Don't forget it also apparently keeps prices down on ICBM parts, because the DOD is so strapped for cash they need NASA to subsidize their equipment(?!)
Well, in their defense, we'll need those used ICBM parts in 2063 so Zephram Cochrane can build the Phoenix, thereby making the first warp flight as well as contact with the Vulcans,. ..
What the heck do you talk about at the water cooler then?
Probably something else besides MSM, overhyped bullcrap. The term "water cooler talk" was really just invented by MSM to as a way to convince them to watch their shows.
No, it will not forever be the term. "Tweet" is a very Twitter-specific term, and a stupid one at that.
Of course, by the same argument, the NYT should ban the term "slashdot" or "slashdotted", when referring to sites that get overloaded by their traffic,. ..
While the RIAA is busy going after all the filesharers and college students, that really don't have the money to pay their extortions anyways, the biggest copyright infringements are right in Washington! They should go after the GOP! They'd probably get a bigger settlement, too!
In seemingly unrelated news, Google also made the decision today to stop using chairs as well. All employees are issued their choice of bean bag, pogo stick, or exercise ball.
Actually, yes they do. If I Can Dream just came out this Spring, though it doesn't do much for me, as it's just another reality TV show. If they had something original, along the lines of Lost, Fringe, Eureka, Chuck, etc, it might be worth tuning in. But watching a bunch of wanna-be stars' every waking moments is nothing more than voyeurism, and not very entertaining, IMHO. Of course, the TV industry probably doesn't understand why a site called slashdot and bills itself as, "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters" could ever get more than 10 hits a day, either,. ..
I'll throw in another vote for Linux for the computational chemistry arena. We use primarily Opensuse or Ubuntu (I actually prefer Opensuse, though). For those applications that absolutely must run on Windows, VMware works great! You will, of course, find predominantly Windows systems of some variant (XP, Vista) in many "wet" experimental laboratories, and many biophysical chemistry instruments (ITC, DSC, IR, CD spec, etc) seem to use a Windows-based computer interface to run the instrument.
The study wasn't exactly complete. First, they only looked at Featured quality articles, A-class, B-class, and C-class. They totally neglected GA-class, of which there are currently over 8,000 of those. Secondly, FA-class and GA-class are handled differently than A, B, and C-classes. FA and GA are Wikipedia-wide assessment systems, with specific criteria that must be adhered to in order for articles to get listed there. FA is pretty rigorous, and only the best of the best get through after having been nitpicked, often far too much (yes, stupid crap like commas and en-dashes). GA is a bit less rigorous, with a review by only one editor being required for listing. And yes, this one editor system has been criticized in the past; though there is a GA reassessment system, and the community has gone through a pretty thorough system of GA sweeps, getting rid of some of the older GAs that were passed before the current criteria were enforced better.
A, B, and C-class assessments are not Wikipedia-wide. They are assessed by individual Wikiprojects (of which there are literally hundreds of these). And each Wikiproject has their own standard of what it considers A, B, and C. Some Wikiprojects are much easier, others are more rigorous (like WikiProject Military history). Furthermore, C-class is relatively new, having been created just within the past two years or so; so there's probably still a lot of B-class articles that should be C-class.
It'll be stable as water ice until we start to colonize, and then "lunar warming" will set in, which will thaw it out and turn the moon into a gigantic swimming pool! Or, at least that's what Al Gore tells me,. ..
Not to be a nitpick here, but did you realize that you started with "Item One" (number written out), then jumped to "Item II" (roman numerals), went to "Item C", and then back to "Item IV" (roman numerals again)? Perhaps we could all use a little bit of proofreading,. ..
The school I received my B.S. degree (Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia) required all undergraduate students to take an exit writing examination prior to graduation. They still do this. And the scary fact is that at least half of all graduates fail the test the first time they take it, so the school suggests students take the test well before they intend to graduate. As for me, I took the test a week before I was set to graduate, and everyone mocked me saying that I was going to fail it and I would have to take it during the summer. Instead, I found it ridiculously easy, and passed the first time around.
Didn't have to take a writing examination prior to getting my Ph.D. (different school), although I did have to write a 200-page dissertation. I think schools generally expect students to be able to write by the time they get there. Still, I've seen lots of students in graduate school with pretty poor grammar skills; although this problem is more due to the fact that there are so many students in graduate school where English is not their first language.
I'll agree that VMD is something that is definitely worth teaching about. It's free, and easy to install and use on a variety of platforms. I'd also recommend introducing them to the Protein Data Bank, which is a free database of x-ray/nmr structures of proteins. Though it gets a bit more into biochemistry and molecular biology from a basic high school chemistry course, some of the simpler structures available there would give a student a good introduction to some of the applications of computational chemistry.
While most of the professional molecular modeling software (InsightII, Sybyl, MOE, etc) will likely be out of the price range of a high school course, ArgusLab is free and pretty decent for some basic small molecule type stuff. The Accelrys Discovery Studio Visualizer is a freely-available version of Discovery Studio, which is also pretty decent. There's a Windows and Linux version of this.
Depending on how advanced your students are, you may want to introduce them to some molecular dynamics. NAMD is freely-available for Windows/Linux/Mac, and there are some good tutorials available. However, this might be getting a bit too advanced for a basic high school course, and might be a bit better to introduce at the undergraduate/graduate level. For most high school students, I'd probably teach them the basics would ArgusLab first.
Doesn't anyone else see the irony that, when the Republicans talk about privatizing things, like Social Security, or keeping health care private (as opposed to the public option), they think it's a good idea. Now, when Obama wants to private something, all of a sudden, those same Republicans scream bloody murder?!?!
The truth is, if we really want to succeed in space, we have to privatize. Government cannot (and should not) be the only ones going up there. Once private industry realizes the resources (and hence, the money) that's available in outer space, they'll want to get there. In the long term, that will include going to Mars, the outer plants, the asteroid belt, and mining (think, "gold rush", except on a larger scale). In the near term, it could potentially be quite lucrative for a company to develop its own near-Earth transit system, not only for trips to the ISS, but also to launch and maintain the vast array of satellites that other corporations use (and deem quite vital) to earth-based activity.
It's kind of like the Internet. The government got that started, too. That led to a mad dash by everybody to get websites and to make some money on the Internet, which led to our economic successes of the 1990s. Perhaps the same thing will eventually happen with space travel? It may take longer than the next decade, but maybe 2020 or 2030,. . . 2040? That's the future! The future is not simply having government be the only ones with the ticket to space, though,...
Except when you realize it, maybe Obama's solution isn't so bad after all. The article does state that the plan calls for both extending the life of the International Space Station to 2020, as well as providing an "attractive sum of money for private companies to make rockets to carry astronauts there." It seems to me like he's thinking more along the lines of the future, where NASA isn't necessarily going to be the only ones going into space. If we really want to use space for commercial development, private industry is going to have to get there, and this is one way to make that happen.
Forget the moon! We've been there. We've seen it. We took pictures. We picked up moon rocks. Having a moon base up there is really going to be useless if we don't have an efficient infrastructure in place for routine trips out there. That means bolstering our presence in low Earth orbit, and getting more businesses capable of the trip. Once private industry gets there, and more discoveries are made as to the commercial value out there, we'll see another gold rush, similar to the gold rush of the 19th century, or even the 1990s dot com "gold rush" (which, of course, the Government also initiated with the creation of the Internet).
All we have to do is make sure that this "attractive sum of money" available to corporations isn't just outsourced to the Indians and/or the Chinese to build rockets to get there. Because that won't help us and in the long run, will just make the current outsourcing problem much worse.
we could possibly develop a workable fusion power plant to alleviate the energy crisis looming on the doorstep?
Great idea! Build a huge fusion power plant on the moon, and then build a powerful laser that could beam the power back to Earth! What could possibly go wrong?!
Slashdot Mirror
Don't feel too bad. Sarah Palin can't even score that high! She'd quit the game before getting the score!
Seeing as how this came out of Chevrolet, a GM division, it's good to see that they put all that federal bailout money to good use!
Well, in their defense, we'll need those used ICBM parts in 2063 so Zephram Cochrane can build the Phoenix, thereby making the first warp flight as well as contact with the Vulcans,. . .
What are you saying? This movie wasn't successful?!?! I'm heartbroken! ;-)
E-Books Read YOU!
Or what if I have a head shaped like this?
Probably something else besides MSM, overhyped bullcrap. The term "water cooler talk" was really just invented by MSM to as a way to convince them to watch their shows.
Of course, by the same argument, the NYT should ban the term "slashdot" or "slashdotted", when referring to sites that get overloaded by their traffic,. . .
Uh, oh! Please don't give these guys any ideas! They'll have the entire stretch of I-40 from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City smelling like one big steak!
While the RIAA is busy going after all the filesharers and college students, that really don't have the money to pay their extortions anyways, the biggest copyright infringements are right in Washington! They should go after the GOP! They'd probably get a bigger settlement, too!
In seemingly unrelated news, Google also made the decision today to stop using chairs as well. All employees are issued their choice of bean bag, pogo stick, or exercise ball.
[Obligatory] "I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech. Because I'm a big pussy."
PAC-MAN PLAYS YOU!
Actually, yes they do. If I Can Dream just came out this Spring, though it doesn't do much for me, as it's just another reality TV show. If they had something original, along the lines of Lost, Fringe, Eureka, Chuck, etc, it might be worth tuning in. But watching a bunch of wanna-be stars' every waking moments is nothing more than voyeurism, and not very entertaining, IMHO. Of course, the TV industry probably doesn't understand why a site called slashdot and bills itself as, "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters" could ever get more than 10 hits a day, either,. . .
I'll throw in another vote for Linux for the computational chemistry arena. We use primarily Opensuse or Ubuntu (I actually prefer Opensuse, though). For those applications that absolutely must run on Windows, VMware works great! You will, of course, find predominantly Windows systems of some variant (XP, Vista) in many "wet" experimental laboratories, and many biophysical chemistry instruments (ITC, DSC, IR, CD spec, etc) seem to use a Windows-based computer interface to run the instrument.
A, B, and C-class assessments are not Wikipedia-wide. They are assessed by individual Wikiprojects (of which there are literally hundreds of these). And each Wikiproject has their own standard of what it considers A, B, and C. Some Wikiprojects are much easier, others are more rigorous (like WikiProject Military history). Furthermore, C-class is relatively new, having been created just within the past two years or so; so there's probably still a lot of B-class articles that should be C-class.
It'll be stable as water ice until we start to colonize, and then "lunar warming" will set in, which will thaw it out and turn the moon into a gigantic swimming pool! Or, at least that's what Al Gore tells me,. . .
How do you say "cloud computing" in Mandarin? Hindi?
Not to be a nitpick here, but did you realize that you started with "Item One" (number written out), then jumped to "Item II" (roman numerals), went to "Item C", and then back to "Item IV" (roman numerals again)? Perhaps we could all use a little bit of proofreading,. . .
Didn't have to take a writing examination prior to getting my Ph.D. (different school), although I did have to write a 200-page dissertation. I think schools generally expect students to be able to write by the time they get there. Still, I've seen lots of students in graduate school with pretty poor grammar skills; although this problem is more due to the fact that there are so many students in graduate school where English is not their first language.
ACD ChemSketch is free, and is very similar to ChemDraw.
While most of the professional molecular modeling software (InsightII, Sybyl, MOE, etc) will likely be out of the price range of a high school course, ArgusLab is free and pretty decent for some basic small molecule type stuff. The Accelrys Discovery Studio Visualizer is a freely-available version of Discovery Studio, which is also pretty decent. There's a Windows and Linux version of this.
Depending on how advanced your students are, you may want to introduce them to some molecular dynamics. NAMD is freely-available for Windows/Linux/Mac, and there are some good tutorials available. However, this might be getting a bit too advanced for a basic high school course, and might be a bit better to introduce at the undergraduate/graduate level. For most high school students, I'd probably teach them the basics would ArgusLab first.
The truth is, if we really want to succeed in space, we have to privatize. Government cannot (and should not) be the only ones going up there. Once private industry realizes the resources (and hence, the money) that's available in outer space, they'll want to get there. In the long term, that will include going to Mars, the outer plants, the asteroid belt, and mining (think, "gold rush", except on a larger scale). In the near term, it could potentially be quite lucrative for a company to develop its own near-Earth transit system, not only for trips to the ISS, but also to launch and maintain the vast array of satellites that other corporations use (and deem quite vital) to earth-based activity.
It's kind of like the Internet. The government got that started, too. That led to a mad dash by everybody to get websites and to make some money on the Internet, which led to our economic successes of the 1990s. Perhaps the same thing will eventually happen with space travel? It may take longer than the next decade, but maybe 2020 or 2030,. . . 2040? That's the future! The future is not simply having government be the only ones with the ticket to space, though,...
Forget the moon! We've been there. We've seen it. We took pictures. We picked up moon rocks. Having a moon base up there is really going to be useless if we don't have an efficient infrastructure in place for routine trips out there. That means bolstering our presence in low Earth orbit, and getting more businesses capable of the trip. Once private industry gets there, and more discoveries are made as to the commercial value out there, we'll see another gold rush, similar to the gold rush of the 19th century, or even the 1990s dot com "gold rush" (which, of course, the Government also initiated with the creation of the Internet).
All we have to do is make sure that this "attractive sum of money" available to corporations isn't just outsourced to the Indians and/or the Chinese to build rockets to get there. Because that won't help us and in the long run, will just make the current outsourcing problem much worse.
Great idea! Build a huge fusion power plant on the moon, and then build a powerful laser that could beam the power back to Earth! What could possibly go wrong?!