xrange

Here's another "secret":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

You might be interested in researching CYP2E1.

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyp2e1_gene_and_alcoh...

>the Fukushima disaster changed my mind a little.

This is what I don't understand. The earthquake and tsunami that caused Fukushima's problems killed 20,000 people, and created an almost unimaginable amount of devastation. No one has died from Fukushima's radiation, and no one is expected to die. How horrible would the disaster have to be for a 1,000 people to have died from radiation? Would there have been 1,000,000 other deaths?

> I still think it's scary we can build a machine with such immense power

...this nails it on the head. It seems like most of the thoughts about nuclear power seems to be in the category of "we've created something unnatural, and we're worried that we'll anger the gods, and they'll release the invisible evil spirits as punishment". Not that I'm saying that we shouldn't have to take aspect of human nature into account.

http://myths.e2bn.org/mythsandlegends/textonly562-pandoras-b...

"...This could explain why well-educated, intelligent people, all across the political spectrum, so often make the unspoken assumption that good intentions and well-crafted words are sufficient for making good public policy"

http://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-are-we-doing-when-w...

Are you making the simple claim that, over say a 30 year period, certain broad stock market indexes ended higher than they started? Or are you making a much more interesting claim? I'd like to see the data set for that if you can point me in the right direction.

How long does each coin flip take, and how soon can I repeat the game? Does each flip takes an equal and finite amount of time? Do subsequent flips take half as much time? Can I play Graham's number of games in an hour? An countable infinite number of games in an hour? If we're wondering about "most people" they might be sub-consciously taking the time factor into account.

I'd like to see a an article about the potential downsides of Basic Income, written by advocates of Basic Income. Is it all "there are no downsides", "there are only minor downsides for the ultra-rich", "there are no possible implementation issues", etc.. Or has someone written a thoughtful article on what might go wrong?

"...This could explain why well-educated, intelligent people, all across the political spectrum, so often make the unspoken assumption that good intentions and well-crafted words are sufficient for making good public policy"

http://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-are-we-doing-when-w...

One man's paltry can be another man's extravagant. If you are coming from R5RS, then that Racket library would be a breath of fresh air. If you are coming from Perl, then maybe not so much.

>Scheme is actually used quite a few places

Don't leave us hanging, I'm sure lots of people would like to know of Scheme success stories besides Jak and Daxter.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LispInJakAndDaxter

>not that the world ends

Lexcorvus and I apparently have similar memories, because my recollection is that all the articles discussing peak oil had a mandatory section predicting the eminent demise of Western Civilization (and quite a large percentage were giddy at the notion).

...is this the string library you are referring to?

http://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/strings.html

...or something more extensive?

My favorite scheme antecdote:

http://philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...

Hmm, I wonder if Pharo/Squeak publish their download numbers? Is the recent uptick in smalltalk articles on HN an indicator in increasing interest in the language (even though they've been mostly harsh).

>Ruby, at least, performs quite well.

Are you talking absolute performance (as in machines are faster now, so speed has become less important) or relative performance (compared to performing the same task with a different interpreter/complier)?

https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?t...

Can anyone tell us how cumbersome it is to do the same thing with the free Smalltalks?

Maybe start with "Smalltalk 80: The Language", and just read the first three chapters:

http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook....

Also available for $1.89 (plus shipping) used from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Smalltalk-80-Language-Adele-Goldberg/d...

So I was interested when someone noted that apparently Pharo/Squeak stumble when it comes to unicode:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ha1gu/why_are...

...it seems like that could potentially lead people to be skeptical about an environment/language that is touted as being highly productive, with automated refactoring ease, unit testing, test driven development, and turtles-all-the-way-down, etc.

Maybe you mean something other than the photoelectric effect? None of light-emitting-diodes, liquid-crystal-displays, or cathode-ray-tubes rely on the photoelectric effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

Deaths from nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

Deaths from coal mining: http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp

If only humanity had discovered an energy source which was safer and cleaner than everything that came before, and produced no GHGs. Oh, and that we hadn't spent the last 60 years irrationally demonizing it.

...has everyone forgotten the 20,000 people who died in the tsunami? What's the opportunity cost with the $300 billion that will be used to rebuild the devastated areas? And yet we've got no deaths from Fukushima. How many other deaths would we have suffered from a natural disaster, if it were a large enough event to have caused a bigger problem at Fukushima to cause one hundred radiation related deaths?

Here's a question. How anonymous can an employee be? For the U.S. It seems like you need to get a Social Security number for tax purposes. Is a name also required?

You might be interested in investigating "radiation hormesis".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/

...isn't that 75 year thing incorrect?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432

Maybe he's self-selecting for sociopaths/people who are good at telling him what he want's to hear? I've always wondered about an organization consisting of psychopaths. You disguise it as a consulting firm, at which point it severely cripples the target company as they infiltrate and demoralize. Then the evil mastermind covers his short positions/options. Seems like it could make for a good book or movie anyway.

>"So we'll ask, 'What's the next job that you would like to have post-LinkedIn?' ... 'It brings some honesty to what is otherwise kind of a collective self-deception dance.'"

...Am I the only one who thinks this guy is self-delusional if he thinks that this brings honesty to the table? Now interview candidates are just going to have to lie about what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Is this going to turn into the next "tell me about your biggest failure"? Maybe we can roll the answers to those two question into one. "My biggest weakness is that I work too hard, sometimes forgoing sleep. In a sleep deprived stupor, I'll probably accidentally accept a middle manager job at ResumeCo.com, when trying to perform some corporate espionage as a double-agent".