GrumpySimon
Joined 18 years ago
Karma
141
Submissions
49
Member since
Apr 29
Recent submissions
Comment · 10 years ago
How's this: https://asmeurer.github.io/python3-presentation/slides.html
Comment · 11 years ago
There's a great talk on this [1] by Raymond Hettinger where he argues that style guides (e.g. PEP8) are no alternative to thinking hard about the code. Blindly following rules (like a bot would do) just gives a false sense of security that it's good code.
Comment · 11 years ago
"Jesse" not "Jeese"
Comment · 11 years ago
Tried pandoc with markdown?
Comment · 12 years ago
Exactly, and it's not like papers are collections of 'facts' that can be extracted anyway. Papers are long arguments based on some data choices, some analysis choices, and followed by interpretations --- none of which are 'facts', and all of which are debatable.
Comment · 12 years ago
Having submitted to that journal before, I suspect the authors just ticked a check box that said something like "Relevant ethics approval was obtained for this paper".
Comment · 12 years ago
Or flip it around - what if the next time Facebook sees you post 5 negative things in a row, it decides to positively skew what it shows you? i.e. trying to cheer up depressed people and stop suicide. It's creepy, eh?
Comment · 12 years ago
Seconding the pandoc approach. I've written articles in markdown (+citeproc) and then used pandoc to convert to LaTeX or MS Word. Easy, clean and elegant. I think it provides all the things that these people want, without needing to reinvent the wheel or make yet-another-markup language.
Comment · 12 years ago
Yes, words change meaning, especially when they're imported across language boundaries. Originally mana DID mean something like spiritual power, and is heavily linked to terms for thunder, lightning etc.
Currently it's used in NZ to mean prestige, but it's original sense was much broader - a tree that grows well has mana. Gods have mana. People get mana through (1) their heritage (i.e. high status families have more mana), (2) from other people i.e. we give a sportsperson mana because we respect their ability to kick a ball, and (3) via the group (e.g. if I'm part of a prestigious group, some of thir mana reflects onto me).
There's a good article on it here: http://www.justice.govt.nz/publications/publications-archive...
Comment · 12 years ago
Absolutely. After messing around with various combinations of rsync/ssh/unison/s3/glacier/etc for a few years, I bit the bullet and paid for Crashplan. It's cheap - the family plan is ~150 USD/year for up to ten computers, unlimited.
It's a lifesaver. I've installed it on my parents/wifes/siblings computers and the piece of mind it gives me is immense - when I get the inevitable phone calls about the damn computer deleting that important file, I can either tell them how to recover it, or do it myself.
Comment · 13 years ago
Awesome. I'll keep an eye on this, thanks.
Comment · 13 years ago
I think this is an artefact of how science is taught: In 1953 Watson and Crick published a paper on the structure of DNA. Everyone smiled and nodded.
In my experience it's more like: Most scientists ignored it. Others were interested but had too much teaching to pay attention to it. A few people got pissed off and tried to prove it wrong. A few other people got excited and tried to build on it.
Comment · 13 years ago
Absolutely. I see peer review as a way of - hopefully - filtering out the most egregious crap, and fixing the worst errors in papers while rounding them off.
I feel all these debates are kind of pointless, because no-one I know treats a published article as gospel. We make up our own minds about the paper.
Comment · 13 years ago
I agree. Compare what happened in New Zealand when John Key and the National party ousted the long-term Labor government.
Despite some major missteps from Key/National, Labor's spent the last term and a half fighting amongst themselves about who will lead it. There just wasn't the talent or the public respect for the interim leaders that could compete with Key.
My money's on a few Liberal terms in government, I'm afraid. The scary thing is, the second time they get voted in, they'll treat it was a strengthened mandate to do what they want.