Way Back When, before Netflix, Blockbuster, and DVDs, I worked in a video rental shop near where Gallagher had his silly hippy ranch. One day, Gallagher came in and rented two of his own concert videos. When he came up to the counter to check out, my coworker picked up the tapes, looked at the titles and grimaced, saying "Wow, nobody rents these" (which was true). Gallagher said nothing, but only signed the receipt and stormed angrily out the door.
Which shows Gallagher is a human being and your co-worker is thoughtless and rude.
The OP didn't say that the coworker recognized Gallagher. If he did, it was rather rude; if he didn't, it's just a funny coincidence.
That reminds me of the old (apocryphal?) story about Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners. Ms. Martin went into a department store looking for a coffee spoon (or something like that) in a particular pattern, to replace one she had lost. The clerk couldn't find coffee spoons in that pattern, but offered a teaspoon as a replacement. Clerk: "Surely, it doesn't matter." Martin: "It matters to me." Clerk: "What, are you Miss Manners or something?" Martin: [lifts eyebrow] Clerk: [realizing] "Oh my God!"
(Granted, Gallagher is probably more recognizable than Miss Manners.:)
It's logically consistent to snort with contempt at 8 [This is proof that our economic system is evil]...while accepting 1-4 pending further data.
and the connections are being made on both sides of the fight, I think: some anti-capitalists want to use global warming as proof that capitalism is evil, while some capitalists take announcements of global warming as a personal insult. If global warming is man-made (as I think it is), it isn't necessary that people be made to feel guilty about it; it's just important to slow it down (which is true even if we are seeing a natural, long-term warming trend--it'll be small comfort to us, with New York City or [insert other favorite low-lying area here] underwater, that we didn't cause it to happen).
That's the problem with a lot of these one-hit-wonders that clamber onto the public stage via some specific talent and then feel qualified to have a publicly worthwhile opinion on everything else.
Everyone's allowed to have a public opinion about anything (cf Slashdot). Point your finger instead at the people who give Metcalfe a platform to express said political opinions, based solely on his technological background.
Well heck, maybe your local bankrupt town should start selling crack and time with prostitutes; then they could pump out tons of free stuff to their citizens too!
Advertising isn't quite at the same level, mind you.
She was trying to publicly shame him for his rudeness, an age-old technique. People are often ruder when they think they are anonymous, or think that no one will call them on it.
She probably did not expect complete strangers to send the guy death threats. Or to visit his building looking for him, which (according to Lycos) 6 people did today (though I have my suspicions about this claim). She should not be held responsible for either of those, if she did not instigate them herself (which she might have done, of course).
My first thought was "Oh no, how would I demonstrate a blackbody spectrum without incandescent light bulbs!"
Yup, I'm a physics teacher. (And now someone is going to suggest a simple alternative and tell me what a terrible physicist I am. And I acknowledge that, in a cheap spectrometer, the solar spectrum appears continuous.)
How would the "certain circumstances" bit work? Would you need a license to buy incandescents? How about people who buy bulbs from the Internet: do we need to have regular home inspections? This law would either be ridiculously intrusive or a meaningless pain-in-the-ass. Since this is true, it's probably more of a gesture to get people talking about it, rather than a serious proposal.
A better way would be to tax incandescents. Maybe this law was introduced to make the tax idea look that much better.:)
If research skills is a learning objective for a course, I think teaching students about Wikipedia is a pretty good idea, because even if they don't use it in your class, they may end up using it (or something similar) in the rest of their lives.
Perhaps a good assignment would be to have students choose a Wikipedia article (better make it one particular snapshot of the page) and write a paper evaluating the article's accuracy by using other, better sources. The class would then have some data to suggest whether Wikipedia is accurate or not, and they could make up their own minds. Having a bunch of aging pre-Internet professors simply tell them that Wikipedia is bad is not going to be as convincing, because it sounds reactionary.
Why should I trust my own parenting? I don't have children yet, but when I do, I'm certainly going to mess something up. Teenagers are still in beta: they are released into the public, but you're still checking for bugs (especially because you don't get to do a second version).
The irony is not lost; it is being sweetly savored. It may not work, and it's definitely fighting dirty, there is a certain poetic justice in using one despicable practice (bad patents) against another (DRM). It is, of course, also frequently argued that only when the patent system screws over the megacorps will the patent system be changed. Getting the MAFIAA and Microsoft on the side of patent reform wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
I'm American and I like the Imperial system (though not for science), so we have dueling anecdotes. My perception (which may be completely wrong) is that the metric system hasn't gained ground in America because most Americans oppose it; if that's not the case, then I'm not sure what's going on. I'd be happy to see a libertarian solution where, as much as possible, people can use whichever unit they like.
In the meantime, you should buy European cookbooks.:) Or, since the difficulty is going back and forth between tsp and Tbsp and cups, mark your measuring cups with their equivalent number of teaspoons (1 cup = 48 teaspoons = 16 tablespoons ==look, binary!)
How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?"
No, it's not. It's not as if the current measurement system we're using somehow belongs to us; we inherited most of it from the Mother Country. For that matter, other children of the Mother Country have managed to convert; heck, our neighbor to the north did, and they never had that little "revolution" thing that we did, so they arguably had stronger ties to Britain.
I did not mean that it would be impossible to convert the U.S. to metric. Instead, I am not convinced that such a transition would be desirable: the metric system is not so superior that its introduction would improve or transform American life, and the implication that Americans are silly to not go along with the majority sounds as arrogant as the stereotypical American tourist complaining about people not speaking English in other countries.
(And if you prefer, replace "France" with "Quebecois" above. The Quebecois did not invent French but they certainly do own it, though not exclusively.)
Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales.
In some people's eyes, perhaps, but not in others.
Please insert "in my opinion" above.
(Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)
I'd consider the death of Welsh sad. I wouldn't give a rat's ass about the death of the imperial system. As far as I'm concerned, it's ridiculous to insinuate that there's something wrong with the "sorts of people" who would agree with me on both.
I wasn't talking about you then. I was thinking about people who are so practical that they see no value in maintaining Welsh, or anything that they deem inefficient. I don't know if there's anything wrong with said people, but I certainly don't agree with them.
How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?" It would sure be convenient if everyone grew up speaking only English, but that's hardly going to convince the French or the Germans or the Chinese or.... "But people often have to learn English to participate in international life!" True...and lots of Americans learn the metric system for the same reason. Americans are actually rather "bilingual" with their units: we have gallons of milk and liters of soda, ounces of meat and milligrams of vitamins, 100-yard football fields and 100-m dashes.
Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales. (Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)
they are asking parents to supervise their own fucking children.
Then you support a major increase in the minimum wage? Most people are too busy working to supervise their children, and don't have the money to hire someone to do it.
I hate the fact that I can never find *anything* I'm looking for.
I'm a Mac/UNIX person, and when I have to use a Windows machine I have the same problem: no idea where things are. I make sure to save files to the Desktop because otherwise I won't be able to find them. Maybe I haven't tried to learn Windows as hard as you've tried to learn OSX, but familiarity is certainly a factor.
In this and many other situations, there is one big question: does a little pornography/violence/etc satisfy the appetite for it, or whet the appetite for it? Do violent video games make people more violent, or do they serve as a useful channel for violent impulses? Does child pornography (real or fake) satisfy the pedophile, or does it make him/her more likely to abuse real children? Everyone seems to have their opinion, but I'd like to see some scientific evidence to back those opinions up. I guess the answer is that it depends on the person: some people are easily satisfied, while some are never satisfied---but maybe people in the latter group would be driven to extremes eventually no matter what their stimulation.
What makes sense to me is that pedophilia is a sexual fetish, a lot like other fetishes except that it can't be indulged in. Pedophiles aren't necessarily evil people, though they may do evil things. They don't choose to be pedophiles. If simulated child pornography gives them some release and helps them control (or eliminate) their urges, then by damn let's give it to them. Just don't make me watch it too.
I don't think the occasional sight of naked people is damaging to children; however, I do think continued exposure to pornography could be: it can develop into an addiction, and it can give teenagers unrealistic ideas about sex (though TV and movies do that already).
In the home, the high false-positive rates with filters could be tempered one of two ways, I think: a) whenever a site is blocked, pop up a dialogue box allowing a parent to permit the use of that site (temporarily or permanently, the page or the whole site) by entering a password. b) Allow the child to go anywhere, but LOG all the sites which would normally be filtered. A child is less likely to actively seek out porn if they know their mother knows what sites they visit.
These options would work for children in the library too, but not for adults because of privacy concerns. ("Did you hear that Ethel was looking up breast cancer the other day?") Libraries should have some computers reserved for "adults only" with no filtering at all.
You have never been able to freely leave the U.S. under any circumstances.
Ignoring the fact that "never" includes vast periods of history where the U.S. had no way of preventing anyone from slipping across the border in either direction, this isn't even true now. To drive from the U.S. to Canada, I have to submit myself to Canadian customs, not U.S. customs. Canada might not allow me to enter, but the U.S. has no direct say in whether I get to leave.
If this were a fascist dictatorship, why would they allow so much criticism? Maybe because it's not yet a fascist dictatorship? These things don't develop overnight. (It's a worst case scenario, but it's worth considering as a possibility.)
[Bush] won another election. BIG DEAL. He'll be gone in 2 years. He can do a lot of damage in two more years, but anyway he's not the problem. The problem is the people he represents. They won't be gone in two years, unless they are brought down.
This country cannot function as a one party state despite what both sides think. Agreed.
Unfortunately, the out of power side in the past 20 years has acted increasingly insane. So I suppose you think the right-wing is sane these days? Ann Coulter as a pillar of stability? Those who believe there is a war on Christmas? Sorry, there are nuts on all sides. The problem is, the nuts on the right get prime-time television spots, access to the President, and influence over legislation. The nuts on the left are mostly invisible, while that wild-eyed John Kerry is called a "leftist". This country needs to be governed from the middle, it's true, but there are two ways to get there: either we get the nuts out of power, or we balance out the right-wing nuts with some left-wing nuts. I'd love to see the first, but fear only the second will work.
The license requirement might also force people to update to newer versions of Windows. People here are talking about staying with XP, right? Well, if Microsoft could prevent people from installing XP on more than two computers ever, then people would have to switch to Vista once their second computer dies or becomes obsolete. (This isn't true for XP I guess, but if you think Vista is bad, who knows what they have coming down the pike?:)
"Standards" aren't the same as "standard behavior": standards are about predictable, documented, logical behavior. Even in "real life", when we talk about someone's "standards", we are typically talking about their moral values, and it is hardly standard for people to live up to their standards all the time.
The "miserable failure" thing seems more like a (politically motivated) joke than a political strategy; it's amusing to people who think that Bush is a m.f. (double entendre intended), but it's not going to change anyone's mind.
The new technique, having a candidate's name bring up a damning article on them, is more potent. Around election time, people WILL start googling candidate's names to learn more about them, and they WILL stumble upon these articles, which probably make accusations that the reader might not have heard before.
In short, Googlebombing, which started off as a toy and a mean-spirited way to get back at people, is now becoming an actual tool which could have actual effects on elections.
Slashdot Mirror
The OP didn't say that the coworker recognized Gallagher. If he did, it was rather rude; if he didn't, it's just a funny coincidence.
That reminds me of the old (apocryphal?) story about Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners. Ms. Martin went into a department store looking for a coffee spoon (or something like that) in a particular pattern, to replace one she had lost. The clerk couldn't find coffee spoons in that pattern, but offered a teaspoon as a replacement.
Clerk: "Surely, it doesn't matter."
Martin: "It matters to me."
Clerk: "What, are you Miss Manners or something?"
Martin: [lifts eyebrow]
Clerk: [realizing] "Oh my God!"
(Granted, Gallagher is probably more recognizable than Miss Manners.
"Qubit" is pronounced "Q-bit", not "kwuh-bit" or the like; it seems unlikely that "Q-bit" would become "quit" or "qit" in spoken English.
Seriously though, what exactly is the point? It's not as if getting the microphone 1 centimeter closer to your face will make much of a difference
Psychologically speaking, putting the microphone closer to the mouth might convince some people that they don't have to shout into the phone.
It's logically consistent to snort with contempt at 8 [This is proof that our economic system is evil]...while accepting 1-4 pending further data.
and the connections are being made on both sides of the fight, I think: some anti-capitalists want to use global warming as proof that capitalism is evil, while some capitalists take announcements of global warming as a personal insult. If global warming is man-made (as I think it is), it isn't necessary that people be made to feel guilty about it; it's just important to slow it down (which is true even if we are seeing a natural, long-term warming trend--it'll be small comfort to us, with New York City or [insert other favorite low-lying area here] underwater, that we didn't cause it to happen).
That's the problem with a lot of these one-hit-wonders that clamber onto the public stage via some specific talent and then feel qualified to have a publicly worthwhile opinion on everything else.
Everyone's allowed to have a public opinion about anything (cf Slashdot). Point your finger instead at the people who give Metcalfe a platform to express said political opinions, based solely on his technological background.
Well heck, maybe your local bankrupt town should start selling crack and time with prostitutes; then they could pump out tons of free stuff to their citizens too!
Advertising isn't quite at the same level, mind you.
Like I said, what did she expect?
She was trying to publicly shame him for his rudeness, an age-old technique. People are often ruder when they think they are anonymous, or think that no one will call them on it.
She probably did not expect complete strangers to send the guy death threats. Or to visit his building looking for him, which (according to Lycos) 6 people did today (though I have my suspicions about this claim). She should not be held responsible for either of those, if she did not instigate them herself (which she might have done, of course).
My first thought was "Oh no, how would I demonstrate a blackbody spectrum without incandescent light bulbs!"
Yup, I'm a physics teacher. (And now someone is going to suggest a simple alternative and tell me what a terrible physicist I am. And I acknowledge that, in a cheap spectrometer, the solar spectrum appears continuous.)
How would the "certain circumstances" bit work? Would you need a license to buy incandescents? How about people who buy bulbs from the Internet: do we need to have regular home inspections? This law would either be ridiculously intrusive or a meaningless pain-in-the-ass. Since this is true, it's probably more of a gesture to get people talking about it, rather than a serious proposal.
:)
A better way would be to tax incandescents. Maybe this law was introduced to make the tax idea look that much better.
If research skills is a learning objective for a course, I think teaching students about Wikipedia is a pretty good idea, because even if they don't use it in your class, they may end up using it (or something similar) in the rest of their lives.
Perhaps a good assignment would be to have students choose a Wikipedia article (better make it one particular snapshot of the page) and write a paper evaluating the article's accuracy by using other, better sources. The class would then have some data to suggest whether Wikipedia is accurate or not, and they could make up their own minds. Having a bunch of aging pre-Internet professors simply tell them that Wikipedia is bad is not going to be as convincing, because it sounds reactionary.
Why should I trust my own parenting? I don't have children yet, but when I do, I'm certainly going to mess something up. Teenagers are still in beta: they are released into the public, but you're still checking for bugs (especially because you don't get to do a second version).
The irony is not lost; it is being sweetly savored. It may not work, and it's definitely fighting dirty, there is a certain poetic justice in using one despicable practice (bad patents) against another (DRM). It is, of course, also frequently argued that only when the patent system screws over the megacorps will the patent system be changed. Getting the MAFIAA and Microsoft on the side of patent reform wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
I'm American and I like the Imperial system (though not for science), so we have dueling anecdotes. My perception (which may be completely wrong) is that the metric system hasn't gained ground in America because most Americans oppose it; if that's not the case, then I'm not sure what's going on. I'd be happy to see a libertarian solution where, as much as possible, people can use whichever unit they like.
:) Or, since the difficulty is going back and forth between tsp and Tbsp and cups, mark your measuring cups with their equivalent number of teaspoons (1 cup = 48 teaspoons = 16 tablespoons ==look, binary!)
In the meantime, you should buy European cookbooks.
I did not mean that it would be impossible to convert the U.S. to metric. Instead, I am not convinced that such a transition would be desirable: the metric system is not so superior that its introduction would improve or transform American life, and the implication that Americans are silly to not go along with the majority sounds as arrogant as the stereotypical American tourist complaining about people not speaking English in other countries.
(And if you prefer, replace "France" with "Quebecois" above. The Quebecois did not invent French but they certainly do own it, though not exclusively.)
Please insert "in my opinion" above.
I wasn't talking about you then. I was thinking about people who are so practical that they see no value in maintaining Welsh, or anything that they deem inefficient. I don't know if there's anything wrong with said people, but I certainly don't agree with them.
How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?" It would sure be convenient if everyone grew up speaking only English, but that's hardly going to convince the French or the Germans or the Chinese or.... "But people often have to learn English to participate in international life!" True...and lots of Americans learn the metric system for the same reason. Americans are actually rather "bilingual" with their units: we have gallons of milk and liters of soda, ounces of meat and milligrams of vitamins, 100-yard football fields and 100-m dashes.
Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales. (Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)
they are asking parents to supervise their own fucking children.
Then you support a major increase in the minimum wage? Most people are too busy working to supervise their children, and don't have the money to hire someone to do it.
I hate the fact that I can never find *anything* I'm looking for.
I'm a Mac/UNIX person, and when I have to use a Windows machine I have the same problem: no idea where things are. I make sure to save files to the Desktop because otherwise I won't be able to find them. Maybe I haven't tried to learn Windows as hard as you've tried to learn OSX, but familiarity is certainly a factor.
In this and many other situations, there is one big question: does a little pornography/violence/etc satisfy the appetite for it, or whet the appetite for it? Do violent video games make people more violent, or do they serve as a useful channel for violent impulses? Does child pornography (real or fake) satisfy the pedophile, or does it make him/her more likely to abuse real children? Everyone seems to have their opinion, but I'd like to see some scientific evidence to back those opinions up. I guess the answer is that it depends on the person: some people are easily satisfied, while some are never satisfied---but maybe people in the latter group would be driven to extremes eventually no matter what their stimulation.
What makes sense to me is that pedophilia is a sexual fetish, a lot like other fetishes except that it can't be indulged in. Pedophiles aren't necessarily evil people, though they may do evil things. They don't choose to be pedophiles. If simulated child pornography gives them some release and helps them control (or eliminate) their urges, then by damn let's give it to them. Just don't make me watch it too.
All cell phones in the US, regardless of provider, are set up to rape the consumer.
That's what it seems like to me, which is why I've avoided getting a mobile. Just can't bring myself to give money to any of those people.
I don't think the occasional sight of naked people is damaging to children; however, I do think continued exposure to pornography could be: it can develop into an addiction, and it can give teenagers unrealistic ideas about sex (though TV and movies do that already).
In the home, the high false-positive rates with filters could be tempered one of two ways, I think:
a) whenever a site is blocked, pop up a dialogue box allowing a parent to permit the use of that site (temporarily or permanently, the page or the whole site) by entering a password.
b) Allow the child to go anywhere, but LOG all the sites which would normally be filtered. A child is less likely to actively seek out porn if they know their mother knows what sites they visit.
These options would work for children in the library too, but not for adults because of privacy concerns. ("Did you hear that Ethel was looking up breast cancer the other day?") Libraries should have some computers reserved for "adults only" with no filtering at all.
You have never been able to freely leave the U.S. under any circumstances.
Ignoring the fact that "never" includes vast periods of history where the U.S. had no way of preventing anyone from slipping across the border in either direction, this isn't even true now. To drive from the U.S. to Canada, I have to submit myself to Canadian customs, not U.S. customs. Canada might not allow me to enter, but the U.S. has no direct say in whether I get to leave.
If this were a fascist dictatorship, why would they allow so much criticism?
Maybe because it's not yet a fascist dictatorship? These things don't develop overnight. (It's a worst case scenario, but it's worth considering as a possibility.)
[Bush] won another election. BIG DEAL. He'll be gone in 2 years.
He can do a lot of damage in two more years, but anyway he's not the problem. The problem is the people he represents. They won't be gone in two years, unless they are brought down.
This country cannot function as a one party state despite what both sides think.
Agreed.
Unfortunately, the out of power side in the past 20 years has acted increasingly insane.
So I suppose you think the right-wing is sane these days? Ann Coulter as a pillar of stability? Those who believe there is a war on Christmas? Sorry, there are nuts on all sides. The problem is, the nuts on the right get prime-time television spots, access to the President, and influence over legislation. The nuts on the left are mostly invisible, while that wild-eyed John Kerry is called a "leftist". This country needs to be governed from the middle, it's true, but there are two ways to get there: either we get the nuts out of power, or we balance out the right-wing nuts with some left-wing nuts. I'd love to see the first, but fear only the second will work.
The license requirement might also force people to update to newer versions of Windows. People here are talking about staying with XP, right? Well, if Microsoft could prevent people from installing XP on more than two computers ever, then people would have to switch to Vista once their second computer dies or becomes obsolete. (This isn't true for XP I guess, but if you think Vista is bad, who knows what they have coming down the pike? :)
Or to take the logic in the opposite direction: if the US were attacked tomorrow, would that prove that the Patriot Act was a bad idea?
"Standards" aren't the same as "standard behavior": standards are about predictable, documented, logical behavior. Even in "real life", when we talk about someone's "standards", we are typically talking about their moral values, and it is hardly standard for people to live up to their standards all the time.
The "miserable failure" thing seems more like a (politically motivated) joke than a political strategy; it's amusing to people who think that Bush is a m.f. (double entendre intended), but it's not going to change anyone's mind.
The new technique, having a candidate's name bring up a damning article on them, is more potent. Around election time, people WILL start googling candidate's names to learn more about them, and they WILL stumble upon these articles, which probably make accusations that the reader might not have heard before.
In short, Googlebombing, which started off as a toy and a mean-spirited way to get back at people, is now becoming an actual tool which could have actual effects on elections.