I don't see too many evolutionary biologists on that list. Why do you suppose that is?
Probably the same reason I don't see too many architects, civil engineers, bank tellers or riverboat captains on the list: the list only includes famous people and there aren't very many famous evolutionary biologists.
Christianity led many to embrace anti-semitism, (e.g. Jews as the ``killers of Christ'') but I can't imagine that the students will be asked to ``trace the connections between Christianity, anti-semitism, the inquisition, pogroms, and death camps. Why are believers so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?'' Yeah, such a link could be made, but the built-in implications of both sets of questions are dishonest: that Christianity [or Evolution] is a ''package deal'' with anti-semitism [or Eugenics].
I do see people try to link Christianity with anti-semitism. The problem is that while there are examples of Christianity being implicated, there are so many counter-examples including the tenets of the religion itself which makes it difficult to call a violent anti-semite "Christian". Also, the most successful anti-semites (Stalin and Hitler) were also anti-Christian. With evolutionary biology, it may be possible to show a link between beliefe an the theory and belief in eugenics, etc., but I suspect it will be very difficult to find counter-examples of anti-eugenics activism that is motivated by a belief in evolutionary biology.
That would be an interesting assignment - Compare and contrast suspected links between evolutionary biology and eugenics with suspected links between Christianity and anti-semism.
The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883,[10] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin. From its inception eugenics was supported by prominent people, including Margaret Sanger,[11] Marie Stopes, H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Prescott Bush, Theodore Roosevelt, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Winston Churchill, Linus Pauling[12] and Sidney Webb.[13][14][15] Its most infamous proponent and practitioner was however Adolf Hitler who praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf, and emulated Eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States.[16]
The first person mentioned, Margaret Sanger, founded the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood).
The practice of using of personal questions to reset passwords really annoys me. By definition, the questions and the answers are personal. Whoever is asking me that question so they can reset my password is overstepping his bounds.
Google and Slashdot have the ads where you can see them. There is no pretense about it. And you know what when you log into a site or when a site has cookies, there will be some tracking. You control the tracking by deleting cookies or not logging in. There are limits to what Google and Slashdot can do because of the security built into the browser
This is different. In this case Firefox is the browser that is supposed to protect your privacy and security. Your browser is supposed to do a job - and it isn't collecting data on you. If the program is going to execute on your CPU and collect data about you to send to someone else, it should be very clear about that intention. This sounds like Firefox has become a Trojan. I wonder if my anti-virus software will warn me about it.
I hope they're right and the warming is natural. If it is natural, it is likely cyclical, and therefore not something likely to grow exponentially making the planet uninhabitable. If it were likely to cause such destruction it probably would have done so by now. Nature has been on the earth for a long time and hasn't destroyed it yet, nor is it likely to destroy it soon.
Man-made global warming is another thing entirely.
One other frightening possibility is that the global warming is natural, but whatever cooling system has in the past kicked in (perhaps increased plant life to breath in all that extra CO2) has been broken up by man and won't protect us.
And then you have the wall street leeches who juggle numbers around and suck millions out of... what exactly? The world is not richer for them in any material sense.
In theory, the Wall Streeters manage the economy by deciding what corporations and in general what portions of the economy are deserving of more money and also by controlling who sits on the board of directors. The Wall Streeters should be highly motivated to make good decisions because they are investing their own money. They take the risk so you can have your safe paycheck every week.
In practice I think too often the many levels of indirection of ownership results in purchases being made without the diligence that should be exercised. The bad loan purchases of recent years would seem to be perfect examples of that.
A quick bit of math shows that if we assume a new generation is born approximately every 25 years, and if you're not too badly inbred, then you should have about (2 parents)^(400 years ago/25 years)=2^16=65536 ancestors. It's an order of magnitude estimate (doubles or halves if you add or remove a generation) but it shows that if your ancestors are primarily European and especially if they are primarily British, then you have a pretty good chance of having an ancestor somewhere in that database.
Re:Now, In the Background, Aliens Waving
on
NASA Has the Lost Tapes
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's a neat mythology: if you believe the Moon Landing was faked, a hoax, then the soon-to-come high-def photos of the moon should answer that by showing the trash we left behind and that should still be there, the Lunar Landers.
If you believe the landing was faked, then the fact that the high-res tapes were found only after sophisticated digital photo-shop techniques were developed helps cement your belief.
Madmen dictators are not 4-year-olds. They don't decide whether to build nukes based on their dad setting a good example for them. The calculate their self-interest and make their decision. Or they calculate whatever mad purpose they have (genocide against Israel) and make their decision. They don't think about the need to defend against American nukes because they know that the US refrains from using nukes except when attacked by nukes. Building nukes for themselves increases the risk of being a victim of a US nuke attack. The only kind of attack the dictator's nukes deter are conventional attacks - and that has nothing to do with the US already having nukes.
The US abandoning nukes would make it even more attractive for smaller countries to build them. Right now, NK's nukes merely deter a conventional American attack. Remove American nukes and threats of nuclear retaliation, and suddenly NK's nukes give them the ability to extort anything they want from their defenseless neighbors.
Americans and western Europeans need to give up their patronizing attitudes toward other countries. Those other countries aren't children who will imitate our adult ways like a child imitates his parents. Those other countries are ruled by adults who calculate their self-interests the way an adult does.
Really? They're aiming for 500 launch vehicles. Are there even that many targets to nuke or does Bolton just want us to do it a few times over for the refried beans effect? Also, this is 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads so I assume there are some MIRVs in there. I was under the impression that the whole defense aspect of nukes was to make retaliation too expensive for the other side to shoot first. If that's the case, 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads would be enough to make anyone regret it.
That may be true for most potential adversaries, but China has historically shown a shocking disregard for the lives of its people, especially during wartime. Even in peacetime they don't seem to care. Mao's policies are believed to have resulted in the death of some 20 million Chinese (as many people as are in entire countries like Australia and Taiwan) during the Great Chinese Famine, yet Mao's portrait still hangs in an honored place at the entrance to the Forbidden City.
I'm not sure 1500 nukes landing in China would have the intended effect. And that's assuming they haven't buddied up with Iran, NK, Russia and other states causing the US to have to divide the nuke strikes amoung several nations.
Russia and the US have already done this before...
Well yeah. Anyone ever here of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_Treaty/? Let me quote the Wikipedia article: START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States' President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty, which became START II.
Slightly offtopic but in high school I read a few books by Robert S McNamara who died yesterday [nytimes.com]. It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies
Don't feel too bad. He did get to see the far more important breakthrough agreements negotiated and signed by Presidents Reagan and Bush 41.
If you're just learning for fun, then most of the time you can just read.
If the topic is somewhat controversial, check out the discussion page to see what topics are being avoided due to lack of agreement, what points of view (POVs) are being squashed, and what POV pushing may happen to be in the article when you read it.
Always pay attention to things that just don't seem right.
If you're reading for something serious where you have to be right (a research paper, a trial, etc.), don't believe anything that isn't sourced and make sure the sources say what the article claims they say.
If the guy is going to jail, doesn't that mean the information is classified? And aren't people who get clearance to see classified information supposed to go through some sort of training as part of the process of getting the clearance?
I started playing EQ some years back. I've never been a hardcore gamer - never had time. But I liked the fact that it took a while to get places, especially at lower levels.
1. While the world was big, the community was small. You were likely to enounter the same people a few times as you both hung out in the same portion of the world.
2. It meant that there still a lot more to see. You couldn't go see it all at once.
3. It allowed you to spatially orient yourself and have the feeling that the world was real.
4. Travel wasn't just a trip, it was a challenge. A low level toon running through a high level zone had to dodge and duck and learn.
5. When you went out in the wilderness, you were really out there. There is challenge and excitement being far from civilization and support.
6. When in a certain region of the game, you were either getting help or offering help to people who were "from" other parts of the world.
What EQ had at the time was the prospect that you would eventually be able to travel faster. You might get a spell to make you go faster, either running fast or porting from specific druid portals to other druid portals. To me that seems like the right way to handle the boredom factor. Give the higher level toons, the one's that have already explored, the ability to travel faster.
The library really ruined things. When I finally left the game for good, one thing that really made it easy was the feeling that it was no longer a place I could explore and learn about. Instead of learning how to get from point a to point b by traveling through a world, I was just being portaled from one fairyland to another. I would go to the Plane of knowledge by clicking on a stone near point a, then click on another stone to go where I could travel to point b. There was no sense that point a and point b were real, they were just imaginary worlds one visited by clicking on stones.
Let the newbies explore. For players who have "been there", provide faster mounts or vehicles, or give them spells to let them travel faster. Let them get faster and faster as they level up. But keep the world as real as possible. No portals or magic gateways, please.
As a parent, these things bother me because I don't see the kids getting an opportunity to be challenged and learn to overcome. Legos. We go bowling, and the kids whine if they don't get to use the rails on the side the prevent gutter balls. We play Legos Star Wars, and they make little effort to avoid the toons getting killed because there is almost no penalty.
How are they supposed to learn to overcome the frustrations of life if their games offer no frustration?
I recently saw President Obama make a comment about how FedEx can track every single package everywhere, but we can't even get medical records to follow a patient from one doctor to another.
Well, Fed Ex is a private entity with very little government regulation, while medicine is subject to government involvement all over the place. The government either pays for medical care (medicade, medicare), determines how it will be paid for (tax incentives) or mandates that it doesn't need to be paid for (get wheeled into any emergency room and they must at least stabilize you, or so I've heard). Government then regulates the tracking of information (privacy regulations - no such privacy regulations apply to FedEx package locations). If something goes wrong, government is involved in deciding malpractice verdicts and awards. From start to finish, government has its hands in the mix.
I remember reading about the difficulties the IRS had with automation due to the complexity of the tax code. Is it any wonder the medical profession would have trouble automating given the complexity of the rules associated with health care in this country?
A couple other key differences between FedEx and Health Care. First, most people feel no moral obligation to provide package shipping to everyone in the country.
Second, it is far easier for consumers to evaluate the effectiveness of FedEx than it is for them to evaluate the effectiveness of their medical care. With FedEx, you can verify that the contents weren't broken, and you can compare the speed similar shipments sent by other companies. That's easy. With doctors, well, recently someone I care about had an abscess in his neck. The doctor was thinking the pain was just lingering effects of a sore throat. But when it didn't clear up. he theorized an abscess and sent the person to the emergency room for an MRI. The abscess was found and removed by surgery that night. Did the doctor nearly cost this person his life by not recognizing the abscess until it was close to breaking through a vein causing blood poisoning? Or did the doctor save this person's life by recognizing the abscess in time? It's not so easy for someone like me to know.
I assumed NASA had been using Metric for decades. Isn't Metric supposed to be the system of science and - just as importantly for the space program - international work?
Sure, Metric has serious drawbacks like all the names sounding the same and the dangers caused by typos (We needed to wait until the second spacecraft was three decameters away before firing the main rocket engines, not three decimeters, but someone typed in in wrong and that's why we lost the second spacecraft), and the ease of getting a decimal in the wrong place when making conversions, but whatever it's problems, our space program should have settled on a single standard by now.
I'm curious (and don't want to start a war on something so trivial) but what strengths are there for return null?
Theory: Exceptions are for exceptional conditions (because of the implied goto they carry). They shouldn't be used for run-of-the-mill occurrances such as not finding a record isn't always expected to exist.
Practical: I may be wrong on this, but I've heard that try-catch is expensive in Java due to the stack tracing.
This is my experience, however. Maybe I'm not working at a high end enough shop that every dev is unlikely to make these kinds of basic-but-potentially-shippable errors. But that's the beauty of a well thought out dev process - those of us less talented can be more likely to produce something of quality.
Or perhaps you're not working for a shop where the customer is not willing to pay for perfect code and you have to make reasonable trade-offs between expensive reviews of everything and the risk of shipping a bug or two.
For a code review to pick up on the trickier defects, the reviewers would need to spend a lot of time with the code - time that could otherwise be spent on new features, or time that simply won't have to be charged to the customer and helping the customer stay in business with low costs. A bug might cost them something, but it likely won't cost them as much as a code review. A code review can certainly catch defects that otherwise escape into production, but it is one of the more expensive ways to catch bugs. The original poster said "our code is intended for desktop, non-critical use". In other words, it doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be pretty good and affordable. As developers, we may prefer perfect over pretty good, but Microsoft isn't showing any signs of going bankrupt.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see too many evolutionary biologists on that list. Why do you suppose that is?
Probably the same reason I don't see too many architects, civil engineers, bank tellers or riverboat captains on the list: the list only includes famous people and there aren't very many famous evolutionary biologists.
Christianity led many to embrace anti-semitism, (e.g. Jews as the ``killers of Christ'') but I can't imagine that the students will be asked to ``trace the connections between Christianity, anti-semitism, the inquisition, pogroms, and death camps. Why are believers so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?'' Yeah, such a link could be made, but the built-in implications of both sets of questions are dishonest: that Christianity [or Evolution] is a ''package deal'' with anti-semitism [or Eugenics].
I do see people try to link Christianity with anti-semitism. The problem is that while there are examples of Christianity being implicated, there are so many counter-examples including the tenets of the religion itself which makes it difficult to call a violent anti-semite "Christian". Also, the most successful anti-semites (Stalin and Hitler) were also anti-Christian. With evolutionary biology, it may be possible to show a link between beliefe an the theory and belief in eugenics, etc., but I suspect it will be very difficult to find counter-examples of anti-eugenics activism that is motivated by a belief in evolutionary biology.
That would be an interesting assignment - Compare and contrast suspected links between evolutionary biology and eugenics with suspected links between Christianity and anti-semism.
The first person mentioned, Margaret Sanger, founded the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood).
The practice of using of personal questions to reset passwords really annoys me. By definition, the questions and the answers are personal. Whoever is asking me that question so they can reset my password is overstepping his bounds.
Google and Slashdot have the ads where you can see them. There is no pretense about it. And you know what when you log into a site or when a site has cookies, there will be some tracking. You control the tracking by deleting cookies or not logging in. There are limits to what Google and Slashdot can do because of the security built into the browser
This is different. In this case Firefox is the browser that is supposed to protect your privacy and security. Your browser is supposed to do a job - and it isn't collecting data on you. If the program is going to execute on your CPU and collect data about you to send to someone else, it should be very clear about that intention. This sounds like Firefox has become a Trojan. I wonder if my anti-virus software will warn me about it.
I hope they're right and the warming is natural. If it is natural, it is likely cyclical, and therefore not something likely to grow exponentially making the planet uninhabitable. If it were likely to cause such destruction it probably would have done so by now. Nature has been on the earth for a long time and hasn't destroyed it yet, nor is it likely to destroy it soon.
Man-made global warming is another thing entirely.
One other frightening possibility is that the global warming is natural, but whatever cooling system has in the past kicked in (perhaps increased plant life to breath in all that extra CO2) has been broken up by man and won't protect us.
In theory, the Wall Streeters manage the economy by deciding what corporations and in general what portions of the economy are deserving of more money and also by controlling who sits on the board of directors. The Wall Streeters should be highly motivated to make good decisions because they are investing their own money. They take the risk so you can have your safe paycheck every week.
In practice I think too often the many levels of indirection of ownership results in purchases being made without the diligence that should be exercised. The bad loan purchases of recent years would seem to be perfect examples of that.
A quick bit of math shows that if we assume a new generation is born approximately every 25 years, and if you're not too badly inbred, then you should have about (2 parents)^(400 years ago/25 years)=2^16=65536 ancestors. It's an order of magnitude estimate (doubles or halves if you add or remove a generation) but it shows that if your ancestors are primarily European and especially if they are primarily British, then you have a pretty good chance of having an ancestor somewhere in that database.
Or was he helped out the window?
If you believe the landing was faked, then the fact that the high-res tapes were found only after sophisticated digital photo-shop techniques were developed helps cement your belief.
Madmen dictators are not 4-year-olds. They don't decide whether to build nukes based on their dad setting a good example for them. The calculate their self-interest and make their decision. Or they calculate whatever mad purpose they have (genocide against Israel) and make their decision. They don't think about the need to defend against American nukes because they know that the US refrains from using nukes except when attacked by nukes. Building nukes for themselves increases the risk of being a victim of a US nuke attack. The only kind of attack the dictator's nukes deter are conventional attacks - and that has nothing to do with the US already having nukes. The US abandoning nukes would make it even more attractive for smaller countries to build them. Right now, NK's nukes merely deter a conventional American attack. Remove American nukes and threats of nuclear retaliation, and suddenly NK's nukes give them the ability to extort anything they want from their defenseless neighbors. Americans and western Europeans need to give up their patronizing attitudes toward other countries. Those other countries aren't children who will imitate our adult ways like a child imitates his parents. Those other countries are ruled by adults who calculate their self-interests the way an adult does.
That may be true for most potential adversaries, but China has historically shown a shocking disregard for the lives of its people, especially during wartime. Even in peacetime they don't seem to care. Mao's policies are believed to have resulted in the death of some 20 million Chinese (as many people as are in entire countries like Australia and Taiwan) during the Great Chinese Famine, yet Mao's portrait still hangs in an honored place at the entrance to the Forbidden City. I'm not sure 1500 nukes landing in China would have the intended effect. And that's assuming they haven't buddied up with Iran, NK, Russia and other states causing the US to have to divide the nuke strikes amoung several nations.
Well yeah. Anyone ever here of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_Treaty/? Let me quote the Wikipedia article: START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States' President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty, which became START II.
Don't feel too bad. He did get to see the far more important breakthrough agreements negotiated and signed by Presidents Reagan and Bush 41.
If you're just learning for fun, then most of the time you can just read.
If the topic is somewhat controversial, check out the discussion page to see what topics are being avoided due to lack of agreement, what points of view (POVs) are being squashed, and what POV pushing may happen to be in the article when you read it.
Always pay attention to things that just don't seem right.
If you're reading for something serious where you have to be right (a research paper, a trial, etc.), don't believe anything that isn't sourced and make sure the sources say what the article claims they say.
If the guy is going to jail, doesn't that mean the information is classified? And aren't people who get clearance to see classified information supposed to go through some sort of training as part of the process of getting the clearance?
Wow! My first ever first post! It's wonderful!!
first post
I started playing EQ some years back. I've never been a hardcore gamer - never had time. But I liked the fact that it took a while to get places, especially at lower levels.
1. While the world was big, the community was small. You were likely to enounter the same people a few times as you both hung out in the same portion of the world.
2. It meant that there still a lot more to see. You couldn't go see it all at once.
3. It allowed you to spatially orient yourself and have the feeling that the world was real.
4. Travel wasn't just a trip, it was a challenge. A low level toon running through a high level zone had to dodge and duck and learn.
5. When you went out in the wilderness, you were really out there. There is challenge and excitement being far from civilization and support.
6. When in a certain region of the game, you were either getting help or offering help to people who were "from" other parts of the world.
What EQ had at the time was the prospect that you would eventually be able to travel faster. You might get a spell to make you go faster, either running fast or porting from specific druid portals to other druid portals. To me that seems like the right way to handle the boredom factor. Give the higher level toons, the one's that have already explored, the ability to travel faster.
The library really ruined things. When I finally left the game for good, one thing that really made it easy was the feeling that it was no longer a place I could explore and learn about. Instead of learning how to get from point a to point b by traveling through a world, I was just being portaled from one fairyland to another. I would go to the Plane of knowledge by clicking on a stone near point a, then click on another stone to go where I could travel to point b. There was no sense that point a and point b were real, they were just imaginary worlds one visited by clicking on stones.
Let the newbies explore. For players who have "been there", provide faster mounts or vehicles, or give them spells to let them travel faster. Let them get faster and faster as they level up. But keep the world as real as possible. No portals or magic gateways, please.
As a parent, these things bother me because I don't see the kids getting an opportunity to be challenged and learn to overcome. Legos. We go bowling, and the kids whine if they don't get to use the rails on the side the prevent gutter balls. We play Legos Star Wars, and they make little effort to avoid the toons getting killed because there is almost no penalty.
How are they supposed to learn to overcome the frustrations of life if their games offer no frustration?
I recently saw President Obama make a comment about how FedEx can track every single package everywhere, but we can't even get medical records to follow a patient from one doctor to another.
Well, Fed Ex is a private entity with very little government regulation, while medicine is subject to government involvement all over the place. The government either pays for medical care (medicade, medicare), determines how it will be paid for (tax incentives) or mandates that it doesn't need to be paid for (get wheeled into any emergency room and they must at least stabilize you, or so I've heard). Government then regulates the tracking of information (privacy regulations - no such privacy regulations apply to FedEx package locations). If something goes wrong, government is involved in deciding malpractice verdicts and awards. From start to finish, government has its hands in the mix.
I remember reading about the difficulties the IRS had with automation due to the complexity of the tax code. Is it any wonder the medical profession would have trouble automating given the complexity of the rules associated with health care in this country?
A couple other key differences between FedEx and Health Care. First, most people feel no moral obligation to provide package shipping to everyone in the country.
Second, it is far easier for consumers to evaluate the effectiveness of FedEx than it is for them to evaluate the effectiveness of their medical care. With FedEx, you can verify that the contents weren't broken, and you can compare the speed similar shipments sent by other companies. That's easy. With doctors, well, recently someone I care about had an abscess in his neck. The doctor was thinking the pain was just lingering effects of a sore throat. But when it didn't clear up. he theorized an abscess and sent the person to the emergency room for an MRI. The abscess was found and removed by surgery that night. Did the doctor nearly cost this person his life by not recognizing the abscess until it was close to breaking through a vein causing blood poisoning? Or did the doctor save this person's life by recognizing the abscess in time? It's not so easy for someone like me to know.
I assumed NASA had been using Metric for decades. Isn't Metric supposed to be the system of science and - just as importantly for the space program - international work?
Sure, Metric has serious drawbacks like all the names sounding the same and the dangers caused by typos (We needed to wait until the second spacecraft was three decameters away before firing the main rocket engines, not three decimeters, but someone typed in in wrong and that's why we lost the second spacecraft), and the ease of getting a decimal in the wrong place when making conversions, but whatever it's problems, our space program should have settled on a single standard by now.
I'm curious (and don't want to start a war on something so trivial) but what strengths are there for return null?
This is my experience, however. Maybe I'm not working at a high end enough shop that every dev is unlikely to make these kinds of basic-but-potentially-shippable errors. But that's the beauty of a well thought out dev process - those of us less talented can be more likely to produce something of quality.
Or perhaps you're not working for a shop where the customer is not willing to pay for perfect code and you have to make reasonable trade-offs between expensive reviews of everything and the risk of shipping a bug or two.
For a code review to pick up on the trickier defects, the reviewers would need to spend a lot of time with the code - time that could otherwise be spent on new features, or time that simply won't have to be charged to the customer and helping the customer stay in business with low costs. A bug might cost them something, but it likely won't cost them as much as a code review. A code review can certainly catch defects that otherwise escape into production, but it is one of the more expensive ways to catch bugs. The original poster said "our code is intended for desktop, non-critical use". In other words, it doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be pretty good and affordable. As developers, we may prefer perfect over pretty good, but Microsoft isn't showing any signs of going bankrupt.
But the company that gives you that paycheck does, and that's all that really matters. :)
If I get hit by a bus, will they keep giving me a paycheck?
Also, if you get hit by a bus, your fellow programmers can take over without having to reverse-engineer your thoughts.
But if I get hit by a bus, I won't care whether my fellow programmers can take over without having to reverse-engineer my thoughts.