I've always thought that the quote was rather shortsighted too.
There was a story, told at the temple I went to growing up, that told of an old man who planted a carob tree - a tree that takes a long time to reach fruition.
Someone asked him why he was doing it and he responded that it was for his children. The lesson was that we should always prepare for the future.
I think this makes a lot more sense, considering that it includes what you've said about the need to delay gratification. It forces you to ask yourself "Do I want to be working here 2 years from now?"
I've alwasy thought that the "live every day like it was your last" quote was remarkably bad advice which encouraged people not to consider the consequences of their actions and I've been amazed at the cutural staying power that it's had.
Or maybe Democrats will learn what is and is not sex?
Or more importantly, DO NOT keep semen stained mementos.
Doesn't Lewinsky wash her frigging clothes? Was she gonna have the dress framed? WTF?
As for what is and isn't sex - lots of people disagree over that kind of thing.
Historically, people have rebelled against the strictures that were imposed upon them. Nations wanted people to control their sex lives, their violence, etc. And as much benefit as that control might give, both to individuals and nations, it would also dramatically increase the power of those who already weild power. It could fundamentally change human nature, and society with it. The grandparent was right to want to proceed with caution.
Economic necessity is a powerful incentive for people to change their behavior. As people gain the ability to act on that impulse, we're going to see society changing, perhaps recklessly and with little foresight.
Kids are gonna be BEGGING to be upgraded.
Speaking as someone whose parents put him on Ritalin, and who had a few tearful arguments before they agreed he should stop taking the shit, I wonder if that's the way the decision will play out.
There's a difference in increasing the information you can access and changing yourself.
Re:Dumbest thing I've read all week...
on
The Evil in E-Mail
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· Score: 1
The "Society for Creative Anachronisms" was investigated when some spook misread it as "Society for Creative Anarchism."... But your role playing group isn't centrally organized is it?
Your role playing group would be flagged as an organization. I don't know why they'd be considered terrorist.
Re:Dumbest thing I've read all week...
on
The Evil in E-Mail
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· Score: 1
Some more from TFA:
A related trick, he says, is to examine patterns in who e-mails whom. As an example, in criminal networks it is common to find several people communicating regularly with the same person, but never with each other.
OMG! This is the pattern of emails in my company! My whole company is a giant terrorist organization! I had no idea!
Not that I agree with all this emphasis on monitoring, but think about the utility of this. This technique isn't useful in mapping out "terrorist organizations" but rather organizations in general. As another poster mentioned, this patters people's interaction with Tech Support. If the pattern maps to a known or obvious organization, fine. If it maps to an unknown organization, that's somthing to be aware of, though it's certainly not proof of criminal activity.
Then, when he finally gets a chance to show the Republic in the prequels (hereafter called the "Bad Movies") it's boring and inept and corrupt and slow-witted.
Bear in mind, it was like this in part because Palpatine was deliberatly working to make it so.
Also, is a bumbling republic so unrealistic? Why paint a falsely rosy picture of democracy? The republic was not so much the presence of good as the avoidance of evil. i.e. The Jedi had certain lines that they wouldn't cross, such as not harming someone who is unarmed, and the Sith did whatever they could to take power. If you cross moral lines in pursuit of your goal, you turn to the dark side.
The main problem with your post is that having babies is not an equivalent to "wanting to be a sex goddess".
I never claimed that it was. Having sex or wanting sex != sex god.
To put it simply, men are more likely to equate sex power with sex.
Finally, most primates do not bond in long-term relationships.
There are a lot of problems in comparing people to primates, the least of which is that there are things required for modern civilization which are not required for tribal life. If you had modern population density and primitive living conditions, people would quickly drown in their own fecal waste. The same goes for promiscuous sexual habits. Syphalis, for example, was tied to the rise of cities.
You could have a harem structure, where a few males have most of the females and the other males are left to pick at those harems or to go hang. But there are definite social and economic rewards for stable social structures which are strongly motivated to invest in the raising of children.
"The problem with nanotechnology is that we don't really understand why much of it works, and we don't have any idea how the special properties it has will affect our bodies."
The problem is, this isn't "nanotechnology" at all. It's plain old boring toxicology and should be called and considered as such.
To the (arguable) degree that it's nanotech, it isn't harmful. To the degree that it might be harmful, it's not nanotech.
So a guy has an upper limit of the aggregate upper limits of all potential females.
True, but that's still considerably higher than the upper limit for women.
It's this upper limit that I'm focusing on. The top 1% of children for men, vs. women. Think "Magic Johnson" having sex with 1000 women. How many kids might he have had from those liasons? I have no clue. Probably a few, since he didn't seem to be using protection.
I realize that there are all kinds of complex patters for the lower 99% of men and women and I agree with what you've said about classes. I also realize that harems with 600 children may not be all of the harem master, even if it's his harem. Even if he doesn't intend to share.
I was trying to point out the fact that men and women have different strategies, on the average. Sure, there's overlap. Strategies are not widely divergent. But they're not identical either. And in a culture where people are supposed to be equal and identical, somtimes that kind of comment gets a lot of negative feedback.
Moodle can have a lot of simultaneous users. The problem is specifically with quizzes which create a number of simultaneous hits to the database when submitted.
Easy php installation
on
A Decade of PHP
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· Score: 2, Informative
If anyone needs an easy installation of PHP on a windows platform, try EasyPHP. The site is all in french, but it's free and good. It automatically installs and integrates PHP, MySQL and an Apache server.
Personally, I've set up a lot of moodle sites (www.moodle.org) which is the best free LMS I've found.
Check it out if anyone is into e-learning or web based training.
(Make sure you have a fast server if you want to put a lot of students on it. The quiz modules are very useful, but they use an ungodly amout of resources if you're teaching a class of +30 students.)
Can that single guy provide for his 100s of children?
That's often the case with harems. But guys more often use more than one pattern. i.e. Sleep with as many people as you can when you're young and have few resources. Marry, enforce your paternity and provide for children when you're older.
OK, so a few sultans can father potentially dozens of children. What about all the other guys in the tribe?
What about them? Male reproductive success has higher variation than female reproductive success, which is the point I was trying to make.
How many of the women in the tribe are getting their 10 babies used up on one guy?
I don't know. I'm pointing out that the upper limit is lower for women. There are a few male outliers who are very reproductivly successful, and will dramatically increase the variation of reproductive success between men and women.
King Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, a medieval despot of Morocco, sired over 800 children by the women in his harem, and the first emperor of China, around 3000 years ago, was reputed to have sired even more through his much larger harem (Betzig, 1986). By contrast, the world record for a woman is 69 children, many of which were triplets (Daly & Wilson, 1983). Even under relatively egalitarian tribal conditions, some men can father several dozen children by several different women, whereas no woman bears more than 10 or so children (Chagnon, 1983).
Thus, a man's reproductive success generally increases with his number of sexual partners (in the absence of contraception), whereas a woman reaches her reproductive limit rather quickly as her number of sexual partners increases. This is because males can opt out of parental investment in a way that women cannot -- nature can't enforce child support laws any better than modern governments. Of course, women under ancestral conditions probably used abortion and infanticide to avoid maternal investment during difficult times (see Hausfater & Hrdy, 1984), but they could not induce another woman to bear a child for them. Maternal investment was obligatory in hominids; paternal investment was not.
Well, I'd agree that the girls that I've dated and that I tend to spend time with are not representative samples of the population, so maybe I'm biased in that way.
Which series are we discussing? Japanese manga like Gundam Wing and Ranma 1/2? Marvel comics like Spider Men and x-men?
they are depicted in a way that makes them objects of sexual interest, but are not depicted as beings with sexual behaviors.
To really make someone an object, their desires would need to be seen as entirely invalid or immaterial. They would only be relevant in terms of serving or being desired by others.
But using your standard I've seen comics where girls are interested in guys or in relationships with them, the above mentioned being just a few. And I've seen more where girls were interested in other things and those emotions were considered valid.
Slashdot Mirror
Your faith in your friends is your weakness.
I've always thought that the quote was rather shortsighted too.
There was a story, told at the temple I went to growing up, that told of an old man who planted a carob tree - a tree that takes a long time to reach fruition.
Someone asked him why he was doing it and he responded that it was for his children. The lesson was that we should always prepare for the future.
I think this makes a lot more sense, considering that it includes what you've said about the need to delay gratification. It forces you to ask yourself "Do I want to be working here 2 years from now?"
I've alwasy thought that the "live every day like it was your last" quote was remarkably bad advice which encouraged people not to consider the consequences of their actions and I've been amazed at the cutural staying power that it's had.
Probably sometime before the editors learn to proofread the submissions.
Or maybe Democrats will learn what is and is not sex? Or more importantly, DO NOT keep semen stained mementos. Doesn't Lewinsky wash her frigging clothes? Was she gonna have the dress framed? WTF? As for what is and isn't sex - lots of people disagree over that kind of thing.
Historically, people have rebelled against the strictures that were imposed upon them. Nations wanted people to control their sex lives, their violence, etc. And as much benefit as that control might give, both to individuals and nations, it would also dramatically increase the power of those who already weild power. It could fundamentally change human nature, and society with it. The grandparent was right to want to proceed with caution.
Economic necessity is a powerful incentive for people to change their behavior. As people gain the ability to act on that impulse, we're going to see society changing, perhaps recklessly and with little foresight.
Kids are gonna be BEGGING to be upgraded.
Speaking as someone whose parents put him on Ritalin, and who had a few tearful arguments before they agreed he should stop taking the shit, I wonder if that's the way the decision will play out.
There's a difference in increasing the information you can access and changing yourself.
The "Society for Creative Anachronisms" was investigated when some spook misread it as "Society for Creative Anarchism." ... But your role playing group isn't centrally organized is it?
Your role playing group would be flagged as an organization. I don't know why they'd be considered terrorist.
Some more from TFA:
A related trick, he says, is to examine patterns in who e-mails whom. As an example, in criminal networks it is common to find several people communicating regularly with the same person, but never with each other.
OMG! This is the pattern of emails in my company! My whole company is a giant terrorist organization! I had no idea!
Not that I agree with all this emphasis on monitoring, but think about the utility of this. This technique isn't useful in mapping out "terrorist organizations" but rather organizations in general. As another poster mentioned, this patters people's interaction with Tech Support.
If the pattern maps to a known or obvious organization, fine. If it maps to an unknown organization, that's somthing to be aware of, though it's certainly not proof of criminal activity.
Then, when he finally gets a chance to show the Republic in the prequels (hereafter called the "Bad Movies") it's boring and inept and corrupt and slow-witted.
Bear in mind, it was like this in part because Palpatine was deliberatly working to make it so.
Also, is a bumbling republic so unrealistic? Why paint a falsely rosy picture of democracy? The republic was not so much the presence of good as the avoidance of evil. i.e. The Jedi had certain lines that they wouldn't cross, such as not harming someone who is unarmed, and the Sith did whatever they could to take power. If you cross moral lines in pursuit of your goal, you turn to the dark side.
Shit I sound like a star wars geek, I am not
Even worse, you sound like a Starwars geek in denial.
The main problem with your post is that having babies is not an equivalent to "wanting to be a sex goddess".
I never claimed that it was. Having sex or wanting sex != sex god.
To put it simply, men are more likely to equate sex power with sex.
Finally, most primates do not bond in long-term relationships.
There are a lot of problems in comparing people to primates, the least of which is that there are things required for modern civilization which are not required for tribal life. If you had modern population density and primitive living conditions, people would quickly drown in their own fecal waste. The same goes for promiscuous sexual habits. Syphalis, for example, was tied to the rise of cities.
You could have a harem structure, where a few males have most of the females and the other males are left to pick at those harems or to go hang. But there are definite social and economic rewards for stable social structures which are strongly motivated to invest in the raising of children.
Hell, America even had a teflon (tm) president.
And he damaged the immune systems of many Central American animals.
"The problem with nanotechnology is that we don't really understand why much of it works, and we don't have any idea how the special properties it has will affect our bodies."
The problem is, this isn't "nanotechnology" at all. It's plain old boring toxicology and should be called and considered as such.
To the (arguable) degree that it's nanotech, it isn't harmful. To the degree that it might be harmful, it's not nanotech.
Where are you getting that "more common" fact? Personal observation?
I read it a while ago in a book about counseling for sexual dysfunction. Not sure where the reference is.
My personal observations seems to support it, though if a guy had no desire it would probably be less obvious to me.
Pain during intercourse for women generally results from a lack of proper foreplay. (And no, I'm not talking backrubs.)
Or inability to lubricate. Or other problems.
I've never known anyone with this problem personally, though, before you ask.
So a guy has an upper limit of the aggregate upper limits of all potential females.
True, but that's still considerably higher than the upper limit for women.
It's this upper limit that I'm focusing on. The top 1% of children for men, vs. women. Think "Magic Johnson" having sex with 1000 women. How many kids might he have had from those liasons? I have no clue. Probably a few, since he didn't seem to be using protection.
I realize that there are all kinds of complex patters for the lower 99% of men and women and I agree with what you've said about classes. I also realize that harems with 600 children may not be all of the harem master, even if it's his harem. Even if he doesn't intend to share.
I was trying to point out the fact that men and women have different strategies, on the average. Sure, there's overlap. Strategies are not widely divergent. But they're not identical either. And in a culture where people are supposed to be equal and identical, somtimes that kind of comment gets a lot of negative feedback.
Cool. I'll check it out. Thanks much!
Moodle can have a lot of simultaneous users. The problem is specifically with quizzes which create a number of simultaneous hits to the database when submitted.
If anyone needs an easy installation of PHP on a windows platform, try EasyPHP. The site is all in french, but it's free and good. It automatically installs and integrates PHP, MySQL and an Apache server.
Personally, I've set up a lot of moodle sites (www.moodle.org) which is the best free LMS I've found.
Check it out if anyone is into e-learning or web based training.
(Make sure you have a fast server if you want to put a lot of students on it. The quiz modules are very useful, but they use an ungodly amout of resources if you're teaching a class of +30 students.)
Women...may enjoy sex
I've had some female friends who were frigid.
It's more common in women than in men, as is pain during intercourse.
I get out plenty, thanks. Don't get all your sexual information from TV and the movies. They tend to glamorize things.
They were working on somthing like this a while ago.
Last I heard, it was a little buggy. I don't know if they ever rolled it out.
Can that single guy provide for his 100s of children?
That's often the case with harems.
But guys more often use more than one pattern. i.e.
Sleep with as many people as you can when you're young and have few resources. Marry, enforce your paternity and provide for children when you're older.
OK, so a few sultans can father potentially dozens of children. What about all the other guys in the tribe?
What about them?
Male reproductive success has higher variation than female reproductive success, which is the point I was trying to make.
How many of the women in the tribe are getting their 10 babies used up on one guy?
I don't know. I'm pointing out that the upper limit is lower for women. There are a few male outliers who are very reproductivly successful, and will dramatically increase the variation of reproductive success between men and women.
This is about 'reproductive success' not morality.
A person can say that torture is effective in warfare. That doesn't make it right.
King Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, a medieval despot of Morocco, sired over 800 children by the women in his harem, and the first emperor of China, around 3000 years ago, was reputed to have sired even more through his much larger harem (Betzig, 1986). By contrast, the world record for a woman is 69 children, many of which were triplets (Daly & Wilson, 1983). Even under relatively egalitarian tribal conditions, some men can father several dozen children by several different women, whereas no woman bears more than 10 or so children (Chagnon, 1983).
Thus, a man's reproductive success generally increases with his number of sexual partners (in the absence of contraception), whereas a woman reaches her reproductive limit rather quickly as her number of sexual partners increases. This is because males can opt out of parental investment in a way that women cannot -- nature can't enforce child support laws any better than modern governments. Of course, women under ancestral conditions probably used abortion and infanticide to avoid maternal investment during difficult times (see Hausfater & Hrdy, 1984), but they could not induce another woman to bear a child for them. Maternal investment was obligatory in hominids; paternal investment was not.
http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/mate_choice.htm
What do you say to people when the advise you to think big?
Well, I'd agree that the girls that I've dated and that I tend to spend time with are not representative samples of the population, so maybe I'm biased in that way.
I'm not saying that there's no advantage. But it's not as advantageous for women as it is for men.
The advantage of having 'genetically varied children' is not as valuable as having more children.
Which series are we discussing? Japanese manga like Gundam Wing and Ranma 1/2? Marvel comics like Spider Men and x-men?
they are depicted in a way that makes them objects of sexual interest, but are not depicted as beings with sexual behaviors.
To really make someone an object, their desires would need to be seen as entirely invalid or immaterial. They would only be relevant in terms of serving or being desired by others.
But using your standard I've seen comics where girls are interested in guys or in relationships with them, the above mentioned being just a few. And I've seen more where girls were interested in other things and those emotions were considered valid.