Since I had a look at a couple of them, I suppose I might as well provide reviews. "Introduction to Proofs and the Mathematical Vernacular" -- this is actually pretty good, and I kinda wish I'd had a copy of it at the…
Which textbook are you talking about? I have a moderate hatred for most entry-level physics textbooks, which manage to pad about 100 pages' worth of information into a thousand-page tome full of glossy photographs in…
The first four are good general advice. The fifth and sixth are good ideas some of the time, the seventh is a bit platitudinous but possibly good advice some of the time, and the eighth is more like "a guide to writing…
I assume "it looks AMAZING" is perfectly within the usual editorial standards of "omgbuntu", but wouldn't mind seeing a different headline here. How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT…
That's great, but I wonder how heavy the nuclear reactor would need to be that provides the 2 MW to power this thing. Is this something we could practically loft into orbit with present-day rockets? (Ignoring the…
Works great for me, but only if the music in question has no lyrics. Baroque, bebop or pretentious Philip Glass-y stuff seems to work best.
It obviously can't do very much to a truck, but I wonder what it would do to a human. Nothing very good, obviously, but how long would you need to keep it focused on someone before they dropped down, brain cooked? (I…
Is the single word really necessary? I mean, it already says "google.com" up in the URL bar, so you know what you're looking at.
You're probably taking it too seriously then. Oh, certainly. I've never found a case where there's genuine ambiguity, it's just that there's a certain part of my brain which takes delight in pointing out all the…
The best thing about posting bills online for six months is that it doesn't matter that legislators don't read them. Instead you'd have an army of partisan bloggers etc trying to point out the flaws, ensuring that all…
The second sentence is a straw man. Is there some kind of competition I don't know about to mention the words "straw man" in as many threads as possible? It seems to pop up in just about every thread, along with the…
Those sorts of questions always bothered me in IQ tests too. I was also always bothered by questions like: "What comes next in this sequence? 1,4,9,16,25," Sure, the answer might be 36, but then again maybe we're…
Probably. Hell, we could all just start using Euros (or whatever) for cash, and then exchange our Euros for plastic-only US dollars at changing booths (which would suddenly become a lot more common). This, of course,…
Because, while it doesn't provide particularly useful advice, it is at least a good starting point for discussion on an interesting subject? Also, because people upvoted it before taking time to read it carefully and…
Straw man. Who the hell uses their todo list like that? Who are those "proponents" who suggest playing this sort of silly "estimate the task and match it to a time slot" game? I've never met one. You've never seen a…
This is the "makers' schedule" vs "managers' schedule" again. Donald Trump doesn't need a "To do" list because he (presumably) works on a manager's schedule -- if he decides he needs to do something he'll tell his…
I agree. How about six months? All the major issues have been festering for years, what's an extra six months of delay? Remember, the government can't build a new road without three years of planning, community…
What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to. That bugs you? I'm pretty grateful for it,…
Aside from that, they do realize that the internet is an international medium and the vast majority of it isn't subject to FCC rules, right? Speaking of which, as a non-US citizen, I'd like to invite companies to send…
What about surgically implanted bombs in fat people? (Like in that movie I won't name just to avoid spoiling it for the small number of people who haven't seen it.) Does anyone have a good idea of whether that's a…
It's fairly certain that "old, ugly, fat, have children" are all characteristics that would lower the match %, therefore you argument of equating these different traits is debunked. I think you need to look up how their…
There is, as I understand it, some evidence for the idea that people learn what's attractive in a member of the opposite sex by essentially averaging out all the faces which they see while growing up. This makes a…
There are a zillion factors which haven't been corrected for. As well as class, they include message length, message quality, profile quality, number of messages received on average by each class of respondee, income,…
Gender preference is certainly non-equivalent to race preference. On the other hand, it does show that certain forms of discrimination which would be wrong (and just plain illegal) in other settings are perfectly okay…
Actually I find the nationalities of the winners to be the least interesting part of Nobel Prize season. Apart from opportunities for nationalist chest-thumping, brow-beating and/or hand-wringing, who cares? On the…
Since I had a look at a couple of them, I suppose I might as well provide reviews. "Introduction to Proofs and the Mathematical Vernacular" -- this is actually pretty good, and I kinda wish I'd had a copy of it at the…
Which textbook are you talking about? I have a moderate hatred for most entry-level physics textbooks, which manage to pad about 100 pages' worth of information into a thousand-page tome full of glossy photographs in…
The first four are good general advice. The fifth and sixth are good ideas some of the time, the seventh is a bit platitudinous but possibly good advice some of the time, and the eighth is more like "a guide to writing…
I assume "it looks AMAZING" is perfectly within the usual editorial standards of "omgbuntu", but wouldn't mind seeing a different headline here. How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT…
That's great, but I wonder how heavy the nuclear reactor would need to be that provides the 2 MW to power this thing. Is this something we could practically loft into orbit with present-day rockets? (Ignoring the…
Works great for me, but only if the music in question has no lyrics. Baroque, bebop or pretentious Philip Glass-y stuff seems to work best.
It obviously can't do very much to a truck, but I wonder what it would do to a human. Nothing very good, obviously, but how long would you need to keep it focused on someone before they dropped down, brain cooked? (I…
Is the single word really necessary? I mean, it already says "google.com" up in the URL bar, so you know what you're looking at.
You're probably taking it too seriously then. Oh, certainly. I've never found a case where there's genuine ambiguity, it's just that there's a certain part of my brain which takes delight in pointing out all the…
The best thing about posting bills online for six months is that it doesn't matter that legislators don't read them. Instead you'd have an army of partisan bloggers etc trying to point out the flaws, ensuring that all…
The second sentence is a straw man. Is there some kind of competition I don't know about to mention the words "straw man" in as many threads as possible? It seems to pop up in just about every thread, along with the…
Those sorts of questions always bothered me in IQ tests too. I was also always bothered by questions like: "What comes next in this sequence? 1,4,9,16,25," Sure, the answer might be 36, but then again maybe we're…
Probably. Hell, we could all just start using Euros (or whatever) for cash, and then exchange our Euros for plastic-only US dollars at changing booths (which would suddenly become a lot more common). This, of course,…
Because, while it doesn't provide particularly useful advice, it is at least a good starting point for discussion on an interesting subject? Also, because people upvoted it before taking time to read it carefully and…
Straw man. Who the hell uses their todo list like that? Who are those "proponents" who suggest playing this sort of silly "estimate the task and match it to a time slot" game? I've never met one. You've never seen a…
This is the "makers' schedule" vs "managers' schedule" again. Donald Trump doesn't need a "To do" list because he (presumably) works on a manager's schedule -- if he decides he needs to do something he'll tell his…
I agree. How about six months? All the major issues have been festering for years, what's an extra six months of delay? Remember, the government can't build a new road without three years of planning, community…
What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to. That bugs you? I'm pretty grateful for it,…
Aside from that, they do realize that the internet is an international medium and the vast majority of it isn't subject to FCC rules, right? Speaking of which, as a non-US citizen, I'd like to invite companies to send…
What about surgically implanted bombs in fat people? (Like in that movie I won't name just to avoid spoiling it for the small number of people who haven't seen it.) Does anyone have a good idea of whether that's a…
It's fairly certain that "old, ugly, fat, have children" are all characteristics that would lower the match %, therefore you argument of equating these different traits is debunked. I think you need to look up how their…
There is, as I understand it, some evidence for the idea that people learn what's attractive in a member of the opposite sex by essentially averaging out all the faces which they see while growing up. This makes a…
There are a zillion factors which haven't been corrected for. As well as class, they include message length, message quality, profile quality, number of messages received on average by each class of respondee, income,…
Gender preference is certainly non-equivalent to race preference. On the other hand, it does show that certain forms of discrimination which would be wrong (and just plain illegal) in other settings are perfectly okay…
Actually I find the nationalities of the winners to be the least interesting part of Nobel Prize season. Apart from opportunities for nationalist chest-thumping, brow-beating and/or hand-wringing, who cares? On the…