While I believe that the amount of debt I accrued during my time in college was high, and is a significant part of my monthly budget now (~1 mortgage payment), I do not believe that I could have gained the knowledge, experience, and training in any other way.
It may be argued that life experience, time in the local library, etc, can give someone a great deal of useful education. And honestly, I don't disagree. However, my population 6,000 hometown had none of the resources available to compare to 3.5 years of undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum from my alma mater. "Stress" was a psychological term, not a mathematical description of load and area. "Fluid dynamics" sounded like a plumber's job, not the study of pressures and flows in liquids and gases. Nobody in Small Town, Ohio knew about AutoCAD, or Maple, or Fortran, or differential equations, mechatronics, or engineering management. These are all things I learned first in college, and have since refined in my professional practice on a daily basis.
I agree that not all costs for college seem rational for the student, and indeed, many colleges do take advantage of their "customers". For me, I'm glad I made the investment, as it's expanded my understanding of the world and my earning potential (well in excess of what it costs me, even 10 yrs beyond graduation). I would make the same purchase again. And I'll teach my kids about the costs and benefits and help them pay if they choose to and our college savings are adequate.
Might I suggest you investigate Aereo? They are working on, and legally defending, a service to stream live TV to their customers. Of course, this still is network content, but it's something.
Or, your parents might have gotten you mixed up with Martians and you could come back to Terra and provide spiritual/mathematical/scientific enlightenment as the main ingredient in a watery broth.
To be fair, it sounds like this spreadsheet calculation was averaging maybe a dozen or so values. Hardly a misuse of Excel. Yes, I know people complain all the time about using Excel as if it were a DB application, but this is not one of those instances.
It's a percentage, look it up on wikipedia. You'll see that percentages are an ancient way of making things relative, regardless of their absolute value. "Per" means divided evenly, and "cent" means 100. You take some absolute number, break it up into 100 equal parts, and then you can compare it to other equally divided number w/o being concerned about the absolute amount.
And, some basic necessity things don't scale well with the income level of the people who use them. It's much easier for a wealthy person to buy food, even expensive, organic, hand picked food, than it is for a poor person to buy horse meat and high fructose corn syrup.
Both artists write good lyrics, and have some pretty infamously bad examples of using the wrong word at the wrong time.
So, to set the record straight:
Alanis: Sang "Isn't it ironic?" when, in fact, few, if any of the scenarios she mentioned were irony (implied meaning in opposition to the literal meaning)
Jewel: Sang "...with such casualty", when she actually mean casualness (i.e. not death, but with little regard)
I would presume that it would ultimately be each individual's job to decide the point-by-point literal or metaphorical interpretation of any book of faith.
Wanting to find out who the Authority is so that they can provide these answers for you is part of the problem.
Though I'm no imunology scientist, I'd think that from an evolutionary standpoint, the newborn immune system is running at peak performance just after birth and for the first few weeks/months of post-natal life.
The whole thing has been refined through evolution to find novel, harmful things in the body which came from the external environment and to do the job of putting together killer molecules to stop those harmful things. It's like saying a racecar is stressed out by accelerating at the start of the race. That's what the thing was meant to do, for crying out loud!
This is my feeling as well. This is surely _NOT_ fingerprint imaging as they would have you believe. My quickie calculations say a 0.1mm ridge is about 3.5 arcseconds wide at a 6m distance. And that's if you assume perfect edges and a static finger.
This is likely some pattern recognition on the shape, size, and orientation of the parts of your finger. Tip radius, length to knuckle, width, etc. Sounds like typical misleading marketspeak to me.
I know they're probably pretty near and dear to your heart, and you wouldn't want me to get a jump on your own development, but could you share some paltry details of your system to "fine tun[e] the asteroid orbit and rotation speed" in a time frame suitable to more than one launch per generation? I don't want too many secrets, just tell me the material you'll use for the major components, or list those components' rough dimensions, or even what order of magnitude your energy budget is.
Engineering is HARD. No, really, really, really difficult. Even more difficult than writing a fascinating and intriguing science fiction story (which very few people can do, I might add). Why don't you spend a decade becoming a very well received science fiction writer, and then decide if there's still enough genius left in your mind to become an engineer?
And those charitable causes are their billionaire friends' yacht attendant apprentice program, and the art museum donor's ball fund, and the prevent wind turbines from spoiling the scenic views from my 30 acre yard campaign.
Newsflash: Billionaires get that way specifically because they can make more money than they spend. All of those charitable donations are rigorously chosen and delicately balanced to scratch the backs of other big donors and their own causes. It's not going into a general tax fund where citizens (nominally) get to decide how and where the money is spent. It's not the same.
How, exactly, are we making governments at all levels "leaner and more efficient" if they now all have to have special offices and bureaucrats to coordinate and administrate these collective bargaining efforts?
Dune _is_ amazing, but please, for the love of Shai- Hulud, do not read the prequels or post-quels from his son. They are so far from canon as to poison the well of the actual Herbert novels.
-Mad Maxx style Thunderdome fights would have arisen
-People would have moved back to riding horses
-We'd have all developed psychic abilities to communicate over large distances w/o needing to travel there
This type of speculation adds NOTHING to the discussion.
Umm...yay!? Didn't we used to have to use some brilliant/analytical/scientific minds to create rulers and paper and textbooks and all the other necessities of research several centuries ago? Once discovered, didn't those tools free up more people to do more, and more difficult, research?
If we automate scientific research in some areas, those bright humans who would have otherwise been working on those problems are free to pursue some other, equally interesting areas. Have no fear, the Universe will constantly have more secrets for us to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
While I believe that the amount of debt I accrued during my time in college was high, and is a significant part of my monthly budget now (~1 mortgage payment), I do not believe that I could have gained the knowledge, experience, and training in any other way.
It may be argued that life experience, time in the local library, etc, can give someone a great deal of useful education. And honestly, I don't disagree. However, my population 6,000 hometown had none of the resources available to compare to 3.5 years of undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum from my alma mater. "Stress" was a psychological term, not a mathematical description of load and area. "Fluid dynamics" sounded like a plumber's job, not the study of pressures and flows in liquids and gases. Nobody in Small Town, Ohio knew about AutoCAD, or Maple, or Fortran, or differential equations, mechatronics, or engineering management. These are all things I learned first in college, and have since refined in my professional practice on a daily basis.
I agree that not all costs for college seem rational for the student, and indeed, many colleges do take advantage of their "customers". For me, I'm glad I made the investment, as it's expanded my understanding of the world and my earning potential (well in excess of what it costs me, even 10 yrs beyond graduation). I would make the same purchase again. And I'll teach my kids about the costs and benefits and help them pay if they choose to and our college savings are adequate.
Might I suggest you investigate Aereo? They are working on, and legally defending, a service to stream live TV to their customers. Of course, this still is network content, but it's something.
Or, your parents might have gotten you mixed up with Martians and you could come back to Terra and provide spiritual/mathematical/scientific enlightenment as the main ingredient in a watery broth.
To be fair, it sounds like this spreadsheet calculation was averaging maybe a dozen or so values. Hardly a misuse of Excel. Yes, I know people complain all the time about using Excel as if it were a DB application, but this is not one of those instances.
Ayatollah Khomeini says,
"Eleven things are unclean: ... and the perspiration of a camel that eats filth."
How come there's such a specific prohibition on camels?
And how are you supposed to know if the camel ever ate filth?
Balderdash!
It's a percentage, look it up on wikipedia. You'll see that percentages are an ancient way of making things relative, regardless of their absolute value. "Per" means divided evenly, and "cent" means 100. You take some absolute number, break it up into 100 equal parts, and then you can compare it to other equally divided number w/o being concerned about the absolute amount.
And, some basic necessity things don't scale well with the income level of the people who use them. It's much easier for a wealthy person to buy food, even expensive, organic, hand picked food, than it is for a poor person to buy horse meat and high fructose corn syrup.
Technically, it needs to be falsifiable.
Ok.
I like Jewel's music.
I like Alanis' music.
People will judge, they always do.
Both artists write good lyrics, and have some pretty infamously bad examples of using the wrong word at the wrong time.
So, to set the record straight:
Alanis: Sang "Isn't it ironic?" when, in fact, few, if any of the scenarios she mentioned were irony (implied meaning in opposition to the literal meaning)
Jewel: Sang "...with such casualty", when she actually mean casualness (i.e. not death, but with little regard)
So there, that's settled.
I would presume that it would ultimately be each individual's job to decide the point-by-point literal or metaphorical interpretation of any book of faith.
Wanting to find out who the Authority is so that they can provide these answers for you is part of the problem.
Though I'm no imunology scientist, I'd think that from an evolutionary standpoint, the newborn immune system is running at peak performance just after birth and for the first few weeks/months of post-natal life. The whole thing has been refined through evolution to find novel, harmful things in the body which came from the external environment and to do the job of putting together killer molecules to stop those harmful things. It's like saying a racecar is stressed out by accelerating at the start of the race. That's what the thing was meant to do, for crying out loud!
This is my feeling as well. This is surely _NOT_ fingerprint imaging as they would have you believe. My quickie calculations say a 0.1mm ridge is about 3.5 arcseconds wide at a 6m distance. And that's if you assume perfect edges and a static finger. This is likely some pattern recognition on the shape, size, and orientation of the parts of your finger. Tip radius, length to knuckle, width, etc. Sounds like typical misleading marketspeak to me.
This is an awesome idea!
I know they're probably pretty near and dear to your heart, and you wouldn't want me to get a jump on your own development, but could you share some paltry details of your system to "fine tun[e] the asteroid orbit and rotation speed" in a time frame suitable to more than one launch per generation? I don't want too many secrets, just tell me the material you'll use for the major components, or list those components' rough dimensions, or even what order of magnitude your energy budget is.
Engineering is HARD. No, really, really, really difficult. Even more difficult than writing a fascinating and intriguing science fiction story (which very few people can do, I might add). Why don't you spend a decade becoming a very well received science fiction writer, and then decide if there's still enough genius left in your mind to become an engineer?
And those charitable causes are their billionaire friends' yacht attendant apprentice program, and the art museum donor's ball fund, and the prevent wind turbines from spoiling the scenic views from my 30 acre yard campaign.
Newsflash: Billionaires get that way specifically because they can make more money than they spend. All of those charitable donations are rigorously chosen and delicately balanced to scratch the backs of other big donors and their own causes. It's not going into a general tax fund where citizens (nominally) get to decide how and where the money is spent. It's not the same.
How, exactly, are we making governments at all levels "leaner and more efficient" if they now all have to have special offices and bureaucrats to coordinate and administrate these collective bargaining efforts?
Now, why would you be so ignorant as to write it THAT way?
Clearly it should be Picard > Kirk!
STOPPPP! Don't high 5 or your hands will... Too late, now you're stuck like that. Forever.
And Jenny McCarthy's boy got Autism after she gave him medicine that contained the stuff! Nasty, nasty chemical.
Those 25 years to my 17th birthday took forever!
If there's ultra high vacuum required, it could very easily take many hours to pump down the pressure to the required level.
Very dystopian, but with some very off-the-wall characters and disturbing villains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hinz
Dune _is_ amazing, but please, for the love of Shai- Hulud, do not read the prequels or post-quels from his son. They are so far from canon as to poison the well of the actual Herbert novels.
"If prices had been higher in the US, perhaps..."
-Mad Maxx style Thunderdome fights would have arisen
-People would have moved back to riding horses
-We'd have all developed psychic abilities to communicate over large distances w/o needing to travel there
This type of speculation adds NOTHING to the discussion.
I think, next, we go straight to plaid.
most journalists only write up a summary of blogs.
Umm...yay!? Didn't we used to have to use some brilliant/analytical/scientific minds to create rulers and paper and textbooks and all the other necessities of research several centuries ago? Once discovered, didn't those tools free up more people to do more, and more difficult, research?
If we automate scientific research in some areas, those bright humans who would have otherwise been working on those problems are free to pursue some other, equally interesting areas. Have no fear, the Universe will constantly have more secrets for us to understand.