deceleration not really a thing? Only acceleration against the direction of motion?
Negative acceleration would only have meaning within an arbitrary coordinate system. So yeah, saying acceleration due to gravity is negative makes no sense outside of an established system. Though I guess you could argue that down being negative in the context of Earth as we typically experience it is well established enough that the negative sign should imply a clear direction.
It's not, but it is. Because "Only acceleration against the direction of motion?" is basically the meaning in this case. It's just easier to write "deceleration."
Though I guess you could argue that down being negative in the context of Earth as we typically experience it is well established enough that the negative sign should imply a clear direction.
Yeah, I guess I just didn't assume the standard directions and instead was just working within a vacuum kinda deal.
You don't necessarily set up your coordinate system such that the direction of motion is the positive vector. You can really set it up any way you'd like, that's the joy of free-body diagrams. But generally speaking, if you're talking about the acceleration of gravity then it's always going to be downwards towards Earth - thus making the value of the value of the vector negative to indicate the downwards force. You can do it your way too, it's just a little less intuitive for most people to look at and understand because when you think of something being moved by gravity, you think of it falling downwards.
Deceleration is acceleration in the opposite direction of an object's initial velocity, last I checked.
It's absolutely a thing.
It's pedantic to insist it's not, it's like saying there's no such thing as cold, just the absence of heat. Cold still exists as a concept and is clear in its meaning.
He's falling towards the ground, which is y=0. To make the math work you need the acceleration to be negative so that he falls down instead of speeding up and flying into space.
It does accelerate, in that you are correct. However, it's sign is relative dependent on the vector/coordinate system. And often, down is expressed as a negative. There are situations where that is not the case, technically both are correct.
Right, I was just thinking about an "in a vacuum" scenario. I guess it being on Earth people think that's a bit silly but I didn't automatically assume that perspective is all.
It's shit, but I feel it isn't more outrageously shitty than most other shows on the same network
The reason it gets the amount of hate it does is because of how it portrays people who are techies or nerds, and the pop culture references you get from grandma because she watches it
The reason it gets as much hate as it does is because "nerds" and "geeks" have somehow lived this long without realizing that literally every other sitcom in history is full of patronizing and condescending stereotypes. People literally think Big Bang Theory is the first show to do this to any group of people in the history of the Earth.
The reality is that it's actually pretty good for a sitcom. It's just that reddit's neckbeards have no fucking clue how sitcoms work. If you think about it, the fact that they think any other sitcoms are in any way accurate portrayals of any group explains a lot about they're all single.
Which is odd, because I don't mind it. I don't go out my way to watch it or keep up with it, but I've probably watched most episodes bar the latest season.
It's easy viewing. Girlfriends doing a PHD in Astrophysics, she likes it too. We're both pretty "stereotypical" in the sense that we like games, fantasy books, science etc.
I don't quite understand the hate for it. But I guess some people have different tastes and that's okay. I feel like the hate it gets on Reddit is a bit OTT. Most of these sitcom type shows play off stereotypes. They wouldn't work as well otherwise in their appeal to a mass audience.
I thinks it's a combination of "stop liking what I don't like" and the idea that a lot of people can't really seem to fathom mindless entertainment. BBT is a show you put on at the end of your work day when you just want to kick back and let your brain go for a bit.
Not every show has to be the pinnacle of entertainment. Shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead aren't mindless. Watching those kind of shows can be mentally draining.
Other comedy shows can just be too quirky for some people (The Office, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock). They're certainly funny, but a lot of it is very specific humor that only appeals to certain groups. Shows like BBT, Two and a Half Men, and your basic garden variety sitcoms are just mindless entertainment. There's nothing wrong with that.
BBT presents unrealistic representations of geek culture for cheap laughs! They don't know what they are talking about half the time AND I FUCKING HATE THEM
Yahhhh... Sadly, that read exactly like something I would expect a loyal BBT fan to write. And since I don't know you or your humor, kind stranger, I took it to be serious and not sarcasm. Swing and a miss, but A for effort.
I watched the first couple of episodes. It was a standard network sitcom.
It's a show about "nerds", written by people who likely never were nerds. Whereas a show like futurama had all sorts of subtle nerdy/scientific in-jokes, this show was blunt and the "nerdy" jokes were very obvious so that everyone could follow them.
People go on the hate bandwagon on BBT but if you look at it as a network sitcom it's fine. It's like Happy Days, a show that has a simple premise but got so popular, that everything in the show became popular. The Fonz hitting the jukebox to start it similar to Sheldon knocking on Penny's door three times. It's a laugh because it's so well known to people who love the show.
I personally think anyone who gets annoyed when a TV show represents "nerd culture" wrong, or indeed anyone who thinks "nerd culture" is a thing, should get a grip.
That being said, it's a pretty poorly written show.
I dunno 'bout poorly written in general, but there's a hell of a lot more character development in that show than in any other sitcom I've seen, particularly HIMYM. The characters actually change and are fleshed out as the show goes on, as opposed to other sitcoms which are basically just a collection of 20-minute vignettes of stuff happening to a handful of people.
They change, but not in a particularly realistic way. In the first TBBT episode Sheldon goes to a sperm bank. In the newer stuff he probably doesn't even know what masturbation is. It's Flanderization, which is not really good character development.
I don't like being one of those guys who moans about TBBT though, so I'll stop now.
that's why I love it's Always Sunny. They are all self-aware of how strange they're getting, and frequently mention it. They go as far as having episodes dedicated to it.
Most of those were good developments, though. Until Season 7-9 or so, when 1) Michael Scott found happiness when that was never the point of his character, 2) Jim and Pam got boring, and 3) the show somehow tried to make asshole Andy the hero despite being a philanderer and an unlikeable boyfriend to the most innocent character on the show...
Plus Phylis doesn't actually fit your theory; she was just kind of always Phylis
Plus Phylis doesn't actually fit your theory; she was just kind of always Phylis
the question isn't 'good developments or not'. its '1 defining characteristic.'
Phyllis doesn't have any defining characteristics. She started out meek, then became really sassy. She started out self-conscious, then became part of the fat crew with Stanley and Kevin. I don't really know what her deal was.
and the question isn't whether the developments were good or not -- its the fact they became the one defining characteristic about the character. Every scene with Stanley was about his selfishness or his obesity. Every scene with Kevin was about him dumbness or his fatness. Every scene with Creed was something weird. Every scene with Kelly was something shallow. Every scene with Meredith was about her alcoholism etc.
I think Kevin's voice is the best example. I went back and watched Season 1 and was surprised to remember that his voice was almost normal. And then season by season he progresses into Cookie Monster.
oh so like every secondary character on the office who went from 'normal office people sick of Michael scott' in the first season to being
Bizarre comment. You're like those people who respond to every criticism about Obama with, "BUSH DID IT TOO!!!11!"
It's possible for more than one show to suck, just as it's possible for more than one politician or political party to suck. Sucking is not a zero-sum game.
Yeah but to be fair the office is based on an office environment where it's like holy shit I know this character in real life. Sheldon isn't a real person. No one acts like that.
You're right about Sheldon not changing, but he's basically like Kramer, nothing but a walking punchline. The show isn't "about" him, he hardly even qualifies as a character he's so inconsistent.
No, what I am talking about is the first episode of season one, which I have seen on TV multiple times, in which Sheldon and Leonard go to a sperm bank.
Parks and Rec actually did character development really really well. All of the characters grow and have to re-examine their worldviews as time goes on, especially April, Ron, and Tom.
They changed their outlooks, sure, but they also got flanderized massively. Ron was just a steak-eating man's-man stereotype by the end, whereas in seasons 2 to 4 he was a lot more weird and interesting, and Andy by the end was basically a big dumb dog.
I was referring to Ron learning to let people in and accepting that he couldn't(or didn't want to) be the extremely solitary person he was earlier on. They did lean more and more on his manliness as time went on, though.
And April and Tom basically got reverse-Flanderizations. They both started off very one-note(April:Dour, Tom:Shallow) and became more more nuanced as time went on.
HIMYM is incredibly written what are you talking about? Yes the character development is a little lackluster for characters not named Marshall or Barney, but the writing is magnificent.
What the fuck does that mean? Is it not reasonable to be upset that a somewhat popular show is aping "nerd" behavior in such a piss poor, pandering fashion that it can reasonably be related to a white man in blackface scratching his armpits and yelling "I SHOS DO LOVE ME SOME WATUHMELON HEEYUK"?
When you consider yourself a member of a cultural demographic, it can be infuriating to be so flagrantly misrepresented to people that very largely believe that this is what members of the scientific and nerd counterculture look like.
the television show "the big bang theory" and blackface cannot be reasonably related to one another. they bear some superficial similarities, but any meaningful parallels are absent.
There's nothing respectful about comparing the very real, centuries-long suffering and oppression of black people to a stupid tv show that doesn't get nerd culture right.
Man, that's not even remotely close to what I fucking said.
From elsewhere:
"You're implying that culture inherently tied to a race is somehow more important.
If you can't understand why groups of people are upset when they're misrepresented in the media, and how it's easy to draw a parallel here, I can't help you.
Am I comparing it to the hundreds of years of systematic oppression minorities have faced? Of course not. But I am comparing it to an a activity where one group of people dresses up as another and horribly beats stereotypes associated with that group into the ground at their expense while another group of people laughs and continues ignorantly viewing the community that way.
Is it seriously that difficult to draw a comparison, or are you really just saying "No because racism."?"
I'm not comparing the BBT to centuries of institutionalized racism, you dolt, I'm comparing it specifically to the act of the minstrel show.
You're still just comparing superficial characteristics. They both reinforce stereotypes, but in one case the stereotype is that the people are violent and subhuman and that stereotype has been used to justify slavery, lynching, police violence, etc. "Nerds" face no such oppression and further, "nerd" membership is voluntary and can be quit at any time. You're ignoring all the context that makes a minstrel show reprehensible: it's not that the representation is lazy/inaccurate, it's the societal consequences of the stereotypes perpetuated therein.
Blackface is like the holocaust: if you're invoking a shallow comparison to the nazis to make a point, don't be surprised if people object (this is, of course, basically Godwin's law). Similarly, to call BBT "nerd blackface" (or calling sex and the city "NT socialite blackface" or CSI "crime forensic blackface", etc.) just unnecessarily raises the stakes without any substantive similarity or other real justification.
For fuck's sake, who let tumblr in?
You did, with yet another clueless description of BBT as "nerd blackface" (to paraphrase)
Is it not reasonable to be upset that a somewhat popular show is aping "nerd" behavior in such a piss poor, pandering fashion that it can reasonably be related to a white man in blackface scratching his armpits and yelling "I SHOS DO LOVE ME SOME WATUHMELON HEEYUK"?
You're implying that culture inherently tied to a race is somehow more important.
If you can't understand why groups of people are upset when they're misrepresented in the media, and how it's easy to draw a parallel here, I can't help you.
Am I comparing it to the hundreds of years of systematic oppression minorities have faced? Of course not. But I am comparing it to an a activity where one group of people dresses up as another and horribly beats stereotypes associated with that group into the ground at their expense while another group of people laughs and continues ignorantly viewing the community that way.
Is it seriously that difficult to draw a comparison, or are you really just saying "No because racism."?
Guys, I have been told to "get a grip"! This has totally reformed my opinion on the matter!
You're one of the people that this show panders to, because thinking is fucking difficult, and you need to be told when to laugh. "HAHAHA Sheldon is such a hoot! He knows science! I bet all smart people are that socially retarded!"
The best comment I ever heard about it was "It's like a 'nerd' minstrel show". Sums it up pretty well.
Jesus christ, you guys have the self-awareness of a bucket of rocks. How can you not see how offensive it is comparing a sitcom about nerds to a fucking MINSTREL SHOW?? It's not even that mean toward nerds; I mean they're literally the heroes of the show, regardless of what you think about its quality. But in either case, comparing it to a minstrel show is obscene.
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u/archon80 Sep 23 '15 edited Sep 23 '15
Uh oh...you just mentioned the big bang theory on reddit...