Indeed -- I took this to be the same skill as the primitive who glances at a vast prairie, immediately gets all the information he needs from it (not enough game to be worth the trouble to hunt, too big to search for scarce water) and moves along to something else.
And how much of a problem are these accidents as a percentage of the whole? I'd guess it's some miniscule fraction of a percent, relatively safe compared to, say, medicine or automobiles or bathtubs. But like a plane crash (also a rare risk) it's spectacular compared to everyday risks.
Also, let's not forget that a great many of today's housing developments grew up AFTER the pipeline or refinery or whatever nasty-NIMBY. Who is really liable when you move in next door to a known potential risk?
I don't think it's about selling merchandise. I think it's more likely about becoming the one-low-monthly-payment access to an internet of micropayments... basically they'd be a reseller for such websites, same as Prodigy did in the olden days. Meanwhile, they still can sell your eyeballs to advertisers for a little over-and-above the guaranteed monthly rent paid by subscribers.
Think on that when someone promotes the notion of micropayments... who will it really benefit?
Indeed... even tho I'm rather more "I'd rather do it myself" than most folks, I see no reason why I should dink around with my own mail server and FTP (I keep a mirror of a large FTP site) when I can pay $6/mo. for unlimited space/mailboxes, with automatic backups and probably better security than I could reasonably manage, via my 1&1 hosting account.
Sort of like AOL and Prodigy in the olden days, where they were also walled gardens... try this on for size:
Say we have an internet of logins and micropayments. Access via a paid account with FB or Google gives you 'free' access to all these login and micropayment sites (as FB and G buy bulk accounts).
I think this is not at all implausible as their eventual goal. Makes you rethink the notion of logins and micropayments, don't it??
Yep, it's a pile of speculation at best. When it evolved there could have been some other factor at work, and that flies dislike stripes might be serendipitous. We can guess, but we can't really know.
It can be a good way to =start= teaching math. It's not so good if the student is not subsequently taught how to extrapolate it to ordinary long division without needing to draw a pile of boxes first.
By the time I finished 2nd grade (this was in 1962) we had the abstract concept of numbers down pat; we didn't need visual examples any more, and we didn't need them when we went from the times tables we learned in 2nd grade, to the new (to us in 3rd grade) concept of long division. Funny thing, we had nowhere near the level of basic-math illiteracy that I see in today's kids, either.
Thanks for the info -- I had not realised it had gone so stupid, or that CommonCore was at this level. What you describe is not so much teaching to the test as to the lowest common denominator, to the student who =cannot= extrapolate "take 10 boxes and divide them into two equal piles" into long division applicable to any numbers.
Then make the test work at that level, and only the lowest common denominator will pass. How to dumb down education in one easy step!!
What you describe with dividing boxes and calling it math reminds me of "whole word recognition" (which teaches everyone to read the same way dyslexics often do, by guessing ahead) and how that gave us a generation of students who could not read above the base level.... and from which education has never recovered, because those students are today's teachers.
Someone above touched on this, but I'm guessing the flies didn't evolve to get past the stripes because of the size of fly eyes and what an eye of that size can interpret. If they could grow larger eyes maybe stripes would cease to bother them.... but then we'd also have giant flies.
And my observation has been that the damned roundabouts cause more issues than they solve. They sure as hell cause issues when icy streets are common...
I've personally seen two accidents at a roundabout, where no one was going over 10mph, but that needless curve and wet ice made predictable results.
Second, any vehicles longer than a car cause backups much in excess of what you get from a four-way stop.
Third, have fun sharing 'em with 18 wheelers who can't make that curve without cutting across two lanes.
And the habit of putting a raised mini-park in the middle means they've got needless blind corners.
They're great when you have a population that doesn't respect stop signs and has to be forced into sharing the road (which from what I've seen seems to well describe Europe). When you have sign-abiding drivers to start with (as is true in most of America), they're a step backwards in traffic flow.
Just as well. Fish oil has its own problems, notably that it is typically too far toward rancid, which in turn uses up Vit.E in the body. The resulting deficiency can be minor (itching skin results) to catastrophic (known to cause retinal degeneration and blindness in dogs, and no doubt would do something similar in humans). The aftertaste was probably rancidity, not the fish oil itself.
Conversely you can live on milk with very little else, if need be, in good health.
I'm getting the picture that his 'food instincts' are actually pretty durn good (ie. good sense of smell where it counts) and that it's probably wise to listen when he refuses something.
I think you're right about kids and what they'll eat. And I think what they'll eat is often controlled by instinct. I reached this conclusion after watching toddlers refuse spinach, not as a normal "I don't like it" refusal, but rather with an extreme and severely *panicked* reaction, more like "this is poison and will kill me" -- I'd guess they can detect the oxalic acid (not so good for a busy calcium system as with growing bones) and instinct says "that's poison".
So my feeling is that parents shouldn't be too insistent when a kid refuses to eat something; there may be a perfectly good biochemical reason, and that may vary a lot from one child to the next (frex, a kid that's a little marginal on some nutrient may crave one thing and refuse another, because instinct says that's how to balance out the deficiency).
You can get unfriendly colonies of gut bacteria from adding fibre to the diet, which one gets largely from the same source as gluten. I'd guess that after long abstinence, the relevant bacteria simply aren't there in enough quantity to make a problem. Gut bacteria are not at all uniform from one person to the next, and the resident flora mix is highly dependent on what you eat. (Because of this, Dr.Eades' standard cure for acid reflux is to remove fibre from the diet -- and it works!)
[I went to univ in biochem and microbiol, so I kinda speak this stuff.]
Oh, that explains why yesterday I was driving in snow in southern Utah, and wearing long underwear in SoCal, where normally this time of year I'd be thinking about breaking out the shorts.
That's a really good observation. Better to keep our ag going by any hook or crook necessary, than to let it die out and -- because once it's gone, it's gone forever. It's not possible to recover cropland from suburbia, nor is it likely that public grazing land sequestered out of ranchers' reach will ever be returned to the pool of usable acreage. (And those who think we should farm rather than ranch any such land have obviously never seen the American West.)
Somewhat in the same vein, I've speculated that a great deal of the anti-farmer water policies currently at issue in California are in fact not about water or fish or anything local at all, but rather are very likely being lobbied by food *importers*.
This has already been done once -- Prop2 (which outlawed modern egg production in CA) was fronted by HSUS, but the money came from egg producers in India, China, and the Phillipines. (I found some documentation on that, back when it was happening.)
Kill our ag industry and what will we eat? Imports, obviously. We're one of the few countries both large enough to be a markiet and rich enough to buy our food, at least for a while. But over time it's a great way to become a client state.:(
If more people would be open to studying the genetics, rather than thinking the genocidals have it in for them, perhaps we'd be further along toward understanding it. And pedigree analysis (and DNA analysis when available) prior to reproduction could minimize the numbers of severely affected children.
As someone pointed out with the example of sickle-cell anemia, it's not always desirable or prudent to entirely eliminate a given genetic defect, because it may be associated with desirable or necessary traits. But there may also be instances where it's a no-win for the offspring and therefore some individuals would be better not to breed, or at least not with other carriers. But that's not genocide, it's just prudence. And your offspring have a better chance to pass along your other genes if said offspring are also within the functional spectrum.
If he can't tolerate gluten, then he lacks an enzyme that handles it somewhere in the chain between consumption and excretion. Which means it's genetic. DNA to RNA to enzymes is a direct chain of biochemical events. Probably this lack of a specific enzyme leads to a buildup of some byproduct or derivative of gluten, which in turn, when it accumulates to excess, affects neurological function, and then you see symptoms.
Kinda like MDR1 in dogs (where with the defective gene, they lack an enzyme that normally breaks down one family of drugs, and instead of excreting them normally, they get a buildup that affects brain function).
So it's not so much a mystery, as that his particular variant of this genetic deficit may not be identified as yet. But more than likely it inherits as a single gene, either recessive or with partial penetrance (like MDR1).
I'm reminded that porphyria comes in several flavors, and the symptoms depend on exactly where in the chain the normal biochemical process is interrupted.
"...the effect of prohibition on the available margins in a given market."
Good way to put it.
And I was just reading about the more-than-expected $$millions that legal pot is bringing Colorado in taxes, and my response (tho I don't use) was, "Hurry up and legalize the damned stuff! We need the money!"
Egads. And meanwhile people wonder why cost per student has gone up while results per student are going down. Obviously "more teachers" wasn't the answer.
"The point of making movies is to rake in huge profits and transferable tax credits while pretending to have lost money."
Bingo. And I wonder how many "Hollywood accounting" balance sheets would suddenly look very interesting to the IRS, were they to be reminded via suddenly large sales of streamed copies.
You can tell which folks here have actually built and run a business or not, eh?
This can have interesting side effects, too:
My sister is a partner in a big architectural firm. She and her husband are the last two people there who can still draw plans by hand. Everyone else only knows how to use CAD. When the power goes out, guess who are the only two people who can keep working (and this work is all billed by the hour, so you don't get paid for watching a dark monitor).
Imagine that on a larger scale. The modern Luddites (Amish and such) are preserving skills that few else now have, but would be critical in the event of widespread catastrophe.
And right, I really would like to hear John Carmack's own thoughts about this (John, don't you have an account here? Show up and speak for yourself!) Tho I don't begrudge him a pile of cash; he's earned it.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed -- I took this to be the same skill as the primitive who glances at a vast prairie, immediately gets all the information he needs from it (not enough game to be worth the trouble to hunt, too big to search for scarce water) and moves along to something else.
And how much of a problem are these accidents as a percentage of the whole? I'd guess it's some miniscule fraction of a percent, relatively safe compared to, say, medicine or automobiles or bathtubs. But like a plane crash (also a rare risk) it's spectacular compared to everyday risks.
Also, let's not forget that a great many of today's housing developments grew up AFTER the pipeline or refinery or whatever nasty-NIMBY. Who is really liable when you move in next door to a known potential risk?
I don't think it's about selling merchandise. I think it's more likely about becoming the one-low-monthly-payment access to an internet of micropayments... basically they'd be a reseller for such websites, same as Prodigy did in the olden days. Meanwhile, they still can sell your eyeballs to advertisers for a little over-and-above the guaranteed monthly rent paid by subscribers.
Think on that when someone promotes the notion of micropayments... who will it really benefit?
Indeed... even tho I'm rather more "I'd rather do it myself" than most folks, I see no reason why I should dink around with my own mail server and FTP (I keep a mirror of a large FTP site) when I can pay $6/mo. for unlimited space/mailboxes, with automatic backups and probably better security than I could reasonably manage, via my 1&1 hosting account.
Sort of like AOL and Prodigy in the olden days, where they were also walled gardens... try this on for size:
Say we have an internet of logins and micropayments. Access via a paid account with FB or Google gives you 'free' access to all these login and micropayment sites (as FB and G buy bulk accounts).
I think this is not at all implausible as their eventual goal. Makes you rethink the notion of logins and micropayments, don't it??
Yep, it's a pile of speculation at best. When it evolved there could have been some other factor at work, and that flies dislike stripes might be serendipitous. We can guess, but we can't really know.
It can be a good way to =start= teaching math. It's not so good if the student is not subsequently taught how to extrapolate it to ordinary long division without needing to draw a pile of boxes first.
By the time I finished 2nd grade (this was in 1962) we had the abstract concept of numbers down pat; we didn't need visual examples any more, and we didn't need them when we went from the times tables we learned in 2nd grade, to the new (to us in 3rd grade) concept of long division. Funny thing, we had nowhere near the level of basic-math illiteracy that I see in today's kids, either.
Thanks for the info -- I had not realised it had gone so stupid, or that CommonCore was at this level. What you describe is not so much teaching to the test as to the lowest common denominator, to the student who =cannot= extrapolate "take 10 boxes and divide them into two equal piles" into long division applicable to any numbers.
Then make the test work at that level, and only the lowest common denominator will pass. How to dumb down education in one easy step!!
What you describe with dividing boxes and calling it math reminds me of "whole word recognition" (which teaches everyone to read the same way dyslexics often do, by guessing ahead) and how that gave us a generation of students who could not read above the base level.... and from which education has never recovered, because those students are today's teachers.
And what happens when the camera fails?
A broken mirror will still show you at least some of what you're running into.
A broken camera shows you nothing at all.
I think this falls under "just because we can doesn't mean we should", like so much of 'modernizing' vehicles of late.
Someone above touched on this, but I'm guessing the flies didn't evolve to get past the stripes because of the size of fly eyes and what an eye of that size can interpret. If they could grow larger eyes maybe stripes would cease to bother them. ... but then we'd also have giant flies.
When there's a strong preference for sweets, with no calorie starvation to instigate it, it's worthwhile to check thyroid function.
And my observation has been that the damned roundabouts cause more issues than they solve. They sure as hell cause issues when icy streets are common...
I've personally seen two accidents at a roundabout, where no one was going over 10mph, but that needless curve and wet ice made predictable results.
Second, any vehicles longer than a car cause backups much in excess of what you get from a four-way stop.
Third, have fun sharing 'em with 18 wheelers who can't make that curve without cutting across two lanes.
And the habit of putting a raised mini-park in the middle means they've got needless blind corners.
They're great when you have a population that doesn't respect stop signs and has to be forced into sharing the road (which from what I've seen seems to well describe Europe). When you have sign-abiding drivers to start with (as is true in most of America), they're a step backwards in traffic flow.
Just as well. Fish oil has its own problems, notably that it is typically too far toward rancid, which in turn uses up Vit.E in the body. The resulting deficiency can be minor (itching skin results) to catastrophic (known to cause retinal degeneration and blindness in dogs, and no doubt would do something similar in humans). The aftertaste was probably rancidity, not the fish oil itself.
Conversely you can live on milk with very little else, if need be, in good health.
I'm getting the picture that his 'food instincts' are actually pretty durn good (ie. good sense of smell where it counts) and that it's probably wise to listen when he refuses something.
I think you're right about kids and what they'll eat. And I think what they'll eat is often controlled by instinct. I reached this conclusion after watching toddlers refuse spinach, not as a normal "I don't like it" refusal, but rather with an extreme and severely *panicked* reaction, more like "this is poison and will kill me" -- I'd guess they can detect the oxalic acid (not so good for a busy calcium system as with growing bones) and instinct says "that's poison".
So my feeling is that parents shouldn't be too insistent when a kid refuses to eat something; there may be a perfectly good biochemical reason, and that may vary a lot from one child to the next (frex, a kid that's a little marginal on some nutrient may crave one thing and refuse another, because instinct says that's how to balance out the deficiency).
You can get unfriendly colonies of gut bacteria from adding fibre to the diet, which one gets largely from the same source as gluten. I'd guess that after long abstinence, the relevant bacteria simply aren't there in enough quantity to make a problem. Gut bacteria are not at all uniform from one person to the next, and the resident flora mix is highly dependent on what you eat. (Because of this, Dr.Eades' standard cure for acid reflux is to remove fibre from the diet -- and it works!)
[I went to univ in biochem and microbiol, so I kinda speak this stuff.]
Oh, that explains why yesterday I was driving in snow in southern Utah, and wearing long underwear in SoCal, where normally this time of year I'd be thinking about breaking out the shorts.
That's a really good observation. Better to keep our ag going by any hook or crook necessary, than to let it die out and -- because once it's gone, it's gone forever. It's not possible to recover cropland from suburbia, nor is it likely that public grazing land sequestered out of ranchers' reach will ever be returned to the pool of usable acreage. (And those who think we should farm rather than ranch any such land have obviously never seen the American West.)
Somewhat in the same vein, I've speculated that a great deal of the anti-farmer water policies currently at issue in California are in fact not about water or fish or anything local at all, but rather are very likely being lobbied by food *importers*.
This has already been done once -- Prop2 (which outlawed modern egg production in CA) was fronted by HSUS, but the money came from egg producers in India, China, and the Phillipines. (I found some documentation on that, back when it was happening.)
Kill our ag industry and what will we eat? Imports, obviously. We're one of the few countries both large enough to be a markiet and rich enough to buy our food, at least for a while. But over time it's a great way to become a client state. :(
If more people would be open to studying the genetics, rather than thinking the genocidals have it in for them, perhaps we'd be further along toward understanding it. And pedigree analysis (and DNA analysis when available) prior to reproduction could minimize the numbers of severely affected children.
As someone pointed out with the example of sickle-cell anemia, it's not always desirable or prudent to entirely eliminate a given genetic defect, because it may be associated with desirable or necessary traits. But there may also be instances where it's a no-win for the offspring and therefore some individuals would be better not to breed, or at least not with other carriers. But that's not genocide, it's just prudence. And your offspring have a better chance to pass along your other genes if said offspring are also within the functional spectrum.
If he can't tolerate gluten, then he lacks an enzyme that handles it somewhere in the chain between consumption and excretion. Which means it's genetic. DNA to RNA to enzymes is a direct chain of biochemical events. Probably this lack of a specific enzyme leads to a buildup of some byproduct or derivative of gluten, which in turn, when it accumulates to excess, affects neurological function, and then you see symptoms.
Kinda like MDR1 in dogs (where with the defective gene, they lack an enzyme that normally breaks down one family of drugs, and instead of excreting them normally, they get a buildup that affects brain function).
So it's not so much a mystery, as that his particular variant of this genetic deficit may not be identified as yet. But more than likely it inherits as a single gene, either recessive or with partial penetrance (like MDR1).
I'm reminded that porphyria comes in several flavors, and the symptoms depend on exactly where in the chain the normal biochemical process is interrupted.
"...the effect of prohibition on the available margins in a given market."
Good way to put it.
And I was just reading about the more-than-expected $$millions that legal pot is bringing Colorado in taxes, and my response (tho I don't use) was, "Hurry up and legalize the damned stuff! We need the money!"
Egads. And meanwhile people wonder why cost per student has gone up while results per student are going down. Obviously "more teachers" wasn't the answer.
Well, at least one is offering some back catalog:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Link to site below article.
Unfortunately, they're both pricey for old stuff, and I didn't find anything I wanted. :(
"The point of making movies is to rake in huge profits and transferable tax credits while pretending to have lost money."
Bingo. And I wonder how many "Hollywood accounting" balance sheets would suddenly look very interesting to the IRS, were they to be reminded via suddenly large sales of streamed copies.
You can tell which folks here have actually built and run a business or not, eh?
This can have interesting side effects, too:
My sister is a partner in a big architectural firm. She and her husband are the last two people there who can still draw plans by hand. Everyone else only knows how to use CAD. When the power goes out, guess who are the only two people who can keep working (and this work is all billed by the hour, so you don't get paid for watching a dark monitor).
Imagine that on a larger scale. The modern Luddites (Amish and such) are preserving skills that few else now have, but would be critical in the event of widespread catastrophe.
Google's frog isn't that warm yet.
And right, I really would like to hear John Carmack's own thoughts about this (John, don't you have an account here? Show up and speak for yourself!) Tho I don't begrudge him a pile of cash; he's earned it.