The Lounge

I'm a translator and I have a text which I'm translating into English in which someone is mentioning an obviously outdated term for a computer department in a company, so I need something equally outdated (if there is such a thing) in English. This is from the 70s. I guess most companies refer to such a dept. as their IT dept. nowdays, but was there some different term in the 70s (or older)?

I want to know whether wit is a creative byproduct. The clever seem to be witty. Or is wit a summary told in a particular way.? It is said "Brevity is soul of wit". Of course. Long and windy explanations are considered to be deceitful. I am not a witty guy though. I am quite comfortable being sensible. Where do we place "wit" in importance.?

Very sad news that Hans Rosling died this morning in Uppsala One of the world's most passionate and effective communicators and an utter joy to listen to. He changed the way I see statistics and opened new perspectives on understanding poverty and its interaction with education, sex, and nation. The Joy of Stats is a masterpiece and the epitome of great tv - I would urge people to watch it when it is rebroadcast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

Is anyone aware of any studies (or maybe you know from your own experience) that would settle the question of whether it is cheaper to turn your heat off over night or just lower it?

We have another 10 years more or less before the actual unmanned probe (hopefully) reaches Jupiter's moon Europa. NASA/JPL have a mission team assembled and a penciled in launch date of 2020's. To help pass the time I highly recommend this movie. It is a faux documentry of a manned mission to Europa. It is on Netflix and DVD and maybe some other streaming channels I'm not sure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report

Do you consider this division to be valid? Math, physics and chemistry are usually considered to be "hard" sciences while sociology, economics, law and political science are considered to be "soft". Anectodal evidence says that hard sciences are more intellectually demanding, harder to master and at college level they have entry requirements and higher dropout rates - does data back this claim up? I have even seen economics being classified as a pseudoscience... by people with academic background in economics (one of them also had a minor in pure math).

So the company I've been working at has been wearing me down. I recently graduated college in May with a BS in Biotechnology, and started my first job in June. Still working at the same company. My company makes point-of-care kits for infectious diseases..nothing cutting edge. I work with several scientists as my job is R&D. I don't know if it's the private industry or whatever, but the people I work with seem to shrug any kind of science off their shoulders. Trying to go deep into thinking to solve a problem is quickly dismissed with "it's not my job/ we don't do that here", or no solutions are really investigated...just make the product "work" enough. Any on…

UK: Expedition days yester, now leak, reach be core codes. USA: Energy expeditions yester, reach be combined travel. Russia: Aliens Milkyway? Reach be take Ali plant feet core earth=Moon. Deutschland: Shell well engineered, jealous my detail pierces? Autobahn. Sorry, I prefer eccentric What brought those nations success & can't be matched by others My piece toward peace

SHouldn't the editor autosave my post? Where can I find it?

Interesting 'photo' in a recent German magazine about European centres. Any ideas on how the trick works?

is it very expensive to see doctors in USA ? How much difference does it make with or without health insurance ?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-have-less-than-1000-in-savings-2015-10-06 Published: Dec 23, 2015 10:01 a.m. ET less than $1,000 in savings, almost no savings ....... true or false ?

I don't know squat about wall moisture so bear with me. In my shower the tiles go up to my shoulders so when I take a shower the wall above the tiles invariably gets sprayed with water. The fella who painted the walls I THINK painted it with something that supposedly keeps the moisture out of the walls. Is this something to be concerned about?

For all those who actually publish academic papers and are increasingly frustrated and annoyed by the epidemic of pay-to-publish / open access pseudo-journals; here is a lovely proof that sad huge number of these journals are vanity publishing of the worse sort. https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-laced-anti-spam-paper/ I won't post screen shots because of the profanity

Hello all. In joining this forum, it is my goal to socially entrench myself within this community. I want to learn math. I finished college algebra and am having difficulty motivating myself to study further. I hope that those here would enjoy explaining to me where, how, and why each of the different mathematical disciplines are rewarding or useful. I want to learn physics. I want to learn the rulebook to this game of life. I want to understand what we can achieve and what is currently beyond our grasp. I want to learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning. I want to, at the very least, be informed about the most recent developments in computer science a…

What do you think, would it be possible to make a spray can that contains DNA samples from hundreds (or better, thousands) human individuals? Would such spray be any effective to mask an earlier presence of an individual in some room? If it works, what would be legal concerns about manufacturing such spray cans? Should people volunteer to have their DNA sample canned? Would there be a health risk: is it possible to somehow sterilize those DNA samples?

As a former PhD and postdoc, I was so used to the language of scientific papers, which is often convoluted and aimed at specialists that I found it difficult to adjust my level to normal conversation and bored my wife and other family members with the results of my, no doubt highly important, cogitations. When I started teaching, I thought I could aim high and let the children rise up to the level I expected linguistically. It failed completely! As a consequence, after a month I had to re-adjust to "student speak" and, 18 years later, it seems to work, most of the time. However, in this august and most- esteemed science forum, I notice that specialists quit…

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MEMBERS OF SFN Hope there will be many more interesting discussions in this new year........ - Sriman :-)

I think we're half way to reaching this inflection point. The time when we have 100% energy efficiency, 100% of diseases cured, 100% automation, 100% food production, 100% technical transparency, 100% repair..there will be no jobs for scientists, doctors, cooks, mechanics, specialists, designers, engineers, secretaries, developers, financial planners. Artists, actors, musicians, the whole lot will become the doctor and lawyer of yesterday. Science will become a thing of the past, an archaic method that has no purposeful application, barely enough for "education". I feel like we're beginning to feel the early stages of this, with smart phones, and other technologies an…

Instead of April first, PBS television showed today as news, the invention of a domestic hydrogen generator by a Greek inventor, based on resonance to split water... Very well made prank with all the flavor of being breaking news, with the presence of scientists evaluating the contraption at the inventorś home, and surrounding details of the story. Except in the U.S., the pranks day is December 28. [ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/episode/pbs-newshour-full-episode-dec-26-2016/ ]

On this day, long ago, was born a man who would help lead the world from darkness. Happy birthday Isaac Newton.

To all the community here, Merry Christmas.

Suppose you are faced with a mysterious machine that has 2 buttons on it. Button A has a 100% chance of giving you $100 Button B has an X% chance of giving you $1.000.000 What is the minimum value of X that would make you choose button B? I can hardly imagine anyone would go for the mathematical solution. For example, if you gave A = 100% for $100, and button B = 50% for $202 to a non-pragmatic math machine, it would choose B, while around 100% of humans would choose B. P.S. Obviously, it is implied you can only press the button once, so no B spamming until it rains money. (Or A spamming, depending on the value of x )

Time Continuum (Sci-fi Riddle). In the time continuum, you can go forward, or backward in time! If you go back in time, you change the future; and when going forward in time, you leave parts of the past unchanged (you're missing). You speak to four characters on your way to the Time Continuum. The first, second and third characters, do not tell you their names; but the fourth character, tells you it's name, 'Time 4', and after, you're in the Time Continuum. Time 4 advises you, "change as little as possible". Question: How do you escape (or normalize) the Time Continuum, at this point?

I'm worried and afraid of taking selfies and posting them on facebook because I'm afraid someone (e.g. my enemies) might download and steal my photos and Photoshop them in adult pornographic sites or personal vendetta blogs online. Is this a legitimate fear and is it enough reasonable grounds to not have facebook, instagram or any other form of social media where the main attraction is sharing online electronic photos? What's everyone's opinions about this? I have had friends' facebook accounts hacked or duplicated through the creation of fake accounts. Anyone ever had similar experiences? If someone managed to download your photo and they know your full name, t…