People used to talk about how it was scientifically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, but yet it does.
Idiots used to say it's impossible for a bumblebee to fly. Scientists used to say we don't fully understand how they do it yet. It turns out insect aerodynamics is quite a bit more complex than aircraft aerodynamics. But no one but morons ever said it violated any known laws.
Is it also blatant Euro-centrism to assume that Egyptians couldn't have discovered America because they were woefully lousy sailors?
Well, it should be noted that he didn't say the Egyptians discovered America, he said we shouldn't be certain "there was absolutely no interaction between Egyptian and South American civilizations". Interaction can be indirect, e.g. perhaps there was some limited trade between the two civilizations, conducted by Phoenician sailors. I don't believe the Phoenicians visited South America, either, but I don't dismiss the idea out of hand. It's unlikely but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Some interesting reading about these issues can be found in the books of Ralph Ellis. Another researcher who academics publicly label as a "kook" while begrudgingly accepting his conclusions in private.
Yes, but they also begrudgingly admit it's all a conspiracy due to him being behind on his Illuminati dues in private. (Hey wow, I can claim anything I want about what people do "in private" and point to the lack of published acknowledgment as proof! Of course, only a complete and utter fucking moron would believe me, since, of course, if they only do it in private, how the hell would I know?)
It would be more accurate to say your history books are full of mistruths, but if you want examples, just pick nearly any thing from a high school history book... and then REALLY research it.
1) We're all told that Benedict Arnold was simply a traitor to the American Revolution... but not that he was mistreated prior to that. (note: I'm not drawing judgment, these are simply facts).
For what it's worth, there was not a single "mistruth" in any history book I ever read about Benedict Arnold. Where there details omitted? Quite a bit, and too bad, because the story of Benedict Arnold is a fascinating one. But frankly, there are a lot of fascinating that don't make it into grade school history books. Most kids can't spend the eight hour a day for forty years straight to get something more than a cursory glossing over the facts involved in any history. All history books are necessarily incomplete.
Granted, Benedict Arnold deserves a lot more text in any book about the American Revolution than your typical school book gives him. But there are no "mistruths" in any I've seen, just a general skipping of the whole story.
As for the rest, it's true that I was taught North America was all but unpopulated when Europeans first arrived. It's false that I was told Custer was a hero. And I've never seen a single history book claim Jesus was blonde or blue-eyed.
Yes, but when you devote more attention to one group, that means you devote less attention to another. If no one knows you're doing it, this increases your odds of catching the bad guys, but if the bad guys know you're doing it, it creates an exploitable weakness in your system. If you know a particular door to the castle is most likely to be attacked, you devote more guards to it, but if the enemy knows you'd taken guards from the other door to guard the first, which door do you think they're going to use? You ultimately weaken your defenses if you engage in that kind of allotment of resources when the enemy can see perfectly well what you're doing. It only works when they can't. That's why using a publicly available list of countries to subject travelers from to more screening actually weakens your security. You've just decreased the amount of time you spend on countries off the list (by devoting your limited resources more to the ones on it rather than distributing evenly), and provided the enemy with a list of countries that are subject to decreased security (by inverting the list). Any at all sophisticated enemy praises Allah for your gift of intentionally weakening your security.
To foil a sophisticated enemy, you need to treat all travelers exactly the same, or keep completely and totally secret what ways you're treating anyone differently, because the moment the enemy knows you're treating people differently is the moment they have a greatly enhanced chance of pulling off a successful attack.
tl;dr: Treating everyone equally is not about political correctness, it's about not being bad at security.
It's nice they've developed a way to transfer data at ridiculous speeds, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using mechanical hard drives. Even a "mere" 1 gigabit network connection outstrips the ability of spinning platters to absorb it.
A and B are interdependent components of a system that determine its ability to perform task T.
Someone suggests improving A, but skeptics point out that it does no good, because B won't be able to keep up and T will still take just as long.
Someone suggests improving B, but skeptics point out that it does no good, because A won't be able to keep up and T will still take just as long.
Someone intelligent, who wants to see T eventually be done faster and better, applauds either effort when it comes along, and shoots the skeptics because they are stoopid...
Of course, the survey you cite has close to nothing to do with the GP's point, as it's fundamentally mostly concerned with citations in English language publications. Basically you could have mail-order degrees and still score well, as long as you had decent researchers (or the reputation, friends or money needed to get published anyway).
As a measure of the quality of education it certainly lacks a level of scientific rigour and seems to lack relevance for that subject.
[Citation needed.]
You're perfectly free to criticize the evidence your opponents presented, but when you present none at all in support of yours, it doesn't really add to the credibility of your argument. "The best evidence presented really isn't that good" leads to the conclusion that the view it supports should be only tentatively considered true. It does not logically lead to the conclusion that it's opposite should be considered true. Lacking better evidence on your side, those you're arguing against are winning the debate here. Their view is more credible based on the evidence presented, even with your reservations about it considered.
I don’t think in all of Europe more than a few geeks have ever heard of Penny Arcade.
Presumably this is based on your personal experience, combined with the certain knowledge that Europe is such a small and homogeneous place that your personal experience is sufficient to broadly generalize over its entirety.
It's always seemed like a bad idea to name anything after a figure whose claim to fame was that he ignored warnings against exceeding the tolerances of his vehicle, causing it to break up and kill him.
Yeah... "Daidalos" would have been a better name I would think. Or "Daedalus" if you prefer Latin spellings (which I assume you do, since you titled your post "Icarus" instead of the more accurate to the original Greek "Ikaros").
Actually, it was only about 7700 years ago. And the "eye witness accounts" are... generally believed to be highly mythologized by this point. To quote Wikipedia, "The Klamath Native Americans of the area believed that the mountain was inhabited by Llao, their god of the underworld. After the mountain destroyed itself the Klamaths recounted the events as a great battle between Llao and his rival Skell, their sky god."
I suspect the part about Llao and Skell is not literally true. But it is true that the eruption was witnessed at the time, and the stories of it survive to this day, so, yeah, we do have surviving eye-witness accounts.:)
Just in case you were serious: the affected area was western Europe with the exception of Spain. How would reroute a flight from London to Frankfurt around the affected area, given that both the take off and landing points are inside the affected area (not to mention all points in-between)?
Now, if your flight was from New York to Moscow, you could reroute flying over Africa, or over the arctic, but I imagine any route that would have otherwise involved flying over Europe would end up having much more than an hour added to the flight time in order to entirely avoid flying over Europe.
That was nice and helpful of him. I'm sure you'll remember that next time you go to a corner store and someone with a gun walks in demanding the store's money. After all, "don't get into the situation in the first place" in this instance means don't shop at stores which don't have extensive security.
No. In the scenario you just described, no bullets were fired. Thus, even being in the store at the time, he has successfully avoided the situation of being in front of an oncoming bullet. All that's required to follow his father's advice is to never get shot at.
Of course, the word is a form of "perunajauhomainen" which is an adjective that basically means "resembling potato flour" that was being used to describe the volcanic "ash dust".
In general, when one tries to describe something unfamiliar, it's a good technique to compare it to something similar that is more likely to be familiar to the reader/listener. Personally, this is the first time in my life that I've ever heard the phrase "potato flour". Is it similar to ordinary (wheat) flour in its consistency?
In any case, it's interesting that Finnish media would assume familiarity with this on the part of the reader. I don't know that I've learned anything about volcanic ash, but I've just learned something interesting about the Finnish... XD
Indeed. Humans are more likely to follow ritual for the sake of it being "what you're supposed to do". Once the children learn that's how you open a box, they open boxes that way whether they need to or not, simply because that's how you're supposed to be do it. We do all kinds of things every day that we could avoid, but we wouldn't be doing it the way we're supposed to. Society would function much less well if people didn't follow ritual regardless of necessity, and this goes far beyond simply stopping at red lights when there's no cross-traffic. Rules are the framework of society, even if most of the time, they're really unnecessary.
I think the brain games can help memory and response time, but only after you get your exercise.
This is precisely the claim that the study refutes. The brain games will improve your ability at that game, but it won't translate into a general improvement in memory or response time, it will only improve your memory and response time for that particular game.
The study would suggest otherwise. It will no doubt improve your facility at the specific tasks practiced in the game, but it's unlike to translate into any general improvement at anything.
Well, no, but worse for the complainer, this actually qualifies, even if he doesn't particularly like it. Yes, it'd be nice if it provided insight or a new way of doing things, but that's not what "meme" means, just what "a good meme" might subjectively mean. There are ugly memes too, and plenty of utterly silly ones...
Then it shows that apple is incredibly (really incredibly, meaning I cannot believe it) incompetent!
This coming from the person who says he's make sure the prototype had no logos at all on it. You might as well just print "SECRET PROTOTYPE" on the case if you're going to try to make it that obvious...
Except that if *I* were going to put field units out, I would make sure they'd have no logos whatsoever printed in them. Seems a quite elemental "security" consideration if you *really* wanted to keep a secret...
That's why you would suck at security. It would be far more suspicious to see a completely logo-less phone running the obvious iPhone OS than to see what appears to be an iPhone 3GS running it.
Seriously, I do hope your job doesn't involve security or secrecy to any degree. You really, really suck at it...
Slashdot Mirror
People used to talk about how it was scientifically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, but yet it does.
Idiots used to say it's impossible for a bumblebee to fly. Scientists used to say we don't fully understand how they do it yet. It turns out insect aerodynamics is quite a bit more complex than aircraft aerodynamics. But no one but morons ever said it violated any known laws.
Is it also blatant Euro-centrism to assume that Egyptians couldn't have discovered America because they were woefully lousy sailors?
Well, it should be noted that he didn't say the Egyptians discovered America, he said we shouldn't be certain "there was absolutely no interaction between Egyptian and South American civilizations". Interaction can be indirect, e.g. perhaps there was some limited trade between the two civilizations, conducted by Phoenician sailors. I don't believe the Phoenicians visited South America, either, but I don't dismiss the idea out of hand. It's unlikely but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Some interesting reading about these issues can be found in the books of Ralph Ellis. Another researcher who academics publicly label as a "kook" while begrudgingly accepting his conclusions in private.
Yes, but they also begrudgingly admit it's all a conspiracy due to him being behind on his Illuminati dues in private. (Hey wow, I can claim anything I want about what people do "in private" and point to the lack of published acknowledgment as proof! Of course, only a complete and utter fucking moron would believe me, since, of course, if they only do it in private, how the hell would I know?)
It would be more accurate to say your history books are full of mistruths, but if you want examples, just pick nearly any thing from a high school history book... and then REALLY research it.
1) We're all told that Benedict Arnold was simply a traitor to the American Revolution... but not that he was mistreated prior to that. (note: I'm not drawing judgment, these are simply facts).
For what it's worth, there was not a single "mistruth" in any history book I ever read about Benedict Arnold. Where there details omitted? Quite a bit, and too bad, because the story of Benedict Arnold is a fascinating one. But frankly, there are a lot of fascinating that don't make it into grade school history books. Most kids can't spend the eight hour a day for forty years straight to get something more than a cursory glossing over the facts involved in any history. All history books are necessarily incomplete.
Granted, Benedict Arnold deserves a lot more text in any book about the American Revolution than your typical school book gives him. But there are no "mistruths" in any I've seen, just a general skipping of the whole story.
As for the rest, it's true that I was taught North America was all but unpopulated when Europeans first arrived. It's false that I was told Custer was a hero. And I've never seen a single history book claim Jesus was blonde or blue-eyed.
Our sun is, what, 5 billion years old? And our galaxy, like 10 billion years old?
It blows my mind that we're able to observe light that was around from when our solar system was but a twinkle in the pool of eternity.
But like a good twinkie, it's still good after five billion years.
Oh, you said "twinkle". It was funnier when I first misread it...
You can play on my lawn anytime. ;)
Yes, but when you devote more attention to one group, that means you devote less attention to another. If no one knows you're doing it, this increases your odds of catching the bad guys, but if the bad guys know you're doing it, it creates an exploitable weakness in your system. If you know a particular door to the castle is most likely to be attacked, you devote more guards to it, but if the enemy knows you'd taken guards from the other door to guard the first, which door do you think they're going to use? You ultimately weaken your defenses if you engage in that kind of allotment of resources when the enemy can see perfectly well what you're doing. It only works when they can't. That's why using a publicly available list of countries to subject travelers from to more screening actually weakens your security. You've just decreased the amount of time you spend on countries off the list (by devoting your limited resources more to the ones on it rather than distributing evenly), and provided the enemy with a list of countries that are subject to decreased security (by inverting the list). Any at all sophisticated enemy praises Allah for your gift of intentionally weakening your security.
To foil a sophisticated enemy, you need to treat all travelers exactly the same, or keep completely and totally secret what ways you're treating anyone differently, because the moment the enemy knows you're treating people differently is the moment they have a greatly enhanced chance of pulling off a successful attack.
tl;dr: Treating everyone equally is not about political correctness, it's about not being bad at security.
It's nice they've developed a way to transfer data at ridiculous speeds, but it does the average user no good as long as we're using mechanical hard drives. Even a "mere" 1 gigabit network connection outstrips the ability of spinning platters to absorb it.
A and B are interdependent components of a system that determine its ability to perform task T.
Someone suggests improving A, but skeptics point out that it does no good, because B won't be able to keep up and T will still take just as long.
Someone suggests improving B, but skeptics point out that it does no good, because A won't be able to keep up and T will still take just as long.
Someone intelligent, who wants to see T eventually be done faster and better, applauds either effort when it comes along, and shoots the skeptics because they are stoopid...
Of course, the survey you cite has close to nothing to do with the GP's point, as it's fundamentally mostly concerned with citations in English language publications. Basically you could have mail-order degrees and still score well, as long as you had decent researchers (or the reputation, friends or money needed to get published anyway).
As a measure of the quality of education it certainly lacks a level of scientific rigour and seems to lack relevance for that subject.
[Citation needed.]
You're perfectly free to criticize the evidence your opponents presented, but when you present none at all in support of yours, it doesn't really add to the credibility of your argument. "The best evidence presented really isn't that good" leads to the conclusion that the view it supports should be only tentatively considered true. It does not logically lead to the conclusion that it's opposite should be considered true. Lacking better evidence on your side, those you're arguing against are winning the debate here. Their view is more credible based on the evidence presented, even with your reservations about it considered.
I don’t think in all of Europe more than a few geeks have ever heard of Penny Arcade.
Presumably this is based on your personal experience, combined with the certain knowledge that Europe is such a small and homogeneous place that your personal experience is sufficient to broadly generalize over its entirety.
In any case, you're wrong.
It's always seemed like a bad idea to name anything after a figure whose claim to fame was that he ignored warnings against exceeding the tolerances of his vehicle, causing it to break up and kill him.
Yeah... "Daidalos" would have been a better name I would think. Or "Daedalus" if you prefer Latin spellings (which I assume you do, since you titled your post "Icarus" instead of the more accurate to the original Greek "Ikaros").
I still find that title very suspect. He should have an asterisk next to his name.
Hey, at least it isn't Senator Lizard People. :p
Actually, it was only about 7700 years ago. And the "eye witness accounts" are... generally believed to be highly mythologized by this point. To quote Wikipedia, "The Klamath Native Americans of the area believed that the mountain was inhabited by Llao, their god of the underworld. After the mountain destroyed itself the Klamaths recounted the events as a great battle between Llao and his rival Skell, their sky god."
I suspect the part about Llao and Skell is not literally true. But it is true that the eruption was witnessed at the time, and the stories of it survive to this day, so, yeah, we do have surviving eye-witness accounts. :)
Are you kidding?
Just in case you were serious: the affected area was western Europe with the exception of Spain. How would reroute a flight from London to Frankfurt around the affected area, given that both the take off and landing points are inside the affected area (not to mention all points in-between)?
Now, if your flight was from New York to Moscow, you could reroute flying over Africa, or over the arctic, but I imagine any route that would have otherwise involved flying over Europe would end up having much more than an hour added to the flight time in order to entirely avoid flying over Europe.
That was nice and helpful of him. I'm sure you'll remember that next time you go to a corner store and someone with a gun walks in demanding the store's money. After all, "don't get into the situation in the first place" in this instance means don't shop at stores which don't have extensive security.
No. In the scenario you just described, no bullets were fired. Thus, even being in the store at the time, he has successfully avoided the situation of being in front of an oncoming bullet. All that's required to follow his father's advice is to never get shot at.
Of course, the word is a form of "perunajauhomainen" which is an adjective that basically means "resembling potato flour" that was being used to describe the volcanic "ash dust".
In general, when one tries to describe something unfamiliar, it's a good technique to compare it to something similar that is more likely to be familiar to the reader/listener. Personally, this is the first time in my life that I've ever heard the phrase "potato flour". Is it similar to ordinary (wheat) flour in its consistency?
In any case, it's interesting that Finnish media would assume familiarity with this on the part of the reader. I don't know that I've learned anything about volcanic ash, but I've just learned something interesting about the Finnish... XD
Indeed. Humans are more likely to follow ritual for the sake of it being "what you're supposed to do". Once the children learn that's how you open a box, they open boxes that way whether they need to or not, simply because that's how you're supposed to be do it. We do all kinds of things every day that we could avoid, but we wouldn't be doing it the way we're supposed to. Society would function much less well if people didn't follow ritual regardless of necessity, and this goes far beyond simply stopping at red lights when there's no cross-traffic. Rules are the framework of society, even if most of the time, they're really unnecessary.
I think the brain games can help memory and response time, but only after you get your exercise.
This is precisely the claim that the study refutes. The brain games will improve your ability at that game, but it won't translate into a general improvement in memory or response time, it will only improve your memory and response time for that particular game.
The study would suggest otherwise. It will no doubt improve your facility at the specific tasks practiced in the game, but it's unlike to translate into any general improvement at anything.
Watashi ha jere donatsu desu.
Well, no, but worse for the complainer, this actually qualifies, even if he doesn't particularly like it. Yes, it'd be nice if it provided insight or a new way of doing things, but that's not what "meme" means, just what "a good meme" might subjectively mean. There are ugly memes too, and plenty of utterly silly ones...
If one wants to get technical, any fashion or fad has to have a meme behind it, or it would never become a fashion or fad.
MobileMe has the ability to check the GPS location of your lost phone, remotely.
Not if it's been bricked. And the risks of leaving it unbricked are too great to try your little hide & go seek game...
Then it shows that apple is incredibly (really incredibly, meaning I cannot believe it) incompetent!
This coming from the person who says he's make sure the prototype had no logos at all on it. You might as well just print "SECRET PROTOTYPE" on the case if you're going to try to make it that obvious...
Except that if *I* were going to put field units out, I would make sure they'd have no logos whatsoever printed in them. Seems a quite elemental "security" consideration if you *really* wanted to keep a secret...
That's why you would suck at security. It would be far more suspicious to see a completely logo-less phone running the obvious iPhone OS than to see what appears to be an iPhone 3GS running it.
Seriously, I do hope your job doesn't involve security or secrecy to any degree. You really, really suck at it...