Some of his notions are either popular or gaining traction in the environmental movement (overpopulation has long been a hot topic; critique of civilization is increasingly accepted as a part of the discussion; Daniel Quinn is a pretty popular author), some are completely alien (the desire to stop all human procreation; immigration). I haven't been paying much attention, but I suspect the Fox News crowd will tread lightly seeing as this guy is as much in their court as in ours (and they'll no doubt end up with guests pointing this out). Or they'll just shout "ecoterrorist" until they're blue in the face, then go to commercial. Either way.
He makes no such thing, and it's a horrible embarrassment to the radical environmental movement to be associated with this vomit.
If you object to immigration from overpopulated countries, you should be focused on ending globalist economic policies—which come straight out of the first world—that encourage conditions of poverty and subjugation in the third world. Overpopulation is a third world problem because it's a poverty problem, first and foremost. Oppressed people have more children because having more children means having more hands around to help.
In other words, if you want to stop seeing a growing Mexican-American population, end NAFTA. Also, maybe recognize that a huge portion of the US was stolen from Mexico, and maybe letting some folks in to live a pretty meager second-class existence is a small price to pay for the benefit of sharing ownership of that stolen land.
He specifies the book in the opening paragraph: Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael". It's a shame, because this guy just discredited an already-marginal group's best (or, most palatable in the mainstream) spokesperson. I haven't read My Ishmael, but the first book in the series—Ishmael—is an excellent introduction to the critique of civilization, and particularly well suited to explaining the critique to people who think even the idea of engaging in such a critique is outlandish heresy.
Gmail is an enormous memory hog, particularly if you leave it open for a long period of time. Every browser in that scenario will show growing memory use.
What else am I supposed to think when someone claims that a "monopoly on making babies dead" wants to "sustain demand" and create a "permanent cultural shift into thinking that unborn babies are just harvestable tissue"? Maybe a little levity in response is douchebaggery, but how would you prefer I respond to that nonsense?
Because the absence of embryonic stem cell research will lead to a precipitous drop in demand for abortions, right? Any time now?
Because abortions are performed not for the various personal reasons a woman might want to abort a pregnancy[1], but because the Pro Abortion Conspiracy(TM)[2] is running a particularly effective (but somehow due to expire shortly) and deeply manipulative marketing campaign the likes of which political and corporate marketing departments everywhere should be sitting up to notice any minute now, right? Right?
So you tell me: is the purpose of the Pro Abortion Conspiracy(TM) to make profit? To cull the population? To establish a Master Race? Just want to know what sort of nonsense you're hinting at here. And just to put my own biases on the table, I'm actually against stem cell research and treatment, but I'm also against the need of folks with self-evidently irrational political squicks to invent totally outlandish motivations for their opponents when the much simpler explanation is plainly in front of them: someone can disagree with you for principled reasons that have absolutely fuck all to do with dark, secret, nefarious motives!
[1] Some of these personal reasons are perfectly respectable on their own merits, even if you don't accept the conclusion that they justify aborting a pregnancy. Other such reasons are not respectable, regardless of your opinion of abortion. I'll omit these lists for the sake of (already failing) brevity and because they should be bloody obvious.
[2] Presumably this conspiracy is secretly led by a cabal of eugenicists transported right out of the 1920s, including Margaret Sanger her damn self, amirite? Because God forbid the possibility that something might appeal in different ways to people with different motivations—even to some whose motivations are downright harmful or even malevolent—without implicating the object of appeal in the worst of those motivations. Vegetarianism is also nazism, don't let's forget!
Anthropomorphism of nature isn't necessarily taken from a premise first of blind reverence, it may also be a rhetorical device to underscore an observed extant adversarial relationship*, which needn't be and which might be overcome.
That is how the passage in question reads, and considering the source it should be obvious: the early (Marxist) Communist theorists operated from a premise first of blind reverence for *industrialism* (and indeed, capitalism), as a necessary precondition to an advanced communist society. Their theory incorporated a view of much earlier societies as "primitive communist" which they derided for their lack of wealth but otherwise stood as examples of egalitarianism.
With their actual theories in mind, the passage seems more of a self-critique or a challenge to their own assumptions about the fruits of vaster and more complete manipulation of the nonhuman world.
Your reaction is possibly from a position of ignorance of this context, but it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction nonetheless. The truth of the problem doesn't depend on anthropomorphism of nature, but simply observing the consequences of overuse of the nonhuman world. Using anthropomorphism of nature is a relatively simple lens through which to view the problem, and it swims in a sea of countless metaphors and rhetorical devices that none of us struggles to comprehend without rejecting the thoughts behind them outright. In short, it's important to not get lost in flourish.
* And it's not as if this relationship is only dreamt up by opponents of mass exploitation of the natural world. "We need everything that's out there. We don't log to a 10-inch top, or an 8-inch top, or a 6-inch top. We log to infinity. Because we need it all. It's ours. It's out there, and we need it all. Now." - Harry Merlo, Louisiana Pacific, CEO
I think, as a contrary point of view, it might be that people's perception of human nature reflects their perception of themselves or their own place in humanity.
It's not controversial to say that humans have a competitive nature (and by extension, can exhibit greed even at the needless expense of others), but it's no more controversial to say that humans have a cooperative nature (and by extension, can exhibit empathy and altruism even at the needless expense of themselves). It's probably also not controversial to say that both characteristics can coexist, even in the same conditions, and that both characteristics can be beneficial for individuals and groups alike.
The meek will not inherit the Earth, but perhaps the unyieldingly principled and ethical will. Justice doesn't demand submissiveness of those who seek it—in fact, it demands forcefulness. We can live in the world as it exists and continue to make the world we want to live in. But not if we take the attitude that the best thing you can do is just get yours.
Well, I don't know for sure how all the different versions' boards vary, but my (completely unscientific) observation has been that the versions from the original in Win 3.1 through the last version which was remotely similar, in XP, have very similar boards.
I play the 3.1 version exclusively (via WINE on OS X), and it certainly doesn't avoid requiring guesses.
So it seems that the guesswork is built in to the game.
Meaning to avoid boards that require guessing to solve? Many boards do require guessing to solve. In my experience, if I had to hazard a guess, at least a handful of the "beginner" and "intermediate" boards I've solved required a guess, and probably every single "expert" board I've solved.
I would have been just as incredulous. It seems odd that it would be true. I'd hazard a completely unsubstantiated guess that it was more intentional than the others studying it have theorized, in order to add an element of "learnability" to an otherwise sort of opaque game.
Presumably this is for "beginner", which has been solved in 1 second by numerous people. The current best known score for "intermediate" is 8 seconds, and the current best known score for "expert" is 33 seconds.
Whether a winmine game can be solved by logic alone depends entirely on the mine placement, but it's worth noting that from the original (win 3.0) version on, there has always been a finite set of mine placements used (for the standard "beginner", "intermediate" and "expert" variants).
Even where guessing which board you're playing isn't an option (and there are enough boards that memorization would be impossible for most people), most places where you have to "guess" follow a certain pattern which can be recognized. As the boards begin to feel "familiar", so too do the "guesses", as well as opportunities to guess in areas that logic would suffice (in order to improve speed).
Winmine is "learnable" in that sense, and follows a certain logic by virtue of that.
Why on Earth does HTML5 need to even specify the codec?
Because leaving it unspecified nullifies the value of a standard video tag, encourages continued fragmentation of web content, and leaves a door wide open for some vendors to force other vendors to choose between violating the law or preventing their users from accessing a wide range of Internet content.
In short, because it forces open source vendors like Mozilla to forego interoperability with the web. With no codec [which can be legally and practically implemented by every vendor] specified, the de facto standard (h.264) is unavailable to about a quarter of web users.
Suppose there were professions that depended on perception of the light spectrum exceeding that which is invisible to the "normal" subset of the population. Would those of us who only perceive the "normal" range of the light spectrum have an "ailment" that requires a "cure", and would it be "cruel" or "harsh" to withhold that "cure"?
In other words, when circumventing a person's natural genetic or physical limitations becomes the moral default, where does that reasonably end?
We have means to circumvent people's natural inaptitudes in many professions, but they're not universally good and are often harmful or otherwise regarded as immoral. For instance, steroids can be used to help a relatively poor athlete perform on par with naturally talented professionals.
More to the point, it's easy to conceive how this could irreparably alter a person's potential impact in the world for the worse. It's not hard to imagine that, had Helen Keller been "cured" of deafness and blindness as an infant, many of her beliefs and hence her impact on the world would have been quite different. I really don't think the world would have been better off if she had been an electrical engineer, and I really doubt she would have chosen that for herself.
This question is wrongly presented as a choice for those "suffering" these physical and genetic limitations, but it would be anything but. The choice would inevitably be made by parents of newborns, and by society at large in terms of expectations of parental responsibility. With that in mind, it's worth understanding that the choice's consequences aren't clearly one-sided, and that the moral implications are much broader than whether or not a person can choose to identify red and green wires.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of his notions are either popular or gaining traction in the environmental movement (overpopulation has long been a hot topic; critique of civilization is increasingly accepted as a part of the discussion; Daniel Quinn is a pretty popular author), some are completely alien (the desire to stop all human procreation; immigration). I haven't been paying much attention, but I suspect the Fox News crowd will tread lightly seeing as this guy is as much in their court as in ours (and they'll no doubt end up with guests pointing this out). Or they'll just shout "ecoterrorist" until they're blue in the face, then go to commercial. Either way.
He makes no such thing, and it's a horrible embarrassment to the radical environmental movement to be associated with this vomit.
If you object to immigration from overpopulated countries, you should be focused on ending globalist economic policies—which come straight out of the first world—that encourage conditions of poverty and subjugation in the third world. Overpopulation is a third world problem because it's a poverty problem, first and foremost. Oppressed people have more children because having more children means having more hands around to help.
In other words, if you want to stop seeing a growing Mexican-American population, end NAFTA. Also, maybe recognize that a huge portion of the US was stolen from Mexico, and maybe letting some folks in to live a pretty meager second-class existence is a small price to pay for the benefit of sharing ownership of that stolen land.
I remember when MTV still had music and they used to play TLC. Chilli was hot.
He specifies the book in the opening paragraph: Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael". It's a shame, because this guy just discredited an already-marginal group's best (or, most palatable in the mainstream) spokesperson. I haven't read My Ishmael, but the first book in the series—Ishmael—is an excellent introduction to the critique of civilization, and particularly well suited to explaining the critique to people who think even the idea of engaging in such a critique is outlandish heresy.
Feeding Christians to lions!
Now for the next debate, using "site" instead of "cite". Discus!
Even more ridiculous when you remember that he was only eating three meals a day, not 10 burgers.
Gmail is an enormous memory hog, particularly if you leave it open for a long period of time. Every browser in that scenario will show growing memory use.
What else am I supposed to think when someone claims that a "monopoly on making babies dead" wants to "sustain demand" and create a "permanent cultural shift into thinking that unborn babies are just harvestable tissue"? Maybe a little levity in response is douchebaggery, but how would you prefer I respond to that nonsense?
Because the absence of embryonic stem cell research will lead to a precipitous drop in demand for abortions, right? Any time now?
Because abortions are performed not for the various personal reasons a woman might want to abort a pregnancy[1], but because the Pro Abortion Conspiracy(TM)[2] is running a particularly effective (but somehow due to expire shortly) and deeply manipulative marketing campaign the likes of which political and corporate marketing departments everywhere should be sitting up to notice any minute now, right? Right?
So you tell me: is the purpose of the Pro Abortion Conspiracy(TM) to make profit? To cull the population? To establish a Master Race? Just want to know what sort of nonsense you're hinting at here. And just to put my own biases on the table, I'm actually against stem cell research and treatment, but I'm also against the need of folks with self-evidently irrational political squicks to invent totally outlandish motivations for their opponents when the much simpler explanation is plainly in front of them: someone can disagree with you for principled reasons that have absolutely fuck all to do with dark, secret, nefarious motives!
[1] Some of these personal reasons are perfectly respectable on their own merits, even if you don't accept the conclusion that they justify aborting a pregnancy. Other such reasons are not respectable, regardless of your opinion of abortion. I'll omit these lists for the sake of (already failing) brevity and because they should be bloody obvious.
[2] Presumably this conspiracy is secretly led by a cabal of eugenicists transported right out of the 1920s, including Margaret Sanger her damn self, amirite? Because God forbid the possibility that something might appeal in different ways to people with different motivations—even to some whose motivations are downright harmful or even malevolent—without implicating the object of appeal in the worst of those motivations. Vegetarianism is also nazism, don't let's forget!
Well, #4 certainly isn't particularly well enforced, why would you expect #3 to be?
Anthropomorphism of nature isn't necessarily taken from a premise first of blind reverence, it may also be a rhetorical device to underscore an observed extant adversarial relationship*, which needn't be and which might be overcome.
That is how the passage in question reads, and considering the source it should be obvious: the early (Marxist) Communist theorists operated from a premise first of blind reverence for *industrialism* (and indeed, capitalism), as a necessary precondition to an advanced communist society. Their theory incorporated a view of much earlier societies as "primitive communist" which they derided for their lack of wealth but otherwise stood as examples of egalitarianism.
With their actual theories in mind, the passage seems more of a self-critique or a challenge to their own assumptions about the fruits of vaster and more complete manipulation of the nonhuman world.
Your reaction is possibly from a position of ignorance of this context, but it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction nonetheless. The truth of the problem doesn't depend on anthropomorphism of nature, but simply observing the consequences of overuse of the nonhuman world. Using anthropomorphism of nature is a relatively simple lens through which to view the problem, and it swims in a sea of countless metaphors and rhetorical devices that none of us struggles to comprehend without rejecting the thoughts behind them outright. In short, it's important to not get lost in flourish.
* And it's not as if this relationship is only dreamt up by opponents of mass exploitation of the natural world. "We need everything that's out there. We don't log to a 10-inch top, or an 8-inch top, or a 6-inch top. We log to infinity. Because we need it all. It's ours. It's out there, and we need it all. Now." - Harry Merlo, Louisiana Pacific, CEO
I think, as a contrary point of view, it might be that people's perception of human nature reflects their perception of themselves or their own place in humanity.
It's not controversial to say that humans have a competitive nature (and by extension, can exhibit greed even at the needless expense of others), but it's no more controversial to say that humans have a cooperative nature (and by extension, can exhibit empathy and altruism even at the needless expense of themselves). It's probably also not controversial to say that both characteristics can coexist, even in the same conditions, and that both characteristics can be beneficial for individuals and groups alike.
The meek will not inherit the Earth, but perhaps the unyieldingly principled and ethical will. Justice doesn't demand submissiveness of those who seek it—in fact, it demands forcefulness. We can live in the world as it exists and continue to make the world we want to live in. But not if we take the attitude that the best thing you can do is just get yours.
Well, I don't know for sure how all the different versions' boards vary, but my (completely unscientific) observation has been that the versions from the original in Win 3.1 through the last version which was remotely similar, in XP, have very similar boards.
I play the 3.1 version exclusively (via WINE on OS X), and it certainly doesn't avoid requiring guesses.
So it seems that the guesswork is built in to the game.
Meaning to avoid boards that require guessing to solve? Many boards do require guessing to solve. In my experience, if I had to hazard a guess, at least a handful of the "beginner" and "intermediate" boards I've solved required a guess, and probably every single "expert" board I've solved.
Unless I'm misunderstanding.
I would have been just as incredulous. It seems odd that it would be true. I'd hazard a completely unsubstantiated guess that it was more intentional than the others studying it have theorized, in order to add an element of "learnability" to an otherwise sort of opaque game.
http://www.minesweeper.info/articles/Shifts.html
http://www.minesweeper.info/articles/BoardCycleBug.pdf
It can, but if it is the game will move it to the closest non-mine position to the top left corner (moving away horizontally).
Presumably this is for "beginner", which has been solved in 1 second by numerous people. The current best known score for "intermediate" is 8 seconds, and the current best known score for "expert" is 33 seconds.
Whether a winmine game can be solved by logic alone depends entirely on the mine placement, but it's worth noting that from the original (win 3.0) version on, there has always been a finite set of mine placements used (for the standard "beginner", "intermediate" and "expert" variants).
Even where guessing which board you're playing isn't an option (and there are enough boards that memorization would be impossible for most people), most places where you have to "guess" follow a certain pattern which can be recognized. As the boards begin to feel "familiar", so too do the "guesses", as well as opportunities to guess in areas that logic would suffice (in order to improve speed).
Winmine is "learnable" in that sense, and follows a certain logic by virtue of that.
How do you propose open source vendors like Mozilla address the fact that they cannot legally implement the apparent standard?
Because leaving it unspecified nullifies the value of a standard video tag, encourages continued fragmentation of web content, and leaves a door wide open for some vendors to force other vendors to choose between violating the law or preventing their users from accessing a wide range of Internet content.
In short, because it forces open source vendors like Mozilla to forego interoperability with the web. With no codec [which can be legally and practically implemented by every vendor] specified, the de facto standard (h.264) is unavailable to about a quarter of web users.
Suppose there were professions that depended on perception of the light spectrum exceeding that which is invisible to the "normal" subset of the population. Would those of us who only perceive the "normal" range of the light spectrum have an "ailment" that requires a "cure", and would it be "cruel" or "harsh" to withhold that "cure"?
In other words, when circumventing a person's natural genetic or physical limitations becomes the moral default, where does that reasonably end?
We have means to circumvent people's natural inaptitudes in many professions, but they're not universally good and are often harmful or otherwise regarded as immoral. For instance, steroids can be used to help a relatively poor athlete perform on par with naturally talented professionals.
More to the point, it's easy to conceive how this could irreparably alter a person's potential impact in the world for the worse. It's not hard to imagine that, had Helen Keller been "cured" of deafness and blindness as an infant, many of her beliefs and hence her impact on the world would have been quite different. I really don't think the world would have been better off if she had been an electrical engineer, and I really doubt she would have chosen that for herself.
This question is wrongly presented as a choice for those "suffering" these physical and genetic limitations, but it would be anything but. The choice would inevitably be made by parents of newborns, and by society at large in terms of expectations of parental responsibility. With that in mind, it's worth understanding that the choice's consequences aren't clearly one-sided, and that the moral implications are much broader than whether or not a person can choose to identify red and green wires.
It's not normal where I live.
Which three?