The book "What is Mathematics?" by Courant and Robbins, despite its cushy-sounding name, would be my recommendation. First of all, it's written by two world-class mathematicians. Second, it's not a textbook; rather, it's what you might call a celebration of how awesome math is. If you want to succeed in college math without being miserable, why not try to see the subject as thing of beauty, rather than a burden? This book will definitely help you do that. If you read through the first half of the book (it shouldn't take long) you will have a chance to warm the math parts of your brain back up, and you'll learn some extremely cool shit along the way. (A bit of geometry, a bit of topology, a bit of algebra, etc.)
When you get to the authors' lucid explanation of the main ideas behind calculus, you'll realize that (1) calculus isn't scary, (2) the computations you need to learn how to do are fun, not hard, and (3) everything comes down to a few very intuitive ideas -- it may have taken geniuses like Newton and Leibnitz to come up with them in the first place, but they are part of our common intellectual heritage, not erudite ideas reserved for mathematicians and physicists.
And, although it's not a textbook, there are some exercises which will give you the chance to test your understanding. Again, though, they are fun, not grueling.
I detest the ludicrous prices of internet service as much as anyone. I'm all for new players entering the market and shaking up the monopolies' crappy (in the sense of evil, albeit profitable) business models. But I am somewhat uncomfortable with a local government being this player.
Now it's true that certain industries are natural monopolies (in the sense of economics: they require large capital investment in infrastructure, which results in high barriers to market entry and enables the sort of tactics other commenters have described, pricing competitors out of the market when they do crop up. Many of these industries seem to work better for society when they are government-regulated utilities, e.g. sewage, electricity, water, police and fire protection. But that doesn't mean that the government should be allowed to run any industry which is a natural monopology.
In particular, I think it's best to maintain a healthy distrust of government when it comes to running media of communication which are necessary for political speech and dissent from government policies. Internet, phone, and cable services, I believe, fall into this category.
Another example might be newspapers, which are obviously about to go out of business, because website redistribute for free the content produced by the papers' journalists. Some people have proposed endowing newspapers as nonprofit organizations. Another possible model, I suppose, would be having the government pay journalists to do their reporting, which would then be delivered to citizens, e.g. online. But no one (I hope) would seriously consider this a good idea for "saving" journalism --- we would end up like with a state-controlled media of questionable objectivity, not really worth a damn.
The moral? Be wary when the government owns the flow of information. It's a Good Thing that the ISPs are being challenged. But hopefully private enterprises can accomplish the same thing, too.
I've got to agree that Courant-Robbins is the place to look. It's got pretty much everything -- a nice taste of calculus, some elementary number theory, and even a bit of knot theory. It's the elementary math book which comes closest to capturing the spirit of of the mathematical world as I grasp it, now nearing the end of my undergraduate math major and set to go to graduate school next year. It was also one of the better Bar Mitzvah presents I received, in retrospect.
At a lower level, Conway and Guy wrote an excellent book called "The Book of Numbers". It's got enough in it that a bright middle school or high school student could read it cover to cover four or five times and pick up something new and interesting on each read.
Another good book, written at an elementary level but sophisticated in content, is "Geometry and the Imagination" by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.
The Weizmann institute outside of T.A. runs a summer program (two versions actually, one for HS students and one for undergraduates) called the Karyn Kupcinet International Science School for Overseas Students. At least, that's the part of the program I participated in, as an American undergrad. But there were a lot of Israeli HS students around, so I think you would be eligible. You get to troll the institute's websites and rank the distinguished faculty members you would like to do research with in order of preference. If you get into the program, they'll assign you one of your choices, and that advisor will help you with a research project.
The CS/Math department is very strong. I don't know much about the other departments, But it's worth pointing out that Weizmann has its own particle accelerator (!), now used mostly for nMRI I believe.
Having a lot of equations does NOT make a physics book "targeted for mathematicians". Indeed, physics books love to display their "proofs" and "derivations" of all the important formulae. This is fine, and I'm sure the OP has no trouble following such arguments.
What mathematicians like in a physics book is a clear and precise explanation of the mathematical axiomatization of the underlying physical principles being appealed to, as well as a good presentation of the motivation behind any application of particular mathematical methods. The best example of this is in classical mechanics, where depending upon one's sophistication one can take the Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian perspective on the subject. With this increasing sophistication, there is increasing complexity, but also an increasingly (mathematically) elegant, geometric way of understanding the dynamics of physical systems.
I think it's a philosophically contentious claim that math is constrained by the physical universe. A lot of practicing mathematicians with Platonist tendencies would probably disagree.
This, of course, doesn't make your point any less valid: math is much more *interesting* because it relates to the physical universe.
V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics. He has what is obviously the One True perspective on the math underlying classical physics (symplectic geometry). Complement your reading with a modern math book on symplectic geometry and you'll really understand what's going on.
For QM, I've been told that Mackey's "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics" does things in a mathematician-understandable way. You can find illegal scans (and most other math books) of this on the usual Russian websites.
As always/. brings us old news: The n-category cafe carried a lively discussion of this business back in December. The response from the small sampling of mathematicians represented there was highly skeptical at best. Now who knows whether or not this program will be good for DARPA in the long run. However, there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that the proposer of these problems is no David Hilbert...
For what it's worth, Yahoo! is also the go-to site for free online gaming. Now, I've never clicked an ad (except by mistake), so I'm not sure how much revenue this really generates for them, but it's certainly a service that I use frequently and greatly appreciate. With the recent surge in popularity of online poker, if Yahoo! were to significantly improve its poker gaming experience and offer play-for-money via PayPal, they could dominate the field even more.
All those who tout the tremendous import of the Internet as a tool for research and productivity should remember that - perhaps first and foremost - it is a brilliant tool for screwing around and wasting time. Read, browsing Slashdot.
Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc).
This is factually incorrect. In fact, our economy's incredible strength during the past 50 years is partly attributable to our extremely strong consumption. Briefly put, consumption fuels economic growth.
As far as trade deficits are concerned, they are not really a problem in and of themselves. Since the imperial era, economics has progressed past the mercantilist idea that a prosperous nation must export more than it imports -- the amount of wealth in the global economy is not constant, so we are not fighting with other nations for a bigger piece of the pie.
In fact, trade deficits are merely a symptom of a more fundamental "problem" in the U.S. economy: American's don't save (much), and haven't since the Reagan administration, when government deficit spending caused the national savings rate to plummet. This is an issue because saving fuels investment, and hence economic growth. Currently, the problem hasn't even gotten bad because other nations' investors have so far been willing to fund our strong capital accumulation; as such, growth has remained strong. (The weakening dollar in recent months may indicate a looming change in the tide, however.)
In general, though, the key point is that consumption = good. As the parent points out, the problem for China will be boosting productivity, so that they will be *able* to consume like we can.
>> 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep
This would essentially fit in my iPod (or at least, I wouldn't mind the extra thickness), and would prevent it from going to iPod Valhalla too soon... if only, if only.
Well, circa 2040, when some of the good shit from the 60s goes off copyright (assuming optimistically that we don't have another Disney extension before then), we can all start renting CDs from our local libraries and ripping them freely. We're certainly not stealing the physical media; we're just making copies, which would by then be a matter of exercising our fair use right to public domain art.
On the one hand, it's distressing that this bill continues the recent trend of naming laws in such a manner as to automatically cast aspersions on the honor of anyone who opposes them. I mean, the public should (rightly) be worried if their elected legislators are opposed to Counting Every Vote. But if there was a genuine flaw in the wording of the bill, and a politician voted against it because of this, his or her opponents could certainly spin this act in a dishonest - but politically effective - manner.
But on the other hand, it's nice to see an apparently benign example of this phenomenon. By all acounts this bill is a Good Thing, entirely apart from partisan consideration, so our legislators should feel political pressure to vote for it. Contrast with the PATRIOT Act, for example, or the watered-down Help America Vote Act...
With regards to Pollack, you are incorrect. His paintings were genuinely random; he merely took the part of the canvas he liked best after hurling various things at it for a long time. I think what you meant was that we, as humans, respond not to the random content in such work, but to the emotional intensity that clearly lies beneath the creation of such randomness. Obviously, this emotional intensity is absent for computer-generated art, but whether that disqualifies it, I am in no position to say.
Granted I've never flown a plane, so I don't know how farfetched the idea may be... but isn't piloting a potentially computer-controllable task? After all, planes fly pre-arranged flight plans, land on carefully-scheduled runways, etc. In the plane, most of the work consists of pointing in the right direction at the right time, and being at the right altitude for the flight plan, no? And not only are computers harder to blind (with proper design) they are also harder to highjack (with proper security).
An irrefutably classic book on mathematics is Courant and Robbins' amazing "What is Mathematics?" (Later edited and revised by Ian Stewart). This is a fantastic book that was nevertheless written very much with the lay-person in mind. (I believe the introduction - by Courant's son? - discusses how one of the authors required his sons' brides-to-be to get through the book at least once.)
It's one of those books that you never really finish. I received it years ago for my Bar Mitzvah and I've probably read through the text several times. But I invariably return later to those sections that bored or confused me, only to find them fascinating and illuminating. I would highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing fondness for numbers.
Economically speaking, this is a Good Thing. The fundamental assumption of global warming -- which a large number of scientists seem to believe, although clearly the question needs to be studied more -- is that when the U.S. used CO2-emitting technology, it is imposing a cost on the entire planet that is not accurately reflected in its own production costs. Kyoto's tradable vouchers would "internalize this externality" by making U.S. firms pay the real (social / environmental) cost of conducting their business. Thus is makes no sense to say that Kyoto would put us at a "pollution deficit." Either you believe in global warming or you don't. If you do, then there is no valid reason why American companies shouldn't pay a price for their emissions.
Free-market incentive structures like this really work. By letting supply and demand determine the allocation of the vouchers, they will necessarily end up in the countries where polluting is more efficient than reducing emissions. What we too often forget is that wealth is not about the flow of dollars into and out of our country: it's about the standard of living of people; the dollars are just pieces of paper, or today, mere bits. In short, if global warming is a problem, then the structure of Kyoto will make the world a genuinely better place, in terms of real value to the global society.
Moral: if you doubt the science, you doubt the science. Otherwise, don't bitch and moan; it's just protectionism and it's irrational.
And one other thing...all you countries complaining about how Americans are just for world domination...where exactly in our history have we ever done that, especially when we were in the driver's seat (Germany and Japan weren't annexed after WWII)? Never, that's when. But YOU, you've done that many times (Hitler, Napoleon, Lenin, Stahlin, etc.). Perhaps you distrust us because you were corrupt in your own history. We may not be perfect, and there may be a few of us that are anarchists (Michael Moore), but we don't want to dominate you...
Perhaps it's worth pointing out that we would have no Texas today if it weren't for an American annexation in the 1840s... Likewise, even today we retain several colonial holdings (e.g. Puerto Rico, Guam) that are nothing more than remnants from the Spanish-American War. Ask the Filipinos about Americans and world domination...
Now, I concede that there are no such examples in "recent" American history. However, my (American) perspective on what the international community fears in Bush is this: Why do we pick exactly the battles we do? Why did Clinton intervene in Kosovo and not in Rwanda? Why did Bush invade Iraq and not the Sudan? It is awfully difficult to justify foreign policy in terms of grand visions about humanitarianism and democracy when that policy is not evenly applied.
In the end, certain things are unavoidable. The UN is a mess, Saddam was an asshole, perhaps Bush has done something truly good in Iraq. (Perhaps it's too soon to tell.) But it does not inspire confidence in the citizens of the world to watch a US President launch wars on false pretexts, justifying them after the fact.
The difference between architecture and painting is that whereas the aesthetic sensibilities of a painter dictate the appearance of a wall, or at most a single room, the architect has the power to shape the appearance and atmosphere of an entire neighborhood. Such power, used wisely, can be a Good Thing. Indeed, many of the examples you linked to demonstrate that.
However, what the Guggenheim and the Sydney Opera House have that Gehry's Stata Center lacks is class. It doesn't take a trained architect's eye to get a feel for what it would be like to live near or in a building. I live near Cambridge, and when I walk or drive by the Stata center, I get one distinct impression: Fisher Price on crack.
For better or for worse, the Stata looks like a toy - a quirky, disturbing, funky looking toy. Now, perhaps that is just right for a place like MIT's AI lab. In my opinion, though, there is much to be said for the sheer elegance of a building like MIT's own Dome. Modernism is fine (and even Frank Gehry has designed some cool buildings), but that doesn't mean the Stata is a place where I would want to work, or even see on a regular basis. All I can say is Bleah.
My parents bought me a $200 iTunes gift certificate for a present. This was supposed to be either 200 songs or 20 albums, which makes it a damn good present, one that I can apply gradually as I purchase music throughout a period of a year or more. However, if the price of a song or album goes up, my balance is worth less. Since I am effectively having value taken away from my account, it feels an aweful lot like I'm being stolen from.
Now I suppose that this situation is akin to any gift certificate, when prices are raised. However, because the record industry is doing this en masse, in what is clearly a price-fixing fashion (as has been pointed out by other posters), it feels a lot worse. What the RIAA should understand is that, while their business must ultimately be about their bottom line, this has an extremely negative impact on the customer, and does nothing to help their already-dubious reputation. I can guarentee that I would be far less likely to buy someone, say, a $200 gift certificate, if the songs cost $2.50 rather than $0.99. In the long run, this is therefore a poor decision, on both a customer-service and a business level.
For what it's worth, I am a Napster/KaZaA user-turned-iTunes customer. Essentially, I am willing to pay $0.99 for the convenience of guarenteed quality and easy searching. But it is stupidity - bordering on insanity - to think that customers like myself won't again seek out free alternatives when the convenience no longer justifies the cost... Oh, and to anticipate the criticism that customers pay for music to "support the artist," let me just say that if I wish do so, I'll go to a concert. If the artist is no longer touring, they're probably either already rich, broken up, or washed up. In any case, I have no desire to be supporting them.
I have to disagree. Often, those who dislike baseball simply do not know enough about it. I, for one, would be quite dismayed if MLB were to disappear. For example, as a resident of the Boston area, it is virtually impossible for me not to be a Red Sox fan; half the fun is knowing that if (when!) we win the World Series, New England will shut down for months in celebration. (Then Hell freezes over and pigs start flying...)
On another note, baseball is one of the more computer-friendly sports in that watching the action is almost unnecessary. I would suspect that live webcasts of the game are not nearly as popular as updated-every-30-seconds box scores are. E.g., I would never waste my time and energy trying to stream a game in Windows Media Player, let alone Real Player. Instead, when I can't watch the game I use a little Java app from Yahoo Sports that shows the complete box score, the batter and count, and situation stats at all times. With this much information, what use is a crappy-quality stream?
Of course, we all know that MLB controls the Guvmint's secret spy satellites anyway, so its no use for Real to fight them...
Slashdot Mirror
Scratch.
The book "What is Mathematics?" by Courant and Robbins, despite its cushy-sounding name, would be my recommendation. First of all, it's written by two world-class mathematicians. Second, it's not a textbook; rather, it's what you might call a celebration of how awesome math is. If you want to succeed in college math without being miserable, why not try to see the subject as thing of beauty, rather than a burden? This book will definitely help you do that. If you read through the first half of the book (it shouldn't take long) you will have a chance to warm the math parts of your brain back up, and you'll learn some extremely cool shit along the way. (A bit of geometry, a bit of topology, a bit of algebra, etc.)
When you get to the authors' lucid explanation of the main ideas behind calculus, you'll realize that (1) calculus isn't scary, (2) the computations you need to learn how to do are fun, not hard, and (3) everything comes down to a few very intuitive ideas -- it may have taken geniuses like Newton and Leibnitz to come up with them in the first place, but they are part of our common intellectual heritage, not erudite ideas reserved for mathematicians and physicists.
And, although it's not a textbook, there are some exercises which will give you the chance to test your understanding. Again, though, they are fun, not grueling.
I detest the ludicrous prices of internet service as much as anyone. I'm all for new players entering the market and shaking up the monopolies' crappy (in the sense of evil, albeit profitable) business models. But I am somewhat uncomfortable with a local government being this player.
Now it's true that certain industries are natural monopolies (in the sense of economics: they require large capital investment in infrastructure, which results in high barriers to market entry and enables the sort of tactics other commenters have described, pricing competitors out of the market when they do crop up. Many of these industries seem to work better for society when they are government-regulated utilities, e.g. sewage, electricity, water, police and fire protection. But that doesn't mean that the government should be allowed to run any industry which is a natural monopology. In particular, I think it's best to maintain a healthy distrust of government when it comes to running media of communication which are necessary for political speech and dissent from government policies. Internet, phone, and cable services, I believe, fall into this category.
Another example might be newspapers, which are obviously about to go out of business, because website redistribute for free the content produced by the papers' journalists. Some people have proposed endowing newspapers as nonprofit organizations. Another possible model, I suppose, would be having the government pay journalists to do their reporting, which would then be delivered to citizens, e.g. online. But no one (I hope) would seriously consider this a good idea for "saving" journalism --- we would end up like with a state-controlled media of questionable objectivity, not really worth a damn.
The moral? Be wary when the government owns the flow of information. It's a Good Thing that the ISPs are being challenged. But hopefully private enterprises can accomplish the same thing, too.
I've got to agree that Courant-Robbins is the place to look. It's got pretty much everything -- a nice taste of calculus, some elementary number theory, and even a bit of knot theory. It's the elementary math book which comes closest to capturing the spirit of of the mathematical world as I grasp it, now nearing the end of my undergraduate math major and set to go to graduate school next year. It was also one of the better Bar Mitzvah presents I received, in retrospect.
At a lower level, Conway and Guy wrote an excellent book called "The Book of Numbers". It's got enough in it that a bright middle school or high school student could read it cover to cover four or five times and pick up something new and interesting on each read.
Another good book, written at an elementary level but sophisticated in content, is "Geometry and the Imagination" by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.
The Weizmann institute outside of T.A. runs a summer program (two versions actually, one for HS students and one for undergraduates) called the Karyn Kupcinet International Science School for Overseas Students. At least, that's the part of the program I participated in, as an American undergrad. But there were a lot of Israeli HS students around, so I think you would be eligible. You get to troll the institute's websites and rank the distinguished faculty members you would like to do research with in order of preference. If you get into the program, they'll assign you one of your choices, and that advisor will help you with a research project. The CS/Math department is very strong. I don't know much about the other departments, But it's worth pointing out that Weizmann has its own particle accelerator (!), now used mostly for nMRI I believe.
Having a lot of equations does NOT make a physics book "targeted for mathematicians". Indeed, physics books love to display their "proofs" and "derivations" of all the important formulae. This is fine, and I'm sure the OP has no trouble following such arguments.
What mathematicians like in a physics book is a clear and precise explanation of the mathematical axiomatization of the underlying physical principles being appealed to, as well as a good presentation of the motivation behind any application of particular mathematical methods. The best example of this is in classical mechanics, where depending upon one's sophistication one can take the Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian perspective on the subject. With this increasing sophistication, there is increasing complexity, but also an increasingly (mathematically) elegant, geometric way of understanding the dynamics of physical systems.
I think it's a philosophically contentious claim that math is constrained by the physical universe. A lot of practicing mathematicians with Platonist tendencies would probably disagree.
This, of course, doesn't make your point any less valid: math is much more *interesting* because it relates to the physical universe.
V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics. He has what is obviously the One True perspective on the math underlying classical physics (symplectic geometry). Complement your reading with a modern math book on symplectic geometry and you'll really understand what's going on. For QM, I've been told that Mackey's "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics" does things in a mathematician-understandable way. You can find illegal scans (and most other math books) of this on the usual Russian websites.
As always /. brings us old news: The n-category cafe carried a lively discussion of this business back in December. The response from the small sampling of mathematicians represented there was highly skeptical at best. Now who knows whether or not this program will be good for DARPA in the long run. However, there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that the proposer of these problems is no David Hilbert...
For what it's worth, Yahoo! is also the go-to site for free online gaming. Now, I've never clicked an ad (except by mistake), so I'm not sure how much revenue this really generates for them, but it's certainly a service that I use frequently and greatly appreciate. With the recent surge in popularity of online poker, if Yahoo! were to significantly improve its poker gaming experience and offer play-for-money via PayPal, they could dominate the field even more.
All those who tout the tremendous import of the Internet as a tool for research and productivity should remember that - perhaps first and foremost - it is a brilliant tool for screwing around and wasting time. Read, browsing Slashdot.
Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc).
This is factually incorrect. In fact, our economy's incredible strength during the past 50 years is partly attributable to our extremely strong consumption. Briefly put, consumption fuels economic growth.
As far as trade deficits are concerned, they are not really a problem in and of themselves. Since the imperial era, economics has progressed past the mercantilist idea that a prosperous nation must export more than it imports -- the amount of wealth in the global economy is not constant, so we are not fighting with other nations for a bigger piece of the pie.
In fact, trade deficits are merely a symptom of a more fundamental "problem" in the U.S. economy: American's don't save (much), and haven't since the Reagan administration, when government deficit spending caused the national savings rate to plummet. This is an issue because saving fuels investment, and hence economic growth. Currently, the problem hasn't even gotten bad because other nations' investors have so far been willing to fund our strong capital accumulation; as such, growth has remained strong. (The weakening dollar in recent months may indicate a looming change in the tide, however.)
In general, though, the key point is that consumption = good. As the parent points out, the problem for China will be boosting productivity, so that they will be *able* to consume like we can.
>> 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep This would essentially fit in my iPod (or at least, I wouldn't mind the extra thickness), and would prevent it from going to iPod Valhalla too soon... if only, if only.
Well, circa 2040, when some of the good shit from the 60s goes off copyright (assuming optimistically that we don't have another Disney extension before then), we can all start renting CDs from our local libraries and ripping them freely. We're certainly not stealing the physical media; we're just making copies, which would by then be a matter of exercising our fair use right to public domain art.
On the one hand, it's distressing that this bill continues the recent trend of naming laws in such a manner as to automatically cast aspersions on the honor of anyone who opposes them. I mean, the public should (rightly) be worried if their elected legislators are opposed to Counting Every Vote. But if there was a genuine flaw in the wording of the bill, and a politician voted against it because of this, his or her opponents could certainly spin this act in a dishonest - but politically effective - manner.
But on the other hand, it's nice to see an apparently benign example of this phenomenon. By all acounts this bill is a Good Thing, entirely apart from partisan consideration, so our legislators should feel political pressure to vote for it. Contrast with the PATRIOT Act, for example, or the watered-down Help America Vote Act...
With regards to Pollack, you are incorrect. His paintings were genuinely random; he merely took the part of the canvas he liked best after hurling various things at it for a long time. I think what you meant was that we, as humans, respond not to the random content in such work, but to the emotional intensity that clearly lies beneath the creation of such randomness. Obviously, this emotional intensity is absent for computer-generated art, but whether that disqualifies it, I am in no position to say.
Granted I've never flown a plane, so I don't know how farfetched the idea may be... but isn't piloting a potentially computer-controllable task? After all, planes fly pre-arranged flight plans, land on carefully-scheduled runways, etc. In the plane, most of the work consists of pointing in the right direction at the right time, and being at the right altitude for the flight plan, no? And not only are computers harder to blind (with proper design) they are also harder to highjack (with proper security).
Just a thought
...towards "Smart Wheels" a la Neal Stephenson. And there ain't nothing wrong with that.
An irrefutably classic book on mathematics is Courant and Robbins' amazing "What is Mathematics?" (Later edited and revised by Ian Stewart). This is a fantastic book that was nevertheless written very much with the lay-person in mind. (I believe the introduction - by Courant's son? - discusses how one of the authors required his sons' brides-to-be to get through the book at least once.)
It's one of those books that you never really finish. I received it years ago for my Bar Mitzvah and I've probably read through the text several times. But I invariably return later to those sections that bored or confused me, only to find them fascinating and illuminating. I would highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing fondness for numbers.
Economically speaking, this is a Good Thing. The fundamental assumption of global warming -- which a large number of scientists seem to believe, although clearly the question needs to be studied more -- is that when the U.S. used CO2-emitting technology, it is imposing a cost on the entire planet that is not accurately reflected in its own production costs. Kyoto's tradable vouchers would "internalize this externality" by making U.S. firms pay the real (social / environmental) cost of conducting their business. Thus is makes no sense to say that Kyoto would put us at a "pollution deficit." Either you believe in global warming or you don't. If you do, then there is no valid reason why American companies shouldn't pay a price for their emissions.
Free-market incentive structures like this really work. By letting supply and demand determine the allocation of the vouchers, they will necessarily end up in the countries where polluting is more efficient than reducing emissions. What we too often forget is that wealth is not about the flow of dollars into and out of our country: it's about the standard of living of people; the dollars are just pieces of paper, or today, mere bits. In short, if global warming is a problem, then the structure of Kyoto will make the world a genuinely better place, in terms of real value to the global society.
Moral: if you doubt the science, you doubt the science. Otherwise, don't bitch and moan; it's just protectionism and it's irrational.
And one other thing...all you countries complaining about how Americans are just for world domination...where exactly in our history have we ever done that, especially when we were in the driver's seat (Germany and Japan weren't annexed after WWII)? Never, that's when. But YOU, you've done that many times (Hitler, Napoleon, Lenin, Stahlin, etc.). Perhaps you distrust us because you were corrupt in your own history. We may not be perfect, and there may be a few of us that are anarchists (Michael Moore), but we don't want to dominate you...
Perhaps it's worth pointing out that we would have no Texas today if it weren't for an American annexation in the 1840s... Likewise, even today we retain several colonial holdings (e.g. Puerto Rico, Guam) that are nothing more than remnants from the Spanish-American War. Ask the Filipinos about Americans and world domination...
Now, I concede that there are no such examples in "recent" American history. However, my (American) perspective on what the international community fears in Bush is this: Why do we pick exactly the battles we do? Why did Clinton intervene in Kosovo and not in Rwanda? Why did Bush invade Iraq and not the Sudan? It is awfully difficult to justify foreign policy in terms of grand visions about humanitarianism and democracy when that policy is not evenly applied.
In the end, certain things are unavoidable. The UN is a mess, Saddam was an asshole, perhaps Bush has done something truly good in Iraq. (Perhaps it's too soon to tell.) But it does not inspire confidence in the citizens of the world to watch a US President launch wars on false pretexts, justifying them after the fact.
You are stupid.
is that Indiana's teachers SUCK if their grading can be emulated by a machine.
The difference between architecture and painting is that whereas the aesthetic sensibilities of a painter dictate the appearance of a wall, or at most a single room, the architect has the power to shape the appearance and atmosphere of an entire neighborhood. Such power, used wisely, can be a Good Thing. Indeed, many of the examples you linked to demonstrate that.
However, what the Guggenheim and the Sydney Opera House have that Gehry's Stata Center lacks is class. It doesn't take a trained architect's eye to get a feel for what it would be like to live near or in a building. I live near Cambridge, and when I walk or drive by the Stata center, I get one distinct impression: Fisher Price on crack.
For better or for worse, the Stata looks like a toy - a quirky, disturbing, funky looking toy. Now, perhaps that is just right for a place like MIT's AI lab. In my opinion, though, there is much to be said for the sheer elegance of a building like MIT's own Dome. Modernism is fine (and even Frank Gehry has designed some cool buildings), but that doesn't mean the Stata is a place where I would want to work, or even see on a regular basis. All I can say is Bleah.
My parents bought me a $200 iTunes gift certificate for a present. This was supposed to be either 200 songs or 20 albums, which makes it a damn good present, one that I can apply gradually as I purchase music throughout a period of a year or more. However, if the price of a song or album goes up, my balance is worth less. Since I am effectively having value taken away from my account, it feels an aweful lot like I'm being stolen from.
Now I suppose that this situation is akin to any gift certificate, when prices are raised. However, because the record industry is doing this en masse, in what is clearly a price-fixing fashion (as has been pointed out by other posters), it feels a lot worse. What the RIAA should understand is that, while their business must ultimately be about their bottom line, this has an extremely negative impact on the customer, and does nothing to help their already-dubious reputation. I can guarentee that I would be far less likely to buy someone, say, a $200 gift certificate, if the songs cost $2.50 rather than $0.99. In the long run, this is therefore a poor decision, on both a customer-service and a business level.
For what it's worth, I am a Napster/KaZaA user-turned-iTunes customer. Essentially, I am willing to pay $0.99 for the convenience of guarenteed quality and easy searching. But it is stupidity - bordering on insanity - to think that customers like myself won't again seek out free alternatives when the convenience no longer justifies the cost... Oh, and to anticipate the criticism that customers pay for music to "support the artist," let me just say that if I wish do so, I'll go to a concert. If the artist is no longer touring, they're probably either already rich, broken up, or washed up. In any case, I have no desire to be supporting them.
I have to disagree. Often, those who dislike baseball simply do not know enough about it. I, for one, would be quite dismayed if MLB were to disappear. For example, as a resident of the Boston area, it is virtually impossible for me not to be a Red Sox fan; half the fun is knowing that if (when!) we win the World Series, New England will shut down for months in celebration. (Then Hell freezes over and pigs start flying...)
On another note, baseball is one of the more computer-friendly sports in that watching the action is almost unnecessary. I would suspect that live webcasts of the game are not nearly as popular as updated-every-30-seconds box scores are. E.g., I would never waste my time and energy trying to stream a game in Windows Media Player, let alone Real Player. Instead, when I can't watch the game I use a little Java app from Yahoo Sports that shows the complete box score, the batter and count, and situation stats at all times. With this much information, what use is a crappy-quality stream?
Of course, we all know that MLB controls the Guvmint's secret spy satellites anyway, so its no use for Real to fight them...