I agree you can get too clever with concise syntax, but Java really does not seem like it's at optimal point on that tradeoff. Some really common things are very verbose, to the extent that it harms readability imo.

A lot of math grading has a subjective element. At least when I was in school, you usually had to show your work on math problems, and could get partial credit. For example if you correctly analyzed a word problem, set up the equations correctly, and then made an adding error at the end, you'd get some points despite the wrong final answer. Continues at higher levels, e.g. when doing proofs.

It's possible to reduce some sources of bias by using grading rubrics, specifying precisely what you'll get points for (X points for setting up the equations, etc...). Some people dislike rubrics because they're very mechanical, but in some cases that can be an advantage, since it removes the judgment around "ah well they got it 90% right"... without points assigned in advance, the assessment that someone got it "90%" vs. "70%" right can be influenced in large part by the teacher's prior belief about whether the student understands the material.

a self-immolating monks

The many merge into one.

That was my first thought. On the one hand, I can believe some departments offering this really do have good intentions. But will they be able to resist the urge to do more with that surveillance video once they have accumulated a bunch of it? Seems ripe for data-mining and building various kinds of circumstantial cases against frequent buyers/sellers.

Until recently they didn't. EE launched a service a few months ago, and Vodafone is launching one this quarter.

In the UK case these ISPs mostly also run other media services: Virgin Media is a big media conglomerate that owns a bunch of TV channels, and Vodafone and EE both sell streaming-television services. A blocking/QoS war could be damaging to all of them, if they start preferring their own services and degrading other companies' services, so it might make business sense to just mutually agree not to do that.

their party's next nominee

I gather there's not much lost between the Obama and Clinton camps...

Are the Slavs really more culturally similar than the Arabs, though? They feel at best "equally foreign" to me. Slavs are the eastern fringe of Europe, and Arabs are the southern fringe. They both intertwine with European history while remaining not quite entirely within it. And in the modern era, they are both more religious than the average Scandinavian, which manifests itself in fairly similar ways (the Slavs and Arabs both seem to hate gays). I'm not sure I would really prefer to have Slav neighbor than an Arab neighbor, all things considered. If anything the Slav seems more likely to try to sell my kidney to someone.

Indeed, the parts of the sanctions that are required by law remain in effect. Congress did give the executive pretty broad discretion over parts of them, though, which is what Obama is using to modify the sanction regime (something previous presidents have also done, in both directions). Specifically the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA) authorizes exports to Cuba in certain areas, such as agriculture and medicine. The law directs the Treasury Department to come up with regulations governing such exports, such as procedures for receiving a permit, and/or annual quotas, but doesn't specify these procedures in any detail. The president therefore has quite a bit of leeway regarding whether he wants the export-licensing process to be easier or harder. A president who wanted to maximally restrict exports could institute a very onerous licensing process with low limits (effectively the current process), while a president who wanted to loosen the restrictions could institute a more streamlined licensing process.

I don't know what they do in the UK, but Eastern Europeans do not integrate well here. They are pretty notorious for being heavily involved in criminality.

I don't think XChat for Windows is open-source; in fact it appears the source code isn't even available, under any license. The site does provide diffs for its modifications to the LGPL libraries it's built on, but the source to the Windows front-end isn't released.

Islam is opposed to the separation of church and state.

Eh, and so is Christianity generally. So much so that we do not even have separation of church and state in Denmark: the Church of Denmark is the official state church, which is written into the Constitution. There is freedom of conscience and worship, but one religion (Lutheran Protestant Christianity) is officially established, while the others are (according to the Constitution) merely tolerated, allowed to worship as they wish "provided that nothing at variance with good morals or public order shall be taught or done" (section 67).

Of course, in practice the church has lost almost all of its power in a gradual reform process spanning the past few decades. But I don't see this as some bit fundamental disagreement between Christianity and Islam, more a practical issue of which parts of each religion are dominant and what kinds of political power they have. In the current era, the temporal power of Christian theocrats is waning, so they are no longer much of a practical threat. But not because Christianity is doctrinally particularly great. Christian conservatives simply lost the political battle; if some things had turned out differently, they might have won, or at least come to more of a stalemate. But they didn't.

Is it really a large number? Here in Scandinavia as far as I can tell there are indeed Muslim extremists, but a quite small number. I work with a number of Muslims in a regular office job, and they are more or less normal people. More religious than the average Scandinavian, but then so are Americans.

And in terms of actual crimes committed, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of terrorism going on here. There have actually been many more people killed by anti-Muslim nativists (like Anders Breivik) than by Muslim terrorists. Meaning that the people trying to "save" us from the Muslims are killing more of us than the Muslims are. In which case I would like to request that they stop trying to "save" us...

The biggest problems are more run-of-the-mill socioeconomic problems. A large number of young people in poor suburbs of Copenhagen and Aarhus end up committing petty crimes or joining street gangs. These are disproportionately immigrants, although it applies to Danes in those areas as well (who join biker gangs, which for some reason in Denmark are very white, and heavily involved in smuggling).

Most Italians do not descend from the ancient Italic tribes.

You're not going to draw me into a Slashdot thread on this subject. Ok, sure, I posted this one comment in the thread. But no more.