proemeth

"Sweden's gross domestic product, by comparison, amounted in 2011 to more than 3500 billion."

The irony.

Looks like a typo, it should be around 500bn$. 3500 would be Germany. Proof that "fat finger" human mistakes can do as much damage as algos gone wild.

I am not sure custom curricula are a good idea. Education is more about how it's learnt and less about what is learnt. Beware of technology's cognitive biases too, see how TV is transforming education into entertainment. Computers have their own biases, just see the difference between today's teenagers and teenagers from 15 years ago.

I was expecting some graph at least...

This is a bayesian problem, depending on the a priori probability given to a "special dice" pri,

P = 2 * pri / (1+pri)

(Which is > to the probability before tossing)

Toska: looks like Melancholy Saudade: how is that different from mourning?

One thing that can be both a quality and a problem, is that The Wire is very demanding. A lot of what happens is implicit or not directly seen on camera. Also, episodes are not as self-contained as, for instance Mad Men, where you can watch one stand-alone, without needing too much background on who's who, and what happened before.

Thank you for the pointer on Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming. http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html

Judging by the stats (The Red Sox), we have strong US East Coast bias (due to user base).

Reminds me of the 2 schools in "Worse is better": http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html

A clear and distinctive title?

Let's take as a benchmark intentional homicide rates: North America 6.5, West Europe 1.5. Also, more murders per capita in US than Armenia or India.

Yes, but instead of manipulating them separately, they apply one same filter to all the film, even frames with now face in it. Which means some frames have no contrast in them (screenshot Wolfman #2), others make irrelevant objects stand out (Hot Tub #2). Great article.

Digital literacy (how to use technology/computers) maybe, programming literacy I am more sceptical. The use of computers and basic tools is more vital than programming for the average person. Most employers require it, soon it will be necessary to buy basic services (plane ticket, concert ticket).

Well, there would be several schools in terms of time travel (mutable/immutable timelines).

Please link to the original website (abstruse goose): http://abstrusegoose.com/249

"I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles."

Summary: satirical article to say we don't like flame wars.

From imdb: The truman show 8.0 Minority report 7.7 Blade runner 8.3 Total recall 7.4

The Martian Chronicles is SF, maybe not Hard SF, but SF. That's where the limit between SF and fantastic is blury, but in that regard Dick is sometimes more fantasy, or not so science (consider Time Out of Joint for instance, probable inspiration for the Truman Show).

What i found most insightful is the "monotous death" he says SF is at risk of settling into. All the brilliant SF's reputation is overshadowed by the pulp works with tasteless covers, and people tend to think of SF as children's books, not serious (if you compare it to "classic" litterature). We need more works like Bradbury's, that are in themselves brilliant litterature (look at the prose in Fahrenheit 451!) as well as SF.

I found his web site is interesting, including this "guide to conceptual illustration": http://christophniemann.com/man/bpages/gallery6.html

Does anyone have good resources on ranking algorithms?