Chronic Pain sufferers taking opioids is not very different from diabetics taking insulin. The only real difference is that without insulin a diabetic dies of a coma, whilst without pain killers a chronic pain sufferer dies of jumping in front of a train. Dependency is really not a major concern, as much as it not hurting so damn much.
No, you are wrong. Receptor downregulation is the mechanism of dependency, not of addiction. Addiction is drug seeking behaviour, where your existance starts to revolve around the drug. Dependency is the simple fact that eventually your body stops making endorphines, and so when you stop taking the meds you get sick for a while.
Note that I base this distinction on about 20 years of taking opiates for chronic pain. I started with Nembudiene (a mix of codiene and barbiturates, quite rightly taken off the market), then went to 50mg codiene pills, then tramal, then ms-contin (morphine), and now oxycontin. Sometimes I wonder if I should have had the amputation when it was offered as an option.
I am most assuredly dependent on painkillers, as I get quite ill, with all sorts of aches and pains if I stop taking them. But when I have a nerve block working (marcain direct into c5-c7, as well as into the shoulder and behind the scapular - it's about 150-200ml of 5% solution each session, in many many injections) I only remember to take my pills when the withdrawal hits me, hence I'm not addicted. The distinction is important - I'm in control of the pain killers, and through them I gain some control of my pain. If I was an addict then I'd be taking them faster than prescribed, larger quantities than required, and would be planning my days around dosing and obtaining more oxy/morphine, instead of planning my days around my wife, kids and hobbies. I have Endone for breakthrough pain, and each box of 20 lasts me about 4 months. An addict would get through a box in a day or two.
Tramadol does cause dependence, but it does so very very slowly. I took tramal (400mg/day) for about 4 years. During one of my periodic "holidays" when the nerve blocks were working I'd stop taking tramal to see where my dependence was. For two nights I wouldn't sleep, and I'd have restless legs.
Last Friday I got some nerve blocks, and took a break from my oxycontin. The symptoms of withdrawal are essentially the same, except more intense. I'm taking 20mg of oxy tonight so I'll sleep, and I'll be back to my 40s by thursday. but the break is good, as I'll have had the chance to pooh properly by then. Then it's another 6 weeks until my next nerve blocks.
Note that I'm talking about dependence here, btw. You are of course exactly right about the difference between dependency and addiction. Addiction is a behaviour.
Note that Tramal has it's own risks btw, not the least being seretonin syndrome and seizures. I developed seretonin syndrome due to a clueless doctor suggesting I take 600mg a day. I nearly died - it was terribly scary, and I've had low level chest pains ever since.
As I've posted elsewhere, I take strong pain-killers, and have done for quite a long time. When I lived in the US I was shocked at the attitude there. No such thing as over-the-counter codeine. Surely it's better to take 20mg of codiene and 1000mg of paracetamol whilst waiting for your dentist appointment this afternoon than sitting in pain. But when I asked a pharmacist for some low level codiene/paracetamol he threatened to call the police!!! Wierd.
Don't confuse addiction with habit. Addiction is a physical dependency and that aspect doesn't necessarily have any relation to its analgesic effect.
No, Physical Dependency is dependency, it's metabolic. Addiction is a behaviour, it's the watching the clock for the nurse to come around, or planning tommorrow around your drug taking schedule.
Almost everyone who uses opioids for a long period develops dependency. Those who over-medicate develop addiction.
The Eastern Rosella is a great example. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme removed a huge part of the critters range. Now the birds from the extreme ends of the range no longer recognise each other as potential mates, and can only be bred by forcing the issue (lock em up together and feed them lots of hormones).
in my mind a scientist of all people should be open to any possibility
Regardless of what ever your personal view of a scientist is, a Scientist is actually someone who practices the Scientific Method. It is NOT in a scientists best interests to be open to any possibility. The method actually requires us to only be open to possibilities that can be tested for falseness. For example, there is a possibility that sometime in the next quadrillion years, this keyboard will sprout wings and start to sing Handel's Messiah (man, ya gotta love quantum physics). This event is however really hard to test for falseness, as I don't have the resources to sit here for a quadrillion years. In fact, given that the probability of such an event can be shown to be extremely small, it's simply not good science for me to consider this as a possibility when I hear about people who can't find their keyboards.
Rather than working off your own definition of what science is, or from a definition of science from a theologist or a preacher, I suggest you aquaint yourself with the definition of Scientist that scientists use. It will enable you to take part in this kind of debate without appearing clueless. You should also learn about the words "theory", "biogenesis", "selection", "evolution", and "falsifiability" whilst you're at it.
Hopefully all us clever/. readers will be able to come up with ways to prevent this game from destroying the Earth, killing all forms of life and generally ruining everybodies day.
It kinda puts Global Warming and the War on Terror into perspective doesn't it? They arn't going to destroy the planet! I'm personally sitting here shitting myself, comtemplating the implications of having the Earth shattered.
New Zealand is a collection of small islands somewhere to the east of Australia. Due to its' small size, inbreeding has given rise to many strange and wonderful creatures, such as:
Flocks of carnivorous parrots. Yes, flying around New Zealand are flocks of parrots, that although they look like nice friendly "Polly like a cracker" bordies, are more savage than you could possibly imagine. These are birds that no pirate would ever have on his shoulder as they are likely to bite your head clean off. They eat sheep and cars. Yes, cars. If you park your car near a flock of these things you'll come back to find it stripped to bare metal, and a bunch of arrogant birdies burping nearby. This is the honest-to-God truth.
The Kiwi. The Kiwi is an innocuous little ball of fluff. The oddest thing about the Kiwi is that it completely ignores the laws of physics, being a bird that lays an egg larger than itself. They're getting rare, and are endangered. Some blame this on cats and other introduced predators, but in my opinion there's no introduced predator more dangerous than the flesh-eating parrakeetrs, so we should look a little deeper... I ask you, if in order to breed you had to pass an object the size of a fridge, would you be very keen on propagating? I find it amazing that they breed at all, and that the female Kiwis don't flee from all the males screaming!
The Moa. The Moa was a giant version of the Kiwi, that stood 13 feet (4 meters) high. Based on proportion, this means that a moa egg would be the size of a battleship. Anthropologists claim that the moa is extinct because the Maoris ate them all, but see my note above about the Kiwi.
Maoris. The Maoris claim to be the indigenous people of New Zealand. This is a lie. Before the Maoris got there around 800 years ago there was a race called the Mori Ori people living in New Zealand. These guys had red hair and blue eyes, and are used by extremem creationists as proof that the Celtic peoples are the real descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. Be that as it may we can't ask the Mori Oris as they all got eaten by the Maoris. Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the Maoris is how they survived given their pencahnt for eating their own young. Eating your kids is usually considered as counter survival, but somehow the Maoris have overcome this and are breeding faster than any other race in the Southern Hemisphere. The Maoris are proud of the fact that they were undefeaeted in the Maori Wars. This was due to the fact that the British Professional Soldier could cope with being killed or being taken prisoner, but suffered a huge failure of morale when faced with being eaten.
New Zealand also has a very special form of natural scenery - Boiling Mud. People travel from all over the world to see the pools of boiling mud, which are surrounded by clouds of toxic vapour. Many Australians believe that New Zealand has pools of Boiling Mud because God Loves them so much, as heard in the popular hymn "For God so loved New Zealand that he gave them Boiling Mud". Boiling Mud pools are a popular site for suicides, as the mud id superheated to close to 200C, and is rich in Sulphuric Acid. Angst-ridden teens jump into the pools. It sould be noted that the Maoris strongly condem this practice, claiming that it is an insult to the ancestral spirits. The truth is they hate to see food go to waste.
The New Zealand dialect is interesting, as New Zealand English is distinguished by the near total obliteration of all vowels. The Maori language has 22 vowels and 6 consonents. NZ english has 24 consonents and one vowel. This causes much embarrassment to tourists, as the worlds "six", "sex" and "sax" are all indistinguishable excepting by context. This leads to massive orgies at Jazz festivals, where well-meaning introductions of bands are taken to be invitations for everyone of "join in with Pete's six sax players, let's all move with the rythmn!" (this would typically soun
Not Queenslanders in general, just those in Toowoomba. For those in The Rest Of The World, Toowoomba is one of those towns that gets slandered in jokes about inbreeding. It ios serious;y one of the most boring and conservative places I've ever been. It also has an extremely high youth suicide rate, and the dubious honour of having one of the highest rates of Child Abuse in the world.
No, you're right, it was about water from recycled sewage returning to the main supply. Note that this water is already being used in the parks here on the Gold Coast. We'll be having a vote here soon on this same issue. I don't think it'll get up as I expect that the Tourism industry will start screaming that it'll scare away the dollars.
Gauss' Theorem is usually interpreted as what is fully known as Gauss' Divergence Theorem, which says
Let R be a domain in the xy-plane which lies on one side of its piecewise smooth boundary curve C. If F=F1(x,y)i+F2(x,y)j (NOTE: 1 and 2 in this are subscripts!!) is a smooth vector field then
"The Integral over the area R of div F with respect to the areas (dA) equals the path integral around the boundary of R of F dot the Unit Normal.
The mathematicians amongst the/. readers will be saying, ah, but that's just the Divergence Theorem written badly and restyricted to normal domains in 2 dimensions. Yes, but that's my point, if you can't see what this is and what it means then forget actuarial maths.
Liebnitz' Theorem is the result that tells us when we can perform a double integral over a surface (i.e. the volume under a C3 surface)as the product of two simple integrals. The result is not intuitive for most people, as it requires you to think of simplicity of volumes.
Other stuff that comes up a lot in actuarial stuff is MGFs for multivariate experiments(moment generating functions). The various moments are solutions to partial differential equations, which are most certainly not part of High School Syllabi. There's a lot of use of the Gamma and Beta functions as well, and analysis involving them isn't quite trivial unless you've been using them for a while.
I have to admit I'm not an actuary. I had friends attempting the stuff while I was working with nice safe biomathematics, and I what I saw nade me glad I was working with "nice" intractable problems, where ludicrous assumptions are acceptable to simplify things.
Even if 80% of your "donation" goes to "administration", that still means 20% is going to the person it should be going to.
And keep in mind that this money is usually helping an entire community - $20 spent proving a well and pump that gets water from the uphill side of the village is a hell of a lot of benefit to a village that previously drank from the river on the downhill side of the latrines and cess pits. That money is preventing disease, and improving the health of the entire village. This in turn enables people to be more productive and as such the diet of everyone improves. This in turn improves the effectiveness of the education the kids in that village get.
I get kinda cranky when I hear this "I won't give to because x% of the donations never gets to the people that need it" as it means that the people that need it miss out on the (100-x)% they might have got. And we say this as we sit in our nice houses, drinking our triply-treated water, and throwing our food scaps out to be used in industrial land-fill, watching "Rock Idol" and debating whether video games might encourage violence in kids.
but I see zero evidence that computers in U.S. classrooms are making education better.
As much as it pains me, I have to agree on this point (but make it Australia, not USA). I've been involved in studies looking at "flexible delivery" and "online learning" methodology, and I'm in no way convinced that we've identified effective methods for using computers in education yet. In my experience they can provide some benifits, but in the roles of self-testing and reference. I've yet to see any real evidence for effective teaching as such.
If you already have the basics of a subject, then it does appear that a computer can be a useful tool for expanding skills (i.e. if you know PASCAL, then you can learn a lot of C using computers and the network). But there's a real limit to what can be taught in that manner (have you seen the C Code a completely self-taught programmer who has mainly used online C "tutorials" to learn writes?), and I do not think that real fundamentals can be taught terribly well without face-to-face contact (includes 2-way radio) and books (real dead trees) to work from.
I believe that some day someone will crack a way of doing real interactive remote teaching over the web, and then we'll start to see computers delivering real teaching. Until then we should look at "computer based education" as research in progress.
Great pay, zero tolerance for error and seriously challenging. There are typically 4 postions in Australia advertised each year for fully qualified actuaries, and 3 of these are continuations. But seriously big money.
2) BioStatistics (and biomathematics)
A huge growth area, which actually means "we realise we'll be needing one or more of you guys somewhere down the line in a year or two". Note that this is pretty much my area. Seriously challenging problems, work can be sporadic unless you are working for a mining company working out how to get around environmentral laws (OOOPPSS!!!! - I mean "devising ecologically sustainable mineral exploitation strategies!"). Not a bad are to start doing postgrad work in now, as I reckon it'll be huge in 5 to 10 years.
The last two (CS and academia)well there are jobs, but you really want to be the cream if you want to count on a good, interesting and satifying career.
Errr.... exactly what were you looking at? Actuarial courses have insane levels of difficulty. If you don't always get over 90% in all maths courses forget about it.
Unlike some fields, small errors in actuarial work add up to massive losses for employers, and hence massive risks to actuaries (unless you find that billion dollar lawsuits arnt going to faze you). There's no way that any 'good' high school student is going to have a clue if he's got what it takes to understand advanced stats unless he's a freak - i.e. an excellent high school student, who has already read his way through most of Bourbaki, and is comfortable with Liebnitz' Theorem and can reproduce proofs of Gauss theorem from scratch.
There is no room for error in Actuarial stuff - that's why the $$$ are so excellent. Only the best need apply. If you can do mind numbing calculations for 8 hours straight, checking everything from a numerical and theoretical position as you go AND get it all right then you might want to consider it!.
Nice selective quoting. Try Sura 9:29 where Jews and Christians are described as "People of the Book" and as such are not to be classed as "unbelievers" but as potential believers under the prtection of the believers. I'd also point out that instructions not to sleep or eat with people are not the same as instructions to kill them (putting Sura 5:51 into perspective).
Try the following:
Sura 10:94 "If you are in doubt about what We have sent down to you, ask those who were reading scripture before you."
An instruction that Jews and Christians can be used to help interpret scripture.
Sura 29:46 "Do not dispute with the People of the Book save in the fairest way; except for those of them who are evildoers. And say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and to Him we are submissive.'"
Keep in mind that this does not mean that Judaism nor Christianity are viewed as pure faiths (see 4:171 and 5:77) for critiques of religous practices of both Jews and Christians).
Sura 5:51 "Taken them not as friends." Sura 2:120 "Neither the Jews nor the Christians will be pleased with you until you follow their religion."
The big one is however Sura 9:29 where the People of the Book are required to pay a special poll tax and to adopt a low social profile in return for the protection, "dhimmah," of the Muslims, hence the adjective "dhimmi," or "one under protection," as applied to Christians or Jews.
But was a military attack against the USA justified? Obviously, no.
From the perspective of the people who see the USA as the greatest force of evil in the world today attacks against the USA are justified. This doesnt mean that you (probably an American) would think it justified, to you it's obviously no. And myself, who thinks that the American Culture is a very very bad thing for the planet in general, dont think that such an attack was justified. But to many who see the USA actively working to destroy and dismantle their cultures, attacks on the USA are seen as moves to protect morality and their right to choose their government and religion.
Keep in mind that to a lot of people on this planet "The American Way" is viewed as a nightmare, not a dream.
Actually, most Muslims follow the Koran, which instructs them to care for and protect Jews and Christians .
Comparing all Arabs to the Wahabists is like saying all Americans are like those mid-west bible thumping fundies, or that GW is a typical American.
You should also keep in mind that for most of the history of Palestine post Roman occupation apart from the period around the crusades, Jews and Arabs have lived reasonably successfully together in the Middle East, up until The foundation of the modern state of Israel. Yes, there were incidents of anti-semitism, but these were not the norm for about 1600 years.
I believe this is kinda what the USA is doing to David Hicks in Cuba, and the other "terrorists" that have been held without charge or trial for 4.5 years, and who have (until very recently) been denied status as Prisoners of War.
By this logic we could say that Al Queada was attacking the network infrastructure that the USA Govt was using to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine when it attcked the towers in New York. It was unfortunate that some US civilians and business interests were in the way.
OK, so that was pure flamebait. but it's the exact logic being presented to justify the effects that the Israeli operations are having on the Lebanese people. I have no doubt that I'll be modded into hell for this post, but seriously, how many lebanese civilans are being blown up, injured, killed, how many kids are we going to see runing burnt down roads before we ask whether 2 soldiers and however many people in Haifa have been adequately avenged?
Don't try to tell me that Hezbollah is going to be bought under control. That's as likely as the Iraqi people (in general) liking the US occupation of Iraq. Vietnam showed how effective US (and any other) forces are against highly mobile, devoted forces with a popular grassroots backing and rockets.
Perhaps if the US would desist from vetoing almost all UN resolutions that censure Israel, then the various forces around there might be willing to listen to the what the USA has to say. Until then I find a general ceasefire about as likely as the US general population supporting invading Cuban troops in the event they invaded to "liberate" the American workers.
Now someone mod me down - will I get "Troll", "Flamebait" or "Offtopic"?
BTW - I am not an anti-semite. My wife is of semitic descent (so she tells me), and hence so are my children. So take your politically correct screams away. Just because the USA has a collective guilt complex over their tardiness to get involved in WWII in Europe does not justify all adverse comments about the stste of Israeli being considered anti-semitic. OK, so this paragraph flamebait, but a hell of a lot of people wonder why the USA was so willing to let things go as far as they did in Europe at that time, when everyone knew pretty much what was going on.
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Mod them up - this person is a real expert as they speak from experience.
Chronic Pain sufferers taking opioids is not very different from diabetics taking insulin. The only real difference is that without insulin a diabetic dies of a coma, whilst without pain killers a chronic pain sufferer dies of jumping in front of a train. Dependency is really not a major concern, as much as it not hurting so damn much.
No, you are wrong. Receptor downregulation is the mechanism of dependency, not of addiction. Addiction is drug seeking behaviour, where your existance starts to revolve around the drug. Dependency is the simple fact that eventually your body stops making endorphines, and so when you stop taking the meds you get sick for a while.
Note that I base this distinction on about 20 years of taking opiates for chronic pain. I started with Nembudiene (a mix of codiene and barbiturates, quite rightly taken off the market), then went to 50mg codiene pills, then tramal, then ms-contin (morphine), and now oxycontin. Sometimes I wonder if I should have had the amputation when it was offered as an option.
I am most assuredly dependent on painkillers, as I get quite ill, with all sorts of aches and pains if I stop taking them. But when I have a nerve block working (marcain direct into c5-c7, as well as into the shoulder and behind the scapular - it's about 150-200ml of 5% solution each session, in many many injections) I only remember to take my pills when the withdrawal hits me, hence I'm not addicted. The distinction is important - I'm in control of the pain killers, and through them I gain some control of my pain. If I was an addict then I'd be taking them faster than prescribed, larger quantities than required, and would be planning my days around dosing and obtaining more oxy/morphine, instead of planning my days around my wife, kids and hobbies. I have Endone for breakthrough pain, and each box of 20 lasts me about 4 months. An addict would get through a box in a day or two.
Tramadol does cause dependence, but it does so very very slowly. I took tramal (400mg/day) for about 4 years. During one of my periodic "holidays" when the nerve blocks were working I'd stop taking tramal to see where my dependence was. For two nights I wouldn't sleep, and I'd have restless legs.
Last Friday I got some nerve blocks, and took a break from my oxycontin. The symptoms of withdrawal are essentially the same, except more intense. I'm taking 20mg of oxy tonight so I'll sleep, and I'll be back to my 40s by thursday. but the break is good, as I'll have had the chance to pooh properly by then. Then it's another 6 weeks until my next nerve blocks.
Note that I'm talking about dependence here, btw. You are of course exactly right about the difference between dependency and addiction. Addiction is a behaviour.
Note that Tramal has it's own risks btw, not the least being seretonin syndrome and seizures. I developed seretonin syndrome due to a clueless doctor suggesting I take 600mg a day. I nearly died - it was terribly scary, and I've had low level chest pains ever since.
A sane voice at last!
As I've posted elsewhere, I take strong pain-killers, and have done for quite a long time. When I lived in the US I was shocked at the attitude there. No such thing as over-the-counter codeine. Surely it's better to take 20mg of codiene and 1000mg of paracetamol whilst waiting for your dentist appointment this afternoon than sitting in pain. But when I asked a pharmacist for some low level codiene/paracetamol he threatened to call the police!!! Wierd.
Don't confuse addiction with habit. Addiction is a physical dependency and that aspect doesn't necessarily have any relation to its analgesic effect.
No, Physical Dependency is dependency, it's metabolic. Addiction is a behaviour, it's the watching the clock for the nurse to come around, or planning tommorrow around your drug taking schedule.
Almost everyone who uses opioids for a long period develops dependency. Those who over-medicate develop addiction.
The Eastern Rosella is a great example. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme removed a huge part of the critters range. Now the birds from the extreme ends of the range no longer recognise each other as potential mates, and can only be bred by forcing the issue (lock em up together and feed them lots of hormones).
in my mind a scientist of all people should be open to any possibility
Regardless of what ever your personal view of a scientist is, a Scientist is actually someone who practices the Scientific Method. It is NOT in a scientists best interests to be open to any possibility. The method actually requires us to only be open to possibilities that can be tested for falseness. For example, there is a possibility that sometime in the next quadrillion years, this keyboard will sprout wings and start to sing Handel's Messiah (man, ya gotta love quantum physics). This event is however really hard to test for falseness, as I don't have the resources to sit here for a quadrillion years. In fact, given that the probability of such an event can be shown to be extremely small, it's simply not good science for me to consider this as a possibility when I hear about people who can't find their keyboards.
Rather than working off your own definition of what science is, or from a definition of science from a theologist or a preacher, I suggest you aquaint yourself with the definition of Scientist that scientists use. It will enable you to take part in this kind of debate without appearing clueless.
You should also learn about the words "theory", "biogenesis", "selection", "evolution", and "falsifiability" whilst you're at it.
Because this is the first game that is going to destroy (shatter) the Earth.
Hopefully all us clever /. readers will be able to come up with ways to prevent this game from destroying the Earth, killing all forms of life and generally ruining everybodies day.
It kinda puts Global Warming and the War on Terror into perspective doesn't it? They arn't going to destroy the planet! I'm personally sitting here shitting myself, comtemplating the implications of having the Earth shattered.
For those who do not know about New Zealand:
New Zealand is a collection of small islands somewhere to the east of Australia. Due to its' small size, inbreeding has given rise to many strange and wonderful creatures, such as:
Flocks of carnivorous parrots. Yes, flying around New Zealand are flocks of parrots, that although they look like nice friendly "Polly like a cracker" bordies, are more savage than you could possibly imagine. These are birds that no pirate would ever have on his shoulder as they are likely to bite your head clean off. They eat sheep and cars. Yes, cars. If you park your car near a flock of these things you'll come back to find it stripped to bare metal, and a bunch of arrogant birdies burping nearby. This is the honest-to-God truth.
The Kiwi. The Kiwi is an innocuous little ball of fluff. The oddest thing about the Kiwi is that it completely ignores the laws of physics, being a bird that lays an egg larger than itself. They're getting rare, and are endangered. Some blame this on cats and other introduced predators, but in my opinion there's no introduced predator more dangerous than the flesh-eating parrakeetrs, so we should look a little deeper... I ask you, if in order to breed you had to pass an object the size of a fridge, would you be very keen on propagating? I find it amazing that they breed at all, and that the female Kiwis don't flee from all the males screaming!
The Moa. The Moa was a giant version of the Kiwi, that stood 13 feet (4 meters) high. Based on proportion, this means that a moa egg would be the size of a battleship. Anthropologists claim that the moa is extinct because the Maoris ate them all, but see my note above about the Kiwi.
Maoris. The Maoris claim to be the indigenous people of New Zealand. This is a lie. Before the Maoris got there around 800 years ago there was a race called the Mori Ori people living in New Zealand. These guys had red hair and blue eyes, and are used by extremem creationists as proof that the Celtic peoples are the real descendants of the Biblical Hebrews. Be that as it may we can't ask the Mori Oris as they all got eaten by the Maoris. Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the Maoris is how they survived given their pencahnt for eating their own young. Eating your kids is usually considered as counter survival, but somehow the Maoris have overcome this and are breeding faster than any other race in the Southern Hemisphere. The Maoris are proud of the fact that they were undefeaeted in the Maori Wars. This was due to the fact that the British Professional Soldier could cope with being killed or being taken prisoner, but suffered a huge failure of morale when faced with being eaten.
New Zealand also has a very special form of natural scenery - Boiling Mud. People travel from all over the world to see the pools of boiling mud, which are surrounded by clouds of toxic vapour. Many Australians believe that New Zealand has pools of Boiling Mud because God Loves them so much, as heard in the popular hymn "For God so loved New Zealand that he gave them Boiling Mud". Boiling Mud pools are a popular site for suicides, as the mud id superheated to close to 200C, and is rich in Sulphuric Acid. Angst-ridden teens jump into the pools. It sould be noted that the Maoris strongly condem this practice, claiming that it is an insult to the ancestral spirits. The truth is they hate to see food go to waste.
The New Zealand dialect is interesting, as New Zealand English is distinguished by the near total obliteration of all vowels. The Maori language has 22 vowels and 6 consonents. NZ english has 24 consonents and one vowel. This causes much embarrassment to tourists, as the worlds "six", "sex" and "sax" are all indistinguishable excepting by context. This leads to massive orgies at Jazz festivals, where well-meaning introductions of bands are taken to be invitations for everyone of "join in with Pete's six sax players, let's all move with the rythmn!" (this would typically soun
Not Queenslanders in general, just those in Toowoomba. For those in The Rest Of The World, Toowoomba is one of those towns that gets slandered in jokes about inbreeding. It ios serious;y one of the most boring and conservative places I've ever been. It also has an extremely high youth suicide rate, and the dubious honour of having one of the highest rates of Child Abuse in the world.
No, you're right, it was about water from recycled sewage returning to the main supply. Note that this water is already being used in the parks here on the Gold Coast. We'll be having a vote here soon on this same issue. I don't think it'll get up as I expect that the Tourism industry will start screaming that it'll scare away the dollars.
Gauss' Theorem is usually interpreted as what is fully known as Gauss' Divergence Theorem, which says
/. readers will be saying, ah, but that's just the Divergence Theorem written badly and restyricted to normal domains in 2 dimensions. Yes, but that's my point, if you can't see what this is and what it means then forget actuarial maths.
Let R be a domain in the xy-plane which lies on one side of its piecewise smooth boundary curve C. If F=F1(x,y)i+F2(x,y)j (NOTE: 1 and 2 in this are subscripts!!) is a smooth vector field then "The Integral over the area R of div F with respect to the areas (dA) equals the path integral around the boundary of R of F dot the Unit Normal.
The mathematicians amongst the
Liebnitz' Theorem is the result that tells us when we can perform a double integral over a surface (i.e. the volume under a C3 surface)as the product of two simple integrals. The result is not intuitive for most people, as it requires you to think of simplicity of volumes.
Other stuff that comes up a lot in actuarial stuff is MGFs for multivariate experiments(moment generating functions). The various moments are solutions to partial differential equations, which are most certainly not part of High School Syllabi. There's a lot of use of the Gamma and Beta functions as well, and analysis involving them isn't quite trivial unless you've been using them for a while.
I have to admit I'm not an actuary. I had friends attempting the stuff while I was working with nice safe biomathematics, and I what I saw nade me glad I was working with "nice" intractable problems, where ludicrous assumptions are acceptable to simplify things.
Even if 80% of your "donation" goes to "administration", that still means 20% is going to the person it should be going to.
And keep in mind that this money is usually helping an entire community - $20 spent proving a well and pump that gets water from the uphill side of the village is a hell of a lot of benefit to a village that previously drank from the river on the downhill side of the latrines and cess pits. That money is preventing disease, and improving the health of the entire village. This in turn enables people to be more productive and as such the diet of everyone improves. This in turn improves the effectiveness of the education the kids in that village get.
I get kinda cranky when I hear this "I won't give to because x% of the donations never gets to the people that need it" as it means that the people that need it miss out on the (100-x)% they might have got. And we say this as we sit in our nice houses, drinking our triply-treated water, and throwing our food scaps out to be used in industrial land-fill, watching "Rock Idol" and debating whether video games might encourage violence in kids.
but I see zero evidence that computers in U.S. classrooms are making education better.
As much as it pains me, I have to agree on this point (but make it Australia, not USA). I've been involved in studies looking at "flexible delivery" and "online learning" methodology, and I'm in no way convinced that we've identified effective methods for using computers in education yet. In my experience they can provide some benifits, but in the roles of self-testing and reference. I've yet to see any real evidence for effective teaching as such.
If you already have the basics of a subject, then it does appear that a computer can be a useful tool for expanding skills (i.e. if you know PASCAL, then you can learn a lot of C using computers and the network). But there's a real limit to what can be taught in that manner (have you seen the C Code a completely self-taught programmer who has mainly used online C "tutorials" to learn writes?), and I do not think that real fundamentals can be taught terribly well without face-to-face contact (includes 2-way radio) and books (real dead trees) to work from.
I believe that some day someone will crack a way of doing real interactive remote teaching over the web, and then we'll start to see computers delivering real teaching. Until then we should look at "computer based education" as research in progress.
1) Actuarial Maths.
Great pay, zero tolerance for error and seriously challenging. There are typically 4 postions in Australia advertised each year for fully qualified actuaries, and 3 of these are continuations. But seriously big money.
2) BioStatistics (and biomathematics)
A huge growth area, which actually means "we realise we'll be needing one or more of you guys somewhere down the line in a year or two". Note that this is pretty much my area. Seriously challenging problems, work can be sporadic unless you are working for a mining company working out how to get around environmentral laws (OOOPPSS!!!! - I mean "devising ecologically sustainable mineral exploitation strategies!"). Not a bad are to start doing postgrad work in now, as I reckon it'll be huge in 5 to 10 years.
The last two (CS and academia)well there are jobs, but you really want to be the cream if you want to count on a good, interesting and satifying career.
Errr.... exactly what were you looking at? Actuarial courses have insane levels of difficulty. If you don't always get over 90% in all maths courses forget about it.
Unlike some fields, small errors in actuarial work add up to massive losses for employers, and hence massive risks to actuaries (unless you find that billion dollar lawsuits arnt going to faze you). There's no way that any 'good' high school student is going to have a clue if he's got what it takes to understand advanced stats unless he's a freak - i.e. an excellent high school student, who has already read his way through most of Bourbaki, and is comfortable with Liebnitz' Theorem and can reproduce proofs of Gauss theorem from scratch.
There is no room for error in Actuarial stuff - that's why the $$$ are so excellent. Only the best need apply. If you can do mind numbing calculations for 8 hours straight, checking everything from a numerical and theoretical position as you go AND get it all right then you might want to consider it!.
I at least am in Australia, so keep your "we're not in the UK or Australia...try "Mom"..." comment back in your 3rd world ghetto where it belongs.
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Seriously, you have to start to realize that people outside the USA do own and use computers, and that we can (and do) read and post to
Nice selective quoting. Try Sura 9:29 where Jews and Christians are described as "People of the Book" and as such are not to be classed as "unbelievers" but as potential believers under the prtection of the believers. I'd also point out that instructions not to sleep or eat with people are not the same as instructions to kill them (putting Sura 5:51 into perspective).
Try the following:
Sura 10:94 "If you are in doubt about what We have sent down to you, ask those who were reading scripture before you."
An instruction that Jews and Christians can be used to help interpret scripture.
Sura 29:46 "Do not dispute with the People of the Book save in the fairest way; except for those of them who are evildoers. And say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and to Him we are submissive.'"
Keep in mind that this does not mean that Judaism nor Christianity are viewed as pure faiths (see 4:171 and 5:77) for critiques of religous practices of both Jews and Christians).
Sura 5:51 "Taken them not as friends." Sura 2:120 "Neither the Jews nor the Christians will be pleased with you until you follow their religion."
The big one is however Sura 9:29 where the People of the Book are required to pay a special poll tax and to adopt a low social profile in return for the protection, "dhimmah," of the Muslims, hence the adjective "dhimmi," or "one under protection," as applied to Christians or Jews.
But was a military attack against the USA justified? Obviously, no.
From the perspective of the people who see the USA as the greatest force of evil in the world today attacks against the USA are justified. This doesnt mean that you (probably an American) would think it justified, to you it's obviously no. And myself, who thinks that the American Culture is a very very bad thing for the planet in general, dont think that such an attack was justified. But to many who see the USA actively working to destroy and dismantle their cultures, attacks on the USA are seen as moves to protect morality and their right to choose their government and religion.
Keep in mind that to a lot of people on this planet "The American Way" is viewed as a nightmare, not a dream.
Actually, most Muslims follow the Koran, which instructs them to care for and protect Jews and Christians
.
Comparing all Arabs to the Wahabists is like saying all Americans are like those mid-west bible thumping fundies, or that GW is a typical American.
You should also keep in mind that for most of the history of Palestine post Roman occupation apart from the period around the crusades, Jews and Arabs have lived reasonably successfully together in the Middle East, up until The foundation of the modern state of Israel. Yes, there were incidents of anti-semitism, but these were not the norm for about 1600 years.
I believe this is kinda what the USA is doing to David Hicks in Cuba, and the other "terrorists" that have been held without charge or trial for 4.5 years, and who have (until very recently) been denied status as Prisoners of War.
By this logic we could say that Al Queada was attacking the network infrastructure that the USA Govt was using to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine when it attcked the towers in New York. It was unfortunate that some US civilians and business interests were in the way.
OK, so that was pure flamebait. but it's the exact logic being presented to justify the effects that the Israeli operations are having on the Lebanese people. I have no doubt that I'll be modded into hell for this post, but seriously, how many lebanese civilans are being blown up, injured, killed, how many kids are we going to see runing burnt down roads before we ask whether 2 soldiers and however many people in Haifa have been adequately avenged?
Don't try to tell me that Hezbollah is going to be bought under control. That's as likely as the Iraqi people (in general) liking the US occupation of Iraq. Vietnam showed how effective US (and any other) forces are against highly mobile, devoted forces with a popular grassroots backing and rockets.
Perhaps if the US would desist from vetoing almost all UN resolutions that censure Israel, then the various forces around there might be willing to listen to the what the USA has to say. Until then I find a general ceasefire about as likely as the US general population supporting invading Cuban troops in the event they invaded to "liberate" the American workers.
Now someone mod me down - will I get "Troll", "Flamebait" or "Offtopic"?
BTW - I am not an anti-semite. My wife is of semitic descent (so she tells me), and hence so are my children. So take your politically correct screams away. Just because the USA has a collective guilt complex over their tardiness to get involved in WWII in Europe does not justify all adverse comments about the stste of Israeli being considered anti-semitic. OK, so this paragraph flamebait, but a hell of a lot of people wonder why the USA was so willing to let things go as far as they did in Europe at that time, when everyone knew pretty much what was going on.