I've read some of Finklestein; man seems to have his stuff together.
A lighter but still well-sourced book (from memory) is "The Historical Jesus"; although the author is a "believer" he's done some fascinating homework.
I thank you for laying out a fine approach to getting a good perspective on this and entry to further reading. Although I've read several translations of the Bible more'n once, ditto Quran, along with some Hindu and other stuff along the way, my speed is more limited to something like "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" although I'm certainly not averse to some digging.
You're correct on the lead; a layer of which has long been a staple of building sound-attenuating walls. Found that out in mid-'70s when doing the materials and methods research for building a recording studio. (Interesting that the band for whom the studio was originally built laid down many tracks in one of the member's three-car garage - they liked the 'bounce' off the slab. We'd sometimes be up in the rafters with sheets of plywood or sheetrock for sweetener or mute. Fun times.)
Most bridges need fixing or replacing, and have done for decades in not a few cases. Much of the power grid needs repair, renewal, rebuilding. We could get smart enough to build a fair number of improved nuclear plants and significantly get into thorium cycle - that covers everything from mining, tailings reclamation to all kinds manufacturing of parts for this and that. Lots of crops are under-harvesting even where gleaning is allowed. I've lost all track of how many thousands of miles of waterways, including the Intra-Coastal, need a raft of work - I plain got tired of looking at the mess after a while.
There is a whole shitload of basic infrastructure work that needs doing but has been put off, for a variety of reasons, none of which are particularly good.
Hell, just for grins we could do something weird such as rebuild, say, Detroit.
And even if the government is the last builder of resort, it'd still be a big plus because the monies spent would be mostly all spent _here_. We could have close to full employment for the first time in decades; people working, consuming, paying taxes. There's plenty of folks have done the crunching, so go dig some useful info out; I found lots, last I looked, browsers and hard drives and missing backups ago. Stop with the kneejerks; heck, take just five minutes per day this week and just look around you, and tell me if you don't see stuff needs doing.
Yes, there are some bad people need sorting, in some fashion, so do that. What we are doing isn't working so well. The War on $flavor_of_the_day is a scam, to inflate fear, divide the populace, extract money, consolidate power. Why not solve some problems instead? Solving problems invites a bit of calm and reason and cooperation. What a concept.
(Not to add an over-burden to my own wish list [snicker] but while we're about it, how's about an opt-in national single-payer health service, publicly-financed elections, re-districting by something half-way sane (even by ZIP code would be an improvement), and some real freacking transparency to government. Might be a real good idea to have an actual education system, and pay teachers for a change.)
Folks keep sayin' they want balanced budgets and all that. Fine. Then bloody well look where the money goes, how it's spent, and what we get in real return to the economy - not someone's off-shore accounts. And enough already with the wonderful trade agreements which have gutted us, killing the middle class in the process (well, there's lots of fingers in that slice of pie.)
In my state it's illegal to ask if one is a felon on a job application.* Further, if the company later finds out and fires you, that's illegal as well. Guess how many companies have been prosecuted, let alone indicted. Zero.
*I don't remember how it's phrased or dealt with, but there is a requirement for disclosure if your felony is directly related to the position being applied for, i.e., one convicted of fraud or embezzlement applying to be a bank teller. (My approach was for some place that had an HR chain, tell 'em squat. When talking with an owner or a real manager, I'd tell 'em straight up, "Btw, FWIW, I have a felony conviction; if it might be a problem for you down the road I thought you should know." Most appreciated it, a few slammed the door, most, if it might be of concern, discussed it with me.)
A reason for ex-cons being better at, say, customer support is that being in prison tends to develop and hone inter-personal skills. I'm not talking about "go along to get along" crap, but the reality of communicating effectively with people with wide diversity in personal background, culture, and intelligence, and their own varying grasp of those skills. (I've also met some fine people behind bars - there's quite the variance of sharp, intelligent, well-read, even wise. In my locale it was also a place to try picking up a bit of Spanish. At some point, "If you don't mind, what was your hometown like?" opened doors - and people.)
If all somebody knows of prison, police, and the justice system comes from television, then they know little to nothing of the reality of it.
And you're right. Finding an employer who'll knowingly hire an ex-con is non-trivial in the extreme. Back when, only places I found in a city of 50k and lots of manufacturing and its infrastructure were a bar owner I knew from before and the porn shop. Only things they cared about were if I did the work and was honest.
Sign comes in handy in very noisy environments, or conversely where silence is golden. Then there's job-specific signing, as for crane operators and their spotters.
Finding a roommate on Craigslist sounds wonderful until you start looking into it. Location? Basics of compatibility in communal chores; personal habits? Owning a car on 500-700/month means you already have one and you haven't budgeted for big-ticket failures - or you have all the tools needed, garage space, access to spare parts at cost or less... so basically that's bullshit. Public transpo means generally at least a fair-sized city of 50k up. Cabs? Good luck. Even with a senior/disabled discount card, that only is affordable for first zone, and it doesn't take too many $3.50 fares to soak up any "disposable" portion of income. There's a van service @$3.60 one way which really helps when you can make an appointment two days in advance. I'm still on crutches after a year which only complicates things, and can't stand long enough w/o passing out from pain to wait for a bus. On a good day, tho, I can walk to the groceria or Walgreens.
Hell, I'm living in a rooming house a few blocks from the "downtown" in a city of around 55k. Got 160sq.ft. with my own bathroom (5x10, part of that 160); rent goes up on the 1st, five bucks/wk for heat, so that's now $115/wk. There goes the $500 Social Security check.
Food. Well, on that income, one qualifies for food stamps or whatever they're called now. In my state it's food share, I forget what the Feds call it. Otherwise if you pay for food out of that income you're screwed; a steady diet of rice and beans takes you just so far. Without the ~$190 of that I'd be on the street, 'cuz the Sally Ann shelter is already full, with a long line of applicants, and I'm told even with the list there's already a line every morning on the off chance someday moves or is kicked out. There are no alternatives in this city except for one church that sleeps twenty-two or thereabouts.
Phone for $23/month? Wow. I keep looking; I've got a "lifeline" phone, and just the calls to insurance, clinic, pharmacy require adding minutes. Else Net10 is still predictably about the most affordable starting from scratch.
So, I get two smaller checks, totalling ~$250, so I'm theoretically in hog heaven compared to this person in Phoenix. Time Warner now graciously has upped my Internet bill to $53 at no greater capability despite advertised speeds and feeds. Yeah, and I splurge, too. Last month I bought a scarf for a tenner, and a pint of Guinness down to the local for five (well, four plus tip, during Happy Hour.)
So I'm doin' good; 2 yards a month for stuff, personal and household supplies, transpo - which has been running a good hundred what with all the extra stuff from the lung cancer in June, co-pays, laundromat. My desktop monitor died Tuesday on the five-year old home-built tower; using my five-year old laptop from better days. If I'm careful and lucky I should be able to get a new monitor in three months. Yup, living large and loving it. Nice to know, and I am grateful, that I'm doing better than a whole bunch of my fellow sapients. Nobody's shooting at me, either.
But, comfortable? No fucking way. AlphaWolf_HK is doing good, and more power to him or her, but I'd say that's an exceptional situation.
First of all is the really important question, "Does this guy ever sleep?" The answer, of course, is yes. He's cloned himself several times and has learned how to do effective, conflict-free, brain copying.
I like the soc-tech points, never seen it laid out like that, and it makes easy sense and calc, once one arrives at how to go about assigning those points to begin with. Actually, back of the envelope WAG calculation is neat, it allows for slop and helps show the shapes of things (which is not a shabby tune, either, come to think of it.)
One of the things that's struck me as odd and very wrong is how well the dinosaurs resist the apparent knowing of post-scarcity realities and convince so many that it's impossible to reach without resorting to the worst examples of regimentation combined with enforced sub-standard living conditions for all (except themselves, of course). This so they can continue the narrow Mammon game (deRopp) of accumulating valuta, owning the means of production, thus having control of how the world is organized and ruled. Works well for them, but apart from having an abundant supply of organic labor units, consumers, and cannon fodder, it's rather like they wipe their asses with the bulk of humanity. I'd hazard the guess that they might score rather low on the empathy scale. OTOH, maybe not. After all, they might see themselves and their peers as humans and the rest of us as sub-humans masquerading in the shape and form of real humans.
Ah, Richard Buckminster Fuller, one of my heroes. Dude's a trip, man, fuller of insights and thought-provokers than any handful of normal geniuses; he self-described as a geometer. It may have been in one of the Synergetics volumes where he had the thought experiment of describing sub-atomic particle interactions as icosohedra analyzed with integer fractions, ("geometry and arithmetic uber alles" - my description of it.)
Wood - even dead it has a feel to it. Sure, there's the mechanics, the engineering, the chemistry, but there's a half-dreaming thing when using it. Metal fascinates, wood soothes.
And not just M.I.T.; any university that retains some of the old intent and structure - a fire-hose, yes, to a burning mind, ablaze with curiosity and the need to know, to encompass, to understand. With at least a foot in the world - to build, explore, make better, more world-around enjoyable. Well, on a good day, anyhow. [grin]
Depending on what and how it is, a virtual world, along with a pet such as dog or cat, might offer a safe place to "deal with" certain otherwise often debilitating things such as PTSD, grief, depression, anomie. A place to explore, work out, arrange and re-arrange, one goal to find safeways to bring to RW and function, then heal and grow. Maybe.
Cheers, mate; by odd circumstance I have some more reading to do....
Listen, especially viz. the soc-tech points thing, thanks for putting into words a whole raft of different stuffs that's been working around in my mind on and off for a long, long time. It makes a convenient thought-structure upon which to hang stuff and play around with it better.
I've been trying to remember some of the want-ads from late-Sixties into the Seventies. IIRC, this was around the time you started seeing things such as systems analyst, programmer-analyst, but most were for programmer. On the bulk civil service tests where they had, say, levels one through three, in the description for the lowest level they'd say something like 'writes programming code according to [the guy above you] specification' or some such. A friend started there, then worked up to section head about a decade later. I asked him what it was like; he said it was mind-numbing, in addition to the daily quota for number of lines of code. It was considered to be barely up from data entry or keypunch - except managers grudgingly allowed as how one had to think a little bit.
[chuckle] Yeah, could be. But if the guy does say, "yeah, ok" then there's a chance he's interested and not just a conversational "yeah, yeah, already." I figure it's worth a shot.
I had occasion to re-read my comment to your post. In so doing I saw that my aside concerning your handle might all too readily be taken amiss.
So, for the record, I _like_ your handle. Among other things, it invites thought. Optimal, while self-explanatory, raises a deeper question, namely, how does one go about finding out the parameters, assign values, and try to arrive at what one might hope, for the bearer, is a pragmatic balance of all the stuff.
Sheesh, I had enough trouble just coming up with a name, let alone having it mean anything.
Nice. Some really good comments by the time I got here, but you get the in-a-nutshell award. Last line's a killer. Now, a good critic can separate wheat from chaff, back up with good argument and examples, lead to a bit of learning, but good critics are rare. So I'll take the doers every time.
The "I'm so glad I'm a beta" elitism crap has done much harm. I wonder, is that really so much down to human nature, or more part of the rationale for self-promoting sanctimony?
Indeed. I saw the same thing at MSU in East Lansing during the mid to late '60s, then watched the shifts you mentioned over the next few decades.
At the time I attended, the geeks were lumped as "the math-dorm-ADS-crowd". ADS - Alumni Distinguished Scholar scholarship competition and award, dorms because in those years of _in loco parentis_ the first two years had to be lived on campus unless you were married - the geeks mostly didn't object much; math is obvious (no degree yet in computer science), and crowd used ironically. Outward signs include glasses, pocket protectors, and slide rules - oft-times hanging from a belt clip.
And your observation on 'the big lumping together' is spot on. There are some sub-species of geek these days but I expect overall there's still the big lumping to achieve efficiency of disdain. ---- Back then, the distinction we had in our own minds, when it needed to be used, was between computer scientists and data-processing professionals (it was all D.P. then), and maybe hacker - the guys and gals at three in the morning between floors pulling cable as readily as coding over a hiccup in the batch scheduler. Today, it's more by level of abstraction when you get to the programming portion. I think most use it in their own heads even if unawares. (many liberties taken, below...)
There's the program designer - the software architect, project lead, whathaveyou. Takes goal or task and limns it. The big picture part. Goals, tests, milestones, org chart, flow chart, etc. Interfaces management.
The programmer - breaks it on down to modules, subs, the 'what has to happen here' and 'how this fits into'. Points out gotchas.
The coder - yeah. Nuts and bolts. We'd like to presume he can test and validate input and double-check with programmer to avoid gaping barn doors of security problems. He's often the lucky fellow who gets to do the documentation because the programmer can't be bothered with things that are beneath him.
And all three layers of abstraction and in-group societal roles are often right between our own ears. Can be distracting but makes it easy to say, "hey, we could move this over here and save a bunch on inter-process comms" or "y'know, if we took this other approach, we could eliminate this whole section and also streamline the alternative."
Of course, that only works in the old days or for small projects. Anything else can be a right charley-foxtrot no matter what.
Now, for the guy who regards the whole thing the same as plumbing or carpentry... point to the weather app on his phone.
"See this? Tap, and you get a weather report and forecast?" Yeah. "Wanna know how they do that?", glance at watch, "In three and a half minutes; impress your friends?" Yeah, ok. Then show him - languages, stuff that can be grabbed from sources and tables, what has to be written from scratch, how it all fits in a program on phone, on a server somewhere, a bit on how it's displayed, call up a page of code from anything so he can see how weird and arcane it is... and you're done. [Warning: it really should all be done in the three and a half minutes. Because you said so, and it's also impressive as all get out.] "Hey, I'm dry, ready for a brew?" get him one, maybe he gets you one, talk about other stuff or move on. Either way, you've done your part to pass on some stuff, get some cred, make _him_ feel in the know and that's huge - and he's a bit more aware and maybe not so ready to be so easily dismissive in future.
Congrats - you've made cross-species contact. And a friendly-wave-in-passing acquaintance down at the local. Networking, man, and good human fun also.
This deserves up mod informative. Or deserved, since I'm two days late reading it.
Thanks, Bill, for the fast-compression thing - it's well worth the reading; I think it would be good general knowledge compared to what many of us carry around in our heads concerning CPR.
Oops, sorry; in direct answer your question: yes, the latter is the more reasonable.
I fear I got carried away in my other reply; I'd just written one of my representative-types and had a bit left over on my mind. I didn't want to overwhelm or piss off the poor guy - I gather he's enough on his plate just now. So you got the blue plate special instead of the particular item you asked for. Sorry 'bout that.
It may be thought jejune, and I do not mean to belittle possible bad outcomes due to not having a wide database of recent comms to look at, but on the whole I would prefer for many reasons no surveillance whatsoever upon one's own citizens, nor the loophole of lateral trades of same amongst partners.
Surveillance by my lights ought be by specific warrant for a specific time for a specific reason signed off by a specific judge in accord with a specific law and all such to be under complete specific oversight by specific people subject to the complete open consent of the body politic.
With some exceptions for wars hot and cold, history shows that, particularly in ostensible peace (and the Wars on $thing doesn't, to my mind, qualify) that much of what is lumped under intel may often be better served by generally straightforward police methods. Please note I also abhor and eschew entrapment; it's one thing to keep tabs upon or infiltrate an organization, it's another entire to foment and equip plots to secure convictions.
[The Cold War has been used by some as a primer; it's early days and all, but I think it as likely that it may be as much aberration than a model for current and future policy. I could well be wrong and keep the thought open; I can go only by what I've read from open material.]
Do we need intel, in the classic sense? Hell, yes. There are some nasty people making for nasty places; some even try, and too many succeed in doing, nasty things. Are there better ways to accomplish the needful? IMO, again, hell, yes.
Depending upon source, NSA FBI, sweeping surveillance has prevented between 50-150 terrorist plots. When asked to be specific by members of Congress, one was cited, IIRC. If memory serves, although there may have been "acting upon information received" it was overseas, and done via police. Total signals vacuuming of the U.S. has apparently - going by the papers - not done much; it didn't appear to help with anything here the past few years, anyway.
Look, I'm an old Boy Scout law and order, peace love dope old burnt-out hippie; live, love, think, build, grow, celebrate the good, help each other through the bad kind of guy. I want to trust my government. I want to trust the people who on behalf of me and my fellow citizens use their skills to go into the dark places and do the needful to keep things copacetic. I want them to have the tools they need to do their jobs. I also want them to be able to do their work without it being necessary to turn the whole fucking planet into some kind of uber police state born out of some dystopian nightmare.
Any state can call itself a republic. Being a republic requires open government, rule of law, and accountability.
Wow, yes, no doubt; problems aplenty. I fear the repercussions will be a long time unfolding, will get worse, and will do some lasting harm.
I'm a U.S. citizen and wish no harm to my country. This in no way means I can excuse what it's government, or some parties in that government, have done. Doing the harm was easy, "because we can", but making things right is not a gimme.
What the problem is as seen by a number of people including the original submitter of the Patriot Act to Congress, is the wholesale collection by the NSA of all the electronic communications _of its own people_ - to no known good purpose and in direct contravention of law, the Constitution, and what some might even quaintly characterize as morality.
To state it somewhat differently, Optimal Cynic (now there's a fine thought, that handle, and a heavy responsibility to live up to), the problem is not about having an agency tasked with foreign signals intelligence (one of the NSA's founding tasks; there are several more including cryptanalysis of said signals and cryptography in aid of securing our own communications) "spying" on the communications of other governments.
The problem as talked about here and elsewhere since, what, June?, is the total Hoovering of all internal electronic comms, on the off chance that sometime between now and the heat death of the Universe some citizen might have some electronic intercourse with someone from another country and that that communication might somehow possibly have some relevance to some potential investigation of someone else who talks with someone else who is also from another country and that what is talked about might be flagged for inquiry as being somehow inimical to the interests of this country or of its safety or that of its citizens. Or so the ostensible reasoning goes.
The totality of this has been done in secret from the secret court charged with issuing warrants and conducting oversight and from the Congress which set out as part of the Patriot Act a section setting up such court, etc., and which is supposed to be in charge of oversight which includes being fully briefed on what said court and agency are doing vis-a-vis their tasking. This isn't following the comms of a suspect under investigation via warrant and foreign intel as is done in normal fruitful investigations by police agencies, this is the complete sucking up of all electronic comms excepting garage-door openers on everyone inside our borders. Just in passing, the agency has consistently lied about this to the secret court and to Congress. Well, technically, no; the lies changed in light of every new revelation as to what they were doing, so it might be better to say repeatedly than consistently.
D'you begin to get a glimpse or glimmer that the problem is not spying on others, but on us? (I think it might have been Shaw, "The ability to see things as they are is called cynicism by those who haven't got it." May have been Bierce. Or even Wilde; they were all pretty sharp.) Anyway, do you see, optimally or otherwise?
Yeah, and the billions blown by an LGA comes from direct tax revenues, even if some of the bookkeeping is na levo. OTH that large biz is being paid by ad companies, the costs of which are part of the 'hidden tax' that increases the cost of all goods and services. It's a bit of a toss-up, depending on where one stands, etc.
Hmm. Are there reasonably good data on just what percentage ad companies add to the price of mainstream consumer goods and services? (I purely don't know, haven't tried to look [sue me, it's late and I'm lazy, and at the moment wouldn't know where to start], but am curious nonetheless.)
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I've read some of Finklestein; man seems to have his stuff together.
A lighter but still well-sourced book (from memory) is "The Historical Jesus"; although the author is a "believer" he's done some fascinating homework.
I thank you for laying out a fine approach to getting a good perspective on this and entry to further reading. Although I've read several translations of the Bible more'n once, ditto Quran, along with some Hindu and other stuff along the way, my speed is more limited to something like "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" although I'm certainly not averse to some digging.
You're correct on the lead; a layer of which has long been a staple of building sound-attenuating walls. Found that out in mid-'70s when doing the materials and methods research for building a recording studio. (Interesting that the band for whom the studio was originally built laid down many tracks in one of the member's three-car garage - they liked the 'bounce' off the slab. We'd sometimes be up in the rafters with sheets of plywood or sheetrock for sweetener or mute. Fun times.)
thanks for posting this; short, interesting read. Mr. Vijayan's comment on right team is spot on. True for most stuff I've seen.
Amen. Keep it simple and easy enough on the front end where people won't mind, might even like, to enter the damn data.
I was looking forward to reading the article linked in the summary, btw, but got turned off by the paywall. Too bad.
Most bridges need fixing or replacing, and have done for decades in not a few cases. Much of the power grid needs repair, renewal, rebuilding. We could get smart enough to build a fair number of improved nuclear plants and significantly get into thorium cycle - that covers everything from mining, tailings reclamation to all kinds manufacturing of parts for this and that. Lots of crops are under-harvesting even where gleaning is allowed. I've lost all track of how many thousands of miles of waterways, including the Intra-Coastal, need a raft of work - I plain got tired of looking at the mess after a while.
There is a whole shitload of basic infrastructure work that needs doing but has been put off, for a variety of reasons, none of which are particularly good.
Hell, just for grins we could do something weird such as rebuild, say, Detroit.
And even if the government is the last builder of resort, it'd still be a big plus because the monies spent would be mostly all spent _here_. We could have close to full employment for the first time in decades; people working, consuming, paying taxes. There's plenty of folks have done the crunching, so go dig some useful info out; I found lots, last I looked, browsers and hard drives and missing backups ago. Stop with the kneejerks; heck, take just five minutes per day this week and just look around you, and tell me if you don't see stuff needs doing.
Yes, there are some bad people need sorting, in some fashion, so do that. What we are doing isn't working so well. The War on $flavor_of_the_day is a scam, to inflate fear, divide the populace, extract money, consolidate power. Why not solve some problems instead? Solving problems invites a bit of calm and reason and cooperation. What a concept.
(Not to add an over-burden to my own wish list [snicker] but while we're about it, how's about an opt-in national single-payer health service, publicly-financed elections, re-districting by something half-way sane (even by ZIP code would be an improvement), and some real freacking transparency to government. Might be a real good idea to have an actual education system, and pay teachers for a change.)
Folks keep sayin' they want balanced budgets and all that. Fine. Then bloody well look where the money goes, how it's spent, and what we get in real return to the economy - not someone's off-shore accounts. And enough already with the wonderful trade agreements which have gutted us, killing the middle class in the process (well, there's lots of fingers in that slice of pie.)
I can just see, wherever he is, his wicked-fine smile at partial affirmation of some of his speculation.
One of the beauties of Universe is the slew of un-answered questions; that so few seem to give a damn, one of its uglies.
In my state it's illegal to ask if one is a felon on a job application.* Further, if the company later finds out and fires you, that's illegal as well. Guess how many companies have been prosecuted, let alone indicted. Zero.
*I don't remember how it's phrased or dealt with, but there is a requirement for disclosure if your felony is directly related to the position being applied for, i.e., one convicted of fraud or embezzlement applying to be a bank teller. (My approach was for some place that had an HR chain, tell 'em squat. When talking with an owner or a real manager, I'd tell 'em straight up, "Btw, FWIW, I have a felony conviction; if it might be a problem for you down the road I thought you should know." Most appreciated it, a few slammed the door, most, if it might be of concern, discussed it with me.)
A reason for ex-cons being better at, say, customer support is that being in prison tends to develop and hone inter-personal skills. I'm not talking about "go along to get along" crap, but the reality of communicating effectively with people with wide diversity in personal background, culture, and intelligence, and their own varying grasp of those skills. (I've also met some fine people behind bars - there's quite the variance of sharp, intelligent, well-read, even wise. In my locale it was also a place to try picking up a bit of Spanish. At some point, "If you don't mind, what was your hometown like?" opened doors - and people.)
If all somebody knows of prison, police, and the justice system comes from television, then they know little to nothing of the reality of it.
And you're right. Finding an employer who'll knowingly hire an ex-con is non-trivial in the extreme. Back when, only places I found in a city of 50k and lots of manufacturing and its infrastructure were a bar owner I knew from before and the porn shop. Only things they cared about were if I did the work and was honest.
Sign comes in handy in very noisy environments, or conversely where silence is golden. Then there's job-specific signing, as for crane operators and their spotters.
Aina? Yaderhey, I was better in the '70s.
Agreed.
Finding a roommate on Craigslist sounds wonderful until you start looking into it. Location? Basics of compatibility in communal chores; personal habits? Owning a car on 500-700/month means you already have one and you haven't budgeted for big-ticket failures - or you have all the tools needed, garage space, access to spare parts at cost or less... so basically that's bullshit. Public transpo means generally at least a fair-sized city of 50k up. Cabs? Good luck. Even with a senior/disabled discount card, that only is affordable for first zone, and it doesn't take too many $3.50 fares to soak up any "disposable" portion of income. There's a van service @$3.60 one way which really helps when you can make an appointment two days in advance. I'm still on crutches after a year which only complicates things, and can't stand long enough w/o passing out from pain to wait for a bus. On a good day, tho, I can walk to the groceria or Walgreens.
Hell, I'm living in a rooming house a few blocks from the "downtown" in a city of around 55k. Got 160sq.ft. with my own bathroom (5x10, part of that 160); rent goes up on the 1st, five bucks/wk for heat, so that's now $115/wk. There goes the $500 Social Security check.
Food. Well, on that income, one qualifies for food stamps or whatever they're called now. In my state it's food share, I forget what the Feds call it. Otherwise if you pay for food out of that income you're screwed; a steady diet of rice and beans takes you just so far. Without the ~$190 of that I'd be on the street, 'cuz the Sally Ann shelter is already full, with a long line of applicants, and I'm told even with the list there's already a line every morning on the off chance someday moves or is kicked out. There are no alternatives in this city except for one church that sleeps twenty-two or thereabouts.
Phone for $23/month? Wow. I keep looking; I've got a "lifeline" phone, and just the calls to insurance, clinic, pharmacy require adding minutes. Else Net10 is still predictably about the most affordable starting from scratch.
So, I get two smaller checks, totalling ~$250, so I'm theoretically in hog heaven compared to this person in Phoenix. Time Warner now graciously has upped my Internet bill to $53 at no greater capability despite advertised speeds and feeds. Yeah, and I splurge, too. Last month I bought a scarf for a tenner, and a pint of Guinness down to the local for five (well, four plus tip, during Happy Hour.)
So I'm doin' good; 2 yards a month for stuff, personal and household supplies, transpo - which has been running a good hundred what with all the extra stuff from the lung cancer in June, co-pays, laundromat. My desktop monitor died Tuesday on the five-year old home-built tower; using my five-year old laptop from better days. If I'm careful and lucky I should be able to get a new monitor in three months. Yup, living large and loving it. Nice to know, and I am grateful, that I'm doing better than a whole bunch of my fellow sapients. Nobody's shooting at me, either.
But, comfortable? No fucking way. AlphaWolf_HK is doing good, and more power to him or her, but I'd say that's an exceptional situation.
First of all is the really important question, "Does this guy ever sleep?" The answer, of course, is yes. He's cloned himself several times and has learned how to do effective, conflict-free, brain copying.
I like the soc-tech points, never seen it laid out like that, and it makes easy sense and calc, once one arrives at how to go about assigning those points to begin with. Actually, back of the envelope WAG calculation is neat, it allows for slop and helps show the shapes of things (which is not a shabby tune, either, come to think of it.)
One of the things that's struck me as odd and very wrong is how well the dinosaurs resist the apparent knowing of post-scarcity realities and convince so many that it's impossible to reach without resorting to the worst examples of regimentation combined with enforced sub-standard living conditions for all (except themselves, of course). This so they can continue the narrow Mammon game (deRopp) of accumulating valuta, owning the means of production, thus having control of how the world is organized and ruled. Works well for them, but apart from having an abundant supply of organic labor units, consumers, and cannon fodder, it's rather like they wipe their asses with the bulk of humanity. I'd hazard the guess that they might score rather low on the empathy scale. OTOH, maybe not. After all, they might see themselves and their peers as humans and the rest of us as sub-humans masquerading in the shape and form of real humans.
Ah, Richard Buckminster Fuller, one of my heroes. Dude's a trip, man, fuller of insights and thought-provokers than any handful of normal geniuses; he self-described as a geometer. It may have been in one of the Synergetics volumes where he had the thought experiment of describing sub-atomic particle interactions as icosohedra analyzed with integer fractions, ("geometry and arithmetic uber alles" - my description of it.)
Wood - even dead it has a feel to it. Sure, there's the mechanics, the engineering, the chemistry, but there's a half-dreaming thing when using it. Metal fascinates, wood soothes.
And not just M.I.T.; any university that retains some of the old intent and structure - a fire-hose, yes, to a burning mind, ablaze with curiosity and the need to know, to encompass, to understand. With at least a foot in the world - to build, explore, make better, more world-around enjoyable. Well, on a good day, anyhow. [grin]
Depending on what and how it is, a virtual world, along with a pet such as dog or cat, might offer a safe place to "deal with" certain otherwise often debilitating things such as PTSD, grief, depression, anomie. A place to explore, work out, arrange and re-arrange, one goal to find safeways to bring to RW and function, then heal and grow. Maybe.
Cheers, mate; by odd circumstance I have some more reading to do....
Listen, especially viz. the soc-tech points thing, thanks for putting into words a whole raft of different stuffs that's been working around in my mind on and off for a long, long time. It makes a convenient thought-structure upon which to hang stuff and play around with it better.
Lucky you.
I've been trying to remember some of the want-ads from late-Sixties into the Seventies. IIRC, this was around the time you started seeing things such as systems analyst, programmer-analyst, but most were for programmer. On the bulk civil service tests where they had, say, levels one through three, in the description for the lowest level they'd say something like 'writes programming code according to [the guy above you] specification' or some such. A friend started there, then worked up to section head about a decade later. I asked him what it was like; he said it was mind-numbing, in addition to the daily quota for number of lines of code. It was considered to be barely up from data entry or keypunch - except managers grudgingly allowed as how one had to think a little bit.
[chuckle] Yeah, could be. But if the guy does say, "yeah, ok" then there's a chance he's interested and not just a conversational "yeah, yeah, already." I figure it's worth a shot.
Dear Optimal Cynic,
I had occasion to re-read my comment to your post. In so doing I saw that my aside concerning your handle might all too readily be taken amiss.
So, for the record, I _like_ your handle. Among other things, it invites thought. Optimal, while self-explanatory, raises a deeper question, namely, how does one go about finding out the parameters, assign values, and try to arrive at what one might hope, for the bearer, is a pragmatic balance of all the stuff.
Sheesh, I had enough trouble just coming up with a name, let alone having it mean anything.
Sincerely,
kermidge
Nice. Some really good comments by the time I got here, but you get the in-a-nutshell award. Last line's a killer. Now, a good critic can separate wheat from chaff, back up with good argument and examples, lead to a bit of learning, but good critics are rare. So I'll take the doers every time.
The "I'm so glad I'm a beta" elitism crap has done much harm. I wonder, is that really so much down to human nature, or more part of the rationale for self-promoting sanctimony?
Indeed. I saw the same thing at MSU in East Lansing during the mid to late '60s, then watched the shifts you mentioned over the next few decades.
At the time I attended, the geeks were lumped as "the math-dorm-ADS-crowd". ADS - Alumni Distinguished Scholar scholarship competition and award, dorms because in those years of _in loco parentis_ the first two years had to be lived on campus unless you were married - the geeks mostly didn't object much; math is obvious (no degree yet in computer science), and crowd used ironically. Outward signs include glasses, pocket protectors, and slide rules - oft-times hanging from a belt clip.
And your observation on 'the big lumping together' is spot on. There are some sub-species of geek these days but I expect overall there's still the big lumping to achieve efficiency of disdain.
----
Back then, the distinction we had in our own minds, when it needed to be used, was between computer scientists and data-processing professionals (it was all D.P. then), and maybe hacker - the guys and gals at three in the morning between floors pulling cable as readily as coding over a hiccup in the batch scheduler. Today, it's more by level of abstraction when you get to the programming portion. I think most use it in their own heads even if unawares. (many liberties taken, below...)
There's the program designer - the software architect, project lead, whathaveyou. Takes goal or task and limns it. The big picture part. Goals, tests, milestones, org chart, flow chart, etc. Interfaces management.
The programmer - breaks it on down to modules, subs, the 'what has to happen here' and 'how this fits into'. Points out gotchas.
The coder - yeah. Nuts and bolts. We'd like to presume he can test and validate input and double-check with programmer to avoid gaping barn doors of security problems. He's often the lucky fellow who gets to do the documentation because the programmer can't be bothered with things that are beneath him.
And all three layers of abstraction and in-group societal roles are often right between our own ears. Can be distracting but makes it easy to say, "hey, we could move this over here and save a bunch on inter-process comms" or "y'know, if we took this other approach, we could eliminate this whole section and also streamline the alternative."
Of course, that only works in the old days or for small projects. Anything else can be a right charley-foxtrot no matter what.
Now, for the guy who regards the whole thing the same as plumbing or carpentry... point to the weather app on his phone.
"See this? Tap, and you get a weather report and forecast?"
Yeah.
"Wanna know how they do that?", glance at watch, "In three and a half minutes; impress your friends?"
Yeah, ok.
Then show him - languages, stuff that can be grabbed from sources and tables, what has to be written from scratch, how it all fits in a program on phone, on a server somewhere, a bit on how it's displayed, call up a page of code from anything so he can see how weird and arcane it is... and you're done. [Warning: it really should all be done in the three and a half minutes. Because you said so, and it's also impressive as all get out.]
"Hey, I'm dry, ready for a brew?" get him one, maybe he gets you one, talk about other stuff or move on. Either way, you've done your part to pass on some stuff, get some cred, make _him_ feel in the know and that's huge - and he's a bit more aware and maybe not so ready to be so easily dismissive in future.
Congrats - you've made cross-species contact. And a friendly-wave-in-passing acquaintance down at the local. Networking, man, and good human fun also.
Do it the same way the government did for the nuclear power industry - legislate limited and capped liability.
This deserves up mod informative. Or deserved, since I'm two days late reading it.
Thanks, Bill, for the fast-compression thing - it's well worth the reading; I think it would be good general knowledge compared to what many of us carry around in our heads concerning CPR.
Oops, sorry; in direct answer your question: yes, the latter is the more reasonable.
I fear I got carried away in my other reply; I'd just written one of my representative-types and had a bit left over on my mind. I didn't want to overwhelm or piss off the poor guy - I gather he's enough on his plate just now. So you got the blue plate special instead of the particular item you asked for. Sorry 'bout that.
It may be thought jejune, and I do not mean to belittle possible bad outcomes due to not having a wide database of recent comms to look at, but on the whole I would prefer for many reasons no surveillance whatsoever upon one's own citizens, nor the loophole of lateral trades of same amongst partners.
Surveillance by my lights ought be by specific warrant for a specific time for a specific reason signed off by a specific judge in accord with a specific law and all such to be under complete specific oversight by specific people subject to the complete open consent of the body politic.
With some exceptions for wars hot and cold, history shows that, particularly in ostensible peace (and the Wars on $thing doesn't, to my mind, qualify) that much of what is lumped under intel may often be better served by generally straightforward police methods. Please note I also abhor and eschew entrapment; it's one thing to keep tabs upon or infiltrate an organization, it's another entire to foment and equip plots to secure convictions.
[The Cold War has been used by some as a primer; it's early days and all, but I think it as likely that it may be as much aberration than a model for current and future policy. I could well be wrong and keep the thought open; I can go only by what I've read from open material.]
Do we need intel, in the classic sense? Hell, yes. There are some nasty people making for nasty places; some even try, and too many succeed in doing, nasty things. Are there better ways to accomplish the needful? IMO, again, hell, yes.
Depending upon source, NSA FBI, sweeping surveillance has prevented between 50-150 terrorist plots. When asked to be specific by members of Congress, one was cited, IIRC. If memory serves, although there may have been "acting upon information received" it was overseas, and done via police. Total signals vacuuming of the U.S. has apparently - going by the papers - not done much; it didn't appear to help with anything here the past few years, anyway.
Look, I'm an old Boy Scout law and order, peace love dope old burnt-out hippie; live, love, think, build, grow, celebrate the good, help each other through the bad kind of guy. I want to trust my government. I want to trust the people who on behalf of me and my fellow citizens use their skills to go into the dark places and do the needful to keep things copacetic. I want them to have the tools they need to do their jobs. I also want them to be able to do their work without it being necessary to turn the whole fucking planet into some kind of uber police state born out of some dystopian nightmare.
Any state can call itself a republic. Being a republic requires open government, rule of law, and accountability.
So, how's that working for us?
Yeah, and ouch and oh-shit.
Extrapolating not all that much, Planetary Panopticon, anyone?
Wow, yes, no doubt; problems aplenty. I fear the repercussions will be a long time unfolding, will get worse, and will do some lasting harm.
I'm a U.S. citizen and wish no harm to my country. This in no way means I can excuse what it's government, or some parties in that government, have done. Doing the harm was easy, "because we can", but making things right is not a gimme.
bingo
Animal Farm, now with computers. And Internet. Now watch for all kinds laws against keeping electronic tabs on one's rulers.
What the problem is as seen by a number of people including the original submitter of the Patriot Act to Congress, is the wholesale collection by the NSA of all the electronic communications _of its own people_ - to no known good purpose and in direct contravention of law, the Constitution, and what some might even quaintly characterize as morality.
To state it somewhat differently, Optimal Cynic (now there's a fine thought, that handle, and a heavy responsibility to live up to), the problem is not about having an agency tasked with foreign signals intelligence (one of the NSA's founding tasks; there are several more including cryptanalysis of said signals and cryptography in aid of securing our own communications) "spying" on the communications of other governments.
The problem as talked about here and elsewhere since, what, June?, is the total Hoovering of all internal electronic comms, on the off chance that sometime between now and the heat death of the Universe some citizen might have some electronic intercourse with someone from another country and that that communication might somehow possibly have some relevance to some potential investigation of someone else who talks with someone else who is also from another country and that what is talked about might be flagged for inquiry as being somehow inimical to the interests of this country or of its safety or that of its citizens. Or so the ostensible reasoning goes.
The totality of this has been done in secret from the secret court charged with issuing warrants and conducting oversight and from the Congress which set out as part of the Patriot Act a section setting up such court, etc., and which is supposed to be in charge of oversight which includes being fully briefed on what said court and agency are doing vis-a-vis their tasking. This isn't following the comms of a suspect under investigation via warrant and foreign intel as is done in normal fruitful investigations by police agencies, this is the complete sucking up of all electronic comms excepting garage-door openers on everyone inside our borders. Just in passing, the agency has consistently lied about this to the secret court and to Congress. Well, technically, no; the lies changed in light of every new revelation as to what they were doing, so it might be better to say repeatedly than consistently.
D'you begin to get a glimpse or glimmer that the problem is not spying on others, but on us? (I think it might have been Shaw, "The ability to see things as they are is called cynicism by those who haven't got it." May have been Bierce. Or even Wilde; they were all pretty sharp.) Anyway, do you see, optimally or otherwise?
Yeah, and the billions blown by an LGA comes from direct tax revenues, even if some of the bookkeeping is na levo. OTH that large biz is being paid by ad companies, the costs of which are part of the 'hidden tax' that increases the cost of all goods and services. It's a bit of a toss-up, depending on where one stands, etc.
Hmm. Are there reasonably good data on just what percentage ad companies add to the price of mainstream consumer goods and services? (I purely don't know, haven't tried to look [sue me, it's late and I'm lazy, and at the moment wouldn't know where to start], but am curious nonetheless.)