My co-resident at the zendo at which I reside and I have been discussing setting up a Tor exit node for a while. The arguments against, are obvious - last I checked the general recommendation was to lease a server at a facillity that was set up for the likely eventual legal problems. But we're both fairly squeaky clean, and would be happy to talk at length about why we feel this is important. (And are in situations where spending time in jail, while not fun, wouldn't ruin us. Or would ruin us less quickly than most, anyway.)
And good friends who are lawyers in the right specialties.
I guess the argument really is that someone has to stand up for freedom. And frankly, some people have more wherewithal than others to do so....but it might be hard on the zendo. And so we haven't, yet.
After I left MS... they funded my research. So for the first couple of years all my dreams of going back to academic unix land were for naught. Okay, I actually had a heck of a good time. But it's nice to be back in the open source world. And... the whole academic partnerships where a company (Apple is pretty big in this as well) offers all kinds of deals to try to buy up future lock in really bothers me.
I knew the presentation computer would not have libre office installed. This was on my own main box, out of curiousity, as my experience had been that.ppt export from OpenOffice (as it was) usually more or less worked, but.pptx was trouble. I'd hoped it had improved since I last tried it. (In my own department I just use my own box.)
The presentation computer was windows, and having not messed with libre office in a windows setting, I didn't want to mess with software I couldn't pre-check on my own box.
Also? Pain in the ass. If it was going to be a problem, there would be a decent.pdf viewer on hand. And there was, and that's what I used.
It's all fine and good (I'm on Kubuntu 12.10 on my primary box)... until you want interoperability with and MS stuff. Which I wish I didn't, but practically speaking, I often do.
I recently was giving a talk for a class in another department, and created my slides in Libre Office. All fine and good, but when I exported them in.pptx (.ppt no longer even being offerred as an option) and then opened them *in Libre Office* the formatting was completely mangled. Powerpoint (which I hate, and which I hated even when I worked at MS) wouldn't even open them.
Now, as it happens, I'd suspected this might be the case, I'd exported the slides as.pdfs, and I could happily give my talk about the role of chan in martial arts.* But the last time I'd tried to create powerpoint files on libre office it hadn't been this bad.
* Seriously, these kids get to take a class on traditional martial arts. For writing credit.
And even a relatively low selection disadvantage will eliminate traits from a population in a few generations. (I think Felsenstein has written on this point.) Sure, mutations are fairly frequent - but unless they are neutral to good, they will tend to be eliminated before they get much of a foothold. The one exception to this tends to be in small isolated populations - and that is certainly not the case of the overwhelming majority these days.
Fiddle faddle. If one assumes from the ample representations of women in Greek art, standards of beauty for the classical period included women who were fit, but also lightly padded and curvy. Perhaps an ability to survive minor famines was valued.
And who would the average American or Greek citizen find more attractive. (Keep in mind that standards of physical beauty have not been static over time.)
Having read only the popular article so far, I confess, it sounds rather speculative.
But more to the point, there is an assumption that intelligence is itself is a single quantifiable thing, and that the intelligence that did so well on the African savannah, or in ancient Athens would do equally well in our circumstance. (For that matter, that this "intelligence" would be the primary contributing factor to who lived or died.)
That there are genetic differences relating to intelligence seems highly likely. That they produce more or less of a single linearly quantifiable intelligence seems rather less likely. That selection pressures have greatly changed (as everything else about our environments have greatly changed) seems something like overhwelmingly likely.
What this means, and what conclusions can be drawn... seems speculative to the point of parlour games.
I was rather hoping the Democrats were going to give being the party of fiscal responsibility a try, as the Republicans had surely left it up for grabs. (That being said, if you were dumb enough to cut taxes when times were good, there still is probably a point in deficit spending when the economy is this bad because cutting spending and pushing it back into recession is... well, to borrow a phrase, how you become Greece.)
1) One can certainly be anti-GOP without being pro-Democrat. I found Obama moderately more tolerable than Romney - which is really saying something considering how I feel about Obama. (Surveillance society? Authorizing assasination? Not even to get in to things like how TSA is basically being used for extra-judicial harrassment, which is certainly a bigger problem than just the Obama administration considering how the courts are punting on regulating TSA.)
2) Adopting policies that are pro-science and pro-math might do a lot to win over the/. crowd. Pro-sex might help as well;-)
As I mentioned elsewhere, the idea that meditative experiences and drug experiences are equivalent is vastly overplayed, in my experience. (Though personally, I'm not against drug use. Have fun, don't be an idiot.)
But there's an even deeper problem with this - meditation is hardly walking on water. It's a simple thing that anyone can learn if they want to put in the time and effort - and yeah, you'll get a lot better with more time and effort, but even a small amount of time and effort can produce useful results. A better analogy might be "why learn to swim when you can use a boat?" or "why learn to walk when you can use a powered scooter?" Meditation just isn't that special.
I've done a lot of meditation (I am a chan Buddhist, live in a zen center*, and spend an awful lot of time sitting on a pillow, staring at the wall in addition to my other primary occupation of neurobiology and martial arts). I've done a smaller amount of recreational drugs (and not recently, but I'm not particularly against them).
I think the comparison between meditative states and those acchieved through drugs is overblown. Oh, there are some overlaps - both my own experience and the literature calls out the use of psilocybin in particular as creating lasting deeply significant insights, and there are certain plenty of examples of drug experiences that in some way mimic enlightenment experiences - but I think there's actually a lot more difference. That they're so often compared might be in part a legacy of the sixties.
Drugs are just a tool. They produce various effects, and can be used more or less (less explicitly including negative values here) usefully. As a society we've created some fairly arbitrary distinctions between drugs. I personally generally tend towards the "less is more" aesthetic... but I'm hardly an absolutist, and I think there's a lot of room for individual variation.
* Yes, I'm using the same word in two languages - the order I belong to is of Chinese origin, and I speak Chinese, and I live in a zen hall affiliated with a lineage of Japanese extraction.
Not the entire state - my Cleveland Heights polling place was using paper sign in books.
I really hope that issue two passes, and that it means we have more competitive districts and less of this candidates running unopposed or having the lock on certain regions - be nice to have folks working for their votes rather than free to be complete idealogues. I do rather suspect that if we get redistricting being handled in a non-partisan process we'll have at least a chance of getting some centrists in to office.
(Mind you, I'm not particularly a centrist myself. But our process is pretty broken to a pretty embarrassing extent at this point.)
Headed out latish in the morning to avoid the lines - things were busy, but not insane. No problems with my somewhat complicated ID. My helpful online guide had not given me all of the right judgeships on the ballot, so I ended up leaving a few blank having no clue as to who these people were. (It could be worse - my labmate had a similar experience, but in his case it cost him a chance to vote against the person who thinks that jihadists are trying to infiltrate textbooks with sharia law.)
And I forgot about the excellent http://www.judge4yourself.com/ website, which could have helped considerably on my judgeships problems. No, really, if you're in Ohio, check it out.
Generally painless. I do miss being able to sign up for absentee ballots and stay signed up, rather than having to re-do it every time.
Because it's not just the windspeed, it's the size of the storm and the size and intensity of storm surge. Far and away more damage is done from flooding than from the wind.
Oh, phoo - it depends on the doctor, and as a population they're probably somewhat less paranoid than your average Joe on the street. There is a lot of fear in the culture about things being taken over by machines. While some is it is about lost jobs, far more is about lost control. (Then, generally, people meet the devices and become accostumed to them.)
The issue with code problems it, of course, that a single mistake can effect far more than one patient. (And yes, of course code generally is more carefully monitored.)
Slashdot Mirror
You say freedom martyr like that's a bad thing.
My co-resident at the zendo at which I reside and I have been discussing setting up a Tor exit node for a while. The arguments against, are obvious - last I checked the general recommendation was to lease a server at a facillity that was set up for the likely eventual legal problems. But we're both fairly squeaky clean, and would be happy to talk at length about why we feel this is important. (And are in situations where spending time in jail, while not fun, wouldn't ruin us. Or would ruin us less quickly than most, anyway.)
And good friends who are lawyers in the right specialties.
I guess the argument really is that someone has to stand up for freedom. And frankly, some people have more wherewithal than others to do so. ...but it might be hard on the zendo. And so we haven't, yet.
Come now, slavish adherance to corporate interests is hardly a sole characteristic of the left. *snort*
What I'll probably continue to do is export ad .pdf and use that.
Or go back to web based presentations - that used to be my standard, actually.
I'm so sorry!
After I left MS... they funded my research. So for the first couple of years all my dreams of going back to academic unix land were for naught. Okay, I actually had a heck of a good time. But it's nice to be back in the open source world. And... the whole academic partnerships where a company (Apple is pretty big in this as well) offers all kinds of deals to try to buy up future lock in really bothers me.
I knew the presentation computer would not have libre office installed. This was on my own main box, out of curiousity, as my experience had been that .ppt export from OpenOffice (as it was) usually more or less worked, but .pptx was trouble. I'd hoped it had improved since I last tried it. (In my own department I just use my own box.)
The presentation computer was windows, and having not messed with libre office in a windows setting, I didn't want to mess with software I couldn't pre-check on my own box.
Also? Pain in the ass. If it was going to be a problem, there would be a decent .pdf viewer on hand. And there was, and that's what I used.
It's all fine and good (I'm on Kubuntu 12.10 on my primary box)... until you want interoperability with and MS stuff. Which I wish I didn't, but practically speaking, I often do.
I recently was giving a talk for a class in another department, and created my slides in Libre Office. All fine and good, but when I exported them in .pptx (.ppt no longer even being offerred as an option) and then opened them *in Libre Office* the formatting was completely mangled. Powerpoint (which I hate, and which I hated even when I worked at MS) wouldn't even open them.
Now, as it happens, I'd suspected this might be the case, I'd exported the slides as .pdfs, and I could happily give my talk about the role of chan in martial arts.* But the last time I'd tried to create powerpoint files on libre office it hadn't been this bad.
* Seriously, these kids get to take a class on traditional martial arts. For writing credit.
Good call.
Which is addressed in her discussion of the bills and why she is introducing them now.
And you can find contact for your local rep here:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
+1
And even a relatively low selection disadvantage will eliminate traits from a population in a few generations. (I think Felsenstein has written on this point.) Sure, mutations are fairly frequent - but unless they are neutral to good, they will tend to be eliminated before they get much of a foothold. The one exception to this tends to be in small isolated populations - and that is certainly not the case of the overwhelming majority these days.
Fiddle faddle. If one assumes from the ample representations of women in Greek art, standards of beauty for the classical period included women who were fit, but also lightly padded and curvy. Perhaps an ability to survive minor famines was valued.
And who would the average American or Greek citizen find more attractive. (Keep in mind that standards of physical beauty have not been static over time.)
Especially since the Flynn effect is likely not tied, or at least not exclusively tied, to genetics.
(Though mind you, with epigenticis trundling along, the distinction is dwindling.)
Having read only the popular article so far, I confess, it sounds rather speculative.
But more to the point, there is an assumption that intelligence is itself is a single quantifiable thing, and that the intelligence that did so well on the African savannah, or in ancient Athens would do equally well in our circumstance. (For that matter, that this "intelligence" would be the primary contributing factor to who lived or died.)
That there are genetic differences relating to intelligence seems highly likely. That they produce more or less of a single linearly quantifiable intelligence seems rather less likely. That selection pressures have greatly changed (as everything else about our environments have greatly changed) seems something like overhwelmingly likely.
What this means, and what conclusions can be drawn... seems speculative to the point of parlour games.
I was rather hoping the Democrats were going to give being the party of fiscal responsibility a try, as the Republicans had surely left it up for grabs. (That being said, if you were dumb enough to cut taxes when times were good, there still is probably a point in deficit spending when the economy is this bad because cutting spending and pushing it back into recession is... well, to borrow a phrase, how you become Greece.)
1) One can certainly be anti-GOP without being pro-Democrat. I found Obama moderately more tolerable than Romney - which is really saying something considering how I feel about Obama. (Surveillance society? Authorizing assasination? Not even to get in to things like how TSA is basically being used for extra-judicial harrassment, which is certainly a bigger problem than just the Obama administration considering how the courts are punting on regulating TSA.)
2) Adopting policies that are pro-science and pro-math might do a lot to win over the /. crowd. Pro-sex might help as well ;-)
As I mentioned elsewhere, the idea that meditative experiences and drug experiences are equivalent is vastly overplayed, in my experience. (Though personally, I'm not against drug use. Have fun, don't be an idiot.)
But there's an even deeper problem with this - meditation is hardly walking on water. It's a simple thing that anyone can learn if they want to put in the time and effort - and yeah, you'll get a lot better with more time and effort, but even a small amount of time and effort can produce useful results. A better analogy might be "why learn to swim when you can use a boat?" or "why learn to walk when you can use a powered scooter?" Meditation just isn't that special.
I've done a lot of meditation (I am a chan Buddhist, live in a zen center*, and spend an awful lot of time sitting on a pillow, staring at the wall in addition to my other primary occupation of neurobiology and martial arts). I've done a smaller amount of recreational drugs (and not recently, but I'm not particularly against them).
I think the comparison between meditative states and those acchieved through drugs is overblown. Oh, there are some overlaps - both my own experience and the literature calls out the use of psilocybin in particular as creating lasting deeply significant insights, and there are certain plenty of examples of drug experiences that in some way mimic enlightenment experiences - but I think there's actually a lot more difference. That they're so often compared might be in part a legacy of the sixties.
Drugs are just a tool. They produce various effects, and can be used more or less (less explicitly including negative values here) usefully. As a society we've created some fairly arbitrary distinctions between drugs. I personally generally tend towards the "less is more" aesthetic... but I'm hardly an absolutist, and I think there's a lot of room for individual variation.
* Yes, I'm using the same word in two languages - the order I belong to is of Chinese origin, and I speak Chinese, and I live in a zen hall affiliated with a lineage of Japanese extraction.
Not the entire state - my Cleveland Heights polling place was using paper sign in books.
I really hope that issue two passes, and that it means we have more competitive districts and less of this candidates running unopposed or having the lock on certain regions - be nice to have folks working for their votes rather than free to be complete idealogues. I do rather suspect that if we get redistricting being handled in a non-partisan process we'll have at least a chance of getting some centrists in to office.
(Mind you, I'm not particularly a centrist myself. But our process is pretty broken to a pretty embarrassing extent at this point.)
Headed out latish in the morning to avoid the lines - things were busy, but not insane. No problems with my somewhat complicated ID. My helpful online guide had not given me all of the right judgeships on the ballot, so I ended up leaving a few blank having no clue as to who these people were. (It could be worse - my labmate had a similar experience, but in his case it cost him a chance to vote against the person who thinks that jihadists are trying to infiltrate textbooks with sharia law.)
And I forgot about the excellent http://www.judge4yourself.com/ website, which could have helped considerably on my judgeships problems. No, really, if you're in Ohio, check it out.
Generally painless. I do miss being able to sign up for absentee ballots and stay signed up, rather than having to re-do it every time.
Dr Kuiken has also done a lot of work with targetted sensory reinervation - neat, neat stuff.
Because it's not just the windspeed, it's the size of the storm and the size and intensity of storm surge. Far and away more damage is done from flooding than from the wind.
+1 - I was just coming back to make pretty much this point, and would have doubtless made it less well.
Oh, phoo - it depends on the doctor, and as a population they're probably somewhat less paranoid than your average Joe on the street. There is a lot of fear in the culture about things being taken over by machines. While some is it is about lost jobs, far more is about lost control. (Then, generally, people meet the devices and become accostumed to them.)
The issue with code problems it, of course, that a single mistake can effect far more than one patient. (And yes, of course code generally is more carefully monitored.)