Recent content by Hlafordlaes

Always used MSSE until I tired of the endless error messages in Event Viewer. Although it is not very good, since I do not visit dubious sites and download only from proper sources, it was enough. Then I started sharing my PC with the missus... BitDefender (free) is as lightweight as MSSE and...

Thanks, Mike H and Pythagorean. With luck, I'll be following coursework at the Institut de Neurociencies at the Univ. of Barcelona in the Fall, either auditing or enrolled. I'll spend all summer purely on maths. Some good conferences are also on schedule locally in September. As Mike H points...

Much quicker question this time: good math books for science majors. Can you recommend one/some? After my naive forays above, it is now clear the field of interest to me is computational biology. Luckily, there is a lot of research in that field locally, and I may even be moving soon right...

[@Pythagorean: Imagine Spock lost in the viewer looking at a new thing, and repeating "Fascinating!" My hope is that maybe in a year or two, I'll be ready to appreciate the content more and close my jaw. For now, I am still seeking out the simple. To wit:] The Curious Incident of the...

Gosh, thanks again everyone. I think I am about to fall in love with a snail. And a bookshelf, too. I was going to publish a joke or two in the Fun section as my only means of providing meager compensation, but the ones I wanted to use have been posted once or twice elsewhere, so for SEO...

Mike H, Thank you so very much for putting that together. I think you understand perfectly the approach I would like to take. I think my next step is to digest more of what your two helpful posts have provided; that should take quite some time. The onus is now on me to get into high gear. I'll...

Background Like many, my curiosity started at the far other end of the discussions regarding mind and brain, and to mention a taboo word softly and with trepidation: consciousness. Those conversations are filled with speculation and rampant rationalist fantasy. I've had quite enough of that...

Mike H: Perfect! Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I think it is the right place for me to get my feet wet first. I am hoping to apply the same structuralist methods based on behavior and hard data one can do in linguistics without getting lost in "meaning," if only to get a sense...

Hello, I am a layman in biology with a good notion of method only. My background is in linguistics (don't run away yet), but my time has been spent over the last several years honing my understanding in a variety of fields. (Fool with time on his hands syndrome.) I wish to answer for myself...

Point of order on the nomenclature. In accounting terms, business income is profit. It is revenue (monies in) that is not taxed; that would ignore costs. As for taxing religious organizations, we'd need to re-think a few things, such as when monies are donated by the organization to a third...

Thanks, Mr. Norse Tree! You're right, the site did let me dl a pdf that was a bit longer. In the end, tho, the method used that resulted in remission was so harsh (basically nuking the immune system), that even if it produces results for AS, it appears the risks are too high, even for...

A recent abstract discusses the first report ever of the remission of an autoimmune disease from which I suffer, ankylosing spondylitis. As a layman without access to subscriptions to professional journals, I was wondering if there might be any posters who are aware of the best internet sites...

Spain's debt-to-GDP ratio prior to the crisis was 62%, far lower than the 80-90% of Germany and France. Here the impact of the financial crisis hit an overheated housing segment, leading to bank weaknesses. So, the profligate spending was actually more an issue elsewhere. Watch out for...

@Naty1 The genesis of the crisis has absolutely nothing to do with the issues you frame above, nor do the subsequent events. The only applicable case is Greece, who set a retirement age of 50 and are nuts. Think bank troubles -> bailouts with sovereign debt -> banks buy sovereign debt -> bank...

Capital flight indicates tremendous uncertainty, but is not a vote for leaving the euro, rather a hedge. Of course there is fear. Where the rub lies is in the increasingly obvious falsification of data across a broad spectrum of political party and banking shenanigans, this time from the right...