Your language is somewhat crude grasshopper. I agree.
Black holes can exist. What can't exist, according to this new theory, is a singularity with an event horizon. In common parlance, I think people are talking about the singularity when they say 'black hole'. They don't mean the matter swirling around it.
I mean, what is a black hole without a singularity? Wouldn't it missing the 'black hole' part?
From present knowledge there is no 'end to the universe' only a heat death, but time will still go on. A side point, but doesn't time stop if you read the speed of light?
Well, if this theory is true, that a black hole never completely collapses until the end of time, it means that we can see the event horizon of a black hole, but the hole part never forms until the end of the universe. The further we look into a black hole, the further into the future we look, because a black hole is a warping of time. And the center of it, the black hole part, exists infinitely into the future, or the end of time.
Like I said in this other post, a black hole is not a thing that warps time and space, it *is* a warping of time-space. And because it warps matter-time-space to an infinite density, it takes an infinitely long time to do so. Sort of like how it takes an infinite amount of energy and time to reach C, the speed of light. It's because when you do reach the speed of light, you have reached the fastest speed, so nothing appears to be moving, because nothing can move faster than the speed of light, which you are now moving at.
Well, IINAP, but I think it's more like the actual hole part doesn't exist until the *end* of the universe.
A black hole is not a thing that exists in time and space, it's an event or process that is a warping the space-time fabric. It's a fine point, but it bears repeating -- a black hole is not a 'thing' that warps time-space, it *is* a warping of time-space. An object actually moving to the center of the black hole takes an infinitely long time to get there, so when it actually does get there, it happens to arrive right at the end of the universe.
So it kind of is like the black hole is perpetually in creation phase, but the matter doesn't disappear until the end of the universe. I read a post a few years back that the word for black hole in Russian is 'Collapsar'. Like a Pulsar always 'pulses', matter is always ( literally *always*, or, from now until the end of time ) collapsing in a Collapsar.
Thanks for the information. I wondered about that, after I hit the submit button, of course. But, another nitpick: I only said they were a state level entity ( they *are* state-by-state, aren't they? Or is there a national BBB?), not that they were a government agency;)
Pre-1998 hardware? What are you talking about? The machines at work that I installed it on last month were *bought* last month. You're telling me they had 250 GB SATA drives and motherboards that supported them before 1998?
The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. What exactly is the problem, AC? We don't need a government function actually serving the interests of the average consumer, instead of large corporations? It will become another bloated, ineffectual government bureaucracy that gets hijacked by industry, like the EPA and the FDA? This is a function that belongs on the state level, like the BBB?
I was going to start to argue *for* another contender on the side of the little guy, but I think I just talked myself out of it.
There is a big difference between fantasy-like eroticism related to polytheistic immortal beings as part of a cultural awe towards their abnormality, and social acceptance. That's true, but the point I was making was that the various levels of acceptance of gays is nothing new to our society. It's not a recent development. There are some societies ( I remember reading about an Indigenous Andean tribe where it's perfectly okay for men to have homosexual relationships their whole lives, even if they have a wife and kids). Some other societies have special or religious roles for gays. But it's not like all societies before recent western civilization were totally homophobic, to the point of considering it a disease, or condoning violence against homosexuals. So again, Puritan transported to New York in 2007, problem. Andean villager, maybe no problem.
Recognition of health concerns, implementation of nation-wide decrees in which the public takes part in the debate (supposedly) is new. There is an obsession with hygiene today that did not exist before I think. I think in previous times, only royalty and the elite had enough money and servants to keep themselves and their belongings clean. Everyone else had to work long days in the fields, with animals. Today, the reason we are able to keep so clean is because the middle class is as wealthy as royalty from earlier times, and we have machines to do the hard, dirty work, like planting and harvesting crops, slaughter animals, and launder clothes. It's like the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail: "He must be a King." "How do you know?" "He hasn't got shit all over him."
So, the middle class, which means the wealth that the common folk enjoy, and the benefits that go with them, such as cleanliness and health that goes along with it, is a relatively new phenomenon. I think human beings have a natural urge to be as clean and presentable as possible, given their economic circumstances -- Amazonian tribes will bathe every day, because they have access to nearby rivers. American farmers didn't have as much access to clean, disposable water, so they stayed field-dirty for months, and only bathed to go to the barn dance in town.
Name one place where abortion was not viewed with shame, or as the result of failed relationships, economic poverty, negligence..etc I'm not saying that abortion was considered 'okay' or no big deal, but it wasn't totally outlawed as a crime by male lawmakers like it was in recent American history. Heck, until recently, nobody considered fertilization the beginning of human life. Even in the Catholic church, human life began at 'the quickening', when the fetus started to move. They thought that this meant that the soul had begun to inhabit the fetus at that point. So abortion before the quickening was okay. Not ideal, but certainly not an intolerable crime, like murder. In places where you find abortion and infanticide considered okay on economic grounds, it's not viewed as the ideal outcome, but a choice made by necessity. In foraging societies, where it's harder to get enough calories to eat, twins were viewed as a curse -- there was no way a lactating mother could expect to feed two babies. So one was killed. In agricultural society, there is usually enough calories to feed two babies, so it's okay. I would argue it *is* like "abortion on demand" -- but that's a loaded term. It's more like "abortion upon necessary decision based on unfortunate circumstances" -- like it is practiced today in America. So, a fundamentalist from 1950s American might have a problem with America today, but a Catholic from 1800 may not have a problem with abortions before 6 weeks.
...But modern day "I can kill my baby and be proud" is also very new. I think that's a straw man set up by the religious right today. I don't think anybody actually feels that way.
I've recently run into problems installing debian and ubuntu on a machine at home, and two at work. After the whole process of installation, I got error code 16 when grub loaded( IIRC -- it was some even 'teenage' number, maybe 12 ).
At home I was frustrated, decided that Linux was *still* not ready for the desktop, and loaded something else ( this was maybe 6 months to a year ago).
Recently at work, I loaded Debian Etch ( 4.0 ), and got the same problem on two machines with the same hardware specs. The stakes were higher, so I looked up the error code. It said that it was a problem with the MBR. Rather than fiddling around editing GRUB, I went through the install process again, this time making a 100 MB boot partition at the beginning of the drive, marking it as bootable, and setting its mount point at/boot. This worked, so I did that on the other machine, and no problem.
I was surprised that I got this on two different machines, with such recent versions of Ubuntu and Debian. What surprised me more was that there wasn't more discussion about this error and how to fix it. I would think that this problem was affecting more people, so the distro creators would either fix the grub install, or at least make Ubuntu automatically set up a bootable/boot partition. Maybe it was just my experience, though. Still, it's something that I wouldn't expect to have happen in 2007 with a linux distro, especially one touted as grandma-friendly like Ubuntu. I've never had a problem having an MS OS properly make itself bootable, since the days of DOS 3.x!
I don't think they mean that Rove is actually writing an email every 12 minutes, but rather that's how much email he has in total. He probably gets copied on tons of emails that he never reads, by people cc'ing the email to every relevant person imaginable in order to cover their ass. I just got a new job at a University, and I get cc'ed on *everything* that the secretaries in the department send out, even though I'm just a temp worker!
It's like being on the mailing lists of every department, meeting, steering committee, or group, of every government function you have a hand in. Of course, neither you, nor Rove, nor I, read every email from every list and every cc'd email we get.
I totally agree, but the situation now is that the Republican party is the root of this whole problem, and the 'common folk', using the Democractic party as a tool, is the best chance we have of fighting back.
Politics is dirty and anybody could betray us at any time. But let's worry about the situation at hand.
But then what? We'd have Cheney as president. A side point, but I can't imagine a scenario where Bush gets impeached and Cheney doesn't get taken down also. Bush really isn't the driving character behind all of this. It's the cabal of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove etc. It's an old boys network that got into power during Bush I, a group that goes all the way back to Nixon. They want to restore the power that the presidency lost after Nixon, and increase the power of the executive further. See Unitary Executive
In the Bush family power structure, W is known as the 'enforcer'. He's not a leader or visionary; he's a henchman or goon. He's the face of the mafia. He takes orders from up above, comes to your office, and lays down the law.
Talkshow host Tom Hartman said that he can't help coming to the conclusion that the endless investigations into Clinton's Christmas card lists, travel agent's activities, and sexual peccadilloes was an effort to sour the public on the process of impeachment, and make whatever crimes the next president would do seem like partisan politics. It's hard not to start thinking this way.
I think he would freak out, simply because it's too much change in a short time. But I don't know if it would be too much different than an average culture shock of some villager walking into the big capital city 1,000 years ago. But a lot of what you list, from new technologies to various cultures practices, have been found all throughout history. Here's just a few:
Gay, lesbian and transsexual rights.
Various cultures have had gay rights, or even elevated positions for gays or transgendered persons. Examples: Ancient Greeks, Sacred Hermaphrodites and transgendereds in Hindusism, Berdache shamans in Apache culture.
Smoking banned in most places.
Smoking was considered unhealhy, devilish, and lower-class stuff when tabacco first found it's way into Europe. It was also considered a medicine and health promoter in certain circles.
and Abortion on demand
Abortion and infanticide has long been practices in tribal societies and non-Monotheistic, Godess-worshipping cultures.
"God is dead."
Hereticism and atheism is nothing new. Greeks.
No-fault divorce. Divorce on demand
Practiced in various tribes and in Muslim countries, and places where men and women had more equal rights.
Photocopiers. Samizdat. Color printers.
Rapid printing presses.
Glossy advertising printed so cheaply that it is literally thrown out.
Colorful decorations that were thrown out and flowers that wilted for days-long religious ceremonies are old practices.
The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, David Bowie.
Music is nothing new. Other people's music is always weird.
Playboy centerfolds. Hustler. Downloadable porn.
Porn? As old as the cavemen. How about being suprised by the lack of whorehouses and streetwalkers?
AIDS.
In the olden says, you would find people with open sores dying in the streets. Obivious, disgusting disease was everywhere. AIDS is a relative benign fatal affliction. One of the diseases from the 1800s, I forget which one, would cause a seemingly healthy man to collapse in the street, dead a few hours later.
"Average" houses worth 250,000 to 1 million.
Mansions and palaces are nothing new. He would be surprised by our amount of wealth.
No spitting on the sidewalk.
A function of wealth and our sewer/plumbing system. Plumbing and sewers go back to the oldest cities.
Artificial fabrics of all types.
On the surface, not distinguishable from an unfamiliar natural fabric.
Rap music.
White people have been freak out by blacks with drums (i.e. African culture) for a long time.
State lotteries.
Gambling and games of chance, even state-sponsored - Very old.
T Shirts. Jeans, capri pants and slacks for women.
Other people always dress weird. Indians in the jungle are running around naked! Women have their breasts exposed!
"You can't hit your wife." "You can't hit your kid." "You can't beat your animals."
This is pretty new. But you find a lot of non-violent, pacifist religions all throught history and the world. Case in point - Judaism (don't abuse your domestic animals, slaughter them humanely), Early Christianity, Buddhism and Jainism.
"You can't threaten someone."
BIG offense in oral cultures. Likely a capital crime.
You CAN burn the flag.
Political protest is nothing new. Greek rulers worried about it all the time.
You CAN call the President an idiot to an audience - and you'll even get laughs.
Who doesn't make fun of their boss or political leader? The only place you couldn't do this was in facist, tightly controlled Kingdoms. Ever heard of the court Jester? It was more a problem for upper-class ind
If you were in a small village in Greece where you had to walk everywhere by foot, the next village over would be a long way away. The village four villages over would be a tremendous distance. A whole country over would be a gigantic distance, and going to France, for example, would be way out of your league. Traveling to eastern Asia, the Americas, or Australia would look like a pipe dream. I would agree with most everything you said, except for the travel part. It's true that trans-oceanic travel was a pipe dream, but walking long distances, or traveling across continents with pack animals and caravans wasn't as big as ordeal as you make it out to be.
Just two examples to illustrate my points: In Joe Kane's _Savages_ he says something like "Indians think nothing of traveling 3,000 miles on foot to visit a relative in a distant tribe." ( It may have been Mark Plotkin's _Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice_ or another ethnographic/journalistic account of Amazonian tribes ). Of course, they didn't get their overnight -- it took months to travel, and they relied on their camping/foraging skills, or the ritual obligations of other tribes to host and feed travelers that they know. So they relied on the camping skills and their social networks to provide for themselves along the way.
Similarly, in tribes and city-based civilizations, people traveled all the time. There were trade caravans running all the time. The Middle East was a crossroads between the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Before Mohammed smashed the idols at Mecca, it was filled with 365 idols. A lot of the pre-Mohammed idols we find can be traced to various Asian, African, and European gods. Mecca was not only a trade center, but a pilgrimage destination, and a caravan coming from Asia would be packed with Asians wanted to pay respect and giving thanks to their gods once they arrived, along with refilling their stocks.
To us in the modern day, travel may have seemed rare because there were few people who could write, and of those people, less who would record their travelogues. But of course, the average soldier, sailor, or caravan servant/slave, never had the opportunity to make a record of all the places they walked, sailed, or caravaned to.
If you read histories of western civilization, you will find scholars and religious students traveling to all the major cities to do learning at various temples and libraries. And of course, there were armies marching all over the world. Religious pilgrimages were also a big impetus for long journeys.
With a critical mind, you might say that the physical evidence of large-scale travel, such as trade goods and cultural items, might have made their way their by exchanging hands. But then we have the travelogues of people who were able to write, and they themselves traveled, and also said they met people who traveled long distances in caravans. In tribal societies, it was common for people to have a practical ability in 6-10 languages. Not that they were fluent, but they could speak well enough to get their needs met and not offend anybody. And cultures that are exposed to large exchanges of people start to develop shared vocabularies for common words. Amongst the North American Plains Indians, there was a common sign language amongst the various tribes. And in Empires, the language of the ruling ethnicity becomes a Lingua Franca. "Take me to your leader" -- because he was the only guy in the village that spoke the official language.
If you look at the Asian empires, including India, they were *huge* compared Europe. Those civilization sent messengers and administrators all over their kingdoms all the time. There were constantly maintained messenger service, who ran on foot. And promising young men were taken from villages to the capital cities to learn the official laws, customs, and language, then sent back in the country to serve as administrators. Even in the Incan empire, traversing the Andes.
Man is naturally a wandering, traveling, pilgrimaging creature, walking across whole continents.
OTOH, if you can't deal with high-pressure scenarios you should be trying to become most kinds of doctors or some kinds of lawyers. That's a good point. If a person falls apart at any sign of stress, they shouldn't be doing high-stress work. Maybe they can be massage therapists;)
But in the example of my sisters' friend, she *can* deal with high-stress, high stakes situations. It's just the high-stakes testing, virtual isolation-chamber environment that stresses her out. She's a very social person, and she's good with communication and in groups. What gets her about the test is that she can hear other people writing, but has no clue about what they're writing. Not that she wants to cheat, but psychologically, she relies on the social cues of the group to get along and maintain her energy. She draws energy from other people, and is energized by social interaction. She's not a loner type. Meanwhile I, as a geek, am drained by social interaction (unless they're close friends), and I get energized when I'm alone.
So she probably wouldn't be good as a surgeon, or as an admin trying to troubleshoot a server in the middle of the night, but if she were a lawyer arguing with the other attorney and the judge in the judge's chamber, she would be energized by that encounter, and would probably come out on top.
So all in all, even though she chokes in high-stakes testing, she will probably do well in life and her career because she can handle high-stakes social situations so well. She can win people over, or at least coming out with the other person liking her after the encounter. Better than a geek who can take tests and do individual, technical tasks well, but comes apart in high-stakes social situation.
Now we have record companies finding talentless bimbos and tryhard boybands to front this multi-billion dollar industry. Not only that, the record companies are taking most of the proceeds and the artist is forced to tour/mime in order to make the kind of cash that would have been available to them 50 years ago. Good artists who may not be the 'in' thing at the moment (as in, not pop/emo/rap) struggle to get a recording contract... What's also happened is that music is now seen as a young person's thing, whereas before the 'popular' ( as in well-received, not pop) music was enjoyed by a broad cross-section of society. It had mass appeal. A night on the town might consist of going out to a concert, like we do with plays or movies these days. Nowadays if you enjoy current music but are over 30, you are a creepy old person trying to re-capture their youth and hit on young girls. Go back to the nursing home!
People can NEVER be honest about saying "I wouldn't have bought it" once they have the full thing for free. I had some friend in high school who downloaded a $4,000 high-end cad/engineering program. They were never going to use it. They said as much themselves. What were they going to do, build models of aircraft engines? AFAIK, their computers weren't even powerful enough to *launch* the app. It may not have even been built for the intel processor!
They never faced charges, fortunately. But my buddy did get a call that he can come pick up his 486 from the FBI evidence storage.
In a smiilar vein, if you download what would be the equivalent of $20,000 woth of CDs, and you don't have $20,000, you can't really lie about your inability to purchase all of that music.
This is not to excuse someone who does poorly on tests because they didn't know the material, but some people have test anxiety, where the situation of a high pressure test, such as the SAT causes them to choke. Otherwise they are normal or good students and do well, even on exams. It's not that they can't do exams, but the high-pressure scenario really freaks them out. It's like people who have a fear of doctors and hospitals have a higher recorded blood-pressure than they do in everyday life, because they are stressed out when the doctor measures it!
I've never had a problem with tests, and I think it's because I understand on a social-engineering level better than the average person. I use strategies such as elimination, or figuring out what common pitfall the instructor is trying to set for us, rather than looking at them as just a knowledge dump.
Although I do well on tests, I wouldn't mind if we got rid of the high pressure, keep silent, face on your own paper, 'final' tests. My problem with that it we really encounter a situation like that where we are actually using and applying our knowledge. Sure, we face other high-pressure scenarios, such as the server being down, or meetings with high-level executives, but the high-stakes testing doesn't 'test' that. A high stakes test more or less an arbitrary ordeal that exists only in education. We don't deal with the trickery and psych-outs of multiple choice in any other arena of our lives. You get no points for creativity or thinking outside the box in multiple choice. It also encourages procrastination, cramming, and waiting till the last minute to clear a hurdle, rather than taking the proper time and energy to complete a task or course of study.
We would do much better to give students the final grade based on their portfolio of work, final essays that they had time to complete, or final projects. But, since multiple choice is standardized and easy to grade by machine, that's why we use it. Everyone is a cog in the machine.
So if someone borrows the pen off your office desk without telling you, do you shoot them? After all, property rights and the very foundation of society is at stake! If you don't shoot him, your desk will be totally empty when you come in to work tomorrow!
The question I have is, how feasible is it to log all IP addresses from the RAM and associate them with the transactions in question? I don't know, maybe they could just keep their apache logs?
OK, I grant that I am made up of parts, and also that I am a part of a larger system. But isn't it also true that I can be considered a singular 'part' myself?
If you say that no, you are not a part yourself, but you are made up of smaller parts, I then ask, "Okay, by what reasoning can we call those smaller parts parts? Aren't they made of parts also?" So then, if we can consider my smaller parts to be singular parts, why can't we call myself a singular part, at a certain level. After all, I am a part of the larger community or system, right?
Neither your lawpoop, nor even one of those sibling plants is one thing. Both are composed of billions of simplistic parts that perform simple functions. Your 'lawpoop' is actually more like the collective result of an ant colony functioning or birds flocking. Okay, but aren't those smaller parts that make me up *themselves* collective results of simpler parts? And then aren't those parts made of simpler parts? If you say I'm more like a swarming ant colony, where the ant is the simple, basic part that makes up the larger function of the swarm, then isn't the ant itself a system of parts, namely cells? And then isn't each ant cell a system of parts, namely organelles and other molecules? And then aren't those molecules made up of atoms? And atoms made up of protons, nuetrons, and electrons? And those made up of quarks?
I'm not even talking about an experiential level, where I 'feel' like there is an indivisible "I", but just on a systems level -- if we're talking about society or the nation, we might define people to be the smallest 'parts' of that national system. But then when we're talking about medicine, we might consider organs, tissues, cells, or molecule channels on cell walls to be the smallest parts of that medical system. Then, when we are talking about physics, we might define quarks to be the smallest parts of that system. And then if we are talking about quantum physics, we might talk about quarks made up of forces or strings.
It all depends on what level you are doing the analysis.
So that's what I mean when I say at one conceptual level, I am made of parts, but at another conceptual level, I am a basic part of another larger system that contains me. I'm arguing that a 'part' is a concept, not a physical reality. It's part of a conceptual framework that we use to perceive various phenomenon at various scales. And the level or scale which we choose to perceive also defines what we consider to be the part, or basic building block of that system, which we don't take apart any further *in that system*. So if we are doing a population study of ant colonies, we might talk about ants or genes as the basic part, but we don't need to talk about quarks -- there is just no need to break it down that far. We can understand all we need to by using the ant or the gene as the basic part of that conceptual framework. So if we can choose to define either an ant, a gene, an atom, or a quark as the basic part of our conceptual framework, then I see no reason why I can't talk about myself as a part, when I'm dealing with a framework that's on the scale of, say, the nation or society.
I don't think you can say with certainty what the most basic, indivisible parts are, in the multi-level sense. Before the 20th century, scientists thought that atoms where the smallest, partless, indivisible bits of matter. This idea came from the Greek philosophers, who said that the world was made up of these tiny, indivisible "atoms" -- literally 'a-tom' or in-divisible or un-cutable. Then in the 20th century we found out that atoms did indeed have parts, they were divisible; they were made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then in the 21st century, we found out that those parts had parts! And we got quantum physics. Then, instead of parts, we get waves. And maybe strings. Vibrations of pure force, no longer hard little chunks of matter.
Another issue, if we're interested in scientific discussion. Why is anthroporophism specifically disallowed? Why can't we anthropomorphise, if the comparison is valid?
When we talk about flight, or vision, between species, nobody complains. If we talk about insect flight compared to bird flight, nobody complains that we are insectopomorphising birds, or avopomorphising insects, even when the comparison is made using our built-in non-scientific comparison ability. What I mean is that we didn't do any scientific studies to show that bird 'flight' is the same 'process' as insect 'flight' -- we just began there because we naturally saw the similarities. Almost anybody in the world can tell you that both insects and birds both fly, albeit with different mechanisms, without scientific knowledge or research. Starting from that point, we can show similarities and differences between insect and bird flight -- in other words, we didn't lose any over our objective perception by starting out talking about bird and insect flight using the same term to describe different processes in different species. So even though flight arose independently in different species and lineages, and have different mechanisms, it somehow is not an issue to talk about comparative behavior and in birds and insects. We even have a name when different structures arise that perform the same process in different species -- it's called convergent evolution of homologous or analogous structure. The same goes for eyes and vision.
Yet when we talk about social behavior of mammals, why are we not allowed to talk about convergent evolution or homologous structures? When a researcher talks about chimps sharing, or dogs having social interaction, is that anthroporphism? What about when people, chimps, and dogs have homologous structures in the 'social' parts of thier respective brains?
People just pipe up with "don't anthropormorphise", yet I haven't yet seen the criteria or definition for what is anthroporophisms vs. an accurate identification of homologous structures or behavior. I'm not saying don't worry about anthropomorphism at all, but we can't worry about it scientifically until we define it and list the criteria. Otherwise it's just another way of saying that human beings are special, that either they are not animals, or are a special kind of animals, therefore, any comparison of humans to animals are invalid.
I think it will become much clearer to you if you think in terms of genes, not organisms. Yes, but the genes don't percieve other genes in the environment, not even in a metaphorical sense. It's the cellular machinery that the genes create that actually does the sensing of other genes, related or not.
It's not the "plant" that "recognizes" siblings, it's individual cells of the plants that behave according to an underlying set of genes. You are stuck on the "higher level" stuff like "thinking" and "smelling" without asking why those complex behaviors might have arisen and what is actually in the driver's seat. Yes, but it's the 'window dressing', or cellular structure that does high level stuff such as smelling and think which provides the mechanism for the 'genes' to detect other 'genes', and also provides the mechanism to decide how related the other genes are, and how much to cooperate with them.
I don't think there's a driver's seat here. It's more like the left and right leg. Both move in their proper time to move the being forward. It's not that the genes are in charge; there's an interaction between the genes and the environment. The genes create part of the environment -- namely, the cellular structure and organism that surrounds the gene -- but the environment also exerts selective pressure on the genes themselves. So at different times it looks like the genes are in charge, at other times.
You don't think your 'self' is actually one thing do you? I know objectively that I am made of parts, but my experiential feeling is that I am a singular entity. What I mean is that it feels to me that there is an indivisible Lawpoop that has no parts. Sure, I have fingers, and a hand, but that's just my body. If I lose my finger, I'm missing a part of my body, but "who I really am" is something other than my body. I also understand that I am part of a larger whole -- my family and community.
So I experience all three levels -- the Lawpoop that is made up of parts, the Lawpoop that is a part of a larger system, but also, the basis of my experience is the Lawpoop that is indivisible and irreduceable. Call it a spirit, a soul, the ghost in the machine, the 'mind', the ego, the "I", an illusion, the mind program that the brain hardware runs -- whatever you call it, that's the basis of my reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, what is a black hole without a singularity? Wouldn't it missing the 'black hole' part? From present knowledge there is no 'end to the universe' only a heat death, but time will still go on. A side point, but doesn't time stop if you read the speed of light?
Well, I think that the proponents of this theory are claiming that the matter does *not* actually disappear until the end of time.
Well, if this theory is true, that a black hole never completely collapses until the end of time, it means that we can see the event horizon of a black hole, but the hole part never forms until the end of the universe. The further we look into a black hole, the further into the future we look, because a black hole is a warping of time. And the center of it, the black hole part, exists infinitely into the future, or the end of time.
Like I said in this other post, a black hole is not a thing that warps time and space, it *is* a warping of time-space. And because it warps matter-time-space to an infinite density, it takes an infinitely long time to do so. Sort of like how it takes an infinite amount of energy and time to reach C, the speed of light. It's because when you do reach the speed of light, you have reached the fastest speed, so nothing appears to be moving, because nothing can move faster than the speed of light, which you are now moving at.
IANAP, so feel free to chime in and correct me.
Well, IINAP, but I think it's more like the actual hole part doesn't exist until the *end* of the universe.
A black hole is not a thing that exists in time and space, it's an event or process that is a warping the space-time fabric. It's a fine point, but it bears repeating -- a black hole is not a 'thing' that warps time-space, it *is* a warping of time-space. An object actually moving to the center of the black hole takes an infinitely long time to get there, so when it actually does get there, it happens to arrive right at the end of the universe.
So it kind of is like the black hole is perpetually in creation phase, but the matter doesn't disappear until the end of the universe. I read a post a few years back that the word for black hole in Russian is 'Collapsar'. Like a Pulsar always 'pulses', matter is always ( literally *always*, or, from now until the end of time ) collapsing in a Collapsar.
Thanks for the information. I wondered about that, after I hit the submit button, of course. But, another nitpick: I only said they were a state level entity ( they *are* state-by-state, aren't they? Or is there a national BBB?), not that they were a government agency ;)
Pre-1998 hardware? What are you talking about? The machines at work that I installed it on last month were *bought* last month. You're telling me they had 250 GB SATA drives and motherboards that supported them before 1998?
I was going to start to argue *for* another contender on the side of the little guy, but I think I just talked myself out of it.
So, the middle class, which means the wealth that the common folk enjoy, and the benefits that go with them, such as cleanliness and health that goes along with it, is a relatively new phenomenon. I think human beings have a natural urge to be as clean and presentable as possible, given their economic circumstances -- Amazonian tribes will bathe every day, because they have access to nearby rivers. American farmers didn't have as much access to clean, disposable water, so they stayed field-dirty for months, and only bathed to go to the barn dance in town. Name one place where abortion was not viewed with shame, or as the result of failed relationships, economic poverty, negligence..etc I'm not saying that abortion was considered 'okay' or no big deal, but it wasn't totally outlawed as a crime by male lawmakers like it was in recent American history. Heck, until recently, nobody considered fertilization the beginning of human life. Even in the Catholic church, human life began at 'the quickening', when the fetus started to move. They thought that this meant that the soul had begun to inhabit the fetus at that point. So abortion before the quickening was okay. Not ideal, but certainly not an intolerable crime, like murder. In places where you find abortion and infanticide considered okay on economic grounds, it's not viewed as the ideal outcome, but a choice made by necessity. In foraging societies, where it's harder to get enough calories to eat, twins were viewed as a curse -- there was no way a lactating mother could expect to feed two babies. So one was killed. In agricultural society, there is usually enough calories to feed two babies, so it's okay. I would argue it *is* like "abortion on demand" -- but that's a loaded term. It's more like "abortion upon necessary decision based on unfortunate circumstances" -- like it is practiced today in America. So, a fundamentalist from 1950s American might have a problem with America today, but a Catholic from 1800 may not have a problem with abortions before 6 weeks.
...But modern day "I can kill my baby and be proud" is also very new. I think that's a straw man set up by the religious right today. I don't think anybody actually feels that way.I've recently run into problems installing debian and ubuntu on a machine at home, and two at work. After the whole process of installation, I got error code 16 when grub loaded( IIRC -- it was some even 'teenage' number, maybe 12 ).
/boot. This worked, so I did that on the other machine, and no problem.
/boot partition. Maybe it was just my experience, though. Still, it's something that I wouldn't expect to have happen in 2007 with a linux distro, especially one touted as grandma-friendly like Ubuntu. I've never had a problem having an MS OS properly make itself bootable, since the days of DOS 3.x!
At home I was frustrated, decided that Linux was *still* not ready for the desktop, and loaded something else ( this was maybe 6 months to a year ago).
Recently at work, I loaded Debian Etch ( 4.0 ), and got the same problem on two machines with the same hardware specs. The stakes were higher, so I looked up the error code. It said that it was a problem with the MBR. Rather than fiddling around editing GRUB, I went through the install process again, this time making a 100 MB boot partition at the beginning of the drive, marking it as bootable, and setting its mount point at
I was surprised that I got this on two different machines, with such recent versions of Ubuntu and Debian. What surprised me more was that there wasn't more discussion about this error and how to fix it. I would think that this problem was affecting more people, so the distro creators would either fix the grub install, or at least make Ubuntu automatically set up a bootable
I don't think they mean that Rove is actually writing an email every 12 minutes, but rather that's how much email he has in total. He probably gets copied on tons of emails that he never reads, by people cc'ing the email to every relevant person imaginable in order to cover their ass. I just got a new job at a University, and I get cc'ed on *everything* that the secretaries in the department send out, even though I'm just a temp worker!
It's like being on the mailing lists of every department, meeting, steering committee, or group, of every government function you have a hand in. Of course, neither you, nor Rove, nor I, read every email from every list and every cc'd email we get.
I totally agree, but the situation now is that the Republican party is the root of this whole problem, and the 'common folk', using the Democractic party as a tool, is the best chance we have of fighting back.
Politics is dirty and anybody could betray us at any time. But let's worry about the situation at hand.
In the Bush family power structure, W is known as the 'enforcer'. He's not a leader or visionary; he's a henchman or goon. He's the face of the mafia. He takes orders from up above, comes to your office, and lays down the law.
Talkshow host Tom Hartman said that he can't help coming to the conclusion that the endless investigations into Clinton's Christmas card lists, travel agent's activities, and sexual peccadilloes was an effort to sour the public on the process of impeachment, and make whatever crimes the next president would do seem like partisan politics. It's hard not to start thinking this way.
Gay, lesbian and transsexual rights.
Various cultures have had gay rights, or even elevated positions for gays or transgendered persons. Examples: Ancient Greeks, Sacred Hermaphrodites and transgendereds in Hindusism, Berdache shamans in Apache culture.
Smoking banned in most places.
Smoking was considered unhealhy, devilish, and lower-class stuff when tabacco first found it's way into Europe. It was also considered a medicine and health promoter in certain circles.
and Abortion on demand
Abortion and infanticide has long been practices in tribal societies and non-Monotheistic, Godess-worshipping cultures.
"God is dead."
Hereticism and atheism is nothing new. Greeks.
No-fault divorce. Divorce on demand
Practiced in various tribes and in Muslim countries, and places where men and women had more equal rights.
Photocopiers. Samizdat. Color printers.
Rapid printing presses.
Glossy advertising printed so cheaply that it is literally thrown out.
Colorful decorations that were thrown out and flowers that wilted for days-long religious ceremonies are old practices.
The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, David Bowie.
Music is nothing new. Other people's music is always weird.
Playboy centerfolds. Hustler. Downloadable porn.
Porn? As old as the cavemen. How about being suprised by the lack of whorehouses and streetwalkers?
AIDS.
In the olden says, you would find people with open sores dying in the streets. Obivious, disgusting disease was everywhere. AIDS is a relative benign fatal affliction. One of the diseases from the 1800s, I forget which one, would cause a seemingly healthy man to collapse in the street, dead a few hours later.
"Average" houses worth 250,000 to 1 million.
Mansions and palaces are nothing new. He would be surprised by our amount of wealth.
No spitting on the sidewalk.
A function of wealth and our sewer/plumbing system. Plumbing and sewers go back to the oldest cities.
Artificial fabrics of all types.
On the surface, not distinguishable from an unfamiliar natural fabric.
Rap music.
White people have been freak out by blacks with drums (i.e. African culture) for a long time.
State lotteries.
Gambling and games of chance, even state-sponsored - Very old.
T Shirts. Jeans, capri pants and slacks for women.
Other people always dress weird. Indians in the jungle are running around naked! Women have their breasts exposed!
"You can't hit your wife." "You can't hit your kid." "You can't beat your animals."
This is pretty new. But you find a lot of non-violent, pacifist religions all throught history and the world. Case in point - Judaism (don't abuse your domestic animals, slaughter them humanely), Early Christianity, Buddhism and Jainism.
"You can't threaten someone."
BIG offense in oral cultures. Likely a capital crime.
You CAN burn the flag.
Political protest is nothing new. Greek rulers worried about it all the time.
You CAN call the President an idiot to an audience - and you'll even get laughs.
Who doesn't make fun of their boss or political leader? The only place you couldn't do this was in facist, tightly controlled Kingdoms. Ever heard of the court Jester? It was more a problem for upper-class ind
Just two examples to illustrate my points: In Joe Kane's _Savages_ he says something like "Indians think nothing of traveling 3,000 miles on foot to visit a relative in a distant tribe." ( It may have been Mark Plotkin's _Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice_ or another ethnographic/journalistic account of Amazonian tribes ). Of course, they didn't get their overnight -- it took months to travel, and they relied on their camping/foraging skills, or the ritual obligations of other tribes to host and feed travelers that they know. So they relied on the camping skills and their social networks to provide for themselves along the way.
Similarly, in tribes and city-based civilizations, people traveled all the time. There were trade caravans running all the time. The Middle East was a crossroads between the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Before Mohammed smashed the idols at Mecca, it was filled with 365 idols. A lot of the pre-Mohammed idols we find can be traced to various Asian, African, and European gods. Mecca was not only a trade center, but a pilgrimage destination, and a caravan coming from Asia would be packed with Asians wanted to pay respect and giving thanks to their gods once they arrived, along with refilling their stocks.
To us in the modern day, travel may have seemed rare because there were few people who could write, and of those people, less who would record their travelogues. But of course, the average soldier, sailor, or caravan servant/slave, never had the opportunity to make a record of all the places they walked, sailed, or caravaned to.
If you read histories of western civilization, you will find scholars and religious students traveling to all the major cities to do learning at various temples and libraries. And of course, there were armies marching all over the world. Religious pilgrimages were also a big impetus for long journeys.
With a critical mind, you might say that the physical evidence of large-scale travel, such as trade goods and cultural items, might have made their way their by exchanging hands. But then we have the travelogues of people who were able to write, and they themselves traveled, and also said they met people who traveled long distances in caravans. In tribal societies, it was common for people to have a practical ability in 6-10 languages. Not that they were fluent, but they could speak well enough to get their needs met and not offend anybody. And cultures that are exposed to large exchanges of people start to develop shared vocabularies for common words. Amongst the North American Plains Indians, there was a common sign language amongst the various tribes. And in Empires, the language of the ruling ethnicity becomes a Lingua Franca. "Take me to your leader" -- because he was the only guy in the village that spoke the official language.
If you look at the Asian empires, including India, they were *huge* compared Europe. Those civilization sent messengers and administrators all over their kingdoms all the time. There were constantly maintained messenger service, who ran on foot. And promising young men were taken from villages to the capital cities to learn the official laws, customs, and language, then sent back in the country to serve as administrators. Even in the Incan empire, traversing the Andes.
Man is naturally a wandering, traveling, pilgrimaging creature, walking across whole continents.
But in the example of my sisters' friend, she *can* deal with high-stress, high stakes situations. It's just the high-stakes testing, virtual isolation-chamber environment that stresses her out. She's a very social person, and she's good with communication and in groups. What gets her about the test is that she can hear other people writing, but has no clue about what they're writing. Not that she wants to cheat, but psychologically, she relies on the social cues of the group to get along and maintain her energy. She draws energy from other people, and is energized by social interaction. She's not a loner type. Meanwhile I, as a geek, am drained by social interaction (unless they're close friends), and I get energized when I'm alone.
So she probably wouldn't be good as a surgeon, or as an admin trying to troubleshoot a server in the middle of the night, but if she were a lawyer arguing with the other attorney and the judge in the judge's chamber, she would be energized by that encounter, and would probably come out on top.
So all in all, even though she chokes in high-stakes testing, she will probably do well in life and her career because she can handle high-stakes social situations so well. She can win people over, or at least coming out with the other person liking her after the encounter. Better than a geek who can take tests and do individual, technical tasks well, but comes apart in high-stakes social situation.
They never faced charges, fortunately. But my buddy did get a call that he can come pick up his 486 from the FBI evidence storage.
In a smiilar vein, if you download what would be the equivalent of $20,000 woth of CDs, and you don't have $20,000, you can't really lie about your inability to purchase all of that music.
This is not to excuse someone who does poorly on tests because they didn't know the material, but some people have test anxiety, where the situation of a high pressure test, such as the SAT causes them to choke. Otherwise they are normal or good students and do well, even on exams. It's not that they can't do exams, but the high-pressure scenario really freaks them out. It's like people who have a fear of doctors and hospitals have a higher recorded blood-pressure than they do in everyday life, because they are stressed out when the doctor measures it!
I've never had a problem with tests, and I think it's because I understand on a social-engineering level better than the average person. I use strategies such as elimination, or figuring out what common pitfall the instructor is trying to set for us, rather than looking at them as just a knowledge dump. Although I do well on tests, I wouldn't mind if we got rid of the high pressure, keep silent, face on your own paper, 'final' tests. My problem with that it we really encounter a situation like that where we are actually using and applying our knowledge. Sure, we face other high-pressure scenarios, such as the server being down, or meetings with high-level executives, but the high-stakes testing doesn't 'test' that. A high stakes test more or less an arbitrary ordeal that exists only in education. We don't deal with the trickery and psych-outs of multiple choice in any other arena of our lives. You get no points for creativity or thinking outside the box in multiple choice. It also encourages procrastination, cramming, and waiting till the last minute to clear a hurdle, rather than taking the proper time and energy to complete a task or course of study.
We would do much better to give students the final grade based on their portfolio of work, final essays that they had time to complete, or final projects. But, since multiple choice is standardized and easy to grade by machine, that's why we use it. Everyone is a cog in the machine.
So if someone borrows the pen off your office desk without telling you, do you shoot them? After all, property rights and the very foundation of society is at stake! If you don't shoot him, your desk will be totally empty when you come in to work tomorrow!
If you say that no, you are not a part yourself, but you are made up of smaller parts, I then ask, "Okay, by what reasoning can we call those smaller parts parts? Aren't they made of parts also?" So then, if we can consider my smaller parts to be singular parts, why can't we call myself a singular part, at a certain level. After all, I am a part of the larger community or system, right? Neither your lawpoop, nor even one of those sibling plants is one thing. Both are composed of billions of simplistic parts that perform simple functions. Your 'lawpoop' is actually more like the collective result of an ant colony functioning or birds flocking. Okay, but aren't those smaller parts that make me up *themselves* collective results of simpler parts? And then aren't those parts made of simpler parts? If you say I'm more like a swarming ant colony, where the ant is the simple, basic part that makes up the larger function of the swarm, then isn't the ant itself a system of parts, namely cells? And then isn't each ant cell a system of parts, namely organelles and other molecules? And then aren't those molecules made up of atoms? And atoms made up of protons, nuetrons, and electrons? And those made up of quarks?
I'm not even talking about an experiential level, where I 'feel' like there is an indivisible "I", but just on a systems level -- if we're talking about society or the nation, we might define people to be the smallest 'parts' of that national system. But then when we're talking about medicine, we might consider organs, tissues, cells, or molecule channels on cell walls to be the smallest parts of that medical system. Then, when we are talking about physics, we might define quarks to be the smallest parts of that system. And then if we are talking about quantum physics, we might talk about quarks made up of forces or strings. It all depends on what level you are doing the analysis.
So that's what I mean when I say at one conceptual level, I am made of parts, but at another conceptual level, I am a basic part of another larger system that contains me. I'm arguing that a 'part' is a concept, not a physical reality. It's part of a conceptual framework that we use to perceive various phenomenon at various scales. And the level or scale which we choose to perceive also defines what we consider to be the part, or basic building block of that system, which we don't take apart any further *in that system*. So if we are doing a population study of ant colonies, we might talk about ants or genes as the basic part, but we don't need to talk about quarks -- there is just no need to break it down that far. We can understand all we need to by using the ant or the gene as the basic part of that conceptual framework. So if we can choose to define either an ant, a gene, an atom, or a quark as the basic part of our conceptual framework, then I see no reason why I can't talk about myself as a part, when I'm dealing with a framework that's on the scale of, say, the nation or society.
I don't think you can say with certainty what the most basic, indivisible parts are, in the multi-level sense. Before the 20th century, scientists thought that atoms where the smallest, partless, indivisible bits of matter. This idea came from the Greek philosophers, who said that the world was made up of these tiny, indivisible "atoms" -- literally 'a-tom' or in-divisible or un-cutable. Then in the 20th century we found out that atoms did indeed have parts, they were divisible; they were made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then in the 21st century, we found out that those parts had parts! And we got quantum physics. Then, instead of parts, we get waves. And maybe strings. Vibrations of pure force, no longer hard little chunks of matter.
Another issue, if we're interested in scientific discussion. Why is anthroporophism specifically disallowed? Why can't we anthropomorphise, if the comparison is valid?
When we talk about flight, or vision, between species, nobody complains. If we talk about insect flight compared to bird flight, nobody complains that we are insectopomorphising birds, or avopomorphising insects, even when the comparison is made using our built-in non-scientific comparison ability. What I mean is that we didn't do any scientific studies to show that bird 'flight' is the same 'process' as insect 'flight' -- we just began there because we naturally saw the similarities. Almost anybody in the world can tell you that both insects and birds both fly, albeit with different mechanisms, without scientific knowledge or research. Starting from that point, we can show similarities and differences between insect and bird flight -- in other words, we didn't lose any over our objective perception by starting out talking about bird and insect flight using the same term to describe different processes in different species. So even though flight arose independently in different species and lineages, and have different mechanisms, it somehow is not an issue to talk about comparative behavior and in birds and insects. We even have a name when different structures arise that perform the same process in different species -- it's called convergent evolution of homologous or analogous structure. The same goes for eyes and vision.
Yet when we talk about social behavior of mammals, why are we not allowed to talk about convergent evolution or homologous structures? When a researcher talks about chimps sharing, or dogs having social interaction, is that anthroporphism? What about when people, chimps, and dogs have homologous structures in the 'social' parts of thier respective brains?
People just pipe up with "don't anthropormorphise", yet I haven't yet seen the criteria or definition for what is anthroporophisms vs. an accurate identification of homologous structures or behavior. I'm not saying don't worry about anthropomorphism at all, but we can't worry about it scientifically until we define it and list the criteria. Otherwise it's just another way of saying that human beings are special, that either they are not animals, or are a special kind of animals, therefore, any comparison of humans to animals are invalid.
I don't think there's a driver's seat here. It's more like the left and right leg. Both move in their proper time to move the being forward. It's not that the genes are in charge; there's an interaction between the genes and the environment. The genes create part of the environment -- namely, the cellular structure and organism that surrounds the gene -- but the environment also exerts selective pressure on the genes themselves. So at different times it looks like the genes are in charge, at other times.
So I experience all three levels -- the Lawpoop that is made up of parts, the Lawpoop that is a part of a larger system, but also, the basis of my experience is the Lawpoop that is indivisible and irreduceable. Call it a spirit, a soul, the ghost in the machine, the 'mind', the ego, the "I", an illusion, the mind program that the brain hardware runs -- whatever you call it, that's the basis of my reality.