Asceticism declined after Aquinas put Catholic theology on an Aristotelian basis (contra the more dualistic Platonism of Augustine). This revalued matter and nature in theology, which changed from being something generally inimical to the contemplative and spiritual life to something generally supportive of, and in cases conducive to it; this became the foundation for art and science moving forward. If we had a Slashdot poll, "What idea created western civilisation", this would get my vote. As a side-effect, within a hundred years the doctrine of the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles (a relic of monasticism) basically disappeared from the mainstream.
> Da Vinci may never have even considered the idea that an apostle was an ascetic.
But the deeper thinkers would be more prone to it, as it drew which took a lot of its support from the Greek philosophers. Or, like Pascal with Jansenism, they may have been attracted to movements and ideas outside of the mainstream; asceticism's marginalisation wouldn't have affected their evaluation of it.
Factors which make gold valuable are easily identified:
1: Gold has aesthetic value. It's pretty, and stays pretty by not tarnishing. Like silver but with colour. That makes it a tradable commodity, and then other values attach to it...
2: Because there's not a lot of it, the price goes up; this then gives it the additional quality of encapsulating high value in small objects that can be carried easily for trade purposes. It concentrates wealth for storage or transportation. This had obvious trade benefits in the past, but today allows a single facility (Fort Knox) to secure a whole system of currency.
3: People will always want to assert and demonstrate status over other people with bright and shiny things. Gold is not only rare and desirable but is also malleable into all manner of gaudy artifacts. Platinum might technically be more ostentatious, but it's too rare to become a trade standard, harder to work, and looks too much like silver to impress people generally.
So gold is uniquely valuable. I don't see an apocalypse changing these factors much, If anything a reversion to the bronze age would give them a shot in the arm.
In order of my personal preferences, I'd suggest NetHack, Angband, NetHack, SLASH'EM, NetHack, ADOM, NetHack, and, oh yeah, NetHack.
I've played all that (and in that proportion!), but I'm finding Linley's Dungeon Crawl to be my preferred poison these days.
Try a Minotaur Gladiator serving Okawaru, then a Deep Elf Ice Elementalist serving Vehumet, then a Spriggan Assassin serving Xom, then (best of all, but rather challenging) a Sludge Elf Transmuter serving Sif Muna.
It would be easier to learn than Nethack also, as there's an inbuilt tutorial. It is true, what they say, though: while Nethack doesn't care if you live or die... Crawl has a preference.
That's rather the question, as he'd presumably still want to appear in Google search results outside of Google News. So a simple Disallow wouldn't *quite* do the job; he'd have to be able to disallow only the news aggregators, which would only be possible if they had a different signature to regular Googlebot.
So he may have to just dissallow everything, which would be fair. Is there any way, as a community service, way we could all chip in a few bucks and buy him an Internet Death Penalty?
I loved playing 'Elite II: Frontier'; cruising around in a Cobra Mk 2, with the Stardreamer on and Sting's "Dream of the Blue Turtles" playing in the background...
Currently, the Vega Strike project looks like the best open source Elite-style universe. I've gotten it to run on an Ubuntu system, but very much unlike Elite, it exceeded the graphics capabilities of the computer I was using at the time, so I can't comment on gameplay.
Haven't been looking for games lately, though. I played NetHack for 15 yrs or so, and felt no need for other games; but that's been replaced now by Dungeon Crawl.
There's a cool scene in U2's video for The Unforgettable Fire, where they're recording at Slane Castle (as you do), and go outside to see an eclipse, whereupon someone who looks like a neighbouring farmer says...
Aye, look what ye've doon NOW with yrr bloody rork music.
Anyone wanting to appraise the textual variants for themselves could read Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the New Testament. It discusses the reasons for every textual decision which was made in the production of the USB4 Greek text, the main critical edition in current academic use. (Or just read the footnotes in a UBS4 in a Uni library.)
It covers variants like "Jesus Christ" being transposed with "Christ Jesus", so it certainly covers everything affecting the actual meaning. The explanations can be understood without knowledge of the Koine Greek language, or even the various manuscript families -- though of course, that knowledge would help, as it's mostly what is being discussed.
So bring your own second monitor if they won't provide one. They're cheap. Take it without you when you leave the company. This is no different to using your own custom keyboard at work. If I'm going to be spending 35-65 hours a week in someone's office, I'd rather do it comfortably. Get a decent leather/mesh chair while you're going. "Because you're worth it!"
It's not trolling to point out that this was news at least 10 days ago. The Age in Melbourne last updated their story on May 21, though Google indexed it there on the 20th.
if a binary system had two stars the size of our sun, then being far enough away for gravitational and seasonal stability would also mean being too far away for liquid water to exist. At least one star would have to be very large in a binary system for this to work.
Helliconia by Brian Aldiss had a striking ternary system with a small star (with an inhabited planet) orbiting a binary system, giving a 1,500-year long mega-season that gave it regularly-occuring ice-ages.
That seems quite viable, but it illustrates some of the extra threats to life in that situation. I would suspect that extra stars would lead to more planetary comet/asteroid collisions, owing to more variable gravity effects on outer-system objects like their Oort cloud.
Slashdot Mirror
Forks? Well there's your problem. Try stabbing it with steely knives!
Asceticism declined after Aquinas put Catholic theology on an Aristotelian basis (contra the more dualistic Platonism of Augustine). This revalued matter and nature in theology, which changed from being something generally inimical to the contemplative and spiritual life to something generally supportive of, and in cases conducive to it; this became the foundation for art and science moving forward. If we had a Slashdot poll, "What idea created western civilisation", this would get my vote. As a side-effect, within a hundred years the doctrine of the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles (a relic of monasticism) basically disappeared from the mainstream.
> Da Vinci may never have even considered the idea that an apostle was an ascetic.
But the deeper thinkers would be more prone to it, as it drew which took a lot of its support from the Greek philosophers. Or, like Pascal with Jansenism, they may have been attracted to movements and ideas outside of the mainstream; asceticism's marginalisation wouldn't have affected their evaluation of it.
Factors which make gold valuable are easily identified:
1: Gold has aesthetic value. It's pretty, and stays pretty by not tarnishing. Like silver but with colour. That makes it a tradable commodity, and then other values attach to it...
2: Because there's not a lot of it, the price goes up; this then gives it the additional quality of encapsulating high value in small objects that can be carried easily for trade purposes. It concentrates wealth for storage or transportation. This had obvious trade benefits in the past, but today allows a single facility (Fort Knox) to secure a whole system of currency.
3: People will always want to assert and demonstrate status over other people with bright and shiny things. Gold is not only rare and desirable but is also malleable into all manner of gaudy artifacts. Platinum might technically be more ostentatious, but it's too rare to become a trade standard, harder to work, and looks too much like silver to impress people generally.
So gold is uniquely valuable. I don't see an apocalypse changing these factors much, If anything a reversion to the bronze age would give them a shot in the arm.
Who else has an Ursula-le-Guin-inspired Slashdot login? Lowest UserID wins.
... but the article is rather light on quotes from actual, stunned astronomers.
And people wonder why we lose so many tourists.
(Ad courtesy of The Gruen Transfer.)
I've played all that (and in that proportion!), but I'm finding Linley's Dungeon Crawl to be my preferred poison these days.
Try a Minotaur Gladiator serving Okawaru, then a Deep Elf Ice Elementalist serving Vehumet, then a Spriggan Assassin serving Xom, then (best of all, but rather challenging) a Sludge Elf Transmuter serving Sif Muna.
It would be easier to learn than Nethack also, as there's an inbuilt tutorial. It is true, what they say, though: while Nethack doesn't care if you live or die... Crawl has a preference.
sudo apt-get install crawl
That's rather the question, as he'd presumably still want to appear in Google search results outside of Google News. So a simple Disallow wouldn't *quite* do the job; he'd have to be able to disallow only the news aggregators, which would only be possible if they had a different signature to regular Googlebot.
So he may have to just dissallow everything, which would be fair. Is there any way, as a community service, way we could all chip in a few bucks and buy him an Internet Death Penalty?
Own up now... who else thought of NetHack when they read...
I've been wanting an Elite clone for some years now... never worked out whether Vega Strike was that; it always ran too slow.
Oolite, moreover, is in the Ubuntu repositories! Clearly someone out there is thinking...
"... or is it more a sort of handbag, really?"
How is it that every vaguely futuristic or Orwellian article on here gets tagged "skynet"... And an practical article on building terminators doesn't?
I loved playing 'Elite II: Frontier'; cruising around in a Cobra Mk 2, with the Stardreamer on and Sting's "Dream of the Blue Turtles" playing in the background...
Currently, the Vega Strike project looks like the best open source Elite-style universe. I've gotten it to run on an Ubuntu system, but very much unlike Elite, it exceeded the graphics capabilities of the computer I was using at the time, so I can't comment on gameplay.
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/
Haven't been looking for games lately, though. I played NetHack for 15 yrs or so, and felt no need for other games; but that's been replaced now by Dungeon Crawl.
http://www.chaosforge.org/crawl/index.php?title=CrawlWiki
Oh, and it's spelt "TEH ASIA".
Anyone wanting to appraise the textual variants for themselves could read Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the New Testament. It discusses the reasons for every textual decision which was made in the production of the USB4 Greek text, the main critical edition in current academic use. (Or just read the footnotes in a UBS4 in a Uni library.)
It covers variants like "Jesus Christ" being transposed with "Christ Jesus", so it certainly covers everything affecting the actual meaning. The explanations can be understood without knowledge of the Koine Greek language, or even the various manuscript families -- though of course, that knowledge would help, as it's mostly what is being discussed.
http://www.amazon.com/Textual-Commentary-Greek-New-Testament/dp/3438060108
Book: 2010. ... as gmac63 has already remarked, I see.
It's Europa. And the Chinese will get there first.
... when you can be a respectable "computer researcher"?
This looks like the fastest-obsoleted map in history. I give them twelve hours until every blog on earth green-links a certain article at Discover.
So bring your own second monitor if they won't provide one. They're cheap. Take it without you when you leave the company. This is no different to using your own custom keyboard at work. If I'm going to be spending 35-65 hours a week in someone's office, I'd rather do it comfortably. Get a decent leather/mesh chair while you're going. "Because you're worth it!"
It's not trolling to point out that this was news at least 10 days ago. The Age in Melbourne last updated their story on May 21, though Google indexed it there on the 20th.
Mod parent +2 Apology.
if a binary system had two stars the size of our sun, then being far enough away for gravitational and seasonal stability would also mean being too far away for liquid water to exist. At least one star would have to be very large in a binary system for this to work.
Helliconia by Brian Aldiss had a striking ternary system with a small star (with an inhabited planet) orbiting a binary system, giving a 1,500-year long mega-season that gave it regularly-occuring ice-ages.
That seems quite viable, but it illustrates some of the extra threats to life in that situation. I would suspect that extra stars would lead to more planetary comet/asteroid collisions, owing to more variable gravity effects on outer-system objects like their Oort cloud.
Yes, that'll be Saturn Claus, devouring a few stray elves now that the kids are gone. It's most likely a big hexagonal bloodstain...
Recently we mourned the Webmaster, even though some of us were implicated in his murder.
That's the kind of Computer Science that is dead: the kind that Computer Science, by its progress, leaves behind.
An similar questions might be: Is evolutionary science dead? Or was that just the dinosaurs that died?
I think the actual experiment here is:
I look forward to the follow-up piece which details the financial results.