Conquest of Elysium Damage Calculator

Conquest of Elysium Damage Calculator

Base Damage:

Bonus

Enemy armor total:

Answer

*** Formula:
Open-ended average of 1-N = N/(N-1)+N/2
[derived by summing infinite series of open-ended rolls plus the average damage of the final non-open-ended roll].
Including armor A where A < N, this produces a weighted average damage = ((1+(N/2)+(N-A-1))*(1/N) + (N-A)*(N-A-1)/(2*N)

Global warming: poll

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the "Comply with Kyoto" model. The scientists in this group "express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause."

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the "Nature Is Overwhelming" model. "In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth." Moreover, "they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives."

Another group of scientists fit the "Fatalists" model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, "diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. 'Fatalists' consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling." These scientists are likely to ask, "How can anyone take action if research is biased?"

The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the "Economic Responsibility" model. These scientists "diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the 'real' cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the 'nature is overwhelming' adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy."

The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the "Regulation Activists" model. These scientists "diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life." Moreover, "They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate."

--

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

'If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven, and if you will follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my back load. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you.'

Prison

Henry Harpending on prison:

[from the comments here: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/castaways/]

I encountered a fellow years ago who had encountered several unwilling castaways and contributed to the failure of their 'attempt'. He was an old guy in NE Botswana, roughly between Nata and Pandamatenga if you have a map handy.

He told me about the best years of his life when the government has housed him, fed him, given him clothes and medical care, and not worked him very hard. I asked him how that happened, and he was a little bit vague. He was hoping it might happen again.

I turned out that when he was a young man their hunting party watched a small airplane with engine failure land on a pan (like a dry lakebed). Two white men came out, looked around, saw the hunting party, and waved at them. The Bushmen did not know what these creatures could be, so in the interest of caution and safety they killed them. Soon after the government took him away to prison.

He did understand that he had been in prison but he had no clear idea why. What had he done wrong?


--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Good article

Biography of Len Hope about his conversion to the gospel in the early 20th century. Real nice flavor to it.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/welcometable/2013/04/len-hope-in-his-own-words/

Brothers and sisters, I wish to state why I become a Latter-day Saint. I once belonged to the Baptist Church. Before I become a Baptist, I thought it was wise to ask some of the old members that have been members of the church for a long time, how do you get religion and what was it.

Some of 'em stated to me that when you get religion, you have to pray for it. You have to see peculiar things, and have peculiar dreams, and see yourself crossing Hell on a spider web. I thought that was very peculiar, but I was willing to try it. So I tried to get religion that year, and I prayed for it, and seek very hard for religion, the way I know — beggin' the Lord for religion, but I couldn't get religion that year.

I couldn't see myself crossing Hell on a spider web, nor neither could I see any peculiar things. Next year, I try religion again. And, as you know it's customary for those in the Baptist or Methodist denomination how they gather, the people down on them benches, called mournin' benches. You set down and pray, and they'll pray for it, and after that period, why they give us a prayer period, a rest period, to go out and pray for our sins. And they let us go out for an hour or two hours, prayin' for our sins. So I went out late at night and went up and lay down in a cotton patches and cornfield, lookin up to Heaven, begging the Lord for religion, dew falling on me heavily. Well after it was impossible for me to see any of these peculiar things, it looked like there was no religion for me. So I went back to the Church and promised to live all the laws of the Baptist Church, keep all the commandments of Jesus Christ as far as I could understand it. I give the preacher my hand, and with covenant. So when the vows was over, they baptize us, and shortly after that the Lord showed me in a dream, that I had to be baptized over again. I wasn't in the right Church; it wasn't happening. [snip]

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Math is a sixth sense

[quoting http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/math-is-hard/]

Lord Kelvin said "I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."  Even those who didn't have much math sometimes wished that they did.  Chuck Darwin said "I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics;  for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense."

I remember talking to a field biologist studying three genetic male morphs of some screwy freshwater fish.  In passing, I said " Of course all three forms have to have the same average fitness, over the long term."  He said " Why?", because he was an idiot. Speaking of which – general intelligence and math ability are fairly well correlated.  Maybe a lot of these low-math types just aren't very smart.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Thella's obituary

My great-aunt died recently. She spent twenty years as an informant for the FBI.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thespectrum/obituary.aspx?n=thella-brock&pid=164179844&fhid=4515#fbLoggedOut

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Medicine: 1960s to now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324789504578380382204116270.html

By current standards, the lack of third-party coverage would be impermissible. But treating patients without insurance meant that I had to give my acute attention to the price of every medical intervention. The costs could have a direct and painful impact on a family's budget. So I had to know the prices for most of the medications I prescribed and of most of the tests I might order. I learned to play for time by waiting, when it was safe to, before ordering an X-ray or a test—and to substitute less-expensive medications for more costly ones wherever possible.

I developed pastimes that were diverting but would permit me to be available to patients 24-7, requiring coverage by a substitute only for a two-week vacation annually. Few physicians nowadays would undertake such an onerous schedule, and yet many of the inconveniences are offset by benefits. If you are caring for your own patients, you know them and their ailments and can manage a great deal over the telephone (or by email these days), with minimal cost to them and minimal intrusion into your own life. By contrast, covering for another physician almost invariably means inefficiency—additional time to learn the patients' relevant history, and often either a direct patient encounter or an outpatient facility visit, all of which greatly add to the cost.

Then, in the mid-1970s, things changed, and we became enlightened. Third parties, typically the insurance companies, were interpolated between the physician and the patient. Some of the consequences were unfortunate.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honor more.

Parenting and The Prince

"It is better to be feared than to be loved." If I ever have kids I am totally going to brush up on my Machiavelli first.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323646604578400804035071688.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

-M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honor more.

Euphemisms

When I was younger, I spent some time looking for alternative expletives which could show emotion without sounding like a faux-swear. E.g. "smeg" shares no phonemes in common with any vulgarism in the English language, and I used it for a while, until one day I caught myself about to use it unconsciously instead of on purpose. And I decided I wanted to be the master of my own words, and dropped it in favor us simply using English. "Smeg!" becomes, "What a mess" or "How vexing."

I still say "Argh!" sometimes though, and "Wow."

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Science! 1940s to now

Lindzen asserts that scientific productivity has fallen dramatically since Vannevar's Bush day, starting in the 1960's, and asserts that this is due to a shift in the way scientists perceive their relationship with the public: from eliciting gratitude then to fear-mongering now. I am still digesting his argument, but it's an interesting paper littered with anecdotes and footnotes like this one:

The response of the IPCC officials makes it eminently clear that the IPCC is fundamentally a political body. If further evidence were needed, one simply has to observe the fact that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers will selectively cite results to emphasize negative consequences. Thus the summary for Working Group II observes that global warming will result in Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress. This, however, is based on work (Arnell, 2004) which actually shows that by the 2080s the net global population at risk declines by up to 2.1 billion people (depending on which scenario one wants to emphasize)! The IPCC further ignores the capacity to use build reservoirs to alleviate those areas they project as subject to drought (I am indebted to Indur Goklany for noting this example.)

http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/lindzen-on-climate-science-2010.pdf

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Natural selection (link)

http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/dan-freedmans-babies/ has an interesting story. I won't spoil the punch lines, but here's the intro:

Daniel Freedman was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago.  For his doctoral thesis, he did adoption studies with dogs.  He had noticed that different dog breeds had different personalities, and thought it would be interesting to see if personality was inborn, or if it was somehow caused by the way in which the mother raised her puppies.  Totally inborn.  Little beagles were irrepressibly friendly.  Shetland sheepdogs  were most sensitive to a loud voice or the slightest punishment. Wire-haired terriers were so tough and aggressive that Dan had to wear gloves when playing with puppies that were only three weeks old. Basenjis were aloof and independent.

He decided to try the same thing with human infants of different breeds.  Excuse me, different races. [snip the rest]

I love reading about interesting experiments.

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Climatology: the key question

From http://reason.com/archives/2013/03/15/why-do-people-believe-scientifically-unt

Climate change: The majority of climate scientists believe that human activity is causing the earth's temperatures to increase. A recent Pew Research poll found that two-thirds of Americans also believe that the earth is warming. But a deep partisan divide yawns between conservatives and liberals on the cause of the warming: Only 16 percent of conservative Republicans believe that human activity is responsible, whereas 77 percent of liberal Democrats do. Moderate Republicans and Democrats accept human responsibility by 38 and 51 percent, respectively. Advantage: Democrats.

This is a strange way of framing the debate. The question of interest is not whether human activity is "responsible" for the temperature rise between the 18th and 21st centuries. The key question is whether claims of impending calamity due to CO2-induced positive feedback temperature loops are well-founded.

To illustrate the difference, consider a case where the warming that predates the Industrial Revolution was solar-driven, but which moved the temperature equilibrium into a delicate position where increases in CO2 would raise the photosphere and trigger a phase change into a new, drier and warmer, equilibrium. In this hypothetical scenario, humans are not responsible for most past warming but will be responsible for large amounts of future warming.

The scientific debate is over whether claims that we are on that cusp are justified given the available evidence. I acknowledge that the political debate is a lot more simplistic, to the extent that there probably are people who believe that the United States ISN'T warmer than it was in 1776, which is empirically false.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Grad school

The following comment from http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/17/obesity-of-the-u-s-scientific-research-enterprise/ reminds me why I dropped out of grad school. I don't feel like I'm one of the first-rate inteligences who truly belongs in academia.

[by miker613 | March 17, 2013 at 11:20 am]

"Just speaking from my own experience: Thirty years ago, I got a PhD in Math from one of the best programs in the country. I had a top GPA as an undergraduate from another of the best schools. And by the time I got my PhD, I knew I didn't want to do math any more. I wasn't needed. I did a pretty good piece of work for my doctorate, other people liked it and quoted it – but I knew I wasn't _needed_. Most people I knew weren't needed. We were filling in gaps, looking for things to work on that no one else had done yet, but I knew that if someone really good would take notice of my problem, he could solve it better in a short time. There were lots of mediocre people like me in my program, and one or two really really good ones, and we all knew the difference. David Hilbert said it once: There are two kinds of mathematicians – those who tackle and solve hard problems, and those who don't.

"I guess I don't have the right to speak to any field but math, but I wonder if it's the same: The really important work gets done by a few really good people, and everyone else makes a living."

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Desalination follow-up WAS RE: Graphene water filters

Desalination can also strain out minerals which are important for some crops. Interesting.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/desalinated-water-can-harm-crops-researchers-warn-1.232848

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Graphene water filters

This seems like it may be important. A graphene-based water filter that's two orders of magnitude more efficient than existing filters, good enough to replace desalination plants. And it looks like graphene is going to become relatively cheap in the near future. I wonder what kind of impact this will have on agriculture? IIRC Israeli agriculture relies on desalination plants to irrigate their crops; what happens desalination gets cheap enough for Arab and African nations to afford it too? Seems like it could change some lives.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUSBRE92C05720130313

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis. "It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."

-Max

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

History

I'm not much into hate, but I hate the old Confederacy with a cold passion. If I had a time machine, I would love to go back and fetch a few old "slave power" die-hards like Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis just so I could show them a colorblind society and watch their heads explode.

Note: I'm not someone who necessarily thinks slavery per se is always evil--it's sometimes superior to killing your enemies out of hand. I just hate the Confederacy and all its triumphalist, bigoted rhetoric, and that they dared to call themselves American while perverting everything America ever stood for.

--
Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.
    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Cost Transparency

I hope it takes off.

http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/08/analyzing-health-care-data-to-empower-patients.html

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a prophet named Moses who was in charge of a bunch of Israelites in the desert, probably the Sinai peninsula next to Saudi Arabia. There wasn't much food there, so God had arranged for food to appear (somehow) with the morning dew, around the camp. The people called this food "mana," meaning "Whatsit?", and for a while they were impressed. After a while, though, the miraculous morning mana meal began to seem less impressive, and people realized that it didn't have much of a taste. They began to complain about the taste of the mana to Moses, saying they wished they had stayed slaves in Egypt, where they could at least eat flesh like fish and fresh vegetables, instead of being trapped here in a desert, not being slaves.

This frustrated Moses to no end, because it was petulant and unreasonable, like the Israelites often were. Moses was sick of it. He asked God to just kill him so he wouldn't have to deal with them any more. God said "No. Instead I will give what they ask for: flesh, flesh, and more flesh until it comes out of their nostrils."

A couple of days later it started raining quails out of the sky. It rained quails until the whole camp was three feet deep in dead quails. The people were happy at first. And then a bunch of them died from a plague, which they probably caught from all the dead quails.

The end.

[From Numbers 11]

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

That which is measured

"That which is measured, improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially." -Karl Pearson

I think these ideas are important.

Recently, Bill Gates wrote the following on the need for metrics other than "dollars spent": 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578261780648285770.html

Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book "The Most Powerful Idea in the World." Among the most important were a new way to measure the energy output of engines and a micrometer dubbed the "Lord Chancellor" that could gauge tiny distances. Such measuring tools, Mr. Rosen writes, allowed inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to the improvements—such as higher power and less coal consumption—needed to build better engines. There's a larger lesson here: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is "doomed to be rare and erratic." With it, invention becomes "commonplace."

This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.

He goes on to talk about some projects he's involved in, public health and education, which have benefited greatly from being able to measure progress.

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Celibacy

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/14/staying-celibate-before-marriage-was-best-thing-ive-ever-done/

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.