Lord knows it won't make it through more than a couple school seasons without taking a terrible beating
Eh? I moved a lot while growing up, and one thing I can say for certain is that the school desks I had to use were old, to just a couple exceptions. In most cases, the desks were at least 10-15 years old. In others, they were as old as 50+. Even with abuse, they last a long damn time.
And the newer ones are even more durable. There's only so much that pencil lead and house keys can do to steel and high-pressure composites.
Even though I went to a state school for the first years of my university, I went to a private college to finish my degree.
The state school had the same desks I was used to seeing - since grade school. Yeah, they were larger, but they were the essential same thing. For someone as tall and bony as I am, they were incredibly uncomfortable. There were also some larger guys (and gals) who were quite fat and couldn't fully sit in them.
At the private college, every room had decent office chairs and rows of tables, split in the middle for an isle, facing the front. A person could sit on either side of the table, if need be - to work on group projects, for instance. The chairs were not $700 units, but they had adjustable lumbar/tilt/elevation and were reasonably comfortable - probably at least in the $200-$300 range.
The later was so, so very much more useful. In fact, it was a big part of why I decided to attend there, and not the state school again: I could tell they were paying attention to environmental factors, which is usually at least signatory to how important something is to someone (eg. server room in the broom closet, kinda thing).
As for the topic at hand... why do they need desks in high school? Or middle/grade school, for that matter? (The desk in the linked article is hardly anything special. They're probably marketing to uppity private schools that have money to waste but don't want to be too 'divergent' - just "better".)
Carpet the rooms (most already are) and use beanbags, cheap tables, and decently comfortable office chairs (at $50 a piece). Or use 'normal' school chairs, so the chairs can be picked up and put to the side. Something. There's precious little reason to have desks in a school room any more.
School desks are a remnant of authoritarian, German style teaching. Sure, teachers like the authoritarian thing, but realistically it's a bad way to teach - and is being shown to not work when the students do not respect the instruction on the basis of the instructor. Time to change something.
I fail to see how nationalism is a common trait of conservative regimes and factions.
Nationalism within neo-liberal states is almost non-existent. Instead, you've got (and have always had) something more akin to extra-nationalism: state-run humanitarian efforts with the bulk of the states' efforts focused outside to bring wealth and prosperity in for control. See: the US, EU, etc.
Nationalism has frequently been used for propaganda purposes, yes - though nationalism is not propaganda in and of itself. I believe that were you to look, you would see much greater nationalism in countries adhering to Marxist/Maoist communism - decidedly 'liberal', or at least it was - than you would to 'conservative' countries. And yes, the "super-state" of communism falls under nationalism due to its contentious emphasis on a unified culture.
War, it would seem, invariably increases nationalism, at any rate. It's growth might even be viewed as a necessary precursor to war. I will concede that a peaceful nationalist country is more likely to be conservative.
We'll have to agree to disagree on neo-liberalism being a conservative philosophy. In my mind, the very nature of being new and contrary to the status quo wherever it comes about is pretty indicative of it belonging to a more liberal worldview.
(The type of nationalism we're talking about, of course, is still open to interpretation, I suppose.)
. They ended on a spiritual note, not the more logical theme that carried the series for so long, and I think that's why it upset so many people.
I don't think it was just a 'logical theme' that carried BSG. Look back at the first freaking episode: character development starts off very early with religious themes with dialog between Six and Baltar. There is frequent emphasis throughout this season (and the others) on the religious: for instance, when the President sees the doctor about her cancer (paraphrased):
Pres: "I'd like to persue alternative healing." Doc: (skeptically) "Prayer?"
Doc: "On a closing note, I would seriously consider prayer."
From the very beginning, they set up and developed Baltar to develop as a religious character
BSG covers the gamut throughput the show: interpersonal relationships, theology, existential philosophy, the afterlife, the individual's journey through life, and so on. All of the characters - cylons included - who change throughout the show have these underlying themes. (The only main character who doesn't change all that much are Pres Roslin and Adama, really.) They're the primary components of BSG; the scientific stuff and action are great, but they're more there than for balance than the principle content.
Hell, as for religious symbology... the characters themselves are mostly named within religious namespace, having direct context to their characters/roles:
* Adama (aka "Adam", the original man who brought about the human race) * Roslin ("Rose line", which some say is the path to finding Christ's body, the fountain of youth, the Ark of the Covenant, holy grail, etc. and a bunch of other mythological stuff that is contextual) * Apollo - greek god of the sky, etc. - plays to his character archetype very well. * Saul Tigh - Tigh, meaning "house". Saul was a biblical character who became Paul - abandoning his previous persecution of Christians to preach the gospel/lead them to salvation.
There are literal thousands of other undertones throughout the show. If you missed them and have any sort of existential/philosophical curiosity, I suggest watching the show again with this in mind - it's worth it.
And uh, what network was this cell phone connecting to? Because you know there's a series of cell towers and satellites that need to be in place for cell phones to work and I don't recall anyone having the foresight to erect such towers in 1928.
Clearly, they were testing for network continuity.
I don't frequent all that many news aggregator sites, but it seems that lately, most of the submissions getting through to the front page were on other sites days or weeks before.
This article, the ones from earlier today on the 'liberal gene', the primate fossils in Asia, CIA investments, the first photograph of a human, the home-built Batmobile, the Australian impact crater - and so on. I've seen these all on one of the following sites in the past week or so on either digg, fark or extragoodshit.phlap.net (which is quite NSFW, but still a very good news/aggregator site, and currently my favorite; the boobies don't hurt his cause any. I highly recommend it with or without the boobies).
Hitler was a liberal? Yeah, he did confiscate guns, but nothing characterizes Nazism better than extreme nationalism, a conservative trait.
Uh, what? Nationalism isn't a conservative trait. It's a German predisposition, sure. But if you typify nationalism as the marker for conservativism, then many of the world's decidedly Marxist regimes are conservative: Communist China, Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and so on.
That's just stupid, and quite intellectually dishonest on your part: there is no fucking way the Nazi party was 'conservative':
* It took corporations from those who did not agree, politically * It was a new party which foisted new ideals upon the German people * They came to power promising liberal social change and were called the National Socialists. Hello! * It instigated many, many social change programs - not just gun control. Familiar with their eugenics programs? * "The people" were a central focus. Everything was done "for the people". Volk, proletariat -whatever you want to call it: that's Marxist.
The nationalism of Nazi Germany was, at best, an outcrop of pure totalitarianism. But nationalism is, historically, something associated with liberalism, not conservativism. (America's expansionist wars have been quite liberal due to the overlying scope - progress. Again, see Nazi Germany for a point of reference here.)
First, I'm going to disagree with this statement due to the unspoken premises which evidently lead to it being made.
Your view of 'Conservative' appears to be quite myopic and castigating, cast along a specific political divide, not a first-belief like 'liberalism' or 'conservativism'. What is 'conservative' in your mind? Was it a conservative mindset that kept us out of WWII until Pearl Harbor, or was it a liberal one? Was it a liberal or conservative mindset that led to the British colonizing the world?
Consider: early Christianity. It wasn't the conservatives who lost those theological battles - it was the liberals (gnostics, etc). Or the liberals who started the French Revolutions (look how well those usually ended for everyone). History is full of many winners and losers of different political stripes, with examples why each was "good" or "bad". (For a counter-example, look at every liberal/populist/Marxist movement that's resulted in significant political change in the last century - none of them have ended well, and most culminated in genocide.)
Of course conservatives look wrong-headed by your "modern" perspective. The problem with liberalism is that its proponents usually think (due to lack of education and retrospective examination, I suppose?) that their ideas are new, fresh, and intrinsically modern/superior.
Second, you are actually correct: in this case conservatives (as you cast them) are on the wrong side of history. Liberals are, unfortunately, casting the lot together, and viewing "conservatives" as one stripe, which simply is not true, and is not beneficial. The world body (in the West) has swung so incredibly far "liberal" that even the most wobbly moderate will be viewed as a conservative to the 'educated Western liberal'.
In my mind, liberalism and conservativism are defined as such:
* Conservativism is easier to define than liberalism, because it can be summed up as 'appreciates the status quo' or 'is content with the status quo. They're resistant to change until they can no longer resist within reason, and then they quickly accept the change, making good use of it through incremental innovation. They're the societal breaks, so to speak: these people will try to stop any abrupt social or political change.
* Liberalism likes the new and shiney. Proponents are the inventors of society, pushing new ideas, new technology, and so on. They're the societal motor, and they need the breaks of conservatives to help them around the turns and when there are walls approaching - so the liberals don't kill everyone aboard.
* The 'moderates'. These people probably don't care, at heart, but are conservative in practice due to the fact that they just want to be left alone. This is the bulk of human kind. It takes a lot for these people to be bothered to get involved.
* And then there are split-brain people, who seem to be quite conservative in their worldview but are adaptive and welcoming to change. They're somewhat the exception.
I'd say that, looking at history, countries/nations have done better with fewer liberals and more conservatives (but certainly some liberals). The proportion is likely important, but I'd wager a 20:80:10 ratio of conservative, moderate, liberal would be best for a culture.
Are you sure you're not referring to fanaticism? It fits within your post better, assuming I adjust for a preference for Marxist dictators.
I watched BSG religiously (and bitched like fuck after the final episode) but I never watched Caprica - I didn't want to have to watch another series just to have some small parts of the back story filled in, and Caprica didn't interest me as an independent series either.
See, I watched BSG religiously, too - after the season had ended, though. I watched the whole thing, sequentially, in a fairly short period of time. I quite enjoyed the last episode: I thought it was probably the best way they could've ended it, after so many years and such good story and plot development. There weren't many ways they could have wrapped up the story, and this was the least dissatisfying of the options.
You didn't miss anything with Caprica. Nothing happened in the first season - not even character or plot development. Sure, the first season of BSG was a bit slow (at least when watching it a second time), but there were developments just the same.
What's amazing about The Final Five is that it was really, really well done. Either they were just saying they had no idea who the final five would be and had it all planned out, or they scrubbed through every single episode to try to figure out who would actually work as one of the 5. Truth be told, the characters they picked for the 5 were probably the ideal to begin with, and they were seemingly developed for it from season 1 (see: Boomer and Chief conspiring to keep Sharon safe after Boomer/Sharon blew the water tanks - that's not explicable/was a plot hole unless you consider that the Chief was a Cylon, too.)
Yeah. Compare it to the 6-seasons of personable drama, action, and in-depth character development in BSG, and it falls flat on its face.
BSG was like a good book: you can go through it once and appreciate it, but subsequent intake allows you to catch many of the nuances. It was that good. They got quite fortunate with the actors they picked: they were perfect for their characters.
BSG was an exception - both for TV and fiction in general as well as for science fiction. Most of it is droll and uninteresting on at least a couple crucial entertainment requirements. BSG stayed strong for all 6 seasons.
It's not so much the size, I think, but the density.
If every house in a neighborhood has a small ant colony, they are all more likely to go unnoticed than if one or several houses has a large and obvious colony. Likewise, if only half the houses in the town have small colonies, they're more likely to be OK than if all houses had an infestation.
There are quite a few ways to be 'stealthy'. Some would be method/mode and 'intelligence' to infection of hosts. (Eg. semi-random, selective within subnets, distributive parent/daughter logic, secured intercommunications, etc.)
QT is very, very easy to develop for. I can hack something together in a couple hours and I've never worked on a 'real' development project before. Short of Visual Studio, it's the easiest GUI development tool I've ever touched (QT Embedded and Kdevelop).
There are a LOT of tools already written to use QT + KDE, and using QT libraries alone would probably not be such a jump as to rewrite things from scratch in Java. And then there are all the QT + python/perl/etc. tools out there, which will be just as useful.
In all honesty, I'm actually thinking of picking up a Symbian phone due to their QT integration and the recent news on that front. From the sounds of it, it looks like it might actually be the best 'geekable' thing we'll have going forward for some time - provided Nokia does not fall apart in the meantime due to politics.
That's possible, but I always thought that general feeling of well-being came from a combination of factors:
* Ozone from the rotting leaves. Supposedly, ozone has a calming sensation. I've noticed this feeling strongest in spring and fall in the Northeast (vs. the Western Mountains, where there isn't nearly as much rotting going on). * The trees themselves. They're releasing oxygen. You're essentially getting high.
Of course, a bitter taste could also help explain why laying in a pile of leaves is so calming.:)
But asthma and other breathing problems do impact a person's ability to breed, albeit only slightly.
Asthmatic kids are usually somewhat slight compared to their peers. They tire easily, and don't have much endurance. Every once in a while, one of them dies from an allergic response to something common (eg. walk into a dusty/musty/moldy closet or cave).
As such, they're weaker, unable to fight off enemies or run down food as easily. They either don't last until breeding ages or are undesirable for such a role once they get there.
I wonder what might be the reasoning behind this system evolving/remaining intact in humans. I can't really think of an exogenous substance that we inhale naturally that would activate such a response and confer an advantage to us.
Who said it had to be exogenous? The body naturally excretes adrenaline - a catecholamine neurotransmitter. Adrenaline, like all neurotransmitters (apparently - I didn't know that until reading this thread), are bitter. We know adrenaline widens breathing passages, so provided this 'bitter response' is independent from the impact adrenaline has on the lungs, I can see how a cooperative response would be beneficial.
The other night my son was having breathing problems (asthma) and he'd just run out of his inhaler. He was also putting on a little drama, and making it worse than it was by exaggerating. Short of taking him to the ER, we didn't see many options.
So on a whim - and to get him to shut up and go to sleep - I poured a couple drops of "cleaning" grade whiskey in a glass and gave it to him. "Here's some medicine. Drink it quickly."
So he pounded the small amount of liquor. His face scrunched up, as if his ears were going to run towards his nose, and pull his eyes into the depths of his skull. "That tastes horrible!" He put his head on the pillow and tried to go to sleep. I could already hear an improvement (no more wheezing).
Before I got out of the room, he said, "Daddy, that's really good medicine. It tastes like a butt, but it worked really well."
I used to be an 'exclusive Model M typist'. I started to find that my fingers would be numb after lengthy typing - particularly the outer fingers (pinky and ring finger), or when I was programming (lots of {} [] |, etc.)
Then I got a Thinkpad, and I can't stand any keyboard but the UltraNav. I found out that half my problem (wrist discomfort) wasn't due to the keyboard, but due to having to use a mouse. The Trackpoint/keyboard nipple helped immensely with that.
The key layout on the Ultranav is somewhat shallower than on a typical 104 key keyboard. It's just as wide, but contains more keys in the same space: I've found this to add to efficiency. Specifically, the F keys are about 2/3rds as deep and are closer to the number keys (I can rest my palms and not have to move my wrists to touch them). The navigation block (home/end/delete/pgup/pgdn/insert) is directly above the backspace key, shrunken in a similar fashion to the F keys. prtsc, scrlk, pause are above the F9-F12 keys. The arrow keys are underneath the right shift key.
I should note that I've got relatively large hands - not beefy ones, just large palms and long fingers. It's not cramped. The tactility of the key strokes is, while not similar to a Model M, still somewhat tactile due to the plastic key buckles (similar to the M design, but with plastic). I no longer have the day-end numbness unless I'm doing something stupid, like perl.:P
Anyway, the UltraNav is highly recommended.
As an added note, I also typically have this keyboard in my lap when typing. I've got longer arms and shoulder elevation isn't quite right if I'm using a desk. YMMV, of course, but at 29 this works very well for me for day-in, day-out use.
I, for one, would pay for incremental upgrades from Microsoft, ala how Apple has done with "OS X". Windows 7 really is the best thing - the only decent OS, I should say - Microsoft has released, ever.
No, it's not perfect, but it's something worth using. Improve it slowly and give me point releases, please.
Time travel is like a quickly running stream. You can hop in and float down stream, but you can't swim upstream. With effort, you might actually feel like time is running slower (eg. try swimming upstream), but it's still progressing.
But if you were to hop from the water, you could easily go upstream (back in time). You're operating on a different plane, and therefore time (the stream) has no impact on you directly.
I don't understand why you post first about a frame of reference problem and then joke about 88 miles per hour... in reference to what? In the movies the DeLorean is traveling at 88 miles per hour as would be seen by an observer standing on Earth's surface.
In reference to... the cameraman who filmed the "this is where we go through time" Delorean shot?
(NOte, I was referring to that camera man at that very instant in time, not 25 years later when he's nursing a coke habit and tens of thousands in medical bill debt, somewhere in Detroit.)
Not necessarily. What if their time travel device is able to compensate for physical location? I mean, you're traveling through time: traveling through space is pretty easy if you've figured that out.
In other words, they could be saying "Travel back to 1985" but what they really mean is "Travel back to this spot, temporally adjusted for physical dislocation, in 1985".
Slashdot Mirror
Lord knows it won't make it through more than a couple school seasons without taking a terrible beating
Eh? I moved a lot while growing up, and one thing I can say for certain is that the school desks I had to use were old, to just a couple exceptions. In most cases, the desks were at least 10-15 years old. In others, they were as old as 50+. Even with abuse, they last a long damn time.
And the newer ones are even more durable. There's only so much that pencil lead and house keys can do to steel and high-pressure composites.
Even though I went to a state school for the first years of my university, I went to a private college to finish my degree.
The state school had the same desks I was used to seeing - since grade school. Yeah, they were larger, but they were the essential same thing. For someone as tall and bony as I am, they were incredibly uncomfortable. There were also some larger guys (and gals) who were quite fat and couldn't fully sit in them.
At the private college, every room had decent office chairs and rows of tables, split in the middle for an isle, facing the front. A person could sit on either side of the table, if need be - to work on group projects, for instance. The chairs were not $700 units, but they had adjustable lumbar/tilt/elevation and were reasonably comfortable - probably at least in the $200-$300 range.
The later was so, so very much more useful. In fact, it was a big part of why I decided to attend there, and not the state school again: I could tell they were paying attention to environmental factors, which is usually at least signatory to how important something is to someone (eg. server room in the broom closet, kinda thing).
As for the topic at hand... why do they need desks in high school? Or middle/grade school, for that matter? (The desk in the linked article is hardly anything special. They're probably marketing to uppity private schools that have money to waste but don't want to be too 'divergent' - just "better".)
Carpet the rooms (most already are) and use beanbags, cheap tables, and decently comfortable office chairs (at $50 a piece). Or use 'normal' school chairs, so the chairs can be picked up and put to the side. Something. There's precious little reason to have desks in a school room any more.
School desks are a remnant of authoritarian, German style teaching. Sure, teachers like the authoritarian thing, but realistically it's a bad way to teach - and is being shown to not work when the students do not respect the instruction on the basis of the instructor. Time to change something.
I fail to see how nationalism is a common trait of conservative regimes and factions.
Nationalism within neo-liberal states is almost non-existent. Instead, you've got (and have always had) something more akin to extra-nationalism: state-run humanitarian efforts with the bulk of the states' efforts focused outside to bring wealth and prosperity in for control. See: the US, EU, etc.
Nationalism has frequently been used for propaganda purposes, yes - though nationalism is not propaganda in and of itself. I believe that were you to look, you would see much greater nationalism in countries adhering to Marxist/Maoist communism - decidedly 'liberal', or at least it was - than you would to 'conservative' countries. And yes, the "super-state" of communism falls under nationalism due to its contentious emphasis on a unified culture.
War, it would seem, invariably increases nationalism, at any rate. It's growth might even be viewed as a necessary precursor to war. I will concede that a peaceful nationalist country is more likely to be conservative.
We'll have to agree to disagree on neo-liberalism being a conservative philosophy. In my mind, the very nature of being new and contrary to the status quo wherever it comes about is pretty indicative of it belonging to a more liberal worldview.
(The type of nationalism we're talking about, of course, is still open to interpretation, I suppose.)
It irked me somewhat, but it had a point or two that were valid.
I watched it after the media had stopped slaying that dog, so it didn't bother me as much as it may have if I'd watched it at that point.
. They ended on a spiritual note, not the more logical theme that carried the series for so long, and I think that's why it upset so many people.
I don't think it was just a 'logical theme' that carried BSG. Look back at the first freaking episode: character development starts off very early with religious themes with dialog between Six and Baltar. There is frequent emphasis throughout this season (and the others) on the religious: for instance, when the President sees the doctor about her cancer (paraphrased):
Pres: "I'd like to persue alternative healing."
Doc: (skeptically) "Prayer?"
Doc: "On a closing note, I would seriously consider prayer."
From the very beginning, they set up and developed Baltar to develop as a religious character
BSG covers the gamut throughput the show: interpersonal relationships, theology, existential philosophy, the afterlife, the individual's journey through life, and so on. All of the characters - cylons included - who change throughout the show have these underlying themes. (The only main character who doesn't change all that much are Pres Roslin and Adama, really.) They're the primary components of BSG; the scientific stuff and action are great, but they're more there than for balance than the principle content.
Hell, as for religious symbology... the characters themselves are mostly named within religious namespace, having direct context to their characters/roles:
* Adama (aka "Adam", the original man who brought about the human race)
* Roslin ("Rose line", which some say is the path to finding Christ's body, the fountain of youth, the Ark of the Covenant, holy grail, etc. and a bunch of other mythological stuff that is contextual)
* Apollo - greek god of the sky, etc. - plays to his character archetype very well.
* Saul Tigh - Tigh, meaning "house". Saul was a biblical character who became Paul - abandoning his previous persecution of Christians to preach the gospel/lead them to salvation.
There are literal thousands of other undertones throughout the show. If you missed them and have any sort of existential/philosophical curiosity, I suggest watching the show again with this in mind - it's worth it.
And uh, what network was this cell phone connecting to? Because you know there's a series of cell towers and satellites that need to be in place for cell phones to work and I don't recall anyone having the foresight to erect such towers in 1928.
Clearly, they were testing for network continuity.
"Can you hear me now?"
I don't frequent all that many news aggregator sites, but it seems that lately, most of the submissions getting through to the front page were on other sites days or weeks before.
This article, the ones from earlier today on the 'liberal gene', the primate fossils in Asia, CIA investments, the first photograph of a human, the home-built Batmobile, the Australian impact crater - and so on. I've seen these all on one of the following sites in the past week or so on either digg, fark or extragoodshit.phlap.net (which is quite NSFW, but still a very good news/aggregator site, and currently my favorite; the boobies don't hurt his cause any. I highly recommend it with or without the boobies).
Hitler was a liberal? Yeah, he did confiscate guns, but nothing characterizes Nazism better than extreme nationalism, a conservative trait.
Uh, what? Nationalism isn't a conservative trait. It's a German predisposition, sure. But if you typify nationalism as the marker for conservativism, then many of the world's decidedly Marxist regimes are conservative: Communist China, Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and so on.
That's just stupid, and quite intellectually dishonest on your part: there is no fucking way the Nazi party was 'conservative':
* It took corporations from those who did not agree, politically
* It was a new party which foisted new ideals upon the German people
* They came to power promising liberal social change and were called the National Socialists. Hello!
* It instigated many, many social change programs - not just gun control. Familiar with their eugenics programs?
* "The people" were a central focus. Everything was done "for the people". Volk, proletariat -whatever you want to call it: that's Marxist.
The nationalism of Nazi Germany was, at best, an outcrop of pure totalitarianism. But nationalism is, historically, something associated with liberalism, not conservativism. (America's expansionist wars have been quite liberal due to the overlying scope - progress. Again, see Nazi Germany for a point of reference here.)
Conservatives are on the wrong side of history.
First, I'm going to disagree with this statement due to the unspoken premises which evidently lead to it being made.
Your view of 'Conservative' appears to be quite myopic and castigating, cast along a specific political divide, not a first-belief like 'liberalism' or 'conservativism'. What is 'conservative' in your mind? Was it a conservative mindset that kept us out of WWII until Pearl Harbor, or was it a liberal one? Was it a liberal or conservative mindset that led to the British colonizing the world?
Consider: early Christianity. It wasn't the conservatives who lost those theological battles - it was the liberals (gnostics, etc). Or the liberals who started the French Revolutions (look how well those usually ended for everyone). History is full of many winners and losers of different political stripes, with examples why each was "good" or "bad". (For a counter-example, look at every liberal/populist/Marxist movement that's resulted in significant political change in the last century - none of them have ended well, and most culminated in genocide.)
Of course conservatives look wrong-headed by your "modern" perspective. The problem with liberalism is that its proponents usually think (due to lack of education and retrospective examination, I suppose?) that their ideas are new, fresh, and intrinsically modern/superior.
Second, you are actually correct: in this case conservatives (as you cast them) are on the wrong side of history. Liberals are, unfortunately, casting the lot together, and viewing "conservatives" as one stripe, which simply is not true, and is not beneficial. The world body (in the West) has swung so incredibly far "liberal" that even the most wobbly moderate will be viewed as a conservative to the 'educated Western liberal'.
In my mind, liberalism and conservativism are defined as such:
* Conservativism is easier to define than liberalism, because it can be summed up as 'appreciates the status quo' or 'is content with the status quo. They're resistant to change until they can no longer resist within reason, and then they quickly accept the change, making good use of it through incremental innovation. They're the societal breaks, so to speak: these people will try to stop any abrupt social or political change.
* Liberalism likes the new and shiney. Proponents are the inventors of society, pushing new ideas, new technology, and so on. They're the societal motor, and they need the breaks of conservatives to help them around the turns and when there are walls approaching - so the liberals don't kill everyone aboard.
* The 'moderates'. These people probably don't care, at heart, but are conservative in practice due to the fact that they just want to be left alone. This is the bulk of human kind. It takes a lot for these people to be bothered to get involved.
* And then there are split-brain people, who seem to be quite conservative in their worldview but are adaptive and welcoming to change. They're somewhat the exception.
I'd say that, looking at history, countries/nations have done better with fewer liberals and more conservatives (but certainly some liberals). The proportion is likely important, but I'd wager a 20:80:10 ratio of conservative, moderate, liberal would be best for a culture.
Are you sure you're not referring to fanaticism? It fits within your post better, assuming I adjust for a preference for Marxist dictators.
I watched BSG religiously (and bitched like fuck after the final episode) but I never watched Caprica - I didn't want to have to watch another series just to have some small parts of the back story filled in, and Caprica didn't interest me as an independent series either.
See, I watched BSG religiously, too - after the season had ended, though. I watched the whole thing, sequentially, in a fairly short period of time. I quite enjoyed the last episode: I thought it was probably the best way they could've ended it, after so many years and such good story and plot development. There weren't many ways they could have wrapped up the story, and this was the least dissatisfying of the options.
You didn't miss anything with Caprica. Nothing happened in the first season - not even character or plot development. Sure, the first season of BSG was a bit slow (at least when watching it a second time), but there were developments just the same.
What's amazing about The Final Five is that it was really, really well done. Either they were just saying they had no idea who the final five would be and had it all planned out, or they scrubbed through every single episode to try to figure out who would actually work as one of the 5. Truth be told, the characters they picked for the 5 were probably the ideal to begin with, and they were seemingly developed for it from season 1 (see: Boomer and Chief conspiring to keep Sharon safe after Boomer/Sharon blew the water tanks - that's not explicable/was a plot hole unless you consider that the Chief was a Cylon, too.)
Yeah. Compare it to the 6-seasons of personable drama, action, and in-depth character development in BSG, and it falls flat on its face.
BSG was like a good book: you can go through it once and appreciate it, but subsequent intake allows you to catch many of the nuances. It was that good. They got quite fortunate with the actors they picked: they were perfect for their characters.
BSG was an exception - both for TV and fiction in general as well as for science fiction. Most of it is droll and uninteresting on at least a couple crucial entertainment requirements. BSG stayed strong for all 6 seasons.
As someone impacted by "information rage", let me just say I support this article's findings.
Now excuse me while I go wash my keyboard. I appear to have inadvertently bludgeoned a coworker with it.
Na, use a randomly seeded short int.
Or better yet:
~/ openssl passwd
Password:
Verifying - Password:
xG54zqA2vYhSE
(That'd be the serial number for tank number "1". It'd make tracking your troop movements a real bitch.)
It's not so much the size, I think, but the density.
If every house in a neighborhood has a small ant colony, they are all more likely to go unnoticed than if one or several houses has a large and obvious colony. Likewise, if only half the houses in the town have small colonies, they're more likely to be OK than if all houses had an infestation.
There are quite a few ways to be 'stealthy'. Some would be method/mode and 'intelligence' to infection of hosts. (Eg. semi-random, selective within subnets, distributive parent/daughter logic, secured intercommunications, etc.)
Absolutely.
Meego (supposedly?) uses QT like Maemo before it.
QT is very, very easy to develop for. I can hack something together in a couple hours and I've never worked on a 'real' development project before. Short of Visual Studio, it's the easiest GUI development tool I've ever touched (QT Embedded and Kdevelop).
There are a LOT of tools already written to use QT + KDE, and using QT libraries alone would probably not be such a jump as to rewrite things from scratch in Java. And then there are all the QT + python/perl/etc. tools out there, which will be just as useful.
In all honesty, I'm actually thinking of picking up a Symbian phone due to their QT integration and the recent news on that front. From the sounds of it, it looks like it might actually be the best 'geekable' thing we'll have going forward for some time - provided Nokia does not fall apart in the meantime due to politics.
That's possible, but I always thought that general feeling of well-being came from a combination of factors:
* Ozone from the rotting leaves. Supposedly, ozone has a calming sensation. I've noticed this feeling strongest in spring and fall in the Northeast (vs. the Western Mountains, where there isn't nearly as much rotting going on).
* The trees themselves. They're releasing oxygen. You're essentially getting high.
Of course, a bitter taste could also help explain why laying in a pile of leaves is so calming. :)
But asthma and other breathing problems do impact a person's ability to breed, albeit only slightly.
Asthmatic kids are usually somewhat slight compared to their peers. They tire easily, and don't have much endurance. Every once in a while, one of them dies from an allergic response to something common (eg. walk into a dusty/musty/moldy closet or cave).
As such, they're weaker, unable to fight off enemies or run down food as easily. They either don't last until breeding ages or are undesirable for such a role once they get there.
I wonder what might be the reasoning behind this system evolving/remaining intact in humans. I can't really think of an exogenous substance that we inhale naturally that would activate such a response and confer an advantage to us.
Who said it had to be exogenous? The body naturally excretes adrenaline - a catecholamine neurotransmitter. Adrenaline, like all neurotransmitters (apparently - I didn't know that until reading this thread), are bitter. We know adrenaline widens breathing passages, so provided this 'bitter response' is independent from the impact adrenaline has on the lungs, I can see how a cooperative response would be beneficial.
Actually, this makes sense.
The other night my son was having breathing problems (asthma) and he'd just run out of his inhaler. He was also putting on a little drama, and making it worse than it was by exaggerating. Short of taking him to the ER, we didn't see many options.
So on a whim - and to get him to shut up and go to sleep - I poured a couple drops of "cleaning" grade whiskey in a glass and gave it to him. "Here's some medicine. Drink it quickly."
So he pounded the small amount of liquor. His face scrunched up, as if his ears were going to run towards his nose, and pull his eyes into the depths of his skull. "That tastes horrible!" He put his head on the pillow and tried to go to sleep. I could already hear an improvement (no more wheezing).
Before I got out of the room, he said, "Daddy, that's really good medicine. It tastes like a butt, but it worked really well."
I used to be an 'exclusive Model M typist'. I started to find that my fingers would be numb after lengthy typing - particularly the outer fingers (pinky and ring finger), or when I was programming (lots of {} [] |, etc.)
Then I got a Thinkpad, and I can't stand any keyboard but the UltraNav. I found out that half my problem (wrist discomfort) wasn't due to the keyboard, but due to having to use a mouse. The Trackpoint/keyboard nipple helped immensely with that.
The key layout on the Ultranav is somewhat shallower than on a typical 104 key keyboard. It's just as wide, but contains more keys in the same space: I've found this to add to efficiency. Specifically, the F keys are about 2/3rds as deep and are closer to the number keys (I can rest my palms and not have to move my wrists to touch them). The navigation block (home/end/delete/pgup/pgdn/insert) is directly above the backspace key, shrunken in a similar fashion to the F keys. prtsc, scrlk, pause are above the F9-F12 keys. The arrow keys are underneath the right shift key.
I should note that I've got relatively large hands - not beefy ones, just large palms and long fingers. It's not cramped. The tactility of the key strokes is, while not similar to a Model M, still somewhat tactile due to the plastic key buckles (similar to the M design, but with plastic). I no longer have the day-end numbness unless I'm doing something stupid, like perl. :P
Anyway, the UltraNav is highly recommended.
As an added note, I also typically have this keyboard in my lap when typing. I've got longer arms and shoulder elevation isn't quite right if I'm using a desk. YMMV, of course, but at 29 this works very well for me for day-in, day-out use.
It was just new, you're right. About 2 years ago.
Four years between releases isn't exactly a short time.
Precisely.
I, for one, would pay for incremental upgrades from Microsoft, ala how Apple has done with "OS X". Windows 7 really is the best thing - the only decent OS, I should say - Microsoft has released, ever.
No, it's not perfect, but it's something worth using. Improve it slowly and give me point releases, please.
Time travel is like a quickly running stream. You can hop in and float down stream, but you can't swim upstream. With effort, you might actually feel like time is running slower (eg. try swimming upstream), but it's still progressing.
But if you were to hop from the water, you could easily go upstream (back in time). You're operating on a different plane, and therefore time (the stream) has no impact on you directly.
I don't understand why you post first about a frame of reference problem and then joke about 88 miles per hour ... in reference to what? In the movies the DeLorean is traveling at 88 miles per hour as would be seen by an observer standing on Earth's surface.
In reference to... the cameraman who filmed the "this is where we go through time" Delorean shot?
(NOte, I was referring to that camera man at that very instant in time, not 25 years later when he's nursing a coke habit and tens of thousands in medical bill debt, somewhere in Detroit.)
Not necessarily. What if their time travel device is able to compensate for physical location? I mean, you're traveling through time: traveling through space is pretty easy if you've figured that out.
In other words, they could be saying "Travel back to 1985" but what they really mean is "Travel back to this spot, temporally adjusted for physical dislocation, in 1985".