Agriculture? What is it? How did it arise? The basis of civilization or so many often say. Forethought, planning, experimentation, settlement versus nomadic hunter gatherers, and on and on. If you subscribe to the idea that agriculture arose in the Mediterranean about 12K yrs ago then it's likely it arose because our dumb ass ancestors stumbled across Polyploidy crops. The Mediterranean then was somewhat different. It may have been a transitory ecotone. There's a theory that the Sahara Desert acted as a giant pump for humanity, drawing people in when wet, colder climates turned it into a hospitable environment, then driving them out when conditions changed and the Sahara dried out. Such a climate change could have created a ecotone in the Mediterranean region about the time polyploidy crops were discovered. I'm way out of my depth on stuff like polyploidy crops but the Biology 1A and 1B lecture series as Berkeley speak to it, in passing, in terms of the "discovery" of agriculture.
For my purposes I define agriculture as the practised exploitation of the sort of Darwinian superfecundity or overproduction of offspring that Gould addressed in his book 'The Structure of Evolution Theory'. It suits my needs because it speaks to hunter gathers as well as what we tend to think of as agriculturalists. There's ample evidence that hunter gathers live as well or better than farmers so questions pop up as to agriculture arose. I hold to slavery for the most part. Agriculture is tied to the earth just like the slave and serfs who worked the earth. If you take this as a jumping off point it presents history, especially in light of the landed aristocracy, in terms more in keeping with the failure of socialism, at least it makes it a little more interesting.
I don't pretend to even an elementary working knowledge of this stuff but the Anandtech articles seem to be the most frequently cited reference starting points. The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ and The SSD Relapse. I've a rudimentary understanding of the problems but have yet to come across anything that speaks to whether a SSD can be "refurbished" at the end of it's relatively short life, or, if a technology could be developed that would be profitable to refurbish SSDs at the end of their life. Just to underscore how little I know about this, I'm not at all sure what I mean when I say "refurbish" a SSD.
Every body knows masturbation leads to blindness, so, now, she's gonna push these people even further. Haven't they paid a big enough price already for their obsession?
Thanks, I looked at the mini as well as the full sized model. I'm usually on the couch when using my HTPC so the idea of a handheld keyboard is appealing. I've no problem with extending the dongle out from behind the box, and, like you, I like to keep my front usb ports open for other stuff. One of things I'll look for in my next box is more than the usual 2 usb ports on the face of the box.
Furtive was my favourite word in Junior High. I named my cat Furtive. As the link to the free dictionary points out furtive means "secret and sly or sordid", but I always thought it had to do with being a cat or a cat burglar, and, of course, there's the fur bit at the beginning. Furtivology is my take on futurology. The Japanese English newspaper Asahi has an interview with Mathew Burrows, expert of geopolitical futurology. I've always thought futurologists are well served being furtive and circumspect.
Mr. Burrows makes a number of interesting point by one is, I think, particularly germane to this thread.
"Small is no longer beautiful
Q: Throughout the 1990s, when very dynamic globalization was under way, there emerged the perception that small is beautiful.
Small countries like Singapore, Ireland, Israel, Estonia and Finland are clearly much more agile and much better at adapting to globalization.
Would I be wrong in saying that an era will come where the perception that big is powerful will gain ground over the next 15 or 20 years?
A: No, I think you're essentially right."
What is of note is the perception that big is powerful and highly centralized, large states like China will be in a better position to put in place the infrastructure necessary to compete. As noted in the linked article we, the world population, are facing a population bomb and the rise of states like India, Brazil and China. Intellectual Property is just one barb when it comes to grappling with the problems the next 5 or so generations are going to face. One of the cornerstones of democracy is the checks and balances founded upon the temporal and geographic dispersal of power. The idea of Intellectual Property as a stopgap against losing ground to a country like China is appealing only until it runs up against our basic rights; but federal agencies are obliged to protect the interests of the country in the world at large. It generates a double bind that probably won't be resolved in our lifetimes, if at all, if we fuck it all up big time.
i use a quad core2, 4 gigs ddr2, ati 5570 - 1gig ddr3, in an antec box w/ a viewsonic 37" 720p and the ati usb 650 tv/fm recorder but my bitch is w/ the 3000 series wireless ms keyboard and mouse. anything approaching 6' and performance just dies. i thought of trying some logitech stuff but i'm running vista ultimate and, another bitch, after 5 years plus of HTPC is the hardware&drivers have to tie in well w/ the OS. i'll probably build a new box w/ new usb, sata, pci standards but then all my peripherals will probably be hooped. i don't think the upgrade path is practical w/ HTPC and a closely scrutinized system build approach is necessary.
I had a problem with elbyvcdshell.dll (from Slysoft's Virtual Clone Drive) causing Windows Explorer to hang for 5 minutes each time I renamed a folder.
thanks for the tip, i've had similar problems but as i installed the virtual clone drive and a new logitech 9000 series webcam/microphone on the same day i've been contemplating my pc's navel trying to guesstimate which one caused the problem while being too lazy to run it down. the more so since i also installed anydvd and read it installs as a driver.
There are vast deposits of salt beneath the Mediterranean, so much so that it's been suggested (Miracle Planet episode x(?)) that the salt deposits were necessary to the evolution of life forms today because of the amount of salt taken from the seas. Sorry I've not the time to search more but this The Mediterranean Disaster Mystery link gives an intro.
I've been trying to stare down, Chuck Norris style, this conundrum for the better part of a decade. Ultimately I end up back at Otto Jespersen's dictum that a problem is best canvassed from all sides, but, perhaps it's best to first know if the side you pick is from inside or outside the box. If you're inside the box, maybe it's your home in some back alley, and you're profoundly constrained by the conditions of the box, then, any possible side you choose in order to implement your solution, is still going to be constrained by being inside the box. If you're lucky enough to be outside the box but arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that the labels you've neatly placed on the box are the blond, perfectly coiffed curls hinting at your Goldilocks Solution to the World's problems then really IMHO you're just jerking off in public and expecting applause.
Solutions to problems are arrived at by critical thinking subjected to peer review. Critical thinking is expensive, metabolically, emotionally and politically. It might just cost you your life. Choosing labels like 'happiness', 'democratic', 'poverty' 'perverse' and any other knee jerk label, applying it to real life situations, then calling for solutions is an indulgence only those outside the box can afford to indulge in. The critical thinking necessary to solving hardcore, complex problems isn't something the majority of people necessarily want to take on. In point of fact, I'm sure, many people living inside boxes in back alleys are living there because critical thinking is not something they are constitutionally capable of or even want to undertake if enabled to do so. Taking problems that require empirical findings, critical review, innovation, expensive implementation and monitoring and giving them news' hour labels, and, then setting your self up as the white knight dragon slayer is an insult to those solving the problems and a trivial pursuit.
After the better part of a decade I've a few notes culled from a wide swath of disciplines that might provide the scaffolding for game play that seduces players into habits of critical thought processes that might, if inculcated, enable them to view problems rationally and test solutions at the least possible cost, but, unlike the bright, curly golden haired prize of a Goldilocks' Solution, the stuff I'm working with looks like the thin, frail, white hair of world weary, old people.
The instance under investigation seems on the face of it to speak to the idea of measured response in light of police actions versus military actions and the greyness between the two. The idea of measured response has been spoken to for some years but seems, at least by way of a precursory search, to be not well defined. Measured response in the context I've heard police and military officials speak of it seems to indicate a situation wherein intelligence and personnel permit an almost algorithmic response that carries through to an intended end an implemented plan. Measured response implies adequate intelligence and a preponderance of personnel and firepower, so much so that firepower isn't employed or employed only when necessary and obviously justified in terms of the rules of engagement. An invasion requires shock and awe in order to minimize loss or injury to the invading force. What seems to have become an expectation on our part is that once an invasion has been successfully executed our troops should throw a switch and become a police force implementing measured response like our domestic police are expected to execute. The ambiguity inherent in expecting military forces to police an invaded country is difficult to analyze. There's necessarily a "can do" attitude in any military culture but perhaps we need another paramilitary force (probably not viable and economically/politically palatable) to implement post invasion, measured response policing in situations like we face in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Further to the above, if there is a need in terms of our domestic security for our forces to be in the middle east, then the force employed should be of a magnitude that permits the sort of measured response we demand of our armed forces.
I'm currently reading The Emergence of a Scientific Culture by S. Gaukroger. My interest stems from past readings in epistemology as a study of the methodology of science, and, my interest in Mediterranean death cult religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism as patriarchal control mechanisms, not unlike induced schizo-affective disorders, that come into play in agrarian societies with controlling oligarchies (monarchies) ensconced in developing urban centres. It's my own take on things that's evolved from trying to understand to what extent corruption is fundamental and necessary to democracy. I'm throwing it out in this thread because I think U.K. libel laws are symptomatic of a transition from class structured, shame-face saving patriarchal societies to modern democracies that have successfully tested empirical findings and common law and are putting aside almost Shamanistic believes that words are effectively magical or Gospel.
Cleisthenes in Ancient Greek history is said to have instituted the first democracy. Sketchily put he did it by breaking up the political clout of existing clans by creating voting blocks that abstracted away from the clan bases and instituted time limits on political offices. He also, IIRC, enforced political participation. I'm sure that somewhere in the Federalist Papers there are presumptions that all of us are corrupt, or subject to corruption, and, the American Founding Fathers instituted articles and laws to form a democracy that reflected their belief in the fundamental corrupt character of us all. I'm trying to formulate a view of modern democracy from the underlying idea that as a political institution democracy best addresses corruption. This sort of links up to Churchill's famous dictum that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others because it best addresses the citizenry and politicians of modern democracies as the worst of all peoples except for all the others, and, this because it best addresses our corruptible natures.
I believe modern democracies with universal suffrage given majority and capacity on the part of it's citizens are the most viable forms of modern government because they've stood the test of history in transitioning from agrarian to post industrial urban societies. British libel laws and things like hate laws have considerable merit but reflect a more industrial/agrarian society where class structure and "face" reflect more primitive belief systems wherein words carry magical import. Going into language goes to far afield but mentioning the "debate" between Newton and Leibniz over the discovery of the Calculus and the tribal wars of industrializing Europe give some character to where I'm trying to go with this stuff.
Archeology has in it's body the idea of a three generation window for viewing past cultures. A generation is somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Three generations give a vivid insight into a culture because grandparents, parents and offspring are a highly sympathetic and even empathetic cluster that transitions cultural values. The U.K., like all viable modern democracies, is transitioning to a new perspective that has as it's foundation empirical findings in Science and tested wisdom in law but still has to deal with the fundamental corrupt nature of our kind.
Fine, I'm OK with it, got my Logitech Pr0n 9000 set up on the 37" Viewsonic and it gives great closeups of me reclined on the couch; but, I just want you all to know I'm not getting a bikini wax.
Guardian Angles? Maybe somebody @ MS is a Bernhard Goetz kind of a guy. Clippy, and his two friends Smith & Wesson, are gonna teach you "a man gotta know his limits".
It's first necessary to define one's terms, isn't it? What is meant by morality.
"Morality (from the Latin moralities "manner, character, proper behavior") is a system of conduct and ethics that is virtuous. Morality has three principal meanings"
"In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred. This sense of term is also addressed by descriptive ethics."
Virtue is a concept addressed across the board from the first big boys on the block like Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, but it's a tricky subject. I had to find my own way on this one because there seemed to be endless gradations and seepage of morality into ethics and ethics into morality. My own moral compass operates from animal behaviour, my animal behaviour. I consider morality to derive directly from our basic drives or instincts. My morality goes to things like Fight-or-flight response. Ethics, like aesthetics, deals with abstractions from instincts.Lex Talionis is the granddaddy of morality and goes to things like the Code of Hammurabi.
I'm not sure morality can be tested in a lab because labs tend to require restricted environments that are artificially impoverished or supplemented in ways that vitiate the results.Today much of neuroscience looks like neo-crypto-phrenology. And moral values tend to speak to concepts of law and there the test of reasonableness holds sway, but does it in the jungle?
Totally agree. Just as an aside, you wrote: "Controlling your enemies emotions to an extent is useful. You can get your enemies to attack you when they may be at a disadvantage.", I very much agree, but recall a valuable bit of advice from the Wilhelm & Baynes translation of the 'I Ching', that is to the effect, one should exercise great care in choosing one's enemies as the costs of engagement are considerable. It's why I have no enemies. I've never valued anyone that highly.;)
2. Many people do feed off of the negative attention.
Isn't attention a necessary condition of any complex and social life form? Theories of apoptosis suggests cells in complex life forms commit programmed death when they lack necessary communication from other cells. Theory of Mind suggests, at least in some interpretations, that an infantile state can be characterized as an inability to "...attribute mental states--beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.--to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."
Looking at both attention and Theory of Mind I think attention is fundamental and necessary whether it's positive or negative. Fucked up people may seek negative attention desperately as a substitute for social confirmation and self confirmation and/or as a cloaked call for help.
"The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare's parlance 'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos."
There's a Wikipedia article on the brain's reward system. I've not read the Wiki article but have tried to grasp some of the Berkeley, mit, Yale uni online lectures that speak to it. The problem I had with trying to understand it in general terms is that the system itself isn't fully understood and, for a lay person like myself, it seems there's no difference in the mechanics between the motivations and rewards of a crack whore and a CEO, but that may just be the way it is. What seems to come into play is the executive planning functions of the brain and whether they act as a damper to limit a runaway reward system. The Executive Functions seem to reside in the frontal lobes and usually the sad story of Phineas Gage is trotted out to model loss of Executive Function. If this post gets modded up a lot I'll post some more:) well maybe if I'm sure I'll get modded up even more and more...
Pleading, desperate, begging, even grovelling sex, sure, that's pretty much my norm, but casual, no. My ex, I'm pretty sure she had a lot of casual sex, even disinterested sex, at least it seemed that way to me, but then I really didn't care. I was just so grateful just to be getting some.
just in case someone doesn't know. Jeremy Bentham left instructions that his corpse be stuffed. His stuffed self sat at the entrance to his club for many years, although I read it was removed after it began to smell bad.
really i dunno but after running it thru my wetware a few times a few "thinks" came up... my first time in Tokyo i was introduced to Pachinko and immediately began to wonder how such a people could have accomplished anything let alone what the Japanese have done, but after a few minutes playing i was strangely hooked and played for about 3 hours, but only played the one time. it reminded me of the kind of fun, mindless calibrating kids can do for hours, getting closer and closer to something meaningless in itself but profitable in tweaking a mind set. maybe it's something like that. the other thing that popped up was reading accounts of indentured servants holding mock feasts made up of the scraps their masters had left over. the servants invented titles and names for themselves and seriously attempted to reproduce the manners of their "betters". it may be the people who do this stuff are wage slaves shedding their pent up aggression and frustration. while i'm just throwing stuff out there there's the point, click, download and install crowd who can't do much on the internet and just do basic stuff that fills the time. or they all could just be like me now doing anything rather than the brain breaking hard work i'm taking a break from, like you reading this:)
Slashdot Mirror
Agriculture? What is it? How did it arise? The basis of civilization or so many often say. Forethought, planning, experimentation, settlement versus nomadic hunter gatherers, and on and on. If you subscribe to the idea that agriculture arose in the Mediterranean about 12K yrs ago then it's likely it arose because our dumb ass ancestors stumbled across Polyploidy crops. The Mediterranean then was somewhat different. It may have been a transitory ecotone. There's a theory that the Sahara Desert acted as a giant pump for humanity, drawing people in when wet, colder climates turned it into a hospitable environment, then driving them out when conditions changed and the Sahara dried out. Such a climate change could have created a ecotone in the Mediterranean region about the time polyploidy crops were discovered. I'm way out of my depth on stuff like polyploidy crops but the Biology 1A and 1B lecture series as Berkeley speak to it, in passing, in terms of the "discovery" of agriculture.
For my purposes I define agriculture as the practised exploitation of the sort of Darwinian superfecundity or overproduction of offspring that Gould addressed in his book 'The Structure of Evolution Theory'. It suits my needs because it speaks to hunter gathers as well as what we tend to think of as agriculturalists. There's ample evidence that hunter gathers live as well or better than farmers so questions pop up as to agriculture arose. I hold to slavery for the most part. Agriculture is tied to the earth just like the slave and serfs who worked the earth. If you take this as a jumping off point it presents history, especially in light of the landed aristocracy, in terms more in keeping with the failure of socialism, at least it makes it a little more interesting.
I don't pretend to even an elementary working knowledge of this stuff but the Anandtech articles seem to be the most frequently cited reference starting points. The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ and The SSD Relapse. I've a rudimentary understanding of the problems but have yet to come across anything that speaks to whether a SSD can be "refurbished" at the end of it's relatively short life, or, if a technology could be developed that would be profitable to refurbish SSDs at the end of their life. Just to underscore how little I know about this, I'm not at all sure what I mean when I say "refurbish" a SSD.
Every body knows masturbation leads to blindness, so, now, she's gonna push these people even further. Haven't they paid a big enough price already for their obsession?
Thanks, I looked at the mini as well as the full sized model. I'm usually on the couch when using my HTPC so the idea of a handheld keyboard is appealing. I've no problem with extending the dongle out from behind the box, and, like you, I like to keep my front usb ports open for other stuff. One of things I'll look for in my next box is more than the usual 2 usb ports on the face of the box.
Furtive was my favourite word in Junior High. I named my cat Furtive. As the link to the free dictionary points out furtive means "secret and sly or sordid", but I always thought it had to do with being a cat or a cat burglar, and, of course, there's the fur bit at the beginning. Furtivology is my take on futurology. The Japanese English newspaper Asahi has an interview with Mathew Burrows, expert of geopolitical futurology. I've always thought futurologists are well served being furtive and circumspect.
Mr. Burrows makes a number of interesting point by one is, I think, particularly germane to this thread.
"Small is no longer beautiful
Q: Throughout the 1990s, when very dynamic globalization was under way, there emerged the perception that small is beautiful.
Small countries like Singapore, Ireland, Israel, Estonia and Finland are clearly much more agile and much better at adapting to globalization.
Would I be wrong in saying that an era will come where the perception that big is powerful will gain ground over the next 15 or 20 years?
A: No, I think you're essentially right."
What is of note is the perception that big is powerful and highly centralized, large states like China will be in a better position to put in place the infrastructure necessary to compete. As noted in the linked article we, the world population, are facing a population bomb and the rise of states like India, Brazil and China. Intellectual Property is just one barb when it comes to grappling with the problems the next 5 or so generations are going to face. One of the cornerstones of democracy is the checks and balances founded upon the temporal and geographic dispersal of power. The idea of Intellectual Property as a stopgap against losing ground to a country like China is appealing only until it runs up against our basic rights; but federal agencies are obliged to protect the interests of the country in the world at large. It generates a double bind that probably won't be resolved in our lifetimes, if at all, if we fuck it all up big time.
thanks didn't know it existed till you mentioned it. i just checked it out online, looks good. :)
just my loose change
I had a problem with elbyvcdshell.dll (from Slysoft's Virtual Clone Drive) causing Windows Explorer to hang for 5 minutes each time I renamed a folder.
thanks for the tip, i've had similar problems but as i installed the virtual clone drive and a new logitech 9000 series webcam/microphone on the same day i've been contemplating my pc's navel trying to guesstimate which one caused the problem while being too lazy to run it down. the more so since i also installed anydvd and read it installs as a driver.
Sorry I just read the linked to page. Do Not Go There. Again Sorry. Try the Miracle Planet Episode. So sorry...
There are vast deposits of salt beneath the Mediterranean, so much so that it's been suggested (Miracle Planet episode x(?)) that the salt deposits were necessary to the evolution of life forms today because of the amount of salt taken from the seas. Sorry I've not the time to search more but this The Mediterranean Disaster Mystery link gives an intro.
I've been trying to stare down, Chuck Norris style, this conundrum for the better part of a decade. Ultimately I end up back at Otto Jespersen's dictum that a problem is best canvassed from all sides, but, perhaps it's best to first know if the side you pick is from inside or outside the box. If you're inside the box, maybe it's your home in some back alley, and you're profoundly constrained by the conditions of the box, then, any possible side you choose in order to implement your solution, is still going to be constrained by being inside the box. If you're lucky enough to be outside the box but arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that the labels you've neatly placed on the box are the blond, perfectly coiffed curls hinting at your Goldilocks Solution to the World's problems then really IMHO you're just jerking off in public and expecting applause.
Solutions to problems are arrived at by critical thinking subjected to peer review. Critical thinking is expensive, metabolically, emotionally and politically. It might just cost you your life. Choosing labels like 'happiness', 'democratic', 'poverty' 'perverse' and any other knee jerk label, applying it to real life situations, then calling for solutions is an indulgence only those outside the box can afford to indulge in. The critical thinking necessary to solving hardcore, complex problems isn't something the majority of people necessarily want to take on. In point of fact, I'm sure, many people living inside boxes in back alleys are living there because critical thinking is not something they are constitutionally capable of or even want to undertake if enabled to do so. Taking problems that require empirical findings, critical review, innovation, expensive implementation and monitoring and giving them news' hour labels, and, then setting your self up as the white knight dragon slayer is an insult to those solving the problems and a trivial pursuit.
After the better part of a decade I've a few notes culled from a wide swath of disciplines that might provide the scaffolding for game play that seduces players into habits of critical thought processes that might, if inculcated, enable them to view problems rationally and test solutions at the least possible cost, but, unlike the bright, curly golden haired prize of a Goldilocks' Solution, the stuff I'm working with looks like the thin, frail, white hair of world weary, old people.
I guess I'm gonna have to start shaving every day again, damn.
The instance under investigation seems on the face of it to speak to the idea of measured response in light of police actions versus military actions and the greyness between the two. The idea of measured response has been spoken to for some years but seems, at least by way of a precursory search, to be not well defined. Measured response in the context I've heard police and military officials speak of it seems to indicate a situation wherein intelligence and personnel permit an almost algorithmic response that carries through to an intended end an implemented plan. Measured response implies adequate intelligence and a preponderance of personnel and firepower, so much so that firepower isn't employed or employed only when necessary and obviously justified in terms of the rules of engagement. An invasion requires shock and awe in order to minimize loss or injury to the invading force. What seems to have become an expectation on our part is that once an invasion has been successfully executed our troops should throw a switch and become a police force implementing measured response like our domestic police are expected to execute. The ambiguity inherent in expecting military forces to police an invaded country is difficult to analyze. There's necessarily a "can do" attitude in any military culture but perhaps we need another paramilitary force (probably not viable and economically/politically palatable) to implement post invasion, measured response policing in situations like we face in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Further to the above, if there is a need in terms of our domestic security for our forces to be in the middle east, then the force employed should be of a magnitude that permits the sort of measured response we demand of our armed forces.
I'm currently reading The Emergence of a Scientific Culture by S. Gaukroger. My interest stems from past readings in epistemology as a study of the methodology of science, and, my interest in Mediterranean death cult religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism as patriarchal control mechanisms, not unlike induced schizo-affective disorders, that come into play in agrarian societies with controlling oligarchies (monarchies) ensconced in developing urban centres. It's my own take on things that's evolved from trying to understand to what extent corruption is fundamental and necessary to democracy. I'm throwing it out in this thread because I think U.K. libel laws are symptomatic of a transition from class structured, shame-face saving patriarchal societies to modern democracies that have successfully tested empirical findings and common law and are putting aside almost Shamanistic believes that words are effectively magical or Gospel.
Cleisthenes in Ancient Greek history is said to have instituted the first democracy. Sketchily put he did it by breaking up the political clout of existing clans by creating voting blocks that abstracted away from the clan bases and instituted time limits on political offices. He also, IIRC, enforced political participation. I'm sure that somewhere in the Federalist Papers there are presumptions that all of us are corrupt, or subject to corruption, and, the American Founding Fathers instituted articles and laws to form a democracy that reflected their belief in the fundamental corrupt character of us all. I'm trying to formulate a view of modern democracy from the underlying idea that as a political institution democracy best addresses corruption. This sort of links up to Churchill's famous dictum that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others because it best addresses the citizenry and politicians of modern democracies as the worst of all peoples except for all the others, and, this because it best addresses our corruptible natures.
I believe modern democracies with universal suffrage given majority and capacity on the part of it's citizens are the most viable forms of modern government because they've stood the test of history in transitioning from agrarian to post industrial urban societies. British libel laws and things like hate laws have considerable merit but reflect a more industrial/agrarian society where class structure and "face" reflect more primitive belief systems wherein words carry magical import. Going into language goes to far afield but mentioning the "debate" between Newton and Leibniz over the discovery of the Calculus and the tribal wars of industrializing Europe give some character to where I'm trying to go with this stuff.
Archeology has in it's body the idea of a three generation window for viewing past cultures. A generation is somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Three generations give a vivid insight into a culture because grandparents, parents and offspring are a highly sympathetic and even empathetic cluster that transitions cultural values. The U.K., like all viable modern democracies, is transitioning to a new perspective that has as it's foundation empirical findings in Science and tested wisdom in law but still has to deal with the fundamental corrupt nature of our kind.
je m'amuse
Fine, I'm OK with it, got my Logitech Pr0n 9000 set up on the 37" Viewsonic and it gives great closeups of me reclined on the couch; but, I just want you all to know I'm not getting a bikini wax.
Guardian Angles? Maybe somebody @ MS is a Bernhard Goetz kind of a guy. Clippy, and his two friends Smith & Wesson, are gonna teach you "a man gotta know his limits".
Dr. Johnson
"Morality (from the Latin moralities "manner, character, proper behavior") is a system of conduct and ethics that is virtuous. Morality has three principal meanings"
"In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred. This sense of term is also addressed by descriptive ethics."
Virtue is a concept addressed across the board from the first big boys on the block like Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, but it's a tricky subject. I had to find my own way on this one because there seemed to be endless gradations and seepage of morality into ethics and ethics into morality. My own moral compass operates from animal behaviour, my animal behaviour. I consider morality to derive directly from our basic drives or instincts. My morality goes to things like Fight-or-flight response. Ethics, like aesthetics, deals with abstractions from instincts.Lex Talionis is the granddaddy of morality and goes to things like the Code of Hammurabi.
I'm not sure morality can be tested in a lab because labs tend to require restricted environments that are artificially impoverished or supplemented in ways that vitiate the results.Today much of neuroscience looks like neo-crypto-phrenology. And moral values tend to speak to concepts of law and there the test of reasonableness holds sway, but does it in the jungle?
Cheers
2. Many people do feed off of the negative attention.
Isn't attention a necessary condition of any complex and social life form? Theories of apoptosis suggests cells in complex life forms commit programmed death when they lack necessary communication from other cells. Theory of Mind suggests, at least in some interpretations, that an infantile state can be characterized as an inability to "...attribute mental states--beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.--to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."
Looking at both attention and Theory of Mind I think attention is fundamental and necessary whether it's positive or negative. Fucked up people may seek negative attention desperately as a substitute for social confirmation and self confirmation and/or as a cloaked call for help.
"The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare's parlance 'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos."
There's a Wikipedia article on the brain's reward system. I've not read the Wiki article but have tried to grasp some of the Berkeley, mit, Yale uni online lectures that speak to it. The problem I had with trying to understand it in general terms is that the system itself isn't fully understood and, for a lay person like myself, it seems there's no difference in the mechanics between the motivations and rewards of a crack whore and a CEO, but that may just be the way it is. What seems to come into play is the executive planning functions of the brain and whether they act as a damper to limit a runaway reward system. The Executive Functions seem to reside in the frontal lobes and usually the sad story of Phineas Gage is trotted out to model loss of Executive Function. If this post gets modded up a lot I'll post some more :) well maybe if I'm sure I'll get modded up even more and more...
Pleading, desperate, begging, even grovelling sex, sure, that's pretty much my norm, but casual, no. My ex, I'm pretty sure she had a lot of casual sex, even disinterested sex, at least it seemed that way to me, but then I really didn't care. I was just so grateful just to be getting some.
just in case someone doesn't know. Jeremy Bentham left instructions that his corpse be stuffed. His stuffed self sat at the entrance to his club for many years, although I read it was removed after it began to smell bad.
really i dunno but after running it thru my wetware a few times a few "thinks" came up... my first time in Tokyo i was introduced to Pachinko and immediately began to wonder how such a people could have accomplished anything let alone what the Japanese have done, but after a few minutes playing i was strangely hooked and played for about 3 hours, but only played the one time. it reminded me of the kind of fun, mindless calibrating kids can do for hours, getting closer and closer to something meaningless in itself but profitable in tweaking a mind set. maybe it's something like that. the other thing that popped up was reading accounts of indentured servants holding mock feasts made up of the scraps their masters had left over. the servants invented titles and names for themselves and seriously attempted to reproduce the manners of their "betters". it may be the people who do this stuff are wage slaves shedding their pent up aggression and frustration. while i'm just throwing stuff out there there's the point, click, download and install crowd who can't do much on the internet and just do basic stuff that fills the time. or they all could just be like me now doing anything rather than the brain breaking hard work i'm taking a break from, like you reading this :)