But if people assume that they are dealing with a real human (and it doesn't even enter their mind that the person on the other end MIGHT be a computer), then I don't know how much credence you can put in the results.
I'll tell you the worse problem with democracy. On the day that the poorest 51% of the population discovers it can vote itself the wealth of the richest 49%, economic collapse is imminent.
It's a good thing that most modern nations are not democracies, but republics.
It's not a godwin unless your opponent tries to refute you by drawing a paralle between your argument and Hitler's. I mentioned Nazi Germany to illustrate mankind's willingness to join any evil as long as it is personally profitable.
Keep in mind that such corruption and evil occurred during WWII in the US, as well. The loudest proponents of Japanese Internment were the farmers competing with the Japanese farmers in the West. Point being, this sort of evil is possible in both a representative government and a fascist one, although the fascist one can clearly carry out its will with much greater efficiency.
This discussion got me thinking about how religious beliefs on how the universe was created. Clearly, there are flaws in mankind and nature - evildoers, earthquakes, etc. Was God a single, omniscient being whose opinions and views were able to be executed efficiently, but didn't necessarily jibe with the inhabitants of his creation? Like, could God care less about tsunamis, so he didn't bother taking them out of the equation, but to the detriment of those who have to live within his kingdom? Or was "God" an elected body and "His" creation of the universe is flawed because of the competing viewpoints of "His" constituency, the poor decision making due to groupthink, and the inherent inefficiencies in having a large group of people work on some common task?
But, again, it's obvious that 'granny' doesn't want the spam if she specifically signed up with an ISP that uses Bayesian Filters.
How do you know that granny chose one ISP over another based on their spam filtering policies. Perhaps she chose the ISP that was listed first in the Yellow Pages, or the one that Carlos, the Cuban pool boy, recommended. And maybe those 'm@k3 Ur M3mBer B1gg3r' spams do catch granny's eye, and she forwards them on to Carlos.
They are not trying to sneak around the Bayesian Filter you have installed on your machine, because, like you said, someone who has gone that far is clearly not going to get lured by spam. They are targeting the ISP's spam filters, so that the spam gets past their filters and into your grandma's Inbox.
Except my daughters are going to learn PHP9 none of that HTML Fluff.
Just keep in mind that different kids have different minds and different ideas of what's interesting or worth their time to learn. Your kid may find programming to be a boring activity. (I know, the horror of it all, but still, it could happen. )
Wouldn't you say this is the case for most "old cities?" The old parts deteriorate over time, and need to be renovated or rebuilt, but the government requires that they be renovated or rebuilt in the "classic" style for purpose of culture, tourism, history, etc.?
Eh, or they're just surrounded by people who make significantly more than $60k. If you make $X and your peers and members of your social circle make $Y, which is greater than $X, you're going to feel as if $X is less than average, even if factually that may not be the case.
Besides, even when people complain that $X is lower class, they neglect that even today's economic lower classes have significant improvements over lower classes in generations past. Today we assume things like TVs, cars, electricity, indoor plumbing, free education, and so forth are part of the "baseline." Only the poorest of the poor in America lack these "essentials."
Uh, the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution. It's the first 10 amendments. From the Wikipedia entry: "The United States Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. These amendments limit the powers of the federal government, protecting the rights of all citizens, residents and visitors on United States territory." And they were added because the States were worried that the Constitution without such amendments would create too strong of a central government.
Usually, we protected the rights of the majority. As you said yourself, we tossed all the Japanese into jail.
At the time, the rights of the minorities were not protected, I agree. As I said earlier, in times of fear or war or terrorism, human beings act irrationally and foolishly - it's human nature. But read up on what happened after WWII. The government apologized to the Japanese Americans who were interned and paid $20,000 to all surviving Japanese Americans who were interned, including those that moved back to Japan. Moreover, the government paid to have historical monuments maintained so that we, as a nation, would not forget these injustices.
Finally, I am not proposing the rights of minorities trump the rights of others. I'm saying that everybody's rights need to be upheld, not just the majority's. Everyone's rights are equivocal. The rights of the many do not trump the rights of the few. And to be clear, what I perceive as our rights are well outlined in the Bill of Rights. And I don't think bag searches at airports violate the Fourth Amendment and neither does the Supreme Court.
At some point, we do have to decide whether protecting minority rights is more important than inconveniencing the majority. If it is just muslim people that cause the problems, then wouldn't it be logical to persecute only them? If you can't stomach persecuting just them, then don't persecute everyone to make yourself feel safe.
This is a dilemma we've faced as a nation time and time again and we've almost always sided with protecting the minority rights. See things like gay rights, civil rights for racial minorities, and on and on. And, IMO, that's how it should be. If you are ever in the minority you'll probably agree with that sentiment, too.
If it is just muslim people that cause the problems, then wouldn't it be logical to persecute only them? If you can't stomach persecuting just them, then don't persecute everyone to make yourself feel safe. Just don't do it all, and take some karate or carry a gun.
Erm, Muslims aren't the only terrorists to have operated in the US. One such counterexample (among several) is Timothy McVeigh. And lastly, I don't think bag searches are persecution. If you disagree, don't fly in a commercial plane. I promise you the TSA is not going to come barging into your home to conduct a persecutory bag search!
Personally, I think that in general our society has an over heightened sense of fear, a sense of fear that is misplaced and not rational (e.g., you are more incredibly, vastly, overwhelmingly more likely to die driving to work than by a terrorist). I think that a lot of these "precautions" really don't do much in the long run to deter terrorists and server more as inconveniences and as a safety blanket so people "feel" safe. However, I think it's wrong to start singling out a particular race or religion and applying different standards to them, because doing so opens to door to other actions targeted against certain groups that may be innocent but are targeted merely because of the color of their skin or their religious beliefs.
The difference is, back then, only the Japanese (and some Germans and Italians), were actually interred. Today, everyone is subject to extra-judicial search and seizure.
So it would be OK today to round up American citizens who were born in Iraq or Iran or Syria or Egypt and forcibly move them to internment camps!?!
I doubt you're saying that. I am guessing you're meaning that it would be OK to just search people who looked like the terrorists - racial or religious profiling? I think instituting such behavior is a slippery slope.
In any event, I don't think bag checks are necessarily "extra-judicial search and seizure." If they are mandated, then, sure, we've got a problem. But last time I checked no one was forcing you to fly in an airplane. If you want to avoid airport security, don't go to airports.
The reality is, the USA was threatened with British spies during the war of 1812, German and Japanese sabotuers in both World Wars, soviet saboteurs during the cold war, all funded by adversaries that were at the time, our equal military match. Yet, it is only today that we have to turn the constitution upside down because of a bunch of panzies afraid of a few semi-literate muzzies trying to blow something up.
You need to brush up on your history. Today is hardly the first time the Constitution has been "turned upside down" due to a perceived threat. There are many such cases during any war, but here's a start: the Japanese American Internment. Locking up American citizens because they immigrated from Japan is a far more grievous act than inspecting a purse at an airport.
I'm not defending breaches of the Constitution or even the heightened state of "alert" we are told to be in today. My point is that in such times of terrorism or war, rules are bent and the rights of some are overlooked. It's a shame, but it happens. It's not a uniquely American thing, it happens everywhere and is a natural human response to actual or perceived danger. My earlier point was that heightened security is naturally going to follow in the epicenter of 9/11; likewise, it's unfair to compare attitudes and behaviors of a populace that hasn't recently suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack to one that has.
Poland had that World War II thing. Invaded by Germany. Over one million people killed, including all of the jews and most of the country's intellectual class.
Well, no duh. But the whole talk was about actions taken by law enforcement to prevent further acts of terrorism. When was the last terrorist action performed in Poland and what were the casualties? And let me ask you this: if Germany had invaded Poland using guerrilla tactics, do you not think that Poland might have justifiably been a little more watchful and cautious of those peoples within her borders, even her own citizens?
By definition, there has to be a loser for every winner and usually multiple losers for every winner.
By whose definition? Economics isn't a zero-sum game. Here's a simple example: Imagine we have two farmers, one grows beans, the other corn. Each grows enough food for them and their family. Rather than eating nothing but beans or nothing but corn, the two decide to trade with each other, exchanging some beans for some corn. Now who, exactly, has lost? I think we have a win-win here.
Yes, we'd all like to believe in the American Dream of being rags to riches. If you work hard, be ambitious, etc. you'll go far in life.
I believe in this dream. Not that working hard equates with great wealth and fame, but that if you work hard you'll be better off than if you don't, that hard work and ingenuity can elevate your position in life. As Thomas Edison so aptly put it, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
So don't blame the white night sky on all the street lights - take a drive out of the city and look up, chances are that you'll still see nothing.
If you are "still seeing nothing," maybe you need to keep driving out of the suburbs and get to the parts of America that are still wild (which is the vast majority of this immense country).
My wife and I went hiking in the Sierra Nevadas this summer. In some spots out there you are 50-100 miles from the nearest car or house, and the night sky was lit up like a planetarium. Of course it helped that for most of our two weeks on in the wilderness, there was nary a cloud in sight, day or night. The view, as you can imagine, was amazing. We'd sleep in our tent and leave the rain fly off, and when we'd wake up in the middle of the night we'd have a majestic view of the universe spread out before us.
Re:Does this really improve the odds of finding hi
on
Help Find Steve Fossett
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· Score: 2, Interesting
One day we'll be telling our children, "When I was your age, we actually had people comparing satellite imagery to find lost people!"
Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? I'm no expert on the state of image recognition research, but you think it would be good enough that a computer could pick out potential "hits" for further review by trained professionals, perhaps by searching for what looks like man-made objects in remote areas or comparing old imagery with the current, updated samples.
You do realize, don't you, the only thing really sustaining any balance at all in this country is the fact the poor people have guns, the rich people have guns, the religious people have guns... at a fundamental level the government has no choice but to fear the people - exactly the recipe for liberty as envisioned by our patriots.
I disagree. Yes, that can be one factor that sustains a society, but that's not a society I'd want to live in. The best societal sustainer is free trade and a capitalistic economy with as little government intervention as necessary. When people are working, producing goods, and trading them with one another, there's no reason why the rich would want to squash the poor or vice-a-versa. Doing so would run counter to your desires: the rich would lose a large share of their market and a warring society is bad for business; the poor would lose their jobs and wouldn't enjoy the wide array of consumer goods and services that have made life so much more comfortable today than it has ever been in the history or humanity.
We should toss such copyright laws, and devise a revised scheme that guarantees that the artists get most of the money.
But who, exactly, is the "artist" in a movie? I saw the Simpson's film this week - a short animated movie - and the credits easily exceeded 100 people. Even in music, while the artist may be the one who created the work, s/he certainly did not work alone to get their songs recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed.
Previously GMail's disk quota was slowly increasing over time. I assume that now that they have entered the business of selling online disk space, such increases are now a thing of the past?
at least in the uk paper money started as something that was gauranteed by the issuer to be exchangable for a fixed ammount of something else (generally precious metals). Then because of problems with currupt issuers the government took over and then from there the exchangeability to gold was phased out.
Yes, I am aware that currency was, in the past, backed by something tangible. But I wonder if it was as easy to exchange currency for that tangible good. Could you walk into a bank or the institution and say, "Here's three bucks, I'd like 0.2 ounces of gold (or silver or whatever)? Maybe for large amounts of currency, but what good does that do the average commoner?
Furthermore, what makes precious metals valuable other than society just agreeing that they are valuable (like any arbitrary currency)? I know that some metals have industrial applications, but gold and other shiny objects had worth even in pre-industrial times. It's funny what we decide to assign worth to.
Only if the something in question has some objective value. I can print off a few hundred CGMUs (Control Group Monetary Units), making a very limited supply, but I don't imagine that would make them worth money to anyone else*.
Unlike the other commodities you mention, US dollars have no inherent utility. The "full faith and credit" of the US government determines their utility.
While the "full faith and credit" of the US government might be the motivating cause for why people place value in the dollar, it's only that belief that makes the dollar worth anything. What I'm trying to say is that currency of any kind has no inherent value. It's value comes because for whatever reason enough people artificially give it value.
I've often wondered how a society goes about finding some currency valuable, how everyone agrees upon it. I imagine you'd need som catalyst, i.e., enough members of society agreeing to place value in the currency in question so that others might join in, figuring it's an easier way to do trade. And once you get a critical mass, I'm sure adoption skies to 100%. But what would the opposite valuation look like? How many people in a society need to start saying, "I'm not accepting that currency" before it gains enough steam that others agree, and then others, and so on?
I recently heard her on a radio interview promoting her new book. She's smart and well spoken. But you know those types of jokes that are subtle and in the delivery? The kind that most socially adapted people pick up quickly. There were a couple of those that seemed to go over her head. (Which was neat because it made her seem more like the nerd/wallflower type than a social butterfly.) Here's an example from the Stuff Magazine interview:
QUESTION: After the show, you attended UCLA, became a genius and published a paper on Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z2. I really enjoyed the part on infinite occupied clusters.
ANSWER: It's really complicated and not that interesting to most people.
Jeepers, Winnie, he was being tongue-in-cheek and opened the door for a joke.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
But if people assume that they are dealing with a real human (and it doesn't even enter their mind that the person on the other end MIGHT be a computer), then I don't know how much credence you can put in the results.
I'll tell you the worse problem with democracy. On the day that the poorest 51% of the population discovers it can vote itself the wealth of the richest 49%, economic collapse is imminent.
It's a good thing that most modern nations are not democracies, but republics.
It's not a godwin unless your opponent tries to refute you by drawing a paralle between your argument and Hitler's. I mentioned Nazi Germany to illustrate mankind's willingness to join any evil as long as it is personally profitable.
Keep in mind that such corruption and evil occurred during WWII in the US, as well. The loudest proponents of Japanese Internment were the farmers competing with the Japanese farmers in the West. Point being, this sort of evil is possible in both a representative government and a fascist one, although the fascist one can clearly carry out its will with much greater efficiency.
This discussion got me thinking about how religious beliefs on how the universe was created. Clearly, there are flaws in mankind and nature - evildoers, earthquakes, etc. Was God a single, omniscient being whose opinions and views were able to be executed efficiently, but didn't necessarily jibe with the inhabitants of his creation? Like, could God care less about tsunamis, so he didn't bother taking them out of the equation, but to the detriment of those who have to live within his kingdom? Or was "God" an elected body and "His" creation of the universe is flawed because of the competing viewpoints of "His" constituency, the poor decision making due to groupthink, and the inherent inefficiencies in having a large group of people work on some common task?
But, again, it's obvious that 'granny' doesn't want the spam if she specifically signed up with an ISP that uses Bayesian Filters.
How do you know that granny chose one ISP over another based on their spam filtering policies. Perhaps she chose the ISP that was listed first in the Yellow Pages, or the one that Carlos, the Cuban pool boy, recommended. And maybe those 'm@k3 Ur M3mBer B1gg3r' spams do catch granny's eye, and she forwards them on to Carlos.
They are not trying to sneak around the Bayesian Filter you have installed on your machine, because, like you said, someone who has gone that far is clearly not going to get lured by spam. They are targeting the ISP's spam filters, so that the spam gets past their filters and into your grandma's Inbox.
Except my daughters are going to learn PHP9 none of that HTML Fluff.
Just keep in mind that different kids have different minds and different ideas of what's interesting or worth their time to learn. Your kid may find programming to be a boring activity. (I know, the horror of it all, but still, it could happen. )
Wouldn't you say this is the case for most "old cities?" The old parts deteriorate over time, and need to be renovated or rebuilt, but the government requires that they be renovated or rebuilt in the "classic" style for purpose of culture, tourism, history, etc.?
Eh, or they're just surrounded by people who make significantly more than $60k. If you make $X and your peers and members of your social circle make $Y, which is greater than $X, you're going to feel as if $X is less than average, even if factually that may not be the case.
Besides, even when people complain that $X is lower class, they neglect that even today's economic lower classes have significant improvements over lower classes in generations past. Today we assume things like TVs, cars, electricity, indoor plumbing, free education, and so forth are part of the "baseline." Only the poorest of the poor in America lack these "essentials."
Uh, the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution. It's the first 10 amendments. From the Wikipedia entry: "The United States Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. These amendments limit the powers of the federal government, protecting the rights of all citizens, residents and visitors on United States territory." And they were added because the States were worried that the Constitution without such amendments would create too strong of a central government.
Usually, we protected the rights of the majority. As you said yourself, we tossed all the Japanese into jail.
At the time, the rights of the minorities were not protected, I agree. As I said earlier, in times of fear or war or terrorism, human beings act irrationally and foolishly - it's human nature. But read up on what happened after WWII. The government apologized to the Japanese Americans who were interned and paid $20,000 to all surviving Japanese Americans who were interned, including those that moved back to Japan. Moreover, the government paid to have historical monuments maintained so that we, as a nation, would not forget these injustices.
Finally, I am not proposing the rights of minorities trump the rights of others. I'm saying that everybody's rights need to be upheld, not just the majority's. Everyone's rights are equivocal. The rights of the many do not trump the rights of the few. And to be clear, what I perceive as our rights are well outlined in the Bill of Rights. And I don't think bag searches at airports violate the Fourth Amendment and neither does the Supreme Court.
At some point, we do have to decide whether protecting minority rights is more important than inconveniencing the majority. If it is just muslim people that cause the problems, then wouldn't it be logical to persecute only them? If you can't stomach persecuting just them, then don't persecute everyone to make yourself feel safe.
This is a dilemma we've faced as a nation time and time again and we've almost always sided with protecting the minority rights. See things like gay rights, civil rights for racial minorities, and on and on. And, IMO, that's how it should be. If you are ever in the minority you'll probably agree with that sentiment, too.
If it is just muslim people that cause the problems, then wouldn't it be logical to persecute only them? If you can't stomach persecuting just them, then don't persecute everyone to make yourself feel safe. Just don't do it all, and take some karate or carry a gun.
Erm, Muslims aren't the only terrorists to have operated in the US. One such counterexample (among several) is Timothy McVeigh. And lastly, I don't think bag searches are persecution. If you disagree, don't fly in a commercial plane. I promise you the TSA is not going to come barging into your home to conduct a persecutory bag search!
Personally, I think that in general our society has an over heightened sense of fear, a sense of fear that is misplaced and not rational (e.g., you are more incredibly, vastly, overwhelmingly more likely to die driving to work than by a terrorist). I think that a lot of these "precautions" really don't do much in the long run to deter terrorists and server more as inconveniences and as a safety blanket so people "feel" safe. However, I think it's wrong to start singling out a particular race or religion and applying different standards to them, because doing so opens to door to other actions targeted against certain groups that may be innocent but are targeted merely because of the color of their skin or their religious beliefs.
The difference is, back then, only the Japanese (and some Germans and Italians), were actually interred. Today, everyone is subject to extra-judicial search and seizure.
So it would be OK today to round up American citizens who were born in Iraq or Iran or Syria or Egypt and forcibly move them to internment camps!?!
I doubt you're saying that. I am guessing you're meaning that it would be OK to just search people who looked like the terrorists - racial or religious profiling? I think instituting such behavior is a slippery slope.
In any event, I don't think bag checks are necessarily "extra-judicial search and seizure." If they are mandated, then, sure, we've got a problem. But last time I checked no one was forcing you to fly in an airplane. If you want to avoid airport security, don't go to airports.
The reality is, the USA was threatened with British spies during the war of 1812, German and Japanese sabotuers in both World Wars, soviet saboteurs during the cold war, all funded by adversaries that were at the time, our equal military match. Yet, it is only today that we have to turn the constitution upside down because of a bunch of panzies afraid of a few semi-literate muzzies trying to blow something up.
You need to brush up on your history. Today is hardly the first time the Constitution has been "turned upside down" due to a perceived threat. There are many such cases during any war, but here's a start: the Japanese American Internment. Locking up American citizens because they immigrated from Japan is a far more grievous act than inspecting a purse at an airport.
I'm not defending breaches of the Constitution or even the heightened state of "alert" we are told to be in today. My point is that in such times of terrorism or war, rules are bent and the rights of some are overlooked. It's a shame, but it happens. It's not a uniquely American thing, it happens everywhere and is a natural human response to actual or perceived danger. My earlier point was that heightened security is naturally going to follow in the epicenter of 9/11; likewise, it's unfair to compare attitudes and behaviors of a populace that hasn't recently suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack to one that has.
Poland had that World War II thing. Invaded by Germany. Over one million people killed, including all of the jews and most of the country's intellectual class.
Well, no duh. But the whole talk was about actions taken by law enforcement to prevent further acts of terrorism. When was the last terrorist action performed in Poland and what were the casualties? And let me ask you this: if Germany had invaded Poland using guerrilla tactics, do you not think that Poland might have justifiably been a little more watchful and cautious of those peoples within her borders, even her own citizens?
This may be the case for NYC, but to be fair, NYC is hardly representative of the States at large.
And let's not forget, they had that whole September 11th thing happen right there in the heart of NYC. Two buildings leveled. 3,000+ dead. Etc., etc.
By definition, there has to be a loser for every winner and usually multiple losers for every winner.
By whose definition? Economics isn't a zero-sum game. Here's a simple example: Imagine we have two farmers, one grows beans, the other corn. Each grows enough food for them and their family. Rather than eating nothing but beans or nothing but corn, the two decide to trade with each other, exchanging some beans for some corn. Now who, exactly, has lost? I think we have a win-win here.
Yes, we'd all like to believe in the American Dream of being rags to riches. If you work hard, be ambitious, etc. you'll go far in life.
I believe in this dream. Not that working hard equates with great wealth and fame, but that if you work hard you'll be better off than if you don't, that hard work and ingenuity can elevate your position in life. As Thomas Edison so aptly put it, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
So don't blame the white night sky on all the street lights - take a drive out of the city and look up, chances are that you'll still see nothing.
If you are "still seeing nothing," maybe you need to keep driving out of the suburbs and get to the parts of America that are still wild (which is the vast majority of this immense country).
My wife and I went hiking in the Sierra Nevadas this summer. In some spots out there you are 50-100 miles from the nearest car or house, and the night sky was lit up like a planetarium. Of course it helped that for most of our two weeks on in the wilderness, there was nary a cloud in sight, day or night. The view, as you can imagine, was amazing. We'd sleep in our tent and leave the rain fly off, and when we'd wake up in the middle of the night we'd have a majestic view of the universe spread out before us.
One day we'll be telling our children, "When I was your age, we actually had people comparing satellite imagery to find lost people!"
Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? I'm no expert on the state of image recognition research, but you think it would be good enough that a computer could pick out potential "hits" for further review by trained professionals, perhaps by searching for what looks like man-made objects in remote areas or comparing old imagery with the current, updated samples.
You do realize, don't you, the only thing really sustaining any balance at all in this country is the fact the poor people have guns, the rich people have guns, the religious people have guns... at a fundamental level the government has no choice but to fear the people - exactly the recipe for liberty as envisioned by our patriots.
I disagree. Yes, that can be one factor that sustains a society, but that's not a society I'd want to live in. The best societal sustainer is free trade and a capitalistic economy with as little government intervention as necessary. When people are working, producing goods, and trading them with one another, there's no reason why the rich would want to squash the poor or vice-a-versa. Doing so would run counter to your desires: the rich would lose a large share of their market and a warring society is bad for business; the poor would lose their jobs and wouldn't enjoy the wide array of consumer goods and services that have made life so much more comfortable today than it has ever been in the history or humanity.
We should toss such copyright laws, and devise a revised scheme that guarantees that the artists get most of the money.
But who, exactly, is the "artist" in a movie? I saw the Simpson's film this week - a short animated movie - and the credits easily exceeded 100 people. Even in music, while the artist may be the one who created the work, s/he certainly did not work alone to get their songs recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed.
Previously GMail's disk quota was slowly increasing over time. I assume that now that they have entered the business of selling online disk space, such increases are now a thing of the past?
at least in the uk paper money started as something that was gauranteed by the issuer to be exchangable for a fixed ammount of something else (generally precious metals). Then because of problems with currupt issuers the government took over and then from there the exchangeability to gold was phased out.
Yes, I am aware that currency was, in the past, backed by something tangible. But I wonder if it was as easy to exchange currency for that tangible good. Could you walk into a bank or the institution and say, "Here's three bucks, I'd like 0.2 ounces of gold (or silver or whatever)? Maybe for large amounts of currency, but what good does that do the average commoner?
Furthermore, what makes precious metals valuable other than society just agreeing that they are valuable (like any arbitrary currency)? I know that some metals have industrial applications, but gold and other shiny objects had worth even in pre-industrial times. It's funny what we decide to assign worth to.
Only if the something in question has some objective value. I can print off a few hundred CGMUs (Control Group Monetary Units), making a very limited supply, but I don't imagine that would make them worth money to anyone else*.
Unlike the other commodities you mention, US dollars have no inherent utility. The "full faith and credit" of the US government determines their utility.
While the "full faith and credit" of the US government might be the motivating cause for why people place value in the dollar, it's only that belief that makes the dollar worth anything. What I'm trying to say is that currency of any kind has no inherent value. It's value comes because for whatever reason enough people artificially give it value.
I've often wondered how a society goes about finding some currency valuable, how everyone agrees upon it. I imagine you'd need som catalyst, i.e., enough members of society agreeing to place value in the currency in question so that others might join in, figuring it's an easier way to do trade. And once you get a critical mass, I'm sure adoption skies to 100%. But what would the opposite valuation look like? How many people in a society need to start saying, "I'm not accepting that currency" before it gains enough steam that others agree, and then others, and so on?
I don't get it.
You don't get what?
Especially if they looked like this. She did a spread for Stuff Magazine. She did an interview for them, too.
I recently heard her on a radio interview promoting her new book. She's smart and well spoken. But you know those types of jokes that are subtle and in the delivery? The kind that most socially adapted people pick up quickly. There were a couple of those that seemed to go over her head. (Which was neat because it made her seem more like the nerd/wallflower type than a social butterfly.) Here's an example from the Stuff Magazine interview:
QUESTION: After the show, you attended UCLA, became a genius and published a paper on Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z2. I really enjoyed the part on infinite occupied clusters.
ANSWER: It's really complicated and not that interesting to most people.
Jeepers, Winnie, he was being tongue-in-cheek and opened the door for a joke. :-)