Eli_Courtwright - Slashdot User

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:00PM from the more-guns-less-crime dept.

cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @01:09PM from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.

iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Comment Re:python (Score 1) 1095

by Eli_Courtwright on Tuesday July 22, 2008 @11:04AM (#24289495) Attached to: How To Encourage a Young Teen To Learn Programming?

Specifically, the book "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning With Python" is freely available online (although it seems to have recently been renamed "Think Python: An Introduction to Software Design". It's an excellent resource for first-time programmers; it starts with "The Way of the Program" and shows how to use the command line interpreter, then gradually moves on to control flow, data structures, building GUIs, etc.

You can find it at http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/

CompUSA Closing More Than 50 Percent of Stores 423

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @01:34PM from the trouble-in-paradise dept.

Zurbrick writes to tell us that CompUSA hs announced that they are closing the doors on over half their stores over the next three months. "CompUSA said in a statement it would close 126 of its stores and would receive a $440 million cash capital infusion, but it was not specific as to the source of the cash. The company also said it would cut costs and restructure. The company operates 225 stores, which its Web site says are located in the United States and Puerto Rico. "

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