That's because Harper has been very good so far at shutting-up the bunch of unwashed redneck hicks that make-up his caucus so far.
It's more that he's clamped down on media access to make it more difficult for situations to arise where MPs (or Harper himself) will have to think on their feet. Arguably, poorly-considered on-the-spot remarks have contributed to their unpopularity in the past. Unfortunately the Canadian tradition of the legislature media swarm, in which some of the best comments of past Prime Ministers have arisen, is no more. It's yet more closing down of our political process...
Another reason is that the minority government situation forces Harper to adopt policies he otherwise wouldn't. See also: any pro-environment policy coming from his government. A great example of this is incentives for increasing the energy efficiency of your home -- Harper axed such a program when he gained power, only to create a new one later when he was forced to take a more pro-environment stance (along with the appropriate "look at out great new program" ads). Hopefully he never wins a majority, or we might find out what he would do to our country without being pushed to take positions he doesn't want.
Really though, I just hope that whoever wins the next election opens up media access again...
Most of the time, math people not able to do art is simply that. Act like a fool so that you can get some.
Aha! Perhaps.
I usually play my cards very carefully, but today I have to stand up for the math profs because you had a bad attitude. And besides, what am I losing?;)
I may have come across a little harsh, though I stick to my belief that the culture of superiority is neither healthy nor justified. Were I convinced it was justified, then it generally wouldn't bother me.
It has also occurred to me that I never clarified my concept of "difficulty". Or rather, what exactly I was trying to assess the difficulty of: the subject or the course. The difficulty of math, the subject, will depend on a person's aptitudes and is therefore difficult to generalize. I stand by this for the various reasons I have already mentioned; you have not convinced me that math-heads in general can simply pick up and "do" art. This is primarily because I know a number of them, and they aren't trying to get into my pants. Rather, many have the conceit that they could be wonderful artists/directors/sociologists/etc without having actually tried it.
But I digress. It is certainly possible to say "degree X will take more work than degree Y". This is not a measure of subject difficulty, this is a measure of required workload: course difficulty, perhaps. In general, I would guess it to be a function of the size of the body of theoretical knowledge required to become conversant in a subject. Given a four-year degree, anything requiring more knowledge to get up to speed will involve more work by sheer necessity.
Subject difficulty, in my mind, is a measure of how hard it is for someone to wrap their mind around ideas within a subject and to synthesize ideas within it. This varies widely across people and subjects. Engineers, math students, physics students, etc probably have a larger body of back-learning to do, but this does not indicate that the subject itself is more difficult in any absolute sense.
The difficulty in most fields, in my opinion, is learning how to "think" fluently within them. A good math student is one who has learned the art of problem solving and proofs. A good student in many arts subjects (say, fine art, sociology, philosophy, film history, english...) will have an ability to connect diverse concepts and synthesize something interesting from them.
On the contrary, a good math student is the one who have to connect diverse concepts and synthesize something interesting from them... and he/she will have to actually PROVE the relation, instead of just stating them as analogy.
Sorry, I probably wasn't really clear with that. I was meaning to restate what generally makes a student good in either area. Part of my conception of "being good at doing proofs" is the synthesis of diverse ideas. Essentially I wanted to point out that it is problem solving and modes of thinking that make a subject difficult -- not the quantity of base knowledge and/or jargon required.
Whatever you said about art, it is the same with math, except that math is just way more difficult. I am not saying that what you do is worthless --- I read a lot of fine art, sociology, philosophy, film history myself. They're very interesting, but I have to be honest about this: they're not at all difficult (except for some modern philosophy), especially not when compared to subjects like math. Why can't you just accept that?
I think you might have misunderstood my perspective on this issue, unless I have inferred something you did not intend -- I am doing a Computer Science major and Fine Art minor. This has meant dealing with a lot of math, and *also* a lot of art-related courses. This is in addition to courses in sociology and philosophy, purely out of my own interest.
Why is there an "English for math students" course?
Do you know how much time you need to spend on a math subject?
As stated above, I very much do. I also know how much time is needed for a (serious) arts subject. Frankly, it is just as variable in either department.
My thoughts on subject difficulty are informed more by observation of others than of myself. I have an aptitude in both arts and math subjects, and tend to classify courses by how tedious they are and how much of my time they require. I have found tedious and time-consuming classes on both ends of the spectrum.
Other peoples' experiences have given me an idea of how difficult certain subjects can be. I have found artistic people who struggle with courses in math or logic, and mathematical people who struggle with arts or literature courses (or anything involving an essay). I have found, from observing others, that many people have an aptitude for one end of the spectrum or the other -- the old "left" versus "right" brain. These observations simply cannot, in my mind, justify an assertion that there is some absolute measure of difficulty.
This is not an either/or situation. One or the other may be more difficult, but it will always depend on who you ask.
(And to try to address the "but I can understand a paper on it" assertion: just as understanding a great proof does not mean one could have produced it, seeing a great work of art or reading an insightful film analysis does not imply one could duplicate it.)
Or maybe I should just give you the Wittgenstein treatment.
And then I'll have to admit that I'm really not familiar with his work...
"How about I read your papers, and you read mine?" -- this I call the acid test of subject difficulty.
I would have to disagree. I think this confuses subject difficulty with the size of the knowledge base required to be conversant in a subject. Basically a restatement of the old "knowledge versus wisdom" concept: it takes a lot of theoretical foundation and knowledge of jargon to be able to read complex math papers. This may be simply a result of the way I learn, but I do not consider the "quantity" of knowledge in a subject to be a measurement of its difficulty. People either learn how to internalize large amounts of knowledge, whatever their field, or they don't make it through undergrad.
The difficulty in most fields, in my opinion, is learning how to "think" fluently within them. A good math student is one who has learned the art of problem solving and proofs. A good student in many arts subjects (say, fine art, sociology, philosophy, film history, english...) will have an ability to connect diverse concepts and synthesize something interesting from them. This is analogous in many ways to writing a good proof. To say that one can read and understand the result of this work is different from saying one can produce it.
In any case, the point you seem to miss is that many people who are good at one will be awful at the other, destroying the notion of an absolute difficulty measure. They might understand a paper that clearly presents its ideas, but I guarantee that a large number of math students would be unable to write a good paper in an upper-year arts course. To me, this belief is justified simply by watching many CS students attempt to write documentation. It is the reason that courses like "English for math students" exist: many would fail an actual English/Lit course.
I'm going to assume you've never studied art. Since I have studied art and computer science (at the Univeristy level -- and get excellent grades in both), I probably have more perspective on the issue than someone who has only studied one of these. The people who excel in either field generally have a keen interest in it, and the majority of them would not excel in the other field. So to say that one is more difficult than the other presumes a standard of difficulty that is the same across all people. I.e., a standard that does not exist.
My "profs with a narrow view of the world" are the ones who perpetuate the belief that they are superior because they are in math. Their attitude is responsible for a general culture of the math department (at least at Waterloo) that seems hostile to other disciplines. This attitude simply reinforces the "High School Nerd Syndrome"; everyone gets to feel superior together. But drop any of those profs in an art class and you could watch them fall on their faces.
This is not to say that other departments don't have similar dogmas. I have often heard disparaging comments about engineers and math students from within the art faculty. One of the differences is that these comments generally don't have an undertone of absolute, arrogant superiority.
It really boggles my mind the level of self-assured ignorance that so many "geeks" have. They think a mastery of software and/or hardware somehow gives them insight into every area of human endeavor.
I'm glad someone else has recognized this. I have believed for awhile that this arrogance, and the tendency of some nerds to libertarianism, are both symptoms of "High School Nerd Syndrome". In other words, the idea that the "real world" is a place they can finally get back at everyone who made fun of them in high school.
I see this in University as well -- at U of Waterloo, many people in Math, Computer Science, Engineering, etc exist in a hilariously blind culture of superiority. I notice this particularly because I am doing a CS major with a minor in Fine Art, so I am not couped up inside the Math faculty. You can easily tell both students and profs with a narrow view of the world simply by their opinions of "art" students and faculty.
One of my long-time friends (since middle school) was blindly capitalist / individualist in high school. I've always considered him to be a prime example of "high school nerd syndrome." He grew out of it very quickly after high school. I suspect a lot of the libertarians on Slashdot are either in high school, or have never exposed themselves to other perspectives with an open mind (e.g., by taking a philosophy course or an arts course, or even by talking to people with other ideas openly).
The poster far above who asserts that all creativity comes from an individual has probably never worked with an artist. Some of the best *individual* work I have done in drawing or painting classes came from working within a highly creative group of friends. While in almost all cases we were not working on collaborative pieces, the value of a group environment with multiple perspectives is impossible to overstate.
But of course, a coding god has no need of outside input.
I have been doing a lot of reading up on health care statistics lately, and I recognize most of those mentioned in the above post. The most astonishing fact I've stumbled upon is that the U.S. *government* spends more on health care per capita than most other nations (including Canada). Then, you add on that the States also spend more (much much more) per person than other nations on private funding, and you can understand why the system costs more.
I think the whole "public healthcare raises taxes" argument is lost right there -- if the States had a system anywhere close to the efficiency of other industrialized nations', they could theoretically be spending just as much at the government level and chuck most of the private health costs. Of course, that's probably unrealistic in that it would likely be politically difficult to build a system like that out of the one in place now.
Anyway, since I can't recall all of the sources of the statistics I've read, I did a bit of googling for you. Right off the top, the OECD (http://www.oecd.org/) is an excellent source that often pops up in such discussions. They have an entire section on Health statistics of member nations.
And a bit of a comparison of average life expectency and spending on health care (note the disparity when it comes to the U.S.): http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php.
Anyway, what tends to bother me the most about these debates on Slashdot is that it often comes down to people with data to back them up versus people who blindly believe that the American system MUST cost less. I mean, it isn't government-run, right?
That position is undeniably false, and I really wish we could at least get past that part of the debate so that something meaningful can come from these discussions. Of course, faith in the free market, just like any other faith, doesn't require facts to be believed.
I've been wondering a lot about this lately as well.
Consider that DRM doesn't stop pirates; in fact, one could argue it provides them with an incentive in the form of a "challenge". It's like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a handful of paper cups. DRM isn't helping much, if at all, and it never will.
At the same time, media companies spend piles of money developing, promoting, and implementing DRM schemes. Schemes which don't really stop piracy, and thus don't actually increase (or "prevent the decrease of") revenue. So uh... why don't they chuck their DRM divisions? I mean, from a pure corporate greed position, they are useless divisions that aren't helping the bottom line. Layoff everyone working on DRM and call it a day. Suddenly more money! Yay!
Why no one in the media world has realized this yet is almost beyond me.
I think you miss the point. By the very nature of how any of these encryption schemes HAVE to be used (ie, within someone's home with key and encrypted data all existing on some device), they can be broken. Always. Therefore, the pirates will break them. The more difficult the studios make it, the more sport it will become to the pirates. I honestly don't see a way they can solve the piracy problem this way.
On the other hand, I purchase my movies (currently on DVD) and am very happy that DeCSS exists. It allows me to watch legally-purchased DVDs on linux, and possibly back them up if I wish. I hope a similarly useful scheme for breaking AACS exists if/when I ever get a high-def drive for my computer (could be a big if).
At the same time, the only people really detrimentally affected by these schemes are legitimate consumers. Once hardware players start getting keys revoked, this is going to become even more apparent. The studios will achieve:
a) Not stopping piracy (and possibly adding to the "fun" by making it marginally more challenging) b) Starting an ongoing war of revoke keys / break keys / revoke / break / revoke /... c) Monumentally frustrating their legitimate customers. Even more so than the few linux/etc users annoyed by CSS.
I'm going to have to second this. I'm a bit of an aspiring beer enthusiast (I *definitely* wouldn't say connoisseur, I've met people who know a metric fuck-tonne more about beer than I do). However, most "OMG Guinness" types strike me as people who just want to drink something other than the standard American Pale Lager so that... well, so that they can say they drink something other than the standard American Pale Lager.
Frankly, I can probably name at least fifty beers off the top of my head I'd rather have than Guinness; consulting my own beer notes and given time to think I can definitely name more. On top of that I'm only 20, and that list is constantly expanding as I try more beer. Granted, my own preference is to Belgian ales, lambics, and German wheat beer; however, I've probably still had more varieties of porter and stout than most Guinness drinkers, and I would certainly rate some of those above Guinness.
On the other hand, I can easily name a bigger pile of beer I would rate worse than Guinness. However, I'm not about to fault other people for their taste. Lots of people have no desire to delve into complex beer and just want something refreshing that matches what they are used to in beer. I *will* fault Guinness-touting pseudo-beer-snobs their elitist attitude however, since their position is barely more informed or less populist than the Bud drinkers they love to make fun of.
Guinness could be a gateway into trying more interesting beer, but if you stop there and conclude "I am a beer expert, ROFL you're drinking Bud," you are sorely mistaken. IMHO, of course.
Not really off topic. If Linux = Japan and MS = America then expect MS to ramp up it's competition against Linux. Look at what ie is starting to do against Firefox. Like America in WW1 ie defeated Netscape (germany) then rested on the laurels and stopped innovating. (When WW2 started America's army was nowhere near ready) Then when attacked by Japan (firefox) America (ie) immediately began working to defeat their enemy.
MS and Linux be damned. I'm just trying to figure out if somewhere in the middle of all that you managed to invoke Godwin's Law.
Easy. But, I bet you're not going to like it. I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not really a "hipster" or an indie type, though I know enough of them that I listen to some of the music. Frankly, I'm more into post-rock than your whiny indie pop stuff (post-rock being a near-meaningless catch-all approximately equal to "experimental rock usually with few vocals", a good chunk of which is also filed under indie rock).
Regardless, the first obvious answer to your question is Broken Social Scene's "Broken Social Scene". Frankly these guys are awesome, for me especially because they combine the actually good elements of indie pop with the instrumentation of a lot of good post-rock. Regardless, if that album doesn't do it for you (which I've listed since it was released in 2005), the even more obvious choice is "You Forgot It In People", which was probably one of the (if not the) best albums of 2002, anywhere. Some people say the 2005 album doesn't live up to it, I think that many of them reject it out of turn.
Next: The Hylozoists' "La Fin Du Monde". Awesome post-rock band that includes a couple of vibraphones, a violin, and a number of other things on top of the standard rock instrumentation. Besides being awesome live, I am listing this album and band because I think they would appeal to a larger audience than a lot of other "post-rock".
Finally, because I haven't had the time or money to get many new CDs this year, I'm gonna list three albums from the past couple of years that are basically awesome anyway:
Feist - Let it Die (awesome singer-songwriter-jazz-folk-pop-i-ness) 2004 Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet (ridiculously good jazz-influenced post-rock) 2002 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O. (over-the-top symphonic post-rock, from the band that is basically the centre of the rather influential Montreal post-rock scene) 2002
And I might as well tack on Death From Above 1979's "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine" (2004) since everyone loves ('d?) ridiculous dance-punk these days.
Frankly, people who complain about the state of Canadian music aren't listening to the right music.
I've noticed this phenomenon as well. Living in Canada and getting American network news, it always surprises me when I hear rants on American TV or the Internet about the "extreme" left bias of various perspectives that would rate centre or just-right-of-centre in Canada.
To me, discussion of the biases of media sources rarely reaches an accurate depiction of those biases. However, it is generally very informative of the biases of those in the discussion. Particularly considering people's perception of media bias (see for eg the Wikipedia article on the topic). To quote:
A major problem in studies is experimentor bias. Studies of US Media Bias studies show that A) Liberal experimentors tend to get results that say the media has a conservative bias, B) conservative experimentors get results indicating a liberal bias, and C) experimentors that do not identify themselves as either liberal or conservative do not detect any bias. This issue may arise from a tendency to accept a reporter's statement that matches one's own bias, even if no evidence is presented to support it. In contrast, statements that disagree with a personal bias tend to be remembered as distinctly biased, especially if evidence is not submitted.
In other words, people's perception of media bias is heavily influenced by disconfirmation bias (specifically, the hostile media effect). They do not scrutinize a reporter's position if it agrees with them, and (over-)scrutinize when it does not -- leading to a perception of a bias opposite their own.
Thus, I find that the bias a person generally sees in media (and the perceived strength and ubiquity of that bias) are excellent indicators of how skewed their own politics are. They can also be good indicators of how clouded that person's vision is by their own beliefs.
I think you've misunderstood. Here's my interpretation (admittedly I haven't taken a physics course in awhile).
The fan generates a force F as you've said, but as the parent specified (and I think is what you missed), that force is acting to propel the boat backwards since the fan is blowing air toward the "front" of the boat. Thus, if the fan yields a force F + g forwards, the net force is (F + g forwards) + (F backwards) == (F + g - F forwards) == g forwards. Or, given a rough force vector diagram:
<--F-- . --F-->-g->
Thus, the boat is propelled forward with a net force of g, which is less than simply turning the fan around to use a force of F to propel the boat.
Such was my understanding, anyway. Like I said, I could be wrong.
Really, that argument just doesn't stand up. It works out fine in Canada (ya ya, there's nobody in Canada or whatever -- but we do have large population centres like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, etc. that do it just like everyone else).
The reason that argument doesn't work is simple: the ballots don't go to some central location for say, the entire province or anything like that. There are people in each riding doing the counting (and in fact, multiple locations within one riding). That way, you just need enough volunteers from within an area to cover that area. In other words, the number of voting stations and people counting scales with the population.
But you know, everyone loves to solve non-existent problems with computers.
Can someone explain to me why it seems every nerd and his brother swears by Guinness? Honestly, it's not a bad stout, but I can think of at least a few stouts or porters off the top of my head that I'd rather drink, and any number of other (non-stout) beers. Granted, I'd take a Guinness over most any shitty North American lager, but luckily the beer store carries a wider selection than Guinness + some lagers.
On a slightly related note, anyone here ever tried Mill Street Coffee Porter? Now that is friggin' delicious.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more that he's clamped down on media access to make it more difficult for situations to arise where MPs (or Harper himself) will have to think on their feet. Arguably, poorly-considered on-the-spot remarks have contributed to their unpopularity in the past. Unfortunately the Canadian tradition of the legislature media swarm, in which some of the best comments of past Prime Ministers have arisen, is no more. It's yet more closing down of our political process...
Another reason is that the minority government situation forces Harper to adopt policies he otherwise wouldn't. See also: any pro-environment policy coming from his government. A great example of this is incentives for increasing the energy efficiency of your home -- Harper axed such a program when he gained power, only to create a new one later when he was forced to take a more pro-environment stance (along with the appropriate "look at out great new program" ads). Hopefully he never wins a majority, or we might find out what he would do to our country without being pushed to take positions he doesn't want.
Really though, I just hope that whoever wins the next election opens up media access again...
Aha! Perhaps.
I may have come across a little harsh, though I stick to my belief that the culture of superiority is neither healthy nor justified. Were I convinced it was justified, then it generally wouldn't bother me.
It has also occurred to me that I never clarified my concept of "difficulty". Or rather, what exactly I was trying to assess the difficulty of: the subject or the course. The difficulty of math, the subject, will depend on a person's aptitudes and is therefore difficult to generalize. I stand by this for the various reasons I have already mentioned; you have not convinced me that math-heads in general can simply pick up and "do" art. This is primarily because I know a number of them, and they aren't trying to get into my pants. Rather, many have the conceit that they could be wonderful artists/directors/sociologists/etc without having actually tried it.
But I digress. It is certainly possible to say "degree X will take more work than degree Y". This is not a measure of subject difficulty, this is a measure of required workload: course difficulty, perhaps. In general, I would guess it to be a function of the size of the body of theoretical knowledge required to become conversant in a subject. Given a four-year degree, anything requiring more knowledge to get up to speed will involve more work by sheer necessity.
Subject difficulty, in my mind, is a measure of how hard it is for someone to wrap their mind around ideas within a subject and to synthesize ideas within it. This varies widely across people and subjects. Engineers, math students, physics students, etc probably have a larger body of back-learning to do, but this does not indicate that the subject itself is more difficult in any absolute sense.
Sorry, I probably wasn't really clear with that. I was meaning to restate what generally makes a student good in either area. Part of my conception of "being good at doing proofs" is the synthesis of diverse ideas. Essentially I wanted to point out that it is problem solving and modes of thinking that make a subject difficult -- not the quantity of base knowledge and/or jargon required.
I think you might have misunderstood my perspective on this issue, unless I have inferred something you did not intend -- I am doing a Computer Science major and Fine Art minor. This has meant dealing with a lot of math, and *also* a lot of art-related courses. This is in addition to courses in sociology and philosophy, purely out of my own interest.
As stated above, I very much do. I also know how much time is needed for a (serious) arts subject. Frankly, it is just as variable in either department.
My thoughts on subject difficulty are informed more by observation of others than of myself. I have an aptitude in both arts and math subjects, and tend to classify courses by how tedious they are and how much of my time they require. I have found tedious and time-consuming classes on both ends of the spectrum.
Other peoples' experiences have given me an idea of how difficult certain subjects can be. I have found artistic people who struggle with courses in math or logic, and mathematical people who struggle with arts or literature courses (or anything involving an essay). I have found, from observing others, that many people have an aptitude for one end of the spectrum or the other -- the old "left" versus "right" brain. These observations simply cannot, in my mind, justify an assertion that there is some absolute measure of difficulty.
This is not an either/or situation. One or the other may be more difficult, but it will always depend on who you ask.
(And to try to address the "but I can understand a paper on it" assertion: just as understanding a great proof does not mean one could have produced it, seeing a great work of art or reading an insightful film analysis does not imply one could duplicate it.)
And then I'll have to admit that I'm really not familiar with his work...
I would have to disagree. I think this confuses subject difficulty with the size of the knowledge base required to be conversant in a subject. Basically a restatement of the old "knowledge versus wisdom" concept: it takes a lot of theoretical foundation and knowledge of jargon to be able to read complex math papers. This may be simply a result of the way I learn, but I do not consider the "quantity" of knowledge in a subject to be a measurement of its difficulty. People either learn how to internalize large amounts of knowledge, whatever their field, or they don't make it through undergrad.
The difficulty in most fields, in my opinion, is learning how to "think" fluently within them. A good math student is one who has learned the art of problem solving and proofs. A good student in many arts subjects (say, fine art, sociology, philosophy, film history, english...) will have an ability to connect diverse concepts and synthesize something interesting from them. This is analogous in many ways to writing a good proof. To say that one can read and understand the result of this work is different from saying one can produce it.
In any case, the point you seem to miss is that many people who are good at one will be awful at the other, destroying the notion of an absolute difficulty measure. They might understand a paper that clearly presents its ideas, but I guarantee that a large number of math students would be unable to write a good paper in an upper-year arts course. To me, this belief is justified simply by watching many CS students attempt to write documentation. It is the reason that courses like "English for math students" exist: many would fail an actual English/Lit course.
I'm going to assume you've never studied art. Since I have studied art and computer science (at the Univeristy level -- and get excellent grades in both), I probably have more perspective on the issue than someone who has only studied one of these. The people who excel in either field generally have a keen interest in it, and the majority of them would not excel in the other field. So to say that one is more difficult than the other presumes a standard of difficulty that is the same across all people. I.e., a standard that does not exist.
My "profs with a narrow view of the world" are the ones who perpetuate the belief that they are superior because they are in math. Their attitude is responsible for a general culture of the math department (at least at Waterloo) that seems hostile to other disciplines. This attitude simply reinforces the "High School Nerd Syndrome"; everyone gets to feel superior together. But drop any of those profs in an art class and you could watch them fall on their faces.
This is not to say that other departments don't have similar dogmas. I have often heard disparaging comments about engineers and math students from within the art faculty. One of the differences is that these comments generally don't have an undertone of absolute, arrogant superiority.
I'm glad someone else has recognized this. I have believed for awhile that this arrogance, and the tendency of some nerds to libertarianism, are both symptoms of "High School Nerd Syndrome". In other words, the idea that the "real world" is a place they can finally get back at everyone who made fun of them in high school.
I see this in University as well -- at U of Waterloo, many people in Math, Computer Science, Engineering, etc exist in a hilariously blind culture of superiority. I notice this particularly because I am doing a CS major with a minor in Fine Art, so I am not couped up inside the Math faculty. You can easily tell both students and profs with a narrow view of the world simply by their opinions of "art" students and faculty.
One of my long-time friends (since middle school) was blindly capitalist / individualist in high school. I've always considered him to be a prime example of "high school nerd syndrome." He grew out of it very quickly after high school. I suspect a lot of the libertarians on Slashdot are either in high school, or have never exposed themselves to other perspectives with an open mind (e.g., by taking a philosophy course or an arts course, or even by talking to people with other ideas openly).
The poster far above who asserts that all creativity comes from an individual has probably never worked with an artist. Some of the best *individual* work I have done in drawing or painting classes came from working within a highly creative group of friends. While in almost all cases we were not working on collaborative pieces, the value of a group environment with multiple perspectives is impossible to overstate.
But of course, a coding god has no need of outside input.
Your kidney has a brain and a liver?
I spell-checked! I did!
grumble...
I have been doing a lot of reading up on health care statistics lately, and I recognize most of those mentioned in the above post. The most astonishing fact I've stumbled upon is that the U.S. *government* spends more on health care per capita than most other nations (including Canada). Then, you add on that the States also spend more (much much more) per person than other nations on private funding, and you can understand why the system costs more.
c t_process.cfm?countries=all&indicators=nha
I think the whole "public healthcare raises taxes" argument is lost right there -- if the States had a system anywhere close to the efficiency of other industrialized nations', they could theoretically be spending just as much at the government level and chuck most of the private health costs. Of course, that's probably unrealistic in that it would likely be politically difficult to build a system like that out of the one in place now.
Anyway, since I can't recall all of the sources of the statistics I've read, I did a bit of googling for you. Right off the top, the OECD (http://www.oecd.org/) is an excellent source that often pops up in such discussions. They have an entire section on Health statistics of member nations.
And here's spending info courtesy of the WHO: http://www.who.int/whosis/database/core/core_sele
This includes per capita government spending on health care, which happens to show that Canadian governement spending (for example) is less than U.S. Government spending, per capita.
And a bit of a comparison of average life expectency and spending on health care (note the disparity when it comes to the U.S.): http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php.
Anyway, what tends to bother me the most about these debates on Slashdot is that it often comes down to people with data to back them up versus people who blindly believe that the American system MUST cost less. I mean, it isn't government-run, right?
That position is undeniably false, and I really wish we could at least get past that part of the debate so that something meaningful can come from these discussions. Of course, faith in the free market, just like any other faith, doesn't require facts to be believed.
No, I'm pretty sure this proves men are from Mars.
(Apologies to the poster above and the faint of stomach.)
You think that's air you're breathing now?
I've been wondering a lot about this lately as well.
Consider that DRM doesn't stop pirates; in fact, one could argue it provides them with an incentive in the form of a "challenge". It's like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a handful of paper cups. DRM isn't helping much, if at all, and it never will.
At the same time, media companies spend piles of money developing, promoting, and implementing DRM schemes. Schemes which don't really stop piracy, and thus don't actually increase (or "prevent the decrease of") revenue. So uh... why don't they chuck their DRM divisions? I mean, from a pure corporate greed position, they are useless divisions that aren't helping the bottom line. Layoff everyone working on DRM and call it a day. Suddenly more money! Yay!
Why no one in the media world has realized this yet is almost beyond me.
I think you miss the point. By the very nature of how any of these encryption schemes HAVE to be used (ie, within someone's home with key and encrypted data all existing on some device), they can be broken. Always. Therefore, the pirates will break them. The more difficult the studios make it, the more sport it will become to the pirates. I honestly don't see a way they can solve the piracy problem this way.
...
On the other hand, I purchase my movies (currently on DVD) and am very happy that DeCSS exists. It allows me to watch legally-purchased DVDs on linux, and possibly back them up if I wish. I hope a similarly useful scheme for breaking AACS exists if/when I ever get a high-def drive for my computer (could be a big if).
At the same time, the only people really detrimentally affected by these schemes are legitimate consumers. Once hardware players start getting keys revoked, this is going to become even more apparent. The studios will achieve:
a) Not stopping piracy (and possibly adding to the "fun" by making it marginally more challenging)
b) Starting an ongoing war of revoke keys / break keys / revoke / break / revoke /
c) Monumentally frustrating their legitimate customers. Even more so than the few linux/etc users annoyed by CSS.
Maudite and a nice slab o' steak is perhaps one of the greatest combinations known to mankind. Unibroue makes me proud to be Canadian
Not a huge fan of de Koninck, and I'm more partial to Quadrupels (and other strong dark Belgian-style ales) myself.
In all seriousness though, I still enjoy a good Tripel
I'm going to have to second this. I'm a bit of an aspiring beer enthusiast (I *definitely* wouldn't say connoisseur, I've met people who know a metric fuck-tonne more about beer than I do). However, most "OMG Guinness" types strike me as people who just want to drink something other than the standard American Pale Lager so that... well, so that they can say they drink something other than the standard American Pale Lager.
Frankly, I can probably name at least fifty beers off the top of my head I'd rather have than Guinness; consulting my own beer notes and given time to think I can definitely name more. On top of that I'm only 20, and that list is constantly expanding as I try more beer. Granted, my own preference is to Belgian ales, lambics, and German wheat beer; however, I've probably still had more varieties of porter and stout than most Guinness drinkers, and I would certainly rate some of those above Guinness.
On the other hand, I can easily name a bigger pile of beer I would rate worse than Guinness. However, I'm not about to fault other people for their taste. Lots of people have no desire to delve into complex beer and just want something refreshing that matches what they are used to in beer. I *will* fault Guinness-touting pseudo-beer-snobs their elitist attitude however, since their position is barely more informed or less populist than the Bud drinkers they love to make fun of.
Guinness could be a gateway into trying more interesting beer, but if you stop there and conclude "I am a beer expert, ROFL you're drinking Bud," you are sorely mistaken. IMHO, of course.
MS and Linux be damned. I'm just trying to figure out if somewhere in the middle of all that you managed to invoke Godwin's Law.
Easy. But, I bet you're not going to like it. I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not really a "hipster" or an indie type, though I know enough of them that I listen to some of the music. Frankly, I'm more into post-rock than your whiny indie pop stuff (post-rock being a near-meaningless catch-all approximately equal to "experimental rock usually with few vocals", a good chunk of which is also filed under indie rock).
Regardless, the first obvious answer to your question is Broken Social Scene's "Broken Social Scene". Frankly these guys are awesome, for me especially because they combine the actually good elements of indie pop with the instrumentation of a lot of good post-rock. Regardless, if that album doesn't do it for you (which I've listed since it was released in 2005), the even more obvious choice is "You Forgot It In People", which was probably one of the (if not the) best albums of 2002, anywhere. Some people say the 2005 album doesn't live up to it, I think that many of them reject it out of turn.
Next: The Hylozoists' "La Fin Du Monde". Awesome post-rock band that includes a couple of vibraphones, a violin, and a number of other things on top of the standard rock instrumentation. Besides being awesome live, I am listing this album and band because I think they would appeal to a larger audience than a lot of other "post-rock".
Finally, because I haven't had the time or money to get many new CDs this year, I'm gonna list three albums from the past couple of years that are basically awesome anyway:
Feist - Let it Die (awesome singer-songwriter-jazz-folk-pop-i-ness) 2004
Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet (ridiculously good jazz-influenced post-rock) 2002
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O. (over-the-top symphonic post-rock, from the band that is basically the centre of the rather influential Montreal post-rock scene) 2002
And I might as well tack on Death From Above 1979's "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine" (2004) since everyone loves ('d?) ridiculous dance-punk these days.
Frankly, people who complain about the state of Canadian music aren't listening to the right music.
To me, discussion of the biases of media sources rarely reaches an accurate depiction of those biases. However, it is generally very informative of the biases of those in the discussion. Particularly considering people's perception of media bias (see for eg the Wikipedia article on the topic). To quote:
In other words, people's perception of media bias is heavily influenced by disconfirmation bias (specifically, the hostile media effect). They do not scrutinize a reporter's position if it agrees with them, and (over-)scrutinize when it does not -- leading to a perception of a bias opposite their own.
Thus, I find that the bias a person generally sees in media (and the perceived strength and ubiquity of that bias) are excellent indicators of how skewed their own politics are. They can also be good indicators of how clouded that person's vision is by their own beliefs.
I think you've misunderstood. Here's my interpretation (admittedly I haven't taken a physics course in awhile).
The fan generates a force F as you've said, but as the parent specified (and I think is what you missed), that force is acting to propel the boat backwards since the fan is blowing air toward the "front" of the boat. Thus, if the fan yields a force F + g forwards, the net force is (F + g forwards) + (F backwards) == (F + g - F forwards) == g forwards. Or, given a rough force vector diagram:
<--F-- . --F-->-g->
Thus, the boat is propelled forward with a net force of g, which is less than simply turning the fan around to use a force of F to propel the boat.
Such was my understanding, anyway. Like I said, I could be wrong.
Really, that argument just doesn't stand up. It works out fine in Canada (ya ya, there's nobody in Canada or whatever -- but we do have large population centres like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, etc. that do it just like everyone else).
The reason that argument doesn't work is simple: the ballots don't go to some central location for say, the entire province or anything like that. There are people in each riding doing the counting (and in fact, multiple locations within one riding). That way, you just need enough volunteers from within an area to cover that area. In other words, the number of voting stations and people counting scales with the population.
But you know, everyone loves to solve non-existent problems with computers.
I was thinking "Buttware" myself, but I think the meaning's lost somewhere in there...
Oh sweet Lord Christus no! Put it back!
RMS is GNU/listening!
......he'll GNU/hear you.....
GNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo!
Can someone explain to me why it seems every nerd and his brother swears by Guinness? Honestly, it's not a bad stout, but I can think of at least a few stouts or porters off the top of my head that I'd rather drink, and any number of other (non-stout) beers. Granted, I'd take a Guinness over most any shitty North American lager, but luckily the beer store carries a wider selection than Guinness + some lagers.
On a slightly related note, anyone here ever tried Mill Street Coffee Porter? Now that is friggin' delicious.
[Go back to the computer] [Stick it in]
You: Ooohhhh yaaaa...
*screen fades out*