What is usually referred to as "The Golden Rule" is the basic principle found in all major religions: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself:" "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others" "This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others what you would not have them do unto you." "One should seek for others the happiness one desires for one's self."
The saying that you're referring to ("Whoever has the gold makes the rules") is basically a satirical take on the original Golden Rule.
You need a lesson on chaos theory. Basically, the gist of it is that the behavior of nonlinear systems, such as the individual motion of the atoms in a gas, become impossible to accurately predict over long time scales. This says nothing, however, of the macroscopic statistical values that describe a system, such as the pressure and temperature of said gas. Compared to the atmosphere as a whole, weather is localized "microscopic" behavior, while average temperature is a macroscopic quantity.
Ah, the classic "you're arrogant" ad hominem. Do you really think that we cannot affect things on a global scale? Look outside your window, and tell me what you see. What are the main features? Natural vegetation, or a landscape covered in roads and buildings? We humans have already changed a significant fraction of our environment.
OK, how 'bout the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is not linear, it's logarithmic.
So what? Whether the standard model predicts that it is quadratic, linear, exponential, or logarithmic doesn't matter. In essence, what you're saying is "I don't believe the data generated by the accepted model," and then turning around and saying, "I don't believe the data because the model predicts that temperature is logarithmic with CO2 levels." I believe that's called having your cake and eating it too.
By the way, when a few degrees can make all the difference, and we're pumping a shitload of excess carbon into the atmosphere, even a logarithmic increase spells bad news.
I realize I didn't say this in my post (and that is my fault), but I was mostly referring to the New Testament. It wasn't so much what they wrote directly as much as it was what they decided would be included in the Bible. The New Testament could've been completely different if some books had been included, or if others were excluded (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas).
I think you're looking too much into this. I worked at Target during high school, and what you heard is far less sinister than you believe it to be. The computer telling the "team members" that a "guest" needs assistance is triggered by a customer picking up one of the service phones peppered throughout the store. The reason that the employees try to respond so quickly is that the phones have something written on them to the effect of "A team member will be with you within the next x minutes," and people get angry if you're not there fast enough.
As for the "Additional cashiers to the front lane," that is actually triggered by the cashiers themselves via a button on their registers. Typically, the manager up front would just call for backup directly if there was a sudden wave of customers, but on occasion, the manager would be busy elsewhere. In that case, one of the cashiers could just press the button without stopping (i.e., slowing down) to do it manually. More practically, the cashiers aren't given walkie-talkies because the collective noise from ten nearby walkies would be disruptive to the customers. Also, the phones at each lane were tied into the walkie system, but it didn't work very well, and it was just easier to push the button.
Probably the worst computer-control issue at Target was the "speed score" system. Basically, after every transaction, they'd assign you a score (either G for green, or R for red), indicating whether you were fast enough on that transaction. Your overall scores were then tabulated on a monthly basis. When I first started, you wouldn't know your score on an individual customer, and you could only know your monthly average. Being a 17-year-old, I tried to get the highest score possible, and I did pretty well (something like best average in the store for six months). However, about halfway through my tenure there, they switched to a system that showed you your score after each customer, which soon led me to see how flawed it actually was. You see, I quickly figured out that if not for the customers themselves, I would have gotten a G on every transaction. The problem was that the system basically worked by assigning every item an allowed scan time (so a thing of dog food might be 30 seconds, while a pencil might be 5 seconds). From what I could tell, it also allowed a certain amount of time for payment. What I noticed is that as long as there were a few items (about four or more), I would always get a G, no matter what. When it came down to just a couple of items, I would often get a R. Why? As it turned out, the customer would squander my allowed time by taking a long time to figure out the machine that Target uses for credit and debit cards. In the end, the only effect that speed scores had on me was to get me angry at the people I was supposed to be serving. Yes, you heard that right: I would get a little mad at people for not being efficient enough.
If you believe in something, then at least stand by it. If you can't or won't stand by it, then why do you believe in it?
The Catholic Church has never believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. As the entity which basically created it, why should it? It would be like me writing down an instruction manual for a product and then claiming that whatever the manual says must be true, even if I know parts to be false. No, the Church's main source of "divine knowledge" comes from the papal lineage, and has done so since it was founded.
Even relatively sane, simple mandates like checking for a valid ID at the poling station get shut down.
Those laws are often struck down as unconstitutional, and for good reason. If you are an American citizen who doesn't have an ID (which you cannot constitutionally be required to own as a direct result of our right to privacy), you should still be able to vote. More practically, from a statistical viewpoint, people with lower incomes and the elderly are surprisingly likely to not have IDs. You might say, "Well, if they want to be able to vote, they need an ID," but if voting laws disenfranchise even one person who has done nothing wrong, they have already gone too far.
Hardly. Practically every device that communicates wirelessly at microwave frequencies has GaAs amplifiers. This includes most cell phones and wireless cards.
Given the alleged effectiveness of the Glove, it seems like it could be more of a solution to the war on obesity than the war in Iraq. Strap it on and you could be able to run for long times without getting tired.
Ugh, I'm so tired of hearing people spew the global-warming-on-Mars fallacy. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we can directly measure solar output here, on Earth. Our observations of the amount of sunlight reaching our planet is showing that there is no such increase. There's no need to bring Mars into the picture, as it only introduces irrelevant unknowns. If there is global warming on Mars, it is not due to the sun.
They're also very likely to vote the same way as the engineering, business and finance faculties of any university, that is, those university people who have to produce ideas of practical value.
Business and finance faculty maybe, but in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, engineering professors skew to the left.
Is anyone else turned off by the idea of putting material in your body that will literally annihilate parts of you? Oh well, I guess it can't be any worse than injecting you with lethal poisons and hoping that the cancer absorbs most of it.:)
Because he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination with his current platform. The Republican party's main base these days is comprised of neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists. On the freedom scale, their beliefs are surprisingly close to fascism, and he is a libertarian. Unless he pulls a McCain 180, then he cannot win. In fact, his chances would probably be better if he ran as a Democrat.
The parent is correct about undergraduate education. Really, it doesn't matter all that much where you go, because any differences in the curriculum are purely cosmetic. * If you're serious about eventually doing research, however, getting into a "top-tier" school certainly doesn't hurt. (After all, it is no coincidence that the faculty listings at most schools are filled with Ph.D. graduates from MIT, Stanford, UIUC, UC Berkeley, and Caltech.) To do this, make sure you do the following as an undergraduate:
1. Early on, probably as a freshman, try to decide on what subdiscipline of EE that you want to focus on (e.g., control systems, electromagnetics, physical/quantum/device electronics, signal processing, circuits, etc.). 2. Also, take as many classes as you can from your designated area, and do well in them. If you plan well enough, you can be taking graduate classes as an upperclassman. 3. Find a professor that will allow you to work as a research assistant in his or her lab, probably starting as a sophomore or as a junior. Preferably, work with one of the big names at your school, since a recommendation from them will be worth a lot. This isn't as hard as it sounds: most professors are egotistic and love to hear that students are interested in what they do, and will jump at the chance to help you. One caveat: don't send out a form letter to a bunch of different professors asking to do research for them. This nullifies the ego factor, and you'll probably get no responses. 4. If you don't do so in every class, pick two classes in which you'll go to office hours, ask insightful questions, and do exceedingly well grade-wise. Most grad schools require three letters of recommendation, which means that in addition to your research advisor, you'll need two other professors to write one for you.
You see, one of the problems with undergraduate applications is that schools have no real way of knowing how you'll perform in a university environment. Furthermore, there is usually a dedicated staff who decides who's admitted, which means that professors never even see your applications. Essentially, at the top-tier schools, it's quite a crap shoot. However, for graduate application, the variables are much more well-defined: it always comes down to grades, research experience, recommendations, personal statements, and GRE scores. (Although, to be fair, GRE scores aren't worth that much in EE, and MIT doesn't even require them.) If you play your cards correctly, then you can go wherever you want for grad school.
* That's not enitrely true: you at least need to be able to go to a school that does research in EE. A small liberal arts college will probably fail you in this regard, as they simply won't have the facilities available for lab work.
How can that not be a bad thing? If a company is more critical of an employee months away from retirement, that is by definition age discrimination. Sorry, but saving a few bucks is not justification for prejudice in the workplace.
It may be the case that new discoveries are often made with a "That's funny," but it's certainly not the most exciting phrase in science. 99.999% of the time, it just means that something's been screwed up.
I used to think the same way as you do until my mother pointed something out to me. It's not just the community who pays for idiots who don't wear seat belts: it's also unfortunate individuals. Suppose that I am at fault an accident with another car in which the driver wasn't using a seat belt. If he had been wearing one, he would've suffered no injury, but because he didn't, he ended up with thousands of dollars in medical costs. My insurance (and me, by proxy) is now going to pay for his medical costs because he couldn't take two seconds to buckle up? I may have made a mistake while driving, but because he took that mistake and amplified it, should I pay the price?
The way I see it, the state has one of two options: 1. Institute seat belt laws. 2. Make it so that even if you are at fault in an accident, if the other party wasn't wearing a seat belt, you don't have to pay a dime.
Of course, the second option has the problem that if the person who doesn't wear a belt gets rushed to the emergency room and doesn't pay their bill, then the hospital is left with it. Essentially, the general consumer will end up paying for it. Therefore, the only sensible option is the first option: prevention.
To be fair, even though Missouri and Kansas are neighbors geographically, they are worlds apart politically. Kansas is a decidedly red state, while Missouri is perhaps the swingiest of swing states. (See the Wikipedia page on the Missouri bellwether.) The major difference is that while Kansas is almost completely rural, Missouri has its own urban east and west "coasts": St. Louis and Kansas City. As it turns out, the population distribution happens to closely mirror that of the nation as a whole, and as a result, Missouri has "picked" the winner of every presidential election since 1900, with the exception of 1956. So, though it supported the Republicans in 2002 and 2004, it supported the Democrats in 2006, while supporting the "liberal" stem cell and minimum wage measures that were on the ballot, mirroring the country as a whole.
And, of course, there's the strange fact that unlike the rest of the Midwest, the St. Louis area tends to say "soda" instead of "pop," as this map shows.
TiVo has all the sheep fooled into thinking their eternal fees are justified for the privilege of using hardware that the end user bought and owns!
For one thing, Tivo doesn't sell the hardware without the subscription any more. It's considered to be one product. For another, even when they did sell them separately, the cost of the hardware has always been heavily subsidized by Tivo, and the end user would end up paying for a fraction of the manufacturing costs. Therefore, I think it's a stretch to say that the end user actually "owns" the device. And before you fault Tivo for not fully selling the hardware to its users, remember that they did: a lifetime subscription was essentially a method for fully purchasing the Tivo, and the total cost of the hardware and a lifetime subscription is a lot closer to the manufacturing costs than the cost of the hardware alone.
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What is usually referred to as "The Golden Rule" is the basic principle found in all major religions:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
"None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself:"
"What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others"
"This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others what you would not have them do unto you."
"One should seek for others the happiness one desires for one's self."
The saying that you're referring to ("Whoever has the gold makes the rules") is basically a satirical take on the original Golden Rule.
You need a lesson on chaos theory. Basically, the gist of it is that the behavior of nonlinear systems, such as the individual motion of the atoms in a gas, become impossible to accurately predict over long time scales. This says nothing, however, of the macroscopic statistical values that describe a system, such as the pressure and temperature of said gas. Compared to the atmosphere as a whole, weather is localized "microscopic" behavior, while average temperature is a macroscopic quantity.
Ah, the classic "you're arrogant" ad hominem. Do you really think that we cannot affect things on a global scale? Look outside your window, and tell me what you see. What are the main features? Natural vegetation, or a landscape covered in roads and buildings? We humans have already changed a significant fraction of our environment.
OK, how 'bout the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere is not linear, it's logarithmic.
So what? Whether the standard model predicts that it is quadratic, linear, exponential, or logarithmic doesn't matter. In essence, what you're saying is "I don't believe the data generated by the accepted model," and then turning around and saying, "I don't believe the data because the model predicts that temperature is logarithmic with CO2 levels." I believe that's called having your cake and eating it too.
By the way, when a few degrees can make all the difference, and we're pumping a shitload of excess carbon into the atmosphere, even a logarithmic increase spells bad news.
I realize I didn't say this in my post (and that is my fault), but I was mostly referring to the New Testament. It wasn't so much what they wrote directly as much as it was what they decided would be included in the Bible. The New Testament could've been completely different if some books had been included, or if others were excluded (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas).
I think you're looking too much into this. I worked at Target during high school, and what you heard is far less sinister than you believe it to be. The computer telling the "team members" that a "guest" needs assistance is triggered by a customer picking up one of the service phones peppered throughout the store. The reason that the employees try to respond so quickly is that the phones have something written on them to the effect of "A team member will be with you within the next x minutes," and people get angry if you're not there fast enough.
As for the "Additional cashiers to the front lane," that is actually triggered by the cashiers themselves via a button on their registers. Typically, the manager up front would just call for backup directly if there was a sudden wave of customers, but on occasion, the manager would be busy elsewhere. In that case, one of the cashiers could just press the button without stopping (i.e., slowing down) to do it manually. More practically, the cashiers aren't given walkie-talkies because the collective noise from ten nearby walkies would be disruptive to the customers. Also, the phones at each lane were tied into the walkie system, but it didn't work very well, and it was just easier to push the button.
Probably the worst computer-control issue at Target was the "speed score" system. Basically, after every transaction, they'd assign you a score (either G for green, or R for red), indicating whether you were fast enough on that transaction. Your overall scores were then tabulated on a monthly basis. When I first started, you wouldn't know your score on an individual customer, and you could only know your monthly average. Being a 17-year-old, I tried to get the highest score possible, and I did pretty well (something like best average in the store for six months). However, about halfway through my tenure there, they switched to a system that showed you your score after each customer, which soon led me to see how flawed it actually was. You see, I quickly figured out that if not for the customers themselves, I would have gotten a G on every transaction. The problem was that the system basically worked by assigning every item an allowed scan time (so a thing of dog food might be 30 seconds, while a pencil might be 5 seconds). From what I could tell, it also allowed a certain amount of time for payment. What I noticed is that as long as there were a few items (about four or more), I would always get a G, no matter what. When it came down to just a couple of items, I would often get a R. Why? As it turned out, the customer would squander my allowed time by taking a long time to figure out the machine that Target uses for credit and debit cards. In the end, the only effect that speed scores had on me was to get me angry at the people I was supposed to be serving. Yes, you heard that right: I would get a little mad at people for not being efficient enough.
Why must you mock my belief system? I know that the Power Rangers are protecting us all!
If you believe in something, then at least stand by it. If you can't or won't stand by it, then why do you believe in it?
The Catholic Church has never believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. As the entity which basically created it, why should it? It would be like me writing down an instruction manual for a product and then claiming that whatever the manual says must be true, even if I know parts to be false. No, the Church's main source of "divine knowledge" comes from the papal lineage, and has done so since it was founded.
Even relatively sane, simple mandates like checking for a valid ID at the poling station get shut down.
Those laws are often struck down as unconstitutional, and for good reason. If you are an American citizen who doesn't have an ID (which you cannot constitutionally be required to own as a direct result of our right to privacy), you should still be able to vote. More practically, from a statistical viewpoint, people with lower incomes and the elderly are surprisingly likely to not have IDs. You might say, "Well, if they want to be able to vote, they need an ID," but if voting laws disenfranchise even one person who has done nothing wrong, they have already gone too far.
Hardly. Practically every device that communicates wirelessly at microwave frequencies has GaAs amplifiers. This includes most cell phones and wireless cards.
Contempt of court, anyone?
Given the alleged effectiveness of the Glove, it seems like it could be more of a solution to the war on obesity than the war in Iraq. Strap it on and you could be able to run for long times without getting tired.
Ugh, I'm so tired of hearing people spew the global-warming-on-Mars fallacy. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we can directly measure solar output here, on Earth. Our observations of the amount of sunlight reaching our planet is showing that there is no such increase. There's no need to bring Mars into the picture, as it only introduces irrelevant unknowns. If there is global warming on Mars, it is not due to the sun.
They're also very likely to vote the same way as the engineering, business and finance faculties of any university, that is, those university people who have to produce ideas of practical value.
Business and finance faculty maybe, but in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, engineering professors skew to the left.
Why do right-to-lifer's support the death penalty?
*cough* Catholics *cough*
Is anyone else turned off by the idea of putting material in your body that will literally annihilate parts of you? Oh well, I guess it can't be any worse than injecting you with lethal poisons and hoping that the cancer absorbs most of it. :)
Because he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination with his current platform. The Republican party's main base these days is comprised of neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists. On the freedom scale, their beliefs are surprisingly close to fascism, and he is a libertarian. Unless he pulls a McCain 180, then he cannot win. In fact, his chances would probably be better if he ran as a Democrat.
The parent is correct about undergraduate education. Really, it doesn't matter all that much where you go, because any differences in the curriculum are purely cosmetic. * If you're serious about eventually doing research, however, getting into a "top-tier" school certainly doesn't hurt. (After all, it is no coincidence that the faculty listings at most schools are filled with Ph.D. graduates from MIT, Stanford, UIUC, UC Berkeley, and Caltech.) To do this, make sure you do the following as an undergraduate:
1. Early on, probably as a freshman, try to decide on what subdiscipline of EE that you want to focus on (e.g., control systems, electromagnetics, physical/quantum/device electronics, signal processing, circuits, etc.).
2. Also, take as many classes as you can from your designated area, and do well in them. If you plan well enough, you can be taking graduate classes as an upperclassman.
3. Find a professor that will allow you to work as a research assistant in his or her lab, probably starting as a sophomore or as a junior. Preferably, work with one of the big names at your school, since a recommendation from them will be worth a lot. This isn't as hard as it sounds: most professors are egotistic and love to hear that students are interested in what they do, and will jump at the chance to help you. One caveat: don't send out a form letter to a bunch of different professors asking to do research for them. This nullifies the ego factor, and you'll probably get no responses.
4. If you don't do so in every class, pick two classes in which you'll go to office hours, ask insightful questions, and do exceedingly well grade-wise. Most grad schools require three letters of recommendation, which means that in addition to your research advisor, you'll need two other professors to write one for you.
You see, one of the problems with undergraduate applications is that schools have no real way of knowing how you'll perform in a university environment. Furthermore, there is usually a dedicated staff who decides who's admitted, which means that professors never even see your applications. Essentially, at the top-tier schools, it's quite a crap shoot. However, for graduate application, the variables are much more well-defined: it always comes down to grades, research experience, recommendations, personal statements, and GRE scores. (Although, to be fair, GRE scores aren't worth that much in EE, and MIT doesn't even require them.) If you play your cards correctly, then you can go wherever you want for grad school.
* That's not enitrely true: you at least need to be able to go to a school that does research in EE. A small liberal arts college will probably fail you in this regard, as they simply won't have the facilities available for lab work.
This is not necessarily a bad thing
How can that not be a bad thing? If a company is more critical of an employee months away from retirement, that is by definition age discrimination. Sorry, but saving a few bucks is not justification for prejudice in the workplace.
It may be the case that new discoveries are often made with a "That's funny," but it's certainly not the most exciting phrase in science. 99.999% of the time, it just means that something's been screwed up.
Well, for one, he was co-sponsor of the 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.
I think she looks more like a cross between Cher and Jennifer Wilbanks...
I used to think the same way as you do until my mother pointed something out to me. It's not just the community who pays for idiots who don't wear seat belts: it's also unfortunate individuals. Suppose that I am at fault an accident with another car in which the driver wasn't using a seat belt. If he had been wearing one, he would've suffered no injury, but because he didn't, he ended up with thousands of dollars in medical costs. My insurance (and me, by proxy) is now going to pay for his medical costs because he couldn't take two seconds to buckle up? I may have made a mistake while driving, but because he took that mistake and amplified it, should I pay the price?
The way I see it, the state has one of two options:
1. Institute seat belt laws.
2. Make it so that even if you are at fault in an accident, if the other party wasn't wearing a seat belt, you don't have to pay a dime.
Of course, the second option has the problem that if the person who doesn't wear a belt gets rushed to the emergency room and doesn't pay their bill, then the hospital is left with it. Essentially, the general consumer will end up paying for it. Therefore, the only sensible option is the first option: prevention.
To be fair, even though Missouri and Kansas are neighbors geographically, they are worlds apart politically. Kansas is a decidedly red state, while Missouri is perhaps the swingiest of swing states. (See the Wikipedia page on the Missouri bellwether.) The major difference is that while Kansas is almost completely rural, Missouri has its own urban east and west "coasts": St. Louis and Kansas City. As it turns out, the population distribution happens to closely mirror that of the nation as a whole, and as a result, Missouri has "picked" the winner of every presidential election since 1900, with the exception of 1956. So, though it supported the Republicans in 2002 and 2004, it supported the Democrats in 2006, while supporting the "liberal" stem cell and minimum wage measures that were on the ballot, mirroring the country as a whole.
And, of course, there's the strange fact that unlike the rest of the Midwest, the St. Louis area tends to say "soda" instead of "pop," as this map shows.
TiVo has all the sheep fooled into thinking their eternal fees are justified for the privilege of using hardware that the end user bought and owns!
For one thing, Tivo doesn't sell the hardware without the subscription any more. It's considered to be one product. For another, even when they did sell them separately, the cost of the hardware has always been heavily subsidized by Tivo, and the end user would end up paying for a fraction of the manufacturing costs. Therefore, I think it's a stretch to say that the end user actually "owns" the device. And before you fault Tivo for not fully selling the hardware to its users, remember that they did: a lifetime subscription was essentially a method for fully purchasing the Tivo, and the total cost of the hardware and a lifetime subscription is a lot closer to the manufacturing costs than the cost of the hardware alone.