Re: One more!
At 11:04 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Apr 19, 2005, at 8:34 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 09:23 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Julia Thompson wrote: If you can get me a program to run it, http://store.wolfram.com/catalog/ US$900! (Won't bother trying to calculate that.) Ouch! I hadn't realized Mathematica was that significantly priced. Humm. Humm. Googlicious ... OK, here's an interesting package called HartMath, which appears to do symbolic calculations, is Java based (!) and is free: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php? group_id=5083package_id=9297 I DLed the .jar, the first on the list, 0.8pre2. And when I entered 900! and clicked the Symbolic evaluation button I got a damn big number, 675268022096458415838790613618008142242694278695893843121982687036850916431804 169691324469526983037942260103705786729085931983476998869285919065010315876518 469767596811126095247870938480044286361868933952727844506303540802432176466580 246966590659517937572235202292355775486538336811021709738937460546491264159091 431501728607211566858106557592300114501329921764549832275386963401126104470290 023370048878772663877045860772935854331516125188001477644611826808228670927866 949828318386418009974998193392065794153256497484862652339189110871145924408965 940626759142949258167198621783746792720926375247869390362900359242717822537380 598869339234478777695830030167053633390314130691558375185247610783420526354756 321131696187745492757014801069333629900037325893705935573252994347344592958667 289887407941746543914799260008488466867087297367132072852037127322012724108308 369130526353650828887251716360815871516034682911067546403982321466736273708959 340907778288275495542324361904648279986839271792460299194432510264644523379395 991985282978285911226899606203612382483131580716433958484050472614126800398777 337618498744473238679117126300231717459682784657805585680670350138852750802921 373604918751649477244642216935337550353000653500651374908320395233829637470261 856530503318323809918448425607509235437751885820964874769502544183651989996746 844172862654427866515944047816229469018791663829307141969082274601330276058178 648773777121931421376254303537184482693907326157766452831988286029176802240410 889938926105068021959172478389001069106980570303791905710576058493231133086344 520081798811656164497676483541612250669679612976096987427379233893916152074411 523193928456876733118992470853277034218629728716444954095722599855632154714820 833256532317771132713265799703107556049739697089494773742549744802946524270224 367053801840640088534572145185152709855631954129931452740576886344488124494458 006176311627682431256064248447093720221499084635722549126549077634457585439809 991491229981043789656267818986552214432636014051520731997065850802887350402054 173712772530962432 00 00 , perhaps? which was much more satisfying than the infinity symbol I got when I clicked Numeric evaluation. This might show more promise for calculating 5,565,709! than a basic Java hack. Oh, I could do it the same way I did the others. The only question is how long it would take to run. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
At 11:08 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 11:04 PM Subject: Re: One more! On Apr 19, 2005, at 8:34 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 09:23 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Julia Thompson wrote: If you can get me a program to run it, http://store.wolfram.com/catalog/ US$900! (Won't bother trying to calculate that.) Ouch! I hadn't realized Mathematica was that significantly priced. Humm. Humm. Googlicious ... OK, here's an interesting package called HartMath, which appears to do symbolic calculations, is Java based (!) and is free: What was Microsoft FORTRAN and then became Compaq FORTRAN and may be HP FORTRAN now has IMSL installed. It is a wondrous callable library of mathematical functionsand I got it with FORTRAN for a few hundred dollars for the package. If you want to throw fits at numbers, that's the way to goas well as do a zillion other things. Mathamatica is a toy in comparison. Which one is best depends on what you are trying to do atm. (I have both, tho I haven't gotten around to reinstalling the FORTRAN on this machine yet.) In this particular case, doing it in FORTRAN would be a little more complicated than typing Factorial [100] and pressing Shift+Enter . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
On Apr 19, 2005, at 11:01 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 11:04 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php? group_id=5083package_id=9297 I DLed the .jar, the first on the list, 0.8pre2. And when I entered 900! and clicked the Symbolic evaluation button I got a damn big number, 67526802209645841583879061361800814224269427869589384312198268703685091 6431804 [...] , perhaps? Or thereabouts, yeah, though I don't feel too inclined to do a digit-for-digit check... I tried 5,565,709! as well, and the program didn't die, but it set up a wait cursor that tells me nothing at all about how long it would take to do the calculation. After about an hour I shut it down and went on to other things. Java's convenient but its VM can really suck up the silicon, especially when all you have is a 600 MHz G3. :\ -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
Gautam Mukunda wrote: But, look, why is it so hard to believe that people can do things for more than one reason? Not hard at all, if that was what happened, but this war was prosecuted by scaring the American People with images of mushroom clouds, not by telling them it was imperative we take over the Iraqi oil fields. -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
computers are evil, why they must be eradicated [was: One more!]
Julia Thompson wrote about 1,000,000!: If you can get me a program to run it, I could do it here Not sure how long it would take, but it would get done, anyway. n! = (n/e)^n sqrt(2 pi n) (1 + 1 / (12 n) + ...) So, using log10, we easily get: 1,000,000! = 8.264 x 10^5,565,708 or something like that Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Julia Thompson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
If you can get me a program to run it, I could do it here Not
sure
5565709! has 35 126 456 digits and took 7 minutes 57 seconds to
calculate and write to disk. Don't ask me to calculate that factorial,
though, because the last calculation took up about 25% of my RAM, and
since the size of the result is going up almost exponentially, the next
one would exceed my RAM and start swapping to virtual memory. As long as
the calculation is in RAM, the time is going up just barely faster than
linearly (1e6! took about 1 minute), but if it starts swapping then I'm
sure the time will go up much faster than linearly.
As might be expected, the resulting number is not really compressible.
Using gzip, I compressed the resulting ASCII file of digits [0-9] to
15 827 771 bytes, a factor of 2.22 compression. Since log2(10)=3.32
bits, we would expect about 8/3.32 = 2.41 compression just by coding the
digits efficiently.
kernel: linux 2.6.9-1-686-smp
language: C++
library: GiNaC http://www.ginac.de/
cat /proc/cpuinfo:
stepping: 9
cpu MHz : 2606.436
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings: 2
fdiv_bug: no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug: no
coma_bug: no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr
bogomips: 5160.96
c++ factorial1.cc -o fc1 -lcln -lginac
date; ./fc1 fout5565709; date
Wed Apr 20 06:46:24 EDT 2005
Wed Apr 20 06:54:21 EDT 2005
wc -c fout5565709
35126452 fout5565709
Program:
#include iostream
#include ginac/ginac.h
using namespace std;
using namespace GiNaC;
int main()
{
ex poly;
poly = factorial( 5565709 );
cout poly ;
return 0;
}
--
Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/
___
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Re: One more!
* Erik Reuter ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: 5565709! has 35 126 456 digits and took 7 minutes 57 seconds to Oops, that's what I get for trying to type instead of copying. As you see below, it is actually: 35126452 digits. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
By the way, there are a bunch of free tools out there that can be used for this type of problem. I somewhat arbitrarily chose GiNaC because it looked robust (being implemented as a C++ library), but there are many more options that could have done the calculation for free. If you aren't running Linux but want to play around with some of the free mathematical and scientific tool sets out there, a good way to do it is with the Quantian live-CD linux distribution (based on Knoppix). http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html If you don't know what a live CD is : it means you just boot from the CD and you are running the OS from the CD, without having to install the OS on your hard drive. When you are done, just take the CD out and reboot and you will be back running your usual OS on your hard drive (or whatever). -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Julia Thompson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I'm drooling. And of course you *would* have to put this up in the week leading up to the science fiction convention we drop the most money at every year head bang on keyboard That costs a lot more than all the components of my expensive big dream project. (Which is a lot more affordable than I thought, now that I check out pricing on *that*) Don't waste your money! Mathematica is highly polished, but there is free software that can do just about everything Mathematica can. One possibility is Maxima: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml There are several other free programs that may be better depending on what you are trying to do, but Maxima is the most general purpose free math system that I know of. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Radical National Rifle Assoc.
Yet another reason for strictly limiting the right to own guns to trained professionals who actually need a gun for their job: Police: 9-Year-Old Kills Mom, Self (CBS/AP)When several family members forced their way into the suburban red brick home Glenda Pulley lived in with her nine-year-old son, they found the residents' two dead bodies and a suicide note from the son, Tyler. Police and local Sherrif's deputies are calling the shooting deaths a murder-suicide, saying they found evidence that Tyler Pulley shot his 38-year-old mother on Saturday before turning the gun on himself, according to reports on WRAL-TV. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/18/national/main688995.shtml The NRA morons probably don't give a hoot, though. When it comes to the right to own guns, they probably consider tragedies like this 'collateral damage.' How many more innocent people have to get killed before America wakes up? ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Truth springs from argument among friends.
Truth springs from argument among friends. Philosopher David Hume. Quoted in today's Wall Street Journal. I thought this was an appropriate reflection of the goal of the arguments on this list. Yours, Avid Reader ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
At 01:14 AM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Apr 19, 2005, at 11:01 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: At 11:04 PM Tuesday 4/19/2005, Warren Ockrassa wrote: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php? group_id=5083package_id=9297 I DLed the .jar, the first on the list, 0.8pre2. And when I entered 900! and clicked the Symbolic evaluation button I got a damn big number, 67526802209645841583879061361800814224269427869589384312198268703685091 6431804 [...] , perhaps? Or thereabouts, yeah, though I don't feel too inclined to do a digit-for-digit check... I tried 5,565,709! as well, and the program didn't die, but it set up a wait cursor that tells me nothing at all about how long it would take to do the calculation. After about an hour I shut it down and went on to other things. Java's convenient but its VM can really suck up the silicon, especially when all you have is a 600 MHz G3. :\ As I said, Mathematica running on this 3GHz processor took overnight to come up with 1,000,000! (Admittedly I was doing e-mail and some other things which were more IO-intensive than CPU-intensive while it was running.) You may find yourself in the place I was on that old IBM 1130 that I struggled to get to do 2500! when I was trying something else and figured based on the preliminary runs that the finished program would take on the order of two months to run . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
- Original Message - From: Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:56 AM Subject: Re: One more! Which one is best depends on what you are trying to do atm. (I have both, tho I haven't gotten around to reinstalling the FORTRAN on this machine yet.) In this particular case, doing it in FORTRAN would be a little more complicated than typing Factorial [100] and pressing Shift+Enter . . . Fair enough. If you have both, and an overnight computer run to spare, your solution is the best. I was thinking more of cost/benefit for someone on a budget who had to pick something to buy. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: War of 1812 Re: New Pope?
From: John D. Giorgis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: War of 1812 Re: New Pope? Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:10:49 -0400 At 05:51 PM 4/9/2005 -0400, Damon Agretto wrote: I believe that USA vs. England in 1775 and again in 1812 would both qualify as well? Perhaps. There's more mitigating circumstances, though. In 1775, while the US was independently pursuing war for a time, in the end the French alliance was important. In 1812 the British had much (MUCH) bigger fish to fry... As something of a counter-point to that, in the famous Battle of New Orleans, the British invasion fleet was, I believe, accompanied by at least two fully-stocked colony ships.Thus, while the British did have some distractions in Europe, they also did attack the United States with what they thought was sufficient force to win. The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. --Solomon Short/aka - David Gerrold-- -Travis _ Take charge with a pop-up guard built on patented Microsoft® SmartScreen Technology. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-capage=byoa/premxAPID=1994DI=1034SU=http://hotmail.com/encaHL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines Start enjoying all the benefits of MSN® Premium right now and get the first two months FREE*. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Dan Minette ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Fair enough. If you have both, and an overnight computer run to spare, your solution is the best. I was thinking more of cost/benefit for someone on a budget who had to pick something to buy. I didn't have either on my computer when I got up this morning. I didn't have GiNaC, either. But overnight to calculate 5M digits sounded way too long to me. So I took a quick look for free software that could do it (about 3 min of reading), decided GiNaC looked good, and typed apt-cache search ginac ginac-tools - Some tools for the GiNaC framework libginac-dev - The GiNaC framework (development files) libginac1.3 - The GiNaC framework (runtime library) apt-get install libginac-dev and then I pasted the GiNaC equivalent of hello, world into my text editor, edited a couple lines, and ran it on 1 000 000! to start. In less than a minute I had the answer. Then I ran it on the requested number which took 8 minutes, and posted the results. Total expenditure: $0, and a few minutes of time (it actually took me longer to create the post summarizing the results than it did to install the software and calculate the results) On the other hand if 8 minutes is too quick for you and you'd rather wait several days for Mathematica to calculate 5M!, then that is of course the best solution if it makes you feel better about all the money you spent on Mathematica... -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
At 10:30 AM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Ronn!Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:56 AM Subject: Re: One more! Which one is best depends on what you are trying to do atm. (I have both, tho I haven't gotten around to reinstalling the FORTRAN on this machine yet.) In this particular case, doing it in FORTRAN would be a little more complicated than typing Factorial [100] and pressing Shift+Enter . . . Fair enough. If you have both, and an overnight computer run to spare, your solution is the best. I was thinking more of cost/benefit for someone on a budget who had to pick something to buy. Oh, I agree. And, as Erik pointed out, there are now much cheaper alternatives to Mathematica (although I'm not sure if they work with the various add-on packages written for Mathematica). At the time I got it, alternatives were fewer if any, and I needed the compatibility. Of course, I wish I'd had both Mathematica and the FORTRAN package back in the good old days . . . though I suppose one would have needed at least a high-end IBM 370 or bigger mainframe in those days just to run them . . . and just think of how slow it would have been . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
On Apr 19, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Dan Minette wrote: From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] You completely missed the point of what I wrote. I'm not saying anything at all about people who accept occasional correction (BTW there are several others on this very list who refuse to admit to being in error, yet I don't see you hammering them over it). All I'm saying, and I said it very clearly, is that for the most part most of us behave, most of the time, as though our opinions are actually Absolute Truth. It is probably true that many people do that. Thank you. I've been trained to not do thatand I've noticed that people who are skilled in scholarship tend not to that. Hmm. If you had to be taught it, does it surprise you that the skill -- which might well be acquired, not innate -- is not universally to be found? My own background is probably working against me here. As a writer, consumer and editor of fiction I tend to prefer phrases that engender strong reactions in readers. That kind of incisive, sometimes confrontational language, coupled with presentation of ideas that might go against the grain of thinking in readers, is something I find stimulating. One of the reasons I like Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, for instance, is that I can see, very clearly, how carefully he constructed his Lunar society to give room for his ideas to function. But as I read that book I was constantly aware of how very impractical, to me at least, his tenets were; that is, in the real world, without the constructs he'd erected to support them, I think his ideologies would quickly collapse. What I mean is that I just don't agree with his politics as presented in that novel, but I thought it was well-done as a polemic anyway, because it was quite internally consistent, even where a lot of his characters' reactions and behaviors (to me) simply couldn't work in application. I did almost the same thing in _The Beasts of Delphos_, though that was before I'd read his book. The ideal society the Delphan Newfreemen erect is something that I'm not sure would actually work without a deep value placed on lifelong education for *every* member of a population, including heavy exposure to alternate points of view, coupled with the isolation that comes of an entire planet inhabited by like-minded individuals and separated from other worlds by distances of lightyears. That is, _Moon_ and _Delphos_ are similar to the extent that in them societies which are totally insular and made up of like-minded people are proposed, and it's not too surprising that in both fairy tales things magically work out for the best. ;) The other thing I liked in Heinlein's opus was the pidgin he used in the text, BTW. I thought it was a really interesting voice to use for the story. But the point is that while you're working from one space of experience and promotion of thought, I'm working from another one, and I think we both have acquired behaviors that in some places just don't intersect, which seems to generate sparks from time to time. The combination of this is that we are taught to both form opionions, even though we are not sure, and to develop mechanisms for weighing the certainty of each opinion so that the best consensus opinion may be obtained. Someone who always rates his certainty as 10 on a scale of 1-10 will have their 10s automatically downgraded (unless they are Feynmanesq. :-) ) OK, fine -- but I don't always rate my certainties as 10. Only the things that I really feel pretty sure of. There are definitely times when I'll get hyperbolic, but that's not the same thing as saying I've got Absolute Certainty in an opinion, only that I'm using incendiary language to put forth a point. To be fair I don't always make the distinction when I comment on something, which surely doesn't help anyone else decide whether I think I'm right or I'm just blowing hot gas. ;) When I was the scientist in an engineering group, these skills came in handy. I worked with field people who were not as educated as I was, but knew a lot that I didn't. I realized that they were sometimes right and I was wrong...often because they had key data that I didn't. Sometimes, I did state virtual certainty if that's the problem, then we have a Nobel Prize on our hands But I saved that for when I was willing to stake _a lot_ on being absolutely right. AFAIK, I never was in a position of being wrong. That last sentence is interesting. Do you mean you don't *recall* being wrong, or that you never were wrong, or that you were just cautious in areas you were unsure and retracted ideas regularly? If the last, I'd suggest that a retraction is equivalent to admitting being wrong. If the second, well ... and if the first, well again, but in a different tone of voice. Or do you mean instead that in any area where you didn't feel qualified, you didn't express an opinion at all? I'm not sure I've ever seen you
Weekly Chat Reminder
As Steve said, The Brin-L weekly chat has been a list tradition for over six years. Way back on 27 May, 1998, Marco Maisenhelder first set up a chatroom for the list, and on the next day, he established a weekly chat time. We've been through several servers, chat technologies, and even casts of regulars over the years, but the chat goes on... and we want more recruits! Whether you're an active poster or a lurker, whether you've been a member of the list from the beginning or just joined today, we would really like for you to join us. We have less politics, more Uplift talk, and more light-hearted discussion. We're non-fattening and 100% environmentally friendly... -(_() Though sometimes marshmallows do get thrown. The Weekly Brin-L chat is scheduled for Wednesday 3 PM Eastern/2 PM Central time in the US, or 7 PM Greenwich time. There's usually somebody there to talk to for at least eight hours after the start time. If you want to attend, it's really easy now. All you have to do is send your web browser to: http://wtgab.demon.co.uk/~brinl/mud/ ..And you can connect directly from William's new web interface! My instruction page tells you how to log on, and how to talk when you get in: http://www.brin-l.org/brinmud.html It also gives a list of commands to use when you're in there. In addition, it tells you how to connect through a MUD client, which is more complicated to set up initially, but easier and more reliable than the web interface once you do get it set up. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ This message was sent automatically using cron. But even if WTG is away on holiday, at least it shows the server is still up. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
On Apr 20, 2005, at 11:00 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/ swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. Possibly the fourth -- bonobos are pretty bright too, it seems. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
As a Pythonist who does a reasonable bit of scientific computing sorts of calculations... I'll say that although I don't have time to see just what it would do with this problem, Scipy, a Python module that uses native libraries, seems to perform quite well at such things once it one muddles through the documentation to figure out the right way to attack the problem. This is especially true if one either obtains binaries for one's specific platform, or, even better, compiles optimized libraries on the very machine on which they'll run. System vendors, such as Sun, also offer highly-optimized standard math libraries for their machines. We haven't invested in such yet. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
On 4/20/05, Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 20, 2005, at 11:00 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/ swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. Possibly the fourth -- bonobos are pretty bright too, it seems. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l -- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
Behalf Of Gautam Mukunda http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/ swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. I see he's going to keep the monkey at home. I think someone is trying to get his pet paid for by the government... - jmh ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
On Apr 20, 2005, at 1:12 PM, Horn, John wrote: Behalf Of Gautam Mukunda http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/ swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. I see he's going to keep the monkey at home. I think someone is trying to get his pet paid for by the government... Let's hope it's just a pet. (Spank, spank...) -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Nick Arnett ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: As a Pythonist who does a reasonable bit of scientific computing sorts of calculations... I'll say that although I don't have time to see just what it would do with this problem, I guess not... Scipy, a Python module that uses native libraries, seems to perform quite well at such things once it one muddles through the documentation to figure out the right way to attack the problem. Huh? factorial(N, exact=1) will calculate it using arbitrary precision integer arithmetic. But it is darn slow. I tried factorial(10, exact=1) and it took more than a minute on my machine. Also, 1! was only a couple seconds, so it looks like it is much worse than linear time. I'd hate to see what happens if you try 5M! -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
On Apr 18, 2005, at 5:24 PM, Dave Land wrote: On Apr 18, 2005, at 2:27 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote: Here's something else, then. What if there were Iraqis praying for an outcome that could only have been possible if Wes didn't survive? Or anybody! I suspect there were prayers for various people to be elected POTUS last fall. I stopped myself from doing that and decided to pray to accept whatever outcome happened. That's it. That's it right there, I think. That's probably the key. Rather than petitioning a deity for an *outcome*, it might be much more sensible to petition that deity for acceptance of circumstances. When praying like that, it doesn't even matter if there's anyone on the other end of the line. The practice of seeking to accept reality, rather than dropping prayer coins into some cosmic vending machine, will help. That first sentence can branch into a couple interesting areas, I think -- one that explores whether there is in fact anyone on the other end of the line; and another that explores whether a genuine attempt at understanding and acceptance through the act of prayer is significantly different from deep self-analysis or the emptying experiences sought after in some Asian-rooted religions. Something like the latter exploration was what ultimately led me to conclude in the negative on the former. =:O That said, one prayer that the Judeo-Christian scripture highly honors is the prayer for wisdom, and seeking acceptance of circumstances seems to me a most wise prayer. Unfortunately that emphasis is not so heavy in many sects of the Abrahamic traditions. Your image of vending-machine prayers is quite apt; I wonder how much of it is cultural. It seems to me that in the US there is a general sense that quick fixes are best. Beseeching the heavens for gratification might just be an extension of the diet-pill attitude many Americans have. I want to lose weight while I sleep, not because I eat consciously, get off my spreading backside and exercise or anything equally onerous... One of my peeves, BTW, is those commercials for antacids, where you see some person tucking into a plate of food that would keep a Rwandan family of 12 fed for a month, then grousing about his reflux disease (I know, it's genuine, but it's a condition often precipitated by chronic overeating, just as the disease of obesity generally is) -- a simpler solution might be to moderate one's food intake. Another is any ad for fiber supplements. The spokesperson talks about needing more fiber in his/her diet ... and so takes a pill or adds powder to a beverage, rather than, oh I don't know, eating a few more damn fruits, vegetables and legumes and cutting back on animal carcasses and cheese. We really seem to want to live in a consequence-free world. Or if there *are* consequences to our actions we want to shove them aside or minimize them rather than change the way we act. So Lord, grant me patience ... and do it right now! Feh. Similarly, James 1:5 reads But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him. Which, to semi-converge a thread, is what the LDS church teaches Joseph Smith read in his teens, the passage that led him to ask for an understanding of which religion (among the veritable cornucopia of Christian sects in rural New York in the early 1800s, of course) was the true one. The answer? None of the above. Go start your own, Joe. Rather than turn from a faith it seems to me that a more sensible approach would be to interrogate the faith and especially what one's expectations are of that faith. When Nick first told me the story of the mother who lost her son in that against-all-odds accident, I have to admit that my first instinct was to wonder whether the faith she lost was such a loss, or whether she was better off no longer insisting that God spare her son. You mean, whether in the long term she'd live a happier, less stressful life? Interesting thought. Possibly so, but maybe only if she tried to understand why she saw things as she had, as opposed to attaching herself to some other activity that also masked the deeper issues she was (presumably) facing. To converge another thread, that's (as I mentioned before) part of my trouble with 12-step programs. They seem another form of addiction rather than a means of addressing the source of the addictive behavior itself. IMO the real goal of any 12-step program should be to self-abnegate, to help members transform themselves in such a way that they don't *need* the 12-step program any longer. I feel as though I have some standing in making such a statement, having lost my own son ten years ago to a rare brain cancer. We got lots and lots of advice on how to pray for Kevin, a lot of it of the vending machine variety (Just ask God and you'll get what you want!). Some of it was of that troublesome sort that suggests that if Kevin died, it would
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Apr 20, 2005, at 1:12 PM, Horn, John wrote: Behalf Of Gautam Mukunda http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=817e=8u=/ap/ swat_monkey I note also that, according to this article, human being are, at best, the _third_ smartest primate. I agree. I see he's going to keep the monkey at home. I think someone is trying to get his pet paid for by the government... Let's hope it's just a pet. (Spank, spank...) How shocking! Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
On 4/19/05, Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... A related issue: what, if anything, prevents this understanding of a deity from being different than Tipler's suggestion that we are, probabilistically speaking, a simulation running in an antiquarian AI's supercomputer? After all, that entity's supercomputer is also necessary, else `all of creation would come to a halt and we would cease to exist.' Moreover, the antiquarian may, or may not, respond to prayers and/or works by his simulations. And his purposes may be hard for a simulation to figure out. -- Robert J. Chassell Wait, wasn't Tipler's argument basically given certain physical constraints, we would surely be re-incarnated at the end of the Universe? What you are mentioning sounds considerably more like Nick Bostrom's neat Simulation Argument. ~Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:29:57 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Scipy, a Python module that uses native libraries, seems to perform quite well at such things once it one muddles through the documentation to figure out the right way to attack the problem. Huh? factorial(N, exact=1) will calculate it using arbitrary precision integer arithmetic. Right... but Scipy has all sorts of ways to do all sorts of things. I'm usually doing somewhat more complex linear algebra stuff, such as calculating eigenvectors and various sorts of decomposition, including our favorite, singular value decomposition. It's is all a bit taxing our systems, especially when I want to do really large matrices (like 50K x 10K). If it goes into virtual memory, there isn't enough time in the universe to finish some of these things. If anyone is wondering, I'm doing this sort of thing in relation to computational linguistics and so forth. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
- Original Message - From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:46 PM Subject: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments) On Apr 19, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Dan Minette wrote: From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hmm. If you had to be taught it, does it surprise you that the skill -- which might well be acquired, not innate -- is not universally to be found? No, I'm not surprised at all. My own background is probably working against me here. As a writer, consumer and editor of fiction I tend to prefer phrases that engender strong reactions in readers. That kind of incisive, sometimes confrontational language, coupled with presentation of ideas that might go against the grain of thinking in readers, is something I find stimulating. OK, I follow that so far. One of the reasons I like Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, for instance, is that I can see, very clearly, how carefully he constructed his Lunar society to give room for his ideas to function. But as I read that book I was constantly aware of how very impractical, to me at least, his tenets were; that is, in the real world, without the constructs he'd erected to support them, I think his ideologies would quickly collapse. Agreed. What I mean is that I just don't agree with his politics as presented in that novel, but I thought it was well-done as a polemic anyway, because it was quite internally consistent, even where a lot of his characters' reactions and behaviors (to me) simply couldn't work in application. The other thing I liked in Heinlein's opus was the pidgin he used in the text, BTW. I thought it was a really interesting voice to use for the story. That helped give his society a organic feel; I agree it was effective. But the point is that while you're working from one space of experience and promotion of thought, I'm working from another one, and I think we both have acquired behaviors that in some places just don't intersect, which seems to generate sparks from time to time. OK, that seems reasonable. The problem to be solved, then, is how to keep this from interfering with communication. OK, fine -- but I don't always rate my certainties as 10. Only the things that I really feel pretty sure of. There are definitely times when I'll get hyperbolic, but that's not the same thing as saying I've got Absolute Certainty in an opinion, only that I'm using incendiary language to put forth a point. To be fair I don't always make the distinction when I comment on something, which surely doesn't help anyone else decide whether I think I'm right or I'm just blowing hot gas. ;) I wouldn't mind having to ask which is it from time to time if you don't mind being asked. If we agree that you sometimes use hyperbola and sometimes take strong serious positions, this seems like an obvious thing to do. That last sentence is interesting. Do you mean you don't *recall* being wrong, or that you never were wrong, or that you were just cautious in areas you were unsure and retracted ideas regularly? Oh, that sentence was not intended to be interpreted that way (althought I can see why you would read it that way). I've been wrong plenty of times. I just have not been wrong on those occasions when I invoked the Nobel Prize arguement. I'll give an example of the use of this. One district engineer told me that his equipment was working just fine, it was just that this particular source had statistical uncertainty that was different from the theoretical statistical uncertainty. I won't bore you with the details, but the statistical distribution of 1 second count rates for a gamma ray detector is well approximated by a Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation of sqrt(cps) (as long as the cps is sufficiently high so the Gaussian distribution does not get close to zero). He was arguing, in his case, the numbers were far different than that. I told him I could guarantee _that_ wasn't the problem, and if it was we'd be rich from the Nobel prize money for falsifying QM. I was very careful not to invoke that without that type of assurance. If you told me that you had a perpetual motion machine that took heat out of the earth and did work without putting heat in a colder body, I'd use it. I didn't use it when you stated string theory removed indetermancies because I was only 99% sure that was wrong. (it was actually infinitieswhich does make sense.) As it happens I've seen some very absolutist statements coming from Gautam, regular use of adjectives such as absurd and nonsense, etc., and yet I don't see you calling him out on his language like you've chosen to target me. OK, a fair observation. You are right that I don't do it. I cannot remember when he used such strong language and I called him on it. The reason for this isn't automatic deference to his education. It's that
Snake report
I killed one in the front yard by running over it with the lawn mower this morning. That wasn't my original intent: I didn't see it (it was about a foot long at most)until after it'd been hit the first time, and from the looks of it then the most merciful thing I could do (not having a hoe, machete, or shotgun with me) was back up and keep running over it until it quit squirming . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Nick Arnett ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:29:57 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Scipy, a Python module that uses native libraries, seems to perform quite well at such things once it one muddles through the documentation to figure out the right way to attack the problem. Huh? factorial(N, exact=1) will calculate it using arbitrary precision integer arithmetic. Right... but Scipy has all sorts of ways to do all sorts of things. I'm Incredible! Your inaction while wishing for a magical solution to drop from heaven extends even to simple programming tasks! ...on the bright side, at least you are consistent... -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
At 05:34 PM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Nick Arnett wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:29:57 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Scipy, a Python module that uses native libraries, seems to perform quite well at such things once it one muddles through the documentation to figure out the right way to attack the problem. Huh? factorial(N, exact=1) will calculate it using arbitrary precision integer arithmetic. Right... but Scipy has all sorts of ways to do all sorts of things. I'm usually doing somewhat more complex linear algebra stuff, such as calculating eigenvectors and various sorts of decomposition, including our favorite, singular value decomposition. It's is all a bit taxing our systems, especially when I want to do really large matrices (like 50K x 10K). If it goes into virtual memory, there isn't enough time in the universe to finish some of these things. FWIW, the same old computer I mentioned previously was limited to doing eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 24x24 matrix: there wasn't enough memory to work on a 25x25 . . . (That was the first program I wrote, btw.) -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
- Original Message - From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 9:23 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons So, the Holocaust would have been ethical if Germany had won? It was ethical to the Nazis at the time it was taking place. Just as it was ethical for slavery to be practiced, here and elsewhere, for a long time, just as it was ethical for the original tribe of Israel to, occasionally, utterly murder rivaling peoples, even to the point that a psalm was written singing of the joys of dashing out the brains of enemies' children against stones. From my point of view today, and I suspect from yours and most others', those actions are all reprehensible. But to no small degree I suspect that's because we're living in a world and a time that affords us the luxury of extending the epithet human to *all* people, even those we oppose or who oppose us. It is indeed far easier to do that when one isn't risking one's childrens' lives in doing sowhich makes That is a valid point. I would point out that the arguement had been made thousands of years agoit's just that even people who state that's their source of ethics find ways to weasel around it. The way I like to look at the Old Testiment is as a journey of a people from a polytheistic religion where every tribe had their totom god and Yahwah was just the god of their tribe to where Yahwah was the God of all, and Israel had a special responsibility. We're not in survival mode -- and I think that the only way for broad-based inclusive idealism to flourish is in an environment that is reasonably stable, secure and affluent. That's a digression; what I'm suggesting is that ethics is contextual. People individually -- I think anyway -- don't set out to deliberately do bad things, at least most people most of the time. There are exceptions of course, but I think that for the most part most of what any person does makes sense to him or her *within the context of his/her ethical landscape*. Others might not see a given action in the same light, of course, but to the individual I think actions and decisions spring from a place that is not intentionally bad, though at least some behaviors might be rationalized, occasionally tortuously. I'm inclined to think that societies *usually* behave in the same way -- a culture or nation does not set out to do terrible things; the things it does are, to that culture or nation, ethically sound actions. Whether it's burning witches, performing human sacrifice or attempting genocide, those behaviors make sense to -- they fit into the ethics of -- those who perpetrate them. Thus, had WWII been won by Hitler's minions, yes, there would be strong argument (rationalization, I might call it) that the extermination of the Jews as an ethnic class was fully justified, and it would be *extremely difficult* if not impossible for someone raised in that worldview to think otherwise. That doesn't mean I think it would be a good thing, and it doesn't mean I think it would be ethical, but then, I'm applying my society's ethics to the situation, not working within the ethics of the hypothetical Third Reich of 1000 years. The issue I have with the word moral is that it suggests, to me, an absolute, a code of conduct implicitly derived from a superhuman source. I think that, at a minimum, morality requires the existance of Truths that exist apart from humans...but that we can come to understand. We agree that one cannot emperically derive morality. But if I can't accept the presence of that source, I'm not personally comfortable with the word, and I get, along with that, the sense that what we call moral is really nothing other than ethics dressed up to look like divine edict -- when in fact morality is every bit as plastic and fluid as ethics, and for exactly the same reasons, because to me they both spring from the same source: Social consensus. OK, let me ask you a hard question. I bet if I did a poll of the world, most people would say that homosexuality is wrong. Does that make it unethical to be gay? Aren't gay people wrong _by definition_? I don't believe this because I consider it inconsistent with my moralitywhich is based on my belief in the worth and value of every human being. If you include the power to persuade, doesn't your statement imply that might makes right? But, I agree you have to have faith to get away from that. I admire your intellectual honesty in not trying to pretend that one can experimentally obtain the Golden Rule. We differ on the ethics of the Nazi's but I fully accept that it is a difference in my having faith and you not, not a difference where I can prove you wrong. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:51:09 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Incredible! Your inaction while wishing for a magical solution to drop from heaven extends even to simple programming tasks! No, no, no. I'm wishing for magical *documentation*. Python isn't a Perl sort of there's more than one way to do it language... but there often is more than one way. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:59:48 -0500, Dan Minette wrote I think that, at a minimum, morality requires the existance of Truths that exist apart from humans...but that we can come to understand. We agree that one cannot emperically derive morality. sarcasm What, it's not just a cost/benefit analysis? /sarcasm Forgive me if that seems offensive -- it's not meant to be. I've been trying to figure out how to respond to the confusion I've observed here between utilitarian and moral arguments. That's the best I've got so far. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
At 05:58 PM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Nick Arnett wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:01:19 -0700, Warren Ockrassa wrote Possibly harking to Job and God's reply out of the whirlwind? That's one of the more enigmatic monologues in the entire Abrahamic tradition. I've seen really hard-line realist type interpretations that insist God is entirely unknowable; I've seen Zennish renderings that suggest something remarkably similar; years ago my own take on it was that it was a non-answer, equivalent to an arbitrary, Because I'm God and I can, that's why. I used to think Job was impenetrable until I realized that at one level, at least, it is a simple lesson. When bad stuff happens to you, there's a great temptation to insist that I didn't deserve it. Job was resisting that urge, choosing to trust that God is just, until his friends goaded him into trying to negotiate with God... who responded with all the did you create the universe? stuff. I'm always a bit surprised when I read some of the words attributed to God in Job that seem nothing other than sarcastic. The lesson could be, Don't listen to your friends, but I think it actually is a simple, trust God. Have faith that things that make zero sense and feel utterly wrong (a parent burying a child always comes to mind for me) happen with God's permission, at the very least. This is trusting without understanding, which is almost completely antithetical to my habits. I'm happy to do God's will, as long as God will explain the whole plan to me, Me, too! I remind myself to admit now and then. And then I remember that the whole plan won't fit between my ears. Another way of looking at it: mortal parents don't always have the time to explain everything to their kids in terms the kids can understand before the kid needs to do it. Sometimes they have to say Do it because I said so. And sometimes the only explanation possible is You'll understand when you get older/have kids of your own. Similarly, there are times when we are not atm capable of understanding what our Heavenly Father asks us to do or to endure, and many times understanding only comes after we do it (or fail to do it). or, as a mentor once said to my, Any sentence that begins, 'If I were God...' is insane. Is that a comment on a fellow list member's state of mind? Or have you traced his address to confirm his identity? -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
* Nick Arnett ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:51:09 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Incredible! Your inaction while wishing for a magical solution to drop from heaven extends even to simple programming tasks! No, no, no. I'm wishing for magical *documentation*. Yeah, how could you ever in a million years have guessed that the function for calculating a factorial was called factorial? -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:11:35 -0500, Ronn!Blankenship wrote Is that a comment on a fellow list member's state of mind? Or have you traced his address to confirm his identity? Hah! Hadn't occurred to me. My subconscious surprises me again. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
At 06:01 PM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Nick Arnett wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:51:09 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Incredible! Your inaction while wishing for a magical solution to drop from heaven extends even to simple programming tasks! No, no, no. I'm wishing for magical *documentation*. Python isn't a Perl sort of there's more than one way to do it language... but there often is more than one way. There's almost always more way to do _any_ programming task, even hello, world. -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
At 06:45 PM Wednesday 4/20/2005, Nick Arnett wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:11:35 -0500, Ronn!Blankenship wrote Is that a comment on a fellow list member's state of mind? Or have you traced his address to confirm his identity? Hah! Hadn't occurred to me. My subconscious surprises me again. Well, if you find out that his ISP is located on Kolob, I don't think I want to know . . . -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: One more!
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:42:47 -0400, Erik Reuter wrote Yeah, how could you ever in a million years have guessed that the function for calculating a factorial was called factorial? I'm having trouble getting your joke. It was a joke, wasn't it? Python is completely object-oriented, so it has methods rather than functions. Part of the challenge of such languages is to figure out where in the object hierarchy to find classes and methods, of course, and often, the appropriate way to call them. And then there are lovlies like call-backs and such that make it all so interesting. And now that I've looked, golly, it is darn simple -- it's at the top level, unlike lots of other things. Pretty much where one would expect, which is certainly not always the case. But it's not called factorial, it's called scipy.factorial. Unless, of course, you've imported the namespace instead of the module. But surely you knew that, I suspect, since you seem to have implied knowldge of the Scipy interface...? I still don't get the joke, if that's what it was. If it wasn't, then I guess I don't get the point, unless the point was to belittle the fact that I didn't look up the factorial method before posting, in which case... nothing. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
Would you be interesting in an African's economists perspective on just wanting riches and morality in the EU? (Not me, but my Zambian daughters) Dan M. Actually, yes. I would like to believe that Germany or the EU are either helpful or at least fair to poor nations, but I've read enough to see it's not really like that. But I don't know exactly how close to or far from the truth that belief actually is. Frank -- +++ GMX - Die erste Adresse für Mail, Message, More +++ 1 GB Mailbox bereits in GMX FreeMail http://www.gmx.net/de/go/mail ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 9:23 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons So, the Holocaust would have been ethical if Germany had won? It was ethical to the Nazis at the time it was taking place. Just as it was ethical for slavery to be practiced, here and elsewhere, for a long time, just as it was ethical for the original tribe of Israel to, occasionally, utterly murder rivaling peoples, even to the point that a psalm was written singing of the joys of dashing out the brains of enemies' children against stones. From my point of view today, and I suspect from yours and most others', those actions are all reprehensible. But to no small degree I suspect that's because we're living in a world and a time that affords us the luxury of extending the epithet human to *all* people, even those we oppose or who oppose us. It is indeed far easier to do that when one isn't risking one's childrens' lives in doing sowhich makes Did you mean to finish the sentence? (This is the first time I remember the lost thought being in the middle of a paragraph.) That is a valid point. I would point out that the arguement had been made thousands of years agoit's just that even people who state that's their source of ethics find ways to weasel around it. The way I like to look at the Old Testiment is as a journey of a people from a polytheistic religion where every tribe had their totom god and Yahwah was just the god of their tribe to where Yahwah was the God of all, and Israel had a special responsibility. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
- Original Message - From: Frank Schmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 6:45 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons Would you be interesting in an African's economists perspective on just wanting riches and morality in the EU? (Not me, but my Zambian daughters) Dan M. Actually, yes. I would like to believe that Germany or the EU are either helpful or at least fair to poor nations, but I've read enough to see it's not really like that. But I don't know exactly how close to or far from the truth that belief actually is. Within 10 minutes of us being in the car home from the airport, Neli started to talk about the European agriculture policy. She said that it was simply a subsidy for lazy farmers who wanted to make money while not being able to do the job. This net subsidy of agriculture keeps Africa from having a market. It seems paradoxical, if Africa has starvation, why sell food. But, the hard currency made this way can lift up the poorest familieslet them use more efficient techniques, etc. Many parts of sub-Sahara Africa have very little foreign exchange. This food subsidy has been called the single greatest impediment to African development. Protectionism and subsidies by rich nations helps no one but those getting the payments and those able to charge high prices in the absence of competition. As far a globalization goes; she's generally for it. A comment from her was it would be awesome if a Nike shoe factory would come to Zambia. It would be awesome because what would be considered slave wages here would be an enormous boon to Zambia. Saying that this is exploitation, when the alternative is worse is self-serving. The last thing is she has become disgusted with the UN over their acceptance of genocide in Sudan. She is far from a Bush fan, he is an idiot is one comment, but she said I have to admit it; Bush did far more than anyone else to address the conflict in Sudan. With her best friends extended family at high risk, its an important issue to her. She agrees with the comment that most of the world would prefer genocide to angering Arabs with all their oil.\ Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
- Original Message - From: Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 6:04 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:59:48 -0500, Dan Minette wrote I think that, at a minimum, morality requires the existance of Truths that exist apart from humans...but that we can come to understand. We agree that one cannot emperically derive morality. sarcasm What, it's not just a cost/benefit analysis? /sarcasm Forgive me if that seems offensive -- it's not meant to be. I've been trying to figure out how to respond to the confusion I've observed here between utilitarian and moral arguments. That's the best I've got so far. Well, in order to do a cost/benefit analysis you have to have a template. I proposed one three times, without response. My template was: measure the action I would prefer for the people in Iraq by picturing my children being exchanged with 3 random civilians there and then being required to live in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Which action would I consider better for my family? But, if that template is reasonable, then we can use all of our skills to answer that question. If we decide that, with respect to the Iraqis, the criterion is do no net harm and do net good if possible, then we can use a number of analytical techniques. Indeed, I feel we are called to use all of our talents when we make decisions. I know some folks who believe that morality is a matter of feeling empathy. You waxed long and poetically in your post about how you felt the pain of people dying. Do you think having such feelings is what morality is aboutthat only those people who feel a emotion at a certain time are acting morally? Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
- Original Message - From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 7:05 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 9:23 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons So, the Holocaust would have been ethical if Germany had won? It was ethical to the Nazis at the time it was taking place. Just as it was ethical for slavery to be practiced, here and elsewhere, for a long time, just as it was ethical for the original tribe of Israel to, occasionally, utterly murder rivaling peoples, even to the point that a psalm was written singing of the joys of dashing out the brains of enemies' children against stones. From my point of view today, and I suspect from yours and most others', those actions are all reprehensible. But to no small degree I suspect that's because we're living in a world and a time that affords us the luxury of extending the epithet human to *all* people, even those we oppose or who oppose us. It is indeed far easier to do that when one isn't risking one's childrens' lives in doing sowhich makes a good basis for understanding the progress we've made in stopping various immoral actions (e.g. slavery). Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful Change L3
From: Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:18:35 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda wrote Note that Dan and I, for example, despite different positions on the war, have consistently acknowledged that going to war has costs. What's striking is the asymmetry here because, of course, _not_ going to war has costs as well, and the reason this discussion isn't going very far is the failure to acknowledge that simple fact. Good grief, Gautam. I've held the remaining hand of a double amputee from Iraq and could hardly speak as we looked into each other's eyes and I told him about Wes. snipping I'm not exactly clear how I was supposed to respond to your post unless I, personally, had died in Iraq. It was so emotional and yet irrelevant to the discussion. None of us have said that you don't care about American soldiers - although you've done your best in posts like this to imply that you do far more than people who disagree with you. The point of this discussion isn't caring about Americans (even though that's the most important thing for me), it's caring about _Iraqis_. You mention being a first responder. Let me see if an analogy in that context gets through. When firefighters go into houses, some of them may die. If they go into enough houses, some of them _will_ die. So a house is on fire and people inside it are burning to death. We can hear them screaming. You are saying - don't send firefighters into that house, some of them will die. Dan and I are saying - okay, that might be a reasonable position, because some fires are just too dangerous to send people in. But when you make that decision, isn't it important to take into account the people in the house? And you're saying, no, we should send the firefighters in, because we don't want firefighters to die. Other fires have gone out because we asked them to - we didn't have to send firefighters in. To which we reply, okay, but those fires have nothing in common with this fire, so that doesn't have anything to do with whether firefighters should go into _this_ fire. So you say - no firefighters should only go in when their _own_ house is on fire. To which we say, look, what if an entire apartment building was on fire? To which your response is that's absurd, but you won't explain why your criteria would allow us to send firefighters into that apartment building. So I say, look, all I'm saying is that the lives of people _inside the building_ are also a factor. To which your response is, look, I'm really angry, I know firefighters and you couldn't possibly Now, do you understand why some people might say - protecting the lives of firefighters is important. We all want to do that. It's really a little offensive that you imply that I don't want to do that. But I don't want a fire marshall to make decisions based solely upon the fact that fighting fires risks firefighters. It's also important to save the people in the buildings. We've talked about prayer a lot in this discussion - I am praying that this analogy is sufficiently clear that I don't have to spell out each particular parallel. So yes, I acknowledge that you've spoken to lots of soldiers have suffered. Have you spoken to Iraqis who, say, saw their children raped and tortured in front of them as a routine method of interrogation? How about ones whose hands, ears, or tongues were chopped off for opposing the regime? All of these are things that would be happening _right now_ if the war had not happened. They're also powerful and emotional. Why don't they matter? If they do, why shouldn't that at least be part of the calculation when we decide what to do? Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Fwd: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
--- Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (quoting Warren, whose post I still haven't got): That's just the empty cant of ideologically and morally bereft leftist extremists To be fair, I should not have said this. I was tired and frustrated when I wrote it. It's just that I've heard this said, over and over and over again, and I, and many other people, have rebutted it over and over and over again, and none of the people saying this have ever even bothered to respond to the points made, over and over and over again, that this is a ridiculous thing to say. It's just a profoundly ridiculous argument, one made entirely without evidence or argument, and I'm just tired of hearing it over and over again. I don't know what the literary equivalent to this would be - someone telling you, over and over again, that a mixed metaphor is gramatically correct even when you send him hour grammar textbooks saying otherwise? It's just a ridiculous argument, and I'm tired of it, and I tend to get frustrated when I hear it, over and over and over again. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
On Apr 20, 2005, at 3:59 PM, Dan Minette wrote: From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] From my point of view today, and I suspect from yours and most others', those actions are all reprehensible. But to no small degree I suspect that's because we're living in a world and a time that affords us the luxury of extending the epithet human to *all* people, even those we oppose or who oppose us. It is indeed far easier to do that when one isn't risking one's childrens' lives in doing sowhich makes That is a valid point. I would point out that the arguement had been made thousands of years agoit's just that even people who state that's their source of ethics find ways to weasel around it. The way I like to look at the Old Testiment is as a journey of a people from a polytheistic religion where every tribe had their totom god and Yahwah was just the god of their tribe to where Yahwah was the God of all, and Israel had a special responsibility. There's a jump in this graf that seems to reflect a complete change of subject; did something get elided? The issue I have with the word moral is that it suggests, to me, an absolute, a code of conduct implicitly derived from a superhuman source. I think that, at a minimum, morality requires the existance of Truths that exist apart from humans...but that we can come to understand. We agree that one cannot emperically derive morality. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree on the source of morality, which is of course why I don't accept that something like morality -- as I think it's commonly supposed to be -- exists. ;) But if I can't accept the presence of that source, I'm not personally comfortable with the word, and I get, along with that, the sense that what we call moral is really nothing other than ethics dressed up to look like divine edict -- when in fact morality is every bit as plastic and fluid as ethics, and for exactly the same reasons, because to me they both spring from the same source: Social consensus. OK, let me ask you a hard question. I bet if I did a poll of the world, most people would say that homosexuality is wrong. Does that make it unethical to be gay? Aren't gay people wrong _by definition_? Heh, now you're getting into the idea that majority rules. But there are a couple escape hatches to what I'm suggesting, one dealing with this specific question (but applicable to at least some others); the other more broadly available. (I'll leave aside the fact that a *global* poll really doesn't reflect much, since we are not a world governed by one single social construct; rather, there are dozens of national governments alone, and there are some nations that explicitly or implicitly have declared homosexual behavior to be fully acceptable. The question's, I think, nullified in effect by our lack of One World Government, but it's still an interesting point.) The specific response is, simply, discussion. A poll that reflects an opinion doesn't leave any room for dialogue, no opportunity from which to determine how the opinion/s are derived or how they might be changed by simple constructive dialogue. There are myriad reasons why any one individual might believe homosexual behavior to be wrong, so the simple response (Yes, it's 'wrong') is not an effective metric. It doesn't address issues like religious concerns (...because God hates fags), fears (...because gay men all want to stick it up my rear), superstitions (...because gays are the reason [whatever] is wrong in our world today) or simple in-group inculcations (...because my parents thought it was 'wrong' so I do too). That's one reason, as I see it, that such a global poll would not a priori define homosexual behavior as wrong. The more general response is that socially-derived ethics provide *context* for individual actions and judgments thereof, but (to my mind) shouldn't be taken as absolutes -- as they are not -- and should not be taken as dictates that are meant to immutably control behavior in individuals *within* a given population. An analogy might be how a master artist could behave -- he knows the rules for working in his medium, but maybe in his works he *breaks* those rules, and in so doing creates something that is not only of profound immediate impact (unfortunately often rejected by contemporaries) but of lasting effect, not the least because it can actually change the way art in his medium is assessed. In effect by breaking the known constraints he can actually change the entire landscape of his craft. There's also the question of relevance. What's good for the goose is not necessarily so for the gander, and likely less so for the horse. What's sensible from one person's perspective is not necessarily acceptable or even *recognizable as rational* from another's. Put yet another way, one million coyotes *can* be wrong after all; or at least, their apparent gustatory opinions don't mean that I'm somehow obligated to join
Re: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
- Original Message - From: Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:08 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments) I don't know what the literary equivalent to this would be - someone telling you, over and over again, that a mixed metaphor is gramatically correct even when you send him hour grammar textbooks saying otherwise? Let this be a warning to you. _Never_ mix metaphors with alcohol. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
At 05:37 PM 4/19/2005 -0700, Deborah Harrell wrote: Killing and dying is too important to do it because it makes people feel good. If you can do good in the world, you should. But it's not the first or most important thing that a state does in foreign policy. Agreed, but if one is going to claim _moral_ justification in pursuing war, one had better ensure that citizens and foreign states will agree with one's assertions. Otherwise, they will eventually discover that such claims were, at best, misreprentation of the actual situation. And that destroys the credibility of that government. As others have pointed out, there is no reason why any of the above should be true. For example, Deborah, you have suggested that the US should be doing more in Sudan. The rest of the world believes that the US should *not* intervene militarily to protect the Darfuris.If Bush were to advocate such an intervention, would the morality of this intervention be based upon the opinion of the rest of the world? JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Good, Evil, and Foreign Affairs Re: Peaceful change
At 07:34 AM 4/16/2005 -0700, Nick Arnett wrote: Perhaps you don't see it as nationalistic because he allows for the existence of good guys who aren't Americans. But the definition of a good guy is anybody who agrees with our national policies. Everybody else is working against us, for the forces of evil. But Nick, your argument tantamount to moral relativism. The alternative you appear to be suggesting to the above is that the United States must occasionally openly engage in evil. Otherwise if: -evil exists in the world -the US occasionally fights evil -when the US fights evil, it is engaging in good -In these cases, the US will be open about the fact that it is working for good And of course, as Dan Minette pointed out, Bush has allowed for the fact that, for example, the Pope disagrees with US policies, but is not working for the forces of evil. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Christian Majority Re: Peaceful change
At 06:52 PM 4/16/2005 -0700, Nick Arnett wrote: feel angry when anyone bring up inaction or doing nothing, etc., in this thread. Nobody is suggesting doing nothing. I think the word nothing is being used as to describe polices that would have the practical effect of contiuing the status quo policies in Iraq of the previous 12 years. Given what those policies had managed to accomplish in 12 years, I think that it is appropriate to describe them as the status quo, or essentially, doing nothing. When the majority of churches and Christians around the world are telling us that what we are about to do is wrong, and leaders that represent a huge number of them present an alternative, how can you say there is no evidence? Are they fools? On the other hand, there have been times in history when a majority of Christians were following heresy, so a majority vote is by no means definitive. My premise is that when most of the churches of the world say that what you're about to do is wrong, it is imperative to stop and consider what they are saying, to at least meet with their leaders and listen. I'm presuming that you meant most of the Christian churches of the world. I am also quite sure that Bush did consider what they were saying. I certainly have little doubt that he considered the perspective of the Vatican. I'd also note that in 2002, subsequent to the Axis of Evil speech, and after a time in which the Washington Post was already reporting on war plans for Iraq, Bush met personally with the Pope in the Vatican. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Removing Dictators Re: Peaceful change L3
At 06:54 PM 4/17/2005 -0700, Nick wrote: When, according to our best understanding, we have an opportunity to decrease human suffering and death, when does God call us to let things unfold instead, increasing human suffering and death? When does God call us to say no when people ask for help? Who called for help? Exactly which Iraqis called for us to invade and occupy their country? Was there any evidence of even an partial consensus for that? Nick, this is a curious standard. Would a consensus of Rwandans been necessary to justify intervention in that country? Also, given the constrainst upon freedom of speech in Iraq, weren't the reactions of people dancing in the streets worth something to you? You later ask if must dictators be physically stopped? I would respond by noting that you seem to agree that Christians are called to do justice. I think that Christians should stop dictators if to do so would be justice. For example, if a dictator is killing his own citizens, and we have the power to save those lives from that killing, is it not just to do so?Even if it requires the use of force? I think that you sense the weakness of the rhetorical question must dictators be physically stopped? because you proceed shortly to the question of urgency: And we absolutely had to remove him from power as quickly as possible? Why? On what basis was there such urgency all of a sudden? I think that here you need to weigh the damage being done vs. the probability of success. For example, we know Saddam Hussein was killing some several thousand Iraqis each month. We also know that for 12 years, various condemnations of international condemnation; diplomatic, military and economic sanctions; covert support for opposition parties; and targeted airstrikes had failed to make any noticeable progress in dislodging him. Therfore, we could reasonably conclude that continuing these policies would likely not result in the removal of Saddam Hussein for several years - particularly based on our experiences in Cuba, DPRK, and elsewhere. Thus, Nick, we have the situation where choosing to continue condemnation and sanctions, etc. would result in the deaths of innocent Iraqis and war would result in the death of innocent Iraqis. I think that a great many people were able to judge that war would most likely result in the deaths of fewer Iraqis in the long run. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Lincoln Re: Peaceful change L3
At 07:32 PM 4/17/2005 -0700, Gautam wrote: --- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices - saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side. --Abraham Lincoln Nick A quote entirely stripped of its moral and historical context - remarkably so, in fact. Lincoln is the historical figure you can _least_ enlist in your cause, Nick, because he is one whom most people agree is the paragon of the modern statesman who _also_ chose to fight an optional war far more terrible than any other his nation has ever fought, before or since. The Lincoln whom you quote approvingly _chose_ to unleash total war in a way that the West had not seen in centuries and the United States had never seen. He did this despite the opposition of most of the rest of the world (Britain and France, for example, _both_ supported mediation of the conflict and, de facto, the split of the United States into separate countries). Indeed, to this day, many Confederacy sympathizers in this country can't understand why Lincoln did not simply let the Confederacy walk, since substantial majorities in each of the Confederate States clearly wanted to go their own way. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change L3
At 04:27 PM 4/18/2005 -0700, Nick wrote: On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:18:35 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda wrote Note that Dan and I, for example, despite different positions on the war, have consistently acknowledged that going to war has costs. What's striking is the asymmetry here because, of course, _not_ going to war has costs as well, and the reason this discussion isn't going very far is the failure to acknowledge that simple fact. Good grief, Gautam. I've held the remaining hand of a double amputee from Iraq and could hardly speak as we looked into each other's eyes and I told him about Wes. I've visited our returning soldiers in VA hospitals. I've planted a few hundred crosses in the ground at an Iraq memorial. I've thanked and hugged more Marines in the last few months than I can count. I've seen my 21-year-old niece bury her husband of 13 months. A half-dozen relatives of dead soldiers and I share a kind of friendship for which I don't even have words. My father is mostly deaf from his time in the belly turret of a light attack bomber in WWII. I have had people die in my hands from violence. I've made the kind of triage decisions that cannot be left behind. I've spent time in dialog with people tortured and targeted by Central American death squads. I've traveled to squatter's settlements and remote Third World villages to learn from the poor, surrounded by children going blind and dying from malnutrition. Please spare me the arguments that I'm thinking magically and don't know the costs of action, inaction or anything in between. I choose to have hope for better ways of dealing with conflict *despite* the fact that my experiences scream at me to run and hide in cynicism or self- righteousness. It's a hell of a thing to suggest that anybody who lost a family member in Iraq is failing to acknowledge that our decisions about war come with costs. It's a hell of a thing to suggest that anybody who's been a first responder fails to acknowledge the cost of violence. I'm feeling pretty stinking angry right now and I'm extremely tempted to dump a truckload of whatthehelldoyouknow on you... but I know that you *do* know a great deal about the costs and benefits of political decisions. I acknowledge your education and contacts, so about how giving me the benefit of the doubt about my knowledge and experiences. Please, spare me the suggestion that I don't know or acknowledge that there are costs of going to war or not going to war. I know far more than I have words to describe. Peace! Nick Nick, I have quoted your whole piece here, because I am not at all sure how it responds to Gautam's point. Gautam's point was that he doesn't feel that you are acknowledging that *not* going to war has costs as well.You responded with a discussion of the costs of going to war. This is a partial sports score, its like saying Baltimore 2 without at all mentioning the other half. Under Saddam Hussein, many families were losing loved ones directly to torture, disappearances, and summary executions. Tens of thousands of others were losing their beloved children because Saddam Hussein was spending the country's oil revenue on palaces and weapons rather than basic food and medicine. These are costs of *not* going to war. Gautam was asking you to acknowledge this, and as near as I can tell, you have not bothered to respond. JDG ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
Julia Thompson wrote: Let's hope it's just a pet. (Spank, spank...) How shocking! I think somewhere in here, there's a joke about a Peter, Gabriel. __ Steve Sloan . Huntsville, Alabama = [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brin-L list pages .. http://www.brin-l.org Science Fiction-themed online store . http://www.sloan3d.com/store Chmeee's 3D Objects http://www.sloan3d.com/chmeee 3D and Drawing Galleries .. http://www.sloansteady.com Software Science Fiction, Science, and Computer Links Science fiction scans . http://www.sloan3d.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
On Apr 20, 2005, at 7:08 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote: --- Dan Minette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (quoting Warren, whose post I still haven't got): Well, you need to take me out of your trash filter, man. (Yes, that was meant to be wry.) That's just the empty cant of ideologically and morally bereft leftist extremists To be fair, I should not have said this. I was tired and frustrated when I wrote it. It's just that I've heard this said, over and over and over again, and I, and many other people, have rebutted it over and over and over again, and none of the people saying this have ever even bothered to respond to the points made, over and over and over again, that this is a ridiculous thing to say. This I understand. There are plenty of times when I've thought, oh no, not *that* tired old hobbyhorse again. There are also times when I've made an end run around all the arguments leading up to whatever a given conclusion might be and simply jumped right to the end. (That usually comes back to bite me.) There've been some times when I've just not responded to the stuff that makes my eyes roll; I can't recall offhand if that's worked in the long run or not, but it sure can make for some short replies sometimes. I don't know what the literary equivalent to this would be - someone telling you, over and over again, that a mixed metaphor is gramatically correct even when you send him hour grammar textbooks saying otherwise? More on the order, perhaps, of cliches -- they're just appalling, don't add any value to a narrative, and almost always can be replaced with something much more creative, colorful and effective with just a little thought. They feel like placeholders when I come across them -- almost like the author needed to put *something* there, and always meant to go back and fix it, but somehow just never did. (Though there are some authors that just use them and don't care; I tend not to read their works, as it's no good at all for my blood pressure.) Won't disagree that the war for oil argument really isn't; there's a lot wrong with the assertion, but possibly your correspondent at the time (Doug?) was also tired. The corollary could be the war to get the WMDs away from Saddam story, which was still being promoted even when it was looking increasingly unlikely (post invasion) that Iraq had had any in its possession for years. IIRC recent polls indicate that a significant minority of Americans still believe that Iraq *did* have unconventional weapons, and that they were seized by US forces. I don't think anyone's seriously promoting the WMD idea any more, but for a while there it was as tiresome to me as the war-for-oil mantra seems to be for you. And yeah, as you observed, people do things for more than one reason; many people -- possibly all people -- can actually carry multiple and mutually-contradictory views, and yet behave in a way that is consistent to many nines. Nations, being bodies of people, logically must be capable of similar behavior -- but maybe that's best taken up on the other thread. ANYway, thanks for the comments; they're appreciated. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
On Apr 20, 2005, at 7:43 PM, Steve Sloan wrote: Julia Thompson wrote: Let's hope it's just a pet. (Spank, spank...) How shocking! I think somewhere in here, there's a joke about a Peter, Gabriel. Oo. I think you win some kind of prize for that one. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:08 PM Subject: Fwd: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments) I don't know what the literary equivalent to this would be - someone telling you, over and over again, that a mixed metaphor is gramatically correct even when you send him hour grammar textbooks saying otherwise? Let this be a warning to you. _Never_ mix metaphors with alcohol. Dan M. Also, never mix calculus with alcohol. Don't drink and derive. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!
Steve Sloan wrote: Julia Thompson wrote: Let's hope it's just a pet. (Spank, spank...) How shocking! I think somewhere in here, there's a joke about a Peter, Gabriel. Thank you, Steve! Give the man a banana! Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Apr 20, 2005, at 8:44 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Let this be a warning to you. _Never_ mix metaphors with alcohol. Dan M. Also, never mix calculus with alcohol. Don't drink and derive. Clearly the best thing to be when doing calculus is stoned. You deserve a prize for that one. I can't think of an appropriate one at the moment, though. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
- Original Message - From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 10:48 PM Subject: Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments) Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Apr 20, 2005, at 8:44 PM, Julia Thompson wrote: Let this be a warning to you. _Never_ mix metaphors with alcohol. Dan M. Also, never mix calculus with alcohol. Don't drink and derive. Clearly the best thing to be when doing calculus is stoned. You deserve a prize for that one. I can't think of an appropriate one at the moment, though. Julia Don't make it too big, something infinitesimal will do just fine. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble theory, and comments)
On Apr 20, 2005, at 3:36 PM, Dan Minette wrote: From: Warren Ockrassa [EMAIL PROTECTED] To be fair I don't always make the distinction when I comment on something, which surely doesn't help anyone else decide whether I think I'm right or I'm just blowing hot gas. ;) I wouldn't mind having to ask which is it from time to time if you don't mind being asked. If we agree that you sometimes use hyperbola and sometimes take strong serious positions, this seems like an obvious thing to do. If you feel the urge to ask, please do so. It might be interesting to see how many times I'm being serious versus just venting. As it happens I've seen some very absolutist statements coming from Gautam, regular use of adjectives such as absurd and nonsense, etc., and yet I don't see you calling him out on his language like you've chosen to target me. OK, a fair observation. You are right that I don't do it. I cannot remember when he used such strong language and I called him on it. The reason for this isn't automatic deference to his education. It's that when I look at that type of statement, I don't have the resources to mount a counter-arguement that meets my standards. All right -- but can you see why I might feel picked on? (Or is fortunate a better term...?) -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Christian Majority Re: Peaceful change
- Original Message - From: JDG [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:31 PM Subject: Christian Majority Re: Peaceful change On the other hand, there have been times in history when a majority of Christians were following heresy, so a majority vote is by no means definitive. If you recall, Nick is a Lutheran. Luther was excommunicated for heresy; and I'm guessing Nick thinks Luther wasn't that far off the mark. :-) Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
On Apr 20, 2005, at 3:58 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:01:19 -0700, Warren Ockrassa wrote Possibly harking to Job and God's reply out of the whirlwind? That's one of the more enigmatic monologues in the entire Abrahamic tradition. I've seen really hard-line realist type interpretations that insist God is entirely unknowable; I've seen Zennish renderings that suggest something remarkably similar; years ago my own take on it was that it was a non-answer, equivalent to an arbitrary, Because I'm God and I can, that's why. I used to think Job was impenetrable until I realized that at one level, at least, it is a simple lesson. When bad stuff happens to you, there's a great temptation to insist that I didn't deserve it. Job was resisting that urge, choosing to trust that God is just, until his friends goaded him into trying to negotiate with God... who responded with all the did you create the universe? stuff. I'm always a bit surprised when I read some of the words attributed to God in Job that seem nothing other than sarcastic. To my mind Job was written in two sections, actually; IIRC there's even some indication that the text was written by two different authors. There was the long-suffering man who, despite his strife, did not blame God. Then there was this other, radically different take from the perspective of a God defending itself with some really unexpected (from Job's, hence our, POV) statements. And one can read Job in another way -- as being a lesson in not finding blame. That is, when the whirlwind says what it says, in essence it's saying there is no reason at all for you to have suffered. That's not saying it was pointless -- rather, it might just mean that trying to find a reason (in the human sense of why did this happen) for boils or livestock pestilence might be as useful as trying to find a reason (again, in a deep, symbolic sense) for a cumulus cloud. IOW some things just *happen*. They're not volitional; they're not cosmic retribution; they're not messages from a netherworld. They're just events. Any significance attached to them is therefore subjective and wholly manufactured. (Huh. Did I just dismiss astrology? ;) -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Peaceful change
On Apr 19, 2005, at 7:16 AM, Robert J. Chassell wrote: A related issue: what, if anything, prevents this understanding of a deity from being different than Tipler's suggestion that we are, probabilistically speaking, a simulation running in an antiquarian AI's supercomputer? Well, to the extent that an involved god/prime mover type entity would be as falsifiable as Tipler's suggestion (read: not falsifiable at all), nothing, I think. Tipler's ideas really aren't very fresh; in some ways they're basically reformulations of Hindu and possibly Gnostic worldviews. A more recent example would be the first _Matrix_ movie or, a little farther back in time, the later works of Philip K. Dick. After all, that entity's supercomputer is also necessary, else `all of creation would come to a halt and we would cease to exist.' Moreover, the antiquarian may, or may not, respond to prayers and/or works by his simulations. And his purposes may be hard for a simulation to figure out. Hmm. Not sure if the simulator would want to respond to prayers, if the idea is to more or less recreate the universe. Wouldn't that represent a corruption of the experiment and thus its outcome? Or hey, how about this -- this isn't the first simulation run. Maybe it's the millionth. And the simulator is bored, bored, bored, and so is now playing with the runtime parameters while the program is in operation. Or maybe our universe is now on display in some hyperdimensional children's museum, in the hands-on (or pseudopods-on) exhibit wing, and it's up to the young (brood, hatchlings) to determine which prayers are answered and which are not. -- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress The Seven-Year Mirror http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
Gautam wrote: --- Doug Pensinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gautam Mukunda wrote: But, look, why is it so hard to believe that people can do things for more than one reason? Not hard at all, if that was what happened, but this war was prosecuted by scaring the American People with images of mushroom clouds, not by telling them it was imperative we take over the Iraqi oil fields. Somehow, Doug, I'm thinking that those aren't the only two possibilities you can imagine. I recall a speech by a fairly prominent member of the Administration about Saddam Hussein using rape, torture, and mass murder as routine instruments of his rule. I think it was the _President_, in front of Congress. I'd guess that nine of ten words in support of invasion were related to the threat Hussein posed to the U.S. and the tenth was about how nasty he was to his own people. Clearly the American people would not have supported a war to liberate Iraq from Hussein. Just as clearly the administration used propaganda and fear to sway opinion. CLearly this wasn't about taking over oil fields. That's just the empty cant of ideologically and morally bereft leftist extremists. You're the one that implied that it was in your exchange with Debbie. But I'll add some substantiation from the necon think tank Project for the New American Century white paper: the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Equally clearly, humanitarian concerns were _very important_ to several people in the Administration - most strikingly, Paul Wolfowitz. But any argument conducted from your premises - that the Bush Administration is EEVVIILL, EEILLL I say, You always want to put those words in my mouth, and I'll continue to deny them. The Bush administration is supremely misguided and is willing to compromise principle to achieve its goals, but they are not evil. Or even EEVVIILL. is one that can't be resolved, because any discussion of politics is, by its nature, uncertain. If you default with certainty to one particular set of beliefs about their motivations and actions (the one that somehow makes the people who disagree with you look as malign as possible), you're welcome to that belief, but don't expect me to take it seriously. Ive gotta call it the way I see it Gautam and whether or not you take me seriously, more and more people are beginning to understand that this administration has been leading us in the wrong direction. -- Doug ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Peaceful Change L3
Gautam Mukunda So yes, I acknowledge that you've spoken to lots of soldiers have suffered. Have you spoken to Iraqis who, say, saw their children raped and tortured in front of them as a routine method of interrogation? How about ones whose hands, ears, or tongues were chopped off for opposing the regime? All of these are things that would be happening _right now_ if the war had not happened. They're also powerful and emotional. Why don't they matter? If they do, why shouldn't that at least be part of the calculation when we decide what to do? So Gautam, are you saying that the US invaded Iraq out of a deeply felt need to save the Iraqi people? Not cos of WMD risks, not cos of issues over oil? Now, I know you are not, it was for a lot of complex intertwined reasons. So please leave a little of the high moral ground for others to stand on. Call me a cynic, but I just can't see GWB weeping at night in bed over the plight of Iraqi children. I am not saying he is a bastard, but just that I doubt it was top of his list. And it certainly was not the thrust of the argument put to justify the war. Also, your statement that peoples hands etc would still be being chopped off if the war had not happened. How can you say that? How do you know? There were other alternatives. That's one of the points that we lefty extremists keep making and that keeps falling on deaf ears. How about a UN sanctioned multinational force, that planned it properly and put in some thought about dealing with the peace. That did it with the full agreement of the only body that can be seen as bi-partisan enough to actually be doing it for moral reasons i.e. the terribly flawed, but at least globally based UN. Sure it was hard, those damn frenchies so much easier just to send in the Marines and shoot all the stupid ragheads... but at least it would have been a consensus. Perhaps than you would have an Iraqi where 60 bodies turning up floating in some canal is not page three news. Well, I guess they all had their hands and tongues. And it's interesting; the main driver for US foreign policy is caring for cute little Iraqi kids unlike those greedy French and Germans etc, whose only interests are oil and power. Please, climb down from your high horse and discuss this rationally. We were all there, we know what we were told, and it was precious bloody little about Iraqi children. At least that part of the drivel we were fed was honest. You nor I have any idea what other outcomes were possible, because GWB rushed into a war that he did not have to, on a timing driven by his electoral interests. Not, and I repeat, not, cos he was losing sleep over the fate of Iraqi children. I am sorry, but you have already suggested that cos of my misgivings about the war that had a secret crush on Saddam Hussien, to now suggest that I/we actually wanted to see the tongues torn out of Iraqi children is too much. Nick never suggested you did not care about American soldiers, and if you found it a 'little offensive' when you misread what he wrote, than why did you shoot it right back at him, suggesting he does not care about Iraqi children. Anyway, I am sorry for getting emotive. I actually wanted to debate some things: 1) Why did the war have to start when it did, what was the cost of waiting and planning better (and perhaps getting a broader level of support)? 2) What kind of precedent has been set for future invasions of countries that the US government takes a dislike to? 3) Are the acts of 9/11 now morally justified, as OBL did not like the US government and acted to release the children of America from what he perceives as a terrible godless tyranny that is tearing out their souls? 4) How many Iraqi people are dying each day now as compared to before the war, and does this matter? I will stop there as its getting emotional again. There are many sides to this debate, and none are all right, nor all wrong. That, I hope, we can all agree on. Andrew ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
