"Are you telling me it's possible for me to determine the absolute most beneficial action I should take at any given time?"
No. I'm just saying you are better at knowing what's best for you than anyone else, and that free market economics leverage that knowledge. Are you saying someone else is better at determining what's best for you than you yourself are?
The cases you are describing are known as market externalities. Market externalities were mentioned in the wikipedia article I linked to, which I considered sufficient reference to them, but again, I assumed too much.
I'm not an anarchist. Market externalities are, in my opinion, legitimate fields for governments to get involved. For example, taxing the knife manufacturer based on the estimated cost of solving health problems from their release of lead into the environment so that the price of your knife legitimately reflects its true costs would be a way of eliminating the market externality without forcing you to consider the knife on any other basis than its quality and cost. Once you get the important market externalities nailed, that's the right time for governments to stop getting involved. That's a difficult point to judge and a legitimate field of debate, but no implementation of communism would even try.
Once you have that point nailed, you've got individual interactions based on individual judgements of utility. The emergent complexity from this system should literally be undeniable. You see it every day. If we can't agree on that, we probably shouldn't even bother to discuss it. That it results in net positive benefits for the group should also be fairly clear. Do you agree on this point?
Human groups have always been swarms -- they are not a "new" thing. The new thing is optimizing the rules for individual interactions for a desirable emergent property and using new models to do so. The ideas about Pareto optimality as an emergent property of idealized free market economics are also proven using mathematical models. They just aren't new anymore. That doesn't mean they don't fit in with the other research in this field. If they didn't fit, the authors of the National Geographic magazine never would have mentioned betting systems as an effective method for combining the information which individuals possess to predict race outcomes. The effectivity of those systems can be proven using essentially the same method.
"...my point is that there's no such thing as absolute enlightened interest - selfish or altruistic, and theories that are predicated on it are increasingly demonstrating to be as quaint as the old "clockwork" model of the world"
And if you can't see that I'm not talking about "clockworks", then you may not be making an honest attempt to understand what I'm writing.
Thank you for your excellent response. I've been modded into the ground for my first time at slashdot, probably because I used too much sarcasm without warning people and assumed that a certain amount of economic theory was general knowledge. So I'd like to add to my own entry's self-defense:
From the fifth page of the article: "Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions."
I know of no other way to "make your own decisions" than enlighted self-interest. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu have shown that an idealized free market economy can achieve Pareto optimality. Important is that most individuals rationally evaluate which exchanges produce a net benefit for themselves, and accept only those exchanges. This is, in my opinion, a clear case of swarm behavior, since it relies on individual interactions being performed based on a simple set of rules which add up to an optimal solution.
Communism, even in its idealised distributed form cannot achieve the same results since it relies on all decision makers to know not only their own interests and preferences, but those of everyone effected by their decisions. The missing element is not perfect altruism, it's omniscience. This is, in my opinion, the reason why societies which experiment with communism end up with some kind of authoritarianism -- people are more willing to believe that a few elite have the knowledge and intelligence to make optimal decisions than that the masses do. It's just the more extreme version of the "there should be a law" camp.
For more information on Pareto optimality and Pareto efficiency, as well as some fair criticisms for using the principle as an evaluation of economic outcomes, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
I'm not sure what you mean. Communism's other name is "command economics". It's the idea that some wise and benevolent leader is better at allocating resources than a pack of ravenous self-interested capitalists. Combine that with the idea that an elite, educated few are better at choosing a wise benevolent leader, than an unwashed mob of drooling voters, and what have you got?
The idea that there is a net benefit for a group from the collective selfish actions of individual actors is closer to what this article is describing as swarm theory. It's also a reasonable description of democracy and free market economics. Both are ideas which I kind of like.
I essentially agree with you, but I'd put it differently. I heard a quote on the radio a couple of years back from some representative of the insurance industry which went to the effect of: "We're okay with not having your genetic information, for as long as you don't have it either."
Basically someone who knows they are going to die or be disabled soon would pay for the insurance. Once the customer is making decisions based on that information, the insurance company will be forced to raise prices to cover their extra costs which result from paying out on someone like that. But that's not the end of the story. When the prices are raised, people who know they are very unlikely to die or be disabled soon will stop paying for the the insurance and look for alternatives. This worsens the risk distribution for the insurance company even more, forcing the prices up further.
Eventually the price of the insurance will be a realistic reflection of the real costs of whatever problems it's supposed to cover. Once that occurs, there's no reason to pay for insurance at all, since you can just as easily use a savings account. At that point there is no insurance industry for that problem anymore.
It boils down to a fairly simple general principle: when a negotiation is occuring between two parties, the party with more information has an important advantage. At some point the disparity becomes so great that it's not even worth it for the disadvantaged party to accept a negotiated agreement at all. That can be bad for both sides.
Re:Some facts to back up your opinion please?
on
Treating the Dead
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I doubt though that people base decisions about how healthy their lifestyle will be on the question of whether or not someone will pay for their illness. After all, most of us like being healthy regardless of how much or how little money that will cost us. This is one of the arguments *for* socialized health care. It's not like in other industries where people will shop around for the best price/quality quotient. They want the best possible service, or the quickest possible service, but rarely the cheapest possible service. This is one reason that it is reasonable to call healthcare a "natural monopoly" (like water, sewage, or electricity). There are good arguments to be made for saying that health should be taken over or heavily regulated by the government.
Still I'm not convinced.
Where economic incentives do help with a market-based health insurance system is when employers have to pay for health insurance (as it is in most cases of full-time employment in the US). I suspect that the most important component of your lifestyle is what you do at work. By forcing employers to pay for health insurance, you provide an incentive for employers to provide a healthier environment for their employees since that means lower insurance premiums. Results of this that I've seen are: company cafeterias with a greater emphasis on also providing healthy food, on-site exercise centers, and improved emphasis on ergonomics and safety.
I also think that Europe's social, and physical structure works better for keeping people healthy: less relocations and more vacation mean less stress and more contact to friends and family, denser cities and better public transportation means more exercise, less wealth means less excessive eating. I don't believe that socialized healthcare is the primary factor in the health gap between the US and Europe.
In addition socialized healthcare has negative consequences which I have had to directly bear. My old doctor closed his practice because he couldn't earn enough to support himself and his family. My new doctor is great; I'm really happy with him, but the appointments are very short -- he's obviously over-worked. It's problems like this and others that have brought me to opt out of the German socialized healthcare system.
P.S. In Germany you pay between 12-15% of your salary for socialized health care. I'm not going to compare that to the US, since I don't actually know the percents in the US. I'm just putting that out there for anybody who does know the US number and wants to compare.
So what do you think of the Saxon series of math books? (If you've never heard of I suggest you go find one of their math books. I suspect you'll be appalled.)
I've never been a twinkie fan, and I don't drink sodas. Those are a part, but not the whole of the picture on American foods. Like I said, I spent the first 22 years of my life in the US. Of course it could be a sub-culture thing, in which case my comparisons are bad. Still, here they are:
My own mother never in her life added sugar to peas or carrots. She rarely added sugar to strawberries. But Germans seem to consider not adding sugar to these things weird. In waffles and pancakes my mother and now I measure sugar with tablespoons and not cups. I can show you in the measurements that the German cake and pie recipes I have contain considerably more sugar than the American cake and pie recipes. I'm talking here about home-made food and not manufactured food. None of that added sugar makes the things it is added to taste better in my opinion. The presence of it also makes the difference between feeling good after a meal or not.
Of course that's just the sugar side of thing. We could expand the topic to simple carbohydrates. A month ago I had an eye-opening experience. I wanted to improve my nutrition, so I read a book in which they suggested buying whole wheat bread instead of bread made from refined wheat. I thought "No problem. I'm in Germany, the land of the corner bakery. Some of those hundreds of different kinds of breads will certainly be made with whole wheat." Boy was I wrong. Nichts da. Not one was whole wheat. All the so-called gray breads were a mixture of refined wheat flour and rye. I've been bragging for years about German bread, and now I have to eat my words. I can't even find whole wheat flour or a whole wheat bread mix at the grocery store.
If we take it from there up to general diet healthfulness, I was raised to use sunflower oil and olive oil for most of the things I see Germans using butter for. The butter doesn't seem to have any flavor advantages, but it isn't as healthy as plant-based fats. In the trans-fats category, they are at least starting to talk about forcing labeling in the US, where Germans are apparently not even aware of the problem -- I haven't been able to find one who can translate "trans-fats" or "hydrogenated" for me. Based on its ingredients list and its consistency, I'm betting Nutella is mostly a German rendering of Crisco, but I have no way of finding out. Continuing from there, lots of German food, especially meat dishes, tastes over-salted to me. Germans drink statistically about twice the amount of alcohol that Americans drink and apply social pressure in a much more aggressive manner than Americans in drinking situations. Germans encourage over-eating by finding it socially difficult to accept leaving food uneaten on the plate, or taking it home with you. I've been in several German households where they'll help you to seconds of food or alcohol even after you've said "No thank you". One German woman even went back into the kitchen to cook extra without asking and then tried to force the food on me. "Coffee", that late afternoon meal which consists entirely of cake is also unhealthy.
On food safety, Germans eat many more foods raw which are dangerous in that form (tiramisu with raw eggs, mett with raw ground pork and hamburger mixed with raw eggs). Two acquaintances of mine got Salmonella that way. Nobody I know in the US has ever had Salmonella. German grocery stores don't refrigerate their eggs, and they sell milk much closer to its expiration date. Because it is difficult for her to throw food away, I can't convince my mother-in-law not to feed food containing meat which sat at room temperature overnight to the chickens she gets her eggs from. I've never gotten spoiled meat from a grocery store or a restaurant anywhere other than in Germany.
I think the only reasons German health and life span statistics aren't as miserable as Americans is that they get more exercise.
And just to avoid coming off like a pleasureless health nut: Rittersport is good, but you can do better:o) t
Having grown up in the US and now living in Europe, I think people tend to exagerate Europeans commitment to quality. The Mars and Snickers are next to the cash register lines here too. The best stuff you'll find at a gas station is Toblerone, but you'll find that in the US too. Nestle, the source of at least half the "American" chocolate flavored wax people are refering to here, is a European company. Really good chocolate has to be sought out in specialty shops in Europe, just like it is in the US. There's just more of those specialty shops -- that's the extent of the difference.
(I'm a little bitter, because I've been struggling through meals made by my German mother-in-law who like all Germans, adds too much sugar to everything in sight.)
I'm not a wine expert, but my all time favorite white is still Lucky Lizard -- an Australian wine. So I understand your partiality to Australian wines.
So allow me to bounce my method of understanding this off of you:
The cat is split into two realities: one in which it is dead and one in which it is alive. I remain identical to myself in the other reality until I am affected by the cat directly or indirectly. At which point, me and myself begin to go ever so slightly separate ways, never to meet again. If this me is in the reality with the living cat, then this me only ever interacts with objects and people for whom the cat is alive.
You must be confusing me with someone else. I did not argue that we disarm anybody. I'm only suggesting that allowing people to arm themselves is unlikely to have prevented any deaths in this situation, for two reasons:
1.) The right to arm yourself does not mean you are armed. In the case of university students it is unlikely they will be armed. 2.) Being armed does not mean you can defend yourself. Especially if the other person has the element of surprise.
I do have views on gun control. They aren't what you are assuming they are. I don't believe arguments against government gun control are even applicable here since the decision to make that campus gun-free was a university decision and not a government decision.
I've seen this comment here a couple of times, and I find it unreasonable. I don't see how university students, most of whom are presumably under the age of 22, can be expected in their short lives to have had the time to train themselves in the use of a handgun, on the side to their normal studies. It also requires a certain mindset to remain calm enough in a situation like that to be able to aim at another human being (even a very dangerous one) and then pull the trigger.
I'm guessing anybody who speaks about this so lightly has never actually been confronted with a threatening person while they had a gun within reach. I'm certain it's different in reality than it is in theory.
Bush also fired all 93 US Attorneys... at the beginning of his term. Firing 8 Attorneys is unusual for a several reasons, and here are a couple of them: *the timing seems to indicate an intent which goes belong the classic "to the victor goes the spoils". *the firings were justified with what now appears to be a lie about "performance problems", and that made some qualified people mad.
I think the whole thing is more of a tempest in a teapot than anything else, but Gonzales' handling of it hasn't improved his image.
I've observed the same phenomenon from two other perspectives:
1.) Working at a foreign branch of a US-based company. Many employees of US companies think that because they work at the "mother ship" they can dictate the way the foreign branch works without the responsibility of making sure the necessary resources and know-how are available to achieve their demands. So you get this "you have to use technology X for your project because we sell technology X", but when you write to ask about some detail of technology X, it'll take two weeks to get an incomplete answer.
2.) Working with a particular person who telecommutes. If he doesn't feel like answering, or doesn't have time for me, he just won't answer. I never find out why, unless I escalate, which is just something I can't be doing all the time.
At the same time, I've also had positive experiences working with people in other overseas branches, or in the main branch. Mostly, it's a matter of luck to get people who have the right mindset and communication skills. My personal opinion is that, as globalization increases, that skill set will become an important work-skill.
That onlinejournal.com basically says there is a small cabal of Jews trying to control the world by playing the US like a puppet. That's not very credible. I don't agree with everything Israel does, but this kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is ugly. It also reduces the credibility of any unrelated claims the article makes, for example about a missing 3 trillion. I think it's a shame that this comment was rated informative.
When I was looking for a job out of college, I interviewed with a company and then turned down their offer. When I turned it down, the recruiter asked why. When I told her, she did what some of the people here have talked about interviewees doing: she argued with my judgement. It just turned into an uncomfortable position for both of us.
It didn't help me, but it might have helped her, so I think I'd answer the question again anyways. I would however try to find a way to present the information so that it's more likely to be helpful to the recipient. I would also, in most cases, avoid criticizing things the person I'm talking to can't change.
We don't use it at interfaces anymore (I never did, but that's because I had the opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes...), but we also can't use the STL at interfaces for the same reasons -- different developer's prefer different versions of STL, and there are no guarantees that STL will remain compatible from one version to the next. You don't want to have to do without the latest version of the STL, just because of something silly like the binary compatibility of your string class. And you certainly won't be able to convince the developers that use your library to do without -- chances are about even they'll just do without your library instead. And multiple versions of STL don't get along in the same project. So there is no STL in our interface definitions either.
This is the reality of programming for industry -- but I get the feeling you might know what I mean.:o)
:o) Try compiling with different versions of MFC. CString isn't compatible between debug and release, much less from one version to the next. STLPort isn't compatible with MS STL either. I'll admit to only 6 years, but I've seen multiple instances of this problem. But we also aren't dealing necessarily with contiguous versions either.
It's certainly very useful to enforce rules about your vtables and etc. It's actually a pre-requisite for ever getting to the problem with the strings. The ABI for Windows is COM; there your binary string representation is BSTR. BSTRs can be manipulated using various libraries, they are however not explicitly associated with the STL or any other library, much less a library which is part of the C++ standard. So you can pick a library, or you can do your memory management, avoid buffer-runs and etc yourself.
Actually I was thinking about separately-compiled in-process components when writing the above. If you are otherwise in-process marshalling is kind of expensive. Out-of-process components is not an area in which I do much programming, so it sounds like you know more than me. Feel free to elaborate:o)
Unfortunately stl isn't binary compatible. That means you have to make sure you've compiled with exactly the same version of the stl with all the components of your program which accept and pass strings. This in turn makes it impossible to release different parts of your program separately from each other if you are using the stl at the interface between your components.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
1.) Pass character arrays at the interfaces between your components and immediately put those character arrays under the control of your library once they come in. 2.) Write or find your own string library and pass that string class between program components. Be careful when doing this. Mistakes will come back to byte you.
All of it's kind of nasty. It'd be nice if C++ could standardize their binary representation, even if it's only a standard valid per platform.
Then there's also:
3.) Choose a language which unlike C++ already has a standardized binary representation for strings, or a system global interpreter for a varying binary representation. This is just an extension of the "higher-level library which does the memory management for you" option really.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm agreeing with the parent post. I'm just adding a caveat.
You are exagerating the contrasts between men and women. Speaking as a woman, I prefer CFL's... especially for certain tasks.
1.) Cooking -- I can more easily check that the color of certain foods is correct. So I don't overcook the vegetables for example. 2.) Arts and Crafts -- I have trouble distinguishing the difference between blue and black and the difference between grey and beige with incandescents and halogens. When sewing or painting its good to be able to see these differences. 3.) Choosing matching clothes -- I hate picking a "matching" blouse and skirt only to discover that they don't match when I go out in the sun. 4.) Programming -- Good bright lighting helps me concentrate.
I don't like them for some things though: 1.) Candle-lit dinner -- candles produce an attractively colored light with soft edges. 2.) Lighted walkways -- When it's dark outside your eyes need to adjust gradually to the bright light indoors. The lighted walkways are the first light you see from a house. So they need a luminance which is intermediate between indoors and outdoors. 3.) Parties -- People relax better when the room they are celebrating in doesn't remind them of an interrogation room or a hospital. 4.) Short-burning lights -- CFL's still don't turn on instantly and for light-fixtures in hallways or other rooms where you only spend a short period of time that's impractical.
I hope this sheds enough light on the topic to reveal that women exhibit just as many human details in their preferences as men do.
Google is the only place I click on ads. If I create a search for something I want to buy, I've found the ads are often better hits for my search than anything else in the search results. I doubt I'm alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! Nice response. But based on which rules of simple interactions was the swarm acting?
"Are you telling me it's possible for me to determine the absolute most beneficial action I should take at any given time?"
No. I'm just saying you are better at knowing what's best for you than anyone else, and that free market economics leverage that knowledge. Are you saying someone else is better at determining what's best for you than you yourself are?
The cases you are describing are known as market externalities. Market externalities were mentioned in the wikipedia article I linked to, which I considered sufficient reference to them, but again, I assumed too much.
I'm not an anarchist. Market externalities are, in my opinion, legitimate fields for governments to get involved. For example, taxing the knife manufacturer based on the estimated cost of solving health problems from their release of lead into the environment so that the price of your knife legitimately reflects its true costs would be a way of eliminating the market externality without forcing you to consider the knife on any other basis than its quality and cost. Once you get the important market externalities nailed, that's the right time for governments to stop getting involved. That's a difficult point to judge and a legitimate field of debate, but no implementation of communism would even try.
Once you have that point nailed, you've got individual interactions based on individual judgements of utility. The emergent complexity from this system should literally be undeniable. You see it every day. If we can't agree on that, we probably shouldn't even bother to discuss it. That it results in net positive benefits for the group should also be fairly clear. Do you agree on this point?
Human groups have always been swarms -- they are not a "new" thing. The new thing is optimizing the rules for individual interactions for a desirable emergent property and using new models to do so. The ideas about Pareto optimality as an emergent property of idealized free market economics are also proven using mathematical models. They just aren't new anymore. That doesn't mean they don't fit in with the other research in this field. If they didn't fit, the authors of the National Geographic magazine never would have mentioned betting systems as an effective method for combining the information which individuals possess to predict race outcomes. The effectivity of those systems can be proven using essentially the same method.
"...my point is that there's no such thing as absolute enlightened interest - selfish or altruistic, and theories that are predicated on it are increasingly demonstrating to be as quaint as the old "clockwork" model of the world"
And if you can't see that I'm not talking about "clockworks", then you may not be making an honest attempt to understand what I'm writing.
Thank you for your excellent response. I've been modded into the ground for my first time at slashdot, probably because I used too much sarcasm without warning people and assumed that a certain amount of economic theory was general knowledge. So I'd like to add to my own entry's self-defense:
From the fifth page of the article:
"Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions."
I know of no other way to "make your own decisions" than enlighted self-interest. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu have shown that an idealized free market economy can achieve Pareto optimality. Important is that most individuals rationally evaluate which exchanges produce a net benefit for themselves, and accept only those exchanges. This is, in my opinion, a clear case of swarm behavior, since it relies on individual interactions being performed based on a simple set of rules which add up to an optimal solution.
Communism, even in its idealised distributed form cannot achieve the same results since it relies on all decision makers to know not only their own interests and preferences, but those of everyone effected by their decisions. The missing element is not perfect altruism, it's omniscience. This is, in my opinion, the reason why societies which experiment with communism end up with some kind of authoritarianism -- people are more willing to believe that a few elite have the knowledge and intelligence to make optimal decisions than that the masses do. It's just the more extreme version of the "there should be a law" camp.
For more information on Pareto optimality and Pareto efficiency, as well as some fair criticisms for using the principle as an evaluation of economic outcomes, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency
I'm not sure what you mean. Communism's other name is "command economics". It's the idea that some wise and benevolent leader is better at allocating resources than a pack of ravenous self-interested capitalists. Combine that with the idea that an elite, educated few are better at choosing a wise benevolent leader, than an unwashed mob of drooling voters, and what have you got?
The idea that there is a net benefit for a group from the collective selfish actions of individual actors is closer to what this article is describing as swarm theory. It's also a reasonable description of democracy and free market economics. Both are ideas which I kind of like.
Elrac is probably refering to Alex the parrot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)
I essentially agree with you, but I'd put it differently. I heard a quote on the radio a couple of years back from some representative of the insurance industry which went to the effect of: "We're okay with not having your genetic information, for as long as you don't have it either."
Basically someone who knows they are going to die or be disabled soon would pay for the insurance. Once the customer is making decisions based on that information, the insurance company will be forced to raise prices to cover their extra costs which result from paying out on someone like that. But that's not the end of the story. When the prices are raised, people who know they are very unlikely to die or be disabled soon will stop paying for the the insurance and look for alternatives. This worsens the risk distribution for the insurance company even more, forcing the prices up further.
Eventually the price of the insurance will be a realistic reflection of the real costs of whatever problems it's supposed to cover. Once that occurs, there's no reason to pay for insurance at all, since you can just as easily use a savings account. At that point there is no insurance industry for that problem anymore.
It boils down to a fairly simple general principle: when a negotiation is occuring between two parties, the party with more information has an important advantage. At some point the disparity becomes so great that it's not even worth it for the disadvantaged party to accept a negotiated agreement at all. That can be bad for both sides.
I doubt though that people base decisions about how healthy their lifestyle will be on the question of whether or not someone will pay for their illness. After all, most of us like being healthy regardless of how much or how little money that will cost us. This is one of the arguments *for* socialized health care. It's not like in other industries where people will shop around for the best price/quality quotient. They want the best possible service, or the quickest possible service, but rarely the cheapest possible service. This is one reason that it is reasonable to call healthcare a "natural monopoly" (like water, sewage, or electricity). There are good arguments to be made for saying that health should be taken over or heavily regulated by the government.
Still I'm not convinced.
Where economic incentives do help with a market-based health insurance system is when employers have to pay for health insurance (as it is in most cases of full-time employment in the US). I suspect that the most important component of your lifestyle is what you do at work. By forcing employers to pay for health insurance, you provide an incentive for employers to provide a healthier environment for their employees since that means lower insurance premiums. Results of this that I've seen are: company cafeterias with a greater emphasis on also providing healthy food, on-site exercise centers, and improved emphasis on ergonomics and safety.
I also think that Europe's social, and physical structure works better for keeping people healthy: less relocations and more vacation mean less stress and more contact to friends and family, denser cities and better public transportation means more exercise, less wealth means less excessive eating. I don't believe that socialized healthcare is the primary factor in the health gap between the US and Europe.
In addition socialized healthcare has negative consequences which I have had to directly bear. My old doctor closed his practice because he couldn't earn enough to support himself and his family. My new doctor is great; I'm really happy with him, but the appointments are very short -- he's obviously over-worked. It's problems like this and others that have brought me to opt out of the German socialized healthcare system.
P.S. In Germany you pay between 12-15% of your salary for socialized health care. I'm not going to compare that to the US, since I don't actually know the percents in the US. I'm just putting that out there for anybody who does know the US number and wants to compare.
So what do you think of the Saxon series of math books? (If you've never heard of I suggest you go find one of their math books. I suspect you'll be appalled.)
I've never been a twinkie fan, and I don't drink sodas. Those are a part, but not the whole of the picture on American foods. Like I said, I spent the first 22 years of my life in the US. Of course it could be a sub-culture thing, in which case my comparisons are bad. Still, here they are:
:o) t
My own mother never in her life added sugar to peas or carrots. She rarely added sugar to strawberries. But Germans seem to consider not adding sugar to these things weird. In waffles and pancakes my mother and now I measure sugar with tablespoons and not cups. I can show you in the measurements that the German cake and pie recipes I have contain considerably more sugar than the American cake and pie recipes. I'm talking here about home-made food and not manufactured food. None of that added sugar makes the things it is added to taste better in my opinion. The presence of it also makes the difference between feeling good after a meal or not.
Of course that's just the sugar side of thing. We could expand the topic to simple carbohydrates. A month ago I had an eye-opening experience. I wanted to improve my nutrition, so I read a book in which they suggested buying whole wheat bread instead of bread made from refined wheat. I thought "No problem. I'm in Germany, the land of the corner bakery. Some of those hundreds of different kinds of breads will certainly be made with whole wheat." Boy was I wrong. Nichts da. Not one was whole wheat. All the so-called gray breads were a mixture of refined wheat flour and rye. I've been bragging for years about German bread, and now I have to eat my words. I can't even find whole wheat flour or a whole wheat bread mix at the grocery store.
If we take it from there up to general diet healthfulness, I was raised to use sunflower oil and olive oil for most of the things I see Germans using butter for. The butter doesn't seem to have any flavor advantages, but it isn't as healthy as plant-based fats. In the trans-fats category, they are at least starting to talk about forcing labeling in the US, where Germans are apparently not even aware of the problem -- I haven't been able to find one who can translate "trans-fats" or "hydrogenated" for me. Based on its ingredients list and its consistency, I'm betting Nutella is mostly a German rendering of Crisco, but I have no way of finding out. Continuing from there, lots of German food, especially meat dishes, tastes over-salted to me. Germans drink statistically about twice the amount of alcohol that Americans drink and apply social pressure in a much more aggressive manner than Americans in drinking situations. Germans encourage over-eating by finding it socially difficult to accept leaving food uneaten on the plate, or taking it home with you. I've been in several German households where they'll help you to seconds of food or alcohol even after you've said "No thank you". One German woman even went back into the kitchen to cook extra without asking and then tried to force the food on me. "Coffee", that late afternoon meal which consists entirely of cake is also unhealthy.
On food safety, Germans eat many more foods raw which are dangerous in that form (tiramisu with raw eggs, mett with raw ground pork and hamburger mixed with raw eggs). Two acquaintances of mine got Salmonella that way. Nobody I know in the US has ever had Salmonella. German grocery stores don't refrigerate their eggs, and they sell milk much closer to its expiration date. Because it is difficult for her to throw food away, I can't convince my mother-in-law not to feed food containing meat which sat at room temperature overnight to the chickens she gets her eggs from. I've never gotten spoiled meat from a grocery store or a restaurant anywhere other than in Germany.
I think the only reasons German health and life span statistics aren't as miserable as Americans is that they get more exercise.
And just to avoid coming off like a pleasureless health nut: Rittersport is good, but you can do better
Having grown up in the US and now living in Europe, I think people tend to exagerate Europeans commitment to quality. The Mars and Snickers are next to the cash register lines here too. The best stuff you'll find at a gas station is Toblerone, but you'll find that in the US too. Nestle, the source of at least half the "American" chocolate flavored wax people are refering to here, is a European company. Really good chocolate has to be sought out in specialty shops in Europe, just like it is in the US. There's just more of those specialty shops -- that's the extent of the difference.
(I'm a little bitter, because I've been struggling through meals made by my German mother-in-law who like all Germans, adds too much sugar to everything in sight.)
I'm not a wine expert, but my all time favorite white is still Lucky Lizard -- an Australian wine. So I understand your partiality to Australian wines.
So allow me to bounce my method of understanding this off of you:
The cat is split into two realities: one in which it is dead and one in which it is alive. I remain identical to myself in the other reality until I am affected by the cat directly or indirectly. At which point, me and myself begin to go ever so slightly separate ways, never to meet again. If this me is in the reality with the living cat, then this me only ever interacts with objects and people for whom the cat is alive.
You must be confusing me with someone else. I did not argue that we disarm anybody. I'm only suggesting that allowing people to arm themselves is unlikely to have prevented any deaths in this situation, for two reasons:
1.) The right to arm yourself does not mean you are armed. In the case of university students it is unlikely they will be armed.
2.) Being armed does not mean you can defend yourself. Especially if the other person has the element of surprise.
I do have views on gun control. They aren't what you are assuming they are. I don't believe arguments against government gun control are even applicable here since the decision to make that campus gun-free was a university decision and not a government decision.
I've seen this comment here a couple of times, and I find it unreasonable. I don't see how university students, most of whom are presumably under the age of 22, can be expected in their short lives to have had the time to train themselves in the use of a handgun, on the side to their normal studies. It also requires a certain mindset to remain calm enough in a situation like that to be able to aim at another human being (even a very dangerous one) and then pull the trigger.
I'm guessing anybody who speaks about this so lightly has never actually been confronted with a threatening person while they had a gun within reach. I'm certain it's different in reality than it is in theory.
Bush also fired all 93 US Attorneys... at the beginning of his term. Firing 8 Attorneys is unusual for a several reasons, and here are a couple of them:
*the timing seems to indicate an intent which goes belong the classic "to the victor goes the spoils".
*the firings were justified with what now appears to be a lie about "performance problems", and that made some qualified people mad.
I think the whole thing is more of a tempest in a teapot than anything else, but Gonzales' handling of it hasn't improved his image.
I've observed the same phenomenon from two other perspectives:
1.) Working at a foreign branch of a US-based company. Many employees of US companies think that because they work at the "mother ship" they can dictate the way the foreign branch works without the responsibility of making sure the necessary resources and know-how are available to achieve their demands. So you get this "you have to use technology X for your project because we sell technology X", but when you write to ask about some detail of technology X, it'll take two weeks to get an incomplete answer.
2.) Working with a particular person who telecommutes. If he doesn't feel like answering, or doesn't have time for me, he just won't answer. I never find out why, unless I escalate, which is just something I can't be doing all the time.
At the same time, I've also had positive experiences working with people in other overseas branches, or in the main branch. Mostly, it's a matter of luck to get people who have the right mindset and communication skills. My personal opinion is that, as globalization increases, that skill set will become an important work-skill.
That onlinejournal.com basically says there is a small cabal of Jews trying to control the world by playing the US like a puppet. That's not very credible. I don't agree with everything Israel does, but this kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is ugly. It also reduces the credibility of any unrelated claims the article makes, for example about a missing 3 trillion. I think it's a shame that this comment was rated informative.
That is certainly a valid way to look at it.
When I was looking for a job out of college, I interviewed with a company and then turned down their offer. When I turned it down, the recruiter asked why. When I told her, she did what some of the people here have talked about interviewees doing: she argued with my judgement. It just turned into an uncomfortable position for both of us.
It didn't help me, but it might have helped her, so I think I'd answer the question again anyways. I would however try to find a way to present the information so that it's more likely to be helpful to the recipient. I would also, in most cases, avoid criticizing things the person I'm talking to can't change.
Yeah, I wish.
:o)
We don't use it at interfaces anymore (I never did, but that's because I had the opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes...), but we also can't use the STL at interfaces for the same reasons -- different developer's prefer different versions of STL, and there are no guarantees that STL will remain compatible from one version to the next. You don't want to have to do without the latest version of the STL, just because of something silly like the binary compatibility of your string class. And you certainly won't be able to convince the developers that use your library to do without -- chances are about even they'll just do without your library instead. And multiple versions of STL don't get along in the same project. So there is no STL in our interface definitions either.
This is the reality of programming for industry -- but I get the feeling you might know what I mean.
:o) Try compiling with different versions of MFC. CString isn't compatible between debug and release, much less from one version to the next. STLPort isn't compatible with MS STL either. I'll admit to only 6 years, but I've seen multiple instances of this problem. But we also aren't dealing necessarily with contiguous versions either.
It's certainly very useful to enforce rules about your vtables and etc. It's actually a pre-requisite for ever getting to the problem with the strings. The ABI for Windows is COM; there your binary string representation is BSTR. BSTRs can be manipulated using various libraries, they are however not explicitly associated with the STL or any other library, much less a library which is part of the C++ standard. So you can pick a library, or you can do your memory management, avoid buffer-runs and etc yourself.
That would be option 1 above.
Actually I was thinking about separately-compiled in-process components when writing the above. If you are otherwise in-process marshalling is kind of expensive. Out-of-process components is not an area in which I do much programming, so it sounds like you know more than me. Feel free to elaborate :o)
Unfortunately stl isn't binary compatible. That means you have to make sure you've compiled with exactly the same version of the stl with all the components of your program which accept and pass strings. This in turn makes it impossible to release different parts of your program separately from each other if you are using the stl at the interface between your components.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
1.) Pass character arrays at the interfaces between your components and immediately put those character arrays under the control of your library once they come in.
2.) Write or find your own string library and pass that string class between program components. Be careful when doing this. Mistakes will come back to byte you.
All of it's kind of nasty. It'd be nice if C++ could standardize their binary representation, even if it's only a standard valid per platform.
Then there's also:
3.) Choose a language which unlike C++ already has a standardized binary representation for strings, or a system global interpreter for a varying binary representation. This is just an extension of the "higher-level library which does the memory management for you" option really.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm agreeing with the parent post. I'm just adding a caveat.
You are exagerating the contrasts between men and women. Speaking as a woman, I prefer CFL's... especially for certain tasks.
1.) Cooking -- I can more easily check that the color of certain foods is correct. So I don't overcook the vegetables for example.
2.) Arts and Crafts -- I have trouble distinguishing the difference between blue and black and the difference between grey and beige with incandescents and halogens. When sewing or painting its good to be able to see these differences.
3.) Choosing matching clothes -- I hate picking a "matching" blouse and skirt only to discover that they don't match when I go out in the sun.
4.) Programming -- Good bright lighting helps me concentrate.
I don't like them for some things though:
1.) Candle-lit dinner -- candles produce an attractively colored light with soft edges.
2.) Lighted walkways -- When it's dark outside your eyes need to adjust gradually to the bright light indoors. The lighted walkways are the first light you see from a house. So they need a luminance which is intermediate between indoors and outdoors.
3.) Parties -- People relax better when the room they are celebrating in doesn't remind them of an interrogation room or a hospital.
4.) Short-burning lights -- CFL's still don't turn on instantly and for light-fixtures in hallways or other rooms where you only spend a short period of time that's impractical.
I hope this sheds enough light on the topic to reveal that women exhibit just as many human details in their preferences as men do.
Google is the only place I click on ads. If I create a search for something I want to buy, I've found the ads are often better hits for my search than anything else in the search results. I doubt I'm alone.