The Maple V Learning Guide -- this comes with Maple (and presumably Matlab if you get it with Maple) and teaches more than a typical undergraduate mathematics program in about 270 pages. Actually, you have to delve into the hypertext documentation of Maple to get at all the calculus, linear algebra, statistics, etc., but it's all in there.
What If there were No Significance Tests -- this overpriced volume (which you should be able to get for much less from the publisher's site, www.erlbaum.com that doesn't seem to be working right now) explains exactly what soft scientists (e.g., psychologists) mean when they say something is true.
100 Statistical Tests -- this reasonably priced but somewhat advanced, applied book will tell you how to tell whether something is true, even if you have to use indirect or partially correlated measurements. The author has provided tools with what you can quickly find the appropriate test(s) for most situations I can imagine.
All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats. Here's hoping for the +1 Funny moderation for Ruben Bolling, whom I believe to be perhaps the finest editorial cartoonist, up there with Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow, Tom Toles, and Gary Treadeau. Fantastic!
These bricks-mortar-and-ivy "institutions" are a joke.
This kind of competitive, stupid abuses are what happens when low-tech "traditional" solutions are given undeserved prestige in the face of superior alternatives.
When society finds it commonplace to take the net to school, then businesses will not have such a difficult time conserving fuel and time, too.
I don't think this state of affairs will last long enough to be useful.
Remember, clones can't continue forever; eventually mutations will do them in without the benefit of gene recombination from sexual reproduction. However, if they are prolific enough, there could always be a viable strain somewhere; just no telling exactly where and how many at any given time.
The real question is, how long will the clones last? If they're hardy enough to supplant existing hives, then they might be strong enough to mutate back into something that can have sex, in which case they would be a whole new species, I suppose.
I guess I think that we, as a species, should have been doing stellar occluding cameras for atmospheric O2, H2O, N2, and related spectral signatures a long time ago, and the fact that we have not constitutes a (non)existence proof that there is a shortage of smart engineers who what to work for the space program, and an abundance of mindless sheep who will do whatever this decade's NASA administrator decides without questioning.
Perhaps I am wrong, but, as Dr. Dieter Britz says, if we can't get a team of scientists to maintain a decent habitat in the middle of Arizona, then what hope do we have of terraforming Mars? I suppose that one could just as easily question whether there is any hope of maintaining a generation starship, but that's why we need to know the parameters (e.g., distance) of the colonization mission to prove the generation starships.
Once we know that, we might as well try to send one each to both Mars and Venus and see then what we are capable of.
What a waste of a whole lot of taxpayer money, this business of synth'ing new transuranic elements.
Unless the physics of the strong and electroweak forces changes overnight, all of the yet-undiscovered elements, including these two "newly undiscovered" elements, have a half-life less than a milisecond.
Any isotope with a half-life less than a milisecond is completely useless for all practical purposes. I say we require any physicists who want to continue making these elements to prove that they might have more utility than a distant neutron star first.
All I'm saying is that unless the tourists are paying enough to speed and not hinder the development of terrestrial planet finders, and after such planets are found, unless they are paying enough to support the unencumbered development of appropriate generation starships and pertinent technologies, and they are paying enough in addition to offset the costs of the trip and mitigation of the polution as a result of their trip, then they shouldn't be going.
In fact, I fully support U.S.-launched space tourists, if the conditions above are met.
I wonder how he would feel using MS Word on a Mac.
It has the revisions feature he mentions needing. I always thought that was fluff for multiple author workgroups (so to speak.)
Maybe he would figure how to get autosave working. It is hard if you're used to those ancient word processors, as if anything in Word is really easy anymore.
The sooner we know the distance to likely colonization sites, the sooner we will know the parameters of a generation starship colonization mission. Before we know how far we have to go, we can't really even start planning such a mission. Once we do know the distance, we could probably build a decent generation starship with the materials and technology we have today.
It's a resource allocation issue: We should not be sending tourists up temporarily when we know of nowhere perminant for them to go. We should be concentrating on terrestrial planet finding and then generation starships. Let the tourists be the first to see Mars up close -- fine -- but only after we learn the paramters of a generation starship colonization. Then, build one and send it back and forth between here and Mars long enough to prove the design. Then send a real one off to start more eggs in another basket.
If the tourists can pay enough to sponsor terrestrial planet searches, building generation starships, cleaning up their rockets' mess, in addition to the travel expenses, then more power to them. Don't count your rich tourists before you find a place to hatch more of them.
The atmospheric commons is only tragic when air quality regulations are not in effect.
There has been a historical trend of fewer carbon atoms per calorie (and storage cost) of fuel, and there is reason to believe that the trend will continue.
If you are so concerned about the environment, why don't you get rid of your car, and convince everyone else in your city/town to do the same, and promote public transportation instead...???
I'm telling you to build terrestrial planet finders and generation starships before trying to visit Mars, and you're calling me a neo-luddite? That's chutzpah!
As for the science you asked for, take a good look at the r^2 value in that sigmoid curve, extrapolating about 98% of the observed variance with just four parameters of prediction. You might note that, given the eventual relative magnitude of the curve, it's not like we have to do anything special to make our atmosphere so Venus-like that this summer's fires, floods, and storms will look like a campfire at mid-tide on the mists of the beach.
... Then, if you get lucky enough to find the thing and get the tech to launch a ship there, you have no real promise that the frikking thing will even be there when you finally get there....
That's what they told Columbus about the Western passage to India.
you realize that a generation starship isn't needed to get to Mars, right?
Yes, and I also realize that Mars will never support human life without the kind of attention that can only be given by having a generation starship, including a genetics and biochem lab, in orbit around it.
Also, if we hope to terraform mars, we might have to smash a comet or several into it. There is an ongoing mission right now to study cometary cores.
... 5923 gallons of gasoline burned. Assume your SUV gets 14 miles to the gallon, and you have an SRB output of 423 miles' worth of SUV CO2. Don't forget to multiply by two, since there's two SRB's per shuttle....
You mean 165844 miles, not 846. And given that CO2 has more oxygen than carbon, I think your 14% estimate is a little untrustworthy.
However, I stand corrected. Not utterly, dead wrong, just off by about a decimal place.
This does not change the fact that it is much wiser to look for extrasolar planets before trying to colonize Mars, because then you can get dual-use from your generation starship.
The parent comment poster seems unfamiliar with solid rocket fuel.
If there are sources comparing the deleterious effects of rocket fuel on the ozone layer with those involving carbon dioxide, then I would like to read them.
I hate to point this out, but in rural India, people don't communicate with villages 100 miles away. Everyone they know is in their own village.
Perhaps the Anonymous Coward hated to point it out because it is completely false.
Agriculture, weather, medical, business and related news and information is coordinated by the national government of India, as is the case in all but the poorest of the third world.
Its not as though that much of the rocket fuel would get burned in the atmosphere.
As if we needed any more carbon dioxide than we already have. Each shuttle SRB produces many millions of SUV-miles worth of CO2. Please, please trust me on this one.
Here's the walk-through for the critical path-impaired:
Find extrasolar terrestrial planets.
Build generation starship.
Put it in local planetary orbits to try it out.
Send it on its generational mission to colonize nonlocal planet(s).
Trying to terraform without alternate targets would bee foolhardy. The worst that could happen is far worse than doing nothing until you can make it to another liquid-water planet. There is enough water around to make such planets likely, but we need to actually find them before we know for sure.
I recoommend scraping all manned Moon and Mars projects, and concentrating on stellar occluding, spectrographic, and interferrometric telescopes.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to Kernigan & Ritchie's 2nd edition, The C Programming Lanugage with ANSI C, which should be on any programmer's workbench, be they Perl, Matlab, Maple, TCL, or even elisp programmers, here are some others:
The Algorithm Design Manual by Steve Skiena. Excellent.
The Nuts and Bolts of Proofs -- the heart of correct math is showing your work, and this book shows you how.
The Data Game -- Controverses in Social Science Statistics -- this really puts you in touch with the kinds of numbers you hear bandied about on the news, and what those numbers mean.
The Maple V Learning Guide -- this comes with Maple (and presumably Matlab if you get it with Maple) and teaches more than a typical undergraduate mathematics program in about 270 pages. Actually, you have to delve into the hypertext documentation of Maple to get at all the calculus, linear algebra, statistics, etc., but it's all in there.
Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability -- actually there were two volumes published in 1980, and one or both might have gone out of print.
What If there were No Significance Tests -- this overpriced volume (which you should be able to get for much less from the publisher's site, www.erlbaum.com that doesn't seem to be working right now) explains exactly what soft scientists (e.g., psychologists) mean when they say something is true.
100 Statistical Tests -- this reasonably priced but somewhat advanced, applied book will tell you how to tell whether something is true, even if you have to use indirect or partially correlated measurements. The author has provided tools with what you can quickly find the appropriate test(s) for most situations I can imagine.
All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats. Here's hoping for the +1 Funny moderation for Ruben Bolling, whom I believe to be perhaps the finest editorial cartoonist, up there with Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow, Tom Toles, and Gary Treadeau. Fantastic!
This kind of competitive, stupid abuses are what happens when low-tech "traditional" solutions are given undeserved prestige in the face of superior alternatives.
When society finds it commonplace to take the net to school, then businesses will not have such a difficult time conserving fuel and time, too.
This is what happens when low-tech "traditional" solutions are given undeserved prestige in the face of superior alternatives.
When society finds it commonplace to take the net to school, then businesses will not have such a difficult time conserving fuel and time, too.
Remember, clones can't continue forever; eventually mutations will do them in without the benefit of gene recombination from sexual reproduction. However, if they are prolific enough, there could always be a viable strain somewhere; just no telling exactly where and how many at any given time.
The real question is, how long will the clones last? If they're hardy enough to supplant existing hives, then they might be strong enough to mutate back into something that can have sex, in which case they would be a whole new species, I suppose.
Perhaps I am wrong, but, as Dr. Dieter Britz says, if we can't get a team of scientists to maintain a decent habitat in the middle of Arizona, then what hope do we have of terraforming Mars? I suppose that one could just as easily question whether there is any hope of maintaining a generation starship, but that's why we need to know the parameters (e.g., distance) of the colonization mission to prove the generation starships.
Once we know that, we might as well try to send one each to both Mars and Venus and see then what we are capable of.
Unless the physics of the strong and electroweak forces changes overnight, all of the yet-undiscovered elements, including these two "newly undiscovered" elements, have a half-life less than a milisecond.
Any isotope with a half-life less than a milisecond is completely useless for all practical purposes. I say we require any physicists who want to continue making these elements to prove that they might have more utility than a distant neutron star first.
So does drilling for oil.
All I'm saying is that unless the tourists are paying enough to speed and not hinder the development of terrestrial planet finders, and after such planets are found, unless they are paying enough to support the unencumbered development of appropriate generation starships and pertinent technologies, and they are paying enough in addition to offset the costs of the trip and mitigation of the polution as a result of their trip, then they shouldn't be going.
In fact, I fully support U.S.-launched space tourists, if the conditions above are met.
It has the revisions feature he mentions needing. I always thought that was fluff for multiple author workgroups (so to speak.)
Maybe he would figure how to get autosave working. It is hard if you're used to those ancient word processors, as if anything in Word is really easy anymore.
The sooner we know the distance to likely colonization sites, the sooner we will know the parameters of a generation starship colonization mission. Before we know how far we have to go, we can't really even start planning such a mission. Once we do know the distance, we could probably build a decent generation starship with the materials and technology we have today.
It's a resource allocation issue: We should not be sending tourists up temporarily when we know of nowhere perminant for them to go. We should be concentrating on terrestrial planet finding and then generation starships. Let the tourists be the first to see Mars up close -- fine -- but only after we learn the paramters of a generation starship colonization. Then, build one and send it back and forth between here and Mars long enough to prove the design. Then send a real one off to start more eggs in another basket.
If the tourists can pay enough to sponsor terrestrial planet searches, building generation starships, cleaning up their rockets' mess, in addition to the travel expenses, then more power to them. Don't count your rich tourists before you find a place to hatch more of them.
Well, there's someone else who didn't read the articles.
3,000 lbs. of ammo and bombs is more than most fighter aircraft carry.
There has been a historical trend of fewer carbon atoms per calorie (and storage cost) of fuel, and there is reason to believe that the trend will continue.
The question is, will it be too little, too late?
I can do better. I can promote telecommuting over a much wider area. So can you.
As for the science you asked for, take a good look at the r^2 value in that sigmoid curve, extrapolating about 98% of the observed variance with just four parameters of prediction. You might note that, given the eventual relative magnitude of the curve, it's not like we have to do anything special to make our atmosphere so Venus-like that this summer's fires, floods, and storms will look like a campfire at mid-tide on the mists of the beach.
That's what they told Columbus about the Western passage to India.
Yes, and I also realize that Mars will never support human life without the kind of attention that can only be given by having a generation starship, including a genetics and biochem lab, in orbit around it.
Also, if we hope to terraform mars, we might have to smash a comet or several into it. There is an ongoing mission right now to study cometary cores.
You mean 165844 miles, not 846. And given that CO2 has more oxygen than carbon, I think your 14% estimate is a little untrustworthy.
However, I stand corrected. Not utterly, dead wrong, just off by about a decimal place.
This does not change the fact that it is much wiser to look for extrasolar planets before trying to colonize Mars, because then you can get dual-use from your generation starship.
Some (very little) rocket fuel is LH2 and LO2. None is solid H2 or solid O2.
At thermite temperatures, all the carbon in the glue burns, and given that most of the fuel is an oxidant, what do you think it burns with?
Codeposition fusion.
Yes we do; it's called dark matter, and there's not enough the endanger ships at generation starship speeds.
-- http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/st
And this contradicts my claim that each exausts many millions of SUV-equivalent miles in carbon dioxide how?
If there are sources comparing the deleterious effects of rocket fuel on the ozone layer with those involving carbon dioxide, then I would like to read them.
How do you know unless you build the TPFs to look? It could be as close as Epsilon Eridani.
Until our resolution increases to that level, we will have no way to estimate the amount of time such voyages would take.
Perhaps the Anonymous Coward hated to point it out because it is completely false.
Agriculture, weather, medical, business and related news and information is coordinated by the national government of India, as is the case in all but the poorest of the third world.
As if we needed any more carbon dioxide than we already have. Each shuttle SRB produces many millions of SUV-miles worth of CO2. Please, please trust me on this one.
Here's the walk-through for the critical path-impaired:
Trying to terraform without alternate targets would bee foolhardy. The worst that could happen is far worse than doing nothing until you can make it to another liquid-water planet. There is enough water around to make such planets likely, but we need to actually find them before we know for sure.
I recoommend scraping all manned Moon and Mars projects, and concentrating on stellar occluding, spectrographic, and interferrometric telescopes.