Part of this problem is the stuff that we think we "need" in order to become happy. I have had good and very bad managers. Think back. Has a 10% raise ever made you 10% happier? Has building a better widget really improved your life or anyone else's? Perhaps, yet we always think that, with the next job change or the next raise, or the next new car, we are going to be happier. I do not think that we can "work" ourselves into happiness. THINGS will never make us happier -- long-term. It's all short-term and that is going nowhere, fast.
If you can, I think you should take at least a year off and do some variation of volunteer work in some cause that you feel is worthwhile. (Maybe do another year of school at the same time if you can't stand the idea of "losing a year". Most people in this forum can pick up back where they left off. I did.) Get to the point that money is not part of the equation and helping others is. The difference in your quality of life and the value of the change in your perspectives will be in orders of magnitude, not in carats or dollars.
Being happy is not about having more things.
Cragen
Well, deciding not to harm others is a decision and prohibiting oneself from acting in a negative way is an action. The level of intelligence and self-awareness is not considered an over-riding factor in the karma of harming others, though it is not considered as harmful to harm smaller animals than larger or more intelligent beings. The difference is something akin to getting to reside in a less lower hell for a period of billions of years. Cheery thought.
Then, again, it is said that if one realizes that in 'cause and effect', the same 'cause and effect' in science, there can logically be no first cause nor final effect, any more than a biggest or smallest number, all beings have thus been in existence for an infinitude of lives (and years), so we have probably all spent many eons in hells and heavens as demi-gods and still haven't got right. Fairly exotice viewpoint for this age, yet logical. Still trying to wrap my head around that the implications of that one.
Cragen
While I would agree mostly with your label of absurdity on the subject poster, I would caution you not to take the analogy of "animal rights loonies" too far. An extension of that appellation would generally fit every practicing Hindu and Buddhist on this planet. And we generally oppose harming all life, if only from the selfish viewpoint of karma. (Cause and effect or "what goes around, comes around") BTW, the theory of karma also states that anyone applauding a negative act also receives the negative karma. So, go ahead and support animal experimentation, if your motivation is truly the advancement of a greater overall happiness among sentient beings, as long as you are willing to bear whatever negative karma will be the result of such actions, along with all who participate in such actions. It is entirely possible for those acts to generate more positive karma than negative karma; however, it is generally agreed that there is no non-enlightened being who can really know the final result. That's the bottom line.
We all are just trying to be happy. Most of us are not doing a real good job at it.
Cragen
Ah. You, too. I have lots of loud-talking people around me. I am probably going to go deaf from the mp3 player blaring in my ear and drowning them out, but I can tune it out easier than them. Until a better solution comes along... (or until it doesn't distract me, anymore.)
Cragen
Your idea has a (perceived) flaw when it comes to reality. Example: All US Army PC's are now required to have screen savers that activate (w/approved password) after 10 min. of inactivity. Not necessarily a great idea, but the Army thinks it is so us folk that work for them have that capability enabled on our PC's whether we wish it or not. Heck, we can't even change the background via screen settings as that tab is disabled. Sigh...
Cragen
While I personally think Tibetans will get their country back right after us Americans give the USA back to the North American Indians, the sheer brutality of the Chinese reign in Tibet is unabated. Monks imprisoned for discussing lack of freedom in Tibet . They do a pretty good job of silencing dissent as it is, with the materials at hand, sad to say.
Living in the DC area, these types of "TV Reports" are often pulled right off the fed. gov't Public Affairs Offices Announcements. These "announcement" are often "announcement softeners", it seems, as quite often new official policies are announced soon after such a "news report". Just as often, it seems, does some Congressional vote surface on the exact same subject right after such a gov't PAO report.
These days, quite a few Dept.-level (Fed.) Public Affairs Offices have their own TV studios to create the filler used in these reports. I know FEMA/HSA does. Once the "news" is created, they then "broadcast" the availability to all TV stations, especially when a disaster has struck. Occasionally, they actually broadscast helpful info, but this is not their prime goal, that being information management.
Geez, the day that I thought my life had "jumped the shark" was when I heard Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze on the Muzak in the elevator. And it was played by one of "smoooooth" orchestras. Probably had little white stands in front of the musicians, each with a big italic music note on it. GAAAAAKKK!!! That song came out when I was a teenager. I absolutely loved that song and everything Hendrix did. MACHINE-GUN!! Back then, Lawrence Welk would have slit his wrists before playing something like that. (sigh...)
Cragen
Years ago, I would've bristled while reading your post, but I am beginning to understand your point. Not that I totally agree with your post, but many of us started out our early years reading SF&F (back in the 60's and 70's) and generally started with Heinlein. Back then, being rebellious was a relatively new idea to us. Being rebellious sexually and in print, outside of porn, was generally only found in heavy-going (no pun intended) English lit. (For us Anglos, anyhow.) Heinlein may have been my first exposure to philosophy of any sort. His philosophies were not necessarily great, but I didn't have much to compare it to, as a teenager, back in the late 60's and early 70's. Later, having survived Vietnam, and still philosophically naive, RH's work was even a bit poignant. It was only later when the light of more mature philosophies exposed those back alleys of my mind that I began to see how simplistic, even juvenile at times, RH's philosophies were. Still, they started me down my own road of finding my own path of discovery so they will always count as "something to remember" in my own small history of life.
I was medically diagnosed with Depression in the early 90's but I am pretty sure that I have been experiencing it since the 70's. I am still taking the meds so anything that follows may or may not make any sense. (I do make enough sense these days to make over $100K/yr, which is no way to judge a person's personal success, but it may be one way to judge whether I can function in this culture of ours.) I seem to have accidentally found something that actually works. At least, I am happy about it and that is saying something.
In my quest to understand my depression, among the many ideas I have explored are various religions. I examined, practiced, and discarded quite a few. (Having something to do keeps one's mind busy.) I happened on the Buddhist philosphy of "totally caring for others", otherwise known as compassion. It seems to work. I now "fixate" on making other people happy (as far as I am able and I try to improve at that) instead trying to always make myself happy and trying to find "permanament" happiness for myself, which really is what we all seem to be trying to do.
Well, at any rate, my family and friends seems to be happier. I find happiness in that.
Good luck,
Cragen
One of my son's friends, who is very allergic to cats, came to spend the night a few years ago. My son forgot to tell him we have cats. Ragdoll is the name of the breed. He also forgot to tell my wife and I. The first time we learned of his allergy was when his father came to pick him up Sunday morning and had saw that we had cats. The boy's allergies were not a problem. No idea why. I have heard this from other Ragdoll "owners". They do shed, but not as much as other cats. Maybe their dander is not so bad.
Hope this helps. I have had cats and been around cats since childhood (some 50 yrs. ago). I have never seen so much personality in cats as is present in Ragdolls. Amazing animals.
Cragen
(Sorry for the lateness. Been off-line for surgery.) In 1989, my wife and I honeymooned in Clearwater, FLA, just south of Tampa. As I was unloading the car, I notice, in my peripheral vision, a big streetlight off behind me. (I was facing west.) A little later, I noticed the streetlight had moved!! Then, I straightened up and saw the shuttle's rockets. I hollered at my wife and we watched it go up into the sky. We saw very clearly the seperation of the two side rockets. So, you can see the thing quite clearly from just about anywhere south of Daytona and west of the Gulf! Have fun!!!
Cragen
The way I read this article, my ultrasound bone stimulator (by Exogen), which contains a non-rechargeable Lithium battery, cannot be taken aboard a plane. I broke my leg this last spring. I was prescribed the ultrasound thingy last month when the osteo-doc decided my fibula was not healing as fast as it should. Fortunately, I'll only be gone over a long weekend, but kinda glad I read the article. I had no idea that these things weren't supposed to go on planes. Makes me wonder how many people flying today and in the future do not know this. One more reason to hate flying. (Guess I oughta see if there's anything on their web site.)
Cragen
Well, it so happens that I collaborated in the production of a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Both are now 15 yrs. old. No tales of telepathy here, but a day care worker, back when they were 4, got freaked out when, during nap time, while asleep, they would roll over at the same time. This supposedly happened lots of times. I, myself, never saw it happen; I generally tried to take a nap whenever they did, if I was baby-sitting that day. (Oh, I miss those days - No, MY nap time.)
No other tales of entanglement. I personally hope there is no such thing in twins. Either one of mine would probably use it to strangle the other.
Cragen
This oughta work r-e-a-l well. The outlawing of any type of behavior does seem to have much effect in this great land of ours, or anywhere else, I guess. Except to make it very profitable for everyone on both "sides" of the law to make, break, or uphold those laws.
Cragen.
Agreed. (Part of his Requirements are probably about money.) I would define "complex" (for a start) as one where the set of rules on the server-side necessitated a seperate tier between the web server and the DB server. That would be one where the tools used are almost irrelevant to the depth and breadth of business rules necessary to accomplish the needs of the customer. Indeed, the question of whether to use client-server or a web server or a combo of both to what degree then also become some questions to be answered.
Good luck,
Cragen
I had a thought similar to the grandparent. Living in the US and having really enjoyed the "Connections" series, I was more concerned that folk born after (doing.the.math...) 1970-ish may not have heard of the James Burke stuff. Under the guise of Technical History, J. Burke presented the most interesting connect-the-inventions survey of Science & Technology that I have ever seen, including the bits we never really thought (or had to think) about. Like the guy who invented Air-Conditioning, (finding.a.link...)John Gorrie , who did it to "to cool sickrooms in a Florida hospital. The system used an air-cycle method of cooling. " That invention led, according to Burke, to the high-rises, vaccuum flasks (thermoses) and Apollo 13. I always figured that anyone might be able to get from one invention to any other sufficiently later invention by his methods but probably wouldn't have a much fun as we did when Burke did it his way.
One item that has not been yet mentioned, and supports (to the best of my knowledge, which would fit in the period at the end of this sentence) is that a lightning strike is actually multipart - the ionization trail up and the lightning strike down. Maybe there was the ionization UP but the lightning, for some reason did not come down. Maybe it just forgot.
(If I remember the TV documentary right. There was a research guy firing up these "lightning rods" to simulate ion trails. It was pretty cool. Slo-mo of strikes showed the two-phased event of a strike. At least for those. I have no idea if it happens that way everytime.)
My original theory involved the pole that seems to be at the place of the flash. The flash and the lack of further information seems contrived. After all, we have to take the fellow's word that the explanation is true. That is not exactly the best first step in finding an explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is more about money than it is the GWOT. Cragen
After all, does one size always fit all? (It just popped into my head. I have no idea if it has any relatively helpful meaning or not.)
Part of this problem is the stuff that we think we "need" in order to become happy. I have had good and very bad managers. Think back. Has a 10% raise ever made you 10% happier? Has building a better widget really improved your life or anyone else's? Perhaps, yet we always think that, with the next job change or the next raise, or the next new car, we are going to be happier. I do not think that we can "work" ourselves into happiness. THINGS will never make us happier -- long-term. It's all short-term and that is going nowhere, fast. If you can, I think you should take at least a year off and do some variation of volunteer work in some cause that you feel is worthwhile. (Maybe do another year of school at the same time if you can't stand the idea of "losing a year". Most people in this forum can pick up back where they left off. I did.) Get to the point that money is not part of the equation and helping others is. The difference in your quality of life and the value of the change in your perspectives will be in orders of magnitude, not in carats or dollars. Being happy is not about having more things. Cragen
I would recommend you mailing all that JS code to our webmaster, but he might pick that day to consider something besides ASP2. Sigh... Cragen
Well, deciding not to harm others is a decision and prohibiting oneself from acting in a negative way is an action. The level of intelligence and self-awareness is not considered an over-riding factor in the karma of harming others, though it is not considered as harmful to harm smaller animals than larger or more intelligent beings. The difference is something akin to getting to reside in a less lower hell for a period of billions of years. Cheery thought. Then, again, it is said that if one realizes that in 'cause and effect', the same 'cause and effect' in science, there can logically be no first cause nor final effect, any more than a biggest or smallest number, all beings have thus been in existence for an infinitude of lives (and years), so we have probably all spent many eons in hells and heavens as demi-gods and still haven't got right. Fairly exotice viewpoint for this age, yet logical. Still trying to wrap my head around that the implications of that one. Cragen
While I would agree mostly with your label of absurdity on the subject poster, I would caution you not to take the analogy of "animal rights loonies" too far. An extension of that appellation would generally fit every practicing Hindu and Buddhist on this planet. And we generally oppose harming all life, if only from the selfish viewpoint of karma. (Cause and effect or "what goes around, comes around") BTW, the theory of karma also states that anyone applauding a negative act also receives the negative karma. So, go ahead and support animal experimentation, if your motivation is truly the advancement of a greater overall happiness among sentient beings, as long as you are willing to bear whatever negative karma will be the result of such actions, along with all who participate in such actions. It is entirely possible for those acts to generate more positive karma than negative karma; however, it is generally agreed that there is no non-enlightened being who can really know the final result. That's the bottom line. We all are just trying to be happy. Most of us are not doing a real good job at it. Cragen
Ah. You, too. I have lots of loud-talking people around me. I am probably going to go deaf from the mp3 player blaring in my ear and drowning them out, but I can tune it out easier than them. Until a better solution comes along... (or until it doesn't distract me, anymore.) Cragen
You have an opinion despite the fact that you have not seen the movie? Now, that is skewed.
Cragen
Your idea has a (perceived) flaw when it comes to reality. Example: All US Army PC's are now required to have screen savers that activate (w/approved password) after 10 min. of inactivity. Not necessarily a great idea, but the Army thinks it is so us folk that work for them have that capability enabled on our PC's whether we wish it or not. Heck, we can't even change the background via screen settings as that tab is disabled. Sigh... Cragen
Cragen
Living in the DC area, these types of "TV Reports" are often pulled right off the fed. gov't Public Affairs Offices Announcements. These "announcement" are often "announcement softeners", it seems, as quite often new official policies are announced soon after such a "news report". Just as often, it seems, does some Congressional vote surface on the exact same subject right after such a gov't PAO report.
These days, quite a few Dept.-level (Fed.) Public Affairs Offices have their own TV studios to create the filler used in these reports. I know FEMA/HSA does. Once the "news" is created, they then "broadcast" the availability to all TV stations, especially when a disaster has struck. Occasionally, they actually broadscast helpful info, but this is not their prime goal, that being information management.
Cragen
Geez, the day that I thought my life had "jumped the shark" was when I heard Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze on the Muzak in the elevator. And it was played by one of "smoooooth" orchestras. Probably had little white stands in front of the musicians, each with a big italic music note on it. GAAAAAKKK!!! That song came out when I was a teenager. I absolutely loved that song and everything Hendrix did. MACHINE-GUN!! Back then, Lawrence Welk would have slit his wrists before playing something like that. (sigh...) Cragen
Years ago, I would've bristled while reading your post, but I am beginning to understand your point. Not that I totally agree with your post, but many of us started out our early years reading SF&F (back in the 60's and 70's) and generally started with Heinlein. Back then, being rebellious was a relatively new idea to us. Being rebellious sexually and in print, outside of porn, was generally only found in heavy-going (no pun intended) English lit. (For us Anglos, anyhow.) Heinlein may have been my first exposure to philosophy of any sort. His philosophies were not necessarily great, but I didn't have much to compare it to, as a teenager, back in the late 60's and early 70's. Later, having survived Vietnam, and still philosophically naive, RH's work was even a bit poignant. It was only later when the light of more mature philosophies exposed those back alleys of my mind that I began to see how simplistic, even juvenile at times, RH's philosophies were. Still, they started me down my own road of finding my own path of discovery so they will always count as "something to remember" in my own small history of life.
I was medically diagnosed with Depression in the early 90's but I am pretty sure that I have been experiencing it since the 70's. I am still taking the meds so anything that follows may or may not make any sense. (I do make enough sense these days to make over $100K/yr, which is no way to judge a person's personal success, but it may be one way to judge whether I can function in this culture of ours.) I seem to have accidentally found something that actually works. At least, I am happy about it and that is saying something. In my quest to understand my depression, among the many ideas I have explored are various religions. I examined, practiced, and discarded quite a few. (Having something to do keeps one's mind busy.) I happened on the Buddhist philosphy of "totally caring for others", otherwise known as compassion. It seems to work. I now "fixate" on making other people happy (as far as I am able and I try to improve at that) instead trying to always make myself happy and trying to find "permanament" happiness for myself, which really is what we all seem to be trying to do. Well, at any rate, my family and friends seems to be happier. I find happiness in that. Good luck, Cragen
This is NO WAY that the space elevator will EVER get completed. (There. That guarantees that it will be completed!) Cragen
One of my son's friends, who is very allergic to cats, came to spend the night a few years ago. My son forgot to tell him we have cats. Ragdoll is the name of the breed. He also forgot to tell my wife and I. The first time we learned of his allergy was when his father came to pick him up Sunday morning and had saw that we had cats. The boy's allergies were not a problem. No idea why. I have heard this from other Ragdoll "owners". They do shed, but not as much as other cats. Maybe their dander is not so bad. Hope this helps. I have had cats and been around cats since childhood (some 50 yrs. ago). I have never seen so much personality in cats as is present in Ragdolls. Amazing animals. Cragen
Silly question (cuz IANAM): Are most (many, few or all) binary numbers that have all 1's in the number prime? Just curious. Cragen
(Sorry for the lateness. Been off-line for surgery.) In 1989, my wife and I honeymooned in Clearwater, FLA, just south of Tampa. As I was unloading the car, I notice, in my peripheral vision, a big streetlight off behind me. (I was facing west.) A little later, I noticed the streetlight had moved!! Then, I straightened up and saw the shuttle's rockets. I hollered at my wife and we watched it go up into the sky. We saw very clearly the seperation of the two side rockets. So, you can see the thing quite clearly from just about anywhere south of Daytona and west of the Gulf! Have fun!!! Cragen
The way I read this article, my ultrasound bone stimulator (by Exogen), which contains a non-rechargeable Lithium battery, cannot be taken aboard a plane. I broke my leg this last spring. I was prescribed the ultrasound thingy last month when the osteo-doc decided my fibula was not healing as fast as it should. Fortunately, I'll only be gone over a long weekend, but kinda glad I read the article. I had no idea that these things weren't supposed to go on planes. Makes me wonder how many people flying today and in the future do not know this. One more reason to hate flying. (Guess I oughta see if there's anything on their web site.) Cragen
Well, it so happens that I collaborated in the production of a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Both are now 15 yrs. old. No tales of telepathy here, but a day care worker, back when they were 4, got freaked out when, during nap time, while asleep, they would roll over at the same time. This supposedly happened lots of times. I, myself, never saw it happen; I generally tried to take a nap whenever they did, if I was baby-sitting that day. (Oh, I miss those days - No, MY nap time.) No other tales of entanglement. I personally hope there is no such thing in twins. Either one of mine would probably use it to strangle the other. Cragen
This oughta work r-e-a-l well. The outlawing of any type of behavior does seem to have much effect in this great land of ours, or anywhere else, I guess. Except to make it very profitable for everyone on both "sides" of the law to make, break, or uphold those laws. Cragen.
Agreed. (Part of his Requirements are probably about money.) I would define "complex" (for a start) as one where the set of rules on the server-side necessitated a seperate tier between the web server and the DB server. That would be one where the tools used are almost irrelevant to the depth and breadth of business rules necessary to accomplish the needs of the customer. Indeed, the question of whether to use client-server or a web server or a combo of both to what degree then also become some questions to be answered. Good luck, Cragen
that there are not very many Buddhists living there. (Being from Missouri and Buddhist, myself, a somewhat rare combo also.)
I had a thought similar to the grandparent. Living in the US and having really enjoyed the "Connections" series, I was more concerned that folk born after (doing.the.math...) 1970-ish may not have heard of the James Burke stuff. Under the guise of Technical History, J. Burke presented the most interesting connect-the-inventions survey of Science & Technology that I have ever seen, including the bits we never really thought (or had to think) about. Like the guy who invented Air-Conditioning, (finding.a.link...)John Gorrie , who did it to "to cool sickrooms in a Florida hospital. The system used an air-cycle method of cooling. " That invention led, according to Burke, to the high-rises, vaccuum flasks (thermoses) and Apollo 13. I always figured that anyone might be able to get from one invention to any other sufficiently later invention by his methods but probably wouldn't have a much fun as we did when Burke did it his way.
One item that has not been yet mentioned, and supports (to the best of my knowledge, which would fit in the period at the end of this sentence) is that a lightning strike is actually multipart - the ionization trail up and the lightning strike down. Maybe there was the ionization UP but the lightning, for some reason did not come down. Maybe it just forgot. (If I remember the TV documentary right. There was a research guy firing up these "lightning rods" to simulate ion trails. It was pretty cool. Slo-mo of strikes showed the two-phased event of a strike. At least for those. I have no idea if it happens that way everytime.) My original theory involved the pole that seems to be at the place of the flash. The flash and the lack of further information seems contrived. After all, we have to take the fellow's word that the explanation is true. That is not exactly the best first step in finding an explanation.