Got to love it when a country that supposedly has one of these competition-stifling, bureaucracy-laden welfare states actually has a government agency that cares for maintaining a genuine competitive environment for corporations, not only for wage-earning people...:-)
... and I was never hit by my parents, and I was a mostly well-behaved kid. And I grew up quite respectful of people and not believing that you really get anything through particularly punitive behavioristic techniques.
I do remember throwing a few tantrums and being occasionally difficult, but at that point I usually just got taken out of the situation for a while and given a few stern words. I used to have enough respect for my parents that getting displeasure from them was usually enough. In tantrum situations in particular, it is more important to drive home the point that the way to get to what the kid is wanting, is not through what he is doing at the moment.... and that shouting like a fire engine just mostly makes a person look like a dork, for no good reason whatsoever. Worked in my case.
I used to use Emacs at university, but for more intense programming, especially in Java, I prefer a full-blown IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans -- been Netbeans more and more recently as its webapp support is better integrated and I never really was satisfied at the quality of most Eclipse plugins. An IDE's code-completion, error-correction and refactoring support is just simply way too good to ignore if you're interested in your productivity as a programmer.
The rest of my editing happens using Kate, and all the little sysadmin things I do in nano... if I had to choose just one editor, it might still be Emacs, but why should I?
It's still going to be a long way before they get a bipedal robot to be truly reliable enough on uneven terrain even if they managed to get it perform reasonably well. People fall down all the time on their own, and we have a remarkably good system that constantly knows the body state and is able to reflexively correct for problems AND attempt to minimize damage if tumbling is inevitable.
I'm in a wheelchair and as the reason to that is that I break my bones easily (osteogenesis imperfecta) it would take a lot of persuasion to get me to try out one of these, if they ever become available... the world is not a very controlled place, and a single misstep on stairs would probably lead to an unrecoverable situation and the occupant's severe injuries or death, especially if it were me...
When it comes to increasing my own mobility, I'd be much more interested in some kind of power-amplifying exoskeletons, as I'm not paralyzed, just too weak to walk.
I am getting a bit freaked out looking at the text comments on Youtube of the most popular version of the Sweeney clip. They are almost disproportionately of two types: either a fairly sophisticated-looking blast of propaganda along the lines of "Here's proof of BBC being an anti-religion Marxist propaganda machine" or a quick sock-puppet seconding the sentiment -- "OMG oh yeah LOL he's a lunatic and should be fired". It seems almost calculated to goad the random passer-by to feel the same way on a simple gut feeling.
Statistically, the distribution is worryingly skewed. There doesn't seem to be a single piece of support for Sweeney, and my fairly reasonable comment stating that I feel for him as I know how frustrating it can be to try to reason with a cultists and have lost my temper at them a few times too, didn't make it past moderation. At least I didn't see it there last time I checked. Does Youtube censor comments that are supportive of Sweeney?
I would assume there would be a LOT more people who feel like I do, or at least would see where he is coming from. I trust Sweeney is a man of intellectual integrity, and it sounds like he snapped at exactly the same sorts of things that make my blood boil too when way too much fallacy is being pushed down my throat in the name of being "tolerant" of some person's faith in, say, Xenu. Of course it makes you look bad when the other side then starts playing victim and pointing fingers, but I don't count that as an argument.
Sometimes being red in the face like a tomato and shouting like a jet engine is a sign of passion for the truth...
I would say common sense very much does exist, and the GP was indeed saying that Americans seem particularly prone to lack of it. I have never visited the US, but I haven't managed to avoid coming a little bit to the same conclusion, in particular after talking to a few exchange student friends who spent a school year there. Americans have a strange tendency, for all their claimed ability to cut through the bs and simplify issues, a weird habit of needing to regulate things that make the rest of us go "duh". Another example is a tendency to irrational paranoia... it's probably because there is a deep-seated insecurity in the very culture about other people who are "out to get you". Witness the red/terrorist scares.
My first guess would be that it has something to do with common sense being at least partially a social norm (excluding things like "it is not smart to jump off a tall building"). Americans are supposedly disapproving of them, and therefore would just simply grant each other the freedom to be an idiot. This, on the other hand, isn't quite credible, as Americans are surprisingly socially conformant, in particular when it comes to the God/country/family stuff.
Europeans are often derided in the US for creating a nanny state that encourages people not to think for themselves, but it is my impression that we are MUCH better at a lot of the unwritten rules... and this is partly why we are better at "community". You just intrinsically know what is appropriate and what is not, as you are more attuned to what the other people around you are about. You also can anticipate their behaviour better, which means you don't have to "think for yourself" and come into sometimes ludicrous, and wrong, conclusions...
Not just license-dodgers, but Conservatives who operate under the principle that anything "public" is by definition evil and inefficient and of low quality and can never do anything right, so therefore its funding must be cut and when THIS starts to show, it's time to put it out of its misery, because they were right in the first place about it being inefficient and of low quality.
The same people are, of course, probably also license-dodgers just to undermine the system. And they watch the BBC anyway;)
Isn't (: harder to type because ( is one key further to the center than )? (At least that's how it is on my Finnish keyboard)... it takes much more typing effort to be backwards, or perhaps I've just built:) into a reflex already through practice...
No imperialist nation had a history of imperialist actions prior to their imperialist actions. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it can't; just because it can happen, doesn't mean it will either. It just means that history teaches us about what has gone before, but when the situation changes it's terrible at predicting the future. You have to compare apples to apples to extract the lesson, and China is undergoing rapid change and we don't know if that may be a good thing or a bad thing.
And you can't turn that into an argument for convenient paranoia, i.e. "just because someone MIGHT turn into an imperialist nasty we must be an imperialist nasty ourselves!" It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do not particularly believe in "historical new paradigms".. history teaches us well exactly because people tend to behave in patterns. I really, really require new proof of some sort of expansionist Chinese nationalism before I am buying into this theory. Sure, they are essentially Fascist (in the real sense, not the Libertarian fake-sense) already, but I am quite confident that economic concerns will trump any stupid warmongering. It is remarkably costly if you really engage in it, and it's just not worth it these days, as Iraq demonstrates.
Which doesn't mean they deserve those areas either. There's no issue of ethical high ground here. American "manifest destiny" claimed the U.S from coast to coast by invading Native American lands and claiming it for the U.S. The formation of China itself was from an an assembly of smaller kingdoms. Invading those kingdoms successfully, and then redubbing the result as a part of itself doesn't change what happens.
So imperialist countries actually do have an imperialist history after all?;-)
In principle, I agree with you. Who "deserves" what areas is probably the stickiest issue in world history, though (see Palestine). We could take any number of such situations and minorities and start taking sides. Perhaps we should -- I personally argue passionately for the Finnish-speaking Finns' (like me) right to be who they are, so I am very aware of the effect of assimilation over time. What we're talking about IS an apples-to-apples comparison though -- the US manifest destiny is no different in any way from China's ideas about Taiwan; the only difference is that the native americans lost already. What if they now wanted to set up an independent state somewhere in the Great Plains? China may have a conflicting view, but I am not sure this makes them especially BAD compared to everything that goes on...
Taiwan will, as I said, be dealt with by deterrent and the cost China would have to bear if it chose to invade. Doing so would be nonsensical. There will be a lot of saber-rattling and little else. The signs of the times are such that over time the two will converge enough to make the issue a moot point. Just watch.
Don't mistake "not able to at the moment", for "no interest in it."
As I said, throughout history China has been remarkably content to stay where it is, geopolitically speaking. This is of course because for most of the millennia it's been around, it genuinely was the top dog of the area and there simply was nothing of interest out there. There is something very self-contented about the Chinese; they are certainly interested in forging relationships that are beneficial -- and are capable of planning very long-term in these -- but I haven't seen much interest in outright imperialism. To accuse them for seeking resources this way while the US is busy occupying oil for itself is hypocrisy.
I recall reading a news story a while back from a Chinese general or military high up saying that in order for China to grow they needed the resources of North America. I don't recall the exact wording, but it wasn't ambiguous. Admittedly, I do not have a link but I will search for it at work today. They have these tendencies, they just don't have the capability of fulfilling them, yet.
If this going keeps up, they'll just buy those resources, and you'll love it, as it narrows the trade imbalance. I'm sure someone will be able to frame that as somehow evil too.
If I were really looking for military adventures that would be suitable for China, the obvious target is certainly Siberia, not North America. It's the Russians who should be worried, although I wouldn't be surprised if they just team up if the US manages to antagonise both sufficiently. Mind you btw, I consider the unbelievably aggressive Russian nationalism and Putin to be a much bigger problem than China right now.
As far as "painting" China as bad. They have done this themselves. Repeatedly threatening countries, including the United States, with war if they don't get their way in Tawain, etc. This is not the American imagination. People in Taiwan really do not want to be part of China. People in Tibet do not either, but it's a bit too late for them. I think you have to really turn a blind eye to the China situation to compare it to the US.
This is somewhat different. You do have to admit that especially Taiwan "is" China; it's just the political differences that make coexistence impossible at the moment. My forecast is that as China becomes more and more capitalist, the capitalists in Taiwan will actually start to want to become a part of China, as I am quite sure there would be obvious economic benefits, regardless of all the rest that would come with it!
China is defensive of areas it considers part of itself, which is not particularly different of any other country. My sympathies are with Tibet, though... I don't really understand why the Chinese have such a problem with granting minorities the right to run their cultures whichever way they wish.
Mind you, though, I have a hard time believing the US is genuinely so concerned of the rights of the Tibetans.. it's a handy tool.
China is isolating its people from the Internet, so they cannot learn what the west is like, or how their country is viewed in the west. I'm sure you'll point to their useless Internet cafe's that have been firewalled off from information that could make their government look bad. Yawn. Their government is nurturing an "us vs them" mentality in their people, which is useful in maintaining their control. They will eventually think we are all the enemy (yes, even you do gooders in Europe and Canada). To an extent they already do.
I don't think the Chinese really give a shit about that really. They are too busy shopping and getting cosmetic surgery and making more money in the coastal cities, and in the countryside they're just interested in surviving, as always. When you tell them that someone wants to take that prosperity away by denying their access to resources because that would make them stron
China is to nations what Microsoft is to corporations, except far worse since they don't have to worry about legal issues beyond giving them lip service. They also have nukes and lots of tanks.
So they are a bit like the US, then?
While I certainly dislike the (genuinely) Fascist tendencies of that particular "Communist" country, there is quite a lot of hypocrisy in the US about China's behaviour. It seems to me that whenever another country starts to be genuinely strong, the Americans have this need to start painting it as some kind of cancerous growth, while they have been, especially during this millennium, very enamored of the idea of an empire of their own.
The Chinese are under no obligation to be Americans' pawns, just as much as you wouldn't agree to the Americans being pawns to the French through the UN, or somesuch yankee horror scenario. The USA is all about looking for one's own benefit, both on an individual and national level, so you shouldn't complain when someone else does the same.
The fact that you're about to get financially pwned by the Chinese is your own fault -- the Chinese lend you if you're willing to burn through money like there's no tomorrow, and you'd better just deal with the consequences. I am awaiting with eagerness to see whether an arrogant China is better than an arrogant America... it's noteworthy that China has never been particularly imperialistic outside its own borders. World-domination is not neccessarily their goal, as long as they are secure and strong within them. Whatever they do inside in their gulags might be the downside, but change regarding that will have to come from among their own people anyway. You just can't bomb westernization into the hearts of 1.3 billion people.
When I started reading your comment, I initially went "right, again it is automatically the public education's fault". I was positively surprised, and must say in some ways I agree with you. This is not a failure of a PUBLIC school (although the political ideologues here will want to make it seem like it is), it's a general failure of culture, and that is reflected in the public school it runs. I'm not sure one should despair far enough in order to just give up, though; that is the goal of the poltical right. Destroy public services up to the point where they are simply non-competitive through all the mismanagement, and then point fingers and say, "See? Doing it the public way doesn't work!"
Trust me, you're absolutely correct about European public schools. This crap that happens in the US is ludicrous and it is hard to imagine it happening here, but only because 1) public schools are funded properly not to have idiots as teachers (and teachers are expected to have proper credentials), and 2) people have a general consensus that the task of the school is to give a good education in neccessary fundamentals, and that people in general agree on an objective enough a reality that they know what those are (which is in turn a long term result of having a good public education system).
I feel this could happen just as well in a private school, and in some ways it's more likely, as MY view is that private schools are more likely to be indoctrination centers for some particular ideology. I care deeply about my potential children not having to share their world with some Flat Earth Academy -educated nutjobs with nukes.
It's possible that this "vibrancy" factor is due to the fact that most consumer cameras "enhance" the picture automagically. They fix contrast, add saturation, etc. It's a real PITA for those of us who just want the data off the sensor though, so that we can then Photoshop things to our preference. DSLRs tend to produce "duller" pictures by default, but you're expected to add the "pop" later on, and the potential is there in the image.
Another possibility is that the tester used some crappy kit lens. For example the one that came with my EOS 300D a few years back is plain awful, and the first thing was to get a proper lens.
Quantum mechanics works at the level of the atom; I think it's safe to say that when I go to bed tonight, my house and all its furnishings are not suddenly going to cease to exist or even waver in their existence while I'm dreaming.
I Am Not A Quantum Mechanic, but I've been reading some Penrose recently... Road to Reality is tough going, but I'm managing it. One of the weird parts about QM is that it doesn't "work just at the level of the atom". There is a perfectly good superposition wavefunction for your entire house, you and the Schrödinger's cat -- and all of these combined! Of course, the big dilemma is that while QM doesn't in any way require macro-level things to be deterministic, they certainly seem to be. As far as I understand, this is one of the unresolved philosophical problems with QM -- at what point does the weirdness stop to apply, when the theory doesn't give any clue to that?
I have always entertained the idea that the smarter we get about understanding our environment, the more we encounter the computational limits of the simulation our brains-in-vats inhabit. It's a bit like visibility culling of polygons; there is no point in extending the simulation beyond certain limits if you don't assume your observers get smart enough to devise experiments to make your optimizations visible. Just play dice with the details to make things seem reasonable and only show something definite when you are being actively observed.
Just don't dump all that vodka into the harbor in protest if someone DID try imposing some charges. It would be such a waste... Bostonians in particular need some education in proper ways to party with drinkables.
And to this day, US citizens generally understand that if the government ever becomes tyrannical and repressive, "we the people" have the right (and must have the means) to overthrow it.
If the Finnish government tried to become repressive and tyrannical, people would start laughing at it. Nobody would take it seriously, not co-operate with it and the attempt would fizzle. This is the way it happens in societies which have a functioning civil society and people who are not terrorized into the mindset that everyone else is out there to get them, including the government. The solution would not be to get up in arms, but to simply make use of effective passive resistance (provided anything like that ever got through the political process in the first place). The civilian side of our government -- regardless of what Libertarian horror stories of Nordic mommy states would make you believe -- is not nearly as powerful in everyday affairs as you'd like to believe. Now, if the army got involved, I don't think any civilian militias would stand a chance. Then again, our military is based on conscription, so all adult males know how to shoot assault rifles, courtesy of the government...
Actually, yes they did. Unless you're willing to go for unlimited escalation of force carried by each and every individual person, you have to call it quits at some point and just trust that strength in numbers is going to overcome whatever weapon the assailant is carrying. If you want to be accusing people for "pussification" because they refuse to live in world where they have to carry guns around because others do so too, consider that it might have been courageous of some sufficiently large guys to just rush him. Some might die, but it would do the trick -- I don't think he was carrying an assault rifle. It takes some bravery but the people in a certain airplane did it.
The only place your philosophy works is also the only place pacifism works, in a theoretical la-la world of perfect situations where everyone else thinks like you (god forbid that ever happens).
The last bit you said is the disturbing part regarding your kind, and is really revealing. You really believe that it would be BAD we lived in a world where this worked? You actually want war and thrive in it? This sort of stuff just makes me want more the ability to diagnose embryos for conservatism (and don't you come complain aborting them would be wrong; disabled ones are aborted all the time due to efficiency...)
Something along those lines, yeah. Singer is a big proponent of infanticide, in particular in the case of disabled children (he takes the "is it a child or is it a blob of cells" argument to the extreme). He also uses the exact same "parents should have the right to choose whether they want to be burdened and increase their own suffering, and as the infant is dependent, parents have the right to make the choice" argument the grandparent got the funny mod for. Interestingly he is also really bleeding-heart when it comes to animal suffering; as they are able to perceive the pain, they deserve not to be tortured. Interestingly, animals still tend to eat each other in the wild in rather gruesome ways despite his objections.
Mind you, I am not anti-abortion myself, but as I would be on Mr. Singer's kill list, I'm so really very glad I managed to survive long enough in order to appreciate my impending doom enough that it would be ethically wrong to bring it upon me.
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Got to love it when a country that supposedly has one of these competition-stifling, bureaucracy-laden welfare states actually has a government agency that cares for maintaining a genuine competitive environment for corporations, not only for wage-earning people... :-)
... and I was never hit by my parents, and I was a mostly well-behaved kid. And I grew up quite respectful of people and not believing that you really get anything through particularly punitive behavioristic techniques.
I do remember throwing a few tantrums and being occasionally difficult, but at that point I usually just got taken out of the situation for a while and given a few stern words. I used to have enough respect for my parents that getting displeasure from them was usually enough. In tantrum situations in particular, it is more important to drive home the point that the way to get to what the kid is wanting, is not through what he is doing at the moment.... and that shouting like a fire engine just mostly makes a person look like a dork, for no good reason whatsoever. Worked in my case.
I used to use Emacs at university, but for more intense programming, especially in Java, I prefer a full-blown IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans -- been Netbeans more and more recently as its webapp support is better integrated and I never really was satisfied at the quality of most Eclipse plugins. An IDE's code-completion, error-correction and refactoring support is just simply way too good to ignore if you're interested in your productivity as a programmer.
The rest of my editing happens using Kate, and all the little sysadmin things I do in nano... if I had to choose just one editor, it might still be Emacs, but why should I?
It's still going to be a long way before they get a bipedal robot to be truly reliable enough on uneven terrain even if they managed to get it perform reasonably well. People fall down all the time on their own, and we have a remarkably good system that constantly knows the body state and is able to reflexively correct for problems AND attempt to minimize damage if tumbling is inevitable.
I'm in a wheelchair and as the reason to that is that I break my bones easily (osteogenesis imperfecta) it would take a lot of persuasion to get me to try out one of these, if they ever become available... the world is not a very controlled place, and a single misstep on stairs would probably lead to an unrecoverable situation and the occupant's severe injuries or death, especially if it were me...
When it comes to increasing my own mobility, I'd be much more interested in some kind of power-amplifying exoskeletons, as I'm not paralyzed, just too weak to walk.
I believe you're mistaken... \. is the Microsoft version, and THAT is indeed full of FUD...
The popfly logo is to Tux as a cheap, brightly-colored blow up sex doll is to a real woman...
I am getting a bit freaked out looking at the text comments on Youtube of the most popular version of the Sweeney clip. They are almost disproportionately of two types: either a fairly sophisticated-looking blast of propaganda along the lines of "Here's proof of BBC being an anti-religion Marxist propaganda machine" or a quick sock-puppet seconding the sentiment -- "OMG oh yeah LOL he's a lunatic and should be fired". It seems almost calculated to goad the random passer-by to feel the same way on a simple gut feeling.
Statistically, the distribution is worryingly skewed. There doesn't seem to be a single piece of support for Sweeney, and my fairly reasonable comment stating that I feel for him as I know how frustrating it can be to try to reason with a cultists and have lost my temper at them a few times too, didn't make it past moderation. At least I didn't see it there last time I checked. Does Youtube censor comments that are supportive of Sweeney?
I would assume there would be a LOT more people who feel like I do, or at least would see where he is coming from. I trust Sweeney is a man of intellectual integrity, and it sounds like he snapped at exactly the same sorts of things that make my blood boil too when way too much fallacy is being pushed down my throat in the name of being "tolerant" of some person's faith in, say, Xenu. Of course it makes you look bad when the other side then starts playing victim and pointing fingers, but I don't count that as an argument.
Sometimes being red in the face like a tomato and shouting like a jet engine is a sign of passion for the truth...
I would say common sense very much does exist, and the GP was indeed saying that Americans seem particularly prone to lack of it. I have never visited the US, but I haven't managed to avoid coming a little bit to the same conclusion, in particular after talking to a few exchange student friends who spent a school year there. Americans have a strange tendency, for all their claimed ability to cut through the bs and simplify issues, a weird habit of needing to regulate things that make the rest of us go "duh". Another example is a tendency to irrational paranoia... it's probably because there is a deep-seated insecurity in the very culture about other people who are "out to get you". Witness the red/terrorist scares.
My first guess would be that it has something to do with common sense being at least partially a social norm (excluding things like "it is not smart to jump off a tall building"). Americans are supposedly disapproving of them, and therefore would just simply grant each other the freedom to be an idiot. This, on the other hand, isn't quite credible, as Americans are surprisingly socially conformant, in particular when it comes to the God/country/family stuff.
Europeans are often derided in the US for creating a nanny state that encourages people not to think for themselves, but it is my impression that we are MUCH better at a lot of the unwritten rules... and this is partly why we are better at "community". You just intrinsically know what is appropriate and what is not, as you are more attuned to what the other people around you are about. You also can anticipate their behaviour better, which means you don't have to "think for yourself" and come into sometimes ludicrous, and wrong, conclusions...
Not just license-dodgers, but Conservatives who operate under the principle that anything "public" is by definition evil and inefficient and of low quality and can never do anything right, so therefore its funding must be cut and when THIS starts to show, it's time to put it out of its misery, because they were right in the first place about it being inefficient and of low quality.
;)
The same people are, of course, probably also license-dodgers just to undermine the system. And they watch the BBC anyway
Isn't (: harder to type because ( is one key further to the center than )? (At least that's how it is on my Finnish keyboard)... it takes much more typing effort to be backwards, or perhaps I've just built :) into a reflex already through practice...
As I said, throughout history China has been remarkably content to stay where it is, geopolitically speaking. This is of course because for most of the millennia it's been around, it genuinely was the top dog of the area and there simply was nothing of interest out there. There is something very self-contented about the Chinese; they are certainly interested in forging relationships that are beneficial -- and are capable of planning very long-term in these -- but I haven't seen much interest in outright imperialism. To accuse them for seeking resources this way while the US is busy occupying oil for itself is hypocrisy.
If this going keeps up, they'll just buy those resources, and you'll love it, as it narrows the trade imbalance. I'm sure someone will be able to frame that as somehow evil too.
If I were really looking for military adventures that would be suitable for China, the obvious target is certainly Siberia, not North America. It's the Russians who should be worried, although I wouldn't be surprised if they just team up if the US manages to antagonise both sufficiently. Mind you btw, I consider the unbelievably aggressive Russian nationalism and Putin to be a much bigger problem than China right now.
This is somewhat different. You do have to admit that especially Taiwan "is" China; it's just the political differences that make coexistence impossible at the moment. My forecast is that as China becomes more and more capitalist, the capitalists in Taiwan will actually start to want to become a part of China, as I am quite sure there would be obvious economic benefits, regardless of all the rest that would come with it!
China is defensive of areas it considers part of itself, which is not particularly different of any other country. My sympathies are with Tibet, though... I don't really understand why the Chinese have such a problem with granting minorities the right to run their cultures whichever way they wish.
Mind you, though, I have a hard time believing the US is genuinely so concerned of the rights of the Tibetans.. it's a handy tool.
I don't think the Chinese really give a shit about that really. They are too busy shopping and getting cosmetic surgery and making more money in the coastal cities, and in the countryside they're just interested in surviving, as always. When you tell them that someone wants to take that prosperity away by denying their access to resources because that would make them stron
So they are a bit like the US, then?
While I certainly dislike the (genuinely) Fascist tendencies of that particular "Communist" country, there is quite a lot of hypocrisy in the US about China's behaviour. It seems to me that whenever another country starts to be genuinely strong, the Americans have this need to start painting it as some kind of cancerous growth, while they have been, especially during this millennium, very enamored of the idea of an empire of their own.
The Chinese are under no obligation to be Americans' pawns, just as much as you wouldn't agree to the Americans being pawns to the French through the UN, or somesuch yankee horror scenario. The USA is all about looking for one's own benefit, both on an individual and national level, so you shouldn't complain when someone else does the same.
The fact that you're about to get financially pwned by the Chinese is your own fault -- the Chinese lend you if you're willing to burn through money like there's no tomorrow, and you'd better just deal with the consequences. I am awaiting with eagerness to see whether an arrogant China is better than an arrogant America... it's noteworthy that China has never been particularly imperialistic outside its own borders. World-domination is not neccessarily their goal, as long as they are secure and strong within them. Whatever they do inside in their gulags might be the downside, but change regarding that will have to come from among their own people anyway. You just can't bomb westernization into the hearts of 1.3 billion people.
When I started reading your comment, I initially went "right, again it is automatically the public education's fault". I was positively surprised, and must say in some ways I agree with you. This is not a failure of a PUBLIC school (although the political ideologues here will want to make it seem like it is), it's a general failure of culture, and that is reflected in the public school it runs. I'm not sure one should despair far enough in order to just give up, though; that is the goal of the poltical right. Destroy public services up to the point where they are simply non-competitive through all the mismanagement, and then point fingers and say, "See? Doing it the public way doesn't work!"
Trust me, you're absolutely correct about European public schools. This crap that happens in the US is ludicrous and it is hard to imagine it happening here, but only because 1) public schools are funded properly not to have idiots as teachers (and teachers are expected to have proper credentials), and 2) people have a general consensus that the task of the school is to give a good education in neccessary fundamentals, and that people in general agree on an objective enough a reality that they know what those are (which is in turn a long term result of having a good public education system).
I feel this could happen just as well in a private school, and in some ways it's more likely, as MY view is that private schools are more likely to be indoctrination centers for some particular ideology. I care deeply about my potential children not having to share their world with some Flat Earth Academy -educated nutjobs with nukes.
The name could be "American Creaming" or somesuch.
Man, am I in a mood for juvenile bad humour today. And not even doing it AC.
Bukkake is, after all, originally a Japanese "sport" so it's no wonder they'd use their Wii for "creaming"...
It's possible that this "vibrancy" factor is due to the fact that most consumer cameras "enhance" the picture automagically. They fix contrast, add saturation, etc. It's a real PITA for those of us who just want the data off the sensor though, so that we can then Photoshop things to our preference. DSLRs tend to produce "duller" pictures by default, but you're expected to add the "pop" later on, and the potential is there in the image.
Another possibility is that the tester used some crappy kit lens. For example the one that came with my EOS 300D a few years back is plain awful, and the first thing was to get a proper lens.
I Am Not A Quantum Mechanic, but I've been reading some Penrose recently... Road to Reality is tough going, but I'm managing it. One of the weird parts about QM is that it doesn't "work just at the level of the atom". There is a perfectly good superposition wavefunction for your entire house, you and the Schrödinger's cat -- and all of these combined! Of course, the big dilemma is that while QM doesn't in any way require macro-level things to be deterministic, they certainly seem to be. As far as I understand, this is one of the unresolved philosophical problems with QM -- at what point does the weirdness stop to apply, when the theory doesn't give any clue to that?
I have always entertained the idea that the smarter we get about understanding our environment, the more we encounter the computational limits of the simulation our brains-in-vats inhabit. It's a bit like visibility culling of polygons; there is no point in extending the simulation beyond certain limits if you don't assume your observers get smart enough to devise experiments to make your optimizations visible. Just play dice with the details to make things seem reasonable and only show something definite when you are being actively observed.
Just don't dump all that vodka into the harbor in protest if someone DID try imposing some charges. It would be such a waste... Bostonians in particular need some education in proper ways to party with drinkables.
I would tell you to just make it so but it appears others already did...
If the Finnish government tried to become repressive and tyrannical, people would start laughing at it. Nobody would take it seriously, not co-operate with it and the attempt would fizzle. This is the way it happens in societies which have a functioning civil society and people who are not terrorized into the mindset that everyone else is out there to get them, including the government. The solution would not be to get up in arms, but to simply make use of effective passive resistance (provided anything like that ever got through the political process in the first place). The civilian side of our government -- regardless of what Libertarian horror stories of Nordic mommy states would make you believe -- is not nearly as powerful in everyday affairs as you'd like to believe. Now, if the army got involved, I don't think any civilian militias would stand a chance. Then again, our military is based on conscription, so all adult males know how to shoot assault rifles, courtesy of the government...
Man, I am so proud of my nanny state :-)
Actually, yes they did. Unless you're willing to go for unlimited escalation of force carried by each and every individual person, you have to call it quits at some point and just trust that strength in numbers is going to overcome whatever weapon the assailant is carrying. If you want to be accusing people for "pussification" because they refuse to live in world where they have to carry guns around because others do so too, consider that it might have been courageous of some sufficiently large guys to just rush him. Some might die, but it would do the trick -- I don't think he was carrying an assault rifle. It takes some bravery but the people in a certain airplane did it.
The last bit you said is the disturbing part regarding your kind, and is really revealing. You really believe that it would be BAD we lived in a world where this worked? You actually want war and thrive in it? This sort of stuff just makes me want more the ability to diagnose embryos for conservatism (and don't you come complain aborting them would be wrong; disabled ones are aborted all the time due to efficiency...)
Something along those lines, yeah. Singer is a big proponent of infanticide, in particular in the case of disabled children (he takes the "is it a child or is it a blob of cells" argument to the extreme). He also uses the exact same "parents should have the right to choose whether they want to be burdened and increase their own suffering, and as the infant is dependent, parents have the right to make the choice" argument the grandparent got the funny mod for. Interestingly he is also really bleeding-heart when it comes to animal suffering; as they are able to perceive the pain, they deserve not to be tortured. Interestingly, animals still tend to eat each other in the wild in rather gruesome ways despite his objections.
Mind you, I am not anti-abortion myself, but as I would be on Mr. Singer's kill list, I'm so really very glad I managed to survive long enough in order to appreciate my impending doom enough that it would be ethically wrong to bring it upon me.