I wasn't trying to say that the average person in the agrarian society had more leisure, merely that the development of the agrarian model allowed more leisure time for the elite (be they priests, scribes, artists or princes).
The key to the development of agriculture was, I believe, environmental - it took particular conditions to produce the right sort of plants to make agriculture attractive, and particular (and extraordinary) conditions to make that attraction obvious to the hunter-gatherers.
The development of social complexity in the form of trade, and the necessity to preserve territory once the agrarian model was adopted, were vital to the development of 'civilisation' as we understand it today.
BTW, it's great to have an intelligent discussion of these issues for a change, so thanks.
I dunno - I quite like the idea of 'inert desire', as it sums up the kind of desire you'd feel (or not feel) for technological advance if your needs were being met by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Now what I want to know is that if there were modern humans back that far, what were they doing all that time? Why didn't they use their brains and tools to build a civilization that ensured their genetic prosperity sooner?
One possible reason is that it was agriculture that really spurred the growth of 'civilisation' (the word really just means living in towns / cities), and that the transition to a successful agrarian culture from a moderately successful hunter-gatherer culture is far from trivial.
A moderately successful, probably mobile hunter-gatherer group is unlikely to see immediate advantage in staying put in one place, especially given the lower nutritional value of the proto-agricultural grasses, pulses etc. that are necessary to the growth of an agrarian culture.
It is only in specific circumstances such as existed in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic that agriculture can flower, and since agriculture leads to increased leisure time (at least for the elite), civilisation and trade can begin to exist on a significant scale.
The parent didn't refer to a 'small percentage', rather to 'the less well educated'.
Although there are undoubtedly some theists that believe themselves to be 'well educated', the rational view to take is that they have some misplaced faith in whatever they class as their 'education'.
Come over here cocky as fuck, shoot our good king Hal in the fucking eye with a fucking arrow, fachrissake - William the fucking bastard indeed!
Dominate good old Anglo-Saxon with their fancy Lingua Fucking Franca, demonise the use of good English swearing in favour of 'Baise mon cul, messieur, s'il vous plait'?
There - you've provoked an emotional response in me.
9/11 on the other hand does nothing - I can't think of any noteable event that happened on November the 9th, so I am unmoved.
Look - if I wanted to work with cunts, I'd have been a gynaecologist!
(to be used with co-workers of the salesman variety when they promise the customer something technically impossible from your product, and expect you to deliver it)
What sort of idiot client would pay per character, or per word (OK - newspapers with columns to fill with mindless garbage will pay per word...)
How can you live with yourself, with the constant temptation to fill your output with unnecessary and redundant (not to say excessive and overblown) verbiage?
If I were you, I would feel an incessant compulsion to expand my prose by the use of such techhinques as hyperbole, ellipsis (do you get paid for the...?), repetitiion, redundancy and so on.
You also don't technically need video support in Impress, because you can just tell the viewers to close their eyes and imagine what it might look like.
Yeah, and you can't put a link to a video in Impress, and use the appropriate Firefox plugin, because that's beyond the ken of normal humans, innit?
Perhaps the survival of these words is in part due to the existence of a particular translation of a book used every Sunday throughout the (Anglican) Christian world.
All that smiting and begetting, when repeated often enough, should be enough to keep the words alive (at least until the end days!)
Beowulf is in a Saxon dialect, and contains many words that failed to survive after the Norman invasion because they had equivalents in the Norman French spoken by the aristocracy that overrode them in common usage as the conquered people became assimilated.
Some Anglo-Saxon does survive today - it fucking well does, I tell you - but the influence of the Normans was such that even Chaucer wrote in a language vastly different to that of Beowulf, only a couple of centuries after the invasion.
But if they don't play nicely with the other children, everyone will think they're jerks - which is fair enough too.
Standards (voluntary or not) are there for a reason - they help disparate systems to communicate in a predictable and consistent manner.
Ignoring a standard because you're a 'big player' isn't polite behaviour, and is ultimately counterproductive, because there is now no incentive for others to adopt the standard when communicating with you.
Hell, if I were to reply to you in French (on this site where English is the lingua franca), would you expect to have a meaningful conversation?
Adherence to standards saves everyone time and effort, and it would be nice to see Microsoft doing it once in a while.
Now I'm no expert, but it seems to me that given a random distribution of voters throughout the day, it should be impossible to reliably skew the results of any particular machine using this method.
Is it because Democrats subscribe to the 'Vote early, vote often' approach that this works in the way you imply?
(Only joking - I know it works by targeting poll stations where a preponderance of Dems over Reps is expected, but I do like the 'Vote early...' line:P)
Sorry, mate, but Masala refers to the spice mix used in the dish, and the wine is spelt Marsala.
Spot on about the Balti though - Small Heath in the late 80s was a Mecca for Balti lovers - Formica tables, piles of chapati bread and a big dish of lamb and spinach Balti (the Balti is just the name of the cast iron dish they were cooked in) evoke fond memories.
I don't think it ever made it to the States, but there's a classic British comedy show called 'Goodness Gracious Me' (starring Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal and Nina Wadia).
They had a sketch called 'Going out for an English', in which Sanjeev asks the waiter "What's the blandest thing on the menu?"
Most of the group opt for 'steak and kiddley pee', while Nina wimps out and has a curry.
On the other hand, I'm a Brit, and there's plenty of fine tasty traditional food if you can find anyone prepared to cook it as it should be cooked - a Lancashire hot pot with red cabbage takes some beating, while a Bury black pudding is simply beyond compare.
Name me one drug (that isn't called diacetyl morphine or nicotine) that causes physiological dependence.
There.
You can't, can you?
'Drugs' are 'bad' because they can be produced outside the pharmacological / tobacco monopolies, and deprive said monopolies of income.
Heroin - yes, that is physically addictive, but I speak from experience when I say that three weeks of hard work can clear the effects for life - 24 years on, I'm free of that particular addiction and intend to stay that way.
Tobacco, OTOH - I've been smoking for 33 years and can never give up.
And religion definitely causes you to sense stuff that isn't there, so you're wrong on all counts.
Slashdot Mirror
We built an early 3.1 server soon after the release date, just to compare it with the Netware servers we used.
Since the system took 10 minutes to get to the login prompt, and the file and print services were atrociously slow, we soon abandoned the exercise.
It's not that long ago, though - only 15 years :P
Get off my lawn, you damn kids!
Oh, that I was so talented!
The key to the development of agriculture was, I believe, environmental - it took particular conditions to produce the right sort of plants to make agriculture attractive, and particular (and extraordinary) conditions to make that attraction obvious to the hunter-gatherers.
The development of social complexity in the form of trade, and the necessity to preserve territory once the agrarian model was adopted, were vital to the development of 'civilisation' as we understand it today.
BTW, it's great to have an intelligent discussion of these issues for a change, so thanks.
I dunno - I quite like the idea of 'inert desire', as it sums up the kind of desire you'd feel (or not feel) for technological advance if your needs were being met by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
One possible reason is that it was agriculture that really spurred the growth of 'civilisation' (the word really just means living in towns / cities), and that the transition to a successful agrarian culture from a moderately successful hunter-gatherer culture is far from trivial.
A moderately successful, probably mobile hunter-gatherer group is unlikely to see immediate advantage in staying put in one place, especially given the lower nutritional value of the proto-agricultural grasses, pulses etc. that are necessary to the growth of an agrarian culture.
It is only in specific circumstances such as existed in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic that agriculture can flower, and since agriculture leads to increased leisure time (at least for the elite), civilisation and trade can begin to exist on a significant scale.
Although there are undoubtedly some theists that believe themselves to be 'well educated', the rational view to take is that they have some misplaced faith in whatever they class as their 'education'.
Quite.
Disclaimer - I went to a university in East Anglia, but it wasn't UEA - in fact I spent most of my time rowing and drinking Greene King IPA :P
Those fucking French cocksuckers!
Come over here cocky as fuck, shoot our good king Hal in the fucking eye with a fucking arrow, fachrissake - William the fucking bastard indeed!
Dominate good old Anglo-Saxon with their fancy Lingua Fucking Franca, demonise the use of good English swearing in favour of 'Baise mon cul, messieur, s'il vous plait'?
There - you've provoked an emotional response in me.
9/11 on the other hand does nothing - I can't think of any noteable event that happened on November the 9th, so I am unmoved.
(to be used with co-workers of the salesman variety when they promise the customer something technically impossible from your product, and expect you to deliver it)
What sort of idiot client would pay per character, or per word (OK - newspapers with columns to fill with mindless garbage will pay per word...)
How can you live with yourself, with the constant temptation to fill your output with unnecessary and redundant (not to say excessive and overblown) verbiage?
If I were you, I would feel an incessant compulsion to expand my prose by the use of such techhinques as hyperbole, ellipsis (do you get paid for the ...?), repetitiion, redundancy and so on.
Yeah, and you can't put a link to a video in Impress, and use the appropriate Firefox plugin, because that's beyond the ken of normal humans, innit?
:P
That an AC Grammar Nazi doesn't know the difference between contractions and acronyms is neither surprising nor noteworthy.
:P
All that smiting and begetting, when repeated often enough, should be enough to keep the words alive (at least until the end days!)
His Master's Voice is up there with Borges, Hemingway, Camus, Orwell and Greene in the canon of great 20th century literature.
Everyone should read HMV at least once in their life - it's a pity I can't read it in the original, as I'm a poor Anglophone with no Polish at all :-{
Beowulf is in a Saxon dialect, and contains many words that failed to survive after the Norman invasion because they had equivalents in the Norman French spoken by the aristocracy that overrode them in common usage as the conquered people became assimilated.
Some Anglo-Saxon does survive today - it fucking well does, I tell you - but the influence of the Normans was such that even Chaucer wrote in a language vastly different to that of Beowulf, only a couple of centuries after the invasion.
Technologic, or technological progress?
Or when describing the speech of a politician, perhaps?
Hypocritic, or hypocritical nonsense?
Orthographical reform seems just fine in context, especially given that the sentence was written over a century ago.
An early example of the hive mentality leading to the creation of taboos, perhaps?
:P
Added to which, the normal British English pronunciation is 'Wusta', anyhoo :P
But if they don't play nicely with the other children, everyone will think they're jerks - which is fair enough too.
Standards (voluntary or not) are there for a reason - they help disparate systems to communicate in a predictable and consistent manner.
Ignoring a standard because you're a 'big player' isn't polite behaviour, and is ultimately counterproductive, because there is now no incentive for others to adopt the standard when communicating with you.
Hell, if I were to reply to you in French (on this site where English is the lingua franca), would you expect to have a meaningful conversation?
Adherence to standards saves everyone time and effort, and it would be nice to see Microsoft doing it once in a while.
Only the French and the Boks to knock over, and it'll be Swing Low Sweet Chariot all the way home :-)
Is it because Democrats subscribe to the 'Vote early, vote often' approach that this works in the way you imply?
(Only joking - I know it works by targeting poll stations where a preponderance of Dems over Reps is expected, but I do like the 'Vote early...' line :P)
Spot on about the Balti though - Small Heath in the late 80s was a Mecca for Balti lovers - Formica tables, piles of chapati bread and a big dish of lamb and spinach Balti (the Balti is just the name of the cast iron dish they were cooked in) evoke fond memories.
They had a sketch called 'Going out for an English', in which Sanjeev asks the waiter "What's the blandest thing on the menu?"
Most of the group opt for 'steak and kiddley pee', while Nina wimps out and has a curry.
On the other hand, I'm a Brit, and there's plenty of fine tasty traditional food if you can find anyone prepared to cook it as it should be cooked - a Lancashire hot pot with red cabbage takes some beating, while a Bury black pudding is simply beyond compare.
There.
You can't, can you?
'Drugs' are 'bad' because they can be produced outside the pharmacological / tobacco monopolies, and deprive said monopolies of income.
Heroin - yes, that is physically addictive, but I speak from experience when I say that three weeks of hard work can clear the effects for life - 24 years on, I'm free of that particular addiction and intend to stay that way.
Tobacco, OTOH - I've been smoking for 33 years and can never give up.
And religion definitely causes you to sense stuff that isn't there, so you're wrong on all counts.