Re:why bother
on
eyeBlog
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I am often able to sense eye contact without any sensors at all. Anyone else?
Animal instinct, I think. Spot the tiger that's just spotted you.
IIRC research has shown that if a predator is eyeing up a herd of prey (e.g. cheetah lounging near grazing antelopes), typically one of the herd will start getting skittish while the others graze on obliviously, and sure enough the nervous one is the one that gets eaten.
Of course, this instinct weakens if people are used to getting stared at, which is why it's always easier to get served by the ugly waitress than the pretty one, 'cos the pretty one doesn't register being looked at as out of the ordinary.:)
ah, but when the church uses the term evidence but it's not direct evidence many say that because it's not direct evidence that you can't believe what is derived.
Like what?
But, when the science claims that then have evidence but no direct evidence I am supposed to believe it.
No. You are supposed to think that it represents a likely scenario and it is a plausible explanation of what happened. There is no "belief" in science, other than as a figure of speech.
I guess the main argumentation of Roger Penrose is that Godel Incompleteness Theorem can not be understood by a computer, because it is computationally undecidable in structure. Well humans can and are therefor outside computation.
The only thing that proves is that humans can convince themselves that they understand something which they actually don't.:-)
used to be the standard advertising slogan for webmail - didn't help much when 90% of the webmail outfits went bust.
100 (or 99) year leases make sense only at government level - hong kong and macao were leased for 99 years, as is guantanamo bay (the agreement was done before the communists took power, but they honoured the deal).
Technically speaking, you're in debt pretty major with a mortgage payment... so it's a great deal like a budget deficit works.
But by paying your mortgage, your debt is decreasing. A decrease in debt is the same as a profit (=surplus). A deficit means your debt is increasing, as the other poster pointed out.
So we need to stop spending money on everything until the deficit is 0? Equivalently, if you've got a mortgage on your house, then you need to stop spending money on all non-essentials like eating out, owning a car, having more than seven sets of clothes (laundry once a week), computers, eating dessert,...
If you have a mortgage, but your salary more than covers your mortgage payments, you do not have a deficit.
However, if you already can't pay your mortgage and your solution is to move to a bigger house in the hope that by stimulating the housing market it might get you a better-paying job, the US goverment would probably like to hire you as a financial adviser.
The original description said the national debt was money "owed by the taxpayer". The taxpayer does not "owe" anything as long as he/she/it pays their taxes. It is the government that owes. The government is not the sum total of its citizens - it is a separate entity.
it could hypothetically use some other mechanism, like taking out a loan from a commercial bank (although it makes no fiscal sense)
Yes. But it frequently makes pork-barrel sense, cf. the (aborted) boeing tanker lease deal. (which would have amounted to the same thing)
All the money the Treasury borrows is money that the taxpayers eventually have to repay,
No. The treasury has to repay it, not the taxpayers. Tax revenue is the obvious way of raising the money to do so, but not the only one.
Simply stated, the national debt is what taxpayers owe the treasury for purchases made by the government.
Nope. The national debt is what the treasury owes to holders of government bonds for money spent by the govt that didn't come from taxpayers. Do you think only americans buy US govt bonds? Hint: Chinese banks own an awful lot of them, it called a "foreign currency reserve".
I am not talking about totalitarians (eg. USSR) calling themselves republic; I'm talking about a corrupted republic calling themselves republic.
Maybe we're not really disagreeing with each other. Where do you determined where totalitarianism stops and "merely corrupted" begins? North Korea is totalitarian and Zimbabwe is not? What about Haiti? Then it comes back down to drawing an (arbitrary) distinction - which is what you're accusing me of doing.
What exactly does "could" mean?
Just that. Politics is about power, and power is about potential. What you "could" do if you were in power, and get away with it (stay in power). For example, even though the UK (where I live) is not technically a democracy, with all executive power being exercised in the name of the monarch, it is generally held that QE2 "could" never actually dissolve parliament and take over power herself, even though it is theoretically in her power. (Not that I'm happy with that situation myself, I think the monarchy should be gotten rid of.)
Hitler was an authoratarian and did things (eg. stacked the court in his favour) but overall, very little changed.
Uh, apart from all opposition parties being banned...
THe problem with your view is that YOU are making up the criteria.
Nonsense. I didn't invent representative democracy. Ideas such as universal suffrage and separation of powers have been around for centuries. I'm not making anything up.
What does that mean? That is to say, how is someone supposed to figure out if opposition can get into power. If one party dominates for a long time, is it all of a sudden a dictatorship of some sort?
It's generally accepted that continuing rule by the same party is bad for any country... But I did say the potential for the opposition to win, not that it needs to happen every 10 years.
USA was ruled by one party for long stretches of time.
Yes, but they had internal factions, disagreements etc., but they were carried out peacefully - people were allowed to disagree, and sometimes the prevailing mood changed. It wasn't the same private club ruling for 100 years.
Japan has been ruled by one party since WWII (though they lost in the late 90's or early 2000's I think).
What I said about prolonged single-party rule being bad. But the opposition COULD have gotten into power - they weren't being tortured in jail, just not enough people voted for them.
As long as there are courts, elections, and so forth (however bogus), the country should rightly be called a republic (if it is one).
Well, we'll just have to disagree here. (Of course in practice, there's no way you can stop a dictator from calling himself whatever he/she likes, so it's a bit of a moot point...)
Consuls weren't elected by the seperate castes. All the people voted for those running; those with the two highest totals won. Simple as that. For a good deal of their history, though, only the patres were allowed to run, and even when the plebs were allowed to try to become consul, they hardly ever won.
Down to the year B.C. 366, the consulship was accessible to none but patricians, but in that year L. Sextius was the first plebeian consul in consequence of the law of C. Licinius (Liv. vi.42, vii.1). The patricians however, notwithstanding the law, repeatedly contrived to keep the plebeians out (Liv. vii.17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28), until in B.C. 342 the insurrection of the army of Capua was followed, among other important consequences, by the firm establishment of the plebeian consulship; and it is even said that at that time a plebiscitum was passed, enacting that both consuls might be plebeians (Liv. vii.42). Attempts on the part of the patricians to exclude the plebeians, occur as late as the year B.C. 297 (Liv. x.15, Cic. Brut. 14) but they did not succeed, and it remained a principle of the Roman constitution that both consuls should not be patricians (Liv. xxvii.34, Liv. xxxix.42). The candidates usually were divided into two sets, the one desirous to obtain the patrician, and the other to obtain the plebeian place in the consulship (in unum locum petebant, Liv. xxxv.10). But as in the course of time the patricians were thrown into the shade by the rising power of the nobiles, it came to pass that both consuls were plebeians. In B.C. 215, the augurs indeed opposed the election of two plebeians (Liv. xxiii.31); but not long after, in B.C. 172, the fact of both consuls being plebeians actually occurred, and after this it was often repeated, the ancient distinction between patricians and plebeians falling completely into oblivion.
For instance, if I take over USA legally (i.e. get elected*) and turn into a totalitarian of some type (say like Stalin), USA would STILL be considered a republic.
Germany wasn't considered a republic after Hitler was voted into office - but he made no pretensions towards it, of course, and even changed the name of the country to reflect it.
The point I'm making is, the type of system does not change just because of corruption. For example, a monarchy could be very "democratic" yet it will still be labelled a monarchy. What matters is the structure.
Are you saying that Hussein's Iraq had the same political structure as the US, or of any european republic (quite different!) for that matter?
The question is, what institutions make a republic, by which I mean a representative democracy. A parliament elected by plebiscite, an independent judiciary, etc.. These things exist, to a greater or lesser extent, in every democratic country, but obviously you can argue that such institutions can exist in name only in what is otherwise a dictatorship.
Maybe a more practical test is whether the opposition can get into power. North Korea may hold elections, just like the Soviet Union did, but there is only one party that can win. It's a similar case in Zimbabwe, where opposition politicians are beaten and tortured for disagreeing with the "democratically elected president" Mugabe.
As far as I know, in India, even if corruption is rife, goverment can and does change at the will of the people. Therefore, India is a democracy, whereas NK or Iraq aren't. Does that sound reasonable?
"Dictatorial Republic" Actually this would make sense. A republic is simply a state without a monarch for head of state. A military dictatorship could for instance be called a dictatorial republic.
Not in the real sense of the word, in which a republic is governed by representatives of the public. ("Res publica" = "public affair"). The original (roman) republic was governed by two consuls, one elected by each caste (plebs & patres).
However, in the 50's or so the tinpot dictators of recently independent 3rd world countries realised that people took them more seriously if they at least went through the motions of representative democracy, so they styled themselves as "President" rather than "God-king", called their country a "Republic" and held "Elections". (e.g., the last presidential election in Iraq, in which one S. Hussein got 100% of the vote).
Of course, that doesn't change what these countries are, which is despotic fiefdoms.
When someone finally gets through to a real person after cursing their way through the system, it will probably be Helga from the old Kremlin Customer Support. She take care of you!
A cellular automaton is simply a description of a discrete differential equation. Since physical laws are described in terms of differential equations to start with, it's not surprising that a cellular automaton can model a physical process.
So what's the deal? Outside of Wolfram's ego, of course.
The "deal" is that he's trying to appear cutting edge and jump the genetics/bioscience bandwagon by using biological metaphors. That's all there is to the book, as far as I can tell.
This new kind of science - what's that all about? Is it good, or is it wack?
For a change, this is actually a legitimate question. Having browsed through a friend's copy (thank god I didn't splash out for one of my own) I have come to the conclusion that it is "whack". A colossal exercise in vanity publishing, nothing else (except for the gratuitious advertising for his own software). Pretty pictures though.
There is a market for plain jane caluators, but you can't find them.
Not entirely true. There is a big market for calculators with large buttons (the middle aged and elderly frequently prefer them), and they normally have very few functions, sometimes not even square root. There are also "currency conversion" calculators which do nothing but basic arithmetic and multiply/divide by a a constant (i.e. currency conversion).
I know this because my parents find the buttons (as well as the lettering on them) on most scientific calculators too small to use/read, but it's hard to find large calculators that actually do anything beyond basic arithmetic.
Slashdot Mirror
Animal instinct, I think. Spot the tiger that's just spotted you.
IIRC research has shown that if a predator is eyeing up a herd of prey (e.g. cheetah lounging near grazing antelopes), typically one of the herd will start getting skittish while the others graze on obliviously, and sure enough the nervous one is the one that gets eaten.
Of course, this instinct weakens if people are used to getting stared at, which is why it's always easier to get served by the ugly waitress than the pretty one, 'cos the pretty one doesn't register being looked at as out of the ordinary. :)
Like what?
But, when the science claims that then have evidence but no direct evidence I am supposed to believe it.
No. You are supposed to think that it represents a likely scenario and it is a plausible explanation of what happened. There is no "belief" in science, other than as a figure of speech.
The only thing that proves is that humans can convince themselves that they understand something which they actually don't. :-)
(sort of like a badly programmed computer)
used to be the standard advertising slogan for webmail - didn't help much when 90% of the webmail outfits went bust.
100 (or 99) year leases make sense only at government level - hong kong and macao were leased for 99 years, as is guantanamo bay (the agreement was done before the communists took power, but they honoured the deal).
The key word in that sentence is "seemingly".
But by paying your mortgage, your debt is decreasing. A decrease in debt is the same as a profit (=surplus). A deficit means your debt is increasing, as the other poster pointed out.
(And yes, I did an accounting course at school)
If you have a mortgage, but your salary more than covers your mortgage payments, you do not have a deficit.
However, if you already can't pay your mortgage and your solution is to move to a bigger house in the hope that by stimulating the housing market it might get you a better-paying job, the US goverment would probably like to hire you as a financial adviser.
The original description said the national debt was money "owed by the taxpayer". The taxpayer does not "owe" anything as long as he/she/it pays their taxes. It is the government that owes. The government is not the sum total of its citizens - it is a separate entity.
it could hypothetically use some other mechanism, like taking out a loan from a commercial bank (although it makes no fiscal sense)
Yes. But it frequently makes pork-barrel sense, cf. the (aborted) boeing tanker lease deal. (which would have amounted to the same thing)
All the money the Treasury borrows is money that the taxpayers eventually have to repay,
No. The treasury has to repay it, not the taxpayers. Tax revenue is the obvious way of raising the money to do so, but not the only one.
Nope. The national debt is what the treasury owes to holders of government bonds for money spent by the govt that didn't come from taxpayers. Do you think only americans buy US govt bonds? Hint: Chinese banks own an awful lot of them, it called a "foreign currency reserve".
Maybe we're not really disagreeing with each other. Where do you determined where totalitarianism stops and "merely corrupted" begins? North Korea is totalitarian and Zimbabwe is not? What about Haiti? Then it comes back down to drawing an (arbitrary) distinction - which is what you're accusing me of doing.
What exactly does "could" mean?
Just that. Politics is about power, and power is about potential. What you "could" do if you were in power, and get away with it (stay in power). For example, even though the UK (where I live) is not technically a democracy, with all executive power being exercised in the name of the monarch, it is generally held that QE2 "could" never actually dissolve parliament and take over power herself, even though it is theoretically in her power. (Not that I'm happy with that situation myself, I think the monarchy should be gotten rid of.)
Uh, apart from all opposition parties being banned...
THe problem with your view is that YOU are making up the criteria.Nonsense. I didn't invent representative democracy. Ideas such as universal suffrage and separation of powers have been around for centuries. I'm not making anything up.
What does that mean? That is to say, how is someone supposed to figure out if opposition can get into power. If one party dominates for a long time, is it all of a sudden a dictatorship of some sort?
It's generally accepted that continuing rule by the same party is bad for any country... But I did say the potential for the opposition to win, not that it needs to happen every 10 years.
USA was ruled by one party for long stretches of time.
Yes, but they had internal factions, disagreements etc., but they were carried out peacefully - people were allowed to disagree, and sometimes the prevailing mood changed. It wasn't the same private club ruling for 100 years.
Japan has been ruled by one party since WWII (though they lost in the late 90's or early 2000's I think).
What I said about prolonged single-party rule being bad. But the opposition COULD have gotten into power - they weren't being tortured in jail, just not enough people voted for them.
As long as there are courts, elections, and so forth (however bogus), the country should rightly be called a republic (if it is one).
Well, we'll just have to disagree here. (Of course in practice, there's no way you can stop a dictator from calling himself whatever he/she likes, so it's a bit of a moot point...)
You mean like the file-sharing thieves? They steal bandwidth too... ;-)
Not from the 4th century BC onwards. Read this.
Down to the year B.C. 366, the consulship was accessible to none but patricians, but in that year L. Sextius was the first plebeian consul in consequence of the law of C. Licinius (Liv. vi.42, vii.1). The patricians however, notwithstanding the law, repeatedly contrived to keep the plebeians out (Liv. vii.17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28), until in B.C. 342 the insurrection of the army of Capua was followed, among other important consequences, by the firm establishment of the plebeian consulship; and it is even said that at that time a plebiscitum was passed, enacting that both consuls might be plebeians (Liv. vii.42). Attempts on the part of the patricians to exclude the plebeians, occur as late as the year B.C. 297 (Liv. x.15, Cic. Brut. 14) but they did not succeed, and it remained a principle of the Roman constitution that both consuls should not be patricians (Liv. xxvii.34, Liv. xxxix.42). The candidates usually were divided into two sets, the one desirous to obtain the patrician, and the other to obtain the plebeian place in the consulship (in unum locum petebant, Liv. xxxv.10). But as in the course of time the patricians were thrown into the shade by the rising power of the nobiles, it came to pass that both consuls were plebeians. In B.C. 215, the augurs indeed opposed the election of two plebeians (Liv. xxiii.31); but not long after, in B.C. 172, the fact of both consuls being plebeians actually occurred, and after this it was often repeated, the ancient distinction between patricians and plebeians falling completely into oblivion.
Germany wasn't considered a republic after Hitler was voted into office - but he made no pretensions towards it, of course, and even changed the name of the country to reflect it.
The point I'm making is, the type of system does not change just because of corruption. For example, a monarchy could be very "democratic" yet it will still be labelled a monarchy. What matters is the structure.
Are you saying that Hussein's Iraq had the same political structure as the US, or of any european republic (quite different!) for that matter?
The question is, what institutions make a republic, by which I mean a representative democracy. A parliament elected by plebiscite, an independent judiciary, etc.. These things exist, to a greater or lesser extent, in every democratic country, but obviously you can argue that such institutions can exist in name only in what is otherwise a dictatorship.
Maybe a more practical test is whether the opposition can get into power. North Korea may hold elections, just like the Soviet Union did, but there is only one party that can win. It's a similar case in Zimbabwe, where opposition politicians are beaten and tortured for disagreeing with the "democratically elected president" Mugabe.
As far as I know, in India, even if corruption is rife, goverment can and does change at the will of the people. Therefore, India is a democracy, whereas NK or Iraq aren't. Does that sound reasonable?
Not in the real sense of the word, in which a republic is governed by representatives of the public. ("Res publica" = "public affair"). The original (roman) republic was governed by two consuls, one elected by each caste (plebs & patres).
However, in the 50's or so the tinpot dictators of recently independent 3rd world countries realised that people took them more seriously if they at least went through the motions of representative democracy, so they styled themselves as "President" rather than "God-king", called their country a "Republic" and held "Elections". (e.g., the last presidential election in Iraq, in which one S. Hussein got 100% of the vote).
Of course, that doesn't change what these countries are, which is despotic fiefdoms.
But Bangla is damn nice, especially the 660ml bottles it comes in.
Maybe they spend a lot of time working on localisation, the results of which the "english-speaking world" never hears about?
In Soviet Russia customer support swears at you!
So what's the deal? Outside of Wolfram's ego, of course.
The "deal" is that he's trying to appear cutting edge and jump the genetics/bioscience bandwagon by using biological metaphors. That's all there is to the book, as far as I can tell.
For a change, this is actually a legitimate question. Having browsed through a friend's copy (thank god I didn't splash out for one of my own) I have come to the conclusion that it is "whack". A colossal exercise in vanity publishing, nothing else (except for the gratuitious advertising for his own software). Pretty pictures though.
Ah, but does he build suspension bridges in his back yard?
Fair enough. I guess it's one we'll soon see on phones as well.
Not entirely true. There is a big market for calculators with large buttons (the middle aged and elderly frequently prefer them), and they normally have very few functions, sometimes not even square root. There are also "currency conversion" calculators which do nothing but basic arithmetic and multiply/divide by a a constant (i.e. currency conversion).
I know this because my parents find the buttons (as well as the lettering on them) on most scientific calculators too small to use/read, but it's hard to find large calculators that actually do anything beyond basic arithmetic.
My Nxh3! pWn5 j00r Bc3 b0x0rs!!!!1
or is it, even? it doesn't appear to be on their web site....I wonder why...