You're all flaming enthusiasm, aren't you? You mention compatibility problems as the main reason why we should expect this to fail - but, as someone who has worked with cross platform development, I know that this is only a small problem. It is perfectly possible - easy, even - to write portable code, certainly on the back-end of an application; I have done so across all UNIXes, Linuxes, Windows, and even z/OS, VMS and MPE/iX. The only problems arise at the front-end, but with proper engineering, it is not even all that hard - just look at things like application servers and cloud: they mostly run Linux at the back-end, but you, the user, couldn't care less.
The only reason why we haven't seen companies make their applications in versions for both Windows, Linux and OSX is that somebody has put a lot of effort into stopping it from happening; I won't mention names. However, with Windows becoming obsolete (even Microsoft themselves seem to have lost the spirit), it is not unreasonable to expect that this may change, and China are well positioned to be the main driver of this, so I wouldn't write this new OS just like that.
So, what they are saying, really, is that even after a referendum they will have to use common sense and work out a deal with the Scottish government. Stranger things happen at sea.
No, I just want to see scientific fact presented as if it is scientific fact. Telling about science doesn't need to be pepped up - the subject is already exciting, as opposed to the disturbed love lives of Big Brother contestants, and people on/. are interested in "News for Nerds", or so I've heard. There was once, when a nature program on telly or a scienticif article would be exactly that: exciting facts about nature; compare David Attenborough standing waist deep in a swamp to todays programs with repeated slow motion replays of lions downing a baby gnu and an idiotic soundtrack. Now, if you tell me you prefer the latter, you might as well seek treatment at Dignitas in Switzerland.
Could we flag this kind of articles with a warning, please? I'm getting tired of glossy gossip that's more suited for a write-up about soap-stars and Big Brother. Give us a hex-dump or a wall of equations to look at, not chatty nonsense trying to invoke a sense of "Woooh, mysterious!!!!"
Considering this is the country that put melamine in milk and cadmium in toys, this speaks volumes.
I would like to know their official justification.
China - the country as a whole or its government - can not be held responsible for crimes committed by private companies or individuals. In fact, these things happened because there was not enough governmental oversight - IOW too much freedom, rather than too little. This is what used to happen in the West, when companies were similarly unrestrained by legislation; things like adding chalk to bread and water to milk. Regulation is not all bad.
As for their official justification, they don't owe us any, but it seems likely that they are worried about the behaviour of the GM companies. Although GM holds huge potential in terms of nutrition, there are many things that give cause for concern: patented genes that spread to neighboring fields, genes that provide restitence to weed-killers spreading to wild species, modifications that hinder the production of viable seeds, so the farmers have to buy new GM seed from the producers rather than growing part of their harvest on next year, etc etc. I'm sure GM would be welcome in most countries if it was not for the companies producing them.
Another thing is that the Chinese are fully capable of developing or buying the technology themselves - so why should they allow in American companies that are only intent on siphoning off as much profit as possible to their share holders?
A football match is a commercial entertainment show - somebody has invested money (lots of it, in the case of football) in producing the show, and therefore has at least a legitimate claim to the content. I don't necessarily agree with the whole copyright thinking, but if it illegal to film in cinemas, theatres and at concerts, then the same holds for a sports match; why would it be different? It is not something that happens in the public space - these venues are privately owned.
Personally, I think it is a petty attitude to get up in arms over small clips; I don't think people sharing these things online translates into lost revenue - on the contrary, it is likely to make more people want to go to the next match, whereas making a fuss like this puts people off.
Which would you prefer: egalitarianism or totalitarianism?
The question makes little sense - for one thing, egalitarian is not the opposite of totalitarian - to quote Wikipedia:
- "Egalitarianism... is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people"
- "Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible".
Arguably, the opposite of egalitarianism is elitism; there isn't really a good word for it that I could find. The same holds for totalitarianism - no good antonym, but democratism might be close enough. These concept occupy two, independent spaces, although it may be that totalitarianism is found more with elitism than with egalitarianism.
The other problem with this question is that they are not binary concepts, but define a continuum - IOW there are different degrees of both scales.
When it comes down to it, the choice you make may not be as obvious as you think. New research suggests that in the distant past, groups of hunter-gatherers may have recognized and accepted the benefits of living in hierarchical societies, even if they themselves weren't counted among the well-off. This model could help explain why bands of humans moved from largely egalitarian groups to hierarchical cultures in which social inequality was rife.
There is nothing new in this. Even back in the day, when we can imagine that humans lives like the other, large apes in small groups, there would have been leaders - alpha-males or -females. Or in family groups, one or both parents would have been in charge. This makes sense, since a more experienced, older adult makes better decisions than a younger one, and a physically stronger individual is able to take what he/she wants as well as offering better protection against attackers etc.
But what recent research of the Egyptian culture actually shows is, that hierarchical society developed, not because hierarchy is inherently better, but because the alternatives were worse. If Egypt hadn't been surrounded by desert, people would have moved away, and hierchical society wouldn't have been established that early. Compare to North Europe, where it is possible to live more or less everywhere, and hierchical societies seemingly didn't arise until much later, when population density got high enough.
Of course - it is a great achievement for any mathematician. However, the gender imbalance in Maths is a real thing, and it is a shame - not because it is unfair to women, but because I think mathematical research would benefit from having more women contribute. Mathematical research is highly dependent on creativity, and it seems quite likely to me that women might bring a slightly different perspective.
I don't think it is about women being pushed out - it is probably more about perceptions. Mathematics is often being seen as 'a high and lonely destiny', something very dry and focused on the achievements of single individuals, which probably appeal a good deal more to men than to women. And it doesn't help either, that the Fields Medal is only given to researchers under the age of 40, when many, especially women, feel they have more important things on their minds; perhaps that should be revised upwards, not least because we now expect to live productive lives far longer.
Scientific discussion of racial differences is not the same as racism.
Well, let us start with the expression "racial differences": here, you presuppose the existence of a meaningful definition of "race". Looking back over history we can see that philosopers and scientists have done everything they can to justify, scientifically, a definition of race based on things like skin colour, and when that didn't really work, on other physical traits. We have had very good reasons to think that the concept didn't actually refer to a deeper reality for a long time, and this is now corroborated by genetic evidence - the genetic variation, even within a single family, is normally far wider than the average variation between supposedly different races, which means that based on the gene map alone, it is not actually possible with any certainty to place any individual in any race, whichever way you define it.
One also has to bear in mind that biological concepts like genus and family are abstractions that are only in use because because they help us understand the reality they describe. The concept of "race" fails in that respect - it doesn't aid our understanding of biology.
It's amazing how afraid some people are of frank discussion about race. They want to shut it down as soon as it begins, typically by denying the question ("there's no such thing as race!!") or personal attacks like you're doing ("you're racist for even suggesting that!!!").
No - they just can't stand yet another, stupid row over something that is so obviously not useful and just reeks of prejudice.
So, you're making your own ridiculous assumptions (good at business = cunning? really? how so?) and ascribing them to the book and then labeling it racist.
I was being sarcastic - I have, over a far too long life, read, heard and encountered so much stupid stereotyping and bigotry: Jews are greedy money-lenders, Germans are humour-less 'Huns', Africans are half-apes etc etc. And drawing a line from "good at business" to "cunning" is not unreasonable. "Cunning" was one ot the characteristics that were often ascribed to the Chinese in the past (think of stories like "Fu Manchu"), and it is easy to see "good at business" as a euphemism for "cunning, devious,...".
Oh, come on. Political Correctness has no place in discussions that are scientific in nature.
On the other hand, science does, and this book is not science, but opinion, if you want to be polite about it. Racist opinion, to be precise, which have been around in some guise or other since who knows when? This kind of racism-disguised-as-science was common throughout 18th and 19th centuries and generally went along the lines of 'Us White (North-) Europeans Are Better Than The Rest' and was used to justify why we had a moral duty to go out and 'civilize' the inferior races.
Science is not made by taking a hand-picked assortment of data, twist it a few times and going 'Look, I can make the data match my opinon' - for anything to be science, you must have a hypothesis, which suggests a logically coherent explanation of all observed facts, makes testable predictions - and which survives experimental testing. It takes only 1 failed prediction to kill a theory.
Northern Europeans clearly evolved to have fair skin and hair, and they evolved from ancestors who did not have fair skin and hair.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that is hardly the main point of this book, is it? To quote from the article:
In the book, Wade suggests that such genetic differences may help explain why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business.
So, black people are violent (meaning 'primitive'?), Chinese are cunning ('good at business') and The White Man is the epitome of civilisation? And this is not racism - how? This is just a worthless rehash of junk from the days of the colonialism.
Groan. Something about this reminds of the scene in Monty Python's 'The Holy Grail', where a rather pestilential peasant is yelling 'I'm being oppressed'. Look, it's not always censorship when some company or government service refuses to be the medium for somebody's political propaganda; or if you insist on calling it censorship, then I have to say that not all censorship is bad.
But I don't think it applies in this situation - nobody has a right to have things printed for them, not even in a news paper. And just like a paper can refuse to print an article or an advert for any reason they like, the postoffice can do the same, of course. They have to make a business decision - why should they print a postage stamp, if they have reason to believe it may harm their business or their reputation? Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everybody has to help you spread your opinions, it only means that the state guarantees that they will not punish people for doing so.
...because China flooded the unholy fuck out of the solar market,...
Ah, the good old supply and demand, you say? Whatever, but the article argues that because nuclear power is 'more economic' right now, we should stay away from the alternatives, and I think that is a bogus argument. What we should do is use nuclear in the short term, while working hard to replace both fossil fuels and nuclear, as well as minimising our waste of energy and resources, because that is far more sustainable, long term.
That last point is far more important than finding alternative energy sources, because it can have an immediate and dramatic effect, and there are so many easy ways that every person on the planet could employ to cut back on wastage.
Mayne will be reading this as saying 'there's a way cure Alzheimer'; actually it isn't a cure, it just covers up some of the symptoms of the still progressing disease. This is comparable to painkillers - they take away some of the pain, which is good, but the underlying cause is still there; not a problem if you have a passing headache, but it can be much more serious if it is something that slowly gets worse, like an infected tooth, a slipped disc - or cancer.
A pedophile is nothing more than a person who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. Not all pedophiles rape or even look at child porn, and not all child rapists are even necessarily pedophiles.
You're just trying to sell the myth that being pedophile is really just innocent, nothing to worry about. But that trivialises the problem to the extent that in fact, most people are 'pedophiles' because they can see the attraction in innocent beauty - what we call pedophilism is a much more sinister and harmful condition: when an adult for whatever reason steps over the border between seeing and doing. It is in many ways parallel to the phenomenon that is called 'paranoid schizophrenia': most people have at least sometimes, a conversation going on in their head - like a voice that comments on what they do and see. They are not called schizophrenic, because they are able to distinguish between their inner voice and what happens outside their own mind.
And being pedophile is not like being gay; pedophiles are made, not born. One can argue that honmosexual behaviour is something that strengthens male bonding and therefore would have been an advantage in a small hunter-gatherer community, whereas it is clear that children who have been sexually molested do not survive that unscathed. Whether the acutal damage is primarily due to the sexual element or the physical and mental abuse that accompanies it, or something different, is not really relevant - the bottom line is that pedophiles harm children; and in fact, one of the outcomes of child abuse is that the child is more likely to become a child abuser as well, which makes the problem all the more serious.
No, it's easy, and that's because there is no logic; just a strong desire for more and more government control over what information is accessible to people.
Playing the 'Evil Govt' card is just your form of voodoo. It is astonishing, the amount of power people can imagine "The Government" has; apparently they are also able to cover up all thes UFO landings all over the place.
China has always been controlled from the center. In past eras, China has had technological and exploration advantages over the West that were wiped out by intrusion and isolation commanded from China's locus of concentrated power - whether via emperors, or the current regime.
Long run (maybe, even near-long-term) this does not bode well for China's prospects, because when one is sealed off from outside ideas and innovation, one will ultimately fall behind and adapt only in suboptimal ways. What results is a waste of social and intellectual capital.
Yes, the good old myths that I used to read about in the 70s, 80s, 90s,... - and which have been promoted ever since the days of the British Empire. It's a load of nonsense, basically; racism dressed up with cheap self-flattery: 'Us in the West are much better because of "freedom" or "democracy" or whatever'.
History shows us that China, like all other, great civilisations go through periods of progress and stagnation. Right now they are progressing at a staggering pace, while we are beginning to lag behind. And I can't see where you get the idea from that China is 'sealed off from outside ideas', when the truth is that China is investing hugely in education, science and technology, both in China and overseas. Also, I believe I have seen many times over the last couple of years, that people on this very forum keep complaining that new gadgets come out in China before you can get them in the US. In short, they are way ahead of us at the moment, and we should stop pissing in the wind and get ourselves moving, preferably in a forward direction.
Personally, I think we should be more confident in our own ability to take part in cooperation with China and other of the ascending nations. The future is likely to hold much more international cooperation and much less nationalism. Well, one can hope.
...Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it â" all without requiring batteries.
All to well, I'm afraid. What I can't imagine is what the hell I or anybody else would want that? I'm not much of a Luddite, but being constantly online is just not part of my lifestyle, and seeing the quality of the online natterdom, I feel no attraction at all, on the contrary. It's just like having a million TV channels, all of them showing Big Brother and Coronation Street and nothing else, 24/7.
Not everyone uses vi/vim because it's "cool". Many of us use it because it's simply more productive to do so.
Exactly - and it is amazing how good the basic vi functionality is. I always run vim in compatibility mode, not least because I work across many UNIXes, and basic vi is available everywhere.
Another good reason for not using fancy editors is that they support syntax highlighting and spell checking, which are often difficult to off. Yes, there are people to whom it is annoying to have every abbreviation and every word in a foreign language flagged as misspelled, and to whom proper indentation is sufficient to set off the structure of code.
And one final point: the fact that you can apply any standard UNIX command to a range of lines in vi is just amazing. Look it up if you don't already know it, but are interested.
I wasn't saying that an aircraft carrier couldn't sing a lullaby - it probably has a tannoy, and it might even sing quite softly; but it can only do so by not using most of its enormous power.
Not necessarily - the '...FLOPS' refers to FLOating Point Operations Per Second, and the hardware necessary to deal with this might conceivably not have the kind of processing capacity necessary for running DOS or Doom. It's like asking whether an aircraft carrier can sing you child to sleep; lots of power is not always relevant.
Is it not possible to be a Communist - even in America - without automatically being a spy or traitor? In most of the world 'communist' means 'somebody whose political views align with Communism'; well, more or less. If it is possible to be Christian, Jew, Muslim,... and still be a patriotic American, is it not possible to be a Communist, patriotic American? Or course it is.
'Communism' is, put simply, the idea that means of production should not be owned by any individual, but should belong to the community. Not the state - the community, whatever that means. Equating the state with the community is a highly artificial idea. Please note that communism in this sense does not mean that people can't have property, it just means that the means of production are owned by everybody - like in a cooperative, really. Or a family - and if anything is being touted as American these days, it is 'family values'; so communism is at the core of what it means to be American.
I'm getting a little bit tired of the never ending fascination with QM 'weirdness', because it seems to me that it tries to see everything as 'weird' simply because it is 'quantum', with the danger that that it makes people blind to what might be explainable by more intuitive means.
In this case I think we see an illustration of the fact that the notion of a particle as a mathematical point in space - something with zero dimensions - is an abstraction; an approximation that works well enough because we can't in that much detail any way, and it makes the equations so much easier. We have always known, somewhere, that this is not true - things like the mysterious wavefunction that mysteriously collapses as soon as we measure it is a big hint, I would say. As explanations go, that one has always sounded a bit strained - hopefully we will be able to handle the maths of a better model in the not too remote future.
A more likely scenario, in my view, is that what we call particles is something more distributed in space, and that somewhere in that 'distributed particle' we can explain how a particle can travel through several paths at once. I mean, it isn't even an altogether new observation - the famous electron diffraction experiment shows something similar.
Now, why do I put such a subject header on my comment, when I know it will have me branded as 'anti-Semit' before I even start? Well, because it doesn't actually make much difference - as soon as anybody voices any concern over what Israel does to the Palestinians, they are stamped that way, no matter how carefully and well-intended their put their words. But maybe, just maybe, if I start out being provocative, I can get at least somebody in the automatically responding, pro-Israel faction to at least think and try to see the issue in a more nuanced way.
I am not against Israel's right to exist as a nation; I am pragmatic about it. The state that calls itself Israel is no doubt founded on a historically dubious justification, but it is a current reality and that is what we have to consider. But on the other hand, I don't think what Israel is doing is right, not by many miles. It is not right to annex palestinian territory - if it wasn't right of the European nations to establish colonies all over the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, then it isn't right for Israel to do this now.
And how can it be right for Israel to smash up Gaza's infrastructure, hospitals and schools, killing 10 - 100 Palestinians for every Israeli? The answer is of course, that it isn't. And the outcome in the long run is inevitably that Israel will erode the support it has in the rest of the world. The West has been far too permissive with Israel, because of a long, bad conscience for the Holocaust; but the power of Europe and America is on the wane, and the new powers don't have that historical background. At some point you guys will lose all your allies - what will you do then?
Most of us criticise Israel because we care, and because we expect that you can do so much better - if only you would try. But arguing with you is like arguing with Scientology or Jehovah's Witnesses; there is no honest dialogue taking place. All you do is look for ways to mishear or misinterpret any criticism, and find ways to twist it around as a weapon. Sometimes I don't think you guys want friends in the world; sometimes I think you are addicted to this never ending conflict, because if it ends, you have to look at yourselves and see what miserable creatures you have become; caricatures of the evil bullies that broke you during the Holocaust.
Russia is NOT a state sponsor of terrorism. It has become a terrorist state
I think there is a third, and perhaps more likely explanation: Parts of the Russian military is not under the control of the government. Putin is not exactly stupid, and what is happening in that area is rapidly becoming stupid, so I think it is a reasonable guess that he hasn't got things under his control. Only very few countries are 'terrorist states' - there is something inherently incompatible between level-headed, routine administration of day to day business and hell-bent, wild-eyed terrorism; I can only think of Libya under Gaddafi.
Slashdot Mirror
You're all flaming enthusiasm, aren't you? You mention compatibility problems as the main reason why we should expect this to fail - but, as someone who has worked with cross platform development, I know that this is only a small problem. It is perfectly possible - easy, even - to write portable code, certainly on the back-end of an application; I have done so across all UNIXes, Linuxes, Windows, and even z/OS, VMS and MPE/iX. The only problems arise at the front-end, but with proper engineering, it is not even all that hard - just look at things like application servers and cloud: they mostly run Linux at the back-end, but you, the user, couldn't care less.
The only reason why we haven't seen companies make their applications in versions for both Windows, Linux and OSX is that somebody has put a lot of effort into stopping it from happening; I won't mention names. However, with Windows becoming obsolete (even Microsoft themselves seem to have lost the spirit), it is not unreasonable to expect that this may change, and China are well positioned to be the main driver of this, so I wouldn't write this new OS just like that.
So, what they are saying, really, is that even after a referendum they will have to use common sense and work out a deal with the Scottish government. Stranger things happen at sea.
Today? I'm ALWAYS grumpy grampy!
No, I just want to see scientific fact presented as if it is scientific fact. Telling about science doesn't need to be pepped up - the subject is already exciting, as opposed to the disturbed love lives of Big Brother contestants, and people on /. are interested in "News for Nerds", or so I've heard. There was once, when a nature program on telly or a scienticif article would be exactly that: exciting facts about nature; compare David Attenborough standing waist deep in a swamp to todays programs with repeated slow motion replays of lions downing a baby gnu and an idiotic soundtrack. Now, if you tell me you prefer the latter, you might as well seek treatment at Dignitas in Switzerland.
Could we flag this kind of articles with a warning, please? I'm getting tired of glossy gossip that's more suited for a write-up about soap-stars and Big Brother. Give us a hex-dump or a wall of equations to look at, not chatty nonsense trying to invoke a sense of "Woooh, mysterious!!!!"
Considering this is the country that put melamine in milk and cadmium in toys, this speaks volumes.
I would like to know their official justification.
China - the country as a whole or its government - can not be held responsible for crimes committed by private companies or individuals. In fact, these things happened because there was not enough governmental oversight - IOW too much freedom, rather than too little. This is what used to happen in the West, when companies were similarly unrestrained by legislation; things like adding chalk to bread and water to milk. Regulation is not all bad.
As for their official justification, they don't owe us any, but it seems likely that they are worried about the behaviour of the GM companies. Although GM holds huge potential in terms of nutrition, there are many things that give cause for concern: patented genes that spread to neighboring fields, genes that provide restitence to weed-killers spreading to wild species, modifications that hinder the production of viable seeds, so the farmers have to buy new GM seed from the producers rather than growing part of their harvest on next year, etc etc. I'm sure GM would be welcome in most countries if it was not for the companies producing them.
Another thing is that the Chinese are fully capable of developing or buying the technology themselves - so why should they allow in American companies that are only intent on siphoning off as much profit as possible to their share holders?
Remember Matthew 7:26: A foolish man built his house on sand.
- and what is silicon made from? ;-)
A football match is a commercial entertainment show - somebody has invested money (lots of it, in the case of football) in producing the show, and therefore has at least a legitimate claim to the content. I don't necessarily agree with the whole copyright thinking, but if it illegal to film in cinemas, theatres and at concerts, then the same holds for a sports match; why would it be different? It is not something that happens in the public space - these venues are privately owned.
Personally, I think it is a petty attitude to get up in arms over small clips; I don't think people sharing these things online translates into lost revenue - on the contrary, it is likely to make more people want to go to the next match, whereas making a fuss like this puts people off.
Which would you prefer: egalitarianism or totalitarianism?
The question makes little sense - for one thing, egalitarian is not the opposite of totalitarian - to quote Wikipedia:
- "Egalitarianism ... is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people"
- "Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible".
Arguably, the opposite of egalitarianism is elitism; there isn't really a good word for it that I could find. The same holds for totalitarianism - no good antonym, but democratism might be close enough. These concept occupy two, independent spaces, although it may be that totalitarianism is found more with elitism than with egalitarianism.
The other problem with this question is that they are not binary concepts, but define a continuum - IOW there are different degrees of both scales.
When it comes down to it, the choice you make may not be as obvious as you think. New research suggests that in the distant past, groups of hunter-gatherers may have recognized and accepted the benefits of living in hierarchical societies, even if they themselves weren't counted among the well-off. This model could help explain why bands of humans moved from largely egalitarian groups to hierarchical cultures in which social inequality was rife.
There is nothing new in this. Even back in the day, when we can imagine that humans lives like the other, large apes in small groups, there would have been leaders - alpha-males or -females. Or in family groups, one or both parents would have been in charge. This makes sense, since a more experienced, older adult makes better decisions than a younger one, and a physically stronger individual is able to take what he/she wants as well as offering better protection against attackers etc.
But what recent research of the Egyptian culture actually shows is, that hierarchical society developed, not because hierarchy is inherently better, but because the alternatives were worse. If Egypt hadn't been surrounded by desert, people would have moved away, and hierchical society wouldn't have been established that early. Compare to North Europe, where it is possible to live more or less everywhere, and hierchical societies seemingly didn't arise until much later, when population density got high enough.
Of course - it is a great achievement for any mathematician. However, the gender imbalance in Maths is a real thing, and it is a shame - not because it is unfair to women, but because I think mathematical research would benefit from having more women contribute. Mathematical research is highly dependent on creativity, and it seems quite likely to me that women might bring a slightly different perspective.
I don't think it is about women being pushed out - it is probably more about perceptions. Mathematics is often being seen as 'a high and lonely destiny', something very dry and focused on the achievements of single individuals, which probably appeal a good deal more to men than to women. And it doesn't help either, that the Fields Medal is only given to researchers under the age of 40, when many, especially women, feel they have more important things on their minds; perhaps that should be revised upwards, not least because we now expect to live productive lives far longer.
Scientific discussion of racial differences is not the same as racism.
Well, let us start with the expression "racial differences": here, you presuppose the existence of a meaningful definition of "race". Looking back over history we can see that philosopers and scientists have done everything they can to justify, scientifically, a definition of race based on things like skin colour, and when that didn't really work, on other physical traits. We have had very good reasons to think that the concept didn't actually refer to a deeper reality for a long time, and this is now corroborated by genetic evidence - the genetic variation, even within a single family, is normally far wider than the average variation between supposedly different races, which means that based on the gene map alone, it is not actually possible with any certainty to place any individual in any race, whichever way you define it.
One also has to bear in mind that biological concepts like genus and family are abstractions that are only in use because because they help us understand the reality they describe. The concept of "race" fails in that respect - it doesn't aid our understanding of biology.
It's amazing how afraid some people are of frank discussion about race. They want to shut it down as soon as it begins, typically by denying the question ("there's no such thing as race!!") or personal attacks like you're doing ("you're racist for even suggesting that!!!").
No - they just can't stand yet another, stupid row over something that is so obviously not useful and just reeks of prejudice.
So, you're making your own ridiculous assumptions (good at business = cunning? really? how so?) and ascribing them to the book and then labeling it racist.
I was being sarcastic - I have, over a far too long life, read, heard and encountered so much stupid stereotyping and bigotry: Jews are greedy money-lenders, Germans are humour-less 'Huns', Africans are half-apes etc etc. And drawing a line from "good at business" to "cunning" is not unreasonable. "Cunning" was one ot the characteristics that were often ascribed to the Chinese in the past (think of stories like "Fu Manchu"), and it is easy to see "good at business" as a euphemism for "cunning, devious, ...".
Oh, come on. Political Correctness has no place in discussions that are scientific in nature.
On the other hand, science does, and this book is not science, but opinion, if you want to be polite about it. Racist opinion, to be precise, which have been around in some guise or other since who knows when? This kind of racism-disguised-as-science was common throughout 18th and 19th centuries and generally went along the lines of 'Us White (North-) Europeans Are Better Than The Rest' and was used to justify why we had a moral duty to go out and 'civilize' the inferior races.
Science is not made by taking a hand-picked assortment of data, twist it a few times and going 'Look, I can make the data match my opinon' - for anything to be science, you must have a hypothesis, which suggests a logically coherent explanation of all observed facts, makes testable predictions - and which survives experimental testing. It takes only 1 failed prediction to kill a theory.
Northern Europeans clearly evolved to have fair skin and hair, and they evolved from ancestors who did not have fair skin and hair.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that is hardly the main point of this book, is it? To quote from the article:
In the book, Wade suggests that such genetic differences may help explain why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business.
So, black people are violent (meaning 'primitive'?), Chinese are cunning ('good at business') and The White Man is the epitome of civilisation? And this is not racism - how? This is just a worthless rehash of junk from the days of the colonialism.
Groan. Something about this reminds of the scene in Monty Python's 'The Holy Grail', where a rather pestilential peasant is yelling 'I'm being oppressed'. Look, it's not always censorship when some company or government service refuses to be the medium for somebody's political propaganda; or if you insist on calling it censorship, then I have to say that not all censorship is bad.
But I don't think it applies in this situation - nobody has a right to have things printed for them, not even in a news paper. And just like a paper can refuse to print an article or an advert for any reason they like, the postoffice can do the same, of course. They have to make a business decision - why should they print a postage stamp, if they have reason to believe it may harm their business or their reputation? Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everybody has to help you spread your opinions, it only means that the state guarantees that they will not punish people for doing so.
...because China flooded the unholy fuck out of the solar market, ...
Ah, the good old supply and demand, you say? Whatever, but the article argues that because nuclear power is 'more economic' right now, we should stay away from the alternatives, and I think that is a bogus argument. What we should do is use nuclear in the short term, while working hard to replace both fossil fuels and nuclear, as well as minimising our waste of energy and resources, because that is far more sustainable, long term.
That last point is far more important than finding alternative energy sources, because it can have an immediate and dramatic effect, and there are so many easy ways that every person on the planet could employ to cut back on wastage.
Mayne will be reading this as saying 'there's a way cure Alzheimer'; actually it isn't a cure, it just covers up some of the symptoms of the still progressing disease. This is comparable to painkillers - they take away some of the pain, which is good, but the underlying cause is still there; not a problem if you have a passing headache, but it can be much more serious if it is something that slowly gets worse, like an infected tooth, a slipped disc - or cancer.
You seem very upset that I dispute your claims - I wonder why? Or are you going to deny that as well?
A pedophile is nothing more than a person who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. Not all pedophiles rape or even look at child porn, and not all child rapists are even necessarily pedophiles.
You're just trying to sell the myth that being pedophile is really just innocent, nothing to worry about. But that trivialises the problem to the extent that in fact, most people are 'pedophiles' because they can see the attraction in innocent beauty - what we call pedophilism is a much more sinister and harmful condition: when an adult for whatever reason steps over the border between seeing and doing. It is in many ways parallel to the phenomenon that is called 'paranoid schizophrenia': most people have at least sometimes, a conversation going on in their head - like a voice that comments on what they do and see. They are not called schizophrenic, because they are able to distinguish between their inner voice and what happens outside their own mind.
And being pedophile is not like being gay; pedophiles are made, not born. One can argue that honmosexual behaviour is something that strengthens male bonding and therefore would have been an advantage in a small hunter-gatherer community, whereas it is clear that children who have been sexually molested do not survive that unscathed. Whether the acutal damage is primarily due to the sexual element or the physical and mental abuse that accompanies it, or something different, is not really relevant - the bottom line is that pedophiles harm children; and in fact, one of the outcomes of child abuse is that the child is more likely to become a child abuser as well, which makes the problem all the more serious.
No, it's easy, and that's because there is no logic; just a strong desire for more and more government control over what information is accessible to people.
Playing the 'Evil Govt' card is just your form of voodoo. It is astonishing, the amount of power people can imagine "The Government" has; apparently they are also able to cover up all thes UFO landings all over the place.
China has always been controlled from the center. In past eras, China has had technological and exploration advantages over the West that were wiped out by intrusion and isolation commanded from China's locus of concentrated power - whether via emperors, or the current regime.
Long run (maybe, even near-long-term) this does not bode well for China's prospects, because when one is sealed off from outside ideas and innovation, one will ultimately fall behind and adapt only in suboptimal ways. What results is a waste of social and intellectual capital.
Yes, the good old myths that I used to read about in the 70s, 80s, 90s, ... - and which have been promoted ever since the days of the British Empire. It's a load of nonsense, basically; racism dressed up with cheap self-flattery: 'Us in the West are much better because of "freedom" or "democracy" or whatever'.
History shows us that China, like all other, great civilisations go through periods of progress and stagnation. Right now they are progressing at a staggering pace, while we are beginning to lag behind. And I can't see where you get the idea from that China is 'sealed off from outside ideas', when the truth is that China is investing hugely in education, science and technology, both in China and overseas. Also, I believe I have seen many times over the last couple of years, that people on this very forum keep complaining that new gadgets come out in China before you can get them in the US. In short, they are way ahead of us at the moment, and we should stop pissing in the wind and get ourselves moving, preferably in a forward direction.
Personally, I think we should be more confident in our own ability to take part in cooperation with China and other of the ascending nations. The future is likely to hold much more international cooperation and much less nationalism. Well, one can hope.
Can you ...
...Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it â" all without requiring batteries.
All to well, I'm afraid. What I can't imagine is what the hell I or anybody else would want that? I'm not much of a Luddite, but being constantly online is just not part of my lifestyle, and seeing the quality of the online natterdom, I feel no attraction at all, on the contrary. It's just like having a million TV channels, all of them showing Big Brother and Coronation Street and nothing else, 24/7.
Not everyone uses vi/vim because it's "cool". Many of us use it because it's simply more productive to do so.
Exactly - and it is amazing how good the basic vi functionality is. I always run vim in compatibility mode, not least because I work across many UNIXes, and basic vi is available everywhere.
Another good reason for not using fancy editors is that they support syntax highlighting and spell checking, which are often difficult to off. Yes, there are people to whom it is annoying to have every abbreviation and every word in a foreign language flagged as misspelled, and to whom proper indentation is sufficient to set off the structure of code.
And one final point: the fact that you can apply any standard UNIX command to a range of lines in vi is just amazing. Look it up if you don't already know it, but are interested.
I wasn't saying that an aircraft carrier couldn't sing a lullaby - it probably has a tannoy, and it might even sing quite softly; but it can only do so by not using most of its enormous power.
Not necessarily - the '...FLOPS' refers to FLOating Point Operations Per Second, and the hardware necessary to deal with this might conceivably not have the kind of processing capacity necessary for running DOS or Doom. It's like asking whether an aircraft carrier can sing you child to sleep; lots of power is not always relevant.
Is it not possible to be a Communist - even in America - without automatically being a spy or traitor? In most of the world 'communist' means 'somebody whose political views align with Communism'; well, more or less. If it is possible to be Christian, Jew, Muslim, ... and still be a patriotic American, is it not possible to be a Communist, patriotic American? Or course it is.
'Communism' is, put simply, the idea that means of production should not be owned by any individual, but should belong to the community. Not the state - the community, whatever that means. Equating the state with the community is a highly artificial idea. Please note that communism in this sense does not mean that people can't have property, it just means that the means of production are owned by everybody - like in a cooperative, really. Or a family - and if anything is being touted as American these days, it is 'family values'; so communism is at the core of what it means to be American.
I'm getting a little bit tired of the never ending fascination with QM 'weirdness', because it seems to me that it tries to see everything as 'weird' simply because it is 'quantum', with the danger that that it makes people blind to what might be explainable by more intuitive means.
In this case I think we see an illustration of the fact that the notion of a particle as a mathematical point in space - something with zero dimensions - is an abstraction; an approximation that works well enough because we can't in that much detail any way, and it makes the equations so much easier. We have always known, somewhere, that this is not true - things like the mysterious wavefunction that mysteriously collapses as soon as we measure it is a big hint, I would say. As explanations go, that one has always sounded a bit strained - hopefully we will be able to handle the maths of a better model in the not too remote future.
A more likely scenario, in my view, is that what we call particles is something more distributed in space, and that somewhere in that 'distributed particle' we can explain how a particle can travel through several paths at once. I mean, it isn't even an altogether new observation - the famous electron diffraction experiment shows something similar.
Now, why do I put such a subject header on my comment, when I know it will have me branded as 'anti-Semit' before I even start? Well, because it doesn't actually make much difference - as soon as anybody voices any concern over what Israel does to the Palestinians, they are stamped that way, no matter how carefully and well-intended their put their words. But maybe, just maybe, if I start out being provocative, I can get at least somebody in the automatically responding, pro-Israel faction to at least think and try to see the issue in a more nuanced way.
I am not against Israel's right to exist as a nation; I am pragmatic about it. The state that calls itself Israel is no doubt founded on a historically dubious justification, but it is a current reality and that is what we have to consider. But on the other hand, I don't think what Israel is doing is right, not by many miles. It is not right to annex palestinian territory - if it wasn't right of the European nations to establish colonies all over the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, then it isn't right for Israel to do this now.
And how can it be right for Israel to smash up Gaza's infrastructure, hospitals and schools, killing 10 - 100 Palestinians for every Israeli? The answer is of course, that it isn't. And the outcome in the long run is inevitably that Israel will erode the support it has in the rest of the world. The West has been far too permissive with Israel, because of a long, bad conscience for the Holocaust; but the power of Europe and America is on the wane, and the new powers don't have that historical background. At some point you guys will lose all your allies - what will you do then?
Most of us criticise Israel because we care, and because we expect that you can do so much better - if only you would try. But arguing with you is like arguing with Scientology or Jehovah's Witnesses; there is no honest dialogue taking place. All you do is look for ways to mishear or misinterpret any criticism, and find ways to twist it around as a weapon. Sometimes I don't think you guys want friends in the world; sometimes I think you are addicted to this never ending conflict, because if it ends, you have to look at yourselves and see what miserable creatures you have become; caricatures of the evil bullies that broke you during the Holocaust.
Russia is NOT a state sponsor of terrorism. It has become a terrorist state
I think there is a third, and perhaps more likely explanation: Parts of the Russian military is not under the control of the government. Putin is not exactly stupid, and what is happening in that area is rapidly becoming stupid, so I think it is a reasonable guess that he hasn't got things under his control. Only very few countries are 'terrorist states' - there is something inherently incompatible between level-headed, routine administration of day to day business and hell-bent, wild-eyed terrorism; I can only think of Libya under Gaddafi.