I'd mod that up if I had the points. Once you've done Mexico there is really no reason to go back. I live in Minnesota so Canada is more familiar to me than Miami. 'course... I don't get to Miami much either... I used to go to Europe like once a year but that was mainly for scoping out all the babes. I have a girlfriend now and I think she would frown on that kind of vacation.
Have you been to Europe? It is not paved over. Most Europeans live in large cities with public transportation, agreggation of resources, etc. This is more environmentally friendly than living in suburbs like most Americans.
I agree with you on the politics point.
At some point though you do have to ignore the side of an argument you find to be patently false. For example, I no longer listen to any argument that is based on religious beliefs. Life is too short. Maybe that razor should not be applied to what is essentially a scientific debate but: 1) Its really hard to do hard science with our very limited information on the global environment. 2) There is a LOT of economic impetus to destroy the environment. To get to a balanced state will require decision making by people without a financial interest. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common s Debating the issue just makes it that much harder to get political support to help the environment.
So it sounds like you moved around a little bit and have found a home at Big Blue since you hinted that you are comfortable and yet, still interested in what you are doing. It seems quite rare for people to quit IBM to work somewhere else. A friend of mine quit to move into a cabin in the woods but, otherwise, it seems quite rare. The "company man" ethos still seems to exist. I might have quit if my boss hadn't allowed me to take a 6 month leave of abscence to go sailing a couple years ago.
IBM is the only real job I've had since college (8 years ago) so sometimes I wonder what is on the other side of the fence. But, I would change jobs within IBM before quitting since I think it is a great company to work for. I'd hate to move to an Enron and I would imagine that changing jobs/cities is kinda stressful. There are other ways to change your scenery and make things more interesting;-)
I'm an atheist. My girlfriend wants to have a religious wedding (She's catholic) in addition to the civil. I keep telling her that, for me, it will be a day of telling serious lies in front of lots of people. Her counter-argument is "It will be over in minutes. You can do that for me." ughhhhh thanks for listening...
Giving aid is NOT only a good thing. It can make the people receiving it reliant on the aid - preventing them from developing their own food-creation infrastructure.
You nailed it dude. Their culture is incompatible with the environment they find themselves in (deadly STDs, and a global marketplace that embraces scientific methodology). They need to adapt or they will continue to cling to life at the bottom.
I would add: What percentage of Gates' yearly income does he devote to charitable causes? In the US at least, it is the poor that give the highest percentage of their income to charitable causes: http://www.newtithing.org/content/NTG_research_FIN AL.pdf
"If affluent young and middleaged [tax] filers had donated as high a proportion of their investment asset wealth to charity in 2003 as did their less affluent peers, total individual charitable donations that year would have been over $25 billion higher, an increase of at least 17%."
I wish he would focus on funding the underlying causes of problems instead of the results of those problems. Instead of extending someone's wretched existance a short while longer, why not improve the infrastructure that these people live in? That would be a longer-term benefit.
Someone should really create a set of instructions or an option to browse/. with all libertarians at -5. They are conversational quicksand and no good will come of engaging one in rational thought.
I've been wondering about the speed of evolution. Imagine a quick change in the environment of the ground squirel, for example, from carriages with skinny wheels moving at 10 MPH to cars with fat tires moving at 30 MPH down your favorite nut-hunting grounds. The squirrels that posses the cognitive capacity to stop, look and listen for vehicles will out-breed those that do not posses that capacity. Within a very few generations, the local squirrel population will be quite different with respect to its cognitive abilities. I would think that the speed of evolution is entirely dependant on the speed of change of local selection criteria.
Humans really are an entirely different critter since we posses the ability to mold our environment. This is the danger that Aldus Huxley alluded to in Brave New World. We have the ability to simulate sex thereby nullifying one of the forces that cause humans to reproduce.
Given Moore's Law, and given increasing performance gains in computer architecture and new work on algorithms, how likely is it that one of these days one of these machines (or one of their exponentially more powerful progeny) bootstrap themselves into a "Singularity", an AI which at the point of self-awareness becomes almost instantaneously god-like?
I'm surprised that playing StarCraft is not required by MBA programs. A lot of what I know about making money I learned from that game such as opportunity costs and the most effective use of resources and capitol. In the start of the game/life, it's good to focus on activities that will allow you to collect resources at a faster pace than your competitors (Build miners/get an education). Then, once you have a steady stream of capitol coming in, you can spend it on tools to establish a dominant position, For example, build an extra base near resource-rich areas/buy a house instead of paying a landlord. Then take it to the next step and eliminate your competitors through shrewed use of your weapons.
What they do is release sterile males into the population. I guess the female gets her freak-on with a sterile male and that disrupts the life cycle of the little blood suckers.
Whaaaaa? You mean the negotiations that occur after one country kicks the other's ass through war?? You know, the israelies and palestinians have done lots of negotiating... Where's the peace?
The world needs to take a hands off approach to the gaza conflict and allow the militarily superior country to fulfill it's destiny.
If the islamic world wants the west to starting bowing towards mecca, fine, fix your culture so that you are able to produce some of the most sophisticated military equipment that exists and come impose your laws on us. Otherwise, you get the table-scraps of civilization. That is human evolution in action.
da telly is reportin dat a leadin skientist in area of developmental psychopathology, professa simon baron-cohen, is indicatin dat there is wicked chance dat there is a scientific basis to da observed phenomenon dat childrun wiv ighly analytical parents is more likely to be autistic.
My guess is that this is your underlying point, but, you didn't mention it: Very very very few people apply scientific methodology when they make descisions about who to vote for.
As an aside, I have noted this problem in my own brain while reading/.. I'll read one well-written post and agree with it and then read another well-written post and agreed with it too even though it is contradictory. It is very hard to come to an objective conclusion about an issue when there are a few folks making seemingly valid points in a well-written submission.
The "dept" under which this article was submitted was "big-surprise-here". I think the simple, "obvious" things like lack of objectivity in politics are most frequently the most useful to keep in mind but, unfortunately most easily forgotten. Human minds are not generally well adapted to scientific thinking. We're animals after all.
WORD!
Mom tells me my IQ tested quite high in the 3rd grade. I certainly dont feel connected to other people - they are more like something to help me not feel lonely. But, unlike you, I suck at many things. For the last 6 years I have been thinking a lot about motivation and lack thereof. It doesn't matter how smart you are - you are not going to learn algebra magically. You still have to have the motivation neccessary to read the book or pay attention in class or whatever. This is something I dont have.
Making money and keeping myself comfortable and entertained has been quite easy for me so, what is my motivation to memorize boring facts? Video games are much easier to do. Reading http://www.edge.org/ won't make me a better person (maybe it's turned me into more of a racist!!). This train of thought is quickly meandering into la la land because my brain is too lazy to stay focused on my original point.
anyway, see ya!
Thank you for the heavy-lifting responding to this dada21 jackass. BTW - does anyone know if there is some kind of user filter akin to a kill file from usenet days? I am getting tired of dada21 spamming/. with his anarchist BS... well, lots of different types of BS actually.
Your central point seems to be freedom = good. But you bring up China. China is an environmental disaster because Chinese companies have the freedom to pollute their environment. It's economically beneficial to pollute the environment. If company A has to buy expensive pollution controls and company B does not, company B has a competitive advantage. There are many good reasons to have a centralized government besides the environment. But, I dont want to waste my breath on a knee-jerk anarchist.
You give humans too much credit. We are animals too and are easily influenced by many things. Even "free-thinking", salad-eating liberals are just bowing to the social pressure and advertising that is aimed at them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd mod that up if I had the points.
Once you've done Mexico there is really no reason to go back. I live in Minnesota so Canada is more familiar to me than Miami.
'course... I don't get to Miami much either...
I used to go to Europe like once a year but that was mainly for scoping out all the babes. I have a girlfriend now and I think she would frown on that kind of vacation.
and I'm a bus driver!!
Have you been to Europe? It is not paved over. Most Europeans live in large cities with public transportation, agreggation of resources, etc. This is more environmentally friendly than living in suburbs like most Americans.
I agree with you on the politics point.
At some point though you do have to ignore the side of an argument you find to be patently false. For example, I no longer listen to any argument that is based on religious beliefs. Life is too short.
Maybe that razor should not be applied to what is essentially a scientific debate but:
1) Its really hard to do hard science with our very limited information on the global environment.
2) There is a LOT of economic impetus to destroy the environment. To get to a balanced state will require decision making by people without a financial interest. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commo
Debating the issue just makes it that much harder to get political support to help the environment.
TNG (where the Borg were conceived of) ROCKED. They invented/explored so many interesting concepts in that show.
Voyager just plain sucked.
Better to keep your fond memories of the TNG-Borg than pollute them with the hackery of Voyager.
So it sounds like you moved around a little bit and have found a home at Big Blue since you hinted that you are comfortable and yet, still interested in what you are doing. It seems quite rare for people to quit IBM to work somewhere else. A friend of mine quit to move into a cabin in the woods but, otherwise, it seems quite rare. The "company man" ethos still seems to exist. I might have quit if my boss hadn't allowed me to take a 6 month leave of abscence to go sailing a couple years ago.
IBM is the only real job I've had since college (8 years ago) so sometimes I wonder what is on the other side of the fence. But, I would change jobs within IBM before quitting since I think it is a great company to work for. I'd hate to move to an Enron and I would imagine that changing jobs/cities is kinda stressful. There are other ways to change your scenery and make things more interesting
I'm an atheist. My girlfriend wants to have a religious wedding (She's catholic) in addition to the civil. I keep telling her that, for me, it will be a day of telling serious lies in front of lots of people. Her counter-argument is "It will be over in minutes. You can do that for me."
ughhhhh thanks for listening...
Giving aid is NOT only a good thing. It can make the people receiving it reliant on the aid - preventing them from developing their own food-creation infrastructure.
You nailed it dude. Their culture is incompatible with the environment they find themselves in (deadly STDs, and a global marketplace that embraces scientific methodology). They need to adapt or they will continue to cling to life at the bottom.
I would add: What percentage of Gates' yearly income does he devote to charitable causes? In the US at least, it is the poor that give the highest percentage of their income to charitable causes:
http://www.newtithing.org/content/NTG_research_FI
"If affluent young and middleaged [tax] filers had donated as high
a proportion of their investment asset wealth to charity in 2003 as did their less affluent peers, total individual charitable donations that year would have been over $25 billion higher, an increase of at least 17%."
I wish he would focus on funding the underlying causes of problems instead of the results of those problems. Instead of extending someone's wretched existance a short while longer, why not improve the infrastructure that these people live in? That would be a longer-term benefit.
Someone should really create a set of instructions or an option to browse
I've been wondering about the speed of evolution.
Imagine a quick change in the environment of the ground squirel, for example, from carriages with skinny wheels moving at 10 MPH to cars with fat tires moving at 30 MPH down your favorite nut-hunting grounds.
The squirrels that posses the cognitive capacity to stop, look and listen for vehicles will out-breed those that do not posses that capacity.
Within a very few generations, the local squirrel population will be quite different with respect to its cognitive abilities.
I would think that the speed of evolution is entirely dependant on the speed of change of local selection criteria.
Humans really are an entirely different critter since we posses the ability to mold our environment. This is the danger that Aldus Huxley alluded to in Brave New World. We have the ability to simulate sex thereby nullifying one of the forces that cause humans to reproduce.
I'm starting to ramble...
Given Moore's Law, and given increasing performance gains in computer architecture and new work on algorithms, how likely is it that one of these days one of these machines (or one of their exponentially more powerful progeny) bootstrap themselves into a "Singularity", an AI which at the point of self-awareness becomes almost instantaneously god-like?
No.
I'm surprised that playing StarCraft is not required by MBA programs. A lot of what I know about making money I learned from that game such as opportunity costs and the most effective use of resources and capitol. In the start of the game/life, it's good to focus on activities that will allow you to collect resources at a faster pace than your competitors (Build miners/get an education). Then, once you have a steady stream of capitol coming in, you can spend it on tools to establish a dominant position, For example, build an extra base near resource-rich areas/buy a house instead of paying a landlord. Then take it to the next step and eliminate your competitors through shrewed use of your weapons.
K2 is more like 8km high.
I'm no biology expert but I can tell you about a problem we have in the great lakes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprey
What they do is release sterile males into the population. I guess the female gets her freak-on with a sterile male and that disrupts the life cycle of the little blood suckers.
Peace ONLY comes through negotiation.
Whaaaaa? You mean the negotiations that occur after one country kicks the other's ass through war?? You know, the israelies and palestinians have done lots of negotiating... Where's the peace?
The world needs to take a hands off approach to the gaza conflict and allow the militarily superior country to fulfill it's destiny.
If the islamic world wants the west to starting bowing towards mecca, fine, fix your culture so that you are able to produce some of the most sophisticated military equipment that exists and come impose your laws on us. Otherwise, you get the table-scraps of civilization. That is human evolution in action.
Oops. So there are more pages, eh?
It did seem like the article ended kind of abruptly!
Thanks
Let's clean that up a bit more:
da telly is reportin dat a leadin skientist in area of developmental psychopathology, professa simon baron-cohen, is indicatin dat there is wicked chance dat there is a scientific basis to da observed phenomenon dat childrun wiv ighly analytical parents is more likely to be autistic.
Thanks for the link but, it mentions nothing about Rochester, MN. I would be interested if there were such an article.
My guess is that this is your underlying point, but, you didn't mention it:
Very very very few people apply scientific methodology when they make descisions about who to vote for.
As an aside, I have noted this problem in my own brain while reading
The "dept" under which this article was submitted was "big-surprise-here". I think the simple, "obvious" things like lack of objectivity in politics are most frequently the most useful to keep in mind but, unfortunately most easily forgotten. Human minds are not generally well adapted to scientific thinking. We're animals after all.
WORD! Mom tells me my IQ tested quite high in the 3rd grade. I certainly dont feel connected to other people - they are more like something to help me not feel lonely. But, unlike you, I suck at many things. For the last 6 years I have been thinking a lot about motivation and lack thereof. It doesn't matter how smart you are - you are not going to learn algebra magically. You still have to have the motivation neccessary to read the book or pay attention in class or whatever. This is something I dont have. Making money and keeping myself comfortable and entertained has been quite easy for me so, what is my motivation to memorize boring facts? Video games are much easier to do. Reading http://www.edge.org/ won't make me a better person (maybe it's turned me into more of a racist!!). This train of thought is quickly meandering into la la land because my brain is too lazy to stay focused on my original point. anyway, see ya!
Thanks!
Thank you for the heavy-lifting responding to this dada21 jackass.
BTW - does anyone know if there is some kind of user filter akin to a kill file from usenet days? I am getting tired of dada21 spamming
Your central point seems to be freedom = good.
But you bring up China. China is an environmental disaster because Chinese companies have the freedom to pollute their environment. It's economically beneficial to pollute the environment. If company A has to buy expensive pollution controls and company B does not, company B has a competitive advantage.
There are many good reasons to have a centralized government besides the environment. But, I dont want to waste my breath on a knee-jerk anarchist.
You give humans too much credit. We are animals too and are easily influenced by many things. Even "free-thinking", salad-eating liberals are just bowing to the social pressure and advertising that is aimed at them.