And after all these years how do you show that Plato did it himself, rather than simply repeating something he had heard and being the first person to be recorded to do so?
A quick Google search turned up a number of pages, including this one (the first half of the page or so, through the first paragraph after the Plato quote, is relevant), summarizing research done by people far more expert in the field than me (and, I'm guessing, most anyone reading/.).
The Egyptians built quite well with just human labor rather than using domestic animals.
Large domesticable animals aren't just useful as a source of labor; at least according to Diamond's thesis (see my post above), they're one of the factors in how easily and advanced a civilization can develop. Among other things, close habitation with large animals leads to plague-style diseases in humans (no goatse.cx posts, please!), and thus to improved resistance to those diseases, which were subsequently carried over to the Americas.
Also: The Americas had quite a range of stuff - including wolly mamoths - until the inhabitants ATE them.
Exactly, and more interestingly, large animals disappeared from the Americas immediately (speaking in archaeological timespans here) after humans arrived -- i.e. there were essentially no large domesticable animals that mattered in the development of civilizations in America.
As for plants - where do you think corn comes from, just for starters? And tomatoes?
Right; I'm aware of that. What many people aren't aware of is that corn became usefully domesticable only shortly before Europeans arrived (again archaeologically speaking here); Americans had to improve it very slowly and painstakingly, as it was essentially useless as a crop (took too much energy to gather relative to the energy it took to harvest). Likewise with the tomato -- not a particularly useful staple crop, unlike the huge varieties of staple crops available in Eurasia/northern Africa.
I'm getting off-topic here, though; I'm not trying to argue that the Americas didn't have civilization, but that they were dealt a crappy hand in terms of a civilization-friendly environment. You're right, one more American civilization would be no surprise, but it's worth being skeptical of the finding, at least until further study is done, and calling it a good candidate for Atlantis is premature to an extreme.
The Atlantis legend is quite widespread and a number of sites have been considered as possible matches.
The problem is, Plato made the entire legend up, without any precedent. The widespread Atlantis legends all spring from that single invention. (The "great flood" legends are distinct and separate from Atlantis legends.)
[T]he Americas had about as many years for civilizations to rise and fall as the EurAsian/African landmass did, along with sufficient population and resources to make it happen.
Almost, but not quite. The Americas had about as long, true, but there was a huge lack of cultivatable plants and domesticable large animals. See Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel for a good introduction.
you'd think that someone who had a moral problem with porn would want to hire this guy to get him OUT of the porn business.
The reasoning went more along the lines of (vast amounts of paraphrasing here) "I'm not sure I'd want someone with the loose morals of a porn site developer to be working for me".
Ignoring the question of whether the submitter was asking a real question or just advertising.... I once interviewed someone who was working at a porn site. Some notes:
* The site seemed somewhat reputable, which was a bonus, or at least not a minus. (I wouldn't hire anybody that seemed not to worry about working for an exploitive, illegal, or otherwise "over-the-line" site.)
* He didn't highlight the fact that he'd been working for a porn site, but didn't disguise it at all, i.e. visiting the corporate site listed on his resume made it clear what he'd been doing.
* The basic fact that he worked for a porn site didn't bother me particularly, though my boss had some (moral) concerns.
* I think that, regardless of the above point, if he'd had the skillset that matched the position he wanted, we would have hired him. It could be that working in a "backwater" of the industry gave him an inflated perception of his skillset....
Damn, should've included these in the first message. Here are links to the publisher, and the publisher's previews of the introductory game and the full RPG. Having skimmed these, it's not clear to me now that the introductory game has an automatic upgrade path to the RPG.
A new Lord of the Rings RPG is being published by Decipher, which is also working on new Star Trek stuff. Ken Hite (a name RPG geeks might recognize) will be working on it; early previews suggest that the new game will have a more Tolkeinesque feel than the Iron Crown version.
IIRC, an introductory game is supposed to be on sale in time for Christmas and the first movie, with the full game released 1Q2002 or so.
When I was between jobs earlier this year, I decided to learn XML, and bought this book after perusing several others in the bookstore. I'd had a vague introduction to it at my previous job, and understood the basic ideas behind it. The book gave me a thorough understanding, and I was able to talk about it intelligently (and correctly) at subsequent job interviews. I now work with it on a nearly-daily basis, and the book is a big source of my knowledge.
> Do girls buy games on anywhere near the volume
> boys do?
That's part of the point of the article. Leaving out the question of whether the gaming industry's marketing approach is "right" or "good" or whatever, it's alienating to almost 50% of the potential gaming population (i.e. women). The industry can't grow beyond its current ghetto if it doesn't market to a broader audience.
One that I've toyed with (only works on Win32, so probably of limited interest to most of you) is the Brain (http://www.thebrain.com, and/or http://www.thebrain.com/products/desktopbrain/defa ult.htm). It's never quite clicked for me, but it may for someone here. It's not explicitly designed to store bookmarks, though it can do that well.
Caveat: I haven't tried this, but I'm initiating proceedings as I type....
Apparently, register.com lets you transfer the registration of your domain from NSI to them. Check out this page. It seems to require a fax or snail-mail, but at this point, I don't really care how clumsy it is.
Slashdot Mirror
And after all these years how do you show that Plato did it himself, rather than simply repeating something he had heard and being the first person to be recorded to do so?
/.).
A quick Google search turned up a number of pages, including this one (the first half of the page or so, through the first paragraph after the Plato quote, is relevant), summarizing research done by people far more expert in the field than me (and, I'm guessing, most anyone reading
The Egyptians built quite well with just human labor rather than using domestic animals.
Large domesticable animals aren't just useful as a source of labor; at least according to Diamond's thesis (see my post above), they're one of the factors in how easily and advanced a civilization can develop. Among other things, close habitation with large animals leads to plague-style diseases in humans (no goatse.cx posts, please!), and thus to improved resistance to those diseases, which were subsequently carried over to the Americas.
Also: The Americas had quite a range of stuff - including wolly mamoths - until the inhabitants ATE them.
Exactly, and more interestingly, large animals disappeared from the Americas immediately (speaking in archaeological timespans here) after humans arrived -- i.e. there were essentially no large domesticable animals that mattered in the development of civilizations in America.
As for plants - where do you think corn comes from, just for starters? And tomatoes?
Right; I'm aware of that. What many people aren't aware of is that corn became usefully domesticable only shortly before Europeans arrived (again archaeologically speaking here); Americans had to improve it very slowly and painstakingly, as it was essentially useless as a crop (took too much energy to gather relative to the energy it took to harvest). Likewise with the tomato -- not a particularly useful staple crop, unlike the huge varieties of staple crops available in Eurasia/northern Africa.
I'm getting off-topic here, though; I'm not trying to argue that the Americas didn't have civilization, but that they were dealt a crappy hand in terms of a civilization-friendly environment. You're right, one more American civilization would be no surprise, but it's worth being skeptical of the finding, at least until further study is done, and calling it a good candidate for Atlantis is premature to an extreme.
The Atlantis legend is quite widespread and a number of sites have been considered as possible matches.
The problem is, Plato made the entire legend up, without any precedent. The widespread Atlantis legends all spring from that single invention. (The "great flood" legends are distinct and separate from Atlantis legends.)
[T]he Americas had about as many years for civilizations to rise and fall as the EurAsian/African landmass did, along with sufficient population and resources to make it happen.
Almost, but not quite. The Americas had about as long, true, but there was a huge lack of cultivatable plants and domesticable large animals. See Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel for a good introduction.
The reasoning went more along the lines of (vast amounts of paraphrasing here) "I'm not sure I'd want someone with the loose morals of a porn site developer to be working for me".
Ignoring the question of whether the submitter was asking a real question or just advertising.... I once interviewed someone who was working at a porn site. Some notes:
* The site seemed somewhat reputable, which was a bonus, or at least not a minus. (I wouldn't hire anybody that seemed not to worry about working for an exploitive, illegal, or otherwise "over-the-line" site.)
* He didn't highlight the fact that he'd been working for a porn site, but didn't disguise it at all, i.e. visiting the corporate site listed on his resume made it clear what he'd been doing.
* The basic fact that he worked for a porn site didn't bother me particularly, though my boss had some (moral) concerns.
* I think that, regardless of the above point, if he'd had the skillset that matched the position he wanted, we would have hired him. It could be that working in a "backwater" of the industry gave him an inflated perception of his skillset....
Your milage may vary, of course.
Damn, should've included these in the first message. Here are links to the publisher, and the publisher's previews of the introductory game and the full RPG. Having skimmed these, it's not clear to me now that the introductory game has an automatic upgrade path to the RPG.
The publisher will not be Games Workshop.
A new Lord of the Rings RPG is being published by Decipher, which is also working on new Star Trek stuff. Ken Hite (a name RPG geeks might recognize) will be working on it; early previews suggest that the new game will have a more Tolkeinesque feel than the Iron Crown version.
IIRC, an introductory game is supposed to be on sale in time for Christmas and the first movie, with the full game released 1Q2002 or so.
Highly useful, and highly recommended.
When I was between jobs earlier this year, I decided to learn XML, and bought this book after perusing several others in the bookstore. I'd had a vague introduction to it at my previous job, and understood the basic ideas behind it. The book gave me a thorough understanding, and I was able to talk about it intelligently (and correctly) at subsequent job interviews. I now work with it on a nearly-daily basis, and the book is a big source of my knowledge.
> Do girls buy games on anywhere near the volume
> boys do?
That's part of the point of the article. Leaving out the question of whether the gaming industry's marketing approach is "right" or "good" or whatever, it's alienating to almost 50% of the potential gaming population (i.e. women). The industry can't grow beyond its current ghetto if it doesn't market to a broader audience.
One that I've toyed with (only works on Win32, so probably of limited interest to most of you) is the Brain (http://www.thebrain.com, and/or http://www.thebrain.com/products/desktopbrain/defa ult.htm). It's never quite clicked for me, but it may for someone here. It's not explicitly designed to store bookmarks, though it can do that well.
Caveat: I haven't tried this, but I'm initiating proceedings as I type....
Apparently, register.com lets you transfer the registration of your domain from NSI to them. Check out this page. It seems to require a fax or snail-mail, but at this point, I don't really care how clumsy it is.