>Superman = invincible person who has magic powers for no other reason than accident of birth beats up people with advanced PhDs.
To be fair, Peter Parker wanted to get a science PhD as well. (Nitpick: It also wasn't an accident of birth, but a scientific accident, that gave him his superpowers.)
>>Utter nonsense. I remember perusing the print version of the Bulleting in my college library a few years ago, and it was anything but a knee-jerk, "scare-mongering" publication on nuclear issues
From the article: "Over the decades, as new excess cancers have emerged in the atomic-bomb cohort at lower and lower doses, the number that defines Ã'low doseÃ" has shrunk fivefold to its current value of 0.1 Sv. At the same time, the estimated risk has risen tenfold since 1980;8 thus, it is of little surprise why there is continuing concern about low-dose radiation. So the natural question is: When will the estimated-risk increases stop?"
Yeah, this is a bit hyperventalition-y.
My bigger issue with it is that it discusses in detail papers that agree with their obviously a priori conclusion, and merely reference but do not discuss papers that disagree with their conclusion. So the bias is indeed there.
>Spending your money to support people who advocate ideas you believe in has been declared a form of protected expression of your political ideas, broadly lumped under the freedom of speech.
Handing a bag of money to a politician to get laws you want written is bribery.
I was talking with a history professor (rljensen) the other day, and he said that free textbook ebooks would never catch on because, quote, "They're all terrible. And if they weren't terrible, they'd be selling them."
Hopefully sites like this will not only prove him wrong, but bring education, world-wide, to the next level.
Unfortunately, not all judges in Sab Diego are openminded about physics.
My dad once tried to explain why linear interpolation of speed from two frames in a red light cam (after the light was red) was terrible math (it couldn't handle acceleration), the judge just told him he really didn't care.
>>Since people are already using brick and mortar stores as showrooms to try before buying online, maybe that's what BB needs to embrace in order to survive.
Well, they do, kinda. They have a bunch of tablets out on their showroom floor, only half of which they have in stock. The rest they drop ship to you, or you can order to go into the store to pick up.
I don't understand people that would buy tech products like tablets or laptops sight unseen. The UI and touch of a device is really important to me, and I've nixed a number of products who had all the right specs just because I found something in person that annoyed the shit out of me.
>>even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.
>I wish calorie information was on all foods, everywhere
Ditto. There's absolutely no reason that big businesses can't create calorie counts for all of their foods. (Small businesses, yes, it can be expensive.)
My main gripe is that they don't list caffeine content on foods. Mormons want to avoid it, college students want to ingest more of it. Everyone has an interest.
>Blaming the teachers' unions proves you are a fucking retard who listens to too much Rush Limbaugh.
Teachers Unions can be a problem. I work with school districts around the country. Most of them are fine, but some can and do completely cockblock any positive change in the district.
>It's because the schools themselves are physically falling apart.
Fucking A', dude. Talking about being a retard who listens to too much bullshit. Schools are *not* physically falling apart. Every election cycle, the teachers unions run bullshit ads showing kids cowering underneath a downpour of rain hitting them in the classroom, but this is (gasp) a gross exaggeration.
Yes, there's serious maintenance issues. No, kids are not having to deal with schools without running water, unless that shit just broke like yesterday.
>Retardicans who demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a fucking dime of taxes to support it.
There's almost no correlation between per pupil funding and school performance, except on the really low end.
>LEARN TO BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT
Thank you for subscribing to the Democrat Party line. Text messages containing talking points will be sent to your phone every day, for the low rate of $1/text.
>>The whole point of this is that you don't need to know anything about somebody's family status, sexuality, national origin, and so on in order to get to know somebody beyond the basics.
Reminds me of a friend who was applying for a job at Microsoft. Long story short, this big Russian guy on the interviewer panel starts laughing and asks him if he's gay, as a sort of off the cuff response to something my friend said.
There's a long pause from the panel, and then one of the interviewers says, "Yeah, I think we're going to be hiring you."
>You don't need to do it yourself. Call a solar installer, and they will come for free and measure everything. They don't need to wait for the whole year because there is only one Sun for all on Earth.
Yep, they're required by law (at least here in CA) to do it before they do an installation, in fact. They need to run all the math to find out what the rated capability of the system actually is. They can't just use the nominal rating of the PV panels.
It's called a solar site survey or obstacle survey, something like that.
It's really important for them to get it right, too, since if your system underperforms (I think less than 80% of the rated capacity), you can get your money back and they have to uninstall the system on their own nickel.
>>Lets move away from an hour based work schedule to a task and accomplishment based work/pay system.
It's called being an independent contractor.
I am one (I run a small corporation that teaches teachers technology), and it's wonderful. I get all my work done, I never miss a deadline or fail to meet a responsibility, and then I get paid. On my own schedule. Without having to sit in an airless office, waiting for 5PM to arrive. Or have pointless meetings.
Walk around. Vary the intonation of your voice. If you need to use PowerPoint, don't make it text heavy, but just put up the brief points you want them to memorize.
I give 10 or 20 workshops every year around the country, and I can usually capture the interest of an audience without needing PowerPoint.
>>We can whine all we want about the 40 hour work week, but no one is willing to unionize in order to get back to i
But then we'd have unions, which are as big a problem as unpaid overtime.
A better solution would be to put together a lobby to eliminate exclusions for unpaid overtime for certain classes of workers. Like IT workers, who are explicitly called out in the law as not getting overtime.
This has been around for a while, actually. The CLEAR program was $100/year, not $100 for one-time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Traveler)
And you've always been able to buy your way into the fast lane by upgrading your ticket. $100 is cheap compared to what even a single first class ticket would cost you.
To be honest, this program doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Doctrine of Laches. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29)
If this pub has been around for 20 years and they haven't sued them in this time, the pub could assert that the owners have slept on their rights, and that the delay in bringing the suit would cost them a lot of money.
>>Geoengineering to prevent warming doesn't do anything to slow down ocean acidification
I know. That's why I said, "it won't lower our CO2 emissions", which is still an important issue.
But suggesting that genetically engineering humans to *hate the taste of beef* is a better solution than pumping some SO4 into the stratosphere is just laughable.
Slashdot Mirror
My parents read Madeline L'Engle, CS Lewis, etc., for about an hour every day in the evening. It was absolutely wonderful.
You make an interesting point about maybe it wasn't as fun for them, but I suspect they enjoyed it just as much. I'll ask them.
I know I'll enjoy reading to my daughter when she's old enough... but then again I like DMing in D&D as well.
>Superman = invincible person who has magic powers for no other reason than accident of birth beats up people with advanced PhDs.
To be fair, Peter Parker wanted to get a science PhD as well. (Nitpick: It also wasn't an accident of birth, but a scientific accident, that gave him his superpowers.)
I read Spiderman as a parable for grad school.
>>Utter nonsense. I remember perusing the print version of the Bulleting in my college library a few years ago, and it was anything but a knee-jerk, "scare-mongering" publication on nuclear issues
From the article: "Over the decades, as new excess cancers
have emerged in the atomic-bomb
cohort at lower and lower doses, the
number that defines Ã'low doseÃ" has
shrunk fivefold to its current value of
0.1 Sv. At the same time, the estimated
risk has risen tenfold since 1980;8 thus,
it is of little surprise why there is continuing
concern about low-dose radiation.
So the natural question is: When will
the estimated-risk increases stop?"
Yeah, this is a bit hyperventalition-y.
My bigger issue with it is that it discusses in detail papers that agree with their obviously a priori conclusion, and merely reference but do not discuss papers that disagree with their conclusion. So the bias is indeed there.
To paraphrase the joke -
Q: What is the fastest way to become a millionaire?
A: Start as a billionaire, and get into the cruise ship business.
>Spending your money to support people who advocate ideas you believe in has been declared a form of protected expression of your political ideas, broadly lumped under the freedom of speech.
Handing a bag of money to a politician to get laws you want written is bribery.
Yes, he's written a number of books.
I was talking with a history professor (rljensen) the other day, and he said that free textbook ebooks would never catch on because, quote, "They're all terrible. And if they weren't terrible, they'd be selling them."
Hopefully sites like this will not only prove him wrong, but bring education, world-wide, to the next level.
Libertarianism isn't anarchism.
Unfortunately, not all judges in Sab Diego are openminded about physics.
My dad once tried to explain why linear interpolation of speed from two frames in a red light cam (after the light was red) was terrible math (it couldn't handle acceleration), the judge just told him he really didn't care.
>>Since people are already using brick and mortar stores as showrooms to try before buying online, maybe that's what BB needs to embrace in order to survive.
Well, they do, kinda. They have a bunch of tablets out on their showroom floor, only half of which they have in stock. The rest they drop ship to you, or you can order to go into the store to pick up.
I don't understand people that would buy tech products like tablets or laptops sight unseen. The UI and touch of a device is really important to me, and I've nixed a number of products who had all the right specs just because I found something in person that annoyed the shit out of me.
>>even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.
1d4
>>Plus there is no chance of being sued for deformation
Oh, thank goodness!
>>Tells you about the rigor of climate science, that's for certain.
Well, kinda. It depends how much accuracy you're really expecting from predictions of the future.
Hansen (1981) underpredicted the temperatures by about 30%. Hansen (1988) overpredicted by about the same.
Skeptical Science has a good analysis of why this happened:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction-advanced.htm
>>as consumers compete with their dollars to fuel their farm tractors and war tanks
Well, you know those consumers with their war tanks. Drive them to the mall any chance they get.
>I wish calorie information was on all foods, everywhere
Ditto. There's absolutely no reason that big businesses can't create calorie counts for all of their foods. (Small businesses, yes, it can be expensive.)
My main gripe is that they don't list caffeine content on foods. Mormons want to avoid it, college students want to ingest more of it. Everyone has an interest.
>Blaming the teachers' unions proves you are a fucking retard who listens to too much Rush Limbaugh.
Teachers Unions can be a problem. I work with school districts around the country. Most of them are fine, but some can and do completely cockblock any positive change in the district.
>It's because the schools themselves are physically falling apart.
Fucking A', dude. Talking about being a retard who listens to too much bullshit. Schools are *not* physically falling apart. Every election cycle, the teachers unions run bullshit ads showing kids cowering underneath a downpour of rain hitting them in the classroom, but this is (gasp) a gross exaggeration.
Yes, there's serious maintenance issues. No, kids are not having to deal with schools without running water, unless that shit just broke like yesterday.
>Retardicans who demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a fucking dime of taxes to support it.
There's almost no correlation between per pupil funding and school performance, except on the really low end.
>LEARN TO BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT
Thank you for subscribing to the Democrat Party line. Text messages containing talking points will be sent to your phone every day, for the low rate of $1/text.
>>The whole point of this is that you don't need to know anything about somebody's family status, sexuality, national origin, and so on in order to get to know somebody beyond the basics.
Reminds me of a friend who was applying for a job at Microsoft. Long story short, this big Russian guy on the interviewer panel starts laughing and asks him if he's gay, as a sort of off the cuff response to something my friend said.
There's a long pause from the panel, and then one of the interviewers says, "Yeah, I think we're going to be hiring you."
>You don't need to do it yourself. Call a solar installer, and they will come for free and measure everything. They don't need to wait for the whole year because there is only one Sun for all on Earth.
Yep, they're required by law (at least here in CA) to do it before they do an installation, in fact. They need to run all the math to find out what the rated capability of the system actually is. They can't just use the nominal rating of the PV panels.
It's called a solar site survey or obstacle survey, something like that.
It's really important for them to get it right, too, since if your system underperforms (I think less than 80% of the rated capacity), you can get your money back and they have to uninstall the system on their own nickel.
>>Lets move away from an hour based work schedule to a task and accomplishment based work/pay system.
It's called being an independent contractor.
I am one (I run a small corporation that teaches teachers technology), and it's wonderful. I get all my work done, I never miss a deadline or fail to meet a responsibility, and then I get paid. On my own schedule. Without having to sit in an airless office, waiting for 5PM to arrive. Or have pointless meetings.
Walk around. Vary the intonation of your voice. If you need to use PowerPoint, don't make it text heavy, but just put up the brief points you want them to memorize.
I give 10 or 20 workshops every year around the country, and I can usually capture the interest of an audience without needing PowerPoint.
>>We can whine all we want about the 40 hour work week, but no one is willing to unionize in order to get back to i
But then we'd have unions, which are as big a problem as unpaid overtime.
A better solution would be to put together a lobby to eliminate exclusions for unpaid overtime for certain classes of workers. Like IT workers, who are explicitly called out in the law as not getting overtime.
>>So now, air travel has a caste system.
This has been around for a while, actually. The CLEAR program was $100/year, not $100 for one-time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Traveler)
And you've always been able to buy your way into the fast lane by upgrading your ticket. $100 is cheap compared to what even a single first class ticket would cost you.
To be honest, this program doesn't bother me in the slightest.
In my neck of the woods (California), you can still order DSL service across AT&T's copper but from a different service provider.
Doctrine of Laches. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_%28equity%29)
If this pub has been around for 20 years and they haven't sued them in this time, the pub could assert that the owners have slept on their rights, and that the delay in bringing the suit would cost them a lot of money.
>>Geoengineering to prevent warming doesn't do anything to slow down ocean acidification
I know. That's why I said, "it won't lower our CO2 emissions", which is still an important issue.
But suggesting that genetically engineering humans to *hate the taste of beef* is a better solution than pumping some SO4 into the stratosphere is just laughable.