This lady represents British military violence to millions of black and brown people around the world. I don't understand why people, especially the British, aren't ashamed of this person.
I did this throughout India for 9 months. Reliable wifi access is a must and more difficult to secure than you'd think, perhaps. But by moving only every 2 or 3 months, I find there's a good balance between setting up shop, getting familiar with your environment, etc. and just getting shi* done.. YMMV
AFAIK this is primarily for the purposes of avoiding the court system. Things that are classified seem to be dealt with by the rubber-stamp FISA courts instead of the actual judicial system so they can avoid being challenged in the light of day.
The author first points out that science and engineering Ph.D.'s are disproportionately Asian, and that many return to their mother nations after education. That's true. He then points out that national success is built on the back of technology and science. Also true. But by ending with a back-patting, reassuring comparison with Japan and the claim that Americans have that truly essential quality, "entrepreneurial spirit" and innovation, and Asian nations don't, he makes a claim that reeks of hubris and will likely be quickly proved untrue. Science is the gas pedal, innovation is the fuel-- but without the pedal your full tank of gas isn't going to take your car anywhere. Confidence without substance is empty. My 2 cents
This is largely true. Bitcoin is a brilliant idea combining a several innovations that in and of themselves would be laudable. Still, it is most likely true that expecting Mr. Satoshi Nakamato to have a perfectly formed working model of a new financial system at one go is unrealistic, even with his obvious brilliance and dedication.
As a corollary to your point, other world currencies are going to be considerably more inflationary than Bitcoins the longer this experiment last. Then converting bitcoins to a national currency with a more profitable interest rate is an inevitability. bitcoins will be sucked into financial services rather than building out a viable economic platform for the currency.
That strikes at the heart of it, IMHO. The current currency distribution model is good at least in the sense that the newly "printed" currency is allocated for the most part by banks with (ostensibly) some degree of investment saavy. Here, we are asking "network operators" doing the proof-of-work algorithms to essentially act like banks and distribute bitcoins into larger circulation. That seems likely to cause problems.
about the last point- hiding personal opinions about world politics, economics, etc to avoid negative career consequences... can you give any examples of how these opinions, especially un-orthodox ones, could hurt a researcher working in an entirely unrelated field? curious....
This is hilarious. "My roomates are a little weirded out",since I, you know, grow viruses in the attic... With sewer water.
Having worked in a virus lab in the past, I CAN reassure folks that you can't order dangerous pathogens without all sorts of certifications you won't easily find, say, in your garage. But this is still not a very good idea. Mixing bacterial or viral strains together in a human-like environment... somebody slap that kid. How will he test it's efficacy, anyway? On his roomate with an ear infection?
Scipy+numpy+matplotlib, get enthought's distribution for one stop shop and an interactive shell via Ipython. my 2 cents. Although short-term, matlab legacy code is definitely a big plus for many scientific/data analysis applications.
My 2 cents: Numpy+Scipy+Matplotlib and other packages, which u can download together in a convenient package at Enthought. That enthought distribution also comes with Ipython, which, is, REALLY nice. I checked out R, Sage and am still sometimes forced into Matlab, but u just can't beat a programming language (Python) which can be used OUTSIDE of whtever problem space you happen to be working on.
My 2 cents: Numpy+Scipy+Matplotlib and other packages, which u can download together in a convenient package at Enthought. That enthought distribution also comes with Ipython, which, is, REALLY nice. I checked out R, Sage and am still sometimes forced into Matlab, but u just can't beat a programming language (Python) which can be used OUTSIDE of whtever problem space you happen to be working on.
Paul says,
"There's an even better way to block the transmission of power between generations: to encourage the trend toward an economy made of more, smaller units"
this very aptly describes "small-world Networks" which are ubiquitous in societal/biological/information centric complex systems.
It's the tribe reflected in the organization of smallworld networks: many small, high clustered groups working together, yet connected to any random person in any given subgroup within 6 degrees of separation or less.
How? The distance between any two separate nodes ("people") is much lower on average than you'd think, mostly because of "shortcuts" or giant hubs in the network to which two distant regions can both connect. This is a huge advantage, because the increased information throughput becomes so much greater, bringing great opportunities. (For example, when you desperately need a date for the prom, you ask the girl with the most friends on Facebook to set you up.)
with the internet's advent, the most gigantic hub in history now offers the possibility of a "perfect ad-hoc group", be it a tribe of hackers building an experimental project, a band of economic analysts parsing through financial data, or any group of like-minded people engaged in any endeavour.
What i'm saying is, exponential growth of smaller groups isboth dynamically driving AND benefiting from the spread of the Internet. So... it is inevitable.
Open-source educational resources, e.g. video lectures, semantically organized testing materials, etc. will definitely be ubiquitous in the future. The real sticking point will be in society and individual's perception of the 'legitimacy' of online self-education versus, for instance, a college degree.