I remember discovering Slashdot in '97 or '98, at my first job out of college, a dot-com job. What a crazy time. How can it have been so long? Twenty years since my first concert - the first Lollapalooza, more than ten years since Fight Club came out, Steve Jobs resigning - but I still have two shares of Apple I bought back then at $32. I still remember the Slashdot blue-green (same as it is today, but without the gradient;) ) and how every post, and every comment (above 3 or so) was SO smart and thought-provoking. It blew my mind. I've read Slashdot both more and less over the years... but I'm still reading. It'll be a little strange not seeing the CmdrTaco handle anymore, but life goes on. Best wishes, Rob. Anyways I have added you on my newfangled Google Plus.:)
Neither Sapir nor Whorf say that you can't lie or theorize. Just in "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language," Whorf states, when talking about the habitual thought worlds of people who speak different languages:
"By 'habitual thought' and 'thought world' I mean more than simply language, i.e. than the linguistic patterns themselves. I include all the analogical and suggestive value of the patterns... and all the give-and-take between language and the culture as a whole, wherein is a vast amount that is not linguistic but yet shows the shaping influence of language."
Whorf also quotes Sapir:
"It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language... The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation."
I added all the italics. What is really at issue is, as Whorf says, language's "constant ways of arranging data." Sapir and Whorf never said that any linguistic restriction of people might be absolute. It seems to me they were very careful about that. They are just saying that we should consider how different languages nudge people in different directions, maybe similar to how, when you get into the habit of doing a thing one way, you forget to consider how you could do it faster, more accurately, more elegantly, and so on.
Pinker's examples you give there are only jumping-off points for the development of the hypothesis.
Re:AT&T Wireless...No, Cingular...No wait...
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 1
Actually it's even better. Cingular contains the old Pacific Bell Cellular. Pacific Bell was a part of Pacific Telesis, one of the companies created in the 1984 AT&T split-up. Here's the Wikipedia entry.
I remember hearing that a lot of Everquest was based on research done at a Diku MUD called Sojourn. I always thought that if you only looked at the text scroll of either Everquest or WoW, you could say the gameplay was the same.
Council, is your cousin and his family receiving any therapy using Applied Behavioral Analysis? You can have great improvements in behavior using this method. It's a simple method... really more a way of problem-solving behavior according to certain principles. I do this work and when it's properly done, it works.
I hope I'm on track with what you meant, but most bloggers definitely aren't geeks. I'm not counting the Livejournal and Xanga people, because they're mostly high school kids, but most Blogger and Moveable Type people I come across aren't geeks, even though Moveable Type requires a bit of technical knowledge to set up. They seem to be some wierd new breed of technically-knowledgeable hipster instead.
Re:Anything by Kurt Vonnegut or Chuck Palaniuk
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
I read Fight Club and was disappointed. I thought the movie actually conveyed the themes better. And Palahniuk's writing was rough, to say the least. Maybe it's gotten better in his newer books.
William Gibson's Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero are great, but, bless him, Virtual Light and Idoru were not good.
Fjord and Dancin Santa, I'm so happy to see such enlightenment! Most males, on mention of this particular "crisis week," attempt to suppress gagging and run.
> When the individual who's not part of that "inbred Bostonian merchant family" (whose members won't be going to any public school) does well for a year or two at one of those, he or she can transfer into a state university.
Atkinson's move seems 90% political to me considering that California's community colleges really are the back door into the UC system. It's very common for people who had no hope for getting into a UC straight out of high school to get in after doing well in their GEs at community college. I knew a lot of people like this at UCLA.
And these people were all sorts, ranging from very intelligent to averagely intelligent, and anything from Asian to Jewish and Hispanic. So I think everyone's needs are being fairly well covered in this way.
I used to adore The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. I remember it was this book with a complete acid-trip plot that dropped into my lap from nowhere (a hand-me down from someone whose kids had outgrown it) and was never heard from again. I've never heard mention of it by anyone until now. Kudos!
"millions of younger Americans never watch a commercial TV newscast"
At first glance I was elated. "Finally!" I thought. "America is opening its eyes to the intellectual bankruptcy of our broadcast journalists!" But then a small but powerful doubt entered my mind and I searched for the author's name. Jon Katz? Well, if HE said it, it's got to be a load of crock. How disappointing.
actually in some ways parrots are better subjects for animal intelligence studies. first, they reach maturity faster than primates. second, because they can learn words you don't need to teach them sign language.
this january discover magazine had a really fascinating article about alex, a 23-year old african grey. if what its researcher/owner says is true, it demonstrates (or at least is able to express) intelligence greater than any primate i've read about.
Evidence to back this up comes from the speed with which some answers came back -- faster than many experienced programmers would type them
This could be due to artistdirect's moderation system. If artistdirect is running iChat with all its moderation features on, questions would be waiting in a queue and could be pushed to the audience at any time, whether before, after, or while the speaker (Metallica, their lawyers, a typist, etc.) responded to them. So it may not be as sinister as it looks.
Then again, it could be every bit as sinister as it looks...
Classic paranoid schizophrenic raving. Gives me the heebie jeebies. What are people like this doing walking the streets, running Web sites, buying domain names?!?!
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha!
I remember discovering Slashdot in '97 or '98, at my first job out of college, a dot-com job. What a crazy time. How can it have been so long? Twenty years since my first concert - the first Lollapalooza, more than ten years since Fight Club came out, Steve Jobs resigning - but I still have two shares of Apple I bought back then at $32. I still remember the Slashdot blue-green (same as it is today, but without the gradient ;) ) and how every post, and every comment (above 3 or so) was SO smart and thought-provoking. It blew my mind. I've read Slashdot both more and less over the years... but I'm still reading. It'll be a little strange not seeing the CmdrTaco handle anymore, but life goes on. Best wishes, Rob. Anyways I have added you on my newfangled Google Plus. :)
Some people do spend 14 years in grad school, though!
Whorf also quotes Sapir:
I added all the italics. What is really at issue is, as Whorf says, language's "constant ways of arranging data." Sapir and Whorf never said that any linguistic restriction of people might be absolute. It seems to me they were very careful about that. They are just saying that we should consider how different languages nudge people in different directions, maybe similar to how, when you get into the habit of doing a thing one way, you forget to consider how you could do it faster, more accurately, more elegantly, and so on.
Pinker's examples you give there are only jumping-off points for the development of the hypothesis.
Actually it's even better. Cingular contains the old Pacific Bell Cellular. Pacific Bell was a part of Pacific Telesis, one of the companies created in the 1984 AT&T split-up. Here's the Wikipedia entry.
I remember hearing that a lot of Everquest was based on research done at a Diku MUD called Sojourn. I always thought that if you only looked at the text scroll of either Everquest or WoW, you could say the gameplay was the same.
Council, is your cousin and his family receiving any therapy using Applied Behavioral Analysis? You can have great improvements in behavior using this method. It's a simple method... really more a way of problem-solving behavior according to certain principles. I do this work and when it's properly done, it works.
Hah! Absolutely.
I read Fight Club and was disappointed. I thought the movie actually conveyed the themes better. And Palahniuk's writing was rough, to say the least. Maybe it's gotten better in his newer books. William Gibson's Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero are great, but, bless him, Virtual Light and Idoru were not good.
I thought the United States doesn't recognize dual citizenship. Does anyone know how this works? It seems one or the other must be void.
> When the individual who's not part of that "inbred Bostonian merchant family" (whose members won't be going to any public school) does well for a year or two at one of those, he or she can transfer into a state university.
Atkinson's move seems 90% political to me considering that California's community colleges really are the back door into the UC system. It's very common for people who had no hope for getting into a UC straight out of high school to get in after doing well in their GEs at community college. I knew a lot of people like this at UCLA.
And these people were all sorts, ranging from very intelligent to averagely intelligent, and anything from Asian to Jewish and Hispanic. So I think everyone's needs are being fairly well covered in this way.
That rant has no open tag.
;)
At first glance I was elated. "Finally!" I thought. "America is opening its eyes to the intellectual bankruptcy of our broadcast journalists!" But then a small but powerful doubt entered my mind and I searched for the author's name. Jon Katz? Well, if HE said it, it's got to be a load of crock. How disappointing.
this january discover magazine had a really fascinating article about alex, a 23-year old african grey. if what its researcher/owner says is true, it demonstrates (or at least is able to express) intelligence greater than any primate i've read about.
This could be due to artistdirect's moderation system. If artistdirect is running iChat with all its moderation features on, questions would be waiting in a queue and could be pushed to the audience at any time, whether before, after, or while the speaker (Metallica, their lawyers, a typist, etc.) responded to them. So it may not be as sinister as it looks.
Then again, it could be every bit as sinister as it looks...
Seems more naive than jaded...