I've been almost everywhere in South and East Asia. Never been Europe or the Americas though, maybe they shout "Death to America" over there...
I can see no reason why a news organisation would show people in the Middle East shouting death to America, but wouldn't show it if it happened in India. I'm pretty sure it would. It would certainly be a lot more interesting if it happened in India.
But Indians seem more concerned with their internal problems and the cause, rather than concerning themselves with whether it was something the Americans/Europeans did. Which is a complex which occurs a lot in China (generally the newspapers / commentators) and Korea (generally random protests).
And yes I've been to India, Korea and China. All for reasonable amounts of time (over a year each). I have also met a great deal of Iranians, none of whom wished death to America.
And I've never ever seen any Western recorded footage of people in Iran shouting "Death to America", perhaps you should look up the facts of that incident. It was a country wide chant, and it was recorded officially by various Arab channels. It's their government that's crazy, but the Iranians I've met seem much more friendly than most Americans I've met.
The rich people don't matter. It's the number of people who can't eat enough or be warm enough that matter. And I can assure you that countries with bad economies usually have a lot of poverty. So, actually so, sorry.
China's been getting richer faster than any country for last several years. And their poverty rate has been shooting down. The disparity didn't matter.
Equal communities are usually equally POOR. It's equal opportunity combined with unequal rewards that matters.
Indians don't go around chanting "Death to America" for starters, nor do they have a crazy self-indulging senseless control freak for the head of their government. India has a tendency to honour international agreements, while the DPRK tends to flout them over and over again.
Besides, anyone has a right to sell something (or not) to someone for whatever reason they have. If I decide I don't want the USA to have any of my little pink bunnies, while letting the UK have them, what's wrong with that? My decision.
Any danger the arsenal represents probably wouldn't even double if it increased 100 fold. Nuclear fuel is something the world needs right now, if all the hype about global warming is as bad as they say it is.
Not only that, but cheaper nuclear fuel -> cheaper power -> better economy -> less poverty.
He said wrote that no human could possibly climb the mountain IN THE CONDITION that his men where in (paraphrased). Just because you heard a quote outside of it's context you believed something that isn't true. He and his men were tired, and he gave up climbing because he hadn't eaten for 2 days, and his men were tired. It's probably not possible to climb mountain in that condition.
It was named after him because he was the leader of the expedition that discovered it, and that is pretty standard practice.
And at this stage, better live brain scanning techniques would advance our ability a lot better. If we knew how a brain worked, it would be a lot easier to get the funding to build this supercomputer, which although expensive, could possibly be done with current technology.
Psychology is still in it's primary infancy, even after thousands of years of study, and philosophy. We know NOTHING about the human brain, or intelligence. A massive multitude of supercomputers isn't going to help at this stage. Of course they will be needed, but they'll probably be needed to study real human brains before they try simulating one.
And this will take an unknown amount of time. We have all these neurons and God knows what else. And heck, I doubt we can even simulate a single neuron properly at this stage.
And of course saying something's impossible is stupid, because you could take heaps of what are currently everyday things, and people 1000 years ago would laugh at you (and perhaps burn you at the stake) for your utter nonsense. Most likely they'd regard that person the town idiot.
But in my opinion the idiots are the ones who say things are not possible. Saying something will happen within a certain timeframe is also usually pretty flimsy. We can't even make a computer game in a specific timeframe... a brain is just slightly more complex. But we'll get there, I'm sure, unless we kill ourselves first.
By observation it is true... How many Chinese do you see criticising their own government on how they are handling Tibet? How many Chinese do you see criticising their government for their support of the regime in North Korea?
And I'm not attacking the race. The entire country has been brainwashed throughout the schooling system, that is a function of government, not of race.
Well, as I worship the flying spaghetti monster, I consider anything else to be a cult. The Christian cult, the Atheist cult, the Agnostic cult, Hindu's, Buddhists. Damn cults. I have to do battle every day.
"The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches"
You're right. It does look like FBI paid several different Verizons each to upgrade 1,140 switches. It should have been written "The FBI paid Verizon to upgrade 1,140...switches at $2,500 apiece".
Sorry.
Although in this case Verizon is still the recipient.
You're over-simplifying a lot. Yes there are elections in China, but nothing like you're talking about. In China, there are 4 main strata with elected officials. These are at the Township, Country, Prefecture and Province levels. Each level has 2 main officials, one is the Party Secretary, and the other is (supposed to be) elected, and is called either governer, magistrate or mayor (depending on the level). In all matters, the decisions of the Party Secretary (who is appointed from above) take precedence over the (supposedly) elected official.
I said the elected official is supposedly elected, because there is often only one canditate (who is usually appointed).
China is NOT moving towards a more democratic system. They are moving towards more freedom, but they are not moving towards democracy. Democracy and freedom are two different things.
In the UK and the US you are getting less freedoms, but you don't seem to be getting any less democracy. The people are voting for less freedom because they are scared. They need to be educated.
I live in Shanghai so I'll have to check that out when I get home. I was watching HBO last night. BBC is certainly available because I was watching it this morning.
would worry about internet censorship in China at a time like this. The Chinese government certainly is
People are still crushed under rubble, entire towns are flattened,
And the pseudo-communist government is still thinking about how to censor the Internet.
I'd have to disagree with you that anyone's point of view is irrelevant. All points of view are relevant, whether or not we agree.
This story is absolute BS. I live in Shanghai, and no entertainment websites I know of are being blocked. For instance, I can access XKCD, Slashdot, Fox News... my usual sources of entertainment. The three days of mourning are Mon, Tue and Wed. Most people wouldn't go to clubs on these days anyway.
In other words this story is absolute BS, and although China does a lot of things I disagree with, they are not doing this, and even if they were I wouldn't see too much wrong with it.
You're correct in that Asians have had more unfair portrayal in Western culture, but that still doesn't mean we shouldn't criticise things we think are wrong.
also, by saying that chinese forums never say anything bad about the west, you are conversely implicating slashdot as non-chinese. i disagree with that.
I was being sarcastic; there has been a lot of USA/France/CNN bashing on Chinese message boards lately, it's very much a two way street.
As for my implication, I've never noticed people having discussions on Slashdot in Chinese. I'd say the vast majority of people here are from western countries. I'd call that non-Chinese. There are Chinese people on here, but they are a very small minority, and also from the elite that can read/write English very well, which to be honest is not a typical representation of a Chinese person. Would you call Slashdot Chinese?
Anyway, I agreed with you that it's silly to start calling for boycotts/isolation etc. or to say that the people in said country are stupid. But I can't see anything wrong with having something against any particular government.
It is mostly the rich and well educated people here that support the government. Out in the countryside, there are many many people who are displeased but can do nothing.
the distinction between a government and its people is an academic one. i'm explaining the deep-rooted feelings of one culture for another. the standard "the people must rise" makes no difference if the people agree with the government. by attacking the government, you are attacking the people who support it. maybe they have their reasons for supporting it.
So that brings about a paradox. If I attack my government (which I do on a constant basis), am I attacking myself, my friends and my family?
So do you think people are wrong to bash the Chinese government at all? If you think that's the case then you'd be a hypocrite to criticise anything the American/British governments do. Say, for instance, installing way too many CCTVs, allowing people to be sued for thousands of dollars for downloading a few songs, etc. I maintain my right to criticise any government for anything it does.
If people get offended by me attacking their government, then they are just grabbing the wrong end of the stick. And I'm not defending the people calling for embargoes, or isolation, or wars or whatever other unjustified invective; but I have a right to make statements like "The Chinese government is wrong to censor foreign news sources" or "I disagree that China has any right to claim land currently under the control of India". Where by "China" I mean the Chinese government.
It would be a very dangerous world if people stopped criticising governmental wrongdoings just for the sake of appeasing people with an overdeveloped sense of nationalism.
By extension, you're saying that if I criticise the Dear Leader for not feeding the people in North Korea, I am in turn criticising the people who are not being fed? So if I attack Kim Jeong Il in order to support the hungry, I am in turn attacking the hungry? That's absurd.
The physical distinction between a government and it's subjects is very real. Tying the two together would be the purely academic exercise, which doesn't make it true. The government can do a lot of things that the 'people' can't do, i.e. arrest people, make laws, organise a war with another country, etc. Any love that one has for a government is artificial and silly.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have governments, they are very necessary to keep order, and protect the people, the economy and so forth, but we are all better off if the government does it's job better, and we should all be allowed the right to criticise them in order to help attain improvements.
People in China do not openly criticise the government, and those who do are harassed at varying degrees. Of the people who do wish to criticise, fear stops them doing it in public.
I still can't understand why you would have me not criticise the Chinese government. Just because there are a lot of governments that are worse, the PRC government is not absolved of unjustified behaviour.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been almost everywhere in South and East Asia. Never been Europe or the Americas though, maybe they shout "Death to America" over there...
I can see no reason why a news organisation would show people in the Middle East shouting death to America, but wouldn't show it if it happened in India. I'm pretty sure it would. It would certainly be a lot more interesting if it happened in India.
But Indians seem more concerned with their internal problems and the cause, rather than concerning themselves with whether it was something the Americans/Europeans did. Which is a complex which occurs a lot in China (generally the newspapers / commentators) and Korea (generally random protests).
And yes I've been to India, Korea and China. All for reasonable amounts of time (over a year each). I have also met a great deal of Iranians, none of whom wished death to America.
And I've never ever seen any Western recorded footage of people in Iran shouting "Death to America", perhaps you should look up the facts of that incident. It was a country wide chant, and it was recorded officially by various Arab channels. It's their government that's crazy, but the Iranians I've met seem much more friendly than most Americans I've met.
The rich people don't matter. It's the number of people who can't eat enough or be warm enough that matter. And I can assure you that countries with bad economies usually have a lot of poverty. So, actually so, sorry.
China's been getting richer faster than any country for last several years. And their poverty rate has been shooting down. The disparity didn't matter.
Equal communities are usually equally POOR. It's equal opportunity combined with unequal rewards that matters.
AFAWK
Until we've correlated every function of the human body to a gene, how can we discredit any part of the sequence as doing nothing?
Indians don't go around chanting "Death to America" for starters, nor do they have a crazy self-indulging senseless control freak for the head of their government. India has a tendency to honour international agreements, while the DPRK tends to flout them over and over again.
Besides, anyone has a right to sell something (or not) to someone for whatever reason they have. If I decide I don't want the USA to have any of my little pink bunnies, while letting the UK have them, what's wrong with that? My decision.
Any danger the arsenal represents probably wouldn't even double if it increased 100 fold. Nuclear fuel is something the world needs right now, if all the hype about global warming is as bad as they say it is. Not only that, but cheaper nuclear fuel -> cheaper power -> better economy -> less poverty.
That's hard enough for a human.
He said wrote that no human could possibly climb the mountain IN THE CONDITION that his men where in (paraphrased). Just because you heard a quote outside of it's context you believed something that isn't true. He and his men were tired, and he gave up climbing because he hadn't eaten for 2 days, and his men were tired. It's probably not possible to climb mountain in that condition.
It was named after him because he was the leader of the expedition that discovered it, and that is pretty standard practice.
And at this stage, better live brain scanning techniques would advance our ability a lot better. If we knew how a brain worked, it would be a lot easier to get the funding to build this supercomputer, which although expensive, could possibly be done with current technology.
Psychology is still in it's primary infancy, even after thousands of years of study, and philosophy. We know NOTHING about the human brain, or intelligence. A massive multitude of supercomputers isn't going to help at this stage. Of course they will be needed, but they'll probably be needed to study real human brains before they try simulating one.
And this will take an unknown amount of time. We have all these neurons and God knows what else. And heck, I doubt we can even simulate a single neuron properly at this stage.
And of course saying something's impossible is stupid, because you could take heaps of what are currently everyday things, and people 1000 years ago would laugh at you (and perhaps burn you at the stake) for your utter nonsense. Most likely they'd regard that person the town idiot.
But in my opinion the idiots are the ones who say things are not possible. Saying something will happen within a certain timeframe is also usually pretty flimsy. We can't even make a computer game in a specific timeframe... a brain is just slightly more complex. But we'll get there, I'm sure, unless we kill ourselves first.
By observation it is true... How many Chinese do you see criticising their own government on how they are handling Tibet? How many Chinese do you see criticising their government for their support of the regime in North Korea?
And I'm not attacking the race. The entire country has been brainwashed throughout the schooling system, that is a function of government, not of race.
Well, as I worship the flying spaghetti monster, I consider anything else to be a cult. The Christian cult, the Atheist cult, the Agnostic cult, Hindu's, Buddhists. Damn cults. I have to do battle every day.
Hmm.
"The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches"
You're right. It does look like FBI paid several different Verizons each to upgrade 1,140 switches. It should have been written "The FBI paid Verizon to upgrade 1,140 ...switches at $2,500 apiece".
Sorry.
Although in this case Verizon is still the recipient.
WRONG!!
'Apiece' denotes multiple objects and means pretty much the same as 'each'. Whether they are recipients or not doesn't matter.
E.g. My children received $10 apiece.
Works fine, so does
I bought 5 pencils at $4 apiece.
If you're gonna be a grammer Nazi, at least be correct!!
Except the movie was called The Number 23
Dammit! I'm going to start a new brand of computers called Orange.
Dammit, we must be crazy!
You're over-simplifying a lot. Yes there are elections in China, but nothing like you're talking about. In China, there are 4 main strata with elected officials. These are at the Township, Country, Prefecture and Province levels. Each level has 2 main officials, one is the Party Secretary, and the other is (supposed to be) elected, and is called either governer, magistrate or mayor (depending on the level). In all matters, the decisions of the Party Secretary (who is appointed from above) take precedence over the (supposedly) elected official.
I said the elected official is supposedly elected, because there is often only one canditate (who is usually appointed).
China is NOT moving towards a more democratic system. They are moving towards more freedom, but they are not moving towards democracy. Democracy and freedom are two different things.
In the UK and the US you are getting less freedoms, but you don't seem to be getting any less democracy. The people are voting for less freedom because they are scared. They need to be educated.
Except 984 is not "big", which is 244
If he keeps pushing his point of view there will be more humour in the world? I'm up for that!!
I've got a good idea, let's take out all the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, etc. that is in English too...
Oh, wait a minute. I think it would just be easier to add 'lathi' to my vocabulary.
I live in Shanghai so I'll have to check that out when I get home. I was watching HBO last night. BBC is certainly available because I was watching it this morning.
I'm in Shanghai, and I can't get Youtube. But Youtube is so full of crap that I don't really give a damn.
And the pseudo-communist government is still thinking about how to censor the Internet.
I'd have to disagree with you that anyone's point of view is irrelevant. All points of view are relevant, whether or not we agree.
This story is absolute BS. I live in Shanghai, and no entertainment websites I know of are being blocked. For instance, I can access XKCD, Slashdot, Fox News... my usual sources of entertainment. The three days of mourning are Mon, Tue and Wed. Most people wouldn't go to clubs on these days anyway.
In other words this story is absolute BS, and although China does a lot of things I disagree with, they are not doing this, and even if they were I wouldn't see too much wrong with it.
But... all those stereotypes are mostly true. What was your point?
He didn't use either. That was a direct copy-paste from Wikipedia.
I was being sarcastic; there has been a lot of USA/France/CNN bashing on Chinese message boards lately, it's very much a two way street.
As for my implication, I've never noticed people having discussions on Slashdot in Chinese. I'd say the vast majority of people here are from western countries. I'd call that non-Chinese. There are Chinese people on here, but they are a very small minority, and also from the elite that can read/write English very well, which to be honest is not a typical representation of a Chinese person. Would you call Slashdot Chinese?
Anyway, I agreed with you that it's silly to start calling for boycotts/isolation etc. or to say that the people in said country are stupid. But I can't see anything wrong with having something against any particular government.
It is mostly the rich and well educated people here that support the government. Out in the countryside, there are many many people who are displeased but can do nothing.
the distinction between a government and its people is an academic one. i'm explaining the deep-rooted feelings of one culture for another. the standard "the people must rise" makes no difference if the people agree with the government. by attacking the government, you are attacking the people who support it. maybe they have their reasons for supporting it.So that brings about a paradox. If I attack my government (which I do on a constant basis), am I attacking myself, my friends and my family?
So do you think people are wrong to bash the Chinese government at all? If you think that's the case then you'd be a hypocrite to criticise anything the American/British governments do. Say, for instance, installing way too many CCTVs, allowing people to be sued for thousands of dollars for downloading a few songs, etc. I maintain my right to criticise any government for anything it does.
If people get offended by me attacking their government, then they are just grabbing the wrong end of the stick. And I'm not defending the people calling for embargoes, or isolation, or wars or whatever other unjustified invective; but I have a right to make statements like "The Chinese government is wrong to censor foreign news sources" or "I disagree that China has any right to claim land currently under the control of India". Where by "China" I mean the Chinese government.
It would be a very dangerous world if people stopped criticising governmental wrongdoings just for the sake of appeasing people with an overdeveloped sense of nationalism.
By extension, you're saying that if I criticise the Dear Leader for not feeding the people in North Korea, I am in turn criticising the people who are not being fed? So if I attack Kim Jeong Il in order to support the hungry, I am in turn attacking the hungry? That's absurd.
The physical distinction between a government and it's subjects is very real. Tying the two together would be the purely academic exercise, which doesn't make it true. The government can do a lot of things that the 'people' can't do, i.e. arrest people, make laws, organise a war with another country, etc. Any love that one has for a government is artificial and silly.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have governments, they are very necessary to keep order, and protect the people, the economy and so forth, but we are all better off if the government does it's job better, and we should all be allowed the right to criticise them in order to help attain improvements.
People in China do not openly criticise the government, and those who do are harassed at varying degrees. Of the people who do wish to criticise, fear stops them doing it in public.
I still can't understand why you would have me not criticise the Chinese government. Just because there are a lot of governments that are worse, the PRC government is not absolved of unjustified behaviour.