I have learned three of life’s lessons from this series: (1) in the end, you will be judged on the integrity of your mission, whether or not your mission was successful; (2) you can always outsmart a computer; and (3) never be the first person to investigate a glowing blob of plasma on an alien planet.
Happy anniversary, Star Trek. Live long and prosper.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
While for the other barbarians and for us there were lavishly prepared dishes served on silver platters, for Attila there was only meat on a wooden plate . . . Gold and silver goblets were handed to the men at the feast, whereas his cup was of wood. His clothing was plain and differed not at all from that of the rest, except that it was clean. Neither the sword that hung at his side nor the fastenings of his barbarian boots nor his horse’s bridle was adorned, like those of the other Scythians, with gold or precious stones.
Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, Oxford University Press, p. 320
Evidence that global warming has stopped
The conclusion:
So, in the end, the evidence that global warming has stopped is … lacking.
Irish Class, July 22, 2013
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Irish Class, July 8, 2013
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What does the B stand for in Benoit B. Mandelbrot?
We have had some chilly months here in Minnesota, but ….
Earth had third warmest May on record (tie with 1998 and 2005)
The global temperature has been above average now 339 straight months (more than 28 years). The last time global temperatures were below average (February, 1985), the Chevrolet Celebrity was among the top selling cars.
This story has received a lot of coverage in the last few days, even extending to Jay Leno’s monologue. Understandably, there is a lot of concern about the civil liberties implications. But there is also another question, answered by Corey Chivers: How likely is the NSA PRISM program to catch a terrorist?
We don’t really know anything about how PRISM works (NSA = Never Say Anything), but with some plausible assumptions we can estimate the answer. Suppose
Using Bayes’ rule, Chivers shows that only 1 in 10,102 of the people flagged as suspects will actually be a terrorist!
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From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 