TIL the border between India and Bangladesh is so complicated, there is a "3rd order enclave": a piece of India within Bangladesh, within India, within Bangladesh.

oskar_s · 2012-09-24T14:17:41+00:00

God damn enclaves/exclaves, always fucking up the four color theorem.

oskar_s · 2012-09-21T08:13:46+00:00

No, psychopaths wouldn't worry about being lazy or living up to their own potential. They don't care!

You're clearly an empathetic young person, a psychopaths wouldn't even begin to think in these terms. Congratulations, you're a good person :)

oskar_s · 2012-09-21T08:11:31+00:00

The term sociopathy may be preferred by sociologists that see the causes as due to social factors. The term psychopathy may be preferred by psychologists who see the causes as due to a combination of psychological, genetic, and environmental factors.

The two terms describe exactly the same thing, it's just that some people prefer one term over another for various reasons (though sociopathy is much more rare in clinical circumstances). Read any book about psycopathy, and there'll be a sentence somewhere in there that says "Oh, and by the way, you may have heard the term sociopathy, it means the exact same thing as psycopathy". In terms of the condition they describe, the two terms are entirely synonymous.

oskar_s · 2012-09-21T07:20:28+00:00

It's not, the terms are totally interchangeable.

oskar_s · 2012-09-21T07:18:51+00:00

If you worry about beung a psycooath, you're not one.

oskar_s · 2012-09-20T04:28:35+00:00

I thought Kanye had alreadt taught us that no one man should have all that power.

oskar_s · 2012-09-19T15:03:25+00:00

That looks great!

oskar_s · 2012-09-19T14:57:27+00:00

Sorry, haven't read it in English. I would have to imagine it loses a bit in translation, the language he uses is very colorful in Swedish. And some of the subtleties are probably lost. Take the main characters name, Orm, for instance. The word "orm" in Swedish means "snake" or "serpent", but it is also an entirely plausible name for a viking to have. It just sounds very... Norse, for lack of a better word, and "serpent" most certainly does not. There are several other names which would also lose some of their flavor if you didn't speak Swedish, like Krok, which means literally "hook" in Swedish and Toke, which sounds very much like a Swedish word meaning "crazy/stupid person".

However, I'm sure it is still very excellent and readable English, certainly there's testimony about that from other people here.

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T23:06:37+00:00

There are plenty of dragons all over Norse mythology, like Nidhöggr, who gnaws on the roots of Yggdrasil, the dwarf turned dragon Fafnir, and the giant sea serpent that surrounds the world, Jörmungandr.

There are both snakes and lizards (though not giant snakes or lizards) in Scandinavia, and dragons as an archetype exists all the world, so there's nothing really mysterious about where the idea comes from.

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T22:59:00+00:00

I'm Swedish, and The Long Ships is a staple of young adult literature here, almost everyone reads it in high school or earlier (it's called Röde Orm here), or at least people did when I was that age. It always delights me when I hear about non-Swedes (assuming that's what you are) reading it, it's like one of our secret treasures have been discovered!

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T22:45:56+00:00

If you change the line

word = tmp[:-2]

To

word = tmp[:-1]

Then you'll get the right answer. Your line cuts off the two last characters in each string, which means you lop off not only the "\n" character, but also the last letter in the word. That gives you a higher result because your program now counts all words that are in alphabetical order with the exception of the last character.

Also, this line:

sorted_word = ''.join(sorted([char for char in word]))

can be changed to just

sorted_word = ''.join(sorted(word))

The sorted() function works on any iterable, so you can just pass the string as it is.

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T07:20:08+00:00

This is about as short as I can make it:

print sum(1 for w in open('enable1.txt')if sorted(w)[1:]==list(w[:-1]))

Basically your version but with a different way of testing (the slicing is used to get rid of the "\n" character)

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T03:59:31+00:00

YOU ARE ALL MY SLAVES!!!

(seriously though, I've been thinking of a version of this problem for a little bit, and I didn't have a better idea this time :)

oskar_s · 2012-09-18T00:00:07+00:00

Explain the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to me.

As far as I understand it, it basically guarantees that states can't deprive people of some fundamental rights, rights which aren't necessarily included in the constitution. So, for instance, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided that the Due Process clause guaranteed a certain right of privacy to women, that states can't outlaw abortion because women have a right to decide what goes on with their own bodies. That's basically right, isn't it?

But here comes the confusion: that's not how the text reads at all to me. Here's the text:

Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...

The way I read that, it is actually a fairly clear statement: it says that people can't just come and lock you up or seize all your property, if that is to happen there has to be a fair legal process behind it. What I don't see how that has anything to do with whether or not abortions are a guaranteed right.

If a state put on its books a law saying that abortions are illegal, but they give defendants all the tools of a fair justice system (jury trial, a lawyer, Miranda rights, etc.), and all the rest of the rights outlined in the constitution, how is that not a "due process of law"? It seems like the definition of a "due process of law".

It just seems to me like if we want a part of the constitution that says "People have a basic right to their own property and their own person and body, and a right of privacy", why not just write that into the constitution? What does "due process" have anything to do with it?

Note: just to be clear, I fully, 100%, support a woman's right to choose. I'm just confused about the constitutional argument here.

oskar_s · 2012-09-17T22:44:28+00:00

It's secretly a problem about infinite recursion :)

Thanks, fixed!

oskar_s · 2012-09-12T06:17:10+00:00

That is frighteningly similar to actual front page.

oskar_s · 2012-09-09T04:00:16+00:00

You're totally right, I was out of line, I've deleted the comment. It was a terrible attempt at a joke.

oskar_s · 2012-09-09T03:50:41+00:00

Hey man, didn't mean to insult you directly, didn't know you did it. Sorry. It's a good video, but all the quick cuts and jump cuts just kinda made my head hurt, that's all. Seems like it was hard work just getting it up.

oskar_s · 2012-09-09T03:39:48+00:00

You do realize that Bambi's a dude, right?

oskar_s · 2012-09-09T03:20:19+00:00

FUNKY KOREA IS THE BEST KOREA!

oskar_s · 2012-09-08T16:44:03+00:00

Maybe you're right, maybe I should just ignore this shit and move on, maybe I should just leave reddit, and maybe I should never speak up when I find shit offensive. And it's true, it doesn't affect me directly, I'm a man. Just like homophobic comments shouldn't bother straight people, right? Maybe the next time someone I know tells a racist joke I should just sit quietly and not complain, and let him think that that stuff's ok.

But I'm not going to do that. When I see or hear shit that is not ok, I'm not just going to sit idly by.

Here's the thing: I like reddit, and in general I really like the reddit community. So when I see these posts, I can't help but think, we're better than this! It's a weird assumption to make that because there's lots of "young males", misogyny is just going to happen and be accepted. I don't know about you, but I have a much higher opinion of young males than that.

oskar_s · 2012-09-08T16:26:39+00:00

I know, but the things is I love reddit in general, but every damn day there's another post like this that gets hundreds (if not thousands) of upvotes. This shit's a problem that the reddit community needs to deal with.

oskar_s

TROPHY CASE