Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You and the reviewer are pretty dense. Most of the words are derived from English, Greek, or Latin, with many of them being jokes and puns. The whole point is to denote a sense of both otherness and familiarity, which is a central theme of the book.
The characters aren't strictly human, they live isolated from their own kind (in increments of one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand years), they don't usually speak the same language as the majority of their world's population. Are you going to envision them with the appropriate sense of alienness if they keep calling each other brother and sister?
And for God's sake, who doesn't love the word 'speelycaptor'?
How about I pound nails with a wrench instead? It would be about the same thing. Use the right tool for the right job. Keep the cellphone OSes on phones.
It's funnier when you pretend he says it in a preacher voice, railing about operating system miscegenation.
I know this isn't a popular answer, but I believe that there are forces at work which guide our existence that we will never be able to grasp on our plane of existence.
I saw that movie. And he was wrong. They actually did figure it all out. IT WAS THE FREAKIN' PLANTS!
If a truly intelligent computer program were ever created, its knowledge of its existence would be limited to the tools provided to it. With nothing more than a screen and mouse, how would it ever find out details of the physical world? It would exist, but it could never find out the nature of its existence. So, I believe we are the same way.
Oh, look, it's the "our existence is deterministic and limited to a blind deaf mind, therefore there is a God" argument. Dude, wait, what?
Actually, your computer could deduce all of mathematics and simulate entire universes. Perhaps we exist in just such a computer. WOAH!
And third, unless you have an observation, which for the moment I'll describe as "a number and a unit of measure which can (at least in theory) be independently checked by someone else", you're not doing science. As this "theory" of multiverses proposes (infinitely?) many parallel worlds which we cannot observe in any way, it's not a science at all. It's just another religion made up by people who want to avoid using that word.
The only way to cause human extinction is to manage to kill everyone at one go. Things like a the Sun going unexpectedly nova, or some kind of unforseen astronomical radiation burst that sterilizes everything. Stuff you couldn't possibly prepare for.
Thing are events where preparation is the only thing that makes that.01%, and what we can prepare for increases with technological and scientific advancement, some of which may be motivated by the preparation for slightly less lethal events, and so on.
In a post-9/11 world, every child should be aggressive. Because there are terrorists who want to hurt them, and they need to be mentally prepared to respond to that threat.
What do you think freepers are? They may be dumb as bricks, but they know how to stay on message and work as a team.
Now they're really starting to lose it as Obama is practically a shoe-in. Expect them to start lashing out in the coming months, online and off-line. Everything from website vandalism to murdering people like that guy in Tennessee.
We should make every suit at every financial institution in this country write a thousand times on a blackboard:
An identifier is not a shared secret key.
This applies to account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, drivers license numbers, everything.
The symbol that represents you is not the thing that proves who you are. Otherwise, your name itself would be all you need to verify your identity, and we all know how absurd that is.
Of course, the real problem is that they aren't held adequately liable for the fraud that occurs. They blame it on the customer and wash their hands of it. If we made them always eat that cost, I guarantee we'd see real progress against identity theft.
We have a committed socialist vs old war horse (with socialist tendencies).
Do you actually believe that saying things like that has any effect other than people dismissing you as a fanatical partisan freak?
There will never be a viable third party because the third parties we have are every bit as crazy and out of the mainstream than the people who support them.
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You and the reviewer are pretty dense. Most of the words are derived from English, Greek, or Latin, with many of them being jokes and puns. The whole point is to denote a sense of both otherness and familiarity, which is a central theme of the book.
The characters aren't strictly human, they live isolated from their own kind (in increments of one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand years), they don't usually speak the same language as the majority of their world's population. Are you going to envision them with the appropriate sense of alienness if they keep calling each other brother and sister?
And for God's sake, who doesn't love the word 'speelycaptor'?
Of course, since the space station inhabitants drink recycled urine, I'm still not totally convinced that I would want to try that cup.
Wow, I guess Starbucks really is everywhere.
How about I pound nails with a wrench instead? It would be about the same thing.
Use the right tool for the right job. Keep the cellphone OSes on phones.
It's funnier when you pretend he says it in a preacher voice, railing about operating system miscegenation.
Two digit ID, think of the children whargarbl...
Holy crap, the trolls have sleeper cells!
Whiny objections over the classification of ones sub-culture as being "nerdy" is itself nerdy, and therefore, accurate.
I dislike the default assumption that traditional gender roles = bad; where is the evidence?
Every person who asserts that gender roles are necessary.
Every culture that enforces them.
I know this isn't a popular answer, but I believe that there are forces at work which guide our existence that we will never be able to grasp on our plane of existence.
I saw that movie. And he was wrong. They actually did figure it all out. IT WAS THE FREAKIN' PLANTS!
If a truly intelligent computer program were ever created, its knowledge of its existence would be limited to the tools provided to it. With nothing more than a screen and mouse, how would it ever find out details of the physical world? It would exist, but it could never find out the nature of its existence. So, I believe we are the same way.
Oh, look, it's the "our existence is deterministic and limited to a blind deaf mind, therefore there is a God" argument. Dude, wait, what?
Actually, your computer could deduce all of mathematics and simulate entire universes. Perhaps we exist in just such a computer. WOAH!
No matter how advanced science gets, it will never be able to disprove -- or prove, for that matter -- the existence of a God or gods.
Prove it.
And third, unless you have an observation, which for the moment I'll describe as "a number and a unit of measure which can (at least in theory) be independently checked by someone else", you're not doing science. As this "theory" of multiverses proposes (infinitely?) many parallel worlds which we cannot observe in any way, it's not a science at all. It's just another religion made up by people who want to avoid using that word.
<img src="images/WHARRGARBL.jpg">
Similar to "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly, which was made into an Outer Limits episode staring the photographer from "Just Shoot Me".
The only way to cause human extinction is to manage to kill everyone at one go. Things like a the Sun going unexpectedly nova, or some kind of unforseen astronomical radiation burst that sterilizes everything. Stuff you couldn't possibly prepare for.
Thing are events where preparation is the only thing that makes that .01%, and what we can prepare for increases with technological and scientific advancement, some of which may be motivated by the preparation for slightly less lethal events, and so on.
"In the case of forced disappearance the word disappear, which is properly an intransitive verb, becomes transitive."
Actually, vampire movies are about the fear and/or admiration of elites, whereas zombie movies are about the resentment of conformity.
The young, photogenic, would-be first black President gets more attention than the puffy old white guy? Say it ain't so, America, say it ain't so!
Of course, this is also easily explained by the fact that reality has a liberal bias.
Excuse me, did you just say hoarding?
I think it refers to the dinosaur that ate him.
In a post-9/11 world, every child should be aggressive. Because there are terrorists who want to hurt them, and they need to be mentally prepared to respond to that threat.
Context for the unfamiliar.
Welcome to the future.
What do you think freepers are? They may be dumb as bricks, but they know how to stay on message and work as a team.
Now they're really starting to lose it as Obama is practically a shoe-in. Expect them to start lashing out in the coming months, online and off-line. Everything from website vandalism to murdering people like that guy in Tennessee.
We should make every suit at every financial institution in this country write a thousand times on a blackboard:
An identifier is not a shared secret key.
This applies to account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, drivers license numbers, everything.
The symbol that represents you is not the thing that proves who you are. Otherwise, your name itself would be all you need to verify your identity, and we all know how absurd that is.
Of course, the real problem is that they aren't held adequately liable for the fraud that occurs. They blame it on the customer and wash their hands of it. If we made them always eat that cost, I guarantee we'd see real progress against identity theft.
JIT is the only way to get good performance with Android and Dalvik.
So why is the performance so good now?
Actually, the Dalvik VM doesn't JIT (yet).
Apps written expressly for the iphone run faster than the java apps on the G1.
Prove it.
Yeah, I hear you. I'd buy a car if weren't those ugly wheels.
We have a committed socialist vs old war horse (with socialist tendencies).
Do you actually believe that saying things like that has any effect other than people dismissing you as a fanatical partisan freak?
There will never be a viable third party because the third parties we have are every bit as crazy and out of the mainstream than the people who support them.