I merely expressed a preference. That's all and it's nothing more.
I think there's a little more to it that than. When you compare, you are making an implicit claim that the two are comparable. What if I had said, "I prefer Snoop Dog's Doggystyle to Twilight Zone." Are the two really comparable? A music album compared to a TV series? Why would the two be comparable? Or how about, "I prefer hand-made Swiss watches to Twilight Zone"...? People would say that that's non-nonsensical, and it is. But your comparison is sensical. Why? Because they have an element in common.
The implicit claim is that they have something in common and they 'compete' with one another in this aspect -- that one is worse or better than the other in this dimension that they have in common.
It's always helpful to deconstruct your customer's or client's feedback into outcomes or objectives instead of technical specifications. And if they ask for something specific it's usually a good idea to define whether they really want that in specific thing or there is some specific attribute of that thing that think is unique to it.
The thing about that is that you have to talk them into the idea that what you're offering is *really* want they want, not what they already think they want. Which takes some marketing and salesmanship savvy. If people have made a decision ( " I need a brigher backlight" ) it takes a lot of work to get them to change their position.
You can clean your streets without having the banner of five rings looming over them. Do you think that the olympic committee comes in and does the work?
Sure, all these things are *theoretically* possible. But the key is motivation. How well do you clean your house as compared to when you have guests coming over?
There are fairly well defined geographical boundaries.
They're fairly arbitrary as far as culture goes. You won't find a wall of culture where one culture stops and another one starts.
I don't think anyone would argue that Africa belongs to Europe.
Does the mediterranean belong to Europe? Rome has had much more influence from the middle east and Africa -- itself being a Mediterranean city -- than, say, Scandinavia has had on it. Why, Vatican city is the head of a religion that originated in the middle east!
So if you look at it, yeah, all the cities on the North coast of Africa have much more connection with Southern Europe than they do Southern Africa.
I just say that questioning immigration and dilution of local culture brought by immigration is a concern and a valid topic for discussion. And people bringing it up shouldn't be written off as Nazis or racists or whatever.
I agree with you about discussions of culture and I don't think you're a Nazi or racist ( at least from what you've said so far;) I think where people get hung up is the terms you use. Like "European culture" when 1. there
It seems what you are saying is you want more good stuff, and less bad stuff. I think what raises people's alarm systems is presentation of the idea that the "native" culture is composed of only the good stuff, which must be kept ( an idea which you rightfully disagree with anyway ), and that the outsiders are bringing in "bad" stuff and must be resisted. This kind of "identity of identity" language ( "Keep Europe more European" ) is what's used by white supremacists-- which is not saying you are one, or agree with those ideas, but your using the same language as those types. Which is why people react to those kinds of statements. "Where's he going with this?" one wonders. I did wonder, until you replied.
Obviously we don't want things like beheadings, honor killings, or female circumcisions happening in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter. But there has been a positive influence of cultures from all over the world into Europe ( and vice-versa ), along with a lot of bad things. So I don't think it's migration or cultural influences that create the good or bad in human kind. It's found all over the world. I think it's built into who we are as a species;)
This is a test so that when some dark avised Johnny Foreigner gets scraped off the bottom of a lorry and claims to be a political refugee from Outer Warzoneistan, the border gestapo can test them and say "Funny - you seem to be of Inner Spongistanian ancestry. Want to change your story?"
Also, nevermind the fact that almost all of the countries of the Middle East are arbitrary conglomerations of various tribes that were at each others' throats until the British said to them, "Hey! You're all a single country now!" So a single identifiable ethnic group could be intersected by 3 different countries. Add to that all the warfare, migration, affairs, and rapes, and you have no way of matching DNA to any modern-day political identification.
This is a test so that when some dark avised Johnny Foreigner gets scraped off the bottom of a lorry and claims to be a political refugee from Outer Warzoneistan, the border gestapo can test them and say "Funny - you seem to be of Inner Spongistanian ancestry. Want to change your story?"
So this political refuge is supposed to "change his story" to "Oh, sir, I forgot, five generations ago my great-great-grandmother migrated to Turkey from Inner Spongistan and they assimilated themselves to the local culture so they woudn't face discrimination", or "Oh, my grandmother had an affair with an Inner Spongistanian 60 years ago and raised my father as a Outer Warzonian. To this day nobody knows but my grandmother and you."
Do you have any idea how ridiculous and ineffectual your idea sounds?
*Everybody* is a bastard. *All* cultures are mogrel. You can't look at someone's genetics and figure out their citizenship or point of origin.
And I do think that culture in Europe should remain predominantly European. This means either assimilating other cultures (people representing them living in Europe), or limiting amount of other cultures (people representing them) we import, or both.
This is a ridiculous tautology, based on the premise that cultures never change.
Do you think Europe should give up their Middle Eastern religion ( Christianity )?
I think this might be like the "video games" cause violence argument. I think any reasonable person can see how it's not healthy to stare at violence all day everyday... it's also probably not healthy to stare at sex all day everyday... hell... it's probably not healthy to stare at slashdot all day everyday. Most obsessions are similarly destructive of people's lives.
"Not healthy" as in "nothing measurably bad ever really happens"? There are tons of violent video games playes all over the suburbs. Shouldn't there be all out gang warfare and school shooting every day? There isn't. In fact, I would say that the most violent teen gang members probably don't have as much access to those violent video games as the suburban kids do. But, they listen to that terrible ganger rap!... so do the suburban kids. In fact, I bet that *violence has nothing to do with 'violent' video games or music*!
Same goes for porn. There's porn all over the web and a whole new generation of young men are exposing themselves <ahem> to stuff that would be unimaginable to previous generations, but there isn't a new wave of insane rapes and sexual crimes. Perverts do the crimes regardless of what media their exposed to.
This is kind of a tangent to some of the ideas you bring up. This past summer, I visited a "zoo" in the large jungle town Iquitos, in Peru. They had sloths, anacondas, capybaras, and caiman in cages. However, running freely around the "zoo" were 3-4 species of monkeys, with "Pepe", the big guy, the size of a two year old, several malnourished dogs, a coati, and two macaws with their flight feathers clipped. They all clustered around the people, fighting over bits of food, getting scratched and petted, and generally getting along and not eating each other. I suspect if they didn't have people feeding them all the time, there would be more violence and eating between them, but it kind of indicated to me that tolerance and closeness is not something foreign to the animal kingdom -- perhaps just a situation brought about by hunger.
I voted for the president that would protect me better. (Gore/Kerry were/are jokes)
You got the president that presided over the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history. You got a president whose counter-terrorism task force did not meet *once* before 9/11 -- after the outgoing administration ( which Gore was a part of ) told them that Osama Bin Laden would be their top priority.
Voting for Gore would have gotten you a guy from an administration who put Terry Nichols ( one of the Oklahoma city bombers ) behind bars, put the plotters of the 1993 WTC bombings behind bars, prevented the Millennium terrorist attacks, and carried out missle strikes against suspected Bin Laden chemical weapons facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan.
What exactly are you smoking? I'd advise you to quit.
I understand yuour attitude, but if you think about it, its one where you really don;t care about your job.
It's not binary -- either CARE or DONT_CARE -- rather, it's how much emphasis you place on it. What's a healthy level of caring about your work? It's not that I don't care about my job -- before, I cared too much, whereas now I care an appropriate amount. I get my work done. I'm productive. I do a good job, and I'm not miserable when it's not perfect -- which it never is.
Yeah, so much more than the drama kings who have an identity crisis when they don't get what they think is right. "OMG!!1! My PHB nixed my proposal! How will I sleep tonight!?"
However, in the cases where the technology is truly bad (like the "Enterprise-class" software we have to use at work) then you will only harm your self-confidence, your sense of self-worth and your overall satisfaction with yourself. After a while you'll start to not give a damn about other things too, and your skills will slowly fade, and the next thing you know - you're stuck in a crappy job you hate.
Only if you base your self-esteem on your job. I got out of that rat-trap a long time ago. Work is work; it's not life nor your identity. Work is a lot more enjoyable now, and the challenges and assholes easier to surmount when my whole sense of self-worth does not hinge on the outcome.
But isn't the 'math being right' based on the paradigm of 'how we would perceive it with our visual system if such an object were on a scale what we could 'look at it'
I mean, if you're doing a physical detection of a thing, the math can never be wrong, can it ( well, there is always a tolerance of error on the equipment itself) ? They're not creating an image out of nothing, like a drawing of an atom taken from theory; they are making measurements of one sort or another. Here, we're judging those measurements as far as how well they can seemingly emulate a phenomena that only exists on the macro level -- at this thing does not exist, so it can't generate such phenomena. We're judging the 'imageness' of the image based on whether it looks like something it really isn't and cannot be.
You're mixing two things here -- life and intelligence. Sure, maybe that patch of blue on your drapes is intelligent. Who knows? We don't really even have a definition of the word. Dolphins and elephants are probably as intelligent as we are, and dolphins are apparently able to comunicate complex thoughts through language ( on command, a pair can spontaneously create a novel synchronized swimming routine and perform it immediately, perfectly, only just having 'talked' about it, for fish ), but we have gotten almost nowhere in cracking their 'code'.
However, life should be fairly easy to detect, because we have some pretty good descriptions. Just to throw out a few: it must reproduce, it must metabolize energy, maintain homeostasis. If we can closely examine any planets, we should know pretty well whether the planet contains life -- as James Lovelock hypothesized, if metabolic life is going on, the atmosphere should be fairly chemically reactive. If there is no life, chemical constituents simmer down to a state pretty close to equilibrium.
So I agree with you that intelligence might be pretty hard to detect ( Go to a new age conference and see how many people are in communication with things most people never realize are conscious -- problem is, things like The Sun or the Moon or a mountain are only interested in New Age topics, which are a turn-off to most people ), but finding life 'as we know it' should be pretty easy.
Might be fun for one person to write the code, but it would destroy the ongoing joy of dozens of slashdotters who have indexed xkcd in their heads and can instantly recall the appropriate xkcd reference.
Once there was a guy who went to prison. He was taken under the wing of an old timer. The new guy and the old timer were eating lunch in the cafeteria. "37!" someone calls out. The room laughs. A while later, someone hollers about "108!" Everyone roars. "Hey, what's going on with these numbers?" the new guy asks. "Why's everyone laughing?"
"We've all been around so long we've heard everyone's jokes a million times. We gave 'em all numbers so you don't have to bother telling them." "Really?" "Yeah, watch -- 92!" The table cracks up. "Damn!" The new guy thinks. "Hey everyone! Everyone!" he calls out. "50! Number 50!" A few guys look at him, then go back to their food trays. "What happened?" he asks the old timer. "Well, some people just can't tell a joke..."
Chiropractic is *not* just a massage. ( Although they do share some techniques, such as heat therapy on muscles, etc, chiropractors will never massage a muscle ). They will actually crack joint, mostly in your spine. Yes, it's the same kind of cracking that you do with your fingers.
It's a great say to get certain cricks out of your back.
Slashdot Mirror
Similar lack of thought has plagued a lot of other shows.
Maybe it's because Zerg Rushes don't make for very good plots.
"Captain, we just destroyed the Borg by crashing a big vehicle into it. What now?"
"Aw hell, I don't know..."
Why not just watch the guy from Doom blowing apart demons as a TV show?
Is there any reason why a computer savvy person will act so differently than someone who does not use a computer?
Asperger's syndrome and the Autism spectrum.
I merely expressed a preference. That's all and it's nothing more.
I think there's a little more to it that than. When you compare, you are making an implicit claim that the two are comparable. What if I had said, "I prefer Snoop Dog's Doggystyle to Twilight Zone." Are the two really comparable? A music album compared to a TV series? Why would the two be comparable? Or how about, "I prefer hand-made Swiss watches to Twilight Zone"...? People would say that that's non-nonsensical, and it is. But your comparison is sensical. Why? Because they have an element in common.
The implicit claim is that they have something in common and they 'compete' with one another in this aspect -- that one is worse or better than the other in this dimension that they have in common.
So what you're saying is you have a hard time with any kind of fiction that's not science fiction?
Perhaps they're saying that this note doesn't belong on slashdot, but on cinemabuffs.com or something like that.
It's always helpful to deconstruct your customer's or client's feedback into outcomes or objectives instead of technical specifications. And if they ask for something specific it's usually a good idea to define whether they really want that in specific thing or there is some specific attribute of that thing that think is unique to it.
The thing about that is that you have to talk them into the idea that what you're offering is *really* want they want, not what they already think they want. Which takes some marketing and salesmanship savvy. If people have made a decision ( " I need a brigher backlight" ) it takes a lot of work to get them to change their position.
You can clean your streets without having the banner of five rings looming over them. Do you think that the olympic committee comes in and does the work?
Sure, all these things are *theoretically* possible. But the key is motivation. How well do you clean your house as compared to when you have guests coming over?
Maybe he means it in an abstract legal-philosophical sense, as in "nobody has been hurt; therefore, no crime has been committed."
There are fairly well defined geographical boundaries.
They're fairly arbitrary as far as culture goes. You won't find a wall of culture where one culture stops and another one starts.
I don't think anyone would argue that Africa belongs to Europe.
Does the mediterranean belong to Europe? Rome has had much more influence from the middle east and Africa -- itself being a Mediterranean city -- than, say, Scandinavia has had on it. Why, Vatican city is the head of a religion that originated in the middle east!
So if you look at it, yeah, all the cities on the North coast of Africa have much more connection with Southern Europe than they do Southern Africa.
I just say that questioning immigration and dilution of local culture brought by immigration is a concern and a valid topic for discussion. And people bringing it up shouldn't be written off as Nazis or racists or whatever.
I agree with you about discussions of culture and I don't think you're a Nazi or racist ( at least from what you've said so far ;) I think where people get hung up is the terms you use. Like "European culture" when 1. there
It seems what you are saying is you want more good stuff, and less bad stuff. I think what raises people's alarm systems is presentation of the idea that the "native" culture is composed of only the good stuff, which must be kept ( an idea which you rightfully disagree with anyway ), and that the outsiders are bringing in "bad" stuff and must be resisted. This kind of "identity of identity" language ( "Keep Europe more European" ) is what's used by white supremacists-- which is not saying you are one, or agree with those ideas, but your using the same language as those types. Which is why people react to those kinds of statements. "Where's he going with this?" one wonders. I did wonder, until you replied.
;)
Obviously we don't want things like beheadings, honor killings, or female circumcisions happening in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter. But there has been a positive influence of cultures from all over the world into Europe ( and vice-versa ), along with a lot of bad things. So I don't think it's migration or cultural influences that create the good or bad in human kind. It's found all over the world. I think it's built into who we are as a species
I don't know how this got modded flamebait.
This is a test so that when some dark avised Johnny Foreigner gets scraped off the bottom of a lorry and claims to be a political refugee from Outer Warzoneistan, the border gestapo can test them and say "Funny - you seem to be of Inner Spongistanian ancestry. Want to change your story?"
Also, nevermind the fact that almost all of the countries of the Middle East are arbitrary conglomerations of various tribes that were at each others' throats until the British said to them, "Hey! You're all a single country now!" So a single identifiable ethnic group could be intersected by 3 different countries. Add to that all the warfare, migration, affairs, and rapes, and you have no way of matching DNA to any modern-day political identification.
This is a test so that when some dark avised Johnny Foreigner gets scraped off the bottom of a lorry and claims to be a political refugee from Outer Warzoneistan, the border gestapo can test them and say "Funny - you seem to be of Inner Spongistanian ancestry. Want to change your story?"
So this political refuge is supposed to "change his story" to "Oh, sir, I forgot, five generations ago my great-great-grandmother migrated to Turkey from Inner Spongistan and they assimilated themselves to the local culture so they woudn't face discrimination", or "Oh, my grandmother had an affair with an Inner Spongistanian 60 years ago and raised my father as a Outer Warzonian. To this day nobody knows but my grandmother and you."
Do you have any idea how ridiculous and ineffectual your idea sounds?
*Everybody* is a bastard. *All* cultures are mogrel. You can't look at someone's genetics and figure out their citizenship or point of origin.
And I do think that culture in Europe should remain predominantly European. This means either assimilating other cultures (people representing them living in Europe), or limiting amount of other cultures (people representing them) we import, or both.
This is a ridiculous tautology, based on the premise that cultures never change.
Do you think Europe should give up their Middle Eastern religion ( Christianity )?
I think this might be like the "video games" cause violence argument. I think any reasonable person can see how it's not healthy to stare at violence all day everyday... it's also probably not healthy to stare at sex all day everyday... hell... it's probably not healthy to stare at slashdot all day everyday. Most obsessions are similarly destructive of people's lives.
"Not healthy" as in "nothing measurably bad ever really happens"? There are tons of violent video games playes all over the suburbs. Shouldn't there be all out gang warfare and school shooting every day? There isn't. In fact, I would say that the most violent teen gang members probably don't have as much access to those violent video games as the suburban kids do. But, they listen to that terrible ganger rap! ... so do the suburban kids. In fact, I bet that *violence has nothing to do with 'violent' video games or music*!
Same goes for porn. There's porn all over the web and a whole new generation of young men are exposing themselves <ahem> to stuff that would be unimaginable to previous generations, but there isn't a new wave of insane rapes and sexual crimes. Perverts do the crimes regardless of what media their exposed to.
Take a class in anthropology; you'll read it in papers from 100 years ago.
This is kind of a tangent to some of the ideas you bring up. This past summer, I visited a "zoo" in the large jungle town Iquitos, in Peru. They had sloths, anacondas, capybaras, and caiman in cages. However, running freely around the "zoo" were 3-4 species of monkeys, with "Pepe", the big guy, the size of a two year old, several malnourished dogs, a coati, and two macaws with their flight feathers clipped. They all clustered around the people, fighting over bits of food, getting scratched and petted, and generally getting along and not eating each other. I suspect if they didn't have people feeding them all the time, there would be more violence and eating between them, but it kind of indicated to me that tolerance and closeness is not something foreign to the animal kingdom -- perhaps just a situation brought about by hunger.
I voted for the president that would protect me better. (Gore/Kerry were/are jokes)
You got the president that presided over the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history. You got a president whose counter-terrorism task force did not meet *once* before 9/11 -- after the outgoing administration ( which Gore was a part of ) told them that Osama Bin Laden would be their top priority.
Voting for Gore would have gotten you a guy from an administration who put Terry Nichols ( one of the Oklahoma city bombers ) behind bars, put the plotters of the 1993 WTC bombings behind bars, prevented the Millennium terrorist attacks, and carried out missle strikes against suspected Bin Laden chemical weapons facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan.
What exactly are you smoking? I'd advise you to quit.
I understand yuour attitude, but if you think about it, its one where you really don;t care about your job.
It's not binary -- either CARE or DONT_CARE -- rather, it's how much emphasis you place on it. What's a healthy level of caring about your work? It's not that I don't care about my job -- before, I cared too much, whereas now I care an appropriate amount. I get my work done. I'm productive. I do a good job, and I'm not miserable when it's not perfect -- which it never is.
Yeah, so much more than the drama kings who have an identity crisis when they don't get what they think is right. "OMG!!1! My PHB nixed my proposal! How will I sleep tonight!?"
However, in the cases where the technology is truly bad (like the "Enterprise-class" software we have to use at work) then you will only harm your self-confidence, your sense of self-worth and your overall satisfaction with yourself. After a while you'll start to not give a damn about other things too, and your skills will slowly fade, and the next thing you know - you're stuck in a crappy job you hate.
Only if you base your self-esteem on your job. I got out of that rat-trap a long time ago. Work is work; it's not life nor your identity. Work is a lot more enjoyable now, and the challenges and assholes easier to surmount when my whole sense of self-worth does not hinge on the outcome.
But isn't the 'math being right' based on the paradigm of 'how we would perceive it with our visual system if such an object were on a scale what we could 'look at it'
I mean, if you're doing a physical detection of a thing, the math can never be wrong, can it ( well, there is always a tolerance of error on the equipment itself) ? They're not creating an image out of nothing, like a drawing of an atom taken from theory; they are making measurements of one sort or another. Here, we're judging those measurements as far as how well they can seemingly emulate a phenomena that only exists on the macro level -- at this thing does not exist, so it can't generate such phenomena. We're judging the 'imageness' of the image based on whether it looks like something it really isn't and cannot be.
You're mixing two things here -- life and intelligence. Sure, maybe that patch of blue on your drapes is intelligent. Who knows? We don't really even have a definition of the word. Dolphins and elephants are probably as intelligent as we are, and dolphins are apparently able to comunicate complex thoughts through language ( on command, a pair can spontaneously create a novel synchronized swimming routine and perform it immediately, perfectly, only just having 'talked' about it, for fish ), but we have gotten almost nowhere in cracking their 'code'.
However, life should be fairly easy to detect, because we have some pretty good descriptions. Just to throw out a few: it must reproduce, it must metabolize energy, maintain homeostasis. If we can closely examine any planets, we should know pretty well whether the planet contains life -- as James Lovelock hypothesized, if metabolic life is going on, the atmosphere should be fairly chemically reactive. If there is no life, chemical constituents simmer down to a state pretty close to equilibrium.
So I agree with you that intelligence might be pretty hard to detect ( Go to a new age conference and see how many people are in communication with things most people never realize are conscious -- problem is, things like The Sun or the Moon or a mountain are only interested in New Age topics, which are a turn-off to most people ), but finding life 'as we know it' should be pretty easy.
Might be fun for one person to write the code, but it would destroy the ongoing joy of dozens of slashdotters who have indexed xkcd in their heads and can instantly recall the appropriate xkcd reference.
Once there was a guy who went to prison. He was taken under the wing of an old timer. The new guy and the old timer were eating lunch in the cafeteria. "37!" someone calls out. The room laughs. A while later, someone hollers about "108!" Everyone roars. "Hey, what's going on with these numbers?" the new guy asks. "Why's everyone laughing?"
"We've all been around so long we've heard everyone's jokes a million times. We gave 'em all numbers so you don't have to bother telling them."
"Really?"
"Yeah, watch -- 92!" The table cracks up.
"Damn!" The new guy thinks. "Hey everyone! Everyone!" he calls out. "50! Number 50!" A few guys look at him, then go back to their food trays. "What happened?" he asks the old timer. "Well, some people just can't tell a joke..."
Chiropractic is *not* just a massage. ( Although they do share some techniques, such as heat therapy on muscles, etc, chiropractors will never massage a muscle ). They will actually crack joint, mostly in your spine. Yes, it's the same kind of cracking that you do with your fingers.
It's a great say to get certain cricks out of your back.
...but my daughter's male teacher and principal can (strange double standard)
The parents know that they've been background checked.
Well, I was born about 300 miles from where I live... does that count?