"Deep magic" is something only a handful of people can really do. That makes it an alternate reality all of its own, something that sets them far apart.
If he's talking about...feeling the groove, getting in the Zone, becoming One with whatever you do, I must disagree. Almost everyone has been there. Which does not diminish the wonderfulness of being hyper-focussed, or make it any less - or more - of an alternate reality. Only for most of us getting there is a rare treat. One thing that separates the Great Ones - be they great athletes, musicians, artists or programmers - from mere mortals is that this tiny minority can work the Deep Magic consistantly. On demand. Every day if they have to.
The (Greek/Roman) governments were not actually free though; they all had slaves and women who had no say in the government.
So they were even more like the (Colonial) USA... High ideals about freedom and democracy; glaring violations of freedom and democracy in real life.
Also IIRC, Roman women did enjoy considerable power in government. Not full equality with men, and certainly nothing that would please a feminist today, but neither were they chattel like Greek women usually were.
(Mitochondrial) DNA is only present in female ova (not in sperm) and is passed from mother to children.
Still wrong, but less glaringly so.
Of course mitochondria are present in sperm, else they (the sperm - not the mitochondria) would be dead (No ATP). However, when a sperm fertilizes an egg, it sorta self-destructs, leaving its tail, its protoplasm, and all its organelles (including the mitochondria) behind. The only part that joins with the egg is the genetic material.
So while sperm have mitochondria, children (mammalian ones anyway) get all of theirs from mom (via mom's egg).
I think I see the point here (about pi being transcendental and all) but if there is a need for infinite precision, wouldn't it also be correct to claim that it's impossible to cut a stick that is one (1.00000000...) inch long?
Then there's the whole problem of units. Your "international standard inch" may be one inch long by definition. What's to stop someone from devising a new system of measurement, in which some platinum bar in Paris is (by definition) pi units long?
While I suspect it'd be a fun read for anyone, Bethke's Headcrash is especially entertaining for anyone who's ever lived/worked on the Silicon Tundra of the Minneapolis/StPaul Metro.
More recently I've begun making and selling (analog) desk and wall clocks from trashed (or just obsolete) hard drives. The entire drives, not just the platters! If anyone is interested, email me.
The horrifically headcrashed ones look the best, IMHO, so if you've got a favorite "old friend" that went down in flames, I can very probably fix it up into a nice clock for you...
...with the purchase a virtual real estate and virtual goods with real world money, what it the "real value of money" today?
The real value is what someone is willing to give you for it.
Does anyone see the possibility of using UO game cash to purchase real goods? (Like on Ebay or some barter site?)
Sure! It's called barter. It's been going on for millenia. The web, like the central marketplace in a village, makes it easier for people to find other people who want to trade with them, but the underlying principle is the same. Two people, each with something the other wants, agree to an exchange.
No taxes, where would you declare them??
I don't know about other countries, but in the US, barter isn't supposed to be taxed. If enough items of value are exchanged this way (without the use of taxable currency) the powers-that-be might be tempted to implement a tax. Don't know how they'd go about it tho'.
I dunno... I read The Giving Tree (and had it read to me) at an impressionable age, and I don't think it predisposed me toward noble and thankless self-sacrifice.
There are plenty of other forces pushing noble and thankless self-sacrifice (and expectation of same) on girls and boys today. It doesn't make it okay, but neither does it seem fair to pick on The Giving Tree for promoting this (probably inadvertent) message.
Sure the tree could have been referred to as "it" or "he" instead of she. Would it have made much difference? "It" would be most technically accurate, but to most people it seems kinda impersonal. If you're gonna anthropomorphize a tree, it helps to avoid the pronoun "it". Using "he" solves that problem, but adds another. Now there's NO women (or she-trees) in the story. As I'm sure you're aware, the female perspective is sorely lacking in kiddy lit already. Maybe the boy in the story should have been a girl!
In any case, the impression most folx seem to get after reading The Giving Tree is "how sad". Indicating (to me anyway) that the message this story most effectively communicates might be that noble and thankless self-sacrifice is not all that wonderful after all.
Sure. Why not? Consider for a moment WHY people masturbate. It's fun! Wrapping one's brain around the ideas in GEB:EGB is fun too. Even if it doesn't lead to a career in AI research.
This book used those entertaining puzzles and games to illustrate some fairly hairy concepts in ways even an uninitiated teenager could kinda sorta grasp. Surely there's some value in that.
Absolutely! I believe that (16) was about the age I was when I read it too. It was, IIRC, a Birthday present; I'd requested it because I liked Bach and worshipped Escher. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, right? I'd never even heard of Godel. I had NO CLUE!
To say this book overpowered my poor unprepared teenage mind would be a serious understatement. I loved it!
A quote from the come-on text on the back of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age (since you mentioned it) could apply equally well to GEB:
"People who plow through these mind-bogglers will walk around slack-jawed for days and reemerge with a radically redefined sense of reality"
Slashdot Mirror
Katz wrote
...feeling the groove, getting in the Zone, becoming One with whatever you do, I must disagree. Almost everyone has been there. Which does not diminish the wonderfulness of being hyper-focussed, or make it any less - or more - of an alternate reality. Only for most of us getting there is a rare treat. One thing that separates the Great Ones - be they great athletes, musicians, artists or programmers - from mere mortals is that this tiny minority can work the Deep Magic consistantly. On demand. Every day if they have to.
"Deep magic" is something only a handful of people can really do. That makes it an alternate reality all of its own, something that sets them far apart.
If he's talking about
The (Greek/Roman) governments were not actually free though; they all had slaves and women who had no say in the government.
So they were even more like the (Colonial) USA... High ideals about freedom and democracy; glaring violations of freedom and democracy in real life.
Also IIRC, Roman women did enjoy considerable power in government. Not full equality with men, and certainly nothing that would please a feminist today, but neither were they chattel like Greek women usually were.
(Mitochondrial) DNA is only present in female ova (not in sperm) and is passed from mother to children.
Still wrong, but less glaringly so.
Of course mitochondria are present in sperm, else they (the sperm - not the mitochondria) would be dead (No ATP). However, when a sperm fertilizes an egg, it sorta self-destructs, leaving its tail, its protoplasm, and all its organelles (including the mitochondria) behind. The only part that joins with the egg is the genetic material.
So while sperm have mitochondria, children (mammalian ones anyway) get all of theirs from mom (via mom's egg).
Hope that helps.
Hmmm... I got Amazon's "The file you requested could not be found" message when I clicked through. Bummer.
I think I see the point here (about pi being transcendental and all) but if there is a need for infinite precision, wouldn't it also be correct to claim that it's impossible to cut a stick that is one (1.00000000...) inch long?
Then there's the whole problem of units. Your "international standard inch" may be one inch long by definition. What's to stop someone from devising a new system of measurement, in which some platinum bar in Paris is (by definition) pi units long?
While I suspect it'd be a fun read for anyone, Bethke's Headcrash is especially entertaining for anyone who's ever lived/worked on the Silicon Tundra of the Minneapolis/StPaul Metro.
I made a hexadecimal clock a few years ago.
More recently I've begun making and selling (analog) desk and wall clocks from trashed (or just obsolete) hard drives. The entire drives, not just the platters! If anyone is interested, email me.
The horrifically headcrashed ones look the best, IMHO, so if you've got a favorite "old friend" that went down in flames, I can very probably fix it up into a nice clock for you...
...with the purchase a virtual real estate and virtual goods with real world money, what it the "real value of money" today?
The real value is what someone is willing to give you for it.
Does anyone see the possibility of using UO game cash to purchase real goods? (Like on Ebay or some barter site?)
Sure! It's called barter. It's been going on for millenia. The web, like the central marketplace in a village, makes it easier for people to find other people who want to trade with them, but the underlying principle is the same. Two people, each with something the other wants, agree to an exchange.
No taxes, where would you declare them??
I don't know about other countries, but in the US, barter isn't supposed to be taxed. If enough items of value are exchanged this way (without the use of taxable currency) the powers-that-be might be tempted to implement a tax. Don't know how they'd go about it tho'.
I dunno... I read The Giving Tree (and had it read to me) at an impressionable age, and I don't think it predisposed me toward noble and thankless self-sacrifice.
There are plenty of other forces pushing noble and thankless self-sacrifice (and expectation of same) on girls and boys today. It doesn't make it okay, but neither does it seem fair to pick on The Giving Tree for promoting this (probably inadvertent) message.
Sure the tree could have been referred to as "it" or "he" instead of she. Would it have made much difference? "It" would be most technically accurate, but to most people it seems kinda impersonal. If you're gonna anthropomorphize a tree, it helps to avoid the pronoun "it". Using "he" solves that problem, but adds another. Now there's NO women (or she-trees) in the story. As I'm sure you're aware, the female perspective is sorely lacking in kiddy lit already. Maybe the boy in the story should have been a girl!
In any case, the impression most folx seem to get after reading The Giving Tree is "how sad". Indicating (to me anyway) that the message this story most effectively communicates might be that noble and thankless self-sacrifice is not all that wonderful after all.
"800 masturbatory pages"...?
Sure. Why not? Consider for a moment WHY people masturbate. It's fun! Wrapping one's brain around the ideas in GEB:EGB is fun too. Even if it doesn't lead to a career in AI research.
This book used those entertaining puzzles and games to illustrate some fairly hairy concepts in ways even an uninitiated teenager could kinda sorta grasp. Surely there's some value in that.
Absolutely! I believe that (16) was about the age I was when I read it too. It was, IIRC, a Birthday present; I'd requested it because I liked Bach and worshipped Escher. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, right? I'd never even heard of Godel. I had NO CLUE!
To say this book overpowered my poor unprepared teenage mind would be a serious understatement.
I loved it!
A quote from the come-on text on the back of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age (since you mentioned it) could apply equally well to GEB:
"People who plow through these mind-bogglers will walk around slack-jawed for days and reemerge with a radically redefined sense of reality"
Only in my case it's been more like decades.