Viewing profile — wtrk

You've read the linked article, wherein readers are informed that more than two thousand people (not a tiny number given that only 800 students were sitting for the exam at the sch…

Can I provide evidence to prove to you that my generalization is accurate? Can you prove to me that Antarctica exists? That there were ever dinosaurs? If I'm intent on not being co…

Cheating is not endemic within the gaokao system because, as a testing regime, it's excessively vulnerable to cheating. It's not any more cheatable than the SAT, GREs, or other sta…

> Should I, or anyone else, be fined for that? If you had been made aware, in advance, that there was a fine, then sure, you should be fined for being tardy. Are you pattern-matchi…

Instead of discouraging people from showing their care/regard for you (which, with a generous helping of social obligation, is what gift-giving is about), why not try to find ways …

Actually, no. If you give someone a delicious homemade chutney and that inspires them, they could gift you the following year with a marmalade or cherry confit or something else. Y…

People tend to be polite, especially when it comes to expressing thanks for a gift. One way to gauge the recipients' true enthusiasm would be to look at how many of them have follo…

I'm not a Futurama head, so I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost

I have read and enjoyed some of the other books already mentioned and would add: * Paul R. Halmos's "I Want to Be a Mathematician... an automathography: http://www.amazon.com/Want-…

If I look at the sky and it's blue and I tell you that it's blue but you're convinced that it's yellow, should I compromise and agree henceforth to tell people that the sky is gree…

If anyone would like a lifelogging camera right now, you can purchase a Vicon Revue (rebadged/locked version of Microsoft's SenseCam): http://www.viconrevue.com/product.html It has…

Indeed. But don't expect the sort of person whose battle cry w/re to RS is "But he's so unkempt!" to acknowledge that he tends to be correct.

The article heralds soy as having an uber-low glycemic index ... but doesn't note that soy appears to function as an endocrine disruptor in humans, something of concern for everyon…

Indeed. AFAICT from the linked post, there's no proof (e.g. visual sighting of a whale at any of the locations from which the sounds have emanated) that the source of the sounds is…

The (unframed) article: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-...

Thanks for posting this. A few seconds before the eight-minute mark, Vinge says that he expects the Singularity to occur before 2030 assuming that (A.) it is technologically possib…

I'm a year or two away from eligibility of permanent resident status here in HK and, while I obviously haven't hated living here enough yet to pull up stakes and move, I can't real…

"The Real Story of JPG Magazine" http://powazek.com/posts/534

I think that something like the Math Emporium could represent an excellent additional resource ... but using it to replace lectures altogether would seem, to me, to be a missed opp…

The NSF and NCTM are anti-AP? I googled and didn't turn up anything on this, but it's altogether possible that I didn't search on the right terms. Do you have any links?

Why was this deleted? [Posting as a reply to dangoldin's comment b/c I can't post a top-level reply.]

Sorry! I follow HN primarily through the RSS feed and a lot of posts/threads never show up there. Before posting, I did Google for polls on the subject of version control and didn'…

Which version control system are you using, right now, for your startup and/or for personal projects?

I'm looking for a way to quantitatively describe hierarchical directory/folder and file structures. Parameters that could be calculated and used to give a broad idea of the depth a…