imatfaal

Abortion isn't illegal in the USA. Wade v Roe was the landmark case you need to read up; of course, there are limits to legal abortion and different rules for different trimesters of pregnancy but abortion is legal in the USA. Some states have passed law that in the absence (overturning or partial overturning) of Wade v Roe will re-criminalize abortion, and other have passed law that will legalise; but these laws remain in abeyance until the SCOTUS judgment is, in some way, weakened. There is constant talk of Wade v Roe being re-visited, but the ruling still stands as binding precedent.

 

The Kenyan constitution has now been passed and the international reaction to it has been good; both politically and economically. Kenya needed a new constitutional settlement, the aftermath of the 2007 elections proved that. For the world's dominant democracy to abstain from comment and encouragement (and let's face it 2 million bucks is a lot to you and me, but peanuts in the overall scale of things) because of a small section of the overall plan would have been madness. Saysumthn's idea of eugenics through abortion is mindless of the numbers; allowing (or actively encouraging) east Africa to destabilize is far more 'effective'. The crimes perpetrated in and against sub-Saharan Africa are numerous, bloody, and heinous; from a humanist point of view there are more important things to worry about than codifying abortion laws into the constitution.

From looking at the equations - i would guess that d has to be an angular distance; that is it say it is the angle in radians made by the two end points of the journey and the centre of the earth. So if you divide your journey distance by radius of earth - you will get d; which by definition is also an angle in radians. I am loath to look in detail at the equations and work out if they are correct, cos it spoils the fun; but I think from quick look d has to be journey/radius

 

I thought about this on the train home - if I had to do it from scratch I am pretty sure that I could rearrange the cosine rule of spheres to get a formulation that would work. perhaps try looking at that rule on wiki or mathworld and see how you do

the LHC at Swansea

...

Swansea is right at the heart of the experiment

but Cern is in Geneva!! Someone get on the phone quick - the LHC is warping space time - South Wales and the Alps are now in superposition! Panic - wormholes folding space time continuum!

 

Sorry.

 

Just read the article on line - one of those amazing pieces that deal in cutting edge research but can provide a fair amount of understanding and insight for the committed amateur. Prof Charlton and his colleagues should be proud

Publically available abstract of Nature article from which this story arises is here http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09610.html

There is a common concept that states that we have only a few drawers in our mind. When those drawers are full of knowledge, you must keep it safe from invasion of useless random information. As a consequence, people well educated avoid or refuse information upon subjects that have nothing to do with their beloved discipline. IMHO it is mental sclerosis. There is always room for new knowledge, drawers are never full, and you can create in your mind as many drawers you whish, the only thing you need is interest. If you are not interested in the first place, you will never learn.

 

 

There might be room - but there isn't time enough. Whilst our brains might be able to cope with a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, an appreciation of the finer details of Proust, the machinations and workings of financial derivatives, and the reciprocal complexity of J S Bach's fugues - it is very difficult to be an expert in all four at the same time, purely because of the heavy-duty reading and cogitation required. It is a sad fact of our world that we spend around 7 hours sleeping 8 hours working and have to fit everything else into the 9 hours left. I am not saying we shouldn't try! But to be a real expert, most of us mere mortals have to focus our temporal resources on to a bare minimum of subjects - the alternative is we risk mediocrity in all things.

 

 

Just re-read the post and it half looks as if I am claiming to be an expert in the above areas - to clarify, that's more a distant and hopeless ambition rather than a reality

to be brutal Walshy - if you can't understand these basics please don't go connecting up electrical supplies to water. water and electricity don't really mix. there are lots of basic tutorials on the web. if you have a particular reason to be electrolysing water then maybe some hobby sites will give more usage specific guidance - but its really not something to just try out for a laugh

Alan - what's your question? and have you plugged in the figures and got a reasonable answer? Pick two points on google earth - use measure tool to get rough distance and angle and check the equations. if you cant get that to work - you don't understand the equations or they are wrong

Alan - I dont have time right now to go through but I am not sure you do have the rught idea. Tony is of course correct - there has to be some reference to the size of the world. At a quick glance I think d is a distance measured as a ratio of distance travelled over radius of earth. this for small angles will give the radian angle at centre of earth. you will note that your equation has sin and cos d - this only really makes sense if they are angles.

 

Will have a look later - or maybe you can work through an example and see if the sums tally.

Alan

 

this looks a useful set of ideas http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/sets/select/dm_lat_long.html

 

one of which might help

- the famous (is/ought) problem = should be/ has to be . The point is that you agree to be bound by the document upon which you have appended it; and that the signature is personal to you.

I hope it was Oscar that said it first - everything I have read about and by GBS makes me think he was an insufferable bighead and not fun to be around; whereas Oscar would be a bit of a laugh, if a little dangerous

But, dear Oscar was "a bit of a one" for recycling other people's bons mots; when Whistler made a particularly clever remark Wilde reportedly said "I wish I had said that", Whistler retorted "You will, Oscar, you will"

Your real life signature has to be your name...

 

 

who is gonna check and how? It's a scribble on a piece of paper that you confirm is yours and by which you affirm your agreement to the preceding, famously it could be just a mark or cross. As an example - my father's signature was the forename he used followed by a squiggle; this forename was a nickname that he acquired in the air force and never changed - it had no 'legal' connexion with him whatsoever. As a second example; I receive a huge amount of correspondence with the company name "signed" at the bottom - lots of law firms adopt this procedure

 

 

It only make sense that your signature is some recognizable "depiction" of your name and something that you can be proud of. I've heard that European companies tend to ask for a sample of handwriting for personality analysis from prospective employees. IS this still true? American companies do not do this, but IMO, Americans think the appearance of your signature on your job application says something about yourself.

 

Regarding forgery, the more continuous the flow of lines without the pen leaving the paper, the more difficult it is to forge. Breaks in a signature allow forgers to stop, compare their work with the original signature, and continue on. IIRC, some public people may have two signatures: one for serious documents and one for public letters, autographs etc.

 

IMO, truly important signatures (checks, contracts, mortgages, promissory notes (IOUs), wills (holographic or not), pre-nuptials, etc) should be understandable ... that someone reading it will know the person's name, and that a bunch of squiggles and slashes are easy to forge.

 

IMO, know your pens for serious stuff: never use erasable ink, and use a fine-tip felt pen or a gel pen instead of a regular ballpoint, so that the ink actually soaks into the paper (important when it comes to the payee and the amount written on a check).

 

Frank Abagnale of "Catch Me If You Can" fame turned from a life of crime to an equally world-famous career as professional security advisor. Here's what he says about check fraud and identity theft.

 

 

Ewmon - you're correct that some companies will ask for handwriting, I was, but then my company is basically American so your second point is not quite right. Whilst agreeing that the more continuous and flowing the signature is, the harder to forge; it is by no means the case that the signature must be readable. All important documents will have a signature block which will contain name, (position), date, and signature - the really important ones have witness sections as well. There is no way you could work out my surname from my signature, yet it is acceptable for setting up of trusts and companies, signing of contracts, and confirmations of transfers. I know of a few individuals for whom it was impossible to tell which alphabet they using in their signature - let alone what it said.

 

To the OP - people shouldn't judge you on things like your signature, but it is human nature to do so. It is not necessary to be fancy, nor flamboyant but it should be consistent, fairly complex, and second nature to you.

 

And final point - if you think your signature is going to be forged - then do something about it! fancy curvy signatures in real ink pens are no protection - take precautions, understand the circumstances that your bank, company, lawyers etc will accept instructions under a plain signature and change them!

How GBS would react to being equated with a half English/half American aristocratic demogogue I shudder to think - but his reaction would be scornful and witty!

Just reading through the last few days of this thread - BTW "two peoples separated by a common language." - was George Bernard Shaw.

Probability 1st one is corner piece = 8/125

3 other cubes touch corner, so probability of second touching first = 3/124

Therefore, the probability that it will be a corner piece, touching another, is (8/125)*(3/124) = 24/15500

 

Then, just do the same for edge pieces (24 of them, each can touch 4 others), face pieces, (54 of them, each can touch 5 others), and interior ones (27 of them, each can touch 6 others). Since any one of those situations satisfies the conditions, just add those probabilities together.

 

[(8/125)*(3/125)]+[(24/125)*(4/124)]+[(54/125)*(5/124)]+[(27/125)*(6/124)]

 

Unless I made a mistake somewhere, it should be 432/15500, or 108/3875.

 

Your slip up was here

 

8 corners ( 4 per face each shared by 3 faces 24/3=8) ,

36 side pieces (12 per face - each shared by two faces 72/2=36),

54 mid pieces (9 per face), and

27 interior pieces (3*3*3)

8+36+54+27 =125

 

However! You cannot touch the interior faces - unless this is some new form of touch that involves my finger going straight through a solid object. Any answer that deals with internal cubes seems to me a bit screwy - the question clearly stated

Like a Rubik's cube

- and Rubik's cubes do not have internal cubes, that's where the mechanism is. Therefore all sums should work on the 98 cubes that you can actually touch.

 

[(8/98)*(3/97)]+[(36/98)*(4/97)]+[(54/98)*(4/97)] = (8.3+36.4+54.4)/(97.98) = 384/9506 = 0.040396

Leeder Bee - try Birkbeck - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/. Birkbeck is purely for mature students (at present), but mature starts quite young as Rhiaden says above. There are practically no entry requirements, apart from interviews and assessments; the degrees are all internal University of London (so not mickey mouse) and in some departments they are world respected. The great advantage over Open (which is great as well) is that the Birkbeck courses are not distance learning - they are normal attendance-based, but in the evenings. It's a shattering schedule, work 9am-5pm, college , 6pm-9pm, and study every free minute; but there is a great social side that will provide the necessary peer-support and beer-support! If you want more info about it drop me a pm (there are private messages on this forum aren't there?) - I studied undergrad and post-grad at Birkbeck

Doublerainbow - done your survey. Tiny hint: your age ranges are screwed - 30 and 40 appear in two categories; if I noticed it your teacher/marker probably will as well.

Rigney - you started typing the sentence "I do not see how anyone...." without a space after the link. Therefore if you click the link it error 404s because it has :I appended to the end or the url. I realise I was more than a little cryptic...

You have a good one too

For those of you that have been following the Registers PARIS mission - updates and pictures galore here.

 

PARIS page Congrats to all involved.

PARIS involved building a paper plane that could be launched from a weather balloon at high altitude.

Yes - I am really against the death sentence for these people - without even opening the link I am opposed to them being condemned to death. I am not going to enter the debate - mainly because these are deeply ingrained personal ethics that do not really translate to a forum debate; but I did want to let you know that many people have thought long and hard about cases such as these and remain opposed to any form of judicial death sentence for any crime.

 

 

PS you might want to edit the link - your ":I" are too close and forming part of the url and stop automatic opening of link

Michel - yes, to an extent. But I can guarantee that the electric circuits (whatever they are doing) in the bose headphones they give out on american airlines make a noticeable difference on the roar of the jet. They have a switch to turn on the power so you can flip from on to off (ie from just physical soundproofing to active in addition) - and whilst voices are almost unchanged (which tallies with your quote above) the low drone of the engines is considerable reduced.

.

I am afraid "counter waves" are not feasable.

 

 

Not feasible - quite agree. But are they possible, (money no object)? They work in headphones - Bose and Sennheiser make a fortune selling noise cancelling headphones because they work. Could not an array of microphones around bed allow a fairly accurate model of the incoming sound waves to be made and feed information to processor to produce signal for speakers to create noise-cancelling out of phase sound.

 

 

Demonio - but surely the dark matter is not causing expansion. dark matter was predicted to make up for the fact that there is too little apparent mass in orbiting galaxies within large clusters. dark matter is the unknown and unseen matter that makes up the difference between the measurable mass of the universe and the calculations. now dark energy is a different matter - that is an intellectual construct to stand in for the fact that we don't understand the large scale large time expansion rate of the universe