Multitasking, whoo-hoo. - 14 October 2007
Oct. 15th, 2007 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptHad Mac and Cheese tonight, with actual cheddar in place of the other stuff I normally use. Very good stuff. Will make an excellent lunch tomorrow. Spent a lot of today sort of lazing about, but productively lazing about, or something like that. Compiling, deciding, buying, cooking, that sort of thing. Tomorrow the tooth doctor gets some uninterrupted alone time with me and my molars, before work. That should be interesting.
Discover Magazine takes a look inside the most important future military technologies, focusing on the areas of hypersonics, so that missiles, and perhaps eventually planes, will go really fast, laser and other directed energy weaponry, better information awareness to coordinate logistics, identify enemies a long ways off, and make the battlefield look like a bunch of yellow (or was that pink?) arrows moving from one side to another, and ways of winning minds and pouring all that additional information into a soldier’s brains. More than just propaganda, this moves more toward “Stand By For Mind Control” (although it’s really about information flow and control). American Samidzat takes issue with this last point, considering it waging a war not only against an "enemy", but against the American populace, to mold them into the kind of people that will continue electing and praising governments that rape them and try to promulgate rules like needing to get clearance to fly three days before flying, with any information captured, submitted, or requested going into the government’s warehouse, for them to use as they please.
Speaking of those kinds of governments, claims are now being made that the NSA appraoched and got telecommunications companies to spy on American telephone records seven months before the 11 September attacks. And then, a useful catalyst came along allowing them to bring their already in-place equipment out into the open, at the request of the government. If you believed that the 11 September attacks were not hijackers, but government operatives, this sort of revelation might add some weight to that idea.
Having said something she probably regrets, Maureen Dowd makes way for Stephen Colbert in her Op-Ed column, after Colbert took her up on a dare to write an Op-Ed. While Colbert hasn’t declared yet (still most likely the Stewart/Colbert ticket), he’s been hinting that he might. If he does, and files the paperwork for it, I wonder whether people would elect him.
If one were wondering whether one’s favorite celebrity is a blogger type, here's a list of 66 that do maintatin blogs. Of course, they could always have a MySpace page, too. (Actually, some of those links are to MySpace.) If, instead, you’re an interview kind of person, Rolling Stone, in 1974, got Bowie and Burroughs together and got them to talk. Very fun to see.
Forty-three years after last being seen, a farmer has taken photographs of a wild South China tiger. Feared extinct, it appears that there are some wild populations left. Not that this gets them anywhere near out of endangered. In other animal kingdom stunts, pregnant moose move toward human habitats to help them fend off predators. By getting close to human roads and camps, they can avoid the bears that would normally attack them.
Austin Cline puts out possible reasoning why conservatives fight even small things like an expansion of a government health-care program as “socialized medicine”: "socialized medicine" and government assistance frees people from the control of the elite, the religious, and brings people up toward a more even footing. Rather than believing social ills stem from individuals, or believing that some people really are superior, government assistance falls on the just and the unjust equally. If not going as far as total redistribution, at the very least ensuring equal education for everyone, rich or poor should be part of what we want to do. Income gaps produce education gaps - if the school’s tax base has trouble affording books for the children, then the schools and libraries aren’t going to be able to do much better. Others take the idea of equal footing for all out to a logical conclusion, saying if government were to ensure that basic needs were met for everyone, many reasons for strife would disappear. Not only that, but if drudge work were completed by robots or automatons, or in fact, anyone could design a robot that did their work for them, then everyone could work at a job they enjoyed, rather than one they had to keep to pay the bills. Needs taken care of, then everyone is free to choose whatever profession they like, and occasionally to take time off and be indolent here and there. Or change professions as one’s interests change. Mortgaging oneself to a job/professional category is a decision with the same sort of impact as mortgaging one’s house. It locks you in for a long time. And, much like the house mortgage, we expect you to make the decision while you’re young and haven’t fully figured out what it is you really want to do in life. And we’ll penalize you horribly if you later find out this isn’t what you wanted and you want to change.
Archonoclast has a wonderful insight about philosophy and religion - there is usually a base state, and an end state, but very little on the methods by which one traverses from start to finish. And thus, in the intervening states, an institution, like the Catholic Church, or a Protestant worship house or the temples, appears, and procedures and rituals flow from those institutions, even the kind that say to just sit. And that sort of gets me thinking in two directions. The first is “Would a religious or philosophical leader deliberately leave out parts of their system, expecting adherents and disciples to find them and use them as bridges, or because he wanted flexibility in interpretation at that point, so that the philosophy didn’t become too rigid or backwards-looking?” My guess would be “Probably not.” There was likely a specific meaning imparted in the words said, but an incomplete understanding, transcription, recording, or transmission all could have introduced enough noise that the meaning was lost. And with that part lost, something needs to be constructed to replace it. Would that void a philosophy? Probably not, unless it was one of the major pillars that was lost to time, and then the philosophy itself would probably crumble or be seen as nonpracticable. From there, the second question arises, and that is “Are all of our philosophical and religious transmissions actually complete, and thus require no addition, no subtraction, only the correct interpretation?” If all you had was The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, wouldn’t that be enough to deduce a philosophy of living and interacting from? Just taking Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad could feasibly produce an entire philosophy. The things that come after it, chronologically, like “And Mohammed is His Prophet” or “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole of the Law rests would also work for making a complete thing when paired with the Shema. Given a base point and an end point, finding the way between the two is often considered an exercise in wisdom, with rewards awaiting those who find a wise path and punishment awaiting those who find a foolish path. Or the obtaining or liberating of karma. If we went back to the real fundamentals of all of our philosophies, discarded the rest and started again, what would happen? Would we learn from past mistakes and generate better intermediate institutions? Would we find those institutions the cause for problems and eliminate them entirely? I don’t know. Which sort of leads to the final question - if there’s no defined path for the novice to walk that leads to the promised reward, are all paths that start at the beginning and end at the end, regardless of where they meander through, merge, cross, or run parallel with other paths, equally valued, equally important, equally valid? Were I to have a hypothetical question or three for an intelligent designer, or Universal AC, I might ask that as one of them. (Another being ”Why?“ and hoping for a response other than ”Why not?“ Although, if the answer truly is ”Why not?“, then even from that, I suspect much of the workings of the cosmos and time will become clear.)
I do believe the winner tonight of the coveted Last Spot award is Regrets Only, a column that apologizes for just about everything. Of course, the column itself won’t make much sense without the footnotes, a.k.a. the ”Cheat sheet“ for this particular column.
Thus, because the dentist is going to scrub my teeth, I’m brushing mine and going to bed.
Discover Magazine takes a look inside the most important future military technologies, focusing on the areas of hypersonics, so that missiles, and perhaps eventually planes, will go really fast, laser and other directed energy weaponry, better information awareness to coordinate logistics, identify enemies a long ways off, and make the battlefield look like a bunch of yellow (or was that pink?) arrows moving from one side to another, and ways of winning minds and pouring all that additional information into a soldier’s brains. More than just propaganda, this moves more toward “Stand By For Mind Control” (although it’s really about information flow and control). American Samidzat takes issue with this last point, considering it waging a war not only against an "enemy", but against the American populace, to mold them into the kind of people that will continue electing and praising governments that rape them and try to promulgate rules like needing to get clearance to fly three days before flying, with any information captured, submitted, or requested going into the government’s warehouse, for them to use as they please.
Speaking of those kinds of governments, claims are now being made that the NSA appraoched and got telecommunications companies to spy on American telephone records seven months before the 11 September attacks. And then, a useful catalyst came along allowing them to bring their already in-place equipment out into the open, at the request of the government. If you believed that the 11 September attacks were not hijackers, but government operatives, this sort of revelation might add some weight to that idea.
Having said something she probably regrets, Maureen Dowd makes way for Stephen Colbert in her Op-Ed column, after Colbert took her up on a dare to write an Op-Ed. While Colbert hasn’t declared yet (still most likely the Stewart/Colbert ticket), he’s been hinting that he might. If he does, and files the paperwork for it, I wonder whether people would elect him.
If one were wondering whether one’s favorite celebrity is a blogger type, here's a list of 66 that do maintatin blogs. Of course, they could always have a MySpace page, too. (Actually, some of those links are to MySpace.) If, instead, you’re an interview kind of person, Rolling Stone, in 1974, got Bowie and Burroughs together and got them to talk. Very fun to see.
Forty-three years after last being seen, a farmer has taken photographs of a wild South China tiger. Feared extinct, it appears that there are some wild populations left. Not that this gets them anywhere near out of endangered. In other animal kingdom stunts, pregnant moose move toward human habitats to help them fend off predators. By getting close to human roads and camps, they can avoid the bears that would normally attack them.
Austin Cline puts out possible reasoning why conservatives fight even small things like an expansion of a government health-care program as “socialized medicine”: "socialized medicine" and government assistance frees people from the control of the elite, the religious, and brings people up toward a more even footing. Rather than believing social ills stem from individuals, or believing that some people really are superior, government assistance falls on the just and the unjust equally. If not going as far as total redistribution, at the very least ensuring equal education for everyone, rich or poor should be part of what we want to do. Income gaps produce education gaps - if the school’s tax base has trouble affording books for the children, then the schools and libraries aren’t going to be able to do much better. Others take the idea of equal footing for all out to a logical conclusion, saying if government were to ensure that basic needs were met for everyone, many reasons for strife would disappear. Not only that, but if drudge work were completed by robots or automatons, or in fact, anyone could design a robot that did their work for them, then everyone could work at a job they enjoyed, rather than one they had to keep to pay the bills. Needs taken care of, then everyone is free to choose whatever profession they like, and occasionally to take time off and be indolent here and there. Or change professions as one’s interests change. Mortgaging oneself to a job/professional category is a decision with the same sort of impact as mortgaging one’s house. It locks you in for a long time. And, much like the house mortgage, we expect you to make the decision while you’re young and haven’t fully figured out what it is you really want to do in life. And we’ll penalize you horribly if you later find out this isn’t what you wanted and you want to change.
Archonoclast has a wonderful insight about philosophy and religion - there is usually a base state, and an end state, but very little on the methods by which one traverses from start to finish. And thus, in the intervening states, an institution, like the Catholic Church, or a Protestant worship house or the temples, appears, and procedures and rituals flow from those institutions, even the kind that say to just sit. And that sort of gets me thinking in two directions. The first is “Would a religious or philosophical leader deliberately leave out parts of their system, expecting adherents and disciples to find them and use them as bridges, or because he wanted flexibility in interpretation at that point, so that the philosophy didn’t become too rigid or backwards-looking?” My guess would be “Probably not.” There was likely a specific meaning imparted in the words said, but an incomplete understanding, transcription, recording, or transmission all could have introduced enough noise that the meaning was lost. And with that part lost, something needs to be constructed to replace it. Would that void a philosophy? Probably not, unless it was one of the major pillars that was lost to time, and then the philosophy itself would probably crumble or be seen as nonpracticable. From there, the second question arises, and that is “Are all of our philosophical and religious transmissions actually complete, and thus require no addition, no subtraction, only the correct interpretation?” If all you had was The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, wouldn’t that be enough to deduce a philosophy of living and interacting from? Just taking Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad could feasibly produce an entire philosophy. The things that come after it, chronologically, like “And Mohammed is His Prophet” or “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole of the Law rests would also work for making a complete thing when paired with the Shema. Given a base point and an end point, finding the way between the two is often considered an exercise in wisdom, with rewards awaiting those who find a wise path and punishment awaiting those who find a foolish path. Or the obtaining or liberating of karma. If we went back to the real fundamentals of all of our philosophies, discarded the rest and started again, what would happen? Would we learn from past mistakes and generate better intermediate institutions? Would we find those institutions the cause for problems and eliminate them entirely? I don’t know. Which sort of leads to the final question - if there’s no defined path for the novice to walk that leads to the promised reward, are all paths that start at the beginning and end at the end, regardless of where they meander through, merge, cross, or run parallel with other paths, equally valued, equally important, equally valid? Were I to have a hypothetical question or three for an intelligent designer, or Universal AC, I might ask that as one of them. (Another being ”Why?“ and hoping for a response other than ”Why not?“ Although, if the answer truly is ”Why not?“, then even from that, I suspect much of the workings of the cosmos and time will become clear.)
I do believe the winner tonight of the coveted Last Spot award is Regrets Only, a column that apologizes for just about everything. Of course, the column itself won’t make much sense without the footnotes, a.k.a. the ”Cheat sheet“ for this particular column.
Thus, because the dentist is going to scrub my teeth, I’m brushing mine and going to bed.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 05:48 pm (UTC)I still don't understand why socialized medicine is such a bad idea. I don't think I ever will. It even ties into education - healthier people lead to actually attending classes, and less teachers needing to be out for being sick, so less days of having substitutes babysit classes, too.
I think in terms of the whole education problems, they also need to consider the rising costs of college. Those kids who live in the Bronx with no gym? yeah, show me how many of those kids will be able to afford even attending the local SUNY campus? Oh, sure, there are financial aid packages to help them....sure. They can go into debt for the next 30 years. But if they don't have a good primary and secondary education, they won't even have the scores to get into college! Plus, even applying costs money -you have to take the SATs and pay application fees for schools. I'm not saying we shouldn't think about funding primary school, but I don't think it should stop there.
but then again, I get labeled as a socialist and I'm "wrong".
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 07:26 pm (UTC)It's the same mentality with school funding - if you live in a poor area, it's your fault you're poor and your neighbors' fault that they're poor, and why should we have to subsidize any part of your childrens' education - you chose to be poor and stupid by not working hard enough. If you want to go to college, then you'll have to mortage yourself to the university and then pay it back, assuming you find work where you can pay it back.
We need more grants and scholarships and need-based aid that aren't loans. But if we just gave the money away, then the lazy and the stupid and the poor by choice could get it, and that would be rewarding their sinful, lazy, unAmerican lives.
That's the position of those kinds of people, probably exaggerated a little, but not a whole lot. They believe that you just have to work hard enough (even if it does mean 100-hour work weeks) and you can survive and succeed. Any faults in your life are because you aren't working hard enough. On the other side, all us "socialists" believe that enjoyable work is more productive than merely hard work, and that people who are assured that they will be able to meet all their basic needs will be happier, healthier, and produce higher-quality material. Even better, with all those things, they can take time to live their lives as well as enjoy their work. With extreme mechanization to take care of so many things, then everyone can work a 20-hour week (or less) and the machinery of the government, the production of goods and supplies, and maybe even some services will still run smoothly as if there were hundreds of peon people-workers at them. You could craft for your living and not have to worry about where the money's going to come from to pay all the necessary expenses.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 07:41 pm (UTC)Ah, if only. If only someone was able to do what they WANT to do, instead of what they HAVE to do. Someone who wants to make their living off of handcrafting items still has to potentially take a job they don't want in order to at least have health insurance, and perhaps be able to pay back that expensive college bill. Doing a job they don't like 20-40 hours/week leads to less time for their handcraft work, and since that's what makes them happy, it leads to being sad and/or depressed. Depressed people are more likely to call off work (after all, if it's work that's making them sad), and of course, now they potentially need to see someone for their depression, and maybe even go on medication if it's REALLY bad, and so they have to keep the job that's causing the depression just to be able to treat their depression. It's a never-ending loop.
If we had socialized health care, more people would be able to do what they love, and people would be happier in general. Moreso if they can figure out a way to wipe out collegiate debt for people and allow anyone who's got the smarts to go to college. Or at least, let them go to public colleges like PSU and U-M. Let private colleges remain privately fee'd -- people who want to go to them will pay the fees regardless, just like they do for private/parochial secondary schooling. But when Public/State colleges are becoming just as expensive as the private schools, there really IS a problem.
There are many countries out there that have universal health care, and they're all doing fine. There are even countries out there who pay for two years of schooling outside of high school (Equivalent to Associates Degree) for everyone who wants it. I don't see why the US can't do the same.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 08:06 pm (UTC)Same for college for all, or at least a way to reduce debts - it encourages the lazy and the indolent to go to college so that they can spend two, four, more years sucking on the public teat without becoming Productive Members Of Society. If someone's going to stare down $50,000 in loans, they might think twice about deciding on whether to go to college to avoid work or whether to go to get professional education. Problem being that those who do go for professional education often end up in jobs that don't pay enough for the schooling to be paid back any time soon, if at all.
The problem with needing college just to get by could be fixed if we would pour enough money, teachers, and skill into our current government-mandated system so that everyone leaving has sufficient ability to find a job in a position of interest. Might not be the CEO, but enough to get them going. College could then be for the managers and professionals that need the extra training to get into their jobs.
The reason why people resist those moves is they feel the expense involved is too great (and to pay for it, of course, taxes are raised, something guaranteed to bring out the pitchforks and torches) or that it would benefit precisely the people who, in their opinion, don't deserve it. If anyone can get health care and/or education, then all sorts of degenerate behavior is encouraged, because it's all free. (Or some subset thereof is.)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 08:30 pm (UTC)Which is funny, because sometimes, those things take the longest to produce.
(more later....i'm running out the door)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-15 11:43 pm (UTC)