A friend of mine works for Prof Andre Geim in the Mesoscopic Physics Group at University Manchester and was one of the people to first prepare graphene crystals. They have a spin off that is selling graphene flakes to some interested industry altho the demand is not huge at the moment. If you want to play with graphene flakes of your own you can check them out here.
It is interesting stuff - I saw Prof Geim speak about it and it seems to me one of these areas where quantum theory and experiment intersect, such as with Bose-Einstein Condensates. It's not really my field but the preparation of them is interesting.
M
Here's where you can actually hear them telling you they are idiots:
from TF paper:
Putting the pieces together, the long story is approximately as follows. From 1972 to 1992, violent crime rose 83%: increasing lead exposure produced a 28-91% increase, the growth of prisons produced a 35% decrease, and a remaining 24-87% increase remains unexplained. From 1992 to 2002, violent crime dropped 34%: declining lead exposure produced a 56% decrease, legalized abortion produced a 29% decrease, other factors produced a 23% decrease, and a remaining 74% increase remains unexplained. Thus, the current results imply that lead exposure was likely an important factor in both the rise and the decline of violent crime in the last 30 years. At the same time, the recent history of violent crime is not fully understood: a sustained rise in crime of about 3-5% annually remains unexplained.
I would argue that prisons did not produce a 35% decrease, given that the prison population has more than doubled during this period, but nearly all of these numbers are made up; even if they aren't, then they accept that there is a remaining 74% increase unaccounted for. How can they be even remotely certain that lead is responsible for the highly precise 28-91%
If you aren't convinced they are idiots try this for size:
By the year 2020, when the effects of the Clean Air Act and Roe
v. Wade would be complete, violent crime could be as much as 70% lower than it would be if lead
had remained in gasoline, and as much as 35-45% lower than it would be if abortion had never
been legalized. At the same time, history suggests that other unknown factors would have
increased crime by perhaps 3-5% per year.
What serious researcher writes like this?
Another gem for those who care:
The effect on IQ has been debated extensively, but the consensus is that an
increase in blood lead level of 1 g/dL produces a decrease of approximately one-half of an IQ
point, without any safe threshold
The issue of girls 'underperforming' in Maths has been tackled strongly since the 90s. What has not been addressed successfully is a corresponding inequity in performance of boys in English. In Australia, in EVERY field, girls are out performing boys under the age of 25. It depends how you measure it of course. If you consider whether on average boys or girls score higher, then it is girls, if you look at the top say 10%, then in a maths unit there will usually be more men, but the top student may be a girl (much more likely than 20 years ago).
I think that there has been a tragic overlooking of boys performance in English. For many years there has been an agenda to say that girls are capable of doing anything boys can; with a particular focus on offering scholarships for women in engineering, and targetting women in early high school for mathematics education. These have both done a lot of good for increasing participation of women in Mathematics/Engineering. Alternatively, we are now faced by a chronic shortage of male primary educators, and teachers in general, and there is probably a need for scholarships addressing this issue.
Something as important as the ability to communicate should not be assumed to be 'difficult' for boys to learn. My personal experience is having attended a boys school that was one of the strongest maths schools in my state, but one of the weakest in english. This was part accepted as a 'boy thing', part ignored as unimportant. A noticable difference is that maths was streamed from first year high school until the end, whereas english was only streamed for the last 2 years. I believe in coeducational classes to benefit both boys and girls and a departure from an educational focus on the gender differences of each group and more on the educational similarity
I think this is a disgrace. A fellow Australian, who has never even been to the US, is extradited to the US for a crime that was never committed on US territory because of the damage to certain US corporations.
My main question is this: is Senator Ellison aware of what he is doing by not granting Griffith's appeal to the extradition. He faces up to 10 years for this crime, in a Virginia court; the sentence for rape in Victoria Australia is 6 years 9 months.
20% of inmates in the US have been coerced into sex and 10% of inmates have been raped [source: SPR. Prison rape is largely an American phenomenon due to an institutional apathy that surrounds it. There is no prison rape in the Netherlands, much less in the UK and in Australia, and it is also non-existent, altho for other reasons, parts of latin america (Bolivia, Venezuela). A 10 year sentence, even if served at a minimum security prison includes a very high likelihood of being raped, especially as a young male on a non-violent offence.
So how does Senator Ellison justify allowing this extradition and subsequent sentence in a US prison, far from his family and friends, at risk to his health, including a possible death sentence from HIV, for a crime that yielded him no money, but allegedly cost American corporations $50million (and most of us here would note the difference between $50million worth of software and $50 million worth of sold units).
The majority of the worlds oceans may indeed be above 4C (long term mean), well noted. But a large portion of the ocean is not. Consider this. All of the 'polar ocean' which reaches approximately the southern tip of NZ and Canada around Vancouver, is below 4C.
And then, when calculating volume, how deep are you considering? at a depth of 50m, the temperature drops markedly across global oceans. Are you just considering volume expansion of the top 1m... if the ocean has to heat uniformly, what about the contraction of the layers beneath the top layer, that may be less than 4C?
Also, should we consider the bulk properties of solutions, given that we are not dealing with deionised wate?
It is not a fact that water expands when heated. Liquid water is in fact very strange, and expands upon freezing, which is why if you put a beer can in the freezer it will explode. It is also why icebergs, thankfully, float. It also decreases in volume up to 4 deg C, and then increases in volume after that. (Properties of Water)
The rise in sea level is due to your second point, receding polar ice sheets. A rise in sea level of 1m would indeed cause havoc in Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and many Pacific Islands, but would affect us all.
My main point is that expansion of most liquids due to heat is very small, and in the case of water, which is peculiar, not true at low. The change in sea level will change due to melted ice and increased sea volume, rather than a hot expanded sea.
M.
above corruption quote should be Shell, not BP. Can't recall the nation. Was presented at a Symposium on African Corruption at Ox Uni, presenter was Professor Paul Collier of African Studies Dept at Ox Uni.
Can't remember anything else, so that statistic is basically useless. I 'believe' it, but can't at this time find any more solid backing, so take what you will.
It's well-meaning idiots like you that focus on the short term and keep meddling in those societies (creating corruption and dependency in the process) that are responsible for a large part of the suffering in the third world. Europe and the US developed into modern societies with long life expectancies without such meddling, and these nations can and will as well if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely.
It is not simply well-meaning idiots that focus on the short term. It is far more systemic - corruption is supported by the west, in fact BP last year wrote off 40% of its investment cost in a certain African nation as "Corruption". Yes, that is 40%. Massive. In response to Chinese interests in African oil, there is now a somewhat 'anything goes' strategy, which means corruption and 'stability' are here to stay, at the expense of conditions of those nations' populations. In particular, it is not just 'well-meaning idiots' that are causing problems, but planned greed, perhaps out of oil-peak fears, by corporations and governments alike.
I challenge the statement that the US developed into a modern economy devoid of meddling. Slave trade from Africa transported by English and other frigates? Help from the French in War of independence?
But more so I disagree with 'if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely'. First, we may need to subsidise the first African efforts to trade on a free market, given the already strong presence of cheap production in South East Asia, at this time, a lot of industries that sub-saharan African nations might become involved in are already dominated successfully by SE Asian nations; how can we get their foot in the door? It is worse than this currently though, because the WTO has legislation that says something like 97% of trade from Africa will be tariff free. Who's to say which are the remaining 3? Individual nations, so they can in fact pick only those industries which are competitive.
Also, there is a huge issue of malaria and HIV. I don't see the free market on it's own solving this. I agree that access to markets, in particular in the landlocked countries that have highest rates of HIV and malaria, and most stark poverty, is necessary, but I think the market on its own, without assistance, is not a cure-all for the economic malaise facing sub-saharan Africa.
I'm not being facetious either; it's a very highly regulated two party system (what with the destruction of the Australian Democrat Party - exactly who's being kept honest?), to even run as a candidate you have to run through the party apparatus, which means politicking and garnering support within that party. You won't get that support unless you are going to in turn support the party, or further its goals in someway. Competency, efficacy, and electability are all different things, and the most important of these is the last one: winning elections is everything. The labour party is currently unable to win the next election no matter what they do. While this is, in my biased opinion, somewhat of a tragedy, I have no idea what they are doing with policies like this; will it win them a vote? If it really was a vote-winner, wouldn't the Liberals (conservative party) have already done this? They, the conservatives, certainly wouldn't lose votes by implementing internet censorship. So in short, it won't work, it won't win votes, and in fact the most attention it will probably get in australia and elsewhere for the rest of time is this thread on slashdot.
But at least they got in the news for something, right?
I find map24.com, in every european language, with great route selection, zoomable maps, scrolling, and customisation, to be by far the best road map service in europe. Google maps just isn't as easy to use, especially to navigate around countries... the fact that you can just click a box and it zooms down to that box with map24, and then use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom out, makes it the quickest general and specific map out there.
What is a nano-toxin? How does it differ from a toxin? In what way does the creation of a small macromolecule in the shape of a car contribute to toxicity?
This is phobia and panic, started in the realm of GE food, and spreading, through ignorance, into the world of nanotech. Nanotech is ill defined, and literally means anything over the nano-scale. Scaremongers try to use new scary words (hence their profession), like nano-toxin, and site that nanoparticles are in things like sunscreen, aerosols...etc. Of course they are, for without TiO4 in sunscreen, it wouldn't block ultraviolet rays, and it wouldn't work. I fail to see the difference between a nano-toxin and a toxin, but regardless of what I fail to see, this kind of irrational skepticism and 'but it could be NANO-toxic!' are unhelpful, and only serve to further the divide between scientists and society. Likewise, scientists dismissing the concerns of the public also furthers this divide.
Inform yourself, ask questions of the scientists, but don't say sarcastic unhelpful things like 'it's perfect for producing nano-toxins', without explaining how this might occur.
One could argue the abatement of violence in Northern Ireland is due to EU subsidies and cashflow into the country. Removing poverty is a good way to end violence, however generational hatred and intolerance still remain.
But it's a lot better than it was, and I don't think it's got much to do with British 'non-violence'.
Why do you want India and China to return to an agrarian state? Large tracts of these countries do still operate like this, but I think it is good for them and for the world to have strong economies and production centres in these countries.
Which is better? Now that A has developed X, we can work straight away on returning the United States to an agrarian state, or now that A has developed X we can work on improving living conditions and production capacity across the world.
Deliberately repressing progress in these countries helps no-one.
Growing up in Australia I always thought the UK edition of the game was the 'true' version of monopoly, but the game was in fact invented in America, and so the original version, and the version used in all monopoly world championships, is the American version of the game.
I challenge this. Who was it exactly out of the 489,540 Americans killed in WW1 that died protecting your freedom of speech, and expression of religion?
WW1 was a war fought between empires, that was the beginning of the end of imperialism, it had nothing to do with fighting for freedom, or fighting against oppression.
The US made a lot of money in the first 2 years of the war selling arms and goods to both sides.
Don't get me wrong, WW1 is a very serious historical event, that I would equate with the death of the notion of a 'noble war' (perhaps the 1914 Christmas armstice is the last instance of this) . I have had 95 year old french women come up and thank me just for being Australian and for my ancestors defending their village of Villers-Bretonneux at a cost of 10,000 Australian lives, something that I found quite intense. But I cringe at revisionist history of our intent in WW1. Of course, laud mateship, comraderie, sacrifice and bravery, but do not believe for a second that the allies were the 'just' party in WW1, or that it was a war that defended our essential freedoms. It was a war of attrition, pitting empire against empire, and whilst the minds and bodies of many men were sacrificed for this cause, it was not in the name of liberty.
M.
Out of interest, the russian casualties in WW1 were 775,400, and they only fought for 3 years. In WW2 the numbers are even more ridiculous. Thus there are lots of people from "OTHER countries" who died for your freedom too.
Your friend has seen too many movies where ppl get shot in drive bys, but I think it likely that he has never had a gun pulled on him, or perhaps never even heard a gunshot.
I had a Canadian pull a same thing, at the same time, in Australia when running away from a dodged cab fare. Again we laughed at him, but I also think he'd never had a gun pulled on him. He was just drunk and playing up this attitude of deadly street life in america.
The funny thing is, I lived in the US for 1 year, but never saw a gun (heard gunshots admittedly). The one time I did get a gun pulled on me was back in Australia. It was a James Bond Woman's gun, ie tiny little wednesday night special that would probably have blown the guys hand off, but it was still a gun, and still was a surprise. I guess regardless of attitude, access to guns, or environment, there are still a few lunatics who, frequently coked up, think that pulling out a gun is a great idea.
Either way - Ciudad Juarez, Mexico City, Tijuana, are all much more dangerous than any city in america I believe. I also feel that the most dangerous place I have been is South Side Chicago at 2am dressed like an idiot and begging to get my car back from the tow company, but if I'd been in a similar situation in the outskirts of mexico city I probably would have actually not metaphorically shat my pants.
yeah, fosters is big all over the world, and they are smart too. That's why they have those 'australian for beer' ads. Remember the olympics - 2 weeks before the olympics, ads for Fosters cropped up all over the city, to convince tourists that we all drank fosters, and thus they should try the local brew... as my mate said 'where'd all this foster's shit come from... it's like... get back in ya fucken box fosters'.
But to be fair, given a pint price of 3 pounds in the UK for a good beer, I'd rather pay 2 pounds for a shitty fosters and become drunk more cheaply. So it is true that there, I would be drinking fosters too.
if you can't write, it doesn't matter how good you are in 'math and science' because you are still an idiot.
communication is more important than solving assigned problems with assigned answers. learn to write well while you can and then you will be a better scientist, communicator and educator for it.
umm, sir, Berkeley is a State University... University of California. It in fact might be one of the best public universities in the country, alongside UT Austin, UW Seattle, Georgia Tech, and that probably wraps up my knowledge of US Public Universities.
Trivia - who is the highest paid state official in California...? The coach of the UCLA Football team.
This is one of the most useless comparisons ever used. 'you are more likely to die on the drive to the airport than in a plane', 'you are more likely to die driving to the mountain than climbing it'. Why should we feel safe because something like driving, which we do every day, is inherently very dangerous, and thus unsuitable for comparison.
Can you think of anything else that causes as much loss of life in the 20-25yr old male bracket? Almost all of us can think of someone or a family that has lost someone, and that is because driving is extremely dangerous.
In short, showing that something has a lower death toll than driving has absolutely no reflection on its safety. Might as well say that you have more chance dying when trying to sever a limb with a chainsaw than in a terrorist attack. True, but not particularly insightful.
The Olympiads in general, IOI included, are not about speed. They are about finding the most talented young minds in the world, and giving them a chance to earn prestige and acclaim amongst their peers. The other olympiads, Maths in particular, have been around for years. RSA Encryption was invented by 3 attendees at the (I believe) 1967 International Maths Olympiad, Rivest, Shamir, and Adlemann, who were the US team at the time. Would anyone think that the maths olympiad was merely a matter of speed?
Likewise, the chemistry and physics olympiads have been around for circa 20 years, and biology for 15. It is a great sign for informatics that has its own olympiad alongside these prestigious competitions. The IOI is not about programming speed, but ingenuity, problem solving, and working under pressure. I do not know the details of the IOI, but I do know that to succeed in the other olympiads brilliance is most certainly required.
And now a question for you... what tasks would you put in this competition to be a true test of informatics ingenuity?
we could just look at each interval as it comes, regardless of 'base tone', and look at the distribution of those. If you differentiate between intervals with respect to key, then you have to also include every key change and modulation, which is going to be a lot harder.
Originally I said 156, being all intervals within one octave where C-G is different from D-A, for example, but that would be a lot of bins to distribute over. If he is just using 13 notes, ie an A counts as the same A no matter which octave it falls in, then the interval analogy would be just to consider the 13 possible intervals (within an octave) between one note and the next, and look at all n-1 intervals, where n is the number of notes. In that case C-G, D-A would be the same thing, a perfect 5th, and you would tally the intervals like that.
silly stuff above from me about 156 intervals in a scale - obviously intervals are still just intervals, so there are 13 within one octave, the same as the number of notes.
However, it would strange to consider an augmented octave the same as a minor 2nd, so if we included all intervals greater than an octave, there would be lots of bins in which to place the data (the notes of the piece). He chooses notes instead of intervals, probably due to ease of calculation using notes, but also to add statistical accuracy.
From the article at arXiv.org the author states [included below] some reasoning for choosing single notes, or at least shows he thought about it. After the passage quoted below he goes on to mention that from a statistical point of view it makes more sense to use notes, seeing as each composition will have thousands of notes. I would argue that these compositions would probably not have all 156 (13x12, within one octave) intervals possible in them at least once.
I agree completely however, saying a piece has 572 As in it says nothing about the music. But it might say something about the statistical correlation between note frequency and tonal vs atonal composition.
An obvious difficulty in modelling the creation of musical context along the lines discussed in Section 2 for language, which are based on the statistics of word usage, resides in the fact that the notion of word cannot be unambiguously extended to music (Boroda and Polikarkov, 1988). In language, words -or short combinations of words- stand for the units of semantic contents, with (almost) unequivocal correspondence with objects and concepts. Moreover, in the symbolic representation of language as a chain of characters, i.e. as a written text, words are separated by blank spaces and punctuation marks, which facilitates their identification -in particular, by automatic means. Music, on the other hand, does not possess any conventionally defined units of meaning. The notion of word is however conceivable in music by comparison with the linguistic role of words as "units of context," namely, as the perceptual elements whose collective function yields coherence and comprehensibility to a message. In music, the role of "units of context" is played by the building blocks of the patterns which, at different time scales, make the musical message intelligible. Yet, the identification of such units in a specific work may constitute a controversial task.
In the quantitative investigation of context creation in music, I have chosen as "units of context" the building blocks of the smallest-scale patterns, namely, single notes. A note is here characterised by its pitch (i.e. its position on the clef-endowed staff) and type (i.e. its duration relative to the tempo mark), and its volume, timbre, and actual frequency and duration are disregarded. The contribution of notes to the creation of musical context, determining tonality and the basis for rhythm, is particularly transparent. In addition, the choice of single notes has several operational advantages. In the first place, the collection of notes available to all musical compositions -or, at least, to all those compositions that can be written on a staff using the standard note types- is the same. This collection of notes plays the role of the lexicon out of which the message is generated. Secondly, single notes are well-defined entities in any symbolic representation of music, either printed on a staff or in standardised digital formats, such as the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). This makes possible their automatic identification, which, as described later, constitutes a crucial step in the analysis. Moreover, in order to extract any meaningful information from a statistical approach, it is necessary to work with relatively large corpora. The compositions used in the present investigation contain, typically, several thousand single notes. This figure remains well below the number of words in any literary corpus, which usually reaches a few hundred thousands (cf. figure 1), but is already suited for statistical manipulations.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine works for Prof Andre Geim in the Mesoscopic Physics Group at University Manchester and was one of the people to first prepare graphene crystals. They have a spin off that is selling graphene flakes to some interested industry altho the demand is not huge at the moment. If you want to play with graphene flakes of your own you can check them out here.
It is interesting stuff - I saw Prof Geim speak about it and it seems to me one of these areas where quantum theory and experiment intersect, such as with Bose-Einstein Condensates. It's not really my field but the preparation of them is interesting. M
The issue of girls 'underperforming' in Maths has been tackled strongly since the 90s. What has not been addressed successfully is a corresponding inequity in performance of boys in English. In Australia, in EVERY field, girls are out performing boys under the age of 25. It depends how you measure it of course. If you consider whether on average boys or girls score higher, then it is girls, if you look at the top say 10%, then in a maths unit there will usually be more men, but the top student may be a girl (much more likely than 20 years ago).
I think that there has been a tragic overlooking of boys performance in English. For many years there has been an agenda to say that girls are capable of doing anything boys can; with a particular focus on offering scholarships for women in engineering, and targetting women in early high school for mathematics education. These have both done a lot of good for increasing participation of women in Mathematics/Engineering. Alternatively, we are now faced by a chronic shortage of male primary educators, and teachers in general, and there is probably a need for scholarships addressing this issue.
Something as important as the ability to communicate should not be assumed to be 'difficult' for boys to learn. My personal experience is having attended a boys school that was one of the strongest maths schools in my state, but one of the weakest in english. This was part accepted as a 'boy thing', part ignored as unimportant. A noticable difference is that maths was streamed from first year high school until the end, whereas english was only streamed for the last 2 years. I believe in coeducational classes to benefit both boys and girls and a departure from an educational focus on the gender differences of each group and more on the educational similarity
I think this is a disgrace. A fellow Australian, who has never even been to the US, is extradited to the US for a crime that was never committed on US territory because of the damage to certain US corporations.
My main question is this: is Senator Ellison aware of what he is doing by not granting Griffith's appeal to the extradition. He faces up to 10 years for this crime, in a Virginia court; the sentence for rape in Victoria Australia is 6 years 9 months.
20% of inmates in the US have been coerced into sex and 10% of inmates have been raped [source: SPR. Prison rape is largely an American phenomenon due to an institutional apathy that surrounds it. There is no prison rape in the Netherlands, much less in the UK and in Australia, and it is also non-existent, altho for other reasons, parts of latin america (Bolivia, Venezuela). A 10 year sentence, even if served at a minimum security prison includes a very high likelihood of being raped, especially as a young male on a non-violent offence.
So how does Senator Ellison justify allowing this extradition and subsequent sentence in a US prison, far from his family and friends, at risk to his health, including a possible death sentence from HIV, for a crime that yielded him no money, but allegedly cost American corporations $50million (and most of us here would note the difference between $50million worth of software and $50 million worth of sold units).
MB--
The majority of the worlds oceans may indeed be above 4C (long term mean), well noted. But a large portion of the ocean is not. Consider this. All of the 'polar ocean' which reaches approximately the southern tip of NZ and Canada around Vancouver, is below 4C.
And then, when calculating volume, how deep are you considering? at a depth of 50m, the temperature drops markedly across global oceans. Are you just considering volume expansion of the top 1m... if the ocean has to heat uniformly, what about the contraction of the layers beneath the top layer, that may be less than 4C?
Also, should we consider the bulk properties of solutions, given that we are not dealing with deionised wate?
The rise in sea level is due to your second point, receding polar ice sheets. A rise in sea level of 1m would indeed cause havoc in Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and many Pacific Islands, but would affect us all.
My main point is that expansion of most liquids due to heat is very small, and in the case of water, which is peculiar, not true at low. The change in sea level will change due to melted ice and increased sea volume, rather than a hot expanded sea. M.
above corruption quote should be Shell, not BP. Can't recall the nation. Was presented at a Symposium on African Corruption at Ox Uni, presenter was Professor Paul Collier of African Studies Dept at Ox Uni.
Can't remember anything else, so that statistic is basically useless. I 'believe' it, but can't at this time find any more solid backing, so take what you will.
Matt.
It is not simply well-meaning idiots that focus on the short term. It is far more systemic - corruption is supported by the west, in fact BP last year wrote off 40% of its investment cost in a certain African nation as "Corruption". Yes, that is 40%. Massive. In response to Chinese interests in African oil, there is now a somewhat 'anything goes' strategy, which means corruption and 'stability' are here to stay, at the expense of conditions of those nations' populations. In particular, it is not just 'well-meaning idiots' that are causing problems, but planned greed, perhaps out of oil-peak fears, by corporations and governments alike.
I challenge the statement that the US developed into a modern economy devoid of meddling. Slave trade from Africa transported by English and other frigates? Help from the French in War of independence?
But more so I disagree with 'if we give them access to world markets and let them compete and develop freely'. First, we may need to subsidise the first African efforts to trade on a free market, given the already strong presence of cheap production in South East Asia, at this time, a lot of industries that sub-saharan African nations might become involved in are already dominated successfully by SE Asian nations; how can we get their foot in the door? It is worse than this currently though, because the WTO has legislation that says something like 97% of trade from Africa will be tariff free. Who's to say which are the remaining 3? Individual nations, so they can in fact pick only those industries which are competitive.
Also, there is a huge issue of malaria and HIV. I don't see the free market on it's own solving this. I agree that access to markets, in particular in the landlocked countries that have highest rates of HIV and malaria, and most stark poverty, is necessary, but I think the market on its own, without assistance, is not a cure-all for the economic malaise facing sub-saharan Africa.
The hard part here is:
"get someone competent to run"
I'm not being facetious either; it's a very highly regulated two party system (what with the destruction of the Australian Democrat Party - exactly who's being kept honest?), to even run as a candidate you have to run through the party apparatus, which means politicking and garnering support within that party. You won't get that support unless you are going to in turn support the party, or further its goals in someway. Competency, efficacy, and electability are all different things, and the most important of these is the last one: winning elections is everything. The labour party is currently unable to win the next election no matter what they do. While this is, in my biased opinion, somewhat of a tragedy, I have no idea what they are doing with policies like this; will it win them a vote? If it really was a vote-winner, wouldn't the Liberals (conservative party) have already done this? They, the conservatives, certainly wouldn't lose votes by implementing internet censorship. So in short, it won't work, it won't win votes, and in fact the most attention it will probably get in australia and elsewhere for the rest of time is this thread on slashdot.
But at least they got in the news for something, right?
I find map24.com, in every european language, with great route selection, zoomable maps, scrolling, and customisation, to be by far the best road map service in europe. Google maps just isn't as easy to use, especially to navigate around countries... the fact that you can just click a box and it zooms down to that box with map24, and then use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom out, makes it the quickest general and specific map out there.
What is a nano-toxin? How does it differ from a toxin? In what way does the creation of a small macromolecule in the shape of a car contribute to toxicity?
This is phobia and panic, started in the realm of GE food, and spreading, through ignorance, into the world of nanotech. Nanotech is ill defined, and literally means anything over the nano-scale. Scaremongers try to use new scary words (hence their profession), like nano-toxin, and site that nanoparticles are in things like sunscreen, aerosols...etc. Of course they are, for without TiO4 in sunscreen, it wouldn't block ultraviolet rays, and it wouldn't work. I fail to see the difference between a nano-toxin and a toxin, but regardless of what I fail to see, this kind of irrational skepticism and 'but it could be NANO-toxic!' are unhelpful, and only serve to further the divide between scientists and society. Likewise, scientists dismissing the concerns of the public also furthers this divide.
Inform yourself, ask questions of the scientists, but don't say sarcastic unhelpful things like 'it's perfect for producing nano-toxins', without explaining how this might occur.
One could argue the abatement of violence in Northern Ireland is due to EU subsidies and cashflow into the country. Removing poverty is a good way to end violence, however generational hatred and intolerance still remain.
But it's a lot better than it was, and I don't think it's got much to do with British 'non-violence'.
Why do you want India and China to return to an agrarian state? Large tracts of these countries do still operate like this, but I think it is good for them and for the world to have strong economies and production centres in these countries.
Which is better? Now that A has developed X, we can work straight away on returning the United States to an agrarian state, or now that A has developed X we can work on improving living conditions and production capacity across the world.
Deliberately repressing progress in these countries helps no-one.
Growing up in Australia I always thought the UK edition of the game was the 'true' version of monopoly, but the game was in fact invented in America, and so the original version, and the version used in all monopoly world championships, is the American version of the game.
no that's "cracka-ass cracka".
I challenge this. Who was it exactly out of the 489,540 Americans killed in WW1 that died protecting your freedom of speech, and expression of religion?
WW1 was a war fought between empires, that was the beginning of the end of imperialism, it had nothing to do with fighting for freedom, or fighting against oppression.
The US made a lot of money in the first 2 years of the war selling arms and goods to both sides.
Don't get me wrong, WW1 is a very serious historical event, that I would equate with the death of the notion of a 'noble war' (perhaps the 1914 Christmas armstice is the last instance of this) . I have had 95 year old french women come up and thank me just for being Australian and for my ancestors defending their village of Villers-Bretonneux at a cost of 10,000 Australian lives, something that I found quite intense. But I cringe at revisionist history of our intent in WW1. Of course, laud mateship, comraderie, sacrifice and bravery, but do not believe for a second that the allies were the 'just' party in WW1, or that it was a war that defended our essential freedoms. It was a war of attrition, pitting empire against empire, and whilst the minds and bodies of many men were sacrificed for this cause, it was not in the name of liberty.
M.
Out of interest, the russian casualties in WW1 were 775,400, and they only fought for 3 years. In WW2 the numbers are even more ridiculous. Thus there are lots of people from "OTHER countries" who died for your freedom too.
Your friend has seen too many movies where ppl get shot in drive bys, but I think it likely that he has never had a gun pulled on him, or perhaps never even heard a gunshot.
I had a Canadian pull a same thing, at the same time, in Australia when running away from a dodged cab fare. Again we laughed at him, but I also think he'd never had a gun pulled on him. He was just drunk and playing up this attitude of deadly street life in america.
The funny thing is, I lived in the US for 1 year, but never saw a gun (heard gunshots admittedly). The one time I did get a gun pulled on me was back in Australia. It was a James Bond Woman's gun, ie tiny little wednesday night special that would probably have blown the guys hand off, but it was still a gun, and still was a surprise. I guess regardless of attitude, access to guns, or environment, there are still a few lunatics who, frequently coked up, think that pulling out a gun is a great idea.
Either way - Ciudad Juarez, Mexico City, Tijuana, are all much more dangerous than any city in america I believe. I also feel that the most dangerous place I have been is South Side Chicago at 2am dressed like an idiot and begging to get my car back from the tow company, but if I'd been in a similar situation in the outskirts of mexico city I probably would have actually not metaphorically shat my pants.
M
yeah, fosters is big all over the world, and they are smart too. That's why they have those 'australian for beer' ads. Remember the olympics - 2 weeks before the olympics, ads for Fosters cropped up all over the city, to convince tourists that we all drank fosters, and thus they should try the local brew... as my mate said 'where'd all this foster's shit come from... it's like... get back in ya fucken box fosters'.
But to be fair, given a pint price of 3 pounds in the UK for a good beer, I'd rather pay 2 pounds for a shitty fosters and become drunk more cheaply. So it is true that there, I would be drinking fosters too.
m
if you can't write, it doesn't matter how good you are in 'math and science' because you are still an idiot.
communication is more important than solving assigned problems with assigned answers. learn to write well while you can and then you will be a better scientist, communicator and educator for it.
umm, sir, Berkeley is a State University... University of California. It in fact might be one of the best public universities in the country, alongside UT Austin, UW Seattle, Georgia Tech, and that probably wraps up my knowledge of US Public Universities.
Trivia - who is the highest paid state official in California...?
The coach of the UCLA Football team.
This is one of the most useless comparisons ever used. 'you are more likely to die on the drive to the airport than in a plane', 'you are more likely to die driving to the mountain than climbing it'. Why should we feel safe because something like driving, which we do every day, is inherently very dangerous, and thus unsuitable for comparison.
Can you think of anything else that causes as much loss of life in the 20-25yr old male bracket? Almost all of us can think of someone or a family that has lost someone, and that is because driving is extremely dangerous.
In short, showing that something has a lower death toll than driving has absolutely no reflection on its safety. Might as well say that you have more chance dying when trying to sever a limb with a chainsaw than in a terrorist attack. True, but not particularly insightful.
The Olympiads in general, IOI included, are not about speed. They are about finding the most talented young minds in the world, and giving them a chance to earn prestige and acclaim amongst their peers. The other olympiads, Maths in particular, have been around for years. RSA Encryption was invented by 3 attendees at the (I believe) 1967 International Maths Olympiad, Rivest, Shamir, and Adlemann, who were the US team at the time. Would anyone think that the maths olympiad was merely a matter of speed?
Likewise, the chemistry and physics olympiads have been around for circa 20 years, and biology for 15. It is a great sign for informatics that has its own olympiad alongside these prestigious competitions. The IOI is not about programming speed, but ingenuity, problem solving, and working under pressure. I do not know the details of the IOI, but I do know that to succeed in the other olympiads brilliance is most certainly required.
And now a question for you... what tasks would you put in this competition to be a true test of informatics ingenuity?
we could just look at each interval as it comes, regardless of 'base tone', and look at the distribution of those. If you differentiate between intervals with respect to key, then you have to also include every key change and modulation, which is going to be a lot harder.
Originally I said 156, being all intervals within one octave where C-G is different from D-A, for example, but that would be a lot of bins to distribute over. If he is just using 13 notes, ie an A counts as the same A no matter which octave it falls in, then the interval analogy would be just to consider the 13 possible intervals (within an octave) between one note and the next, and look at all n-1 intervals, where n is the number of notes. In that case C-G, D-A would be the same thing, a perfect 5th, and you would tally the intervals like that.
silly stuff above from me about 156 intervals in a scale - obviously intervals are still just intervals, so there are 13 within one octave, the same as the number of notes.
However, it would strange to consider an augmented octave the same as a minor 2nd, so if we included all intervals greater than an octave, there would be lots of bins in which to place the data (the notes of the piece). He chooses notes instead of intervals, probably due to ease of calculation using notes, but also to add statistical accuracy.
I agree completely however, saying a piece has 572 As in it says nothing about the music. But it might say something about the statistical correlation between note frequency and tonal vs atonal composition.