I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

How many of us have tried to do something and wished we had (at least) a third hand?

I would pay a *lot* for a third hand, as I do a lot of my own construction work (building an interior into an old church we now live in.)

I can't even guess at the number of times I've had to wait until I had someone at my side to hold, turn, twist, drill, cut, brace, etc.

This stuff is great to hear. Love the idea of extra fingers.

Although it does put me strangely in mind of that scene in Heavy Metal where a robot, after having "done" a very sexy human female, spins his fingers around with a "whiiizzz", while commenting something on the order of "human woman love sex with mechanical assistance" lol

For most programmers, recursion seems to be a tool to completely -- but unpredictably -- blow out the stack. Cynical, I know, but that's been my experience.

Although I gotta tell ya, one of my favorite recursive things is a particular area fill routine for rectangular pixels. Simple and beautiful. Just elegant as all get out. Once I understood how it does what it does, it was like someone washed my mental windshield with Windex. That was a great day. :)

Yep. One of the things you discovered is that your school was one of the (many, many) schools that are horrible at teaching things, and in particular, math. Welcome to the real world. :)

So... how's your luck been in convincing employers (if you go that way) that your Coursera work is worthy of qualifying you for jobs?

I'm going to go with this:

The vast majority of programming is fairly simple manipulation of states and symbols, which are themselves a small subset of numbers. yes and no are 1 and 0, etc.

The way those manipulations work together quickly becomes very complex.

You can do a boatload of things with just that knowledge. Entire video games. Many types of process control and dedicated controllers. Most reasonable scripting jobs, most "webby" stuff, database stuff, etc.

But then adding some knowledge of math, in the purely technical sense, gives us more symbols to manipulate, and more ways to manipulate them, and this, like any major skills enhancement, definitely makes you a better programmer. Some mid-level math concepts -- very simple in nature, actually -- amplify what you can do so much it's just amazing.

I suspect -- I can't actually tell you because my math is only mediocre to fairly good, nor have I ever knowingly come in contact such a person -- that *really* advanced math skills combined with *really* advanced programming skills (which I can lay claim to) would combine to create a true monster programmer.

But...

I think there's something about the essentially concrete nature of programming, and the incredibly abstract nature of higher math, that makes these dual-facet powerhouses the rarest of the rare. In my experience -- admittedly, just one person's career -- serious math heads tend to be pretty lousy programmers. Lots of bugs, poor structure, little to no sensitivity to shortcuts and loading. Then really great programmers seem to be only sorta capable with math (although what they can do with what they have tends to be quite surprising.) Just an IMHO based on my experience. Something I've found interesting enough to contemplate many times. Having said that, I sure would like to meet Mr. or Ms. combination-o-both. :)

The claim that parental approval is required can only be made if parental access is properly validated. Threatening to charge the child with fraud if the parent refuses to pay, is not by any stretch of the imagination seeking parental approval prior to the pay to win virtual sale of imaginary goods. Also refusing to refunds especially when the product suffers no wear and tear or re-stocking cost is also pretty extremely corrupt.

Do you how you calculate how much you 'NEED' to make. You don't bloody look at the job being done and think well the worse the job the less we'll pay them. You look at life costs. So how much to buy quality food and groceries, have a place to live, transport to work (bound to quality city planning), health costs, retirement, clothing and because workers are not animals to be beaten into submission some leisure spending. Now add on that breeding costs because that has to happen otherwise your community will collapse. So add it all up and you can figure out why some people need more than one job with both parents working.

Don't be an evil little git and define what people should be paid by how crappy the job is, always reflect on how much they need in order to live properly and honestly the more crappy the job the more they should be paid not less.

What you need is a force feed back suit, basically an extension of powered exoskeleton technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... but instead of providing mechanical assistance it provides mechanical resistance. Not only can it be used in gaming but in remote robotics where the operator guides the robot and gets feedback from the robot for accurate motion. Think of the suit being suspended in mid air, holding the player up and allowing a full range of motion, quite expensive and really only for the relatively wealthy, interactive gyms and hotels for an extended experience. Use in remote robotics extends the technology and subsidises cost, unfortunately it can also be extended for military and law enforcement operations. Think of the operator back in base in their force feedback suit controlling the armoured conflict drone. The big problem with powered exoskeletons in fitting the operator inside them, put the operator in a remote location and the become far simpler to design and that same technology can be use in all high risk environments, like fire rescue, not just of course fully immerse virtual gaming, which might seem like a waste but of course it helps generate the numbers to pay for development and manufacturing.

You know how a ponzi scheme works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.... Those at the top of the pyramid sell the scam to those at the bottom. Those higher up the pyramid make a load of money whilst those at the bottom make nothing as the scheme collapse. Now bitcoin, how easy was it to generate money at the begging for free, all those people had to do was sell the scheme to others, who would find it progressively harder to generate coins, whilst those at the begging cashed in for millions, hmm, ponzi currency, easy at the beginning, the bif sell, impossible at the end. The most marketed benefits of ponzi bitcoins tax evasion and criminal transactions.

First soup, then COMMUNISM, then ducks are all polyphonic in my upper regiols of yhear.

Sir, you have a toad in your hat.

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.