It also matters from a philosophy-of-science perspective *to the metric system.* While in practical terms it's the usefulness of the metric system which stands as its ultimate justification, it also helps keep the metric system on the same page as good scientific practice if its basic postulates are somehow empirically verifiable. Imagine what it would be like if the metric system was based on the idea of the length of the staff of God, or on the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. It doesn't fit right with the rest of the scientific project -- it's like putting peanut butter in your spaghetti sauce. If the metric system *was* set up this way, one can imagine it feeling competitive pressure from a similarly efficient and congenial system of measure based on the empirically verifiable properties of middle-sized objects; e.g., spheres of silicon. Now, you might not think that much is gained by going from a chunk of platinum to a sphere of silicon, but science is all about incremental improvements, and (as the article and other posters point out) there are certain properties of a silicon sphere which make it a more reliable/stable proxy for the ideal kilogram. (Remember, the closer your empirically verifiable properties are to the ideal properties you postulate, the better your scientific theory.)
AP - Scientists at the prestigious CERN institute in Switzerland announced late Friday that the so-called 'dark matter', which makes up 90% of the universe, is actually bullshit. "These findings come as a surprise," stated Dr. Weissmann, lead scientist at the institute. "Before today, we thought dark matter might be, say, an agglomeration of exotic subatomic particles, like muons or 'strange' quarks, signifying a problem with the equations governing space-time. Instead, all that turns out to be bullshit." Other hypotheses included Cheez-puffs and intelligent end-users. But the conclusive evidence for the new Bullshit Theory of Matter came from the Hubble space telescope, which since 1995 has been sending back data that, according to scientists, is "complete and utter bull." "Over and over we ran through the equations, and each time we came up with the same answer: This is crap," affirmed Weismann. "It's satisfying, in a way, to be able to say that about your life's work."
For all of those that wear fanny packs, this one's commin' atcha!
(w/ apologies to Ben Folds)
Seriously, though.
In Germany, where I lived for a spell, it was permissible for us young males to wear a small shoulder bag. Well, hell, I happen to be gay, right, but the straights were doing it too. It was INFINITELY more efficient than this pockets business every guy in America puts up with. (Or at least the guys here in Chicago.) I had my 'handy' (=cell), my keys, my iPod, my headphones, hipster PDA (http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-t he-hipster-pda/) and of course a broad selection of pens. And all in a cute little bag! So, red-blooded american mostly-males: Are you ready to hack gender normativity? Or are you TOO GIRLY to put up with some funny stares and SUFFER, like the 50's housewives whose conformity you ape?
Go to that store. Buy something cute. Put the iPod in it. No need to ask slashdot for silly permission or reassurance. GET A PURSE.
Mars used to be a lot like Earth, but then they voted for a George Bush, who burst from the chest of Sigourney Weaver. They started randomly attacking oil-bearing nations in Martian Gulf, and then drilling in Martian Alaska, and so forth.
Hey, it ain't called the 'red planet' for nothing.
Look, you supposedly free-market-fond ninnies. The guys in Romania have just as much to compete for the custom of your employer as you do. Give the rest of the world a chance. How *dare* you compare downsizing with the incineration of millions of Jews? Shame on you, *and* your new SUVs.
I consult and some days I work in a beautiful office that's 90% windows. Great for wi-fi and cells, right? NNNNT! They're all coated with magic Anti Signal Coating, and (near as I can tell) the only way to get any sort of reception on any wireless equipment is to stick the thing out the window or walk outside.
that once biotech takes off we'll see the same explosion in human virii that we currently see in their digital cognates.
'Bitter, disillusioned teenager (or bitter, disillusioned terrorist) whips up new version of influenza, pictures and patches at eleven. If you live on the south side of the river, however, you're as good as dead, please try X brand tylenol for all your lethal-flu-related misery.'
BTW, what would a human equivalent to 'Windows Update' look like?
I'd much rather have 1kg of incredibly toxic stuff in a sealed container than 10,000,000kg of fossil fuel residues in the air I have to breathe....until some clever dude with a 747 decides it'd be fun to aerosolize that 1kg in an explosion.
It's daft these days to think only of environmental problems in scenarios which presume human responsibility. What you also need are scenarios where (some) human beings are intentionally trying to break the system down.
I've spent about six months or so repairing a botched installation of Quickbooks (http://www.quickbooks.com) and setting up an inventory and accounting system for a small distribution/wholesale concern. Aside from the fact that QuickBooks was designed by accountants who obviously hate all techies, and despite the additional badness of possessing an inflexible and proprietary back-end with a five- or ten-seat 'concurrent use' limit, Quickbooks possesses the following serious advantages:
1. Price. A one-year subscription to Quickbooks Pro, including tech support, costs $85 a month, which means that you get the whole accounting package for a little over a grand. (You can cancel your subscription and keep your seats.) That's a steal, especially since I'm computing this in Canadian dollars.:)
2. QB Pro comes with an SDK, so you can buy third-party extensions to attach your database to ODBC, etc, which mitigates the allergy you might have to proprietariness. Also, people like www.numbercruncher.com have developed very complete sales/invo add-on packages for Quickbooks, which are worth taking a gander at if Quickbooks built-in inventory system is insufficient. (It'll probably be sufficient on its own, however, unless you're doing something weird.)
3. You really, really don't want to roll your own accounting system. Funny thing is that an inventory system must be pretty tightly integrated with an accounting system in order to work well. (ie. inventory adjustments should alter the accountant's info about what assets you have on hand; double-entry bookkeeping dictates that the difference in the asset account must match an occurrent change in an income account; valuation must be performed by averaging the cost of each order of a given inventory item type; etc.) You don't want your client to get to year-end and then find that his books don't make sense. The IRS and Revenue Canada both hate that sort of thing, and your client will likely pass the hatings on to you. Don't leave him up that particular canal without a gondola pole.
4. Quickbooks is really easy for end-users to use. Ease-of-use is paramount when you're going to let the minimum-wagers at the counter enter info.
5. Intuit sells a POS for QuickBooks. Never tried it, but I'm sure it works well.
6. Quickbooks might be too dinky for your client's business, but that's okay: It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try before you buy. If quickbooks isn't enough, go get $10,000 of AccPac like everyone else.
7. Message me for more info about what I've seen work and not work.
The bicycle is great, and I use mine all the time. But before you start complaining about automobiles, think of those of us up here in CANADA where winter can peg the thermometer at unbikeable temperatures for up to two thirds of the year (at least it does where I'm from -- Edmonton -- you other canucks might find that, almost literally, YMMV.)
Basically, Microsoft is so entrenched now that they can dictate terms to governments by threatening economic slowdowns, and hence, poor showings on election day.
Essentially, Microsoft now has enough economic power to also possess de-facto political power.
>>Why is the person outside of your country - probably also the head of a household - less deserving than the person in your country?
>Sorry, that's not a moral argument.
Actually, it is -- provided that you aren't a utilitarian. For instance, if you find it plausible that you 'owe' your wife and kids something more than the family of the guy across the street (that is, you shouldn't skip your Timmy's soccer practice in order to go see Bob's kid's spelling recital; you shouldn't lavish gifts on your neighbour's wife in preference to, or even to the same degree as, your own) then one might argue that the same goes for those that share your culture, your language, your past and your future. I.e. your countrymen. On this reading, it is immoral not to be patriotic to some degree or another.
I'm not claiming this is the right argument, but it's a perfectly valid, coherent position to hold.
(P.S. My degree is in ethics, and hence completely useless except when debugging slashdot. It's so nice to feel useful, even if only for a few minutes.:)
As another poster mentioned, in OSC's Ender novels, as well as in David Brin's _Earth_. As a matter of fact, the latter described the device almost precisely as described here. Brin even thought of some important caveats: given how difficult it is for the average human being to keep their thoughts on track for 0.2ms, the thing is almost impossible to use for more than 0.3ms. (The extra 0.1ms is the length of time it takes to think 'FORKING PIECE OF SHI.zza!@EOF' as you reach for the sensors.)
So don't get too excited, all you ADD, quasi-ADD and just plain procrastinatory slashdotters -- whoever ends up using this tech won't be you.:)
is to racially screen the extraterrestrials getting on the asteroids, so only white, and not green or grey, aliens can get on the thing. You can be sure that good, universe-governing-entity-fearing white aliens won't randomly crash into us. Let's put the others on pluto without trial as 'alien combatants' until the universe undergoes heat death.
Or maybe I've just been reading too many white house press releases.
This is very slightly OT, but: I have the best cover letter in the world.
See, I'm an arts major. I love comp sci, but, at core, I'm better at slinging words than code. And yet --- and yet! --- time and time I land juicy IT/comp sci jobs.
How did I do it, you ask? How -- in this era of downsizing, offshoring, outsourcing, and outcasting, can a man with only two thirds of a BA to his name whisk jobs out from under the noses of a standing army of hungry engineers?
It began some time ago. Late one May night, in the spring of my first year of university, I sat up, smoking, staring at my screen. I had no prospects that summer, and my bank account, over the preceding months, had boiled dry in the orgiastic worship of those two deities, Pizza and Alcohol, that stand watch over freshmen. I had no regrets, but for the gnawing of my gut; but this latter had long ceased to be a matter of purely speculative interest. Of late, it had begun to impel my thoughts towards dark fantasies and barbarous acts; I had even, in my nadir, begun contemplating call centre jobs. So I sat there, hour after hour, smoking, until, heavy with nicotine and caffeine and exhaustion's due, I reached for the 'Shut Down' item in the Special menu. But as despair condemns, so does it raise up. As I grasped the mouse, I saw a vision of all the terrible months, the agonies, that await the un- and under-employed, and, in terror, I blurted into my word processor a single phrase: 'To Whom It May Concern'.
'To Whom It May Concern'. Bold, but not brazen. Formal, but not stiff.
Just as, upon kindling a fire, one red-tongued flame implies the next, or, in ramen, one noodle dangles upon its predessor, so too with words. In my desperation I spoke, as they say, from the heart; I emptied the 'ramen noodle bowl' of my heart up, out, into the computer, and the word processor awaiting within. A god must have possessed me, for I wrote without memory, and fell asleep on the keyboard. When I awoke, I discovered that I had created such a harmony of plain-hearted, well-spoken servile lies that I could not believe my eyes. I saved the created _thing_, my.doc golem, to three floppies (in case any one should prove incapable of containing such forces) and printed a copy to show to my roommate, who immediately asked if he could pay me $20 to fix his computer, which had, he said, been making a lot of fan noise of late. After I reformatted approximately half his drive and lost one of his motherboard's DIMMs, he paid me $30, and recommended me to everyone he knew, including his uncle, who works in HR at a large software company which shall remain nameless.
And that is how I survive: By using the dark side of the market forces to manipulate feeble-minded middle management into hiring and retaining me. Maybe I don't have the certs, and maybe I don't have the street cred; But I *do* have the world's best cover letter. It is +4/+5 with mountainwalking, forestwalking, swampwalking and moonwalking. It comes on premium bond acid-free paper, lightly watermarked with one of those pretentious marbly patterns.
It also comes in an attractive matching envelope.
So far, according to my completely unscientific measurements, it's landed me, and my friends, over twenty jobs. It can be modified to target any position, any requirements, with only a single sentence change -- and yet it sounds perfectly natural and unaffected. In short, no job is safe, no position impregnable. The only reason I have not yet taken over the world is that the U.S. presidency does not accept resumes. But, in the event that I do somehow manage to take control (or, as I shall say on TV, 'stewardship') of the planet, you should not worry: I take very good care of the mindless suits that become my mindless slaves, and I see no reason to change a broadly successful HR policy simply because I'll have a few extra billion chattel to boss about. Although I admit that my reign will probably involve some gigantic poster-waving, I will see to it that eith
Except 'other books' don't represent objective criteria, they represent the author of that books *opinions*.
What is the difference between opinion and true belief?
In simpler terms, one can make a statement that can be compared to existing opinion. Once cannot however create an experiment that verifies or falsifies the existence of said hermeneutic circles. The first is subjective, the second objective.
Right. Again, I ask: Tell me what objectivity is. (If you find out, please tell Fox news.) Unless you want to give a *metaphysical* (and therefore, 'opinion'-based) take on the matter, you will probably end up saying something like: 'Objectivity is what everyone sees'. Or, 'objectivity is something that every subject can observe, if given the appropriate conditions'. The jargon for this is 'intersubjective verifiability' (Google if you like.) My point is that text seems only somewhat less intersubjectively verifiable than science, because (unless you want to rely on God, or the transcendent idea of God, as Descartes was forced to) you have no basis for saying that X is an objective measurement and Y is subjective. You can only say that X seems more easily verified by a certain kind of person trained in the minutia of a particular theory than is Y; it is almost an aesthetic, rather than ontological or epistemological, difference.
'Everyone knows what one is' does not map onto the statement 'the existence of one can be demonstrated by objectively verifiable means'. Again, you confuse the meanings of the words 'subjective' and objective'.
No, I have not. On the contrary, you have confused the myth of (for lack of a better expression) 'strong' objectivity with what actually exists, or seems to exist, or can be argued can exist.
Certainly. And if you *were* a quantum physicist, you could repeat my experiments for yourself, and verify the results. (Which by the way is the core of the scientific method.) You cannot say the same about rational agents or hermeneutic circles.
You miss the point: That (a) the experiments mean nothing without a theory to guide them, and that (b) logicaly, the theory cannot be a consequence of the experiments meant to prove it. Furthermore, (c) experiments by themselves can neither prove nor disprove a scientific theory. The upshots are that (a) that science involves an irreducibly metaphysical aspect, and (b) that empirical measurements do not seem to have any claim to special consideration, except that the seem to be especially useful for making CPU's and jet engines. (Math, for instance, does not use empirical measurements, but gets on just fine.) Please read 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', by Thomas Kuhn (an MIT wonk, BTW), because I'm basically just recapping and riffing off of his eloquent and perspicacious research.
You can only agree or disagree with the existence of those, but not prove their existence. In science, no matter how large the body of opinion, it can be toppled by a single experiment. (And has been on multiple occasions.)
Right. Whenever revolutionary natural scientific discoveries are made, all major scientists queue up to clamber aboard, right? And if major scientists fail to queue up so, it is a sign of a regrettable intellectual vice, rather than (shock, horror) because they operate in the same sort of belief-construct that animates the humanities and social sciences?
Yes, it could mean that we have a faulty understanding. Which means we have to create a theory to explain the new results, *and perform experiments to test the truth or falsehood of that theory*. Again, something that you cannot do in philosophy, or lit crit, or economics because you cannot perform experiments with verifiable results.
Yes, but a lit crit, philosophical or (since you do not seem to consider it a real science) economic theory can be proven or disproven based on its consequences for the rest of the discipline. For instance, if it turned out that,
Slashdot Mirror
'innovation'
It also matters from a philosophy-of-science perspective *to the metric system.* While in practical terms it's the usefulness of the metric system which stands as its ultimate justification, it also helps keep the metric system on the same page as good scientific practice if its basic postulates are somehow empirically verifiable. Imagine what it would be like if the metric system was based on the idea of the length of the staff of God, or on the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. It doesn't fit right with the rest of the scientific project -- it's like putting peanut butter in your spaghetti sauce. If the metric system *was* set up this way, one can imagine it feeling competitive pressure from a similarly efficient and congenial system of measure based on the empirically verifiable properties of middle-sized objects; e.g., spheres of silicon. Now, you might not think that much is gained by going from a chunk of platinum to a sphere of silicon, but science is all about incremental improvements, and (as the article and other posters point out) there are certain properties of a silicon sphere which make it a more reliable/stable proxy for the ideal kilogram. (Remember, the closer your empirically verifiable properties are to the ideal properties you postulate, the better your scientific theory.)
Kant figured this out back in the mid-nineteenth century. He proved that spatial and temporal conception is a prerequisite of consciousness.
Not that anyone except the five people that made it through the 'Transcendental Deduction' noticed, however.
AP - Scientists at the prestigious CERN institute in Switzerland announced late Friday that the so-called 'dark matter', which makes up 90% of the universe, is actually bullshit.
"These findings come as a surprise," stated Dr. Weissmann, lead scientist at the institute. "Before today, we thought dark matter might be, say, an agglomeration of exotic subatomic particles, like muons or 'strange' quarks, signifying a problem with the equations governing space-time. Instead, all that turns out to be bullshit."
Other hypotheses included Cheez-puffs and intelligent end-users. But the conclusive evidence for the new Bullshit Theory of Matter came from the Hubble space telescope, which since 1995 has been sending back data that, according to scientists, is "complete and utter bull."
"Over and over we ran through the equations, and each time we came up with the same answer: This is crap," affirmed Weismann. "It's satisfying, in a way, to be able to say that about your life's work."
-C.
For all of those that wear fanny packs, this one's commin' atcha!
t he-hipster-pda/) and of course a broad selection of pens. And all in a cute little bag! So, red-blooded american mostly-males: Are you ready to hack gender normativity? Or are you TOO GIRLY to put up with some funny stares and SUFFER, like the 50's housewives whose conformity you ape?
(w/ apologies to Ben Folds)
Seriously, though.
In Germany, where I lived for a spell, it was permissible for us young males to wear a small shoulder bag. Well, hell, I happen to be gay, right, but the straights were doing it too. It was INFINITELY more efficient than this pockets business every guy in America puts up with. (Or at least the guys here in Chicago.) I had my 'handy' (=cell), my keys, my iPod, my headphones, hipster PDA (http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-
Go to that store. Buy something cute. Put the iPod in it. No need to ask slashdot for silly permission or reassurance. GET A PURSE.
But can it predict future revolutions?
(Today is Octidi, le 38 Vendémiaire, Année 214 de la République, to you monarchist imperialist bastards!)
Mars used to be a lot like Earth, but then they voted for a George Bush, who burst from the chest of Sigourney Weaver. They started randomly attacking oil-bearing nations in Martian Gulf, and then drilling in Martian Alaska, and so forth.
Hey, it ain't called the 'red planet' for nothing.
Red planet, blue planet...
Look, you supposedly free-market-fond ninnies. The guys in Romania have just as much to compete for the custom of your employer as you do. Give the rest of the world a chance. How *dare* you compare downsizing with the incineration of millions of Jews? Shame on you, *and* your new SUVs.
I consult and some days I work in a beautiful office that's 90% windows. Great for wi-fi and cells, right? NNNNT! They're all coated with magic Anti Signal Coating, and (near as I can tell) the only way to get any sort of reception on any wireless equipment is to stick the thing out the window or walk outside.
that once biotech takes off we'll see the same explosion in human virii that we currently see in their digital cognates.
'Bitter, disillusioned teenager (or bitter, disillusioned terrorist) whips up new version of influenza, pictures and patches at eleven. If you live on the south side of the river, however, you're as good as dead, please try X brand tylenol for all your lethal-flu-related misery.'
BTW, what would a human equivalent to 'Windows Update' look like?
I'd much rather have 1kg of incredibly toxic stuff in a sealed container than 10,000,000kg of fossil fuel residues in the air I have to breathe. ...until some clever dude with a 747 decides it'd be fun to aerosolize that 1kg in an explosion.
It's daft these days to think only of environmental problems in scenarios which presume human responsibility. What you also need are scenarios where (some) human beings are intentionally trying to break the system down.
I've spent about six months or so repairing a botched installation of Quickbooks (http://www.quickbooks.com) and setting up an inventory and accounting system for a small distribution/wholesale concern. Aside from the fact that QuickBooks was designed by accountants who obviously hate all techies, and despite the additional badness of possessing an inflexible and proprietary back-end with a five- or ten-seat 'concurrent use' limit, Quickbooks possesses the following serious advantages:
:)
1. Price. A one-year subscription to Quickbooks Pro, including tech support, costs $85 a month, which means that you get the whole accounting package for a little over a grand. (You can cancel your subscription and keep your seats.) That's a steal, especially since I'm computing this in Canadian dollars.
2. QB Pro comes with an SDK, so you can buy third-party extensions to attach your database to ODBC, etc, which mitigates the allergy you might have to proprietariness. Also, people like www.numbercruncher.com have developed very complete sales/invo add-on packages for Quickbooks, which are worth taking a gander at if Quickbooks built-in inventory system is insufficient. (It'll probably be sufficient on its own, however, unless you're doing something weird.)
3. You really, really don't want to roll your own accounting system. Funny thing is that an inventory system must be pretty tightly integrated with an accounting system in order to work well. (ie. inventory adjustments should alter the accountant's info about what assets you have on hand; double-entry bookkeeping dictates that the difference in the asset account must match an occurrent change in an income account; valuation must be performed by averaging the cost of each order of a given inventory item type; etc.) You don't want your client to get to year-end and then find that his books don't make sense. The IRS and Revenue Canada both hate that sort of thing, and your client will likely pass the hatings on to you. Don't leave him up that particular canal without a gondola pole.
4. Quickbooks is really easy for end-users to use. Ease-of-use is paramount when you're going to let the minimum-wagers at the counter enter info.
5. Intuit sells a POS for QuickBooks. Never tried it, but I'm sure it works well.
6. Quickbooks might be too dinky for your client's business, but that's okay: It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try before you buy. If quickbooks isn't enough, go get $10,000 of AccPac like everyone else.
7. Message me for more info about what I've seen work and not work.
Now, of course, the question becomes: How long will it take to weaponize them?
The bicycle is great, and I use mine all the time. But before you start complaining about automobiles, think of those of us up here in CANADA where winter can peg the thermometer at unbikeable temperatures for up to two thirds of the year (at least it does where I'm from -- Edmonton -- you other canucks might find that, almost literally, YMMV.)
Personally, I love cars.
Basically, Microsoft is so entrenched now that they can dictate terms to governments by threatening economic slowdowns, and hence, poor showings on election day.
Essentially, Microsoft now has enough economic power to also possess de-facto political power.
Translucent windows?
(looks outdoors)
How are they new again?
Well, this is 'translucent windows.... on the Internet'. It's totally different.
I just bought an iBook like, two weeks ago. :) It only runs at 800mhz, and, truth be told, I can feel it.
Bummer....
all hell will break loose. Damn machines.
I'm going to go work on my Mech battle suit now.
>>Why is the person outside of your country - probably also the head of a household - less deserving than the person in your country?
>Sorry, that's not a moral argument.
Actually, it is -- provided that you aren't a utilitarian. For instance, if you find it plausible that you 'owe' your wife and kids something more than the family of the guy across the street (that is, you shouldn't skip your Timmy's soccer practice in order to go see Bob's kid's spelling recital; you shouldn't lavish gifts on your neighbour's wife in preference to, or even to the same degree as, your own) then one might argue that the same goes for those that share your culture, your language, your past and your future. I.e. your countrymen. On this reading, it is immoral not to be patriotic to some degree or another.
I'm not claiming this is the right argument, but it's a perfectly valid, coherent position to hold.
(P.S. My degree is in ethics, and hence completely useless except when debugging slashdot. It's so nice to feel useful, even if only for a few minutes.
If I wanted a dual layer DVD, I'd just put two of them in the drive at the same time.
Me, I'm waiting for *triple*-layer DVDs. Now that'd be something. Yessiree. Yessiree *bob*.
As another poster mentioned, in OSC's Ender novels, as well as in David Brin's _Earth_. As a matter of fact, the latter described the device almost precisely as described here. Brin even thought of some important caveats: given how difficult it is for the average human being to keep their thoughts on track for 0.2ms, the thing is almost impossible to use for more than 0.3ms. (The extra 0.1ms is the length of time it takes to think 'FORKING PIECE OF SHI.zza!@EOF' as you reach for the sensors.)
:)
So don't get too excited, all you ADD, quasi-ADD and just plain procrastinatory slashdotters -- whoever ends up using this tech won't be you.
is to racially screen the extraterrestrials getting on the asteroids, so only white, and not green or grey, aliens can get on the thing. You can be sure that good, universe-governing-entity-fearing white aliens won't randomly crash into us. Let's put the others on pluto without trial as 'alien combatants' until the universe undergoes heat death.
Or maybe I've just been reading too many white house press releases.
Let's just hope they have a really, really good UPS; saving that thing off to conventional media would take a few hours.
Next on CNN: Terrorists who target the power infrastructure of command-and-control centres! Pictures at eleven!
This is very slightly OT, but:
.doc golem, to three floppies (in case any one should prove incapable of containing such forces) and printed a copy to show to my roommate, who immediately asked if he could pay me $20 to fix his computer, which had, he said, been making a lot of fan noise of late. After I reformatted approximately half his drive and lost one of his motherboard's DIMMs, he paid me $30, and recommended me to everyone he knew, including his uncle, who works in HR at a large software company which shall remain nameless.
I have the best cover letter in the world.
See, I'm an arts major. I love comp sci, but, at core, I'm better at slinging words than code. And yet --- and yet! --- time and time I land juicy IT/comp sci jobs.
How did I do it, you ask? How -- in this era of downsizing, offshoring, outsourcing, and outcasting, can a man with only two thirds of a BA to his name whisk jobs out from under the noses of a standing army of hungry engineers?
It began some time ago. Late one May night, in the spring of my first year of university, I sat up, smoking, staring at my screen. I had no prospects that summer, and my bank account, over the preceding months, had boiled dry in the orgiastic worship of those two deities, Pizza and Alcohol, that stand watch over freshmen. I had no regrets, but for the gnawing of my gut; but this latter had long ceased to be a matter of purely speculative interest. Of late, it had begun to impel my thoughts towards dark fantasies and barbarous acts; I had even, in my nadir, begun contemplating call centre jobs. So I sat there, hour after hour, smoking, until, heavy with nicotine and caffeine and exhaustion's due, I reached for the 'Shut Down' item in the Special menu. But as despair condemns, so does it raise up. As I grasped the mouse, I saw a vision of all the terrible months, the agonies, that await the un- and under-employed, and, in terror, I blurted into my word processor a single phrase: 'To Whom It May Concern'.
'To Whom It May Concern'. Bold, but not brazen. Formal, but not stiff.
Just as, upon kindling a fire, one red-tongued flame implies the next, or, in ramen, one noodle dangles upon its predessor, so too with words. In my desperation I spoke, as they say, from the heart; I emptied the 'ramen noodle bowl' of my heart up, out, into the computer, and the word processor awaiting within.
A god must have possessed me, for I wrote without memory, and fell asleep on the keyboard. When I awoke, I discovered that I had created such a harmony of plain-hearted, well-spoken servile lies that I could not believe my eyes. I saved the created _thing_, my
And that is how I survive: By using the dark side of the market forces to manipulate feeble-minded middle management into hiring and retaining me. Maybe I don't have the certs, and maybe I don't have the street cred; But I *do* have the world's best cover letter. It is +4/+5 with mountainwalking, forestwalking, swampwalking and moonwalking. It comes on premium bond acid-free paper, lightly watermarked with one of those pretentious marbly patterns.
It also comes in an attractive matching envelope.
So far, according to my completely unscientific measurements, it's landed me, and my friends, over twenty jobs. It can be modified to target any position, any requirements, with only a single sentence change -- and yet it sounds perfectly natural and unaffected. In short, no job is safe, no position impregnable. The only reason I have not yet taken over the world is that the U.S. presidency does not accept resumes. But, in the event that I do somehow manage to take control (or, as I shall say on TV, 'stewardship') of the planet, you should not worry: I take very good care of the mindless suits that become my mindless slaves, and I see no reason to change a broadly successful HR policy simply because I'll have a few extra billion chattel to boss about. Although I admit that my reign will probably involve some gigantic poster-waving, I will see to it that eith
Except 'other books' don't represent objective criteria, they represent the author of that books *opinions*.
What is the difference between opinion and true belief?
In simpler terms, one can make a statement that can be compared to existing opinion. Once cannot however create an experiment that verifies or falsifies the existence of said hermeneutic circles. The first is subjective, the second objective.
Right. Again, I ask: Tell me what objectivity is. (If you find out, please tell Fox news.) Unless you want to give a *metaphysical* (and therefore, 'opinion'-based) take on the matter, you will probably end up saying something like: 'Objectivity is what everyone sees'. Or, 'objectivity is something that every subject can observe, if given the appropriate conditions'. The jargon for this is 'intersubjective verifiability' (Google if you like.) My point is that text seems only somewhat less intersubjectively verifiable than science, because (unless you want to rely on God, or the transcendent idea of God, as Descartes was forced to) you have no basis for saying that X is an objective measurement and Y is subjective. You can only say that X seems more easily verified by a certain kind of person trained in the minutia of a particular theory than is Y; it is almost an aesthetic, rather than ontological or epistemological, difference.
'Everyone knows what one is' does not map onto the statement 'the existence of one can be demonstrated by objectively verifiable means'. Again, you confuse the meanings of the words 'subjective' and objective'.
No, I have not. On the contrary, you have confused the myth of (for lack of a better expression) 'strong' objectivity with what actually exists, or seems to exist, or can be argued can exist.
Certainly. And if you *were* a quantum physicist, you could repeat my experiments for yourself, and verify the results. (Which by the way is the core of the scientific method.) You cannot say the same about rational agents or hermeneutic circles.
You miss the point: That (a) the experiments mean nothing without a theory to guide them, and that (b) logicaly, the theory cannot be a consequence of the experiments meant to prove it. Furthermore, (c) experiments by themselves can neither prove nor disprove a scientific theory. The upshots are that (a) that science involves an irreducibly metaphysical aspect, and (b) that empirical measurements do not seem to have any claim to special consideration, except that the seem to be especially useful for making CPU's and jet engines. (Math, for instance, does not use empirical measurements, but gets on just fine.) Please read 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', by Thomas Kuhn (an MIT wonk, BTW), because I'm basically just recapping and riffing off of his eloquent and perspicacious research.
You can only agree or disagree with the existence of those, but not prove their existence. In science, no matter how large the body of opinion, it can be toppled by a single experiment. (And has been on multiple occasions.)
Right. Whenever revolutionary natural scientific discoveries are made, all major scientists queue up to clamber aboard, right? And if major scientists fail to queue up so, it is a sign of a regrettable intellectual vice, rather than (shock, horror) because they operate in the same sort of belief-construct that animates the humanities and social sciences?
Yes, it could mean that we have a faulty understanding. Which means we have to create a theory to explain the new results, *and perform experiments to test the truth or falsehood of that theory*. Again, something that you cannot do in philosophy, or lit crit, or economics because you cannot perform experiments with verifiable results.
Yes, but a lit crit, philosophical or (since you do not seem to consider it a real science) economic theory can be proven or disproven based on its consequences for the rest of the discipline. For instance, if it turned out that,