And how is 17'th century religion that different from todays religions of Political Correctness and Environmentalism?
"Political correctness" is 10% a bunch of idiots who claim to be liberal but have no idea what the word means, and 90% a strawman set up by the right as a (very successful) political maneuver.
Environmentalism? Please, let's not pretend that environmentalists have any power in a nation where SUVs rule the roads and the president denies the scientific consensus on global climate change.
I've always been of the opinion that if you have to use software to schedule your meetings, you have too many meetings. I have no need or desire to share my schedule with others, so I found calendar/todo software pretty useless - until I found Mupo.
It's primitive, but the very important thing it gets right is the nature of to-dos. They can recur ("take out the trash" every Wednesday night), and they stack up if not completed ("water plants", set as a to-do for every Wednesday, will still be on my list Thursday if I neglect to do it). I have a lot more "to-do" items than appointments, and Mupo is very useful in helping track them.
If you really are using PHP for application programming, and if these applications are anything more than trivial in size, then you are almost certainly using the wrong language.
Now with Windows, each application covers your desktop with its own application window. And the document windows are stuck in that parent window. You think that's better?
Oh, no question, MDI sucks even worse. I see fewer Windows apps using it now - but I'm a Linux guy so my perception on its use may be off.
Tell me exactly how the Mac model sucks when switching applications? When I switch to Photoshop, all its windows come to the front.
You just answered your own question. Why would I want all the Photoshop windows to come to the front instead of just the one I want?
Where is the "intellectual" side to the several Buddhist hells where the wicked are tormented eternally? Where is the "intellectual" side to the hungry ghosts?
These are what Buddhist teachers call "skillful means".
They are not core Buddhist teachings, they are shiny candy coatings (and you will find noted Buddhist teachers, especially in the Zen traditions, who explictly confirm this) introduced in the Mahayana traditions to help ignorant and superstitious people swallow the "medicine" of Buddhist teaching.
As always, some people focus on the candy (hey, just like computer interfaces!) rather than the substance. If you want to avoid the candy, stick to Zen and to some of the Theravada (Hinayana) traditions. I think the candy is ok in small doses - the hells and hungry ghosts are very good metaphors, for example.
When questioned by his contemporaries about life after death and other "supernatural" phenomenea, the Buddha explictly said they were outside the scope of his teaching - that being the nature, origin, and relief of human suffering.
I've been re-reading some of my books on Buddhism lately to get ready for a talk I'm giving next week (in case any "techno-pagans" are headed to the Free Spirit Festival next week, I'll be presenting a workshop there on "Zen Paganism"). Here's some of my recommended reading for those interested in learning more about Buddhism:
Jane Hope and Borin Van Loon, "Introducing Buddha". A good, lighthearted but not shallow overview of Buddhism. Slightly tilted toward Vajrayana ("Tantric" Buddhism, as found in the Tibetan styles).
Huston Smith, "The Religions of Man", and its updated version "The World's
Religions". This book should be required reading for humanity. It has excellent sections on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Thich Nhat Hanh's "No Death, No Fear", "Be Free Where You Are", and "The Heart of Understanding"
Raymond M. Smullyan, "The Tao is Silent". A modern Western logician connects with the Tao. (Zen is Buddhism + Taoism, stirred over an open flame...)
Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters". For the Discordian connection.
Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen", and "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen" . The original short article version of the later can be found at
http://www.bluesforpeace.com/beat_zen.htm.
Seung Sahn, "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha"; and Wu Kwang, "Open Mouth Already a Mistake". These are collections of talks, from Korean Zen Master
Seung Sahn, and one of his American students, Wu Kwand (Richard Shrobe). http://www.kwanumzen.com/.
Mac OS computers have always had a single menu bar. Mac window title bars do not have, and have never had menus in native Mac OS applications. The reason is user testing. Fitt's law...
Yes, yes, yes, Fitt's law, whatever. Never mind that the Mac way of doing things breaks the whole desktop metaphor, that windows are magic pieces of paper on your desk - my desk doesn't have a strip at the top that magically changes when I bring a piece of paper to the top of the stack.
If you're someone who only uses one application at a time, the Mac model is fine. (But then, in Windows or Linux you can just always maximize the window you're working on, and have the title bar at the top of the screen.) If you switch back and forth between applications - like shuffling the papers on your desk - the Mac model sucks rocks.
I dunno, what is more secure than UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, etc...? Armored car driving to and fro between cities?
An encrypted tape travelling via UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, etc., is more secure.
(Hint: YMFL, (Yet More Federal Legislation), will not prevent accidental loss of freight packages).
The problem here isn't the loss of the package. The problem is the potential for misuse if the package falls into the wrong hands - and that misue could easily be prevented by encrypting the data. Failure to do so is gross negligance.
Let's see here - assuming the information is restricted to the parties to the case...
That's the point - it shouldn't be restricted at all. Any tech used by the state to prosecute citizens must be open to all citizens for examination. No trade secrets.
Yes, that might require changes in how procurment contracts are made, and might lower profits for supplying companies. Tough shit. That doesn't come close to competing with the rights of due process.
Rather than having one "ultimate leatherman" as big and clunky as that humongous swiss army knife they make, what about a customizable one?
The Gerber Multiplier is probably the closest to this; they have one with interchangable pliers heads, another with a set of screwdriver bits. Some people have customized the tool collection, at least on older models - I just Googled for replacement tools, though, and they seem to be harder to find now.
It seems to me you don't have to know how it works, you just have to know that it works.
You can't know with any certainty that any technological device works unless you know how it works.
The right to subpoena witnesses and cross-examine them is vital; it trumps any concept of "trade secret". It implies the right to examine schematics, source code, design documentation, even the physical device itself, for any device being used as evidence against you.
It's interesting to know that there are people who are so misinformed that they think any of the alternatives were any better.
The bombs were dropped largely to intimiadte the USSR, not to force Japan to surrender:
"There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project conducted on that basis" -- General Leslie Groves, miltary commander of the Manhattan Project
"[O]ur possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more managable in the East...might impress Russia with America's military might" -- James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State
The U.S. knew, on the basis of intercepted communications, that Japan was ready to sue for peace. The Japanese were done for and knew it. With German defeated, Russia was about to focus on them - and after the war, one U.S. study concluded that Soviet entry into the Pacific theater had more on an influence on Japan's surrender than the atomic bomb did.
But we had a shiny new death-toy to show off. And besides, it not like it was white people we were incinerating, it was those sub-human Japs.
Really my (now 3 week old) would kick up a strom in my wife when I talked into her belly, thats as much interaction as I got for a few days after birth..
I would hardly call kicking in response to noise a significant interaction with the universe.
And of course a newborn is not much more capable than a fetus of interaction, but the process has begun. (If you took a newborn at kept them in a sensory deprivation chamber for twenty years, no consiousness would form.)
There are onyl two major changes (moments when everything becomes different) in human life, conception and death. Everything other than these two things is a subtle developemnt of the person.
The fact that something does not occur at a single moment does not mean that it is not a significant, even drastic, change. In the case of a developing human being, developing a nervous system, developing a sense of self through interaction with the world, and learning language are the important transitions, none of which happen instantly.
And looked are carefully, neither conception nor death happens in a single instant anyway. When is this "moment" of conception? When the sperm touches the egg? When its cell membrane opens and the cytoplasm starts to mix? After the cytoplasm is fully mixed? When the genetic material comes together? It's as arbitrary as any other time boundry.
Death? Cardiac or brain? We can make an arbitrary distinction about EEG or EKG readings, but there are still plenty of living cells in a newly "dead" person. Death doesn't happen in a single instant either.
Look closely and nothing happens in a single moment (except maybe in quantum physics when you're dealing with the Plank time...)
Life doesn't begin at conception and end at death - it's an ongoing process that began a few billion years ago and will end some billions of years hence. The life of an individual human is something that, like a star, accumlates slowly from the surroundings, not beginning at one instant.
And those who insist its not a kid but a fetus (when infact its both) are doing nothing more than hitler did when he said the Jews we not people..
Please. There's a large difference between saying that a grown and conscious human should be treated as a non-person due to their ancestry, and saying that an undeveloped fetus - or even a fertilized ovum - should not be given the same (or superior) ethical consideration than the (grown and conscious) mother.
Both carrying a pregnancy and aborting a pregnancy pose a risk to the mother.
The risk of complications from an early-term abortion is about an order of magnitude less than carrying a pregnancy to term.
Of course, if the "pro-life" political faction has its way and women are again forced to back-alley abortionists and "do-it yourself" procedures, this will change.
We know what the effects of outlawing abortion are: maimed and dead women.
However abortion has a 100% fatality rate among unborn humans.
Your witty soundbite that assumes the conclusion: that a fetus is for ethical purposes a human being.
A human being is a conscious, sentient being. It develops that consciousness by moving about in and interacting with the world. A fetus - or even a newborn infant - has not yet done that; there is no subjectivity, no sentience, there.
(Of course I have the same sentimental attachment to newborn infants as most people and would be upset to see one harmed. It's programmed by our genes and by our culture to protect infants. That doesn't mean it's rational to consider them the same as more developed and conscious humans.)
I'm sure your wife says that she's carrying your fetus instead of your child.
In any situation, what people say informally (and certainly in the case of pregnancy, sentimentally) is obviously not the most correct and precise description.
A fetus is different in many significant ways from a child, and if we are to speak precisely about the suject we should use precise language.
Being a non-free person implies your creativity is irrelevant, as you have no liberty to make use of it.
If your statement were true, it would still have no effect on the truth of mine. "If not free, not creative" does not imply "if free, creative".
But the given examples show, non-free people can be creative.
The pioneering engineers of rocketry weren't slaves.
I said "subjects of authoritarianism." Not all non-free people are slaves.
Jazz and blues music was created by a people oppressed.
Not slaves either. (They were descended from ex-slaves, but still...)
Again, you don't have to be a slave to be non-free. But the origins of blues can certainly be traced the time of American slavery of African people.
IIRC the alphabet that we use can be traced back to an innovation by slaves in Egypt, to use simple symbols derived from hieroglyphs to represent sounds.
I consider a healthy, unborn child to be extremely important
There is no such thing as an "unborn child". It's not a child until after it's born. The word you want is "fetus". (Or "embryo" or "blastula" or "zygote", depending.)
Of course "fetus" doesn't have the same emotional impact as "child". When we think of children we think of human beings - sentient, if naive - who have begun to interact with and learn about the world and thereby form consciousness. A fetus is not in this state, it cannot interact with the world, and may not even have a developed nervous system; but by using the same word those who oppose abortion make a strong emotional appeal.
Adoption is what you do if you don't want the baby. For all quality of life issues, the child deserves to live.
If you have a baby you don't want, yes, you should put it up for adoption.
If you have a fetus (or embryo, blastula, orzygote) inside you, affecting your body, creating a threat to your health (even an ideal pregnancy has non-trivial risk to the mother) that you don't want, that's a completely different case.
And the greater the number of free people, the greater the number of innovative ideas for transforming raw resources into goods and services that improve human lives. In free markets, more people mean more wealth.
Doesn't follow at all. Being a free person does not imply being a creative person.
And there have been plenty of creative slaves and subjects of authoritarianism. It was after all Nazis engineers who made rockets practical, and the authoritarian Soviet Union that put the first artificial satellite and first humans into orbit.
Jazz and blues music was created by a people oppressed. Going way back, IIRC the alphabet that we use can be traced back to an innovation by slaves in Egypt, to use simple symbols derived from hieroglyphs to represent sounds.
Nor can evem the most creative people exceed the carrying capacity of the environment. Give a group of craftmen 100 pounds of iron to make widgets, give them as much time as you like to develop efficent methods, and you will never get 200 pounds of iron tools out of them.
Like many modern economists, Julian Simon operated under a set of axioms radically at odds with the physical reality in which we find ourselves. We live on a finite planet; following economic theory that disregards that basic fact, we have already passed the point where the human population exceeds the sustainable carrying capacity of the biosphere.
Good and evil are both defined by the masses. It's an invention of the human mind and is not a universal truth. There's no mathematical equation or relationship that can be used to determine if something is good or evil.
Actually, ethical systems can be viewed somewhat like geometry, with axioms and conclusions that follow from them. You get somewhat different results from Kantian rationalism than from utilitarianism.
And both mathematical and ethical systems are invention of the human mind.
But like I said, good and evil are defined by the majority.
So slavery was good in, say, 1750, and became evil sometime in the 1800s? That makes for an interesting system...whenever faced with an ethical choice, take a poll.
And how can so much of the population have such a hard time with it, that they need to be prescribed drugs just to step outside their door or go have dinner in a public place or get their ass to work?!
Because over the past few decades we've created a seriously dysfunctional society.
High population density, a highly moblile society resulting in looser and less supporting family and social bonds, an economy where fewer and fewer people do any sort of meaningful work and there is deliberate pressure to increase consumption, ecological devistation, the degradation of the mental environment, the fear of weapons of mass destruction (at least global thermonuclear war seems a lot less possible these days)...
Constant low-level stress can be much more damaging than simple direct threats.
Of course part of the problem is the overmedicalization you mention; if every cranky moment is a "mental health" disorder for which we can sell you a drug, so much the better for the bottom line of Our Beloved Corporate Masters (TM). But that's only a small part of the overall problem of a system that's working against, rather than for, human happiness.
And I bet that half the people I know other than at work are like that. Often people I would have never guessed.
You'll be surprised to find out about some of those co-workers years down the line.
In the past few months I found out that, in the time since I worked with them, one former co-worker had a breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital for several weeks; another is apparently dealing with an addiction to pain meds; and a third, after losing health insurance and not being able to get the medication that prevented panic attacks, was for a time homeless and living on the streets.
These were all highly skilled professionals; two of them are older than me (I'm 35), the third younger but still not a kid.
And those are just the ones I happen to have heard about.
I guess I've sort of come to expect, or at least not be surprised, by hearing stories like that from my friends from my artist, poet, and musician friends. But to hear it from my professional acquaintances was quite a surprise.
Of course it shouldn't have been, and that was stupid prejudice on my part.
I can type over 80 wpm for half an hour or more without getting even minor pains.
Hmm, what sort of job do you have with these 30-minute workdays?:-)
Certainly, if you take a good break every half-hour your chances of RSI are much lower.
It must be the way I have my arms and the desk positioned.
It could be that your hands and arms are better sized and shaped than others for keyboarding - given the highly variable geometry of human bodies plus the pretty standard geometry of computer keyboards, some people will fit better than others. (Shame there isn't a wider variety of keyboard sizes and shapes available.)
If you're keeping your palms on your desk (or wrist rest in front of your keyboard) you're asking for problems.
If you suspend your hands in the air, you've got to use muscles to do that - some combination of the shoulder girdle elevators (upper trapezius, leveator scapula) and and elbow flexors (bicepts, brachialis). So you'll get neck, shoulder, or arm pain instead of wrist pain.
The best solution I've found is the use of SmartGloves along with frequent stretching breaks. (Don't use the gloves all the time, you want to allow those muscles to work and get stretched and strengthened; but when they're tired, they need extra support.)
Also I'm not a touch typist - I move my hands around a lot, which means slower typing (only about 40 wpm) but possibly less chance of RSI since I'm varing the motion.
Yes, I only type 40 wpm, but since I don't create text or code that fast, I only feel contrained when I'm typing in text I originally hand-wrote.
Slashdot Mirror
"Political correctness" is 10% a bunch of idiots who claim to be liberal but have no idea what the word means, and 90% a strawman set up by the right as a (very successful) political maneuver.
Environmentalism? Please, let's not pretend that environmentalists have any power in a nation where SUVs rule the roads and the president denies the scientific consensus on global climate change.
I've always been of the opinion that if you have to use software to schedule your meetings, you have too many meetings. I have no need or desire to share my schedule with others, so I found calendar/todo software pretty useless - until I found Mupo.
It's primitive, but the very important thing it gets right is the nature of to-dos. They can recur ("take out the trash" every Wednesday night), and they stack up if not completed ("water plants", set as a to-do for every Wednesday, will still be on my list Thursday if I neglect to do it). I have a lot more "to-do" items than appointments, and Mupo is very useful in helping track them.
On what basis do you make such an assertation?
Your history is faulty.
Oh, no question, MDI sucks even worse. I see fewer Windows apps using it now - but I'm a Linux guy so my perception on its use may be off.
You just answered your own question. Why would I want all the Photoshop windows to come to the front instead of just the one I want?
These are what Buddhist teachers call "skillful means".
They are not core Buddhist teachings, they are shiny candy coatings (and you will find noted Buddhist teachers, especially in the Zen traditions, who explictly confirm this) introduced in the Mahayana traditions to help ignorant and superstitious people swallow the "medicine" of Buddhist teaching.
As always, some people focus on the candy (hey, just like computer interfaces!) rather than the substance. If you want to avoid the candy, stick to Zen and to some of the Theravada (Hinayana) traditions. I think the candy is ok in small doses - the hells and hungry ghosts are very good metaphors, for example.
When questioned by his contemporaries about life after death and other "supernatural" phenomenea, the Buddha explictly said they were outside the scope of his teaching - that being the nature, origin, and relief of human suffering.
I've been re-reading some of my books on Buddhism lately to get ready for a talk I'm giving next week (in case any "techno-pagans" are headed to the Free Spirit Festival next week, I'll be presenting a workshop there on "Zen Paganism"). Here's some of my recommended reading for those interested in learning more about Buddhism:
Jane Hope and Borin Van Loon, "Introducing Buddha". A good, lighthearted but not shallow overview of Buddhism. Slightly tilted toward Vajrayana ("Tantric" Buddhism, as found in the Tibetan styles).
Huston Smith, "The Religions of Man", and its updated version "The World's Religions". This book should be required reading for humanity. It has excellent sections on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Thich Nhat Hanh's "No Death, No Fear", "Be Free Where You Are", and "The Heart of Understanding"
Raymond M. Smullyan, "The Tao is Silent". A modern Western logician connects with the Tao. (Zen is Buddhism + Taoism, stirred over an open flame...)
Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters". For the Discordian connection.
Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen", and "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen" . The original short article version of the later can be found at http://www.bluesforpeace.com/beat_zen.htm.
Seung Sahn, "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha"; and Wu Kwang, "Open Mouth Already a Mistake". These are collections of talks, from Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn, and one of his American students, Wu Kwand (Richard Shrobe). http://www.kwanumzen.com/.
Yes, yes, yes, Fitt's law, whatever. Never mind that the Mac way of doing things breaks the whole desktop metaphor, that windows are magic pieces of paper on your desk - my desk doesn't have a strip at the top that magically changes when I bring a piece of paper to the top of the stack.
If you're someone who only uses one application at a time, the Mac model is fine. (But then, in Windows or Linux you can just always maximize the window you're working on, and have the title bar at the top of the screen.) If you switch back and forth between applications - like shuffling the papers on your desk - the Mac model sucks rocks.
An encrypted tape travelling via UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, etc., is more secure.
The problem here isn't the loss of the package. The problem is the potential for misuse if the package falls into the wrong hands - and that misue could easily be prevented by encrypting the data. Failure to do so is gross negligance.
That's the point - it shouldn't be restricted at all. Any tech used by the state to prosecute citizens must be open to all citizens for examination. No trade secrets.
Yes, that might require changes in how procurment contracts are made, and might lower profits for supplying companies. Tough shit. That doesn't come close to competing with the rights of due process.
The Gerber Multiplier is probably the closest to this; they have one with interchangable pliers heads, another with a set of screwdriver bits. Some people have customized the tool collection, at least on older models - I just Googled for replacement tools, though, and they seem to be harder to find now.
You can't know with any certainty that any technological device works unless you know how it works.
The right to subpoena witnesses and cross-examine them is vital; it trumps any concept of "trade secret". It implies the right to examine schematics, source code, design documentation, even the physical device itself, for any device being used as evidence against you.
Online bookstores are fine (Amazon is evil, shop Powell's instead) if you know the specific book you want.
To pick up books and flip through to compare them, or to just go browsing for interesting unknown books, you need a bookstore.
Uh, when exactly was it "unanimous" to invade Iraq? I seem to recall millions of people being against it.
The bombs were dropped largely to intimiadte the USSR, not to force Japan to surrender:
The U.S. knew, on the basis of intercepted communications, that Japan was ready to sue for peace. The Japanese were done for and knew it. With German defeated, Russia was about to focus on them - and after the war, one U.S. study concluded that Soviet entry into the Pacific theater had more on an influence on Japan's surrender than the atomic bomb did.
But we had a shiny new death-toy to show off. And besides, it not like it was white people we were incinerating, it was those sub-human Japs.
I would hardly call kicking in response to noise a significant interaction with the universe. And of course a newborn is not much more capable than a fetus of interaction, but the process has begun. (If you took a newborn at kept them in a sensory deprivation chamber for twenty years, no consiousness would form.)
The fact that something does not occur at a single moment does not mean that it is not a significant, even drastic, change. In the case of a developing human being, developing a nervous system, developing a sense of self through interaction with the world, and learning language are the important transitions, none of which happen instantly.
And looked are carefully, neither conception nor death happens in a single instant anyway. When is this "moment" of conception? When the sperm touches the egg? When its cell membrane opens and the cytoplasm starts to mix? After the cytoplasm is fully mixed? When the genetic material comes together? It's as arbitrary as any other time boundry.
Death? Cardiac or brain? We can make an arbitrary distinction about EEG or EKG readings, but there are still plenty of living cells in a newly "dead" person. Death doesn't happen in a single instant either.
Look closely and nothing happens in a single moment (except maybe in quantum physics when you're dealing with the Plank time...)
Life doesn't begin at conception and end at death - it's an ongoing process that began a few billion years ago and will end some billions of years hence. The life of an individual human is something that, like a star, accumlates slowly from the surroundings, not beginning at one instant.
Please. There's a large difference between saying that a grown and conscious human should be treated as a non-person due to their ancestry, and saying that an undeveloped fetus - or even a fertilized ovum - should not be given the same (or superior) ethical consideration than the (grown and conscious) mother.
The risk of complications from an early-term abortion is about an order of magnitude less than carrying a pregnancy to term.
Of course, if the "pro-life" political faction has its way and women are again forced to back-alley abortionists and "do-it yourself" procedures, this will change.
We know what the effects of outlawing abortion are: maimed and dead women.
Your witty soundbite that assumes the conclusion: that a fetus is for ethical purposes a human being.
A human being is a conscious, sentient being. It develops that consciousness by moving about in and interacting with the world. A fetus - or even a newborn infant - has not yet done that; there is no subjectivity, no sentience, there.
(Of course I have the same sentimental attachment to newborn infants as most people and would be upset to see one harmed. It's programmed by our genes and by our culture to protect infants. That doesn't mean it's rational to consider them the same as more developed and conscious humans.)
In any situation, what people say informally (and certainly in the case of pregnancy, sentimentally) is obviously not the most correct and precise description.
A fetus is different in many significant ways from a child, and if we are to speak precisely about the suject we should use precise language.
If your statement were true, it would still have no effect on the truth of mine. "If not free, not creative" does not imply "if free, creative".
But the given examples show, non-free people can be creative.
I said "subjects of authoritarianism." Not all non-free people are slaves.
Again, you don't have to be a slave to be non-free. But the origins of blues can certainly be traced the time of American slavery of African people.
The Proto-Sinaitic script, beleived ancestral to all modern alphabets, was used by mine workers who were, as the Wikipedia article puts it "prisoners of war" - slaves, t be blunt. Some beleive that the script originated there as a means of secret writing.
The environment in the example given contains 100 pounds of iron. Obviously the planet on which we live contains more - but still a finite amount.
There is no such thing as an "unborn child". It's not a child until after it's born. The word you want is "fetus". (Or "embryo" or "blastula" or "zygote", depending.)
Of course "fetus" doesn't have the same emotional impact as "child". When we think of children we think of human beings - sentient, if naive - who have begun to interact with and learn about the world and thereby form consciousness. A fetus is not in this state, it cannot interact with the world, and may not even have a developed nervous system; but by using the same word those who oppose abortion make a strong emotional appeal.
If you have a baby you don't want, yes, you should put it up for adoption.
If you have a fetus (or embryo, blastula, orzygote) inside you, affecting your body, creating a threat to your health (even an ideal pregnancy has non-trivial risk to the mother) that you don't want, that's a completely different case.
Doesn't follow at all. Being a free person does not imply being a creative person.
And there have been plenty of creative slaves and subjects of authoritarianism. It was after all Nazis engineers who made rockets practical, and the authoritarian Soviet Union that put the first artificial satellite and first humans into orbit. Jazz and blues music was created by a people oppressed. Going way back, IIRC the alphabet that we use can be traced back to an innovation by slaves in Egypt, to use simple symbols derived from hieroglyphs to represent sounds.
Nor can evem the most creative people exceed the carrying capacity of the environment. Give a group of craftmen 100 pounds of iron to make widgets, give them as much time as you like to develop efficent methods, and you will never get 200 pounds of iron tools out of them.
Like many modern economists, Julian Simon operated under a set of axioms radically at odds with the physical reality in which we find ourselves. We live on a finite planet; following economic theory that disregards that basic fact, we have already passed the point where the human population exceeds the sustainable carrying capacity of the biosphere.
Actually, ethical systems can be viewed somewhat like geometry, with axioms and conclusions that follow from them. You get somewhat different results from Kantian rationalism than from utilitarianism.
And both mathematical and ethical systems are invention of the human mind.
So slavery was good in, say, 1750, and became evil sometime in the 1800s? That makes for an interesting system...whenever faced with an ethical choice, take a poll.
Because over the past few decades we've created a seriously dysfunctional society.
High population density, a highly moblile society resulting in looser and less supporting family and social bonds, an economy where fewer and fewer people do any sort of meaningful work and there is deliberate pressure to increase consumption, ecological devistation, the degradation of the mental environment, the fear of weapons of mass destruction (at least global thermonuclear war seems a lot less possible these days)...
Constant low-level stress can be much more damaging than simple direct threats.
Of course part of the problem is the overmedicalization you mention; if every cranky moment is a "mental health" disorder for which we can sell you a drug, so much the better for the bottom line of Our Beloved Corporate Masters (TM). But that's only a small part of the overall problem of a system that's working against, rather than for, human happiness.
You'll be surprised to find out about some of those co-workers years down the line.
In the past few months I found out that, in the time since I worked with them, one former co-worker had a breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital for several weeks; another is apparently dealing with an addiction to pain meds; and a third, after losing health insurance and not being able to get the medication that prevented panic attacks, was for a time homeless and living on the streets.
These were all highly skilled professionals; two of them are older than me (I'm 35), the third younger but still not a kid.
And those are just the ones I happen to have heard about.
I guess I've sort of come to expect, or at least not be surprised, by hearing stories like that from my friends from my artist, poet, and musician friends. But to hear it from my professional acquaintances was quite a surprise. Of course it shouldn't have been, and that was stupid prejudice on my part.
Hmm, what sort of job do you have with these 30-minute workdays? :-)
Certainly, if you take a good break every half-hour your chances of RSI are much lower.
It could be that your hands and arms are better sized and shaped than others for keyboarding - given the highly variable geometry of human bodies plus the pretty standard geometry of computer keyboards, some people will fit better than others. (Shame there isn't a wider variety of keyboard sizes and shapes available.)
If you suspend your hands in the air, you've got to use muscles to do that - some combination of the shoulder girdle elevators (upper trapezius, leveator scapula) and and elbow flexors (bicepts, brachialis). So you'll get neck, shoulder, or arm pain instead of wrist pain.
The best solution I've found is the use of SmartGloves along with frequent stretching breaks. (Don't use the gloves all the time, you want to allow those muscles to work and get stretched and strengthened; but when they're tired, they need extra support.)
Also I'm not a touch typist - I move my hands around a lot, which means slower typing (only about 40 wpm) but possibly less chance of RSI since I'm varing the motion.
Yes, I only type 40 wpm, but since I don't create text or code that fast, I only feel contrained when I'm typing in text I originally hand-wrote.
You, sir, are cleary a masochist.
MDI...shudder. The horror...the horror...