You are correct. I have known about it for some time...I think it is pozzolan or similar - nothing lost or rediscovered.

they also used to put blood in some of their cement.

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Argentina tried pegging its currency to the US dollar. It was a disaster, because the US dollar rose in relation to other currencies at the time (late 1990s) and so did the Argentine peso. As a result, Argentine goods became expensive to the outside world and imports were cheap to Argentines, and this led to economic collapse. The effects were really bad as it gave a bad name to the economic liberalism which was being introduced at the time.

The country is now totally fucked and will probably invade the Falkland Islands within the next five years, and then loose, again. Except this time they are going to make it a dirty war. The old regime honoured (even worshiped) military tradition. This one, not so much

There's more to education than listening to lectures and taking the final exam (though the Chinese and many European schools don't seem to understand this). College education involves lectures, Q&A, homework, feedback from the teacher, projects, interaction with classmates...all in some personal manner. I am not suggesting that everyone needs one-on-one training as provided by a tutor, but interactivity is important. In mega-classrooms this is impossible. Sure, you'll get graders and TAs, but they often are unable to answer more than the most basic questions. It's not only about receiving information from the professor, it's also about responding back in turn - to improve the professor's understanding of the field, his or her teaching methodology, and to build a repor which lasts beyond the classroom.

For some years now, Wall-street and wannabee wall-street types having being trying to rebuild higher education along the lines of a business, with assembly lines and workers as interchangeable parts. It doesn't work. The quality of education is suffering. There's a race to the bottom as students are taught only how to pass the multiple-choice, computer graded exam. While understanding of certain facts is key, and rote memorization and replay have their value, it is not sufficient as part of a quality education. Small classrooms and interpersonal relations are required. This is best done in the traditional university environment.

Disclaimer; no, I am not any part of this teaching machine, either of the mass-production or hand-crafted ones.

Back in 1998, I was pushed into applying for a corporate AmEx card by my employers, a consulting company of moderate repute. The idea was that I would use this for expenses related to travel. When I read the agreement in full, and understood that it was my responsibility, rather than my employers, to pay the bill I declined to apply. Shortly thereafter, I heard from other people in the company that it was expecting them to charge various IT related expenses to the card, and was taking a very long time (over four months) to pay. This was clearly a credit-kiting scheme cooked up by corporate finance to support the company's cash flow. When I told my boss that not only had I not applied for the Amex card, but that I had no credit cards (true: I tore them up about a year before), I was treated with disdain. A few weeks later, I was asked to resign under the pretense of some irregularities in my job application (which I had been forced to fill out after I had been accepted by the company and switch coasts). For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is an NDA, I can't reveal the name of the employer. I can say that they were swept up in one acquisition after another, and few people remember the name fifteen years later. But I still remember how much I came to distrust them, starting with an employer trying to force loans from its employees. Beware!

An Anonymous website...the whole point is there can be no single website. This project is a bunch of posers, and it will be DoSed as soon as it goes up. In any case, 4chan is about as close to an Anonymous web site as is wanted, needed, or possible.

Looking forward to Wellesley and Woburn. Then maybe Winchester and Weymouth, Wakefield, probably not.

Sorry I have just been served a cease and desist order by WIPO, they claim authority. I guess they've reinterpreted the first word in their name.

A while back, some people thought it might be good to name the potentially habitable planets. Therefore, http://www.sinister.com/names_of_potentially_habitable_planets.html

This is good, I think this is more interesting than looking at distant galaxies.

MIT students really like the freedom that they have on their nets, and in fact, have come to take it for granted. I forsee massive disobedience to this, along with protests. and I'll be standing there right beside them.

Boycotting it and any other organization with such knee-jerk reactions.

Make it easy to buy (paypal, or similar), install, and use. Make a custom binary which fills in registration data, which comes on the title/bootup screen, saying "This software is licensed for the exclusive use of $customer, all rights reserved, copyright $year". Hide it in the binary (make it hard to find and edit with a hex editor/ decompiler), but don't spend too much time doing so. You have the right to be paid for your work, but being a dick in protecting those rights is just not worth the effort.

This is happening, with the propellantless drive, the EMDrive, which looks impossible at first, because it seems to violate laws of inertia, but it actually is sound. It uses a very high efficiency (high Q) tuned microwave cavity. The caveat is, that it is only efficient when used at low speeds (to clarify: it is not the speed the drive is travelling at, but rather, using the eMdrive alone to attain such speeds), so it is useful as anti-gravity. Because of its high efficiency, it can provide us with flying cars and a freight train to orbit, but it's not useful for interplanetary or interstellar travel.

Dark matter is merely interstellar lint, the remains of many, many missing socks.