Maybe head over to the engineering department of a big university and see who's attending and getting top grades. You have a sh*tton of people from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and also now Latin America, working their asses off. Not many Americans... no they're all at the Business School learning 1- blah 2- blah 3- profit. Let's fix that first, then complain.
I'd like to see some stats on that, actually, given that it's diametrically opposite from my own experience (graduated two years ago). EE and CS maybe, but all the other engineering disciplines, including my own Mechanical, were overwhelmingly American natives. The foreign students seemed to flock to pre-med.
religion as one of the most arbitrary labels by which people divide themselves when involved in conflict
Really? I'm pretty sure a guy got stabbed this past weekend because he was wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey in San Francisco. People get shot in LA and Chicago for walking onto the wrong gang's turf. Other people get special treatment because they joined a certain fraternity in college.
It's not often that I say this, but South Park hit the nail on the head. Singling out religion as the culprit for mankind's tendency to find idiotic excuses to justify violence is absurd. It's like blaming gunpowder manufacturers every time someone gets shot.
It's an interesting read despite its now-defeated viewpoint, kind of like watching The Battleship Potemkin or Triumph of the Will. It was an allegory ranting against the discipline of complex math, which had just recently been introduced. He was ridiculing the concept of imaginary numbers, which take you to a Wonderland where things grow and shrink in size randomly and other things disappear almost entirely (except their grin!).
If good non-fiction is ok, find some Feynman. You will be forever in awe.
Another great non-fiction is Inviting Disaster by James Chiles. It's an engineering book, not a math book, but I think it's still cool in the same vein. Every chapter recreates the events of a famous or influential disaster (nitroglycerin plants explode, buildings collapse, reactors melt down, etc.) and examines the engineering and human decisions that caused or exacerbated the problem. It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC it had great discussions on Three Mile Island, Challenger, and the 2000 Concorde crash.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure martyrs just brought down four Middle Eastern governments, with a fifth on its way.
Martyrdom doesn't work for little shit that nobody cares about. Martyrdom is the only solution against actual, we-will-kill-you-if-you-resist oppression. People fight for symbols, not for faceless ideals.
Not exactly. It'd be more like a ToS for the internet - "by being online you consent to law enforcement hacking your computer anytime they choose." It's like your car - police can't search the trunk without a warrant if you keep it closed, but if you're pulling out your groceries and an officer just "happens" to see the five kilos of coke in the open trunk, he doesn't need a warrant to seize them and arrest you.
That's my interpretation, anyway. It'd probably take a court case to clarify in the end.
Well, I don't know how Dutch (or wherever else you might live, but this is the Dutch police) handle OoJ, but the content of your files is not the point. It's the fact that you'd be willfully preventing the police from having information that they are legally allowed to have. It's the equivalent of refusing to open a safe which they've obtained a warrant to search.
"Called" obstruction of justice? If the police get legalized powers to break into your system, doing that would be obstruction of justice. Like, a textbook case of it.
Traders are panicky sheep. Or lemmings. Or whatever. When these numbers get released during the day, everybody runs to SELLSELLSELLOHGODSELLIT. If they wait to release the numbers after the closing bell, the markets have all night for people to calm down and realize that the report isn't all that bad after all, and there's less downward pressure.
You've become an incredibly polarizing figure in a contentious debate. In certain groups, you're akin to the Anti-Christ, and in others you're quoted without question like a religious prophet. How do you handle that? Does it feel weird to have everything you say dissected (and possibly misinterpreted)? Is there pride? Exasperation? Amusement?
Just look at the volume of the Moon compared to the volume of the Earth. 22 billion cubic kilometers vs. 1083 billion cubic kilometers (about 2%). If you added that volume back and assumed it distributed evenly, the Earth's mean radius would increase by just under 50km.
Note: That's assuming there was no extra debris thrown out or outgassed that didn't end up back on the Moon or Earth in the end. Probably not too valid of an assumption.
It's more like "this marvelous model seems pretty cool, but if it were true we'd see this weird thing happening with the moon rocks." "Hey, we see that weird thing!"
It's like finding George Washington's dried blood on your baseball bat. It's possible there are other ways the blood got there, but you probably just whacked the guy.
No, the net effect isn't the same. In a single-party system, nobody gets a voice. There is no debate. In a two-party system, you get debate, but you don't get wackos. You debate between a 2% tax cut and a 1% tax hike. In a multiparty system, where everyone has a voice, you debate between a 100% tax cut and a 75% tax hike (but only on the people who aren't you, of course!). Anyone other than an ideologue is shouted down. And in times of hardship, when people naturally tend to gravitate to more extremist ideas, you get people elected who threaten the very concept of the democracy that elected them (example: Greeks this year gave 6% of their parliament to Nazis. Not fake, Glenn-Beck-paranoia Nazis, but actual fucking Nazis). It's an inherently unstable system.
The only thing worse than a multiparty system would be a three-party system, where the two major parties fall over themselves in a contest to grant the most concessions to the smallest party and form a coalition. The small (likely because they're the most extreme) party ends up getting everything they want.
The danger of party-based democracy isn't tyranny of the majority - it's tyranny of the minority.
Yep. And that's the way it should be. I like it when the farthest right the wingnuts will go is to photograph themselves at a fried chicken restaurant, and the farthest left the loonies will go is to maybe-kinda-suggest that investment income should be counted as normal income.
Change comes, but slowly and in a stable way. And that is a good thing. Multiparty systems can go screw themselves.
There, I've poked the sacred cow. Flame away, Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe head over to the engineering department of a big university and see who's attending and getting top grades. You have a sh*tton of people from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and also now Latin America, working their asses off. Not many Americans... no they're all at the Business School learning 1- blah 2- blah 3- profit. Let's fix that first, then complain.
I'd like to see some stats on that, actually, given that it's diametrically opposite from my own experience (graduated two years ago). EE and CS maybe, but all the other engineering disciplines, including my own Mechanical, were overwhelmingly American natives. The foreign students seemed to flock to pre-med.
Wow. Just, wow. That was beautiful. I haven't seen such pure, unadulterated ego in a long time. Bravo, I say!
(P.S. If this is your nomal attitude, you might want to check again before you start claiming to have "figured it out".)
Do you realize where you are? Why in the FSM's name would you ask how to be more humble on this website?
religion as one of the most arbitrary labels by which people divide themselves when involved in conflict
Really? I'm pretty sure a guy got stabbed this past weekend because he was wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey in San Francisco. People get shot in LA and Chicago for walking onto the wrong gang's turf. Other people get special treatment because they joined a certain fraternity in college.
It's not often that I say this, but South Park hit the nail on the head. Singling out religion as the culprit for mankind's tendency to find idiotic excuses to justify violence is absurd. It's like blaming gunpowder manufacturers every time someone gets shot.
It's an interesting read despite its now-defeated viewpoint, kind of like watching The Battleship Potemkin or Triumph of the Will. It was an allegory ranting against the discipline of complex math, which had just recently been introduced. He was ridiculing the concept of imaginary numbers, which take you to a Wonderland where things grow and shrink in size randomly and other things disappear almost entirely (except their grin!).
Another great non-fiction is Inviting Disaster by James Chiles. It's an engineering book, not a math book, but I think it's still cool in the same vein. Every chapter recreates the events of a famous or influential disaster (nitroglycerin plants explode, buildings collapse, reactors melt down, etc.) and examines the engineering and human decisions that caused or exacerbated the problem. It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC it had great discussions on Three Mile Island, Challenger, and the 2000 Concorde crash.
I just want to be able at some point to say, "Oh. A keyboard. How quaint."
Someone mod this guy up, please. An actually-knowledgable reply in a sea of kneejerksmanship? Jiminy Jillikers, Radioactive Man!
Really? Because I'm pretty sure martyrs just brought down four Middle Eastern governments, with a fifth on its way.
Martyrdom doesn't work for little shit that nobody cares about. Martyrdom is the only solution against actual, we-will-kill-you-if-you-resist oppression. People fight for symbols, not for faceless ideals.
Obviously, you haven't played enough Tribes.
Hell even if the internet would go down I still have a phone book and a land line.
Hey, me too! It's always good to have things lying around to club people with when civilization ends.
Not Farraday. Damnit, timothy!
That's my interpretation, anyway. It'd probably take a court case to clarify in the end.
Well, I don't know how Dutch (or wherever else you might live, but this is the Dutch police) handle OoJ, but the content of your files is not the point. It's the fact that you'd be willfully preventing the police from having information that they are legally allowed to have. It's the equivalent of refusing to open a safe which they've obtained a warrant to search.
"Called" obstruction of justice? If the police get legalized powers to break into your system, doing that would be obstruction of justice. Like, a textbook case of it.
I think that OverTheGeicoE's tinfoil hat reflected a few too many x-rays into his brain.
It's in the works, but the engineers responsible for it are busy making airplane windows openable.
Traders are panicky sheep. Or lemmings. Or whatever. When these numbers get released during the day, everybody runs to SELLSELLSELLOHGODSELLIT. If they wait to release the numbers after the closing bell, the markets have all night for people to calm down and realize that the report isn't all that bad after all, and there's less downward pressure.
But they give a free bucket of krill for every patient he sends them!
You've become an incredibly polarizing figure in a contentious debate. In certain groups, you're akin to the Anti-Christ, and in others you're quoted without question like a religious prophet. How do you handle that? Does it feel weird to have everything you say dissected (and possibly misinterpreted)? Is there pride? Exasperation? Amusement?
Note: That's assuming there was no extra debris thrown out or outgassed that didn't end up back on the Moon or Earth in the end. Probably not too valid of an assumption.
It's like finding George Washington's dried blood on your baseball bat. It's possible there are other ways the blood got there, but you probably just whacked the guy.
Yeah. You shouldn't hang out with people from Africa either.
No, the net effect isn't the same. In a single-party system, nobody gets a voice. There is no debate. In a two-party system, you get debate, but you don't get wackos. You debate between a 2% tax cut and a 1% tax hike. In a multiparty system, where everyone has a voice, you debate between a 100% tax cut and a 75% tax hike (but only on the people who aren't you, of course!). Anyone other than an ideologue is shouted down. And in times of hardship, when people naturally tend to gravitate to more extremist ideas, you get people elected who threaten the very concept of the democracy that elected them (example: Greeks this year gave 6% of their parliament to Nazis. Not fake, Glenn-Beck-paranoia Nazis, but actual fucking Nazis ). It's an inherently unstable system.
The only thing worse than a multiparty system would be a three-party system, where the two major parties fall over themselves in a contest to grant the most concessions to the smallest party and form a coalition. The small (likely because they're the most extreme) party ends up getting everything they want.
The danger of party-based democracy isn't tyranny of the majority - it's tyranny of the minority.
Change comes, but slowly and in a stable way. And that is a good thing. Multiparty systems can go screw themselves.
There, I've poked the sacred cow. Flame away, Slashdot.