Pack what you think you'll need, and then leave 1/2 of it at home.
Absolutely. Good advice. Dump the electronics apart from a compact digicam, and with the possible exception of an iPod with books on tape - though I'd still just bring a book. Recharging is a pain.
I'm not so sure on the sleeping bag though. Having traveled with and without, I definitely think it should be left at home unless you know you need it in your specific circumstances. I would would always bring a sheet bag. It depends where you're going I suppose. If you're in cheap places in the developing world, there will probably be bedding, and you may not want to go anywhere near it. In really rough places bring insecticide powder to kill bedbugs.
Travel towel - great idea, but I'd buy the smallest one you can hold in both hands to dry your back with. When they get wet, you just wring them out and they work again, so big doesn't help much.
Doing laundry on the road is expensive and can be a major hassle. Get used to being dirtier than you are at home.
But with a little effort you can be pretty clean. Do your own laundry. Just bring a few sets of underwear and t-shirts and give them a clean with soap in the evening before bed. If you have the right stuff, and some high-tech fabrics work here, it'll generally be dry by morning. After washing, roll up in the travel towel and wring - gets most of the water out. Consider a string clothes line.
If you do it right, you can travel indefinitely in a wide range of places with only a large daypack. You never have to check luggage, and you don't have to find somewhere to dump your big pack every time you step off a plane/train/bus. You have the self-contained freedom that you set off for in the first place.
Big bag, with tent, sleeping bag, electronics: it's a slog and you'll only really feel free when you've checked it all into an expensive, safe, hotel.
I want to go! The wife and kids might not be happy though.
In my view, revelation, both by modern prophets and direct, personal revelation, enable us to discern and address these errors.
I think there we have a complete disconnect which we can't move past in any meaningful way. I don't recognize any validity in "revelation", especially since so many people have conflicting "revelations", and just about every cult leader does, or claims to.
You're right that I'm taking pot-shots at theology as it's presented for and by the masses - deliberately.
Your view of the Bible ("the authors had a much less well-developed understanding of the universe", "allegorical in nature", etc.) seems to me to make it no more significant than, say, the works of Shakespeare. Sure, there's wisdom in the stories (sometimes), but other than that it's just a book written by unsophisticated men?
If you'd like to explain which biblical events lead you to that characterization
I'm no biblical scholar - as you point out. I'm pretty ignorant of it, almost as much as I am of astrology, the Norse gods, and so on. However, I could fire up quotes and examples of immorality, from the New or Old testament with a quick web search, e.g. where Jesus criticizes people for not killing their disobedient children as the Old Testament tells them to?
Anyway, sorry, I don't have the time to do this subject more justice, and I'm sure you'll agree we're not going to get anywhere.
What you were saying was eminently reasonable and uncontentious even if I disagree, my apologies since it was logical to assume I was ridiculing you. All I could take exception to is the implication that atheism is a phase and with maturity people grow out of it - and that would be a bit rich given my ridicule.
However, if I refocus the ridicule on most believers rather than you personally, I stand by it. Most, if not all, of the expressions of the foundation of people's belief I encounter in public or private are inane and delusional. It's very common to hear people say "there's a lot to life that science can't explain", as if it's evidence for their belief in, for instance, a bronze-age myth of an immoral, vain, vengeful sky god "of love" who will damn most of his creations to eternal torment if they don't flatter him enough. Most Christians are so staggeringly ignorant of what their "inerrant" Bible actually contains that ridicule seems the most appropriate response. Of those who aren't ignorant, I've never heard any reasoning for which bits of the Bible they choose to accept, and which to reject.
discover that the world is more complex and less amenable to rational analysis than they had thought
The logic of faith:
We assert that A explains B.
Rationality can't tell us anything about B.
Therefore A. QED! And besides, we know it's true.
...Except where rationality does tell us something about B, contradicting A, in which case the logic of faith goes: fingers-in-ears "la-la-la-la-la", or else "well, we didn't literally mean A."
Ok, part of my viewpoint comes from the fact I'm a cheapskate, and won't pay hundreds of dollars a year for service*, don't care about cameras, internet access etc.. For cheapskates, the soap-bar is king.
Now that flip-phones like the RAZR are around, the size in the pocket is no longer a disadvantage, only leaving the high cost to get a small phone and the fragility of a hinge etc.. In contrast for instance the Nokia 6030 is even given away free for prepaid (T-mobile: $30 including $35 of airtime), the equivalent Samsung flip is a fat lump, and a RAZR costs $200. If you get them "free" with a contract, we all know they're not really free.
The mic on these soap bars is on the bottom of the unit, so won't touch your cheek. With my fairly large head, it's 2 inches from my mouth, and works just fine. No one ever has problems hearing me, and I have to keep telling my wife she can talk more quietly on hers.
I do concede that with the flips don't need to lock the keys, and if you're happy paying for a slim RAZR or whatever, then it's not really inferior. My initial comment was partly out of date, and certainly colored by my usage pattern.
* Prepaid: I use the phone on average of 10 minutes a week. With T-mobile prepaid I can buy 2 year's worth of minutes for $100, and then just have to buy a minimum of $10 after 12 months to keep that balance active for another 12. Total cost for first 2 years service with phone: $140, $50/year after that, assuming all things stay the same. Sure, I could pay $40 or more a month and get more minutes, but they'd be minutes I don't use. I use Skype or Gizmo when I want to have an actual chat, which is rarely when mobile.
If I take my phone and turn it upside-down in a natural position, the screen is fully visible. It would be a major improvement. I'd have to adopt an uncomfortable position to obscure the screen.
My phone is a very small Nokia soap-bar (6100 - I've never understood the infatuation with flip-phones... Star Trek?). Perhaps it's different with whatever you're using.
consumes about 9 watts (without a drive, or with a flash drive)
I saw that on a Slug Wiki somewhere, but tested my own, and it drew about 5W out of the wall with a USB laptop harddrive attached (measured with a Kill-a-Watt meter). Perhaps I should find and edit that Wiki.
Fair point with respect to what I actually said, though my intention wasn't to imply that nothing is done for the poor - simply that there's nothing stopping a project like this being adopted, so whining about it going to foreigners is baseless.
That leaves millions of kids in American schools who don't have a computer. I think they, and those like them in other countries, should be the real targets of a project like this.
It is "those like them in other countries" that these computers are going to be sent to. Didn't you just contradict your own point? Or are the kids in Brazil etc. somehow not like American kids? Who exactly are the inappropriate targets of this plan, and how are they inappropriate?
Nothing is stopping the government (or private ventures) in the wealthiest country in the world, backing OLPC to educate and supply its own poor (except greed, corruption, and an inane support for "Free Market" dogma). I'm sure if the US wanted to sign up to OLPC, the project would greet them with open arms.
the fundamental purpose of television: Entertainment.
When did the purpose of tv get defined? Would you say the same thing about books? Are dry textbooks a subversion of the true purpose of books: entertainment?
You want to be entertained at all times - some other people do want education to learn something for the sake of learning something, albeit ideally presented in an interesting form. Perhaps this "interesting form" is equal to the "entertainment" you're getting at, but to me, it seems that the idea that TV is only for entertainment was plucked out of the air.
Other people said this elsewhere, and the obvious response is that if you want to make money, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it, and a much easier way would be to seek funding from the oil companies to support their agenda.
If they're trying to get rich, they're making life very difficult for themselves. Your idea does not hold up to any intelligent assessment.
why don't the tobacco companies merge with the oil companies
Don't forget the evolution and geology deniers too (The earth's only 6000 years old you know. Oh yes). They all love the "teach the controversy (which we created)" tactic.
They don't get this recognition from pushing an agenda, they get it for being persuasive in that agenda, hopefully by being right. This still doesn't explain what they gain if what they say about climate change is correct - it merely says what they gain by their argument being accepted.
It's a subtle but very important distinction. The oil companies have a vested interest in making climate change be disbelieved - in promoting a conclusion. If UCS aims to further its research and donation funds, its strongest vested interest is in being convincing. I'd say by far the simplest and easiest way for them to do this is to tell the truth.
What is their agenda? I'm not that familiar with it, so I'm interested to know where they deviate from widely accepted science?
Another poster mentioned their global warming FAQ, but I read it and thought that most of what I read was pretty uncontroversial among qualified climate scientists (apart from a few counter-views, which almost always seem to be oil-funded).
Given that you assert UCS is a special interest, how do they profit from acceptance of their assertions? It's obvious how oil companies profit directly from the rejection of a theory of human-generated climate change.
I assume you're talking about the UK, based on terminology and your URL.
A big difference between the UK and the USA is that in the latter, most people think it's the greatest place on earth (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't; in the UK most think it's a shithole (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't. At a certain point your miserable attitude becomes self-fulfilling. You should actually try hopping to the other side of the world and see how much they enjoy the company of whinging poms.
...learned that Muslims do believe in Jesus Christ
Wow, not to pick on the parent, but the fact that this rates "Informative", and some of the responses to it stun me. Here we are, many years into strife we're supposed to believe is all due to Muslim fundamentalists, and this sort of knowledge is considered novel!
Surely the knowledge that JC is considered a Muslim prophet is part of every trivial 5-minute summary of Islam that just about every American should know.
Or perhaps, all we really need to know about them is they're The Evil Enemy.
We're doomed.
Re:WTF?! Some of the entries are total bullsh*t.
on
Top Ten Geek Girls
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· Score: 1
She not a f**king geek! She's a left-wing, activist actress!
Agreed she has no business on the list, but in what possible way do any of these attributes disqualify her. As someone else pointed out Hedy Lamar was a bona-fide geek and actress. As for left-wing and activist, I can't even begin to think how that's relevant.
Since when is the US health care system a free market?
Absolutely, as we know, Free Markets produce the best possible results, so if imperfect results come from The Market, then The Market has by definition been distorted. The most frequent type of distortion of The Free Market is usually caused by something called "reality".
Agreed, plenty of noise at 1600, but my point is so does T-Max. I have scanned T-Max at lower res than my DSLR, and its "noise", or grain, is much stronger than the digital. The T-max noise is, however, more pleasing to look at.
We are talking SLRs now aren't we - digital compacts are useless at high ISO (their sensors are a tiny fraction of the size of a DSLR), but a digital SLR at ISO 1600 is less noisy than T-Max. Generally, the noise may be ugly in color, but to compare apples with apples, if you desaturate your digital shot to B&W it'll be cleaner and more detailed than T-Max.
I'm sorry, you can get a DSLR for the same price as a "prosumer" non SLR - In the region of $600 and don't forget your film costs, and it will be superior in every respect except pocketability. They'll take many hundreds of shots between charges (you really would have to go crazy to not get a day's worth of shots from one charge). As for the last point, well you can make an attempt at the grain etc., in Photoshop et al, but sure, you won't get the exact characteristics - however, of the options, looks and effects open to you with digital, very few are available with film.
Yeah, if you're a stubborn Luddite and you work hard at it, you can find some areas where film cameras still excel, but they're few and far between.
I'm sure it's quite possible; check out silentpcreview.com. However, you should note that it's much easier and cheaper to make an inaudible system with fans, if you select the components carefully.
Fanless is the holy grail of silence obsessives, but often it's a pointless quest. Also, be aware that no hard disk is quieter than a quiet fan.
I can only imagine you have fine facial hair and not a lot of it. If I try to shave without cream, the razor clogs on the first half the first stroke and is useless after that until manually cleaned. While cream has the benefits of keeping the beard moist and soft, its main purpose for me is that it keeps the stubble in a foamy suspension so it can flow through and clear of the blades. When traveling I use a brush and soap, and it's hard to get as good a lather as with an aerosol, in which case I have to make short strokes and rinse well in between. Shaving without soap or cream is nearly impossible (and very unpleasant) for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely. Good advice. Dump the electronics apart from a compact digicam, and with the possible exception of an iPod with books on tape - though I'd still just bring a book. Recharging is a pain.
I'm not so sure on the sleeping bag though. Having traveled with and without, I definitely think it should be left at home unless you know you need it in your specific circumstances. I would would always bring a sheet bag. It depends where you're going I suppose. If you're in cheap places in the developing world, there will probably be bedding, and you may not want to go anywhere near it. In really rough places bring insecticide powder to kill bedbugs.
Travel towel - great idea, but I'd buy the smallest one you can hold in both hands to dry your back with. When they get wet, you just wring them out and they work again, so big doesn't help much.
But with a little effort you can be pretty clean. Do your own laundry. Just bring a few sets of underwear and t-shirts and give them a clean with soap in the evening before bed. If you have the right stuff, and some high-tech fabrics work here, it'll generally be dry by morning. After washing, roll up in the travel towel and wring - gets most of the water out. Consider a string clothes line.
If you do it right, you can travel indefinitely in a wide range of places with only a large daypack. You never have to check luggage, and you don't have to find somewhere to dump your big pack every time you step off a plane/train/bus. You have the self-contained freedom that you set off for in the first place.
Big bag, with tent, sleeping bag, electronics: it's a slog and you'll only really feel free when you've checked it all into an expensive, safe, hotel.
I want to go! The wife and kids might not be happy though.
Oh, and bring a sewing kit.
I think there we have a complete disconnect which we can't move past in any meaningful way. I don't recognize any validity in "revelation", especially since so many people have conflicting "revelations", and just about every cult leader does, or claims to.
You're right that I'm taking pot-shots at theology as it's presented for and by the masses - deliberately.
Your view of the Bible ("the authors had a much less well-developed understanding of the universe", "allegorical in nature", etc.) seems to me to make it no more significant than, say, the works of Shakespeare. Sure, there's wisdom in the stories (sometimes), but other than that it's just a book written by unsophisticated men?
I'm no biblical scholar - as you point out. I'm pretty ignorant of it, almost as much as I am of astrology, the Norse gods, and so on. However, I could fire up quotes and examples of immorality, from the New or Old testament with a quick web search, e.g. where Jesus criticizes people for not killing their disobedient children as the Old Testament tells them to? Anyway, sorry, I don't have the time to do this subject more justice, and I'm sure you'll agree we're not going to get anywhere.What you were saying was eminently reasonable and uncontentious even if I disagree, my apologies since it was logical to assume I was ridiculing you. All I could take exception to is the implication that atheism is a phase and with maturity people grow out of it - and that would be a bit rich given my ridicule.
However, if I refocus the ridicule on most believers rather than you personally, I stand by it. Most, if not all, of the expressions of the foundation of people's belief I encounter in public or private are inane and delusional. It's very common to hear people say "there's a lot to life that science can't explain", as if it's evidence for their belief in, for instance, a bronze-age myth of an immoral, vain, vengeful sky god "of love" who will damn most of his creations to eternal torment if they don't flatter him enough. Most Christians are so staggeringly ignorant of what their "inerrant" Bible actually contains that ridicule seems the most appropriate response. Of those who aren't ignorant, I've never heard any reasoning for which bits of the Bible they choose to accept, and which to reject.
The logic of faith:
...Except where rationality does tell us something about B, contradicting A, in which case the logic of faith goes: fingers-in-ears "la-la-la-la-la", or else "well, we didn't literally mean A."
What sort of idiots mod this insightful? Have you only just realized that money spent by the government comes from taxes?
That's the key - perhaps you should read my post. You think it's really costing you $50? Good consumer! Good boy!
Ok, part of my viewpoint comes from the fact I'm a cheapskate, and won't pay hundreds of dollars a year for service*, don't care about cameras, internet access etc.. For cheapskates, the soap-bar is king.
Now that flip-phones like the RAZR are around, the size in the pocket is no longer a disadvantage, only leaving the high cost to get a small phone and the fragility of a hinge etc.. In contrast for instance the Nokia 6030 is even given away free for prepaid (T-mobile: $30 including $35 of airtime), the equivalent Samsung flip is a fat lump, and a RAZR costs $200. If you get them "free" with a contract, we all know they're not really free.
The mic on these soap bars is on the bottom of the unit, so won't touch your cheek. With my fairly large head, it's 2 inches from my mouth, and works just fine. No one ever has problems hearing me, and I have to keep telling my wife she can talk more quietly on hers.
I do concede that with the flips don't need to lock the keys, and if you're happy paying for a slim RAZR or whatever, then it's not really inferior. My initial comment was partly out of date, and certainly colored by my usage pattern.
* Prepaid: I use the phone on average of 10 minutes a week. With T-mobile prepaid I can buy 2 year's worth of minutes for $100, and then just have to buy a minimum of $10 after 12 months to keep that balance active for another 12. Total cost for first 2 years service with phone: $140, $50/year after that, assuming all things stay the same. Sure, I could pay $40 or more a month and get more minutes, but they'd be minutes I don't use. I use Skype or Gizmo when I want to have an actual chat, which is rarely when mobile.
If I take my phone and turn it upside-down in a natural position, the screen is fully visible. It would be a major improvement. I'd have to adopt an uncomfortable position to obscure the screen.
My phone is a very small Nokia soap-bar (6100 - I've never understood the infatuation with flip-phones... Star Trek?). Perhaps it's different with whatever you're using.
I saw that on a Slug Wiki somewhere, but tested my own, and it drew about 5W out of the wall with a USB laptop harddrive attached (measured with a Kill-a-Watt meter). Perhaps I should find and edit that Wiki.
Fair point with respect to what I actually said, though my intention wasn't to imply that nothing is done for the poor - simply that there's nothing stopping a project like this being adopted, so whining about it going to foreigners is baseless.
This reads like thinly veiled nationalism/racism.
It is "those like them in other countries" that these computers are going to be sent to. Didn't you just contradict your own point? Or are the kids in Brazil etc. somehow not like American kids? Who exactly are the inappropriate targets of this plan, and how are they inappropriate?
Nothing is stopping the government (or private ventures) in the wealthiest country in the world, backing OLPC to educate and supply its own poor (except greed, corruption, and an inane support for "Free Market" dogma). I'm sure if the US wanted to sign up to OLPC, the project would greet them with open arms.
Ok, apologies not wishing to flame, but:
When did the purpose of tv get defined? Would you say the same thing about books? Are dry textbooks a subversion of the true purpose of books: entertainment?
You want to be entertained at all times - some other people do want education to learn something for the sake of learning something, albeit ideally presented in an interesting form. Perhaps this "interesting form" is equal to the "entertainment" you're getting at, but to me, it seems that the idea that TV is only for entertainment was plucked out of the air.
Other people said this elsewhere, and the obvious response is that if you want to make money, this is exactly the wrong way to go about it, and a much easier way would be to seek funding from the oil companies to support their agenda.
If they're trying to get rich, they're making life very difficult for themselves. Your idea does not hold up to any intelligent assessment.
Don't forget the evolution and geology deniers too (The earth's only 6000 years old you know. Oh yes). They all love the "teach the controversy (which we created)" tactic.
They don't get this recognition from pushing an agenda, they get it for being persuasive in that agenda, hopefully by being right. This still doesn't explain what they gain if what they say about climate change is correct - it merely says what they gain by their argument being accepted.
It's a subtle but very important distinction. The oil companies have a vested interest in making climate change be disbelieved - in promoting a conclusion. If UCS aims to further its research and donation funds, its strongest vested interest is in being convincing. I'd say by far the simplest and easiest way for them to do this is to tell the truth.
What is their agenda? I'm not that familiar with it, so I'm interested to know where they deviate from widely accepted science?
Another poster mentioned their global warming FAQ, but I read it and thought that most of what I read was pretty uncontroversial among qualified climate scientists (apart from a few counter-views, which almost always seem to be oil-funded).
Given that you assert UCS is a special interest, how do they profit from acceptance of their assertions? It's obvious how oil companies profit directly from the rejection of a theory of human-generated climate change.
I assume you're talking about the UK, based on terminology and your URL.
A big difference between the UK and the USA is that in the latter, most people think it's the greatest place on earth (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't; in the UK most think it's a shithole (usually those who've never lived anywhere else), and it isn't. At a certain point your miserable attitude becomes self-fulfilling. You should actually try hopping to the other side of the world and see how much they enjoy the company of whinging poms.
Wow, not to pick on the parent, but the fact that this rates "Informative", and some of the responses to it stun me. Here we are, many years into strife we're supposed to believe is all due to Muslim fundamentalists, and this sort of knowledge is considered novel!
Surely the knowledge that JC is considered a Muslim prophet is part of every trivial 5-minute summary of Islam that just about every American should know.
Or perhaps, all we really need to know about them is they're The Evil Enemy.
We're doomed.
Agreed she has no business on the list, but in what possible way do any of these attributes disqualify her. As someone else pointed out Hedy Lamar was a bona-fide geek and actress. As for left-wing and activist, I can't even begin to think how that's relevant.
Absolutely, as we know, Free Markets produce the best possible results, so if imperfect results come from The Market, then The Market has by definition been distorted. The most frequent type of distortion of The Free Market is usually caused by something called "reality".
Agreed, plenty of noise at 1600, but my point is so does T-Max. I have scanned T-Max at lower res than my DSLR, and its "noise", or grain, is much stronger than the digital. The T-max noise is, however, more pleasing to look at.
We are talking SLRs now aren't we - digital compacts are useless at high ISO (their sensors are a tiny fraction of the size of a DSLR), but a digital SLR at ISO 1600 is less noisy than T-Max. Generally, the noise may be ugly in color, but to compare apples with apples, if you desaturate your digital shot to B&W it'll be cleaner and more detailed than T-Max.
Who modded this insightful?
I'm sorry, you can get a DSLR for the same price as a "prosumer" non SLR - In the region of $600 and don't forget your film costs, and it will be superior in every respect except pocketability. They'll take many hundreds of shots between charges (you really would have to go crazy to not get a day's worth of shots from one charge). As for the last point, well you can make an attempt at the grain etc., in Photoshop et al, but sure, you won't get the exact characteristics - however, of the options, looks and effects open to you with digital, very few are available with film.
Yeah, if you're a stubborn Luddite and you work hard at it, you can find some areas where film cameras still excel, but they're few and far between.
I'm sure it's quite possible; check out silentpcreview.com. However, you should note that it's much easier and cheaper to make an inaudible system with fans, if you select the components carefully.
Fanless is the holy grail of silence obsessives, but often it's a pointless quest. Also, be aware that no hard disk is quieter than a quiet fan.
I can only imagine you have fine facial hair and not a lot of it. If I try to shave without cream, the razor clogs on the first half the first stroke and is useless after that until manually cleaned. While cream has the benefits of keeping the beard moist and soft, its main purpose for me is that it keeps the stubble in a foamy suspension so it can flow through and clear of the blades. When traveling I use a brush and soap, and it's hard to get as good a lather as with an aerosol, in which case I have to make short strokes and rinse well in between. Shaving without soap or cream is nearly impossible (and very unpleasant) for me.