Posts by Nathaniel Wilson
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OnPoint: Re: Education, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I'm pretty sure "r value" is slang for R^2. They are the same thing
They're really not. Very roughly speaking, r gives you an indication of whether the two variables have a relationship, r^2 provides an indication of how much variance in the data can be explained. r^2 =1 means the line explains all the variance, r^2 of 0.074 means the line explains 7.4 % of the variance; sweet FA in other words. You could probably plot number of cars per household or number of badminton players per school on the x-axis and get just as good results.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Adrian Humm,
Fast forward to the brave new world of league tables and charter schools. Multiply our experience by the number of small rural towns with single, medium-sized high schools. I see more problems ahead than opportunities. How about you?
Doom, doom doom is what I think.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But if past behaviour is a predictor of future behaviour, then no matter how worthless the data is, parents will do anything to send their children to the highest ranked school they can manage.
So what's going to change then? 'cause it's not like anyone's going to be surprised the the outcomes are they?
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Alternatively, we could all just send our children to the local high schools of the communities we've chosen to live in, and base where we live on the quality of the neighbourhood, not the schools. That'd circumvent both the Government and APN/Fairfax at the same time.
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Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, it is. Their economy went to shit because of the incredibly harsh Versailles terms that forced them pay endlessly for WW1. How can they not see that any country you do that to is likely to turn nationalistic real fast, just like they themselves did? Can they also not understand that the Marshall Plan was what set up their meteoric rise from the ashes of total destruction? Do they really think things would have gone so well for them if a second Versailles had been imposed on them then?
It's a really, really long bow to equate self-inflicted debt with the punitive debt for losing a horriffically brutal and pointless 4 year-long war. Or post WWII reconstruction for that matter, unless you're planning ignoring an awful lot of context.
This isn't Germany's fault, and I can't help but feel if it were France or England doing the "best" at present the entire narrative would be different. Yes German banks (amongst others) are involved, but that doesn't make the people of Germany responsible anymore than we (New Zealanders) are responsible for the behaviour of finance companies here.
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Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to Idiot Savant,
The great achievement of the European Union was to bury all that and let Europe move on as a settled continent. German moralising and subversion of democracy has ripped off that scab and brought all the nationalistic pus bubbling to the surface again.
Nationalistic pus? Germany's largest tabloid suggesting Germans are not happy doesn't really mean much eh, but I'd be moralising too if it was me having to pay for the bailout.
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Hard News: Vanilla Buffalo Yoghurt, in reply to Grant McDougall,
Not that I'm grumpy about again missing the Food Show, and so keen to continue to move off-topic, but....Radler is not a style of beer, at least not here in Germany (where the name comes from). Radler = Shandy, i.e. a mix of beer and lemonade (they also do mixes with cola and/or fanta, and/or cherry liquor too, but even the though of such drinks makes me shudder). The whole point of a Radler (lit. cyclist) is to lower the alcohol percentage of what you're drinking, so you can have a couple of half-litres in the afternoon without suffering any adverse consequences.
While I think it's a shame DB won the case, it's not the case they have copyrighted an existing style of beer. We must be the only people on earth where there is a market for a full strength beer tasting like a shandy. My point is, I guess, that if you're going to boycott Monteith's Radler do so for the right reasons (i.e. it's a crime against beer-nature, or you can make your own "authentic" Radler for much cheaper), and not the wrong ones, 'cause they'll get you every time otherwise.
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to Sacha,
You've got me there : )
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Hard News: Going Social, in reply to Sacha,
Informed speculation?
Sometimes maybe, but not from that guy. Speculating on what might be in a press conference based on the project workers' CVs and what projects these people have been, in some way, involved in, is hardly what I'd call informed.Arsenic is used by bacteria as an energy source (well, electron donor/acceptor) to power other reactions, but by definition, it can't be used for photosynthesis (as photosynthesis is a specific chemical reaction involving carbon, oxygen and hydrogen). I know I sound pedantic, but while astrobiology news in general always promises to be pretty mindblowing (sadly the actual news fails to deliver), the chances that they've found life on Titan that uses arsenic instead of carbon (which is what an arsenic-based lifeform would have to be) is about 0%. Oh, and since I ripped into the other guy for not being informed, I say all this because I'm currently doing my post-doc in a lab which focusses on what happens to arsenic in weird environments (geothermal ones in particular).
I'm sure it'll be an interesting press release, but completely rewriting everything we know about biochemistry? Nah. I'll be stoked to admit it if I'm wrong, but I'm not counting on it. To me, you highlight the major weakenss of the "new" media, in that there is a lot less critical evaluation of the information coming through, or at least that's how it seems to me anyway. As a method of spreading rumour though, it's awesome.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Not here, but there've been more than a few comments on other forums on the matter - typically "if only we were allowed to just dig up all the National Parks none of this would have happened" nonsense. I think there will be a heap more of it in the next few weeks too.