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An open shipping lane across the top of the world would unlock the Siberian landmass for the Russians, and then who knows what happens next...

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wa...

--#

It is basic statistics and science, and it is unescapable. Law can present equal opportunity, but if you enforce equal outcome it will require denying opportunities to males based on their gender. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wa...

I taught a course on this in Spring 2004 and my notes are still online at: http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty... (albeit handwritten and scanned). The book I was using was Palm OS Programming Bible, Second Edition. John Wiley & Son. by Lonnon R. Forster. which you could probably pick up cheap from amazon or Ebay.

The thing that convinced me something is wrong is the venus atmosphere.

This sounded interesting to me until I looked it up. Then I found the most horribly garish web page I have seen in ages produced by a statistician at SJSU. It talks about Venus and Earth and concludes that they are both experiencing temperature effects due to CO2 which agree with models. But this is what he had to say about the entire situation:

The best estimate of the rate of global warming is 0.7 of 1 ÂC per century, of which 30% or 0.2 of 1 ÂC is due to the increased intensity of the Sun's radiation. This leaves 0.5 of 1ÂC per century as the rate of global warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. This is just about the same as given by more elaborate climate projection models. However it should be noted that the current rate of increase of carbon dioxide is 0.4 of 1% per year. At this rate it will take about 176 years for the concentration of carbon dioxide to double. The climate modelers assume a rate of increase of 1% per year, which means the the level of carbon dioxide will double in about 70 years. Why do the climate modelers assume a rate of increase 2.5 times the actual rate of increase? Apparently for no other reason that it helps generate scary projections.

The problem with the notion of "scary projections" is that the unindustrialized world would very much like to industrialize, thankyouverymuch, and if they can then they will. Right now that means more carbon release. We would expect the rate of change to increase, and since there is no proposed mechanism by which the rate of fixing to increase simultaneously, let alone equivalently, we would expect CO2 levels to rise.

That would not mean pumping CO2 into our atmosphere will have no effect, only that average temperature is a poor metric by which to measure this and current theories will not be capable of making accurate predictions.

We can measure CO2 directly, although much more detailed monitoring is needed to actually understand concentrations in detail, since they are uneven. The cost of actually doing this, and in fact building small weather stations to gather more information about other interesting and important details of local weather patterns, is really not very high in comparison to other human projects. It is difficult to imagine why we have not gone ahead and written the checks on this subject so that we can better find out what is in fact happening here on Earth without invoking everyday mundane conspiracies and their influence, the good old funding shuffle.

Did you know all living things have exactly the same length of life in terms of heart beats. All animals get about 2 billion heartbeats of life.

Did you know that most factoids found on the Internet are wrong?
First, the factoid states 1 billion, not 2.
Second, it only holds remotely true when restricted to mammals.
Third, it's really not a very tight correlation between 1 billion beats and lifespan. (scroll down a bit)
Fourth, the real correlation is between energy consumption and size.
Fifth, don't believe everything you read, and please, please, don't go spouting off everything you "know."

How about launching without propellant?

That could really drop launch costs.

No Kidding.

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm

A hydrologist named Chen Xing objected to this policy on the basis that it would lead to water logging and alkinization of farm land due to a high water table produced by the dams. Not only were the warnings of Chen Xing ignored but political officials changed his design for the largest reservoir on the plains. Chen Xing, on the basis of his expertise as a hydrologist, recommended twelve sluice gates but this was reduced to five by critics who said Chen was being too conservative. There were other projects where the number of sluice gates was arbitrarily reduced significantly. Chen Xing was sent to Xinyang.

Read "sent to Xinyang" as "exiled", a punishment used since the time of the emperors.

Regarding the 1975 Dam catastrophe... Wikipedia is entirely too polite on the Chinese government's culpability in the disaster, and what happened to hydrologist Chen Xing, who warned that the dam's design was inadequate, recommending 12 sluice gates instead of the 5 implemented.

For his criticism, he was over-ridden by party officials and exiled to the western provinces.

Not exactly.

magnetic fields basics

short answer about deflecting both electrons and protons in a magnetic field

Magnetic deflection is used quite regularly on very small things (electron beams in a CRT for instance, or protons in the massive Van Allen radiation belts around Earth). Anything with a charge, though, is a magnet. Any conductor can have a current and therefore an electric field induced in it by a magnet. If you have a strong enough magnet positioned just right and time the movements just right, you can induce a current into a metal and then repel the metal rather than attract it.

There are then the diamagnetic solids, of which lead is one. In a diamagnetic object, the induced magnetic fields actually repel the object from the magnet rather than attract it. All materials are to some extent diamagnetic, but most are also to some extent ferromagnetic or paramagnetic, and are classified by their net overall effect. The velocity of a bullet fired from a pistol or rifle would be much higher than you could readily produce via diamagnetism, since diamagnetism is a pretty weak force. Given a powerful enough magnet, though, you could theoretically repel lead, copper, or a few other materials in their solid state. Good luck overcoming chemical explosives for velocity, though.

Nobody believes that but you, apparently. FDR was a wealthy elitist personally. His policies and leadership provided a light to the US citizens during a very very dark period.

Plenty of economists, you known the ones with economic training, also believe FDR lengthened the Great Depression. You want some data? Try this: The Recovery from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Look for the unemployment rate chart on that page. In 1932 unemployment was above 20% with 1933 figures a couple of percent higher before dropping a few percent in 1934. Now when did FDR enter office? On 4 March 1933. Unemployment didn't drop below 10% until 1942. FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate has more data.

Look at 1929. Unemployment then was less than 5%. In 1930 it more than doubled, then doubled again in 1931. Guess what happened in 1929? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed and signed becoming law in the US. So what? It raised tariffs on imports. So what do other nations do? They raise their own tariffs which almost shuts down international trade. All those US employees working for exporters lost their jobs. Of course to people like you that's alright, we can't lose US jobs to cheap imports.

Now look at the The National Income Accounts for the Great Depression in the U.S. chart. In 1929 US exports were 35.6, in 1930 29.4, and in 1932 was 19.1 Exports didn't reach 30 again until 1939. Investment levels didn't reach it's 1929 level, investments create employment, until 1937.

Falcon

No. I'm not actually making that mistake. I'm saying both systems are susceptible to greed. In one the individual acts greedy. In the other the state is greedy and ambitious, and at the time time takes away the freedom of the individual.

Let me give you a couple of quotes from the San Jose State University website that does a good job show what goes on in Sweden's economy and government.

The weakness of the Social Welfare State is that a large share of people's income must be taken in taxes to pay for the social services the state provides. This leaves people with the necessities taken care of but with a yearning for more income to spend at their discretion. Many Swedes have coped with this need for discretionary income by working two jobs. The main job's income is largely taken in taxes to pay for the social services. The second job's income become their real income, the income they have to spend.

To survive people have to work two jobs. Their main job accomplishes nothing more than paying their taxes. I call that servitude. It's like the peons in the feudal system. They had nothing left after paying their taxes either.

This is the most important issue in political economy. If the Welfare State has functioned to the satisfaction of the Swedish people then it is a system worthy of consideration by other industrialized countries. On the other hand, if it was serious flaws then these should be noted. While the Swedish system might be a suitable model for industrialized countries it is probably not affordable as a system for developing countries.

The long tenure of the Social Democratic Party led to a mentality of its leaders that they knew better than the people what was best for them. For example, Sweden had initially adopted the left side traffic system of Britain. When other countries adopted the right side system of France more and more problems were arising. The government called for a referendum on the issue. The Swedish public decisively voted agains the change. Nevertheless the government mandated the change and at a designated time Swedish drivers were required to cross over into the opposite lanes. The change was however accepted. But the notion of the Social Democrats that they and they alone know what is best for Sweden can be irritating. The danger is that the Social Democrats will become an elite much like the aristocracy of old.

These quotes are from the following link: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sweden.htm

This is a very mild of socialism. Yet even in it can be seen servitude to the state and the seeds of the problems found in the aristocratic form of government. The political party in control is ignoring the will of the people. Sound like current US politics?

Also, I found elsewhere that Sweden has had to do a lot of deregulation as their economy was completely failing as they moved toward complete socialism. The government was exerting so much control over business and the banks that it required squelched the economy to the point of having to devaluate their currency more than once back in the 70's. Also, the labor unions and business had to create an agreement between them or the government would have taken total control of that aspect of their economy too.

Socialism, once you let it get a toehold is very hungry for power and will soon enslave an apathetic population.

The Swedish experiment with even this mild form of socialism has been less than successful.

I, for one, hate our new cow fart powered future. :(

I miss Hugo Gernsback.

OK, I understand where you're coming from: the scrappy, small garage-based operation trying to invent the Next Big Thing, maxing out their credit cards and eating Ramen while waiting for a huge payoff.

The problem, though, is that in the 21st century, digital video and audio are like the letters and books of yesteryear. People need to be able to create and use video freely, and not have to pay to do so. It's not a matter of cost, it's a matter of principle. You have to pay for a pen and paper, but you don't pay anyone a fee for making the shapes of the Latin letters.

Imposing per-use or even lump-sump payments on freely expressing yourself via digital video is the equivalent of penmanship book publishers (like D'Nealian or Getty-Dubay) getting a commission on every writing from the Declaration of Independence to the manuscript for John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to your high school term papers.

The point is, the basic formats for communication among mankind have to be free.

http://www.math.sjsu.edu/~swann/mcsqrd.html

Sort of hard to find, but they have an address to contact the publisher, who may be still willing to run some off for you.

I learned calculus from this book... When I was 8. It's pretty good.

Competition is good?

Always?

Even when it hurts consumers, and basically everyone besides the company bottom line?

This is a level of faith in the 'invisible hand' which is, quite frankly, disturbing. (Incidentally, did you know when Smith explained how the invisible hand would secure justice for all, or which of his students did? Didn't think so.)

Hiring assasins to kill rival CEOs is not a good thing, though it may be good competition.
Lying, suing tactically and locking customers to a proprietary product are not good things either, despite how good it is for the company.

One is illegal, both are immoral.

PS: The answer to the invisible hand question is that noone has answered yet. Unhindered competition has been shown, theoretically and empirically, to lead to pretty bad consequences. See http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/downs.htm and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster, respectively.

From the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008

Leopold looked up at the arrow piercing the skin of the dirigible with a sort of wondrous dismay -- the wheezy shriek was just the sort of sound he always imagined a baby moose being beaten with a pair of accordions might make.

Shannon Wedge, New Hampshire

Please, PLEASE read the rest of the entries. Hilarious.

Really? I thought the very fact that gold kept being mined out of the ground, caused a steady inflation. Except it was uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Then you had stuff like the discovery of gold and silver mines by the Spanish in America, caused some uncontrollable bursts and fits of hyper-inflation in Spain.

I found some data here that comes to inflation between -3% and 4% per year from 1500 to 1650, with an average of about... 0.84% (350% total). Whereas if I go to the first google result for "Inflation Calculator", I see that we've had 360% cumulative inflation since 1976, or about 4% per year.

Recent inflation averages 5 times as high as this "Spanish Hyperinflation" (or if I use the shadowstats numbers about 6% or 7% per year, so 8 times the Spanish hyperinflation).

Or read a bit about the Black Death outbreaks. Unemployment practically disappeared, as there were not enough peasants and craftsmen for the nobles to employ. Prices shot up. There was some _massive_ inflation in the 14'th and 15'th centuries. (Which also provides some early illustration for that curve at work.)

Sure. Fewer people equals more money per person equals higher prices. Fewer people also equals more land (capital) per person which makes it easier to get use of the capital you need in order to work. No causal relation between the inflation and the unemployment, since there's a third change driving them both.

At any rate, heck, your government (assuming you're in a western country) still applies that curve quite successfuly. Again, that's how and why we all control inflation. But, at the very least, there you go, most governments still didn't abandon it at all.

Right, they didn't abandon it. Which means that if it worked, we wouldn't get stagflation and jobless recoveries.

Here's a recent cryptanalysis of SIGABA:

http://www.sjsu.edu/mscs/research/projects/chan_wing-on.pdf

In normal use, it appears to have had a keyspace of about 48 bits, which is not easy to attack now with a modest distributed effort, but way out of the reach of WWII technology.

However, a variant of the machine used for communication between the US President and British PM had an effective keyspace of 95+ bits, which (if you have access to some known plaintext) can be reduced to 86 bits, which although shorter than key lengths in common use today is still out of reach.

He wants to go back on the gold standard. Because, yunno, we never had any economic problems in the 19th century.

No, but we had the Great Depression while we were on the Gold Standard. And the US did have depressions in the 1800s. There was one in 1807, another in 1837, and two more in 1873 and 1893.

For those insisting someone track the rocks with GPS, check out this web page with a list of GPS paths for about 162 individual rocks (work done circa 1996). For those still interested, be sure and check out the associated Ph.D. dissertation and detailed California Geology article linked at that site. Still no web cams, but this animation is amusing (but probably staged).

For those insisting someone track the rocks with GPS, check out this web page with a list of GPS paths for about 162 individual rocks (work done circa 1996). For those still interested, be sure and check out the associated Ph.D. dissertation and detailed California Geology article linked at that site. Still no web cams, but this animation is amusing (but probably staged).

Becoming a multi-subject teacher and a single-subject teacher is a completely different process. From your description, it sounds as if you were looking at the multi-subject credential. Most people can get a single-subject credential in
nine months. Here is a link to a science single-subject credential.

However, the process of attaining a multi-subject credential is a ton of work--you have to take and pass
the CSET, CBEST, and RICA; you need to have certain certifications like being TB negative and having a CPR certification; and you need to be actively student-teaching and enrolled in a multi-credential program.

The schools near me start paying around $45,000; whereas the highest paid teachers are paid around $90,000.

barium titanate has an extremely high dielectric constant of around 5000 at room temperature. see http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/selvaduray/page/papers /mate115/hsiaolin.pdf

This is hundres of times more than polystyrene, but the challeng is still formidable:

A cap with 320Wh/kg or 1GJ/m^3 or 1kJ/cm^3 at 3kV would require:

C/cm^3=0.7Farad

Since C=k*e0*A/d, e0=8.8E-12, k=5000
we get C(BaTiO3)/cm^3=4.4E-8*A/d
and with A*d=1cm^3 (not all of the cap can be dielectric so this is a ceiling)we get:
A=4m^2 and d=250nm

So with d=250nm, and U=3kV, the voltage across the dielectric is 12GV/m. Breakdown voltage for most ceramics are less than 300MV/m.

This would imply less than 1% the capacity claimed. Still an incredible feat, but the car would only go a few km.

It is rather off topic, but I'll answer as best I can:

How much money is there in the United States?

This is actually harder to answer than you may think. There are many measurements of the amount of cash in an economy - M0, M1, M2, etc. Each includes/excludes various things: for example, banks take a deposit and then loan the money out again. So should that money be counted twice? It turns out that if you are trying to control an economy, the answer is "yes." And in the real world, instead of being twice, it is more like ten times (not understanding that is the direct cause of the great depression). M1 is about $1.5T, M3 is about $10T

To what percentage of currently existing, freely exchanged cash do corporations aspire to?

Unfortunately, this is the wrong question. Obviously, they aspire to all of it - but that is not useful, because you are erroneously assuming a zero sum game. The implicit contract that a corporation (or anyone else) has with society is this: you create value to society, and then we haggle over who gets to keep what fraction. In the US economy, there is a side deal that says: and in the end, society gets the value (primarily because we don't allow monopolies and powerful families indefinately, like they do in most of the world). The key issue here, though, is that corporations create value.

For example, you work and get paid $X. You are willing to trade your time for the $X because the money is worth more to you than the time. The corporation pays you because your time is worth more to them than the money. At the end of the day, the corporation is better off because of your labor (the value of the labor minus the value of your salary is a positive number), and you are better off with the money (the value of the money to you minus the value of the labor to you is a positive number). So society (which includes all the players) is better off - the only real argument is did you get more of the value or did the corporation? And to a certain point, that is only vanity anyway - who is to say which of you "deserves" more? You can make identical arguments about the sale of a product, like an Ipod - every transaction that does not involve coercion creates a net gain for society.

how many of the recessions have been caused by corporate greed?

None of them. As I have shown (I hope), corporations do not have any control over that. The Fed can cause recessions through bad monetary policy - they almost certainly directly caused the great depression (we have learned a lot since then, but we are still not infallible). After the Fed, the number two determinant of a recession is consumer confidence. When the herd gets restless, we have a recession - all the Fed can do is try to soften it. Really, corporations hate recessions even more than you do, and would prevent them if they could. (There is something to be said about business cycles actually strengthening the economy by threatening to cull the herd, but I don't see corporations being that altruistic...)

One final point, if you really think that corporations get an unfair percentage of the profits, then invest! That is by far the easiest way to change things in your favor. If you can't / don't want to do that, start your own company - that is another great way to change the equations in your favor.

Remember for every $1 you invest in stocks now, you can draw $1 per year for the rest of your life after 25 years! Do the math! (This assumes a 10% growth rate of the economy - 1.1^25=10.8, so you get 10.8 times return after 25 years at 10% - after that, you can draw out 10% each year [the growth of your money] without ever touching the principle.)

To show the sensitivity of this to the growth rate here are the years you have to wait to be getting yearly income equal to your initial investment at different rates:

5% - 65 years
6% - 50 years
7% - 40 years
8% - 33 years
9% - 2

Autodesk was a market leader and a real Silicon Valley 80s-90s wonder. One of the great things that came out of it, indirectly, was the book "The Hacker and the Ants" by Rudy Rucker which had some obvious inspiration from the time Rucker spent at Autodesk. The CEO at that time John Walker is a remarkable guy. As a bunch of people have already pointed out, they are long past market relevance (except for legacy lockin issues) so this is sad, but they were at one time quite the acme of geekdom.

I went to a talk by the V.P. of Yahoo search R&D last Thursday, who had something to say about this. The current new thing in search is recognizing certain classes of common queries and understanding them at a deeper level than word matching. The main examples were performers, for which the search engine offers ways to view, listen, and buy their works, and cities, which brings up map and location related information. Sports related queries bring up current sports scores. There are a few tens of special cases like this in Yahoo now. That's about the level at which "semantics" are currently understood. Yahoo would like to make this more general.

There's much interest in "search personalization", but other than for ads, nobody really has a good idea on how to make that work without making it too annoying. There's search history use, where the recent history of your searches influences the results of your next search. But that has the downside that searches become nonrepeatable; the same search done twice can produce different results, depending on what happened in the interim.

Ever-smarter ad targeting, though, is coming. The user's history can be used profitably for selecting ads, and that's the most likely near-term application.

So that's the Yahoo perspective on "Web 3.0", and no, the Yahoo speaker didn't use the term.

These types of nonlinear differential equations are usually very simple in form, and, most importantly, very local, as that is how most biological interaction is mediated. The parameter tweaking should not be considered too alarming when one considers that the number of biological parameters, in the sense of genetic material, involves thousands of degrees of freedom.

A short (but good) web site about this can be found here. The interpretation of these formulas is fairly trivial, as they describe a diffusion process (common in all biological systems) with a somewhat more complex reactive process, which could be mediated through all kinds of channels.

This is not akin to fitting a polynomial to the shape of a bone and calling that a "model" - there are obvious interpretations which correspond to very well known processes.

Stereotypes are part of human psychology because, more often than not, they are statistically the right thing to think. If you buy into Bayesian reasoning, every statement has a "prior" value - a degree of belief assigned to it before any actual information on that statement has been gathered.

It is the experience of most individuals that true computer 'geeks' are rare among females, and therefore it is especially surprising to find one. Many of the few female CS majors I knew while doing my degree were anything but computer geeks (indeed I think they were very much bothered by them).

In most situations these stereotypes help an individual because a male geek is less likely to start spouting unappreciated computer nonsense out to a random female until and unless he has reason to believe (sometimes incredulously) that she would "get" it.

Another factor is that it seems (though this is a bit contraversial) that while the average intelligences of males and females are the same, that the standard deviation is somewhat higher for males. So there are fewer "genius" level females, but also fewer "idiot" level males. There is a hypothesis that this may be explained by X chromosome-linked genetic factors, which have much higher variation when a single gene is present (in males) than in females. Another explaination is that males are born in a ratio that's totally unnecessary, which explains why males are much more likely to engage in risky behavior, and possibly even express genetic traits in a more risky fashion. This article has a bit more along those lines, though I cannot vouch for its authority.

I really hate how political correctness has surpressed studies of these types of things - I'm very much a feminist and believe it is important to continue to advance the rights of females, after all even conservatives should see that it's important to make the best use out of your population. I really hate seeing someone get in trouble for saying these things are issues that should be studied.

L7_ is correct. We had a choice between Physics, Experimental physics, or Computational physics. I forget what exactly it says on my diploma that distinguishes it but it is all the same dept. It really was just the choice of electives and a research topic. The research was optional but it was the single most valuable piece of work I did in college.

If I were to go back i would have done something more like this. http://www.stanford.edu/group/mathcompsci/intro.ht ml

Also, if you are looking for a good terminal masters there is this program.http://www.physics.sjsu.edu/degreeprogs.ht ml

What do you mean by this? I assume TCA is Transaction Cost Analysis?

A couple of Thermotron http://www.thermotron.com/ ovens,
some Omega controls http://www.omega.com/
all hooked up by their industry standard ethernet interface http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/i to_doc/ethernet.htm
to a PC http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/pc.htm
and you have the same thing for less money.

Tell NASA to shoot for the moon NOT the moonpie!

The above recalled Rudy Rucker's early, first(?) novel Software. The plot carries your idea along the following lines:

"Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb."

Rucker's background gave him more insight into the idea of mapping consciousness than "Dixie Flatline's construct" William Gibson came up with.

The ideas propagated in epistemology, (as it refers to the theory of knowledge not the methodology of science), have eaten up big chunks of my time since my mid teens. Presently I'm trying to come a working definition of information, more so in the context of entropy and negentropy, as it applies to life. The going has been slow. Recently I've read through quite a bit of Complexity theory (Santa Fe Institute, S. Kaufman et al) and am poking around at ideas of memory and attractor basins. The same old story the more I learn, the less I know. We, as sentient beings, seem to need to relate through stories and broad context. Factor in Antonio Damasio's work on the importance of emotion in knowing and decision making, and, the idea of modelling consciousness becomes, to me, presently impossible.

cheers, thanks for the input.

I just started my upper-division work at a uni similiar to Smartypants U. My earlier experiences, however, include:

1. Top AP scores (5) on Calculus AB and Physics, and a really good (4) score on English Lit/Comp.
2. Four semesters of partial failure at my first Smartypants U, much of which didn't transfer.
3. Computer-type vocational training at a Community College (that didn't transfer at all), and finally:
4. 30 or so hours at another CC to finish up an Engineering Associate's and make damn sure my time at the uni was minimized (i.e. no GE, nothing at the uni that I could take at the CC).

What I've learned from all this is that the CC is the best value for the time and the money from both a hours-treadmill perspective and from a "what you actually learn" perspective. Period. Too many full-on universities (or at least uni profs) ignore the educational needs of their students, and Engineering, CS and other Math and Science-related degrees are too damned hard to entrust smart students to people who don't care.

Community college instructors, on the other hand, generally have no writing/research requirement, and often have interesting day jobs that directly relate to their material. They are generally better at teaching (as opposed to researching), and there are never any TAs that the class is pawned off onto. Lecture-hall classes of hundreds of students are unheard of (common in lower-division at big unis), and class sizes are generally smaller overall. At best, CC instructors match up nicely with the better uni profs, and at worst, they're at least waaaay less expensive and distracted.

Furthermore, if you live in a state where the CC and uni systems are tight (like in California), there are things like direct course articulation (e.g. http://artic.sjsu.edu/ and general ed certification, so you can plan for and avoid transfer pitfalls. And CCs are at least an order of magnitude cheaper. As long as you stick to stuff that will transfer, you (and whoever's financing you) WILL be happier at a CC than slogging your way through lower-division at a big uni.

I enthusiastically recommend CCs to all incoming freshmen and to anyone returning to school with lower-division left to complete, doubly so if their planned major is tough. CCs might not get much respect in the academic world, but they are far and away the best bridge from the generally conscientious (and professional) educators in high school to the part-time, often lackluster educators in big unis. While not necessarily all CC instructors are top-drawer, they're far better as a class than those at Smartypants U, and far cheaper.

My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.

My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.

By the way, if you want more info on the history of the contest, go to the the Bulwer-Lytton home page .

You reply is a logical fallacy, shifting the burden of proof. See:
http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/burd en.html

I'll bite anyway.

The harm is not the "not seeing" but the infringement of the liberty to choose whether or not to cover specific parts of the body. At a time still in human memory - albeit just barely - it was considered indecent in American society to display the adult female ankle. Would you argue that this was a reasonable restriction at the time? If social mores were to change to regard facial hair as obscene, would public display of a moustache be legitimate grounds for a public indecency arrest?

Check out his site

Titled "The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair" produced by Westinghouse in 1939 as a promotion for their exhibit. I own a copy. It has a wonderful anticommunist sub-plot. Great fun.

It's known that nature uses reaction-diffusion techniques to generate camouflage patterns for animals. This was noted by Alan Turing. It wouldn't be too surprising to see if this occurred inside cells as well. There's an interesting 3D demo to see what reaction-diffusion equations can do in real-time. Perhaps the pharamceutical companies will have to figure out ways of generating such signalling patterns.

Would that be sjsu? Because your description sounds very familiar.

That wasn't due to an evil corporation though so it doesn't count.

Article

Over 85 thousand died as a result of the dam failures. There was little or no time for warnings. The wall of water was traveling at about 50 kilometers per hour or about 14 meters per second. The authorities were hampered by the fact that telephone communication was knocked out almost immediately and that they did not expect any of the "iron dams" to fail.

Article

KARABOLKA, Russia - One of the world's ghastliest nuclear accidents happened just upwind of here, in a nameless atomic city that never appeared on a map, when an explosion of radioactive sludge produced a toxic plume that contaminated a quarter of a million people.

.... really, it boils down to a matter of "perceived" vs. "average" risk.

The technologies available to dispose nuclear waste, imperfect as they are, render the risk comparable, in terms of damages, to alternatives ways to obtain the same amount of usable energy in comparable quantities.

the point is that the human being is incapable to assess low probability events .

As you said, you see the same psychology at work in air transport: people that habitually use a car (and drive recklessly, BTW) regard air travel as "dangerous", while statistically just the opposite is true.

I think that's incorrect. If one thinks of it, Spain shouldn't have had that much difficulty with gold since gold was a desired product in the rest of Europe. It was widely used in jewelry and had value anywhere on three different continents. Second, according to these figures inflation in Spain was on the order of a factor of four over 150 years. That's around 1% inflation per year, if true.

Instead, the likely culprits seem the military adventurism of the Spanish kings (including such debacles as the Spanish Armada, the routine piracy of Spanish treasure fleets, and the struggle over Holland, southern Italy and other scattered possessions), the drain of the bureaucratic structures of the empire, the risk adverse nature of religion in Spain at that time, and probably considerable bad economic policy of Spain.

Spain actually received an immediate payoff from its conquests. That's how it could fund such things as the Armada invasion against England. Rather than investing in the future, Spain squandered this vast windfall.

Many people here have listed city, county, state and federal data sources, but I didn't read mention of GIS Data or "Geodata" Collaboratives.

Throughout the country, regional councils of government (known by names such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Association of Governments (AGs) and Council of Governments (COGs)) are forming, or have formed GIS Councils that administrate "GIS Collaboratives" in concert with, or at the direction of State GIS Councils/Commissions and the Federal Geographic Data Committee

These collaboratives contain GIS data from their member city, county and special district governments.

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REGIONAL COUNCILS maintains a directory of these regional councils of government. Here are a few examples from my neck of the woods:

• (SANDAG)San Diego Association of Governments
• (ABAG) Association of Bay Area Governments
• (SACOG) Sacramento Area Council of Governments

Many people here have listed city, county, state and federal data sources, but I didn't read mention of GIS Data or "Geodata" Collaboratives.

Throughout the country, regional councils of government (known by names such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Association of Governments (AGs) and Council of Governments (COGs)) are forming, or have formed GIS Councils that administrate "GIS Collaboratives" in concert with, or at the direction of State GIS Councils/Commissions and the Federal Geographic Data Committee

These collaboratives contain GIS data from their member city, county and special district governments.

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REGIONAL COUNCILS maintains a directory of these regional councils of government. Here are a few examples from my neck of the woods:

• (SANDAG)San Diego Association of Governments
• (ABAG) Association of Bay Area Governments
• (SACOG) Sacramento Area Council of Governments

The post WWII US dominance was due to military funding of the cold war and the so called "spunik generation". Americans who went into science because of Russia launching the first rockets.

US mainland received no substantial attacks during WWI - so the economy dominated the world. More money was left for corporate R&D.

Asia - in particlar China + Taiwan will dominate the end of the century scientifically if degrees are any indicator. 1 in 6 Chinese degrees go to Engineering or Science. Most US Phds in sciences go to Asians (Primarily Chinese). They are increasingly heading home after finishing their Phds.

The only question is that historically Chinese have not focused on basic research - prefering practical applications of technology such as the steelyard, abacus, ceramics, papermaking, printing, the compas, oil rigs, etc

I am sure Dr Arrow is proud! For more info on Arrow's paradox click Here.

Dec. 31, 1903, 6:00 PM

Which may be the default for the Central time zone.

Do I really need those files anymore? Well sure! Some of them are old entries for the Bulwer Lytton Contest, and you never know when I'll have enough to collect for section of a short story collection. Plus, you know that as soon as I throw away a file, I'll need it the next day. That's just how things work.

This is one of the many, many reasons why I've gone from a 60 Meg to a 60 Gig hard drive. ;-)

Quill essentially affirms Bellas Hess.

There's a four-prong "Complete Auto" test which has been used as a criterion for the validity of state taxes on interstate commerce:

1. The tax must be applied to an activity with a "substantial nexus" with the taxing state
2. The tax must provide fair apportionment between the states
3. The tax must not discriminate against interstate commerce
4. The tax must be fairly related to services provided by the taxing state

Relevant quotes from the cases:

State taxation falling on interstate commerce ... can only be justified as designed to make such commerce bear a fair share of the cost of the local government whose protection it enjoys.

... The Court has never held that a State may impose the duty of use tax collection and payment upon a seller whose only connection with customers in the State is by common carrier or the United States mail.

... If Illinois can impose such burdens, so can every other State, and so, indeed, can every municipality, every school district, and every other political subdivision throughout the Nation with power to impose sales and use taxes.

The very purpose of the Commerce Clause was to ensure a national economy free from such unjustifiable local entanglements. Under the Constitution, this is a domain where Congress alone has the power of regulation and control.

Other references:

Annette Nellen's Home Page, especially Timeline Review of Activities Related to Discussions on Internet Taxation

Sales and Use Taxation of Internet Transactions

In other news, Barnes & Noble Inc. has offered to buy back the shares of BN.com -- could this eventually mean BN.com will have to collect sales taxes on internet sales to all states which have Barnes & Noble retail stores?

Quill essentially affirms Bellas Hess.

There's a four-prong "Complete Auto" test which has been used as a criterion for the validity of state taxes on interstate commerce:

1. The tax must be applied to an activity with a "substantial nexus" with the taxing state
2. The tax must provide fair apportionment between the states
3. The tax must not discriminate against interstate commerce
4. The tax must be fairly related to services provided by the taxing state

Relevant quotes from the cases:

State taxation falling on interstate commerce ... can only be justified as designed to make such commerce bear a fair share of the cost of the local government whose protection it enjoys.

... The Court has never held that a State may impose the duty of use tax collection and payment upon a seller whose only connection with customers in the State is by common carrier or the United States mail.

... If Illinois can impose such burdens, so can every other State, and so, indeed, can every municipality, every school district, and every other political subdivision throughout the Nation with power to impose sales and use taxes.

The very purpose of the Commerce Clause was to ensure a national economy free from such unjustifiable local entanglements. Under the Constitution, this is a domain where Congress alone has the power of regulation and control.

Other references:

Annette Nellen's Home Page, especially Timeline Review of Activities Related to Discussions on Internet Taxation

Sales and Use Taxation of Internet Transactions

In other news, Barnes & Noble Inc. has offered to buy back the shares of BN.com -- could this eventually mean BN.com will have to collect sales taxes on internet sales to all states which have Barnes & Noble retail stores?

I wonder what, if any, effect the draining of the fresh water lake into the sea will have on "the global conveyer. There was some speculation that the melting ice caps will release so much fresh water into the system the salinity and temperature difference that dries this engine will break down, and the CO2 that it deposits in the deep water will also stop. Is anyone an oceanologist?