Then there's the United Kingdom. The Roman's used to grow grapes there. Now if people grew grapes there today folk would say "Look, global warming! There's your proof."
Actually, I say "I really must visit that vinyard I pass every time I go to my mums sometime."
*rolls eyes*
We aren't far off Scotland having a viable wine business.
I don't know of anything that can predict conjunctions like that automatically. I'd probably use one of the planetarium programs like Starry Night to animate the moons in faster that real time and just wait for the appropriate moment.
That would certainly make for a nice photo.
I'll do a little digging to see if I can find a better solution and will post it if I find one.
the only drawback is a 8" scope can BLIND YOU if you observe the moon without filters.
Do you mean permanent blindness or just an after-image?
if permanent, do you have any kind of citation for that? I'm an astronomer, and I've only ever heard of neutral density filters being needed for comfort, not safety. For the moon - the Sun does of course need suitable filters even with the naked eye.
Observing the moon without filters can be slightly eye-straining through larger scopes, true, and it does cause an after-image which fades in a couple of minutes.
Hmm, google has nothing about viewing the moon blinding people either...
All our missile subs carry sealed, hand-written orders from the prime minister as to whether to retaliate with nukes in the event that Britain is the target of a first strike. The orders are destroyed once the prime minister leaves office and few have ever revealed which way they decided.
It is, apparently, one of their first tasks upon taking office.
Join the European Space Agency and a proportion of the work equal to the proportion of the funds supplied has to be done in your country. Could help to stop the brain-drain.
Experience: his job is to lead and to expect his more qualified staff to handle the details of running and doing
Terrorists: 'bomb the crap out them without blinking' is pure gold for them; lots more radicalized recruits once the smoke clears. Talk diplomacy and have a good ground-level human intel network is the way to go.
Do not underestimate the potential of nanobears with regards to their ability to fight diseases like cancer. I for one welcome our microscopic ursine overlords.
Yep - turned off for sure. Trying to push DnD into being a half-breed tabletop/online mongrel pushed away a lot of long-time gamers. I heard about Gleemax right at the start of the push to 4Ed, and it put me right off - keep up the monthly payments or you can't use the ebooks? No thanks.
Take a look at Pathfinder (3.75 ed) at Paizo or the up-coming Fantasycraft from Crafty Games if you want some real DnD goodness. WotC are well over the shark with 4ed.
With the gutting of the Forgotten Realms to a dripping carcass of its former self just to serve as a 4ed setting with a name that has 'brand recognition' and the focus of the new rules on WoW style combat to the exclusion of all else, trying to force DnD into the paid subscription model of revenue deserved to fail.
I'll second those people recommending Feynman - great series of books.
Physics to a degree will get you thinking like a physicist - it covers most undergraduate topics in physics with tutorial style questions and answers.
I found Introduction to Modern Astrophysics an interesting read after I graduated. It covered most of the stuff we did at Birmingham and did so very well.
Our introductory book was Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics by Michael Zeilik, which was ok, and then Astrophysics: Stars Vol 1 by Richard Bowers and Terry Deeming, which was very good and Vol 2 similarly.
You don't mention what your course is going to cover or what its aim is - you are not going to cover the whole of astrophysics in 9 taught months. You also don't mention your interest in astrophysics - numerical simulation? So it is difficult to come up with any more specific recommendations.
Good luck anyhow. Post below with more info if you want any more detailed recommendations.
I'm seeing first year science undergraduates now needing remedial lessons in logarithms, calculus and trig before they can attempt university level science.
Yes, a calculator can give you numerical answers, but you need to know some of the theory behind them to get a feel for whether the answers are reasonable - whether you are asking the right questions. I'd be really interested in hearing an example of what you consider 'useless junk' to see if it is on my list of what I think is missing at present.
For reference, I was a student in the UK in the 80s and 90s. I now have degrees in maths, astrophysics and software engineering.
We need to make exams much harder. We need to give kids a 'well done, you have done ok' for a C grade and an A needs to become exceptional again. Otherwise the results are useless for discriminating between candidates.
Get a copy of "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie and read it several times. This book should be a first year undergrad textbook for all engineering subjects.
You can apply to them for a license to use the code in a commercial application, or you can rewrite it from the algorithms in the book without looking at their code (which in some cases is a good thing - making C behave like FORTRAN, YUK!).
Strictly, it was for kicking two crisps that had come out of the packet into the gutter. This would indeed attract vermin and they should have been picked up and put in a pocket for disposal at home.
However, it should be an inform first system. If the intent is to educate, rather than gather revenue, the warden should have said 'Could you take those home with you please, because they will attract rats?" and only issued a fine if the person refused.
Having the cameras would allow the wardens to prove that they had been polite and only issued the fine as a last resort.
I don't honestly know how the RSoC did the marking, nor how many correct answers they obtained.
For my part, I put together a geometric proof for the first part (I suck at proofs!), and then did the second and third parts using three-dimensional vector maths (dot and cross product). That was mainly because I had a limited amount of time, and after you do enough computer graphics work that kind of maths gets hardwired into your brain. I showed my working though.
You should indeed get few (if any) marks for the 'right answer' part of the solution. This is one thing that I like about the Open University: they would dock (say) 20% of the marks if you made a mistake (swapped a plus/minus) half way through your working, but you got the rest of the marks if you carried on and propogated the error correctly.
Agreed. But how on earth can we conspire to get kids interested in techie stuff when the media tends to drag it down at every chance?
Here in the UK, the Royal Society of Chemistry ran a maths challenge to highlight the fact that Chinese teenagers were required to solve a university entrance paper containing harder questions than those used to bring the maths skills of first-year British undergraduates up to scratch. I won the competition, and tried to get the message across to the press that we needed to improve our teaching and require more of university entrants, otherwise we would lose our position as one of the leaders in science and engineering. The press reported it as either 'British man beats the Chinese' or 'RSoC says British crap at maths - Shoreham man proves them wrong'.
I get the feeling that people in general take a pride in not caring about science/maths because they found it hard at school and want nothing more to do with it. If anyone wants me, I'll be crying into my beer on my blog and learning how to chip flint arrowheads for when society implodes back to the stone age.
Slashdot Mirror
Then there's the United Kingdom. The Roman's used to grow grapes there. Now if people grew grapes there today folk would say "Look, global warming! There's your proof."
Actually, I say "I really must visit that vinyard I pass every time I go to my mums sometime."
*rolls eyes*
We aren't far off Scotland having a viable wine business.
All multi-document Mac applications work in the same way: Alt+Tab to switch applications, Alt+` to switch documents.
That's command+tab and command+`.
That would certainly make for a nice photo.
I'll do a little digging to see if I can find a better solution and will post it if I find one.
the only drawback is a 8" scope can BLIND YOU if you observe the moon without filters.
Do you mean permanent blindness or just an after-image?
if permanent, do you have any kind of citation for that? I'm an astronomer, and I've only ever heard of neutral density filters being needed for comfort, not safety. For the moon - the Sun does of course need suitable filters even with the naked eye.
Observing the moon without filters can be slightly eye-straining through larger scopes, true, and it does cause an after-image which fades in a couple of minutes.
Hmm, google has nothing about viewing the moon blinding people either...
All our missile subs carry sealed, hand-written orders from the prime minister as to whether to retaliate with nukes in the event that Britain is the target of a first strike. The orders are destroyed once the prime minister leaves office and few have ever revealed which way they decided.
It is, apparently, one of their first tasks upon taking office.
See this report from The Today Programme
Can't live on "free dinners, free bottles of scotch"? Bollocks.
See here for more info.
Keep in mind that the "process of being turned into films" is a long and difficult one where many projects get axed at every stage.
"making a movie is like trying to cook a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it" Douglas Adams
Experience: his job is to lead and to expect his more qualified staff to handle the details of running and doing Terrorists: 'bomb the crap out them without blinking' is pure gold for them; lots more radicalized recruits once the smoke clears. Talk diplomacy and have a good ground-level human intel network is the way to go.
Do not underestimate the potential of nanobears with regards to their ability to fight diseases like cancer. I for one welcome our microscopic ursine overlords.
intralords
So I guess the US is a country? Oh wait - that joke doesn't work in written form.
Ah the Kenny Everett job-killer joke. Priceless :)
RIP Kenny
BitterOldGUy ... Hmmm ... No shit!
Take a look at Pathfinder (3.75 ed) at Paizo or the up-coming Fantasycraft from Crafty Games if you want some real DnD goodness. WotC are well over the shark with 4ed.
With the gutting of the Forgotten Realms to a dripping carcass of its former self just to serve as a 4ed setting with a name that has 'brand recognition' and the focus of the new rules on WoW style combat to the exclusion of all else, trying to force DnD into the paid subscription model of revenue deserved to fail.
Ok, rant over :)
Oh, for mod points right now. +1 sad but true.
Physics to a degree will get you thinking like a physicist - it covers most undergraduate topics in physics with tutorial style questions and answers.
I found Introduction to Modern Astrophysics an interesting read after I graduated. It covered most of the stuff we did at Birmingham and did so very well.
Our introductory book was Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics by Michael Zeilik, which was ok, and then Astrophysics: Stars Vol 1 by Richard Bowers and Terry Deeming, which was very good and Vol 2 similarly.
You don't mention what your course is going to cover or what its aim is - you are not going to cover the whole of astrophysics in 9 taught months. You also don't mention your interest in astrophysics - numerical simulation? So it is difficult to come up with any more specific recommendations.
Good luck anyhow. Post below with more info if you want any more detailed recommendations.
Yes, a calculator can give you numerical answers, but you need to know some of the theory behind them to get a feel for whether the answers are reasonable - whether you are asking the right questions. I'd be really interested in hearing an example of what you consider 'useless junk' to see if it is on my list of what I think is missing at present.
For reference, I was a student in the UK in the 80s and 90s. I now have degrees in maths, astrophysics and software engineering.
We need to make exams much harder. We need to give kids a 'well done, you have done ok' for a C grade and an A needs to become exceptional again. Otherwise the results are useless for discriminating between candidates.
(A Brit)
ETrace : Run-time tracing http://freshmeat.net/projects/etrace/
This book is worth a read http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/
Draw some static graphs of functions of interest using CodeViz http://freshmeat.net/projects/codeviz/
Write lots of notes, preferably on paper with a pen rather than electronically.
Get a copy of "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie and read it several times. This book should be a first year undergrad textbook for all engineering subjects.
You can apply to them for a license to use the code in a commercial application, or you can rewrite it from the algorithms in the book without looking at their code (which in some cases is a good thing - making C behave like FORTRAN, YUK!).
Wouldn't happen to have the source for Framemaker would you? I'd love to get that working under OSX...
However, it should be an inform first system. If the intent is to educate, rather than gather revenue, the warden should have said 'Could you take those home with you please, because they will attract rats?" and only issued a fine if the person refused.
Having the cameras would allow the wardens to prove that they had been polite and only issued the fine as a last resort.
Kids and their newfangled web 1.0. I remember when the internet was green on a black background...
For my part, I put together a geometric proof for the first part (I suck at proofs!), and then did the second and third parts using three-dimensional vector maths (dot and cross product). That was mainly because I had a limited amount of time, and after you do enough computer graphics work that kind of maths gets hardwired into your brain. I showed my working though.
You should indeed get few (if any) marks for the 'right answer' part of the solution. This is one thing that I like about the Open University: they would dock (say) 20% of the marks if you made a mistake (swapped a plus/minus) half way through your working, but you got the rest of the marks if you carried on and propogated the error correctly.
Here in the UK, the Royal Society of Chemistry ran a maths challenge to highlight the fact that Chinese teenagers were required to solve a university entrance paper containing harder questions than those used to bring the maths skills of first-year British undergraduates up to scratch. I won the competition, and tried to get the message across to the press that we needed to improve our teaching and require more of university entrants, otherwise we would lose our position as one of the leaders in science and engineering. The press reported it as either 'British man beats the Chinese' or 'RSoC says British crap at maths - Shoreham man proves them wrong'.
I get the feeling that people in general take a pride in not caring about science/maths because they found it hard at school and want nothing more to do with it. If anyone wants me, I'll be crying into my beer on my blog and learning how to chip flint arrowheads for when society implodes back to the stone age.
Ok, one ray of hope: the BBC education report wasn't too bad.