roundsquare

anyone have an idea why this wouldn't show up?

Also, 9 is divisible by 3, so maybe it feels less random.

Even if someone is ideologically driven, they might think twice about joining an organization where they are more likely to kill themselves and fellow believers rather than the infidels.

Point is, its not one or the other. All approaches can be used in unison to decrease recruitments. Not to mention that its hard to sow terror when you're being laughed at.

However, I do agree with your point below. Getting this message out will be difficult because you need to make sure you target terrorists and not Muslims (which, as you say, will create more enemies).

Edit: There is also the point in the article about how to use resources to defend the people. If you know the competence level of your enemies, you can defend their likely targets. This doesn't remove the need to protect high profile targets, but we might be able to change the distribution of defense to take into account likely targets.

If his actions are coming up short, thats very important. In fact, thats what we should be discussing. Thats where we should be pressuring him to do better. So we are, in fact, in agreement that the President's actions should be under the closest scrutiny and open to criticism that he should take into account.

The point of the article however is that the President (whoever it may be) is also called upon to do two things:

1) Seemingly react with the same emotions as the American people.

2) Take part in various ceremonial activities.

Especially with respect to the first (and to some degree with the second, though this can be debated more easily) this is absurd. Just because people are angry with something, why should the President show the same anger. At times, it may be strategically sound to do so, but at times it would be a bad idea.

This, I think, is the main idea of the article. Note that I have not mentioned any specific President or any specific disaster or event. This is a general point. If you take issue with Obama's actions, thats all well and good, but its not what the article was getting at (at least in my reading).

Edit: Minor edit for clarity.

This is the problem. The 4th dimension is not time. We can represent time as the 4th dimension in a system if we want to, but you can have systems where the 4th dimension is not time.

A good example is when people create a matrix representing links in webpages. If you limit your universe to online 100 webpages and their interconnections, you can get a vector for each webpage. The vector is a point in 100 dimension space. The 4th dimension is not "time" but "if the 4th website on the list links to me."

Its great for everyone involved because you all improve from this.

If you can find a discussion group in college, that might help... but its better if you can do this with friends. Sitting around with a few beers and arguing about computer science, math, philosophy, history, current events, etc... is a lot of fun and you can joke around a bit too.

If you learn a new keyboard layout, does that make it hard to use a regular layout? And what about if someone else uses your computer?

Side note: He may have solid research, but it doesn't come out in the writing.

Actually, I wonder, when people usually ask this question, are they just using the word dimension as a buzz word or do they know what it means?

You can't "visualize" the fourth dimension (or I haven't met anyone who could... and the kind of math/physics where this comes up was a common topic for me for a while).

However, you can understand it pretty easily. Its really just another coordinate. You can do algebra with it. If I say someone is at (3, 2, 5, 6) and moves (1, 2, 3, 4) they are now at (4, 4, 8, 10)...

Want a 5th dimension? Add another comma/number.

People who "visualize" the higher dimensions actually visualize 2 or 3 dimensions and know how to generalize (from practice/experience/theorems).

Can someone explain? What exactly do they mean by width and what else has this property?

Not saying thats the right thing to do, but thats my guess.

However, I think that reductions are critical to understanding why we care about NP-complete problems so much. The best example I've been able to give of a reduction is "reducing" addition to subtraction.

In my experience, a lot of business people don't really know what is possible so their solutions aren't always that good.

Example: "I need to know if I own more than 3% of a company. Give me a report that tells me what percent I own of each company. " "How about a big flashing light or warning if you own more than 3% (or set it at 2% so you know when you are getting close) so that you don't need to spend time each day looking at the report."

The problem I think people will have with this article is that he doesn't acknowledge this point.

I suspect if we could find a way to teach kids a little programming in grade school we would to them and society a world of good... but as far as I can tell we haven't yet been able to find a way to teach programming at that level.

I suspect people thought that about math at some point as well...

To choose science for one specialty but pseudo science or dogma for another is inconsistent.

Yes you can (edit for clarity: Yes you can use dogma for one domain and science for another). It is perfectly consistent to say that the word of god is the ultimate truth but where god is silent on an issue science is the next best thing. There is no a priori reason to claim that the scientific method will give more accurate results than the word of god. The fact that science needs to keep updating itself is, for some (most?) people evidence enough that it can't be as accurate as the word of god.

But, thats not my point.

Most people get whatever knowledge they have of science from sources several level removed from the scientist. As a result, they don't get access to see the true science. Instead, they take what they hear from (seemingly) credible sources and trust it. Maybe they put some thought into the arguments given but generally they don't, especially if no one is disputing what they hear.

With evolution though, there's people yelling at them from both sides. Both sides use what seem to be logical sounding arguments (though, under close inspection, one side's logic breaks down). In addition, one side also claims to represent god, which they are told is the ultimate truth. In their minds therefore it becomes:

Science vs Science + Ultimate Truth

It doesn't take a genius to see which side would win in that battle.

However, with medicine, God appears to be essentially silent on the matter. There are no options to weight. Everyone agrees. Nice and simple.

So yes, there is some hypocrisy, but its limited to the politically motivated few who are pushing the ID agenda. The masses are not guilty of true hypocrisy.

I find this statement to be disingenuous. I would be hard pressed to believe that (most) creationists are against science in general or think that science itself is generally wrong. In fact, they seem to try to make scientific type arguments, and I'd suspect that most IDers believe that the arguments are in fact good science.

Certainly thats not true is it? I agree that it doesn't make predictions that we can test like we do in physics (if I drop a ball from this height it will take this long to hit the ground, etc...) but it does make predictions. It predicts how we'll see fossil records change over time, etc...

As far as I know (and I'm not horribly well read on the subject) all of these types of predictions have held up.

I suspect if median were used instead this would vanish... you might even be able to prove this (assuming you could eliminate the social misconceptions).