aphar

- Can Russel's barber shave the Schrödinger's cat using the Occam's razor?
- No, Zeno won't let him catch it.

Obama: What action on Russia will benefit the US the most?
Experts: Invite Putin to a summit and spit in his face.
Obama: He is a Judo Black Belt! He will kill me!
Experts: Yep. You did say "benefit the US the most", didn't you?

by Jared Mason Diamond

Well organized, insightful, and informative review of the history of the human civilization, attempting to explain "why the Europeans conquered America/Australia &c and not, e.g., Incas conquered Europe".
The author reduces the explanation to the advantages enjoyed by the Europeans stemming from better food production and animal husbandry, which is determined by a better choice of domesticable plants and animals and a east-west expanse of Eurasia (as opposed to north-south expanse of America and Africa).
The anti-European slant, starting with enquoting the word "discovery" when referring to The Age of Discovery, and ending with the author's "subjective impression that New Guineans are on the average smarter than Eurasians", detracts, alas, from the impression of scientific objectivity which he tries to convey.

I am sure you are aware of the recent wave of hate crime in Brooklyn - "knock out game".
The mayor-elect De Blasio is silent, while his ally Laurie Cumbo, a councilwoman-elect, blamed the victims of the attacks for being rich.
Given such city leadership, NYPD will not be either prosecuting these crimes or trying to stop them.
I was wondering if there was something which could be done at the state level - before it becomes unsafe for us to go outside our homes.
E.g. is it possible to deploy the State National Guard troops to patrol our streets?
Thank you!

you can write your letter here.
you can find out who your representative here

During training women firefighters failed to hold on to the firehose.
This is not really surprising: the water pressure is huge, women are usually physically weaker.
Men firefighters made twitter posts about that (pretty rude, although nothing extraordinary when viewed from inside the "jock" subculture).
The outcome I expected: the firefighters who fail during training are sacked for ineptitude (профнепригодность); the twitting ones are reprimanded for rudeness.
The actual outcome: the twitting ones are sacked.
So, now the only(?) firefighters remaining on the public payroll are those who cannot hold on to the firehose.

LinkedIn "endorsement" system is crazy. People keep endorsing me for "ruby on rails" and LinkedIn wants me to add it to my profile.
But I have no idea what R-on-R is!
This reminds me of an old joke: after Brezhnev's "Little Land" was published, he calls his Politburo comrades for their opinions and receives glowing reviews. He muses: "Everyone seems to like it. Maybe I should read it myself."

There is no scientific evidence that psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are valid or useful ...
the British Psychological Society's division of clinical psychology (DCP) ... casts doubt on psychiatry's predominantly biomedical model of mental distress – the idea that people are suffering from illnesses that are treatable by doctors using drugs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/12/psychiatrists-under-fire-mental-health

Finally someone is questioning the "treat an itch with an amputation" approach!

attach a keyboard to a laptop.
hit CapsLock on the laptop. LAPTOP KEYBOARD
hit CapsLock on the keyboard. LAPTOP KEYBOARD
hit CapsLock on BOTH. laptop keyboard
i.e., if you hit CapsLock twice, you have de-facto disabled it even though the CapsLock LED is 'on' on both laptop and keyboard.