Adaptation: 10/10
Presentation: 10 /10
Awesome!

This is where my thoughts immediately went -- maybe $15/hr sounds so high because we're so far behind the inflation curve -- but I wasn't sure, so I pulled up this list of historic minimum wages and this inflation calculator and started doing some conversions.

1950: $0.75 = $7.30 today
1960: $1.00 = $7.81 today
1970: $1.60 = $9.74 today
> 1978: $2.65 = $9.80 today -- @enoch: How are you getting $22?
1980: $3.10 = $9.28 today
1990: $3.80 = $6.92 today
2000: $5.15 = $7.03 today
2010: $7.25 - $7.71 today

@Yogi is probably right; These people are probably asking for $15 and hoping for $10 (and $10 seems reasonable based on historic rates above).

Cranking up minimum wage much higher than that might be treating the symptoms rather than the sickness. Entry level jobs not paying enough is not the root cause; the root cause is that people are trapped in entry level careers. By all means, bump minimum wage up to $10, maybe $12 an hour, but then start taking action so that, when inflation catches up to those rates, there's more job mobility.

4/12 * 3/10 = 1/10. Rotten luck, Tom.

Edit: Well... I guess it's really 4/12 * 8/11 * 3/10 + 4/12 * 3/11 + 2/10 = 9%. Close enough.

australia is 10 for 10 for the ten deadliest snakes in the world.

10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0

Via Blues News: Re: Game Reviews Sep 10, 2012, 10:31 ItBurn
*
The guild wars 2 review isn't a review, it's a developer blowjob.

this is cool too:

Improved measurement of the shape of the electron - 2011
- J. J. Hudson,D. M. Kara,I. J. Smallman,B. E. Sauer, M. R. Tarbut & E. A. Hinds

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7348/full/nature10104.html

briefly

"Here we use cold polar molecules to measure the electron EDM at the highest level of precision reported so far, providing a constraint on any possible new interactions. We obtain de = (−2.4 ± 5.7stat ± 1.5syst) × 10−28e cm, where e is the charge on the electron, which sets a new upper limit of |de| < 10.5 × 10−28e cm with 90 per cent confidence. This result, consistent with zero, indicates that the electron is spherical at this improved level of precision."

@Jinx

I don't think using the WBC as an advert for atheism would really work out.

Pretty much everyone hates them, including mainstream catholics and Fox News. Using them as some sort of example of why it's bad to believe in a god would surely fail because when push comes to shove, I don't really think the WBC give a flying fuck what god thinks. Their hatred of homosexuality is their only religion. It's far too easy for mainstream catholics to distance themslves from WBC-nutbaggery.

You want to promote Atheism? Stop being douchebags with stupid billboard signs and just...be the better person. That's all you really need to do. Demonstrate on a daily basis that Catholics can't claim the moral high ground as they often think they can.

I've lost count of how many time's I've seen supposedly "moral" Christians do despicable things. They're the ones that came up with the 10 commandments, but they're the ones that seem to have a hard time actually following it. Hell, come up with an Atheist 10 Commandments. 10 basic rules of living a life that positively contributes to society that doesn't involve getting on your knees and praying to an imaginary friend. Really shouldn't be that hard. Do what religion refuses to do and periodically update and revise these rules to get rid of outdated and obsolete ideas and inject new truths into it.

Religion isn't inherently good or bad..It's what you do with religion that is good or bad.

>> ^BoneyD:

I hate to burst bubbles, but they weren't run off; they left when they had completed their segment.
See Moxy's recordings of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjZn0jbux3w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be77h7Tn5fA
See also: NY Daily News story.


Don't worry you didn't burst bubbles because they could've been planning further reporting and interviews. It's something we can't know.

I hate to burst bubbles, but they weren't run off; they left when they had completed their segment.

See Moxy's recordings of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjZn0jbux3w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be77h7Tn5fA

See also: NY Daily News story.

>> ^Ornthoron:

@charliem No, you are wrong.
Noone says that 0.999 = 1. What is true is that the number written as 0.(an infinite number of 9s), which we can write more prettily as 0.(9), is equal to 1. That means equal. Exactly equal. No equivalence needed.
Bear in mind that we are not talking about a number with a finite number of decimals. If we were, it would be true to say that we could get arbitrarily close to 1 without ever being exactly equal. But we are in fact talking about the infinite sum
9 (1/10) + 9 (1/10)^2 + 9 (1/10)^3 + ...
This is a geometric series of the form ar + ar^2 + ar^3 which according to the convergence theorem has the solution
ar/(1-r) = (9 (1/10))/(9/10) = 1
There, I just proved the equality for you.


Something tending to something isn't the something itself. Something tending toward 1 isn't, yet, 1. We don't live in the land of convergent infinities, we live in today. If you can right down enough .99999's that eventually turn into a 1, then I will accept that proof, otherwise, it is an estimation or an assumption. Unless you don't believe in infinite precision, that is. But even then, your left one something with a fineinte number of 9's that don't converge to a 1. Doing loop-de-loops with infinities, a reality in which humans don't and can't inhabit, is trying to abstract away the real problem...the same problem that Zeno proposed long, long ago.

@charliem No, you are wrong.

Noone says that 0.999 = 1. What is true is that the number written as 0.(an infinite number of 9s), which we can write more prettily as 0.(9), is equal to 1. That means equal. Exactly equal. No equivalence needed.

Bear in mind that we are not talking about a number with a finite number of decimals. If we were, it would be true to say that we could get arbitrarily close to 1 without ever being exactly equal. But we are in fact talking about the infinite sum

9*(1/10) + 9*(1/10)^2 + 9*(1/10)^3 + ...

This is a geometric series of the form ar + ar^2 + ar^3 which according to the convergence theorem has the solution

ar/(1-r) = (9*(1/10))/(9/10) = 1

There, I just proved the equality for you.

>> ^offsetSammy:

You are correct that each bomb diffusion is an independent event and always has the same probability of success, but it is also correct to say that the chances of successfully diffusing 4 bombs IN A ROW is 40%, 10 bombs IN A ROW is 10%, etc. In this case each event is dependent, but you have to work out the probabilities at the start, before any bombs are diffused.
It's kind of like flipping a coin (which has a 50% chance of landing heads or tails every time). Every time I flip it, I have a 50% chance of landing on heads, but my chances of getting say 5 heads in a row is only 3%. (0.5^5) Imagine that flipping tails results in death. Now you can start to see the peril these guys were in!
So if the 80% bomb diffusion success rate was correct, it would be valid to say, BEFORE the person does it, that if they are tasked with diffusing 10 bombs, their chances of survival are only 10%. Note that, every time they successfully diffuse a bomb, their overall odds of survival improve a little bit (because now they only have to diffuse 9 in a row, 8 in a row, etc).
p.s. I think you'll find that the chance of the sun rising every day is quite a bit higher than 99%.
>> ^Friesian:
My maths is pretty rusty, but I'm not sure you can do the probabilities in that manner because they're unrelated events: your success in defusing one bomb has no bearing (statistically at least) on your ability to defuse the next one. Otherwise you could say things like:
Let's imagine there's a 99% chance that the sun will rise tomorrow. Assuming the sun rises each and every day for the next two months, the "probability" it would rise on the 61st day as well is near 50/50. Take this even further, and count back to when the sun first came into existence, and it's essentially impossible that the sun would still rise tomorrow.
Don't get me wrong, bomb defusing is one hell of a risky job—hell, average life expectancy was only 10 weeks according to the video—but I don't think your probabilities hold up.>> ^offsetSammy:
Scary stuff. If you do the math, let's say you had an 80% chance of successfully diffusing any given bomb. If your career consisted of diffusing only 4 bombs, and assuming an unsuccessful diffusion results in death, your chances of survival are only 40%. 6 bombs, 26%. 10 bombs, 10%. Yikes.
Note: I have no idea how accurate the 80% figure is. It would be interesting to hear the real statistic.



Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines, but there's something about it which makes me sit back and question it.


Interestingly, 3% seems really really low for getting 5 heads in a row (oh, I know it's correct, but it just appears low). There are 2 to the power 5 different combinations of heads/tails from 5 coin flips (32). As you've got to have at least one combination, 100%/32 (as they're all just as likely) = 3.125%, which is the same as 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2. I know I'm just reiterating what you said, but this helps me get it through my skull and into my brain.

Perhaps I'm overthinking this, or maybe ever since I heard about the Monty Hall problem I've never trusted myself to be able to accurately figure out probabilities.

You are correct that each bomb diffusion is an independent event and always has the same probability of success, but it is also correct to say that the chances of successfully diffusing 4 bombs IN A ROW is 40%, 10 bombs IN A ROW is 10%, etc. In this case each event is dependent, but you have to work out the probabilities at the start, before any bombs are diffused.

It's kind of like flipping a coin (which has a 50% chance of landing heads or tails every time). Every time I flip it, I have a 50% chance of landing on heads, but my chances of getting say 5 heads in a row is only 3%. (0.5^5) Imagine that flipping tails results in death. Now you can start to see the peril these guys were in!

So if the 80% bomb diffusion success rate was correct, it would be valid to say, BEFORE the person does it, that if they are tasked with diffusing 10 bombs, their chances of survival are only 10%. Note that, every time they successfully diffuse a bomb, their overall odds of survival improve a little bit (because now they only have to diffuse 9 in a row, 8 in a row, etc).

p.s. I think you'll find that the chance of the sun rising every day is quite a bit higher than 99%.

>> ^Friesian:

My maths is pretty rusty, but I'm not sure you can do the probabilities in that manner because they're unrelated events: your success in defusing one bomb has no bearing (statistically at least) on your ability to defuse the next one. Otherwise you could say things like:
Let's imagine there's a 99% chance that the sun will rise tomorrow. Assuming the sun rises each and every day for the next two months, the "probability" it would rise on the 61st day as well is near 50/50. Take this even further, and count back to when the sun first came into existence, and it's essentially impossible that the sun would still rise tomorrow.
Don't get me wrong, bomb defusing is one hell of a risky job—hell, average life expectancy was only 10 weeks according to the video—but I don't think your probabilities hold up.>> ^offsetSammy:
Scary stuff. If you do the math, let's say you had an 80% chance of successfully diffusing any given bomb. If your career consisted of diffusing only 4 bombs, and assuming an unsuccessful diffusion results in death, your chances of survival are only 40%. 6 bombs, 26%. 10 bombs, 10%. Yikes.
Note: I have no idea how accurate the 80% figure is. It would be interesting to hear the real statistic.

My maths is pretty rusty, but I'm not sure you can do the probabilities in that manner because they're unrelated events: your success in defusing one bomb has no bearing (statistically at least) on your ability to defuse the next one. Otherwise you could say things like:

Let's imagine there's a 99% chance that the sun will rise tomorrow. Assuming the sun rises each and every day for the next two months, the "probability" it would rise on the 61st day as well is near 50/50. Take this even further, and count back to when the sun first came into existence, and it's essentially impossible that the sun would still rise tomorrow.

Don't get me wrong, bomb defusing is one hell of a risky job—hell, average life expectancy was only 10 weeks according to the video—but I don't think your probabilities hold up.>> ^offsetSammy:

Scary stuff. If you do the math, let's say you had an 80% chance of successfully diffusing any given bomb. If your career consisted of diffusing only 4 bombs, and assuming an unsuccessful diffusion results in death, your chances of survival are only 40%. 6 bombs, 26%. 10 bombs, 10%. Yikes.
Note: I have no idea how accurate the 80% figure is. It would be interesting to hear the real statistic.