You haven't seen high school girls pull out their TI-83 PLUSes so they could discover that 40 + 8 equals 48. (This actually happened. In an honors math class.)
There is no reason students shouldn't have a basic scientific for say, things like calculating pe^(rt), but graphing calculators are unnecessary. They cause students to learn how to do a sequence of operations for finding the answer to a question which they'll get on next week's test, not how the problem actually gets solved. If the kids are being taught concepts and not arithmetic, wouldn't the problems and scenarios be designed to make the arithmetic trivial anyway?
Are you sure? I _might_ be wrong, but I am pretty sure I remember seeing a special about some North American Indians that did not live on the equator, which had a wall that pointed due east/west, and they mentioned that the sun would rise and set right along the line of the wall during the equinox (which they showed on camera).
Energy is not mass. And writing "Period" cannot strengthen an argument that runs counter to facts. If you think that transmitting electromagnetic radiation means that an object is losing mass, then stop trying to argue and go look up the physics for yourself.
Well, as for the first three sentences, i don't think they apply for everybody. There are some people whose interest might be well-sparked by such software. And I don't think it's very helpful to plot graphs by hand or detrimental to do that with a computer. (Well, one time in DiffEq... well let's just say that I got excited by hand-plotting a spiralling solution to a system of linear equations with complex eigenvalues.) However, the only interest-sparking I usually see from such software or calculators involves graphing calculators' easy and rewarding programmability. (Easy/rewarding in that results can be acheived without bothering with compiling or perfect syntax and such.) And I don't see software doing much in that department.
On the high school to freshman level? Take software (and calculators) out of the kid's hands. It will only hurt his education. If anything at all, get him an RPN calculator -- it still requires thinking in order to evaluate expressions, the kind of thinking that improves mathematical skills and understanding of the task at hand, instead of the kind of thinking that goes "I plug and chug and get an answer."
Without doubt, I am certain that my getting an RPN calculator (replacing a non-RPN calculator) while in high school improved my mental math skills and caused my brain to rewire the way it thinks about many aspects of math.
But anyway, about your question. Check out Xcas. Its user interface I dislike, but at least it exists. http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.h tml
The energy from food, etc, on the space station comes from _chemical_ reactions. Chemical reactions do not involve any change of mass. The practical ones on the space station convert potential energy of some sort or another into things like kinetic energy, heat, and light. This energy can be stored in batteries, chemical bonds, or whatever. Some comes from light, via solar panels.
For a more graspable example of energy storage involving retrieval of energy without destroying matter, think of springs. You can have a "battery" consisting of a loaded spring, which is controlled via some mechanations to only release its energy in certain amounts for certain intervals. Every once in a while, this "battery" can be recharged by winding the spring back to its loaded state. Is there any conversion of _matter_ to energy? No. The same answer of "no" applies to circuits and the breaking of chemical bonds.
This type "spring battery" power storage has been used in clocks and watches for a long time.
That would be true if the sun rose and set in the same angle over the horizon all year, but the sun does not do that. During the summer, it sets and rises north of where it sets and rises in the winter. At the equinox, it sets and rises due west and due east.
So the test is "sentience" now? Two things: First, please quit moving the goalposts. Second, surely a newborn is no more possessed of sentience than a newly fertilized zygote. There's absolutely no way to know for sure, but even the most optimistic estimates are that self-awareness doesn't begin to emerge until after the first year of life. Are babies younger than one year of age not really babies? Should it be okay to kill them?
A newborn certainly is more sentient than a zygote. Sentience does not require self-awareness; the two terms are not synonymous by the way. A newborn might not be self-aware *, but it is sentient. There is a thinking being in there.
There is not a thinking being in a zygote or embryo, however.
Is it moral or not to kill non-self-aware beings? That is a tricky question. My answer would be that if nothing else, since other humans highly value the lives of infants, it is considered, by generally "all" people, wrong to kill them. Their lives are valued. Personally, I find it immoral because they are sentient humans, which should not be killed regardless of how others value them.
Unborn brainless human collections of cells, however, have differing views attached to them. Some people value the lives of all embyros; others do not. That's where the moral differences come in to play.
* Self-awareness is a tricky issue. People often talk of things as either being self-aware or not. However, I do not think self-awareness just "turns on" at some point in a child's development. It is either always on (from when neurons start firing) or it gradually develops.
I think awareness develops when the brain starts operating, and awareness of oneself develops over the course of time. Hence, self-awareness is not a good place to start when considering rights.
But since you brought it up, definition #1 is "a very young child." Embryos naturally meet this standard.
If we're going to play the game of looking at definition #1 (which I'll join because the game is fun), let's look at dictionary.com's definition #1 for "child." That is, "A person between birth and puberty." And embryos certainly don't fit this category.
But that's if you play the game of looking at definition #1. And we both know that using dictionary definitions to twist through moral issues is a pretty retarded thing to try.
Just like using weighted terminology can add weight to your words, but it can't add weight to your argument.
Now I have to quickly answer your other post since it is more convenient to do it here:
You can refer to an embryo in whatever clinical, dehumanizing terms you want. Call it a "scrap of tissue," call it a "bunch of cells," call it an "unwanted growth." Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is a baby.
Likewise, calling it a difference over terminology or conflicting worldviews or whatever doesn't change the essential fact that embryonic stem cells are harvested from the corpses of dead babies.
If an embryo is not a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead embryos.
If an embryo is a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead babies which are in the embryonic stage.
Does that terminology make you squeamish?
No.
Rightly so!
Huh?
The killing of a baby for medical research, even if justified by the possibility of wonderful results, should never be undertaken lightly.
Replace "baby" with "embryo" and I would still agree with you. So let's not undertake the research lightly; let's only do research on non-sentient babies. Embryos and zygotes fall under that category, so why would there be anything wrong with research on them?
(Disclaimer: I am against embryonic stem cell research. I am arguing against your arguments, not your opinion.)
Yeah, all those people seem to be under the delusion that one is prime... The number one is neither prime nor composite though (you'd think the mathematician in the joke would know that).
But so much of life relies on the lunar cycle, some directly relying on tides. This would throw the ecosystem completely out of whack. Also, half of the world would experience a somewhat permanent day, light-wise, with the moon being so close to the Earth. Also, the tidal forces themselves would be rediculously stronger -- with the moon more than ten times as close, as would be necessary for geostationary orbit, its gravitational field at the Earth would be over one hundred times as strong. And even if everything did magically work itself out, the moon's gravity would completely destroy the paths of all other geosynchronous satellites. Also, there are surely many other problems which I have not thought of yet.
As for solving the problem of earthquakes -- it would result in millenia and millenia of super-intense volcanic and tectonic activity.
Wireless Network -- As far as I remember, the only public wireless was in the student union and the DCC (where the largest lecture halls were). A year or two ago, they restricted these connections to VPN access. With regard to that other dude who had issues, the cisco linux client never worked for me either:-(.
There is more wireless access nowadays. I get wireless access on RPI's network in most places where I have classes -- I have not had the occasion to try some places -- the library/VCC have wireless now of course. Where there isn't "official" access, one can still get online via individuals' routers, whether in dorms or in academic buildings like Carnegie. I get access outside, usually. (I probably deliberately sit in likely locations, though.)
Provide Web Pages -- I think there is 10 MB of space for each student.
It's now 25 MB, I think.
Computer Purchase -- The laptops are IBMs top of the line T series laptop at the time. Usually about 3000 grand which probably covers the software licensing more than it covers the cost of the hardware.
The T42s this year were $2300.
Usenet -- I don't know.
There is a usenet server, but it is less useful than news.individual.net.
Nothing, it's just a bad place for a band trip. The year before I entered high school, the band trip was to Chicago. It was pretty bad, because there was no way the students were going to be allowed out of the hotel into the middle of Chicago while they had free time (parents wouldn't allow it, and the band director wouldn't have anyway). This is in contrast to Myrtle Beach, where a couple of days were spent mostly hanging out on the beach, and, for some people, visiting stores that are designed to take vacationers' money. Where would you rather go?
This is somewhat like the Borda voting method, except that in the Borda method, you must give N points to your favorite candidate, N - 1 points to your second favorite, and so on - the number of points is fixed.
The problem with your method is that everybody is going to throw their points at one candidate - their favorite. The problem with the Borda method is this scenario: Suppose you have high school band members voting on where they want the band trip to be. The options are Chicago, Toronto, and Myrtle Beach. The situation is this: 45 bandies want Toronto over Myrtle Beach, 45 prefer Myrtle Beach over Toronto, and 10 loonies prefer Chicago (which is such a bad idea, by the way). Each person lists their three choices in order - first place votes are worth 3 points, second place 2 points, third place 1 point.
All the Toronto-wanters decide that to screw the Myrtle Beach crowd, they'll vote for Myrtle Beach in third place, with Chicago in second, even though it is a crappy place for a band trip (because they shouldn't have to worry about Chicago getting picked). The Myrtle Beach-wanters do the same thing. The result is that 180 points go to each Myrtle Beach, Chicago, and Toronto.
Then the Chicago loonies vote for Chicago in first place, putting Chicago over the edge. Chicago wins, and 90% of people hate the band trip.
No, free trade helps both countries. Just look at how hurt many industries were when Bush raised protectionist tariffs on steel: the steel industry was happy, but the rest of the country got hit with higher supply costs.
If you read comp.sys.hp48, you'll keep hearing people complaining about the new keyboards breaking as well. Also, new programs still suffer from the emulation layer, unless they're written explicitly for the ARM -- and most software is written in SysRPL.
The calc does not get sold with the capability of 200 MHz already built in -- which makes that useless for most users.
Except that you are completely wrong in your information. The G+ has an ARM cpu of aboout 75 MHz, and it has an SD card slot, not compactflash.
Also, its speed is effectively much less than 75 MHz, because the ARM processor just emulates a Saturn processor.
Also, the 49G+ has an utterly poor-quality keyboard -- many keypresses just aren't detected, and some people are having keys break on their hinges entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
You haven't seen high school girls pull out their TI-83 PLUSes so they could discover that 40 + 8 equals 48. (This actually happened. In an honors math class.)
There is no reason students shouldn't have a basic scientific for say, things like calculating pe^(rt), but graphing calculators are unnecessary. They cause students to learn how to do a sequence of operations for finding the answer to a question which they'll get on next week's test, not how the problem actually gets solved. If the kids are being taught concepts and not arithmetic, wouldn't the problems and scenarios be designed to make the arithmetic trivial anyway?
Are you sure? I _might_ be wrong, but I am pretty sure I remember seeing a special about some North American Indians that did not live on the equator, which had a wall that pointed due east/west, and they mentioned that the sun would rise and set right along the line of the wall during the equinox (which they showed on camera).
In fact, take a look at March 20's Astronomy Picture of the Day, taken in Arizona.
sets and rises due east and due west (Not vis versa)
The sun sets in the west.
Energy is not mass. And writing "Period" cannot strengthen an argument that runs counter to facts. If you think that transmitting electromagnetic radiation means that an object is losing mass, then stop trying to argue and go look up the physics for yourself.
Well, as for the first three sentences, i don't think they apply for everybody. There are some people whose interest might be well-sparked by such software. And I don't think it's very helpful to plot graphs by hand or detrimental to do that with a computer. (Well, one time in DiffEq... well let's just say that I got excited by hand-plotting a spiralling solution to a system of linear equations with complex eigenvalues.) However, the only interest-sparking I usually see from such software or calculators involves graphing calculators' easy and rewarding programmability. (Easy/rewarding in that results can be acheived without bothering with compiling or perfect syntax and such.) And I don't see software doing much in that department.
On the high school to freshman level? Take software (and calculators) out of the kid's hands. It will only hurt his education. If anything at all, get him an RPN calculator -- it still requires thinking in order to evaluate expressions, the kind of thinking that improves mathematical skills and understanding of the task at hand, instead of the kind of thinking that goes "I plug and chug and get an answer."
h tml
Without doubt, I am certain that my getting an RPN calculator (replacing a non-RPN calculator) while in high school improved my mental math skills and caused my brain to rewire the way it thinks about many aspects of math.
But anyway, about your question. Check out Xcas. Its user interface I dislike, but at least it exists. http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.
e=mc^2? There is no mass being lost at all.
To say there is mass being lost because of some lost energy is like observing the trees and noting that swaying trees make the wind.
No no no no no no no.
The energy from food, etc, on the space station comes from _chemical_ reactions. Chemical reactions do not involve any change of mass. The practical ones on the space station convert potential energy of some sort or another into things like kinetic energy, heat, and light. This energy can be stored in batteries, chemical bonds, or whatever. Some comes from light, via solar panels.
For a more graspable example of energy storage involving retrieval of energy without destroying matter, think of springs. You can have a "battery" consisting of a loaded spring, which is controlled via some mechanations to only release its energy in certain amounts for certain intervals. Every once in a while, this "battery" can be recharged by winding the spring back to its loaded state. Is there any conversion of _matter_ to energy? No. The same answer of "no" applies to circuits and the breaking of chemical bonds.
This type "spring battery" power storage has been used in clocks and watches for a long time.
That would be true if the sun rose and set in the same angle over the horizon all year, but the sun does not do that. During the summer, it sets and rises north of where it sets and rises in the winter. At the equinox, it sets and rises due west and due east.
So the test is "sentience" now? Two things: First, please quit moving the goalposts. Second, surely a newborn is no more possessed of sentience than a newly fertilized zygote. There's absolutely no way to know for sure, but even the most optimistic estimates are that self-awareness doesn't begin to emerge until after the first year of life. Are babies younger than one year of age not really babies? Should it be okay to kill them?
A newborn certainly is more sentient than a zygote. Sentience does not require self-awareness; the two terms are not synonymous by the way. A newborn might not be self-aware *, but it is sentient. There is a thinking being in there.
There is not a thinking being in a zygote or embryo, however.
Is it moral or not to kill non-self-aware beings? That is a tricky question. My answer would be that if nothing else, since other humans highly value the lives of infants, it is considered, by generally "all" people, wrong to kill them. Their lives are valued. Personally, I find it immoral because they are sentient humans, which should not be killed regardless of how others value them.
Unborn brainless human collections of cells, however, have differing views attached to them. Some people value the lives of all embyros; others do not. That's where the moral differences come in to play.
* Self-awareness is a tricky issue. People often talk of things as either being self-aware or not. However, I do not think self-awareness just "turns on" at some point in a child's development. It is either always on (from when neurons start firing) or it gradually develops.
I think awareness develops when the brain starts operating, and awareness of oneself develops over the course of time. Hence, self-awareness is not a good place to start when considering rights.
But since you brought it up, definition #1 is "a very young child." Embryos naturally meet this standard.
If we're going to play the game of looking at definition #1 (which I'll join because the game is fun), let's look at dictionary.com's definition #1 for "child." That is, "A person between birth and puberty." And embryos certainly don't fit this category.
But that's if you play the game of looking at definition #1. And we both know that using dictionary definitions to twist through moral issues is a pretty retarded thing to try.
Just like using weighted terminology can add weight to your words, but it can't add weight to your argument.
Now I have to quickly answer your other post since it is more convenient to do it here:
You can refer to an embryo in whatever clinical, dehumanizing terms you want. Call it a "scrap of tissue," call it a "bunch of cells," call it an "unwanted growth." Applying these names doesn't change the essential fact that an embryo is a baby.
Likewise, calling it a difference over terminology or conflicting worldviews or whatever doesn't change the essential fact that embryonic stem cells are harvested from the corpses of dead babies.
If an embryo is not a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead embryos.
If an embryo is a baby, then I could say it's okay to harvest cells from the corpses of dead babies which are in the embryonic stage.
Does that terminology make you squeamish?
No.
Rightly so!
Huh?
The killing of a baby for medical research, even if justified by the possibility of wonderful results, should never be undertaken lightly.
Replace "baby" with "embryo" and I would still agree with you. So let's not undertake the research lightly; let's only do research on non-sentient babies. Embryos and zygotes fall under that category, so why would there be anything wrong with research on them?
(Disclaimer: I am against embryonic stem cell research. I am arguing against your arguments, not your opinion.)
But it's not the Cantor set. Missing every third letter has nothing to do with the Cantor Set's shape.
Yeah, all those people seem to be under the delusion that one is prime... The number one is neither prime nor composite though (you'd think the mathematician in the joke would know that).
I always liked to mess with my teachers by using this version:
x = 2c/(-b +/- (b^2 - 4ac)^0.5)
But so much of life relies on the lunar cycle, some directly relying on tides. This would throw the ecosystem completely out of whack. Also, half of the world would experience a somewhat permanent day, light-wise, with the moon being so close to the Earth. Also, the tidal forces themselves would be rediculously stronger -- with the moon more than ten times as close, as would be necessary for geostationary orbit, its gravitational field at the Earth would be over one hundred times as strong. And even if everything did magically work itself out, the moon's gravity would completely destroy the paths of all other geosynchronous satellites. Also, there are surely many other problems which I have not thought of yet.
As for solving the problem of earthquakes -- it would result in millenia and millenia of super-intense volcanic and tectonic activity.
Seriously, I know somebody who heated his apartment this way.
Wireless Network -- As far as I remember, the only public wireless was in the student union and the DCC (where the largest lecture halls were). A year or two ago, they restricted these connections to VPN access. With regard to that other dude who had issues, the cisco linux client never worked for me either :-(.
There is more wireless access nowadays. I get wireless access on RPI's network in most places where I have classes -- I have not had the occasion to try some places -- the library/VCC have wireless now of course. Where there isn't "official" access, one can still get online via individuals' routers, whether in dorms or in academic buildings like Carnegie. I get access outside, usually. (I probably deliberately sit in likely locations, though.)
Provide Web Pages -- I think there is 10 MB of space for each student.
It's now 25 MB, I think.
Computer Purchase -- The laptops are IBMs top of the line T series laptop at the time. Usually about 3000 grand which probably covers the software licensing more than it covers the cost of the hardware.
The T42s this year were $2300.
Usenet -- I don't know.
There is a usenet server, but it is less useful than news.individual.net.
free alumni email for life
:)
This might not last...
in the ultimate metaphor for tech worship, the building used as the main computing center and server room is a former church.
I have to agree. The building is very nice: Take a look.
sweet deal on the standard laptop: IBM T40
The standard laptop is actually the T42 for the class of 2008
Also, since a standard laptop must be purchased by incoming freshmen, it is for all intents and purposes part of your tuition.
This is not true -- one only has to buy a laptop that meets the minimum specifications. However, the standard Thinkpad is the best deal, I think.
We actually have had usenet since it's inception before the Internet.
Um. No comment...
Pure science solves loads of problems that applied science never would.
Nothing, it's just a bad place for a band trip. The year before I entered high school, the band trip was to Chicago. It was pretty bad, because there was no way the students were going to be allowed out of the hotel into the middle of Chicago while they had free time (parents wouldn't allow it, and the band director wouldn't have anyway). This is in contrast to Myrtle Beach, where a couple of days were spent mostly hanging out on the beach, and, for some people, visiting stores that are designed to take vacationers' money. Where would you rather go?
This is somewhat like the Borda voting method, except that in the Borda method, you must give N points to your favorite candidate, N - 1 points to your second favorite, and so on - the number of points is fixed.
The problem with your method is that everybody is going to throw their points at one candidate - their favorite. The problem with the Borda method is this scenario: Suppose you have high school band members voting on where they want the band trip to be. The options are Chicago, Toronto, and Myrtle Beach. The situation is this: 45 bandies want Toronto over Myrtle Beach, 45 prefer Myrtle Beach over Toronto, and 10 loonies prefer Chicago (which is such a bad idea, by the way). Each person lists their three choices in order - first place votes are worth 3 points, second place 2 points, third place 1 point.
All the Toronto-wanters decide that to screw the Myrtle Beach crowd, they'll vote for Myrtle Beach in third place, with Chicago in second, even though it is a crappy place for a band trip (because they shouldn't have to worry about Chicago getting picked). The Myrtle Beach-wanters do the same thing. The result is that 180 points go to each Myrtle Beach, Chicago, and Toronto.
Then the Chicago loonies vote for Chicago in first place, putting Chicago over the edge. Chicago wins, and 90% of people hate the band trip.
By any chance, is this in the same group as bureaucratium?
No, biased news is good. As long as the bias vectors all point in a whole bunch of different directions.
No, free trade helps both countries. Just look at how hurt many industries were when Bush raised protectionist tariffs on steel: the steel industry was happy, but the rest of the country got hit with higher supply costs.
If you read comp.sys.hp48, you'll keep hearing people complaining about the new keyboards breaking as well. Also, new programs still suffer from the emulation layer, unless they're written explicitly for the ARM -- and most software is written in SysRPL.
The calc does not get sold with the capability of 200 MHz already built in -- which makes that useless for most users.
However, the Bushes come from New England.
Except that you are completely wrong in your information. The G+ has an ARM cpu of aboout 75 MHz, and it has an SD card slot, not compactflash.
Also, its speed is effectively much less than 75 MHz, because the ARM processor just emulates a Saturn processor.
Also, the 49G+ has an utterly poor-quality keyboard -- many keypresses just aren't detected, and some people are having keys break on their hinges entirely.