I was the world's #1 authority on a very narrow subject. No kidding, I really was - in the English language, anyway. The Wikipedia article was blah, the sort of crap that people copy & paste from local government websites. Stats and figures, GDP, tons per month exported from the port, that sort of crap. The native language article on the same topic was pretty blah, too. I took it upon myself (this was in 2005) to update the article, remove the crap, and start plugging away at making it more useful to the world. You know what happened, right? Revert. Revert. Revert. Apparently I wasn't a "Wikipedian" which somehow counted against me. A couple of my edits sneaked through, but after getting reverted several times, I was through. I made my own website on the same topic that was 100x better than the Wikipedia article, and eventually made it up to #3 for the Google keyword. I added the website to the "external links" section - guess what happened? Rejected as spam.
Oh well, I learned my lesson, eh? I will never again even bother to try contributing to Wikipedia. My story isn't unique, you'll probably see it repeated several times in these comments.
You can buy a turnkey matchmaking site, complete with a few thousand profiles to get things going. These profiles will even send messages to your "real" users. You can toggle a switch to choose if your users have to pay to see the message, pay to reply, or whatever. There's nothing wrong with what reddit did, even if it went against their own terms of service. What's the phrase..."by any means necessary".
Not quite. Typical "only can see things from our perspective" bullshit. I thought multiculturalism, as taught in our universities, eliminated this sort of "us first" thinking? Try thinking of another culture's viewpoint for once in your life, and maybe you'll gain some insight.
The kids who go to overseas universities from China failed the gaokao, the Chinese SAT. They couldn't get admitted to a good local university, so their parents bought them a place in a foreign university. Prestige? Laughable. There's no prestige. The Chinese students in American universities don't mix with the [dirty] local students. They keep to themselves, speak Chinese, and the males keep the females in line and don't allow them boyfriends. What about the males taking American girlfriends, you say? Well, let's be honest that American girls are openly racist and will not take any Asian boyfriend (except a few outliers, of course). On the other hand, American males are total losers and try incessantly to take Chinese females as girlfriends - this is why the Chinese males police their own and do not allow mixing. WM/AF couples are openly despised by Western feminists, and running afoul of feminists is not something you want to do on campus, of all places. âoeSorry, white man and Asian woman. You seem like nice enough people, and we accept the general idea of interracial relationships, but your union is wrong because other nice people out there arenâ(TM)t getting together at the same rate you are. Youâ(TM)ve used up your quota. Try again in a year or two.â. Who wants to be on the wrong side of this argument?
The really wrong part comes when the Chinese students fail to perform and it's grading time. What are you going to do, TA? Fail a student who is paying top dollar to attend? No. Absolutely not. The Chinese student will receive the grade he's paying for. What, do the typical "fail 50% of freshmen on general principles" bullshit? No, that's for Americans paying in-state tuition. Fail a few hundred Chinese students, and the word will get around in China that America is not the place to send your failing kids. Hey, if they were actually talented, they would have qualified for a Chinese university in the first place! American universities understand this, and give the grades for which they're being paid. It's a win-win situation for both parties. American universities get to pay for their incredible administration expenses, and Chinese parents get their kid a diploma that he couldn't qualify for in China. What could possibly go wrong?
2. Yes, religious fanatics in charge of fascist theocratic states seldom have nutso beliefs that make no rational sense. You've got me there.
3. Another point! Because the more fervently religious states with nukes, the better. What could go wrong!
4. Enriched uranium isn't used for nuclear power, and Iran has plenty of petroleum for its power needs. But hey, let's believe the working fascist theocracy!
Really? You're not worried about the Islamic Republic of Iran, a functioning fascist theocracy, getting nuclear weapons? Realllllll-ly? Quick question: what's the 12th imam? And how can nukes help bring him out of hiding?
The difference is the Empire State Building is still here decades later. This building will be moldering and falling apart five years hence. I've seen Chinese buildings built while I was in China, moved away, and then come back for a visit years later and was shocked at the deterioration.
On the morning of May 3rd, Sichuan Chengdu city resident Lin Zhaoqiang carried 50,000 yuan in torn 100 yuan bills from Chengdu Jintang to the Bank of China Sichuan Branch, looking for help. May 1st, Lin Zhaoqiang's wife all of a sudden had a fit and tore the 50,000 yuan life-saving money into pieces. Facing thousands of pieces of cash, 12 bank employees sorted and spliced for 6 hours only to piece together a single 100 yuan bill. The remaining money, if unable to be pieced back together, face the unfortunate possibility of being declared null and invalid. Because this money is for treating his wife's mental illness, Lin Zhaoqiang said he won't give up.
One of the commenters said they should just weigh the cash, but obviously that would be too simple. Nothing is simple when dealing with Chinese banks and their ridiculous rules. They'll flat-out refuse to take small bills or coins ("What the heck are we going to do with all these jiao notes? What are we, a bank or something?")
Nope, wrong! AQ started because the US left some troops in Saudi Arabia to garrison the place after liberating Kuwait. This was an affront in the eyes of the True Believers, as Saudi Arabia is the home of Mecca. They got outraged, and we all know what happens when Islamists get angry. Nice try on the leftist angle, though - shows you're thinking about your own worldview and not the views of other cultures.
It's cultural. There is simply too much at stake, and the pilots (err...passengers) are too low-ranking to make such huge decisions. If there is an Apollo 13-like incident, then careers will crash and burn, there will be a huge investigation, and the big bosses will likely end up in prison for stealing funds from the operation. The astronauts are just placeholders.
Anyone remember the names of China's first three astronauts? Me, either.
"It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but is not a serious proposition; it is later conceded that it is a serious proposition but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it will make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset."
-- Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002
We are currently at the fourth item on the list. It's all downhill to the sixth item.
Your post is a good example of why workers' socialist governments put so many intellectuals into labor camps for a long bout of honest work, plus some reeducation about what life is really like. Bourgeois intellectuals have always been the enemy of the working class.
Giving IQ any merit is racist. That's why IQ tests are banned from employment screenings. Racists also use IQ research to attempt to ban low-IQ people from breeding - and we all know who they're talking about.
It implies you value appearances over merit. Great intellectuals never cared how they appeared (Einstein, anyone?) but mediocre minds often do. It's an easy way to tell if a person is anti-intellectual.
Here in China, it's the opposite. People use whitening creams to avoid looking tan (tan means you're a rural person, at least American intellectuals also agree that's a bad thing). If someone comes walking past looking whiter than I do, it's a good chance that she's not really into deep thinking. You certainly don't want that sort of person in charge of anything important, because they'll emphasize how it looks over how it works.
No such thing. Champagne is an appellation. Champagne comes from Champagne, France. If it ain't from France, it ain't champagne. Call it sparkling wine. Just like how bourbon must come from Kentucky, otherwise it is, by definition, not bourbon. Impress your friends next time and win a bar bet the next time they call Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey a bourbon.
I've tried those. They're great as long as you're in the West, I suppose. But my third-tier city in China barely has anything. Unusable, and I say this as someone who desperately wants to ditch Google Maps.
"The gun control agenda is based on the view that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted to use the physical power of arms responsibly. But a people that cannot be trusted with guns cannot be trusted with the much more dangerous powers of self-government. The gun control agenda is thus an implicit denial of the human capacity for self-government and is tyrannical in principle."
-- Alan Keyes
"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-- George Orwell
"Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun'"
-- Mao Tse-Tung
"Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."
-- Mao Tse-Tung
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
-- Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC(RET)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
-- The Dalai Lama
You made a mistake by not helping this guy. You needed to communicate with him. You needed to ask him a deep, existential question that would cause him to question and reassess his actions, attitudes, and core beliefs in light of the impact he is having on the world and of the impact the world can have on him. You needed to ask him a question that would help him onto the path of nonviolent enlightenment.
Sometimes you can even ask such a question without using any words at all. A question like - "You don't really want me to shoot you in the face with this.38, do you?"
-- Massad Ayoob
Slashdot Mirror
Amazing what ditching Marxism and adopting a market-based economy will do.
Anyone here? Beuller? Beuller? *crickets*
Oh well, I learned my lesson, eh? I will never again even bother to try contributing to Wikipedia. My story isn't unique, you'll probably see it repeated several times in these comments.
50K a year salary is not "meager". FYI.
You can buy a turnkey matchmaking site, complete with a few thousand profiles to get things going. These profiles will even send messages to your "real" users. You can toggle a switch to choose if your users have to pay to see the message, pay to reply, or whatever. There's nothing wrong with what reddit did, even if it went against their own terms of service. What's the phrase..."by any means necessary".
Not quite. Typical "only can see things from our perspective" bullshit. I thought multiculturalism, as taught in our universities, eliminated this sort of "us first" thinking? Try thinking of another culture's viewpoint for once in your life, and maybe you'll gain some insight.
The kids who go to overseas universities from China failed the gaokao, the Chinese SAT. They couldn't get admitted to a good local university, so their parents bought them a place in a foreign university. Prestige? Laughable. There's no prestige. The Chinese students in American universities don't mix with the [dirty] local students. They keep to themselves, speak Chinese, and the males keep the females in line and don't allow them boyfriends. What about the males taking American girlfriends, you say? Well, let's be honest that American girls are openly racist and will not take any Asian boyfriend (except a few outliers, of course). On the other hand, American males are total losers and try incessantly to take Chinese females as girlfriends - this is why the Chinese males police their own and do not allow mixing. WM/AF couples are openly despised by Western feminists, and running afoul of feminists is not something you want to do on campus, of all places. âoeSorry, white man and Asian woman. You seem like nice enough people, and we accept the general idea of interracial relationships, but your union is wrong because other nice people out there arenâ(TM)t getting together at the same rate you are. Youâ(TM)ve used up your quota. Try again in a year or two.â. Who wants to be on the wrong side of this argument?
The really wrong part comes when the Chinese students fail to perform and it's grading time. What are you going to do, TA? Fail a student who is paying top dollar to attend? No. Absolutely not. The Chinese student will receive the grade he's paying for. What, do the typical "fail 50% of freshmen on general principles" bullshit? No, that's for Americans paying in-state tuition. Fail a few hundred Chinese students, and the word will get around in China that America is not the place to send your failing kids. Hey, if they were actually talented, they would have qualified for a Chinese university in the first place! American universities understand this, and give the grades for which they're being paid. It's a win-win situation for both parties. American universities get to pay for their incredible administration expenses, and Chinese parents get their kid a diploma that he couldn't qualify for in China. What could possibly go wrong?
At least the damage will be restricted to one company, albeit a major one.
2. Yes, religious fanatics in charge of fascist theocratic states seldom have nutso beliefs that make no rational sense. You've got me there.
3. Another point! Because the more fervently religious states with nukes, the better. What could go wrong!
4. Enriched uranium isn't used for nuclear power, and Iran has plenty of petroleum for its power needs. But hey, let's believe the working fascist theocracy!
Really? You're not worried about the Islamic Republic of Iran, a functioning fascist theocracy, getting nuclear weapons? Realllllll-ly? Quick question: what's the 12th imam? And how can nukes help bring him out of hiding?
It's almost like it's a great idea that never works out when it collides with reality. How many times has it been tried, now? Dozens?
They tried the government owning the means of production, in the name of the people. It didn't work out as well as you might have expected.
The difference is the Empire State Building is still here decades later. This building will be moldering and falling apart five years hence. I've seen Chinese buildings built while I was in China, moved away, and then come back for a visit years later and was shocked at the deterioration.
On the morning of May 3rd, Sichuan Chengdu city resident Lin Zhaoqiang carried 50,000 yuan in torn 100 yuan bills from Chengdu Jintang to the Bank of China Sichuan Branch, looking for help. May 1st, Lin Zhaoqiang's wife all of a sudden had a fit and tore the 50,000 yuan life-saving money into pieces. Facing thousands of pieces of cash, 12 bank employees sorted and spliced for 6 hours only to piece together a single 100 yuan bill. The remaining money, if unable to be pieced back together, face the unfortunate possibility of being declared null and invalid. Because this money is for treating his wife's mental illness, Lin Zhaoqiang said he won't give up.
One of the commenters said they should just weigh the cash, but obviously that would be too simple. Nothing is simple when dealing with Chinese banks and their ridiculous rules. They'll flat-out refuse to take small bills or coins ("What the heck are we going to do with all these jiao notes? What are we, a bank or something?")
They weren't "optimized", they were small to begin with.
Browsing on a 486 running Windows 3.1 was snappy and responsive. I know, I had one.
Nope, wrong! AQ started because the US left some troops in Saudi Arabia to garrison the place after liberating Kuwait. This was an affront in the eyes of the True Believers, as Saudi Arabia is the home of Mecca. They got outraged, and we all know what happens when Islamists get angry. Nice try on the leftist angle, though - shows you're thinking about your own worldview and not the views of other cultures.
Anyone remember the names of China's first three astronauts? Me, either.
-- Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002
We are currently at the fourth item on the list. It's all downhill to the sixth item.
Your post is a good example of why workers' socialist governments put so many intellectuals into labor camps for a long bout of honest work, plus some reeducation about what life is really like. Bourgeois intellectuals have always been the enemy of the working class.
Giving IQ any merit is racist. That's why IQ tests are banned from employment screenings. Racists also use IQ research to attempt to ban low-IQ people from breeding - and we all know who they're talking about.
Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line incredibly annoying?
Here in China, it's the opposite. People use whitening creams to avoid looking tan (tan means you're a rural person, at least American intellectuals also agree that's a bad thing). If someone comes walking past looking whiter than I do, it's a good chance that she's not really into deep thinking. You certainly don't want that sort of person in charge of anything important, because they'll emphasize how it looks over how it works.
No such thing. Champagne is an appellation. Champagne comes from Champagne, France. If it ain't from France, it ain't champagne. Call it sparkling wine. Just like how bourbon must come from Kentucky, otherwise it is, by definition, not bourbon. Impress your friends next time and win a bar bet the next time they call Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey a bourbon.
I've tried those. They're great as long as you're in the West, I suppose. But my third-tier city in China barely has anything. Unusable, and I say this as someone who desperately wants to ditch Google Maps.
"The gun control agenda is based on the view that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted to use the physical power of arms responsibly. But a people that cannot be trusted with guns cannot be trusted with the much more dangerous powers of self-government. The gun control agenda is thus an implicit denial of the human capacity for self-government and is tyrannical in principle."
-- Alan Keyes
"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-- George Orwell
"Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun'"
-- Mao Tse-Tung
"Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."
-- Mao Tse-Tung
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
-- Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC(RET)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
-- The Dalai Lama
You made a mistake by not helping this guy. You needed to communicate with him. You needed to ask him a deep, existential question that would cause him to question and reassess his actions, attitudes, and core beliefs in light of the impact he is having on the world and of the impact the world can have on him. You needed to ask him a question that would help him onto the path of nonviolent enlightenment.
Sometimes you can even ask such a question without using any words at all. A question like - "You don't really want me to shoot you in the face with this .38, do you?"
-- Massad Ayoob