hughprime

"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 start of my university mathematical education, if only to teach me what the hell a "Lemma" was, exactly. It's also fun to read.

"21st Century Physics Flexbook" -- very odd. Admittedly intended as a K-12 textbook rather than a university-level textbook, but not much of a way to learn physics even for the kids. Virtually no mathematics whatsoever, let alone calculus. A random grab-bag of topics from "gravitation" (with an attempt to explain relativity which would be more confusing than enlightening) to "nanoscience" and "biomedical imaging". Basic mechanics finally comes in at the end as an afterthought. Not recommended to anyone.

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 order to justify the $100+ price tag. So if there are any good free texts that would be great.

How about "it looks REASONABLY GOOD" or "it looks ABOUT LIKE YOU MIGHT EXPECT"?

I suppose, on the upside, that once you had this thing in space it could stay there -- a nuclear reactor plus plasma rocket which could just shuffle back and forth between Earth orbit and Mars/Jupiter/wherever, refuelling at every Earth stop.

I wonder if a reflective helmet would be a decent countermeasure (or, dare I say it, a tinfoil hat?)

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 potential flaws in everything I read. It's much harder to concentrate on the test when half my brain is busy visualizing what four hundred Captain Picards would look like marching down my street.

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 words "correlation does not equal causation".

"What comes next in this sequence? 1,4,9,16,25,"

Sure, the answer might be 36, but then again maybe we're looking at some subtler sequence of numbers than that. Maybe it's "the number of bald men who walked past my house every hour since 5am". Maybe the next number is 345 due to the annual Patrick Stewart Lookalike Parade. Who knows?

This, of course, doesn't make life any easier for anyone, except the jerks who already use cards for everything (aka the jerks I always get stuck behind in line while I wait for their little receipt to print and get signed).

Also, because people upvoted it before taking time to read it carefully and think about whether the advice was really valuable?

You've never seen a Gantt chart? You're lucky, then.

To do lists are only relevant to those who actually need to sit down and do things on their own. Did Einstein have a To Do list? I don't know, but if he didn't then it was for very different reasons to Donald Trump.

Remember, the government can't build a new road without three years of planning, community consultation, environmental impact statements, mandatory waiting periods, careful negotiation with all stakeholders, and whatever other bureaucracy might crop up along the way. But when the government wants to pass a bill to spend a trillion bucks or fundamentally change the nature of the economy, they seem to think that about twelve hours is the ideal length of time to spend debating it.

That bugs you? I'm pretty grateful for it, personally.

The jihadists' greatest strength is also their greatest weakness: they're not very rational. If they were rational then they'd figure out that there are more efficient ways to kill random civilians than anything they've explored so far. On the other hand, if they were rational then they'd figure out that killing random civilians to please an invisible sky wizard is a pretty fucking stupid way to spend your life anyway.

Speaking of which, as a non-US citizen, I'd like to invite companies to send me free products so I can say nice things about them on my blog!

I think you need to look up how their "match %" is computed. It was described in an earlier post on that blog.

Anyway, if our brains really do use this strategy I think it goes a long way towards explaining some of this data.

edit: I don't mean to imply that this is the only criterion our brains use -- we probably find most attractive people who are slightly taller, more muscular and/or larger-breasted than the average we see while growing up. However in other things like facial structure where no particular face is objectively fitter than any other, heading towards the average is a pretty good plan.

I imagine you could, by using fake profiles and fake messages, do a controlled experiment which took all these factors out. My guess would be that you'd still see a vaguely similar effect but that it would be much less pronounced.

As a better example, I'm not interested in dating women who are old, ugly, fat, or have children, and that's perfectly okay. If I were not interested in hiring women who were old, ugly, fat or have children then I'd have a serious lawsuit on my hands.

Now personally, I think that refusing to date someone based on their race is both regrettable and closed-minded, but it's not detestable the way that actual racism is.

On the other hand, I bet if you were to go to the newspapers of the home countries of the two researchers not born in the US you wouldn't find the headline "Three Americans win Nobel Prize". Hmm, let me check...

Yup! The Age (Melbourne) currently has the headline "Our Beautiful Mind: Scientist Australia's first woman Nobel laureate". (Can't find an equivalent in the UK just now -- there are enough British Nobel laureates that they don't need to get excited over each one.)

I think the best strategy at this stage in history is the "know everything about something and something about everything" strategy. Aside from making life more interesting, the more you know about fields outside your own specialty the more likely you are to have great ideas in your own field, since most "new ideas" in a field are really just of the form "hey, why don't we try this approach which they use in another field on this field?"

Restaurantwise, there's a few good ones, but not really enough to satisfy your every whim. Barwise, once you've removed all the really unsafe ones you've got just a handful left, scattered among Oakland's three or four safe neighbourhoods and separated by miles of "don't go here at night".

The weather is better (slightly) and the rent is cheaper (much) though.

Actually I do see a few houses in the $1 million range on that page, but none of them seem to have yards. With no backyard and no reasonable parks in the neighbourhood, where would your children play?