How to Get a Copy of Your FBI File (idea) by narzos The Freedom of Information Act is a powerful thing. If you've ever wanted to know just what those guvmint bastards have on you, anyway, here's your chance. Just fill in the italics in this form letter with the appropriate information, get your signature notarized, send it off, and you're in business! This should be free, though if your search returns reams of information, you may be charged 5 cents per page in duplication fees. Your Name Today's Date Your Address Line 2 of Your Address Federal Bureau of Investigation Records Resources Division - Attn.: FOIA/PA Office J. This is a request for records under both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act. My full name is: Your Name. FOIA/PA statutes provide that even if some of the requested material is properly exempt from mandatory disclosure, all segregable portions must be released. I hereby agree to pay reasonable costs associated with this request up to a maximum of $30. Sincerely,Your Signature Your Printed Name
Top 50 Free Open Source Classes on Computer Science : Comtechtor Computer science is an interesting field to go into. There are a number of opportunities in computer science that you can take advantage of. With computers increasingly becoming a regular part of life, those who can work with computers have good opportunities. You can find a good salary with a program in computer science, and as long as you are careful to keep up your skills. Introduction to Computer Science Learn the basics of computer science, and get a foundation in how computer science works. Introduction to Computer Science: Learn about the history of computing, as well as the development of computer languages. Comprehensive Computer Science Collections If you are interested in courses that are a little more comprehensive in nature, you can get a good feel for computer science from the following collections: Programming and Languages Get a handle on computer programming, and learn about different computer languages used in programming. Computer Software Computer Processes and Data
The Running Man, Revisited Comparison between walking and running of mechanical energy expended. Credit: Daniel Lieberman Ann Trason, Scott Jurek, Matt Carpenter. These are the megastars of ultra-distance running, athletes who pound out not just marathons, but dozens of them back-to-back, over Rocky Mountain passes and across the scorching floor of Death Valley. But a handful of scientists think that these ultra-marathoners are using their bodies just as our hominid forbears once did, a theory known as the endurance running hypothesis (ER). Our toes, for instance, are shorter and stubbier than those of nearly all other primates, including chimpanzees, a trait that has long been attributed to our committed bipedalism. “If you have very long toes, the moment of force acting on the foot’s metatarsal phalangeal joint becomes problematic when running,” explains Lieberman. The paper earned the cover of Nature and generated quite a stir within bio/anthro circles. shoothead via Flickr
Maps home page Down to: 6th to 15th Centuries | 16th and 19th Centuries | 1901 to World War Two | 1946 to 21st Century The Ancient World ... index of places Aegean Region, to 300 BCE Aegean Region, 185 BCE Africa, 2500 to 1500 BCE Africa to 500 CE African Language Families Alexander in the East (334 to 323 BCE) Ashoka, Empire of (269 to 232 BCE) Athenian Empire (431 BCE) China, Korea and Japan (1st to 5th century CE) China's Warring States (245 to 235 BCE) Cyrus II, Empire of (559 to 530 BCE) Delian League, 431 BCE Egyptian and Hittite Empires, 1279 BCE Europe Fertile Crescent, 9000-4500 BCE Germania (120 CE) Greece (600s to 400s BCE) Gupta Empire (320 to 550 CE) Han China, circa 100 BCE Hellespont (Battle of Granicus River, 334 BCE) India to 500 BCE Israel and Judah to 733 BCE Italy and Sicily (400 to 200 BCE) Judea, Galilee, Idumea (1st Century BCE) Mesopotamia to 2500 BCE Mesoamerica and the Maya (250 to 500 CE) Oceania Power divisions across Eurasia, 301 BCE Roman Empire, CE 12 Roman Empire, CE 150 Roman Empire, CE 500
Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's first computer programmer.[1][2][3] Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". As a young adult, her mathematical talents led her to an ongoing working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, and in particular Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Biography[edit] Childhood[edit] Ada, aged four On 16 January 1816, Annabella, at George's behest, left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory taking one-month-old Ada with her. Adult years[edit]
Psychology Today: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature. This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences. Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters,
Ghost Quiz In 1885, Cecilia Garrett Smith and a friend were experimenting with automatic writing using a primitive Ouija board on which a planchette was guided by a visiting “spirit.” “We got all sorts of nonsense out of it, sometimes long doggerel rhymes with several verses,” but the prophecies they asked for were rarely answered. When they asked who the guiding spirit was, the planchette wrote that his name was Jim and that he had been Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. Intrigued, they asked Jim to write the equation describing the heart-shaped planchette they were using, and they received this response: This they interpreted as , which J.W. “I am quite sure that I had never seen the curve before, and therefore the production of the equation could not have been an act of unconscious memory on my part,” Smith wrote later. One wonders what Jim thought of all this.
Entropy (information theory) 2 bits of entropy. A single toss of a fair coin has an entropy of one bit. A series of two fair coin tosses has an entropy of two bits. This definition of "entropy" was introduced by Claude E. Entropy is a measure of unpredictability of information content. Now consider the example of a coin toss. English text has fairly low entropy. If a compression scheme is lossless—that is, you can always recover the entire original message by decompressing—then a compressed message has the same quantity of information as the original, but communicated in fewer characters. Shannon's theorem also implies that no lossless compression scheme can compress all messages. Named after Boltzmann's H-theorem, Shannon defined the entropy H (Greek letter Eta) of a discrete random variable X with possible values {x1, ..., xn} and probability mass function P(X) as: Here E is the expected value operator, and I is the information content of X.[8][9] I(X) is itself a random variable. . The average uncertainty , with
Most Interesting Libraries of the World The Royal library Black Diamond at the waterfront of Copenhagen owes its name to the black granite from Zimbabwe used for the facade of the building. The name was used by the public first and has been adapted officially later. Design by the Danish architects Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen. Photography by Mirage Bookmark Flickr.com Antikythera mechanism The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A – front) The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A – back) The Antikythera mechanism (/ˌæntɨkɨˈθɪərə/ ANT-i-ki-THEER-ə or /ˌæntɨˈkɪθərə/ ANT-i-KITH-ə-rə) is an ancient analog computer[1][2][3][4] designed to predict astronomical positions and eclipses. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck, a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.[5] Although the computer's construction has been attributed to the Greeks and dated to the early 1st century BC, its significance and complexity were not understood until the 1970s when it was analyzed with modern X-ray technology. Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe.[6] The mechanism was housed in a wooden box approximately 340 × 180 × 90 mm in size and comprised 30 bronze gears (although more could have been lost). Origins and discovery[edit] Gearing[edit]