But the worst are evangelical atheists. The only motivation there is for you to be godless just like them so you won't be happier than they are.
Well, there are certainly other motivations. For example, I would prefer not to be burned at the stake for my atheism, as many atheists and non-conforming theists have in the past. Therefore, the fewer religious people the better, for me. Also, being an atheist means I'm free of original sin, which always seemed to be a real downer, so I'm probably happier than most Christians too.
Well, certainly in Lewis' stuff the Christian stuff is the point, but it is quite interesting how unreligious LOTR is, despite the piousness of Tolkien. While there are Middle-Earth "gods/angels" (the Valar) they aren't mentioned at all in LOTR and nobody seems to worship them.
One other reason why The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle will likely NOT be made into films: without a major rewrite, they both paint the religion of Islam in a very unfavorable light, and in these times of post-9/11 issues of religious discrimination, would likely be more controversial than the studios would be willing to accept.
Gee, just because the pseudo-Arabs of Calormen worship the pseudo-Satan Tash? I'm sure the Islamic world be be comforted by the idea that "good" Calormenese will be accepted by the pseudo-Jesus Aslan in the afterlife.
Yeah, it's not sequencing -- it's just traditional 1970's style molecular biology. But you're right about dyes. Anything that can intercalate into DNA probably is a good mutagen.
Actually, even religious wars are just an excuse to get money. Think of the crusaders. The Templars got pretty darn rich -- eventually too rich for their own good, of course, when the Crown decided to get their money. And why did so many German princes support Martin Luther? Because that let them loot Catholic monks.
but there are places in the government that require a degree of secrecy to maintain national security.
Why would security through obscurity work any better in government than in software? Honestly, if the interview is true, and the NSA is still using pseudoscientific crap like lie detectors, the Psychic Friends Network is probably more useful to national security. What a waste of tax dollars.
There is a bit of an irony between your signature and your obvious authoritarian tendencies. I don't see why anyone in a democracy has anything to hide. If my tax dollars pay their salaries, I have a right to know what they do. Secrecy is just a veil for corruption.
He had to be the worst, but thankfully, with the demise of Byte, nobody has to read his columns any more. They were just frightening. He would always describe these stupid problems he had that even my semi-computer-illiterate mom could figure out. And he never seemed to learn. Even after 10+ years of using a computer.
Genetic engineering allows introduction into a species of genes that express proteins (and other molecules) not available within the host species' existing gene pool.
Where do these people get the idea that genes can't cross species? They can. Look up horizontal gene transfer in any molecular evolution text. Like Creationists, the anti-GE crowd simply ignores science when it doesn't serve their purposes.
Orwell (although obviously living in the 20th century) had one of those "classical educations" you refer to. It doesn't sound very appealing at all -- mindless memorization and physical abuse were what it mostly consisted of. You can read Orwell's famous essay Here
1984 was also the year that the first edition of "Fire in the Valley" came out. "Fire in the Valley" was the the most popular history of the personal computer in the '80s. What was amusing in retrospect was that in 1984 we thought the history of personal computers was basically over -- personal computers had gone from labs and the garages of hobbyists to the homes and offices of "normal" people. Looking backward, of course, 1984 seems almost as remote as the introduction of the Altair in 1975.
Let me give an analogy from science education. When I was an undergraduate, I was annoyed by my chemistry professor because he never really explained how to do the problems on the homework. Surely, I thought, a good professor would be someone who wouldn't beat around the bush but would explain things directly. Now I realize that he was trying to make us *think* about chemistry. Just telling us how to do the problems wouldn't do that. Great literature makes us think too. It really is more than just entertainment.
IMHO, he is long winded and writes complicated on purpose. If he wrote without using obscure phraseology then his texts would be much shorter and easier to understand. He doesn't want to be understood easily, he wants people to say "Gee, he's a smart guy!" This seems to be a mark of the 'new age' writer. His texts just drag out. Much like how Stephen King takes a story that can just as well fit 35 pages, and draws it out to fill 600. The both of them produce nothing but yawners.
Although the movies, television, etc have tended to make people forget this, the point of a piece of literature isn't to tell a story as quickly as possible. In fact, great works of literature like Joyce's Ulysses have hardly any story at all. If story or entertainment is all you want from a book, you are missing out. It really is fulfilling to track down references in literature that you don't get right away. They make you learn more about the culture we live in, which in many ways is as important as learning scientific facts about the universe we live in.
An the irony is that Eco is really "literature light". He's much more accessible than, for example, James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon
The Turing Award has nothing to do with the Turing Test. It's just an award given by a major computer science association (the ACM) to people that they consider to have significantly advanced the field.
"It doesn't rain because it is so dry" as Milner said in the interview in regard to the Suez Canal region.
But such banalities aside, it is an interesting interview. I was particularly interested in learning that he doesn't have a doctorate -- on this side on the pond that would have been required (for better or worse) for his academic position.
For instance, the advent of nuclear power in the 50's lead to the predicting of some that there would be a nuclear power plant in every home. This is both technologically possible and in many cases useful, but it was not found desireable.
Well, I'd say the jury is still out on nuclear power. The real reason it didn't take off is simply that petroleum is still cheap. We'll have to see what happens when we really start to run out of oil.
For every new technology, there are far more uses that are found undesireable than desirable
I see no reason to assume this. Maybe this is true for scientific laws, which simply describe the universe without any concern for human good or ill, but technologies are created by people for people.
Just another example of people who think that just because something is technically possible and perhaps even practical in some cases, that is somehow automatically considered desireable.
Perhaps. But history shows that technological advances *are* in general desirable, despite initial resistance. It's a lot like advances in music. Adults in the 50's couldn't stand Rock and Roll, even as the younger generation embraced it. As someone in their 30s, I confess that I just don't get the point of Bjork or instant messaging, but such music and technology are popular among 20 year olds. Maybe people growing up in the world of sub-dermal technology will have no problem with it.
I think the worst mistake people can make when seeing LOTR is to constantly be comparing the films to the book
Well, if Jackson didn't want to film Tolkien's work, he should have named it "Peter Jackson's Dwarf-tossing, wimpy-heir-to-the-throne-that-needs-to-be-slapped fantasy trilogy". Then nobody would compare it to the books. But no, he didn't do that.
When directors make Shakespearian films, while they may play around with scenery and do weird things like setting Richard III in 1930's England, or Hamlet in 20th century America, they know enough not to touch the characters or dialog. Tolkien deserves the same sort of respect. Instead Jackson treated it the same way crappy source material from Stephen King or Tom Clancy is treated by directors -- that is as something where fidelity to the source is of no great matter.
Even if the people were to cut the wires as close to the patch panel as possible, wouldn't this be the corporate equivalent of the gradual degraduation of teleomeres?
Yes, and buildings eventually get torn down, don't they? Therefore cabling must have something to do with the aging of buildings!
Yes, for example he claims that what became Microsoft Flight Simulator (that is, Bruce Artwick's program, marketed by Sublogic) started on the C64. While there was a version for the C64, it started on the Apple ][, before there even was such a thing as the C64.
if you had said someone who hasn't been elsewhere, I might at least consider it credible. But as you've stated it, this is just silly (or hyperbolic). I never said someone shouldn't have knowledge of other cultures or countries. But one hardly needs to live elsewhere for any extended length of time to gain such a working knowledge.
I'd disagree. Just being somewhere a week or two does *not* give a meaningful working knowledge. A year at least is required, so that you actually experience how a culture works. For example, "socialized medicine", once sounded scary to me, until I actually had need of a doctor in Canada and discovered that the much feared paperwork and waiting were actually *less* than in the supossedly more efficient world of HMOs.
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Why would anyone have problems with this?
Because it implies that all the other pseudo-Arabs were evil, and that the pseudo-Islamic religion was devil-worship.
But the worst are evangelical atheists. The only motivation there is for you to be godless just like them so you won't be happier than they are.
Well, there are certainly other motivations. For example, I would prefer not to be burned at the stake for my atheism, as many atheists and non-conforming theists have in the past. Therefore, the fewer religious people the better, for me. Also, being an atheist means I'm free of original sin, which always seemed to be a real downer, so I'm probably happier than most Christians too.
Well, certainly in Lewis' stuff the Christian stuff is the point, but it is quite interesting how unreligious LOTR is, despite the piousness of Tolkien. While there are Middle-Earth "gods/angels" (the Valar) they aren't mentioned at all in LOTR and nobody seems to worship them.
One other reason why The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle will likely NOT be made into films: without a major rewrite, they both paint the religion of Islam in a very unfavorable light, and in these times of post-9/11 issues of religious discrimination, would likely be more controversial than the studios would be willing to accept.
Gee, just because the pseudo-Arabs of Calormen worship the pseudo-Satan Tash? I'm sure the Islamic world be be comforted by the idea that "good" Calormenese will be accepted by the pseudo-Jesus Aslan in the afterlife.
The real question to ask is whether the heads of FEMA own stock in traditional broadband providers. Follow the money...
Yeah, it's not sequencing -- it's just traditional 1970's style molecular biology. But you're right about dyes. Anything that can intercalate into DNA probably is a good mutagen.
Actually, even religious wars are just an excuse to get money. Think of the crusaders. The Templars got pretty darn rich -- eventually too rich for their own good, of course, when the Crown decided to get their money. And why did so many German princes support Martin Luther? Because that let them loot Catholic monks.
but there are places in the government that require a degree of secrecy to maintain national security.
Why would security through obscurity work any better in government than in software? Honestly, if the interview is true, and the NSA is still using pseudoscientific crap like lie detectors, the Psychic Friends Network is probably more useful to national security. What a waste of tax dollars.
There is a bit of an irony between your signature and your obvious authoritarian tendencies. I don't see why anyone in a democracy has anything to hide. If my tax dollars pay their salaries, I have a right to know what they do. Secrecy is just a veil for corruption.
Wow, they sound just like the pro-GE crowd.
Cute, but it isn't so symmetric. Simply wanting to *allow* a technology isn't the same as going out of one's way to promote it.
He had to be the worst, but thankfully, with the demise of Byte, nobody has to read his columns any more. They were just frightening. He would always describe these stupid problems he had that even my semi-computer-illiterate mom could figure out. And he never seemed to learn. Even after 10+ years of using a computer.
Genetic engineering allows introduction into a species of genes that express proteins (and other molecules) not available within the host species' existing gene pool.
Where do these people get the idea that genes can't cross species? They can. Look up horizontal gene transfer in any molecular evolution text. Like Creationists, the anti-GE crowd simply ignores science when it doesn't serve their purposes.
Orwell (although obviously living in the 20th century) had one of those "classical educations" you refer to. It doesn't sound very appealing at all -- mindless memorization and physical abuse were what it mostly consisted of. You can read Orwell's famous essay Here
1984 was also the year that the first edition of "Fire in the Valley" came out. "Fire in the Valley" was the the most popular history of the personal computer in the '80s. What was amusing in retrospect was that in 1984 we thought the history of personal computers was basically over -- personal computers had gone from labs and the garages of hobbyists to the homes and offices of "normal" people. Looking backward, of course, 1984 seems almost as remote as the introduction of the Altair in 1975.
Let me give an analogy from science education. When I was an undergraduate, I was annoyed by my chemistry professor because he never really explained how to do the problems on the homework. Surely, I thought, a good professor would be someone who wouldn't beat around the bush but would explain things directly. Now I realize that he was trying to make us *think* about chemistry. Just telling us how to do the problems wouldn't do that. Great literature makes us think too. It really is more than just entertainment.
IMHO, he is long winded and writes complicated on purpose. If he wrote without using obscure phraseology then his texts would be much shorter and easier to understand. He doesn't want to be understood easily, he wants people to say "Gee, he's a smart guy!" This seems to be a mark of the 'new age' writer. His texts just drag out. Much like how Stephen King takes a story that can just as well fit 35 pages, and draws it out to fill 600. The both of them produce nothing but yawners.
Although the movies, television, etc have tended to make people forget this, the point of a piece of literature isn't to tell a story as quickly as possible. In fact, great works of literature like Joyce's Ulysses have hardly any story at all. If story or entertainment is all you want from a book, you are missing out. It really is fulfilling to track down references in literature that you don't get right away. They make you learn more about the culture we live in, which in many ways is as important as learning scientific facts about the universe we live in.
An the irony is that Eco is really "literature light". He's much more accessible than, for example, James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon
The Turing Award has nothing to do with the Turing Test. It's just an award given by a major computer science association (the ACM) to people that they consider to have significantly advanced the field.
http://www.acm.org/awards/taward.html
"It doesn't rain because it is so dry" as Milner said in the interview in regard to the Suez Canal region.
But such banalities aside, it is an interesting interview. I was particularly interested in learning that he doesn't have a doctorate -- on this side on the pond that would have been required (for better or worse) for his academic position.
For instance, the advent of nuclear power in the 50's lead to the predicting of some that there would be a nuclear power plant in every home. This is both technologically possible and in many cases useful, but it was not found desireable.
Well, I'd say the jury is still out on nuclear power. The real reason it didn't take off is simply that petroleum is still cheap. We'll have to see what happens when we really start to run out of oil.
For every new technology, there are far more uses that are found undesireable than desirable
I see no reason to assume this. Maybe this is true for scientific laws, which simply describe the universe without any concern for human good or ill, but technologies are created by people for people.
Just another example of people who think that just because something is technically possible and perhaps even practical in some cases, that is somehow automatically considered desireable.
Perhaps. But history shows that technological advances *are* in general desirable, despite initial resistance. It's a lot like advances in music. Adults in the 50's couldn't stand Rock and Roll, even as the younger generation embraced it. As someone in their 30s, I confess that I just don't get the point of Bjork or instant messaging, but such music and technology are popular among 20 year olds. Maybe people growing up in the world of sub-dermal technology will have no problem with it.
I think the worst mistake people can make when seeing LOTR is to constantly be comparing the films to the book
Well, if Jackson didn't want to film Tolkien's work, he should have named it "Peter Jackson's Dwarf-tossing, wimpy-heir-to-the-throne-that-needs-to-be-slapped fantasy trilogy". Then nobody would compare it to the books. But no, he didn't do that.
When directors make Shakespearian films, while they may play around with scenery and do weird things like setting Richard III in 1930's England, or Hamlet in 20th century America, they know enough not to touch the characters or dialog. Tolkien deserves the same sort of respect. Instead Jackson treated it the same way crappy source material from Stephen King or Tom Clancy is treated by directors -- that is as something where fidelity to the source is of no great matter.
Even if the people were to cut the wires as close to the patch panel as possible, wouldn't this be the corporate equivalent of the gradual degraduation of teleomeres?
Yes, and buildings eventually get torn down, don't they? Therefore cabling must have something to do with the aging of buildings!
Organisms don't need to breed to swap genes. Look up lateral (or horizontal) gene transfer.
Yes, for example he claims that what became Microsoft Flight Simulator (that is, Bruce Artwick's program, marketed by Sublogic) started on the C64. While there was a version for the C64, it started on the Apple ][, before there even was such a thing as the C64.
if you had said someone who hasn't been elsewhere, I might at least consider it credible. But as you've stated it, this is just silly (or hyperbolic). I never said someone shouldn't have knowledge of other cultures or countries. But one hardly needs to live elsewhere for any extended length of time to gain such a working knowledge.
I'd disagree. Just being somewhere a week or two does *not* give a meaningful working knowledge. A year at least is required, so that you actually experience how a culture works. For example, "socialized medicine", once sounded scary to me, until I actually had need of a doctor in Canada and discovered that the much feared paperwork and waiting were actually *less* than in the supossedly more efficient world of HMOs.