With this, I wholeheartedly agree. We should do everything we can to help ourselves, our species, thrive for as long as possible. The point I was trying to make is that any argument about climate change, etc., is ultimately entirely anthropocentric. The world we see around us was not created by us and will not be destroyed by us, and can only be (in the grand scheme of things) changed by us by miniscule amounts. We care - and should care - about how we treat our world, because we have the capability to make it unsuitable for ourselves, but anything beyond that is vanity and egocentrism.
Why should we care about endangered species? 99%+ of all species that have ever existed are extinct, including at least five (and perhaps up to eleven) mass extinctions which annihilated 30% or more of all known species... and yet our planet resolutely maintains a mind-boggling level of species diversity today.
I'm not espousing a reckless or negligent approach to our stewardship of our home. But I take issue with people who think that we need to preserve the present state of nature for its own sake. 100 million years from now (when Earth is 2.5% older than it is now), nearly every species that exists at this present moment will not exist, and no one will mourn their loss any more than we mourn the dinosaurs, giant insects, or sea monsters.
We cannot prevent nature from changing - no force in the universe can. We need to stop focusing on things we cannot control and begin addressing the things we can - malnourished children, afflicted families, etc., just as you've said.
[Although I must admit great pleasure in killing every mosquito I can find, knowing that I could be preventing the birth of billions^billions more of them over the next several million years, the little fuckers.]
Haha, that's cute - I'd forgotten about that joke. But I was focusing more on the time frame than the depth. The statistician deserved it if it took ten years for the water to get deep enough for him to drown.
There is no such thing as a "negative" impact on the biosphere. There are only changes, and these changes are neither positive nor negative, except from a distinctly human perspective. The biosphere doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to it. Life will adapt and evolve under any conditions, just as it did for 4+ billion years before us, and will long after we're gone.
Are you implying that the Bangladeshi aren't smart enough to get out of the way of a 0.4mm annual rise in ocean levels? Or is it that they are so short they will drown in 18-59cm of water that will rise in the next 90 years? Your post does not make that clear.
I think you need to re-evaluate your understanding of sea level rise and any "catastrophes" it may cause. There are loads of antropocentric problems that will arise in the next 100 years as a result of the rise, but people drowning is most decidedly NOT one of them.
Try learning Russian, French, or any of the other languages where the addition of negatives strengthen the negative instead of cancelling it out. It's only your Germanic language roots that are making your head hurt.
You need to read more of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Much of what he wrote about government vs. the governed is EXACTLY what the right to bear arms centered around. It's about the right of the people to defend themselves from any oppressor, foreign or domestic. This specifically includes the government.
Depends on who you are. There is exactly one chain restaurant in Old Town (a Subway), and someone threw a brick through their front window the week it opened. Going to protests is a normal Friday social activity for a lot of people there, and rent control makes it possible for people to live there that couldn't afford anywhere nearby otherwise.
That said, it's a great town in a lot of respects. (I lived there for a while.) It has kept a lot of small-town charm despite sharing a long border with the District of Columbia, and it has some of the best little shops and restaurants in the surrounding areas.
But you're right, there are a few people who see the waiver as the beginning of a slippery slope.
In the US, Flight Levels don't start until FL180 - ~18,000 feet AGL (above ground level), using a standard barometric pressure of 29.92 inches of mercury (which is why it varies based on current atmospheric conditions).
Mostly only small turboprops or short-haul passenger jets use flight levels below 24. Commercial air carriers generally cruise between FL250 and FL340. Business jets such as Learjets are capable of flight levels of 450, and some military jets cruise much higher.
Bullet damage != explosive decompression. A small hole in the fuselage will most likely be more than compensated for by the excess capability of the pressurization system, which pressurize (in most cases) to 8000 feet MSL (above mean sea level), not FL100 (which does not exist - flight levels are only for Class A airspace, above 17,999 feet MSL).
The reason those countries copied the cell infrastructure and not the landline one is that it's cheaper. For all the talk of "New Energy", fossil fuels are still by far the cheapest form of energy available, and will continue to be so for quite a while. If wind, solar, or nuclear energy were more economical (financially and politically), they would ignore the fossil fuel infrastructure and build those instead, same as mobile phones.
This is true, but how long would it take? Remember the old adage: you can have it fast, cheap, and good... but you can only pick two. The model you're proposing is cheap and (hopefully) good, but certainly not fast.
Zombies, Run! hoped to raise $12,500 from Kickstarter; they ended up with over $72,000. They have already passed version 1.0 (which works nearly flawlessly) and are constantly adding new missions and features. I actually bought an iOS device just so I wouldn't have to wait for the Android version (which is due out late May/early June). The game is fantastic - excellent premise and a lot of fun (and I've already lost almost 5kg playing it!). It's a true Kickstarter success story.
Unfortunately, they're not just targeting spam. Try posting a link to fbpurity.com (which, combined with ffixer, are the only things that make facebook bearable to use, IMO) on your wall, and see what happens.
Facebook has begun actively inserting itself into the mono- and dialogues of users. While this is no different or scarier from what they have been capable of in the past, it forces shee^H^H^H^H users to acknowledge that fact for perhaps the first time. As such, I'm all for it.
Correct or not, "what have you gotten" has a different connotation from "what did you get". (It's similar to the French imparfait vs. the passé-composé.) The former phrase denotes an action that may have occurred over time and may or may not be complete (cf: 'What have you gotten so far?'), while the latter implies that the action is finished. And while I despise the misuse of grammar as much as the next !z, I have to rule for the finesse of meaning with this phrase.
It shows that Stalin did not, in fact, kill more people than Hitler. But the two of them together killed 17-20 million people. (The article mentions that this combined figure sadly doesn't even come close to the 30 million who died as part of Mao's revolution in China.)
Communism is responsible for far more deaths than the Nazis, by multiples. But Hitler wins vs. Stalin.
You are so right - it's amazing to think I've been playing Wasteland off and on for almost 23 years. Yikes!
So after reading your post and battling a fit of nostalgia, I was lamenting that I can't play my old DOS games on my Mac without some serious tweaking to Parallels. So I did a quick search, and found Boxer. It took me less than four minutes from finding the website to having Wasteland running in an OSX-native window.
I'm a musician as well, and I agree - it should apply to all media, not just music.
I have bought lim->(0) new CDs in the past five years. But every time I go to a show or meet a musician whose music I like, I will buy merchandise and/or give a donation directly to the artist. Usually that donation is about $10-$20, which is the revenue equivalent (in most cases) to buying 20-40 CDs. I support the artists I like directly and generously, without benefiting the major labels and their litigious associations. No one should confuse my lack of support for the labels as a lack of support - monetary support - for the artists themselves.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I bought a PS3 (and PS2 and Playstation) specifically to play a couple of select games. Since I've already made the investment, I'll probably continue to buy those games in new installments when they're released. However, I will make damn sure that I test each game before I buy it, so I don't make any more mistaken purchases (Black Ops, anyone?). This policy will also prevent me from purchasing any games on impulse, which I've done often in the past. (I bought Stuntman: Ignition on a whim, and it's one of the most fun games I've played on the PS3.)
So Instead of being the center of my video gaming universe, my PS3 is now relegated to being a niche piece of hardware for playing a couple of games. Kind of sad, really.
Science and religion/philosophy fundamentally ask different questions. Philosophy attempts to address the question 'why are we here?', while science looks for answers to 'how are we here?'. Science and religion only seem to be mutually exclusive when someone crosses domains and attempts to explain the other's question with the wrong tool - and it's in this way that people like Richard Dawkins and the medieval Catholic Church are unfortunately very closely related. Allow science to explore only the mechanism of life, and religion to explore only the mysteries of being, and you'll never find a conflict.
It was all about the shiny colors. (Which, to be fair, were gorgeous.) And that it was done by Cameron, because, hey, it's Cameron, right? It must be Oscar-worthy! (Don't even get me started on why in Titanic there was noticeable reverb on people's voices IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN.)
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With this, I wholeheartedly agree. We should do everything we can to help ourselves, our species, thrive for as long as possible. The point I was trying to make is that any argument about climate change, etc., is ultimately entirely anthropocentric. The world we see around us was not created by us and will not be destroyed by us, and can only be (in the grand scheme of things) changed by us by miniscule amounts. We care - and should care - about how we treat our world, because we have the capability to make it unsuitable for ourselves, but anything beyond that is vanity and egocentrism.
Why should we care about endangered species? 99%+ of all species that have ever existed are extinct, including at least five (and perhaps up to eleven) mass extinctions which annihilated 30% or more of all known species... and yet our planet resolutely maintains a mind-boggling level of species diversity today.
I'm not espousing a reckless or negligent approach to our stewardship of our home. But I take issue with people who think that we need to preserve the present state of nature for its own sake. 100 million years from now (when Earth is 2.5% older than it is now), nearly every species that exists at this present moment will not exist, and no one will mourn their loss any more than we mourn the dinosaurs, giant insects, or sea monsters.
We cannot prevent nature from changing - no force in the universe can. We need to stop focusing on things we cannot control and begin addressing the things we can - malnourished children, afflicted families, etc., just as you've said.
[Although I must admit great pleasure in killing every mosquito I can find, knowing that I could be preventing the birth of billions^billions more of them over the next several million years, the little fuckers.]
Haha, that's cute - I'd forgotten about that joke. But I was focusing more on the time frame than the depth. The statistician deserved it if it took ten years for the water to get deep enough for him to drown.
There is no such thing as a "negative" impact on the biosphere. There are only changes, and these changes are neither positive nor negative, except from a distinctly human perspective. The biosphere doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to it. Life will adapt and evolve under any conditions, just as it did for 4+ billion years before us, and will long after we're gone.
Are you implying that the Bangladeshi aren't smart enough to get out of the way of a 0.4mm annual rise in ocean levels? Or is it that they are so short they will drown in 18-59cm of water that will rise in the next 90 years? Your post does not make that clear.
Cf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
I think you need to re-evaluate your understanding of sea level rise and any "catastrophes" it may cause. There are loads of antropocentric problems that will arise in the next 100 years as a result of the rise, but people drowning is most decidedly NOT one of them.
Try learning Russian, French, or any of the other languages where the addition of negatives strengthen the negative instead of cancelling it out. It's only your Germanic language roots that are making your head hurt.
You need to read more of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Much of what he wrote about government vs. the governed is EXACTLY what the right to bear arms centered around. It's about the right of the people to defend themselves from any oppressor, foreign or domestic. This specifically includes the government.
Depends on who you are. There is exactly one chain restaurant in Old Town (a Subway), and someone threw a brick through their front window the week it opened. Going to protests is a normal Friday social activity for a lot of people there, and rent control makes it possible for people to live there that couldn't afford anywhere nearby otherwise.
That said, it's a great town in a lot of respects. (I lived there for a while.) It has kept a lot of small-town charm despite sharing a long border with the District of Columbia, and it has some of the best little shops and restaurants in the surrounding areas.
But you're right, there are a few people who see the waiver as the beginning of a slippery slope.
In the US, Flight Levels don't start until FL180 - ~18,000 feet AGL (above ground level), using a standard barometric pressure of 29.92 inches of mercury (which is why it varies based on current atmospheric conditions).
Mostly only small turboprops or short-haul passenger jets use flight levels below 24. Commercial air carriers generally cruise between FL250 and FL340. Business jets such as Learjets are capable of flight levels of 450, and some military jets cruise much higher.
Bullet damage != explosive decompression. A small hole in the fuselage will most likely be more than compensated for by the excess capability of the pressurization system, which pressurize (in most cases) to 8000 feet MSL (above mean sea level), not FL100 (which does not exist - flight levels are only for Class A airspace, above 17,999 feet MSL).
The reason those countries copied the cell infrastructure and not the landline one is that it's cheaper. For all the talk of "New Energy", fossil fuels are still by far the cheapest form of energy available, and will continue to be so for quite a while. If wind, solar, or nuclear energy were more economical (financially and politically), they would ignore the fossil fuel infrastructure and build those instead, same as mobile phones.
This is true, but how long would it take? Remember the old adage: you can have it fast, cheap, and good... but you can only pick two. The model you're proposing is cheap and (hopefully) good, but certainly not fast.
Curt Schilling: 216 MLB wins
Sean Connery: 007 wins
Fixed.
Zombies, Run! hoped to raise $12,500 from Kickstarter; they ended up with over $72,000. They have already passed version 1.0 (which works nearly flawlessly) and are constantly adding new missions and features. I actually bought an iOS device just so I wouldn't have to wait for the Android version (which is due out late May/early June). The game is fantastic - excellent premise and a lot of fun (and I've already lost almost 5kg playing it!). It's a true Kickstarter success story.
Unfortunately, they're not just targeting spam. Try posting a link to fbpurity.com (which, combined with ffixer, are the only things that make facebook bearable to use, IMO) on your wall, and see what happens.
Facebook has begun actively inserting itself into the mono- and dialogues of users. While this is no different or scarier from what they have been capable of in the past, it forces shee^H^H^H^H users to acknowledge that fact for perhaps the first time. As such, I'm all for it.
Correct or not, "what have you gotten" has a different connotation from "what did you get". (It's similar to the French imparfait vs. the passé-composé.) The former phrase denotes an action that may have occurred over time and may or may not be complete (cf: 'What have you gotten so far?'), while the latter implies that the action is finished. And while I despise the misuse of grammar as much as the next !z, I have to rule for the finesse of meaning with this phrase.
Here, for one.
It shows that Stalin did not, in fact, kill more people than Hitler. But the two of them together killed 17-20 million people. (The article mentions that this combined figure sadly doesn't even come close to the 30 million who died as part of Mao's revolution in China.)
Communism is responsible for far more deaths than the Nazis, by multiples. But Hitler wins vs. Stalin.
Mod points. Mod points!! My kingdom for mod points!!!
You are so right - it's amazing to think I've been playing Wasteland off and on for almost 23 years. Yikes!
So after reading your post and battling a fit of nostalgia, I was lamenting that I can't play my old DOS games on my Mac without some serious tweaking to Parallels. So I did a quick search, and found Boxer. It took me less than four minutes from finding the website to having Wasteland running in an OSX-native window.
I am in love.
Here are a couple:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1265676/Britney-Spears-releases-airbrushed-images-digitally-altered-versions.html
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/photo-alteration-analysis/?intcid=story_ribbon&pid=2550&viewall=true
I'm a musician as well, and I agree - it should apply to all media, not just music.
I have bought lim->(0) new CDs in the past five years. But every time I go to a show or meet a musician whose music I like, I will buy merchandise and/or give a donation directly to the artist. Usually that donation is about $10-$20, which is the revenue equivalent (in most cases) to buying 20-40 CDs. I support the artists I like directly and generously, without benefiting the major labels and their litigious associations. No one should confuse my lack of support for the labels as a lack of support - monetary support - for the artists themselves.
"How is it sane to rip artists off and never pay them for their work?"
You're right, it's insane. Someone really needs to prevent the major labels and their *AA thugs from doing that.
...and why Citigroup, General Motors, Chrysler, and Bank of America aren't.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I bought a PS3 (and PS2 and Playstation) specifically to play a couple of select games. Since I've already made the investment, I'll probably continue to buy those games in new installments when they're released. However, I will make damn sure that I test each game before I buy it, so I don't make any more mistaken purchases (Black Ops, anyone?). This policy will also prevent me from purchasing any games on impulse, which I've done often in the past. (I bought Stuntman: Ignition on a whim, and it's one of the most fun games I've played on the PS3.)
So Instead of being the center of my video gaming universe, my PS3 is now relegated to being a niche piece of hardware for playing a couple of games. Kind of sad, really.
Science and religion/philosophy fundamentally ask different questions. Philosophy attempts to address the question 'why are we here?', while science looks for answers to 'how are we here?'. Science and religion only seem to be mutually exclusive when someone crosses domains and attempts to explain the other's question with the wrong tool - and it's in this way that people like Richard Dawkins and the medieval Catholic Church are unfortunately very closely related. Allow science to explore only the mechanism of life, and religion to explore only the mysteries of being, and you'll never find a conflict.
All right, so what is the correct Latin term?
It was all about the shiny colors. (Which, to be fair, were gorgeous.) And that it was done by Cameron, because, hey, it's Cameron, right? It must be Oscar-worthy! (Don't even get me started on why in Titanic there was noticeable reverb on people's voices IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN.)