Thank you for being the first to point out what these idiot doctors should have realized from the beginning.
Saying PDA's hurt your memory is like saying that using crutches will break your leg, because the rate of broken legs is startlingly higher among crutch-users than the general population.
I remember that game. It was not really compelling enough to hold anybody's interest, so anyone who tried would always let slip the dogs of war, just for the hell of it. (The screen would go black, and the makers of the game put up a little statement that said they refused to reward you "loss" with exciting graphics... which was an obvious cop-out because they did not want to trouble themselves with programming a mushroom cloud animation.)
I was thinking along the lines of a multi-player game with a little more complexity to it.
Rome's power spread to Africa, Europe, and Asia... and they did not know about the Americas (which, with the exeption of a few tribes in Central America, was living in a pre-civilization state anyway). They (wrongly) considered every bordering "nation" to be too primative to bother with.
So, yes... Rome was the only Empire that ever got close enough to even kid themselves about being World Conquerers.
Of course, but my point is that those peaks and drops exist. Great civilizations, for obvious reasons, are built to suit the task of developing and expanding. The moment the stop becoming a greater empire, they find themselves with the task of maintaining a great empire without growing... something they had never done before.
Nobody seems to stay on top for very long... a mere century can be considered to be a darn good run, if you are keeping score.
The good news is that people generally live very well during the decay of a great civilization... until the Visigoths actualy come and sack the city, anyway. It's far easier to live in a crumbling superpower than to participate in building one up.
his announcement sounds to me like someone uncovering a single line of code in the Linux kernel and saying that it's responsible for multithreading.Actually, it sounds more to me like a small step towards the reverse-engineering of the brain, which is really cool, IMHO.
Actually, there have been some very good explanations for mental states along the lines of autism. Generally, it is a failure of the part of the brain which allows people to shift their attention quickly. Since the "tells" of a person's mood are often subtle, brief, and varied, a person who has difficutly shifting the focus of their attention tends to have a problem with empathy.
Slashdot has, on occation in the past, linked to studies that showed that the sort of people who are usually known as "nerds" are likely to suffer from a mild form of this disorder. The lack of easy empathy makes them social outcasts, but the slowly-shifting focus allows them to stay up all night hacking code while heavy metal blares in the background to keep their heart rates up.
The average non-nerd, even if fairly bright, is less likely to stare at a flickering cathode ray for hours at the best of times, let alone when distracted by loud music.
The rare "idiot savant" cases have also been linked with this phenomenon.
Disclaimer: If you are an athiest or agnostic, none of the rambling thoughts below are likely to be of interest to you. Feel free to ignore them.
I find this really rather dismaying. These scientist are attempting to explain the most beautiful parts of our consciousness - love, hate, even consciousness itself - in terms of how a bunch of neurons fire.
Actually, even as a person who believes deeply in a religion that is challenged by this discovery, I find the information quite thrilling and compelling.
I've always thought that true faith invites intellectual curiosity, because if you really believe it, how can you be worried about the facts contradicting it?
When a discovery or observation seems to contradict my philosophy, I try not to dismiss the observation out of hand. I approach it with skepticism, because we should approach everything with skepticism, but once compelling evidence is present, I need to consider a couple possibilites: 1. In some peripheral way, my understanding of the world might not be correct. 2. In some way, my understanding of this new information might not be correct.
Still, this new information should be studied with enthusiasm, with all of my preconceptions on the table, including my religious views... because if I fear having my religion challenged, then my faith might not really be as strong as I thought.
In that regard, scientific findings, even scientific myths (as you called them), can never really be "dangerous" to either of us.
As for the notion that something never will be explained, simply because the presence of "mystery" is important to you... You are free to hold that view, but it seems a bit peculiar to urge humility in the same breath.
Back in college, some friends of mine and I were huge fans of the British version of the show, and we got a bunch of people together for an evening of "Whose Line Is It Anyway? The Home Game". A couple of us spend a few hours throwing together a few cards, we pre-screened the "players" to find out which games they thought they could do well at (but did not leak the actual improv situations), and let them go. Some games were lifted strait from the show, some were made up.
A personal favorite: "Commercial Soundtrack": The contestant was supposed to shill a product (chosen at random from the audience) in a style that fit well with some pre-selected instrumental background music that they had not heard before.
Warning: In order for the game to work, you need to be able to find people who are clever on their feet and have enough cultural awareness to do improv well, yet be nerdy enough to think that this game would be a fun way to spend a weekend evening.
It might just be because it is a late Friday afternoon, but I don't get what you are trying to say... can you elaborate, AC? Was there a joke there that I missed?:/
How is Somnium not "space fantasy" by the definitions you gave!? It is a fantasy in which a man goes to the moon and seen all kinds of strange wonders... at a time when almost nothing was known about the moon's surface. Kepler had pretty much no scientific ground to rationalize his notions with whatsoever. Pure fantasy.
Risk is probably one of the very best examples of a zero-sum game. The goal is territories, not armies. Armies are just and extention of the terriroty: The more territory you possess, the greater your ability to take more.
"Zero sum" means that you can not have a gain of resources without somebody else having an equal loss. That is what Risk is all about.
Diplomacy is fun, but the objective is still, "I want to take what is yours". The goal in Diplomacy is expansion, and you can't add territories without taking them from somebody else.
Static, finite scarcity is the very definition of "zero-sum".
I've lately been thinking that most geo-political games (Risk, Diplomacy, etc) are not very realistic, because the goal of world conquest is not only within reach, but it is nearly a guarantee that one-world government will be the final outcome.
Of all the great empires of history, only one (Rome) got big enough to fool itself into thinking it conquered the world, and all great expansionist powers seem to collapse shortly after their peak.
It would be fun to put together a computer game where the goal is to run a nation (in a sort-of SimCity/Civilizaton style), and where success is measured according to the success of your nation, but where wiping out an enemy almost never serves your best interests, where a conquered nation can assemble an underground revolutionary movement and regain their sovereignty, and where the game simply continues to be played for as long as the participants are enjoying themselves.
I would buy a game like that, if it was well done.
Fortunatly for us, the British Empire spread the practice of speaking English to most corners of the world. In India, Enlish is the only language spoken by nearly everybody. (It's not the first language for any of them, but it's the second language for almost all of them.)
Between England and the US, this language has been the international language of commerce for two Centuries. It is possible that 21st Century America will decline the way 20th Century England did, and somebody else will be the next economic superpower... but if their language is not well suited to tty screens and keyboards (i.e., most of Asia), they will probably use English, too.
There are, however, a few really out-of-touch third world nations that don't speak much English. France, for example. For their sake, we sometimes need to learn other languages, in the unlikely event that we need to ask directions to get to Euro-Disney.;)
America is a nation of immigrants, and has always had pockets of non-english-speaking recent arrivals. Their children usually learn English, though, so this separation only lasts one generation, and by then a wave of immigrants from a completely different part of the world is coming in.
If we all took the trouble to learn German and Italian when all the immigration was coming from there, it would have done us very little good when the flood of migration from East Asia and Central America kicked in... it would just mean there would be two more languages that people would need to deal with when they came here.
A one-language nation is much more immigrant-friendly, if you ask me. I would hate to move to a country where dozens of languages are spoken, according to region. Knowing that you only need to get the hang of one new language in order to get by is very handy.
If you want to go back even more, you could make a case for Homer's Oddesssey. At the time, sailing to unknown lands was their equivalent of a voyage into space.
IIRC, many of the classic "Arabian Nights" stories involved a hero who had to solve mysteries. While Poe might have been the first to do so in the form of a novel, the "detective story" goes back a lot farther.
"The Andromeda Strain" fails to fit your profile. The story begins with your step 3: Something goes wrong, and continues from there.
Actually, most of his books are not like that at all.
The Great Train Robbery - Story of a train heist Eaters of the Dead - An arab encounters a Viking culture Disclosure - A computer geek gets framed for sexual harrassment to cover a scandal Congo - A corporate firms races against the competition to stake a diamond claim deep in the African jungle The Terminal Man - After a car crash, a man slowly changes into a killer cyborg ER - "Saint Elswhere" with more car-crash victims.
"His close involvement with the New Wave meant much of his early work was more closely associated with the UK than with the country of his birth. "
As if he would only be dealing with American writers if he was around in 1890!
So far as I am concerned, the history of Science Fiction begins with H.G. Wells.
I don't really consider Poe to be a science fiction writer. His short story "Into the Maelstrom" was a very convincing tale of an adventure that he obviously never had, but sci-fi had little to do with it.
Props to old Edgar for writing the first great story that gives a detail account of encryption hacking ("The Gold Bug")... but I would say that he is a lot closer, in both style and substance, to Herman Melville than to Isaac Asimov.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying PDA's hurt your memory is like saying that using crutches will break your leg, because the rate of broken legs is startlingly higher among crutch-users than the general population.
That doctor is an idiot. What he said is the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time. Every one of us is a little dumber for having read it.
Aircraft-type seating is comfortable!?
Compared to what? A splintered broom handle?
I was thinking along the lines of a multi-player game with a little more complexity to it.
So, yes... Rome was the only Empire that ever got close enough to even kid themselves about being World Conquerers.
Yes, but what about an effective dream?
Woo-hoo! Just a few more obscure pop-cuture references, and that Dennis Miller Award will be mine!
Nobody seems to stay on top for very long... a mere century can be considered to be a darn good run, if you are keeping score.
The good news is that people generally live very well during the decay of a great civilization... until the Visigoths actualy come and sack the city, anyway. It's far easier to live in a crumbling superpower than to participate in building one up.
his announcement sounds to me like someone uncovering a single line of code in the Linux kernel and saying that it's responsible for multithreading.Actually, it sounds more to me like a small step towards the reverse-engineering of the brain, which is really cool, IMHO.
Slashdot has, on occation in the past, linked to studies that showed that the sort of people who are usually known as "nerds" are likely to suffer from a mild form of this disorder. The lack of easy empathy makes them social outcasts, but the slowly-shifting focus allows them to stay up all night hacking code while heavy metal blares in the background to keep their heart rates up.
The average non-nerd, even if fairly bright, is less likely to stare at a flickering cathode ray for hours at the best of times, let alone when distracted by loud music.
The rare "idiot savant" cases have also been linked with this phenomenon.
I find this really rather dismaying. These scientist are attempting to explain the most beautiful parts of our consciousness - love, hate, even consciousness itself - in terms of how a bunch of neurons fire.
Actually, even as a person who believes deeply in a religion that is challenged by this discovery, I find the information quite thrilling and compelling.
I've always thought that true faith invites intellectual curiosity, because if you really believe it, how can you be worried about the facts contradicting it?
When a discovery or observation seems to contradict my philosophy, I try not to dismiss the observation out of hand. I approach it with skepticism, because we should approach everything with skepticism, but once compelling evidence is present, I need to consider a couple possibilites: 1. In some peripheral way, my understanding of the world might not be correct. 2. In some way, my understanding of this new information might not be correct.
Still, this new information should be studied with enthusiasm, with all of my preconceptions on the table, including my religious views... because if I fear having my religion challenged, then my faith might not really be as strong as I thought.
In that regard, scientific findings, even scientific myths (as you called them), can never really be "dangerous" to either of us.
As for the notion that something never will be explained, simply because the presence of "mystery" is important to you... You are free to hold that view, but it seems a bit peculiar to urge humility in the same breath.
Back in college, some friends of mine and I were huge fans of the British version of the show, and we got a bunch of people together for an evening of "Whose Line Is It Anyway? The Home Game". A couple of us spend a few hours throwing together a few cards, we pre-screened the "players" to find out which games they thought they could do well at (but did not leak the actual improv situations), and let them go. Some games were lifted strait from the show, some were made up.
A personal favorite: "Commercial Soundtrack": The contestant was supposed to shill a product (chosen at random from the audience) in a style that fit well with some pre-selected instrumental background music that they had not heard before.
Warning: In order for the game to work, you need to be able to find people who are clever on their feet and have enough cultural awareness to do improv well, yet be nerdy enough to think that this game would be a fun way to spend a weekend evening.
Keep in mind that Twister was invented during a time when people were desperate for more excuses to touch each other.
It might just be because it is a late Friday afternoon, but I don't get what you are trying to say... can you elaborate, AC? Was there a joke there that I missed? :/
How is Somnium not "space fantasy" by the definitions you gave!? It is a fantasy in which a man goes to the moon and seen all kinds of strange wonders... at a time when almost nothing was known about the moon's surface. Kepler had pretty much no scientific ground to rationalize his notions with whatsoever. Pure fantasy.
Read, comprehend, react. Do it in that order and you are far less likely to get worked up over nothing.
Also a Good Thing, IMHO.
I didn't vote for the guy, but I'm growing slightly more optimistic about his foreign policies as time goes by.
"Zero sum" means that you can not have a gain of resources without somebody else having an equal loss. That is what Risk is all about.
Static, finite scarcity is the very definition of "zero-sum".
Of all the great empires of history, only one (Rome) got big enough to fool itself into thinking it conquered the world, and all great expansionist powers seem to collapse shortly after their peak.
It would be fun to put together a computer game where the goal is to run a nation (in a sort-of SimCity/Civilizaton style), and where success is measured according to the success of your nation, but where wiping out an enemy almost never serves your best interests, where a conquered nation can assemble an underground revolutionary movement and regain their sovereignty, and where the game simply continues to be played for as long as the participants are enjoying themselves.
I would buy a game like that, if it was well done.
Between England and the US, this language has been the international language of commerce for two Centuries. It is possible that 21st Century America will decline the way 20th Century England did, and somebody else will be the next economic superpower... but if their language is not well suited to tty screens and keyboards (i.e., most of Asia), they will probably use English, too.
There are, however, a few really out-of-touch third world nations that don't speak much English. France, for example. For their sake, we sometimes need to learn other languages, in the unlikely event that we need to ask directions to get to Euro-Disney. ;)
If we all took the trouble to learn German and Italian when all the immigration was coming from there, it would have done us very little good when the flood of migration from East Asia and Central America kicked in... it would just mean there would be two more languages that people would need to deal with when they came here.
A one-language nation is much more immigrant-friendly, if you ask me. I would hate to move to a country where dozens of languages are spoken, according to region. Knowing that you only need to get the hang of one new language in order to get by is very handy.
If you want to go back even more, you could make a case for Homer's Oddesssey. At the time, sailing to unknown lands was their equivalent of a voyage into space.
IIRC, many of the classic "Arabian Nights" stories involved a hero who had to solve mysteries. While Poe might have been the first to do so in the form of a novel, the "detective story" goes back a lot farther.
"The Andromeda Strain" fails to fit your profile. The story begins with your step 3: Something goes wrong, and continues from there.
Actually, most of his books are not like that at all.
The Great Train Robbery - Story of a train heist
Eaters of the Dead - An arab encounters a Viking culture
Disclosure - A computer geek gets framed for sexual harrassment to cover a scandal
Congo - A corporate firms races against the competition to stake a diamond claim deep in the African jungle
The Terminal Man - After a car crash, a man slowly changes into a killer cyborg
ER - "Saint Elswhere" with more car-crash victims.
"His close involvement with the New Wave meant much of his early work was more closely associated with the UK than with the country of his birth. "
As if he would only be dealing with American writers if he was around in 1890!
So far as I am concerned, the history of Science Fiction begins with H.G. Wells.
I don't really consider Poe to be a science fiction writer. His short story "Into the Maelstrom" was a very convincing tale of an adventure that he obviously never had, but sci-fi had little to do with it.
Props to old Edgar for writing the first great story that gives a detail account of encryption hacking ("The Gold Bug")... but I would say that he is a lot closer, in both style and substance, to Herman Melville than to Isaac Asimov.