I would have thought that the Dark Ages began quite a bit earlier, with the fall of Rome, and ended with the flowering of the Renaissance, which I think you'll find was quite a bit before 1800, and which began the Middle Ages. Of course the later data hardly helps my 10,000 year figure, but hey. Incidentally, the Renaissance was largely the result of the assimilation of Arabic culture by Europe, which is just one of the many things casting a curious light on those who call for a general offensive on the Arabic world today.
Certainly, it can be hard for an individual to change the minds of society on a moral matter. But that said, society changes its mind a lot, so it's clearly not impossible.
And I would further add that your definition is incomplete - what society determines as right and wrong is made up of the consensus morals of all the citizens you actually hear, which all too often are those with power - be that money, guns or celebrity.
Re your second point, I totally agree (& by extension, also with the first). Even more humorously/tragically, when the Russians sent in 80,000 troops, precipitating a conflict which killed a million Afghans, sent six million more fleeing abroad and utterly destroyed the country's economic and political infrastructure, they were doing it to 'remove terrorism'. What they actually achieved was to augment the size, experience, support-base and extremism of groups like that which bombed the WTC. Why would the repeated destruction of Afghanistan advocated in some parts turn out any differently?
'What any particular person believes is irrelevant'? I'm sorry to barge into this debate, but I totally disagree here. Morals are a personal choice as well as a societally dictated phenomenon. When the individual, & by extension minority, opinion can be totally ignored by the majority then social stagnation is an inevitable result. The Dark Ages in Europe are testimony to that. >10,000 years of nearly constant and rigidly imposed religious orthodoxy. Fundamentally, society is 'we the people', and we are capable of forming society almost as much as it forms us. If we only choose to.
Absolutely. Some people are great people just about all the time, sure. Some people are not-so-great, others are great on occasion, others still are admittedly complete shit-bags. Just about all the time. Not everyone would agree upon who is whom. But who, really, can point at their past and show a completely pure sheet, where they never did a single thing that might be regretable or avoided doing a single thing that morally they should have done? We all have a degree of guilt, and yes, it is relative. To view the world entirely in black-and-white is to paint over the middle ground we all live in. Even a murderer can fall in love. The kindest person is sometimes hurtful, and not only through negligence. It's all about being human, really.
> This, by the way, is why the Arabs continue to
> attack Israel, and to speak of it with
> loathing. It is a secular state in a
> fundamentalist world. It is a western bastion,
> even a Trojan horse. This is why the Arabs have
> NEVER attacked any Israeli religious targets.
> It is not the religion that bothers them. It is
> the lack of religion. It is the secular Israel
> that offends, not the Jewish one.
It should also be pointed out that there is another, very real reason for the widespread hatred of Israel in the Arab world - the 50-year long persecution of the Palestinians, and intermittent persecution of the Lebanese, during Israel's existence. The western allies of Israel are also hated because of their support of, or lack of opposition to, the atrocities and human rights abuses which have persistently been inflicted upon the indiginous peoples of Israeli soil. In particular the US is hated due to being Israel's most stalwart supporter, and Britain is remembered with anger for their betrayal of a promise to hand over the land to the Palestinians. Control of that land was ceded to the Zionists under US pressure and in the presence of Zionist terrorist bomb attacks upon British civilians.
The worst of Israel's abuses seemed to be past until the reelection of one of their most infamous hawks, Sharon, whose actions are in no small part responsible for the latest Intifada and much of the innocent blood that has been shed in Israel and Palestine since September. And in the wake of the appalling terrorist attacks upon the USA, Sharon has intensified his programs of invasion and assassination in the sure confidence that at this point they will attract no US censure at all, and will set a precedent which he may now continue to follow for a long time to come.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 1
Nothing? Come on. The USA, and its ally the UK, have by constantly bombing and by enforcing severe sanctions upon Iraq caused the deaths of over a million civilians since the gulf war ended. That's over a hundred times the estimated fatalities from this round of attacks. The bombing raids on Serbia also caused widespread civilian casualties, and until the Serbians chose to pull out of Kosovo totally failed to stem the actions of Serbian troops on the ground. On the contrary, the amount of atrocities commited against Kosovan citizenry massively increased as a direct result of the bombardment.
The USA has also done next to nothing to rein in its allies, such as Israel, when they directly target civilians. On the contrary, the USA has sponsored endless terrorist groups and oppressive regimes where it was in the national interest to do so at the time. It's exactly this kind of short-sightedness which ultimately killed so many US citizens yesterday. Get over it.
NASA need to talk to Dr. Schlock
on
Space Blimps
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· Score: 1
Find out what I'm talking about at http://www.sluggy.com . In my opinion, anyone who can build an inflatable time machine should not have any great problem with airships. Probably.
I always understood that the elvish language had been most heavily influenced by Finnish, but it's beena while since I read the Appendices to the LOTR so I could be mistaken.
This is, of course, dependent upon personal morality - do you believe in freedom of speech first, or the suppression of x, y, & z because they disagree with you? To loosely quote Voltaire - "I disagree with what you are saying but would defend to the death your right to say it".
Certainly they do, excepting perhaps the contents of the 'special sauce'. But do they know what goes _into_ the burger?
Curiously enough, everyone I've met who ever worked in a fast food joint has resolved never, ever to eat in one. (Whoops, slight surfeit of 'ever's.) I've heard that the same is true for people who make prepacked sandwiches.
Putting aside deep suspicions that this is a troll, I've decided to deflate the argument somewhat.
> capitalism is a white European invention
Questionable as to whether it was an 'invention' - if so, who invented it and where precisely? Furthermore, what about the very advanced trading systems which had developed seperately in a great deal of varieties of themselves? Check out the economics of old Imperial China, & the Silk Road for example.
> and it is poised to disappear as non-European nations become dominant
The rise in the power, economic and otherwise of non-European nations is very much linked to their adoption of capitalism. Hence the rise of Japan after WW2 (abandoned militarist expansion - shrank military & built up the national industries etc - country boomed).
> China is poised to become the 21st century super power
This has the potential to happen, certainly, but it's hardly guarenteed as yet. And more importantly:
> and they are communist, not capitalist. Communism is a third world philosophy, not a western one.
The rise of China's strength has been directly linked to their adoption of capitalist systems. Which industries perform better in China, private or state? Private.
> Also the European nations themselves become less European as immigration continues and 75% of the population will originate from outside of Europe in 2075.
The changing ethnicity of Europe should not necessarily change its fundamentally capitalist nature - the urge to earn money & so status & comfort is not confined to white folks. Also, I'm interested in how you can claim to know what 'will' happen in 2075, but surely that's a little far to be making projections with any accuracy. Personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 75% figure is reached long before then, but only time will tell.
> So this capitalist/globalist thing is just the dying roar of an old white ugly beast.
In that case, it's a pretty large roar, & a growing one. I'd be interested to know how you think it could be stopped. People have been predicting the end of capitalism for a v. long time now, & it hasn't happened yet - much like the end of the world.
I'm sorry, after reading through this again, I've realised that I forgot to mention that by 'early days' I meant just prior to the Revolution - I think that the Mensheviks were thrown out prior to the Communist's rise to power, although their name (given after the event, meaning 'of the minority' compared to 'bolshevik' meaning 'of the majority') continued to be employed for years afterwards as a phantom enemy to keep the people in line (read 'Animal Farm'). Stalin later used the same tactic with his talk of 'Trotskyists' etc.
It's been a while since I've studied history, but this should be something approaching the truth:
The bolsheviks were a political, not a racial group. In the original days of the russian Commumist party under Lenin, there was a divide between the 'bolsheviks' and the 'mensheviks' over various policies. The bolsheviks rose to the ascendent, and the mensheviks (I think) were variously expelled, imprisoned or executed depending on how much of a nuisance they made of themselves. The 'bolsheviks' then essentially became the Communist party in Russia, & so the early Russian strain of Communism became known as Bolshevism.
Re:Give yourself enough time to switch to pedal po
on
Flywheel UPS
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· Score: 1
Sadly, the actual power output contributed by a rigged-up exercise bike is pretty minimal - you have to go at a pretty high rate to provide the same output as a normal lightbulb would require, & not many people can keep up a decent speed for very long. The costs of installing such a system would well outweigh the power benefits, although the exercise provided would undeniably be helpful. A small wind turbine or solar panel system on the roof would almost certainly do much better as a power source.
Re:Eco friendly? Wouldn't a LEAD flywheel be bette
on
Flywheel UPS
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· Score: 1
I would disagree with this, and claim that the future looks even more divided. The poor will get poorer (and more numerous) while the rich get richer and play with all their new toys. It's been a constant trend over the whole of human history - the greater the number of people, the less fair the division of resources. There are exceptions to this trend, as with all generalisations, but the statistics bear the argument out. And population will increase, despite (almost) all that War, Famine, Pestilence & Stupidity throw in our way.
If you read Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" you'll find what I think is a very cogent answer to this query. Basically, complicated systems like human intelligence are not specifically aimed at, but instead the steps to get there contain their own advantages. So that something increasing the quality of a creature's responses to stimuli can give it a slight advantage, which will lead to a tendency for it to succeed, and thus drive evolution.
Well, it is possible, but outside of our experience. On Earth, the rule has always been 'find water and you'll find life'. There are forms of life which exist quite cheerfully in anaerobic conditions, however, but in every case which I know of they are influenced by the actions of aerobic life upon which their survival depends. The seeds of life can exist for v. long periods of time in anhydrous, anaerobic, and otherwise harsh conditions however in the form of bacterial spores.
'Favorable' conditions do allow a certain degree of scope. Among the archeabacteria on this planet, for example, are species which exist perfectly happily at extremes of heat (volcanic vents), cold (antarctica), radioactivity (nuclear waste has proved most suitable), pH (acid or alkali, in different cases) and more. 'Archea' means ancient - ie, these have been around as long as anything we know of. Therefore they must have been started up early, and to extrapolate from this it would not be difficult to imagine at least monocellular life evolving on other planets to suit the conditions there. And under other conditions, who knows what happens next?
I haven't read the book you advocate. But I will oppose the premise you draw from it, which is that Africans should be left to clean up the mess themselves. They lack the funds, and their leaders lack the political motivation, to take the necessary action. What is needed is a combined effort - we must educate them in the dangers, promote safe sex (or, for the religious, monogamy), and provide therapy so that those infected with HIV may continue to be valuable members of their societies. Their governments must be persuaded to provide this information, their medical facilities must be upgraded to enable dispensal of therapies, and they must be persuaded to take the therapies. A good article on how this is being done in Haiti may be found in today's Observer (a British newspaper):
The drug companies would sue you if you tried this. If you check the article, you'll find that they've been suing the South African Gvt. since 1997 for allowing measure such as these. It's dangerous to be naive when you're dealing with pharmaceutical companies - they'll fight for their profit margin as fiercely as the next multinational, and the existence or non-existence of half the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, or India, or most of Latin America, is irrelevant to that. I don't know what I can do, either, except publicise this and sell my shares in them (although holding onto a single share so that I can lobby them at shareholders' meetings seems tempting).
> Innovation would certainly suffer if pharmaceutical
> manufacturers could not charge high prices in their primary
> markets, although how high is open to debate. But applying
> this argument to Ukraine or Uganda is a scare tactic. No
> manufacturer depends on profits in Africa, which will
> account for 1.3 percent of worldwide drug sales next year, to
> motivate the search for new medicines. And companies can
> sell their AIDS drugs at very steep discounts - some at 90
> percent or more off the American price - and still profit.
Against this evidence, the 'necessity' of charging unmanageable prices for the medicines begins to look just a tad dubious, wouldn't you say?
Actually, I kind of think this AC has a point. Too many of us are so happy to enjoy our comfortable little existence while ignoring the evident fact that the prosperity which we enjoy is often gained at the cost of human lives elsewhere. I reckon more people should get out of their small corner of the world and do something for others in need. Or at least write out nice fat checks, as Bill Gates did the other day ($100m pledged for Aids vaccines research. I'm actually starting to like the guy). If you're in any doubt of the realities of the global situation, and of what people can do to help, check out this article from today's Observer (a British newspaper):
Slashdot Mirror
I would have thought that the Dark Ages began quite a bit earlier, with the fall of Rome, and ended with the flowering of the Renaissance, which I think you'll find was quite a bit before 1800, and which began the Middle Ages. Of course the later data hardly helps my 10,000 year figure, but hey. Incidentally, the Renaissance was largely the result of the assimilation of Arabic culture by Europe, which is just one of the many things casting a curious light on those who call for a general offensive on the Arabic world today.
Certainly, it can be hard for an individual to change the minds of society on a moral matter. But that said, society changes its mind a lot, so it's clearly not impossible.
And I would further add that your definition is incomplete - what society determines as right and wrong is made up of the consensus morals of all the citizens you actually hear, which all too often are those with power - be that money, guns or celebrity.
Re your second point, I totally agree (& by extension, also with the first). Even more humorously/tragically, when the Russians sent in 80,000 troops, precipitating a conflict which killed a million Afghans, sent six million more fleeing abroad and utterly destroyed the country's economic and political infrastructure, they were doing it to 'remove terrorism'. What they actually achieved was to augment the size, experience, support-base and extremism of groups like that which bombed the WTC. Why would the repeated destruction of Afghanistan advocated in some parts turn out any differently?
'What any particular person believes is irrelevant'? I'm sorry to barge into this debate, but I totally disagree here. Morals are a personal choice as well as a societally dictated phenomenon. When the individual, & by extension minority, opinion can be totally ignored by the majority then social stagnation is an inevitable result. The Dark Ages in Europe are testimony to that. >10,000 years of nearly constant and rigidly imposed religious orthodoxy. Fundamentally, society is 'we the people', and we are capable of forming society almost as much as it forms us. If we only choose to.
Absolutely. Some people are great people just about all the time, sure. Some people are not-so-great, others are great on occasion, others still are admittedly complete shit-bags. Just about all the time. Not everyone would agree upon who is whom. But who, really, can point at their past and show a completely pure sheet, where they never did a single thing that might be regretable or avoided doing a single thing that morally they should have done? We all have a degree of guilt, and yes, it is relative. To view the world entirely in black-and-white is to paint over the middle ground we all live in. Even a murderer can fall in love. The kindest person is sometimes hurtful, and not only through negligence. It's all about being human, really.
> This, by the way, is why the Arabs continue to
> attack Israel, and to speak of it with
> loathing. It is a secular state in a
> fundamentalist world. It is a western bastion,
> even a Trojan horse. This is why the Arabs have
> NEVER attacked any Israeli religious targets.
> It is not the religion that bothers them. It is
> the lack of religion. It is the secular Israel
> that offends, not the Jewish one.
It should also be pointed out that there is another, very real reason for the widespread hatred of Israel in the Arab world - the 50-year long persecution of the Palestinians, and intermittent persecution of the Lebanese, during Israel's existence. The western allies of Israel are also hated because of their support of, or lack of opposition to, the atrocities and human rights abuses which have persistently been inflicted upon the indiginous peoples of Israeli soil. In particular the US is hated due to being Israel's most stalwart supporter, and Britain is remembered with anger for their betrayal of a promise to hand over the land to the Palestinians. Control of that land was ceded to the Zionists under US pressure and in the presence of Zionist terrorist bomb attacks upon British civilians.
The worst of Israel's abuses seemed to be past until the reelection of one of their most infamous hawks, Sharon, whose actions are in no small part responsible for the latest Intifada and much of the innocent blood that has been shed in Israel and Palestine since September. And in the wake of the appalling terrorist attacks upon the USA, Sharon has intensified his programs of invasion and assassination in the sure confidence that at this point they will attract no US censure at all, and will set a precedent which he may now continue to follow for a long time to come.
Nothing? Come on. The USA, and its ally the UK, have by constantly bombing and by enforcing severe sanctions upon Iraq caused the deaths of over a million civilians since the gulf war ended. That's over a hundred times the estimated fatalities from this round of attacks. The bombing raids on Serbia also caused widespread civilian casualties, and until the Serbians chose to pull out of Kosovo totally failed to stem the actions of Serbian troops on the ground. On the contrary, the amount of atrocities commited against Kosovan citizenry massively increased as a direct result of the bombardment.
The USA has also done next to nothing to rein in its allies, such as Israel, when they directly target civilians. On the contrary, the USA has sponsored endless terrorist groups and oppressive regimes where it was in the national interest to do so at the time. It's exactly this kind of short-sightedness which ultimately killed so many US citizens yesterday. Get over it.
Find out what I'm talking about at http://www.sluggy.com . In my opinion, anyone who can build an inflatable time machine should not have any great problem with airships. Probably.
I always understood that the elvish language had been most heavily influenced by Finnish, but it's beena while since I read the Appendices to the LOTR so I could be mistaken.
This is, of course, dependent upon personal morality - do you believe in freedom of speech first, or the suppression of x, y, & z because they disagree with you? To loosely quote Voltaire - "I disagree with what you are saying but would defend to the death your right to say it".
> They know exactly what is on a hamburger
Certainly they do, excepting perhaps the contents of the 'special sauce'. But do they know what goes _into_ the burger?
Curiously enough, everyone I've met who ever worked in a fast food joint has resolved never, ever to eat in one. (Whoops, slight surfeit of 'ever's.) I've heard that the same is true for people who make prepacked sandwiches.
Putting aside deep suspicions that this is a troll, I've decided to deflate the argument somewhat.
> capitalism is a white European invention
Questionable as to whether it was an 'invention' - if so, who invented it and where precisely? Furthermore, what about the very advanced trading systems which had developed seperately in a great deal of varieties of themselves? Check out the economics of old Imperial China, & the Silk Road for example.
> and it is poised to disappear as non-European nations become dominant
The rise in the power, economic and otherwise of non-European nations is very much linked to their adoption of capitalism. Hence the rise of Japan after WW2 (abandoned militarist expansion - shrank military & built up the national industries etc - country boomed).
> China is poised to become the 21st century super power
This has the potential to happen, certainly, but it's hardly guarenteed as yet. And more importantly:
> and they are communist, not capitalist. Communism is a third world philosophy, not a western one.
The rise of China's strength has been directly linked to their adoption of capitalist systems. Which industries perform better in China, private or state? Private.
> Also the European nations themselves become less European as immigration continues and 75% of the population will originate from outside of Europe in 2075.
The changing ethnicity of Europe should not necessarily change its fundamentally capitalist nature - the urge to earn money & so status & comfort is not confined to white folks. Also, I'm interested in how you can claim to know what 'will' happen in 2075, but surely that's a little far to be making projections with any accuracy. Personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 75% figure is reached long before then, but only time will tell.
> So this capitalist/globalist thing is just the dying roar of an old white ugly beast.
In that case, it's a pretty large roar, & a growing one. I'd be interested to know how you think it could be stopped. People have been predicting the end of capitalism for a v. long time now, & it hasn't happened yet - much like the end of the world.
I'm sorry, after reading through this again, I've realised that I forgot to mention that by 'early days' I meant just prior to the Revolution - I think that the Mensheviks were thrown out prior to the Communist's rise to power, although their name (given after the event, meaning 'of the minority' compared to 'bolshevik' meaning 'of the majority') continued to be employed for years afterwards as a phantom enemy to keep the people in line (read 'Animal Farm'). Stalin later used the same tactic with his talk of 'Trotskyists' etc.
It's been a while since I've studied history, but this should be something approaching the truth:
The bolsheviks were a political, not a racial group. In the original days of the russian Commumist party under Lenin, there was a divide between the 'bolsheviks' and the 'mensheviks' over various policies. The bolsheviks rose to the ascendent, and the mensheviks (I think) were variously expelled, imprisoned or executed depending on how much of a nuisance they made of themselves. The 'bolsheviks' then essentially became the Communist party in Russia, & so the early Russian strain of Communism became known as Bolshevism.
Sadly, the actual power output contributed by a rigged-up exercise bike is pretty minimal - you have to go at a pretty high rate to provide the same output as a normal lightbulb would require, & not many people can keep up a decent speed for very long. The costs of installing such a system would well outweigh the power benefits, although the exercise provided would undeniably be helpful. A small wind turbine or solar panel system on the roof would almost certainly do much better as a power source.
I would disagree with this, and claim that the future looks even more divided. The poor will get poorer (and more numerous) while the rich get richer and play with all their new toys. It's been a constant trend over the whole of human history - the greater the number of people, the less fair the division of resources. There are exceptions to this trend, as with all generalisations, but the statistics bear the argument out. And population will increase, despite (almost) all that War, Famine, Pestilence & Stupidity throw in our way.
If you read Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" you'll find what I think is a very cogent answer to this query. Basically, complicated systems like human intelligence are not specifically aimed at, but instead the steps to get there contain their own advantages. So that something increasing the quality of a creature's responses to stimuli can give it a slight advantage, which will lead to a tendency for it to succeed, and thus drive evolution.
Well, it is possible, but outside of our experience. On Earth, the rule has always been 'find water and you'll find life'. There are forms of life which exist quite cheerfully in anaerobic conditions, however, but in every case which I know of they are influenced by the actions of aerobic life upon which their survival depends. The seeds of life can exist for v. long periods of time in anhydrous, anaerobic, and otherwise harsh conditions however in the form of bacterial spores.
'Favorable' conditions do allow a certain degree of scope. Among the archeabacteria on this planet, for example, are species which exist perfectly happily at extremes of heat (volcanic vents), cold (antarctica), radioactivity (nuclear waste has proved most suitable), pH (acid or alkali, in different cases) and more. 'Archea' means ancient - ie, these have been around as long as anything we know of. Therefore they must have been started up early, and to extrapolate from this it would not be difficult to imagine at least monocellular life evolving on other planets to suit the conditions there. And under other conditions, who knows what happens next?
I haven't read the book you advocate. But I will oppose the premise you draw from it, which is that Africans should be left to clean up the mess themselves. They lack the funds, and their leaders lack the political motivation, to take the necessary action. What is needed is a combined effort - we must educate them in the dangers, promote safe sex (or, for the religious, monogamy), and provide therapy so that those infected with HIV may continue to be valuable members of their societies. Their governments must be persuaded to provide this information, their medical facilities must be upgraded to enable dispensal of therapies, and they must be persuaded to take the therapies. A good article on how this is being done in Haiti may be found in today's Observer (a British newspaper):
7 98 ,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,429
The drug companies would sue you if you tried this. If you check the article, you'll find that they've been suing the South African Gvt. since 1997 for allowing measure such as these. It's dangerous to be naive when you're dealing with pharmaceutical companies - they'll fight for their profit margin as fiercely as the next multinational, and the existence or non-existence of half the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, or India, or most of Latin America, is irrelevant to that. I don't know what I can do, either, except publicise this and sell my shares in them (although holding onto a single share so that I can lobby them at shareholders' meetings seems tempting).
Take this paragraph for instance:
> Innovation would certainly suffer if pharmaceutical
> manufacturers could not charge high prices in their primary
> markets, although how high is open to debate. But applying
> this argument to Ukraine or Uganda is a scare tactic. No
> manufacturer depends on profits in Africa, which will
> account for 1.3 percent of worldwide drug sales next year, to
> motivate the search for new medicines. And companies can
> sell their AIDS drugs at very steep discounts - some at 90
> percent or more off the American price - and still profit.
Against this evidence, the 'necessity' of charging unmanageable prices for the medicines begins to look just a tad dubious, wouldn't you say?
Actually, I kind of think this AC has a point. Too many of us are so happy to enjoy our comfortable little existence while ignoring the evident fact that the prosperity which we enjoy is often gained at the cost of human lives elsewhere. I reckon more people should get out of their small corner of the world and do something for others in need. Or at least write out nice fat checks, as Bill Gates did the other day ($100m pledged for Aids vaccines research. I'm actually starting to like the guy). If you're in any doubt of the realities of the global situation, and of what people can do to help, check out this article from today's Observer (a British newspaper):
7 98 ,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,429
If you'd like that as a link, just click here:
7 98 ,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,429
On someone who is doing something to help with the Aids and TB in the Third World may be found here:
7 98 ,00.html
http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,429
It puts us all to shame.