Interesting post. I'd heard/recognized some of this, but not all of those details at the same time.
One thing you didn't mention explicitly, though maybe it correlates to your comments about in-group and threat, is that conservatives seem to find the idea of people getting things they don't deserve more objectionable. For instance, they're more likely to see a system like welfare not worth it because of scammers and cheaters, despite it also helping some truly needy, while liberals would be more likely to shrug off the cheating as an unavoidable side-effect, and focus on the benefits to those who need it.
Well, I'm certainly willing to maintain a little skepticism, but your argument seems to be that because the shape of the skull isn't correlated with the function of the brain, then the shape of the brain also isn't correlated with the shape of the brain. I'm not sure that's a logical leap. There's at least a little more reason to think brain structure affects brain behavior.
Yeah, don't go killing pets, not only for the cruelty factor, but for peace between you and your neighbors.
I have seen video of motion detectors hooked up to sprinklers/hoses, especially to chase off cats. (One youtube video from a few years ago, the poor guy's car was being peed on constantly.) That might solve your problem easily and non-violently.
Shoulda panned the Win 10 calculator while you had the chance. It's slower than dirt. Every time I launch, I can count to 3 full seconds before it actually loads the app, and until it's fully loaded it's not buffering any keystrokes.
Also, sometimes it starts to launch and then just closes itself again.
Compared to the calculator in XP, Vista, 7, or 8, the one in 10 is inexplicably bad, just for those two things.
But it should be noted that humans live in African for hundreds of thousands of years and Africans mega fauna survived.
As someone else noted, humans evolving in Africa gave the local megafauna time to learn to avoid us. There's a direct statistical correlation between the percentage of megafauna driven extinct and the distance from the site of human origins. African megafauna suffered the least, European and Asian less so, but Australian, North American, and South American megafauna got hit really hard. The idea is very popular that those continents not explored until humans were fully modern explain why most of those megafauna went extinct.
I took Symbolic Logic from the philosophy department, which was labeled "humanities" in my school, but seemingly would fall into your "liberal arts" category. It was extremely applicable to programming and database logic.
"Since March of 1997 I don't really believe in anything." That's oddly specific. Curious if he's referencing a specific thing/event, or if that's a callback to a personal moment of truth, or just a weirdly detailed joke?
I get that, too. Loud noise = white flash. I always assumed it was just my brain being so startled by the noise it stopped paying attention to visual input for a second. That's gotta be a poor survival instinct.
I've noticed at art museums, as I stand and look at a paining, I often hear a kind of mild background hum, that seems to change depending on what work I'm looking at. I can tell it's in my head and don't think I'm intentionally doing it. Possibly it's something I notice there because art museums are kind of quiet places.
Hm. I would have guessed that, if someone's up unusually late on a weekend, they'd just be hungry due to elapsed time. If you have supper around 6, then by 3 a.m. it's been 9 hours since you've eaten. That would make it time for another meal, right?
There was a time when my personal home page from college was the #1 entry for duct tape... for taping myself to a wall and making a bunch of jokes about it. Man, those were heady days.
How long has it been since they had their slogan, "Do you, uh... YaHOOOOOO-OOOO?" Feels like just yesterday, but it's probably been more than a decade.
To be fair, the guy did get extremely rich and famous mostly through the power of imagining things. His error is in thinking that's a universal rule, rather than a blend of luck, talent, timing, and who knows what else.
Yes, wanted to say this. I mean, it may be good to have a discussion for other folks dealing with tough work environments, so maybe it's not wasted, but the original poser of the question has likely wrapped this issue up one way or another more than a year ago.
As Tepples notes, it's easier than ever for people to publish their own books. I've done two, myself. The *real* trick is in advertising, or whatever you want to call it to get the book you wrote into the hands of the people who would enjoy it. An improved search/recommendation service might be the most important next step, particularly for niche products. For example, there might be a lot of people out there who would enjoy a humorous fantasy novel that weaves in nods and winks to scores of classic computer RPGs, but how many of those people are out actively looking for that? How will they know that some indie author has just published an enjoyable bit of nostalgia, especially if Amazon thinks it ought to get lumped in with video game guidebooks, rather than original fiction that's got some reference and parody?
I mean, yeah, some self-serving schlub could go on Slashdot and talk up his own product (The Eight-Bit Bard, by Aaron Rath.... don't shoot me!) but that still only catches the rare Slashdot reader digging deep in comments on a minor article, and don't cater at all to a guy sitting bored, who doesn't even know that what he's really in the mood to read is something like 'Ready Player One' except with less overall pop culture and more focus on RPGs, say.
The value of a library's shelf space is measurable. The old books should not be rendered inaccessible, but their marginal value continues to decline and shelf space needs to be made available for the new stuff that people want to read more. The obvious and rational response is to retire old paper books in favor of electronic versions. Personally I hate ebooks and think Amazon is aggressively creating an ebook monopoly that will destroy the publishing industry, but... It would make much more sense to make the old, long-tail books available instantly in electronic forms.
If copyright wasn't so ridiculously long, "old" books after only a decade or two could end up on public domain sites like Project Gutenberg, to be available to anyone with a computer, which is just about everyone these days. I'd think it would ease a librarian's conscience to know that material was still being provided somewhere, even if it couldn't be at the library.
I thought conventional wisdom capped the mortgage at 2-2.5 times salary? On $50k, they shouldn't have a mortgage greater than $100k or $125k. Someone realizing that their limit is $125k and not stretching to $200k and bankrupting themselves seems pretty sensible to me.
I read his A History of Warfare years ago, and it still comes back to me on a regular basis. One of those works that really encapsulates and explains a whole subject really well, I thought, and something I'd recommend to anyone even remotely interested.
Yes! An old favorite. Read it in high school, probably the reason I studied physics in college, because I hadn't met anyone so persuasively entertaining about any other topic. Reread it this year for a refresher. Wasn't *quite* as entertaining the second time, but still a great read.
Odd. I was thinking about the books I enjoyed from this year and had just come to the conclusion this was one of the biggest surprises, both for the educational content and shift of historical understanding it gave me. I thought, "Nobody's gonna know this book, or buy it as a recommendation." Glad to see someone else enjoyed, it, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting post. I'd heard/recognized some of this, but not all of those details at the same time.
One thing you didn't mention explicitly, though maybe it correlates to your comments about in-group and threat, is that conservatives seem to find the idea of people getting things they don't deserve more objectionable. For instance, they're more likely to see a system like welfare not worth it because of scammers and cheaters, despite it also helping some truly needy, while liberals would be more likely to shrug off the cheating as an unavoidable side-effect, and focus on the benefits to those who need it.
Well, I'm certainly willing to maintain a little skepticism, but your argument seems to be that because the shape of the skull isn't correlated with the function of the brain, then the shape of the brain also isn't correlated with the shape of the brain. I'm not sure that's a logical leap. There's at least a little more reason to think brain structure affects brain behavior.
Yeah, don't go killing pets, not only for the cruelty factor, but for peace between you and your neighbors.
I have seen video of motion detectors hooked up to sprinklers/hoses, especially to chase off cats. (One youtube video from a few years ago, the poor guy's car was being peed on constantly.) That might solve your problem easily and non-violently.
You mean Trump *isn't* the balrog?
Shoulda panned the Win 10 calculator while you had the chance. It's slower than dirt. Every time I launch, I can count to 3 full seconds before it actually loads the app, and until it's fully loaded it's not buffering any keystrokes.
Also, sometimes it starts to launch and then just closes itself again.
Compared to the calculator in XP, Vista, 7, or 8, the one in 10 is inexplicably bad, just for those two things.
But it should be noted that humans live in African for hundreds of thousands of years and Africans mega fauna survived.
As someone else noted, humans evolving in Africa gave the local megafauna time to learn to avoid us. There's a direct statistical correlation between the percentage of megafauna driven extinct and the distance from the site of human origins. African megafauna suffered the least, European and Asian less so, but Australian, North American, and South American megafauna got hit really hard. The idea is very popular that those continents not explored until humans were fully modern explain why most of those megafauna went extinct.
I took Symbolic Logic from the philosophy department, which was labeled "humanities" in my school, but seemingly would fall into your "liberal arts" category. It was extremely applicable to programming and database logic.
"Since March of 1997 I don't really believe in anything." That's oddly specific. Curious if he's referencing a specific thing/event, or if that's a callback to a personal moment of truth, or just a weirdly detailed joke?
I get that, too. Loud noise = white flash. I always assumed it was just my brain being so startled by the noise it stopped paying attention to visual input for a second. That's gotta be a poor survival instinct.
I've noticed at art museums, as I stand and look at a paining, I often hear a kind of mild background hum, that seems to change depending on what work I'm looking at. I can tell it's in my head and don't think I'm intentionally doing it. Possibly it's something I notice there because art museums are kind of quiet places.
Sorry, couldn't resist. (See subject.)
iSee what you did there.
Sadly, "So I Married an Axe Murderer" doesn't qualify, even though of the things you list that's the movie iLiked best.
I'm having flashbacks to Gravity's Rainbow.
Hm. I would have guessed that, if someone's up unusually late on a weekend, they'd just be hungry due to elapsed time. If you have supper around 6, then by 3 a.m. it's been 9 hours since you've eaten. That would make it time for another meal, right?
Wait, are you telling me Slashdot's reliable standby, the car analogy, just broke down?
Wait, who hires the B-level people, then?
There was a time when my personal home page from college was the #1 entry for duct tape ... for taping myself to a wall and making a bunch of jokes about it. Man, those were heady days.
How long has it been since they had their slogan, "Do you, uh ... YaHOOOOOO-OOOO?" Feels like just yesterday, but it's probably been more than a decade.
To be fair, the guy did get extremely rich and famous mostly through the power of imagining things. His error is in thinking that's a universal rule, rather than a blend of luck, talent, timing, and who knows what else.
Yes, wanted to say this. I mean, it may be good to have a discussion for other folks dealing with tough work environments, so maybe it's not wasted, but the original poser of the question has likely wrapped this issue up one way or another more than a year ago.
Brilliant! Well played.
As Tepples notes, it's easier than ever for people to publish their own books. I've done two, myself. The *real* trick is in advertising, or whatever you want to call it to get the book you wrote into the hands of the people who would enjoy it. An improved search/recommendation service might be the most important next step, particularly for niche products. For example, there might be a lot of people out there who would enjoy a humorous fantasy novel that weaves in nods and winks to scores of classic computer RPGs, but how many of those people are out actively looking for that? How will they know that some indie author has just published an enjoyable bit of nostalgia, especially if Amazon thinks it ought to get lumped in with video game guidebooks, rather than original fiction that's got some reference and parody?
I mean, yeah, some self-serving schlub could go on Slashdot and talk up his own product (The Eight-Bit Bard, by Aaron Rath .... don't shoot me!) but that still only catches the rare Slashdot reader digging deep in comments on a minor article, and don't cater at all to a guy sitting bored, who doesn't even know that what he's really in the mood to read is something like 'Ready Player One' except with less overall pop culture and more focus on RPGs, say.
The value of a library's shelf space is measurable. The old books should not be rendered inaccessible, but their marginal value continues to decline and shelf space needs to be made available for the new stuff that people want to read more. The obvious and rational response is to retire old paper books in favor of electronic versions. Personally I hate ebooks and think Amazon is aggressively creating an ebook monopoly that will destroy the publishing industry, but... It would make much more sense to make the old, long-tail books available instantly in electronic forms.
If copyright wasn't so ridiculously long, "old" books after only a decade or two could end up on public domain sites like Project Gutenberg, to be available to anyone with a computer, which is just about everyone these days. I'd think it would ease a librarian's conscience to know that material was still being provided somewhere, even if it couldn't be at the library.
I thought conventional wisdom capped the mortgage at 2-2.5 times salary? On $50k, they shouldn't have a mortgage greater than $100k or $125k. Someone realizing that their limit is $125k and not stretching to $200k and bankrupting themselves seems pretty sensible to me.
I read his A History of Warfare years ago, and it still comes back to me on a regular basis. One of those works that really encapsulates and explains a whole subject really well, I thought, and something I'd recommend to anyone even remotely interested.
Yes! An old favorite. Read it in high school, probably the reason I studied physics in college, because I hadn't met anyone so persuasively entertaining about any other topic. Reread it this year for a refresher. Wasn't *quite* as entertaining the second time, but still a great read.
Odd. I was thinking about the books I enjoyed from this year and had just come to the conclusion this was one of the biggest surprises, both for the educational content and shift of historical understanding it gave me. I thought, "Nobody's gonna know this book, or buy it as a recommendation." Glad to see someone else enjoyed, it, too.