Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
That's my contention too... based on a lot of side-thoughts but mainly on the fact that dogs' noses also have a unique print, which probably serves no "purpose" either, but is just an artifact of the way skin develops, and the type of skin found on commonly-used pressure points (hands, feet, or with dogs, noses).
Remember, your toes, soles, and palms ALSO have unique "prints". I'd hazard that the microwrinkles in everyone's skin are the same thing (and equally unique), just less "codified" because that skin is not normally a pressure point against the rest of the environment.
They may have more value in gripping *rough* surfaces, for the same reason that serrated knives stay sharp longer than smooth-edged knives -- only a small amount of the skin (or knife edge) ever comes in contact with abrasive hard surfaces, therefore improving skin (and knife) endurance. Also, it's easier to grip rough surfaces (as occur in nature) if the gripper isn't entirely smooth.
But even after all that.. it's still extremely trivial as it would affect everyday life; I'd guess well below any threshold that would affect survival. So I'll stick with my own theory (posted above) that it's just a developmental artifact of normal skin, and has no dedicated function.
Exactly -- why does it have to be for any particular use? More likely it's just an artifact of how skin develops. People forget that many traits didn't evolve for a specific purpose, but rather, were random mutations that were not selected against, becauee they did the species no harm.
The whole question also shows a profound ignorance of the rest of the animal kingdom:
Dogs have noseprints that are as unique as fingerprints (and in fact are legal ID for dogs in Canada). Why is this? Probably no reason at all, other than quirks of individual cell layout in the skin layer.
Chickens have similar uniqueness in the surface of their combs. Why? Likewise, probably no reason, other than it's just a trivial quirk of how the skin cells piled up in a given individual.
'You can't be rousted on the malicious and phony say-so of a neighbor, nor on the say-so of an informant who knows and dislikes you, without additional advance evidence. A warrant must state with specificity what is sought and what the basis for suspecting its presence. Police CANNOT, even with a warrant, conduct a "fishing expedition" to find evidence of some other crime....'
Which is very interesting in light of the fact that this is exactly how Animal Control now operates in most locales -- in fact in Los Angeles County their policy REQUIRES that they investigate and COUNT AS EVIDENCE *ANY* complaint, even those KNOWN to be spurious. In at least two cases, this has been used by a malicious neighbour to put legitimate established boarding kennels out of business. In numerous other cases across the country, it has been used to seize *salable* animals from legit breeders (which then become asset-forfeiture style profits for the department, without a hint of due process).
Not me... "tough on crime" has become a redflag in my book. Very few can manage to be "tough on crime" without also backing at least some policies that trample our Constitutional Rights.
On the flipside of the Aisle, the politicos who scream the loudest about justice for all are usually the ones most willing to pass nanny laws and yet more entitlements, which infringe our rights as much or more, just in different ways.
"The fact is, none of these are so much the creator's rights, as their ability to restrict yours. Put in that context, it suddenly becomes very clear whose rights are being violated."
Good point. The more so if you also happen to be the creator of the work, but no longer own the rights to it thanks to some usorious contract.
There's a good point. Cops have the authority to arrest, but take little or no responsibility for the consequences of a bad arrest.
Maybe they should have to suffer the penalties they'd tried to pin on someone, should the arrest prove bogus.. that would put a damper on it, all right.
Exactly -- "Regulation didn't fix it, so let's add MORE regulations!!"
And as sumdumbass's long reply about mortgages goes to illustrate, there are too many corner cases even in what should be a relatively straightforward question: "Can you afford this?"
Methinks we'd be better off to return to case-by-case responses, even tho that too has its potential for abuse ("I don't like you, so today the answer is no.")
I begin to wonder if we've had it backwards... rather than regulations being made in response to corruption, perhaps the existence of regulations to a large degree *drives* corruption.
There are specific segments of gov't where this is definitely so, but your remarks made me consider that it may in fact be far more general.
So... someday you could be judged by an internet mob from halfway around the world, who have not bothered to even look at the evidence (or RTFA, as we'd say here).
At that point, justice will truly become like politics.
You gotta wonder how much of the culture of ignorance comes out of the old ways of it being illegal to be educated unless it was through the church. It does seem to be more of a problem in cultures where there is a lot of religious influence still at work, even if people are not religious.
Montana is essentially Scandinavian, English, Dutch, and German, all cultures that value education far more than conformity, and where religion hasn't had people in a yoke for centuries.
Kids, being exceedingly tribal and intolerant of differences, will try to expunge anyone who doesn't conform to their subculture -- and as rebellious as kids may wish to be, their subculture still reflects the base culture's attitudes.
Probably more a cultural contrast than country vs upscale urban. Great Falls MT was still very much a cow town when I was growing up, albeit a cow town of 60,000 people. The outlying school districts weren't much different (my cousins went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, and later in a little bitty small-town school). But the whole culture there is based on personal achievement (earned, not yours by right) and having respect for parents and country, not on showing off what a dominant dick you can be.
I did notice that the newer schools with more yuppie kids seemed to lose some of this culture of academic achievement, while the older traditional schools serving older middle-class neighbourhoods steadfastly maintained it.
Here in north Los Angeles county (which is fairly tame as SoCal goes), kids seem to revel in showing off what hoodies they are -- being part of the ruling gangsta types is paramount (showing off that they're tougher and smarter than any adult). A lot of that got imported along with the flood of illegal aliens -- the first generation born here seemed to think it should all be handed to them on a silver platter. I don't doubt that smart kids are at risk in that culture. But the whole culture is bent and destructive.:(
Yes, exactly -- good example from the AC. When the AC was a kid, money motivated because it was in short supply. Later -- not so much, and it lost its appeal. A lot of kids now get money handed to them just for breathing anyway, so where's the motivation??
I went to what was at the time the largest public school system in the state, and one of the highest-rated in the entire U.S. -- Great Falls, Montana. I graduated in 1972. In our Senior class of about 560 kids, there were only TWO dropouts, both in the last month of school.
All through the system, it was the same -- peer pressure was toward academic success. In my HS, everyone wanted to be like the eggheads, who were the school heroes -- and that was even tho we had a great football team (I believe it was undefeated that year), and did very well in other athletics. You weren't allowed on a team if you didn't keep your grades up, and that WAS enforced.
Public schools used to mostly be like this, back before the era of entitlements and self-worth just for breathing. I watched it change from the earliest days... I had a 5th grade teacher (back in 1964) who got sucked into the "new methods" fully believing that "ensuring success 100% of the time" was the best thing to do -- and funny thing, we kids KNEW we were being shortchanged academically, compared to kids in the traditional classes who actually had to WORK to succeed, and who sometimes failed. I was very lucky that this was the only "progressive" teacher I ever had.
When I was in school, private schools were rather more like what we now think of as poor quality public systems -- relatively poor academically, and to varying degrees socially repressive. We could always tell the kids coming from the Catholic middle school, because they were about a year behind those of us who'd gone to public middle schools (Junior High Schools, as they were called then), and sometimes didn't seem to know how to function as normal kids.
What's he going to do when he goes to work and finds an everyday job is just as much "torture"?? He won't have learned any *endurance*. You can't very well tell your boss that you know all the week's work so he should just pay you now and let you go home.
As I recall it's been tried before -- stay in school, stay off drugs, and we'll pay you $$ at graduation. I don't recall the details but in POOR neighbourhoods it had good short-term gains. Rich kids -- not so, where's the incentive in cash when you already have everything??
When I was in school, the motivators were desire to please our teachers, desire to do well in our classmates' eyes (there was a LOT of peer pressure to get good grades), and somewhat less desire to please our parents. It was expected behaviour and how we *earned* something rather more valuable -- self-esteem and the recognition that we COULD do this stuff.
The kids who did get paid by their parents for grade performance tended to slack off when the money lost its interest. The rest of us -- peer pressure never ends. It was ALWAYS embarrassing to fail, in the eyes of our peers or of our teachers.
Resources might be a problem for someone coming from even *further* out in bumfuck nullspace, tho -- and we might be a convenient target/stopping point on their way to pillage further in.
Tourists and tourist agencies usually want to maintain the desirability of the tourist trap in question. What might be more of a problem are sport hunters.
Yes -- and that goes way back to the earliest days of children's television... Captain Kangaroo had some sort of reading-teaching segment. Read word, point at object; doesn't take many brain cells to make the connection, even if your culture and/or brain wiring is completely different.
Funny thought: Alien steps out of spaceship, says, "See dog run!"
What you say is true, but it also depends on backups being *performed*, AND either very good redundancy or perfect backups, AND on media-shifting all that data AND all those backups every time there's an upgrade of media types.
And the fact is, that's not happening -- I recall hearing that NASA has assloads of data orphaned on old-style media, which is no longer accessable AND for which there are no other formats -- backups having been done in the same now-inaccessable format. And by now no one even knows if the data is still readable, since digital media silently degrades, with your first clue usually being "cannot read disk".
Conversely the paper form may be severely inconvenient by comparison, but failure to upgrade both original data AND backups won't result in data being so rapidly lost. And you can SEE when the media is degrading, and take steps to copy it BEFORE it's lost forever.
I don't disagree with keeping digital data, but *relying* entirely on digital data is folly.
Slashdot Mirror
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/fireice.htm
read the interesting comment by Tom Hansen, about the 3rd one down.
That's an interesting question, and now that you mention it, I'm one of those, whatever they are. "Atheism" does actually mean "without gods", NOT "anti-gods".
That's my contention too... based on a lot of side-thoughts but mainly on the fact that dogs' noses also have a unique print, which probably serves no "purpose" either, but is just an artifact of the way skin develops, and the type of skin found on commonly-used pressure points (hands, feet, or with dogs, noses).
Remember, your toes, soles, and palms ALSO have unique "prints". I'd hazard that the microwrinkles in everyone's skin are the same thing (and equally unique), just less "codified" because that skin is not normally a pressure point against the rest of the environment.
They may have more value in gripping *rough* surfaces, for the same reason that serrated knives stay sharp longer than smooth-edged knives -- only a small amount of the skin (or knife edge) ever comes in contact with abrasive hard surfaces, therefore improving skin (and knife) endurance. Also, it's easier to grip rough surfaces (as occur in nature) if the gripper isn't entirely smooth.
But even after all that.. it's still extremely trivial as it would affect everyday life; I'd guess well below any threshold that would affect survival. So I'll stick with my own theory (posted above) that it's just a developmental artifact of normal skin, and has no dedicated function.
Exactly -- why does it have to be for any particular use? More likely it's just an artifact of how skin develops. People forget that many traits didn't evolve for a specific purpose, but rather, were random mutations that were not selected against, becauee they did the species no harm.
The whole question also shows a profound ignorance of the rest of the animal kingdom:
Dogs have noseprints that are as unique as fingerprints (and in fact are legal ID for dogs in Canada). Why is this? Probably no reason at all, other than quirks of individual cell layout in the skin layer.
Chickens have similar uniqueness in the surface of their combs. Why? Likewise, probably no reason, other than it's just a trivial quirk of how the skin cells piled up in a given individual.
'You can't be rousted on the malicious and phony say-so of a neighbor, nor on the say-so of an informant who knows and dislikes you, without additional advance evidence. A warrant must state with specificity what is sought and what the basis for suspecting its presence. Police CANNOT, even with a warrant, conduct a "fishing expedition" to find evidence of some other crime....'
Which is very interesting in light of the fact that this is exactly how Animal Control now operates in most locales -- in fact in Los Angeles County their policy REQUIRES that they investigate and COUNT AS EVIDENCE *ANY* complaint, even those KNOWN to be spurious. In at least two cases, this has been used by a malicious neighbour to put legitimate established boarding kennels out of business. In numerous other cases across the country, it has been used to seize *salable* animals from legit breeders (which then become asset-forfeiture style profits for the department, without a hint of due process).
Not me... "tough on crime" has become a redflag in my book. Very few can manage to be "tough on crime" without also backing at least some policies that trample our Constitutional Rights.
On the flipside of the Aisle, the politicos who scream the loudest about justice for all are usually the ones most willing to pass nanny laws and yet more entitlements, which infringe our rights as much or more, just in different ways.
Can't win... I think we need a new game. :(
"The fact is, none of these are so much the creator's rights, as their ability to restrict yours. Put in that context, it suddenly becomes very clear whose rights are being violated."
Good point. The more so if you also happen to be the creator of the work, but no longer own the rights to it thanks to some usorious contract.
If they can create new rights (or entitlements, as Shieldw0lf more accurately calls it) for themselves, why can't we??
I suggest that for each new DRM lockup entitlement, one form of what is now called piracy should be legalized. Fair is fair!
There's a good point. Cops have the authority to arrest, but take little or no responsibility for the consequences of a bad arrest.
Maybe they should have to suffer the penalties they'd tried to pin on someone, should the arrest prove bogus.. that would put a damper on it, all right.
It's not enough to take a minor hellhole because we've been piddlefucking around rather than just doing the job and getting it over with.
You'd think we'd have learned that in Vietnam, but apparently not.
Exactly -- "Regulation didn't fix it, so let's add MORE regulations!!"
And as sumdumbass's long reply about mortgages goes to illustrate, there are too many corner cases even in what should be a relatively straightforward question: "Can you afford this?"
Methinks we'd be better off to return to case-by-case responses, even tho that too has its potential for abuse ("I don't like you, so today the answer is no.")
I'll take China for $500 billion dollars, Alex.
Actually, it might be worth it, if we regained control over our manufacturing chains.
I begin to wonder if we've had it backwards... rather than regulations being made in response to corruption, perhaps the existence of regulations to a large degree *drives* corruption.
There are specific segments of gov't where this is definitely so, but your remarks made me consider that it may in fact be far more general.
So... someday you could be judged by an internet mob from halfway around the world, who have not bothered to even look at the evidence (or RTFA, as we'd say here).
At that point, justice will truly become like politics.
You gotta wonder how much of the culture of ignorance comes out of the old ways of it being illegal to be educated unless it was through the church. It does seem to be more of a problem in cultures where there is a lot of religious influence still at work, even if people are not religious.
Montana is essentially Scandinavian, English, Dutch, and German, all cultures that value education far more than conformity, and where religion hasn't had people in a yoke for centuries.
Kids, being exceedingly tribal and intolerant of differences, will try to expunge anyone who doesn't conform to their subculture -- and as rebellious as kids may wish to be, their subculture still reflects the base culture's attitudes.
Probably more a cultural contrast than country vs upscale urban. Great Falls MT was still very much a cow town when I was growing up, albeit a cow town of 60,000 people. The outlying school districts weren't much different (my cousins went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, and later in a little bitty small-town school). But the whole culture there is based on personal achievement (earned, not yours by right) and having respect for parents and country, not on showing off what a dominant dick you can be.
I did notice that the newer schools with more yuppie kids seemed to lose some of this culture of academic achievement, while the older traditional schools serving older middle-class neighbourhoods steadfastly maintained it.
Here in north Los Angeles county (which is fairly tame as SoCal goes), kids seem to revel in showing off what hoodies they are -- being part of the ruling gangsta types is paramount (showing off that they're tougher and smarter than any adult). A lot of that got imported along with the flood of illegal aliens -- the first generation born here seemed to think it should all be handed to them on a silver platter. I don't doubt that smart kids are at risk in that culture. But the whole culture is bent and destructive. :(
Yes, exactly -- good example from the AC. When the AC was a kid, money motivated because it was in short supply. Later -- not so much, and it lost its appeal. A lot of kids now get money handed to them just for breathing anyway, so where's the motivation??
I went to what was at the time the largest public school system in the state, and one of the highest-rated in the entire U.S. -- Great Falls, Montana. I graduated in 1972. In our Senior class of about 560 kids, there were only TWO dropouts, both in the last month of school.
All through the system, it was the same -- peer pressure was toward academic success. In my HS, everyone wanted to be like the eggheads, who were the school heroes -- and that was even tho we had a great football team (I believe it was undefeated that year), and did very well in other athletics. You weren't allowed on a team if you didn't keep your grades up, and that WAS enforced.
Public schools used to mostly be like this, back before the era of entitlements and self-worth just for breathing. I watched it change from the earliest days... I had a 5th grade teacher (back in 1964) who got sucked into the "new methods" fully believing that "ensuring success 100% of the time" was the best thing to do -- and funny thing, we kids KNEW we were being shortchanged academically, compared to kids in the traditional classes who actually had to WORK to succeed, and who sometimes failed. I was very lucky that this was the only "progressive" teacher I ever had.
When I was in school, private schools were rather more like what we now think of as poor quality public systems -- relatively poor academically, and to varying degrees socially repressive. We could always tell the kids coming from the Catholic middle school, because they were about a year behind those of us who'd gone to public middle schools (Junior High Schools, as they were called then), and sometimes didn't seem to know how to function as normal kids.
What's he going to do when he goes to work and finds an everyday job is just as much "torture"?? He won't have learned any *endurance*. You can't very well tell your boss that you know all the week's work so he should just pay you now and let you go home.
As I recall it's been tried before -- stay in school, stay off drugs, and we'll pay you $$ at graduation. I don't recall the details but in POOR neighbourhoods it had good short-term gains. Rich kids -- not so, where's the incentive in cash when you already have everything??
When I was in school, the motivators were desire to please our teachers, desire to do well in our classmates' eyes (there was a LOT of peer pressure to get good grades), and somewhat less desire to please our parents. It was expected behaviour and how we *earned* something rather more valuable -- self-esteem and the recognition that we COULD do this stuff.
The kids who did get paid by their parents for grade performance tended to slack off when the money lost its interest. The rest of us -- peer pressure never ends. It was ALWAYS embarrassing to fail, in the eyes of our peers or of our teachers.
Resources might be a problem for someone coming from even *further* out in bumfuck nullspace, tho -- and we might be a convenient target/stopping point on their way to pillage further in.
Tourists and tourist agencies usually want to maintain the desirability of the tourist trap in question. What might be more of a problem are sport hunters.
Yes -- and that goes way back to the earliest days of children's television... Captain Kangaroo had some sort of reading-teaching segment. Read word, point at object; doesn't take many brain cells to make the connection, even if your culture and/or brain wiring is completely different.
Funny thought: Alien steps out of spaceship, says, "See dog run!"
What you say is true, but it also depends on backups being *performed*, AND either very good redundancy or perfect backups, AND on media-shifting all that data AND all those backups every time there's an upgrade of media types.
And the fact is, that's not happening -- I recall hearing that NASA has assloads of data orphaned on old-style media, which is no longer accessable AND for which there are no other formats -- backups having been done in the same now-inaccessable format. And by now no one even knows if the data is still readable, since digital media silently degrades, with your first clue usually being "cannot read disk".
Conversely the paper form may be severely inconvenient by comparison, but failure to upgrade both original data AND backups won't result in data being so rapidly lost. And you can SEE when the media is degrading, and take steps to copy it BEFORE it's lost forever.
I don't disagree with keeping digital data, but *relying* entirely on digital data is folly.