Now that is a better response than the person who accused me of not going out enough.
Actually, I was accusing you of confusing critical thinking with bragging about headshots, which is probably worse. In all fairness, I just think you weren't being clear.
I have said before that a good reader will kind of phase out the whole actual "reading the book" part, and will more sit there absently turning the pages in front of their eyes while watching and listening to what their imagination makes of it.
That is one kind of reader; another, the kind that winds up writing, also notices techniques like foreshadowing, symbolic reinforcement, lyricism, nuance, etc. while also having a bloody good time. It's slightly more literate than the wholly absorbed imagination, because the critical faculties are at play--not necessarily better or worse, just more.
Though to have the time to raise a child properly generally means... two parents, only one who goes out to work and the other taking care of the children all day. This seems to be too difficult for most people nowadays for some reason.
We did this, and it required a level of voluntary poverty and lost career opportunities many would be uncomfortable with. I'd say "some reason" = consumerism and the great "nuclear family" social experiment.
A book works the brain more than a video game? Last time I checked (last night) there isn't much strategic planning or difficult choices to be made in reading a book. A book may work your imagination, but trying to predict what will happen if you do such-and-such, or trying to figure out how to do whatever, in a video game works your imagination quite effectively as well.
And one last point. Books are better for social development than a video game? Last I checked people don't tend to get together to read books, but frequently get together to play games. Either in front of one TV or over the internet using voice chat to communicate, makes little difference.
Avast, ye philistine! Well, I guess it is/., so:
books exist in a vast historical framework of narrative and reference
books develop the essential skill of literacy (big topic, that)
books are varied (you read many), games are repetitive
narrative skills are essential, storytelling and book reading are the best way to develop these skills (for most)
reading a good novel often involves lots of strategic thinking... it's called second guessing, it's fun, try it
books are a window into a mind, games are a window into a fun but narrow set of objectives
a really good book can drastically change your life for the better (no reference to religion in that)
social development is more than getting together, you need the perspective books give you (in a literate society)--there's a reason for the cliche of hanging out with a d-pad in your hands = stunted development
reading a book gets you together with people you'd never meet otherwise... or at least prepares you to
literacy in any media is good, including video games.. a critical thinker will get good mental exercise even out of watching Disney pap, but you'll get critical thinking from books, not video games
maybe you're reading crappy books
Look, I'm not saying there's no place for video games or that they don't work the brain. I'm saying that the socialization that comes from being well-read and the mental organization of having a good grasp of narrative is more important than what most people get out of video gaming. If a seriously shy nerd can get some collaborative skills and strategic reckoning from gaming, great (d00d)... but there are other ways to get those skills, too. What you get from being well-read is probably impossible to get any other way.
Silly question... but... what is the difference between sitting on the couch reading a book and sitting on the couch and playing a video game?
Good questions. I guess you know it's silly because obviously a book works the brain in so many rich ways--so far, a good book is better for personal and social development than any video game.
My question is in regards to your asking your kids to do something physically active in exchange for time spent on the couch playing video games. Do you do the same thing for time spent on the couch reading?
I assume that a good parent is careful to make sure that the kids are physically active. There's lots of ripping around and horseplay going on around here, and quiet time reading is the norm in balance with that. I'm asking them to do extra activity for the extra privilege of screen time. Basically, screen time is earned or gifted, like chocolate or pop. It's a regulated commodity in the household economy, not a right; you can trade it for healthful activities. This gives power to the kids within strict limits, gives them a system they can try and game, makes the wielding of power easier as a parent.
Since bopping on the rebounder (it's a mini indoor trampoline--thanks grandma) is a blast and saves the couch, everyone wins, it's an easy sell, like "you can go play hard outside." It also reinforces the useful knowledge that there's a physical or mental cost that has to be paid sooner or later if you're sitting on the couch or soaking up a movie. They get it. So far the only resistance has been about doing research to earn TV, but that's more performance anxiety than equating it with punishment.
We try to approach this with a nerdly view, both Piaget and culture geek influenced. We balance things out with counter-activities and limits. If they want to watch the "idiot-box," they have to prove it won't make them idiots by doing some book research: just about anything, so long as they prove they're developing research skills. We don't have cable, but an excellent collection of video including documentaries. To play a couchpotato video game for an hour, they have to play hard outside for 20 minutes or bounce on the rebounder non-stop 300 times each.
Don't deprive, don't indulge, and be involved. In my home we want the kids to have the same fun and cultural reference as their peers, but develop in a non-alienated way. Two hours of screen time (tv or gaming) a day max, and we aim for less than 10 hours per week. We often read aloud or sitting next to each other. Plus, if they start to obsess, they wind up on a 'diet,' learning restraint and dosage (and better negotiation technique). We do see TV and gaming as consciousness-altering and physiologically risky.
Both parents teach media literacy workshops on the side, so we have to eat our own dog food! But the thing is that the kids rarely got introduced to a show or game without a parent ready to interject. Thus, they are pretty clear on the nature of advertising, product tie-in, and consumer choice, as well as ferreting out the values they're getting from a show or game. We introduced them to video games slowly, later for the girl (starting age 6) because she's a ferocious reader and didn't show much interest, earlier for the boy (starting @ 4) so that his peer pressure wasn't too awkward. Basically, we started with puzzle games, then moved to management games, then action games. It worked well to keep them focused on playing smart, so I recommend a staged method of introduction.
This approach works for us, because the primary entertainment around here is a book.
Because every video editor has a test system? Not everyone has a non-production machine or the time/resources to test every update. That's Apple's job. And while you can't expect Apple to test compatibility with every OS X app, After Effects is a pretty major video app.
Every video editor has been bitten by Quicktime at some point, or is going to be. Every video editor makes enough money to buy an external bootable firewire drive for Emergency OS #2. A wise editor puts two partitions on it, one for rollback, one for testing. It doesn't actually take that long to set up, compared to the alternatives.
Most students and semi-pros don't listen to oldfarts like me, though. They need to feel the pain for themselves.
Unless there is a reason to update. Quicktime has a horrible record of security.
OK, if it's a production machine (especially a turnkey system), you're mid-project, and Quicktime has security updates waiting, then keep that machine off the internet. Use another machine for research/pr0n/gaming. Or boot off a separate HD or user account at the very least. Sorry, that's just wisdom earned the hard way.
I agree with your "should not," but 15 years of pulling hair over Quicktime says reality wins. If you rely on QT to make money, e.g. video editing, your production machine is tied very closely to the version of the software you are running, and nearly every version of every app on your machine is determined by that, plus the main editing apps you rely on. It may mean that you are running a much older OS version than you want, or even older hardware. Anyone who relies on Digidesign to butter their bread knows exactly what I mean.
Upgrading Quicktime/OS/major apps often means upgrading other software, and in the ecology of file compatibilities, that means churn and sometimes disaster. Don't upgrade mid-project, we've learned the hard/expensive way. It's faster to avoid upgrade kerfuffle than to have a speedy machine that's broken.
It's especially hard if you're an independent media freelancer without multiple production machines. I work off of one main machine, and with many overlapping projects, some things can get pretty out of date. One of the less obvious blessings of running a Mac is that I can delay security updates etc. without too much stress.
[...]But part of the dream of Speech Recognition is telling the computer to do this and that -- even just a simplistic version of what is in some Sci-Fi like in Star Trek -- and the computer just knows what it needs to do and does it. I'm not even talking anything as complicated as AI, just something like "look up slashdot" and it fires up the browser and goes to the site. [...]
This isn't something that is Dragon's fault -- I think in many years programs and OSes as well will have a number of keywords that will control them built in (if I'm not mistaken Apple has a primitive version of this but the speech recognition is crap). [...]
I used to do this on a mac running OS8 in the '90s, using the built in commands and a system-wide macro utility called KeyQuencer (hey, that was a really great app). "Computer: check mail" etc. Not due to accessibility problems on my own, just geeking out. Once you extended it with scripting, it was pretty amazing for repetitive tasks, and I never had problems with recognition, once I got the hang of it.
My impression is that Apple hasn't developed it at all, and their SR technology is stuck in the '90s.
Your faulty assumptions are:
1. Family farms DO have your best interests at heart.
2. Giant agribusinesses are somehow completely unaware of and unconcerned with the risks of genetic monocultures and chemical dependencies.
1: This is not a faulty assumption, just because you know some a-hole farmers (I'm in Canada, so YMMV.) Most farmers care, and the less in hock they are to the vertical integration duopoly of banks and industry suppliers, the more they care. However, face to face interaction introduces accountability at the personal level. Know Thy Farmer, a principle of food security.
2: I am not assuming this--maybe you're confusing individuals in a corporation with that corp as a legal entity. I am assuming (based on extensive literature and personal experience) that they care about those things in so far as they affect profitability and strategic positioning. Giant agribusiness is not morally driven. They fear those problems and then embrace them due to the competitive advantage, and hold an ideological faith in the next tech solution. Or do you have industry-wide evidence to prove otherwise? Can you prove the biodiversity and non-spraying passions of Monsanto and Cargill? (Please don't cite debacles like roundup-ready soy.)
One important item left off that food security list was the Precautionary Principle. Smaller producers more easily embrace this.
"have cloned meat than meat pumped full of growth hormones."
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Nice understatement.
The real heart of the matter isn't "frankenfood" (though it's a marketing issue, for sure) or the inevitable genetic damage carried forward by the clones; it's the way that the food industry is becoming more capital intensive through ideological progress, vertical integration and conglomeration, and through designing a complex chain of pharmacological dependencies. All these things undermine your food security by replacing family farms (and local processors) with giant corporate systems that DO NOT have you or your community's best interests at heart.
Cloned, monogenetic livestock herds will require Big Pharma to support them, they'll be susceptible to epidemics and genetic flaws. They will go hand in hand with methods of production that are over-scale and thus risky. They will be controlled by a very few corporate giants, and will further push farmers out of business, to be replaced by more of the same faceless institutions.
I'm all for mass international corporate production--of electronics. Food, however, is different. Our food security requires
regional production in a diverse economic base of farmers and processors
people who care, and accountability (see above)
biodiversity of crops and in the supporting bioregion
a short line between field and table
crops and animal varieties that don't need intensive industrial supports
broad base of knowledge, and therefore more producers
well, that's as a start. Food security isn't about stockpiling or having enough or locking your roommates out of the pocket pizzas. It's about integrating the food system into the regional economy and seeking better quality and diversity, it's about reliability and nutrition, and minimizing risks.
Cloned livestock herds will work against food security, because of how they will be developed, produced, and owned. The so-called health issues are second to these concerns.
I'm a tad annoyed by this. iPhone users get the new software update for free, new iPod Touch users get them for free, yet the early adopter iPod Touch people have to stump up $20?
Probably SEC rules about changing an already spec'd prduct as opposed to releasing a new one. That, and a little friendly gouging.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out why conspiracies are always assumed not to exist.
I mean, it's not as though there's no one convicted of any conspiring, or anything. But it has become an automatism to link "conspiracy" with "crazy".
And yet, who are the real extreme conspiracy 'theorists?' The ones who make a living doing it.
They're the ones who tap the phones of the Raging Grannies and peace activists. Those who trumpet a threat through media mouthpieces about badly concocted risks, like WMD, ignoring or downplaying real risks, like traffic and poverty and the Mob. The McCarthys and the JE Hoovers, shock jocks and NSA spooks. The makers of the 100,000 person 'no-fly' lists, who stop people from travelling because of the cover of the mystery novel they're reading. Commies in the woodpile and all that.
Oh sure, there are plenty of ineffective kooks who make the Lone Gunman series look tame, but they're badly outgunned, outfinanced, and make a good paintbrush for the 'crazy' tag that is both so legitimate and so admittedlyexpanded by black propaganda, fear, and otherdisinformation.
So, it is both planned and true that firm believers in alternate histories and shadow elites are crazy, because the evidence is so tainted, that to believe it wholly is to be inevitably duped. Still, some of the evidence is for real, right? Occam's Razor suggests that documents like the PAO's "Greater CIA Openness" and Pentagon's "Information Operations Roadmap" memos are real, and that there are always those-who-would-be-king pulling whatever strings they can grasp.
Here's the situation for media skeptics:
you have to question nearly every source, cross reference, etc.
it is extremely tiring and brings about malaise (an intended effect)
on public fora like this, expect the spanish inquisition
How much of USA's population celebrates indefinite ideological domestic and global war? Millions. And the first casualty is always truth (sorry). To answer your first question: conformity is comforting, and authoritarian.
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
It was decided during the development of typography, pre-internet, by typesetters, editors, and designers.
Double spaces between sentences are for monospaced fonts, like typewriters or courier font families. Variable-width fonts like the one you're probably using to read this don't need two spaces, largely because the eye groups words more easily. E.g.: typesetting in books uses singe spaces between sentences. Old newspapers are more variable.
Maybe you're confusing Usenet with the Internet, or email (txt=monosp) with the web (usually varable-width).
All part of the rules of font usage and interacting with the design of your expressive tools. Literacy now extends into minor forms of publishing and email daily for most of us, such as this thread, so we have to learn them to break them. FWIW.
Exactly. So cede the ground that is irrelevant. Let them believe in their version of "why", just try to persuade them to leave the "how" alone.
OK, so I know we generally agree (though you're being tantalizingly vague), and this comment is just about tactics. But the "how," for extremists such as creationists, stems directly from this issue of exegesis. The emotional investment in an explanation of 'how' that is biblical and in keeping with a literalist interpretation is immense. In my experience, they can't leave 'how' alone, because if they cede that ground to science or scientism then, again, their identity and perceived self is at risk.
Part of the struggle is over who is a betteer authority on the workings of God: a scientist, trying to read the book of nature, or a preacher who has privileged access to biblical meaning. Creationists (some) sincerely believe that the bible is more honest than nature, that nature is full of deceptions like a fossil record and the bible is absolute if you can read it properly (so start stoning yer sinful neighbours and lippy kids, eh!).
So, you may think you're discussing the 'how' of creation, but you're still going to be talking about 'what' is legitimate discourse, and 'why' it is legitimate or not. Really, it's a discussion about temporal power, about what information we use to order our lives and society, and who has the right to define the terms.
Now, it makes sense for a nerd to be somewhat literalist themselves and think that what is being argued is in the obvious consensual meanings of the words being used. But, as I said in the GP post, there is a great effort among christian extremists (and others) to deny contradictions in the belief system. This means you need to remember that, as Liebniz said, 'we may have ideas of which we are not conscious,' and the grounds of the debate are not about evolution, but the legitimacy of an interpretation of the bible, and thus the survival of an identity.
It's actually a literary argument, which makes it very difficult to talk about science/ID. The actual grounds of the debate are taboo to those who are using biblical exegesis as a lab manual.
The problem is one of authority. The authority over the scientist resides in previous results and the judgement of peers (ideally, ignoring corporate/political strings). The authority in the creationist resides in -- theoretically-- G-d's word, but in actuality, in the exegesis of scripture, and the agents of heaven on earth.
So, in arguing about creationism, you aren't really allowed to talk about the origins of the bible, because calling into question its formation as a politically motivated process under Emporer Constantine, and the dealings at the table at the Council of Nicaea, and the authorship and dates of the new testament, and subsequent monastic editorializing and translation, and the change in historical context and thus meanings--calling any of this into question subverts faith that the bible is the Word. Suggest that it's grossly misrepresented by its advocates and you've picked a fight with a devoted christian (or muslim, etc.).
Since faith involves wrapping one's identity up in a flag of belief, attack on that faith is a kind of deadly attack on someone's sense of self. You may think they're arguing on behalf of God but they're fighting with life and death instincts. You want to kill their personhood, ruin their eternity! Since the contradictions of faith can be so extreme, the effort to deny those contradictions becomes extreme as well.
The exalted literary critics known as preachers~priests~theologians are using the bible as social code, and taking the power offered to those who define the terms of discussion. The question of how the bible is interpreted as text is at the core of the ID debate, as with most social discussions involving the People of the Book (muslims-christians-jews).
I'd just do a fan swap.I have a dual PII/450 HP Netserver with a SATA card doing backup server duty. Swapped in a quiet cooling fan from some old power supply and life is good.
Wow, and that magically just shrinks the box up somehow, while making it quieter too?
No seriously, I am not a complete idiot thanks, and can swap a fan for a new one or a bigass heatsink without having to ask someone. I just don't have much space. However, pulling components out of the case and making a more compact convection cooled configuration that doesn't need a fan involves a 'decent mod', not a minor upgrade. I'm considering zap-strapping everything to pegboard and screwing it to the closet wall, unless I find a better suggestion.
This is what I was about to do, then was confronted with the realities of space and noise, and energy consumption.
I wound up going with a cheap unknown-reliability Hotway/Mediasonic HD-9, basically an external HD case with ethernet and a tiny CIFS and FTP server built in. It's silent and tiny and sips electricity, and cost $65 without the HD.
What I'd like to know is: are there any decent hardware mods out there for turning noisy bulky old beater equipment into quiet compact server boxes?
I get a top-notch highway system, a federally insured system of banks, police and fire protection, my food and water are relatively safe, my workplace is held up to a minimum saftey requirement... All in all I think I am getting a pretty good deal.
Don't assume that you're getting all that stuff from federal income tax. Most of that is allocated to paying off loans, so you're actually mostly servicing the banks, not The People.
All those nifty civilized things your tax money gets that don't count as usury or murderous are primarily coming from the plethora of other less obvious taxes: property, goods/services, state income tax, etc.
If we had all the money back that we've flushed down the Iraq toilet, who knows what all nifty stuff I'd be getting for my investment in this nation?
Yeah, I wonder just how effective half a trillion dollars would be if applied to international pro-democracy propaganda, educational support programs, donations to civil society, and even providing support for local pro-democracy institutions? You know, empowering local Iraqis and Afghanis to rise up and build an equitable system from the grassroots? I'm guessing 500 billion bucks buys a lot of freedom using non-violence-- if that's actually your goal. It's ten times the domestic annual education budget, so one could easily double the domestic budget, and 'educate' the world too.
Here's what Americans would have gotten out of such a radical foreign aid approach: goodwill, security, credibility, a stronger domestic civil sector, more freedom at home, less fear and twisting of the national political culture. Less opportunity for kleptocrat fascism at home. Very likely, actual modern democracies in target countries. A safer world, a smaller american military, fewer overseas bases and invasion forces. Less money and power flowing into Halliburton, Lockheed et.al., and a different track for the future, one that doesn't need FEMA preparing for martial law.
make sure your old items are recycled, which will at least partially offset the need to mine or pump new materials from the ground.
Reduce-reuse-recycle, in that order: upgrade your old machine with more efficient software like Puppy Linux. You'll still get that temporary pseudo-boost of a getting-new-stuff feeling (hail mammon, the secret consumer $DEITY), or give it to a kid. As long as it boots from CD, has a fairly standard bios and motherboard, and 128MB of RAM, it will be easy to set up and feel as fast as a modern machine, with a typical set of productivity apps. Really quite amazing, how things can be repurposed, and reduce the need for new stuff, by 'changing the system'--this applies to lifestyle, as well as computer hardware.
Man, I'd love to be able to submit the tax returns those guys must have;)
There are at least three budgets to every production: The Promise, which gets everyone involved and helps set rates, The TaxMan, which is public, and The Secret, which is what really happens. This scales all the way down to small indies. From what I've seen and heard, big-budget movies have many variants on the promise and the secret.
...if their goal was to create fear in the U. S. population.
The fear is real. I hate to admit it, but it affect me.
[snip] Part of me was indignant at what looked from a distance to be discriminatory treatment. And part of it was great relief that she was not on my flight.
Thank you for being so frank! You're right to raise the issue in this way,. It points out how the Fear of Terrorism has little to do with actual risk to life and limb, otherwise the transport system would be radically different; it isn't about fear of loss of liberty, otherwise the nation would be in an utter uproar; it's abstract, with punctuated real-world instances, most of them home grown. It's religious fervour and raw patriotism wrapped up in the legitimizing and reassuring messages of an authoritative democratic-appearing media.
To put it bluntly, the fear stems from propaganda, and not the stodgy overworked totalitarian style of propaganda, but the enormous and complex web of USA's media, which merely needs to suggest, so that an attitude or notion echoes around everyone's mediasphere (radio/print/tv/web/etc) until it's a premise. Burkha-Taliban-Brutal-Competition-Secrecy-Othernes-MassMurderer is an emotional knot that is easy to tie in a north american. Anything as 'extreme' as a Burkha (and it bugs me too, for different reasons) signifies fanaticism to those with that knot.
And yet, the democratic ideals of the typical American, watered down as they are, aren't likely to die soon or easily. It's a weakness in the U.S. ideology of patriotism: don't tread on me should extend to everyone, land of the free, that's what makes us great etc. (Never mind the prison system--sorry, couldn't resist;-)
It's refreshing to see someone review their own ideologies. Usually, ideology is like halitosis: everyone else has it.*
Have fun using QOS on it though. I admit the WRT54G ran great at my house with just my parents and brother on it, but my current house has 5 guys who love to transfer files/stream/p2p and the WRT54G I had ran straight into the ground. Threw in a box running pfSense (Some shitty P2 with 128mb of ram) and it's been running great ever since. Can't save power with something that doesn't work...
I recently bought a WRT54GL for exactly this reason, to get good QoS cheap on miserly electricity.
I promptly flashed the firmware OS to Tomato because of its speed, stability, and balance between simplicity and features like 10 QoS classes. So far so good with torrents and video streaming (some tweaking of settings, not much), while keeping surfing speedy. Twenty minutes of work and all of a sudden it's a much better router, good speeds, no slogging down under p2p connections.
actually, the evidence seems to suggest that advanced users of windows have a more difficult time switching than novice users. A novice is used to clicking through menus and trying to figure out the buttons, whereas a more experienced user already knows shortcuts and practiced movements.
I'm constantly running into people with expensive laptops or years of usage who truly want an appliance PC, and have settled into an uneasy compromise of knowing just what to do to get predictable effects, like reading email. These are people who call the computer a 'hard drive' or think that IE is 'the internet' because that's what it says in the start menu, often professionals who rely on computers, often in their 50's. The mere mention of changing to another operating system truly freaks them out, because they've invested enough braintime to not be so afraid of the damn thing. Even using a Mac is threatening because they 'don't know where anything is' [translation: where the start menu is, etc.].
Computers badly fail the 'appliance' test. I tell them that they should learn to use it, the same way a carpenter has to learn a table saw or plumb line, but get chagrined shrugs.
So, next week, I'm starting an afterschool computer club at my kids' school. They've just moved the whole district to Fedora via the Linux Terminal Server Project, w00t, no hardware replacement costs in my tax bill, so it's just getting interesting here in this small community, there's hope for the kids, more likely they'll convert the old farts by importing linux into the home.
No, zogger, that isn't a bad analogy; it isn't even an analogy, it's an excellent real world example of intellectual property rights run amok. Cargill (the Invisible Giant of the food system), the rumour goes, once published a saying in a regional corporate newsletter: "he who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and he who controls the farmer, controls the country." True or not, it's an alarming yet typical point of view found in the 'life sciences' megacorporations.
When you take the epistemological perversion of biopiracy
combined with the cynical destruction of the family farm wrought by vertical integration, processing centralization, and dirty tricks, and really crazy shit like terminator seeds or untested GMO's released by stealth, you have a grave danger to society on your hands--especially since hardly anyone is noticing.
The long lever these companies use is IP, only they're much more successful at it than Sony, and even more evil (yes, it's possible). Even nerds eat; if we're worried about the Sonys, how much more should we be worried about the Monsantos?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I was accusing you of confusing critical thinking with bragging about headshots, which is probably worse. In all fairness, I just think you weren't being clear.
I have said before that a good reader will kind of phase out the whole actual "reading the book" part, and will more sit there absently turning the pages in front of their eyes while watching and listening to what their imagination makes of it.That is one kind of reader; another, the kind that winds up writing, also notices techniques like foreshadowing, symbolic reinforcement, lyricism, nuance, etc. while also having a bloody good time. It's slightly more literate than the wholly absorbed imagination, because the critical faculties are at play--not necessarily better or worse, just more.
Though to have the time to raise a child properly generally means... two parents, only one who goes out to work and the other taking care of the children all day. This seems to be too difficult for most people nowadays for some reason.We did this, and it required a level of voluntary poverty and lost career opportunities many would be uncomfortable with. I'd say "some reason" = consumerism and the great "nuclear family" social experiment.
And one last point. Books are better for social development than a video game? Last I checked people don't tend to get together to read books, but frequently get together to play games. Either in front of one TV or over the internet using voice chat to communicate, makes little difference.
Avast, ye philistine! Well, I guess it is /., so:
Look, I'm not saying there's no place for video games or that they don't work the brain. I'm saying that the socialization that comes from being well-read and the mental organization of having a good grasp of narrative is more important than what most people get out of video gaming. If a seriously shy nerd can get some collaborative skills and strategic reckoning from gaming, great (d00d)... but there are other ways to get those skills, too. What you get from being well-read is probably impossible to get any other way.
Good questions. I guess you know it's silly because obviously a book works the brain in so many rich ways--so far, a good book is better for personal and social development than any video game.
My question is in regards to your asking your kids to do something physically active in exchange for time spent on the couch playing video games. Do you do the same thing for time spent on the couch reading?I assume that a good parent is careful to make sure that the kids are physically active. There's lots of ripping around and horseplay going on around here, and quiet time reading is the norm in balance with that. I'm asking them to do extra activity for the extra privilege of screen time. Basically, screen time is earned or gifted, like chocolate or pop. It's a regulated commodity in the household economy, not a right; you can trade it for healthful activities. This gives power to the kids within strict limits, gives them a system they can try and game, makes the wielding of power easier as a parent.
Since bopping on the rebounder (it's a mini indoor trampoline--thanks grandma) is a blast and saves the couch, everyone wins, it's an easy sell, like "you can go play hard outside." It also reinforces the useful knowledge that there's a physical or mental cost that has to be paid sooner or later if you're sitting on the couch or soaking up a movie. They get it. So far the only resistance has been about doing research to earn TV, but that's more performance anxiety than equating it with punishment.
We try to approach this with a nerdly view, both Piaget and culture geek influenced. We balance things out with counter-activities and limits. If they want to watch the "idiot-box," they have to prove it won't make them idiots by doing some book research: just about anything, so long as they prove they're developing research skills. We don't have cable, but an excellent collection of video including documentaries. To play a couchpotato video game for an hour, they have to play hard outside for 20 minutes or bounce on the rebounder non-stop 300 times each.
Don't deprive, don't indulge, and be involved. In my home we want the kids to have the same fun and cultural reference as their peers, but develop in a non-alienated way. Two hours of screen time (tv or gaming) a day max, and we aim for less than 10 hours per week. We often read aloud or sitting next to each other. Plus, if they start to obsess, they wind up on a 'diet,' learning restraint and dosage (and better negotiation technique). We do see TV and gaming as consciousness-altering and physiologically risky.
Both parents teach media literacy workshops on the side, so we have to eat our own dog food! But the thing is that the kids rarely got introduced to a show or game without a parent ready to interject. Thus, they are pretty clear on the nature of advertising, product tie-in, and consumer choice, as well as ferreting out the values they're getting from a show or game. We introduced them to video games slowly, later for the girl (starting age 6) because she's a ferocious reader and didn't show much interest, earlier for the boy (starting @ 4) so that his peer pressure wasn't too awkward. Basically, we started with puzzle games, then moved to management games, then action games. It worked well to keep them focused on playing smart, so I recommend a staged method of introduction.
This approach works for us, because the primary entertainment around here is a book.
Every video editor has been bitten by Quicktime at some point, or is going to be. Every video editor makes enough money to buy an external bootable firewire drive for Emergency OS #2. A wise editor puts two partitions on it, one for rollback, one for testing. It doesn't actually take that long to set up, compared to the alternatives.
Most students and semi-pros don't listen to oldfarts like me, though. They need to feel the pain for themselves.
OK, if it's a production machine (especially a turnkey system), you're mid-project, and Quicktime has security updates waiting, then keep that machine off the internet. Use another machine for research/pr0n/gaming. Or boot off a separate HD or user account at the very least. Sorry, that's just wisdom earned the hard way.
I agree with your "should not," but 15 years of pulling hair over Quicktime says reality wins. If you rely on QT to make money, e.g. video editing, your production machine is tied very closely to the version of the software you are running, and nearly every version of every app on your machine is determined by that, plus the main editing apps you rely on. It may mean that you are running a much older OS version than you want, or even older hardware. Anyone who relies on Digidesign to butter their bread knows exactly what I mean.
Upgrading Quicktime/OS/major apps often means upgrading other software, and in the ecology of file compatibilities, that means churn and sometimes disaster. Don't upgrade mid-project, we've learned the hard/expensive way. It's faster to avoid upgrade kerfuffle than to have a speedy machine that's broken.
It's especially hard if you're an independent media freelancer without multiple production machines. I work off of one main machine, and with many overlapping projects, some things can get pretty out of date. One of the less obvious blessings of running a Mac is that I can delay security updates etc. without too much stress.
This isn't something that is Dragon's fault -- I think in many years programs and OSes as well will have a number of keywords that will control them built in (if I'm not mistaken Apple has a primitive version of this but the speech recognition is crap). [...]
I used to do this on a mac running OS8 in the '90s, using the built in commands and a system-wide macro utility called KeyQuencer (hey, that was a really great app). "Computer: check mail" etc. Not due to accessibility problems on my own, just geeking out. Once you extended it with scripting, it was pretty amazing for repetitive tasks, and I never had problems with recognition, once I got the hang of it.
My impression is that Apple hasn't developed it at all, and their SR technology is stuck in the '90s.
1. Family farms DO have your best interests at heart.
2. Giant agribusinesses are somehow completely unaware of and unconcerned with the risks of genetic monocultures and chemical dependencies.
1: This is not a faulty assumption, just because you know some a-hole farmers (I'm in Canada, so YMMV.) Most farmers care, and the less in hock they are to the vertical integration duopoly of banks and industry suppliers, the more they care. However, face to face interaction introduces accountability at the personal level. Know Thy Farmer, a principle of food security.
2: I am not assuming this--maybe you're confusing individuals in a corporation with that corp as a legal entity. I am assuming (based on extensive literature and personal experience) that they care about those things in so far as they affect profitability and strategic positioning. Giant agribusiness is not morally driven. They fear those problems and then embrace them due to the competitive advantage, and hold an ideological faith in the next tech solution. Or do you have industry-wide evidence to prove otherwise? Can you prove the biodiversity and non-spraying passions of Monsanto and Cargill? (Please don't cite debacles like roundup-ready soy.)
One important item left off that food security list was the Precautionary Principle. Smaller producers more easily embrace this.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Nice understatement.
The real heart of the matter isn't "frankenfood" (though it's a marketing issue, for sure) or the inevitable genetic damage carried forward by the clones; it's the way that the food industry is becoming more capital intensive through ideological progress, vertical integration and conglomeration, and through designing a complex chain of pharmacological dependencies. All these things undermine your food security by replacing family farms (and local processors) with giant corporate systems that DO NOT have you or your community's best interests at heart.
Cloned, monogenetic livestock herds will require Big Pharma to support them, they'll be susceptible to epidemics and genetic flaws. They will go hand in hand with methods of production that are over-scale and thus risky. They will be controlled by a very few corporate giants, and will further push farmers out of business, to be replaced by more of the same faceless institutions.
I'm all for mass international corporate production--of electronics. Food, however, is different. Our food security requires
well, that's as a start. Food security isn't about stockpiling or having enough or locking your roommates out of the pocket pizzas. It's about integrating the food system into the regional economy and seeking better quality and diversity, it's about reliability and nutrition, and minimizing risks.
Cloned livestock herds will work against food security, because of how they will be developed, produced, and owned. The so-called health issues are second to these concerns.
Probably SEC rules about changing an already spec'd prduct as opposed to releasing a new one. That, and a little friendly gouging.
I mean, it's not as though there's no one convicted of any conspiring, or anything. But it has become an automatism to link "conspiracy" with "crazy".
And yet, who are the real extreme conspiracy 'theorists?' The ones who make a living doing it.
They're the ones who tap the phones of the Raging Grannies and peace activists. Those who trumpet a threat through media mouthpieces about badly concocted risks, like WMD, ignoring or downplaying real risks, like traffic and poverty and the Mob. The McCarthys and the JE Hoovers, shock jocks and NSA spooks. The makers of the 100,000 person 'no-fly' lists, who stop people from travelling because of the cover of the mystery novel they're reading. Commies in the woodpile and all that.
Oh sure, there are plenty of ineffective kooks who make the Lone Gunman series look tame, but they're badly outgunned, outfinanced, and make a good paintbrush for the 'crazy' tag that is both so legitimate and so admittedly expanded by black propaganda, fear, and other disinformation.
So, it is both planned and true that firm believers in alternate histories and shadow elites are crazy, because the evidence is so tainted, that to believe it wholly is to be inevitably duped. Still, some of the evidence is for real, right? Occam's Razor suggests that documents like the PAO's "Greater CIA Openness" and Pentagon's "Information Operations Roadmap" memos are real, and that there are always those-who-would-be-king pulling whatever strings they can grasp.
Here's the situation for media skeptics:
How much of USA's population celebrates indefinite ideological domestic and global war? Millions. And the first casualty is always truth (sorry). To answer your first question: conformity is comforting, and authoritarian.
Thank you. That "wipe off the map" quote was deliberate translation disinformation, folks.
It was decided during the development of typography, pre-internet, by typesetters, editors, and designers.
Double spaces between sentences are for monospaced fonts, like typewriters or courier font families. Variable-width fonts like the one you're probably using to read this don't need two spaces, largely because the eye groups words more easily. E.g.: typesetting in books uses singe spaces between sentences. Old newspapers are more variable.
Maybe you're confusing Usenet with the Internet, or email (txt=monosp) with the web (usually varable-width).
All part of the rules of font usage and interacting with the design of your expressive tools. Literacy now extends into minor forms of publishing and email daily for most of us, such as this thread, so we have to learn them to break them. FWIW.
OK, so I know we generally agree (though you're being tantalizingly vague), and this comment is just about tactics. But the "how," for extremists such as creationists, stems directly from this issue of exegesis. The emotional investment in an explanation of 'how' that is biblical and in keeping with a literalist interpretation is immense. In my experience, they can't leave 'how' alone, because if they cede that ground to science or scientism then, again, their identity and perceived self is at risk.
Part of the struggle is over who is a betteer authority on the workings of God: a scientist, trying to read the book of nature, or a preacher who has privileged access to biblical meaning. Creationists (some) sincerely believe that the bible is more honest than nature, that nature is full of deceptions like a fossil record and the bible is absolute if you can read it properly (so start stoning yer sinful neighbours and lippy kids, eh!).
So, you may think you're discussing the 'how' of creation, but you're still going to be talking about 'what' is legitimate discourse, and 'why' it is legitimate or not. Really, it's a discussion about temporal power, about what information we use to order our lives and society, and who has the right to define the terms.
Now, it makes sense for a nerd to be somewhat literalist themselves and think that what is being argued is in the obvious consensual meanings of the words being used. But, as I said in the GP post, there is a great effort among christian extremists (and others) to deny contradictions in the belief system. This means you need to remember that, as Liebniz said, 'we may have ideas of which we are not conscious,' and the grounds of the debate are not about evolution, but the legitimacy of an interpretation of the bible, and thus the survival of an identity.
It's actually a literary argument, which makes it very difficult to talk about science/ID. The actual grounds of the debate are taboo to those who are using biblical exegesis as a lab manual.
The problem is one of authority. The authority over the scientist resides in previous results and the judgement of peers (ideally, ignoring corporate/political strings). The authority in the creationist resides in -- theoretically-- G-d's word, but in actuality, in the exegesis of scripture, and the agents of heaven on earth.
So, in arguing about creationism, you aren't really allowed to talk about the origins of the bible, because calling into question its formation as a politically motivated process under Emporer Constantine, and the dealings at the table at the Council of Nicaea, and the authorship and dates of the new testament, and subsequent monastic editorializing and translation, and the change in historical context and thus meanings--calling any of this into question subverts faith that the bible is the Word. Suggest that it's grossly misrepresented by its advocates and you've picked a fight with a devoted christian (or muslim, etc.).
Since faith involves wrapping one's identity up in a flag of belief, attack on that faith is a kind of deadly attack on someone's sense of self. You may think they're arguing on behalf of God but they're fighting with life and death instincts. You want to kill their personhood, ruin their eternity! Since the contradictions of faith can be so extreme, the effort to deny those contradictions becomes extreme as well.
The exalted literary critics known as preachers~priests~theologians are using the bible as social code, and taking the power offered to those who define the terms of discussion. The question of how the bible is interpreted as text is at the core of the ID debate, as with most social discussions involving the People of the Book (muslims-christians-jews).
Wow, and that magically just shrinks the box up somehow, while making it quieter too?
No seriously, I am not a complete idiot thanks, and can swap a fan for a new one or a bigass heatsink without having to ask someone. I just don't have much space. However, pulling components out of the case and making a more compact convection cooled configuration that doesn't need a fan involves a 'decent mod', not a minor upgrade. I'm considering zap-strapping everything to pegboard and screwing it to the closet wall, unless I find a better suggestion.
Insttall FreeNAS
This is what I was about to do, then was confronted with the realities of space and noise, and energy consumption.
I wound up going with a cheap unknown-reliability Hotway/Mediasonic HD-9, basically an external HD case with ethernet and a tiny CIFS and FTP server built in. It's silent and tiny and sips electricity, and cost $65 without the HD.
What I'd like to know is: are there any decent hardware mods out there for turning noisy bulky old beater equipment into quiet compact server boxes?
Don't assume that you're getting all that stuff from federal income tax. Most of that is allocated to paying off loans, so you're actually mostly servicing the banks, not The People.
All those nifty civilized things your tax money gets that don't count as usury or murderous are primarily coming from the plethora of other less obvious taxes: property, goods/services, state income tax, etc.
If we had all the money back that we've flushed down the Iraq toilet, who knows what all nifty stuff I'd be getting for my investment in this nation?Yeah, I wonder just how effective half a trillion dollars would be if applied to international pro-democracy propaganda, educational support programs, donations to civil society, and even providing support for local pro-democracy institutions? You know, empowering local Iraqis and Afghanis to rise up and build an equitable system from the grassroots? I'm guessing 500 billion bucks buys a lot of freedom using non-violence-- if that's actually your goal. It's ten times the domestic annual education budget, so one could easily double the domestic budget, and 'educate' the world too.
Here's what Americans would have gotten out of such a radical foreign aid approach: goodwill, security, credibility, a stronger domestic civil sector, more freedom at home, less fear and twisting of the national political culture. Less opportunity for kleptocrat fascism at home. Very likely, actual modern democracies in target countries. A safer world, a smaller american military, fewer overseas bases and invasion forces. Less money and power flowing into Halliburton, Lockheed et.al., and a different track for the future, one that doesn't need FEMA preparing for martial law.
Reduce-reuse-recycle, in that order: upgrade your old machine with more efficient software like Puppy Linux. You'll still get that temporary pseudo-boost of a getting-new-stuff feeling (hail mammon, the secret consumer $DEITY), or give it to a kid. As long as it boots from CD, has a fairly standard bios and motherboard, and 128MB of RAM, it will be easy to set up and feel as fast as a modern machine, with a typical set of productivity apps. Really quite amazing, how things can be repurposed, and reduce the need for new stuff, by 'changing the system'--this applies to lifestyle, as well as computer hardware.
There are at least three budgets to every production: The Promise, which gets everyone involved and helps set rates, The TaxMan, which is public, and The Secret, which is what really happens. This scales all the way down to small indies. From what I've seen and heard, big-budget movies have many variants on the promise and the secret.
...if their goal was to create fear in the U. S. population.The fear is real. I hate to admit it, but it affect me.
[snip]
Part of me was indignant at what looked from a distance to be discriminatory treatment. And part of it was great relief that she was not on my flight.
Thank you for being so frank! You're right to raise the issue in this way,. It points out how the Fear of Terrorism has little to do with actual risk to life and limb, otherwise the transport system would be radically different; it isn't about fear of loss of liberty, otherwise the nation would be in an utter uproar; it's abstract, with punctuated real-world instances, most of them home grown. It's religious fervour and raw patriotism wrapped up in the legitimizing and reassuring messages of an authoritative democratic-appearing media.
To put it bluntly, the fear stems from propaganda, and not the stodgy overworked totalitarian style of propaganda, but the enormous and complex web of USA's media, which merely needs to suggest, so that an attitude or notion echoes around everyone's mediasphere (radio/print/tv/web/etc) until it's a premise. Burkha-Taliban-Brutal-Competition-Secrecy-Othernes-MassMurderer is an emotional knot that is easy to tie in a north american. Anything as 'extreme' as a Burkha (and it bugs me too, for different reasons) signifies fanaticism to those with that knot.
And yet, the democratic ideals of the typical American, watered down as they are, aren't likely to die soon or easily. It's a weakness in the U.S. ideology of patriotism: don't tread on me should extend to everyone, land of the free, that's what makes us great etc. (Never mind the prison system--sorry, couldn't resist ;-)
It's refreshing to see someone review their own ideologies. Usually, ideology is like halitosis: everyone else has it.*
* eagleton
I recently bought a WRT54GL for exactly this reason, to get good QoS cheap on miserly electricity.
I promptly flashed the firmware OS to Tomato because of its speed, stability, and balance between simplicity and features like 10 QoS classes. So far so good with torrents and video streaming (some tweaking of settings, not much), while keeping surfing speedy. Twenty minutes of work and all of a sudden it's a much better router, good speeds, no slogging down under p2p connections.
I'm constantly running into people with expensive laptops or years of usage who truly want an appliance PC, and have settled into an uneasy compromise of knowing just what to do to get predictable effects, like reading email. These are people who call the computer a 'hard drive' or think that IE is 'the internet' because that's what it says in the start menu, often professionals who rely on computers, often in their 50's. The mere mention of changing to another operating system truly freaks them out, because they've invested enough braintime to not be so afraid of the damn thing. Even using a Mac is threatening because they 'don't know where anything is' [translation: where the start menu is, etc.].
Computers badly fail the 'appliance' test. I tell them that they should learn to use it, the same way a carpenter has to learn a table saw or plumb line, but get chagrined shrugs.
So, next week, I'm starting an afterschool computer club at my kids' school. They've just moved the whole district to Fedora via the Linux Terminal Server Project, w00t, no hardware replacement costs in my tax bill, so it's just getting interesting here in this small community, there's hope for the kids, more likely they'll convert the old farts by importing linux into the home.
No, zogger, that isn't a bad analogy; it isn't even an analogy, it's an excellent real world example of intellectual property rights run amok. Cargill (the Invisible Giant of the food system), the rumour goes, once published a saying in a regional corporate newsletter: "he who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and he who controls the farmer, controls the country." True or not, it's an alarming yet typical point of view found in the 'life sciences' megacorporations.
When you take the epistemological perversion of biopiracy combined with the cynical destruction of the family farm wrought by vertical integration, processing centralization, and dirty tricks, and really crazy shit like terminator seeds or untested GMO's released by stealth, you have a grave danger to society on your hands--especially since hardly anyone is noticing.
The long lever these companies use is IP, only they're much more successful at it than Sony, and even more evil (yes, it's possible). Even nerds eat; if we're worried about the Sonys, how much more should we be worried about the Monsantos?