David

14 ms·

91.
by David 16y ago
There's a line to be drawn somewhere. At one extreme, the content is buried by the obscurity (but precision) of the language used. At the other, the content is lost to words that are too general, that have essentially no meaning. It's like
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by David 16y ago
It's not about his disdain for the word, it's about maintaining a vocabulary that alienates no one. As it is, even if it's been around for ages from our perspective, there are technophobes out there who have no idea what a tweet is. For the
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by David 16y ago
Yes, but as a species we have a tendency for risk-aversion. So I think you have to set it up as risk versus risk, rather than risk versus benefit. Weigh the negative outliers on each side against each other, instead of weighing negatives ve
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by David 16y ago
I was just thinking that cooperative behavior seems to have pretty good survival value, at least for the life we can find. That, of course, says very little about life we can't find, since we don't know how different things might be. But it
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by David 17y ago
The point of the article is that they've discovered a concrete physical link between environment and DNA. We knew it happened, but now we have an instance. It's a pretty big step. Aside: Evolution works by natural selection across generatio
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by David 17y ago
The distinction is the expected ratio of US customers to international ones. A significant inconvenience for a select few customers is nowhere near as bad as a small inconvenience for every customer. Also, shipping is _important_. Definitel
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by David 17y ago
Not that I disagree with your point, but "[...] CNN ranks 21st, while MSNBC lags even further behind at 25th." Doesn't sound like specialization is working well for MSNBC, to me.
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by David 17y ago
As a member of the current generation, I know that I don't often send personal emails. And yes, it's something my parents and teachers use. But I definitely use it to talk to members of the older generation. And anything that's less than pe
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by David 17y ago
As a high school senior, I'm jealous of your opportunity (though no doubt you earned it.) I would probably leap at the opportunity to skip this year. I share your opinion on wasted time, but more with classes I don't feel that I need than w
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by David 17y ago
Do we really want to eliminate the physical university? One thing that a campus does, that would not exist with an online education, is create a community. Good universities get smart people together, which is invaluable in creating wealth.
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by David 17y ago
I've always been of the opinion that human existence will end because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, through the continual change of various forms of energy into heat. Looks like the black holes are with me on this one. But I don't reall
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by David 17y ago
The only place I can realistically see ill-natured joking being accepted is in a school. The social hierarchy in schools is often based on it, in fact. But in the real world, I agree with you. (What does that say about our education system?
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by David 17y ago
I don't see the social hierarchy as a form of oppression. And I don't see how this says anything about political correctness, either. I'm not at the top of the ladder. I'm not particularly funny, and I'm not particularly cool. But social do
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by David 17y ago
Do you mean a wheel-generator attachment for a manpower bike, or an attachment to borrow energy from an electric bike? For a manpower bike, I think it would be terrifically underpowered or terrifically difficult. As mentioned in a link from
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by David 17y ago
Oh, irony. I'm at work, right now. Reading this instead of actually working. Think I can successfully rationalize this as a focus-enhancing short term break instead of a lack of self-discipline?
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by David 17y ago
My question: why do the pharms think this is bad news for them? The placebo effect requires belief that the placebo is fixing the problem. Studies are double-blind so that the patient does have that belief. Without the expectation of being
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by David 17y ago
What exactly is the problem with swear words? He's using a word with the appropriate emotional connotation to express his message. Why hack a system that doesn't work when we already have one that does exactly what we want?
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by David 17y ago
From what I've seen, good teachers are those who A) earn the respect of their students, and B) understand that different people learn differently. Respect is important because no student will be engaged in a class with a teacher of whom he
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by David 17y ago
"[Brian Knutson] has consistently found that the pictures inside our skulls show that the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one." There's evolutionary motivation to stop and smell the roses. Who knew? (O
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by David 17y ago
...I don't really see what high school did for you, then. That sounds more like an argument for change than against it. If you're not gonna know as a junior in college, having been through high school, any better than you did as a 8th grade
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by David 17y ago
I'd contend that with youth I have a better perspective on the folly of your adulthood just as you can perceive the folly of my youth. (I'm 17.) What makes your later view more correct than my earlier view, on this one? Accumulated experien
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by David 17y ago
I'd rather work a 6 day week working when I want to (say, starting at 10pm) than a 4 day week 9-5. Oh, and a do not disturb sign is probably mandatory. I'll let you know when I've got some processing power to deal with your problems. Otherw
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by David 17y ago
I'm with you on the headline. Article doesn't explain anything about time actually stopping. Time slowing seems like it'd be asymptotic. You should be able to have an arbitrarily large time t, where time is flowing at rate r > 0. Accord
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by David 17y ago
That makes me very, very curious. Does universal expansion imply increasing distances between every atom in the universe, or only between, say, galaxies? I can't see how the second would work, but the first would be ridiculous as well - inc
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by David 17y ago
A week of karate camp does this for me. Just one week, but it is intensely focused on my body and my immediate physical surroundings. I think what makes it so... refreshing? is that it is a new and different obsession. (It's been new and di