3) Why did this deserve front page news? Exploits like this are found on a daily basis, and ones much more humorous/interesting/newsworthy.
Because left-wing fascists are thicker on/. than the lice in Osama's beard. And they all despise fox for offering an alternative to their propaganda outlets.
Ha. ha ha. ha ha ha. Cynicism just inspires different ideologies and as long as humans exist, there will be politics. They are absolutely integral to human interaction of any kind. Professional politics is just the overblown and theatrical big daddy of the microcosms of our personal lives.
That aside, "more cynical" people would spell the end of any human race anyone would want to be a party of. It's the end of hope, trust, love, and loyalty. You know, the four pillars of a worthwhile life.
^^^^ What he said.
Humanity is worthwhile insofar as we can rationally embrace what is good. That means adopting ideology. To avoid adopting bad ideology, we must strengthen rationality, insight, conscience, and objectivity -- not eliminate ideology. Cynicism is not an alternative to critical thought.
Believe it or not, the following books were required reading for the english electives I had during my high school: 1984, Brave New World, Catch 22, 2001, Iliad, Odyssey, Crime and Punishment.
lol. Too bad Les Miserables is rarely required anywhere outside of France. It's the best of the lot.
Firstly, that wasn't a list of sci-fi novels. It was a short list of some critically acclaimed dystopian novels. "Cynical drivel"? Well, you're entitled to your thoughts but not many would agree with you there.
Personally, I like hitting kids with the idea that shit happens and that life isn't all sweetness and light through reading. Usually it makes them think, about their lives and the world around them, and I rather kids came away from any experience (even if it's "just" reading a book) having been challenged in some way, no matter how big or small, instead of just looking for their next momentary distraction.
The irony of me having an idealistic view of reading about imperfect worlds hasn't been missed.
Yes, I know well that they are all critically acclaimed and popular. However I think that dystopian ideology is just as bad for a developing mind as utopian ideology, in that both discourage an objective criticism of the world around it. No good novel is going to leave the reader with the idea that life is all sweetness and light (certainly not those that I mentioned), but I cannot see how a novel that reinforces the natural teenage inclination towards "the world sux and The System sux, end of story" can be a beneficial thing... or very challenging to their thinking.
(by the way, good luck getting kids to read either The Iliad or Odyssey; I know adults educated to doctorate level who struggle with those)
Boy, I'm glad I backed off my original inclination to advocate teaching them Greek and Cuneiform first, so they could read the Illiad, Odyssey, and Gilgamesh in their original languages (they're poems, after all). Seriously, I don't understand about the Illiad and Odyssey being hard reads -- unless it's not a good translation, or an outdated one. I'm currently reading the Robert Fagles translations, and they are very entertaining and engaging.
Now, if only we could find a way to make them read books like 1984, Brave New World, Catch 22 and Fahrenheit 451...
A fine collection of cynical drivel (IMnshO). If they must read scifi, then Dune and 2001, otherwise the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Odyssey, Les Miserables, and Crime and Punishment, for starters.
In the end, this isn't just harvesting unused energy; There's no such thing. It has to come from somewhere. In this case, doesn't it come from the energy the heart is exerting to pump blood? Is it possible that this could have some long term side effects, due to slightly more stress on the heart?
Since it's powered by the vibrations from the pulse, the energy used would presumably otherwise by converted to heat by the mechanical dampening of the pulse by the vein walls. Since this is not a way that the body purposely generates heat, I'd argue that it qualifies as "unused energy." Worst case, it would require a minuscule amount of additional heat production from available fat or sugar stores. It doesn't seem like it would have any direct effect on the heart, as it shouldn't effect the actual flow of blood.
According to TFA, this should not be impairing blood flow, regardless of where it is installed. It is not some sort of hydroelectric... er, vitroelectric dam, rather, if I understand correctly, it is powered by harnessing the vibrations of the pulse itself, that are otherwise just absorbed by the vein walls.
Oh... wait... to you, evil means 'slightly less good for me personally, or the people I identify with as a nation'. Being against protectionism isn't evil... in fact, if you're for the benefit of the human race as a whole, protectionist policies are evil. Free trade, without tariffs, may hurt some people, but it helps others... you're just whining because you happen to be neighbors with the people who might get hurt in the short term, and don't care about those other-skin-colored people who get a significant benefit in the short and long term from open border policies.
1) Protecting the long-term well being of your country is a good thing. Besides being good for you and your countrymen, it's good for the countless generations of people who will continue to be able to migrate to your country, if you succeed in keeping your country a place worth migrating to. 2) That said, I don't think there should be any limit to the number of highly skilled people that a company is allowed to recruit from other countries. Bringing highly talented people to the country is obviously good for the country. I think immigration restrictions in general are important, and maybe need to be increased, but they should not apply to these cases. 3) Your attribution of the parent's aversion to relaxing H1B visas to what you apparently imagine to be his aversion to people with some particular skin tone is repugnant, and it makes you come across as some kind of non-thinking hate-mongering left-wing hoodlum.
If we ignore the environmental burden caused by printing and delivering snail mail spam, I find it much less obnoxious than email spam for a number of reasons:
1. It comes in once a day, and I can sort it in a few seconds, as opposed to trickling in all day long and distracting me. 2. Since it has significant costs to send, it is almost never as blatantly stupid as most of the spam emails I get. 3. Since the post office does investigate mail fraud (at least in the US), most of the offers may be stupid, but they are usually legitimate.
Not only that, but if one has a wood-burning stove and is willing to fill out the occasional product registration form and sweepstakes entry, one can fairly easily heat one's house for free with postal spam. Besides getting free heat, you can contribute beneficial CO2 to the atmosphere. (Eat my shorts, algore. Besides, this is carbon neutral, as carbon in = carbon out.)
And really, snail mail spam is an invasion of your privacy? Care to explain that one? If your privacy bar is set so high that a piece of mail dropping in a box counts as a significant imposition how do you handle walking down the street or using public transportation? Wouldn't someone actually being able to see you be far more of an invasion of your privacy?
Easy... Someone could mail you a monkey that observes your actions and reports back to its owner. For me anyway, this doesn't occur frequently enough to actually become a nuisance, though.
- Life might be hard to bootstrap: something that occurs once every billion year per galaxy.
Highly unlikely, given that life appeared on earth virtually the instant (geologically) that there was solid ground and liquid water.
- Even if life reoccurs at a different time, one type is likely to be vastly superior and outcompete the other.
That doesn't seem to be the case. Bacteria, for example, are biologically vastly superior to humans, and out-compete humans in most measurable ways, but we (for the most part) have no trouble surviving as a species alongside them. The incredibly vast number of species on the planet argues against the idea that out-competed species, are as a rule, eliminated.
Actually there is a distinction beween stopway and clearway. Stopway needs to have an LCN (load bearing capacity) similar to runway surface to support the aircraft. The clearway is there so there are not physical or visual obstructions.
There are many instances where the effective clearway is a body of water.
These ponds do not need to be so deep that they would constitute a hazard for the plane sinking into the depths. In fact if they were less than a meter deep and the bottom was firm (concrete) the water would actually provide a relatively safe place for the plane to come to rest (dissipating a great deal of energy).
I can see it now. "A plane slid off the runway today at Algae International Airport, coming to rest in the adjacent algae pond. The 200 passengers on board suffered only minor injuries initially, but there were 150 subsequent fatalities due to acute algae infections. Film at 11."
Personally, I'd love to see bio-fuels take off (no pun intended). Turn Death Valley into a big algae farm (although watch that impact global weather patterns somehow).
Personally, I'd rather see Death Valley turned into a mega-nuclear reactor....that's not over a fault-line is it? Maybe somewhere in Nevada instead.
Given that this device is intended to produce "totally random numbers", I'd say it's output most certainly *won't* follow Benford's Law.
In most cases it would, depending on the random distribution you're getting. Eg, in a random 8-bit number, you have 0-255. 111 of those start with 1, which is 43%; 67 start with 2, which is 26%; 11 each start with 3 through 9, which is 4% each.
Agreed, although as for the Earth/Water/Air/Fire model, I don't think the standard attribution of this as the ancient model of "elements" as we think of "elements" is accurate. These are the people who taught us how to smelt iron, plant crops, and a bunch of other stuff that we probably wouldn't have figured out yet on our own. If you call them "states of matter" instead of "elements" then nothing has changed, except that we temporarily forgot the last one and then added it back, and now we call them Solid/Liquid/Gas/Plasma.
I agree. Determinism not only throws morality and free will out the window, it throws reason and even math out the window. (I'll leave the proof of that statement as an exercise for the reader.)
But as a separate issue, if consciousness isn't a Real Thing itself, but only an emergent property of an algorithm in the brain, then why is your consciousness only aware of itself and the senses of your own body, and no one else? What makes your consciousness be the consciousness of your brain and never my brain?
If you stand in a group with 10 other people and discuss something together, why aren't you conscious of all 10 then? Surely, it's just one large algorithm at that point. In philosophical terms, an emergent property should be one essential substance. There's only one green, no matter how many things are green. So human consciousness, if it were an emergent property should also be one, rather than 6 billion.
Consciousness is just a useful tool for allowing our genes to produce copies of themselves -- a goal which the genes themselves, of course, are not conscious of.
I'm sorry, but consciousness -- the most unfathomable, beautiful thing any of us has ever conceived of or experienced -- is just a tool for making copies of DNA? Something that bacteria do FAR more successfully WITHOUT consciousness? Do you actually believe that? To me that falls squarely in the category of an absurdity that would require extraordinary evidence to even consider.
Anybody can look at what we know and define an invisible system of metaphysics beyond the limits of our knowledge. Without evidence or something like a scientific methodology for testing our speculations, however, I don't really see where any of that gets us, or why we should credit any book, legend, priest, psychic medium or anything/anybody else as a credible authority on these matters. We're all equally ignorant on this subject... some just think (or pretend) otherwise.
The world is teaming with evidence. There are things very much like scientific methodology. On both counts, read Swedenborg, e.g., "Heaven and Hell". It's tempting for one who is ignorant to say, "we're all equally ignorant," as I also used to say, but we're not.
My point is this: when I was "dead," I never "left my body," I never saw myself and the doctors in the hospital from "above," I never experienced anything. It was like a light-switch was simply flipped. I was just gone. No angels, no bright light, nothing.
As you are apparently aware, NDEs do not happen every time someone's heart stops. In fact, researchers have tried inducing NDEs by stopping the heart (a la "flatliners") without success. It's a "common" phenomenon, in that there are very many examples of it, but it's not "common" in that it usually happens in any particular medical scenario.
The quote from Romans doesn't really fit your thesis. And nor should it, since it's only in the New Testament that you find the concept of an afterlife. The Old Testament had no such concept, there was no promise of eternity, the focus was on life in the here and now.
Not true. See my reply to the parent post for a number examples of OT discussion of the afterlife.
Dead cannot think: Psalms 146:4 His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
It also says the soul dies at death: Ezekiel 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinning, it shall die. Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
In the OT, the english words "death" and "hell" are most often translations of the word "sheol". Especially in the Psalms and the Prophets, that is what is called in Revelation "the second death," which is not just the natural death of the body, but complete death, which is hell. It is often used as if it meant "darkness", e.g, Psalm 13:3 "Look on me and answer, O Jehovah my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;"
Counterexamples to the claim that the OT teaches that the dead don't think and the soul dies with the body: Job 26:5 "The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them." Job 27:8,9 "For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life? Does God listen to his cry when distress comes upon him?" Job 28:12,13: "But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living." Psalm 23: "I will dwell in the house of Jehovah forever." Psalm 49:13-15: "This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings. Like sheep they are destined for the sheol, and death will feed on them. The upright will rule over them in the morning; their forms will decay in the sheol, far from their princely mansions. But God will redeem my soul from the sheol; he will surely take me to himself." For her house leads down to death Proverbs 2:18-22: "For [the adulteress'] house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. Thus you will walk in the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it."
Regarding Psalm 146, the word "thoughts" there is usually translated "plans." It's the only place that word is used, but in the context, "plans" makes a whole lot more sense. NIV translation: NKJV also has "plans". [don't put your trust in princes...] 4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Read on a little further in what you quoted from Ezekiel: Ezekiel 18:19-23 "The soul who sins is the one who will die... But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Jehovah. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?"
Thats how religion starts -- people choosing to ignore the scientific explanation (or not knowing it).
Uh, I don't think any religion started that way. However, ignoring the "scientific explanation" IS, generally, how science progresses.
From a neurological standpoint, its not some great mystery what happens during those times. The feelings and visions people have are not a mystery. Some of the details are argued, but the neurophysiology of near death is not a big black box of unknown.
Yes it is. The few neurologists who try to explain it neurologically are laughable. They say things like "the commonality of people in NDEs seeing a bright light is because the occipital lobe is turning on, and that's what it the occipital lobe does, it makes you see lights."
Slashdot Mirror
Because left-wing fascists are thicker on
A post on the newsworthiness of the main article is not off-topic. Should be modded back up.
^^^^ What he said.
Humanity is worthwhile insofar as we can rationally embrace what is good. That means adopting ideology. To avoid adopting bad ideology, we must strengthen rationality, insight, conscience, and objectivity -- not eliminate ideology. Cynicism is not an alternative to critical thought.
lol. Too bad Les Miserables is rarely required anywhere outside of France. It's the best of the lot.
Yes, I know well that they are all critically acclaimed and popular. However I think that dystopian ideology is just as bad for a developing mind as utopian ideology, in that both discourage an objective criticism of the world around it. No good novel is going to leave the reader with the idea that life is all sweetness and light (certainly not those that I mentioned), but I cannot see how a novel that reinforces the natural teenage inclination towards "the world sux and The System sux, end of story" can be a beneficial thing... or very challenging to their thinking.
Boy, I'm glad I backed off my original inclination to advocate teaching them Greek and Cuneiform first, so they could read the Illiad, Odyssey, and Gilgamesh in their original languages (they're poems, after all). Seriously, I don't understand about the Illiad and Odyssey being hard reads -- unless it's not a good translation, or an outdated one. I'm currently reading the Robert Fagles translations, and they are very entertaining and engaging.
A fine collection of cynical drivel (IMnshO). If they must read scifi, then Dune and 2001, otherwise the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Odyssey, Les Miserables, and Crime and Punishment, for starters.
Since it's powered by the vibrations from the pulse, the energy used would presumably otherwise by converted to heat by the mechanical dampening of the pulse by the vein walls. Since this is not a way that the body purposely generates heat, I'd argue that it qualifies as "unused energy." Worst case, it would require a minuscule amount of additional heat production from available fat or sugar stores. It doesn't seem like it would have any direct effect on the heart, as it shouldn't effect the actual flow of blood.
According to TFA, this should not be impairing blood flow, regardless of where it is installed. It is not some sort of hydroelectric... er, vitroelectric dam, rather, if I understand correctly, it is powered by harnessing the vibrations of the pulse itself, that are otherwise just absorbed by the vein walls.
1) Protecting the long-term well being of your country is a good thing. Besides being good for you and your countrymen, it's good for the countless generations of people who will continue to be able to migrate to your country, if you succeed in keeping your country a place worth migrating to. 2) That said, I don't think there should be any limit to the number of highly skilled people that a company is allowed to recruit from other countries. Bringing highly talented people to the country is obviously good for the country. I think immigration restrictions in general are important, and maybe need to be increased, but they should not apply to these cases. 3) Your attribution of the parent's aversion to relaxing H1B visas to what you apparently imagine to be his aversion to people with some particular skin tone is repugnant, and it makes you come across as some kind of non-thinking hate-mongering left-wing hoodlum.
Not only that, but if one has a wood-burning stove and is willing to fill out the occasional product registration form and sweepstakes entry, one can fairly easily heat one's house for free with postal spam. Besides getting free heat, you can contribute beneficial CO2 to the atmosphere. (Eat my shorts, algore. Besides, this is carbon neutral, as carbon in = carbon out.)
Easy... Someone could mail you a monkey that observes your actions and reports back to its owner. For me anyway, this doesn't occur frequently enough to actually become a nuisance, though.
I also understand that computers are going to replace paper in the workplace in a couple years.
Highly unlikely, given that life appeared on earth virtually the instant (geologically) that there was solid ground and liquid water.
That doesn't seem to be the case. Bacteria, for example, are biologically vastly superior to humans, and out-compete humans in most measurable ways, but we (for the most part) have no trouble surviving as a species alongside them. The incredibly vast number of species on the planet argues against the idea that out-competed species, are as a rule, eliminated.
I can see it now. "A plane slid off the runway today at Algae International Airport, coming to rest in the adjacent algae pond. The 200 passengers on board suffered only minor injuries initially, but there were 150 subsequent fatalities due to acute algae infections. Film at 11."
Carbon footprint? Carbon does a lot more good in the air than it does in the ground, specifically fertilizing the world's food crops and forests.
Personally, I'd rather see Death Valley turned into a mega-nuclear reactor.
However, if you get a 1,001st 42, chances are it's just broken.
I propose adding this to the
In most cases it would, depending on the random distribution you're getting. Eg, in a random 8-bit number, you have 0-255. 111 of those start with 1, which is 43%; 67 start with 2, which is 26%; 11 each start with 3 through 9, which is 4% each.
Agreed, although as for the Earth/Water/Air/Fire model, I don't think the standard attribution of this as the ancient model of "elements" as we think of "elements" is accurate. These are the people who taught us how to smelt iron, plant crops, and a bunch of other stuff that we probably wouldn't have figured out yet on our own. If you call them "states of matter" instead of "elements" then nothing has changed, except that we temporarily forgot the last one and then added it back, and now we call them Solid/Liquid/Gas/Plasma.
I agree. Determinism not only throws morality and free will out the window, it throws reason and even math out the window. (I'll leave the proof of that statement as an exercise for the reader.)
But as a separate issue, if consciousness isn't a Real Thing itself, but only an emergent property of an algorithm in the brain, then why is your consciousness only aware of itself and the senses of your own body, and no one else? What makes your consciousness be the consciousness of your brain and never my brain?
If you stand in a group with 10 other people and discuss something together, why aren't you conscious of all 10 then? Surely, it's just one large algorithm at that point. In philosophical terms, an emergent property should be one essential substance. There's only one green, no matter how many things are green. So human consciousness, if it were an emergent property should also be one, rather than 6 billion.
I'm sorry, but consciousness -- the most unfathomable, beautiful thing any of us has ever conceived of or experienced -- is just a tool for making copies of DNA? Something that bacteria do FAR more successfully WITHOUT consciousness? Do you actually believe that? To me that falls squarely in the category of an absurdity that would require extraordinary evidence to even consider.
The world is teaming with evidence. There are things very much like scientific methodology. On both counts, read Swedenborg, e.g., "Heaven and Hell". It's tempting for one who is ignorant to say, "we're all equally ignorant," as I also used to say, but we're not.
As you are apparently aware, NDEs do not happen every time someone's heart stops. In fact, researchers have tried inducing NDEs by stopping the heart (a la "flatliners") without success. It's a "common" phenomenon, in that there are very many examples of it, but it's not "common" in that it usually happens in any particular medical scenario.
Not true. See my reply to the parent post for a number examples of OT discussion of the afterlife.
In the OT, the english words "death" and "hell" are most often translations of the word "sheol". Especially in the Psalms and the Prophets, that is what is called in Revelation "the second death," which is not just the natural death of the body, but complete death, which is hell. It is often used as if it meant "darkness", e.g,
Psalm 13:3 "Look on me and answer, O Jehovah my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;"
Counterexamples to the claim that the OT teaches that the dead don't think and the soul dies with the body:
Job 26:5 "The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them."
Job 27:8,9 "For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life? Does God listen to his cry when distress comes upon him?"
Job 28:12,13: "But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living."
Psalm 23: "I will dwell in the house of Jehovah forever."
Psalm 49:13-15: "This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings. Like sheep they are destined for the sheol, and death will feed on them. The upright will rule over them in the morning; their forms will decay in the sheol, far from their princely mansions. But God will redeem my soul from the sheol; he will surely take me to himself."
For her house leads down to death
Proverbs 2:18-22: "For [the adulteress'] house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. Thus you will walk in the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be torn from it."
Regarding Psalm 146, the word "thoughts" there is usually translated "plans." It's the only place that word is used, but in the context, "plans" makes a whole lot more sense. NIV translation: NKJV also has "plans".
[don't put your trust in princes...] 4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Read on a little further in what you quoted from Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 18:19-23 "The soul who sins is the one who will die... But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Jehovah. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?"
Uh, I don't think any religion started that way. However, ignoring the "scientific explanation" IS, generally, how science progresses.
Yes it is. The few neurologists who try to explain it neurologically are laughable. They say things like "the commonality of people in NDEs seeing a bright light is because the occipital lobe is turning on, and that's what it the occipital lobe does, it makes you see lights."