You obviously care a lot about excelling at what you do. Been so laser-focused has a few disadvantages though: there are a lot of really good ideas / metaphors / patterns out there that you will miss if you don't diversify a bit.
I'd only add that salaries and passion or hours put into the job are only correlated in a very narrow sense. Salaries are a function of supply / demand (in an fictionalized scenario) but also of gender bias / connections / corruption / other stuff in the real world.
Coming from Mexico city, my experience with traffic cops is this: they really are corrupt. But they usually won't stop you without a reason (like making an wrong turn, or going the wrong way). I would just tell them something like this: "I'm sorry officer, I didn't see the sign. If you're going to give me a ticket it's Ok. But I'm kindof in a hurry". They of course don't want to give you a ticket, what they really want is that you produce some cash to avoid the fine. After 20 min - half an hour they realize there not going to get money from me and rather be chasing somebody else, and just let me go.
One problem here is comparing python vs C/C++/Java only. Because those languages are very verbose on their own. An interesting comparison would be python vs Scala, for example. In my own very limited testing of scala, I'd say it requires marginally more code than python (for simple things, at least).
Dawkins does not claim that science can "prove" de non-existence of god (as in a mathematical proof).
That would be silly. What science can do is consider the idea of god as an hipothesis with physical consecuences and investigate about it. As in, "gather evidence for or against it".
And for the record, the fact that dawkins does "science" for a living has nothing to do with the fact that he can discuss and analyze religion rationally.
He could sell cars or write poetry or develop video games and still could use his intellect to think critically and cuestion dogmas and arrive to rational answers.
He would still arrive to the conclusion that there is zero evidence of a supranatural entity resembling "god".
This thing about international communications got me thinking: if we concede that foreign people (wrt. some country) still have many rights that nationals have (for example, human rights), and if we concede that somehow is not right to spy on domestic population, then should it not be wrong to spy on anyone? As in "is wrong to torture people whatever its origin"?
What happens is that as available stocks shrink, and the cost of mining more increases, the cost of that resource also goes up. This provides a natural economic incentive both to find alternatives, and to recycle
Up to this point I think everybody can agree.
Now, whether "economically feasible" alternatives can be found in reasonable time or at all is another thing.
This kind of argument seems funny to me. Of course running a web browser or running a word processor won't benefit from this computer power. But it doesn't need to.
You could say as well that your watch calculator (remember those?) won't benefit from multiple cores (although perhaps it does).
What will benefit from this computer power will be games (and virtual environments), transcoding media files, automatic language translation, object recognition, driverless cars, and a thousand things that we don't do right now because we haven't even thought about it because we don't have the computer power.
Online distribution without compensating the copyright holder will cause the arts to suffer. Yes, artists are getting ripped off by music companies, that will change as online downloads dramatically decreases the cost of distributing the work to the people.
Please, could we stop using the word "artist" in such careless way? What about: musician, singer, entertainer, entepreneur, showman, composer, dancer, performer, etc, etc.
Let's reserve artist for the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo da vinci, Beethoven, Cervantes, even Bob Dylan, but to call britney spears "an artist" abusing the word.
In retrospect our actions (particularly in Latin-America) weren't justifiable but it's too easy to condemn them with the full benefit of historical hindsight.
I take offence at this paragraph. The actions of the US government in latin-america where inexcusable all the time, not "in retrospect".
I think we all know what kind of regimes where supported by the US at that time. Cruel and corrupt dictators, serving racist plutocracies.
If fact, if you think of it, what better way to promote communism than support such regimes, with no democracy, no civic liberties, no rechtsstaat, no middle class, no even political prisoners in some countries (all disenters simply disappeared, tortured and killed).
Let me see if I understand this clearly.
It is written in a book that:
Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim said that:
Ibn Abbas said that:
he heard that:
Muhammed said
"Every maker of pictures will go to the fire, where a being will be set upon him to torment him in hell for each picture he made. So if you must, draw tress and things without animate life in them."
That's a lot of "I heard, he said". Have you ever played the game called "Chinese whispers", or "broken telephone" or just "telephone"? Here's a link.
And we are lead to believe that Muhammed said the statement above. I'm a little puzzled at this point. why should he said such a thing?
Does he really dislike so much pictures of humans? In that case, why he not simply said "I don't really like pictures, please don't show them to me"?
Although, from the sentence, it is not really inferred that he hates pictures. He just makes an assertion of the type "this will happen if...". As if he somehow knew it to be true. It even seems that he is trying to protect the ignorant (of the torment).
Now, the assertion raises many questions: Who will send the maker of pictures to fire? for what reason? by what right? what "being" will torment the maker of pictures? can we not do anything to stop this arbitrarity?
and most important of all: why does he believes all this to be true?. If he wants us to believe in he, should he not be more specific and provide adequate proof?
That is from his perspective. Now from a modern reader. Suppose that he really believes the assertion to be true. so what? why should the reader believe in what he believes?
Perhaps it would help if what he says be at least plausible. But tell me, what reason would have someone (or some being) to torture and torment all painters of human beings?
I, for example, can think of some extremely dangerous side effects of religion, like being brain washed since birth into believing nonsense, or perhaps the worst of all: faith. Faith, as you know, is essentially a back-door into your mind, and it has been abused many many times.
Yeah, that's also why I won't give my child any money for health care, or food. Not a penny. I'm going to make them pay their own way, out of their trust funds and other incomes. If I paid for it and gave them a free health care or food, they wouldn't value it at all.
And speaking of which, have you noticed how little people value the free air? Perhaps we should start charging for it...
Chavez might be unpopular in México (due to manipulative media), but Castro and specially Guevara definitely not. Guevara has some sort of pop icon status.
And governments can only reasonably make a profit in three different ways: 1) tax the bejesus out of the population, 2) actually print money, and 3) take wealth out of other nations without their consent.
You forgot to mention the possibility that goverments actualy can create wealth, as in, owning a business or a factory or financing open source development, etc.
Nicaragua went through a revolution in 1979. It's new goverment, (the sandinistas) had leftist inclinations, but calling them "comunists" is very misleading.
They where just a very corrupt goverment, and had to fight a war against US sponsored mercenaries.
When they lost elections, I think it was due to people wanting finish the war (even at the cost of another corroupt goverment) but obviuosly also due to its incompetence.
Also, as a general rule, please don't use a word if you have no idea of its meaning. I'm talking about "comunism".
Comunism is not the kind of goverment the USSR suffered through 1917-1990. Comunism is some sort of utopia, and I'd say it's all about freedom (economic freedom, etc). So it has nothing to do with the USSR.
In fact, you're just repeting the official US propaganda of the cold war, of calling "comunist" everything or everyone who they felt was "anticapitalist", which is to say, anti american corporations.
For example, did you know that the guatemalan democratic elected goverment in 1945-1955 was labeled as "comunist"? The reason?, they were afecting US "American Fruit Company"'s interests.
Sadly, after the CIA backed coup in 1954 what followed was a list of brutal military dictatorships which kept the country in a semi-feudal state. No wonder there was several guerillas fighting in several central-american countries (guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua).
And guess what?, Of course US supported those brutal dictatorships. For example, in 90's in el salvador the guerrilla (FMLN) launched a full scale atack against the goverment, but had the little inconvenient of having to figth virtually against the US army. It is said that the US help to the el salvador goverment was in the order of 1 million dollars a day just for military expenses.
Those guerrillas received some support of cuba and USSR, but there is no comparison between that help and the kind of help that those goverments received.
Finally, I would ask: If you had the determination to give monetary support to someone, who would you prefer?
a) An oppressive totalitarian goverment whose only interest is mantain that status quo (extrem poverty, ignorance, racism,) because they profit from these state of affairs?
b) A group who a allegedly fight for the well-being of the people (and which of course were force to insurrect due to the lack of democracy)?
Of course there are many factors to consider, but my choice definitely wouldn't be (a) !
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously care a lot about excelling at what you do. Been so laser-focused has a few disadvantages though: there are a lot of really good ideas / metaphors / patterns out there that you will miss if you don't diversify a bit.
I'd only add that salaries and passion or hours put into the job are only correlated in a very narrow sense. Salaries are a function of supply / demand (in an fictionalized scenario) but also of gender bias / connections / corruption / other stuff in the real world.
Coming from Mexico city, my experience with traffic cops is this: they really are corrupt. But they usually won't stop you without a reason (like making an wrong turn, or going the wrong way). I would just tell them something like this: "I'm sorry officer, I didn't see the sign. If you're going to give me a ticket it's Ok. But I'm kindof in a hurry". They of course don't want to give you a ticket, what they really want is that you produce some cash to avoid the fine. After 20 min - half an hour they realize there not going to get money from me and rather be chasing somebody else, and just let me go.
Oh, come on, even I can see that this plan has some ...uh ... flaws...
And here I was thinking all jews have superior IQ.
One problem here is comparing python vs C/C++/Java only. Because those languages are very verbose on their own. An interesting comparison would be python vs Scala, for example. In my own very limited testing of scala, I'd say it requires marginally more code than python (for simple things, at least).
won the peace nobel prize, I say: what the hell.
I vote for "so?".
The guy's name is "Miguel Alcubierre", not "Michael Alcubierre".
That would be silly. What science can do is consider the idea of god as an hipothesis with physical consecuences and investigate about it. As in, "gather evidence for or against it".
And for the record, the fact that dawkins does "science" for a living has nothing to do with the fact that he can discuss and analyze religion rationally.
He could sell cars or write poetry or develop video games and still could use his intellect to think critically and cuestion dogmas and arrive to rational answers.
He would still arrive to the conclusion that there is zero evidence of a supranatural entity resembling "god".
Despite it's non-standard interface (which is been rewritten right now), it can increase your productivity, what 5, 10-fold?
"there is NOTHING that wiretapping will do to prevent those that hate us from doing damage to us"
Generally you don't "hate" *all* people of some country. Perhaps you hate its government, or its international policy, of its religion, or whatever.
Second, even if you hate something, the chances that you decide to become a terrorist are almost zero ( #terrorist / #haters ~ 0 )
Third, I really doubt that the main motivation to become a terrorist is pure hate.
This thing about international communications got me thinking: if we concede that foreign people (wrt. some country) still have many rights that nationals have (for example, human rights), and if we concede that somehow is not right to spy on domestic population, then should it not be wrong to spy on anyone? As in "is wrong to torture people whatever its origin"?
What happens is that as available stocks shrink, and the cost of mining more increases, the cost of that resource also goes up. This provides a natural economic incentive both to find alternatives, and to recycle
Up to this point I think everybody can agree.
Now, whether "economically feasible" alternatives can be found in reasonable time or at all is another thing.
You could say as well that your watch calculator (remember those?) won't benefit from multiple cores (although perhaps it does).
What will benefit from this computer power will be games (and virtual environments), transcoding media files, automatic language translation, object recognition, driverless cars, and a thousand things that we don't do right now because we haven't even thought about it because we don't have the computer power.
Please, could we stop using the word "artist" in such careless way? What about: musician, singer, entertainer, entepreneur, showman, composer, dancer, performer, etc, etc.
Let's reserve artist for the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo da vinci, Beethoven, Cervantes, even Bob Dylan, but to call britney spears "an artist" abusing the word.
In retrospect our actions (particularly in Latin-America) weren't justifiable but it's too easy to condemn them with the full benefit of historical hindsight.
I take offence at this paragraph. The actions of the US government in latin-america where inexcusable all the time, not "in retrospect".
I think we all know what kind of regimes where supported by the US at that time. Cruel and corrupt dictators, serving racist plutocracies.
If fact, if you think of it, what better way to promote communism than support such regimes, with no democracy, no civic liberties, no rechtsstaat, no middle class, no even political prisoners in some countries (all disenters simply disappeared, tortured and killed).
One could make a short story based on just this sentence. :)
Let me see if I understand this clearly.
It is written in a book that:
Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim said that:
Ibn Abbas said that:
he heard that:
Muhammed said
"Every maker of pictures will go to the fire, where a being will be set upon him to torment him in hell for each picture he made. So if you must, draw tress and things without animate life in them."
That's a lot of "I heard, he said". Have you ever played the game called "Chinese whispers", or "broken telephone" or just "telephone"? Here's a link.
And we are lead to believe that Muhammed said the statement above. I'm a little puzzled at this point. why should he said such a thing?
Does he really dislike so much pictures of humans? In that case, why he not simply said "I don't really like pictures, please don't show them to me"?
Although, from the sentence, it is not really inferred that he hates pictures. He just makes an assertion of the type "this will happen if...". As if he somehow knew it to be true. It even seems that he is trying to protect the ignorant (of the torment).
Now, the assertion raises many questions: Who will send the maker of pictures to fire? for what reason? by what right? what "being" will torment the maker of pictures? can we not do anything to stop this arbitrarity?
and most important of all: why does he believes all this to be true?. If he wants us to believe in he, should he not be more specific and provide adequate proof?
That is from his perspective. Now from a modern reader. Suppose that he really believes the assertion to be true. so what? why should the reader believe in what he believes?
Perhaps it would help if what he says be at least plausible. But tell me, what reason would have someone (or some being) to torture and torment all painters of human beings?
Oh, really?
That's a very bold statement.
I, for example, can think of some extremely dangerous side effects of religion, like being brain washed since birth into believing nonsense, or perhaps the worst of all: faith. Faith, as you know, is essentially a back-door into your mind, and it has been abused many many times.
Yeah, that's also why I won't give my child any money for health care, or food. Not a penny. I'm going to make them pay their own way, out of their trust funds and other incomes. If I paid for it and gave them a free health care or food, they wouldn't value it at all.
And speaking of which, have you noticed how little people value the free air? Perhaps we should start charging for it...
Chavez might be unpopular in México (due to manipulative media), but Castro and specially Guevara definitely not. Guevara has some sort of pop icon status.
And governments can only reasonably make a profit in three different ways: 1) tax the bejesus out of the population, 2) actually print money, and 3) take wealth out of other nations without their consent.
You forgot to mention the possibility that goverments actualy can create wealth, as in, owning a business or a factory or financing open source development, etc.
Well said!
Of course it is a work of fiction. It is a little bit sad that you consider it "excellent", though.
May I suggest some damn good readings?
Try something by Umberto Eco, perhaps The Name of the Rose, or even Foucault's Pendulum.
Personally I find amusing all the fuss about such a crappy book. I really couldn't care less if the events narrated in the book are "true" or not.
Nicaragua went through a revolution in 1979. It's new goverment, (the sandinistas) had leftist inclinations, but calling them "comunists" is very misleading.
They where just a very corrupt goverment, and had to fight a war against US sponsored mercenaries.
When they lost elections, I think it was due to people wanting finish the war (even at the cost of another corroupt goverment) but obviuosly also due to its incompetence.
Also, as a general rule, please don't use a word if you have no idea of its meaning. I'm talking about "comunism".
Comunism is not the kind of goverment the USSR suffered through 1917-1990. Comunism is some sort of utopia, and I'd say it's all about freedom (economic freedom, etc). So it has nothing to do with the USSR.
In fact, you're just repeting the official US propaganda of the cold war, of calling "comunist" everything or everyone who they felt was "anticapitalist", which is to say, anti american corporations.
For example, did you know that the guatemalan democratic elected goverment in 1945-1955 was labeled as "comunist"? The reason?, they were afecting US "American Fruit Company"'s interests.
Sadly, after the CIA backed coup in 1954 what followed was a list of brutal military dictatorships which kept the country in a semi-feudal state. No wonder there was several guerillas fighting in several central-american countries (guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua).
And guess what?, Of course US supported those brutal dictatorships. For example, in 90's in el salvador the guerrilla (FMLN) launched a full scale atack against the goverment, but had the little inconvenient of having to figth virtually against the US army. It is said that the US help to the el salvador goverment was in the order of 1 million dollars a day just for military expenses.
Those guerrillas received some support of cuba and USSR, but there is no comparison between that help and the kind of help that those goverments received.
Finally, I would ask: If you had the determination to give monetary support to someone, who would you prefer? a) An oppressive totalitarian goverment whose only interest is mantain that status quo (extrem poverty, ignorance, racism,) because they profit from these state of affairs?
b) A group who a allegedly fight for the well-being of the people (and which of course were force to insurrect due to the lack of democracy)?
Of course there are many factors to consider, but my choice definitely wouldn't be (a) !