Except it's not rote memorization for him. That's the point. He has had experience with these places, so didn't just memorize "Washington, Oregon, California, etc." He remembers "That place where I had that chili dog that gave me diarrhea for 2 days straight was in Washington on my way down to Oregon where I met that guy...." For some people, it is just rote memorization, so unless they periodically re-study the material, they forget it. And not many people study the states past high school. Geography in that sense is like, let's say, a car:-) You can read instruction and look at diagrams, but unless you actually change the belt, you are unlikely to remember how to do it a year from now. If you do change the belt, you are unlikely to forget how to do it.
I wasn't suggesting that my friend's knowledge of the states was proof of his intelligence. I guess there was really no reason to mention the fact that he is intelligent; my point was more about practical vs. theoretical geographic knowledge. Most Americans at some point in middle or high school have to learn all 50 states and their capitals. Unless this becomes applied knowledge through actually visiting these places, most people tend to forget it. Which is also why the average American knows so little about European or Asian geography. A subsidiary point was my experience with fairly highly educated people having very little knowledge of basic geography (for their culture). It just seems to be an overlooked area of education for the most part.
BTW, I REALLY REALLY want "Claven Fallacy" to be a legitimate term.
I'm an American. I work for a university, so live in a university town. One of the most intelligent guys I have met here never went to college; he moved here when his highschool girlfriend came to college here and stayed after they broke up. Occasionally at parties, if it comes out that he isn't in school and never attended college, some asshat will make some comment about it (interestingly, my friend claims this is much more likely to be a philosophy grad student than anything else). My friend's favorite thing to do is challenge said asshat to name all 50 states. I have seen this happen several times over the last few years; the closest I saw anyone come was something like 45. It's priceless when my "uneducated" friend then rattles off the ones they couldn't come up with. Even better is if someone asks him why he knows them so well. "I've been there." It's a classic example of theoretical vs. practical education.
And oddly enough, I have been to Washington, and do know the capital, even though I haven't actually been to Olympia. I have never been to California, and couldn't remember what the capital was (Sacramento). Short point on a long story, I suspect that most Americans simply don't know about geography b/c they haven't seen much of it. Once you've been there, you tend to remember.
Yeah, I spent a bit of time pondering that as well. I THINK he misspelled AND typoed "impeach" under the mistaken impression that it was the word "impede". Which almost fits in his sentence.
I spent WAY too much time trying to decide if imspeech was a new way of saying l33t sp3k3, and wondering what IM had to do with this. Meh, anything is better than work:-)
An aspect of non-local culture (I like that phrase, by the way) that you might not have considered is the feed-back effect. Not only do the potential victims see things happening hundreds of miles away and fear for their own safety, potential perpetrators do as well. Copy-cat crimes have been around for some time; as national media make the rare localized sensational event a part of the national consciousness, EVERY potential copy cat is exposed to EVERY sensational crime. Bored, depressed, picked on at school? Get a gun and shoot people! Being the next headline will spice up your life! Somewhat ironically, the mere perception that these events are common could very easily lead to these events becoming common.
I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".
Well, there you go: lesson learned. If you want to get ahead on/. just stick to making snarky comments about the other users, karma whoring, and OCD refreshing of the front page to get that elusive first post. Submitting interesting stories and making interesting or informative comments about said stories is sooo... huh, I wanted to make a joke, then got all sad b/c I realized I honestly couldn't come up with a board where that is the norm. I think I'll go bump up my filter a notch or two now.
The income gap is growing, true. I don't dispute that at all. What I'm saying, tho, is that those at the top have less legal and social ability to exploit their comparative advantage over those of us on the wrong side of the gap. Sure, realistically, Bill Gates can ruin my life, have me killed, pretty much do what he wants to with me. But if he is caught having me killed, he will face consequences. There was a time not too long ago where the haves could kill the have-nots with a wink and a nod from the authorities (think Jim Crowe in the South). There was a time when it would be unthinkable to press charges against the wealthy on behalf of the destitute. Nowadays, yes, the power is still there, but it requires a bit more subtlety and effort to abuse the power; flagrant abuse of power is more heavily frowned on in today's society.
As for quality of life and working hours, I think you simply have too short a time frame. Sure, in 15-20 years things might go down a bit, but over a longer period, things are up. I'm pretty sure your "lower quality of life and higher working hours" are no where near as low or as long as my grandparents, who ran a tobacco farm in rural NC from 1930 - 1970 (ish). And their quality of life was a lot better than a 19th century farmer's, who had it better than a 15th century peasant, etc etc.
I'm not saying there aren't things that need changing. Otherwise, the current downward trend you have noticed might not turn around; maybe we did reach some pinnacle of equity in society. I think it is a bit early to say that based on just a couple of decades, but I can certainly understand the fear. However, I think things would have to go down quite a bit more to get to the point that even my grandparents generation experienced.
Maybe if you did you'd notice that the differences you're feebly attempting to illustrate are getting smaller and smaller all the time.
I understand and admire the anti-authoritarian philosophy you are espousing. The powerful will always want more power, which will come at the expense of the little people (like me). The few exceptions to this rule, historically, are remarkable in large part b/c they are so rare.
However, I think you are being a bit pessimistic with the statement that "the differences [between totalitarianism and US democracy] are getting smaller and smaller all the time". Ignoring the rest of the world (hey, I AM an American!) and just looking at the history of this country, you have to admit things are MUCH better now in terms of equity between the masses and the powerful than they were even 50 years ago. Microsoft is actually a very good example of this. They are a convicted monopolist. Maybe the punishment hasn't been enough to influence their behavior, but even a token slap on the wrist is much more than many, many companies that behaved much, much worse ever received. Look up the Homestead Strike; far from censuring Carnegie Steel for unfair business practices, the state sent in the militia to break up picketing workers. The state supporting business concerns over citizens was the rule for a large part of the history of industrialization in our country.
I'm not saying things are now wonderful; the state still tends to support corporate concerns over citizen concerns. But things are better; state sponsorship of corporations has to be more subtle today than before, b/c the people will not put up with such blatant power grabs on behalf of corporate welfare. And thanks to the internet, the masses can coordinate in an unprecedented manner to really utilize the power of our sheer numbers. The rich eating the poor will never go away, but we are making them work harder and more intelligently at it than ever before.
You're right, there are some ways in which we can and do reduce energy consumption. I think cars are a point for my argument, however. Not everyone can have a car. There simply aren't enough oil resources to support 6.5 billion people having a car and a road to drive it on. And you will never convince the "have" societies to give up the advantages and luxuries their greater resources afford them (such as cars); at least, not to enough of an extent that it will allow the "have nots" an even playing field.
ut the fact that such standards exist at all (weak though they are) shows that the system works fine, we are just arguing over the extent to which such standards should be enforced.
I think most people agree that current levels of industrialized nations energy consumption are unsustainable without some technological breakthru (or possibly political one, depending on your stance on nuclear) in energy production. Barring a breakthru, we are guaranteed to run out of the energy necessary to support the industrialized world's lifestyle. The current system of reduction controls can extend the inevitable for a while, but doesn't offer any real solutions. I would therefore argue that it does not work fine.
I'm not saying reduction is not a worthwhile goal. I'm just saying that it is not feasible to expect people to reduce their energy consumption to the levels necessary for reduction alone to solve the coming energy shortage.
Here's a crazy novel idea for you: Why just not stop wasting so much energy in the first place?
B/c it won't happen. Not a novel idea, but crazy if you think it would work. Its called Tragedy of the Commons. Obviously, you can't require people to use less energy than it requires for them to live. Once basic subsistence is met, extra energy == luxury. People LIKE luxury. So, if everyone else is living at subsistence level, there is enough energy for ME to run the heat 1 degree higher, drive my car a little bit farther, etc. And you KNOW there will be people that will do just that. So, eventually, you get right back to where you started. The only way rationing would really work on a global scale is with a global authority enforcing it; I doubt anyone here really wants an Energy Consumption Control Organization monitoring and enforcing energy rationing.
Of course it is mostly for the profit, but sometimes, forcing someone else to pay $BIG_MONEY for their misdeeds is a good way of convincing them (and others) not to do such misdeeds in the future. But yeah, just like everywhere else (WTF, Americans? troll much?) it's mostly all about the money.
the very idea that laws should be enacted for the good of the state is one of morality.
I think it depends on your definition of "state". If by state you mean the people that comprise the state, then there are certainly moral (or is it ethical, I can never remember) arguments to be made. If by state you mean government, then I think the moral arguments are replaced by self-interest. I mean, if I go about saying that everyone should do or not do what is best for me at their own expense, I doubt anyone will be fooled by any moral pretexts I might throw out.
but it is senseless to argue that you can't legislate morality.
I think the crux of this argument is that if you force me to behave in a certain manner on threat of punishment, my behavior can't be said to be based on morality. It is based on fear of punishment. Once you legislate morality, it ceases to actually be a moral choice. Of course, the people that want to legislate moral behavior probably aren't too concerned about my actual morality, just my behavior.
I don't think it is Windows that is playing catch-up, but rather Windows admins. You can set read/write/execute permissions to files and/or folders (with the option to have sub-folders inherit parent folders permissions) for individual users or groups that users can be added to. Actually very similar to how Unix handles permissions. The thing is, most Windows admins I have seen are too lazy/indifferent/ignorant to take the time to set this sort of environment up properly. Much more common is to simply give the "everyone" group all permissions to all things. It might take a little more effort out the box than Unix, but Windows has perfectly adequate tools for setting up a properly controlled environment.
No, but I find that if I switch off muscle groups each set (eg. bench, squat, curl, leg extension, rinse repeat) I don't need that much rest between sets and can keep my heart rate up pretty well. I do sort of use ab work as a filler in between, sometimes. I also hit the stationary bike for a low impact aerobic workout (although my knees are about the only good joint I have). The biggest thing for getting back into it is to take it easy at first; it sucks thinking about how much you used to bench or whatever, but you'd rather walk away feeling like you didn't get much of a work out than barely being able to walk away. And it's surprising how hard it is to do 4 sets of 15 reps with 30-40% max
Good luck finding what works for you. If you can find a gym that offers Body Pump , I would definitely give that a try. I'm generally not much of a fan of the weird classes gyms offer, but I enjoyed this one. Not only does it provide a great circuit training style workout, the scenery hardly ever sucks:-)
I'm not a scientist myself, but just b/c something isn't subject to a repeatable test is no reason to doubt its truth, IF you witnessed the first test. Sure, it can't be called science, but science is actually pretty narrow. There is absolutely no way possible for me to either prove or disprove that my wife called me a "dirty nugget" yesterday, but I still believe it happened. It would actually be kind of weird if there were any person that only believed facts that were subject to rigorous scientific testing.
The big problem I have now is that I'm getting older and, frankly, lifting and I don't get along as well as we used to...
If you are talking joint and tendon pain, something I have found to be a good compromise is lower weight, higher reps. And if you do it circuit-training style (less rest between sets and exercises, which is easier to do with lighter weight), it has the added bonus of being a decent cardio workout. It took me a little experimentation to find a weight/rep ratio that a) provided a decent workout and b) didn't make my back, shoulders and hips scream. Also, ibuprofen is definitely your friend:)
Heh, I can remember when my college gym re-organized. All of the guys were very disappointed that the butterfly machine was no longer directly in front of and facing the leg abductor.
As a former library employee, I can tell you that the large academic university library (US) in which I worked did NOT keep historical records like this. Every book had to be manually scanned back into the system when it was returned by a patron. If you were the one rescanning the books, part of the job was to keep an eye out for damaged books. If you saw one that was damaged, don't rescan it until you have either marked it as damaged, or verified that is was previously marked as damaged. Keeping historical records wouldn't help; if you didn't notice it when it was returned, there isn't really any way to determine which previous borrower had done the damage. There really weren't any other compelling business reasons to keep such historical records, either. I know that is why we didn't bother keeping them.
FYI, if you want to complain about pronouncing acronyms as words, SQL is not a good choice. The original acronym was SEQUEL, which was later shortened to SQL. So pronouncing SQL as sequel rather than ess-cue-ell is more of a traditional hold over from the original spelling than anything else. citation
And honestly, if I were hiring a DB developer that didn't know what I was talking about when I said Sequel rather than ess-cue-ell, I would be highly suspect of their amount of experience. Who in the database world has not heard of MSSQL Server (pronounced Em-Ess-Sequel-Server)? And if you can't put 2 + 2 together any better than that...
Well, that's true - not everything always goes up. Just most things, most of the time. For instance, distribution media. The costs of PS2 discs has probably gone down, but the cost of PS3 discs is higher than that, so the cost to distribute a game has probably stayed about the same, or gone up slightly. I don't really know, but while I exaggerated previously, its still true that in general, the cost of doing business tends to rise. Established technologies go down in cost, but the cutting edge keeps getting more expensive. Most non-technology related costs continuously grow. Without some facts and figures showing the costs, I see no reason not to believe that game development is getting more expensive - just like most other businesses.
Of course development costs are rising. The programmers should be getting raises, rent on the office building should be going up, powering the machines used goes up in costs, I'm sure there are hundreds of little expenses that go up over time. Over time, everything goes up in cost, it's the way our economy works. I'm not saying developers aren't trying to also see their profits go up, but you seem skeptical that costs are also going up; they are.
IANA anthropologist, but I am pretty confident the first human clothing was made out of natural fibers like animal hides. Any idea what sort of divergence helped the lice/fleas thrive on a blanket made out of a deer skin as opposed to a deer skin currently occupied by a deer?
Math is about more than learning to do math. It's about learning logic and reasoning, among other things.
But only advanced math. Basic algebra and geometry, which are currently required for a high school diploma, obviously don't teach any of these other skills. Your arguments have convinced me that all students must learn advanced maths, or be doomed to mouth-breathing moron-hood.
Slashdot Mirror
Except it's not rote memorization for him. That's the point. He has had experience with these places, so didn't just memorize "Washington, Oregon, California, etc." He remembers "That place where I had that chili dog that gave me diarrhea for 2 days straight was in Washington on my way down to Oregon where I met that guy...." For some people, it is just rote memorization, so unless they periodically re-study the material, they forget it. And not many people study the states past high school. Geography in that sense is like, let's say, a car :-) You can read instruction and look at diagrams, but unless you actually change the belt, you are unlikely to remember how to do it a year from now. If you do change the belt, you are unlikely to forget how to do it.
I wasn't suggesting that my friend's knowledge of the states was proof of his intelligence. I guess there was really no reason to mention the fact that he is intelligent; my point was more about practical vs. theoretical geographic knowledge. Most Americans at some point in middle or high school have to learn all 50 states and their capitals. Unless this becomes applied knowledge through actually visiting these places, most people tend to forget it. Which is also why the average American knows so little about European or Asian geography. A subsidiary point was my experience with fairly highly educated people having very little knowledge of basic geography (for their culture). It just seems to be an overlooked area of education for the most part.
BTW, I REALLY REALLY want "Claven Fallacy" to be a legitimate term.
I'm an American. I work for a university, so live in a university town. One of the most intelligent guys I have met here never went to college; he moved here when his highschool girlfriend came to college here and stayed after they broke up. Occasionally at parties, if it comes out that he isn't in school and never attended college, some asshat will make some comment about it (interestingly, my friend claims this is much more likely to be a philosophy grad student than anything else). My friend's favorite thing to do is challenge said asshat to name all 50 states. I have seen this happen several times over the last few years; the closest I saw anyone come was something like 45. It's priceless when my "uneducated" friend then rattles off the ones they couldn't come up with. Even better is if someone asks him why he knows them so well. "I've been there." It's a classic example of theoretical vs. practical education.
And oddly enough, I have been to Washington, and do know the capital, even though I haven't actually been to Olympia. I have never been to California, and couldn't remember what the capital was (Sacramento). Short point on a long story, I suspect that most Americans simply don't know about geography b/c they haven't seen much of it. Once you've been there, you tend to remember.
Yeah, I spent a bit of time pondering that as well. I THINK he misspelled AND typoed "impeach" under the mistaken impression that it was the word "impede". Which almost fits in his sentence.
:-)
I spent WAY too much time trying to decide if imspeech was a new way of saying l33t sp3k3, and wondering what IM had to do with this. Meh, anything is better than work
An aspect of non-local culture (I like that phrase, by the way) that you might not have considered is the feed-back effect. Not only do the potential victims see things happening hundreds of miles away and fear for their own safety, potential perpetrators do as well. Copy-cat crimes have been around for some time; as national media make the rare localized sensational event a part of the national consciousness, EVERY potential copy cat is exposed to EVERY sensational crime. Bored, depressed, picked on at school? Get a gun and shoot people! Being the next headline will spice up your life! Somewhat ironically, the mere perception that these events are common could very easily lead to these events becoming common.
I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".
/. just stick to making snarky comments about the other users, karma whoring, and OCD refreshing of the front page to get that elusive first post. Submitting interesting stories and making interesting or informative comments about said stories is sooo ... huh, I wanted to make a joke, then got all sad b/c I realized I honestly couldn't come up with a board where that is the norm. I think I'll go bump up my filter a notch or two now.
Well, there you go: lesson learned. If you want to get ahead on
The income gap is growing, true. I don't dispute that at all. What I'm saying, tho, is that those at the top have less legal and social ability to exploit their comparative advantage over those of us on the wrong side of the gap. Sure, realistically, Bill Gates can ruin my life, have me killed, pretty much do what he wants to with me. But if he is caught having me killed, he will face consequences. There was a time not too long ago where the haves could kill the have-nots with a wink and a nod from the authorities (think Jim Crowe in the South). There was a time when it would be unthinkable to press charges against the wealthy on behalf of the destitute. Nowadays, yes, the power is still there, but it requires a bit more subtlety and effort to abuse the power; flagrant abuse of power is more heavily frowned on in today's society.
As for quality of life and working hours, I think you simply have too short a time frame. Sure, in 15-20 years things might go down a bit, but over a longer period, things are up. I'm pretty sure your "lower quality of life and higher working hours" are no where near as low or as long as my grandparents, who ran a tobacco farm in rural NC from 1930 - 1970 (ish). And their quality of life was a lot better than a 19th century farmer's, who had it better than a 15th century peasant, etc etc.
I'm not saying there aren't things that need changing. Otherwise, the current downward trend you have noticed might not turn around; maybe we did reach some pinnacle of equity in society. I think it is a bit early to say that based on just a couple of decades, but I can certainly understand the fear. However, I think things would have to go down quite a bit more to get to the point that even my grandparents generation experienced.
Maybe if you did you'd notice that the differences you're feebly attempting to illustrate are getting smaller and smaller all the time.
I understand and admire the anti-authoritarian philosophy you are espousing. The powerful will always want more power, which will come at the expense of the little people (like me). The few exceptions to this rule, historically, are remarkable in large part b/c they are so rare.
However, I think you are being a bit pessimistic with the statement that "the differences [between totalitarianism and US democracy] are getting smaller and smaller all the time". Ignoring the rest of the world (hey, I AM an American!) and just looking at the history of this country, you have to admit things are MUCH better now in terms of equity between the masses and the powerful than they were even 50 years ago. Microsoft is actually a very good example of this. They are a convicted monopolist. Maybe the punishment hasn't been enough to influence their behavior, but even a token slap on the wrist is much more than many, many companies that behaved much, much worse ever received. Look up the Homestead Strike; far from censuring Carnegie Steel for unfair business practices, the state sent in the militia to break up picketing workers. The state supporting business concerns over citizens was the rule for a large part of the history of industrialization in our country.
I'm not saying things are now wonderful; the state still tends to support corporate concerns over citizen concerns. But things are better; state sponsorship of corporations has to be more subtle today than before, b/c the people will not put up with such blatant power grabs on behalf of corporate welfare. And thanks to the internet, the masses can coordinate in an unprecedented manner to really utilize the power of our sheer numbers. The rich eating the poor will never go away, but we are making them work harder and more intelligently at it than ever before.
Many of their creations still exist today. Can the same be said for ours?
Let's see: Many of our creations still exist today. Sounds right to me.
You're right, there are some ways in which we can and do reduce energy consumption. I think cars are a point for my argument, however. Not everyone can have a car. There simply aren't enough oil resources to support 6.5 billion people having a car and a road to drive it on. And you will never convince the "have" societies to give up the advantages and luxuries their greater resources afford them (such as cars); at least, not to enough of an extent that it will allow the "have nots" an even playing field.
ut the fact that such standards exist at all (weak though they are) shows that the system works fine, we are just arguing over the extent to which such standards should be enforced.
I think most people agree that current levels of industrialized nations energy consumption are unsustainable without some technological breakthru (or possibly political one, depending on your stance on nuclear) in energy production. Barring a breakthru, we are guaranteed to run out of the energy necessary to support the industrialized world's lifestyle. The current system of reduction controls can extend the inevitable for a while, but doesn't offer any real solutions. I would therefore argue that it does not work fine.
I'm not saying reduction is not a worthwhile goal. I'm just saying that it is not feasible to expect people to reduce their energy consumption to the levels necessary for reduction alone to solve the coming energy shortage.
Here's a crazy novel idea for you: Why just not stop wasting so much energy in the first place?
B/c it won't happen. Not a novel idea, but crazy if you think it would work. Its called Tragedy of the Commons. Obviously, you can't require people to use less energy than it requires for them to live. Once basic subsistence is met, extra energy == luxury. People LIKE luxury. So, if everyone else is living at subsistence level, there is enough energy for ME to run the heat 1 degree higher, drive my car a little bit farther, etc. And you KNOW there will be people that will do just that. So, eventually, you get right back to where you started. The only way rationing would really work on a global scale is with a global authority enforcing it; I doubt anyone here really wants an Energy Consumption Control Organization monitoring and enforcing energy rationing.
Of course it is mostly for the profit, but sometimes, forcing someone else to pay $BIG_MONEY for their misdeeds is a good way of convincing them (and others) not to do such misdeeds in the future. But yeah, just like everywhere else (WTF, Americans? troll much?) it's mostly all about the money.
the very idea that laws should be enacted for the good of the state is one of morality.
I think it depends on your definition of "state". If by state you mean the people that comprise the state, then there are certainly moral (or is it ethical, I can never remember) arguments to be made. If by state you mean government, then I think the moral arguments are replaced by self-interest. I mean, if I go about saying that everyone should do or not do what is best for me at their own expense, I doubt anyone will be fooled by any moral pretexts I might throw out.
but it is senseless to argue that you can't legislate morality.
I think the crux of this argument is that if you force me to behave in a certain manner on threat of punishment, my behavior can't be said to be based on morality. It is based on fear of punishment. Once you legislate morality, it ceases to actually be a moral choice. Of course, the people that want to legislate moral behavior probably aren't too concerned about my actual morality, just my behavior.
I don't think it is Windows that is playing catch-up, but rather Windows admins. You can set read/write/execute permissions to files and/or folders (with the option to have sub-folders inherit parent folders permissions) for individual users or groups that users can be added to. Actually very similar to how Unix handles permissions. The thing is, most Windows admins I have seen are too lazy/indifferent/ignorant to take the time to set this sort of environment up properly. Much more common is to simply give the "everyone" group all permissions to all things. It might take a little more effort out the box than Unix, but Windows has perfectly adequate tools for setting up a properly controlled environment.
No, but I have it on good authority that His face has been captured on toast :-)
No, but I find that if I switch off muscle groups each set (eg. bench, squat, curl, leg extension, rinse repeat) I don't need that much rest between sets and can keep my heart rate up pretty well. I do sort of use ab work as a filler in between, sometimes. I also hit the stationary bike for a low impact aerobic workout (although my knees are about the only good joint I have). The biggest thing for getting back into it is to take it easy at first; it sucks thinking about how much you used to bench or whatever, but you'd rather walk away feeling like you didn't get much of a work out than barely being able to walk away. And it's surprising how hard it is to do 4 sets of 15 reps with 30-40% max
:-)
Good luck finding what works for you. If you can find a gym that offers Body Pump , I would definitely give that a try. I'm generally not much of a fan of the weird classes gyms offer, but I enjoyed this one. Not only does it provide a great circuit training style workout, the scenery hardly ever sucks
I'm not a scientist myself, but just b/c something isn't subject to a repeatable test is no reason to doubt its truth, IF you witnessed the first test. Sure, it can't be called science, but science is actually pretty narrow. There is absolutely no way possible for me to either prove or disprove that my wife called me a "dirty nugget" yesterday, but I still believe it happened. It would actually be kind of weird if there were any person that only believed facts that were subject to rigorous scientific testing.
The big problem I have now is that I'm getting older and, frankly, lifting and I don't get along as well as we used to...
:)
If you are talking joint and tendon pain, something I have found to be a good compromise is lower weight, higher reps. And if you do it circuit-training style (less rest between sets and exercises, which is easier to do with lighter weight), it has the added bonus of being a decent cardio workout. It took me a little experimentation to find a weight/rep ratio that a) provided a decent workout and b) didn't make my back, shoulders and hips scream. Also, ibuprofen is definitely your friend
Heh, I can remember when my college gym re-organized. All of the guys were very disappointed that the butterfly machine was no longer directly in front of and facing the leg abductor.
As a former library employee, I can tell you that the large academic university library (US) in which I worked did NOT keep historical records like this. Every book had to be manually scanned back into the system when it was returned by a patron. If you were the one rescanning the books, part of the job was to keep an eye out for damaged books. If you saw one that was damaged, don't rescan it until you have either marked it as damaged, or verified that is was previously marked as damaged. Keeping historical records wouldn't help; if you didn't notice it when it was returned, there isn't really any way to determine which previous borrower had done the damage. There really weren't any other compelling business reasons to keep such historical records, either. I know that is why we didn't bother keeping them.
FYI, if you want to complain about pronouncing acronyms as words, SQL is not a good choice. The original acronym was SEQUEL, which was later shortened to SQL. So pronouncing SQL as sequel rather than ess-cue-ell is more of a traditional hold over from the original spelling than anything else. citation
And honestly, if I were hiring a DB developer that didn't know what I was talking about when I said Sequel rather than ess-cue-ell, I would be highly suspect of their amount of experience. Who in the database world has not heard of MSSQL Server (pronounced Em-Ess-Sequel-Server)? And if you can't put 2 + 2 together any better than that...
Well, that's true - not everything always goes up. Just most things, most of the time. For instance, distribution media. The costs of PS2 discs has probably gone down, but the cost of PS3 discs is higher than that, so the cost to distribute a game has probably stayed about the same, or gone up slightly. I don't really know, but while I exaggerated previously, its still true that in general, the cost of doing business tends to rise. Established technologies go down in cost, but the cutting edge keeps getting more expensive. Most non-technology related costs continuously grow. Without some facts and figures showing the costs, I see no reason not to believe that game development is getting more expensive - just like most other businesses.
Of course development costs are rising. The programmers should be getting raises, rent on the office building should be going up, powering the machines used goes up in costs, I'm sure there are hundreds of little expenses that go up over time. Over time, everything goes up in cost, it's the way our economy works. I'm not saying developers aren't trying to also see their profits go up, but you seem skeptical that costs are also going up; they are.
IANA anthropologist, but I am pretty confident the first human clothing was made out of natural fibers like animal hides. Any idea what sort of divergence helped the lice/fleas thrive on a blanket made out of a deer skin as opposed to a deer skin currently occupied by a deer?
Math is about more than learning to do math. It's about learning logic and reasoning, among other things.
But only advanced math. Basic algebra and geometry, which are currently required for a high school diploma, obviously don't teach any of these other skills. Your arguments have convinced me that all students must learn advanced maths, or be doomed to mouth-breathing moron-hood.