CapitalistImperialistPig

Nice country you got there.  Be a shame if you didn't have any Javelin antitank missiles to defend it. But there is this one favor you could do for me.

My favorite answer: Physicists are ungainly, untalented, unattractive, unpopular, and predominately undesirable people, who weren’t good at sports and couldn’t get dates in high school. This freed up their time for math and/or science, which they happened to be good at/interested in. Physicists, therefore, spend their whole lives in their niche, using their one ability trying to achieve fame and acceptance in an academic context. Also, they can’t dance. Frankly, I got to say the "can't dance" part stung a bit.

...coding for the very first time. I'm taking a class in Astro which requires computer problems in the form of Python notebooks.  I actually took a course in Python once, but I have no clue anymore as to how the hell to program in it much less store the result in notebooks.  OK, that's a slight exaggeration.  Hello World only took me two tries, but a more serious problem is that it is so long since I actually did programming for a living that I really don't get the technology of packages, etc. There is also a lot of syntax I need to learn or relearn. I'm thinking of asking Joe Biden if he has a spare record player on which I can listen to some tutorials.

The origins of the peoples of India has long been a contentious issue.  India has a population that looks, and is, racially diverse.  Several major language groups are represented in the hundreds of languages and dialects of India.  Notably, several of them are closely related the languages of Europe and Iran - the Indo-European languages, which are not only global in extent but probably spoken by more people than any other, with the possible exception of Chinese. These IE languages in India are clearly descended from Sanskrit, the language of the founding documents of Hinduism and Indian culture.  So a central question is who were these people who spoke something like Sanskrit, called themselves Aryans, and occupy a central role in all of Indian culture since.  German linguists appropriated the name and claimed that the Aryans were in fact Germans who had invaded India. Anthropology and especially modern genomics tells a different story.  The IE langua...

All four of the leading candidates for President are well past retirement age and eligible for Medicare.  Trump, the current occupant, shows definite signs of early dementia.  I would say the same about Biden except that he has always been a bit like that.  Sanders is a cranky old man, and I can picture him yelling at Congress to get off his lawn. Warren, the youngest, is 70, so they are all in their eighth decade.  Of course she is also the smartest, so that should count for something. Ronald Reagan, the only President of comparable age before Trump, and whose Alzheimer's became severe during his second term, was younger than any of them when first elected. The others on the debate stage next go-around, AKA the Seven Dwarfs, don't look especially promising either, but maybe one of them can make a move.