- Hardy's "A course of Pure Mathematics" has been highly regarded since it was first published in 1908 because it was an innovative text: rigorous, modern, well-written. Its intended readership was always first year "honours" mathematics students. This book inspired innovation in subsequent generations of textbook writers.
However, in the 21st century, this book really can no longer be recommended for its original teaching purpose. As a textbook it is outdated (a term I hate, but it is true). It is now an historical curiosity - although one which I am pleased to own, and the exercises in the book are still worth a look.
Calculus teaching has progressed considerably since 1908. The construction of the real number system in Hardy's book, using the Dedekind Cut method is overly complicated - the use of the of Least Upper Bound is much simpler and clearer. Hardy defines the concept of integral solely as the anti-derivative; there is no discussion of Riemann sums, or Darboux sums, etc. I am sure I would not want to take Hardy's approach today.
I think we are better off recommending books are more modern.
I will start by recommending "Calculus" by Michael Spivak.
- Apart from the Tk and Expect extensions, one of the best parts of Tcl its general extensibility through the Tcl C API. Unfortunately, this is one of Tcl's less well-documented features. Most books and online tutorials either ignore it completely or, at best, provide perfunctory discussion and examples.
The other poorly documented feature is the objected-programming framework which was belatedly added after Tcl fell out of the mainstream of programming languages and so languishes unused.
The biggest problem of all is that that there is no online forum for Tcl users now that Google has dropped Groups. Usenet comp.lang.tcl was the main discussion forum and it is now gone.
- > In the same way Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand’s prime ministers > serve at the King’s pleasure. It’s ceremonial, much like the monarchy itself.
This is incorrect: the British monarchy is not ceremonial. Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand were self-governing dominions of the British Empire, with their own parliaments, and each nation still has a governor-general who is nominally approved by the monarch but who is actually selected by the government of each nation from time to time. Hong Kong was a Crown Colony, a.k.a. Overseas Territory, and had a governor who was selected by the British government in London and approved by the monarch. Governors-general and governors are quite different things. Governors-general are the representatives of the monarch and exercise the monarch's reserve powers according to the constitution of the nation. The Hong Kong governor was a colonial governor and had much more power over administration than the governor-general of a dominion.
>They had a full democracy after 1997. That was self determination.
This is incorrect: The creation of a democratically elected administration in Hong Kong was fiercely opposed by the People's Republic of China from 1949 onwards, even threatening violence to prevent it. The last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, created a parliament, the Legislative Council, which was partially elected by universal suffrage. The Legislative Council was declared illegitimate by the PRC and was immediately and permanently shut down after the PRC takeover of Hong Kong. The government of Hong Kong since the handover consists entirely of people selected and appointed by Beijing who are all, or mostly all, members of the Chinese Communist Party.
- For all the pontificating in this thread about the need to follow safety advice regarding the wearing of seat belts (and bicycle helmets!) at all times, please note the following from the BBC report:
> the London-Singapore flight suffered a sudden drop as a meal service was under way.
Meal service is probably the single most vulnerable moment to encounter turbulence. How many of the safety-first-at-all-times brigade could dine while tightly strapped to their seat? And no matter how tightly strapped in you are, you could not avoid being splashed by scalding coffee, as some passengers on the in the report were.
Also, the flight time from London to Singapore is 13 hours and 15 minutes (non-stop). How many of you would stay tightly strapped in at all times for that long?
- Your counterexample is not even close to being accurate. Italy and Switzerland have much more in common than China and Japan. Italian is even one of the official languages of Switzerland. Switzerland and Italy are both essentially federations of distinct provinces. Both are recognizably Western European. China and Japan are worlds apart, as are China and India.
- It is called Pythagoras's Theorem precisely because Pythagoras, according to legend, first proved the statement of the theorem within the framework of Greek geometry. Proof matters to mathematicians, and Pythagoras is justly famous for his achievement. There is archaeological evidence that much older civilisations than the Greeks, such as the Sumerians, Babylonians and the Egyptians, were persuaded of the correctness of Pythagoras's Theorem. But there is no surviving evidence that anyone other than the Greeks produced a satisfactory proof, nor did any other civilisation even possess a formal mathematical system capable of representing a logically correct proof.
- I watched the first episode the Sympathiser last week. It occurs to me that South Korea is the only Asian country that has produced significant modern-era (i.e. Cold War and later) espionage dramas that have been widely distributed in the West: these with the two Koreas as protagonists, of course. The only other Asia-focussed espionage dramas that spring to mind are a few with pre-WWII era plots involving Imperial Japan.
- I do agree that the "Deutschland 83/86/89" TV series was great espionage drama, but I also think your Eurocentric bias is showing. I have often wondered why Asia has been continuously overlooked in the espionage TV drama stakes. Even John LeCarré's "The Honourable Schoolboy" never got adapted to the screen. My conclusion is that it is not due to a lack of good material but due to political and cultural reasons. Westerners are uncomfortable with portraying Asian geopolitical adversaries such as Communist China and North Korea because they don't want to be accused of racism. When was the last time you saw or read a tale about Chinese spies? Sadly, this has resulted in a vast, unexplored region of espionage drama being totally ignored. I wonder if they make Asia-focussed spy drama in Japan?
- A.k.a. "Le bureau des légendes": criminally underrated. Was available to view in Australia on SBS On Demand, where I serendipitously encountered it. It is right up there with the best of John LeCarré's film and television adaptations: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Smiley's People", "The Little Drummer Girl", etc.
- Some possible counterarguments:
1. Mathematics is a lot more abstract than it used to be.
2. Mathematics is a lot more specialised than it used to be.
3. Non-mathematical content is inaccessible to those who don't read English.
4. Space in academic journals is too precious to waste on inessential content.
5. The style is part of a universal mathematical culture so you should fit in.
6. There are many alternative places to publish nontechnical academic writing.
- I read Silicon Snake Oil soon after it was published (1996) and I felt Cliff Stoll's views were excessively pessimistic at the time. He was definitely out of tune with the Dot Com Zeitgeist. But a quarter of a century later he might be experiencing a degree of Schadenfreude.
Computers have still not successfully replaced newspapers. Computers have still not successfully replaced teachers. Computers have still not changed the way government works.
Computer technology has undoubtedly had enormous effects on many aspects of society but it has failed to produce benefits that many early technology idealists and entrepreneurs predicted, and it has made some things a lot worse.
We have lost the quality journalism that was nurtured by the old broadsheet newspapers because they no longer have the necessary money nor inclination to do it.
Education systems are in decline everywhere. Teacher quality has declined. The best teachers find jobs outside the education systems. Student performance has declined despite vast investments in technology for education. Student attention spans have declined and mental health problems have greatly increased along with increased exposure to technology.
Governments at least have benefited from technology in that has enabled mass surveillance and control of their citizens. But other areas of government administration for public benefit, such as health administration and education have not improved. Yet governments have wasted vast amounts of taxpayer money in failed technology projects. Wider citizen participation in democracy? Not so much.
What Cliff Stoll seems to have underestimated is people's willingness to put up with cheaper, lower-quality technological alternatives to quality newspapers, good teachers and public administration.
- Do read Dune Messiah, the sequel to Dune. I believe it was written specifically for those who failed to get the negative implication from Dune. Hence, it was not so well received. It is my favourite in the series (well, maybe after Dune itself), firstly because it is very explicit about the tragic consequences of Paul's jihad, which was only hinted at in the first book, and secondly because of the way that it greatly enriches the literary universe of Dune by filling more details of the various political actors, the Guild steersmen, the amoral technologists of the Bene Tleilax, gholas, the mysterious planet Ix, and so on. And the Dune Messiah is surprisingly short!
You should probably read Children of Dune to round off the trilogy, just to learn the fate of Paul Atreides, although he is not the primary character in that book.
The second trilogy is distinct but the stories are told told in the same setting; enjoyable but not essential.
- It is not even slightly weird. Consumption of alcohol by women has always been frowned upon, especially in public houses, not least by women, and survives today in the shaming of pregnant women who drink even the smallest drop of alcohol at any stage of pregnancy. Women were prominent campaigners against consumption of alcohol, especially in the USA, e.g. Woman's Christian Temperance Union, leading to temperance laws in several US states and ultimately the Eighteenth Amendment of the US national constitution which launched the notorious Prohibition Era.
Also, even past the middle of the twentieth century, in the UK and Australia at least, it was normal for there to be a separate "public" bar" in pubs for men only and a "ladies bar" or "saloon bar" where women were permitted entry.
- Not so much. Australian coal-fired generators are gradually being phased out and replaced by gas-fired generators, or by renewable sources in some jurisdictions.
Australia is still a large coal producer, most of which is exported to China and India. And Australian export coal is high quality thermal coal meaning that it produces more heat and less CO2 than the brown coal those countries would otherwise use. Yet activists and Labor Part/Green Party politicians are constantly trying to close down the coal-mining industry even though there is no possibility of either India or China reducing their coal usage in the foreseeable future.
Australia also produces a lot of natural gas, mostly for export. Consumers in the Eastern states are experiencing massive power price inflation because their state governments chose not to replace old coal-fired generators with gas-fired power generation in their states, banned development of new gas fields: i.e. an all-renewable sources policy, and they must pay international market prices for their gas. Western Australia produces large amounts of gas and a proportion is production reserved for the state of Western Australia. As a result Western Australia has relatively low power prices and a secure supply of gas.
- You saved me writing a comment (almost). The map show huge countries such as Canada, Russia, China, and most countries in South America as not having the highest air quality rating even though the air pollution is specific to certain relatively small regions that experience such pollution, while vast regions of those countries are basically undeveloped wilderness with very pure air. This map is so misleading that it is unhelpful.
- If Roman numerals are printed around the perimeter of the clock face with the base of each numeral on the same circle, as opposed to printing the numerals horizontally, then the numerals towards the bottom are harder to read because they are nearly upside down. This makes it harder to distinguish quickly between IV and VI. One solution is to use IIII instead of IV.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-deli...