Technology is a tool. The hands that use that technology are what are significant. The same theoretical base is used to create weapons that can destroy cities or power them. DNA can now be revised to rescue children from debilitating conditions... or create viruses that could kill everyone (or RNA, but anyway). The environment can be molded to our liking either in a building through climate control or outdoors through selective planting / irrigation / pollution management. Nerves can be transplanted now (I don't have any medical journals to point you too since this was something considered impossible when I was little, but my neighbor had this done after a rather bad motorcycle accident) but at the same time, people can use the same technology to harvest organs. Technology is neither savior nor demon -- it simply is. If it simply is there to be used, then how the individual acts is important--modeling himself after a messiah or a devil.
I haven't had any hissing... with this said, I have trouble with certain songs (I have to go into iTunes and lower volume specs for the MP3 and then re-sync the phone) being too loud even on the lowest volume setting (similar, perhaps to your using the minimum volume setting).
Does the noise continue if you pull the jack out a bit or jig it to one side and hold it there?
Wikipedia has a great discussion on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black). In my own mind, I've always thought of a black cast iron pot (for steaming / boiling crabs, making chili, etc.) and a tea kettle also made of cast iron (they have them, usually smaller than the cheap ten dollars stainless ones that you can get at Walmart). Both are equally black.
As I originally noted, fire hazards due to cable placement / organization are low if properly used BUT apparently one of the leading causes of home fires is due to cables (I assume power cords are part of the mix) shoved behind desks and forgotten. Over time, desks and other furniture are bumped (by vacuum, etc.) and the insulation of the assorted wiring is worn through. After a few years of this, the wiring shorts, causes a fire and everybody dies (or doesn't if they have the latest, greatest whatever smoke detectors from company X).
The emphasis in the various sales materials I've seen seems to be over-hyped, as I've tried to note above a bit (I'm looking at you, MasterGuard - overplaying the value of photoelectric and suggesting that ionization types are worthless), but contains a nugget of truth.
If you live in an area with MasterGuard sales reps, you should be able to get a good steak dinner out of them at least once followed by a trip to your local Home Depot / Lowes (MasterGuard tells people they are the only show in town at $300 / unit while Lowes sells a similar product for $12, $18, or ~$30 - the difference, you can wash MasterGuard units) if you don't already have photoelectric smoke detectors to catch wiring-type fires (slow smolder is common at the beginning) in addition to ionization types (which catch the faster burning types better than the photoelectric... the typical kitchen fire or:) asteroid strike as examples here).
Just to be clear, I have not attempted this and any results you might have with larger peas from fresh (as opposed to frozen) produce sections should not be related to my above post.
Noise would be the least of my reasons to do this... If induction powered monitors would work with this without the RF interference issue being a problem, a monitor (or TV or whatever) could sit by itself without cables causing fire hazards (not too likely if properly used) or looking unsightly. I wish there were one cable to rule them all... If I could plug one cable into the back of my TV and then have it connect through the surge protector to all the other devices (dvd, etc.), I would like it. Instead I have a mass of cables that is almost three inches thick.
Big Pharma probably is poisoning us on some level already (at least indirectly through the various drugs that pass through current water treatment tech). Thankfully, it is better to have the "cure" than to attempt without it (or at least, so it would appear given that the life expectancy in Western countries (even in the low life expectancy ones like the US) is more than double what it is in places like Nepal and South Africa (or it was last I checked).
And of course, none of those kids will be allowed to go to school (at least in my state, no one is allowed in without a certain set of vaccines... I guess homeschooling is an option, but the home school crowd usually does so because they want a better education than is being provided by the state / private schools and would likely be aware of the scam issues) and thus, won't impact the majority of people when they get sick... this is a tragedy because they will have less apparent value to society already (I am not saying they actually have less value but that society tends not to appreciate the value of the uneducated today).
His child is an "it" now? More importantly, it isn't carrots, it's garnets... pesky gems available widely in January. I highly recommend anyone who has to live through a January avoid people born in that month. Garnets are dangerous -- bad combination of minerals and color. Speaking of dangers, we should also note that peas are dangerous too... especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
The information on the hack indicates that it would require a hardware mod to stop it--since no one I know is going to shell out more money to make their console less usable, a rootkit would not be sufficient to stop it.
There has to be a balance - compare the labor situation in the last hundred years across multiple countries. Take France or Italy as an example of extremely powerful labor. The US could be on the mid to low end range with your cited example of Germany as a mid range labor situation. Have you been to Europe lately? There is a lot of anger in the EU now (at least in the north) over the high levels of labor / dole politicking sapping money from the "industrious north" to the labor oriented south (this is a partial fiction put out by the media, but there is a grain of truth in it).
The US still has the more powerful economy if we compare the EU to it (or even if we just look at France and scale up). We could suggest a problem with labor in the US as part of the issue--isn't it just a little disturbing to anyone else that a large arm of the UAW owns the company that its members work at?
I think we might be comparing apples and oranges. I am all for taking appropriate responsibility for one's employees as well as for one's taxes. My concern is that a business, seeking to be more efficient in it's usage of energy, time, materials, AND human resources should be penalized.
This isn't just an issue of the evil big company trying to stick it to the little guy (though this may well be lart of it, I don't know). A significant part of the issue is found in the desire to avoid unnecessary wastage (which strikes me as a great thing for an energy company to have as a goal). If by having see electric meters the energy company can cut fifty jobs across its sphere of influence, this will indeed have a broad negative impact on those it affects, and I think that it should seek to retrain these individuals for other jobs in house. On the other hand, by getting rid of those fifty (and it may be more or less than this, I am simply offering one example number), it can take fifty cars off the road for eight hours a day, this is a significant carbon savings. Add in the ability to more efficiently re route power to areas affected by a blown transformer and we have energy savings there. If someone decides to pull a Chevy Chase Christmas on the block, smart metered can allow the grid control to more quickly resolve the problem (maybe he only loses power for thirty seconds instead of the whole neighborhood for an hour).
When there is technology to eliminate wasteful use of human and other resources, I have a huge problem with that. Does it mean that those who have been doing meter-reading will have to find other lines of work? Yes. There are tons of other low-training labor opportunities--it doesn't require much training to be able to drive a car and write down a number for each house you drive by. A company should not be forced to support hundreds of workers it doesn't need just because the government wants to protect jobs (thereby diminishing, at least on one level, the dole). Allowing a company to increase efficiency allows it to provide a better service to the people at a lower cost.
With all this said, there are a number of other issues with the electronic metering systems that are being installed (they tend to be more accurate in favor of the company for one, but again--they really ought to have the option of providing for their stockholders in an appropriate efficient manner)...
Google voice? (they warn that abuse will get sms privileges taken down) but after that happens, there's always AT&T... maybe start with them... their webpage allows sending of sms for free.
Bickering is easy on the internet and continued communication does allow for resolutions - your comment makes me remember (and I say this simply to add to the conversation not add an emotional layer to it) the '06 survey on tone reception in written communication -- http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179
I have yet to buy any... the local library had DVD copies last time I wanted to watch it and that took care of the issue. I don't know if I'll ever buy another copy... my current TV is right on the edge (42 in.) of blu-ray offering a difference and since there's always "another edition" coming out, he's actually losing money on me since I have it in my head that "maybe I'll get the next one."
This was precisely my point in noting that the Bible was a bad example to use when stating that history was once again being written to highlight just the "good" parts from the perspective of one individual (note the parent post to my original comment). It shows both bad and good, even when the "bad" hurts its position in the eyes of some readers.
You bring up some good points for historical variants to mainstream Christianity--early Christianity, particularly pre-2nd century seems to be fairly uniform (there are theories otherwise, but looking into the sources reveals little support).
While the first article you note suggests Gnostic roots for some of the Gospels as well as in the writings of Paul, these don't fit the historical pattern--the article on Gnosticism more generally at Wikipedia is better sourced and does not have as many flags from editors as to problematic issues with the entry. There is easily a reason that no branch of Christianity, as you note in your final link, supports a different NT canon than the others. There are a variety of reasons why this is possible. It could be that the various branches of Christianity actively tried to suppress variant views of Christ that would diminish their power / impact. This fits various patterns that we see in history. Given, however, the wide variance in acceptance of the OT canon between Jews, Orthodox, Ethiopian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches over the OT, it strikes me as odd that we should see no variation in the NT canon between established churches. Consider that even though the Coptic church has a different view of Christ's human-divine nature than do the western churches, they still hold to the same NT canon as the rest. This is significant.
Consider also that in times of persecution, which was significant at various times in the Roman Empire's history, only what was considered absolutely vital would be kept. If the Bible as it is now upheld were not the only reliable document for that time period, why were some texts saved universally while others were universally left behind? Put another way, if the text of the Gospel According to the Hebrews were seen as fan fiction (using modern parlance) rather than accepted canon, it would be easy to hand this over to the Roman official demanding texts to burn. If, however, it were seen as words coming from God's mouth through man's writing, everything possible would have been done to hide it. This is, in fact, the testimony we see in early Christian writings.
Further, the Gospel According to the Hebrews was written during the more accepted general period of Gnostic interaction with Christianity (acknowledging potential roots in other areas) - mid to late 2nd century rather than in the late first century for the books seen as part of the New Testament canon (even in those circles where the New Testament is thought to have been written beyond the first century, those books that established Christianity are seen to have been written in the first century itself).
This is a fairly long reply (I apologize) but there is an even more thorough (and probably better thought out) evaluation of Old Testament and New Testament canons at http://bible.org/seriespage/bible-holy-canon-scripture.
Isolated control groups? Could we go looking for a group of people that have never been exposed to the outside world and see if they have a religion of some kind? Would the various people groups from the Amazon rainforest at the beginning of the 20th century serve?...or interior Africa at the beginning of the 19th? Each of these areas was home to various tribes that had one type of religion or another. Though I disagree with his general conclusions about religion, I think that Dawkins might be right in noting that there is a genetic component to religous views. Dawkins sees humanity as past this and in need of getting rid of it (I would disagree).
I recognize from your post that you are trying to avoid religious extremism. Using the Bible as your example may not be in your best interest here (other religious texts might make use of the history-excise bit a bit more while others are similar to the Bible in terms of historical openness). Far from excising those parts of itself that might make it look bad, it includes them (much of the book of Luke, for example, makes use of the testimony of women--not something that had legal standing in the ancient world. As another example, the celebrated King David is noted for being a ruthless bloodthirsty guy who had an affair and tried to cover it up by murdering the woman involved's husband). If I were trying to promote my book as the end all be all solution to living, I might have done things differently, but this, for me at least, is part of what makes the Bible's story compelling--it owns up to the mistakes of those in its pages, including fairly awful things.
And there are numerous other projects similar to this requiring a human brain rather than distributed computing - or at least where a human brain is still effectively helpful. Galaxy zoo is the past time of thousands and they recently branched out into digitizing old British navy war records for the purpose of long term climate research.
Maybe the animals as you say are happy to make the trade-off but until we're sure and give each one the choice we shouldn't assume
I am reminded of the cow in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I was thinking about this recently and it occurred to me that at least animals can offer some resistance (it might be futile but they could resist). All those poor carrots though... and lettuce. Will no one think of the lettuce? It can't even try to run away. All of you awful vegans destroying millions of poor beans and rice plants just because you can't handle meat./end humor
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Technology is a tool. The hands that use that technology are what are significant. The same theoretical base is used to create weapons that can destroy cities or power them. DNA can now be revised to rescue children from debilitating conditions... or create viruses that could kill everyone (or RNA, but anyway). The environment can be molded to our liking either in a building through climate control or outdoors through selective planting / irrigation / pollution management. Nerves can be transplanted now (I don't have any medical journals to point you too since this was something considered impossible when I was little, but my neighbor had this done after a rather bad motorcycle accident) but at the same time, people can use the same technology to harvest organs. Technology is neither savior nor demon -- it simply is. If it simply is there to be used, then how the individual acts is important--modeling himself after a messiah or a devil.
I haven't had any hissing ... with this said, I have trouble with certain songs (I have to go into iTunes and lower volume specs for the MP3 and then re-sync the phone) being too loud even on the lowest volume setting (similar, perhaps to your using the minimum volume setting).
Does the noise continue if you pull the jack out a bit or jig it to one side and hold it there?
Wikipedia has a great discussion on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black). In my own mind, I've always thought of a black cast iron pot (for steaming / boiling crabs, making chili, etc.) and a tea kettle also made of cast iron (they have them, usually smaller than the cheap ten dollars stainless ones that you can get at Walmart). Both are equally black.
As I originally noted, fire hazards due to cable placement / organization are low if properly used BUT apparently one of the leading causes of home fires is due to cables (I assume power cords are part of the mix) shoved behind desks and forgotten. Over time, desks and other furniture are bumped (by vacuum, etc.) and the insulation of the assorted wiring is worn through. After a few years of this, the wiring shorts, causes a fire and everybody dies (or doesn't if they have the latest, greatest whatever smoke detectors from company X).
:) asteroid strike as examples here).
The emphasis in the various sales materials I've seen seems to be over-hyped, as I've tried to note above a bit (I'm looking at you, MasterGuard - overplaying the value of photoelectric and suggesting that ionization types are worthless), but contains a nugget of truth.
If you live in an area with MasterGuard sales reps, you should be able to get a good steak dinner out of them at least once followed by a trip to your local Home Depot / Lowes (MasterGuard tells people they are the only show in town at $300 / unit while Lowes sells a similar product for $12, $18, or ~$30 - the difference, you can wash MasterGuard units) if you don't already have photoelectric smoke detectors to catch wiring-type fires (slow smolder is common at the beginning) in addition to ionization types (which catch the faster burning types better than the photoelectric... the typical kitchen fire or
Just to be clear, I have not attempted this and any results you might have with larger peas from fresh (as opposed to frozen) produce sections should not be related to my above post.
Noise would be the least of my reasons to do this... If induction powered monitors would work with this without the RF interference issue being a problem, a monitor (or TV or whatever) could sit by itself without cables causing fire hazards (not too likely if properly used) or looking unsightly. I wish there were one cable to rule them all... If I could plug one cable into the back of my TV and then have it connect through the surge protector to all the other devices (dvd, etc.), I would like it. Instead I have a mass of cables that is almost three inches thick.
Big Pharma probably is poisoning us on some level already (at least indirectly through the various drugs that pass through current water treatment tech). Thankfully, it is better to have the "cure" than to attempt without it (or at least, so it would appear given that the life expectancy in Western countries (even in the low life expectancy ones like the US) is more than double what it is in places like Nepal and South Africa (or it was last I checked).
And of course, none of those kids will be allowed to go to school (at least in my state, no one is allowed in without a certain set of vaccines... I guess homeschooling is an option, but the home school crowd usually does so because they want a better education than is being provided by the state / private schools and would likely be aware of the scam issues) and thus, won't impact the majority of people when they get sick... this is a tragedy because they will have less apparent value to society already (I am not saying they actually have less value but that society tends not to appreciate the value of the uneducated today).
His child is an "it" now? More importantly, it isn't carrots, it's garnets... pesky gems available widely in January. I highly recommend anyone who has to live through a January avoid people born in that month. Garnets are dangerous -- bad combination of minerals and color. Speaking of dangers, we should also note that peas are dangerous too... especially when attached to a pin and stuck into a large Starbucks straw.
The information on the hack indicates that it would require a hardware mod to stop it--since no one I know is going to shell out more money to make their console less usable, a rootkit would not be sufficient to stop it.
Glad I work at home now.
There has to be a balance - compare the labor situation in the last hundred years across multiple countries. Take France or Italy as an example of extremely powerful labor. The US could be on the mid to low end range with your cited example of Germany as a mid range labor situation. Have you been to Europe lately? There is a lot of anger in the EU now (at least in the north) over the high levels of labor / dole politicking sapping money from the "industrious north" to the labor oriented south (this is a partial fiction put out by the media, but there is a grain of truth in it).
The US still has the more powerful economy if we compare the EU to it (or even if we just look at France and scale up). We could suggest a problem with labor in the US as part of the issue--isn't it just a little disturbing to anyone else that a large arm of the UAW owns the company that its members work at?
I think we might be comparing apples and oranges. I am all for taking appropriate responsibility for one's employees as well as for one's taxes. My concern is that a business, seeking to be more efficient in it's usage of energy, time, materials, AND human resources should be penalized.
This isn't just an issue of the evil big company trying to stick it to the little guy (though this may well be lart of it, I don't know). A significant part of the issue is found in the desire to avoid unnecessary wastage (which strikes me as a great thing for an energy company to have as a goal). If by having see electric meters the energy company can cut fifty jobs across its sphere of influence, this will indeed have a broad negative impact on those it affects, and I think that it should seek to retrain these individuals for other jobs in house. On the other hand, by getting rid of those fifty (and it may be more or less than this, I am simply offering one example number), it can take fifty cars off the road for eight hours a day, this is a significant carbon savings. Add in the ability to more efficiently re route power to areas affected by a blown transformer and we have energy savings there. If someone decides to pull a Chevy Chase Christmas on the block, smart metered can allow the grid control to more quickly resolve the problem (maybe he only loses power for thirty seconds instead of the whole neighborhood for an hour).
When there is technology to eliminate wasteful use of human and other resources, I have a huge problem with that. Does it mean that those who have been doing meter-reading will have to find other lines of work? Yes. There are tons of other low-training labor opportunities--it doesn't require much training to be able to drive a car and write down a number for each house you drive by. A company should not be forced to support hundreds of workers it doesn't need just because the government wants to protect jobs (thereby diminishing, at least on one level, the dole). Allowing a company to increase efficiency allows it to provide a better service to the people at a lower cost.
With all this said, there are a number of other issues with the electronic metering systems that are being installed (they tend to be more accurate in favor of the company for one, but again--they really ought to have the option of providing for their stockholders in an appropriate efficient manner)...
This explains why my HTC Wizard died a few years back...
Google voice? (they warn that abuse will get sms privileges taken down) but after that happens, there's always AT&T... maybe start with them... their webpage allows sending of sms for free.
Bickering is easy on the internet and continued communication does allow for resolutions - your comment makes me remember (and I say this simply to add to the conversation not add an emotional layer to it) the '06 survey on tone reception in written communication -- http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179
I have yet to buy any... the local library had DVD copies last time I wanted to watch it and that took care of the issue. I don't know if I'll ever buy another copy ... my current TV is right on the edge (42 in.) of blu-ray offering a difference and since there's always "another edition" coming out, he's actually losing money on me since I have it in my head that "maybe I'll get the next one."
...Indiana Jones with a crystal skull...
At least the ending was pretty.
This was precisely my point in noting that the Bible was a bad example to use when stating that history was once again being written to highlight just the "good" parts from the perspective of one individual (note the parent post to my original comment). It shows both bad and good, even when the "bad" hurts its position in the eyes of some readers.
You bring up some good points for historical variants to mainstream Christianity--early Christianity, particularly pre-2nd century seems to be fairly uniform (there are theories otherwise, but looking into the sources reveals little support).
While the first article you note suggests Gnostic roots for some of the Gospels as well as in the writings of Paul, these don't fit the historical pattern--the article on Gnosticism more generally at Wikipedia is better sourced and does not have as many flags from editors as to problematic issues with the entry. There is easily a reason that no branch of Christianity, as you note in your final link, supports a different NT canon than the others. There are a variety of reasons why this is possible. It could be that the various branches of Christianity actively tried to suppress variant views of Christ that would diminish their power / impact. This fits various patterns that we see in history. Given, however, the wide variance in acceptance of the OT canon between Jews, Orthodox, Ethiopian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches over the OT, it strikes me as odd that we should see no variation in the NT canon between established churches. Consider that even though the Coptic church has a different view of Christ's human-divine nature than do the western churches, they still hold to the same NT canon as the rest. This is significant.
Consider also that in times of persecution, which was significant at various times in the Roman Empire's history, only what was considered absolutely vital would be kept. If the Bible as it is now upheld were not the only reliable document for that time period, why were some texts saved universally while others were universally left behind? Put another way, if the text of the Gospel According to the Hebrews were seen as fan fiction (using modern parlance) rather than accepted canon, it would be easy to hand this over to the Roman official demanding texts to burn. If, however, it were seen as words coming from God's mouth through man's writing, everything possible would have been done to hide it. This is, in fact, the testimony we see in early Christian writings.
Further, the Gospel According to the Hebrews was written during the more accepted general period of Gnostic interaction with Christianity (acknowledging potential roots in other areas) - mid to late 2nd century rather than in the late first century for the books seen as part of the New Testament canon (even in those circles where the New Testament is thought to have been written beyond the first century, those books that established Christianity are seen to have been written in the first century itself).
This is a fairly long reply (I apologize) but there is an even more thorough (and probably better thought out) evaluation of Old Testament and New Testament canons at http://bible.org/seriespage/bible-holy-canon-scripture.
Isolated control groups? Could we go looking for a group of people that have never been exposed to the outside world and see if they have a religion of some kind? Would the various people groups from the Amazon rainforest at the beginning of the 20th century serve? ...or interior Africa at the beginning of the 19th? Each of these areas was home to various tribes that had one type of religion or another. Though I disagree with his general conclusions about religion, I think that Dawkins might be right in noting that there is a genetic component to religous views. Dawkins sees humanity as past this and in need of getting rid of it (I would disagree).
I recognize from your post that you are trying to avoid religious extremism. Using the Bible as your example may not be in your best interest here (other religious texts might make use of the history-excise bit a bit more while others are similar to the Bible in terms of historical openness). Far from excising those parts of itself that might make it look bad, it includes them (much of the book of Luke, for example, makes use of the testimony of women--not something that had legal standing in the ancient world. As another example, the celebrated King David is noted for being a ruthless bloodthirsty guy who had an affair and tried to cover it up by murdering the woman involved's husband). If I were trying to promote my book as the end all be all solution to living, I might have done things differently, but this, for me at least, is part of what makes the Bible's story compelling--it owns up to the mistakes of those in its pages, including fairly awful things.
And there are numerous other projects similar to this requiring a human brain rather than distributed computing - or at least where a human brain is still effectively helpful. Galaxy zoo is the past time of thousands and they recently branched out into digitizing old British navy war records for the purpose of long term climate research.
Maybe the animals as you say are happy to make the trade-off but until we're sure and give each one the choice we shouldn't assume
I am reminded of the cow in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I was thinking about this recently and it occurred to me that at least animals can offer some resistance (it might be futile but they could resist). All those poor carrots though... and lettuce. Will no one think of the lettuce? It can't even try to run away. All of you awful vegans destroying millions of poor beans and rice plants just because you can't handle meat. /end humor