don't forget projects like LOFAR (snippets from lofar website)
In the first digital processing step 256 kHz subbands are formed. Only a subset of these bands is further processed. The maximum total bandwidth selected for further processing will be 32 MHz. Each Remote Station delivers a single dual polarization beam at 32 MHz, or 8 dual polarization beams at 4 MHz or any combination in between. The resulting output data rate is 2 Gb/s. The secondary filtering stage (to 1kHz channels) is done in the Central Processing system.
LOFAR produces large data streams, especially for the astronomy application (e.g. 6 TB of raw visibility data for an 8 beam, 4 hour synthesis observation, after integration for 1 sec and over 10kHz). One month of observing in this mode results in a PetaByte of data. (Systematic long-term storage for such data volumes thus becomes extremely expensive.)
The project is hardly up and running yet, but still, quite a bit of raw data to process. (powered by IBM's BlueGene/L)
well, yeah, there isn't (other than that ff3 whines a bit when i try to get it to accept my self-signed cert) really a reason not to use it.. What I'm wondering is why GMail doesn't have the same 256bit AES encryption that my spiffy (and lonely) 1-man forum has, in stead of 128bit RC4?
maybe we do, maybe we do not.. It doesn't really matter (and i think i left it up in the air rather than begging questions), i think.
Considering those 250 systems have 'jupiters' close to the sun, and we have Jupiter still fairly far away from the sun, even though we've been here 4.5B-ish years now, I doubt they're moving inward quickly, if they are at all.
That said, i'm hardly well-read on the topic of solar system formation, and I haven't a clue whether there are models that explain why the matter in the solar accretion disk would have been distributed the way it was for the current planets to be formed the way they were.
Honestly, I can understand how people who care about competitive sports and participate in them would be annoyed because they have to guess they keep losing just because the other guy is using a less tracable kind of doping or just because they're worse at whatever sport they play, even if I don't really see why you'd want to risk your life for it, but as someone above you already suggested in a roundabout way, it may be the only thing someone is capable of doing.
But it seems to me that the current culture (specifically in marathony/cycling long distances) is pretty much destroyed already by the mentioned suspicion, as pretty much nobody will want to risk being the only guy who isn't cheating, and consistently losing because of it. For them, legalizing doping would just create more openness/honesty
It however has nothing to say about the likelyhood of the type of solar system produced until we have a theory that actually explains all the systems we currently see...
That's bound to give a person headaches.. why not assume the things need to have a reason to "gravitate" inward (or outward.. iirc our moon is moving away from the earth by stealing our angular momentum), and adapt the model from there. given how we hardly have perfect information on our solar system's formation (perhaps another (proto)solar system/(galaxy) "nearby" caused jupiter and the outer planets to stabilize in their orbits (although that would probably have affected the other planets in ways i cannot speculate on even slightly as well, so what the net effect of that would've been i do not know), or perhaps saturn did it, in a herculean effort to make possible god-fearing life on earth.)
Anyway, that the model was wrong is something even Zeno could've predicted. but using the current hypothesis in the meantime hardly seems like a crime (and yes, i realise that wasn't necessarily what you were suggesting)
the reason "they" kowtow to arabia? Russia is just as dependent on the money the EU pays them as the EU is of russia's oil.. (there are no significant pipelines connecting russia's supply (east of the Siberia) to anyone else's demand) This apparently as opposed to Bush's dumping Georgia as an "ally" as soon as Putin decides he's allowed to stomp on them. Yes, consistency is King here
Neat way to read what I said.
Thinking something is misused/applied is rather different from thinking something is useless (or not "understanding" it) in my book, though.
So unless you consider nationalism/'race'ism a necessary part of one's experience of 'pride', i'm not really sure what it is you are responding to.
I don't get it.. Why would you care what color your skin is? One might argue being white is handy, since it makes it less likely you'll be held up by cops, but i can't say i find it an achievement i only turn tan when i stay out in the sun for a few weeks on end.
For that matter, i have a lot of trouble understanding why people would be proud of their black "heritage" (although that somewhat ambiguous term probably at least in part refers to their cultural achievements), or their american heritage.
I don't know if you've noticed, but with the increased lifespans the achievements of one's family has become mightily less important than it was in the olden days.
While in the Middle Ages people were married at age 16 just to insure the continuity of the family line, and so any Family Property staying in the family for at least another generation, these days you're mostly supposed to "succeed" by yourself, as you've got at least 60 years to do so, in stead of 10-15 (after you become conscious, anyway)
Nationalism changed that a bit, but I'm mostly glad i grew up in Holland (that is, the dutch west, which is noticably less religious than some other parts) because it allowed me not to have to waste time on silly things like a draft, civil wars, mafiosi, conservative/extremist thinking, or not being able to go to uni because you're required to have (aside from a brain) parents that can pay 20k/year. (like in some other parts of the world i could name) And not because I necessarily think the dutch way of life is best.
That said, the world is become a slightly messier place every year now (stuff becoming more expensive, schooling becoming both more elitist (supposedly, anyway, it's not as if the generation after mine is all that much smarter) and more dulling (leveling effects to ensure 'equal opportunity' for retards and geniuses are also becoming more noticable)..
Anyway, all these trends affect "blacks", latinas, and "asians" alike, as they all seem to have idiots and normals in equal amounts.. the only thing your post proves is that most of the other "races" haven't had the leisure time yet to figure out that those "identifiers" are mostly arbitrary.
thrilled you're aware of the science wars, but honestly, i'd have been more thrilled with an alternative for a working system than 'exposing' those two idiotic examples and saying we should do away with the whole practice. (yes, i know you didn't say that explicitly, but i don't really see what it proves, other than that the author made a somewhat naÃve claim)
there will always be people like Leibniz (Monadology), or cultural scientists who are pissed at not getting recognition, or others pissed at the same thing.
Monadology is still read, and there are also people getting BAs for writing a paper combining Husserl and mysticism.
Did that cloning guy from Sth-Korea prove that medicine should be abolished? Honestly, i can't get too worked up over a few papers a year being published that are about absolutely nothing, or other papers that are exposed as frauds in another few, because it will turn out (via citation counters) that noone is reading/referencing them, and they will be fired by their universities (or not)
Remember that news article about a "God Gene" having been found a few years ago?
turned out the article the papers were talking about didn't even exist/was never published.
anyone can make a mistake..
Continued use of whatever is said in those articles will prove that a writer is useful, and the market will take care of the rest.
Probably because the system you propose would allow for an infinite redistribution (interestingly, in the opposite direction from maximum entropy) towards the richer, which will in time cause a relative devaluation of the currency.
Although it's hard to say how much of an effect the superrich class has on inflation, it's conceivable that they will start buying only the "highest quality" items, buying only from a very select group within the producing economy, and which will, given a few decades, relatively bankrupt all companies who didn't already produce those products.
These other companies producing for the 'underclass' can only sell their products if that underclass is rich enough to buy their products, because the "rich" will not be interested in their products (and, as the market teaches us all: selling lots of products that everyone needs to lots of people at a small price (higher than the production costs) will generate more revenue (and in turn, profit) than not doing so does.
In the system you espouse, (well, in any system, really) companies exist because they can sell goods at a price higher than cost.
There will be a small number of companies that produce a few high quality items at high cost/price, and lots of companies selling lots of low-quality products at a low cost, thus enabling them to employ more workers at a 'normal' wage, which allows those workers to buy more goods, thus sponsoring more work. &c.
If you, however, ensure that a larger and larger proportion of the total amount of the extant money stays with a small class, that class will not need anything anymore after a while, and will stop buying goods, or only buy super-expensive products that their part of the market can pay for, but the rest cannot (these items become so expensive because they're relatively higher quality, and because there is small demand for it, per the 'rules of the market')
This hoarding will thus cause more unemployment because of diminished demand, because, assuming there is a (more or less, ignoring money creation) stable total amount of money in existence, the money the rich are making extra will cause diminished buying power somewhere else, and thus less demand, because the people who formerly had incomes now cannot buy stuff anymore, thus causing an additional decrease in total demand, ad infinitum.
now, I will grant that you cannot beforehand say where this phenomenon will occur, but I can guarantee you it WILL occur. and after this avalanche is done rolling, you will be back in early industrial victorian britain, which is where we came.
Back then, you had a guy called Malthus who argued there existed an "iron law of wages", something he formulated based on data supplied by david ricardo, about population growth.. which is more or less what you are referring to in your happy optimism (or, as i'm inclined to view it, short-sightedness. but I digress)
One can make a very good case, however, that it was only after the commoner started having more money than he needed for food and clothing, that the world economy started taking off (you can verify this by looking at GDP over time studies that exist on the interweb, even though I don't at this time have any urls for you), because it was only after this time that lots of goods could be sold, thus causing lots more demand, thus, well, you get the picture.
Anyway, I know you didn't really want to hear this, as a closet libertarian, but I hope this helps you to put things into a perspective that makes sense to you (that is, by pointing out the world has gotten lots richer since poor people got lots richer.
you do realise that writing your software in such a way that it automatically retaliates if it's 'pissed off' is just as intentional legally as doing it manually, right?.. it doesn't make any difference if this was inititated by an employee unthinkingly switching on the doling out of 'punishment' to websites frustrating their efforts to annoy people with fake materials without first checking if the website is owned by a reputable company or just an automated response which didn't require further human interaction, the response was programmed/executed in a systematic fashion.. that doesn't add up to being negligent when it comes to checking whether they should be bullying this person or not, it adds up to intentional bullying, period.
I can see how that might be a slight (attitude?) adjustment to make WRT your thinking about why insurance companies exist, but why is that "what is wrong with the system today"?
Is the system offended by our considering it a necessary evil? Are you?
Or is it the thought of people actually using their insurance's worth that offends you?
Actually, I'm fairly convinced the reason the insurance industry exists is not the one you mention, but actually one that will sound quite a bit more callous: Insurance (companies) exist(s) because countries don't function very well if too large a part of the population (that does all the grunt work) continually dies off too soon after having been spent money on (through education) for that investment to be recouped, and for the economy as a whole to keep running at the current pace (whatever that is), thus making the country a 'richer' place for everyone to live in.
Now, while i'm sure i've just offended every Libertarian out there, let me just say that i also do not believe the insurance company is there to make money for its executives/whoever gets the cream off every year's profits.
There, that should take care of the no-rules-necessary capitalists who weren't also Libertarians, and who hadn't already been woken up to the necessity of at least modest regulation after the sub-prime spanking.
Anyway, the point the article makes (especially in the summary) is utterly silly. insurance worked before, and (as others who were annoyed by the fact that someone where was still feeling young and invincible pointed out) accidents happen often enough for insurance to be useful to have even for those who don't have "genetic predispositions"
oh, come on.. haven't you been watching the movies? "dangerous tigers" -> AI who can control and actively/heuristically test for the nature of any intrustion -> give a machine the intelligence and power to shut down/quarantine affected systems -> soon it will start caring about the safety of its own hardware first..
i'll agree that skynet was supposedly created to esnure the efficient and speedy reaction of the USMil in case of an attack, but imagining it as having primarily a defense feature of the network itself doesn't seem that different.
hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is.. if you invest in amnesty/OxFam/whatever you know at least 20% is lost due to "overhead", another 10% at least is lost due to corruption, and even then (in the case of oxfam and related charities), there is a chance you're funding an organization that has more than a few members (statistically speaking, based on the amount of cases that have come out over the past 5 years or so) that indulge in sex-for-food programmes while they're doing their work. (That said, i do donate to Oxfam, because there just isn't an alternative i know that i know is better, and i'm hoping they're doing at least something with it that can be called useful.
Anyway, it is of course up to you (and i'll admit i'm somewhat cynical when it comes to those organizations), but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.
Commander Adama: "It's an integrated compter network, and I will not have it aboard this ship!" Secretary Rosalyn: "I heard you're one of those people... you're actually afraid of computers." Commander Adama: "No... there are many computers on this ship. But they're not networked!" Secretary Rosalyn: "A computerized network would simply make it faster and easier for the teacher's to be able to teach..." Commander Adama: "Let me explain something to you... Commander Adama: "... many good men and women lost their lives aboard this ship, because someone wanted a faster computer to make life easier. I'm sorry that I'm inconveniencing you or the teachers, but I will not allow... a network computerized system to be placed on this ship while I'm in command. Is that clear?"
it's not about euphemisms.. it's about marketing, and it's not so '90s either.. it's still alive, even if you might be critical of the use of it.
watch http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/ for a fairly interesting docu PBS did on it (warning: the fact that the people that are being interviewed take their jobs seriously is unnerving as well as a partial explanation of why and how they can keep coming up with stuff like it.)
i'll accept his denunciation as internally consistent (i'll say nothing about whether i agree with his position otherwise) as soon as he also decries some of his god's actions as affronts to Human Dignity.. until then
I'm sorry, you've really lost me here.. The dutch approve of "surveillance" because they don't close their curtains as soon as possible? or possibly leave them closed permanently?
As for the cameras, the only places they're really being implemented at all are places where a lot of people go out late at night (as, for some reason, those who are less educated seem to revel in drunken carousing, or worse, and cops can't be everywhere at once even if people call stuff in)
It's hardly the british mentality, where stuff like this can be said:
Competitions are being held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the "voice" of CCTV cameras, Mr Reid said.
The 21 areas which have received grants for Talking CCTV proposals are: Southwark; Barking and Dagenham; Reading; Thanet; Harlow; Norwich; Ipswich; Plymouth; Gloucester; Derby; Northampton; Mansfield; Nottingham; Coventry; Sandwell; Wirral; Blackpool; Salford; Middlesbrough; South Tyneside; and Darlington. Something that struck me as amusing: nearly every day i watched the news when i was there last, british newsreaders would report how CCTV's had helped arrest/find/whatever childmolesters/'normal' criminals.
About peer pressure: Yes, the normalizing tendencies that seem to be bred into most people here are somewhat obvious if you're not used to them, and probably obnoxious when you're exposed to them.
Personally, I find them something of a nuisance, but as I almost never interact with the little people anyway, they're not all that hard to avoid.
I'm curious to know what country's perspective you're writing from though.. If it's the US, you might be right in observing that it happens differently there, though i find your implicit suggestion that it doesn't happen in other countries at all rather naieve.. it's just expressed differently in different countries, but pretty much every society 'impresses' its rules on its inhabitants - be that through the KKK greeting unwanted newcomers to the South (a short few decades ago?) or through 'tssk tssk' in the parental care role).
having a right to bare (your) arms (as the Arrogant Worms put it:P) might it less likely that you're being told outright you shouldn't have too many tattoos, but go to any rural community in the South/Mid-West of the US or parts of Canada and you'll be ostracized when you don't go to church like proper people do.
And if that isn't (scary) normalizing/normative behavior/conditioning i don't know what is.
Seriously.
the RIAA (or mediadefender) generally has hardly any evidence at all when they push their 'claims', and are only accepted, well, probably because they've got expensive tweed jackets to wear (or isn't this britain? well, some silly fabric anyway)
Assuming the same thing would happen when a single band sues for something that could be (argued to be, anyway) a 'mistake' would be well, a mistake.
EMI *might* be forced to make reparations, but that won't cost them more than a few mil at most, and i doubt it'll be even that much.
assuming malicious intent from something as friendly and emotion-free as a 'corporation' would be a pragmatic CiT, after all
Yes, and it's only true if and only if you believe it to be true.. which is a belief you base on what you yourself believe, in part.. but also something you base on how others react to the same verbiage
and as long as not everyone believes it, it's not entirely or certainly true..
Never mind the silly Reductio ad Absurdems your parent talks about that don't exactly expand to fit other categories [when he's talking about going from talking about abluting in the street to actually doing it] unless he's actually already raised in a certain way, think about things like inciting racial hatred (or other beliefs) before a large crowd (whether they be KKK or ADL members).. Words change or form beliefs, and thus inform actions..
It may well be you're choosing not to be offended when someone says unflattering things about your ancestry, his appreciation for your [lack of] attention to personal hygiene, but I imagine that if said person were to describe how he felt like he would like to use a rather hot implement to remove your entrails by pulling them out through your sphincter, I imagine that the knowledge that a person was dreaming of mutilating you at some future date would disturb you at least somewhat, even if it only made you wonder what you did to him to deserve such treatment
Alternatively, for a less graphic example, imagine someone producing a document that stated you were his or her personal servant to do with as he/she wishes, or imagine being a woman in a society that is entirely patriarchal. in such a society it would be taught from infancy that using women (or any subgroup) is entirely acceptable, and where the members of the subgroup would also be raised in this way, with heavy punishments following in case of disobedience.
You *might* argue that the only way the society stays together is because of the threat of (domestic?) violence, but I think that that would be fairly naïve to assume.. even in modern societies a lot of people choose to accept the 'status quo' (gotta love that these words exist), and even in modern societies a lot (really a very large percentage) of control is exerted through language and education.
Which is what the whole point about these 'words' versus 'actions' is about.. there is no real difference, depending on which meaning of 'word' you're talking about of course.. but words are used to motivate (most) actions, and words can also be used to repress, in the situation described as above, or in the case of 'abusive language'
My PoV on swearwords, however, is that the restraints in place on them are mostly rather frivolous.. yes, it's very, very annoying when people intersperse statements with swearwords, but it's mostly because they're just wasted space, and don't really serve a function.
That said, a well-placed/used expletive can serve to convey how the intensity wit which someone feels something to be true/important (especially in the case of the person who indeed only occasionally swears), and as such be 'constructive'. I'm not sure however what that proves. does it mean that the things usually referenced by swearwords and the strength of some beliefs rather than others are both things people feel strongly/instinctively about, or that we associate the things we feel strongly about with bodily functions
Relatedly: considering Faith-based swearing exists, and these would be strongly held beliefs (never minding for the moment why it is people think up things they believe so strongly about that seem to be entirely unrelated to 'material' life), and adding how I know I personally feel very strongly about people using repressive language about societal groups (be they women or minorities), and how I find attacks on their autonomy personally disturbing (although I suspect most of the reason why I find them disturbing is because I know they lead to repressive action, rather than because I find the 'thought' part disturbing, which makes it somewhat different from religious-based slurs/attacks/yada), I'm probably inclined to believe that the former of the two is the case rather than the latter.. anyway
the point isn't really that it's funny, i think.. the point is that everyone else has to suffer through it (probably because your prison system is deficient in some way, and the fact that you've got the highest number of inmates in the world next to china probably doesn't help either), and libby doesn't have to..
if people really cared to fix the rapes going on there, i'm sure it could be done.. i can't say we (i'm dutch/european) have this happening here all the time quite the way that your culture seems to. then again, we're terribly liberal, so you might just think that our prison system is worse off because of it:p
that's not to say that it doesn't happen here, i wouldn't have a clue if it does.. but i somehow doubt it, because the only place that comes to mind when i'm talking to my fellow countrymen and we start talking about rape in prison/as part of a sentence is the Land of the Free [and Noble?]. i'm sure that stands for something
anyway, whether rapes happen more often in state prisons or in private prisons, what i don't understand is why prisons are privatized.. at least in state pens there's a sort of incentive to reintegrate people into society/get them a job.. but privately owned prisons (per your silly corporate profit maximization legislation) would actually benefit from not trying to get people to adjust to living in society (never mind if the project works or is doomed to fail in the first place). Obviously, nobody would be unscrupulous enough to think that way, but isn't it something of a conceptual problem at the very least?
This is my reply to anyone who asks: "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? My reply is not that which someone is said to have given as a joke to evade the force of the question. He said: He was preparing hells for people who inquire into profundities. It is one thing to laugh, another to see the point at issue, and this reply i reject. I would have preferred him to answer 'I am ignorant of what i do not know' rather than reply so as to ridicule someone who has asked a deep question and to win approval for an answer which is a mistake.
in other words, Hawking was making a joke. it's a shame it was lost on you, though.
report them to the authorities when their potential new friends/customers are binge-drinking at a fratparty that they can't go to so they'll be forced not to go there anymore and in stead go to nerdy CS student parties where they get free booze from CS students desperate for friends?:p
odd notion, that
oh, it indeed will stop.. if we produce enough to make it 60-70deg outside all the time, i'm sure we'll all die out (more or less), and after another few thousand years it will likely (mind you, i'm not sure if we won't trigger something silly like mass vaporization of ocean water thus creation a steam bath, who's to say. Venus is not a nice place to live in either case, if you want to see what greenhouse gases can do) start cooling down, or 'swinging back' again.
I'm unsure how this would help your argument, though, or make it a valid retort (unless you consider this acceptable of course)
regardless, i'm not really into fearmongering, but statements like yours seem somewhat trivially true.
Slashdot Mirror
In the first digital processing step 256 kHz subbands are formed. Only a subset of these bands is further processed. The maximum total bandwidth selected for further processing will be 32 MHz. Each Remote Station delivers a single dual polarization beam at 32 MHz, or 8 dual polarization beams at 4 MHz or any combination in between. The resulting output data rate is 2 Gb/s. The secondary filtering stage (to 1kHz channels) is done in the Central Processing system.
LOFAR produces large data streams, especially for the astronomy application (e.g. 6 TB of raw visibility data for an 8 beam, 4 hour synthesis observation, after integration for 1 sec and over 10kHz). One month of observing in this mode results in a PetaByte of data. (Systematic long-term storage for such data volumes thus becomes extremely expensive.)
The project is hardly up and running yet, but still, quite a bit of raw data to process. (powered by IBM's BlueGene/L)
well, yeah, there isn't (other than that ff3 whines a bit when i try to get it to accept my self-signed cert) really a reason not to use it..
What I'm wondering is why GMail doesn't have the same 256bit AES encryption that my spiffy (and lonely) 1-man forum has, in stead of 128bit RC4?
Considering those 250 systems have 'jupiters' close to the sun, and we have Jupiter still fairly far away from the sun, even though we've been here 4.5B-ish years now, I doubt they're moving inward quickly, if they are at all.
That said, i'm hardly well-read on the topic of solar system formation, and I haven't a clue whether there are models that explain why the matter in the solar accretion disk would have been distributed the way it was for the current planets to be formed the way they were.
Honestly, I can understand how people who care about competitive sports and participate in them would be annoyed because they have to guess they keep losing just because the other guy is using a less tracable kind of doping or just because they're worse at whatever sport they play, even if I don't really see why you'd want to risk your life for it, but as someone above you already suggested in a roundabout way, it may be the only thing someone is capable of doing.
But it seems to me that the current culture (specifically in marathony/cycling long distances) is pretty much destroyed already by the mentioned suspicion, as pretty much nobody will want to risk being the only guy who isn't cheating, and consistently losing because of it.
For them, legalizing doping would just create more openness/honesty
It however has nothing to say about the likelyhood of the type of solar system produced until we have a theory that actually explains all the systems we currently see ...
That's bound to give a person headaches.. why not assume the things need to have a reason to "gravitate" inward (or outward.. iirc our moon is moving away from the earth by stealing our angular momentum), and adapt the model from there. given how we hardly have perfect information on our solar system's formation (perhaps another (proto)solar system/(galaxy) "nearby" caused jupiter and the outer planets to stabilize in their orbits (although that would probably have affected the other planets in ways i cannot speculate on even slightly as well, so what the net effect of that would've been i do not know), or perhaps saturn did it, in a herculean effort to make possible god-fearing life on earth.)
Anyway, that the model was wrong is something even Zeno could've predicted.
but using the current hypothesis in the meantime hardly seems like a crime (and yes, i realise that wasn't necessarily what you were suggesting)
the reason "they" kowtow to arabia?
Russia is just as dependent on the money the EU pays them as the EU is of russia's oil.. (there are no significant pipelines connecting russia's supply (east of the Siberia) to anyone else's demand) This apparently as opposed to Bush's dumping Georgia as an "ally" as soon as Putin decides he's allowed to stomp on them.
Yes, consistency is King here
Neat way to read what I said.
Thinking something is misused/applied is rather different from thinking something is useless (or not "understanding" it) in my book, though.
So unless you consider nationalism/'race'ism a necessary part of one's experience of 'pride', i'm not really sure what it is you are responding to.
I don't get it.. Why would you care what color your skin is? One might argue being white is handy, since it makes it less likely you'll be held up by cops, but i can't say i find it an achievement i only turn tan when i stay out in the sun for a few weeks on end.
For that matter, i have a lot of trouble understanding why people would be proud of their black "heritage" (although that somewhat ambiguous term probably at least in part refers to their cultural achievements), or their american heritage.
I don't know if you've noticed, but with the increased lifespans the achievements of one's family has become mightily less important than it was in the olden days.
While in the Middle Ages people were married at age 16 just to insure the continuity of the family line, and so any Family Property staying in the family for at least another generation, these days you're mostly supposed to "succeed" by yourself, as you've got at least 60 years to do so, in stead of 10-15 (after you become conscious, anyway)
Nationalism changed that a bit, but I'm mostly glad i grew up in Holland (that is, the dutch west, which is noticably less religious than some other parts) because it allowed me not to have to waste time on silly things like a draft, civil wars, mafiosi, conservative/extremist thinking, or not being able to go to uni because you're required to have (aside from a brain) parents that can pay 20k/year. (like in some other parts of the world i could name) And not because I necessarily think the dutch way of life is best.
That said, the world is become a slightly messier place every year now (stuff becoming more expensive, schooling becoming both more elitist (supposedly, anyway, it's not as if the generation after mine is all that much smarter) and more dulling (leveling effects to ensure 'equal opportunity' for retards and geniuses are also becoming more noticable)..
Anyway, all these trends affect "blacks", latinas, and "asians" alike, as they all seem to have idiots and normals in equal amounts.. the only thing your post proves is that most of the other "races" haven't had the leisure time yet to figure out that those "identifiers" are mostly arbitrary.
thrilled you're aware of the science wars, but honestly, i'd have been more thrilled with an alternative for a working system than 'exposing' those two idiotic examples and saying we should do away with the whole practice. (yes, i know you didn't say that explicitly, but i don't really see what it proves, other than that the author made a somewhat naÃve claim)
there will always be people like Leibniz (Monadology), or cultural scientists who are pissed at not getting recognition, or others pissed at the same thing.
Monadology is still read, and there are also people getting BAs for writing a paper combining Husserl and mysticism.
Did that cloning guy from Sth-Korea prove that medicine should be abolished? Honestly, i can't get too worked up over a few papers a year being published that are about absolutely nothing, or other papers that are exposed as frauds in another few, because it will turn out (via citation counters) that noone is reading/referencing them, and they will be fired by their universities (or not)
Remember that news article about a "God Gene" having been found a few years ago?
turned out the article the papers were talking about didn't even exist/was never published.
anyone can make a mistake..
Continued use of whatever is said in those articles will prove that a writer is useful, and the market will take care of the rest.
Although it's hard to say how much of an effect the superrich class has on inflation, it's conceivable that they will start buying only the "highest quality" items, buying only from a very select group within the producing economy, and which will, given a few decades, relatively bankrupt all companies who didn't already produce those products.
These other companies producing for the 'underclass' can only sell their products if that underclass is rich enough to buy their products, because the "rich" will not be interested in their products (and, as the market teaches us all: selling lots of products that everyone needs to lots of people at a small price (higher than the production costs) will generate more revenue (and in turn, profit) than not doing so does.
In the system you espouse, (well, in any system, really) companies exist because they can sell goods at a price higher than cost.
There will be a small number of companies that produce a few high quality items at high cost/price, and lots of companies selling lots of low-quality products at a low cost, thus enabling them to employ more workers at a 'normal' wage, which allows those workers to buy more goods, thus sponsoring more work. &c.
If you, however, ensure that a larger and larger proportion of the total amount of the extant money stays with a small class, that class will not need anything anymore after a while, and will stop buying goods, or only buy super-expensive products that their part of the market can pay for, but the rest cannot (these items become so expensive because they're relatively higher quality, and because there is small demand for it, per the 'rules of the market')
This hoarding will thus cause more unemployment because of diminished demand, because, assuming there is a (more or less, ignoring money creation) stable total amount of money in existence, the money the rich are making extra will cause diminished buying power somewhere else, and thus less demand, because the people who formerly had incomes now cannot buy stuff anymore, thus causing an additional decrease in total demand, ad infinitum.
now, I will grant that you cannot beforehand say where this phenomenon will occur, but I can guarantee you it WILL occur. and after this avalanche is done rolling, you will be back in early industrial victorian britain, which is where we came.
Back then, you had a guy called Malthus who argued there existed an "iron law of wages", something he formulated based on data supplied by david ricardo, about population growth.. which is more or less what you are referring to in your happy optimism (or, as i'm inclined to view it, short-sightedness. but I digress)
One can make a very good case, however, that it was only after the commoner started having more money than he needed for food and clothing, that the world economy started taking off (you can verify this by looking at GDP over time studies that exist on the interweb, even though I don't at this time have any urls for you), because it was only after this time that lots of goods could be sold, thus causing lots more demand, thus, well, you get the picture.
Anyway, I know you didn't really want to hear this, as a closet libertarian, but I hope this helps you to put things into a perspective that makes sense to you (that is, by pointing out the world has gotten lots richer since poor people got lots richer.
you do realise that writing your software in such a way that it automatically retaliates if it's 'pissed off' is just as intentional legally as doing it manually, right?.. it doesn't make any difference if this was inititated by an employee unthinkingly switching on the doling out of 'punishment' to websites frustrating their efforts to annoy people with fake materials without first checking if the website is owned by a reputable company or just an automated response which didn't require further human interaction, the response was programmed/executed in a systematic fashion.. that doesn't add up to being negligent when it comes to checking whether they should be bullying this person or not, it adds up to intentional bullying, period.
I can see how that might be a slight (attitude?) adjustment to make WRT your thinking about why insurance companies exist, but why is that "what is wrong with the system today"?
Is the system offended by our considering it a necessary evil? Are you?
Or is it the thought of people actually using their insurance's worth that offends you?
Actually, I'm fairly convinced the reason the insurance industry exists is not the one you mention, but actually one that will sound quite a bit more callous: Insurance (companies) exist(s) because countries don't function very well if too large a part of the population (that does all the grunt work) continually dies off too soon after having been spent money on (through education) for that investment to be recouped, and for the economy as a whole to keep running at the current pace (whatever that is), thus making the country a 'richer' place for everyone to live in.
Now, while i'm sure i've just offended every Libertarian out there, let me just say that i also do not believe the insurance company is there to make money for its executives/whoever gets the cream off every year's profits.
There, that should take care of the no-rules-necessary capitalists who weren't also Libertarians, and who hadn't already been woken up to the necessity of at least modest regulation after the sub-prime spanking.
Anyway, the point the article makes (especially in the summary) is utterly silly. insurance worked before, and (as others who were annoyed by the fact that someone where was still feeling young and invincible pointed out) accidents happen often enough for insurance to be useful to have even for those who don't have "genetic predispositions"
oh, come on.. haven't you been watching the movies? "dangerous tigers" -> AI who can control and actively/heuristically test for the nature of any intrustion -> give a machine the intelligence and power to shut down/quarantine affected systems -> soon it will start caring about the safety of its own hardware first..
i'll agree that skynet was supposedly created to esnure the efficient and speedy reaction of the USMil in case of an attack, but imagining it as having primarily a defense feature of the network itself doesn't seem that different.
hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is.. if you invest in amnesty/OxFam/whatever you know at least 20% is lost due to "overhead", another 10% at least is lost due to corruption, and even then (in the case of oxfam and related charities), there is a chance you're funding an organization that has more than a few members (statistically speaking, based on the amount of cases that have come out over the past 5 years or so) that indulge in sex-for-food programmes while they're doing their work. (That said, i do donate to Oxfam, because there just isn't an alternative i know that i know is better, and i'm hoping they're doing at least something with it that can be called useful.
Anyway, it is of course up to you (and i'll admit i'm somewhat cynical when it comes to those organizations), but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.
aboard this ship!"
Secretary Rosalyn: "I heard you're one of those people... you're actually
afraid of computers."
Commander Adama: "No... there are many computers on this ship. But they're
not networked!"
Secretary Rosalyn: "A computerized network would simply make it faster and
easier for the teacher's to be able to teach..."
Commander Adama: "Let me explain something to you...
Commander Adama: "... many good men and women lost their lives aboard this
ship, because someone wanted a faster computer to make life easier. I'm
sorry that I'm inconveniencing you or the teachers, but I will not allow...
a network computerized system to be placed on this ship while I'm in
command. Is that clear?"
it's not about euphemisms.. it's about marketing, and it's not so '90s either.. it's still alive, even if you might be critical of the use of it.
watch http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/ for a fairly interesting docu PBS did on it (warning: the fact that the people that are being interviewed take their jobs seriously is unnerving as well as a partial explanation of why and how they can keep coming up with stuff like it.)
i'll accept his denunciation as internally consistent (i'll say nothing about whether i agree with his position otherwise) as soon as he also decries some of his god's actions as affronts to Human Dignity.. until then
As for the cameras, the only places they're really being implemented at all are places where a lot of people go out late at night (as, for some reason, those who are less educated seem to revel in drunken carousing, or worse, and cops can't be everywhere at once even if people call stuff in)
It's hardly the british mentality, where stuff like this can be said: Competitions are being held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the "voice" of CCTV cameras, Mr Reid said. The 21 areas which have received grants for Talking CCTV proposals are: Southwark; Barking and Dagenham; Reading; Thanet; Harlow; Norwich; Ipswich; Plymouth; Gloucester; Derby; Northampton; Mansfield; Nottingham; Coventry; Sandwell; Wirral; Blackpool; Salford; Middlesbrough; South Tyneside; and Darlington. Something that struck me as amusing: nearly every day i watched the news when i was there last, british newsreaders would report how CCTV's had helped arrest/find/whatever childmolesters/'normal' criminals.
About peer pressure: Yes, the normalizing tendencies that seem to be bred into most people here are somewhat obvious if you're not used to them, and probably obnoxious when you're exposed to them. :P) might it less likely that you're being told outright you shouldn't have too many tattoos, but go to any rural community in the South/Mid-West of the US or parts of Canada and you'll be ostracized when you don't go to church like proper people do.
Personally, I find them something of a nuisance, but as I almost never interact with the little people anyway, they're not all that hard to avoid.
I'm curious to know what country's perspective you're writing from though.. If it's the US, you might be right in observing that it happens differently there, though i find your implicit suggestion that it doesn't happen in other countries at all rather naieve.. it's just expressed differently in different countries, but pretty much every society 'impresses' its rules on its inhabitants - be that through the KKK greeting unwanted newcomers to the South (a short few decades ago?) or through 'tssk tssk' in the parental care role).
having a right to bare (your) arms (as the Arrogant Worms put it
And if that isn't (scary) normalizing/normative behavior/conditioning i don't know what is.
that's what contempt of court is for... though i'll be interested in hearing their answer to this
Seriously. the RIAA (or mediadefender) generally has hardly any evidence at all when they push their 'claims', and are only accepted, well, probably because they've got expensive tweed jackets to wear (or isn't this britain? well, some silly fabric anyway)
Assuming the same thing would happen when a single band sues for something that could be (argued to be, anyway) a 'mistake' would be well, a mistake.
EMI *might* be forced to make reparations, but that won't cost them more than a few mil at most, and i doubt it'll be even that much.
assuming malicious intent from something as friendly and emotion-free as a 'corporation' would be a pragmatic CiT, after all
and as long as not everyone believes it, it's not entirely or certainly true..
Never mind the silly Reductio ad Absurdems your parent talks about that don't exactly expand to fit other categories [when he's talking about going from talking about abluting in the street to actually doing it] unless he's actually already raised in a certain way, think about things like inciting racial hatred (or other beliefs) before a large crowd (whether they be KKK or ADL members).. Words change or form beliefs, and thus inform actions..
It may well be you're choosing not to be offended when someone says unflattering things about your ancestry, his appreciation for your [lack of] attention to personal hygiene, but I imagine that if said person were to describe how he felt like he would like to use a rather hot implement to remove your entrails by pulling them out through your sphincter, I imagine that the knowledge that a person was dreaming of mutilating you at some future date would disturb you at least somewhat, even if it only made you wonder what you did to him to deserve such treatment
Alternatively, for a less graphic example, imagine someone producing a document that stated you were his or her personal servant to do with as he/she wishes, or imagine being a woman in a society that is entirely patriarchal. in such a society it would be taught from infancy that using women (or any subgroup) is entirely acceptable, and where the members of the subgroup would also be raised in this way, with heavy punishments following in case of disobedience.
You *might* argue that the only way the society stays together is because of the threat of (domestic?) violence, but I think that that would be fairly naïve to assume.. even in modern societies a lot of people choose to accept the 'status quo' (gotta love that these words exist), and even in modern societies a lot (really a very large percentage) of control is exerted through language and education.
Which is what the whole point about these 'words' versus 'actions' is about.. there is no real difference, depending on which meaning of 'word' you're talking about of course.. but words are used to motivate (most) actions, and words can also be used to repress, in the situation described as above, or in the case of 'abusive language'
My PoV on swearwords, however, is that the restraints in place on them are mostly rather frivolous.. yes, it's very, very annoying when people intersperse statements with swearwords, but it's mostly because they're just wasted space, and don't really serve a function. That said, a well-placed/used expletive can serve to convey how the intensity wit which someone feels something to be true/important (especially in the case of the person who indeed only occasionally swears), and as such be 'constructive'. I'm not sure however what that proves. does it mean that the things usually referenced by swearwords and the strength of some beliefs rather than others are both things people feel strongly/instinctively about, or that we associate the things we feel strongly about with bodily functions
Relatedly: considering Faith-based swearing exists, and these would be strongly held beliefs (never minding for the moment why it is people think up things they believe so strongly about that seem to be entirely unrelated to 'material' life), and adding how I know I personally feel very strongly about people using repressive language about societal groups (be they women or minorities), and how I find attacks on their autonomy personally disturbing (although I suspect most of the reason why I find them disturbing is because I know they lead to repressive action, rather than because I find the 'thought' part disturbing, which makes it somewhat different from religious-based slurs/attacks/yada), I'm probably inclined to believe that the former of the two is the case rather than the latter.. anyway
the point isn't really that it's funny, i think.. the point is that everyone else has to suffer through it (probably because your prison system is deficient in some way, and the fact that you've got the highest number of inmates in the world next to china probably doesn't help either), and libby doesn't have to..
:p
if people really cared to fix the rapes going on there, i'm sure it could be done.. i can't say we (i'm dutch/european) have this happening here all the time quite the way that your culture seems to. then again, we're terribly liberal, so you might just think that our prison system is worse off because of it
that's not to say that it doesn't happen here, i wouldn't have a clue if it does.. but i somehow doubt it, because the only place that comes to mind when i'm talking to my fellow countrymen and we start talking about rape in prison/as part of a sentence is the Land of the Free [and Noble?]. i'm sure that stands for something
anyway, whether rapes happen more often in state prisons or in private prisons, what i don't understand is why prisons are privatized.. at least in state pens there's a sort of incentive to reintegrate people into society/get them a job.. but privately owned prisons (per your silly corporate profit maximization legislation) would actually benefit from not trying to get people to adjust to living in society (never mind if the project works or is doomed to fail in the first place). Obviously, nobody would be unscrupulous enough to think that way, but isn't it something of a conceptual problem at the very least?
in other words, Hawking was making a joke. it's a shame it was lost on you, though.
report them to the authorities when their potential new friends/customers are binge-drinking at a fratparty that they can't go to so they'll be forced not to go there anymore and in stead go to nerdy CS student parties where they get free booze from CS students desperate for friends? :p
odd notion, that
oh, it indeed will stop.. if we produce enough to make it 60-70deg outside all the time, i'm sure we'll all die out (more or less), and after another few thousand years it will likely (mind you, i'm not sure if we won't trigger something silly like mass vaporization of ocean water thus creation a steam bath, who's to say. Venus is not a nice place to live in either case, if you want to see what greenhouse gases can do) start cooling down, or 'swinging back' again.
I'm unsure how this would help your argument, though, or make it a valid retort (unless you consider this acceptable of course)
regardless, i'm not really into fearmongering, but statements like yours seem somewhat trivially true.