hugh3

25 ms·

241.
by hugh3 15y ago
Sure, but Jupiters and Saturns only form because of the heavier elements. You can't make a planet just out of hydrogen and helium (actually some models suggest you can, via some weird dynamical instability, but it's not widely believed that
242.
by hugh3 15y ago
Now that's just a silly example. A swank gelato bar for Python developers in downtown San Francisco would be hugely profitable!
243.
by hugh3 15y ago
What would you do with the lasers? Heat 'em evenly so that they vapourise smoothly instead of falling apart and forming lots of little bits?
244.
by hugh3 15y ago
Finding water anywhere is no longer a big deal. It's now known to be one of the most common substances in the universe. Hydrogen and oxygen are the first and third most common elements in the universe, and forming water molecules tends to b
245.
by hugh3 15y ago
So apart from the tricky business of grabbing a bit of space junk going past you at Mach33 and changing it's delta-V so you can grab it and attach it to your satelite It'll be in (essentially) the same orbit, so it'll be drifting past the
246.
by hugh3 15y ago
Another classic story which illustrates your point: the "Magic/More Magic" switch. http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did di
247.
by hugh3 15y ago
Nah, it just doubles the likelihood that someone you're talking to is gonna say something you know is stupid.
248.
by hugh3 15y ago
I don't dismiss the humanities, but I do think that doing a PhD in 'em is very unlikely to be a good career move, and that government funding of humanities PhDs is very unlikely to be a good use of money, nor of human talent.
249.
by hugh3 15y ago
I try to be one of those scientists who is also well-versed in the humanities. There are very few rewards for it, though, apart from a smug feeling of superiority to everybody and a massive further decrease in the number of people with whom
250.
by hugh3 15y ago
I refuse to take lectures on conspicuous consumption from somebody called "Veyron". Seriously though, I concede that there's a gradient from "sensible consumption" to "conspicuous consumption". I'd classify a Mercedes as "sensible" rather t
251.
by hugh3 15y ago
Bloomberg is attempting to clip the wings of the taxi industry, but he's having a hard time of it. I'm not sure of the details and precisely why the taxi industry has so much power. (Maybe they have carefully compiled dossiers on the late-n
252.
by hugh3 15y ago
It's hard to say that's "all it takes" when the actual Mayor of New York City had a huge fight on his hands just to wrench a tiny amount of power away from the medallion owners: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/bloomberg-plan-to.
253.
by hugh3 15y ago
I took only maths and physics classes for my final three years of undergrad. In first year, I also took chemistry and computer science. No, I didn't go to uni in the US.
254.
by hugh3 15y ago
Forget clinics, but surely the best surgeons have far higher success rates than the worst?
255.
by hugh3 15y ago
I really think you need to look up what "conspicuous consumption" means. It isn't just about buying a slightly better, slightly more expensive version of a product. It's about spending money purely for the sake of showing off how much money
256.
by hugh3 15y ago
Whether they are or not (and that's a very boring debate I don't wanna get into)... no, not unless the premium is huge and obvious. Wikipedia sez: "Conspicuous consumption is spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose o
257.
by hugh3 15y ago
And would it be less unfair if instead of uprbringing and connections, it were due to genetics?
258.
by hugh3 15y ago
Oh purleez. There's what, a couple of thousand of 'em nationwide? The same damn crowd that protests.... everything?
259.
by hugh3 15y ago
Also, that's wages, not income. Most truly rich people (and a great many fairly rich people) derive their income from non-wage sources.
260.
by hugh3 15y ago
Sure. But if someone is earning $26K a year, then this means that their labour isn't worth any more than twenty-six thousand dollars to anyone else. Money is, after all, a medium of exchange, and if your labour is only worth $26K this means
261.
by hugh3 15y ago
If Apple products were a conspicuous consumption item, they'd have diamonds embedded, and gold plating. And they'd cost enough in order to not be owned by practically everybody , because conspicuous consumption loses its appeal when you ha
262.
by hugh3 15y ago
Aw c'mon, Apple products don't count as "conspicuous consumption". They're fairly small and unobtrusive. Sure, they're a bit self-marketing (white earphones and big illuminated Apple logos on the back of your laptop) but that's not conspicu
263.
by hugh3 15y ago
Linkbait title from NPR. It's clearly not a secret government report, since if it was then it couldn't have been obtained via a FOI request. It is a genuine concern, though, what would happen if US Treasury Bonds ceased to exist. There's
264.
by hugh3 15y ago
The real problem is that there's a huge disparity in talent . The worst of us are worth a whole lot less than the best of us. The question is: what do we do about that?
265.
by hugh3 15y ago
There are a lot of 'em, but I doubt they account for 50% of the working population.
266.
by hugh3 15y ago
I've never heard of anyone being denied entry, in practice, because the minimum-wage guy (actually immigration officers earn a median salary of $46,0000) at the airport doesn't like their face. It's true that they legally can deny entry to
267.
by hugh3 15y ago
I don't think his decision to refuse surgery was a 'stupid decision', he was just being human. I'm afraid I don't see the distinction between "being human" and "making stupid decisions".
268.
by hugh3 15y ago
These numbers seem implausibly low. How are they derived? It says they come from W-2 filings. But do they bother to match up different W-2 filings from the same person? i.e. if I work two part-time jobs, are those added up? Or even if I swi
269.
by hugh3 15y ago
Something like that. It's actually hard to know where to divide up the onus of proof when we're talking about predictions. One thing's for sure, though. Kurzweil's "I'm right until proven otherwise" attitude ain't the way to do it.
270.
by hugh3 15y ago
Indeed. Flaggity flag flag.

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