Mathematics are not a science, because they do not rely on underlying reality: the universe may have had completely different physics (never mind the fine-tuning arguments) but mathematics would still be the same.
Off-topic, but fun. When I was in school one of my best friends was a math/physics major, and we had many a long, heated, talk over this. She endorsed the idea that math was real, as in an actual thing in the universe, and thus was as much a science as physics. This, I found, is not an uncommon view. I endorsed math being a formulaic language, and had the same connection to the world as any other language. Saying "tree" in French or English, still refers to the same object, and thus it is with math. There could be other formulaic systems with the same descriptive power as our math, but of a completely different, and perhaps incompatible, form.
The place of math in epistemology, is very interesting, and still completely ambiguous. It obviously works, so there is no debating that, but HOW it works, and WHY it works are pretty interesting debates. Is our development of math nothing but uncovering an a priori thing? Is it an evolution of some basic "laws of thought", or internal logic, which was evolved into our conception of the world, and this explains its usefulness in modeling exterior events? Is it some odd ad hoc system, which we cater to the world?
I miss college. You could hang out and drink and discuss deep (but useless) issues. Now I when I manage to hang out and drink and talk about yard work, kids, and bills.
The "buzz word" was misappropriated from Kuhn. Just like the term "quantum leap" has nothing to do with physics, even if it was stolen from the lexicon of physics.
Have you read the text, you might find that your view isn't that different from his, or at least it isn't "incommensurable" (ahem!) from the views he put forth in the book.
Have you actually taken any social science classes? At a high level?
I can't talk for sociology (though I would love to call it a joke), but in certain areas of psychology, there is real science going on. Predictions, measurements, mapping things to mathematical models, testing those models with highly controlled empirical techniques, etc... Yes, there are the feel good, talky, therapy bits, and those bits are guilty of bad science, and truth by handwaving. But there is also a lot of pure research going on, and many experiments that have been done thousands of times with similar results. Yes, the standard of proof is a bit lower than physics and the like, but this is inevitable. Its harder to control for people, than it is a single atom of cesium in a vacuum.
You also ignore emerging and growing cross over of psychology and neurology, and biology, along with some areas of compsci (whose science-ishness is also a bit dubious).
Anthropology is also a mixed bag. Cultural anthropology is a bout as woo as most sociology, but physical anthropology is pretty much only an offshoot of biology, and thus an actual science.
Some aspects of the social sciences are just as sciency as the hard sciences. Some aspects of the so-called hard-sciences are also pretty damn ridiculous as well, which is only classical metaphysics for math nerds.
Back to Kuhn, oddly I just finished re-reading his book. I read it in college when I was doing philosophy of science, but I came across it when reading about Errol Morris' experiences with Mr. Kuhn, so gave it another go. Errol Morris had some very good complains, mostly hinging on "incommensurability", and what a horribly defined concept it is. In the book, people of two paradigms can't talk to each other in an understandable way anymore, which is obviously idiotic. Mr. Kuhn then spent the rest of his career trying to actually define his own term, a term which much of his theory actually rests on. The fault in this idea was very clear when I re-read it. If you read it as a less extreme version of itself it is rather profound. But if you read it as it sounds, it is a bit absurd with some thought.
Either way, I still love the book, since right or wrong it leads to an interesting conversation, and some fun exploration within the philosophy of science.
Either that or I prefer civility, rationality, and a level of consensus over knee jerk, unthinking bile. Feelings are all well and good, but in the end they don't really mean anything, especially when you consider that we have to all live together, and somehow get along together. This is hard when all of us are 100% correct, and everyone who doesn't agree with our feelings is 100% wrong, so the only people who truly matter are people just like me.
Truth has nothing to do with how you or me FEEL about something. Truth doesn't give a shit if you like it or not.
I agree, anonymity is important. But it completely looses its impact when it is ubiquitous, and any idiot can say any idiotic thing that crosses their idiotic minds. It frees people from the burden of having to actually make a rational point, or having to live with the consequences of their actions.
I actually like pseudo-anonymity better. I've pretty much ran with a single online identity since the birth of the web (and before, even.), so people can identify me, and judge me by my past actions and words.
Having a device that actually has games for it would be nice. Should Ouya not pan out, what games do you recommend that fully take advantage of what makes an HTPC different, such as a big screen and multiple gamepads?
Good question. Like I said, mine is aging, so I can barely run anything on Steam with it (i.e. anything much more taxing than Torchlight I sucks). For gaming, I only use it for a bit of emulation, as pretty much everything else is unplayable. If you have the hardware, though, Steam's Big Picture mode, and their new category for just games with controller support is a good place to start. Even if your a Valve-aphobe, the list itself is a good reference for what games to pick up, even without using Steam.
In one sense, any game that assumes the player has gamepad as opposed to just a touch screen is "beyond the typical iOS/Android fare" because only one Android phone (Xperia Play) has ever shipped with a gamepad.
This worries me. How well would it do for support on pre-existing titles?
PC games and console games have traditionally been in different genres.
PC games have traditionally been most games, in most genres. Its only in the last 10 or so years that things have split. There really wasn't that big of a genre gap until the PS2 era of consoles, before that PC was king of almost everything (yes, the old consoles did eat away a bit, but not as bad as now). "Back in the day" I had a Logitech game pad, and a big fancy flight stick (around 20 buttons, and 3 axis, with an additional 2 axes switch, plus throttle). I used them regularly. They were pretty much standard equipment for PC gamers, or at least everyone I knew had them, and used them. There also was a niche market of innovative controllers.
Now, obviously, things are sadly different. But the current state of gaming wasn't always so. Also, I'm getting older, and have pretty much stopped actually paying much attention to the trends, so I get a bit stuck in the past. My knee-jerk assumption is still that PC games are deep, and complex, while console games are mere toys. This doesn't hold anymore, but it takes a couple of moments to realize it.
I'm guessing there is a vent opposite the fan, but being clear plastic its hard to tell the details. I'm not sure, it could be a completely boneheaded design decision, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (no one who could actually produce a functioning bit of hardware could be that stupid, right?)
- I know the xbox dev box comes in clear plastic, but doesn't make it look any less cheap.
I rather like it. I miss the clear plastic trend of the mid-80's. I would love to see the guts of my gadgets, just to be reminded that they aren't "magic boxes". I doubt I'm cool, or my sense of style is accepted (I'm a nerd, so the latter is probably an oxymoron), but I like it. This also isn't release hardware, so I'm guessing the final consumer version will look like it does on the marketing materials.
- D-Pad from hell (another x-box transfer)
They pretty much said that the controller isn't the final version in the video. I admit, though, that so far it looks sort of like a crappy "Mad Catz" cheapo controller. If it has bluetooth, nothing will stop you from using a 360 controller, or anything else.
- Have they done any software to support their games? Didn't even see Jelly Bean load up.
This is a bit hazy. Looking at another video on their channel, it looks like they might be using a modified version of Android, as their game browser is rather "unique" looking. I'm not sure if you can actually use Android normally, and if you can how, since using a controller is very different than the standard touch. But it does look like they did make it more "game friendly", since it has an actual game browser. Everything else is a mystery, which is sad, since my decision to purchase one would be somewhat based on its functionality beyond games.
I can play games on pretty much everything these days. So having another gaming device isn't terribly attractive (3 computers (one hooked up to the living room TV), a phone, 2 tablets, 2 consoles, 5 retro consoles, a DS, etc...), but having a very small, low power, computer allowing basic functions to replace my aging, loud and hot, HTPC would be nice. Even as a gaming device, I'm somewhat skeptical, since 90% of Android/iOS games don't really excite me, they are generally shallow, gimmicky, crap; good for playing on the bus, but horrible for holding your attention for over 15 minutes. If it had "real" games I might bite, but is the hardware capable enough to handle anything beyond the typical iOS/Android fare?
- Awkward video full of awkward comments. Ouch.
I wish I knew what it was about Youtube that brought out the largest possible selection of absolute morons of any other form of media.
I think we've entered the happy period of time when all three major browsers are pretty much equal, and users can pick which on they want to use based purely on aesthetics and functionality.
IE10 is pretty competent, I just can't stand its UI, and I have a historical bias against it. I also worry that MS with withhold updates from people who don't buy their newest OS at some point.
Firefox is okay. It feels a bit clunky to me, but that probably is subjective. I don't really trust Mozilla's development cycle anymore, though. They like to change things for the sake of changing things, and like to add new crap that I'll never use to often. Good browser still, just not to my tastes.
Chrome is also okay. It can be wonky, and often its stability is a bit off. 99% of the time it works fine, and then it drops a page for no reason. It also loves RAM, a lot. Not a big deal on modern systems, but still something to consider. Good also has some odd practices, dropping and adding features for arbitrary feeling reasons. If your on anything but the release channel, Google can feel a bit capricious. This is my browser of choice, but mostly out of habit, and its Android integration. I used to be a Firefox (Firebird, Phoenix) fanboy, but Moz has moved in directions I didn't like, so I moved on.
As for the others:
Opera, its fine. It works. But no one cares.
Safari, it also works. But the Apple's dev and updating strikes me as a bit dubious, and not at all user-transparent. I also don't trust them to support, or upgrade across OS increments, just like MS, but worse. I also don't like how Safari works or functions. This doesn't mean its bad, it just means I don't like it.
Comodo, I don't trust them. Probably a good Chromium port, but I don't know enough to actually trust them.
If you look hard enough at anything, you'll find most things in life are hard to define well. Try to define a cookie, such that the definition includes all cookies but not brownies, cupcakes, or other sweets. Are they still cookies when you pour the batter into a pan and cut out large squares, like brownies?
I'm pretty aware of this. I went so school for philosophy, and this seemed to be the biggest bugbear by far.
The difference with defining intelligence, and defining a cookie (or such) is that the definition matters more for the former than the latter because we use it to classify humans. Some people in this topic have already equated IQ with some metric for evaluating the "value" of humans. This could be dangerous, there have been many movements (none with positive consequences) based on measuring the "worth" of individuals. Further having in ill-defined cookie doesn't lead to egostroking handwaggling that IQ does. People always are elevating themselves, or denigrating others, based on perceived intelligence ("you're stupid, I am smart!").
Just because there isn't a solid definition, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I do think that there is something that could be called intelligence, but it, so far, is hidden and unknown. Not unknowable, just not well explored at this time. The term also is fairly laden with baggage. My example how hard it is to generalize it outside of humans, without basically turning it into meaning "human-like" is an example. In moving the trait to other non-human things, it turns into a mere vehicle for personification, and a way to assert some flavor of species-centric egotism. This pretty much means that we really lack a good scientific, measurable, metric, since we can't generalize it outside of a single domain.
"General Intelligence = problem solving" still doesn't quite grasp it. "Problem solving" is a surface phenomena, many people might solve the same problem in many different ways, using multiple internal schemes and strategies. I might intuit the solution, you might work it out mathematically, and someone else might try many solutions honing in on the right own through trial and error. The end result is still a solution to a problem, and thus intelligent, but now we're missing something. For example, the last case (trial and error) would score horribly on an IQ test, even though they still solved the problem, and their problem solving strategy does have strengths that the others lack.
I have an odd idea that the definition problem is the main problem with intelligence. We're lumping too much into that term, to the point where it is somewhat meaningless. I wouldn't consider many thing you listed in the animal kingdom as being actually intelligent. They are running a simple evolutionary program, which isn't actually generational. I would say my computer is intelligent, even if it do math at a level far beyond what I can do. Its following a script. Some of the human behaviors you list, might follow this. Social intelligence, for example, might be largely as instinctual and a bird being able to find where it left seeds.
When we talk of intelligence, I think we're actually referring to what you called "general intelligence", the ability to apply something in our brains to novel situations. Following a script is much different than this. The evolved, instinctual, behaviors might be muddying the term a bit. Separate out the "mere programming" (perhaps "task based processes", would be a better term), then figure out whats left.
I might have wandered a bit off track here, sorry. A mere cup of coffee doesn't help me be... well... very intelligent.
Memory is a huge factor in this. It's very difficult to learn anything with a poor memory, and if you can't learn anything, you aren't worth much.
It is interesting how much interplay there is between memory and "intelligence". Perhaps different ways of processing memories lead to different flavors of intelligent, different schema of cognition. As stated, I intuit things more than reason, I also have a horrible episodic memory. My girlfriend can remember every dinner we've had for around a year in the past, I can't generally remember what I ate for breakfast. I've never been able to memorize text passages, but I can cough up a full summary of almost every book and article I've ever read. Memory seems to follow the inner mechanisms of intellect, of perhaps there is another common factor working on both.
The variations of the human brain are absolutely amazing. Sure, they all get the job done (for the most part), but it seems like there isn't one chosen route to get there.
...to be able to rate a person's value.
Here we might disagree, or at least perhaps I fail to understand. Humans don't have a value, innate or not. If we had perfect science and measures, we could chop a man into a few digits, and this would be, perhaps interesting, but wouldn't actually mean anything. Our being depends on more than our brain, it depends on our context in the world, and in history, it depends on our social and cultural milieu and connections. We are defined by more than the mass sum of our neurons, we are mostly defined our external relationships.
The smartest man in the world doesn't amount to much when we lacks any exterior resources to make him actually intelligent. The most intelligent man in the world can do great harm when mixed with the wrong place, time, and culture. People with lesser levels of intelligence can inspire us, support us emotionally and physically, and often can out perform very intelligent people thanks to their backgrounds and/or hardwork. Most smart people I know are lazy, since they've always been told how damn intelligent they are. We're more likely to rest on our laurels, and never really challenge ourselves. We generally get crushed easier when something beats us. People who were weaned to be intellectual, always had to work for it. In a way, a person with an IQ (or whatever future measurement) who actually does something, will beat a person with an IQ of 130 who sits around talking about how damn clever they are.
There is always going to be a level of pure greed involved. Piracy will probably never die, as it seems to be a consequence of our increasingly digital age. And when I was younger I admit to be a rather voracious pirate, and justifying it with various youthful "revolutionary" ideals. Free stuff is awesome, how can you go wrong, right? As I got older, and started having an income, I realized that I don't need most media, where when young it was almost a obsession, wrapping myself in the robes of cultural identity. Perhaps time became scarce, and money more plentiful...
I do think, though, that there is a good degree of heartfelt ideology involved, over the greed. Some of this ideology might have valid bits, as well. We all know something is broken, so we try hard to figure out how, and how to act when human nature isn't in accordance with law. When people are approached by an extreme, they often reply with an opposing extreme.
Intelligence might be measurable... But the problem arises from trying to actually define "intelligence".
I personally think that IQ tests measure something, but that something is very complex, and pretty much completely unknown at this time. IQ is a symptom of whatever intelligence is, and not a direct measure of it. Most of the people I've met who have high IQs (120+), have never really been smart in comparable ways. Some of them are math/logic types, some are intuitive, some have increased linguistic skills, some are artistic, some are.... You get the point.
In college, the psychology capstone I took (before giving up, and moving on to other fields) was a class on so-called "animal intelligence", I had a very hard time with it, since I couldn't find a definition of "intelligence" anywhere, besides meaning "things we identify in humans as intelligent" (a doubly meaningless statement now). I later talked to the teacher, and he had the same complaint, and I was his only student to really pick up on it. After this conversation, I pretty much aced the class by taking it like one of my philosophy courses. A bit tangential, but we have similar problems, oddly, with defining "human intelligence"... The closest we can get is "acting in ways that are intelligent in humans". Intelligence is basically a tautology.
I'm always suspicious of the concept of IQ, in that I don't think we actually know what we're actually measuring. Sure, its correlated with behaviors and abilities we associate with something called "intelligence, which isn't a really well defined term in the first place. Besides being "smart" (like pornography, I know it when I see it.), IQ really doesn't predict "smart how". For example, I'm like you, I have a rather high IQ, but suck at math. I also have a hard time powering through complicated processes of reason. But I can intuit solutions better than most, my off-the-cuff guesses are more accurate than most people who actually spend time on the problems. Some of this might be environmental, since my school background was lacking (I got bored, was a distraction and was quickly labeled "learning disabled", and forced to repeat 6th grade math for 3 years, despite high test scores), I am basically self-taught, so there are some large gaps. My mother has a high IQ as well, and like your sister, it seems to go completely into somewhat scary linguistic abilities. But then again I have friends who are very much into math and engineering, who pretty much think in numbers. One of the smartest people I know is a language nerd, she was working on language #5 while doing her physics degree, and eventually dropped out of the sciences to do German lit.
IQ might capture some elusive idea of "smart", but it doesn't really seem to predict much more than that. Its like IQ is the ends, but every brain has a different means to get there. This makes me think that it is somewhat lacking, and perhaps a bit useless. Sure it measures something, but it is more of an epiphenomena, than a thing itself.
Further, one of my best friends has an IQ of 95, and he is one of the smartest people I know. I'd rather have a conversation with him than most people I know with higher IQs. Sure, he takes a small bit longer to get from point A to point B than I do. But he is far more mindful of the process, and this comes up with things related to intermediate steps I'd never think of. He also never takes his brain for granted like I do, so he often continues mulling an idea long after I think I've worked it to completion (I'm so damn smart, after all), and pretty much makes me feel like an idiot. Even with an IQ a couple deviations higher, I'd have a really hard time saying that I'm smarter than him.
My father has a low IQ, and no formal education past 6th grade. But he has far more practical intelligence, and street smarts than I'll ever have. He can get people to do what he wants, and knows how people operate. Given half an hour, every single person in a business will be his friend. He also tools around in the garage and invents things, practical things, some of which are mindbogglingly clever and useful. He's had a computer, though, for 10 years, and still is unsure about how to turn it on. I know more useless stuff than he does, have more education, read more, etc... But in places where it matters, he is far smarter than I'll ever be.
I used to be cocky about my IQ, and used it as some indicator of how damn special I am... but as I age, I've slowly realized that it is about as meaningful as my height. Sure, it helps me reach the top shelf easier, and makes some cars uncomfortable, but beyond that; it really doesn't matter.
Because I've made my living as a writer since 1995?
Touche.
Sorry, I've known several "writers" in my day who've been perpetually working on the bit of literature that will set them free from the mundane crap us uncreative hoi polloi have to put up with. As a result, I am a bit jaded and cynical. You have my apologies on the snark, then.
I am unshakably convinced that authors MUST have the right to control the dissemination of their own work. That copyright law is in dire need of major reform is, I think, established beyond debate.
We don't disagree as much as I thought. I mostly disagreed with some of your reasoning, but I think our ends are the same. Some flavor of copyright is needed, and inevitable, this much is obvious. And obviously authors (creators) need some level of control, so they can attempt to make money from their works. Copyright is a carrot to force creators to keep busy for the good of the rest of us. But I do think fair use should be expanded, terms severely limited, and everything should be made more public (not creator, not corporation) friendly.
That somehow that implies that copyright itself should be abolished is idiocy, promoted exclusively by selfish fools, and it should be rejected by anyone with a particle of sense.
Its a good thing I didn't espouse this, then. And I doubt it is really a very common view among the non/. crowd. I bet even most of them would shut up if we had something sane, like 30 years, with a 15 year extension, or limiting transferability, or just expanding and protecting fair-use. Though I'd probably still be a pirate, for the reasons I stated (try before you buy), but I view this as ethical piracy, as long as you purchase it, or delete it once sampled.
In the absence of income from their work, there will be no professional writers. Period.
God, I despise this fallacy. There were tons of work before modern copyright existed, and tons more when it was sensible, before our current insanity. Books were written, music was created, art was made... Hell, if you completely removed money from the equation (magically no one will pay, ever, which is implausible at best), music would be made, books would be written, and art created.
I don't get paid a cent, and I still do photography (I don't want to get paid, I do it for its own sake), my girlfriend has never made a cent, and still paints. I know many a friend who plays free concerts, and social gigs, just because they love making music, and love making people happy with it.
Another faulty preconception you include is the fact that artists shouldn't have real jobs, like the rest of us. I don't actually see any reason to believe this, as most artists DO have real jobs, even if they dream of being the next big-wig famous, remarkably rich, artist. There is no "right" to be a self-employed artist who has the money to only do art. You might get lucky, you might have the remarkable talent in self-promotion to make this happen, but there is no right to this. Again, most artists struggle, most artists have a normal job like the rest of us, only the very top of the herd can live off their art, and only after years and years of hard work usually.
So: no more Jules Vernes, no more Robert Heinleins, no more Iain M. Banks, and no more consistently high-quality streams of work from writers who are free to concentrate on writing, because their writing pays the bills, instead of being forced to focus on plumbing, or selling cars, or doing double-entry accounting, because the bills MUST be paid.
So how did these people ever manage to get to where they are today while having a normal job? There is a catch 22 here, since to be a good writer you can't have a job, but in order to shed your job you have to be a good writer. This is bullshit, again. 90% of all artists work, or they're starving and either near homeless or just plain homeless.
To be honest, I can live without your book. I don't actually give a shit. I can live without 90% of all culture (and do, culture is vast, and their is now way to engage it all). I don't NEED obscenely successful books or music, or art. And as stated previously, it all would still exist anyways. Half the art in our house was painted by friends and acquaintances, half the shows I go to are local kids, and friends. Books haven't quite gotten there, but in a few years they probably will be. And actually most of the crap they makes enough money to allow the author to quit their job, is probably crap. Sure, you can say Heinlein, but I can retort with Twilight, or Daniel Steele, or now the 50 Shades of Grey lady, or...
I realize that most idiots sincerely believe that professional-quality writing is something that "anybody can do." Being idiots, they are, of course, completely, utterly, and profoundly wrong about that. In fact, there is only a relatively small percentage of the population who have the inherent talent to write well enough to eventually become professionals at it. Idiots like hazah are almost certainly not among them.
How do you know Hazah isn't, or can't be an author? Do you personally know him or her? And what makes you think you can be one, or be professional? How many authors think they are, try to publish something, and then are never heard from again because no one cared? Don't get me wrong, I wish you luck, but you have to realize that everyone who ever tried to be an author probably felt the same way. Most of them were wrong. Hell, I used to think I would be the next Thomas Pynchon, but sadly I couldn't be, even if I had 60,000 words. I still write, but now just because I enjoy it.
Also, as a tangent, their might be more Jules Vernes
Considering most people can't perceive frame rates faster than 30..
Can we please stop with this falsity already? In an FPS, you most assuredly can tell the difference between 30 and 60fps. More frames, means more, smoother, motion, which means higher accuracy. 30fps also looks a bit "juttery" with fast motions, especially with digital graphics, since there is no recorded motion blur to cover it up. Also, why all the brouhaha over the Hobbit being at 48fps and not the standard 24, if no one could notice it?
So the Iliad or Odyssey should be taken on the same level as the Bible (or more so, since they are actually older than the Bible)? Or the works of Plato and Aristotle? I'd rather actually have Plato and Aristotle over the Bible, less blood, less violence, and at least an attempt at reason. Not to be antagonistic, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle don't endorse archaic tribal mores to the extent that the Torah/Old Testament do.
Age and survival isn't proof of truth. Sure, there probably is some lasting content we can connect to, but that doesn't really mean the contents have a basis in reality. And just because a belief is held for a long time, doesn't mean it is more likely to be true, there were ideas from Aristotle that survived for millennia, that were later proven to be unequivocally untrue.
Yes, the Bible has some interesting morals, but not more so than hundreds of other texts that are contemporaneous, or predate it. And, sadly, there are also bits which are nothing but harmful (fueling hatred).
Tell me, how much is a latte at starbucks in Paris?
If I was in Paris, why the hell would I go to a Starbuks?
Further, there are trade offs. Environment or Economy. Where you balance these needs depend on your culture and values. In America we lean heavily towards the idea that economy is the be all end all, and the environment can go jump in a slightly polluted lake. Enviroment is also more than just "the wilds", or "ecosystems", its also the place where we live, how we want our cities and communities to operate. In most US cities, we don't care one bit, in a lot of European cities they want quality of living.
I'm not weighing in here, since as I stated, this is a subjective judgement dependent wholly on cultural values. I for one would rather live in a city like Paris, than one like Phoenix or LA, though.
If solar/wind or renewables were an option, I'd probably wouldn't be as big of a fan of nuclear, since it still is risky and polluting (and mining for it is nasty business, better than coal, but still bad). But then again if we actually decided to do nuclear smart (reprocessing, using low-grade waste, actual long-term storage, etc...), it would compete nicely with "greener" technologies.
I suck at social networking, so I'm having a pretty hard time with G+, Flickr at least had baked in groups, that were rather easy to find. 500px is wonderful if you want to make a portfolio, or go "pro", but is somewhat odd when it comes to social features. I also found a bit of snobby elitism there, which didn't really mesh with my amateur, enthusiast, streak. I'm never going to make money with my hobby, nor do I really want to, I want to be good at it for its own rewards. I'm a photo geek, not a photographer, so the community at 500px was a bit daunting to me.
But I guess there are just those (like you), that do not realize danger until they actually get killed by it.
According to Wikipedia (not the best source, granted) there have been 4013 deaths from nuclear accidents over 55 years (4000 of which were from Chernobyl), which doesn't really worry me that much... As a killer, so far nuclear is doing a pretty shitty job compared to pretty much everything else.
TMI was a partial meltdown, it never breached containment, and there were no ill effects or deaths caused by the accident. No environmental harm... TMI could actually be taken as a success, things failed, things got bad, but the safety features kept it from being a true disaster.
Windscale was bad. But kind of irreverent since there are no reactors like that in the wild, and it wasn't a civilian power plant, it was for processing fuel for nuclear weapons. It would be like including people trampled by oxen in modern traffic fatality lists.
So far Nuclear is pretty damn safe if you look at the actual statistics. I'd rather have it than coal or gas. Sure, solar and wind would be optimal, but right now they aren't really viable for most of the world's needs. Both of these also have their fair share of problems too, there is no ideal solution, and everything has risks and costs.
Look up when "meltdown" means. TMI wasn't a full meltdown, and was pretty harmless actually. Windscale wasn't a meltdown at all, and also no one uses anything like that design anymore, for obvious reasons, also it was only for processing fuel for weapons, and had nothing to do with civilian use. I don't know about the one in Canada, since you haven't cited anything about it. Some quick Googleing shows that there were two civilian accidents in Canada, during the '50s (i.e. designs that are no longer in production), neither had any fatalities or lasting damage.
Really, there are only two bad nuclear messes in the history of the technology. "Tchernobil, and "Fuckupshima", as you... er... well... eloquently phrased them (please read sarcasm into the last statement, you actually just sound like an idiot, not clever, sorry.).
Why do you think some have been covered up? You have any proof of this assertion? No? Well that brings us to 2 serious events, and 2.5 meltdowns. I think I'll be able to sleep easily still, thank you. I still haven't found a reason to really be scared of nuclear power yet. Hell, I live within a 40 minutes drive of the largest nuclear power plant in the U.S. and I still sleep pretty soundly. It actually is pretty cool to visit, or at least it was before 9/11 when you could visit it.
I knew a bit about him before hand, and found his Facebook page (protected and neglected), so I could figure out that he was still in state, at least at some point in the more recent past. He did have a somewhat unique surname, with a unique spelling, so I could narrow it down a bit. I did have to tear through several people though, since even a unique surname, isn't. Mine is rather uncommon as well, but thanks to the internet, it seems very common now. On the first page of a search, there is 6 people who share my exact name/surname, one of whom lives in the same city as me. I've always been tempted to look them up.
The more information you have to start with, the better. Which high school they went to is very useful, as is any previous addresses, as various sites index these. Women are tougher, though, since their names can change. It took me a couple years of idle searching to find a girl I went to high school with, in the intervening years she married twice, move a bunch of times, etc... I only found her thanks to an old mutual friend finding me on Facebook.
It really hasn't been worth the trouble. In the end, what do you have to say to someone you haven't seen in decades? With the girl the conversation was basically "So, your a professor now? "Yep." "Wow. You ever finish that tattoo?" "Nope." "Crap." "... silence and crickets..." "Gotta go, kids got home."
I also had an ex-girlfriend track me down 15 years later, basically the conversation died after; "what have you been up to?"... How the hell do you even answer that?
Slashdot Mirror
Mathematics are not a science, because they do not rely on underlying reality: the universe may have had completely different physics (never mind the fine-tuning arguments) but mathematics would still be the same.
Off-topic, but fun. When I was in school one of my best friends was a math/physics major, and we had many a long, heated, talk over this. She endorsed the idea that math was real, as in an actual thing in the universe, and thus was as much a science as physics. This, I found, is not an uncommon view. I endorsed math being a formulaic language, and had the same connection to the world as any other language. Saying "tree" in French or English, still refers to the same object, and thus it is with math. There could be other formulaic systems with the same descriptive power as our math, but of a completely different, and perhaps incompatible, form.
The place of math in epistemology, is very interesting, and still completely ambiguous. It obviously works, so there is no debating that, but HOW it works, and WHY it works are pretty interesting debates. Is our development of math nothing but uncovering an a priori thing? Is it an evolution of some basic "laws of thought", or internal logic, which was evolved into our conception of the world, and this explains its usefulness in modeling exterior events? Is it some odd ad hoc system, which we cater to the world?
I miss college. You could hang out and drink and discuss deep (but useless) issues. Now I when I manage to hang out and drink and talk about yard work, kids, and bills.
The "buzz word" was misappropriated from Kuhn. Just like the term "quantum leap" has nothing to do with physics, even if it was stolen from the lexicon of physics.
Have you read the text, you might find that your view isn't that different from his, or at least it isn't "incommensurable" (ahem!) from the views he put forth in the book.
Have you actually taken any social science classes? At a high level?
I can't talk for sociology (though I would love to call it a joke), but in certain areas of psychology, there is real science going on. Predictions, measurements, mapping things to mathematical models, testing those models with highly controlled empirical techniques, etc... Yes, there are the feel good, talky, therapy bits, and those bits are guilty of bad science, and truth by handwaving. But there is also a lot of pure research going on, and many experiments that have been done thousands of times with similar results. Yes, the standard of proof is a bit lower than physics and the like, but this is inevitable. Its harder to control for people, than it is a single atom of cesium in a vacuum.
You also ignore emerging and growing cross over of psychology and neurology, and biology, along with some areas of compsci (whose science-ishness is also a bit dubious).
Anthropology is also a mixed bag. Cultural anthropology is a bout as woo as most sociology, but physical anthropology is pretty much only an offshoot of biology, and thus an actual science.
Some aspects of the social sciences are just as sciency as the hard sciences. Some aspects of the so-called hard-sciences are also pretty damn ridiculous as well, which is only classical metaphysics for math nerds.
Back to Kuhn, oddly I just finished re-reading his book. I read it in college when I was doing philosophy of science, but I came across it when reading about Errol Morris' experiences with Mr. Kuhn, so gave it another go. Errol Morris had some very good complains, mostly hinging on "incommensurability", and what a horribly defined concept it is. In the book, people of two paradigms can't talk to each other in an understandable way anymore, which is obviously idiotic. Mr. Kuhn then spent the rest of his career trying to actually define his own term, a term which much of his theory actually rests on. The fault in this idea was very clear when I re-read it. If you read it as a less extreme version of itself it is rather profound. But if you read it as it sounds, it is a bit absurd with some thought.
Either way, I still love the book, since right or wrong it leads to an interesting conversation, and some fun exploration within the philosophy of science.
Either that or I prefer civility, rationality, and a level of consensus over knee jerk, unthinking bile. Feelings are all well and good, but in the end they don't really mean anything, especially when you consider that we have to all live together, and somehow get along together. This is hard when all of us are 100% correct, and everyone who doesn't agree with our feelings is 100% wrong, so the only people who truly matter are people just like me.
Truth has nothing to do with how you or me FEEL about something. Truth doesn't give a shit if you like it or not.
I agree, anonymity is important. But it completely looses its impact when it is ubiquitous, and any idiot can say any idiotic thing that crosses their idiotic minds. It frees people from the burden of having to actually make a rational point, or having to live with the consequences of their actions.
I actually like pseudo-anonymity better. I've pretty much ran with a single online identity since the birth of the web (and before, even.), so people can identify me, and judge me by my past actions and words.
Having a device that actually has games for it would be nice. Should Ouya not pan out, what games do you recommend that fully take advantage of what makes an HTPC different, such as a big screen and multiple gamepads?
Good question. Like I said, mine is aging, so I can barely run anything on Steam with it (i.e. anything much more taxing than Torchlight I sucks). For gaming, I only use it for a bit of emulation, as pretty much everything else is unplayable. If you have the hardware, though, Steam's Big Picture mode, and their new category for just games with controller support is a good place to start. Even if your a Valve-aphobe, the list itself is a good reference for what games to pick up, even without using Steam.
In one sense, any game that assumes the player has gamepad as opposed to just a touch screen is "beyond the typical iOS/Android fare" because only one Android phone (Xperia Play) has ever shipped with a gamepad.
This worries me. How well would it do for support on pre-existing titles?
PC games and console games have traditionally been in different genres.
PC games have traditionally been most games, in most genres. Its only in the last 10 or so years that things have split. There really wasn't that big of a genre gap until the PS2 era of consoles, before that PC was king of almost everything (yes, the old consoles did eat away a bit, but not as bad as now). "Back in the day" I had a Logitech game pad, and a big fancy flight stick (around 20 buttons, and 3 axis, with an additional 2 axes switch, plus throttle). I used them regularly. They were pretty much standard equipment for PC gamers, or at least everyone I knew had them, and used them. There also was a niche market of innovative controllers.
Now, obviously, things are sadly different. But the current state of gaming wasn't always so. Also, I'm getting older, and have pretty much stopped actually paying much attention to the trends, so I get a bit stuck in the past. My knee-jerk assumption is still that PC games are deep, and complex, while console games are mere toys. This doesn't hold anymore, but it takes a couple of moments to realize it.
Ah.. nostalgia.
Good catch. I meant PS3 controller.
I'm still a bit boggled by this world where PCs no longer really use their own controllers and resort to pre-existing console pads.
- Giant fan in a sealed box. Why?
I'm guessing there is a vent opposite the fan, but being clear plastic its hard to tell the details. I'm not sure, it could be a completely boneheaded design decision, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (no one who could actually produce a functioning bit of hardware could be that stupid, right?)
- I know the xbox dev box comes in clear plastic, but doesn't make it look any less cheap.
I rather like it. I miss the clear plastic trend of the mid-80's. I would love to see the guts of my gadgets, just to be reminded that they aren't "magic boxes". I doubt I'm cool, or my sense of style is accepted (I'm a nerd, so the latter is probably an oxymoron), but I like it. This also isn't release hardware, so I'm guessing the final consumer version will look like it does on the marketing materials.
- D-Pad from hell (another x-box transfer)
They pretty much said that the controller isn't the final version in the video. I admit, though, that so far it looks sort of like a crappy "Mad Catz" cheapo controller. If it has bluetooth, nothing will stop you from using a 360 controller, or anything else.
- Have they done any software to support their games? Didn't even see Jelly Bean load up.
This is a bit hazy. Looking at another video on their channel, it looks like they might be using a modified version of Android, as their game browser is rather "unique" looking. I'm not sure if you can actually use Android normally, and if you can how, since using a controller is very different than the standard touch. But it does look like they did make it more "game friendly", since it has an actual game browser. Everything else is a mystery, which is sad, since my decision to purchase one would be somewhat based on its functionality beyond games.
I can play games on pretty much everything these days. So having another gaming device isn't terribly attractive (3 computers (one hooked up to the living room TV), a phone, 2 tablets, 2 consoles, 5 retro consoles, a DS, etc...), but having a very small, low power, computer allowing basic functions to replace my aging, loud and hot, HTPC would be nice. Even as a gaming device, I'm somewhat skeptical, since 90% of Android/iOS games don't really excite me, they are generally shallow, gimmicky, crap; good for playing on the bus, but horrible for holding your attention for over 15 minutes. If it had "real" games I might bite, but is the hardware capable enough to handle anything beyond the typical iOS/Android fare?
- Awkward video full of awkward comments. Ouch.
I wish I knew what it was about Youtube that brought out the largest possible selection of absolute morons of any other form of media.
I think we've entered the happy period of time when all three major browsers are pretty much equal, and users can pick which on they want to use based purely on aesthetics and functionality.
IE10 is pretty competent, I just can't stand its UI, and I have a historical bias against it. I also worry that MS with withhold updates from people who don't buy their newest OS at some point.
Firefox is okay. It feels a bit clunky to me, but that probably is subjective. I don't really trust Mozilla's development cycle anymore, though. They like to change things for the sake of changing things, and like to add new crap that I'll never use to often. Good browser still, just not to my tastes.
Chrome is also okay. It can be wonky, and often its stability is a bit off. 99% of the time it works fine, and then it drops a page for no reason. It also loves RAM, a lot. Not a big deal on modern systems, but still something to consider. Good also has some odd practices, dropping and adding features for arbitrary feeling reasons. If your on anything but the release channel, Google can feel a bit capricious. This is my browser of choice, but mostly out of habit, and its Android integration. I used to be a Firefox (Firebird, Phoenix) fanboy, but Moz has moved in directions I didn't like, so I moved on.
As for the others:
Opera, its fine. It works. But no one cares.
Safari, it also works. But the Apple's dev and updating strikes me as a bit dubious, and not at all user-transparent. I also don't trust them to support, or upgrade across OS increments, just like MS, but worse. I also don't like how Safari works or functions. This doesn't mean its bad, it just means I don't like it.
Comodo, I don't trust them. Probably a good Chromium port, but I don't know enough to actually trust them.
If you look hard enough at anything, you'll find most things in life are hard to define well. Try to define a cookie, such that the definition includes all cookies but not brownies, cupcakes, or other sweets. Are they still cookies when you pour the batter into a pan and cut out large squares, like brownies?
I'm pretty aware of this. I went so school for philosophy, and this seemed to be the biggest bugbear by far.
The difference with defining intelligence, and defining a cookie (or such) is that the definition matters more for the former than the latter because we use it to classify humans. Some people in this topic have already equated IQ with some metric for evaluating the "value" of humans. This could be dangerous, there have been many movements (none with positive consequences) based on measuring the "worth" of individuals. Further having in ill-defined cookie doesn't lead to egostroking handwaggling that IQ does. People always are elevating themselves, or denigrating others, based on perceived intelligence ("you're stupid, I am smart!").
Just because there isn't a solid definition, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I do think that there is something that could be called intelligence, but it, so far, is hidden and unknown. Not unknowable, just not well explored at this time. The term also is fairly laden with baggage. My example how hard it is to generalize it outside of humans, without basically turning it into meaning "human-like" is an example. In moving the trait to other non-human things, it turns into a mere vehicle for personification, and a way to assert some flavor of species-centric egotism. This pretty much means that we really lack a good scientific, measurable, metric, since we can't generalize it outside of a single domain.
"General Intelligence = problem solving" still doesn't quite grasp it. "Problem solving" is a surface phenomena, many people might solve the same problem in many different ways, using multiple internal schemes and strategies. I might intuit the solution, you might work it out mathematically, and someone else might try many solutions honing in on the right own through trial and error. The end result is still a solution to a problem, and thus intelligent, but now we're missing something. For example, the last case (trial and error) would score horribly on an IQ test, even though they still solved the problem, and their problem solving strategy does have strengths that the others lack.
I have an odd idea that the definition problem is the main problem with intelligence. We're lumping too much into that term, to the point where it is somewhat meaningless. I wouldn't consider many thing you listed in the animal kingdom as being actually intelligent. They are running a simple evolutionary program, which isn't actually generational. I would say my computer is intelligent, even if it do math at a level far beyond what I can do. Its following a script. Some of the human behaviors you list, might follow this. Social intelligence, for example, might be largely as instinctual and a bird being able to find where it left seeds.
When we talk of intelligence, I think we're actually referring to what you called "general intelligence", the ability to apply something in our brains to novel situations. Following a script is much different than this. The evolved, instinctual, behaviors might be muddying the term a bit. Separate out the "mere programming" (perhaps "task based processes", would be a better term), then figure out whats left.
I might have wandered a bit off track here, sorry. A mere cup of coffee doesn't help me be... well... very intelligent.
Memory is a huge factor in this. It's very difficult to learn anything with a poor memory, and if you can't learn anything, you aren't worth much.
It is interesting how much interplay there is between memory and "intelligence". Perhaps different ways of processing memories lead to different flavors of intelligent, different schema of cognition. As stated, I intuit things more than reason, I also have a horrible episodic memory. My girlfriend can remember every dinner we've had for around a year in the past, I can't generally remember what I ate for breakfast. I've never been able to memorize text passages, but I can cough up a full summary of almost every book and article I've ever read. Memory seems to follow the inner mechanisms of intellect, of perhaps there is another common factor working on both.
The variations of the human brain are absolutely amazing. Sure, they all get the job done (for the most part), but it seems like there isn't one chosen route to get there.
Here we might disagree, or at least perhaps I fail to understand. Humans don't have a value, innate or not. If we had perfect science and measures, we could chop a man into a few digits, and this would be, perhaps interesting, but wouldn't actually mean anything. Our being depends on more than our brain, it depends on our context in the world, and in history, it depends on our social and cultural milieu and connections. We are defined by more than the mass sum of our neurons, we are mostly defined our external relationships.
The smartest man in the world doesn't amount to much when we lacks any exterior resources to make him actually intelligent. The most intelligent man in the world can do great harm when mixed with the wrong place, time, and culture. People with lesser levels of intelligence can inspire us, support us emotionally and physically, and often can out perform very intelligent people thanks to their backgrounds and/or hardwork. Most smart people I know are lazy, since they've always been told how damn intelligent they are. We're more likely to rest on our laurels, and never really challenge ourselves. We generally get crushed easier when something beats us. People who were weaned to be intellectual, always had to work for it. In a way, a person with an IQ (or whatever future measurement) who actually does something, will beat a person with an IQ of 130 who sits around talking about how damn clever they are.
There is always going to be a level of pure greed involved. Piracy will probably never die, as it seems to be a consequence of our increasingly digital age. And when I was younger I admit to be a rather voracious pirate, and justifying it with various youthful "revolutionary" ideals. Free stuff is awesome, how can you go wrong, right? As I got older, and started having an income, I realized that I don't need most media, where when young it was almost a obsession, wrapping myself in the robes of cultural identity. Perhaps time became scarce, and money more plentiful...
I do think, though, that there is a good degree of heartfelt ideology involved, over the greed. Some of this ideology might have valid bits, as well. We all know something is broken, so we try hard to figure out how, and how to act when human nature isn't in accordance with law. When people are approached by an extreme, they often reply with an opposing extreme.
But having an IQ over 100 also isn't a guarantee that you'll be a good coder, ever.
Intelligence might be measurable... But the problem arises from trying to actually define "intelligence".
I personally think that IQ tests measure something, but that something is very complex, and pretty much completely unknown at this time. IQ is a symptom of whatever intelligence is, and not a direct measure of it. Most of the people I've met who have high IQs (120+), have never really been smart in comparable ways. Some of them are math/logic types, some are intuitive, some have increased linguistic skills, some are artistic, some are.... You get the point.
In college, the psychology capstone I took (before giving up, and moving on to other fields) was a class on so-called "animal intelligence", I had a very hard time with it, since I couldn't find a definition of "intelligence" anywhere, besides meaning "things we identify in humans as intelligent" (a doubly meaningless statement now). I later talked to the teacher, and he had the same complaint, and I was his only student to really pick up on it. After this conversation, I pretty much aced the class by taking it like one of my philosophy courses. A bit tangential, but we have similar problems, oddly, with defining "human intelligence"... The closest we can get is "acting in ways that are intelligent in humans". Intelligence is basically a tautology.
I'm always suspicious of the concept of IQ, in that I don't think we actually know what we're actually measuring. Sure, its correlated with behaviors and abilities we associate with something called "intelligence, which isn't a really well defined term in the first place. Besides being "smart" (like pornography, I know it when I see it.), IQ really doesn't predict "smart how". For example, I'm like you, I have a rather high IQ, but suck at math. I also have a hard time powering through complicated processes of reason. But I can intuit solutions better than most, my off-the-cuff guesses are more accurate than most people who actually spend time on the problems. Some of this might be environmental, since my school background was lacking (I got bored, was a distraction and was quickly labeled "learning disabled", and forced to repeat 6th grade math for 3 years, despite high test scores), I am basically self-taught, so there are some large gaps. My mother has a high IQ as well, and like your sister, it seems to go completely into somewhat scary linguistic abilities. But then again I have friends who are very much into math and engineering, who pretty much think in numbers. One of the smartest people I know is a language nerd, she was working on language #5 while doing her physics degree, and eventually dropped out of the sciences to do German lit.
IQ might capture some elusive idea of "smart", but it doesn't really seem to predict much more than that. Its like IQ is the ends, but every brain has a different means to get there. This makes me think that it is somewhat lacking, and perhaps a bit useless. Sure it measures something, but it is more of an epiphenomena, than a thing itself.
Further, one of my best friends has an IQ of 95, and he is one of the smartest people I know. I'd rather have a conversation with him than most people I know with higher IQs. Sure, he takes a small bit longer to get from point A to point B than I do. But he is far more mindful of the process, and this comes up with things related to intermediate steps I'd never think of. He also never takes his brain for granted like I do, so he often continues mulling an idea long after I think I've worked it to completion (I'm so damn smart, after all), and pretty much makes me feel like an idiot. Even with an IQ a couple deviations higher, I'd have a really hard time saying that I'm smarter than him.
My father has a low IQ, and no formal education past 6th grade. But he has far more practical intelligence, and street smarts than I'll ever have. He can get people to do what he wants, and knows how people operate. Given half an hour, every single person in a business will be his friend. He also tools around in the garage and invents things, practical things, some of which are mindbogglingly clever and useful. He's had a computer, though, for 10 years, and still is unsure about how to turn it on. I know more useless stuff than he does, have more education, read more, etc... But in places where it matters, he is far smarter than I'll ever be.
I used to be cocky about my IQ, and used it as some indicator of how damn special I am... but as I age, I've slowly realized that it is about as meaningful as my height. Sure, it helps me reach the top shelf easier, and makes some cars uncomfortable, but beyond that; it really doesn't matter.
Because I've made my living as a writer since 1995?
Touche.
Sorry, I've known several "writers" in my day who've been perpetually working on the bit of literature that will set them free from the mundane crap us uncreative hoi polloi have to put up with. As a result, I am a bit jaded and cynical. You have my apologies on the snark, then.
I am unshakably convinced that authors MUST have the right to control the dissemination of their own work. That copyright law is in dire need of major reform is, I think, established beyond debate.
We don't disagree as much as I thought. I mostly disagreed with some of your reasoning, but I think our ends are the same. Some flavor of copyright is needed, and inevitable, this much is obvious. And obviously authors (creators) need some level of control, so they can attempt to make money from their works. Copyright is a carrot to force creators to keep busy for the good of the rest of us. But I do think fair use should be expanded, terms severely limited, and everything should be made more public (not creator, not corporation) friendly.
That somehow that implies that copyright itself should be abolished is idiocy, promoted exclusively by selfish fools, and it should be rejected by anyone with a particle of sense.
Its a good thing I didn't espouse this, then. And I doubt it is really a very common view among the non /. crowd. I bet even most of them would shut up if we had something sane, like 30 years, with a 15 year extension, or limiting transferability, or just expanding and protecting fair-use. Though I'd probably still be a pirate, for the reasons I stated (try before you buy), but I view this as ethical piracy, as long as you purchase it, or delete it once sampled.
In the absence of income from their work, there will be no professional writers. Period.
God, I despise this fallacy. There were tons of work before modern copyright existed, and tons more when it was sensible, before our current insanity. Books were written, music was created, art was made... Hell, if you completely removed money from the equation (magically no one will pay, ever, which is implausible at best), music would be made, books would be written, and art created.
I don't get paid a cent, and I still do photography (I don't want to get paid, I do it for its own sake), my girlfriend has never made a cent, and still paints. I know many a friend who plays free concerts, and social gigs, just because they love making music, and love making people happy with it.
Another faulty preconception you include is the fact that artists shouldn't have real jobs, like the rest of us. I don't actually see any reason to believe this, as most artists DO have real jobs, even if they dream of being the next big-wig famous, remarkably rich, artist. There is no "right" to be a self-employed artist who has the money to only do art. You might get lucky, you might have the remarkable talent in self-promotion to make this happen, but there is no right to this. Again, most artists struggle, most artists have a normal job like the rest of us, only the very top of the herd can live off their art, and only after years and years of hard work usually.
So: no more Jules Vernes, no more Robert Heinleins, no more Iain M. Banks, and no more consistently high-quality streams of work from writers who are free to concentrate on writing, because their writing pays the bills, instead of being forced to focus on plumbing, or selling cars, or doing double-entry accounting, because the bills MUST be paid.
So how did these people ever manage to get to where they are today while having a normal job? There is a catch 22 here, since to be a good writer you can't have a job, but in order to shed your job you have to be a good writer. This is bullshit, again. 90% of all artists work, or they're starving and either near homeless or just plain homeless.
To be honest, I can live without your book. I don't actually give a shit. I can live without 90% of all culture (and do, culture is vast, and their is now way to engage it all). I don't NEED obscenely successful books or music, or art. And as stated previously, it all would still exist anyways. Half the art in our house was painted by friends and acquaintances, half the shows I go to are local kids, and friends. Books haven't quite gotten there, but in a few years they probably will be. And actually most of the crap they makes enough money to allow the author to quit their job, is probably crap. Sure, you can say Heinlein, but I can retort with Twilight, or Daniel Steele, or now the 50 Shades of Grey lady, or...
I realize that most idiots sincerely believe that professional-quality writing is something that "anybody can do." Being idiots, they are, of course, completely, utterly, and profoundly wrong about that. In fact, there is only a relatively small percentage of the population who have the inherent talent to write well enough to eventually become professionals at it. Idiots like hazah are almost certainly not among them.
How do you know Hazah isn't, or can't be an author? Do you personally know him or her? And what makes you think you can be one, or be professional? How many authors think they are, try to publish something, and then are never heard from again because no one cared? Don't get me wrong, I wish you luck, but you have to realize that everyone who ever tried to be an author probably felt the same way. Most of them were wrong. Hell, I used to think I would be the next Thomas Pynchon, but sadly I couldn't be, even if I had 60,000 words. I still write, but now just because I enjoy it.
Also, as a tangent, their might be more Jules Vernes
Considering most people can't perceive frame rates faster than 30..
Can we please stop with this falsity already? In an FPS, you most assuredly can tell the difference between 30 and 60fps. More frames, means more, smoother, motion, which means higher accuracy. 30fps also looks a bit "juttery" with fast motions, especially with digital graphics, since there is no recorded motion blur to cover it up. Also, why all the brouhaha over the Hobbit being at 48fps and not the standard 24, if no one could notice it?
So the Iliad or Odyssey should be taken on the same level as the Bible (or more so, since they are actually older than the Bible)? Or the works of Plato and Aristotle? I'd rather actually have Plato and Aristotle over the Bible, less blood, less violence, and at least an attempt at reason. Not to be antagonistic, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle don't endorse archaic tribal mores to the extent that the Torah/Old Testament do.
Age and survival isn't proof of truth. Sure, there probably is some lasting content we can connect to, but that doesn't really mean the contents have a basis in reality. And just because a belief is held for a long time, doesn't mean it is more likely to be true, there were ideas from Aristotle that survived for millennia, that were later proven to be unequivocally untrue.
Yes, the Bible has some interesting morals, but not more so than hundreds of other texts that are contemporaneous, or predate it. And, sadly, there are also bits which are nothing but harmful (fueling hatred).
Tell me, how much is a latte at starbucks in Paris?
If I was in Paris, why the hell would I go to a Starbuks?
Further, there are trade offs. Environment or Economy. Where you balance these needs depend on your culture and values. In America we lean heavily towards the idea that economy is the be all end all, and the environment can go jump in a slightly polluted lake. Enviroment is also more than just "the wilds", or "ecosystems", its also the place where we live, how we want our cities and communities to operate. In most US cities, we don't care one bit, in a lot of European cities they want quality of living.
I'm not weighing in here, since as I stated, this is a subjective judgement dependent wholly on cultural values. I for one would rather live in a city like Paris, than one like Phoenix or LA, though.
If solar/wind or renewables were an option, I'd probably wouldn't be as big of a fan of nuclear, since it still is risky and polluting (and mining for it is nasty business, better than coal, but still bad). But then again if we actually decided to do nuclear smart (reprocessing, using low-grade waste, actual long-term storage, etc...), it would compete nicely with "greener" technologies.
I suck at social networking, so I'm having a pretty hard time with G+, Flickr at least had baked in groups, that were rather easy to find. 500px is wonderful if you want to make a portfolio, or go "pro", but is somewhat odd when it comes to social features. I also found a bit of snobby elitism there, which didn't really mesh with my amateur, enthusiast, streak. I'm never going to make money with my hobby, nor do I really want to, I want to be good at it for its own rewards. I'm a photo geek, not a photographer, so the community at 500px was a bit daunting to me.
But I guess there are just those (like you), that do not realize danger until they actually get killed by it.
According to Wikipedia (not the best source, granted) there have been 4013 deaths from nuclear accidents over 55 years (4000 of which were from Chernobyl), which doesn't really worry me that much... As a killer, so far nuclear is doing a pretty shitty job compared to pretty much everything else.
TMI was a partial meltdown, it never breached containment, and there were no ill effects or deaths caused by the accident. No environmental harm... TMI could actually be taken as a success, things failed, things got bad, but the safety features kept it from being a true disaster.
Windscale was bad. But kind of irreverent since there are no reactors like that in the wild, and it wasn't a civilian power plant, it was for processing fuel for nuclear weapons. It would be like including people trampled by oxen in modern traffic fatality lists.
So far Nuclear is pretty damn safe if you look at the actual statistics. I'd rather have it than coal or gas. Sure, solar and wind would be optimal, but right now they aren't really viable for most of the world's needs. Both of these also have their fair share of problems too, there is no ideal solution, and everything has risks and costs.
Look up when "meltdown" means. TMI wasn't a full meltdown, and was pretty harmless actually. Windscale wasn't a meltdown at all, and also no one uses anything like that design anymore, for obvious reasons, also it was only for processing fuel for weapons, and had nothing to do with civilian use. I don't know about the one in Canada, since you haven't cited anything about it. Some quick Googleing shows that there were two civilian accidents in Canada, during the '50s (i.e. designs that are no longer in production), neither had any fatalities or lasting damage.
Really, there are only two bad nuclear messes in the history of the technology. "Tchernobil, and "Fuckupshima", as you... er... well... eloquently phrased them (please read sarcasm into the last statement, you actually just sound like an idiot, not clever, sorry.).
Why do you think some have been covered up? You have any proof of this assertion? No? Well that brings us to 2 serious events, and 2.5 meltdowns. I think I'll be able to sleep easily still, thank you. I still haven't found a reason to really be scared of nuclear power yet. Hell, I live within a 40 minutes drive of the largest nuclear power plant in the U.S. and I still sleep pretty soundly. It actually is pretty cool to visit, or at least it was before 9/11 when you could visit it.
I knew a bit about him before hand, and found his Facebook page (protected and neglected), so I could figure out that he was still in state, at least at some point in the more recent past. He did have a somewhat unique surname, with a unique spelling, so I could narrow it down a bit. I did have to tear through several people though, since even a unique surname, isn't. Mine is rather uncommon as well, but thanks to the internet, it seems very common now. On the first page of a search, there is 6 people who share my exact name/surname, one of whom lives in the same city as me. I've always been tempted to look them up.
The more information you have to start with, the better. Which high school they went to is very useful, as is any previous addresses, as various sites index these. Women are tougher, though, since their names can change. It took me a couple years of idle searching to find a girl I went to high school with, in the intervening years she married twice, move a bunch of times, etc... I only found her thanks to an old mutual friend finding me on Facebook.
It really hasn't been worth the trouble. In the end, what do you have to say to someone you haven't seen in decades? With the girl the conversation was basically "So, your a professor now?
"Yep."
"Wow. You ever finish that tattoo?"
"Nope."
"Crap."
"... silence and crickets..."
"Gotta go, kids got home."
I also had an ex-girlfriend track me down 15 years later, basically the conversation died after; "what have you been up to?"... How the hell do you even answer that?