Imagine you're an alien and you land on Earth in front of a pet store. You go inside and you start meeting dogs. Some are big with a loud deep "WOOF", some are small with a quieter higher "ruff" and there's one little one that goes "meow". Some of them have big floppy ears, some of them have little floppy ears, and that little one has sharp pointed ears with tufts on the end. You think "That little meowing dog with the pointed tufted ears is an unusual dog!"
Then you go onto the rest of the pet store and find a whole bunch more small meowing things with pointed tufted ears, and you say "Oh... I see. That wasn't a funny dog, that was just the first cat I met!"
Pluto was the first Trans-Neptunian Object we met, and so we originally called it by our existing language ("planet"). But once we had a much better lay of the land, it became clear that it was just the first example of a quite different type of object.
Most importantly, it's not just NASA -- the NSF and NIH also have above-inflation budget increases, after several years of stark cuts. I was worried that this was going to be cannibalizing one science for another, but that doesn't appear to be the case!
Canada has FPTP and has had at least 3 major parties every election for decades (at times up to 5). It's more the case that when you have 2-party FPTP, it is very hard to break out of it... but if you start off with more viable parties, it can remain that way.
Which is not to say that I endorse FPTP in any way, shape or form. We all know that Arrow's Theorem says that no voting system satisfies all the axioms you would like a voting system to adhere to, but some violate the axioms more often and in more egregious ways than others. FPTP is more egregious at the individual level than almost any alternative.
The problem with Arrow's Theorem is that it is really about what happens for a choice amongst a few individuals (like a presidential election), while the majority of countries have parliamentary systems in which it is the aggregate of all of the individual choices that determines the government. If you ask what government you get as a result of all of those individual FPTP elections, its faults vis-a-vis Arrow's Theorem are usually not too bad. Which is probably why FPTP persists despite the fact that it does badly at the individual level -- people tend to agree that the government it produces at the national level usually reflects the will of the people.
The one that drives me crazy is removing the ethernet port on MacBooks. Which wouldn't be too bad if Apple's USB or Thunderbird ethernet adapters lasted more than 6 months before breaking, but I'm on my 5th in slightly over 2 years now... finally bought a third party one in the hopes that it will be less frail.
Do you really think that most "highly skilled" jobs are exportable? All H1Bs I know (including myself) are academics - I am a university professor. I'm pretty confident that this job won't be outsourced.
Except that if the star was captured by the Milky Way, that already tells you that it was moving at less than the escape velocity, while these are moving faster than the escape velocity.
Still, it would be interesting to see if they share orbital elements with known satellites or streams...
I disagree - being an academic takes all your time, and being an administrator also takes all your time. I'd like my administrators to have enough time to be good administrators!
Now, I think that all administrators ought to have once been academics, otherwise they don't actually understand the problems that they need to deal with, but not that they still are active researchers.
That's valid if you're driving for 30 minutes. Several times a month, I do an 11.5 hour drive in one day. There the extra 10mph saves me 1.5 hours, which is well worth it!
Yes, indeed. Impacts on me:
- My wife works for an organization that operates a federal facility on behalf of the NSF. She is on furlough. (actually, even worse - she has to work on a project that's deemed essential, but she's not going to get paid this month if the money from the NSF doesn't flow before payday. Yes, she will probably get back-pay, but that doesn't help when this month's bills are due!).
-...and lives in housing that is owned and operated by the agency. So there is no trash collection, and if anything goes wrong she's SOL.
- Oh, and our daughter's daycare is also on-site. It is being run privately out of someone's house during the shutdown.
- Processing of my green card application is on pause until after the department of labor is up and running again.
- I am hiring a researcher with funds that are partly coming from NASA. Some of the money is in my account, but the next payment is expected in a week. Fortunately, some of the money for that position is coming from another source, so I can pay him for about 6 months before I need the NASA money, but if that weren't true it would be about 1 month.
- I have grant proposals under review from both the NSF and NASA. The review process is on pause and no one knows how long it'll take before we know whether we can do research next year...
- When I teach, I regularly make use of things on NASA websites, which are not running so my students have to listen to me instead of seeing examples.
So, yes, this is hitting my very directly in a lot of ways.
Casinos sell a product - entertainment. In particular, the thrill that you might win some (a lot) of money. People go and pay to experience that thrill. If you want to be entertained by something different, that's fine, but it's not stupid to like a little thrill and be willing to pay a little for it.
That's certainly true, but some fraction of them will be good teachers innately or from additional training. Given the current job market, where there are far more highly qualified candidates than you can even short-list for any tenure-track faculty position at even non-prestigious research universities, departments can afford to be picky when they hire. In other words, don't expect to get hired today if you're only a good researcher but not a good teacher, because someone else who applied for the job will both be a good researcher *and* a good teacher.
As a consequence, the past 5 years of tenure-track hires at pretty much any university are, on average, much better teachers than average hires have been before.
This would be horrible - the need the organization has for the employee and the rate they pay are only loosely connected depending on what the employee does and what other organizations pay someone equivalent.
For example, I am on H1B status. I am a professor of astrophysics at a state university. If I were a early-career software developer, I would make more than I currently do, and therefore would be more eligible to be here under your plan. But the university needs me as a professor with my particular skills more than it needs a random early-career software developer - but the prevailing wage for software developers is higher because they are also hired by companies who can afford to pay higher salaries.
(of course, I wouldn't object to the "pay professors more" solution, but because a significant fraction of the university's budget comes from the state, it is more limited and is much less sensitive to market pressures than the companies who hire software developers. Not that I think that's necessarily a good thing, but it's also not going to change any time soon)
Salt is an ingredient whose apparent strength depends strongly on how acclimated you are to it. So if you don't use much salt, it doesn't take much for food to taste like nothing but salt, but if you use a fair bit then you need a fair bit or food tastes bland.
Do you need scrollbars eating screen real estate when they aren't needed or you aren't scrolling? They appear when you scroll if you need them, just scroll a tiny bit and poof, there they are... and they get larger if you hover near them so they are easier to hit. What EXACTLY is your complaint?
You're the first person I've heard who doesn't think this is the most vile thing ever done to their OS. Yes, you do. They provide information - where are you in a document. I don't want to need to change where I am in a document to find that out.
To any of you who think this is cool science and want to make sure more of it gets done: The GBT is under very severe threat of shutting down. In the recent NSF Portfolio Review, it was recommended that given the "current" funding situation (this was last year), the NSF divest itself of certain observatories including Green Bank. That means the telescope will shut down, unless a private consortium (i.e. of universities) can scrape together enough money to take it over.
Note also that the "current" funding situation referred to was even before the sequester, so the chances of getting the NSF to change their minds have dropped significantly - there is just not enough money in the budget. But please lobby your congressional representatives to restore funding for basic research if you think this is important!
If prepay is setup to do a la carte on the plans, then why does AT&T require a data plan for smartphones *even on prepay plans*? I don't have a cell phone right now because AT&T is the only carrier that has decent coverage at home, I only make about 2-3 calls a month so a monthly plan would obviously be ludicrous, but I want a smartphone to use wifi, which is available most everywhere I spend time.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only person who read "axes" in the headline as "plural of a Cartesian coordinate axis", not "sharp metal wedge on a stick"?
I was expecting the summary to talk about confusing GPS using an esoteric mathematical axis transformation, not hitting it with an ax!
You know it really is blue, right?
(the reviews, incidentally, are hysterical)
[TMB]
Here's an analogy I gave my students last week...
Imagine you're an alien and you land on Earth in front of a pet store. You go inside and you start meeting dogs. Some are big with a loud deep "WOOF", some are small with a quieter higher "ruff" and there's one little one that goes "meow". Some of them have big floppy ears, some of them have little floppy ears, and that little one has sharp pointed ears with tufts on the end. You think "That little meowing dog with the pointed tufted ears is an unusual dog!"
Then you go onto the rest of the pet store and find a whole bunch more small meowing things with pointed tufted ears, and you say "Oh... I see. That wasn't a funny dog, that was just the first cat I met!"
Pluto was the first Trans-Neptunian Object we met, and so we originally called it by our existing language ("planet"). But once we had a much better lay of the land, it became clear that it was just the first example of a quite different type of object.
[TMB]
Most importantly, it's not just NASA -- the NSF and NIH also have above-inflation budget increases, after several years of stark cuts. I was worried that this was going to be cannibalizing one science for another, but that doesn't appear to be the case!
[TMB]
Canada has FPTP and has had at least 3 major parties every election for decades (at times up to 5). It's more the case that when you have 2-party FPTP, it is very hard to break out of it... but if you start off with more viable parties, it can remain that way.
Which is not to say that I endorse FPTP in any way, shape or form. We all know that Arrow's Theorem says that no voting system satisfies all the axioms you would like a voting system to adhere to, but some violate the axioms more often and in more egregious ways than others. FPTP is more egregious at the individual level than almost any alternative.
The problem with Arrow's Theorem is that it is really about what happens for a choice amongst a few individuals (like a presidential election), while the majority of countries have parliamentary systems in which it is the aggregate of all of the individual choices that determines the government. If you ask what government you get as a result of all of those individual FPTP elections, its faults vis-a-vis Arrow's Theorem are usually not too bad. Which is probably why FPTP persists despite the fact that it does badly at the individual level -- people tend to agree that the government it produces at the national level usually reflects the will of the people.
The one that drives me crazy is removing the ethernet port on MacBooks. Which wouldn't be too bad if Apple's USB or Thunderbird ethernet adapters lasted more than 6 months before breaking, but I'm on my 5th in slightly over 2 years now... finally bought a third party one in the hopes that it will be less frail.
Do you really think that most "highly skilled" jobs are exportable? All H1Bs I know (including myself) are academics - I am a university professor. I'm pretty confident that this job won't be outsourced.
Aha, you have conclusively proven that no civilization has ever collapsed!
Oh, wait....
[TMB]
Except that if the star was captured by the Milky Way, that already tells you that it was moving at less than the escape velocity, while these are moving faster than the escape velocity.
Still, it would be interesting to see if they share orbital elements with known satellites or streams...
[TMB]
I disagree - being an academic takes all your time, and being an administrator also takes all your time. I'd like my administrators to have enough time to be good administrators!
Now, I think that all administrators ought to have once been academics, otherwise they don't actually understand the problems that they need to deal with, but not that they still are active researchers.
That's valid if you're driving for 30 minutes. Several times a month, I do an 11.5 hour drive in one day. There the extra 10mph saves me 1.5 hours, which is well worth it!
Yes, indeed. Impacts on me: ...and lives in housing that is owned and operated by the agency. So there is no trash collection, and if anything goes wrong she's SOL.
- My wife works for an organization that operates a federal facility on behalf of the NSF. She is on furlough. (actually, even worse - she has to work on a project that's deemed essential, but she's not going to get paid this month if the money from the NSF doesn't flow before payday. Yes, she will probably get back-pay, but that doesn't help when this month's bills are due!).
-
- Oh, and our daughter's daycare is also on-site. It is being run privately out of someone's house during the shutdown.
- Processing of my green card application is on pause until after the department of labor is up and running again.
- I am hiring a researcher with funds that are partly coming from NASA. Some of the money is in my account, but the next payment is expected in a week. Fortunately, some of the money for that position is coming from another source, so I can pay him for about 6 months before I need the NASA money, but if that weren't true it would be about 1 month.
- I have grant proposals under review from both the NSF and NASA. The review process is on pause and no one knows how long it'll take before we know whether we can do research next year...
- When I teach, I regularly make use of things on NASA websites, which are not running so my students have to listen to me instead of seeing examples.
So, yes, this is hitting my very directly in a lot of ways.
[TMB]
Partisan gerrymandering has been explicitly approved by the Supreme Court. What's not allowed is racial gerrymandering.
Casinos sell a product - entertainment. In particular, the thrill that you might win some (a lot) of money. People go and pay to experience that thrill. If you want to be entertained by something different, that's fine, but it's not stupid to like a little thrill and be willing to pay a little for it.
Bertolli got an ad out pretty quickly:
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/bertolli-makes-most-barilla-chairmans-anti-gay-comments-152758
Bertolli did one better:
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/bertolli-makes-most-barilla-chairmans-anti-gay-comments-152758
Ha! Nice one... wish I had mod points for you! :)
That's certainly true, but some fraction of them will be good teachers innately or from additional training. Given the current job market, where there are far more highly qualified candidates than you can even short-list for any tenure-track faculty position at even non-prestigious research universities, departments can afford to be picky when they hire. In other words, don't expect to get hired today if you're only a good researcher but not a good teacher, because someone else who applied for the job will both be a good researcher *and* a good teacher.
As a consequence, the past 5 years of tenure-track hires at pretty much any university are, on average, much better teachers than average hires have been before.
There was no Star Trek V - it jumped straight from IV to VI! Now if only they'd make the prequels to the Star Wars movies...
[TMB]
This would be horrible - the need the organization has for the employee and the rate they pay are only loosely connected depending on what the employee does and what other organizations pay someone equivalent.
For example, I am on H1B status. I am a professor of astrophysics at a state university. If I were a early-career software developer, I would make more than I currently do, and therefore would be more eligible to be here under your plan. But the university needs me as a professor with my particular skills more than it needs a random early-career software developer - but the prevailing wage for software developers is higher because they are also hired by companies who can afford to pay higher salaries.
(of course, I wouldn't object to the "pay professors more" solution, but because a significant fraction of the university's budget comes from the state, it is more limited and is much less sensitive to market pressures than the companies who hire software developers. Not that I think that's necessarily a good thing, but it's also not going to change any time soon)
Salt is an ingredient whose apparent strength depends strongly on how acclimated you are to it. So if you don't use much salt, it doesn't take much for food to taste like nothing but salt, but if you use a fair bit then you need a fair bit or food tastes bland.
Oh to have mod points... come on someone, read this one and think about it!
You're the first person I've heard who doesn't think this is the most vile thing ever done to their OS. Yes, you do. They provide information - where are you in a document. I don't want to need to change where I am in a document to find that out.
To any of you who think this is cool science and want to make sure more of it gets done: The GBT is under very severe threat of shutting down. In the recent NSF Portfolio Review, it was recommended that given the "current" funding situation (this was last year), the NSF divest itself of certain observatories including Green Bank. That means the telescope will shut down, unless a private consortium (i.e. of universities) can scrape together enough money to take it over.
Note also that the "current" funding situation referred to was even before the sequester, so the chances of getting the NSF to change their minds have dropped significantly - there is just not enough money in the budget. But please lobby your congressional representatives to restore funding for basic research if you think this is important!
If prepay is setup to do a la carte on the plans, then why does AT&T require a data plan for smartphones *even on prepay plans*? I don't have a cell phone right now because AT&T is the only carrier that has decent coverage at home, I only make about 2-3 calls a month so a monthly plan would obviously be ludicrous, but I want a smartphone to use wifi, which is available most everywhere I spend time.