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Comment Re:I don't like it. (Score 2) 127

Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Until the writer reads that analysis and intentionally deviates from it.

Congratulations, you've just spoiled the plot of Minority Report (the original, not the movie).

Comment Re:Sex robots (Score 1) 139

Someday you may grow to learn that women are more than just a vessel for your seed.

Drifting ever further OT, I would like to point out that the long-accepted use of "seed' to describe sperm cells is a blatant glory grab by males.

The woman provides the egg, which is exactly the analog of a plant's seed. Both require some minor bits of chromosome info from the male (sperm, pollen) to fertilize the seed.

Comment Re:Faulty premise (Score 1) 139

I would have dumped all over you for "Spoiler Alert," but as it happens, McCaffrey deliberately spills the beans in the prelude to the very first book. (It's on a couple pages you might well miss while jumping to the first page of Chapter One and wondering if Lessa is really hot :-) )

Comment Re:Incompetence (Score 1) 167

So one has to ask: why isn't he suing the folks who revoked the offer, demanding to see their justification, or violation of contract, or some such?

Seems the website posting the comments, as well as the commenters themselves, should be irrelevant. If UMiss chose to revoke a valid offer, it ought to be up to them to show the comments prove fraud or incompetence.

Comment Re:Science vs Faith (Score 1) 795

Why do humans have appendices? Science gives an answer to that "why" question: A common ancestor had an appendix and mutations in more recent common ancestors sufficient for its disappearance have not occurred since the time of that older common ancestor.

You've just unwittingly given a great example of the good stuff scientific research does. The "it was an evolutionary leftover" was the dominant theory for a long time. Only relatively recently have researchers discovered that the appendix quite likely is an actively useful organ, storing healthy bacterial colonies to re-populate the gut after various disasters (illnesses).
The point is that science is quite able to change the theory as new evidence and models come into play. The religious method would be something like "god made appendices because he's god." Self-contained and complete, but totally useless (oh, wait, that's Microsoft, right? :-) )

Comment Re:The article isn't any better. (Score 2) 795

I use to live in a 100+ year old house. The structure was ridiculously over done. 12x12 logs holing up the roof, The bricks were 5 layers deep. In essence it was engineered by someone without strong science knowledge. He just figured more is better. So it was over engineered because of lack of knowledge of the science.

Or just maybe the designer wanted to build a structure that would withstand a 100-year storm and 300 year's worth of general weather and usage. Just because (most USA) homes are built of stuff that'll fall apart in less than 50 years doesn't mean that's the right way to do things.

Comment how about "InvisiFile"? (Score 2) 270

That's easy to pronounce, and since part of the intent of the encryption software is to present a disk with no evidence of there being an encrypted file, the 'invisibility' part may make sense to the nontechies.

I was going to suggest Data-B-Gone but that's probably trademarked by QVC :-)

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