lolcraft

x^n = exp((log x)n). By definition, exp(n+m)=exp(n)exp(m). By definition, a(b+c) = ab + ac (for the log x thing). QED.

By the way, (the infamous calculus book) Baby Rudin has the poor reader show this property holds in exponentiation for reals, starting with integers and via rationals, as an exercise on its first chapter. Insane difficulty for me, even though the author practically holds your hand along the way! Cool read, though.

An example: progress requires, above anything, a rentier class not hell bent on furthering their greed at the expense of everyone else, via shadow banking, obscure contracts and general, short-sighted stupidity. Regulated, if you will.

I don't see many "pro-business" governments doing anything to solve that. I see many of them giving their corporate friends cool, undeserved subsidies under the pretense of "industry being of national interest".

Cool and all, but sometimes a pitch is just a pitch, and a fuck is just a fuck.

Also: personally I would never start a business with a friend I really cared about. Never. It's just like having a "friend with benefits": it can go perfectly or it can be hell on earth.

* The medieval warm period was warmed than today, which is false; thus * Solar activity might be the cause of large climate changes, which is doubtful, more so because the premise is wrong.

Not enough to explain ocean acidity, why climate change is global, why there's a hole in the Antarctic's atmosphere...

But I agree with your suggestion that C should be teached first. If anything, because C's "computational model" is very simple: you know what executes when; it encourages a more common, procedural way of thinking, and it's easy to do side effects in single-threaded C.

I mean, equating anxiety about being accused of something to actual guilt... that's thoughtcrime. Implying that the GP is so stupid that he/she couldn't distinguish racism from bad mood... that's a straight insult.

Of course, people that think "no point yet" = "not valuable ever" might want to pursue philosophical nihilism until terminal depression. But I digress.

What affects you is having children before you retire, because then you'll be fed and survive a lot more than otherwise. Evolution is a conclusion of that, not the other way around.

According to Leibniz, neurons can't exist. Exercise does not improve your mood. Brain surgery is useless. Caffeine does not work. Hormones do nothing. Coma is unexplainable by definition. And so on.

Reality killed Leibniz.

Furthermore, where do you read that the objective is "low variance"? I read "higher average".

I'm not convinced that the ethics of any philosopher, a matter of praxis by definition, should be considered strictly apart from the values which that philosopher really acted by (as this article portrays). Not following your own ethics seems as dishonest as openly proclaiming "do what I say, not what I do", as dishonest as an evolutionary biologist advocating creationism in their free time. Because of this, IMO the article does not incur in ad hominem for presenting Rand's life.

That would be the rational thing for us to demand, since a more liberal Pakistan would make both us and Pakistanis happier. Nowadays it is a matter of corporations' interest rather than law.

Sorry, but I refuse to call atheist to anyone who believes that an arbitrary, human-made list of values can be "godlike" in any meaningful sense. If anything, should that person use that list of values to base their political or scientific arguments, I would call them theocrats.

Yes, "exploiting" is exactly the word I was looking for. Cool hack, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

"Alcohol is also a common risk of causing psychotic disorders or episodes. Research has shown that alcohol abuse causes an 8-fold increase in psychotic disorders in men and a 3 fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in women. Alcoholic psychosis is sometimes misdiagnosed as a mental illness such as schizophrenia."

The people I'm talking about are the party types who are using these drugs all the time, to the point that drugs are the only things in their lives.

That doesn't seem a very strong argument. I would argue that everything is subject to psychological addiction. Gambling, World of Warcraft, the Internet, sex... it's physical addiction what should be controlled. I could see the point on banning, say, crack. Or alcohol. Or tobacco. But hallucinogens?

I somewhat feel sorry for the authors, but I think they'll manage. Being a writer is already a respected and highly-sought status, even though the pay is poor. Either way, I wouldn't claim copyright durations of ten years. But we can't stay like this eternally.

History has proven that, past a point, money does not seem to translate into creativeness. Cultures almost always have their most creative periods at times of social and intellectual changes (say, XIX-XX century Germany) and when intellectual work is regarded as prestigious and respected by the public (physics on America post-Einstein/WW2).