It always amazes me when I see people who are incredibly disorganized, have to expend so much effort to find things, who basically are always just one big mistake away from burnout, when they could learn some basic organization skills and work SO much more efficiently.
It always amazes me when people think that everyone should be good at their particular strengths.
But it also amazes me when I see people who are incredibly organized, expend a lot of emotional energy staying that way, but then are constrained by their pre-allocations of time so that they can't focus on important priorities.
Let's take a case in point: I ran a chem lab for 14 years. It was messy. I knew where everything was, but the students didn't (although that got better over time). Why was it messy? Because there were loads of projects going on all at once. Because as the students worked, I would circulate about and ask them questions about what they were doing. Then, I moved out of chem and on to other things. The new chem teacher is possessed by the spirit of Felix Unger. The lab is neat, the principal is delighted -- but the students do about half as many labs, because Felix can't stand to have glassware out after the bell rings, so he gets less done during the period.
Another thing about being disorganized: it keeps you from scaling.
This is correct. My method wouldn't work if I had 5 lab periods in a row. BUT... my method does accomplish something that the neatfreaks don't: I focus time on teaching instead of cleaning. I'm organized and focused, but my organization is in t-space, not (x,y,z) space.
The inbox should be used for NEW, UNREAD MESSAGES ONLY!
Agreed. In fact, my computer file structure is oddly enough quite organized. Go figure.
Anyway, why bring a bottle on the plane if yer breastfeeding already (nothing would spoil formula)?
Since my wife is currently breastfeeding our second child, I'll step up to the plate.
It turns out that a 12-mo.-old is non-trivial to breastfeed, especially if she's a big and active kid. She likes to squirm, she is longer than the width of a seat, and she likes to take breaks and look around.
My wife, meanwhile, is not interested in having to wrestle her out of her safety seat, find a position that works, and then feed her while worrying that baby will look around right at the moment that a male passenger is walking by.
A bottle of pre-pumped milk makes a lot of sense (Pepperidge Farm Goldfish make even more sense, if possible).
With our first child, the mouth shape was wrong, leading to significant blistering. My wife resorted to pumping out of self-defense.
Said the scientists, adult stem cells have only been suggested by research to cure only seven diseases thus far, and most of them are skin diseases.
Then they lied, or else were answering a different question. Adult stem cells are currently used -- not suggested by research, but are currently used -- to cure about 70diseases, many of them cancers.
Here's what bugs me about this issue: let's leave aside the moral question of destroying embryos for the moment, although it's very important to me. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that eSCR were morally on par with aSCR. Now, we have large numbers of scientists claiming they need funding, and celebrities with no medical training touting the benefits... and where's the results? Isn't anybody suspicious of arguments made by people who want funding? Even leaving the moral issue aside, it all seems like pie-in-the-sky to me.
Let's say I have some rare cancer. If I have an eSCR-based treatment from some random embryo, even a good genetic match, I will probably be on anti-rejection drugs for life. The best hope for eSCR for me will be that my own DNA is used to create a clone, which will then provide stem cells. But why bother? My own testes can already produce pluripotent stem cells.
When you add the moral argument in, it's a slam dunk issue. Ironically, though, the moral argument often obscures the issue; people are so anxious to prove that they aren't prudes that they overlook the obvious: funding for eSCR is going to aSCR instead because aSCR is proven technology.
You misread my post, and you misread my arguments.
I did *not* claim that the Democratic Party, or that CNN or the NYTimes, disagree with the American public on all 6 of the listed issues. I *did* claim that the Democratic Party, CNN, and the NYTimes take the same position on all 6 issues. I stand by that claim.
Your response was that CNN and NYTimes take the position of the majority of Americans on those issues. My response was that, no, on the issues of abortion and homosexual marriage, they do not. My response was, intentionally, limited to those two issues alone.
Somehow, you mutated my response to make it seem that I stated that CNN and NYTimes take a different position from the majority of Americans on all six issues. I did not state that and do not believe that.
Specifically, I have never said anything that would justify your blanket assertion that I have a "belief that the Democratic Party is "out of the mainstream" with America on [the issues I chose]..." Contrary to your assumption, my belief is that the Democratic Party represents American opinion well enough to be a viable party in America. The same is true of the Republican party.
I will assume that your misreading occurred in good faith.
Now. With regard to abortion, consider this set of polls from the same Pew Research site you used, which shows that 66% of Americans want abortion to be either more restricted than it is currently, or even illegal under most or all circumstances (1nd poll on right).
With regard to homosexual marriage, the 1st poll on the right from the same site shows 56% opposition to 35% support.
The numbers are clear, and they support my claim: CNN, the NYTimes, and the Democratic Party disagree with the majority of Americans on *these two issues.* Hence, your original claim that CNN and NYTimes reflect the opinions of Americans on the listed issues is factually false.
With regard to my.sig, your understanding of the word "function" is odd. Someone with Down's syndrome is a functioning organism, as is someone with a viral infection. They don't necessarily function well... but they function as organisms. Hence, they are human beings.
Actually, I've put a lot of careful thought into the question "What is a human being?" The.sig reflects that thought, and I would encourage you to be a little less hasty in your rejection of it.
Er, the "Democratic Party" line on all those issues happens to be the popular American opinion on those topics (except perhaps "religious conservatives", which not an issue, but rather a Republican "frame" of reference).
This is simply untrue. The majority of Americans favor greater restrictions on abortion; Democrats (in general, with exceptions) do not. CNN does not. NYTimes does not. The majority of Americans oppose the right of homosexuals to marry. A large segment of the Democratic party supports that right, as do CNN and NYTimes.
Stephen Colbert famously said "reality has a well-known liberal bias"
Yes, and conservatives are fond of saying that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." Both statements are propaganda and are persuasive only to those already persuaded -- in other words, to the biased.
I don't know about [Colbert's comment], but corporate propaganda has demanded "balance" of fact with its fiction in the mass media for years.
And long before that, liberals were demanding equal time for their views in unversities and seminaries under the aegis of "academic freedom."
The point is not that conservatives are justified because "liberals do it too." I have no interest in justifying the political right in this country, not being a fan of business-entangled government. Instead, the point is that *if* you want to find an enemy of the people, you should seek it in sloppy thinking rather than one political party or another.
I don't see any "Democratic Party" line in the C(IA)NN or NYTimes coverage.
Let's suppose for a moment that you lean "left" in your politics. Let's suppose further that CNN and NYTimes also lean left, at least on certain issues. Will you notice? Probably not -- because "bias" is not a deliberate attempt to deceive, but a general (often sincere) way of seeing the world from a consistent point of view. Those who are biased in your direction are seen as "reasonable", not "biased."
Does CNN have biases that coincide with Democratic positions? Absolutely. As examples, search CNN for stories on any of these topics:
Abortion
Stem cell research
Homosexual rights
Health insurance
Gun violence and gun control
Religious conservatives.
Pay attention to which sources are given the "credible" spot in the article, to the stance implied by the article, and to the correspondence to Democrat positions on those issues.
Actually, rage accomplishes surprisingly little. All of those people that you've stunned into silence are merely keeping their dissent to themselves and biding their time...
For example, if I were addressed in that way and figured I had little to lose, I might very well turn your name over to a bunch of charitable organizations that are also not bound by do-not-call. Thus, you would get to deliver your line over and over and over...
True, it would be illegal. But in my state (Maryland, home of dirty politics), there would be a fine and after four years, no one would remember. I know of no case -- although my knowledge is limited -- in which a candidate was removed from office because of dirty campaign tricks.
Hi, this is Kimberly from the [Republican | Democratic] National Committee...
Hi Kimberly, my wife and I don't make any donations whatsoever over the phone, and we don't answer poll questions either.
Sure, I can understand that. We would like to send you a free brochure with our platform on it, but we need to have some level of commitment from you. Could I put you down for $25?
(It turns out she actually can't understand what I said). I'm sorry. Like I said, we don't make contributions over the phone. Good luck in November.
CLICK. BZZZ...
---
For the record, any political contributions we make go to PACs. We figure that the money will be better distributed to the candidates that actually support our positions, than if we gave to the national parties.
"Infinite" is technically impossible... sound energy is quantized, too. The hypothetical you are describing is similar to the ultraviolet catastrophe, and you are correct to point out that "infinite harmonic" is not possible.
Can't say. The symptom is OS-like; the circumstances seem application-related. Bottom line: it's the job of the keyboard driver to make sure that keypresses are buffered correctly. It may be that Konsole is trying to recreate the functions of the driver and ends up with bad data, but I am *really* speculating here.
Or, as happened to me, when a system gets loaded heavily, konsole will rearrange characters in its input buffer. "rm -rf/var/tmp/some_obsolete_folder" somehow became "rm -rf/var//ttmpssoooomeeee_bll_fdr"
That is one bizarre OS glitch! What are you running (so I can avoid it)?
There are a lot of missing links in your argument. I don't think anyone was saying that God is necessary to create Man in particular.
If God created the universe, and the universe was created from nothing, then God is nothing. QED.
If your syllogism means by 'nothing', 'no physical object', then we agree on the conclusion: God is not a physical object. This is how I meant 'nothing' in the first argument, and it is how most physicists take it (with the quantum fluctation caveat). But if, as I suspect, you mean 'no being whatsoever', then I disagree with your minor premise that the universe was created by 'no being whatsoever.'
That is, unless you're so insecure that you must have a creation mythos to explain your existence.
Well, I'm secure enough not to take personal offense to a rude comment:-).
Just to clarify... my sig is not an argument against abortion. It is piece -- perhaps the most important piece -- of that argument, but as you point out, it isn't the whole show.
The purpose behind my sig is to plant a thought that opposes dehumanization at all levels: abortion, embryonic destruction for whatever cause, euthanasia, civil rights abuses, unjustified wars, etc. It is a reminder that humans are humans, which seems (sadly) to be a lost thought today. In addition, it is a reminder couched in non-theistic language *because* I believe it to be possible and worthwhile to argue even in a predominantly atheistic society -- such as/. -- that humans are humans. Fair enough?
Notice that for this argument to work the value of human life must be intrinsic, that is, it must not rest on a set of criteria based on intelligence, capability, complexity or beauty, since a fetus has none of these things above other animals. Also, "potential" is meaninless without reference to God. If humans evolved from other creatures without God's input, then there is no real difference between Albert Einstien's fetus and a microbe, because they have the same potential, it's just that one of them happens to be closer at the moment. Besides, potential for what? For those other things that we "happen" to value.
Your argument seems confused to me. There might be other reasons besides reference to God to consider the value of human life intrinsic. Stated more precisely, there exist non-theistic reasons to believe that our moral obligation humans is different from our moral obligation to non-humans; for example, our kinship as a species is of intrinsic value.
I happen to believe that being created in God's image is the *best* reason to value humans, but I can also recognize that there are other reasons. Kant, for example, takes the value of humans as axiomatic because the moral agent making any choice is a peer of the humans who will be affected by that choice.
"potential" is completely out of scope here; no-one has mentioned potential, so I don't understand whether you are arguing that I should be mentioning potential, or are criticizing me for implying some kind of potential. To clarify: I do not believe that human beings are valuable because of their potential, and I view any such valuation as disguised preference for ability, and therefore inadmissible.
God is the being that created the universe that we experience with our senses. That such a being exists is a more probable explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe and for the creation of the universe from nothing, than any other explanation (*cough* string theory *cough*) to date.
Done. Now, you might disagree with my assessment of the probabilities -- but you must admit that I've appealed neither to circular reasoning nor to blind faith (at least not in any obvious way).
BTW, if you don't like that argument, there are more. I've just picked one that's short.
Sorry, but I feel the compulsion to pick apart your sig.
Pick away; my ideas are always in need of sharpening.
So since clones aren't genetically distinct, they only constitute a single being? What about identical twins? What about conjoined twins?
Two clones or two identical twins are separate organisms, so there is no confusion.
Conjoined twins are a boundary case, wouldn't you agree?
"Functioning" could be interpreted to mean absolutely anything. Does it exclude a fetus who is dependent on its mother? What if it's still breast feeding? What if it still lives in its parents' basement? What about humans that aren't "functioning" properly, are they no longer beings?
"Functioning" has a reasonably clear biological definition, with some boundary cases: molar pregnancies, for example, are non-functioning; anencephalics are a boundary case; people in comas are a boundary case.
Fetuses attached to mom are not a boundary case. They are clearly functioning organisms (attached to another functioning organism, and happening to reside inside).
The purpose of specifying "functioning" in the definition is to exclude the category of "subhuman" sometimes attributed on the basis of X quality. For example, Jews were classed as "subhuman" (Untermenschen) by the Nazis on the basis of their heredity. "Functioning" levels the playing field and excludes such chicanery, while still granting that corpses, e.g., are no longer human beings.
If I spliced a pig gene into someone's DNA, they're not a "human being"?
Human-animal chimeras are fortunately mostly future, and most splicing that you suggest would be fatal. However, *assuming* that it could be done, probably the predominant DNA would determine the species. I'm not sure that a theistic approach could generate a better answer to that question.
Honestly, it's pointless to try to "define" personhood in any way that does not directly involve God.
I have general and qualified agreement with that point of view, but you'll notice that I didn't define "person" -- I defined "human being." I also happen to believe that human beings are persons and that any human being deserves the benefit of the doubt in that regard, but that argument is not short. You might enjoy my journal here.
But if the neighbor happens to be undressing near an open window, her fruits are definitely not yours, and you can be prosecuted for taking effort to look in, even if you are doing so from your own yard.
So which is it? Is a WiFi signal a piece of property like an apple, that if undefended is free for all? OR, is a WiFi signal a burst of radiation, like a view from the neighbor's window, that has privacy rights attached to it?
I'm willing to bet that if the RIAA cruised around looking for file-sharing over unsecured WiFi and found you downloading Pirates 2, your lawyers would claim privacy in order to invalidate the evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
How about a Marshall Stack amping someone reading Beowulf into a microphone?
But it also amazes me when I see people who are incredibly organized, expend a lot of emotional energy staying that way, but then are constrained by their pre-allocations of time so that they can't focus on important priorities.
Let's take a case in point: I ran a chem lab for 14 years. It was messy. I knew where everything was, but the students didn't (although that got better over time). Why was it messy? Because there were loads of projects going on all at once. Because as the students worked, I would circulate about and ask them questions about what they were doing. Then, I moved out of chem and on to other things. The new chem teacher is possessed by the spirit of Felix Unger. The lab is neat, the principal is delighted -- but the students do about half as many labs, because Felix can't stand to have glassware out after the bell rings, so he gets less done during the period.This is correct. My method wouldn't work if I had 5 lab periods in a row. BUT
My wife, meanwhile, is not interested in having to wrestle her out of her safety seat, find a position that works, and then feed her while worrying that baby will look around right at the moment that a male passenger is walking by.
A bottle of pre-pumped milk makes a lot of sense (Pepperidge Farm Goldfish make even more sense, if possible).
Take a look at this document and search for the quote by van Etten. It's not just that aSCR is *ahead* of eSCR; it's also *growing faster.*
Here's what bugs me about this issue: let's leave aside the moral question of destroying embryos for the moment, although it's very important to me. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that eSCR were morally on par with aSCR. Now, we have large numbers of scientists claiming they need funding, and celebrities with no medical training touting the benefits
Let's say I have some rare cancer. If I have an eSCR-based treatment from some random embryo, even a good genetic match, I will probably be on anti-rejection drugs for life. The best hope for eSCR for me will be that my own DNA is used to create a clone, which will then provide stem cells. But why bother? My own testes can already produce pluripotent stem cells.
When you add the moral argument in, it's a slam dunk issue. Ironically, though, the moral argument often obscures the issue; people are so anxious to prove that they aren't prudes that they overlook the obvious: funding for eSCR is going to aSCR instead because aSCR is proven technology.
You misread my post, and you misread my arguments.
..." Contrary to your assumption, my belief is that the Democratic Party represents American opinion well enough to be a viable party in America. The same is true of the Republican party.
.sig, your understanding of the word "function" is odd. Someone with Down's syndrome is a functioning organism, as is someone with a viral infection. They don't necessarily function well ... but they function as organisms. Hence, they are human beings.
.sig reflects that thought, and I would encourage you to be a little less hasty in your rejection of it.
I did *not* claim that the Democratic Party, or that CNN or the NYTimes, disagree with the American public on all 6 of the listed issues. I *did* claim that the Democratic Party, CNN, and the NYTimes take the same position on all 6 issues. I stand by that claim.
Your response was that CNN and NYTimes take the position of the majority of Americans on those issues. My response was that, no, on the issues of abortion and homosexual marriage, they do not. My response was, intentionally, limited to those two issues alone.
Somehow, you mutated my response to make it seem that I stated that CNN and NYTimes take a different position from the majority of Americans on all six issues. I did not state that and do not believe that.
Specifically, I have never said anything that would justify your blanket assertion that I have a "belief that the Democratic Party is "out of the mainstream" with America on [the issues I chose]
I will assume that your misreading occurred in good faith.
Now. With regard to abortion, consider this set of polls from the same Pew Research site you used, which shows that 66% of Americans want abortion to be either more restricted than it is currently, or even illegal under most or all circumstances (1nd poll on right).
With regard to homosexual marriage, the 1st poll on the right from the same site shows 56% opposition to 35% support.
The numbers are clear, and they support my claim: CNN, the NYTimes, and the Democratic Party disagree with the majority of Americans on *these two issues.* Hence, your original claim that CNN and NYTimes reflect the opinions of Americans on the listed issues is factually false.
With regard to my
Actually, I've put a lot of careful thought into the question "What is a human being?" The
+5 funny. :-)
The point is not that conservatives are justified because "liberals do it too." I have no interest in justifying the political right in this country, not being a fan of business-entangled government. Instead, the point is that *if* you want to find an enemy of the people, you should seek it in sloppy thinking rather than one political party or another.
Does CNN have biases that coincide with Democratic positions? Absolutely. As examples, search CNN for stories on any of these topics:
- Abortion
- Stem cell research
- Homosexual rights
- Health insurance
- Gun violence and gun control
- Religious conservatives.
Pay attention to which sources are given the "credible" spot in the article, to the stance implied by the article, and to the correspondence to Democrat positions on those issues.There's your bias for you.
Actually, rage accomplishes surprisingly little. All of those people that you've stunned into silence are merely keeping their dissent to themselves and biding their time...
For example, if I were addressed in that way and figured I had little to lose, I might very well turn your name over to a bunch of charitable organizations that are also not bound by do-not-call. Thus, you would get to deliver your line over and over and over...
True, it would be illegal. But in my state (Maryland, home of dirty politics), there would be a fine and after four years, no one would remember. I know of no case -- although my knowledge is limited -- in which a candidate was removed from office because of dirty campaign tricks.
Op #1: Hey guys, I've got a list of contrarian voters. Who wants to make the calls?
Op #2: That would be me. Who's first?
Op #1: "MyLongNickName (822545)"
Op #2 (dials 822545): Hi, I'm calling on behalf of Candidate A's campaign
You: I'll vote for Candidate B. Thanks for interrupting my day.
Op #2: Sorry to bother you, sir. (hangs up) Yes! Another easy vote.
Hi, this is Kimberly from the [Republican | Democratic] National Committee...
Hi Kimberly, my wife and I don't make any donations whatsoever over the phone, and we don't answer poll questions either.
Sure, I can understand that. We would like to send you a free brochure with our platform on it, but we need to have some level of commitment from you. Could I put you down for $25?
(It turns out she actually can't understand what I said). I'm sorry. Like I said, we don't make contributions over the phone. Good luck in November.CLICK. BZZZ...
---
For the record, any political contributions we make go to PACs. We figure that the money will be better distributed to the candidates that actually support our positions, than if we gave to the national parties.
Raises hand cautiously...
RUN AWAY!!Looks around for incoming vegatables...
Decides that across the pond is too far to fling produce, gets back to work...
Gets creamed by aerial cow
"Infinite" is technically impossible ... sound energy is quantized, too. The hypothetical you are describing is similar to the ultraviolet catastrophe, and you are correct to point out that "infinite harmonic" is not possible.
While losing no energy, at that (except for the whole 'tides' thing).
Can't say. The symptom is OS-like; the circumstances seem application-related. Bottom line: it's the job of the keyboard driver to make sure that keypresses are buffered correctly. It may be that Konsole is trying to recreate the functions of the driver and ends up with bad data, but I am *really* speculating here.
Jeff
The purpose behind my sig is to plant a thought that opposes dehumanization at all levels: abortion, embryonic destruction for whatever cause, euthanasia, civil rights abuses, unjustified wars, etc. It is a reminder that humans are humans, which seems (sadly) to be a lost thought today. In addition, it is a reminder couched in non-theistic language *because* I believe it to be possible and worthwhile to argue even in a predominantly atheistic society -- such as /. -- that humans are humans. Fair enough?
Your argument seems confused to me. There might be other reasons besides reference to God to consider the value of human life intrinsic. Stated more precisely, there exist non-theistic reasons to believe that our moral obligation humans is different from our moral obligation to non-humans; for example, our kinship as a species is of intrinsic value.I happen to believe that being created in God's image is the *best* reason to value humans, but I can also recognize that there are other reasons. Kant, for example, takes the value of humans as axiomatic because the moral agent making any choice is a peer of the humans who will be affected by that choice.
"potential" is completely out of scope here; no-one has mentioned potential, so I don't understand whether you are arguing that I should be mentioning potential, or are criticizing me for implying some kind of potential. To clarify: I do not believe that human beings are valuable because of their potential, and I view any such valuation as disguised preference for ability, and therefore inadmissible.
Done. Now, you might disagree with my assessment of the probabilities -- but you must admit that I've appealed neither to circular reasoning nor to blind faith (at least not in any obvious way).
BTW, if you don't like that argument, there are more. I've just picked one that's short.
Conjoined twins are a boundary case, wouldn't you agree?
"Functioning" has a reasonably clear biological definition, with some boundary cases: molar pregnancies, for example, are non-functioning; anencephalics are a boundary case; people in comas are a boundary case.
Fetuses attached to mom are not a boundary case. They are clearly functioning organisms (attached to another functioning organism, and happening to reside inside).
The purpose of specifying "functioning" in the definition is to exclude the category of "subhuman" sometimes attributed on the basis of X quality. For example, Jews were classed as "subhuman" (Untermenschen) by the Nazis on the basis of their heredity. "Functioning" levels the playing field and excludes such chicanery, while still granting that corpses, e.g., are no longer human beings.
Human-animal chimeras are fortunately mostly future, and most splicing that you suggest would be fatal. However, *assuming* that it could be done, probably the predominant DNA would determine the species. I'm not sure that a theistic approach could generate a better answer to that question.I have general and qualified agreement with that point of view, but you'll notice that I didn't define "person" -- I defined "human being." I also happen to believe that human beings are persons and that any human being deserves the benefit of the doubt in that regard, but that argument is not short. You might enjoy my journal here.Actually, I'm not even sure it's an assertion ... where's the verb?
So which is it? Is a WiFi signal a piece of property like an apple, that if undefended is free for all? OR, is a WiFi signal a burst of radiation, like a view from the neighbor's window, that has privacy rights attached to it?
I'm willing to bet that if the RIAA cruised around looking for file-sharing over unsecured WiFi and found you downloading Pirates 2, your lawyers would claim privacy in order to invalidate the evidence.