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Try printf("%0.2f", num) (replace the 2 in 0.2 with however many digits you wish to display)

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html Well, not really... but Michael Crichton has attempted to relate the Drake Equation to the mathematics underlying climate science, specifically in regard to making outrageous predictions about the future...

Neither do I. Guess I can't even agree with Pangloss without him taking issue.

*sigh* Of course you did, why bother linking quotes which haven't yet been quoted, clearly it's to make the same point you did...

It's interesting that the writers are so acutely aware of the changing media landscape... Hulu launched recently as part of a collaborative effort between a number of different networks/corporations, primarily NBC and Fox but also Viacom and AOL/Time Warner. The site contains a fully legal, ad supported source for streaming television delivered over the web (albeit currently closed beta, but I have an account ha ha!) Currently the writers receive no residuals for shows delivered over systems like these, or countless IPTV systems springing up. While as a professional programmer I find the whole idea of residuals kind of odd (I don't receive residuals for software I've written in the past), I've had the opportunity to receive stock in companies I work for, and that provides continuing value for past work. Writers don't typically have that option. I can certainly see where they're coming from.

Oddly enough, the administration and its neocon cohorts have been playing up a nuclear scenario in Iran, while Pakistan possesses both real, tangible, demonstrated nuclear weapons and an unstable government. Oh, and America counts Pakistan as an ally...

*boggle* No, wrong Yet you'll happily state that water vapor causes global warming. Arguments like that are the reason climate scientists generally eschew the phrase "global warming" Increases in anthropogenic gasses, particularly CO2, are primarily responsible for recent (at least the past 30 years) increases in global mean surface temperature. Who's doing that? That smells of a strawman.

That belies the fact that there's an editing mode for the language I'm using (Erlang) written for Emacs, as well as an elisp binding to Erlang's read-eval-print loop (REPL) that allows me to quickly jump to both compilation problems and errors encountered in the shell. I've never seen REPL bindings for vim, and if they exist for certain languages (which I've never seen) I can pretty much assure you they don't exist in Erlang. Another feature that's immensely useful is the ability to evaluate the current buffer (M-x eval-current-buffer) or evaluate a single expression (C-x C-e). I have no idea how to do this in vim, or if it's even possible (at least with Erlang) Some other features, like tags (specifically exuberant tags), are available for both. While I certainly enjoy vim's end-user experience better, it won't change the fact that Emacs simply has more features I find useful. That said, the main downside to Emacs seems to be the learn one key sequence, forget another one problem.

Hmmm... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314203,00.html

Sooo... you have no trouble putting words in my mouth... Perhaps people like that guy are the reason workfare doesn't work...

Well, that was the point of the thread... Do you think workfare works or not?

This video explains the situation nicely:

Well, let me put it this way: I'm a contributing member of society now. If I worked for 27 years then developed Parkinsons to the point I couldn't hold my head straight, I'd want food stamps and medicare. I certainly wouldn't want to work. I'd spend most of my time trying to keep my quality of live above abominally suicidal. Nice You'll certainly disagree, but I think this guy is a great example of the kind of people who do need food stamps and medicare... regardless of what you think about his attitude. Rudy's naive anti-"entitlement" attitude belies those who are actually in need of society's help. And I'm still not sure what the caller said so offensive... "I'm sick, and you cut off my food stamps and medicare" "LOLZ I think you need a shrink"

Yep, that's exactly what I was getting at. Sorry for leaving it vague in the OP. I do really like what Smolin keeps describing as an "evolving network of relationships." I guess originally when he was developing LQG it was a fixed lattice structure which had a number of problems, so he moved to Penrose's spin networks. It's easy to use arxiv.org to find titles and abstracts that sound interesting to me but... I'm afraid those are both over my head Now that is interesting... The use of fractals is about the only way I can see continuous space making sense. Smolin's argument seemed to be that continuous space would necessitate infinite information while black hole thermodynamics essentially entailed black holes to contain finite information. With something like a fractal it would seem you could have both... What's your personal take on the whole thing?

How, by calling him a criminal? Maybe he shouldn't respond by questioning the guy's mental health.

Are you kidding? He can't even hold his head straight. What kind of job is he going to do?

Excuse the Le Tigre inspired thread title... A man recently called Rudy Giuliani on the failures of his "workfare" program... and called him literally, on a radio program. Under the program his access to food stamps and medicare had been cut off. Giuliani laughed him off and questioned his mental health: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMzPvSpJ1Z8 After 27 years of being a working member of society, he developed Parkinsons, which rendered him wheelchair bound and incapable of performing his job. This is sickening. To quote Le Tigre again: F*ck Giuliani. He's such a f*cking jerk...

Lee Smolin argues pretty convincingly that space is discrete at the Planck scale. He does so in the book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, where he claims that each of the three roads (string theory, loop quantum gravity, and black hole thermodynamics) all paint a picture of discrete space. The string theory angle was an interesting one as to my knowledge string theory still used a continuous spatial background, but Smolin elucidated me as to the idea that strings are comprised of "string bits" which are discrete. I was wondering if there are any theories which specifically require space to be continuous and are incompatible with a discrete approach.

You're asking about perception, which is quite a bit different from encoding a sensory input. The geniculate nucleus processes data directly from the optic nerve before it moves onto the visual cortex. Perception would occur at a much later point in terms of visual processing.

The Democratics, eh?

That says nothing about what they were convicted of or whether the convictions had anything to do with terrorism. Unless you can demonstrate that you're committing a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, i.e.: The Patriot Act has helped convict individuals of crimes Those individuals had terrorist connections Therefore, the Patriot Act has prevented terrorism Has it? Can you point out someone who was convicted of plotting a legitimate terrorist threat? Furthermore, those all point to successes of inter-agency information sharing. That's not unconstitutional. Can you point out someone who was convicted using provisions of the Patriot Act which are of questionable constitutionality? To take that slippery slope the other direction, we should start arresting people who make any negative comments about our country, because they might represent potential terrorists.

The specific structure of the neocortical hierarchy is known, however, specifically that sensory and motor areas are on the bottom, the hippocampus is on top, and the interconnecting structures which comprise the hierarchy are neocortical columns, with mesh-like interaction through the thalamus in the form of thalamo (and corticothalamocortical) loops. If you ascribe to what Hawkins' is saying, the same type of structures which wiggle your pinky are the same type of structures which process the painful sensation of stubbing your elbow are the same type of structures which appreciate classical music. Neocortical columns handle high level sense processing, motor control, and perception. These structures pass unrecognized patterns up the neocortical hierarchy and propagate predictions back down it. What about vision? Scientists have managed to reconstruct scenes using electrical probes implanted in the geniculate nucleus region of a cat's thalamus: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/19/18/8036.pdf I have much more hope for passive, non-invasive brain/computer interfaces. They're beginning to reach a point where they can start being commercialized: http://www.gtec.at/products/g.MOBIlab/gMOBIlab.htm If you ascribe to Vernor Vinge's whole Singularity idea, brain/computer interfaces are a road to superhumanity.

Can you point to just one of these supposed 200 cases and demonstrate how it was a legitimate terrorist threat against the United States of America? Okay, let's ignore the founding fathers for a second and fast forward for a second... "We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power and for their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."

So, in absence of evidence for either hypothesis, a somewhat reasonable one is on par with a totally absurd one? I guess string theory should be treated with equal skepticism to the idea that the universe is made out of spaghetti?

How many of those were terrorists? Take away civil rights and finding criminals is a lot easier. Of course, so does persecuting the innocent... I'm sorry, Conservapedia isn't an authority on anything. I mean, here's their statistics: http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Statistics Enough said... How many of these alleged terrorist organizations were planning an attack on the United States? Someone like me would say zero, someone like you would probably say WE CAN NEVER BE SURE...