No, really -- I hate daylight savings, with a passion. And by passion, I mean "fucking passion".
Twice a year, my sleep cycle is systematically deranged. It's a goddamn kick to the head, and I don't mean that in a good way -- it's like the entire country gets a massive injection of jet lag extract.
Maybe society wants to keep its members from operating at peak efficiency, so let's pull the rug from under everyone's circadian rhythms twice a year, keep 'em off balance....
For a great example of redundancy in action, take a look in the mirror. You have individual cells dying by the millions every minute. Your memory is fuzzy at best, your pattern-recognition in your brain frequently sees things that aren't there, and you make stupid mistakes every single day. And that's fine, because the overall system is pretty damned redundant and resilient. A mash of protein goo and calcium deposits able to sustain one of the most complex information systems around, reliably, 24x7, for an average of 70 years or so apiece.
Nice metaphor, I like your style. In fact, I like it enough to post an excerpt to my blog:
This "fuel" is so easily available that it leads to the well known "an hour later you're hungry again" phenomenon.
The "hour later, hungry again" phenomenon also reflects the meat-intenstive American diet, by contrast with the predominantly rice-and-vegetables diet of the Orient.
I'm reminded of my favorite Dick Cavett joke:
"Have you ever tried German-Chinese food? It tastes great, but an hour later you're hungry for power again."
When I was fifteen (I'm now forty-seven), my dad taught me the rudiments of structured programming. He was a programmer himself, for the Star-Tribune.
Something he said has always stuck with me. He said, what usually happens is this: Management issues some directives; the programmers fulfill the directives; the end users try to use the programs -- and things go wrong because the end users were never consulted about what kind of tools they need to do their jobs.
The successful programmer, dad said, is the one who first goes and sits down with the end users, talks to them about their jobs, finds out what they really need -- then integrates this knowledge with Management directives. He called this "going native" (before he was a programmer, he took his degree in anthropology).
Americans, French and Polish were every bit as authoritarian in the home as the Germans of the time, despite living in non-fascist states.
Indeed. America rounded up over a hundred thousand American citizens of Japanese decent and stuck them in concentration camps. And jailed Quakers for their concientious objection to the war. And issued ration coupons for food, fuel, cars and tires, etc. And imposed nation-wide censorship.
And then copies were collected and burned in America.
In think the anti-Reich hubbub in America was mostly about his orgone boxes, which were either (a) fraudulent, or (b) conducive to sexual amplification. Neither (a) nor (b) was acceptable to the authorities in 1950's America. (Can you imagine June Cleaver stepping out of an orgone box, crackling with cosmic sex energy? "Leave it to Beaver" would have been a very different show.)
I've read it, and I just don't get what the hubbub was about.
Agreed, it's kind of repetitious and dull.
I think the hubbub was less about the book itself, more about Reich's personality (getting himself thrown out of the Communist party, making enemies with the Nazis, etc.).
You don't have to be Freud to see the ways in which pent up guilt and self revulsion pours out of the ruling classes. It's an expression of their own inadequacy to defeat their inner greed, blood lust and worship of war and horror.... Ask any psychologist about the link between Nazism and sexuality if you want to understand the pathology of the authoratarian mind.
Wilhelm Reich analyzed the relationship between authority and sexual repression.
"In [The Mass Psychology of Fascism], Reich categorized fascism as a symptom of sexual repression. The book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power."
-
Link.
"The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's genital sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, 'good," and "docile" in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical faculty also become inhibited. In short, morality's aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later."
- Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Link.
[M]aybe the correct thing for Wikipedia to do is "teach the controversy".
The entry for John Nash should not read "He was homosexual" or "He was NOT homosexual", but rather "Nash's biography claims he was homosexual [cite provided], but this has been disputed by some [cite provided]."
Right on. This is the heart of the matter, the best practice: teach the controversy.
Honestly, I've gotten completely sick of the whole concept of "debate" -- and I used to be a competitive debater. The problem is that it's inherently adversarial. It is not that both parties walk on stage with different viewpoints but a determination to uncover the single truth; no, each side simply wants "to win." So "debate" becomes just one more variety of pissing contest.
This is the problem with party politics: competition is king. Defining the other party as "the enemy" becomes the imperative.
Finding common ground, working out cooperative solutions, is deliberately avoided and prevented -- even where common ground and cooperative solutions might reasonably be found.
[Calculators in classrooms debate] Just in the 70s?
I don't mean to suggest that the debate vanished after the 70s. I was a high school student in the 70s, the memory is vivid in my mind. I don't know what high schools are teaching these days; I suppose the debate continues.
I agree with all your points about the value of learning arithmetic.
Pong is forbidden by Islamic law. You cannot make images of things, however ugly those images are.
To my understanding, the issue of forbidden images is complex and varied. Islamic law is not a unified monolithic concept -- it has evolved over centuries.
I'm no Islamic scholar. But plenty of information is available on the web. Here's one example:
"It is clear that the hadiths prohibit pictures of animals or people, especially in homes. There is no focus on pictures of Muhammad per se. All pictures of people and animals are forbidden." Link.
Since pong represents neither people nor animals, it should be okay.
I've read (in the Foxfire Books) about prohibition-era moonshiners using store-bought granulated sugar.
Any substance with a sweet percentage of sugar is subject to fermentation. I ain't never tried turnip whiskey, but hell, I don't see why it couldn't get a guy roaring drunk.
As for grass clippings, they're no damn good at all, far as I know -- practically no sugar content whatever. Might as well feed horses on the clippings, milk the mares, ferment the milk and distill the results (that's a Mongol thing, supposed to make a pretty good liquor).
Is there anywhere that shows how much energy is consumed by extracting petroleum from the ground, getting it to a ship or pipeline, refined into products, then across to where it's burned for power?
Damned good questions. Sorry I don't have answers -- other than the obvious generalization, "We used up the cheap and easy oil, now we're going after the expensive oil".
I do, however, recall reading somewhere on the web (sorry, can't find the link) that an estimated 70% of U.S. oil consumption goes to the military. If anyone can cite a source (for or against), I'd be very interested to read the figures.
"For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of 'intellectual sluggards'..."
Plato lamented how the invention of writing caused men to lose the ability -- formerly widespread, and held in great esteem -- to memorize tens of thousands of lines of verse (e.g. Homer's Iliad).
The invention of the pocket calculator, and its subsequent widespread use in classrooms, raised similar complaints among math teachers in the 1970's.
Every generation raises children conversant with the technologies of the day.
Stuart Brand and Dr. Patrick Moore, both long-time anti-nuclear environmental activists, have, in recent years, declared for nuclear power:
Stuart Brand:
"There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective. Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don't know where it is and you don't know what it's doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody's atmosphere."
Link
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of GreenPeace:
"We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of nuclear plants in operation."
Link
Bruce Sterling mentions phone sex bots in his short story "Are You For 86?" (appears in Globalhead anthology).
"The software just picks words at random out of the customer's own sick, pathetic rant! Whenever he stops for breath, it feeds a question back to him, using his own vocabulary.... Every two or three minutes it stops and says really nice things to him off the hard disk.... Kind of a flattery subroutine."
However, the difference is the Chinese didn't come here to STAY, invade, expurgate, demolish, or hijack an existing, thriving human ecosystem (competitive and warring, true), nor to subject the Natives.
What evidence do we have for these assertions?
Given the scant archaeological evidence -- very interesting evidence, yes, but scant -- how can we say anything more than "Chinese ships arrived at an early date, carrying glass beads" and "some tombstones and obelisks appear to be Chinese"...?
I submit that these archaeological evidences tell us more or less nothing about Chinese motives. Perhaps the Chinese attempted to conquer the native peoples, and failed. Or, maybe the Chinese were noble non-invasive explorers. No way to tell.
Slashdot Mirror
when deprived of normal sensory input, the mind generates hallucinatory sensations.
This explains my imaginary girlfriend.
LOL!
Sounds to me like the social equivalent of phantom limb pain: "My other half is gone, but I still feel his/her presence."
I'm also reminded of sensory deprivation -- when deprived of normal sensory input, the mind generates hallucinatory sensations.
First off, 1 hour is not jet lag. When I go from GMT+8 to GMT-8, that's jet lag. One hour isn't even noticable.
You're right, I exaggerated.
I should have said, "subclinical dosage of jet lag extract."
No, really -- I hate daylight savings, with a passion. And by passion, I mean "fucking passion".
....
Twice a year, my sleep cycle is systematically deranged. It's a goddamn kick to the head, and I don't mean that in a good way -- it's like the entire country gets a massive injection of jet lag extract.
Maybe society wants to keep its members from operating at peak efficiency, so let's pull the rug from under everyone's circadian rhythms twice a year, keep 'em off balance
For a great example of redundancy in action, take a look in the mirror. You have individual cells dying by the millions every minute. Your memory is fuzzy at best, your pattern-recognition in your brain frequently sees things that aren't there, and you make stupid mistakes every single day. And that's fine, because the overall system is pretty damned redundant and resilient. A mash of protein goo and calcium deposits able to sustain one of the most complex information systems around, reliably, 24x7, for an average of 70 years or so apiece.
Nice metaphor, I like your style. In fact, I like it enough to post an excerpt to my blog:
Link.
Keep up the good work.
Do some programming for fun. Invent a side project for yourself, something you want to do for its own sake. Have fun. Play.
Do you like games? Write a simple game. Do you like math? Write a program that models some mathematical principles.
This "fuel" is so easily available that it leads to the well known "an hour later you're hungry again" phenomenon.
The "hour later, hungry again" phenomenon also reflects the meat-intenstive American diet, by contrast with the predominantly rice-and-vegetables diet of the Orient.
I'm reminded of my favorite Dick Cavett joke:
"Have you ever tried German-Chinese food? It tastes great, but an hour later you're hungry for power again."
When I was fifteen (I'm now forty-seven), my dad taught me the rudiments of structured programming. He was a programmer himself, for the Star-Tribune.
Something he said has always stuck with me. He said, what usually happens is this: Management issues some directives; the programmers fulfill the directives; the end users try to use the programs -- and things go wrong because the end users were never consulted about what kind of tools they need to do their jobs.
The successful programmer, dad said, is the one who first goes and sits down with the end users, talks to them about their jobs, finds out what they really need -- then integrates this knowledge with Management directives. He called this "going native" (before he was a programmer, he took his degree in anthropology).
Link.
Chaos: Making a New Science
by James Gleick [1987]
Excellent science book for the non-specialist. Informative, entertaining, versatile.
Link.
Damn, I'm becoming the cranky old guy and I'm not past 30 yet. I think I am finally beginning to understand my Grandfather. Ah man.
Take heart, your best years are ahead of you.
During their thirties, guys become much more attractive to women. Mid-thirties to mid-forties, much much more attractive.
I'm 47, I speak from experience.
Americans, French and Polish were every bit as authoritarian in the home as the Germans of the time, despite living in non-fascist states.
Indeed. America rounded up over a hundred thousand American citizens of Japanese decent and stuck them in concentration camps. And jailed Quakers for their concientious objection to the war. And issued ration coupons for food, fuel, cars and tires, etc. And imposed nation-wide censorship.
And then copies were collected and burned in America.
In think the anti-Reich hubbub in America was mostly about his orgone boxes, which were either (a) fraudulent, or (b) conducive to sexual amplification. Neither (a) nor (b) was acceptable to the authorities in 1950's America. (Can you imagine June Cleaver stepping out of an orgone box, crackling with cosmic sex energy? "Leave it to Beaver" would have been a very different show.)
I've read it, and I just don't get what the hubbub was about.
Agreed, it's kind of repetitious and dull.
I think the hubbub was less about the book itself, more about Reich's personality (getting himself thrown out of the Communist party, making enemies with the Nazis, etc.).
You don't have to be Freud to see the ways in which pent up guilt and self revulsion pours out of the ruling classes. It's an expression of their own inadequacy to defeat their inner greed, blood lust and worship of war and horror .... Ask any psychologist about the link between Nazism and sexuality if you want to understand the pathology of the authoratarian mind.
Wilhelm Reich analyzed the relationship between authority and sexual repression.
"In [The Mass Psychology of Fascism], Reich categorized fascism as a symptom of sexual repression. The book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power."
- Link.
"The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's genital sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, 'good," and "docile" in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical faculty also become inhibited. In short, morality's aim is to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment required of him later."
- Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Link.
[M]aybe the correct thing for Wikipedia to do is "teach the controversy".
The entry for John Nash should not read "He was homosexual" or "He was NOT homosexual", but rather "Nash's biography claims he was homosexual [cite provided], but this has been disputed by some [cite provided]."
Right on. This is the heart of the matter, the best practice: teach the controversy.
Honestly, I've gotten completely sick of the whole concept of "debate" -- and I used to be a competitive debater. The problem is that it's inherently adversarial. It is not that both parties walk on stage with different viewpoints but a determination to uncover the single truth; no, each side simply wants "to win." So "debate" becomes just one more variety of pissing contest.
This is the problem with party politics: competition is king. Defining the other party as "the enemy" becomes the imperative.
Finding common ground, working out cooperative solutions, is deliberately avoided and prevented -- even where common ground and cooperative solutions might reasonably be found.
[Calculators in classrooms debate] Just in the 70s?
I don't mean to suggest that the debate vanished after the 70s. I was a high school student in the 70s, the memory is vivid in my mind. I don't know what high schools are teaching these days; I suppose the debate continues.
I agree with all your points about the value of learning arithmetic.
Pong is forbidden by Islamic law. You cannot make images of things, however ugly those images are.
To my understanding, the issue of forbidden images is complex and varied. Islamic law is not a unified monolithic concept -- it has evolved over centuries.
I'm no Islamic scholar. But plenty of information is available on the web. Here's one example:
"It is clear that the hadiths prohibit pictures of animals or people, especially in homes. There is no focus on pictures of Muhammad per se. All pictures of people and animals are forbidden." Link.
Since pong represents neither people nor animals, it should be okay.
The next generation might even master the technology of the .signature
D'oh -- !
My bad. Thanks for catching this -- I'd forgotten about the sig.
Moonshine is made of corn ...
Commonly, but not necessarily.
I've read (in the Foxfire Books) about prohibition-era moonshiners using store-bought granulated sugar.
Any substance with a sweet percentage of sugar is subject to fermentation. I ain't never tried turnip whiskey, but hell, I don't see why it couldn't get a guy roaring drunk.
As for grass clippings, they're no damn good at all, far as I know -- practically no sugar content whatever. Might as well feed horses on the clippings, milk the mares, ferment the milk and distill the results (that's a Mongol thing, supposed to make a pretty good liquor).
-kgj
Is there anywhere that shows how much energy is consumed by extracting petroleum from the ground, getting it to a ship or pipeline, refined into products, then across to where it's burned for power?
Damned good questions. Sorry I don't have answers -- other than the obvious generalization, "We used up the cheap and easy oil, now we're going after the expensive oil".
I do, however, recall reading somewhere on the web (sorry, can't find the link) that an estimated 70% of U.S. oil consumption goes to the military. If anyone can cite a source (for or against), I'd be very interested to read the figures.
-kgj
"For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of 'intellectual sluggards' ..."
Plato lamented how the invention of writing caused men to lose the ability -- formerly widespread, and held in great esteem -- to memorize tens of thousands of lines of verse (e.g. Homer's Iliad).
The invention of the pocket calculator, and its subsequent widespread use in classrooms, raised similar complaints among math teachers in the 1970's.
Every generation raises children conversant with the technologies of the day.
-kgj
Stuart Brand and Dr. Patrick Moore, both long-time anti-nuclear environmental activists, have, in recent years, declared for nuclear power:
Stuart Brand:
"There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective. Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don't know where it is and you don't know what it's doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody's atmosphere."
Link
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of GreenPeace:
"We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of nuclear plants in operation."
Link
-kgj
Bruce Sterling mentions phone sex bots in his short story "Are You For 86?" (appears in Globalhead anthology).
.... Every two or three minutes it stops and says really nice things to him off the hard disk .... Kind of a flattery subroutine."
"The software just picks words at random out of the customer's own sick, pathetic rant! Whenever he stops for breath, it feeds a question back to him, using his own vocabulary
-kgj
However, the difference is the Chinese didn't come here to STAY, invade, expurgate, demolish, or hijack an existing, thriving human ecosystem (competitive and warring, true), nor to subject the Natives.
...?
What evidence do we have for these assertions?
Given the scant archaeological evidence -- very interesting evidence, yes, but scant -- how can we say anything more than "Chinese ships arrived at an early date, carrying glass beads" and "some tombstones and obelisks appear to be Chinese"
I submit that these archaeological evidences tell us more or less nothing about Chinese motives. Perhaps the Chinese attempted to conquer the native peoples, and failed. Or, maybe the Chinese were noble non-invasive explorers. No way to tell.
-kgj