This is a question dear to my soul. I drink and I have an hypothesis as stated:

Many European civilizations were bred to consume fermented alcohol.

In Europe (and other parts of the globe), as humans came to populate the earth, they by nature fouled the their surface waters. We urinated and pooped and then proceeded to flush it into the nearest waterway. People living in towns had no access to springs, or clean wells or other and relied on local waterway as a source of water. The solution to potable water back then was not to make latrines or to boil the water. As we entered the middle ages it was realized that adding a bit of fermented alcohol to water kept people from getting sick. Fermenting alcohol wasn't very difficult to make. Understanding that it could make water potable, made it a civil prize next to the wheel. Eureka.

Everyone was on board. The churches of Europe drew their congregations together and cemented their power by providing fermented alcohol to the local populace. Every church fermented alcohol. If you were not a member of the church, you didn't have easy access to potable water.

Mother nature at work:

As we added fermented alcohol to make our water potable, (using beer, wine or mead) we feed it to our freshly weaned children. If the child was allergic to ethanol, it couldn't articulate the problem and not adding ethanol was a death sentence. Either way, peoples of European (and other) decent, unknowingly removed these people from the gene pool. One of the reasons infant mortality was high. In Europe everyone who was adverse to ethanol was gone.

There is a second subtractive effect here too. At this juncture in our heritage, fermented alcohol was easily accessible and easy to abuse. During the early middle ages, transgressions by people incapable of civility while consuming fermented alcohol, would generally lead to a depressed social standing either through excommunication, imprisonment or death. These people didn't get to procreate. They were removed from the gene pool too.

There is a third more additive artifact as pointed out in the article. Anyone who could hold their beer and function well in society, would be rewarded with a higher status and the means to extend their family. This would be a plus for the peoples with ability to consume fermented alcohol.

I make the point that it is fermented alcohol, not ethanol, that has bred changes in European (and other civilization) This whole process took a millenium or two to effect. Distilled alcohol has only been around for a few hundred years. The inability to consume more that a 10-15% solution of ethanol has lead to a whole new litany of grievances of poor behavior by citizens of this planet, complicating the issue. Stick to fermented beverages.

I came to this realization by first visiting the Octoberfest in Munich. Here you see a quarter million inebriated individuals in a small fairground. At the fest, there a broad mood of good will and camaraderie. No civil unrest. Just a immense group of people having a good time, while consuming fermented alcohol.

On the flip side, I have also seen the nicest native Americans, and pacific islanders when sober, who turn into violent and dangerous individual upon consuming any amount of ethanol. They lack the inadvertent breeding mother nature provided in Europe.

It is only an hypothesis. My wife tells me it is just a twisted rationalization of my drinking.

So there it is. Cheers.

Ropati's hypthesis.

This is the fifth impeachment of a US president and the third in my lifetime ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
Buchanan - never got out of committee
Andrew Johnson - Senate failed to impeach by one vote
Nixon - Quit when proceeding hit House floor
Clinton - Acquitted by Senate by 10 votes for both perjury and obstruction

Now Trump's impending impeachment.

Of the three this will be the most divisive. .

From my experience with 2 prior impeachment offerings:
1. Nixon was a sociopath who ordered staff to commit crimes and considered his instructions to be acceptable presidential process. The facts of his actions, forced him to resign: de facto impeachment. Tricky Dick did not deserve a state funeral.

2. The Clinton impeachment was just political theater, and I hung on every word. Legally President Clinton committed no crime but morally he outrage a large percentage of the US population. The House knew they had no case, but the theater couldn't be ignored. The Clinton administration was hamstrung by the process. His actions diminished his administration. The historical lesson here is that impeachment proceedings can derail a second term president's agenda.

Where does a Trump impeachment go:

He is a greedy hardworking misogynist, who ran for president to improve his name recognition and with a few shady moves got the job.

Now he has got the job. First he rolls back taxes on the rich to help himself and his peers. (https://apnews.com/bbd344ade2b74e17a172ac5a371ba756) Next he damages the Affordable Care Act. (https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/06/17/529589.htm). Step 3, he want to build a wall with Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_wall) leading to a 35 day shutdown of the government. Now he has started a trade war with China. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/18/cramer-says-fedex-call-was-extremely-dispiriting-about-the-economy.html). Of the four, I hesitantly applaud the trade war, but know that most of them have just diminished my personal net worth.

What will be the outcome of this impeachment? This Democratic House will assuredly process an impeachment. With the present Senate, there is no way Trump will be impeached unless the evidence is unequivocal, which the transcript isn't. So impeachment proceeding but no impeachment. When will the proceeding take place - in an election year. More theater. How will this theater impact the elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

I think the Democrats believe that, it can't hurt their party by dragging Trump's history and reputation over the coals on national television. I for one hope that an enumeration of the POTUS deficiencies will result in a centralist filling the position.

The reality is that I am aging technologist who still thinks television matters when it doesn't. I have no social media footprint. I am aghast at the loss of traditional journalism and the rise of fake sensationalism inflaming the nation. I'm worried that trolls, foreign nations, and fake news will distort the impeachment dialogue, pushing the national will in a direction selected by a small party of well funded, technically savvy subversives. Just articulating this reality depresses me.

God bless America

I too have found noise cancelling headsets less than adequate.

I suffer from tinnitus and know from experience that any loud noise for an extended period of time will cause my ears to ring for days. I put buds in my ears, then put sound proofing earmuffs over my buds. Now I can dial the music or audionbook down to a comfortable level and not hear any of the crying babies, plane roar, or lawn mower noise. To top it off I save $200.

Proper earmuffs take up some luggage space, but they are "the right tool for the right job".(RCrumb, Mr Natural)

 

What do the Feds have?

This kid at 20 while a CS student at UT of A sets up a web server in college and give unmonitored access. Some assholes post encrypted (how was that decrypted) porn on the server. That is what the feds are holding him on. They don't have shit. It wasn't his porn and they know it. Add another $10k to his student loans to teach him a lesson.

What happened?
CIA was hacked and spectacularly. Got it. I would think it would take a team to accomplish this. How could you get this stuff out the door. One kid walks out with even code snippets after Snowden !? That is really hard to believe. I would have thought the doors were shut. Instead I would have expected a North Korean team pierced the security. They can't brag, so they post.

CIA investigators need to show progress, they find a kid who left CIA employment (with animosity for poor management, [imagine that]). They raid his place search all his stuff and find nothing. He was locked up and release on bail with instructions not to touch a computer. Give me a break. How can a millennial who makes a living on a computer, live without one. Busted for touching a computer and back in jail. His family is broke trying to defend their son.

Nothings moving so they sell him to the media as their prime suspect.

The Feds have nothing, so they are going to ruin another human being to protect their jobs. We wait another 45 days for charges and I bet you there will be no charges. They don't have squat and this kid rots.

I don't know the the guy, I have no connection to federal cyberspace, but if the entire weight of the federal prosecution system can't find anything but someone else's kiddy porn after holding him for a year, then the entire case is chick shit and Joshua Schulte is going to be burned at the stake by public opinion. My American Citizenship feels stained.

If anyone puts up a legit website to defend this kid and linked to his parents, they can have my $50.

This is the top search result for suicide on the web. The act is painless,inexpensive and generally safe. If you want to pass from this world, you should get acquainted with nitrogen masks.

Our atmosphere is 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% argon. We all breath in nitrogen with no impact. If we have too much carbon dioxide in our air our bodies try to pass the bad air and get rid of the CO2. To much CO2 in our lungs and we panic.

If we don't have oxygen, we get dizzy and pass out in a couple of breaths. Dead in 4 minutes. NO panic, rapid lose of consciousness. Death while unconscious.

I am not a fan of executions, but if the state wants to kill them, this is far more humane then lethal injection, electrocutions, hanging or firing squad.

They do need protocols. The nitrogen should be medical grade (ie not have any hydrocarbons) so once the act is finished spectators won't be impacted. The gas needs to be applied with a breathing mask, so the CO2 is removed with every breath and replaced with nitrogen to prevent any panic. The mask can be plumbed so the exhalations are removed such that they don't impact the O2 level in the room. There should be O2 level sensors in the room so any system failure would alert attending guards.

The execution can be designed such that the only the execution victim suffers oxygen deprivation. There is no need to remove oxygen from the whole room..

I am not sure anyone should be executed, but if they are going to be executed, I think this is the best way.

Listen to the RadioLab podcast:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91721-oops/

In particular the first segment: "Be Careful What You Plan For".

The Unibomber had his personality fried by the US government. If I had been tortured like that I am sure I would be just as asocial as Ted.

The whole story has implications for all the other torture done by the US Goverment in the "War on Terrorism".

Mat notes how Azure is handling the load after the first few hours:

http://www.matvelloso.com/2015...

Mat,

How is the load, now that you've been Slashdotted?

Is this still within a personal budget?

How about a report on how much this would cost the average Joe if he put it in the cloud and it went viral? Do you have a cost graph to go with the rest of the Azure Web App?

If you are going to chortle about the ease of Azure, perhaps you should be more specific about the pricing. I love the ease, but I fear the the cost.

Ropati

As has been posted earlier mastering differential equations is an exercise in symbol manipulation, but the underlying equations are really important.

Mathematics is an ordering of nature via symbols. In the ordering of nature, Newton realized that most equations had a second level of ordering that described the original equation. These equations of differentiation and integration were achieved by making differencing ratios and approaching a limit. Differential formula can be used in every field of science. They are used regularly in Computer Science usually as an algorithm to optimize a process.

Learning to manipulate these equations in your situation is probably unnecessary. Understanding what these equations are used for in the real world is very useful. I suggest you consult Google for each equations use in real world situations, if only to give you some mnemonic for learning this stuff. (You can probably consult Google for the DE problem answers too.) If you know how the equation/formula is used in the real world you might see a use for the same concept in a program, hence it is good for a degree in CS.

On the flip side, a good teacher should be able to make this stuff come alive and be far less dry then you make it out to be. Your academic career will flourish if you spend a lot more time researching your teachers for next semester. Consider a different institution if the student consensus is that there are no good math teachers where you toil.

Why use keypads?

I've learned to do verbal calculations with my Android phone. Just say the calculation you want into voice search and Google will return the results. There is no need to carry both a phone and a calculator, and speaking the formula is much easier than trying to use a miniature calculator keyboard.