impendia

36 ms·

391.
by impendia 6y ago
I am a university professor. I use email and have no desire to switch to some fancy tool. Some typical use cases: - I collaborate on research projects with people all over the world, and I exchange emails with my collaborators. Such emails
392.
by impendia 6y ago
If you want to see orderliness and "going nuts" on simultaneous display, I recommend a Japanese baseball game. I went a few years ago to see the Hanshin Tigers play at home. The Tigers are famous for their raucous fans, their icon
393.
by impendia 6y ago
My personal opinion -- and opinions may differ -- is that yes, the TSA is security theater. To my knowledge, the TSA has never caught a terrorist. Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security conducted a test where they attempted to smuggl
394.
by impendia 6y ago
Looks interesting, I checked it out. I'm curious, is your revenue model to keep all those $2 fines that get charged to roommates who don't do the dishes? :)
395.
by impendia 6y ago
> if you keep diluting substance X with more and more of substance Y, you'll eventually get mostly substance Y. Exactly, that's the paradox. Parfit's argument stipulates a series of steps each of which seems to make the wo
396.
by impendia 6y ago
Repeat steps 2 and 3: in addition to the now combined group of two million people, assume that you have an additional group of two million people living difficult lives. Now repeat step 3, and so on, until you've doubled the population
397.
by impendia 6y ago
> This is perspective from purely human view, ignoring just about everything else that makes reality, which is way more complex. I agree. (And, in particular, I agree that ecological diversity is very important.) I consider it to be some
398.
by impendia 6y ago
> We simply don't need billions of humans. You make an excellent point, and I'll raise a counterargument. I would claim, simply, that human life is intrinsically a good thing . I believe that my life is worth living, that it i
399.
by impendia 6y ago
I've been buying groceries in this manner. (I submit a MS Word document with my order, they call me to arrange payment and double check that whatever substitutions they need to make are okay, and I show up in the afternoon and pop my t
400.
by impendia 6y ago
Is there some reason you can't (or don't want to) call them?
401.
by impendia 6y ago
Yeah, math professor here, this drove me crazy. For example, I remember looking at the linear algebra book my department had used previously. Early on, it introduced the concept of the transpose of a matrix: https://en.wikipedi
402.
by impendia 6y ago
They give instructions only after you have accepted? That, too, seems odd to me. I guess that it is what it is.
403.
by impendia 6y ago
> I've reviewed for high-status journals have said explicitly in instructions to reviewers (and I'm only weakly paraphrasing) "don't evaluate the methodological integrity or integrity of the conclusions, only evaluate
404.
by impendia 6y ago
> Participate in some organized activities as a leader. I've noticed that martial arts schools often cultivate leadership. Once you've been training for a year or two, you will often be asked to demonstrate technique to beginne
405.
by impendia 6y ago
Ah, but this is the heart and soul of mathematics. Taking a theorem that is known for one setting, and seeing if it works in some other setting as well. Can you prove it, or alternatively find a counterexample? There is a version of it that
406.
by impendia 6y ago
You have discovered a fascinating nugget from the subject of algebraic number theory . It is a theorem that if every prime p of the form 4n+1 can be written as a sum of two squares: 5 = 1 + 4, 13 = 4 + 9, etc. Conversely, no prime of the f
407.
by impendia 7y ago
Necessarily , no, but in practice likely: - The qualifying exams are likely to be easier than at top tier universities; - The faculty will be more accustomed to weak students with little motivation. Not all students will be weak, and indee
408.
by impendia 7y ago
I'm a math professor at a mid-tier PhD-granting university in the United States. I'll share my perspective. First of all, funding is not an issue. Tuition is free, and we pay a stipend (something like $18k/year I think), prov
409.
by impendia 7y ago
I had the opportunity to visit Byblos, Lebanon and spend a few hours walking around. It was fascinating to me how many different civilizations had left physical imprints: Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, European Crusaders. I highly rec
410.
by impendia 7y ago
Oh, no question about that. When I was a kid, I tended to assume that my parents always were available to drop what they're doing and engage with you. (And which, incidentally, is surely a reason why many parents are finding working fr
411.
by impendia 7y ago
I remember, when I was a kid, that I had a toy piano where the notes C, D, E, etc. were labeled 1, 2, 3, etc. Later, I tried to get a computer to play a simple melody and assumed that 1=A, 2=B, etc. The result sounded wrong, and eventually
412.
by impendia 7y ago
My students are part of the audience, but not all. For example, if I give a talk at a conference, then someone who was in the audience might plausibly look up my website to get a sense of my research interests.
413.
by impendia 7y ago
> 99% of the reduction in transmission comes from physical distancing alone while inside of closed spaces with strangers. This is an extremely strong statement. Although it might be plausibly true, my impression is that the transmission
414.
by impendia 7y ago
> frankly, wasteful. I think I disagree. It seems that face masks are quite effective in reducing the spread of illness. For example, look at the numbers in South Korea, Japan, etc. (where mask-wearing is common) compared to ours. Masks
415.
by impendia 7y ago
I wouldn't agree. I'm a math professor, here's my own web site: http://people.math.sc.edu/thornef/ Very simple static HTML. No stylesheet at all. Although there are also a fair number of academics who in
416.
by impendia 7y ago
> a small grocer may be willing to prepick your order and have it ready for you in the parking lot without an intermediary. This is what I did. A small, upscale grocery near me started offering curbside pickup: you send in an order in th
417.
by impendia 7y ago
>If you have an office where random people can walk in off the street and out again unfettered, that's probably an even greater vulnerability to your company than anything Zoom is doing. This is my point, in reverse. I work in a uni
418.
by impendia 7y ago
> 99.9% of people don't understand what end-to-end encryption is and why it is needed, because they think their calls are secure, when in fact they aren't. It is actually our responsibility to make end-to-end encryption mainstr
419.
by impendia 7y ago
> If the students want privacy, they are just helpless. This isn't true actually. As a student, send the following email: "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know so
420.
by impendia 7y ago
I'm a college professor, and I'll share my perspective. For one, Zoom did just work. (At least as a participant, rather than an organizer.) I tried it out, and it immediately worked. It did what all of us were expecting, with no

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