Call their support and ask them if Linux can do Web serving, or file serving, or if Linux can run MySQL.
The answer will be that no, Linux is not capable of such things. Among Linuxes, only Red Hat Enterprise Linux (not even Red Hat Desktop) can be used in a server capacity. The others do not "support" such operations and duties.
The marketing department has taken over at Red Hat.
I said from the beginning that the two types of enterprises I was describing had some overlap in means and goals. But that does not mean that they are the same.
My differentiation is a real one: between making enough money to live safely and comfortably by doing something that you're competent at on the one hand, and simply using whatever elements are exploitable in the system to make as much money as possible, competence and consequences be damned (as was the case with this story).
"Your argument seems to be that if there are two people, running identical stores in identical ways, and charging identical prices, and one of people those people wants to earn money, and the other one wants to "help people", then there's some magical difference in result. The guy who runs identical store A is "sucking wealth out of the economy for personal use", but the guy who runs store B is some sort of magical goodness munchkin, creating rainbows and pixie dust wherever he goes."
Narrow worldview again. The point is, you'll never find a case in which the two stores will be the same. They won't be. Sorry. The community living-maker's store will carry kosher foods for Mrs. Potolsky and blank DVDs for Mr. Davidson even though they're the only two people who ever buy those products and the store is just breaking even and sacrificing floor space by carrying them.
The money-maker's store will say that the two items break even at best, they're not there to provide kosher foods or DVDs, but to make a profit, and so Mrs. Potolsky and Mr. Davidson will be written off. Maybe they'll never even find another place to conveniently buy their goods and they'll just have to go without. And the "free market" people like yourself will say that's perfectly fine, because the market is deciding, so the people on the fringe will just have to accept that they're "too individual" for the market economy and they'll either have to conform their needs or get ignored... Even when money-makers' stores could do perfectly well helping every member in the community, the can do more business helping only those who spend the most, and so that's what they do. That's the definition of greed: taking more than you need, even when it hurts someone else.
It's a real difference, and a difference that makes a lot of people in America these days bemoan megachains and superstores that come in and make lots of money making 50% of the community very happy while ignoring the other 50%, whose needs are unmet, whose jobs disappear, and whose wages go down.
"He who has the gold makes the rules, therefore we should all do our best to make lots of gold in hopes that someday we can make the rules, and as a result, we'll all make gold together (even though 90% will never get to make any rules)" is not a philosophy that I espouse.
Having grown up with someone who now runs a grocery store, I can tell you that the only reason his grocery store runs is not to make money. His grocery store runs becuase
a) He enjoys providing his community with a safe gathering place that meets a common need across all age, race, and gender groups
and
b) He needs to make a living and in exchange for his service, his community provides him with one
I can hear all of the Smithians screaming, "but (b) is just another way of saying 'to make money,' they're the same statement!"
No. The goal of "making money" is significantly different from the goal of "making a living," even if the two employ some of the same means and some of the same ends.
The former is greedy and unindividuated, it is the process of finding an exploitable point in the market economy and sucking wealth out of it for personal use, even if that wealth could help someone else or even if the removal of that wealth isn't good for other people-- see also lottery tickets, etc.
The latter is a matter of personal survival and good intentions-- it is asking a different question: "I have to live, so what can I do that will justify my community's support of me and help me to support them as well?"
I have a lot of respect for living-earners, but not a lot of respect for money-makers. I also don't think that Smith is god; there are centuries' worth of economists (including some very big names) that have basically diluted smith to the point of being to the operation of modern economics what Edison is to the operation of modern technology.
...piles and piles of OSS deployments that have saved companies millions, and about which they've written (just search Slashdot for the papers/articles).
Seems like this has been happening to OSS from the beginning of time.
OSS User: "I love OSS. It works for me." Anti-OSS: "No you don't. You just think you love OSS, and you just think it works for you. In reality, you're wasting all of your time fiddling and nothing on your desktop works at all!"
OSS Business: "I saved big money with OSS. My books are balanced! Woohoo!" Anti-OSS: "No you didn't. You just think you saved money because the numbers in your ledger tell you you did. In reality, it's not possible to save money with OSS, so you must have lost somewhere."
As far as I'm concerned, if you think you're very happy with a product, and your bankbook numbers tell you that you're saving money, then who cares what's "really" happening in the underlying "reality" of the OSS-doesn't-work-at-all universe?
Data entry techniques on the PDAs without a keyboard are almost impossible, and built in keyboards like the zaurus are almost useless.
I took almost all my notes for my B.A. and my M.A. on my Newton 2100, writing anywhere on the screen, in natural handwriting, at full speed.
Just wanted to let everyone know that handwriting recognition isn't bad by nature, it's just that the marketplace (as often happens) has disposed of some of the best technologies in favor of some of the worst.
Because it doesn't just affect you. Every right you sign away that is *profitable* to a company is likely to result in *rewards* (i.e. wages, benefits, persk) being offered to employees who are willing to sign that right away. This affects everyone else in the labor pool, not just you.
Before you know it, there is an *economy* of employees all willing to sign away more and more rights in order to remain employed; then, it's no longer a matter of choice. We're already getting to that point... want to work? Be willing to sign an NDA. It's not too long until it's:
Want to work? Be willing to subject yourself to speech regulation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to get plastic surgery so that you fit in to our "Most Beautiful Employees Core" value statement. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to wear the clothes that we dictate to you, on the job or off, in order to advertise for our marketing partners. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to work 10, 12, 14, even 16 hours a day. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Oh wait, that last one already happened. It's why we now have federal regs about hours and overtime, etc... The same reason we have laws about child labor, slavery, etc.
What insane, ungrateful values you have. I love how the invention of a useful technology becomes not cause for gratitude, but rather, a sneering accusation.
It was a creation, not a business mistake. The same thing goes for Linux, and for the Magna Carta. Just because someone doesn't demand ransom from the world doesn't mean that their ideas aren't laudable, or deserving of material support.
Every American who doesn't give me a dollar right now is costing me the dollar that I'd have if only they'd given it to me.
Thus, Americans' selfishness is currently costing me over $250 million a year, and that lost revenue has a real economic impact; it's money that would otherwise be flowing into the economy when I spent it on myself.
This is the problem. The Democratic party is too far right for most Democrats in the population, yet the Republican population thinks that the party is much farther left than its base. Most Democracts I know think only "right wing nutjobs" would have voted for Bush, and that any moderate conservatives should have voted for Kerry, who they saw as too conservative for Democrats and a poor choice for that reason.
In truth, the Democratic party is too conservative for its base. Most of the nearly fifty percent of the people in this country who reluctantly voted for Kerry are the "left wing nutjobs" of which you speak. They want national health, strong unions and labor rights, guaranteed social welfare (i.e. food, housing, entertainment enough to have a "good" life), gay/lesbian/transgendered rights, legalization and regulation of drugs, an end to the war in Iraq and a restoration of Palestine, etc. The right loves to call them the "fringe" but they really aren't; they are nearly half of the country--the liberal half. If the Democratic party goes any farther to the right, these people are going to gravitate toward other farther left parties that more closely represent their views, and, in a few more elections, we'll have a 50/50 split again between whatever the new left is called and the conservative right.
This split in the votes really does represent a clear split in ideology in this country. Somehow the right seems to think that the Democratic party is made of ten Marxist-Leninists and fifty million sheep. Not so. There really are nearly as many people who are ardently left as there are people who are ardently right in this country (even though both groups somehow seem to want to defensively claim that they are ardently "center"). What we have is essentially a secular humanist versus evangelical christian conflict, and the two really are completely incompatible, not just ideologically, but also behaviorally, judicially, and financially.
If the US were two nations, one made of the liberal coastal areas, and one made of the conservative central and southern areas, we wouldn't even have diplomatic relations. The conflict would be as hot as the conflict between Israel and Iran is, and the relationship just as cold.
Any Democratic candidate that is acceptable to even the leftmost 25% of the Republican base is going to be too much of a "right wing nutjob" for the leftmost 75% of the Democratic base. Similarly, any Republican candidate that is acceptable to even the rightmost 25% of the Democratic base is going to be too much of a "left wing nutjob" for the rightmost 75% of the Republican base.
Neither view is insane; it has to do with the differing lifestyles of the areas. In Urban areas, the average citizen can not be self-sufficient or live "off the land" since population density is very high and the nearest "land" may be hundreds of miles away. There is little in the way of entertainment or behavior of any kind (i.e. even going to the park in some areas) that does not require capital (i.e. dollars) to experience. There is no natural way to obtain food or water or to dispose of waste; these things must be bussed in and out, also requiring infrastructure and dollars. The greatest danger is from crime--the fact that if you walk out your door at 2.00 in the morning, you have a good chance of getting shot, knifed, mugged by someone who isn't well off enough to be supporting themselves. This, danger, too, can only be mitigated by government intervention: cops to look out for and arrest criminals and welfare to provide such criminals with enough help that they don't need to be on the streets any longer. You can't defend yourself because a) most of the criminals are better armed than you are [hence the desire for gun control] and b) population density is so high that any gunshot in self defense, in any direction, will likely go through ten or twelve apartments at least--potentially killing someone else's mother, fath
Exactly. I watched the election with a circle of people who had faith in the American public going into yesterday and were shocked by the result... truly stunned and flabbergasted.
And the conversation all night and well into today was quite simple, and its narrative thread over several hours and among people of various ages, genders, and backgrounds can be reduced to this: "How can we live here any more? It's now clear that we hate the majority and that they hate us. We're outnumbered by lunatics, warmongers, and crusaders. We hate America and we want to leave. And once we're away and living somewhere else, we're beginning to think we'll hope it falls or dissolves or is attacked by the rest of the world en masse."
Maps were actually brought out and discussions of what other English-speaking countries would take them went on for hours. The people I was staying with honestly seemed to feel threatened in their personal and familial safety by what is they now see to be a clear ultra-conservative American majority.
This is not in some political meeting or radical college club, mind you. It was in an average, suburban house in small-town California. There is a split in America, and it will destroy the nation before it is healed.
That's right... a vigilante "SPAM squad" manning a truck carrying dozens of tons of SPAM, along with a delivery system not unlike a tree chipper that can accept SPAM by the ton and spray greasy SPAM puree hundreds of feet.
The SPAM squad would pull up to the houses of known spammers and douse the house, car, grounds, mailbox, and anything else in sight in 6-12 inches of greasy salted pork goo that would take years to clean up. If the weight of the flying SPAM puree hitting their front windows just "happend" to break them and fill their living room with chunks of SPAM as well, by "accident," that would just be too bad.
Say, 50-60 tons of SPAM per spammer in flash vigilante "actions" out to keep each of them busy for a few weeks (months? years?) at least trying to clean up their persons, personal effects, and lives and drive the smell (and flies) away. Just spray-and-go and let them come stumbling out, slipping and sliding and cursing, realizing that they have finally gotten their comeuppance.
You're wrong. I read and wrote before I started Kindergarten. I was always 6-7 years "above grade level" but of course they couldn't move me that far ahead because it wouldn't work out socially, so they moved me 1-2 ahead (back and forth during some years, unfortunately, depending on the acceptance of the other children) and tried to cope with what they saw as an "extremely gifted and talented child" in the classroom.
But there was no magic in it. I simply learned to spell by reading. In fifth grade I would dick around with the stupid English textbook with three-page stories and fill out the stupid worksheets and then I would go home and read Cervantes or Steinbeck, etc. I was only able to do that because my parents had read with me since I was an infant. My mother and father cooked up their own set of colorful "readers" for me and read with me (not merely "to" me) even before I was speaking. Others scoffed, of course-- he's just a baby, he can't even crawl yet, what's the point-- but it seems to have worked.
I don't think that English orthography is particularly difficult compared to English lexical/structural semantics, grammar, etc., yet babies do not learn to speak by "rote" at all. They learn to speak by hearing spoken language and associating the phenomenological experience with the context of a given situation.
My parents never taught me how to spell through exercises, yet I never missed a single spelling word all throughout K-12, ever, on any exam. Why? Because the spelling exams were painfully easy to me, not because I was any smarter than anyone else but because I had parents who simply encouraged me to read anything and everything that I wanted to read while at the same time taking care to always expand my horizons, thus adding to the reservoir of material from which I could draw and in which I took an interest.
No, I am not suggesting that we stop teaching. What I am suggesting, in keeping with the thread of this discussion, is that the metrics that we use to measure success in these "classes" is indicative of the fact that they are not necessarily interested in whether or not students ever actually learn.
In order to pass chemistry, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass biology, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass trig, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass English, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
It's behavioral training, like we give rats in mazes. We're creating nine-to-fivers, not thinkers. If we really cared about learning, then you'd have to do something involving chemicals to pass chemistry, something involving living things to pass biology, something involving numeric problem-solving to pass mathematics, and something involving high-function communication to pass English.
My parents never tested me with a pencil and paper, yet they taught me more than the school ever could. The school on the other hand taught me more about behvaioral control than my parents ever did.
Students should read Foucault in high school, not attend high school to form ideal to-scale laboratories for examining the underpinnings of "Discipline and Punish."
How many of these courses that you didn't care about then, are you glad you took now?
Zero. I am currently a freelance photojournalist/author who spends the rest of my time doing volunteer work and network administration. I have a B.A. in anthropology and an M.A. in sociology.
- Photography was not available to me K-12 - Computing was not available to me K-12 - Anthro and sociology = not avail K-12
English, mathematics, biology, physical science, and chemistry I took in K-12, yes, but I learned nothing in those classes. Literally. Luckily, both of my parents had graduate degrees in the sciences and my mom had an English education undergraduate background.
Every kid in my high school aced English, math, biology, physical science, and chemistry. None of them know anything about these subject to this day anyway, except those like me who were taught at home as well. The rest may as well have just stayed home and watched cartoons until they were 18.
I was reading novels already when I entered kindergarten because my parents read to me all the time as a kid. My dad had me doing times tables and playing with (late '70/early '80s vintage) computers before I ever saw the inside of a public school. My mom taught me immense amounts writing and biochem over the years. They both encouraged me to spend as much time as I wanted at the library, reading NatGeo and SciAm... the both took me to university bookstores regularly and just let me snag whatever I was interested in.
Everything I know and all of my success proceeds directly from after school hours with my parents and from my time at university.
I can honestly say that K-12 did absolutely nothing but make my question the structure and ethnical foundation of society and the social contract... Not because they taught me to do this, but as a reaction to the complete and utter hypocrisy and transparent worthlessness of the educational system and its relationship to "productive" society.
Replacement for a (paper) notebook!
on
Palmtop Nirvana?
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· Score: 1
It should:
- Have a 5x7 or larger screen - Be less than 0.5" thick - Recognize all handwriting perfectly - without needing a "cursor" - Have a chronologica/subject-based interface - store data automatically, rather than in "files"
I am one of those who swear by the original Microsoft Natural Keyboard (it killed my budding carpal tunnel, on the recommendation of a specialist!) and I agree, Microsoft should be a hardware company... their hardware is great, rugged, and appreciated, and doesn't overreach in terms of thought and market control, unlike their software...
How long will it be before we have the technology to pare all of the inefficiencies away and miniaturize to the point that we just have a clean, simple, powerful phone so small that it fits in your pocket, and none of us will have to carry around the extra bulk or learn to use all this other stuff ever again?!
Various versions of Word aren't 100% compatible. Dvorak and some editors tried to use the change-tracking markup, and "we had a huge mess." What was this mess? He didn't specify.
The problem is that changes tracked with Word 2000/XP lose their author information when loaded in to earlier versions of Word. They all show up as an unrejectable change made by "unknown" rather than a rejectable change made by one of the individuals in your group.
There are some interesting theorists at the intersection between neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, and history that are trying to cope with just these topics.
Check out Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio which treats these questions from the perspective of a neuroscientist, or for a broader, more cultural-historical view on the role of emotion in society, The Navigation of Feeling by William Reddy.
Untrue. If you think media, hollywood, and American youth are slanted left, then you, too, are not at all familiar with the fundamentals of leftist philosophy and have probably never been outside the US.
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Can just as easily be stated as:
"We form political affiliations with people who think like we do."
Umm... no shit. Surprise, surprise, everyone: we generally vote differently from people who think and feel differently than we do about life!
Another good book on Fedora...
on
Linux Desktop Guide
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· Score: 4, Informative
After perusing it, I gave this one to my sisters and mother. It covers all the same things, but in print, with Figures:
Slashdot Mirror
Call their support and ask them if Linux can do Web serving, or file serving, or if Linux can run MySQL.
The answer will be that no, Linux is not capable of such things. Among Linuxes, only Red Hat Enterprise Linux (not even Red Hat Desktop) can be used in a server capacity. The others do not "support" such operations and duties.
The marketing department has taken over at Red Hat.
I said from the beginning that the two types of enterprises I was describing had some overlap in means and goals. But that does not mean that they are the same.
My differentiation is a real one: between making enough money to live safely and comfortably by doing something that you're competent at on the one hand, and simply using whatever elements are exploitable in the system to make as much money as possible, competence and consequences be damned (as was the case with this story).
"Your argument seems to be that if there are two people, running identical stores in identical ways, and charging identical prices, and one of people those people wants to earn money, and the other one wants to "help people", then there's some magical difference in result. The guy who runs identical store A is "sucking wealth out of the economy for personal use", but the guy who runs store B is some sort of magical goodness munchkin, creating rainbows and pixie dust wherever he goes."
Narrow worldview again. The point is, you'll never find a case in which the two stores will be the same. They won't be. Sorry. The community living-maker's store will carry kosher foods for Mrs. Potolsky and blank DVDs for Mr. Davidson even though they're the only two people who ever buy those products and the store is just breaking even and sacrificing floor space by carrying them.
The money-maker's store will say that the two items break even at best, they're not there to provide kosher foods or DVDs, but to make a profit, and so Mrs. Potolsky and Mr. Davidson will be written off. Maybe they'll never even find another place to conveniently buy their goods and they'll just have to go without. And the "free market" people like yourself will say that's perfectly fine, because the market is deciding, so the people on the fringe will just have to accept that they're "too individual" for the market economy and they'll either have to conform their needs or get ignored... Even when money-makers' stores could do perfectly well helping every member in the community, the can do more business helping only those who spend the most, and so that's what they do. That's the definition of greed: taking more than you need, even when it hurts someone else.
It's a real difference, and a difference that makes a lot of people in America these days bemoan megachains and superstores that come in and make lots of money making 50% of the community very happy while ignoring the other 50%, whose needs are unmet, whose jobs disappear, and whose wages go down.
"He who has the gold makes the rules, therefore we should all do our best to make lots of gold in hopes that someday we can make the rules, and as a result, we'll all make gold together (even though 90% will never get to make any rules)" is not a philosophy that I espouse.
Having grown up with someone who now runs a grocery store, I can tell you that the only reason his grocery store runs is not to make money. His grocery store runs becuase
a) He enjoys providing his community with a safe gathering place that meets a common need across all age, race, and gender groups
and
b) He needs to make a living and in exchange for his service, his community provides him with one
I can hear all of the Smithians screaming, "but (b) is just another way of saying 'to make money,' they're the same statement!"
No. The goal of "making money" is significantly different from the goal of "making a living," even if the two employ some of the same means and some of the same ends.
The former is greedy and unindividuated, it is the process of finding an exploitable point in the market economy and sucking wealth out of it for personal use, even if that wealth could help someone else or even if the removal of that wealth isn't good for other people-- see also lottery tickets, etc.
The latter is a matter of personal survival and good intentions-- it is asking a different question: "I have to live, so what can I do that will justify my community's support of me and help me to support them as well?"
I have a lot of respect for living-earners, but not a lot of respect for money-makers. I also don't think that Smith is god; there are centuries' worth of economists (including some very big names) that have basically diluted smith to the point of being to the operation of modern economics what Edison is to the operation of modern technology.
...piles and piles of OSS deployments that have saved companies millions, and about which they've written (just search Slashdot for the papers/articles).
Seems like this has been happening to OSS from the beginning of time.
OSS User: "I love OSS. It works for me."
Anti-OSS: "No you don't. You just think you love OSS, and you just think it works for you. In reality, you're wasting all of your time fiddling and nothing on your desktop works at all!"
OSS Business: "I saved big money with OSS. My books are balanced! Woohoo!"
Anti-OSS: "No you didn't. You just think you saved money because the numbers in your ledger tell you you did. In reality, it's not possible to save money with OSS, so you must have lost somewhere."
As far as I'm concerned, if you think you're very happy with a product, and your bankbook numbers tell you that you're saving money, then who cares what's "really" happening in the underlying "reality" of the OSS-doesn't-work-at-all universe?
Data entry techniques on the PDAs without a keyboard are almost impossible, and built in keyboards like the zaurus are almost useless.
I took almost all my notes for my B.A. and my M.A. on my Newton 2100, writing anywhere on the screen, in natural handwriting, at full speed.
Just wanted to let everyone know that handwriting recognition isn't bad by nature, it's just that the marketplace (as often happens) has disposed of some of the best technologies in favor of some of the worst.
Because it doesn't just affect you. Every right you sign away that is *profitable* to a company is likely to result in *rewards* (i.e. wages, benefits, persk) being offered to employees who are willing to sign that right away. This affects everyone else in the labor pool, not just you.
Before you know it, there is an *economy* of employees all willing to sign away more and more rights in order to remain employed; then, it's no longer a matter of choice. We're already getting to that point... want to work? Be willing to sign an NDA. It's not too long until it's:
Want to work? Be willing to subject yourself to speech regulation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to get plastic surgery so that you fit in to our "Most Beautiful Employees Core" value statement. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to wear the clothes that we dictate to you, on the job or off, in order to advertise for our marketing partners. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Want to work? Be willing to work 10, 12, 14, even 16 hours a day. Or we'll hire one of those others, who is willing.
Oh wait, that last one already happened. It's why we now have federal regs about hours and overtime, etc... The same reason we have laws about child labor, slavery, etc.
What insane, ungrateful values you have. I love how the invention of a useful technology becomes not cause for gratitude, but rather, a sneering accusation.
It was a creation, not a business mistake. The same thing goes for Linux, and for the Magna Carta. Just because someone doesn't demand ransom from the world doesn't mean that their ideas aren't laudable, or deserving of material support.
Every American who doesn't give me a dollar right now is costing me the dollar that I'd have if only they'd given it to me.
Thus, Americans' selfishness is currently costing me over $250 million a year, and that lost revenue has a real economic impact; it's money that would otherwise be flowing into the economy when I spent it on myself.
I think it's time that congress got involved.
by left-wing nutjobs
This is the problem. The Democratic party is too far right for most Democrats in the population, yet the Republican population thinks that the party is much farther left than its base. Most Democracts I know think only "right wing nutjobs" would have voted for Bush, and that any moderate conservatives should have voted for Kerry, who they saw as too conservative for Democrats and a poor choice for that reason.
In truth, the Democratic party is too conservative for its base. Most of the nearly fifty percent of the people in this country who reluctantly voted for Kerry are the "left wing nutjobs" of which you speak. They want national health, strong unions and labor rights, guaranteed social welfare (i.e. food, housing, entertainment enough to have a "good" life), gay/lesbian/transgendered rights, legalization and regulation of drugs, an end to the war in Iraq and a restoration of Palestine, etc. The right loves to call them the "fringe" but they really aren't; they are nearly half of the country--the liberal half. If the Democratic party goes any farther to the right, these people are going to gravitate toward other farther left parties that more closely represent their views, and, in a few more elections, we'll have a 50/50 split again between whatever the new left is called and the conservative right.
This split in the votes really does represent a clear split in ideology in this country. Somehow the right seems to think that the Democratic party is made of ten Marxist-Leninists and fifty million sheep. Not so. There really are nearly as many people who are ardently left as there are people who are ardently right in this country (even though both groups somehow seem to want to defensively claim that they are ardently "center"). What we have is essentially a secular humanist versus evangelical christian conflict, and the two really are completely incompatible, not just ideologically, but also behaviorally, judicially, and financially.
If the US were two nations, one made of the liberal coastal areas, and one made of the conservative central and southern areas, we wouldn't even have diplomatic relations. The conflict would be as hot as the conflict between Israel and Iran is, and the relationship just as cold.
Any Democratic candidate that is acceptable to even the leftmost 25% of the Republican base is going to be too much of a "right wing nutjob" for the leftmost 75% of the Democratic base. Similarly, any Republican candidate that is acceptable to even the rightmost 25% of the Democratic base is going to be too much of a "left wing nutjob" for the rightmost 75% of the Republican base.
Neither view is insane; it has to do with the differing lifestyles of the areas. In Urban areas, the average citizen can not be self-sufficient or live "off the land" since population density is very high and the nearest "land" may be hundreds of miles away. There is little in the way of entertainment or behavior of any kind (i.e. even going to the park in some areas) that does not require capital (i.e. dollars) to experience. There is no natural way to obtain food or water or to dispose of waste; these things must be bussed in and out, also requiring infrastructure and dollars. The greatest danger is from crime--the fact that if you walk out your door at 2.00 in the morning, you have a good chance of getting shot, knifed, mugged by someone who isn't well off enough to be supporting themselves. This, danger, too, can only be mitigated by government intervention: cops to look out for and arrest criminals and welfare to provide such criminals with enough help that they don't need to be on the streets any longer. You can't defend yourself because a) most of the criminals are better armed than you are [hence the desire for gun control] and b) population density is so high that any gunshot in self defense, in any direction, will likely go through ten or twelve apartments at least--potentially killing someone else's mother, fath
now I'm disgusted by our entire country
Exactly. I watched the election with a circle of people who had faith in the American public going into yesterday and were shocked by the result... truly stunned and flabbergasted.
And the conversation all night and well into today was quite simple, and its narrative thread over several hours and among people of various ages, genders, and backgrounds can be reduced to this: "How can we live here any more? It's now clear that we hate the majority and that they hate us. We're outnumbered by lunatics, warmongers, and crusaders. We hate America and we want to leave. And once we're away and living somewhere else, we're beginning to think we'll hope it falls or dissolves or is attacked by the rest of the world en masse."
Maps were actually brought out and discussions of what other English-speaking countries would take them went on for hours. The people I was staying with honestly seemed to feel threatened in their personal and familial safety by what is they now see to be a clear ultra-conservative American majority.
This is not in some political meeting or radical college club, mind you. It was in an average, suburban house in small-town California. There is a split in America, and it will destroy the nation before it is healed.
I'd say that we should repay them with SPAM.
That's right... a vigilante "SPAM squad" manning a truck carrying dozens of tons of SPAM, along with a delivery system not unlike a tree chipper that can accept SPAM by the ton and spray greasy SPAM puree hundreds of feet.
The SPAM squad would pull up to the houses of known spammers and douse the house, car, grounds, mailbox, and anything else in sight in 6-12 inches of greasy salted pork goo that would take years to clean up. If the weight of the flying SPAM puree hitting their front windows just "happend" to break them and fill their living room with chunks of SPAM as well, by "accident," that would just be too bad.
Say, 50-60 tons of SPAM per spammer in flash vigilante "actions" out to keep each of them busy for a few weeks (months? years?) at least trying to clean up their persons, personal effects, and lives and drive the smell (and flies) away. Just spray-and-go and let them come stumbling out, slipping and sliding and cursing, realizing that they have finally gotten their comeuppance.
You're wrong. I read and wrote before I started Kindergarten. I was always 6-7 years "above grade level" but of course they couldn't move me that far ahead because it wouldn't work out socially, so they moved me 1-2 ahead (back and forth during some years, unfortunately, depending on the acceptance of the other children) and tried to cope with what they saw as an "extremely gifted and talented child" in the classroom.
But there was no magic in it. I simply learned to spell by reading. In fifth grade I would dick around with the stupid English textbook with three-page stories and fill out the stupid worksheets and then I would go home and read Cervantes or Steinbeck, etc. I was only able to do that because my parents had read with me since I was an infant. My mother and father cooked up their own set of colorful "readers" for me and read with me (not merely "to" me) even before I was speaking. Others scoffed, of course-- he's just a baby, he can't even crawl yet, what's the point-- but it seems to have worked.
I don't think that English orthography is particularly difficult compared to English lexical/structural semantics, grammar, etc., yet babies do not learn to speak by "rote" at all. They learn to speak by hearing spoken language and associating the phenomenological experience with the context of a given situation.
My parents never taught me how to spell through exercises, yet I never missed a single spelling word all throughout K-12, ever, on any exam. Why? Because the spelling exams were painfully easy to me, not because I was any smarter than anyone else but because I had parents who simply encouraged me to read anything and everything that I wanted to read while at the same time taking care to always expand my horizons, thus adding to the reservoir of material from which I could draw and in which I took an interest.
No, I am not suggesting that we stop teaching. What I am suggesting, in keeping with the thread of this discussion, is that the metrics that we use to measure success in these "classes" is indicative of the fact that they are not necessarily interested in whether or not students ever actually learn.
In order to pass chemistry, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass biology, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass trig, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
In order to pass English, you must scratch on a piece of paper with some graphite in order to replicate the patterns of chalk on a blackboard and behave yourself and not "talk back."
It's behavioral training, like we give rats in mazes. We're creating nine-to-fivers, not thinkers. If we really cared about learning, then you'd have to do something involving chemicals to pass chemistry, something involving living things to pass biology, something involving numeric problem-solving to pass mathematics, and something involving high-function communication to pass English.
My parents never tested me with a pencil and paper, yet they taught me more than the school ever could. The school on the other hand taught me more about behvaioral control than my parents ever did.
Students should read Foucault in high school, not attend high school to form ideal to-scale laboratories for examining the underpinnings of "Discipline and Punish."
How many of these courses that you didn't care about then, are you glad you took now?
Zero. I am currently a freelance photojournalist/author who spends the rest of my time doing volunteer work and network administration. I have a B.A. in anthropology and an M.A. in sociology.
- Photography was not available to me K-12
- Computing was not available to me K-12
- Anthro and sociology = not avail K-12
English, mathematics, biology, physical science, and chemistry I took in K-12, yes, but I learned nothing in those classes. Literally. Luckily, both of my parents had graduate degrees in the sciences and my mom had an English education undergraduate background.
Every kid in my high school aced English, math, biology, physical science, and chemistry. None of them know anything about these subject to this day anyway, except those like me who were taught at home as well. The rest may as well have just stayed home and watched cartoons until they were 18.
I was reading novels already when I entered kindergarten because my parents read to me all the time as a kid. My dad had me doing times tables and playing with (late '70/early '80s vintage) computers before I ever saw the inside of a public school. My mom taught me immense amounts writing and biochem over the years. They both encouraged me to spend as much time as I wanted at the library, reading NatGeo and SciAm... the both took me to university bookstores regularly and just let me snag whatever I was interested in.
Everything I know and all of my success proceeds directly from after school hours with my parents and from my time at university.
I can honestly say that K-12 did absolutely nothing but make my question the structure and ethnical foundation of society and the social contract... Not because they taught me to do this, but as a reaction to the complete and utter hypocrisy and transparent worthlessness of the educational system and its relationship to "productive" society.
It should:
- Have a 5x7 or larger screen
- Be less than 0.5" thick
- Recognize all handwriting perfectly
- without needing a "cursor"
- Have a chronologica/subject-based interface
- store data automatically, rather than in "files"
In short, it should be a thinner Newton 2100.
I am one of those who swear by the original Microsoft Natural Keyboard (it killed my budding carpal tunnel, on the recommendation of a specialist!) and I agree, Microsoft should be a hardware company... their hardware is great, rugged, and appreciated, and doesn't overreach in terms of thought and market control, unlike their software...
How long will it be before we have the technology to pare all of the inefficiencies away and miniaturize to the point that we just have a clean, simple, powerful phone so small that it fits in your pocket, and none of us will have to carry around the extra bulk or learn to use all this other stuff ever again?!
Oh, wait...
If you believe this, the possibilities are already near endless...
Now.
Various versions of Word aren't 100% compatible. Dvorak and some editors tried to use the change-tracking markup, and "we had a huge mess." What was this mess? He didn't specify.
The problem is that changes tracked with Word 2000/XP lose their author information when loaded in to earlier versions of Word. They all show up as an unrejectable change made by "unknown" rather than a rejectable change made by one of the individuals in your group.
There are some interesting theorists at the intersection between neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, and history that are trying to cope with just these topics.
Check out Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio which treats these questions from the perspective of a neuroscientist, or for a broader, more cultural-historical view on the role of emotion in society, The Navigation of Feeling by William Reddy.
Untrue. If you think media, hollywood, and American youth are slanted left, then you, too, are not at all familiar with the fundamentals of leftist philosophy and have probably never been outside the US.
"Perhaps we form political affiliations by semiconsciously detecting commonalities with other people, commonalities that ultimately reflect a shared pattern of brain function."
Can just as easily be stated as:
"We form political affiliations with people who think like we do."
Umm... no shit. Surprise, surprise, everyone: we generally vote differently from people who think and feel differently than we do about life!
After perusing it, I gave this one to my sisters and mother. It covers all the same things, but in print, with Figures:
Teach Yourself Red Hat Linux Fedora