A somewhat related question: I'm about to start a job at a company with "open office" structure, after having my own office for the last 4 years. Anything I should be prepared for?
"The Devil's Cup" is great! He also has "In the Devil's garden", which is quite good as well. It presents the history of food in terms of the seven deadly sins.
Just finished Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A time of gifts" and I can't recommend it enough! One of the best English books that I have read. You will particularly like it if you're interested in European history (political, as well as art history), if you like traveling, if you're into foreign languages and if you don't mind using a dictionary once in a while. I'm really excited to start its sequel "Between the woods and the water".
Compared to, say, Russian or Ukrainian French is really not that complicated. It also has way less "exceptions to every single rule" than English. You should choose a language based on your goals, not "how many countries use it" (and even by that metric French would still be really high up). For example, if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish.
> I figured someone who speaks X and wants to begin learning English would use an X-English / English-X dictionary.
At first. You should switch to X-X dictionary as soon as you can, far before it becomes natural and easy to use X-X dictionary. X-English/English-X dictionaries encourage people to continue "thinking" in their language, while successfully learning a new language would absolutely require embracing new ways of forming phrases, building sentences, etc.
Source: English is my 3rd language, I'm on my 5th now.
> I find it ironic to think that in Australia the government is singing praises for copper network lines [...] yet war torn anarchic Somalia is pushing in the other direction.
Off topic. So, what's the opinion on RD Laing currently in the scientific community? I remember reading "A divided self" and wondering the whole time, is the whole world mad? Or is the author mad? Or is it both?
If you just want to get your foot in with pure math I'd recommend studying basic abstract algebra and analysis at the same time. For abstract algebra look into Hungerford (Intro, not his grad text), for analysis, maybe Rudin, or Kolmogorov and Smirnov.
@facebook.com was supposed to make people feel that all their electronic communication needs can be met by facebook. I'm guessing, it turned out people didn't mind that much logging into both their gmails/hotmails and facebook.
Of course not. In fact the police brutality towards a few peaceful student protesters was what triggered the mass protests in Kiev and all over Ukraine, it wasn't about any particular agreement as many people wrongly believe. I'm just talking about the Russia vs the West politics in Ukraine.
Here is an ELI5 version of what's going on in Ukraine:
Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. It can ask the west, but the west gives back a list of conditions to be satisfied (human rights, economical, etc) that are incredibly hard for the governmnet to achieve given deeply rooted corruption on all levels.
There is another source for the money: Russia (which, despite some westerners' beliefs, is a very rich country). In return Russia's demands are to make sure that the deeply rooted corruption on all levels works in Russia's favour. That is much easier to achieve.
Hence the recent $15 billion loan from Putin, that officially appears to be unconditional.
Another point I'd like to make is that many people in the east (I come from one of the big industrial cities in the south-east), don't just dislike Europe and like Russia. It's that their jobs literally depend on Russia, most of the industrial exports go straight to Russia, that's why people there are terrified of any sanctions.
Maybe your website will help people see the plethora of inconsistent findings, so they can start questioning the state of science and think of "better ways" for themselves ;)
EDIT: Any headphones suggestions?