/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2609426
The point was that many (not all) Americans can't stand anyone criticizing America, and that they get very hostile and angry when they perceive anyone criticizing any element of it--EVEN THE BREAD AND THE CHEESE.

And it is a FACT that Americans travel less than Europeans--mostly because the country is so big that it takes forever to get anywhere. There are quick trains from London to Paris. Not from Paris to New York.

Notice that I never said I hate America. I don't. I love it. But I'm not so chauvinistic to ignore the terrible things about it. The fact that the most popular politician today is Sarah Palin means that I don't really have to justify my beliefs to anyone who has enough intellectual interest to pass the time on a Saturday making conversation with some random German physicist on /sci/.

>>2609419
Americans are also more homophobic than Europeans, and suffer a much higher rate of sexual violence.

>>2609393
The professors were trained when the US was superior (and weren't being killed by Germans and Russians, especially if they emigrated here); now, Americans under the age of 40 have to a considerable extent deserted the sciences. Do you even read newspapers? You're butthurt when someone criticized American culture for being non- (or anti-) intellectual, and you have so little idea of what is happening in your own country?

Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgKepHebKRc
This is open testimony on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

Go have another Big Mac and forget the whole thing.

I am a faggot. Please rape my face.

>>2609366
see
>>2609229
>make sure that whenever you go to the international students office, you are VERY polite, and above all, NEVER appear to be superior or condescending. Americans often feel superior to other people, and don't think that nobody will think "Oh, Germany, we beat them in WWII (blah blah blah), so he has to be deferential to me." It's amazing, but it's just a sad fact.

Thanks for confirming my generalization.

>>2609287
The reason that there are so many foreign grad students and postdocs in US science departments is that there are so few Americans who qualify. American intellectual culture has been in decline for decades. This isn't the 1950s when Europe and Asia were still rebuilding after WWII.

Most well-educated Americans have attitudes like mine, which has nothing to do with love of country, but an acknowledgment that our country has a huge population of rednecks and other kinds of dumbasses.

>>2609274
>>2609276
Pfft. Enjoy your supermarket bread, Detroit cars, obese neighbors, religious fanatics running the government. I'll stay in my small, worldly, cosmopolitan niche, thank you very much. It took me long enough to find it and I love it.

>>2609244
I'm American, fucknuts.

You all need the power of love.

>>2609234
"40 Percent Of Americans Still Believe In Creationism"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-bel_n_799078.html

>>2609227
Two solutions: make sure that you are well-connected with the international-students community, because they will know what needs to be done better than the office staff; and make sure that whenever you go to the international students office, you are VERY polite, and above all, NEVER appear to be superior or condescending. Americans often feel superior to other people, and don't think that nobody will think "Oh, Germany, we beat them in WWII (blah blah blah), so he has to be deferential to me." It's amazing, but it's just a sad fact. (You're lucky you're not Chinese, let me tell you.) So: be nice in that office, AND, if you can, try to "make friends" with someone who knows what they're doing. Learn the person's name, and send thank-you notes when they help you. A personal connection can help a LOT.

Good luck. Thanks for coming to the USA. In terms of science, we need all the help we can get.

>>2609170
American bread is terrible, no denying, and the food overall is pretty bad. Cheese is a serious problem, and sausage, and fruit. American food often tastes like it was made as a display item in museum--"this is what food looks like"--without intending that anyone would actually eat it. BUT you can always get what you want, especially in a college town, and Rutgers is big. You can find a good bakery and a gourmet shop. Get a bicycle--things are spread out.

I went to grad school for a long time, with a lot of Europeans, and I'm sorry to say it but you may find that it's hard to make friends with Americans generally, and that you're more comfortable with other Europeans. American culture is provincial because Americans don't travel much and aren't much interested in other cultures. Of course, there are always exceptions, especially at a college town, but in my uni (which was in a major US city), the foreign students usually ended up hanging out with other foreign students. Which is not so bad, because there are a lot of them, and they're smart, but still it kind of makes me sad.

One more piece of advice, if you don't mind hearing it: as a foreign student, you are going to have to endure a LOT of bureaucracy. What's worse, most American unis (and I don't know about Rutgers, but I don't expect it to be different) don't put a lot of resources into the international-students offices, and these offices are very badly run. Every year, a huge number of students (not proportionally, but in absolute numbers) end up not being able to return to the US because of simple administrative problems that the bureaucrats were too stupid to fix.

>>2609160
If you're 20, and can be horny without getting a hard on for more than one day, then you need to see a doctor asap.

http://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/guide/erectile-dysfunction-as-warning-sign

>>2609099
No person has ever said that in a respectable forum at any time.

Anyway, it's a hard question to answer especially because it's so hard to distinguish effects from early childhood from effects of genetics itself. Even with separated twin studies.

>>2609061
Do you have Google on your computer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Islamic_sects

I live in New York and used to live in New Brunswick and I can tell you that it's a perfectly fine place to live, safe and clean and even pretty, but a bit dull outside the university.

Also, if you have time or energy and the curiosity, the philosophy department is superb--world-class, better than Harvard. (This is not to deny that there are duds in it!) Here's a philosopher of physics:
http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=111&Itemid=210

The existence or non-existence of an object at a given time has observable ramifications later in time. If this counts as indirect observation for you, then there is no such thing as the absence of indirect observation.

>>2603333
Are you a computer programmer? Because binary and bases in other powers of 2 are good for computer architecture. But for calculating convenience generally, it's better to have a factor of 3 in your base as well, because it makes more fractional denominators come out even. 12 has two 2s and one 3. If you have three 2s, two 3s, and one 5, then you base 360--the number of degrees in a circle. All for easy dividing up. But fractions don't have the utility they used to...thanks to computers.

I don't understand why these arguments don't instantly turn to geometry rather than arithmetic.

>>2603328
I see you corrected that. Sorry.

>>2601759
That shows it's not a priori, bud.

>>2603178
Publicity

while we're making changes...
http://base12.org/
Oh, also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

This is perhaps the dumbest thread I have ever read on /sci/ (and I read the threads about 0.9... and 1).

TO ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT WAS ASKED: the opinions of experts are very important in the search for knowledge. Expert opinions are likely to be true, and knowing certain people to be experts justifies believing their opinions. Thus, learning experts' opinions is likely to provide justified true belief, which is knowledge.

ON THE OTHER HAND, opinions of blowhard non-experts are a problem, if you let them affect your beliefs. For example, smug know-it-all scientists spouting off about philosophy when they know nothing about it. ITT, e.g.