Awesome. I'll keep an eye on this, thanks.

I think this is an artefact of how science is taught: In 1953 Watson and Crick published a paper on the structure of DNA. Everyone smiled and nodded.

In my experience it's more like: Most scientists ignored it. Others were interested but had too much teaching to pay attention to it. A few people got pissed off and tried to prove it wrong. A few other people got excited and tried to build on it.

Absolutely. I see peer review as a way of - hopefully - filtering out the most egregious crap, and fixing the worst errors in papers while rounding them off.

I feel all these debates are kind of pointless, because no-one I know treats a published article as gospel. We make up our own minds about the paper.

I agree. Compare what happened in New Zealand when John Key and the National party ousted the long-term Labor government.

Despite some major missteps from Key/National, Labor's spent the last term and a half fighting amongst themselves about who will lead it. There just wasn't the talent or the public respect for the interim leaders that could compete with Key.

My money's on a few Liberal terms in government, I'm afraid. The scary thing is, the second time they get voted in, they'll treat it was a strengthened mandate to do what they want.

Don't go to Australia. We're mostly locking up asylum-seekers on small off-shore island detention centers. This is not a good thing.

Hmm spend time in a civilized nation's prison or 3rd world prison... doesn't seem hard to decide.

(Insert joke about not sure if the .au prison is the civilized one or the 3rd world one ... oh oh look what I just said, now I'm about to be sharing a cell with OP)

This goes double for the Norway comparison... whats the worst thing they can do to you in a Norway prison, serve lutefisk for dinner?

On a 3rd world prison, you might be able to bribe the warden to provide you with better room, cellphone, cable tv, internet, air conditioning unit, small kitchen, etc.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...

If bribes are available then spend it on the judge...

A kickstarter to pay off his judge is something I've not seen yet and is an interesting hack on the system.

Or if forbidden by kickstarter, a startup competitor to kickstarter could have bribery as its secret weapon.

Imagine getting every NRA or NOW or Sierra Club or EFF member to donate to pay bribes in the 3rd world to help some cause.

I'm not sure that is a given. Maybe Australian prisons are nice. You could make the same joke about the USA and it would unfortunately be closer to the truth. I'd rather get sent to jail in Mexico than one in Arizona.

Only those that come by boat. Many many more asylum seekers come by plane which is not such a problem. Detaining boat people is meant to deter others risking their lives the same way.

In Norway it's the same, although it lasts for several months or years.

Don't forget Bokeh[1] - a replacement for ggplot2

[1] https://github.com/ContinuumIO/Bokeh

The way things are is not necessarily the way things ought to be.

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano

I've been doing all my editing in plain text (vim if you must know) for about 6 months. Then I use the wonderful PanDoc [1] to convert it to anything I need (usually PDF, sometimes .docx).

Everything's much simpler and much more peaceful.

[1] http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

From their website: "Fancy Hands can purchase things for you. Yep, if you ask us to buy toner cartridges, lunch, or tickets, we can handle it.

First off, security is our number one priority with this feature and it's totally baked in from the start. At no point, does your assistant, or anybody else at Fancy Hands have access to your credit card number. Not bad, right? You don't have to worry about a rogue assistant using your credit card information, they'll never know it (plus, we don't have any rogue assistants)."

http://www.fancyhands.com/help/payments

Although... "While we can make purchases for you, we cannot do certain things including reservations (at hotels, etc), and airplane tickets."

So fancyhands couldn't have helped the writer of the blogpost with his airplane ticket problem

I've had corporate travel services place tickets on a 24 hour hold for me before (i.e. the itinerary is reserved, but not yet paid for). I assume that's still possible, at least for the legacy carriers.

Continental used to have that, but dropped it shortly before the United merger. I think other companies did too. Instead, they let you cancel with no cancellation fee within 24 hours. (Although the funds may take up to two weeks to go back to your account).

So essentially, FancyHands can book it for you with their card, and cancel it if they can't charge you within 24 hours - but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't want to go that route.

United still has this feature. Choose "pay at the airport" and then just go back and pay online within 24 hours.

American Airlines still has this feature (or at least it did last night when I was making a booking) Edit: By this feature, I mean the ability to place a hold without the credit card.

They could set up the itinerary for him to purchase quickly.

But they can certainly help find the best options for your travel so that you can go there and buy yourself.

That's what takes the most time, once you have that, just go and buy. Sure, having someone that could do everything would be good.

But you could do that with a travel agent.

As a potential customer, I for one would be scared off by the sloppy writing in the very paragraph that is supposed to inspire confidence (stray comma after "At no point"; awkward comma between the two clauses "You don't have to worry..." and "they'll never know it").

Oh brother. This "they messed this one thing up so they must be idiots" is already a way for the simple minded to be able to feel superior about something useless, but in this case you're not even correct. Go read some Mark Twain. That guy must have been a moron, right?

Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.