Comment author: Romashka 15 September 2016 06:04:06PM 0 points [-]

Has anyone here had associations/subjective feelings about subjects of study? (Probably in high school, where the range of subjects is wide and students' attitudes depend on the teachers' images, to some degree.) I tended to like algebra, because solving equations and the like reminded me of gradual shifts of attention in yoga-style exercise - flowing, ordered and always seeking the point of balance. Geometry, I took for a much more "masculine" discipline, a form of exercise in endurance, and was not fond of it. Of course, calculus messed things up...:)

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 August 2016 08:58:24PM 0 points [-]

Why do you think that reading a history of how people who didn't know what DNA was thought about taxonomy will help dissolving the question?

Comment author: Romashka 28 August 2016 03:39:20PM 2 points [-]

Why DNA? For most of taxonomy's existence, DNA "didn't exist". Just because genotyping changed the game doesn't mean there was no game before.

Comment author: Romashka 24 August 2016 10:51:14AM 2 points [-]

It seems to me that the history of biological systematics/taxonomy is a great source of material for a study on dissolving the question (but I am neither a systematicist nor a historian). Are there any popular intros into the field that don't focus on individual botanists of the past? Serebryakov's "Morphology of plants", printed half a century ago, has a nice section on history, but it is limited in scope (and not quite "popular"). Other books often just list the people and what they did without interconnecting them, which is boring.

In response to Buying happiness
Comment author: Romashka 23 August 2016 05:35:21PM 0 points [-]

When my grandfather died, they would have sold his library, but Mother put her foot down and we had it sent to us instead. Simply mailing it cost (us) more than €1000 - a sum wonderfully outside my experience of directly spending - and on the border we had to unload the boxes and show the books to customs officers. Grampa'd really liked his swashbucklers, too, so the officers were probably impressed... Anyway, that day I learned to enjoy as much as possible out of buying experiences, helping others, and paying now - consuming later... It just helps, ok?:)

Comment author: milindsmart 21 August 2016 09:23:41AM -1 points [-]

Ah that particular idea of all human pleasures being harmful for the environment is pretty much religious. It's not at all what the impact is like.

Computing is basically blameless in the direct sense for global warming. We should probably enjoy it as much as possible. Electricity is good. Trains are good. Holidaying is good.

Airconditioning is bad. Air travel is bad. Short product lifetime is bad.

The situation is far more positive than some make it out to be. Even the direst climate change predictions necessitates drastic changes in some aspects of life.

AGW can't take away modern medicine or virtual reality from you.

Comment author: Romashka 21 August 2016 07:02:04PM *  0 points [-]

Why do you think "harmful for the environment" means "leading to global warming"? Lots of things are harmful for the environment. Drying swamps to make railroads harm it. Holidaying leads to decreased "old habitat" biodiversity. Building power plants on small mountain rivers leads to decreased biodiversity, too. Yes, these things are good for us. It just has no bearing on whether they are good for nature.

Comment author: MrMind 19 August 2016 08:13:50AM 0 points [-]

That doesn't seem very healthy, unless it's said in humour. What's the point of drilling on impossible circumstances?

Comment author: Romashka 19 August 2016 09:04:31AM 0 points [-]

I don't know, but my relatives and their guests do it all the time.

Comment author: MrMind 19 August 2016 08:16:46AM 0 points [-]

No I don't think, but still Dunbar number are not an exact quantity, first, and second: if you only need to relate to a handful of comrade in your platoon and one higher ranking official, then you can effectively restrict the number of people with whom you have to interact.

Comment author: Romashka 19 August 2016 08:30:28AM *  0 points [-]

I am asking mostly because I have trouble imagining strict segregation in, say, Mongolian hordes; and intuitively, advance (where you have an army of able-bodied men) should be different from retreat (where you have also women, children and infirm men).

Comment author: Romashka 18 August 2016 08:17:36PM *  1 point [-]

Just a note, posting here because some people might have participated in something similar (if so, what were your impressions?):

...Unfortunately, at the all-Soviet [mathematics] Olympiads they failed to implement another idea, which A. N. Kolmogorov put forward more than once: to begin one of the days of the contest with a lecture on a previously unfamiliar, to the participants, topic and then offer several problems which would build on the ones considered during the lecture. (Such an experiment was successfully carried out only once […] in 1985 […] the lecture was on geometric probabilities.)

N.Vasilyev, A.A.Yegorov. Problems of All-Soviet mathematical olympiads. - Moscow, 1988. - p. 14 of 286.

Comment author: MrMind 18 August 2016 02:32:25PM 0 points [-]

Well, I guess it depends very much on the situation you are asked for.
Generally speaking, I think those are idle questions: unless you're prepared like a Special Force operator, you usually in a crisis situation will behave instinctively. And if the situation is so bad, then you'll die, yes, like anyone else in that situation.
But why they ask the question? Is this something that you are particularly probable to face? Like a job-related risk or a well known danger in the place you live? Because in that case, then I would put much more effort in thinking and training on how to cope.
If, on the other hand, those are idle questions, then I think they deserve an idle answer: "I don't know exactly, but I'm a grown woman, somehow I'll manage it."

Comment author: Romashka 18 August 2016 03:22:52PM 0 points [-]

As far as I can tell, it's just healthy sportsmanlike interest. Like, "I went to the shop and a drunkard threw his bottle at me, so I waited for a bus on my way back." - "AHA! And what would you have done if there were THREE of them, and they had KNIVES?!" - "..."

Comment author: MrMind 18 August 2016 02:34:11PM 1 point [-]

Not necessarily, and after all military hierarchies are a way to cope with the complexity of managing thousands of peopla at a time.

Comment author: Romashka 18 August 2016 03:16:15PM 0 points [-]

Yes, but how? Are there different DN for peace and war?

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