I got a Monster cable as a hook-up instrument cable for my bass guitar some years ago. It was what I could find with a thicker signal wire, hence less resistance; I thought it would have better SNR, as N is picked up all along the length so less attenuation of S should improve SNR. It turns out the shielding was *not as good* as the el-cheapo instrument cables I had been using, so there was actually more 60hz hum!
The poor who have rare neuropathies in their faces (like trigeminal neuralgia) do not relish the idea of being worked on by dental students. Sure, dental students working on the poor is useful, but it's not the best solution to the problem. Universal healthcare is really the best solution to that problem, although having dental students train on volunteers is still useful, though perhaps starting the training on robots would avoid some unfortunate accidents by newbies.
Or possibly utilize a surrogate mother. My gf and I have been looking at bother adoptions (adoption and surrogates) because she has to take *incredibly* strong antiepileptics for trigeminal neuralgia. Uterine transplantation seems almost like an unnecessary step---if your mother can be the surrogate, why try to move the uterus and bring additional risk on the baby?
Disclaimer: didn't RTFA.
What?!?! The INTERCAL manual hasn't been rendered obselete at all!
Of course, you really ought to start with fundamentals, like Brainf***, before moving on to a structured language like INTERCAL.
Ah, sounds sensible, then =) Hey, if you ever start up a fumble-finger wall of shame, can I be an honorary member? *g*
There's a scary amount of legacy code in VB. When I was interviewing for a job recently (PS: anybody hiring coders in the DelMarVA area?), the interviewer was asking about some porting work I had done. There were a whole pile of VB projects in use, only one or two of which the budgeters could justify examining---and that only meant re-working them in VB.net, so that they could be extended in the future without needing a legacy development environment.
VB already *is* the next COBOL.
Oh, that's right! I forgot,thanks =)
Since you're clearly familiar with the series, I'm curious---what did you think of Forward the Foundation?
To me, it had a different feel (besides the fact that it was a prequel)---maybe a different pace, or a bit different writing style. Not in a bad way, but just something I noticed.
Can you point me to where in the series that's mentioned? I *sort of* remember something like that, but all that's coming to mind is the mind-reading human that confounded some of the best minds (outside of the monastic psychohistorians) in the Empire.
Agreed. The range of human ailments is probably beyond what the vast majority of humans can really understand; this means that, in all likelihood (and I know this *is* true, as well, from surveying a number of patients with uncommon conditions) there are lots of doctors who will see a set of symptoms that are a textbook case of an uncommon disease and still mis-diagnose it. Doctors are taught to act confident in front of patients, for the simple reason that patients *do* tend to fare better if they trust their doctors. However, I have seen too many doctors over-extend this to arrogance in the form of not investigating symptoms that they are unfamiliar with: if they have forgotten something important from medical school, they won't say, "I'm not sure---let me refer you to a specialist." Instead, they'll say, "There's really nothing wrong. You have nothing to worry about." When the patient returns in a few months, even sicker, that particular doctor is of course still too arrogant to admit wrongdoing or lack of expertise and will continue to dismiss the patient's concerns. This situation is what leads to the majority of malpractice situations, from what I have read on many online forums (thus, I cannot say for sure that my opinion is right, but it's based off of more than just a few anecdotes).
If doctors only got paid when they were able to help a patient, this wouldn't be the case. However, how do you determine, _precisely_, if a doctor has "helped" a patient?
Oh, so you mean, in the same place?
[Note to mods: if you haven't read Asimov's Foundation series, or at least Foundation and Empire, just skip to the next post.]
All humor aside, I've often wondered about 'psychohistory.' It seems to have a decently solid basis in sci-fi theory, which in the context of "good sci-fi," means that it's at least *plausible.* However, without good models and the necessary empiricism to evaluate them, we don't really know _anything_ for sure---everything is really just speculation, even if plausible.
The first person to provably (by that, I mean beyond reasonable doubt, rather than beyond unrestricted skepticism---if there is a dispute, it will either go up before a committee or multiple people may be considered [I may restrict a "time will tell!" period in that case as a verifier of the model, but not beyond 50 years, and should I die, I will leave the decision to a subcommittee of peers]) develop a working model (it doesn't have to yet be a solid theory) of psychohistory by analyzing this planet's history in detail, and using simulations of periods N-X thru N-1 to predict period N, where X is a large number and the length of a period is something reasonable for human scale (let's say anything in the 10--200 year range, but other periods can be suggested, of course) will win a small monetary prize from me (depending on my income, but I'll guarantee at least $50), and probably (though I can't speak for the Nobel prize committee) a Nobel peace prize and substantial mention in history books for centuries to come.
[Yes, I do realize that though I have skirted around the "pronoun is missing an antecedent" in the previous statement, I would need to re-write the statement to prevent the "generic noun missing specifier antecedent" problem---readers are welcome to do that for me, if they really feel my statement is thusly ambiguous.)
Finally, my sig is relevant!
But, seriously, graphene (and some lab-precision equipment... well, *reliable* lab-precision equipment---a 20-year-old tube electrometer thrown out by a university lab for being flukey doesn't count) would be terribly fun to experiment with (at least for me). Measuring material properties is one of my interests.
In terms of semiconductor experimentation at home, there's always copper oxides, but, meh... it's been over-done.
"The danger of being sued." Exactly! And the first critical lesson in copyright school is... Don't upload anything involving Metallica in any way, shape, or form.
Exactly--that's the second thing that popped into my head---land a fuel factory before sending humans. (The first thing was to land a few solid rockets that could be attached to the humans' rocket once the humans landed to enable them to return, but then I thought a fuel factory would be a better use of rocket launches, since it could be used for many go-there-and-come-back missions.)
It's funny to me that the author of the article didn't consider how we launch rockets off of the earth in the first place (by manufacturing fuel) before writing the article.
Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
