Took a long time to get to the place where they described what he thought immaturity was, but:
These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.
And this has been going on since the 1950's? What else has been going on since the 50's? Hmmm.
Television.
What he's talking about is an observation of what happens to a society that watches television. His associations of maturity or immaturity are immaterial. All of those traits are caused by television exposure and are encouraged by advertisers to get us to buy stuff.
I think everyone here is fully prepared to understand what the scientific method is, and that "physicists" who don't, if I've gotten this straight, CAN'T log time in a lab because the experiments are impossible to perform, are therefore not scientists, and therefore not physicists. That was the opinion stated.
Why does anyone have to understand string theory to have an opinion about the scientific method?
You can make ANYTHING work in mathematics if you try hard enough, and are willing to do the invention. Math is only the language, and you can make up words any time you want. It's when you use the mathematical language to describe real world phenomena that you are engaging in science.
Reminds me of Green's Theorum in multivariable calc. The only reason to state it was to describe the fluid dynamics problem it represented, othewise it was just an obtuse way of stating the General Theory of Calculus. That's what all good science should look like. The real world must come first.
In this case, the real world problem is two competing ideas within physics that APPEAR to be contradictory, and the scientific establishment's inability to accept that they both work. We're obviously missing something here and it's probably the LABS.
I'm afraid you've confused a "complex" explanation with a fully expanded simple one in your example.
In the second example, all you've really said is "aliens did it," but moderately expanded. It's just as simple as "the butler did it," and its consideration mostly has to do with how open minded one is about alien life. *How* "the butler did it" could easily be as or more complex than the m.o. you gave to the alien example.
A complex explanation would be an explanation that a group of several hundred people, comprised of different ethnic makeups, from different areas of the globe and of little common relation carefully synchronized watches and produced some elaborate Rube Goldberg style scheme to poison the Master's tea. See the diff?
This kind of analytical laxity is unbecoming. You go on and on about the "unfalsifiability" aspects of string theory, when the main issue, the critical one, is the "untestable" issue. Forest for the trees, sir.
I would maintain that if you can't test a theory repeatedly under different conditions and environments, then you cannot perform the MOST critical part of the scientific method and are no longer engaging in science. Do we have instruments to measure dimensions #5-11? We're barely sure that a stopwatch will measure #4.
Theoretical physics has yielded us some great results, but it is largely done on paper. For it to be science, you have to log some time on the particle accelerator, of which we have far too few. The author of this article is justified in saying that maybe it's time people studying something other than string theory got a few hours.
Um sorry, but even amateur scientists know that a scientific LAW is merely a THEORY that has not been successfully falsified for such a long period of time that it is assumed that a single, even several, experiment(s) controverting it is a botched experiment(s).
But if enough people can prove it wrong, it goes. Even Sir Issac Newton's most basic equations are discarded in the scientific canon, replaced by Einstein's more complete set. Scientific LAW tends to get amended rather than scrapped, and that's what seperates it from theory.
The SCIENTIFIC METHOD, what science is *supposed* to be based upon, relies upon repeatable results based upon a given set of assumptions: the theory. If you can't test it, what's the point?
The writer of the article doesn't claim that string theorists are WRONG, he claims that they are WASTING THEIR TIME. Why? Because he feels they are more interested in "elegance" and "beauty" than they are in finding a relevant way to describe the universe that is useful and TESTABLE.
Whether that is right is a matter of some debate, but get the premise right.
The top 100 list is "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000," not the 100 most banned books of 2003. There's a nifty top ten list for that.
Also, there's a clear distinction between "banned" and "challenged."
To QUOTE (emphasis added):
"A *challenge* is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A *banning* is the removal of those materials. *Challenges* do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. The positive message of Banned Books Week: Free People Read Freely is that due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection."
And the negative message is to dupe folks like the submitter of this article into thinking the Dark Ages have fallen upon us.
READ FOLKS. Books are always banned from people who *don't read*.
Fix this travesty of an article now please. There's enough *real* dangerous abridgement of freedom going on in this country right now without yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater.
Thank you. TD.
Re:why May 1 as the 'traditional' day of protest?
on
Swedish Pirate Demo
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· Score: 1
I figured it was because in England, May 1st is, by some, considered a day to let down one's hair and engage in lascivious behavior.
In Sweeden, they engage in lascivious behavior on every day BUT May 1. On May 1st they go out and protest (which proabably gets them all laid anyway, now that I think about it).
I'd like to see a fictional treatment of real developments in law today. Of course, if the producers actually did this, they would be carted off to Guantanamo without charge, trial or council. After all, "liberal leaning Hollywood producer" and "enemy combatant" are basically synonymous.
What is that on the SCO globe logo?
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 1
To me, it looks like part of a Mickey Mouse logo from Disney.
Actually, I think it would be really funny if "Clone" boy bands attacked N'Sync. Maybe Boyz2men, the backstreet boys and 98 degrees could all come at them with lightsabers!
Features include business plan speculation about future profitability as reality and truth, the complete lack of the Nintendo NES on the list of the history of console systems, and a bunch of incomplete information that somehow makes the GameCube look like a big question mark that you'd need a crystal ball to see. The omission of the single most successful console system in the history of the industry (the NES) is especially suspect.
Nice going Tom, seeing that MS has an Intel chip in the Xbox, and your continuing blind support of Nvidia, we can all see where your true interests lie. And I mean lie in both senses of the word.
I used to come to Tom's site for useful information. It has ceased to be a source of anything but Intel/Nvidia propaganda for the past year at least. I don't think I need to remind anyone of his assertion that Athlon processors were a fire hazard if the heat sink fell off.
Oh, and Intel/Nvidia is synonymous with Microsoft these days. So throw them into the mix.
Too bad that another good source of independent information has sold out.
There's a Sierra title out there called "Jones in the Fast Lane!" It's very old, probably have to get it on an abandonware site and ask Sierra's permission to use it. It's a "game of Life" for multiple players where you work your way up from "Burger Hut" jobs to highly skilled jobs which require an education in an effort to become highly successful and have all sorts of cool stuff (and win, of course.) It also has a great sense of humour which makes it highly addictive and fun. That one is PERFECT!
Crazy Taxi is non-violent!? What about the driving through signs, fleeing bystanders, crashing cars, etc.? You really need to take a vacation from the Gaza strip some day.;-) Hell, about half of these kids probably drove like that during a joyride at some point in their misguided lives!
Torodung
Bullfrog games has some wonderful strategy stuff. Theme Hospital may be just what your looking for, as it has all sorts of sick and quite scatalogical humour and the worst violence is clicking on the rats that infest your hospital. Most of the game is visually oriented (not too much literacy needed, just a bit of a learning curve). Obviously, Dungeon Keeper is right out.
Frogger 2 is actually a good game for thinking and planning ahead. It's got the action, but the only way to really win is to be patient, no matter how hairy things get, and think about your next move. Once your students figure out how to complete a level there are other strategy options, like how do you get all the coins. I don't know if the in-game movies of the bad guy chucking baby frogs around or Frogger getting sliced in half by a cartoon circular saw are appropriate to your non-violent game mandate though. Let's put it this way, The Powerpuff Girls has worse violence.
A large Solitaire package is perfect. One that has a lot of different varieties, like Bicycle's.
If you're looking for a real pull out the Haldol sort of game, there's always stuff like Reversi, TaiPei (Mahjong tile removal game), Minesweeper etc. from the venerable old Windows entertainment pack, most of these games are easily available on Linux as well.
Finally, you've got to love Tux Racer, proving once again that penguins can fly!
I love flying penguins, don't you?
Torodung
Can someone please tell me why the HTML tags didn't work on that post? I chose the Extrans (sic) option...
Hmmmm...
(Obviously, I'm submiting this post as HTML formatted, but I don't like having to add DIV and BR tags when I don't have to. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy.)
About a month ago I was speaking with an Italian law student and her husband about patent law in Italy. Interestingly enough, they told me that you could place a patent on the bicycle in very little time, with no review. Italy apparently doesn't review patents. However, if you want to enforce your patent, then you have to go to court and prove prior art. Is this the way they do things in Austrlia?
That's right, patent anything you like, but you can't collect licensing fees from someone who won't pay them until you take them to court and prove prior art. I believe you can get an injunction though.
This left me thinking. Well, at first I was shocked and thought the whole idea was ridiculous. Hmmmm. But then I thought, why do we need a patent office in the first place. It's obvious that the above system would favor those who had the money and clout to back up their patents in court, but isn't that the way our system works in the first place? Why the administrative hassle (and time sink) of looking for prior art in the first place, <b>before</b>one gets their patent?
Then I thought... gee, maybe we've moved to the Italian system after all.:-)
My first reaction was, "Gee, I didn't realize trolls were allowed on the front page of Slashdot." (no offense Emmett)
Then the horrible reality sunk in. Spielberg finishing a Kubrick work. Just so you know where I stand, I love Kubrick's body of work and tend to loathe Spielberg's. That being said, anyone I might annoy can stop reading this post.
"Why?" you might ask. "Meticulous" was the word Jack Nicholson used to describe Kubrick's sense of direction (after the umpteen-millionth take of him coming down a staircase). I believe Kubrick would have hand edited every frame of his films if it were sane. If Kubrick were insane, we would never have seen a thing from him.
This is how a project winds up taking 18 years, and now Spielberg will finish it in 1 because that's why Hollywood movie execs love him. Not to say that Spielberg isn't meticulous at times; IMHO he is. It's just that he does it in an intense and rapid fury, it's his style, and I've heard several actors comment on his frenetic direction. This inhibits the ability to make a movie with meaning, where every minute expresses a thought and the whole 120 minutes or so expresses a vision. Take Saving Private Ryan, the whole movie expresses maybe one or two thoughts, but no overall vision. The combat scenes are gruesome and brilliant, but by the end they just become so much filler. I personally failed to feel any tension at all when the German tanks rolled over the bridge and felt nothing but boredom when the Elder Ryan shed a tear at the grave of his deliverer. That scene was obvious, it was stock denoument, it was emotional filler, and it was artless.
Which brings us to Pucini. Those of you familiar with opera will know that Pucini wrote operas for people who liked to sleep at the opera house. That is, you could fall asleep during one scene and awaken to hear the same musical theme and feel comfortable with the ten minute gap in the score. Some people think this is wonderful, that he drives the themes home. I find it dreadfully boring and fall asleep for the entire opera. Spielberg is like this. You can miss half of a film by him and still get the same vision, which makes you wonder why the film is so much longer than it needs to be. You can't do that with a Kubrick film. Every minute counts.
In a way, Spielberg is perfect for the retouch job. He can direct all the filler and attempt to orchestrate a film out of the Master's footage. I wish him luck. But until he learns patience, to make films like red wine and let them age and mellow, he'll just be making a really good white Zinfindel.
Hope everyone is now pissed off. Punctuate this post with a big fat IMHO. This is Torodung signing off. (why'd it have to be a movie about technology and computers?!? *SOB*)
Slashdot Mirror
And this has been going on since the 1950's? What else has been going on since the 50's? Hmmm.
Television.
What he's talking about is an observation of what happens to a society that watches television. His associations of maturity or immaturity are immaterial. All of those traits are caused by television exposure and are encouraged by advertisers to get us to buy stuff.
How thick can you get? :^P
I think everyone here is fully prepared to understand what the scientific method is, and that "physicists" who don't, if I've gotten this straight, CAN'T log time in a lab because the experiments are impossible to perform, are therefore not scientists, and therefore not physicists. That was the opinion stated.
Why does anyone have to understand string theory to have an opinion about the scientific method?
You can make ANYTHING work in mathematics if you try hard enough, and are willing to do the invention. Math is only the language, and you can make up words any time you want. It's when you use the mathematical language to describe real world phenomena that you are engaging in science.
Reminds me of Green's Theorum in multivariable calc. The only reason to state it was to describe the fluid dynamics problem it represented, othewise it was just an obtuse way of stating the General Theory of Calculus. That's what all good science should look like. The real world must come first.
In this case, the real world problem is two competing ideas within physics that APPEAR to be contradictory, and the scientific establishment's inability to accept that they both work. We're obviously missing something here and it's probably the LABS.
--
Torodung
Yes. I somehow think it came about when someone decided that "elegant" == "correct."
If they wanted pretty, they should have taken up the fine arts. The Universe is not pretty.
--
Torodung
I'm afraid you've confused a "complex" explanation with a fully expanded simple one in your example.
In the second example, all you've really said is "aliens did it," but moderately expanded. It's just as simple as "the butler did it," and its consideration mostly has to do with how open minded one is about alien life. *How* "the butler did it" could easily be as or more complex than the m.o. you gave to the alien example.
A complex explanation would be an explanation that a group of several hundred people, comprised of different ethnic makeups, from different areas of the globe and of little common relation carefully synchronized watches and produced some elaborate Rube Goldberg style scheme to poison the Master's tea. See the diff?
This kind of analytical laxity is unbecoming. You go on and on about the "unfalsifiability" aspects of string theory, when the main issue, the critical one, is the "untestable" issue. Forest for the trees, sir.
I would maintain that if you can't test a theory repeatedly under different conditions and environments, then you cannot perform the MOST critical part of the scientific method and are no longer engaging in science. Do we have instruments to measure dimensions #5-11? We're barely sure that a stopwatch will measure #4.
Theoretical physics has yielded us some great results, but it is largely done on paper. For it to be science, you have to log some time on the particle accelerator, of which we have far too few. The author of this article is justified in saying that maybe it's time people studying something other than string theory got a few hours.
--
Torodung
Um sorry, but even amateur scientists know that a scientific LAW is merely a THEORY that has not been successfully falsified for such a long period of time that it is assumed that a single, even several, experiment(s) controverting it is a botched experiment(s).
But if enough people can prove it wrong, it goes. Even Sir Issac Newton's most basic equations are discarded in the scientific canon, replaced by Einstein's more complete set. Scientific LAW tends to get amended rather than scrapped, and that's what seperates it from theory.
The SCIENTIFIC METHOD, what science is *supposed* to be based upon, relies upon repeatable results based upon a given set of assumptions: the theory. If you can't test it, what's the point?
The writer of the article doesn't claim that string theorists are WRONG, he claims that they are WASTING THEIR TIME. Why? Because he feels they are more interested in "elegance" and "beauty" than they are in finding a relevant way to describe the universe that is useful and TESTABLE.
Whether that is right is a matter of some debate, but get the premise right.
--
Torodung
The top 100 list is "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000," not the 100 most banned books of 2003. There's a nifty top ten list for that.
Also, there's a clear distinction between "banned" and "challenged."
To QUOTE (emphasis added):
"A *challenge* is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A *banning* is the removal of those materials. *Challenges* do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. The positive message of Banned Books Week: Free People Read Freely is that due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection."
And the negative message is to dupe folks like the submitter of this article into thinking the Dark Ages have fallen upon us.
READ FOLKS. Books are always banned from people who *don't read*.
Fix this travesty of an article now please. There's enough *real* dangerous abridgement of freedom going on in this country right now without yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater.
Thank you. TD.
I figured it was because in England, May 1st is, by some, considered a day to let down one's hair and engage in lascivious behavior.
In Sweeden, they engage in lascivious behavior on every day BUT May 1. On May 1st they go out and protest (which proabably gets them all laid anyway, now that I think about it).
I'd like to see a fictional treatment of real developments in law today. Of course, if the producers actually did this, they would be carted off to Guantanamo without charge, trial or council. After all, "liberal leaning Hollywood producer" and "enemy combatant" are basically synonymous.
To me, it looks like part of a Mickey Mouse logo from Disney.
How appropriate.
Does this mean MS is releasing *another* service pack. Damn.
Actually, I think it would be really funny if "Clone" boy bands attacked N'Sync. Maybe Boyz2men, the backstreet boys and 98 degrees could all come at them with lightsabers!
Features include business plan speculation about future profitability as reality and truth, the complete lack of the Nintendo NES on the list of the history of console systems, and a bunch of incomplete information that somehow makes the GameCube look like a big question mark that you'd need a crystal ball to see. The omission of the single most successful console system in the history of the industry (the NES) is especially suspect.
Nice going Tom, seeing that MS has an Intel chip in the Xbox, and your continuing blind support of Nvidia, we can all see where your true interests lie. And I mean lie in both senses of the word.
I used to come to Tom's site for useful information. It has ceased to be a source of anything but Intel/Nvidia propaganda for the past year at least. I don't think I need to remind anyone of his assertion that Athlon processors were a fire hazard if the heat sink fell off.
Oh, and Intel/Nvidia is synonymous with Microsoft these days. So throw them into the mix.
Too bad that another good source of independent information has sold out.
There's a Sierra title out there called "Jones in the Fast Lane!" It's very old, probably have to get it on an abandonware site and ask Sierra's permission to use it. It's a "game of Life" for multiple players where you work your way up from "Burger Hut" jobs to highly skilled jobs which require an education in an effort to become highly successful and have all sorts of cool stuff (and win, of course.) It also has a great sense of humour which makes it highly addictive and fun. That one is PERFECT!
Crazy Taxi is non-violent!? What about the driving through signs, fleeing bystanders, crashing cars, etc.? You really need to take a vacation from the Gaza strip some day.
Hell, about half of these kids probably drove like that during a joyride at some point in their misguided lives!
Torodung
Bullfrog games has some wonderful strategy stuff. Theme Hospital may be just what your looking for, as it has all sorts of sick and quite scatalogical humour and the worst violence is clicking on the rats that infest your hospital. Most of the game is visually oriented (not too much literacy needed, just a bit of a learning curve). Obviously, Dungeon Keeper is right out.
Frogger 2 is actually a good game for thinking and planning ahead. It's got the action, but the only way to really win is to be patient, no matter how hairy things get, and think about your next move. Once your students figure out how to complete a level there are other strategy options, like how do you get all the coins. I don't know if the in-game movies of the bad guy chucking baby frogs around or Frogger getting sliced in half by a cartoon circular saw are appropriate to your non-violent game mandate though. Let's put it this way, The Powerpuff Girls has worse violence.
A large Solitaire package is perfect. One that has a lot of different varieties, like Bicycle's.
If you're looking for a real pull out the Haldol sort of game, there's always stuff like Reversi, TaiPei (Mahjong tile removal game), Minesweeper etc. from the venerable old Windows entertainment pack, most of these games are easily available on Linux as well.
Finally, you've got to love Tux Racer, proving once again that penguins can fly!
I love flying penguins, don't you?
Torodung
Can someone please tell me why the HTML tags didn't work on that post? I chose the Extrans (sic) option...
Hmmmm...
(Obviously, I'm submiting this post as HTML formatted, but I don't like having to add DIV and BR tags when I don't have to. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy.)
About a month ago I was speaking with an Italian law student and her husband about patent law in Italy. Interestingly enough, they told me that you could place a patent on the bicycle in very little time, with no review. Italy apparently doesn't review patents. However, if you want to enforce your patent, then you have to go to court and prove prior art. Is this the way they do things in Austrlia?
:-)
That's right, patent anything you like, but you can't collect licensing fees from someone who won't pay them until you take them to court and prove prior art. I believe you can get an injunction though.
This left me thinking. Well, at first I was shocked and thought the whole idea was ridiculous. Hmmmm. But then I thought, why do we need a patent office in the first place. It's obvious that the above system would favor those who had the money and clout to back up their patents in court, but isn't that the way our system works in the first place? Why the administrative hassle (and time sink) of looking for prior art in the first place, <b>before</b>one gets their patent?
Then I thought... gee, maybe we've moved to the Italian system after all.
Keep smiling!
RAMBo will be a mechanized gnu which will attach to Aibo's back, adding memory resources and allowing him to run Linux.
Insert groan here.
What does diogenic mean? If we were playing Scrabble, and I had challenged you, you would have lost with my dictionary.
;->
Of course, I remember losing a challenge to my uncle on the word "VEX" while playing Scrabble with his dictionary.
So, all things being equal, could you answer this question, or do I have to pull out the OED on you?
A sure sign that you're overeducated: words you use conversationally are not in the dictionary. Are you underpaid too?
I agree entirely with your post BTW. Now lettuce speak of cabbages and Kings.
My first reaction was, "Gee, I didn't realize trolls were allowed on the front page of Slashdot." (no offense Emmett)
Then the horrible reality sunk in. Spielberg finishing a Kubrick work. Just so you know where I stand, I love Kubrick's body of work and tend to loathe Spielberg's. That being said, anyone I might annoy can stop reading this post.
"Why?" you might ask. "Meticulous" was the word Jack Nicholson used to describe Kubrick's sense of direction (after the umpteen-millionth take of him coming down a staircase). I believe Kubrick would have hand edited every frame of his films if it were sane. If Kubrick were insane, we would never have seen a thing from him.
This is how a project winds up taking 18 years, and now Spielberg will finish it in 1 because that's why Hollywood movie execs love him. Not to say that Spielberg isn't meticulous at times; IMHO he is. It's just that he does it in an intense and rapid fury, it's his style, and I've heard several actors comment on his frenetic direction. This inhibits the ability to make a movie with meaning, where every minute expresses a thought and the whole 120 minutes or so expresses a vision. Take Saving Private Ryan, the whole movie expresses maybe one or two thoughts, but no overall vision. The combat scenes are gruesome and brilliant, but by the end they just become so much filler. I personally failed to feel any tension at all when the German tanks rolled over the bridge and felt nothing but boredom when the Elder Ryan shed a tear at the grave of his deliverer. That scene was obvious, it was stock denoument, it was emotional filler, and it was artless.
Which brings us to Pucini. Those of you familiar with opera will know that Pucini wrote operas for people who liked to sleep at the opera house. That is, you could fall asleep during one scene and awaken to hear the same musical theme and feel comfortable with the ten minute gap in the score. Some people think this is wonderful, that he drives the themes home. I find it dreadfully boring and fall asleep for the entire opera. Spielberg is like this. You can miss half of a film by him and still get the same vision, which makes you wonder why the film is so much longer than it needs to be. You can't do that with a Kubrick film. Every minute counts.
In a way, Spielberg is perfect for the retouch job. He can direct all the filler and attempt to orchestrate a film out of the Master's footage. I wish him luck. But until he learns patience, to make films like red wine and let them age and mellow, he'll just be making a really good white Zinfindel.
Hope everyone is now pissed off. Punctuate this post with a big fat IMHO. This is Torodung signing off. (why'd it have to be a movie about technology and computers?!? *SOB*)
This space intentionally left blank.