Engineer: CEO-san we need to move those back-up generators to higher ground in case big tsunami hits us. CEO: how high of a tsunami are we talking about? Engineer: pretty high CEO: what is the chance that such tsunami comes our way Engineer : about once every 500 years CEO: and how much this relocation will cost? Engineer: it will eat 2% of the profit for a year CEO: are you nuts? You think I will go in front of the shareholders and tell them they'd get 2% less this year because of something that might happen ONCE in 500 fucking years?! I am here for another 10 years and I retire after that. I'll take the risk that this will not happen on MY watch. And here is a wakizashi, go and commit harakiri right now you insolent brat! Engineer: yes CEO-san
Only....the next CEO will say the same; the next one too...and over time the chances that the big tsunami will come approaches....1, while every CEO sees it as "no chance it will happen on my watch; I am only here for X number of years where X is way smaller than 500".
Disclaimer: I realize that no power plant will operate for 500 years but I also realize that once in 500 years can also mean tomorrow.
Conclusion: never run critical infrastructure, health care, education, military, police and transport on profit motive only. The real profit of those things running smoothly and efficiently regardless of "cost" is way higher than the profit a company will make running it, but this huge profit will be distributed over the whole of the economy rather than a much smaller profit in the pockets of a corporation, while the LOSSES incurred by them running the business badly is soaked by all of us.
Example: for every Nederlander on/. - anything to say about the NS [trains] and the health care system of the Netherlands once they were privatized and began to run ONLY on profit motive? The NS is lying like nobody's business about the delays [you know they consider cancelled trains as not delayed -those do not go into any statistics about the quality of service; those trains do not exists!WTF?!?] and spread the losses by not delivering millions of people to work on time. I won't be surprise if for every million they make they incur losses to all businesses that is 10 times higher. As for the health care system....well enough said [otherwise I'd have to write a novel]....
Consider this. You have a group of people say at work. Say, the management begins to take decisions that damage morale for whatever reason. In the beginning only a few people grumble, over time you begin to see some talents going away but you still take new recruits and although the project naturally slows down you are still not worried. Until one day, morale collapses catastrophically, 50% leave on the spot and you go bust.
Thus the slow change eventually led to catastrophic failure. Many processes in Nature and society behave like this. The example above is how exactly morale works [I have seen it in practice and the supervisory board chairman of the said company, a man with great experience in business agreed with me that that is exactly how it works.. Its not like you have 1 kilo of morale and you can afford to take away a few grams every day until it is gone - no, when you are down to say 500 grams all of it will disappear overnight provoking catastrophe.
Same with fucking the ecosystem [climate, water, food, pollution, everything] - like the Internet it routs up around damage, but eventually if you blow enough holes it collapses catastrophically.
As we know from respectable source, there is no higher life-form in the multi-verse than a librarian. That's why Horace Woblehat is not very keen on being turned back into man. Ook?
Ohh no, not this fallacious argument again.....please read this comment of mine and explain why is it better to have 20 billion fungi eaters on earth rather than 3 billion meat eaters.
Well, the censorship goes for the paper versions as well...I guess it is easier to do it in electronic format. My reply is off-topic but I just could not let this comment pass. The book market, being in the hands of corporations suffers from two issues at least:
- General censorship - only authors that are not "too controversial" are published. It is those corporations that decide which author deserves publicity, so you can have excellent books that no-one ever heard of. I have read very serious articles from all kinds of scholars on the subject [publishers, authors, journalists, ect.] and they all agree that our very culture [music, literature, cinema] is steered by corporations. It's a bit like the google echo-chamber where over time you get only the hits that you "like".
- Particular censorship - I have encountered two examples myself. One is the recent, rather popular book called "the Martian". A friend of mine downloaded somehow the last draft just before publishing. We found out that paragraphs and in some cases whole pages are missing in the officially published version. And the cut out parts were all biting, sarcastic comments on the state of humanity [very insightful observations actually]. The other censored book is also an excellent read from a modern Russian author [V. Pelevin]. In his book "Generation P" entitled in the US as "Babylon" 2 pages are missing from the first chapter because....hold on to your chair...it discusses in a very humorous way why only Pepsi was available in the USSR but not Coke, whereas in the the US Coke is bigger than Pepsi. Can you imagine the lengths at which this people will go - to censor a book that would have been read by no more than a few thousand Americans? I know the corporations did it, cause I have a friend whose job is to monitor the entire media [including Internet] of my motherland for mentions of corporations and she reports every single day to them so they can take action if they deem it necessary....they are interest what is written about them in a obscure blog in an insignificant country!!! Disgusting...
I'd add that thinking over alien invasion is, IMO, more straightforward than speculating about AI. Ironically, if I remember correctly, it was prof. Hawking that was against looking for aliens because "they will steal our resources"
Which resources? you mean things like....I don't know...water, sand, metals, hydrocarbons.....stuff in general. Stuff, that can be found in vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly enormous quantities EVERYWHERE else but on planet Earth for example. You mean those aliens who would have the technology to cross the interstellar distances won't have the option to mine asteroids or take resources from the unimaginably huge quantities of cosmic debris; from planets [the vast majority] that would never harbor life; are they gonna burn OIL in their FTL engines? And even if they do they'd come for our oil rather than look around for their local version of Titan!?
This is soooo nuts that I am afraid I lost my trust in the man altogether.
It is proven that you need rest time to be highly efficient during the working hours. Take a look at productivity per hour work. You'd find that the countries with the lowest working hours per week score the highest. I work 8 hrs per day but when I was int he US some honest people from my profession told me whispering that they'd dilute their effort because it is simply an utopia to expect the same level of intensity when you pull 12hrs per day rather than 8.
Rest, spending time with family and friends, having enough to support yourself means dignity, means lower stress and from there [much] lower health costs [include here the better food that you can afford], lower crime [lower cost of security], lower suicide rate....the benefits for SOCIETY are enormous. I am sorry but anyone who argues against this is not living in reality and is bringing more water for the mill of evil..
I am sick of that evil game where business privatazes the profit and socializes the losses....
Funny....today at work some colleagues with kids were discussing an article stating that you think better and remember better when you write by hand because it is more difficult in general [and slower] than typing. Broad analogy would be taking a photo with digital camera or an analogue one. When you can make hundreds of photo with minimal effort and cost you produce way more bad photos than when you know you just have 32 frames and that's that.
The discussion started because I quoted a statement from a book that poets need to carve in stone - then they WILL learn to say a lot with few words, which is what poetry is...
Horay for another wave of dumbing down of our kids and grand kids in the name of profit!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is just one man; I think you'd do better to read the actual history of Russia. During the darkest times of their feudal totalitarian system [before the revolution] the Russians were extremely religious. And it was a hell-hole [Russia]. If you think that the communist totalitarian regime made them atheists you are wrong. At the moment Russia is as nuts as the US on religion. They are VERY religious. Now, how come that after 75 years of atheism you have such explosion of religion? Who taught the new generation?
I am from Bulgaria which was considered one of the most fateful supporters of the USSR among the communist countries. We had churches and we performed all the rituals. No-one was imprisoned or killed for believing. It was not allowed to year religious symbols that are visible in school. ALL religious symbols not just Christian. Some secular modern countries of today also have similar laws.
I consider myself extremely lucky. The communist stiffed all ideology which was competing with theirs. They did it simply by removing the political and monetary power of the competition [thus religion, for instance, could still propagate in families but won't be able to spread propaganda via governmental channels, media and so on...]. So I grew up safely, not subjected to any propaganda except the communists. But their propaganda was ineffective for anyone with 2 brain cells or more because the gap between words and deeds was too large. Very quickly one realizes that those were no communists but simply power hungry criminals hiding behind a label [how different from the great US, eh:)]. Thus at the end most people from my generation [I can speak only for them] grew up with completely free minds - free of ANY bulshit ideology. The natural state of man is secular humanist [stems from biology]. The rest is BS.
Change the phone....or use Swipe. It is really annoying to read like this - the brain notices and you get a "hick-up" in your reading flow every time when you see those mistakes. LiKE tryINg To ReAD thiS FoR eXAmplE...
You know what made me poor [PhD with good job in NL]? The privatization of the health care system. In other words - libertarianism. For 7 years I was not helped properly and the system always did the minimum to send me home [cutting costs]. The problem grew into disability and I was told [no kidding] "we cannot help you further". Like they helped up to that point?!?
I found a private doctor that could really help. I could not afford it but had no other choice but to patch-up the problem while bankrupting myself. It is only a patch-up mind you. For complete treatment I need an extra 30-50 K Euros. And it is not because the doctor is greedy but because medical services have grown artificially expensive because corporations and insurance companies know the society/government will accept almost any cost for health and cough up, so all the equipment and procedures prices are hugely inflated.
But according to Randoids I am lazy and stupid. Fuck off!!!
Just another case where politics/business brainwashed people there is no problem. Now, because Nature cannot be fooled and laws of Nature cannot be broken, finally the powerful have decided to do something [because they are scared for themselves]. But the public does not buy it after so many years of lies.
So, they are wondering how to sell the facts and they go for the most obvious - don't tell the whole ecosystem is in danger and billions of people already have troubles with water, don't tell about shortage of arable land [the rest being poisoned already by Roundup and the like] and so on [the list goes for weeks].
Instead tell them it is about the most sacred thing in the world - the health of the Americans.
This whole story is revolting. Thinking about the health of the people? After making them one of the sickest first world nations while spending quadrupled amounts of money compared to the rest? Really?
Politicians are prostitutes; businessmen are evil [both facts are result of the system, which filters out such people and promotes them]. It boggles my mind that people actually expect pro active measures from governments and corporations. Those entities never lead; they follow, because the only thing they are concerned about is preserving the status quo [where they are on the top]. There will never be meaningful CHANGE about anything under this system. Get your heads around this fact if you want our civilization to survive and prosper.
I am missing things because of not having Facebook. Specifically communication with the folks back home [immigrant here].
The reason I never subscribed is that I was suspicions from the beginning that it is a trap and once it becomes popular they'd abuse the data they collected. Which of course happened. Otherwise I'd happily participate...
And that is why this show is watched by many people who don't even own a car (me, for instance).
Also, do you know who introduced me to the show? My wife! That's right! Somehow, the obnoxious, sexist, racist Clarkson drew the largest female audience of a car show in the world. Meditate on this you should....
People without imagination and scene of humor are always offended by those who do....
I think he is very loved in Eastern Europe too. The online edition of one of the most popular newspapers in my country [BG] runs 7 articles at the moment. The comments are full of exuberant praise for Sir Terry.
As for me, well, he is the first person that I do not know personally, who's death made me cry [came very close to tears for DNA].
His books felt to me like having a delightful conversation with an incredibly smart, knowledgeable, wise and extremely witty humanist, who, at the same time shares with me a certain fury against the state of man. Much like Vimes's fury and willingness to arrest even the gods for not doing it right. What a feast!
Bull. I got a simple Seiko for 400 euro. Ti casing, sapphire window, kinetic, simple and elegant. Booklet says 10 sec per month deviation. I timed it over 6 months - 1.5 seconds. So, how much more accurate the 20k watch would be? Is it worth the extra cost? I don't think so...
I had the very bad luck of dealing with a loved one with 3 suicide attempts provoked by psychosis. The problems followed heavy depression which in turn was provoked by...unemployment.
Once the person recovered, she went on restoring her brain faculties and although some portions of [very few] faculties could not be restored to previous levels. Nevertheless the doctors showed us that she has "dropped" from "extremely smart" to "very smart". Some faculties were better than before because she developed them further with brain games and what's not.
Now guess what happened? 4 years after the recovery there is no job [she is a PhD in physics with good articles and 2 successful post-doc projects]. There is not going to be a job, because noone takes "the risk" of hiring someone with few years interrupted career. It is a vicious cycle....
Meanwhile, the medical system bankrupted me and made me very sick [I've described it in detail for another thread] so we have no money, no job for her [and mine, although being very advance and interesting does not pay that well], debts and destroyed faculties by the medical system of both of us.
We need only one type of help, only one pill. Dignity!!! Which comes from sense of self-respect which comes from being economically sound, i.e. at least have a job [forget the whole discussion about the socioeconomic system, the times are like they are, we need jobs, the star trek future is postponed indefinitely due to greed].
That is what we need -- one "brave" company that wants to benefit tremendously by hiring [likely for less money than usual] someone who is so eager to contribute and restore their place in society....the social system even offers to pay her salary for a few months so that the company gets to evaluate her for free...and still nothing. Unemployment is rising everywhere in Europe, the "crisis" from 2009 will never end, the middle class is shrinking....expect rise in suicide in the whole western world...
So fuck those initiatives. No Facebook, nor anyone else can do squat about it. In fact Facebook, being greedy corporation which fucks its customers left right and centre, is part of the problem...
- That we should never trust marketing. GPP feature, anyone? Share and enjoy? [+5 Funny] - That if life is to survive in a Universe this size the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion [+5 Insightful] - That galactic banks are a figment of our imagination [+5 Informative] - That with a degree in math and another in astrophysics it is either this or the unemployment agency on Monday morning [+5 Informative] - That cricket is evil [+5 Funny] - That isolationism is bad. "It has to go" --> Krikkiters about the Universe, after discovering they are not alone [+5 Insightful] - That it is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem [+5 Informative] - That the one thing a bunch of respectable physicists cannot stand is a smart ass [+5 Funny] - That the best way to break ice at parties is the finite probability generator [+5 Informative] - That personally offending everyone in the Galaxy is a huge task, even for an immortal [+5 Informative] - That prophets always come back, even if it is just a few seconds before the end of the Universe [+5 Funny] - The the wheel is not commercially viable, mostly because of its color [+5 Funny] - That the most effective devaluation financial program is to cut down the forest [+5 Insightful] - That the best way to avoid tax is the afterlife [+5 Informative] - That cauliflower has special opinion about food that does not want to be eaten [+5 Informative] - That the function of a president is not to yield power, but to divert the attention from those that do [+5000 Informative]
This just from the top of my head. DNA found novel, fascinating and very funny WAY to say the truth. I mean, just for an illustration, the whole story of the total perspective vortex, its creation, effects, usage and the fate of ZB when he is subjected to it --> yes, this is the one and only way, IMO, to deal with the size of the Universe. Both humble and proud. With and without sense of proportion. There is a very healthy portion of real wisdom in those books, just like every good book I suspect.....
First, the dome [or sphere] of stars is majestic enough; if you are able to choose your position in space I am sure there are spectacular views. I mean we have them on Earth, just looking at the sky while in the desert for instance...
Secondly, the planets. And moons. Breakfast in orbit of a planet - bring it on..
Third - there are probably all kinds of interesting large scale phenomena [black holes eating something, that kind of stuff] where a lot is happening outside the visible part of the spectrum. But that is why we have machines and technology. What is wrong in visualizing x-rays and gamma bursts? As long as we remember it is a visualization. If I have spaceship that's how I want my "windows" - like the Predator, switching different sensors and visualizing the environment. I mean think of a SEM picture - that is what we do, converting electron energies and trajectories into visible light. Quite useful and spectacular to behold, is it not?
Truly it is! There is a lot of noise recently about healthy gut and its profound influence on almost every aspect of our health. Good!
Back in the days of my biotechnology college education I learned a profound truth that I forgot for many years after that [partially because I went off doing physics and chemistry instead], until my own health got damaged due to unbalanced gut flora. A truth that most people on Earth are not aware off. And then I remembered....that this is not the planet of the apes, nor the planet of the mammals, birds, reptiles or whatever. This was, is, and will forever be the planet of the microorganisms! All the rest of life is just an overlay on top of the microbial ecosystem. The microbs are everything. Without them there is no complex life possible on any level. They determine or have profound influence on almost everything about life.
There is something to what you say. My own experience was that once the gut flora got out of balance, yeast took over.
During those few years of yeast overgrowth I developed very weird craving for sugars were often I won't be able to go to sleep [and shake like I am dying of starvation] if I did not eat sweet. Once the problem was identified I was put on no sugar at all diet. It took some discipline in the beginning, but to my delight once the yeast began dying [regular lab tests showed that] this maniacal cravings just disappeared and did not come back [1 year so far].
So there is something about this. The guys in our intestines seem to have profound effect on many, many things in our physiological and psychological health.
Tully, the old saying "tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are" seems to be spot on. During one of my doctor's visit I quoted the fad line "Well, those guys are sometimes called the second genome, right?"
To which the doctor banged with her fist on the table and said "No, they are the first genome! They got more genes than us, their network of biofilm comprises an actual organ [without which we will be dead] , making it the largest organ in the body, 60% of your immune system happens in the intestine. Those guys can make us sick, the can cure us, they can make us crazy. And they were doing that job well before Homo Sapiens came to be. They are the first!"
This kind of scientific experiments where we make a volume of space free of some influence[s] and then wait for some event to happen [like the neutrino thing] remind me of a joke from an old book called "Physicists are laughing". It was an article on the subject of "Methods for catching a lion".
The Heisenberg method was described roughly as "There is a non-zero probability that all elementary particles of the lion will simultaneously tunnel through space and the lion will end up in the cage. Build the cage and lock it. Sit outside and wait..."
I think you missed one other option --> they make money, thus are for sale just like everyone else.
As for controlling, one needs to look no further than the life of this man [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays] to get the picture.
Here is the practical example. Remember the Chechen conflict? For Russia those are terrorists, for the West --> freedom fighters. My country is close to Russia and a former communist state. The media is divided by half, pro and anti Russia/West. And then one evening I had the misfortune to witness the most horrific thing I ever saw on screen. I have described it once here, in a discussion about the boogieman of video game violence. Central news, 20:00h, on channel 1, which the majority would watch and was considered the freest of biases, showed propaganda video that the Chechen rebels distributed of a decapitation of Russian soldier. The most revolting thing I ever saw in my life...
And it was a blatant attempt to sway the public opinion; there is no other rational explanation for showing this, risking so much [heads were rolling on the next day] knowing that almost everyone from age 7 upwards is watching. The Western media also had this but did not show it. They show this now because it suites the agenda. See, both sides of the same coin...
Disclaimer: I am a certified [MSc] teacher in chemistry and physics. Worked the job only a year [went to do PhD and then do R&D in semiconductors] but all my life I have being interested in education and never stopped thinking and learning about it. Sorry for the gigantic post; there is so much to say about this...besides according to Terry Pratchett teachers can only converse in the form of short lectures:))
The major problem of standardized school system is the lack of flexibility and inability to provide different approaches to different types of students. I am not saying anything new here -- the class moves through the curriculum with the speed of the average student, not the best, of course. This is the classical case [to use popular culture reference] of "who and how is going to teach Ender"? On the other hand, the "slow students" are often slower than they can be again because of lack of flexibility in approach.
The major problem of home schooling is politics --> that the majority of people seem to want it not in order to educate their kids better but the opposite, to save them from "evil" knowledge and from hearing different points of view. This home schooling fad perpetuates the whole developed world ATM and the idea comes usually. from the religious circle of the parents. Please, understand me right, I don't want to start a war on this issue but it is true. In mitigation I can say that many other ideologies [politics, business, culture in general] also try constantly to meddle in schools and teach [or not] the students about certain things.
Two issues then -- one, now to make the system more efficient in pure education terms, without considering social and cultural issues. Two [this is the biggie] --> how to deal with the inevitable clash between the culture and knowledge in the family and the culture and knowledge of the world [school].
It is a FACT that what happens at school has major influence on the development of the young mind. It is a FACT that bad teacher can do huge harm and good teacher can do huge good. It is a fact that most families internal culture is narrow-minded compared to what the school teaches. And you cannot possibly separate culture form education. Example --> if you study logic, one of the best text books starts with debunking the whole idea of advertisement and shows you clearly how you are manipulated by it. But that message is universally despised by our culture [for it has been perverted to such degree that any objection against money grabs and inhuman economic structures is labeled as "freedom-hating"] and trust me, some enraged group of parents will protest [especially if daddy is making his bucks in advertisement:)]. During my short tenure I saw many such clashes. Parents asked me "why are you teaching them this, you are just physics teacher, what can you possibly teach them about everyday life". "Everything", was my usual answer and I tried to explain that the scientific approach is a system of thought that is universal and can be applied to any problem. As my physics teacher in high school said "you might be selling groceries all your life but if you understand a bit of physics and scientific approach you will out compete the other grocery shop". Very few parents understood...
Thoughts on issue one:
- make the cooperation between parents school and society more efficient and [wishful thinking] as free of politics as possible. - Create "clubs of interests" [we used to have those very good under the communist system] where fast kids can learn more. Make those good and affordable. - here is an idea --> teach skills. Go with the kids to where their parents work. If some kids show interest in advance machining [dad has golden hands and builds interesting stuff] let those kids have internships in that company or similar. Find what the kid really likes and then provide endless torrent of knowledge and practical work in that field. When motivated by curiously and satisfaction we humans excel and do not need a stick to make us
Slashdot Mirror
Picture the scene:
Engineer: CEO-san we need to move those back-up generators to higher ground in case big tsunami hits us.
CEO: how high of a tsunami are we talking about?
Engineer: pretty high
CEO: what is the chance that such tsunami comes our way
Engineer : about once every 500 years
CEO: and how much this relocation will cost?
Engineer: it will eat 2% of the profit for a year
CEO: are you nuts? You think I will go in front of the shareholders and tell them they'd get 2% less this year because of something that might happen ONCE in 500 fucking years?! I am here for another 10 years and I retire after that. I'll take the risk that this will not happen on MY watch. And here is a wakizashi, go and commit harakiri right now you insolent brat!
Engineer: yes CEO-san
Only....the next CEO will say the same; the next one too...and over time the chances that the big tsunami will come approaches....1, while every CEO sees it as "no chance it will happen on my watch; I am only here for X number of years where X is way smaller than 500".
Disclaimer: I realize that no power plant will operate for 500 years but I also realize that once in 500 years can also mean tomorrow.
Conclusion: never run critical infrastructure, health care, education, military, police and transport on profit motive only. The real profit of those things running smoothly and efficiently regardless of "cost" is way higher than the profit a company will make running it, but this huge profit will be distributed over the whole of the economy rather than a much smaller profit in the pockets of a corporation, while the LOSSES incurred by them running the business badly is soaked by all of us.
Example: for every Nederlander on /. - anything to say about the NS [trains] and the health care system of the Netherlands once they were privatized and began to run ONLY on profit motive? The NS is lying like nobody's business about the delays [you know they consider cancelled trains as not delayed -those do not go into any statistics about the quality of service; those trains do not exists!WTF?!?] and spread the losses by not delivering millions of people to work on time. I won't be surprise if for every million they make they incur losses to all businesses that is 10 times higher. As for the health care system....well enough said [otherwise I'd have to write a novel]....
Consider this. You have a group of people say at work. Say, the management begins to take decisions that damage morale for whatever reason. In the beginning only a few people grumble, over time you begin to see some talents going away but you still take new recruits and although the project naturally slows down you are still not worried. Until one day, morale collapses catastrophically, 50% leave on the spot and you go bust.
Thus the slow change eventually led to catastrophic failure. Many processes in Nature and society behave like this. The example above is how exactly morale works [I have seen it in practice and the supervisory board chairman of the said company, a man with great experience in business agreed with me that that is exactly how it works.. Its not like you have 1 kilo of morale and you can afford to take away a few grams every day until it is gone - no, when you are down to say 500 grams all of it will disappear overnight provoking catastrophe.
Same with fucking the ecosystem [climate, water, food, pollution, everything] - like the Internet it routs up around damage, but eventually if you blow enough holes it collapses catastrophically.
As we know from respectable source, there is no higher life-form in the multi-verse than a librarian. That's why Horace Woblehat is not very keen on being turned back into man. Ook?
Ohh no, not this fallacious argument again.....please read this comment of mine and explain why is it better to have 20 billion fungi eaters on earth rather than 3 billion meat eaters.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
and also read this http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and tell me why do you think there is not enough food NOW for all people [there actually is].
Well, the censorship goes for the paper versions as well...I guess it is easier to do it in electronic format. My reply is off-topic but I just could not let this comment pass. The book market, being in the hands of corporations suffers from two issues at least:
- General censorship - only authors that are not "too controversial" are published. It is those corporations that decide which author deserves publicity, so you can have excellent books that no-one ever heard of. I have read very serious articles from all kinds of scholars on the subject [publishers, authors, journalists, ect.] and they all agree that our very culture [music, literature, cinema] is steered by corporations. It's a bit like the google echo-chamber where over time you get only the hits that you "like".
- Particular censorship - I have encountered two examples myself. One is the recent, rather popular book called "the Martian". A friend of mine downloaded somehow the last draft just before publishing. We found out that paragraphs and in some cases whole pages are missing in the officially published version. And the cut out parts were all biting, sarcastic comments on the state of humanity [very insightful observations actually]. The other censored book is also an excellent read from a modern Russian author [V. Pelevin]. In his book "Generation P" entitled in the US as "Babylon" 2 pages are missing from the first chapter because....hold on to your chair...it discusses in a very humorous way why only Pepsi was available in the USSR but not Coke, whereas in the the US Coke is bigger than Pepsi. Can you imagine the lengths at which this people will go - to censor a book that would have been read by no more than a few thousand Americans? I know the corporations did it, cause I have a friend whose job is to monitor the entire media [including Internet] of my motherland for mentions of corporations and she reports every single day to them so they can take action if they deem it necessary....they are interest what is written about them in a obscure blog in an insignificant country!!! Disgusting...
Good points!
I'd add that thinking over alien invasion is, IMO, more straightforward than speculating about AI. Ironically, if I remember correctly, it was prof. Hawking that was against looking for aliens because "they will steal our resources"
Which resources? you mean things like....I don't know...water, sand, metals, hydrocarbons.....stuff in general. Stuff, that can be found in vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly enormous quantities EVERYWHERE else but on planet Earth for example. You mean those aliens who would have the technology to cross the interstellar distances won't have the option to mine asteroids or take resources from the unimaginably huge quantities of cosmic debris; from planets [the vast majority] that would never harbor life; are they gonna burn OIL in their FTL engines? And even if they do they'd come for our oil rather than look around for their local version of Titan!?
This is soooo nuts that I am afraid I lost my trust in the man altogether.
It is proven that you need rest time to be highly efficient during the working hours. Take a look at productivity per hour work. You'd find that the countries with the lowest working hours per week score the highest. I work 8 hrs per day but when I was int he US some honest people from my profession told me whispering that they'd dilute their effort because it is simply an utopia to expect the same level of intensity when you pull 12hrs per day rather than 8.
Rest, spending time with family and friends, having enough to support yourself means dignity, means lower stress and from there [much] lower health costs [include here the better food that you can afford], lower crime [lower cost of security], lower suicide rate....the benefits for SOCIETY are enormous. I am sorry but anyone who argues against this is not living in reality and is bringing more water for the mill of evil..
I am sick of that evil game where business privatazes the profit and socializes the losses....
Funny....today at work some colleagues with kids were discussing an article stating that you think better and remember better when you write by hand because it is more difficult in general [and slower] than typing. Broad analogy would be taking a photo with digital camera or an analogue one. When you can make hundreds of photo with minimal effort and cost you produce way more bad photos than when you know you just have 32 frames and that's that.
The discussion started because I quoted a statement from a book that poets need to carve in stone - then they WILL learn to say a lot with few words, which is what poetry is...
Horay for another wave of dumbing down of our kids and grand kids in the name of profit!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is just one man; I think you'd do better to read the actual history of Russia. During the darkest times of their feudal totalitarian system [before the revolution] the Russians were extremely religious. And it was a hell-hole [Russia]. If you think that the communist totalitarian regime made them atheists you are wrong. At the moment Russia is as nuts as the US on religion. They are VERY religious. Now, how come that after 75 years of atheism you have such explosion of religion? Who taught the new generation?
I am from Bulgaria which was considered one of the most fateful supporters of the USSR among the communist countries. We had churches and we performed all the rituals. No-one was imprisoned or killed for believing. It was not allowed to year religious symbols that are visible in school. ALL religious symbols not just Christian. Some secular modern countries of today also have similar laws.
I consider myself extremely lucky. The communist stiffed all ideology which was competing with theirs. They did it simply by removing the political and monetary power of the competition [thus religion, for instance, could still propagate in families but won't be able to spread propaganda via governmental channels, media and so on...]. So I grew up safely, not subjected to any propaganda except the communists. But their propaganda was ineffective for anyone with 2 brain cells or more because the gap between words and deeds was too large. Very quickly one realizes that those were no communists but simply power hungry criminals hiding behind a label [how different from the great US, eh:)]. Thus at the end most people from my generation [I can speak only for them] grew up with completely free minds - free of ANY bulshit ideology. The natural state of man is secular humanist [stems from biology]. The rest is BS.
Change the phone....or use Swipe. It is really annoying to read like this - the brain notices and you get a "hick-up" in your reading flow every time when you see those mistakes. LiKE tryINg To ReAD thiS FoR eXAmplE...
You know what made me poor [PhD with good job in NL]? The privatization of the health care system. In other words - libertarianism. For 7 years I was not helped properly and the system always did the minimum to send me home [cutting costs]. The problem grew into disability and I was told [no kidding] "we cannot help you further". Like they helped up to that point?!?
I found a private doctor that could really help. I could not afford it but had no other choice but to patch-up the problem while bankrupting myself. It is only a patch-up mind you. For complete treatment I need an extra 30-50 K Euros. And it is not because the doctor is greedy but because medical services have grown artificially expensive because corporations and insurance companies know the society/government will accept almost any cost for health and cough up, so all the equipment and procedures prices are hugely inflated.
But according to Randoids I am lazy and stupid. Fuck off!!!
It's politics, pure and simple.
Just another case where politics/business brainwashed people there is no problem. Now, because Nature cannot be fooled and laws of Nature cannot be broken, finally the powerful have decided to do something [because they are scared for themselves]. But the public does not buy it after so many years of lies.
So, they are wondering how to sell the facts and they go for the most obvious - don't tell the whole ecosystem is in danger and billions of people already have troubles with water, don't tell about shortage of arable land [the rest being poisoned already by Roundup and the like] and so on [the list goes for weeks].
Instead tell them it is about the most sacred thing in the world - the health of the Americans.
This whole story is revolting. Thinking about the health of the people? After making them one of the sickest first world nations while spending quadrupled amounts of money compared to the rest? Really?
Politicians are prostitutes; businessmen are evil [both facts are result of the system, which filters out such people and promotes them]. It boggles my mind that people actually expect pro active measures from governments and corporations. Those entities never lead; they follow, because the only thing they are concerned about is preserving the status quo [where they are on the top]. There will never be meaningful CHANGE about anything under this system. Get your heads around this fact if you want our civilization to survive and prosper.
I am missing things because of not having Facebook. Specifically communication with the folks back home [immigrant here].
The reason I never subscribed is that I was suspicions from the beginning that it is a trap and once it becomes popular they'd abuse the data they collected. Which of course happened. Otherwise I'd happily participate...
That's all there is, really.
Yhea, right!
And that is why this show is watched by many people who don't even own a car (me, for instance).
Also, do you know who introduced me to the show? My wife! That's right! Somehow, the obnoxious, sexist, racist Clarkson drew the largest female audience of a car show in the world. Meditate on this you should....
People without imagination and scene of humor are always offended by those who do....
I think he is very loved in Eastern Europe too. The online edition of one of the most popular newspapers in my country [BG] runs 7 articles at the moment. The comments are full of exuberant praise for Sir Terry.
As for me, well, he is the first person that I do not know personally, who's death made me cry [came very close to tears for DNA].
His books felt to me like having a delightful conversation with an incredibly smart, knowledgeable, wise and extremely witty humanist, who, at the same time shares with me a certain fury against the state of man. Much like Vimes's fury and willingness to arrest even the gods for not doing it right. What a feast!
Bull. I got a simple Seiko for 400 euro. Ti casing, sapphire window, kinetic, simple and elegant. Booklet says 10 sec per month deviation. I timed it over 6 months - 1.5 seconds. So, how much more accurate the 20k watch would be? Is it worth the extra cost? I don't think so...
I had the very bad luck of dealing with a loved one with 3 suicide attempts provoked by psychosis. The problems followed heavy depression which in turn was provoked by...unemployment.
Once the person recovered, she went on restoring her brain faculties and although some portions of [very few] faculties could not be restored to previous levels. Nevertheless the doctors showed us that she has "dropped" from "extremely smart" to "very smart". Some faculties were better than before because she developed them further with brain games and what's not.
Now guess what happened? 4 years after the recovery there is no job [she is a PhD in physics with good articles and 2 successful post-doc projects]. There is not going to be a job, because noone takes "the risk" of hiring someone with few years interrupted career. It is a vicious cycle....
Meanwhile, the medical system bankrupted me and made me very sick [I've described it in detail for another thread] so we have no money, no job for her [and mine, although being very advance and interesting does not pay that well], debts and destroyed faculties by the medical system of both of us.
We need only one type of help, only one pill. Dignity!!! Which comes from sense of self-respect which comes from being economically sound, i.e. at least have a job [forget the whole discussion about the socioeconomic system, the times are like they are, we need jobs, the star trek future is postponed indefinitely due to greed].
That is what we need -- one "brave" company that wants to benefit tremendously by hiring [likely for less money than usual] someone who is so eager to contribute and restore their place in society....the social system even offers to pay her salary for a few months so that the company gets to evaluate her for free...and still nothing. Unemployment is rising everywhere in Europe, the "crisis" from 2009 will never end, the middle class is shrinking....expect rise in suicide in the whole western world...
So fuck those initiatives. No Facebook, nor anyone else can do squat about it. In fact Facebook, being greedy corporation which fucks its customers left right and centre, is part of the problem...
We also learned:
- That we should never trust marketing. GPP feature, anyone? Share and enjoy? [+5 Funny]
- That if life is to survive in a Universe this size the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion [+5 Insightful]
- That galactic banks are a figment of our imagination [+5 Informative]
- That with a degree in math and another in astrophysics it is either this or the unemployment agency on Monday morning [+5 Informative]
- That cricket is evil [+5 Funny]
- That isolationism is bad. "It has to go" --> Krikkiters about the Universe, after discovering they are not alone [+5 Insightful]
- That it is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem [+5 Informative]
- That the one thing a bunch of respectable physicists cannot stand is a smart ass [+5 Funny]
- That the best way to break ice at parties is the finite probability generator [+5 Informative]
- That personally offending everyone in the Galaxy is a huge task, even for an immortal [+5 Informative]
- That prophets always come back, even if it is just a few seconds before the end of the Universe [+5 Funny]
- The the wheel is not commercially viable, mostly because of its color [+5 Funny]
- That the most effective devaluation financial program is to cut down the forest [+5 Insightful]
- That the best way to avoid tax is the afterlife [+5 Informative]
- That cauliflower has special opinion about food that does not want to be eaten [+5 Informative]
- That the function of a president is not to yield power, but to divert the attention from those that do [+5000 Informative]
This just from the top of my head. DNA found novel, fascinating and very funny WAY to say the truth. I mean, just for an illustration, the whole story of the total perspective vortex, its creation, effects, usage and the fate of ZB when he is subjected to it --> yes, this is the one and only way, IMO, to deal with the size of the Universe. Both humble and proud. With and without sense of proportion. There is a very healthy portion of real wisdom in those books, just like every good book I suspect.....
I disagree.
First, the dome [or sphere] of stars is majestic enough; if you are able to choose your position in space I am sure there are spectacular views. I mean we have them on Earth, just looking at the sky while in the desert for instance...
Secondly, the planets. And moons. Breakfast in orbit of a planet - bring it on..
Third - there are probably all kinds of interesting large scale phenomena [black holes eating something, that kind of stuff] where a lot is happening outside the visible part of the spectrum. But that is why we have machines and technology. What is wrong in visualizing x-rays and gamma bursts? As long as we remember it is a visualization. If I have spaceship that's how I want my "windows" - like the Predator, switching different sensors and visualizing the environment. I mean think of a SEM picture - that is what we do, converting electron energies and trajectories into visible light. Quite useful and spectacular to behold, is it not?
Hell is other people. Seriously....
Truly it is! There is a lot of noise recently about healthy gut and its profound influence on almost every aspect of our health. Good!
Back in the days of my biotechnology college education I learned a profound truth that I forgot for many years after that [partially because I went off doing physics and chemistry instead], until my own health got damaged due to unbalanced gut flora. A truth that most people on Earth are not aware off. And then I remembered....that this is not the planet of the apes, nor the planet of the mammals, birds, reptiles or whatever. This was, is, and will forever be the planet of the microorganisms! All the rest of life is just an overlay on top of the microbial ecosystem. The microbs are everything. Without them there is no complex life possible on any level. They determine or have profound influence on almost everything about life.
There is something to what you say. My own experience was that once the gut flora got out of balance, yeast took over.
During those few years of yeast overgrowth I developed very weird craving for sugars were often I won't be able to go to sleep [and shake like I am dying of starvation] if I did not eat sweet. Once the problem was identified I was put on no sugar at all diet. It took some discipline in the beginning, but to my delight once the yeast began dying [regular lab tests showed that] this maniacal cravings just disappeared and did not come back [1 year so far].
So there is something about this. The guys in our intestines seem to have profound effect on many, many things in our physiological and psychological health.
Tully, the old saying "tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are" seems to be spot on. During one of my doctor's visit I quoted the fad line "Well, those guys are sometimes called the second genome, right?"
To which the doctor banged with her fist on the table and said "No, they are the first genome! They got more genes than us, their network of biofilm comprises an actual organ [without which we will be dead] , making it the largest organ in the body, 60% of your immune system happens in the intestine. Those guys can make us sick, the can cure us, they can make us crazy. And they were doing that job well before Homo Sapiens came to be. They are the first!"
This kind of scientific experiments where we make a volume of space free of some influence[s] and then wait for some event to happen [like the neutrino thing] remind me of a joke from an old book called "Physicists are laughing". It was an article on the subject of "Methods for catching a lion".
The Heisenberg method was described roughly as "There is a non-zero probability that all elementary particles of the lion will simultaneously tunnel through space and the lion will end up in the cage. Build the cage and lock it. Sit outside and wait..."
I think you missed one other option --> they make money, thus are for sale just like everyone else.
As for controlling, one needs to look no further than the life of this man [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays] to get the picture.
Here is the practical example. Remember the Chechen conflict? For Russia those are terrorists, for the West --> freedom fighters. My country is close to Russia and a former communist state. The media is divided by half, pro and anti Russia/West. And then one evening I had the misfortune to witness the most horrific thing I ever saw on screen. I have described it once here, in a discussion about the boogieman of video game violence. Central news, 20:00h, on channel 1, which the majority would watch and was considered the freest of biases, showed propaganda video that the Chechen rebels distributed of a decapitation of Russian soldier. The most revolting thing I ever saw in my life...
And it was a blatant attempt to sway the public opinion; there is no other rational explanation for showing this, risking so much [heads were rolling on the next day] knowing that almost everyone from age 7 upwards is watching. The Western media also had this but did not show it. They show this now because it suites the agenda. See, both sides of the same coin...
Disclaimer: I am a certified [MSc] teacher in chemistry and physics. Worked the job only a year [went to do PhD and then do R&D in semiconductors] but all my life I have being interested in education and never stopped thinking and learning about it. Sorry for the gigantic post; there is so much to say about this...besides according to Terry Pratchett teachers can only converse in the form of short lectures:))
The major problem of standardized school system is the lack of flexibility and inability to provide different approaches to different types of students. I am not saying anything new here -- the class moves through the curriculum with the speed of the average student, not the best, of course. This is the classical case [to use popular culture reference] of "who and how is going to teach Ender"? On the other hand, the "slow students" are often slower than they can be again because of lack of flexibility in approach.
The major problem of home schooling is politics --> that the majority of people seem to want it not in order to educate their kids better but the opposite, to save them from "evil" knowledge and from hearing different points of view. This home schooling fad perpetuates the whole developed world ATM and the idea comes usually. from the religious circle of the parents. Please, understand me right, I don't want to start a war on this issue but it is true. In mitigation I can say that many other ideologies [politics, business, culture in general] also try constantly to meddle in schools and teach [or not] the students about certain things.
Two issues then -- one, now to make the system more efficient in pure education terms, without considering social and cultural issues. Two [this is the biggie] --> how to deal with the inevitable clash between the culture and knowledge in the family and the culture and knowledge of the world [school].
It is a FACT that what happens at school has major influence on the development of the young mind. It is a FACT that bad teacher can do huge harm and good teacher can do huge good. It is a fact that most families internal culture is narrow-minded compared to what the school teaches. And you cannot possibly separate culture form education. Example --> if you study logic, one of the best text books starts with debunking the whole idea of advertisement and shows you clearly how you are manipulated by it. But that message is universally despised by our culture [for it has been perverted to such degree that any objection against money grabs and inhuman economic structures is labeled as "freedom-hating"] and trust me, some enraged group of parents will protest [especially if daddy is making his bucks in advertisement:)]. During my short tenure I saw many such clashes. Parents asked me "why are you teaching them this, you are just physics teacher, what can you possibly teach them about everyday life". "Everything", was my usual answer and I tried to explain that the scientific approach is a system of thought that is universal and can be applied to any problem. As my physics teacher in high school said "you might be selling groceries all your life but if you understand a bit of physics and scientific approach you will out compete the other grocery shop". Very few parents understood...
Thoughts on issue one:
- make the cooperation between parents school and society more efficient and [wishful thinking] as free of politics as possible.
- Create "clubs of interests" [we used to have those very good under the communist system] where fast kids can learn more. Make those good and affordable.
- here is an idea --> teach skills. Go with the kids to where their parents work. If some kids show interest in advance machining [dad has golden hands and builds interesting stuff] let those kids have internships in that company or similar. Find what the kid really likes and then provide endless torrent of knowledge and practical work in that field. When motivated by curiously and satisfaction we humans excel and do not need a stick to make us