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From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,

Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.

73% of 130ish applicants asian, so 94.9ish asian applicants. Let's call it 94, and 36 non-asian. Then we have 17 non-asian hires and 4 asian hires. So the question is, using random sampling without replacement from that pool of 94A and 36N, what're the odds of getting 17N and 4A?

I'm using the formulas from http://people.wku.edu/david.ne...
So in our case the figure we want is C(36,17)*C(94,4)/C(130,21) - ways to choose 17N and 4A divided by ways to choose just any 21.
Conveniently, you can google "36 choose 17" to do the calculation, but the formula for N choose K is N! / (K! * (N-K)!)
36 choose 17 is 8597496600
94 choose 4 is 3049501
so C(36,17)*C(94,4) is about 2.6218074e+16 (yeah, we lost a little precision but we can live without it)
130 choose 21 is 8.7664606e+23
So our final result is 2.62e16 / 8.77e23, or 1/3.35e7

one in 33 million isn't one in a billion, so I would also be interested in seeing their math, but the conclusion that the selection was biased seems to be fairly well supported.

The Paleo diet today isn't good for your health.
Unsurprisingly, here is a study in Nature that points out copying Paleolithic diets would not be very useful anyway (not in the least because we've evolved since then, through the Neolithic era).

The paleo diet is yet another fully trademarked fad diet.

The Paleo diet was originally known to most Australians as the CSIRO diet and it's meant for weight loss, not as a regular diet. Its the same with Paleo which has the same high protein, low carbohydrate principles. The CSIRO diet is coupled with exercise and other elements as a 12 week program. Like Paleo, it's designed to induce Ketosis which isn't a healthy state to be in for years, but is just fine for a few months whilst you drop a few kilos.

Unlike fad diets, high protein, low carb diets are proven to reduce weight when combined with moderate exercise.

I don't know why you think so.

Here's an interview on PBS: "I went to visit indigenous people and hunter-gatherers...they don’t get that much meat because hunting is hard work."

Look at the chart half-way down, of some of the hunter/gatherer tribes that still exist. There is huge variety in one they eat....some are mostly meat, some are mostly plants.
The Paleo diet today isn't good for your health.
Unsurprisingly, here is a study in Nature that points out copying Paleolithic diets would not be very useful anyway (not in the least because we've evolved since then, through the Neolithic era).

The paleo diet is yet another fully trademarked fad diet.

Ralph Williams wrote this tight little story for Astounding in 1958.

His alien engineered replicators cannot reproduce animate objects, which is their only limitation. "No assembly required." Energy is not a problem. Material resources are not a problem. Complexity is not a problem. Craftsmanship is not a problem.

Everything comes out of thin air --- except the prototype.

The department store manager navigating his way through this chaos sees this very quickly. He knows that IP rights in a world of seemingly infinite material abundance will be the one real measure of value.

He knows that the object which is trivially easy to replicate will lose its novelty quickly.

Little boxes on the hillside,

  Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

  There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Little Boxes

I disagree, we already have PNA - protein + DNA. The protein component is just more complex than a simple helix running parallel to the DNA, instead it functions to regulate the DNA.

http://bioweb.wku.edu/courses/biol566/Images/NucleosomeF09-30A.JPG

Seems that the famous interview was spot on. Remember OpenBSD has only one C++ package, and that has a good reason.

http://linux.wku.edu/~lamonml/software/cpptruth.ht ml So what is C++0x going to obfuscate now ? *ducks*

I am unsure as to why meditation, per se, would help at all with optical illusions. TM alters the brain chemistry, to a degree, but in ways I would have thought might actually make a person more likely to be susceptible.

On the other hand, what little I do know about the religion would suggest that they mistrust their senses, which means that although they may perceive an illusion, they might not readily accept that the illusion had any basis. But, since that would seem to be how they regard the rest of the Universe, the ability to distinguish on observation alone would seem to be just as limited.

I can't give a link to back the story up behind this claim, but I learned in my microbiology class that often times when the plague would come through towns in old Britain the town would be quarantined and food would be brought in. Every now and then there would be survivors. The family lines of these survivors can be tracked, and said ancestors of these survivors are found to be immune to HIV.

Why? A mutation in the MHC complex prevents HIV from attacking immune cells, much in the same way the bubonic plague would. I imagine the mutation these women have is much the same. I don't foresee a medicine based on this gene in the near as we're talking about restructuring the way immune cells work in an organism.

Viva la evolution!

Access has the most overhead according to this.

Here's a link to a discussion where the poster states that Access is not good for large installations...

You might check with IBM (DB2), Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres for help as well...I'm sure they'ld be more than happy to help.

Cross platform compatability. Students with Windoze, Linux, or Macs can run most SQL servers...not so with Access...

And then there's the corporate settings...most companies are using DB2, Oracle, MySql, or something that is ANSI-SQL compatible...not M$ SQL...

You also have more utilities and help available for SQL than Access...

There's GUI tools, schema browsers, etc all available for SQL...

If your school runs its website on a *NIX server, you could up-play the compatibility angle...you know, senior projects and such...

One major advantage of SQL is that all of the companies/organizations that I mentioned are free or have a free educational version...I doubt M$ does...

You are so deprived. The one Clear Channel station with a soul is in my market (100.5 WTFX-Louisvile, KY WARNING--Not work safe, they have a Thong of the day). Yes the Early 90's derivatives make up a portion of their playlist, but they cover everything from Sabbath and Zeplin to hair bands to grunge and on to todays bands, plus they have a kick ass lineup on Sunday nights, 2 hours of local acts and 1 hour of material that will never get rotation (Industrial, grindcore, ska, new death, etc). Between them and the college station at WKU, I actually get some kick-ass radio.

This pages say so.

Speeding up shell sort is not very exciting and hardly useful. It's the slowest of the n^2 sorts. I'm surprised no one has pointed this out. Where are the computer geeks?

Australia

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Belgium

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Germany

ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Esslingen)

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ftp://ftp.fh-giessen.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Giessen)

ftp://ftp.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/pub/os/linux/mandrak e/dist/8.2/i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Goettingen)

ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Muenster)

ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Munchen)

ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Chemnitz)

ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Clausthal)

ftp://ftp.uasw.edu/pub/os/linux/mandrake/dist/8.2/ i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (bayreuth)

ftp://ftp.uni-kassel.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Kassel)

ftp://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/systems/linux/mandrake/8 .2/i586/ (Mannheim)

ftp://ftp.vat.tu-dresden.de/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://ramses.wh2.tu-dresden.de/pub/mirrors/mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aachen)
Greece

ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Thrace)

ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Athens)
Hong Kong

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Hungary

ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Ireland

ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Italy

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ftp://ftp.edisontel.it/pub/Mandrake_Mirror/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/
Latvia

ftp://ftp.latnet.lv/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Netherlands

ftp://ftp.nl.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Man drake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Wageningen)
Poland

ftp://ftp.ps.pl/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Szczecin)

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Portugal

ftp://ftp.dei.uc.pt/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8. 2/i586/ (Coimbra)

ftp://tux.cprm.net/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Russia

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
Singapore

ftp://ftp.singnet.com.sg/opensource/linux/Mandrake /8.2/i586/
Slovakia

ftp://spirit.profinet.sk/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Bratislava)
Spain

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Sweden

ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

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Switzerland

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Taiwan

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ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Turkey

ftp://ftp.ankara.edu.tr/pub/linux/dagitimlar/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Ankara)
United Kingdom

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United States

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ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Hawaii)

http://mandrake.dsi.internet2.edu/Mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (For Internet2 academic institutions only)

clumsy-o.af
tree-and-le.af
archers-of-lo.af

Now that I have that said...

At one point or another your property (the few of you that actually own property in the USA) was probably imaged this week. Your land is probably imaged 30 or 40 times a year (especially right now where there is maximum sun and sun angles are very high). That 30-40 doesn't count being spied on the NRO or the Russians (or whomever else). Most of the pictures are so low-res that they get what they need for time-sensitive maps (crops, diseases, erosion, land types, etc) that short of you doing something outrageously odd, you'll not be bothered.

How do you think that your precious GPS navigator got its maps? It wasn't from a State Road Inventories since they are not accurate enough. It was from being overflown.

Ever see big Xs, +s or Ls painted on the pavement? Well those are there so the overflight photos can be tied to known geographic locations and the photos can be tied together to build a mosaic.

What makes this story vaguely more intresting is that it is about satelite photos, not traditional air photos. Further the USGS took the photos but the USDA got to use them.

USDA has been overflying on crop validations since at least the 1960s (perhaps as far back as the mid-1940s). How do you think the estimates of crop production get produced? Overflights by Billy-Bob in his Piper with a classic B/W Kodak IR film (roughly 10"x10" negatives, BTW) do most of the heavy lifting then some poor photogramitrist measures whatever was of interest and poof, yet another thematic map.

You folks need some sense of how the world works. Most of this has been happening since long before you were born.

-- Multics

See also:
GEOG 415-001: Air Photo Interpretation
Air Photo Interpretation
And for you EUers, Air Photo Services.

P.S. About crop insurance... go read the USDA web site before you spout about it -- no bailouts there, oh clueless ones.