Even if they want to reinforce the idea that women shouldn't do their own repairs or ever get under the hood (which I think is bullshit), this is a horrible idea. What happens if the car needs a jump? What happens when the woman's husband or brother or whatever could do something minor, but can't now because only a volvo shop has the tools to open the hood? Now you'd need to pay for service? Maybe that's the idea.
There are different kinds of genius, and a movie doesn't have to be particularly intellectual to exhibit genius.
What I love about these movies is that they express many of the themes and much of the feel of Tolkien's works in a way I thought was compelling. The genius I see in them is brilliant adaptation -- Peter Jackson managed to successfully adapt a work I didn't think was adaptable. He did it well, which from my point of view means that he didn't get caught up with the details, but focused on what was important, which in this case was theme, emotional overtones, etc. I agree that they were dramatic and overacted, but in part that's because the characters talked a lot like Tolkien's characters do. That's the material they were working with, and that's one of the things I liked.
I agree that the movies impose an imaginative vision that doesn't allow interpretation the way the books do. But I think they stand on their own without detracting anything from the books, and I think that if Tolkien were here to see them, he'd probably recognize that.
The movies will never be as meaningful to me as the books are, but I really love them anyway, and I'm glad they were made by people who had some love for the books and who managed to capture some of the feel, if not many of the details.
On a side note -- it's too bad the Silmarillion wouldn't adapt to film; it's always been my favorite, and there are parts I'd love to see on screen.:)
It's funny you should say so. Sean Penn is pretty much my favorite living actor, and I agree that some of his best performances have been overlooked, but I don't think he shoud have won it this year. I think it should have gone to Johnny Depp. No, the role wasn't as serious(obviously); but it was as challenging, and it's rare to see someone bring a character to life the way he did. The fact that it was in a silly Disney movie shouldn't get in the way of recognizing that. Sean Penn was great (as was Tim Robbins - I'm glad he won) - but not that great.
Gravy indeed, but well-deserved gravy. As far as other films that lost on technical awards -- I personally don't think they deserved them. ROTK was better than they were in those areas. I thought Pirates of the Caribbean and Master and Commander were both very good -- but not as good in the areas they were nominated for.
Interesting, and I'm somewhat sympathetic, but -- in regards to the last sentence -- keep in mind that he wrote this before effects and costuming could do what they can today. The orcs in these movies didn't come across as men dressed up as animals, or as buffoons or mimics.
No kidding. And it speaks to the genius of Peter Jackson and everyone involved in the project that they managed to pull this off. I usually don't give a damn who gets the awards, but it's fantastic to see them recognized for what was one of the most impressive projects in cinematic history.
That's all nice and good, but as far as language is concerned, it doesn't wash. We have words like 'feel' and 'think' and 'believe' and they all have meanings within a certain context. You can claim whatever you like about your belief system, but you use the words just like everyone else -- that is, within a context that assumes they have meaning. When you write 'You're one of those people who believes...', your use of the word 'believes' only has meaning in a context you claim to reject. Likewise when you say 'I know I'm a zombie.'
In that context, biological analyses are interesting, even vital, but not final or satisfactory. I'm willing to bet that when close friends or relatives of yours die, your first reaction isn't "My evolutionary history is now determining the pain impulse I'm (not) experiencing (because there is no such thing as experience, because mentalism is a lie)." I also assume that when you buy a gift for a woman you care about, you don't sign a card "Sending this to you because my determined biological instinct to pass on my genes requires that I mount you later this evening, and this gift is likely to accomplish that goal."
In conclusion -- the best way to guage what people actually believe is usually by how they act, regardless of the philosophical games they're willing to play. I'm reminded of the solipsist who's angered when no one else is willing to accept his or her solipsism. If a solipsist, why engage in the argument? Funny that. The proof, they say, is in the pudding.
Is it generally thought that helping the patient relive the experience again and again is the best way to accomplish this? I don't mean that as some kind of rhetorical question; I have no psychiatric training at all, and I'm actually interested. As a lay person, my instinct tells me that reliving an extremely painful experience over and over again with little time in between to stop and consider the feelings that are being brought up is a bad thing, and would lead to being 'desensitized' in precisely the 'callous' sense of the word. But I have no idea how these things play out in clinical situations.
I have to disagree. I'm pretty sure the reason I see physical and emotional pain as being different is because they don't feel anything alike one another; they're so dissimilar from a phenomenological perspective as to be almost incomparable. The only reason I can see to call them both 'pain' is because they are generally both unpleasant. Thus I think that as we move into the future, and dualisms are, as you put it, found to have less and less justification -- not that they've had any for the last few hundred years -- my view of physicality vs. emotion will change not at all. Learning about how the brain constructs pain is academic. Feeling pain is not, and I'm not going to talk about two distinctly (experientially) different feelings the same way regardless of what the brain is doing. This is because I'm not doing science when I'm worrying about my feelings, and there's no reason I should be.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a dualist from a metaphysical perspective. But we simply don't experience what we call 'physical' and 'mental' events the same way, and that lends a hell of a lot more than judeo-christian mumbo jumbo to the list of dualist arguments. It also means that behaviorist and other reductionist arguments are extremely unsatisfying where talk about feelings is concerned -- yeah, it's just great that their philosophical agenda is so pure and clean and right, but they're a million miles away from anything that anyone actually feels.
I guess that depends what you mean by 'work.' I personally don't like the idea of getting over an emotional trauma by 'desensitizing' myself to it, as the article seems to suggest. Maybe I'm being sentimental, but it seems to me that what allows us to grow from painful experiences is having to come to terms with them, not getting desensitized.
Physical pain (like that of the burn victims) is one thing; emotional pain is something else entirely.
Without knowing what kind of problems you're experiencing, the best advice I can offer is that you should find someone in your area who knows what they're doing. If you're even somewhat close to a medium-sized city, there is probably a local Linux user group; try googling for them, they may have a web page. If you have any friends who use Linux, ask them for help I've found that many Linux users are happy to help someone else who's just starting out.
If that doesn't work out for you, try the IRC channel for whichever distribution you're trying to install and having problems with.
Don't get me wrong -- I know there are situations in which this sort of thing happens legitimately. My point is that by comparing a fairly small and straightforward set of numbers, a government can decide who to look at more closely. The numbers don't indicate that you're guilty -- they just flag you as a risky case that needs to be examined.
As for who should have to prove what: audits need to happen. The tax system has no teeth without the ability to investigate people who look high-risk. The benefit (in theory) of a system like this is that it helps better identify who's risky and who isn't. The test of how well the system is set up will be a matter of how many innocent people ever have to deal with it.
If you're able to track their large purchases? Very well, I think. You can identify who to look at more closely, as the article says. If you're making $500 a month car payments and $1,500 a month mortgage payments and are reporting $20,000 a year in income, something's probably up, and as stupid as state bureaucracies are, I don't think they'll have too much trouble figuring it out once enough information is in front of them.
I've never used a tablet, but I use my laptop constantly in classes. Assuming you're a good typist, typing is much faster than pen and paper. In several classes, classmates of mine struggle to take decent notes because the professors talk too fast; I never have this problem. And if a lecture gets too boring, I can always get useful work done on something else.
As far as tablets go, I've never really felt I needed one; my laptop does everything I need it to. But I don't need to draw pictures much; a tablet might speed that up considerably.
Book prices are really aweful. Thankfully, several of my professors are sympathetic. One programming course I'm taking requires no book purchases at all -- we are only using documentation available on the web. Another professor -- this one of political science -- makes 'educational copies' (pdf form mostly) of most of our readings available through the university library's electronic reserves. In the three classes I've taken with him, the books required to supplement the pdfs have never added up to more than $50 per class; one was as low as $13.
I only wish more professors realized that $150 or more in cash actually matters to someone who is living off of loans.
The law is pretty much useless even if passed since the provision requiring justification of proprietary software purchases has been removed. Laws aren't worth anything if they don't have teeth. And as for the justification for such a provision, I think its obvious from the taxpayer point of view -- I don't want my government spending money on something if an equally good tool can be had for less or for free.
Even if they want to reinforce the idea that women shouldn't do their own repairs or ever get under the hood (which I think is bullshit), this is a horrible idea. What happens if the car needs a jump? What happens when the woman's husband or brother or whatever could do something minor, but can't now because only a volvo shop has the tools to open the hood? Now you'd need to pay for service? Maybe that's the idea.
There are different kinds of genius, and a movie doesn't have to be particularly intellectual to exhibit genius.
What I love about these movies is that they express many of the themes and much of the feel of Tolkien's works in a way I thought was compelling. The genius I see in them is brilliant adaptation -- Peter Jackson managed to successfully adapt a work I didn't think was adaptable. He did it well, which from my point of view means that he didn't get caught up with the details, but focused on what was important, which in this case was theme, emotional overtones, etc. I agree that they were dramatic and overacted, but in part that's because the characters talked a lot like Tolkien's characters do. That's the material they were working with, and that's one of the things I liked.
I agree that the movies impose an imaginative vision that doesn't allow interpretation the way the books do. But I think they stand on their own without detracting anything from the books, and I think that if Tolkien were here to see them, he'd probably recognize that.
:)
The movies will never be as meaningful to me as the books are, but I really love them anyway, and I'm glad they were made by people who had some love for the books and who managed to capture some of the feel, if not many of the details.
On a side note -- it's too bad the Silmarillion wouldn't adapt to film; it's always been my favorite, and there are parts I'd love to see on screen.
It's funny you should say so. Sean Penn is pretty much my favorite living actor, and I agree that some of his best performances have been overlooked, but I don't think he shoud have won it this year. I think it should have gone to Johnny Depp. No, the role wasn't as serious(obviously); but it was as challenging, and it's rare to see someone bring a character to life the way he did. The fact that it was in a silly Disney movie shouldn't get in the way of recognizing that. Sean Penn was great (as was Tim Robbins - I'm glad he won) - but not that great.
Gravy indeed, but well-deserved gravy. As far as other films that lost on technical awards -- I personally don't think they deserved them. ROTK was better than they were in those areas. I thought Pirates of the Caribbean and Master and Commander were both very good -- but not as good in the areas they were nominated for.
Interesting, and I'm somewhat sympathetic, but -- in regards to the last sentence -- keep in mind that he wrote this before effects and costuming could do what they can today. The orcs in these movies didn't come across as men dressed up as animals, or as buffoons or mimics.
No kidding. And it speaks to the genius of Peter Jackson and everyone involved in the project that they managed to pull this off. I usually don't give a damn who gets the awards, but it's fantastic to see them recognized for what was one of the most impressive projects in cinematic history.
These movies deserved a lifetime achievement award.
That said...Best. Oscars. Ever.
Perhaps the problem is with large overreaching foreign companies?
That's all nice and good, but as far as language is concerned, it doesn't wash. We have words like 'feel' and 'think' and 'believe' and they all have meanings within a certain context. You can claim whatever you like about your belief system, but you use the words just like everyone else -- that is, within a context that assumes they have meaning. When you write 'You're one of those people who believes...', your use of the word 'believes' only has meaning in a context you claim to reject. Likewise when you say 'I know I'm a zombie.'
In that context, biological analyses are interesting, even vital, but not final or satisfactory. I'm willing to bet that when close friends or relatives of yours die, your first reaction isn't "My evolutionary history is now determining the pain impulse I'm (not) experiencing (because there is no such thing as experience, because mentalism is a lie)." I also assume that when you buy a gift for a woman you care about, you don't sign a card "Sending this to you because my determined biological instinct to pass on my genes requires that I mount you later this evening, and this gift is likely to accomplish that goal."
In conclusion -- the best way to guage what people actually believe is usually by how they act, regardless of the philosophical games they're willing to play. I'm reminded of the solipsist who's angered when no one else is willing to accept his or her solipsism. If a solipsist, why engage in the argument? Funny that. The proof, they say, is in the pudding.
So there.
Is it generally thought that helping the patient relive the experience again and again is the best way to accomplish this? I don't mean that as some kind of rhetorical question; I have no psychiatric training at all, and I'm actually interested. As a lay person, my instinct tells me that reliving an extremely painful experience over and over again with little time in between to stop and consider the feelings that are being brought up is a bad thing, and would lead to being 'desensitized' in precisely the 'callous' sense of the word. But I have no idea how these things play out in clinical situations.
I have to disagree. I'm pretty sure the reason I see physical and emotional pain as being different is because they don't feel anything alike one another; they're so dissimilar from a phenomenological perspective as to be almost incomparable. The only reason I can see to call them both 'pain' is because they are generally both unpleasant. Thus I think that as we move into the future, and dualisms are, as you put it, found to have less and less justification -- not that they've had any for the last few hundred years -- my view of physicality vs. emotion will change not at all. Learning about how the brain constructs pain is academic. Feeling pain is not, and I'm not going to talk about two distinctly (experientially) different feelings the same way regardless of what the brain is doing. This is because I'm not doing science when I'm worrying about my feelings, and there's no reason I should be.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a dualist from a metaphysical perspective. But we simply don't experience what we call 'physical' and 'mental' events the same way, and that lends a hell of a lot more than judeo-christian mumbo jumbo to the list of dualist arguments. It also means that behaviorist and other reductionist arguments are extremely unsatisfying where talk about feelings is concerned -- yeah, it's just great that their philosophical agenda is so pure and clean and right, but they're a million miles away from anything that anyone actually feels.
I guess that depends what you mean by 'work.' I personally don't like the idea of getting over an emotional trauma by 'desensitizing' myself to it, as the article seems to suggest. Maybe I'm being sentimental, but it seems to me that what allows us to grow from painful experiences is having to come to terms with them, not getting desensitized.
Physical pain (like that of the burn victims) is one thing; emotional pain is something else entirely.
Without knowing what kind of problems you're experiencing, the best advice I can offer is that you should find someone in your area who knows what they're doing. If you're even somewhat close to a medium-sized city, there is probably a local Linux user group; try googling for them, they may have a web page. If you have any friends who use Linux, ask them for help I've found that many Linux users are happy to help someone else who's just starting out.
If that doesn't work out for you, try the IRC channel for whichever distribution you're trying to install and having problems with.
There's always gonna be loopholes. Big ones, apparently. :)
Don't get me wrong -- I know there are situations in which this sort of thing happens legitimately. My point is that by comparing a fairly small and straightforward set of numbers, a government can decide who to look at more closely. The numbers don't indicate that you're guilty -- they just flag you as a risky case that needs to be examined.
As for who should have to prove what: audits need to happen. The tax system has no teeth without the ability to investigate people who look high-risk. The benefit (in theory) of a system like this is that it helps better identify who's risky and who isn't. The test of how well the system is set up will be a matter of how many innocent people ever have to deal with it.
If you're able to track their large purchases? Very well, I think. You can identify who to look at more closely, as the article says. If you're making $500 a month car payments and $1,500 a month mortgage payments and are reporting $20,000 a year in income, something's probably up, and as stupid as state bureaucracies are, I don't think they'll have too much trouble figuring it out once enough information is in front of them.
I've never used a tablet, but I use my laptop constantly in classes. Assuming you're a good typist, typing is much faster than pen and paper. In several classes, classmates of mine struggle to take decent notes because the professors talk too fast; I never have this problem. And if a lecture gets too boring, I can always get useful work done on something else.
As far as tablets go, I've never really felt I needed one; my laptop does everything I need it to. But I don't need to draw pictures much; a tablet might speed that up considerably.
Book prices are really aweful. Thankfully, several of my professors are sympathetic. One programming course I'm taking requires no book purchases at all -- we are only using documentation available on the web. Another professor -- this one of political science -- makes 'educational copies' (pdf form mostly) of most of our readings available through the university library's electronic reserves. In the three classes I've taken with him, the books required to supplement the pdfs have never added up to more than $50 per class; one was as low as $13.
I only wish more professors realized that $150 or more in cash actually matters to someone who is living off of loans.
The law is pretty much useless even if passed since the provision requiring justification of proprietary software purchases has been removed. Laws aren't worth anything if they don't have teeth. And as for the justification for such a provision, I think its obvious from the taxpayer point of view -- I don't want my government spending money on something if an equally good tool can be had for less or for free.