PBS has had some good programs lately on scientific contributions from women. I'd consider these:
* Vera Rubin -- Her ideas were ridiculed for most of her life, but she was right. She established the existence of dark matter. * Lise Meitner -- She discovered nuclear fission, with chemist Otto Hahn, but she did not get credit because of WWII politics. * Mileva Maric, Einstein's 1st wife -- No major scientific discoveries, but her emotional and intellectual support contributed to Einstein's success. * Emilie de Breteuil -- This fascinating individual, with Voltaire amongst her suitors, deepened our understanding of the relation between energy and velocity, though her own contributions would not be considered "discoveries". * Marie Curie -- Possibly the greatest female scientist in history, and certainly the best known.
To find out when Godel's Theorem really applies, read "Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse", by Torkel Franzen. Even Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking have gotten it wrong, so don't feel ashamed.
I do what you suggest all the time. The trick is to use Python's "introspection". Since Python knows about itself, it can convert itself to C++ headers easily. (Converting the fucntion bodies is harder.)
Yes, a true classic, and the beginning of Michael Crichton's career. But the scientists aren't memorable.
The problem with "favorite scientist" is that engineering is more exciting than scientist, since it actually does stuff.
I liked Dr. Davis McClaren (Bruce Greenwood, but uncredited at IMDB). His passion for science caused all the problems, but the highly competent crew working with him understood that science is worth the risk. It's the way that science and scientists ought to be portrayed. And the movie is very enjoyable.
I don't know why this is moderated at only +3 Informative. This is the most informative post I've seen on this topic.
I am sick of all the "faster-than-light" allegations. First, there's a difference between "faster-than-light" and "faster than c, aka the speed of light in a vacuum". Light travels more slowly in a medium than in a vacuum. Second, the behavior of waves is not intuitive. You have to understand them mathematically, not conceptually.
I saw Brian Greene and Alan Alda on PBS recently talking about science education for the layman. They agreed that while analogies are invaluable in explaining scientific ideas, it's also important to explain their weaknesses. Here, light waves are "like" water waves, but they're not the same thing.
The idea of a light "pulse" as the sum of a large number of light "waves" is difficult to grasp. It's the "pulse" which is behaving unexpectedly, not the light waves themselves.
I would avoid an RFID implant for the same reason that I want an iPod connection in my car: Installed technology can become obsolete. I don't see what's wrong with a bracelet dogtags. My brother and I wore dogtags when we were kids.
The language warriors miss the point: Some languages are better for some tasks than other languages.
Python is a wonderful language for part-time programmers. Why? Because Python...
* is very easy to learn (no weird symbols or idioms)
* enforces indentation
* encourages legible code (few side-effects)
* encourages useful documentation (in the comments)
* encourages testing (esp. doctest)
* encourages modularity (via directory structure)
* encourages OOP (defining a class is trivial)
* can be extremely productive (with great libraries)
I work with people who need to do a lot of work in a "glue" language, but they are not professional programmers. When they use Tcl, I cannot easily re-use, maintain, or extend (via C++) their code. Perl is better, but only because the resulting code is much shorter. These people use Perl and Tcl because that's what they know. Whenever I convert someone like that to Python, they and the people who use their code become more productive.
Ruby is a wonderful language for a programmer, but is it simply not as easy to learn. The block-syntax (with ||) is awkward. Unless you know Perl, regular expressions are too terse. Modularity and OOP are simple but not trivial (which they must be or they will be ignored). Testing is easy, but documentation is as ugly as Perl's.
Also, because of its slow speed, Ruby should be considered a proto-typing language, unless the application simply does not require speed. I think Ruby is perfect for web development, because its flexibility (e.g. mixins) makes the incomprehensible almost manageable.
For proto-typing,
if the target is C++, use Ruby (or Python + Boost);
if the target is C#, use Boo;
if the target is Java, use Jython.
For embedding, I like Lua. It's small, fast, and easy to learn.
For serious, large-scale, mission-critical systems programming, there are better choices than Python and Ruby: Ocaml (or F#), Haskell, Eiffel, Scheme, Ada, etc. The experience and taste of the programmer count more here.
Boo is like Python for.NET (or MONO on Linux). Really, it is a combination of the best parts of Python, Ruby, and C#.
* It ALLOWS blocks instead of indenting in many places.
* It ALLOWS Ruby/Perl-style regular expressions natively.
* It infers types, so it can do compile-time type-checking w/o type declarations.
* It ALLOWS type declarations.
* It ALLOWS completely dynamic typing (like Python) via "duck" typing. (If it looks like a duck...)
* It is nearly as fast as C# -- that's about 15 times faster than Python or Ruby.
* It has full access to.NET/MONO.
* It facilitates.NET extensions.
* There are Boo C# converters if you want complete type-safety.
* I could go on and on. It's a very flexible language.
Joking or not, you missed the irony. Ayn Rand became so stanuchly anti-collectivist because of her experience of the onset of totalitarianism in Russia. Her mother helped her to leave the country when contemporaries, including teachers and classmates, began to disappear in the middle of the night. Rand (then Rosenbaum) was an independent-thinker from a young age, but she was mainly just a lover of romantic cinema until the Bolsheviks ruined her country.
Rand honestly believed that the tiniest intrusion of collectivism could lead to the persecution and deaths of people who like to speak their minds. Your "joke" was exactly the reason why she felt the way she did.
I recommend the Oscar-nominated documentary titled "A Sense of Life," a biography of Ayn Rand. Ignore her flawed philosophy. (The flaw is the assumption that we are rational beings, when clearly we are animals foremost.) The first third of the film will give you some compassion for her deep fears.
It sounds like the author is really saying that liberal arts courses are too easy.
But if liberal arts courses were made harder, we wouldn't have any football teams!
When I buy software, I am purchasing a license? OK, if you look at software in terms of contract law, then you must realize that if I buy software and resell it to my friend Bob, then:
1) I have violated my contract, which is not illegal. I can be sued.
2) Bob has NOT violated any contract. He never agreed to one!
To call my resale and Bob's use illegal, you must consider copyright, not just contract.
Copyright is a monopoly granted by government in order to foster innovation, at the expense of individual liberty. As a society, we need to determine the balance between progress and liberty.
> By your argument it should be legal to yell the proverbial "fire" in a crowded theater...
Arg! This is the worst anti-free speech argument there is, and I hear it all the time.
The fact is, you have an INVIOLABLE right to yell Fire in a crowded theater, for the very simple and obvious reason that there might in fact be a fire.
If there's not a fire, then you can be punished afterwards. But there is no PRIOR RESTRAINT against yelling Fire, and certainly no outright prohibition.
If you see a fire, or if you even suspect that there might be a fire, please let us know.
See also the
Large Binocular Telescope . This page has some convincing photos showing exactly how "obsolete" Hubble has become.
However, Hubble does have some advantages, and it's really too bad we're going to lose it, solely as a result of the recent Shuttle tragedy.
With advances in adaptive optics and computing, ground-based telescopes are now BETTER than the Hubble in many ways.
This site on the Large Binocular Telescope (recently threatened by wildfire!) is very interesting. http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/wh ybuild/grbsspc.html
Finally! Someone posting here with some logic!
The discussion at the mises link is particularly enlightening, though not particuarly light reading.
Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
> What other nation or organization has a spacecraft capable of servicing Hubble within 24-36 months? SPECTER http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/8073...
Discouraging people from flying is part of the Bush administration plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
PBS has had some good programs lately on scientific contributions from women. I'd consider these:
* Vera Rubin -- Her ideas were ridiculed for most of her life, but she was right. She established the existence of dark matter.
* Lise Meitner -- She discovered nuclear fission, with chemist Otto Hahn, but she did not get credit because of WWII politics.
* Mileva Maric, Einstein's 1st wife -- No major scientific discoveries, but her emotional and intellectual support contributed to Einstein's success.
* Emilie de Breteuil -- This fascinating individual, with Voltaire amongst her suitors, deepened our understanding of the relation between energy and velocity, though her own contributions would not be considered "discoveries".
* Marie Curie -- Possibly the greatest female scientist in history, and certainly the best known.
To find out when Godel's Theorem really applies, read "Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse", by Torkel Franzen. Even Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking have gotten it wrong, so don't feel ashamed.
I do what you suggest all the time. The trick is to use Python's "introspection". Since Python knows about itself, it can convert itself to C++ headers easily. (Converting the fucntion bodies is harder.)
% pydoc inspect
Using Perl for this would be nuts!
"boo", a .NET language, allows dynamic typing by specifying 'duck' type. It achieves near-c# speed because all other data are statically typed.
.NET world.
It's a great language -- combining the benefits of Python, Ruby, and C# -- and it's wonderful for proto-typing in the
Python is by far the best language for proto-typing code intended to be written in C++ later. ShedSkin facilitates this process.
Not enough people proto-type their code, which is why hardly anybody talks about how to do it.
I forgot to mention the same of the movie with the realistic scientist: Eight Below.
Yes, a true classic, and the beginning of Michael Crichton's career. But the scientists aren't memorable.
The problem with "favorite scientist" is that engineering is more exciting than scientist, since it actually does stuff.
I liked Dr. Davis McClaren (Bruce Greenwood, but uncredited at IMDB). His passion for science caused all the problems, but the highly competent crew working with him understood that science is worth the risk. It's the way that science and scientists ought to be portrayed. And the movie is very enjoyable.
I don't know why this is moderated at only +3 Informative. This is the most informative post I've seen on this topic.
I am sick of all the "faster-than-light" allegations. First, there's a difference between "faster-than-light" and "faster than c, aka the speed of light in a vacuum". Light travels more slowly in a medium than in a vacuum. Second, the behavior of waves is not intuitive. You have to understand them mathematically, not conceptually.
I saw Brian Greene and Alan Alda on PBS recently talking about science education for the layman. They agreed that while analogies are invaluable in explaining scientific ideas, it's also important to explain their weaknesses. Here, light waves are "like" water waves, but they're not the same thing.
The idea of a light "pulse" as the sum of a large number of light "waves" is difficult to grasp. It's the "pulse" which is behaving unexpectedly, not the light waves themselves.
I would avoid an RFID implant for the same reason that I want an iPod connection in my car: Installed technology can become obsolete. I don't see what's wrong with a bracelet dogtags. My brother and I wore dogtags when we were kids.
The language warriors miss the point: Some languages are better for some tasks than other languages.
Python is a wonderful language for part-time programmers. Why? Because Python
* is very easy to learn (no weird symbols or idioms)
* enforces indentation
* encourages legible code (few side-effects)
* encourages useful documentation (in the comments)
* encourages testing (esp. doctest)
* encourages modularity (via directory structure)
* encourages OOP (defining a class is trivial)
* can be extremely productive (with great libraries)
I work with people who need to do a lot of work in a "glue" language, but they are not professional programmers. When they use Tcl, I cannot easily re-use, maintain, or extend (via C++) their code. Perl is better, but only because the resulting code is much shorter. These people use Perl and Tcl because that's what they know. Whenever I convert someone like that to Python, they and the people who use their code become more productive.
Ruby is a wonderful language for a programmer, but is it simply not as easy to learn. The block-syntax (with ||) is awkward. Unless you know Perl, regular expressions are too terse. Modularity and OOP are simple but not trivial (which they must be or they will be ignored). Testing is easy, but documentation is as ugly as Perl's.
Also, because of its slow speed, Ruby should be considered a proto-typing language, unless the application simply does not require speed. I think Ruby is perfect for web development, because its flexibility (e.g. mixins) makes the incomprehensible almost manageable.
For proto-typing,
if the target is C++, use Ruby (or Python + Boost);
if the target is C#, use Boo;
if the target is Java, use Jython.
For embedding, I like Lua. It's small, fast, and easy to learn.
For serious, large-scale, mission-critical systems programming, there are better choices than Python and Ruby: Ocaml (or F#), Haskell, Eiffel, Scheme, Ada, etc. The experience and taste of the programmer count more here.
Boo is like Python for .NET (or MONO on Linux). Really, it is a combination of the best parts of Python, Ruby, and C#.
* It ALLOWS blocks instead of indenting in many places.
* It ALLOWS Ruby/Perl-style regular expressions natively.
* It infers types, so it can do compile-time type-checking w/o type declarations.
* It ALLOWS type declarations.
* It ALLOWS completely dynamic typing (like Python) via "duck" typing. (If it looks like a duck...)
* It is nearly as fast as C# -- that's about 15 times faster than Python or Ruby.
* It has full access to .NET/MONO.
* It facilitates .NET extensions.
* There are Boo C# converters if you want complete type-safety.
* I could go on and on. It's a very flexible language.
Joking or not, you missed the irony. Ayn Rand became so stanuchly anti-collectivist because of her experience of the onset of totalitarianism in Russia. Her mother helped her to leave the country when contemporaries, including teachers and classmates, began to disappear in the middle of the night. Rand (then Rosenbaum) was an independent-thinker from a young age, but she was mainly just a lover of romantic cinema until the Bolsheviks ruined her country. Rand honestly believed that the tiniest intrusion of collectivism could lead to the persecution and deaths of people who like to speak their minds. Your "joke" was exactly the reason why she felt the way she did. I recommend the Oscar-nominated documentary titled "A Sense of Life," a biography of Ayn Rand. Ignore her flawed philosophy. (The flaw is the assumption that we are rational beings, when clearly we are animals foremost.) The first third of the film will give you some compassion for her deep fears.
I tried it. Didn't get any funny message. Switched back to Python.
It sounds like the author is really saying that liberal arts courses are too easy. But if liberal arts courses were made harder, we wouldn't have any football teams!
When I buy software, I am purchasing a license? OK, if you look at software in terms of contract law, then you must realize that if I buy software and resell it to my friend Bob, then: 1) I have violated my contract, which is not illegal. I can be sued. 2) Bob has NOT violated any contract. He never agreed to one! To call my resale and Bob's use illegal, you must consider copyright, not just contract. Copyright is a monopoly granted by government in order to foster innovation, at the expense of individual liberty. As a society, we need to determine the balance between progress and liberty.
> By your argument it should be legal to yell the proverbial "fire" in a crowded theater... Arg! This is the worst anti-free speech argument there is, and I hear it all the time. The fact is, you have an INVIOLABLE right to yell Fire in a crowded theater, for the very simple and obvious reason that there might in fact be a fire. If there's not a fire, then you can be punished afterwards. But there is no PRIOR RESTRAINT against yelling Fire, and certainly no outright prohibition. If you see a fire, or if you even suspect that there might be a fire, please let us know.
See also the Large Binocular Telescope . This page has some convincing photos showing exactly how "obsolete" Hubble has become. However, Hubble does have some advantages, and it's really too bad we're going to lose it, solely as a result of the recent Shuttle tragedy.
Link to LBT page: http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/whybuild/grbsspc .html
LBT
With advances in adaptive optics and computing, ground-based telescopes are now BETTER than the Hubble in many ways.
h ybuild/grbsspc .html
This site on the Large Binocular Telescope (recently threatened by wildfire!) is very interesting.
http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbto/w
Finally! Someone posting here with some logic! The discussion at the mises link is particularly enlightening, though not particuarly light reading. Thanks.