I'd say both. But with the caveat that "the global economy" is the wrong variable to watch - most of the suffering and most of the unsolved problems will be suffered by the poorest billion on this planet. So the apropriate variable is the economy of the poorest billion.
Trickle-down economics don't seem to work reliably, not even on a national level. Witness how the top 20% have reaped more than two thirds of the growth in USA over the last 2 decades, for example.
Your argument would have some merit IF there was strong reason to believe that not reducing greenhouse-emissions in the first world, would lead to a substantially wealthier third world in a decade or two, but I don't see any strong evidence for that at all.
In practice, I fear that your argument boils down to, let's do what we want in the first world, raising our standard of living even higher than it already is, while polluting a lot. The poor will take the brunt of the resulting problems anyway.
True. Servers and datacenters will need more bandwith earlier. But on the flipside, they're also willing to pay bigger bucks, so overall it evens out.
A $100 network-card is right-out for the home-market, or atleast very expensice, given that that's 10% of what an entire typical computer costs today. In contrast, a $1000 network-card for a heavy-duty server can be entirely acceptable.
True enough, but there's a lot of cable already installed, and the cost of requiring new cable as opposed to being able to use the currently installed one is VERY high indeed, and the replacement-cost goes up even more if the new cable is thicker than the one it is replacing, since that can lead to needing new buried pipes since the new cables won't fit trough the old pipes.
And I don't see a compelling reason. A single current-day single-mode optical fiber is capable of transmitting 15 Tbit/s over 100 miles (more over shorter distances) if using state-of-the-art tranceivers, and experimental new fibers are up to 70Tbit/s over 250km.
Okay, those tranceivers are too expensive for home-use at the moment, but I don't need more than 1Gbps at home at the moment either. If I do in a decade or two, who says 10Tbit/s over a single optical fiber won't be cheap then ? (given that it's practical even TODAY) 20 years is a long time in network-technology. (what did a 100Mbps-link over a single km cost 20 years ago ?)
IT seems hugely unlikely that global warming will cause extinction of humanity. But fairly likely that it'll cause widespread material damage and widespread human suffering.
It's perfectly true that the earth don't care, it doesn't even "care" if we extinguish all life.
But if -WE- care, about reducing suffering and maintaining a high standard of living, then it might be worth it to try to reduce the damage.
But we're talking problems like flooding, and possibly famine following changed climates here - not extinction.
Make all the excuses you like. The fact remains that atleast in the first world, all the resources you need to be able to make *something* on your own are trivial, certainly trivial compared to a CS-degree.
A web-site. And android-app. A windows-program. A Linux-program. Assuming you already have a computer, you can make all of these for a total investment of either zero, or in the 2 digits. And if you don't own a computer as a CS-graduate, I'm sorry but I'm not going to take you seriously when you claim you're serious about programming and qualified to work as one in my company.
Fair enough. That wasn't my primary suggestion anyway. (I just claimed it'd make -more- sense than the current regime, but I agree that the "unknown" and/or "unpreventable" foreign citizenship may change that)
Given that the president is -elected- I think it'd make sense to relax the demands a *lot* I see no obvious downside to simply saying something like: "Must be an american citizen, and have lived in USA for more than a decade". And exclusing for example adopted kids from ever being president seems pointless to me.
I just think that where you grew up, for example, is a lot more relevant to your allegiance than your born citizenship.
How does it make sense that a kid born (in Norway) to American/Norwegian parents, then growing up in Norway, before moving to USA at age 25 qualifies for president. While a kid adopted to American parents at age 2 and thereafter living in USA for all his life does NOT qualify ?
If you compare these two kids, surely the adopted kid should be *more* qualified, not less ? He's got *2* American parents as opposed to one, and he's actually grown up and spent all the life he can remember in USA, with American parents.
Hell, currently a Norwegian girl could get pregnant by a visiting American, then go back to live with her Norwegian husband, the kid need never even meet his biological father, nor ever visit USA before age 20 -- and he'd *still* qualify (assuming the visitor was correctly listed as the childs father, offcourse)
I'd say the demands for having lived in USA for 15 years, and for being a citizen, are sufficient, and the demand for being BORN american, should be removed.
I disagree. If the question is how much energy a typical person needs to perform a typical task, then you *can* compare across changes in tools.
I surfed the web 10 years ago. I surf the web today. The main reason I do it differently is that technology progressed, both software and hardware.
You can claim it doesn't count, but that does not make it so. Fact is, I can perform the same function, using a lot less energy today - DESPITE the huge increase in bloat.
Similarily, my 100Mbit/s fibre-connection has a router that uses about 1/4th of the energy compared to my old 56Kbps modem. It does a lot more, with a lot less.
I disagree. Sure, end-user software on the desktop tends to (essentially) use whatever power is available, wasting the excess on eyecandy if need be.
But the power-consumption of a typical home-user machine has fallen dramatically. A decade ago when I ended my studies, a tower with a PSU of atleast 350W, and a crt-screen around 19" was the standard machine to use, in typical use, it consumed atleast 250W (including the monitor)
Today, the typical machine used by the typical student is a laptop that is orders of magnitude more powerful - AND that has much more bloated software, but which nevertheless gets by on perhaps 30W on the average.
General surfing and suchlike has even to some degree migrated from 250W desktops to tablets that tend to use less than 5W.
Yes, an ipad has bloated software, compared to the browser I had a decade ago. But it's still a 3W device doing the same job that used to require 250W.
And it's the same thing on servers - yes they serve more to do the same job, but they *also* support many more users with the same amount of energy.
The president is *elected* I see no legitimate reason whatsoever that some person born abroad should not be eligible to be president. Infact, it'd make more sense if one would insist that to be eligible for president, one must hold *ONLY* American citizenship. (the current rules don't have any ban on a two-citizenship person becoming president, aslong as one of the two is American, and he's born with it)
What's the rationale for disqualifying someone who, for example, was adopted by American parents at age 2, while ALLOWING a child born to (for example) an American/Norwegian couple who grew up in Norway, yet moved to America at age 20 with dual citizenship.
I'd argue that the latter has substantially stronger ties to a foreign nation, if that's the concern. (if not, I don't know what the concern is)
The constitution does indeed say what you claim, but seems to me it's a dumb rule.
Yes. But the direction is set more by corporations than by individual employees. And it's not a surprise that corporations tend to prefer solutions where they know a LOT about individual customers.
Payment-systems is a big one, for example. (if you can follow and/or control the cashflow, you've got a LOT of information and a LOT of influence)
But the systems being introduced today are almost entirely shaped by the interests of big financial institutions, and not consumers. For example, from the POV of the consumer, anonymity is a advantage of cash. You *don't* have to tell the bartender who you are to buy a beer in cash. (nor does he need to tell you who -he- is) Furthermore, the banks don't know where you spent your money.
It's not a huge surprise that those who design the system, benefit the most from it. So when Paypal, Visa, Google Checkout or similar entities design modern payment-systems, you can be *sure* they design them so that they DO know who buys what from whom when. From their perspective, that's FEATURE, not a bug. (electronic payment-systems that preserves anonymity yet are secure, are perfectly possible and indeed have been known for decades)
Yeah. But energy can't realistically run out. At a maximum, it can rise in price until it's at the level where solar is competitive, which means aproximately double todays price.
But you get more an more computing from the same energy, so if that happened, you'd only be set back a year or two. (2 years from now, you'll likely be able to get the same computing, for half the energy)
True enough. CC-security SUCKS bigtime. (hint: printing more numbers on the backside of the card doesn't help significantly)
They need 2-factor badly. Currently it's pretty much 1-factor as posession of the physical card, or the data on it, is just about everything needed.
With my bank I get an off-channel SMS as the second channel. This helps a *huge* lot. Not because SMS is super-secure or anything, but because stealing my CC-number *AND* tapping into my SMS-delivery is a lot harder than doing only the first.
When I want to pay I get sent a code: "Use X4RT5S to authorize payment of $400 to NetCom a/s" I then need to enter that 6-symbol code into the final confirmation-screen. It's a bit of a hassle, so (at my option) I can disable the code for transactions under a certain limit.
Notice that the amount and recipient is included in the SMS. This prevents malicious software on my computer from modifying amount or recipient behind-the-scenes.
The "core business" of any company, from a certain perspective anyways, is turning a profit. However, this by itself is not directly motivating to any employee who ain't also a owner, because that profit belongs to the share-holders.
It may -indirectly- be motivating because success at turning a profit, tends to mean more opportunities for the employees, be it in the form of more interesting work, higher wages, or some other way.
Still, if a company keeps harping that everyone should always remember that only making money is cool, they should not be surprised if they get what they deserve: employees who follow the same ethic, and thus are only interested in extracting the maximum personal profit (i.e. salary) for minimal effort.
I've pondered the same thing. My workplace spends 6 figures, and as far as I'm able to tell, gets significantly less than I have at home, despite my investment being 2 orders of magnitude less.
Every 2 hours for the last day, every day for the last week, every week for the last month, every month for the last year, every year forever. Physically backed up to 2 distinct discs inhouse (one of which is pretty burglar-proof, living in safe), and 2 encrypted copies under the care of 2 distinct companies, in different jurisdictions and on different continents. (there's 3 copies of the decryption-phrase, one in my head, 1 in my safety-deposit-box in the bank and one stored with my will in a secure will-storage-system run by a respected law-firm)
While this ain't "perfect" (nothing is), it's *hell* of a lot better than what we've got at work, despite the latter costing 100 times more. (and no, the amount of data backed up at work, is not larger, both backups are aproximately 5TB for a complete copy)
Yes, a burglar could steal one copy from my house. But I'm more concerned with not losing files than with preserving privacy, there's nothing *really* secret anywhere in my data.
it's not a good excuse for a journalist or an editor that "someone else said so first".
When publishing a story about a "new record" it's not a stretch to *read* the source to figure out which record is meant. And if the source actually completely fails to even make a *claim* of any record. (it does not, infact, include any information whatsoever on which record is claimed) then yes, you're doing a sucky job as an editor if you just repeat "record!", not even knowing yourself what record is meant.
"Some guy on the internet claims that something he plans to do in the future will break some record or other. He also talks about diving!"
The article indeed uses the word, twice even. Once in the title, and once in stating that submarines have a "good safety record" which is a different kind of record.
i.e. the article doesn't even hint at what kind of record is intended.
Going deeper than to the bottom of the worlds deepest trench, would be quite a trick. Do you suppose this new sub can submerge in geology ?
The Trieste visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960. It even says so right in the article: "return to..." i.e. we where there before, now we're going back.
What exactly is the record here ?
Or is it just another case of the editors not bothering to read the article OR research the basic facts ?
But -any- rating-system that in the end, delivers a recommendation for age-group, is going to have to choose some prejudice.
You have to compare different sorts of content and weigh them against eachother.
How does *this* sort of violence stack up against *this* sort of sex ?
There is no single correct answer to that, indeed any extreme is thinkable from "Any amount of sex is okay, but no violence" to the opposite extreme of "any amount of violence is okay, but no sex"
It doesn't really matter if the score is by computer+questionaire or by human judgement or by any other method. There simple *isn't* one single correct answer.
The method of judging, isn't the problem. The fundamental task, is.
I tend to ignore the age-recommendations completely - instead if I'm in doubt about a certain game being apropriate or not for my kids, I will play it myself for a while. (usually you don't have to play it for -that- long to get a fair guesstimate)
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
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· Score: 1
Right, but if all things have a certain property X, then the statement "Y is X" does no longer tell us anything about Y.
Thus redefining useful words in such a manner that they apply to all objects, should be resisted because it turns the words useless. Or more simply: it's not sensible to define "toxic" to mean "will harm you if ingested in insane amounts"
Alternatively, you can recognize that the world ain't binary, and that toxicity is not a "yes or no" kind of question but instead a "more or less" kind of question.
The question in the headline "is sugar toxic?" would lead you to believe a yes-or-no answer is the apropriate one (and if so, I would argue that *no* is the only answer that leaves the word "toxic" with any real meaning)
But if you recognize that it's really a more-or-less kind of situation, you can instead say that sugar has -low- toxicity. You neeed either *very* high doses, or else *high* doses over many years to suffer significant harm.
But when we talk of harm after years or decades as the result of overconsumption of certain substances, most people would not call that harm "toxic", they would call it "unhealthy".
It's *unhealthy* to consume too much sugar over a long period. You'll become overweight and suffer increased risk of diabetes and a long list of other diseases.
Should most people consume less sugar ? Yes. Would it improve health, to consume less sugar ? For most people, yes. Does that mean it's apropriate to say "sugar is toxic" ? No.
Most people don't do much thinking by themselves, they're satisfied with letting others do it for them.
Most people, don't really start much of anything by themselves, instead the select from and participate in activities started and organized by others.
Most people, are much happier following than leading - and want least of all to have to lead in unknown terrain.
Most people, in short, are pretty average.
Sure, those few people from the 1800s that we still remember, tend to be pretty exceptional (for good or bad!), but that's just because we tend to forget the average guys, and remember only the extraordinary.
Unskilled labour is only valid if you're willing to give the same value. Thus if you're from a richer area than the recipient, then giving the money is almost certainly going to be more efficient.
If I work for an hour in rich Norway, and donate what I earn towards unskilled labor in some poor part of the world, they're likely to get a weeks work out of it. Simply because the value of my work in Norway, is so much higher than the value of an unskilled labourer in a poor part of the world.
I earn aproximately $62/hour, and $10/day would be a good wage for an unskilled labourer in many poor parts of the world.
"infinite" cheap energy has that problem, yes. But when people say "infinite" and "cheap" they tend to mean merely relative to what they're used to.
Energy is -already- very plentiful and very cheap to people in the developed world. I fill my car with $9/gallon gas, which is aproximately the most expensive in the world, but that -nevertheless- gives me 500Kwh worth of energy for half a days salary, or around 1Mwh/workday.
It's not that long ago that people would've considered getting 1Mwh worth of energy for a single days salary to be "plentiful cheap energy".
Yes. In that way. As a sort-of real world "reductio ad absurdum". If a certain law or rule has absurd unwanted consequence - deliberately making those consequences happen, can be a useful way of demonstrating the stupidity of the law. (and thus perhaps get it changed)
When priests where freed from having to do (other wise compulsory) military service - some people fought that by launching "religion of me" with themselves as priests.
When the court said that a belief with only one member is not properly a religion, but instead merely "personal belief", people enlisted a single partner or friend - to make it a religion of two. (which the courts, this far have accepted - it'd be *real* tricky for a court to defend a decision that it's okay to discriminate against a religion merely because it's uncommon)
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I'd say both. But with the caveat that "the global economy" is the wrong variable to watch - most of the suffering and most of the unsolved problems will be suffered by the poorest billion on this planet. So the apropriate variable is the economy of the poorest billion.
Trickle-down economics don't seem to work reliably, not even on a national level. Witness how the top 20% have reaped more than two thirds of the growth in USA over the last 2 decades, for example.
Your argument would have some merit IF there was strong reason to believe that not reducing greenhouse-emissions in the first world, would lead to a substantially wealthier third world in a decade or two, but I don't see any strong evidence for that at all.
In practice, I fear that your argument boils down to, let's do what we want in the first world, raising our standard of living even higher than it already is, while polluting a lot. The poor will take the brunt of the resulting problems anyway.
And I don't think that's a moral way forward.
True. Servers and datacenters will need more bandwith earlier. But on the flipside, they're also willing to pay bigger bucks, so overall it evens out.
A $100 network-card is right-out for the home-market, or atleast very expensice, given that that's 10% of what an entire typical computer costs today. In contrast, a $1000 network-card for a heavy-duty server can be entirely acceptable.
True enough, but there's a lot of cable already installed, and the cost of requiring new cable as opposed to being able to use the currently installed one is VERY high indeed, and the replacement-cost goes up even more if the new cable is thicker than the one it is replacing, since that can lead to needing new buried pipes since the new cables won't fit trough the old pipes.
And I don't see a compelling reason. A single current-day single-mode optical fiber is capable of transmitting 15 Tbit/s over 100 miles (more over shorter distances) if using state-of-the-art tranceivers, and experimental new fibers are up to 70Tbit/s over 250km.
Okay, those tranceivers are too expensive for home-use at the moment, but I don't need more than 1Gbps at home at the moment either. If I do in a decade or two, who says 10Tbit/s over a single optical fiber won't be cheap then ? (given that it's practical even TODAY) 20 years is a long time in network-technology. (what did a 100Mbps-link over a single km cost 20 years ago ?)
IT seems hugely unlikely that global warming will cause extinction of humanity. But fairly likely that it'll cause widespread material damage and widespread human suffering.
It's perfectly true that the earth don't care, it doesn't even "care" if we extinguish all life.
But if -WE- care, about reducing suffering and maintaining a high standard of living, then it might be worth it to try to reduce the damage.
But we're talking problems like flooding, and possibly famine following changed climates here - not extinction.
Make all the excuses you like. The fact remains that atleast in the first world, all the resources you need to be able to make *something* on your own are trivial, certainly trivial compared to a CS-degree.
A web-site. And android-app. A windows-program. A Linux-program. Assuming you already have a computer, you can make all of these for a total investment of either zero, or in the 2 digits. And if you don't own a computer as a CS-graduate, I'm sorry but I'm not going to take you seriously when you claim you're serious about programming and qualified to work as one in my company.
Fair enough. That wasn't my primary suggestion anyway. (I just claimed it'd make -more- sense than the current regime, but I agree that the "unknown" and/or "unpreventable" foreign citizenship may change that)
Given that the president is -elected- I think it'd make sense to relax the demands a *lot* I see no obvious downside to simply saying something like: "Must be an american citizen, and have lived in USA for more than a decade". And exclusing for example adopted kids from ever being president seems pointless to me.
I just think that where you grew up, for example, is a lot more relevant to your allegiance than your born citizenship.
How does it make sense that a kid born (in Norway) to American/Norwegian parents, then growing up in Norway, before moving to USA at age 25 qualifies for president. While a kid adopted to American parents at age 2 and thereafter living in USA for all his life does NOT qualify ?
If you compare these two kids, surely the adopted kid should be *more* qualified, not less ? He's got *2* American parents as opposed to one, and he's actually grown up and spent all the life he can remember in USA, with American parents.
Hell, currently a Norwegian girl could get pregnant by a visiting American, then go back to live with her Norwegian husband, the kid need never even meet his biological father, nor ever visit USA before age 20 -- and he'd *still* qualify (assuming the visitor was correctly listed as the childs father, offcourse)
I'd say the demands for having lived in USA for 15 years, and for being a citizen, are sufficient, and the demand for being BORN american, should be removed.
I disagree. If the question is how much energy a typical person needs to perform a typical task, then you *can* compare across changes in tools.
I surfed the web 10 years ago. I surf the web today. The main reason I do it differently is that technology progressed, both software and hardware.
You can claim it doesn't count, but that does not make it so. Fact is, I can perform the same function, using a lot less energy today - DESPITE the huge increase in bloat.
Similarily, my 100Mbit/s fibre-connection has a router that uses about 1/4th of the energy compared to my old 56Kbps modem. It does a lot more, with a lot less.
I disagree. Sure, end-user software on the desktop tends to (essentially) use whatever power is available, wasting the excess on eyecandy if need be.
But the power-consumption of a typical home-user machine has fallen dramatically. A decade ago when I ended my studies, a tower with a PSU of atleast 350W, and a crt-screen around 19" was the standard machine to use, in typical use, it consumed atleast 250W (including the monitor)
Today, the typical machine used by the typical student is a laptop that is orders of magnitude more powerful - AND that has much more bloated software, but which nevertheless gets by on perhaps 30W on the average.
General surfing and suchlike has even to some degree migrated from 250W desktops to tablets that tend to use less than 5W.
Yes, an ipad has bloated software, compared to the browser I had a decade ago. But it's still a 3W device doing the same job that used to require 250W.
And it's the same thing on servers - yes they serve more to do the same job, but they *also* support many more users with the same amount of energy.
Yeah, that's the rule -- and it's entirely nuts.
The president is *elected* I see no legitimate reason whatsoever that some person born abroad should not be eligible to be president. Infact, it'd make more sense if one would insist that to be eligible for president, one must hold *ONLY* American citizenship. (the current rules don't have any ban on a two-citizenship person becoming president, aslong as one of the two is American, and he's born with it)
What's the rationale for disqualifying someone who, for example, was adopted by American parents at age 2, while ALLOWING a child born to (for example) an American/Norwegian couple who grew up in Norway, yet moved to America at age 20 with dual citizenship.
I'd argue that the latter has substantially stronger ties to a foreign nation, if that's the concern. (if not, I don't know what the concern is)
The constitution does indeed say what you claim, but seems to me it's a dumb rule.
Yes. But the direction is set more by corporations than by individual employees. And it's not a surprise that corporations tend to prefer solutions where they know a LOT about individual customers.
Payment-systems is a big one, for example. (if you can follow and/or control the cashflow, you've got a LOT of information and a LOT of influence)
But the systems being introduced today are almost entirely shaped by the interests of big financial institutions, and not consumers. For example, from the POV of the consumer, anonymity is a advantage of cash. You *don't* have to tell the bartender who you are to buy a beer in cash. (nor does he need to tell you who -he- is) Furthermore, the banks don't know where you spent your money.
It's not a huge surprise that those who design the system, benefit the most from it. So when Paypal, Visa, Google Checkout or similar entities design modern payment-systems, you can be *sure* they design them so that they DO know who buys what from whom when. From their perspective, that's FEATURE, not a bug. (electronic payment-systems that preserves anonymity yet are secure, are perfectly possible and indeed have been known for decades)
Yeah. But energy can't realistically run out. At a maximum, it can rise in price until it's at the level where solar is competitive, which means aproximately double todays price.
But you get more an more computing from the same energy, so if that happened, you'd only be set back a year or two. (2 years from now, you'll likely be able to get the same computing, for half the energy)
True enough. CC-security SUCKS bigtime. (hint: printing more numbers on the backside of the card doesn't help significantly)
They need 2-factor badly. Currently it's pretty much 1-factor as posession of the physical card, or the data on it, is just about everything needed.
With my bank I get an off-channel SMS as the second channel. This helps a *huge* lot. Not because SMS is super-secure or anything, but because stealing my CC-number *AND* tapping into my SMS-delivery is a lot harder than doing only the first.
When I want to pay I get sent a code: "Use X4RT5S to authorize payment of $400 to NetCom a/s" I then need to enter that 6-symbol code into the final confirmation-screen. It's a bit of a hassle, so (at my option) I can disable the code for transactions under a certain limit.
Notice that the amount and recipient is included in the SMS. This prevents malicious software on my computer from modifying amount or recipient behind-the-scenes.
The "core business" of any company, from a certain perspective anyways, is turning a profit. However, this by itself is not directly motivating to any employee who ain't also a owner, because that profit belongs to the share-holders.
It may -indirectly- be motivating because success at turning a profit, tends to mean more opportunities for the employees, be it in the form of more interesting work, higher wages, or some other way.
Still, if a company keeps harping that everyone should always remember that only making money is cool, they should not be surprised if they get what they deserve: employees who follow the same ethic, and thus are only interested in extracting the maximum personal profit (i.e. salary) for minimal effort.
I've pondered the same thing. My workplace spends 6 figures, and as far as I'm able to tell, gets significantly less than I have at home, despite my investment being 2 orders of magnitude less.
Every 2 hours for the last day, every day for the last week, every week for the last month, every month for the last year, every year forever. Physically backed up to 2 distinct discs inhouse (one of which is pretty burglar-proof, living in safe), and 2 encrypted copies under the care of 2 distinct companies, in different jurisdictions and on different continents. (there's 3 copies of the decryption-phrase, one in my head, 1 in my safety-deposit-box in the bank and one stored with my will in a secure will-storage-system run by a respected law-firm)
While this ain't "perfect" (nothing is), it's *hell* of a lot better than what we've got at work, despite the latter costing 100 times more. (and no, the amount of data backed up at work, is not larger, both backups are aproximately 5TB for a complete copy)
Yes, a burglar could steal one copy from my house. But I'm more concerned with not losing files than with preserving privacy, there's nothing *really* secret anywhere in my data.
it's not a good excuse for a journalist or an editor that "someone else said so first".
When publishing a story about a "new record" it's not a stretch to *read* the source to figure out which record is meant. And if the source actually completely fails to even make a *claim* of any record. (it does not, infact, include any information whatsoever on which record is claimed) then yes, you're doing a sucky job as an editor if you just repeat "record!", not even knowing yourself what record is meant.
"Some guy on the internet claims that something he plans to do in the future will break some record or other. He also talks about diving!"
isn't a good story.
The article indeed uses the word, twice even. Once in the title, and once in stating that submarines have a "good safety record" which is a different kind of record.
i.e. the article doesn't even hint at what kind of record is intended.
Going deeper than to the bottom of the worlds deepest trench, would be quite a trick. Do you suppose this new sub can submerge in geology ?
The Trieste visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960. It even says so right in the article: "return to..." i.e. we where there before, now we're going back.
What exactly is the record here ?
Or is it just another case of the editors not bothering to read the article OR research the basic facts ?
But -any- rating-system that in the end, delivers a recommendation for age-group, is going to have to choose some prejudice.
You have to compare different sorts of content and weigh them against eachother.
How does *this* sort of violence stack up against *this* sort of sex ?
There is no single correct answer to that, indeed any extreme is thinkable from "Any amount of sex is okay, but no violence" to the opposite extreme of "any amount of violence is okay, but no sex"
It doesn't really matter if the score is by computer+questionaire or by human judgement or by any other method. There simple *isn't* one single correct answer.
The method of judging, isn't the problem. The fundamental task, is.
I tend to ignore the age-recommendations completely - instead if I'm in doubt about a certain game being apropriate or not for my kids, I will play it myself for a while. (usually you don't have to play it for -that- long to get a fair guesstimate)
Right, but if all things have a certain property X, then the statement "Y is X" does no longer tell us anything about Y.
Thus redefining useful words in such a manner that they apply to all objects, should be resisted because it turns the words useless. Or more simply: it's not sensible to define "toxic" to mean "will harm you if ingested in insane amounts"
Alternatively, you can recognize that the world ain't binary, and that toxicity is not a "yes or no" kind of question but instead a "more or less" kind of question.
The question in the headline "is sugar toxic?" would lead you to believe a yes-or-no answer is the apropriate one (and if so, I would argue that *no* is the only answer that leaves the word "toxic" with any real meaning)
But if you recognize that it's really a more-or-less kind of situation, you can instead say that sugar has -low- toxicity. You neeed either *very* high doses, or else *high* doses over many years to suffer significant harm.
But when we talk of harm after years or decades as the result of overconsumption of certain substances, most people would not call that harm "toxic", they would call it "unhealthy".
It's *unhealthy* to consume too much sugar over a long period. You'll become overweight and suffer increased risk of diabetes and a long list of other diseases.
Should most people consume less sugar ? Yes. Would it improve health, to consume less sugar ? For most people, yes. Does that mean it's apropriate to say "sugar is toxic" ? No.
The sad fact of the situation, is.
Most people don't do much thinking by themselves, they're satisfied with letting others do it for them.
Most people, don't really start much of anything by themselves, instead the select from and participate in activities started and organized by others.
Most people, are much happier following than leading - and want least of all to have to lead in unknown terrain.
Most people, in short, are pretty average.
Sure, those few people from the 1800s that we still remember, tend to be pretty exceptional (for good or bad!), but that's just because we tend to forget the average guys, and remember only the extraordinary.
Unskilled labour is only valid if you're willing to give the same value. Thus if you're from a richer area than the recipient, then giving the money is almost certainly going to be more efficient.
If I work for an hour in rich Norway, and donate what I earn towards unskilled labor in some poor part of the world, they're likely to get a weeks work out of it. Simply because the value of my work in Norway, is so much higher than the value of an unskilled labourer in a poor part of the world.
I earn aproximately $62/hour, and $10/day would be a good wage for an unskilled labourer in many poor parts of the world.
Yeah right, because 200 years ago, "most people" did an awful lot of seriously profound thinking.
You're probably comparing the most *awesome* people of the past with *average* people today, and that's just plain not fair.
"infinite" cheap energy has that problem, yes. But when people say "infinite" and "cheap" they tend to mean merely relative to what they're used to.
Energy is -already- very plentiful and very cheap to people in the developed world. I fill my car with $9/gallon gas, which is aproximately the most expensive in the world, but that -nevertheless- gives me 500Kwh worth of energy for half a days salary, or around 1Mwh/workday.
It's not that long ago that people would've considered getting 1Mwh worth of energy for a single days salary to be "plentiful cheap energy".
Yes. In that way. As a sort-of real world "reductio ad absurdum". If a certain law or rule has absurd unwanted consequence - deliberately making those consequences happen, can be a useful way of demonstrating the stupidity of the law. (and thus perhaps get it changed)
When priests where freed from having to do (other wise compulsory) military service - some people fought that by launching "religion of me" with themselves as priests.
When the court said that a belief with only one member is not properly a religion, but instead merely "personal belief", people enlisted a single partner or friend - to make it a religion of two. (which the courts, this far have accepted - it'd be *real* tricky for a court to defend a decision that it's okay to discriminate against a religion merely because it's uncommon)