your point about "no normaility" is good, but I hope you aren't trying to push a "both sides of the argument" point of view. just because there are always two sides doesn't mean they are equal.
What I am doing is pointing out that the idea that there are "two sides of the argument" is an idiocy. There is no "argument" in the first place.
the fact is people have historically settled very near water and if that water moves real people get screwed.
I currently live on a flood plain. Before moving here I lived on an estuarial flood plain. I'm now simply a bit further inland on a tributary to that estuary. I have twice this year watched the waters rise toward my house. They never reached my house, but my small collection of crops was untterly destroyed. I have had to help neighbors leave their homes by boat.
I am not ignorant of the devestation that flooding can cause. The farm my mother grew up on was ultimately permantly destroyed by the one-two punch of the Great Hurricane of '38 (her entire town went eight feet underwater. My great-grandmother lost her store) and the hurricane of '44.
If you could excavate the bottom of Long Island sound you might very well find evidence of human habitation. 12,000 years ago it was a fertile valley; now it is a branch of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing people did either caused nor could have prevented this.
What "other side of the argument" is there in this? Shit happened. Shit always happens. Get used to it. It doesn't stop the shit from happening, but hysteria is not a very effective coping mechanism.
At Thermopylae the 300 held off an army of 100,000 to 1,000,000 (depending on who you believe) men for two days in hand to hand combat. That was after a larger army had held them off for a week before withdrawing from the field.
At the time Thermopylae was a pass bordered by cliffs on one side and the sea on the other so narrow that one man with a spear could hold it.
Now it is wide enough that a tank battalion could traverse it side by side.
Things are not always as simple as they might appear and the world is not, nor has it ever been a static place. Islands have both dissapeared and appeared throughout mankind's term on this earth.
Works of man may certainly nudge things here and there in particular directions, but the idea that the world as it is is "normal" and must, nevermind can, be held in its current form is arrogance born of ignorance.
Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this?
And then wonder why their kids don't believe a word they say when they're a bit older.
Frankly I've always found the myth of people exchanging gifts out of love and kindness for each other far more asthetically pleasing than some fat guy trying to stuff himself down the chimmney, even if just as mythological.
. ..now that I have a daughter on the way, however, I have to find clever ways of curtailing décadence with a light hand.
Dear Poor, Ignorant Bastard (my daughter is 26),
Your daughter is going to simply arrange for her cell be where you expect it to be while hooking up with her "diseased cock" using a prepaid disposable, thus all you will be doing is impossing a financial burden on her.
Although the experience of learning to run rings around you will have some real life value.
My library was well stocked with those (they had K&R as well. Thank God for timeless classics). Then one day Knuth suddenly appeared on the shelves.
When I inquired who the new computer savvy guy was they wondered how I could tell, but yes, there was a new guy and yes, he seemed to know something about these computer thingies so they were having him spiff up the section a bit.
So far he seems to be doing a fine job of not only cleaning out the dross but buying exactly the right titles to replace them. I wonder if he reads Slashdot.
As far north above the Mason-Dixon as you can get without becoming Canadian you will find the Adirondack Mountains. An Adiredneck is a certain tribe of its inhabitants, easily identifiable by their peculiar native dress (plaid flannel shirts) and mode of transport (pickup truck with gunrack).
I don't actually live in the Adirondack region myself, but I can see it from my back window. I live in the geological formation that makes up its southern boundry. In my youth it required taking only one step across that boundry to encounter my first Adiredneck with a salt loaded shotgun.
Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?
Rip open your R/C car. Take out its Mabuchi 540 motor. Make it spin. Ta Da!
The motor doesn't care how you make it spin. Just get it spinning and electricity comes out of it.
One of my favorite ways to do this is to wrap a string around the shaft with a weight on the ends. Lift one of the weights, let go. Ta Da! Power to the people.
At least until the weight hits the floor. Rinse and repeat. There are various methods for lifting weights and controling the rate of fall without invoking oil/coal. You can always hire someone to lift the weight for you (In South Australia I was born. heave away! Haul away! Work songs often have an odd meter to the modern ear. They're written in five. On the fifth beat you take a rest).
Hence for instance Thompson's (in)famous submachine gun being marketed heavily to the public to keep the company afloat until the military finally pulled the trigger on buying them in '38. But selling to the military was always the goal.
Yes, I am aware of the work of Hertz, what went on at Biggin Hill, the cloak and dagger operations around the magnetron and how radar was the secret weapon of the Battle of Britain. As noted I predate the space age myself. I could not read about the exploits of fearless astronauts in my extreme youth; they did not exist yet (except in Science Fiction; God bless John Campbell; and my mother for being a subscriber). It was "Boy's Own" fearless Spitfire Jockies for me (Ok, so a few Sabre pilots snuck in there too, I'm not that old, but the library in Vermont was a little slow on the buying end of things).
Microwave radar was meant to be filed under "military," not "space age."
Despite the above it is absolutely amazing that I was able to watch television coverage from the moon a matter of hours before I became a teenager. I was born in the perfect interval of time to have Sputnik commemorate my birth and a man on the moon commemorate my coming into the classical age of adulthood. I am a true child of the space age even if I predate it by a hair or two.
Jack Williamson died this year. He was born in 1908, only 5 years after the Wright Bros. first flew under power and three years before Bleriot flew across the English Channel. He was first published in Astounding (Analog) in 1931.
I know what it was like for me to have science fiction come alive before my eyes; I can only imagine what it was like for him.
. ..the local cable company didn't have to provide service to my area.
WWVA, man! Coming to you at 50,000 watts from beautiful, downtown Wheeling, West Virginia (well, St. Clairesville, Ohio really, but pay no attention to that man behind the curtain); now with all that yummy Clear Channel goodness!
They're gonna tear down the Captial Music Hall. They're gonna tear down the sound that goes around our song. . .
...which is a bit early to be a space program spin-off.
Yes. I did not make it terribly clear when I was talking about the space age stuff and just plain old military stuff.
Much of what we think of as space age stuff is really air age stuff, circa WWII, most of which was at least already on the drawing boards before WWII.
You can tell the true space age stuff by its use of, well, space, and its use semiconductors (a civilian invention) to make it possible/practical. A "portable" radio used to be the size of a microwave oven and had no memory.
And we want Flanders back, dammit, it's ours. And Navarre; and Aragon; and the Sudetenland, no, wait, oooooooooh nevermind, we'll take that too. We can teach them French. Ave Carolus Magnus!
Those people who warned you that the metric system was a plot? Well, they were right!
Slashdot Mirror
your point about "no normaility" is good, but I hope you aren't trying to push a "both sides of the argument" point of view. just because there are always two sides doesn't mean they are equal.
What I am doing is pointing out that the idea that there are "two sides of the argument" is an idiocy. There is no "argument" in the first place.
the fact is people have historically settled very near water and if that water moves real people get screwed.
I currently live on a flood plain. Before moving here I lived on an estuarial flood plain. I'm now simply a bit further inland on a tributary to that estuary. I have twice this year watched the waters rise toward my house. They never reached my house, but my small collection of crops was untterly destroyed. I have had to help neighbors leave their homes by boat.
I am not ignorant of the devestation that flooding can cause. The farm my mother grew up on was ultimately permantly destroyed by the one-two punch of the Great Hurricane of '38 (her entire town went eight feet underwater. My great-grandmother lost her store) and the hurricane of '44.
If you could excavate the bottom of Long Island sound you might very well find evidence of human habitation. 12,000 years ago it was a fertile valley; now it is a branch of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing people did either caused nor could have prevented this.
What "other side of the argument" is there in this? Shit happened. Shit always happens. Get used to it. It doesn't stop the shit from happening, but hysteria is not a very effective coping mechanism.
KFG
At Thermopylae the 300 held off an army of 100,000 to 1,000,000 (depending on who you believe) men for two days in hand to hand combat. That was after a larger army had held them off for a week before withdrawing from the field.
At the time Thermopylae was a pass bordered by cliffs on one side and the sea on the other so narrow that one man with a spear could hold it.
Now it is wide enough that a tank battalion could traverse it side by side.
Things are not always as simple as they might appear and the world is not, nor has it ever been a static place. Islands have both dissapeared and appeared throughout mankind's term on this earth.
Works of man may certainly nudge things here and there in particular directions, but the idea that the world as it is is "normal" and must, nevermind can, be held in its current form is arrogance born of ignorance.
The only thing constant is change.
KFG
Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this?
And then wonder why their kids don't believe a word they say when they're a bit older.
Frankly I've always found the myth of people exchanging gifts out of love and kindness for each other far more asthetically pleasing than some fat guy trying to stuff himself down the chimmney, even if just as mythological.
KFG
I can't remember if it's the terrorists or the sex offenders winning at this point.
Reality.
KFG
There are none so blind as . . . parents.
KFG
. . .now that I have a daughter on the way, however, I have to find clever ways of curtailing décadence with a light hand.
Dear Poor, Ignorant Bastard (my daughter is 26),
Your daughter is going to simply arrange for her cell be where you expect it to be while hooking up with her "diseased cock" using a prepaid disposable, thus all you will be doing is impossing a financial burden on her.
Although the experience of learning to run rings around you will have some real life value.
Have a nice parenthood.
KFG
My library was well stocked with those (they had K&R as well. Thank God for timeless classics). Then one day Knuth suddenly appeared on the shelves.
When I inquired who the new computer savvy guy was they wondered how I could tell, but yes, there was a new guy and yes, he seemed to know something about these computer thingies so they were having him spiff up the section a bit.
So far he seems to be doing a fine job of not only cleaning out the dross but buying exactly the right titles to replace them. I wonder if he reads Slashdot.
KFG
"adirednecks"?
As far north above the Mason-Dixon as you can get without becoming Canadian you will find the Adirondack Mountains. An Adiredneck is a certain tribe of its inhabitants, easily identifiable by their peculiar native dress (plaid flannel shirts) and mode of transport (pickup truck with gunrack).
I don't actually live in the Adirondack region myself, but I can see it from my back window. I live in the geological formation that makes up its southern boundry. In my youth it required taking only one step across that boundry to encounter my first Adiredneck with a salt loaded shotgun.
Damn kids wouldn't stay out of his corn.
KFG
. . .they've never heard of being able to fire salt from a shotgun.
Aaaaaaaaaaaah, the "advantages" of growing up surrounded by Adirednecks.
KFG
Oh well, more coffee.
Throw a bit of Jack Daniel's in the next one. You'll feel better all day. Trust me.
KFG
Your fifteen year old Okidata laser printer could print it, but why waste paper like one of those stupid machines.
Because a good book is not a waste of paper and my 1895 printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland works just as well today as the day it was new.
Of course it's hardbound. My paperback copy of The Blind Watchmaker is now effectively a loseleaf edition. We are Devo. Dee Eee Vee Ooh!
KFG
Either way, we're not really net killing trees.
Well of course not, silly. You have to long line for trees.
KFG
Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?
Rip open your R/C car. Take out its Mabuchi 540 motor. Make it spin. Ta Da!
The motor doesn't care how you make it spin. Just get it spinning and electricity comes out of it.
One of my favorite ways to do this is to wrap a string around the shaft with a weight on the ends. Lift one of the weights, let go. Ta Da! Power to the people.
At least until the weight hits the floor. Rinse and repeat. There are various methods for lifting weights and controling the rate of fall without invoking oil/coal. You can always hire someone to lift the weight for you (In South Australia I was born. heave away! Haul away! Work songs often have an odd meter to the modern ear. They're written in five. On the fifth beat you take a rest).
KFG
Now if only they could invent something to get those damned kids off my lawn...
a lts/icecreamsalt.htm
Sometimes the old ways are still the best:
http://www.mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=5
http://www.mortonsalt.com/consumer/products/foods
KFG
Developers typically hate creating non-functional "fluff", or even functional fluff ...
.or even functionality. It's the idea that counts, not . . .getting the right answer.
. .
KFG
Hence for instance Thompson's (in)famous submachine gun being marketed heavily to the public to keep the company afloat until the military finally pulled the trigger on buying them in '38. But selling to the military was always the goal.
The history of Luger is also somewhat ironic.
KFG
Yes, I am aware of the work of Hertz, what went on at Biggin Hill, the cloak and dagger operations around the magnetron and how radar was the secret weapon of the Battle of Britain. As noted I predate the space age myself. I could not read about the exploits of fearless astronauts in my extreme youth; they did not exist yet (except in Science Fiction; God bless John Campbell; and my mother for being a subscriber). It was "Boy's Own" fearless Spitfire Jockies for me (Ok, so a few Sabre pilots snuck in there too, I'm not that old, but the library in Vermont was a little slow on the buying end of things).
Microwave radar was meant to be filed under "military," not "space age."
Despite the above it is absolutely amazing that I was able to watch television coverage from the moon a matter of hours before I became a teenager. I was born in the perfect interval of time to have Sputnik commemorate my birth and a man on the moon commemorate my coming into the classical age of adulthood. I am a true child of the space age even if I predate it by a hair or two.
Jack Williamson died this year. He was born in 1908, only 5 years after the Wright Bros. first flew under power and three years before Bleriot flew across the English Channel. He was first published in Astounding (Analog) in 1931.
I know what it was like for me to have science fiction come alive before my eyes; I can only imagine what it was like for him.
KFG
. . .the local cable company didn't have to provide service to my area.
WWVA, man! Coming to you at 50,000 watts from beautiful, downtown Wheeling, West Virginia (well, St. Clairesville, Ohio really, but pay no attention to that man behind the curtain); now with all that yummy Clear Channel goodness!
They're gonna tear down the Captial Music Hall. They're gonna tear down the sound that goes around our song. . .
KFG
Well of course not, that would only interupt the flow of bribes.
KFG
No, I say. No. What we need is a small manageable amount of bribable individuals so companies can spend less resources on bribery. . .
And this is why socialists want strong, central government, because only a strong central government has the power to fight corruption.
KFG
...which is a bit early to be a space program spin-off.
Yes. I did not make it terribly clear when I was talking about the space age stuff and just plain old military stuff.
Much of what we think of as space age stuff is really air age stuff, circa WWII, most of which was at least already on the drawing boards before WWII.
You can tell the true space age stuff by its use of, well, space, and its use semiconductors (a civilian invention) to make it possible/practical. A "portable" radio used to be the size of a microwave oven and had no memory.
KFG
Why would they go and allow telecoms to skip that step with their services?
There has been a revolution. It was even televised, so I'm not sure what your excuse for missing it is.
KFG
Hey, if he spoke French, he was a Frenchman.
And we want Flanders back, dammit, it's ours. And Navarre; and Aragon; and the Sudetenland, no, wait, oooooooooh nevermind, we'll take that too. We can teach them French. Ave Carolus Magnus!
Those people who warned you that the metric system was a plot? Well, they were right!
KFG
And once you've got your brain out in the airflow you increase it's radiative efficiency by adding surface area - convolutions/size.
Feeling a bit hot/chilly? The solution is likely to be found in what you put on your head, not your chest.
KFG
Add water cooling!
Never work. Just think what would happen to an animal that developed a coolant leak.
KFG