btw i always thought the definition of IQ (assuming that your group satifies the central limit theorem and we can treat it as a normally distributed sample) was that it was normally distributed with a mean of 100 and standard distribution of 10, simple right..
Problem: It really did come from the Native Americans. Two centuries ago.
Say what? From the link you provided:
In conclusion,.... the phrase seems to have been crafted in relatively modern times [1970s], and thus does not have the deep historical resonance provided by age.
I was wondering when we'd reach the point where the accumulation of knowledge available in any given field exceeded the ability of the human mind to completely grasp in a useful manner.
In medicine, that point was reached many years ago, but few care to admit it:
"To estimate the time that it might take a new entrant to the subspecialty [echocardiography] to read all the previous literature, we assumed that he or she could read five papers an hour (one every 10 minutes, followed by a break of 10 minutes) for eight hours a day, five days a week, and 50 weeks a year; this gives a capacity of 10 000 papers in one year. Reading all papers referring to echocardiography (search 1) would take 11 years and 124 days, by which time at least 82142 more papers would have been added, accounting for another eight years and 78 days. Before our recruit could catch up and start to read new manuscripts published the same day, he or she would - if still alive and even remotely interested - have read 408 049 papers and devoted (or served a sentence of) 40 years and 295 days. On the positive side, our recruit would finish just in time to retire."
A substantial portion of the NSA, FBI, and CIA's budget is dedicated towards the very simple task of translating. As in, converting say, islamic into english.
I can see the problem. Islamic language scholars are really hard to find. Similarly, during WWII it was difficult for the allies to keep up with the volume of sigintel from Europe, Africa, and other countries due to the shortage of individuals qualified to translate from the Lutheran and Catholic.
700+ comments and still no mention of John Brunner? Unpossible!
Specifically, Stand on Zanzibar (overpopulation leads to massive increase in violent crime as aggression levels rise, along with mega-corps basically enslaving entire African countries) and to an even greater extent, The Sheep Look Up (ecological catastrophe in slow-motion, domestic terrorists dose municipal water supply with psychotic drugs).
Both actually highly enjoyable, especially Zanzibar with its spy story, fast pace, and mod, proto-MTV style jump cuts.
The big music companies hire untalented musicians for cheap because they have no union.
Actually, there is the American Federation of Musicians. Granted, it is far and away the most inept and least effective collective bargaining unit in human history, but it does exist. A lot of musicians I know consider their AFM membership as just a really expensive compulsory newsletter subscription.
. . . there's little enough time to get through all the things I want to learn, investigate and use without wasting two years learning ( through routine degradation ) how to effectively kill other human beings . ..
Heinlein specifically states in the book that the armed forces make up only a small percentage (2% I think) of the government services one may serve in to qualify for the vote. That would likely mitigate the influence of veterans among the total body of voting citizens. I seem to recall this comes up when Rico's father is trying to talk him out of joining the military (it's been 20 years since I read the book - apologies if the details are a bit fuzzy) and to steer him towards a safer civil service job.
You also get a fair amount of the "that's not my job" types. Their job has a job description and a list of tasks on their yearly review. If a task does not show up on them, they refuse to do it. They have the right to be this wy, because they do do the task that are on their yearly review. In the private sector (non-union), you get rid of these people.
At every union job I have had, the employer can require you to perform just about any task, but you can only be evaluated based on your performance of the tasks on your job description. This actually works quite well to protect employees (otherwise a manager who just plain didn't like you could get you fired by requiring you to do a job completely outside your field of expertise, then giving you an unsatisfactory evaluation when you screw it up) while allowing them to "git-r-done" during extraordinary situations.
If the "extraordinary situation" becomes permanent, the job description can be amended with the new duties if the management, employee, and union all agree, and this may entail the company sending the employee for some training, which is a good idea from everyone's perspective.
I don't think it's anger, I think it's fear.
[snip]
Even before our strict gun laws very few people owned hand guns, I can't imagine living in a country where fear of your fellow countrymen is the norm.
Speaking as a USian, I think it is overstating the case to assert that "fear of [our] countrymen is the norm" (if that is indeed your implication). Although I can certainly see where you would get that idea from all of the wingnut apocalyptic talk around here. I think that the primary motivation for preserving and exercising the right to keep and bear arms is to keep those in power just a little off-balance. At least, that was the original idea. Whether that is a realistic expectation given the federal government's access to modern military weaponry is another question.
Anyway, it is definitely not the case that most people walk down most streets in the US worried about getting their caps peeled by Their Fellow Americans. Some people, and some streets, yes, but not the vast majority.
Yeah, I know, Off Topic, No True Scotsman, Citation Needed, blah blah blah . . .
Just so you know (and I'm a FedEx Employee, so I do know this) the USPS' "priority mail" is all carried by FedEx. The Post Office bundles it, sends it to FedEx, and FedEx gets it to the nearest airport to its destination, turns it over to the Post Office there who carries it the last few miles.
Rail slower than car? What is it that Amtrak does wrong?
Amtrak have to lease access to rail lines from freight haulers. They own very little track themselves (Northeast corridor and a couple of others, according to teh wiki).
* Law enforcement is overrated. Jails too. Gangs and other forms of organized crime can keep the peace just fine.
* I'm thinking the roads in my State are too well maintained too.
* I haven't seen any fires in my neighborhood, so get rid of the Fire Department.
* Sewage systems and trash pick-up are over-rated too.
There you go, lower taxes. Enjoy your crime-riddled, trash-stinking utopia.
Apologies for picking nits, but I live in upstate NY and our garbage collection is privately owned. It works quite well, thank you.
BTW, you just illustrated exactly what the GP was talking about - cherry-picking the most basic government services as emotionally-charged poster children for why government "can't possibly" be reduced.
To address you point about fining public schools. While they have a charitable status thier operation is of no benefit other than to their pupils and staff.
Yet, the usual argument in favor of compulsory government schools is that by educating students they raise the general standard of living for the entire society. Why is this not also true of public schools?
Macs can also be hooked to eachother (as can PCs and Linux boxes) via crossover ethernet
Actually, Macs have NICs that can automatically detect crossed pairs in ethernet cables, so you don't even need a special crossover cable to connect two computers directly, as long as one of them is a Mac. Just a regular ethernet cable will do.
This is also the reason that a Mac will sometimes work when plugged into a wrongly-wired wall jack when all other computers fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet, if they use sexagesimal we are all set for at least several more centuries.
btw i always thought the definition of IQ (assuming that your group satifies the central limit theorem and we can treat it as a normally distributed sample) was that it was normally distributed with a mean of 100 and standard distribution of 10, simple right..
No, standard deviation is 15 points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient/
Problem: It really did come from the Native Americans. Two centuries ago.
Say what? From the link you provided:
In conclusion, .... the phrase seems to have been crafted in relatively modern times [1970s], and thus does not have the deep historical resonance provided by age.
From TFA: Optical Drive (read only) BD 6xCAV DVD 8xCAV
I was wondering when we'd reach the point where the accumulation of knowledge available in any given field exceeded the ability of the human mind to completely grasp in a useful manner.
In medicine, that point was reached many years ago, but few care to admit it:
"To estimate the time that it might take a new entrant to the subspecialty [echocardiography] to read all the previous literature, we assumed that he or she could read five papers an hour (one every 10 minutes, followed by a break of 10 minutes) for eight hours a day, five days a week, and 50 weeks a year; this gives a capacity of 10 000 papers in one year. Reading all papers referring to echocardiography (search 1) would take 11 years and 124 days, by which time at least 82142 more papers would have been added, accounting for another eight years and 78 days. Before our recruit could catch up and start to read new manuscripts published the same day, he or she would - if still alive and even remotely interested - have read 408 049 papers and devoted (or served a sentence of) 40 years and 295 days. On the positive side, our recruit would finish just in time to retire."
Fraser AG, Dunstan FD. On the impossibility of being expert. BMJ. 341(dec14 1):c6815-c6815. http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815
Aber sicherlich ist diese Phrase im Nominativ, also:
"... das ist ein schrecklich Hack!"
Nicht wahr?
You do understand that he will lose all those thousands of free bodyguards once he is out of office, don't you?
You do understand that former presidents are entitled to Secret Service protection for life? Obama signed it (back) into law on Jan. 1.
So, your argument looks like p=!p.
neil armstrong's 1st wife ditched him because he didn't offer her enough support when 2yo karen armstrong died
Say what? Quoth teh wiki:
Armstrong's first wife, Janet, divorced him in 1994, after 38 years of marriage.
Every time I see someone say we need to take our freely elected government back, I always ask "from who?".
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/
A substantial portion of the NSA, FBI, and CIA's budget is dedicated towards the very simple task of translating. As in, converting say, islamic into english.
I can see the problem. Islamic language scholars are really hard to find. Similarly, during WWII it was difficult for the allies to keep up with the volume of sigintel from Europe, Africa, and other countries due to the shortage of individuals qualified to translate from the Lutheran and Catholic.
-Pedantic Reader
The human ear/brain is indeed capable of hearing the difference between a pure sine wave at 440 Hz and a middle C tone played on a piano.
I should hope so, since Middle C and 440 Hz (the A above Middle C) are a major sixth apart.
-Pedantic Music/Audio Teacher
Specifically, Stand on Zanzibar (overpopulation leads to massive increase in violent crime as aggression levels rise, along with mega-corps basically enslaving entire African countries) and to an even greater extent, The Sheep Look Up (ecological catastrophe in slow-motion, domestic terrorists dose municipal water supply with psychotic drugs).
Both actually highly enjoyable, especially Zanzibar with its spy story, fast pace, and mod, proto-MTV style jump cuts.
as for you being as Scottish as anyone here... YOU ARE HAVING A LAUGH!!!..
This made my day. A literal example of the No True Scotsman fallacy!
His favorite was an 8 x 10 view. I know this because I was very privileged to meet the master in 1980 and actually asked him.
He once wrote that when people asked him which was his favorite camera, he answered "The largest one I can carry!"
The big music companies hire untalented musicians for cheap because they have no union.
Actually, there is the American Federation of Musicians. Granted, it is far and away the most inept and least effective collective bargaining unit in human history, but it does exist. A lot of musicians I know consider their AFM membership as just a really expensive compulsory newsletter subscription.
. . . there's little enough time to get through all the things I want to learn, investigate and use without wasting two years learning ( through routine degradation ) how to effectively kill other human beings . . .
Heinlein specifically states in the book that the armed forces make up only a small percentage (2% I think) of the government services one may serve in to qualify for the vote. That would likely mitigate the influence of veterans among the total body of voting citizens. I seem to recall this comes up when Rico's father is trying to talk him out of joining the military (it's been 20 years since I read the book - apologies if the details are a bit fuzzy) and to steer him towards a safer civil service job.
At every union job I have had, the employer can require you to perform just about any task, but you can only be evaluated based on your performance of the tasks on your job description. This actually works quite well to protect employees (otherwise a manager who just plain didn't like you could get you fired by requiring you to do a job completely outside your field of expertise, then giving you an unsatisfactory evaluation when you screw it up) while allowing them to "git-r-done" during extraordinary situations.
If the "extraordinary situation" becomes permanent, the job description can be amended with the new duties if the management, employee, and union all agree, and this may entail the company sending the employee for some training, which is a good idea from everyone's perspective.
Speaking as a USian, I think it is overstating the case to assert that "fear of [our] countrymen is the norm" (if that is indeed your implication). Although I can certainly see where you would get that idea from all of the wingnut apocalyptic talk around here. I think that the primary motivation for preserving and exercising the right to keep and bear arms is to keep those in power just a little off-balance. At least, that was the original idea. Whether that is a realistic expectation given the federal government's access to modern military weaponry is another question.
Anyway, it is definitely not the case that most people walk down most streets in the US worried about getting their caps peeled by Their Fellow Americans. Some people, and some streets, yes, but not the vast majority.
Yeah, I know, Off Topic, No True Scotsman, Citation Needed, blah blah blah . . .
Just so you know (and I'm a FedEx Employee, so I do know this) the USPS' "priority mail" is all carried by FedEx. The Post Office bundles it, sends it to FedEx, and FedEx gets it to the nearest airport to its destination, turns it over to the Post Office there who carries it the last few miles.
I was all set to call BS, but the AC is correct:
http://www.usps.com/communications/news/press/2006/pr06_048.htm
Rail slower than car? What is it that Amtrak does wrong?
Amtrak have to lease access to rail lines from freight haulers. They own very little track themselves (Northeast corridor and a couple of others, according to teh wiki).
Apologies for picking nits, but I live in upstate NY and our garbage collection is privately owned. It works quite well, thank you.
BTW, you just illustrated exactly what the GP was talking about - cherry-picking the most basic government services as emotionally-charged poster children for why government "can't possibly" be reduced.
Perhaps this is the one you are referring to:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901E2DC113DF936A35756C0A9629C8B63
To address you point about fining public schools. While they have a charitable status thier operation is of no benefit other than to their pupils and staff.
Yet, the usual argument in favor of compulsory government schools is that by educating students they raise the general standard of living for the entire society. Why is this not also true of public schools?
Yeaaaah...
Um, don't you mean, "Mmmmmaaahhhhmmmmmaaahhhhmmmmmaaaaahhhmmmm?"
Macs can also be hooked to eachother (as can PCs and Linux boxes) via crossover ethernet
Actually, Macs have NICs that can automatically detect crossed pairs in ethernet cables, so you don't even need a special crossover cable to connect two computers directly, as long as one of them is a Mac. Just a regular ethernet cable will do.
This is also the reason that a Mac will sometimes work when plugged into a wrongly-wired wall jack when all other computers fail.