This occurred to me as well. Although it's possible, getting one's cheek or nose broken probably won't kill all that often. On the other hand, getting one's jaw broken or teeth broken would probably make it hard to eat. "Lopsided face" resulting from a good punching would likely prevent one from getting laid for sure.
My Microsoft Intellimouse is about 15 years old.
I've got some Sennheiser HD 280 headphones that are LOUD AS HELL and still going strong after about 20 years.
And I've got a Fender Twin '65 reissue tube amp that's twenty years old and still sounds incredible.
I also love my cast iron skillets. They are probably 30 years old. I expect they will last quite some time.
TAILS sounds like a honeypot to me. What's wrong with just booting off a KNOPPIX CD-ROM or an Ubuntu CD-ROM? I expect some stuff might get written to a tmp directory somewhere but you could always shred any files there before rebooting the machine.
The fact is there IS NO COMPETITION. In my area, if I want broadband over 1.5Mbps, I have only one choice and that's Time Warner cable. If Time Warner cable chooses to put the squeeze on Netflix or Amazon Prime to extort protection money from them, there is nothing they or I can do about it but pay the protection money or pray that the FCC or our elected representatives put the abusive cable monopoly in check. This is a fact and no amount of hand-waving can change the fact that there is one company between me and the content I want.
I would like to find plates from a specific date in 1970 and another date in 1980. I've been clicking around the collections and can't really make heads or tails of the archive. Can anyone suggest how to find a plate for a specific date?
You are mistaken. Google is great of course, but it's only a tool. I've searched for obscure things on google for weeks without any luck at all. I made a call to some librarians at an ivy league university and they found definitive information and got back to me in a couple of days. There is value in someone who specializes in the process of locating high-quality information like primary sources of authoritative works on a subject.
I think an underrated component of libraries is the librarians. I think I'm imagining a modern library as more than just a place for the public to connect to information. It's a place where the public can go to learn about something and get help in finding the information. Sometimes having access to the internet just isn't enough. You need to find a *person* who has specific expertise.
I like the idea of lending e-readers in *addition* to books. XO Tablet is $125. Comparable to the cost of 10-20 midrange books, but it does provide free access to the 40,000 books on Project Gutenberg. My thinking was mostly that WiFi deployment is cheaper than a) routing ethernet cables everywhere and b) making desktop space for everyone with a device. Books would also require grant money.
The trick in my opinion is to get access to a cheap device that is not locked to any particular content ecosystem.
Cheap desktop computers running free operating systems. You can install Ubuntu or some other *nix distro free on pretty much any old used computer.
WiFi access. I would imagine that your internet bill will likely be your biggest long-term expense. You can get some pretty awesome consumer routers, install DD-WRT on them or tomato USB or whatever) and get some pretty fancy functionality. I've been eyeing this one.
And maybe the most affordable ebook readers or tablets for checkout. You might get a sponsorship from Google or Amazon -- they are all too anxious to rope people into their ebook ecosystems. I would try to avoid these book ecosystems for cost reasons. You can also get all kinds of amazing old books through project gutenberg. Maybe OLPC would have a suitable device?
You might also keep some physical books of historical interest or perhaps large maps or other visually oriented works that resist digitization.
Yes but you forget the other trend toward telecommuting! Silly rabbit, nobody needs to *drive* in the beautiful future! The 7-layer freeways will be for the Amazon bots that are going to deliver more video games and pizza to me.
Until a large portion of the world starts performing population control, our opinions about the harm of growing populations is not relevant to topics related to feeding more people. As long as we as a society let people have as many kids as they want, and do not wish to punish children for the sins of their parents, we need to find ways of feeding all of these people.
How do you figure that concern over population growth is not relevant to feeding people? I smell in this statement some kind of ethical concept which needs to be more clearly elucidated. I'm willing to accept that it's a Machiavellian notion, but if you don't feed people, they find it harder to reproduce. And, as long as we're on the topic of feeding everyone with GMO, why not engineer the GMO to reduce fertility rates? I'm sure it's possible. We just need to find some kind of GMO that contributes an anaphrodisiac to Golden Rice. As long as we are taking charge of our destiny with genetic tools, why not solve all the problems we can?
I worry that we have a society where it's considered to be ok to make decisions based on ideas that are known to be completely crackpot.
I believe you said it best: You can find reasons to worry about anything.
I'm hardly a science denier. I'm not trying to suggest -- in the face of all manner of evidence -- that GMO causes allergy problems or tumors. I was merely trying to suggest that limiting our concern about GMO food production to only it's direct impact on human health ignores some other possibilities and that I've yet to see any evidence showing or refuting that these might be a problem. Some standard examples, which may or may not be caught and/or prevented by sufficient caution and regulation:
* Potential to create an invasive species. Kudzu, which is not GMO, comes to mind. If you introduce a new vegetation that is exceptionally viable, it may potentially overwhelm a given habitat, thereby upsetting the balance of species. "Pest resistant" is not especially far-removed from "lacks no natural predators."
* Potential to upset the nonlinear relation between species in a delicate ecosystem. It's been a very long time since I studied nonlinear differential equations, but I recall one example describing the mutual dependency of prey and predator relations. Some of these featured dangerous instabilities and asymptotes if you pushed them too far to one side. What happens when you prevent "pests" from feeding on their natural food supply? Might this possibly have a catastrophic impact on predatory species that eat those pests? Might that in turn effect other species further up the food chain? This issue does not relate to human health as much as species diversity. Call me a bleeding heart, but I like animals.
* Use of GMO to build herbicide/pesticide resistance, allowing more liberal use of herbicide/pesticide to the detriment of non-human species (e.g., bees, possibly causing or contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder).
These things worry me. I am an not a biologist, but I am an engineer. Please don't accuse me of being a "science denier" and coming up with "crap." If you do, you out yourself as precisely one of the hacks that should never be allowed to conduct this kind of research. If, on the other hand, you can kindly and convincingly *explain* why we shouldn't worry about this stuff, please do so! If you demand that anyone with a reasonable education simply "have faith" in the scientific establishment, then you are not scientist but a cultist.
Quite aside from ecological and human health concerns, what about social equity and legal concerns? I oppose both software and genetic patents because I believe they unfairly favor bean-counting assholes and financial analysts over human interest and inventors. I am skeptical of the "noble" aspirations of feeding starving populations. While I am sympathetic to hungry peoples, I also wonder if it's a good idea to introduce global factors to the food chain which may result in a population boom of the most invasive species of all -- humans. I think it goes without saying that adding another billion people to the earth is going to have catastrophic consequences: pollution, conflict, destruction of wilderness.
So if we *don't* worry about anything, that provides evolutionary advantage? You seem to have conveniently ignored the fact that our evolutionary advantage that allows us to dominate the planet is our ability to think. Although unpleasant, worrying is a form of thinking. In fact, most of our most profound advances in the past century are outgrowths of worry over conflicts.
There's a word for people who don't worry when they should. It's blithe.
If you take the philosphy of "don't worry about it" to its logical conclusion, we'd already be extinct.
I have not, but I've seen hints or modern Hawaii on the one or two occasions I was forced to watch "Dog the Bounty Hunter." Personally, I find it off-putting. I meant the comment about hippies partly in jest. I know it's really a bunch of rich yuppies (kidding again haha).
This post brings up a point that I have suspected and seems very very important to me. Do you have any sources to back up this assertion that GMO is largely to improve pesticide/herbicide resistance?? Increased use of herbicide/pesticide seems like an obvious contributor to Colony Collapse Disorder.
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This occurred to me as well. Although it's possible, getting one's cheek or nose broken probably won't kill all that often. On the other hand, getting one's jaw broken or teeth broken would probably make it hard to eat. "Lopsided face" resulting from a good punching would likely prevent one from getting laid for sure.
My Microsoft Intellimouse is about 15 years old. I've got some Sennheiser HD 280 headphones that are LOUD AS HELL and still going strong after about 20 years. And I've got a Fender Twin '65 reissue tube amp that's twenty years old and still sounds incredible. I also love my cast iron skillets. They are probably 30 years old. I expect they will last quite some time.
TAILS sounds like a honeypot to me. What's wrong with just booting off a KNOPPIX CD-ROM or an Ubuntu CD-ROM? I expect some stuff might get written to a tmp directory somewhere but you could always shred any files there before rebooting the machine.
It's my understanding that if you buy a Bluray, you get access to a digital copy, don't you? You could be wasting your time.
If you can afford a 70" television, you probably aren't ripping content.
As I recall, Netflix tried to close down its DVD business but had to keep it thanks to customer rage. The stockholders were pissed too.
Call wealthy alumni. You could probably get a list from the alumni office.
^This
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...
And ^this
The fact is there IS NO COMPETITION. In my area, if I want broadband over 1.5Mbps, I have only one choice and that's Time Warner cable. If Time Warner cable chooses to put the squeeze on Netflix or Amazon Prime to extort protection money from them, there is nothing they or I can do about it but pay the protection money or pray that the FCC or our elected representatives put the abusive cable monopoly in check. This is a fact and no amount of hand-waving can change the fact that there is one company between me and the content I want.
Also: the Time Warner / Comcast deal is a crock of shit. I believe I'm not the only one who feels that these companies provide terrible customer service and gouge us for shitty connection speeds. The cost of my connection has doubled since Time Warner bought Adelphia cable with no appreciable increase in speed. It's bullshit.
I would like to find plates from a specific date in 1970 and another date in 1980. I've been clicking around the collections and can't really make heads or tails of the archive. Can anyone suggest how to find a plate for a specific date?
Can I get 40 acres and a M.U.L.E. please?
Yeah. Can't wait to see the scars left by the huge strip-mining operation.
You are mistaken. Google is great of course, but it's only a tool. I've searched for obscure things on google for weeks without any luck at all. I made a call to some librarians at an ivy league university and they found definitive information and got back to me in a couple of days. There is value in someone who specializes in the process of locating high-quality information like primary sources of authoritative works on a subject.
I think an underrated component of libraries is the librarians. I think I'm imagining a modern library as more than just a place for the public to connect to information. It's a place where the public can go to learn about something and get help in finding the information. Sometimes having access to the internet just isn't enough. You need to find a *person* who has specific expertise.
I like the idea of lending e-readers in *addition* to books. XO Tablet is $125. Comparable to the cost of 10-20 midrange books, but it does provide free access to the 40,000 books on Project Gutenberg. My thinking was mostly that WiFi deployment is cheaper than a) routing ethernet cables everywhere and b) making desktop space for everyone with a device. Books would also require grant money.
The trick in my opinion is to get access to a cheap device that is not locked to any particular content ecosystem.
Don't forget The Anarchist's Cookbook.
Cheap desktop computers running free operating systems. You can install Ubuntu or some other *nix distro free on pretty much any old used computer.
WiFi access. I would imagine that your internet bill will likely be your biggest long-term expense. You can get some pretty awesome consumer routers, install DD-WRT on them or tomato USB or whatever) and get some pretty fancy functionality. I've been eyeing this one.
And maybe the most affordable ebook readers or tablets for checkout. You might get a sponsorship from Google or Amazon -- they are all too anxious to rope people into their ebook ecosystems. I would try to avoid these book ecosystems for cost reasons. You can also get all kinds of amazing old books through project gutenberg. Maybe OLPC would have a suitable device?
You might also keep some physical books of historical interest or perhaps large maps or other visually oriented works that resist digitization.
Yes but you forget the other trend toward telecommuting! Silly rabbit, nobody needs to *drive* in the beautiful future! The 7-layer freeways will be for the Amazon bots that are going to deliver more video games and pizza to me.
We should be able to moderate the original article as troll.
Until a large portion of the world starts performing population control, our opinions about the harm of growing populations is not relevant to topics related to feeding more people. As long as we as a society let people have as many kids as they want, and do not wish to punish children for the sins of their parents, we need to find ways of feeding all of these people.
How do you figure that concern over population growth is not relevant to feeding people? I smell in this statement some kind of ethical concept which needs to be more clearly elucidated. I'm willing to accept that it's a Machiavellian notion, but if you don't feed people, they find it harder to reproduce. And, as long as we're on the topic of feeding everyone with GMO, why not engineer the GMO to reduce fertility rates? I'm sure it's possible. We just need to find some kind of GMO that contributes an anaphrodisiac to Golden Rice. As long as we are taking charge of our destiny with genetic tools, why not solve all the problems we can?
I worry that we have a society where it's considered to be ok to make decisions based on ideas that are known to be completely crackpot.
I believe you said it best: You can find reasons to worry about anything.
I'm hardly a science denier. I'm not trying to suggest -- in the face of all manner of evidence -- that GMO causes allergy problems or tumors. I was merely trying to suggest that limiting our concern about GMO food production to only it's direct impact on human health ignores some other possibilities and that I've yet to see any evidence showing or refuting that these might be a problem. Some standard examples, which may or may not be caught and/or prevented by sufficient caution and regulation:
* Potential to create an invasive species. Kudzu, which is not GMO, comes to mind. If you introduce a new vegetation that is exceptionally viable, it may potentially overwhelm a given habitat, thereby upsetting the balance of species. "Pest resistant" is not especially far-removed from "lacks no natural predators."
* Potential to upset the nonlinear relation between species in a delicate ecosystem. It's been a very long time since I studied nonlinear differential equations, but I recall one example describing the mutual dependency of prey and predator relations. Some of these featured dangerous instabilities and asymptotes if you pushed them too far to one side. What happens when you prevent "pests" from feeding on their natural food supply? Might this possibly have a catastrophic impact on predatory species that eat those pests? Might that in turn effect other species further up the food chain? This issue does not relate to human health as much as species diversity. Call me a bleeding heart, but I like animals.
* Use of GMO to build herbicide/pesticide resistance, allowing more liberal use of herbicide/pesticide to the detriment of non-human species (e.g., bees, possibly causing or contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder).
These things worry me. I am an not a biologist, but I am an engineer. Please don't accuse me of being a "science denier" and coming up with "crap." If you do, you out yourself as precisely one of the hacks that should never be allowed to conduct this kind of research. If, on the other hand, you can kindly and convincingly *explain* why we shouldn't worry about this stuff, please do so! If you demand that anyone with a reasonable education simply "have faith" in the scientific establishment, then you are not scientist but a cultist.
Quite aside from ecological and human health concerns, what about social equity and legal concerns? I oppose both software and genetic patents because I believe they unfairly favor bean-counting assholes and financial analysts over human interest and inventors. I am skeptical of the "noble" aspirations of feeding starving populations. While I am sympathetic to hungry peoples, I also wonder if it's a good idea to introduce global factors to the food chain which may result in a population boom of the most invasive species of all -- humans. I think it goes without saying that adding another billion people to the earth is going to have catastrophic consequences: pollution, conflict, destruction of wilderness.
So if we *don't* worry about anything, that provides evolutionary advantage? You seem to have conveniently ignored the fact that our evolutionary advantage that allows us to dominate the planet is our ability to think. Although unpleasant, worrying is a form of thinking. In fact, most of our most profound advances in the past century are outgrowths of worry over conflicts.
There's a word for people who don't worry when they should. It's blithe.
If you take the philosphy of "don't worry about it" to its logical conclusion, we'd already be extinct.
I have not, but I've seen hints or modern Hawaii on the one or two occasions I was forced to watch "Dog the Bounty Hunter." Personally, I find it off-putting. I meant the comment about hippies partly in jest. I know it's really a bunch of rich yuppies (kidding again haha).
But it could be serious income to a small government.
This post brings up a point that I have suspected and seems very very important to me. Do you have any sources to back up this assertion that GMO is largely to improve pesticide/herbicide resistance?? Increased use of herbicide/pesticide seems like an obvious contributor to Colony Collapse Disorder.