Depends on your perspective, If I grew up in the middle of nebraska I would be hard pressed to say otherwise. (I use nebraska rather than kansas, because I've been there, I don't want to make statements about things about which I am completely uninformed.)
As far as my wish for a small tornado, it would only have to hit one building... I have nothing against the state of Kansas as a whole, or as a land mass, just that this would be an expedient way to temporarily end the argument, and cause a whole new one in the process.
(i.e. was the tornado a sign from above, or just a natural occurance of nature...(hey, redundancy!))
long way of saying "it was a joke"
And true, at one point, people thought the earth was flat, then we learned more. then it was round, but still the center of the universe. then we learned more. (though it was recently pointed out to me that given the nature of being in an expanding universe, every point is the point of origin. everything is expanding away from you.) then we were part of a solar system, then we were a part of a galaxy, then part of a universe.
the nice thing about science, is that it tends not to regress.
I tend to find the "I haven't got a clue" answer fairly liberating.
the problem here is that the argument about whether or not there was a creator that started it all is a bit of a distraction. Most religions get their strength from what happens after you die, and work backwards from there. Do you really think the first religious argument began with "Where do we come from?" or the more likely "What happened to Ugg?" or grunts to that effect.
Me, I think I was born due to a biological interaction between my parents, and when I die, I will be (assuming I get around the undertaker lobby) worm food. It's a heavy blow to come to the realization that this is all there is. Your existence is finite, and the only thing that will live on after you is your effect on the society around you. this realization can knock you out. but you get over it.
I was brought up in a houshold that was fairly 'realistic', and as a result, I ended up with a fairly pragmatic view of religion. to me it's a catharsis, to help get around the above "revelation." To some degree, I envy the comfort that some people derive from the belief that when they die it will all be alright, but I don't envy them enough to join in.
The difficulty with getting into a discussion about things like evolution with people of a "new-testament-bible*" persuasion, is that if they *really* believe, they will not be shaken by mere proof. to be fair, the same can be said of firm "evolutionists" though s/proof/faith/g Some of the difficulty arises because you can't just tell someone to "shut up, I'm right." because if you do, you have to shut up and listen when it's their turn. If you don't, you break one of the basic rules of current society. (I refer to rules in the platonic sense here.)
Every once in a while I think about the existence of the Universe and all that exists within it, and I shiver a bit when I think about the concept of what (if anything) was before. and I am sad to know that I won't be around to see how it ends (i hope). I am excited by the possibilty that figuring part of it out will happen within my lifetime. here's hoping anyway. vroomfondel and majikthise can go suck eggs.
As a a side question, how many fundamentalists have read the whole bible, that is from genesis forward, not just the "new testament". I admit I haven't, I started to, but if you are not religious to begin with, there isn't much incentive to keep going when you get to all the begets.
*I refer to new-testament-bible types in partiular as they seem to be the ones driving this particular iteration of this movement, but genesis and the story of the creator god is (in this case) from the old testament, or torah, which is the basis for not only judaism, but christianity and its offshoots and islam.
not so much that French is hip, but "something-you're-not" is
my brother tells me the story of when bicycling through belgium, he came across a guy customizing a hod-rod car. on the side were painted the words "sweet girl." when asked, the belgian responded that he wanted something that looked/sounded exotic. A U.S. equivalent might be "cherchez le femme" (or "churchy lafemme" for you Pogo fans...)
I think that it just has to be in a different language. it promotes the need for some one to ask you what it is. makes you feel smart (though possibly only relative to the person asking... (think bad lawyers and latin.)) I suppose it helps that in the U.S. certain languages/accents have come to be hung with certain stereotypes. BBC style British accent=intelligent, French accent=sexy (or stuck-up (or both, for that matter)), Italian=short tempered gangster/lothario. But in all of these cases the primary thing that the accent or the foreign word implies is simply the sense of the exotic.
In the rest of the world, French was/is frequently considered the international language. though with the advent of airtravel, and by necessity international air-traffic control, that has been moving to english for some time. (most computer languages also have their basis in english (keywords and syntax rules for instance.) I find it fairly interesting that ruby, (developed, as far as I know) primarily in Japan, still uses english for the major keywords.)
Finding a name that is not "sue-able" or offensive is a tricky thing. Exxon spent a lot of time and money looking for a new name when Esso was broken up and managed to find that the XX was uncommon or non-existent in all known languages. The fact that Exxon itself eventually became something of an epithet is unrelated, (but pleasantly ironic.)
Rendezvous, at least, had come into relatively common english parlance.
I'm pretty sure the corporation system is not designed to let you create or purchase a shell corporation, commit illegal acts and rack up debts, and then just toss the shell corporation into bankruptcy and say "whoops all forgiven".
designed? no. but when has a design ever prevented anyone from doing anything. I would provide examples, but there are too many, and it's too depressing. Why exactly do you think they call it a "shell"?
One thing that you must remember, (and is all too often forgotten,) the rules only work if people AGREE TO PLAY BY THEM. I'm sorry to shout, but this is a simple point that is often overlooked. Societal rules are a tacit, not explicit, agreement to abide by them. It is ONLY your sense of honor that allows them to work at all. the easiest way to make a "killing," is to get a group of people to abide by a set of rules, and then, while no one is looking, break them. And don't talk about "laws," laws are only passed by those who get burned by the "rules," or at least by people who don't follow the spirit of them...
Sometimes I think that Heinlein had it right, (in 'coventry' at least,) that people should be forced to agree to the rules before they are allowed to take part in a society. If you disagree? get lost. As you come of age, (what ever that is now...) you should have to *formally* accept the laws of the place that you live. As of this moment, it is only tacitly agreed that you should follow the laws of the society that you are born into. let's make it mandatory. If you don't like it, find a society that fits your personality, and move there.
I'm drunk, I'm pissed, I'm depressed and I'm opinionated. (not to mention off-topic) and burning karma like a firework.
I have an uncle, (the kind that at least my immediate family is ashamed of.) who sold all his possesions to his wife and bought a really big house in Florida. Why? 'cause he was gonna get nailed, and that's how you break the spirit of the law in this country. And people wonder why Florida is a Republican Stronghold.
Re:One statment in the article is not true...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1
just to be clear, you mean O'Reilly the 'fuck^h^h^hox-wit' not O'Reilly the publisher right?
Michael Caine had some advice about acting that might be apropos, (though I suspect he got it from someone else (Stanislavski perhaps?)) it went something like this;
"Steal, always steal. But make sure you're stealing from the best!"
Re:There's no need to fear...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 3, Informative
the butthole surfers do the best version of this song... there's a clip here.
they just have to be in line along the route. there is a time lapse between the right and left image. the parallax can be whatever you like.
I don't know how this qualifies as a first though, the original spy satellites from the 50's were stereoscopic. what the hell were they called... ah yes, corona.
you're taking jobs away from honest capitalist mechanics and auto builders with that attitude!
cars are designed to break. if cars never broke, why would you ever buy a new one? because it was actually better? gods forbid! what an Un-American(tm) thought! Of course you may not be one... But You should be, we're the greate<hack!-hack!cough-wwuuuagh!-bleh.... out you foul creature!>
sorry, the concept of planned obsolescence brings out the worst in me. I grant Henry Ford some credit for going through the trouble of making an inexpensive car and making sure that no part of it was over engineered relative to the rest of it. the model T was impressive that way. but currently, the idea is to build a car that lasts just slightly longer than the warranty period. (and you thought it was just bad karma....(sorry)) if it's too easy to fix, you'll never buy parts, and that's where the real money in cars is. have you ever tried to figure out the replacement value of your car based on the cost of the individual part? It comes out to something like double or triple the original sticker price of the car. (and I'm being conservative!)
I was under the impression that the gun was developed as a way to make a smaller miniaturized cannon. I don't think the cannon was developed in order to hunt animals.
weren't large animals just driven into traps? (pits with spikes and the like?)
most of the early portable gun history I remember had people with armor.
(See? having a military budget *does* help the civilian lifestyle.;))
back to the earlier point, about what a gun was designed to do. a gun is designed to kill. period. preferably at a considerable distance. whether or not it is used only to threaten is a matter of semantics, you would still be threatening to kill, unless your target was very sure of your aim and stood very still.
bit torrent is designed to distribute, period. what it distributes is up to the distributor(s). analogies between them are a little difficult to sustain.
in response to a separate earlier comment, *I* care whether or not the artist starves to death, I want more art! (and better art!) If I download a piece of music, its generally because it's easier than finding a record player to plug into my computer. (and even then my records are in storage 3 states away.)
I understand that leeches are quite popular in the limb-reattachment area, they apparently are very good a sucking up the internal bleeding. (somehow I recall a show that is supposed to attract the budding young scientist by grossing them out describing it in some detail.) Smithsonian or SciAm had a thing about it at some point...
and to finish they apply the maggots to deal with the necrotic flesh...
as I recall the way hobhouse had it in the book was that the cure for the one disease in question was to have sex with a west-african virgin, as they were carriers of the other disease, and there you had your cure... I didn't think that malaria was an std, so I was pretty sure it was that way around. And as the chapter of the book was about the hunt for artificial quinine as a cure for malaria... (and as a result the modern petro-chemical industry!)
It has been quite some time since I read the book, so my memory may fail me, but I'm pretty sure...
Of course he was retelling a folk cure from a couple hundred years back, so the accuracy of the original bit from the book may indeed be questionable.
the general populace here, this has been one of the more informative discussions I think I've ever seen here. some of the practical points have been very informative.
I think it might be related to the idea that LISP and HTML are very similar in basic construction, i.e. nested structures. and if you are dealing with a language whose construction and operations are based on a similar construction model to the data. the parallel is pretty neat and convenient.
you might be able to equate this thought with those people who think that CSS is bad for XM, as CSS is not in itself a valid XML doc. where if you develop a style sheet that is pure XML you can operate on the data and the style in the same way. (for what that's worth...)
I think for me the hardest thing for me is wrapping my head around the concept of "state-that-is" rather than "program-that-runs." It's getting easier, but slowly.
this is a good set to start with, and look up asdf and asdf install for further libraries that are cross platform/implementation for lisp. saves a lot of trouble, and evens out the differences between the various lithpssssssss
Slashdot Mirror
I like to think so...
Is the earth flat?
Depends on your perspective, If I grew up in the middle of nebraska I would be hard pressed to say otherwise. (I use nebraska rather than kansas, because I've been there, I don't want to make statements about things about which I am completely uninformed.)
As far as my wish for a small tornado, it would only have to hit one building... I have nothing against the state of Kansas as a whole, or as a land mass, just that this would be an expedient way to temporarily end the argument, and cause a whole new one in the process.
(i.e. was the tornado a sign from above, or just a natural occurance of nature...(hey, redundancy!))
long way of saying "it was a joke"
And true, at one point, people thought the earth was flat, then we learned more. then it was round, but still the center of the universe. then we learned more. (though it was recently pointed out to me that given the nature of being in an expanding universe, every point is the point of origin. everything is expanding away from you.) then we were part of a solar system, then we were a part of a galaxy, then part of a universe.
the nice thing about science, is that it tends not to regress.
I tend to find the "I haven't got a clue" answer fairly liberating.
the problem here is that the argument about whether or not there was a creator that started it all is a bit of a distraction. Most religions get their strength from what happens after you die, and work backwards from there. Do you really think the first religious argument began with "Where do we come from?" or the more likely "What happened to Ugg?" or grunts to that effect.
Me, I think I was born due to a biological interaction between my parents, and when I die, I will be (assuming I get around the undertaker lobby) worm food. It's a heavy blow to come to the realization that this is all there is. Your existence is finite, and the only thing that will live on after you is your effect on the society around you. this realization can knock you out. but you get over it.
I was brought up in a houshold that was fairly 'realistic', and as a result, I ended up with a fairly pragmatic view of religion. to me it's a catharsis, to help get around the above "revelation." To some degree, I envy the comfort that some people derive from the belief that when they die it will all be alright, but I don't envy them enough to join in.
The difficulty with getting into a discussion about things like evolution with people of a "new-testament-bible*" persuasion, is that if they *really* believe, they will not be shaken by mere proof. to be fair, the same can be said of firm "evolutionists" though s/proof/faith/g Some of the difficulty arises because you can't just tell someone to "shut up, I'm right." because if you do, you have to shut up and listen when it's their turn. If you don't, you break one of the basic rules of current society. (I refer to rules in the platonic sense here.)
Every once in a while I think about the existence of the Universe and all that exists within it, and I shiver a bit when I think about the concept of what (if anything) was before. and I am sad to know that I won't be around to see how it ends (i hope). I am excited by the possibilty that figuring part of it out will happen within my lifetime. here's hoping anyway. vroomfondel and majikthise can go suck eggs.
As a a side question, how many fundamentalists have read the whole bible, that is from genesis forward, not just the "new testament". I admit I haven't, I started to, but if you are not religious to begin with, there isn't much incentive to keep going when you get to all the begets.
*I refer to new-testament-bible types in partiular as they seem to be the ones driving this particular iteration of this movement, but genesis and the story of the creator god is (in this case) from the old testament, or torah, which is the basis for not only judaism, but christianity and its offshoots and islam.
please gods, a tornado! just a little one will do.
and if they're busy, could someone ring up Glynda?
or hamburger by the germans
or frankfurturs by the germans...
anybody got any more?
btw, anyone else see "better of dead" with john cusack?
"frawnch fries, frawnch toast... "etc. imdb doesn't have that quote... I kept waiting for her to serve the "frawnch tickler"
though I wouldn't like to have to try and actually read the results...
not so much that French is hip, but "something-you're-not" is
my brother tells me the story of when bicycling through belgium, he came across a guy customizing a hod-rod car. on the side were painted the words "sweet girl." when asked, the belgian responded that he wanted something that looked/sounded exotic. A U.S. equivalent might be "cherchez le femme" (or "churchy lafemme" for you Pogo fans...)
I think that it just has to be in a different language. it promotes the need for some one to ask you what it is. makes you feel smart (though possibly only relative to the person asking... (think bad lawyers and latin.)) I suppose it helps that in the U.S. certain languages/accents have come to be hung with certain stereotypes. BBC style British accent=intelligent, French accent=sexy (or stuck-up (or both, for that matter)), Italian=short tempered gangster/lothario. But in all of these cases the primary thing that the accent or the foreign word implies is simply the sense of the exotic.
In the rest of the world, French was/is frequently considered the international language. though with the advent of airtravel, and by necessity international air-traffic control, that has been moving to english for some time. (most computer languages also have their basis in english (keywords and syntax rules for instance.) I find it fairly interesting that ruby, (developed, as far as I know) primarily in Japan, still uses english for the major keywords.)
Finding a name that is not "sue-able" or offensive is a tricky thing. Exxon spent a lot of time and money looking for a new name when Esso was broken up and managed to find that the XX was uncommon or non-existent in all known languages. The fact that Exxon itself eventually became something of an epithet is unrelated, (but pleasantly ironic.)
Rendezvous, at least, had come into relatively common english parlance.
I'm pretty sure the corporation system is not designed to let you create or purchase a shell corporation, commit illegal acts and rack up debts, and then just toss the shell corporation into bankruptcy and say "whoops all forgiven".
designed? no. but when has a design ever prevented anyone from doing anything. I would provide examples, but there are too many, and it's too depressing. Why exactly do you think they call it a "shell"?
One thing that you must remember, (and is all too often forgotten,) the rules only work if people AGREE TO PLAY BY THEM. I'm sorry to shout, but this is a simple point that is often overlooked. Societal rules are a tacit, not explicit, agreement to abide by them. It is ONLY your sense of honor that allows them to work at all. the easiest way to make a "killing," is to get a group of people to abide by a set of rules, and then, while no one is looking, break them. And don't talk about "laws," laws are only passed by those who get burned by the "rules," or at least by people who don't follow the spirit of them...
Sometimes I think that Heinlein had it right, (in 'coventry' at least,) that people should be forced to agree to the rules before they are allowed to take part in a society. If you disagree? get lost. As you come of age, (what ever that is now...) you should have to *formally* accept the laws of the place that you live. As of this moment, it is only tacitly agreed that you should follow the laws of the society that you are born into. let's make it mandatory. If you don't like it, find a society that fits your personality, and move there.
I'm drunk, I'm pissed, I'm depressed and I'm opinionated. (not to mention off-topic) and burning karma like a firework.
I have an uncle, (the kind that at least my immediate family is ashamed of.) who sold all his possesions to his wife and bought a really big house in Florida. Why? 'cause he was gonna get nailed, and that's how you break the spirit of the law in this country. And people wonder why Florida is a Republican Stronghold.
just to be clear, you mean O'Reilly the 'fuck^h^h^hox-wit' not O'Reilly the publisher right?
Michael Caine had some advice about acting that might be apropos, (though I suspect he got it from someone else (Stanislavski perhaps?)) it went something like this;
"Steal, always steal. But make sure you're stealing from the best!"
the butthole surfers do the best version of this song...
there's a clip here.
(amazon's clips seem to be mostly wmv, sorry)
they just have to be in line along the route. there is a time lapse between the right and left image. the parallax can be whatever you like.
I don't know how this qualifies as a first though, the original spy satellites from the 50's were stereoscopic. what the hell were they called... ah yes, corona.
'talk' to a gas station?
what did it say?
commie;-)
you're taking jobs away from honest capitalist mechanics and auto builders with that attitude!
cars are designed to break. if cars never broke, why would you ever buy a new one? because it was actually better? gods forbid! what an Un-American(tm) thought! Of course you may not be one... But You should be, we're the greate<hack!-hack!cough-wwuuuagh!-bleh.... out you foul creature!>
sorry, the concept of planned obsolescence brings out the worst in me. I grant Henry Ford some credit for going through the trouble of making an inexpensive car and making sure that no part of it was over engineered relative to the rest of it. the model T was impressive that way. but currently, the idea is to build a car that lasts just slightly longer than the warranty period. (and you thought it was just bad karma....(sorry)) if it's too easy to fix, you'll never buy parts, and that's where the real money in cars is. have you ever tried to figure out the replacement value of your car based on the cost of the individual part? It comes out to something like double or triple the original sticker price of the car. (and I'm being conservative!)
(have to go get my unicycle!)
after all, most crashes are due to faulty drivers...
bah-dum-bum-tzing!
or 'tu' vs. 'Lei' in italian I suppose.
good to know, thanks
I was under the impression that the gun was developed as a way to make a smaller miniaturized cannon. I don't think the cannon was developed in order to hunt animals.
weren't large animals just driven into traps? (pits with spikes and the like?)
most of the early portable gun history I remember had people with armor.
(See? having a military budget *does* help the civilian lifestyle.;))
back to the earlier point, about what a gun was designed to do. a gun is designed to kill. period. preferably at a considerable distance. whether or not it is used only to threaten is a matter of semantics, you would still be threatening to kill, unless your target was very sure of your aim and stood very still.
bit torrent is designed to distribute, period. what it distributes is up to the distributor(s). analogies between them are a little difficult to sustain.
in response to a separate earlier comment, *I* care whether or not the artist starves to death, I want more art! (and better art!) If I download a piece of music, its generally because it's easier than finding a record player to plug into my computer. (and even then my records are in storage 3 states away.)
Thy, "What is thy bidding, my master?" ;)
I understand that leeches are quite popular in the limb-reattachment area, they apparently are very good a sucking up the internal bleeding. (somehow I recall a show that is supposed to attract the budding young scientist by grossing them out describing it in some detail.) Smithsonian or SciAm had a thing about it at some point...
and to finish they apply the maggots to deal with the necrotic flesh...
mmmmmm maggots!
no, thankfully.
was it the other way around?
as I recall the way hobhouse had it in the book was that the cure for the one disease in question was to have sex with a west-african virgin, as they were carriers of the other disease, and there you had your cure... I didn't think that malaria was an std, so I was pretty sure it was that way around. And as the chapter of the book was about the hunt for artificial quinine as a cure for malaria... (and as a result the modern petro-chemical industry!)
It has been quite some time since I read the book, so my memory may fail me, but I'm pretty sure...
Of course he was retelling a folk cure from a couple hundred years back, so the accuracy of the original bit from the book may indeed be questionable.
which happily will cure your malaria...
stupid bit of OT trivia, syphilis is a cure for malaria.
source, a good read, the history of quinine is particularly fascinating.
or for that matter "Tiger"
the general populace here, this has been one of the more informative discussions I think I've ever seen here. some of the practical points have been very informative.
thank you.
I think it might be related to the idea that LISP and HTML are very similar in basic construction, i.e. nested structures. and if you are dealing with a language whose construction and operations are based on a similar construction model to the data. the parallel is pretty neat and convenient.
you might be able to equate this thought with those people who think that CSS is bad for XM, as CSS is not in itself a valid XML doc. where if you develop a style sheet that is pure XML you can operate on the data and the style in the same way. (for what that's worth...)
I think for me the hardest thing for me is wrapping my head around the concept of "state-that-is" rather than "program-that-runs." It's getting easier, but slowly.
this is a good set to start with, and look up asdf and asdf install for further libraries that are cross platform/implementation for lisp. saves a lot of trouble, and evens out the differences between the various lithpssssssss