Of all the skewed history, political correct history, revisionist history, lies by omission, and downright deception in the public school's US history curricula, it's actually nothing but a minor footnote.
Fair enough. There is much that could be improved, certainly.
In any case, we're talking about Mayan writing (the only examples the GP brought up).
Did you read the first link I provided? Here it is again -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems -- which mentions at least four or five possible different scripts used by at least as many different cultures. Granted, the Mayan script appears to be the furthest developed and most widely used, but there were others.
It appears from the studies that even those are likely even less informative from a historical perspective than even the surviving Egyptian hieroglyphs, and look to be concerned primarily with inventories of commodities and slaves, used only by the top-level rulers of the civilization. Far from anything you could gain something like stories or chronicles or anything else that the study of history concerns itself with.
What studies have you been reading? This describes the Mayan codices in general, with a mention of how the Spaniards systematically burned almost all they could find. This describes the Dresden Codex, whence we learned a lot about how extremely precise the Mayan astronomers were, and part of where we get the current 2012 hoopla about the end of the Long Count calendar. This describes a book of Mayan poetry and dances, purportedly dating back to the pre-Columbian 1400's.
These are just what I found quickly on Wikipedia, but even this slim sampling tells of far more Mayan literature than something "concerned primarily with inventories of commodities and slaves, used only by the top-level rulers of the civilization".
...the fact is the Native Americans didn't really maintain much of a historical record, just some folk tales handed down by oral tradition.
That's a common misconception, which is a real indictment of the inadequacy of US history curricula. There was writing in the Americas before the Europeans came, and there was history, written down in local scripts. The Spaniards systematically destroyed most of what they could find; if memory serves, the Jesuits were the most fanatical destroyers, while the Dominicans instead tried to preserve such records. We (the general English-speaking "we") are only beginning to figure out what Native American history was from their own perspective, thanks in part to finally mostly deciphering the Mayan script. There may be other writing systems further north that we haven't yet discovered, possibly hidden under some Midwest suburban Walmart parking lot, but despite the presence of large pre-Columbian sites like the numerous Caddoan mounds along the Mississippi, there hasn't been anywhere near the interest or archaeological digs going on the US as there has been further south where people built using stone.
No matter when you date the start of the Little Ice Age, the cooling started at least as early as 1300 (when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe) and probably around 1250 (when the North Atlantic glaciers started to expand).
So, the vikings are to blame?
Of course, silly! The Vikings were, after all, basically pirates, and as anyone knows, global temperatures increase as the number of pirates declines. So it stands to reason that the opposite would hold true as well -- more pirates, colder temperatures -- and we do indeed see this trend, with global temperatures declining as the Vikings got up to speed. It's simple math, really.
So yes, the Vikings are to blame for the Little Ice Age. Quite appropriate that a group that believed in Ragnarok and Fenrir eating the sun and bringing eternal winter would then do just about that -- bring constant warfare and colder winters. Clearly, His Noodly Appendage at work, giving us historical proof of why we should wear pirate regalia.
Minor quibble, but this is one of the many US-UK differences -- UK style tends to put final punctuation outside the quotation marks, unless that punctuation is part of the quote. US style tends to include the final punctuation inside the quotation marks all the time, which can cause confusion when quoting things like code, where a stray punctuation mark can cause all kinds of fun mayhem.
Sorry, but your logic is off a bit. By all accounts that I've seen and read, the main targets of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna's pepper spraying were sitting peacefully on the sidewalk after being corralled by other officers in blue. One of the men in blue can be heard in some of the videos saying, "I can't believe it, he just fucking maced us!" as he wipes his face, having apparently caught at least some of the fumes himself.
being annoying and disruptive = "getting corralled off to the side and out of the way, possibly being charged or fined" -- Okay, fine. This is indeed being treated like they are annoying and disruptive.
being annoying and disruptive = "getting pepper-sprayed in the face while sitting peacefully" -- Not acceptable in any sane world. This is being treated as a clear and present danger in need of forceful subduing, which is clearly *not* what was happening.
I hesitate to bring up your username out of a desire to avoid any ad hominem arguing, but sheepofblue is jarringly pertinent when your comment is apparently so much in favor of authoritarian behaviour. Did you intend such an association, or was that purely accidental?
Part of the media gap may be because such an ill-informed, ill-aimed and intellectually diffuse protest is meaningless.
Precisely because it's so ill-informed, ill-aimed and intellectually diffuse, *and yet it's still persisting over a week later*, it is newsworthy.
The simple fact that people are dissatisfied enough with the status quo to put in this kind of time and energy, even without any clear ideological focus, is a clear signal that there is a lot of untapped motivation. Any aspiring politician with a hint of ambition would be quick to try to capitalize on this.
Yet, you see violence show up at left/liberal protest...like this one.
It's worth noting that the video evidence indicates that at least some of the violence was initiated by certain police officers. When even other cops are taken aback ("I can't believe he just fucking maced her"), something's clearly not right.
I've read that same work; it's a solid dissection of the authoritarian phenomenon, from both sides -- those who cheer on the bullying leaders, and the bullying leaders themselves. It's not terribly short, but not overly long, and it's actually written in an approachable and reasonably legible style, which is unusual for high-end academia types. Well backed up, with footnotes and a bibliography for those so inclined. The author also explicitly released the book online for free, out of the view that he wants his findings as widely available as possible.
Nice idea, but the Date Modified values are retained in Windows from whenever the files in the zip were previously altered -- so sorting by this field is no guarantee that you'll get the files you want.
Sometimes I run across news about discoveries where the commentators are all surprised, but in ways that make me think we need to get over ourselves:) as the utmost pinnacle of evolution or some such nonsense and just realise that we are no more than a combination of various biological strategies that had already been "invented" in numerous other branches of life. We're just a happy accident of much larger processes.
Actually, it might work better to phrase it something like: Atheism isn't a belief; it's a non-belief. Something can't be both a belief and a non-belief at the same time.
We might also note a logical point that's probably too subtle for most religious people: Not believing in a god (typically on the grounds that there's no evidence supporting a claim that any god exists) isn't the same as believing that there is no god. Atheism is basically a position of a skeptic: If you claim there's a god, you should be prepared to present evidence. Otherwise, you shouldn't bother people who don't think it's been shown that there is a god.
In the bolded sections above (emphasis mine), what you describe is not atheism -- "god does not exist" -- but rather agnosticism -- "we have no verifiable empirical evidence that god exists, so I withhold judgement."
Atheism is indeed a belief system of sorts, centered around the belief that god does not exist. Agnosticism is open to the idea that god might exist, and thus you should be prepared to present evidence. It's right there in the etymology -- a- + theo- + -ism, a system of belief in no god -- vs. a- + gnosticos + -ism, a system of belief stating that one does not know whether or not god exists.
While the deeply theist will put their fingers in their ears and "la la la" away to ignore people saying "there is no god," the deeply atheist will do the same to ignore people saying "there is a god." Meanwhile, the agnostic shrugs.
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
When you get to the phase where your new features all involve renaming things, rounding corners, or improving "user experience" then you know it's done and you should pick a new project to work on.
My wife spent some time in serious art-school mode. One of the profs that she greatly respected told her that making great art requires two people -- 1) the person capable of making the piece, and 2) someone else to shoot the first person when they're done. This is because most folks can't leave well enough alone and keep futzing until what was great (or at least on the cusp of it) is munged beyond the pale.
It does indeed look like at least some of the Linux DEs are at the "shoot the artist" stage.
The treaty is very controversial here in the UK: many people feel that the US is using the mere process of extradition as a form of punishment in itself. Sadly, there is a public perception here that the US legal system is vindictive and heavily biased.
Living here, and reading about the SCOTUS's "money talks" case, among many other travesties, leads me to think -- the public in the UK might just be right.
And, as others have said, US was technically on the gold standard until 70s, this is how dollar became reserve currency of the world...
Engineering the US dollar as the only accepted currency for OPEC oil purchases probably had a bit more to do with it of late.
That's one reason the US government has been so down on Hugo Chavez -- he threatened to accept the euro in payment for Venezuelan oil, which would have seriously imperiled the valuation of the US dollar.
You're not paying more because netflix just decided to charge more. You're paying more because studios have increased their price and because of a weakening dollar. Netflix is just trying to stay in business.
Whatever the reason, I see an increase in cost for a decrease in service provided. And more to the meat of your post, if the move were solely the fault of the studios, Netflix could certainly have done more to point this out in their blog post announcing the change. As it is, I see a lot of blather about in-house pricing decisions, but nothing about studio licensing costs -- which makes the whole affair look more like it's all about Netflix's bottom line.
(NB: I'm not saying that a company can afford to be purely charitable -- but raising prices without noticeably increasing or improving your offering, while at the same time claiming that they are "offering our lowest prices ever", sounds precious close to corporate babble and bald-faced lying. There're happy lies ["you look mahvelous in those trousers!"] and unhappy lies ["lower prices!" when they're really higher], and this one is unhappy.)
Slashdot Mirror
Might as well confuse romance with small-engine repair.
Hey now, don't go getting all prejudicial just 'cause some of us get all happy with our spanner sets.
You're comparing apples to tractors here.
Well, they both come in red, or green. Or occasionally yellow.
How am I doing?
Of all the skewed history, political correct history, revisionist history, lies by omission, and downright deception in the public school's US history curricula, it's actually nothing but a minor footnote.
Fair enough. There is much that could be improved, certainly.
In any case, we're talking about Mayan writing (the only examples the GP brought up).
Did you read the first link I provided? Here it is again -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems -- which mentions at least four or five possible different scripts used by at least as many different cultures. Granted, the Mayan script appears to be the furthest developed and most widely used, but there were others.
It appears from the studies that even those are likely even less informative from a historical perspective than even the surviving Egyptian hieroglyphs, and look to be concerned primarily with inventories of commodities and slaves, used only by the top-level rulers of the civilization. Far from anything you could gain something like stories or chronicles or anything else that the study of history concerns itself with.
What studies have you been reading? This describes the Mayan codices in general, with a mention of how the Spaniards systematically burned almost all they could find. This describes the Dresden Codex, whence we learned a lot about how extremely precise the Mayan astronomers were, and part of where we get the current 2012 hoopla about the end of the Long Count calendar. This describes a book of Mayan poetry and dances, purportedly dating back to the pre-Columbian 1400's.
These are just what I found quickly on Wikipedia, but even this slim sampling tells of far more Mayan literature than something "concerned primarily with inventories of commodities and slaves, used only by the top-level rulers of the civilization".
...the fact is the Native Americans didn't really maintain much of a historical record, just some folk tales handed down by oral tradition.
That's a common misconception, which is a real indictment of the inadequacy of US history curricula. There was writing in the Americas before the Europeans came, and there was history, written down in local scripts. The Spaniards systematically destroyed most of what they could find; if memory serves, the Jesuits were the most fanatical destroyers, while the Dominicans instead tried to preserve such records. We (the general English-speaking "we") are only beginning to figure out what Native American history was from their own perspective, thanks in part to finally mostly deciphering the Mayan script. There may be other writing systems further north that we haven't yet discovered, possibly hidden under some Midwest suburban Walmart parking lot, but despite the presence of large pre-Columbian sites like the numerous Caddoan mounds along the Mississippi, there hasn't been anywhere near the interest or archaeological digs going on the US as there has been further south where people built using stone.
Cheers,
No matter when you date the start of the Little Ice Age, the cooling started at least as early as 1300 (when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe) and probably around 1250 (when the North Atlantic glaciers started to expand).
So, the vikings are to blame?
Of course, silly! The Vikings were, after all, basically pirates, and as anyone knows, global temperatures increase as the number of pirates declines. So it stands to reason that the opposite would hold true as well -- more pirates, colder temperatures -- and we do indeed see this trend, with global temperatures declining as the Vikings got up to speed. It's simple math, really.
So yes, the Vikings are to blame for the Little Ice Age. Quite appropriate that a group that believed in Ragnarok and Fenrir eating the sun and bringing eternal winter would then do just about that -- bring constant warfare and colder winters. Clearly, His Noodly Appendage at work, giving us historical proof of why we should wear pirate regalia.
Cheers,
History is like a supper of radishes, it repeats.
I think you need to actually read a history book. And not an on-line one.
Yeah, I'm reading a history book right now, and I don't see even one radish anywhere!
Period inside the quote.
Minor quibble, but this is one of the many US-UK differences -- UK style tends to put final punctuation outside the quotation marks, unless that punctuation is part of the quote. US style tends to include the final punctuation inside the quotation marks all the time, which can cause confusion when quoting things like code, where a stray punctuation mark can cause all kinds of fun mayhem.
Cheers,
We call that voting.
What country are you in?
(Only partly in jest...)
Absolutely! And that's the same reason I am still using my abacus.
And you're posting here on Slashdot? That's *way* cooler than browsing in Lynx!
Sorry, but your logic is off a bit. By all accounts that I've seen and read, the main targets of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna's pepper spraying were sitting peacefully on the sidewalk after being corralled by other officers in blue. One of the men in blue can be heard in some of the videos saying, "I can't believe it, he just fucking maced us!" as he wipes his face, having apparently caught at least some of the fumes himself.
I hesitate to bring up your username out of a desire to avoid any ad hominem arguing, but sheepofblue is jarringly pertinent when your comment is apparently so much in favor of authoritarian behaviour. Did you intend such an association, or was that purely accidental?
Part of the media gap may be because such an ill-informed, ill-aimed and intellectually diffuse protest is meaningless.
Precisely because it's so ill-informed, ill-aimed and intellectually diffuse, *and yet it's still persisting over a week later*, it is newsworthy.
The simple fact that people are dissatisfied enough with the status quo to put in this kind of time and energy, even without any clear ideological focus, is a clear signal that there is a lot of untapped motivation. Any aspiring politician with a hint of ambition would be quick to try to capitalize on this.
It's worth noting that the video evidence indicates that at least some of the violence was initiated by certain police officers. When even other cops are taken aback ("I can't believe he just fucking maced her"), something's clearly not right.
I've read that same work; it's a solid dissection of the authoritarian phenomenon, from both sides -- those who cheer on the bullying leaders, and the bullying leaders themselves. It's not terribly short, but not overly long, and it's actually written in an approachable and reasonably legible style, which is unusual for high-end academia types. Well backed up, with footnotes and a bibliography for those so inclined. The author also explicitly released the book online for free, out of the view that he wants his findings as widely available as possible.
Worth the read. That's my 2p, anyway.
Cheers,
And don't just say you'll tell me later -- you always say that, and then never do.
because uh, fuck regular ftp.
Actually, don't. You might catch something.
:-p
Nice idea, but the Date Modified values are retained in Windows from whenever the files in the zip were previously altered -- so sorting by this field is no guarantee that you'll get the files you want.
Cheers,
If memory serves, I recall hearing that sharks run the gamut from plain oviparous through to placental warm-blooded viviparous.
Ah, yep, here's Google to the rescue.
Sometimes I run across news about discoveries where the commentators are all surprised, but in ways that make me think we need to get over ourselves :) as the utmost pinnacle of evolution or some such nonsense and just realise that we are no more than a combination of various biological strategies that had already been "invented" in numerous other branches of life. We're just a happy accident of much larger processes.
Cheers,
"Atheism is a belief" is a non sequitur.
Actually, it might work better to phrase it something like: Atheism isn't a belief; it's a non-belief. Something can't be both a belief and a non-belief at the same time.
We might also note a logical point that's probably too subtle for most religious people: Not believing in a god (typically on the grounds that there's no evidence supporting a claim that any god exists) isn't the same as believing that there is no god. Atheism is basically a position of a skeptic: If you claim there's a god, you should be prepared to present evidence. Otherwise, you shouldn't bother people who don't think it's been shown that there is a god.
In the bolded sections above (emphasis mine), what you describe is not atheism -- "god does not exist" -- but rather agnosticism -- "we have no verifiable empirical evidence that god exists, so I withhold judgement."
Atheism is indeed a belief system of sorts, centered around the belief that god does not exist. Agnosticism is open to the idea that god might exist, and thus you should be prepared to present evidence. It's right there in the etymology -- a- + theo- + -ism, a system of belief in no god -- vs. a- + gnosticos + -ism, a system of belief stating that one does not know whether or not god exists.
While the deeply theist will put their fingers in their ears and "la la la" away to ignore people saying "there is no god," the deeply atheist will do the same to ignore people saying "there is a god." Meanwhile, the agnostic shrugs.
Cheers,
There are still libertarians here, they are just rarer and drowned out by the noisier people with ideals and no common sense or understanding of how humans work.
There's a difference?
(ducks and dons asbestos gear)
When you get to the phase where your new features all involve renaming things, rounding corners, or improving "user experience" then you know it's done and you should pick a new project to work on.
My wife spent some time in serious art-school mode. One of the profs that she greatly respected told her that making great art requires two people -- 1) the person capable of making the piece, and 2) someone else to shoot the first person when they're done. This is because most folks can't leave well enough alone and keep futzing until what was great (or at least on the cusp of it) is munged beyond the pale.
It does indeed look like at least some of the Linux DEs are at the "shoot the artist" stage.
Cheers,
The treaty is very controversial here in the UK: many people feel that the US is using the mere process of extradition as a form of punishment in itself. Sadly, there is a public perception here that the US legal system is vindictive and heavily biased.
Living here, and reading about the SCOTUS's "money talks" case, among many other travesties, leads me to think -- the public in the UK might just be right.
Sadly,
And, as others have said, US was technically on the gold standard until 70s, this is how dollar became reserve currency of the world...
Engineering the US dollar as the only accepted currency for OPEC oil purchases probably had a bit more to do with it of late.
That's one reason the US government has been so down on Hugo Chavez -- he threatened to accept the euro in payment for Venezuelan oil, which would have seriously imperiled the valuation of the US dollar.
Cheers,
If there is a flaw in the Constitution, it is a lack of checks on the court. I honestly don't know how you could set it up differently.
The threat of impeachment doesn't count at a check?
Apparently not.
Cheers,
You're not paying more because netflix just decided to charge more. You're paying more because studios have increased their price and because of a weakening dollar. Netflix is just trying to stay in business.
Whatever the reason, I see an increase in cost for a decrease in service provided. And more to the meat of your post, if the move were solely the fault of the studios, Netflix could certainly have done more to point this out in their blog post announcing the change. As it is, I see a lot of blather about in-house pricing decisions, but nothing about studio licensing costs -- which makes the whole affair look more like it's all about Netflix's bottom line.
(NB: I'm not saying that a company can afford to be purely charitable -- but raising prices without noticeably increasing or improving your offering, while at the same time claiming that they are "offering our lowest prices ever", sounds precious close to corporate babble and bald-faced lying. There're happy lies ["you look mahvelous in those trousers!"] and unhappy lies ["lower prices!" when they're really higher], and this one is unhappy.)
Cheers,