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It's not often mentioned as a reason to learn Esperanto, but the literature of Esperanto is really quite wonderful and makes learning the language well worth it. I've only read a handful of books in Esperanto so far, but it has been an excellent way to read first-hand accounts of people writing about their own cultures and experiences.

Last night I finished reading Vikitmoj (Victims) by Julio Baghy. The book is a semi-autobiographical story of the author's experiences in a Siberian prisoner of war camp after WWI. It's a fascinating glimpse into life in these camps and how the different populations (POWs, soldiers, peasants, Jews, bolsheviks, etc.) all interacted with each other. As an example, one practice Baghy writes of is a kind of "duel" that the POWs would sometimes engage in between each other. (In the book it came out that one of the POWs had been sleeping with the wife of another of the POWs back before they had been captured.) They weren't allowed weapons, so they had to be a little creative. They would draw lots and the loser would have to provoke the soldiers on one of their marches so that the soldiers would beat him (sometimes to death).

If you learn any national language, you'll be able to read people in a handful of cultures write about themselves in their own words. But one of the unique features of Esperanto is that after you learn it, you can read the works of people in cultures all across the globe without the need of a translator as intermediary. (Of course the subset of people in a culture who write in Esperanto is not representative of the general population, but it's better than nothing!) In particular, many of these works haven't been translated into English (or any other language for that matter), so you would have no way to read them otherwise anyway!

> The nexus with reality of that "100 mile" figure is that it represents the limit of the distance at which the USG can establish a permanent checkpoint --- at which CBP is allowed only to stop people who have actually crossed the border.

That's not been true in my experience. I've done some traveling in the southwest and have been regularly stopped at these checkpoints. They are on U.S. highways far from the border and they stop everybody, not people actually crossing the border or who have recently crossed the border.

Now, it is true that their search powers are more limited at these checkpoints than at the border, but they do have the power to stop everyone who passes through. (Whether or not they have the power to question you doesn't seem to be settled, but to try to exercise your right to remain silent is a risky endeavor. Some civil libertarians who have tried to exercise this right have ended up in the hospital.) Which court case are you referring to?

I imagine buses would be much cheaper and more prevalent when you don't have to pay for a driver.

It is very much the prosecutor's call to make. Prosecutors aren't (at least in theory) supposed to charge the accused with as many crimes as possible. It is the job of the prosecutor to ensure that justice is served, whatever that might mean given the facts before them. Sometimes that might mean throwing the book at the accused, but in other cases it might mean dropping the case even when it is clear that the accused really did break the law. Unfortunately prosecutors are rewarded for successful convictions, so it is not surprising that prosecutors act as though their job is to charge the accused with as many crimes as possible.

Website seems down, so here's a cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vXdZ-Ls...

I would argue it's more a vestige from Protestantism. The Catholic Church has always been fine with alcohol. There's been a lot of theological debate among Catholics about marijuana recently and and least some have concluded that as long as it's legal and done in moderation there's nothing morally objectionable. In the words of Hilaire Belloc:

  Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
  There’s always laughter and good red wine.
  At least I’ve always found it so.
  Benedicamus Domino!

Small nitpick: the Trappists are not the only Western order that practices the "vow" of silence. There are a couple of other orders which are smaller than the Trappists: the Carthusians, the Hieronymites, and the Monks of Bethelehem. (There might be more.)

The Carthusians, in particular, are quite rigorous and notoriously reclusive. Only family members are allowed to visit them, and even then, only once per year. There was a documentary made about them in 2005. The director asked the charterhouse if it would be possible for him to film them in 1984. The monks responded that they needed some time to think about it and replied sixteen years later that he could film them if he wanted. The Trappists, Carthusians, and the Catholic Church more generally, live on a very different timescale than we are accustomed to. Reading these interviews from them is wonderful.

There is, in fact, quite a science of producing foods that have pleasing tastes. They call the optimum combination of flavors the "bliss point":

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...

My understanding was that the claim was that the 10,000 hours rule was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for mastery. So any world class golfer will have played for at least ~10,000 hours, but not every golfer who has played for at least ~10,000 hours will be world class. The only way the hypothesis could be falsified is if Dan becomes a world class golfer in less than ~10,000 hours.

When writing factorials you would want to write (9!)! since 9!! is actually a different operation (the double factorial). 9!! = 9 x 7 x 5 x 3 x 1, so 9!! is less than 9!.

I've started using a semi-random method. I pick a category, take a random page, and then pick whatever book I want from the twenty books on that page. I've enjoyed it so far. It gets me to read books that I may have put off for a while, but because I'm picking the top one out of twenty they're books that I really want to read.

Super cool! It would be awesome to see something like this for books and movies, too!

I don't know. I personally see it as being more like going to watch a pianist perform. Sure, I can play a piano piece and it will be good fun and a fulfilling experience. But a professional pianist who has devoted their life to the art can do things that I am not capable of, and it's wonderful to watch. Likewise, sometimes it's just amazing to watch professional athletes showcase what the human body is capable of.

As a side note, "Agua de Culo," one of the brands offered during the Penn & Teller experiment, translates as "Ass Water."

If you squint, some of those districts look like Julia sets. But I guess that if you were selecting districts that have low compactness you would necessarily be selecting for districts that look fractal-like.

True, but the expenditures of the Vatican are only ~$300 million [1]. The Vatican doesn't just spend money from other countries. (The only exception is Peter's Pence, which is an annual collection taken up in late June where Catholics can give directly to the Vatican.)

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Yes, that's correct. However, the difference in damage that that will do is still not clear. It's possible that skin tissue is more susceptible to damage than other kinds of tissue. (Or perhaps it's less susceptible.) Moreover, low-energy X-rays may do different kinds of damage than relatively high-energy X-rays or cosmic rays. Just looking at rem ignores a lot of variables about the long-term biological effects of the ionizing radiation.

There's still a difference between the kind of radiation exposure that occurs during a flight compared to during a screening. My understanding is that radiation exposure during a flight is due to cosmic rays which are equally likely to cause damage throughout the body. The X-rays used by the TSA are at lower energy and are deposited almost exclusively in the skin. Since the volume of skin is much less than the total volume of your body, the radiation dose that your skin is receiving from the TSA is much larger than the dose during a flight.

The Esperanto translation the newspaper provides is fairly literal: "Ho! Vi kaprido!" "Kapro" is the Esperanto noun for "goat," and the "-id" suffix means "child." So it is translating "kid" as "a baby goat." Is there a better translation? I guess it depends on whether "kid" implied a baby goat or a human child back in 1909. If it meant a human child (which I'm guessing), then a better translation might be "injo," which is the affectionate form of "ido," "ino," or (putting them together) "idino."

Here in Ohio towing fees are regulated by state law. Some towing companies were trying to get around the maximum fees they could charge by tacking on an extra "administrative fee" just because. Fortunately a judge recently ruled that the idea that these fees were legal was "ludicrous." [1]

Even still, tens of thousands of people were charged these fees and many of them will probably never see their money back. Not to mention the fact that having to pay these fees invariably screwed over some fraction of the victims and led to them losing their jobs. Just getting their money back won't fix that.

Luckily the towing fees here in Ohio seem pretty cheap compared to the Bay Area. I had my car towed once (illegally) and it came out to around $130. But towing companies here aren't required to accept credit cards or checks, so they don't. It is cash only and they don't make change, which is especially aggravating given that the total always works out to some odd amount like $134.72. That's perhaps the sleaziest part of that sleazy business.

Fortunately a bill was recently passed aiming to reduce predatory towing practices. [2] Among the changes it's going to bring is to provide a streamlined process to dispute towing charges; victims of illegal towing can collect double the towing fees. Victims of towing will now also be able to retrieve items from there car without needing to pay a fee. And the bill will now (at last) require that towing companies accept credit cards.

[1] http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/04/10/two...

[2] http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/03/20/hou...

Just be careful about botulism! You can mitigate the risk by straining the oil or keeping it in the fridge.

Sorry I misinterpreted your question! Just a little background -- the reason symptoms-based works is because it's only possible to conceive for ~12-24 hours per cycle. The uterus can sustain sperm for a period of ~2-5 days, so if there's no sperm in the uterus for this ~6 day period, pregnancy is not possible. There are several indicators that signal the beginning of this period: basal body temperature, cervical mucus consistency, and cervical position. To get the best readings, however, these measurements need to be taken immediately after waking up. Moreover, you need a long period of readings (> 6 months) in order to be able to correctly interpret the measurements. I'm assuming that perfect use in this context consists of taking these measurements consistently over a period of at least six months.

The perfect use failure rate for symptoms-based fertility awareness is (according to Wikipedia anyway) 0.6% per woman per year. (So, 1 woman in 167 per year.) The typical use failure rate is 1.8%, or 1 woman in 56.

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive comparison of ~30 different birth control methods:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_met...

It lists both the perfect use failure rate and the typical use failure rate. When I first saw this I was surprised at how often condoms fail! I'm also a little puzzled by the infographic in the article that claims that natural family planning is less effective than condoms. While the rhythm method is less effective than condoms, symptoms-based fertility awareness is as effective as the copper IUD in the perfect use case, and its typical use case is still far better than the pill, patch, and ring.

There certainly have been similar approaches in Western Christianity. An explicit attempt at synthesizing Buddhist philosophy with Christianity was made by the Catholic monk Thomas Merton back in the 1960s. Moreover there has been a long mystical tradition in Western Christianity as well. Look to saints like John of the Cross and Thomas a Kempis among others. It’s more that there’s a difference in emphasis between the two churches. The Catholic Church has historically placed more of an emphasis on developing a scholarly, logical theology whereas the Eastern Churches have put more emphasis on theosis, or obtaining a vision of God (participating in a vision of God might be a better way of phrasing that). But neither sees either approach as being in conflict with the other.

I would also claim that the idea that salvation is a process of deification has also long been present in the Catholic Church, the idea of purgatory being one important example. Both Purgatorio and Paradiso from Dante’s Comedy also point toward this idea. But the notion of deification as being a process that continues through life and into death seems to be missing in many Protestant communities.

This looks really cool! As a classical music fan, the one feature that I've always wanted but have never found is the ability to link several tracks together. Often times classical CDs break up a single piece into multiple tracks, so if you're listening to your library on shuffle, you will often jump into the middle of a piece, which is annoying. It would be so cool if there were a music player where you could link several tracks together as one piece so that shuffle would always start from the beginning and wouldn't shuffle away until the end.

Bush actually campaigned on a "humble foreign policy" in the 2000 election. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_presidential_cam...

Roger Penrose has been making a similar argument for some time now. He argues that consciousness must be a quantum phenomenon and that it takes place in microtubules in neurons. It's an interesting idea, but has been met with a lot of skepticism because the structures are too large to really exhibit any quantum effects. But if you're interested in reading more, here's the Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR

Small note -- Caltech and Harvey Mudd are both private, not public.

Apologies for contributing to this going even further afield of the bounds of HN-ish discussion, but I can't help but point out the relevance of one of the big points from the Council of Trent. The Church argued in favor of the idea that original sin is passed on through "propagation, not imitation." [1] That is, original sin is passed on from generation to generation rather like a disease, instead of from children simply imitating their parents.

But although this "disease model" of sin can sometimes be a useful theological model, as you say, it is most emphatically not a genetic disturbance or a true disease in the medical sense of the word.

[1] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2...