I've always assumed that I will not have uploading available to me, but that rather as I get older and (probably, unfortunately) more and more mentally infirm more and more of what I need to get done to live will be taken over by expert systems that know how I like things and otherwise react like me...the onion will grow so, that the fact that the centre were hollow might not matter to the outside world, and by then I should be past caring.
We bred the drug plants to be useful to us---I include 'recreation' as being very useful, note. This doesn't mean that they're perfect, or free of side-effects, or (Grid help us) 'A PLANT, not a DRUG, maaaaaaaaan,' but it does mean that some harm minimisation has been built into them and the rituals and morés associated with their use.
You can chew coca for a long lifetime to little or no ill effect; millions have, ever since the Spanish broke the nobles' monopoly on the leaf---and I guess you can use crack for a lifetime, but it doesn't sound like it would be as long or as net-pleasant as one I'd want, even were it legal. Similarly, I'd rather need my pipe of opium nightly to fall asleep and relieve the aches and stresses of the day than need to inject morphine or heroin in order to function at all.
I'm all for advancing our knowledge and abilities, but when we start using chemicals that have not stood the test of time, we're in greater danger than before. This is not limited to synthetic chemicals: some of the non-THC components of pot's seem to ameliorating effect in those individuals---and they do exist---for whom THC can be a contributing factor in the development of clinical schizophrenia...but the drugs laws have helped to shift the profile strongly toward THC. Tobacco was used by American Indians, but never constantly, and usually in combination with other plants that at least reduced the total nicotine intake (even as they might increase tars, for all I know).
Again, we should not limit ourselves to those things our ancestors developed, but we should maintain an healthy scepticism toward the untried, especially when we're hacking with our core wetware.
...because I spend most of my time in the klo either away from the mirror or in the shower.
Now a shower safe web-radio is a real improvement; we have a rack in our shower (and, yes, it's a nice one) so tomorrow's solution, today, consists of a 7" tablet and a 1qt zip-lock freezer bag.
People live on narratives, and this makes them susceptible to magic, that is the use of patterned sounds and images to alter their brain-states.
People say that it's too much to expect them not to do, that they are 'only human'...this is why I'm a trans-humanist.
There are nice visuals---I like the worn-looking tech in the first two (release order) movies, which I saw---but I've never been a fan of knights of any stripe.
I prefer science fiction to heroic fantasy.
But from what I've heard, wouldn't it make more sense to charge $140 for the first three released, and $80 for all six?
(And, yes, Jaws was never my speed---I figured that either it would leave me cold, which would make it a waste of money, or it would scare me, which I don't like---sometimes I think I'm much simpler than many people...I hate roller-coasters.)
'If they're dumb enough to leave their window unlocked, then they _deserve_ to be stolen-from.'
'[...] why not [....]' ---Because, as Mr Nixon once observed in a different context, 'That would be wrong.'
'
I've often thought how much more Winston Smith could have got done (in his day job) in an on-line world. Maybe he would have been more content, and they could have saved making him rebel so he could be tortured for a later date.
People to the left of me, or just more impatient (maybe with good reason) than I, are very frustrated by this administration.
Well, here's something that I think a McCain administration wouldn't have even considered.
Why this? Well, people aren't screaming in the streets over it, so maybe there's political space for it. Just wait until it's spontaneously decried by mobs of Monsanto-organised 'average Joes' as 'Kenyan Muslim socialists trying to destroy property rights' until even reasonable people feel the terms of the debate are so.
...for anyone except J. Random Warlord. Admittedly, it's possible that there could be non-coërcive régimes in which it were possible to accumulate that much unnatural property, but as things stand such large amounts of income are intimately dependent on there being a Big Evil Gummint whose Men With Guns enforce things like (say) intellectual property rights and copyrights.
Badly used, the above could be an argument for allowing the government to confiscate everything above Benjamin Franklin's Savage's crude hut, coat, and matchlock, but something---an algorithm, a technology, an analogy---may be subject to misuse yet be extremely useful within its proper domain. I think it particularly useful because it is the disease of many rich people to assume that they earned it all themselves, and that social and governmental pressures only reduced the total. I admire William Gates Sr (as well as Jr, Warren Buffett, Sinjorino Soros, and the Koch Bros' Bizarro World counter-parts) to the extent that they both seem to understand this, and that they seem like they'd rather be at the top of a decent world than be kings of a dung-heap.
O.K., they're not starving or nearly, but it's kind of appalling to see people mocked so mercilessly merely for raising a fuss over what they consider ill-treatment.:
In a market system, you get paid as much as you can swing. Some of that is conditioned by how much value you add---not as a direct factor, but it goes into the Mgt's calculation of how little they can get by with paying you, at least via the question of how much they would lose if you should leave...so making a point of how valuable you are to them makes a lot of sense.
A lot of that, I believe, has to do with basic, primate, dominance and threat displays (much like comments on the web, including this one, probably). So whinging and talking big and making threatening noises can all be part of what can move you toward your optimal...."can be", no guaranties, but why mock it?...unless you're trying to move the curve in the bosses' favour.
So complaints can help you; so can solidarity within groups. You don't have to join Ken Macleod's book's I.W.W.W.W.W. (the 'Webblies') but I think the habit of mind which has less sympathy for the people like you than the people more likely to boss you around is a bad one, and leads to conditions in which you're more likely to be under-paid. Even though the market has no concept of 'deserve' or 'fairness' except to the extent that its participants' choices are influenced by such, _you_ probably do, due to Our Glorious Primate Heritage...if you think it it 'right' that you should be paid more, my guess is that you'll come out better than if you just acknowledge that you _want_ to be paid more---it shouldn't matter, but it does, and the market cares a lot more about what is than what should be (except to the extent &c.).
Even though possession of melanin in large enough quantities is not longer a criminal offence, not even in Alabama, it universally is considered as an aggravating factor in any trial or police proceeding (see: treatment of 15-year-old drug users: 'young thug' vs 'young man with a promising future who just made a little mistake').
Nothing like working night shifts in the middle of the (to my coastal eyes) incredibly violent Illinois lightning storms...sitting next to a giant container of liquid hydrogen. Science!
(The Pirelli calendar someone had left in the control room wasn't much consolation---I like my women like I like my coffee: hot, without fake tyre tracks on their bodies, and COVERED IN BEES.)
Three cheers for reductionist rationalist rationalistic analysis and problem-solving that doesn't involve being a somewhat charismatic guy (as G.N. evidently is for some people). In my experience listening to him, his view of a dictatorial, blinkered, medical establishment is more like projection than anything else. (Yes, the medical establishment is sometimes wrong, but I see more self-correction in't than in Mr Null's corpus.)
As a wise old pot-head observed, 'They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.'
I voted for the pro-Pacifica slate at WBAI _despite_ its being backed by Null....Kakutani's support helped.
...was full of guarantied-to-fail receipts---bombs that would blow up their builders, acid that would give you bad trips, opiate analogues that are a one-way ticket to LDopaville.....
If they are white supremacists who frequently use eliminationist rhetoric, their conviction on possessing weapons capable of killing a large number of people in Harlem or Brixton could turn their rhetoric from protected speech into credible threats.
It's even worse: I'll wager (a pack of cigarettes, presumably, in the old days) that about $2.50 will buy more in an Indian prison commissary than in an American---although it _is_ a captive (ahem) audience, and the staff know how much the inmates generally earn, so I can see prices rising to meet that.
But: are Indian prisons such that you have to pay extra to get anything close to decent to eat? I'm afraid of base-levels of food that might make Nutriloaf look good.
Slashdot Mirror
...it just won't be complete.
I've always assumed that I will not have uploading available to me, but that rather as I get older and (probably, unfortunately) more and more mentally infirm more and more of what I need to get done to live will be taken over by expert systems that know how I like things and otherwise react like me...the onion will grow so, that the fact that the centre were hollow might not matter to the outside world, and by then I should be past caring.
I believe the original was making fun of the bastard child of Calvin and Rand that is the ideology of many current politicians and netniks.
...that is, that's where those good old family values on which we might rely are, at least one place.
Lucky there's a rationalist/secularist guy.
You can chew coca for a long lifetime to little or no ill effect; millions have, ever since the Spanish broke the nobles' monopoly on the leaf---and I guess you can use crack for a lifetime, but it doesn't sound like it would be as long or as net-pleasant as one I'd want, even were it legal. Similarly, I'd rather need my pipe of opium nightly to fall asleep and relieve the aches and stresses of the day than need to inject morphine or heroin in order to function at all.
I'm all for advancing our knowledge and abilities, but when we start using chemicals that have not stood the test of time, we're in greater danger than before. This is not limited to synthetic chemicals: some of the non-THC components of pot's seem to ameliorating effect in those individuals---and they do exist---for whom THC can be a contributing factor in the development of clinical schizophrenia...but the drugs laws have helped to shift the profile strongly toward THC. Tobacco was used by American Indians, but never constantly, and usually in combination with other plants that at least reduced the total nicotine intake (even as they might increase tars, for all I know).
Again, we should not limit ourselves to those things our ancestors developed, but we should maintain an healthy scepticism toward the untried, especially when we're hacking with our core wetware.
...so he's always found women suspiciously effeminate.
...because I spend most of my time in the klo either away from the mirror or in the shower. Now a shower safe web-radio is a real improvement; we have a rack in our shower (and, yes, it's a nice one) so tomorrow's solution, today, consists of a 7" tablet and a 1qt zip-lock freezer bag.
...and, yes, I'd wear John Wayne Gacy's sweater, if it were clean, I needed a sweater, and it at-least-sorta fit.
People live on narratives, and this makes them susceptible to magic, that is the use of patterned sounds and images to alter their brain-states. People say that it's too much to expect them not to do, that they are 'only human'...this is why I'm a trans-humanist.
...I'm going to trust whoever might show up and express an interest, because I'm no damned élitist.
There are nice visuals---I like the worn-looking tech in the first two (release order) movies, which I saw---but I've never been a fan of knights of any stripe.
I prefer science fiction to heroic fantasy.
But from what I've heard, wouldn't it make more sense to charge $140 for the first three released, and $80 for all six?
(And, yes, Jaws was never my speed---I figured that either it would leave me cold, which would make it a waste of money, or it would scare me, which I don't like---sometimes I think I'm much simpler than many people...I hate roller-coasters.)
'If they're dumb enough to leave their window unlocked, then they _deserve_ to be stolen-from.' '[...] why not [....]' ---Because, as Mr Nixon once observed in a different context, 'That would be wrong.' '
I've often thought how much more Winston Smith could have got done (in his day job) in an on-line world. Maybe he would have been more content, and they could have saved making him rebel so he could be tortured for a later date.
People to the left of me, or just more impatient (maybe with good reason) than I, are very frustrated by this administration. Well, here's something that I think a McCain administration wouldn't have even considered. Why this? Well, people aren't screaming in the streets over it, so maybe there's political space for it. Just wait until it's spontaneously decried by mobs of Monsanto-organised 'average Joes' as 'Kenyan Muslim socialists trying to destroy property rights' until even reasonable people feel the terms of the debate are so.
...for anyone except J. Random Warlord. Admittedly, it's possible that there could be non-coërcive régimes in which it were possible to accumulate that much unnatural property, but as things stand such large amounts of income are intimately dependent on there being a Big Evil Gummint whose Men With Guns enforce things like (say) intellectual property rights and copyrights.
Badly used, the above could be an argument for allowing the government to confiscate everything above Benjamin Franklin's Savage's crude hut, coat, and matchlock, but something---an algorithm, a technology, an analogy---may be subject to misuse yet be extremely useful within its proper domain. I think it particularly useful because it is the disease of many rich people to assume that they earned it all themselves, and that social and governmental pressures only reduced the total. I admire William Gates Sr (as well as Jr, Warren Buffett, Sinjorino Soros, and the Koch Bros' Bizarro World counter-parts) to the extent that they both seem to understand this, and that they seem like they'd rather be at the top of a decent world than be kings of a dung-heap.
...before and after a nuclear reaction, I either get bored quickly or I grow senescent and die long before I get to 'after'.
O.K., they're not starving or nearly, but it's kind of appalling to see people mocked so mercilessly merely for raising a fuss over what they consider ill-treatment.:
In a market system, you get paid as much as you can swing. Some of that is conditioned by how much value you add---not as a direct factor, but it goes into the Mgt's calculation of how little they can get by with paying you, at least via the question of how much they would lose if you should leave...so making a point of how valuable you are to them makes a lot of sense.
A lot of that, I believe, has to do with basic, primate, dominance and threat displays (much like comments on the web, including this one, probably). So whinging and talking big and making threatening noises can all be part of what can move you toward your optimal...."can be", no guaranties, but why mock it?...unless you're trying to move the curve in the bosses' favour.
So complaints can help you; so can solidarity within groups. You don't have to join Ken Macleod's book's I.W.W.W.W.W. (the 'Webblies') but I think the habit of mind which has less sympathy for the people like you than the people more likely to boss you around is a bad one, and leads to conditions in which you're more likely to be under-paid. Even though the market has no concept of 'deserve' or 'fairness' except to the extent that its participants' choices are influenced by such, _you_ probably do, due to Our Glorious Primate Heritage...if you think it it 'right' that you should be paid more, my guess is that you'll come out better than if you just acknowledge that you _want_ to be paid more---it shouldn't matter, but it does, and the market cares a lot more about what is than what should be (except to the extent &c.).
Even though possession of melanin in large enough quantities is not longer a criminal offence, not even in Alabama, it universally is considered as an aggravating factor in any trial or police proceeding (see: treatment of 15-year-old drug users: 'young thug' vs 'young man with a promising future who just made a little mistake').
Nothing like working night shifts in the middle of the (to my coastal eyes) incredibly violent Illinois lightning storms...sitting next to a giant container of liquid hydrogen. Science!
(The Pirelli calendar someone had left in the control room wasn't much consolation---I like my women like I like my coffee: hot, without fake tyre tracks on their bodies, and COVERED IN BEES.)
Or, more simply, instant dirty bomb: just add a jet-liner, or some powerful non-nuclear explosives.
Douglas-Martin power cells?
Three cheers for reductionist rationalist rationalistic analysis and problem-solving that doesn't involve being a somewhat charismatic guy (as G.N. evidently is for some people). In my experience listening to him, his view of a dictatorial, blinkered, medical establishment is more like projection than anything else. (Yes, the medical establishment is sometimes wrong, but I see more self-correction in't than in Mr Null's corpus.)
As a wise old pot-head observed, 'They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.'
I voted for the pro-Pacifica slate at WBAI _despite_ its being backed by Null....Kakutani's support helped.
...was full of guarantied-to-fail receipts---bombs that would blow up their builders, acid that would give you bad trips, opiate analogues that are a one-way ticket to LDopaville.....
If they are white supremacists who frequently use eliminationist rhetoric, their conviction on possessing weapons capable of killing a large number of people in Harlem or Brixton could turn their rhetoric from protected speech into credible threats.
It's even worse: I'll wager (a pack of cigarettes, presumably, in the old days) that about $2.50 will buy more in an Indian prison commissary than in an American---although it _is_ a captive (ahem) audience, and the staff know how much the inmates generally earn, so I can see prices rising to meet that. But: are Indian prisons such that you have to pay extra to get anything close to decent to eat? I'm afraid of base-levels of food that might make Nutriloaf look good.