Re: Space progress report
Keith said: Friday I visited Reaction Engines. Delightful experience meeting Alan Bond and Richard Varvill, the key technical guys. They have (and I saw) the precooler for the SABRE engines working. They extract a GW of heat from entering ram air and drop the temperature to -150 deg, making it possible to compress the air to rocket chamber pressure with a low tech turbine. Miles of tiny tubes in each one, and they *don't leak.* Speaking of Skylon, the SABRE precooler has now successfully passed its test programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20510112 Rich___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Energy projects was Underwater mortgages and the economy
Dan said: In typical everyday usage, lasers are not very efficient. Even in high tech uses, such as inertia fusion, particle beams are much more efficient: about 12% vs. about 1%, back when inertia fusion was big back in the '80s. High pulse energy, high repetition rate diode-pumped solid state lasers now have an efficiency of around 10%. Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Brin-l Digest, Vol 20, Issue 4
John said: Quote it all! It's the only way to be sure. Quote it all *from orbit*. Rich VFP Very Little Added Value ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Facebook Troll
Jon said: I should have provided more clues... Forrest is correct, the particle with no mass is the Higgs Boson. Forrest Higgs (no mass - doesn't exist!~) Higgs bosons, if they exist, are not massless: the current experimental lower limit on their mass is over a hundred times the mass of a proton. Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: On Listmail
Kevin said: But your point about Facebook and Twitter may be correct, to some degree. The unfortunate thing about that is neither medium is worth a damn for any serious conversation. I am not in Dan Minette's league, as 3-4 paragraphs into an e-mail I start to run out of steam, but you simply cannot talk intelligently at 140 characters per message. I've had some quite serious discussions on Facebook using comments attached to statuses or posted items. I'm not sure what the maximum length of Facebook comments is but it's certainly much more than 140 characters. Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: On Listmail
Doug said: Is anyone out there? I'm still here; I don't think that I'll ever unsubscribe from Brin-L and the Culture. I agree that it's been awfully quiet though. Rich GCU Mailing List Fermi Paradox ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Br?n on global warming
Trent said: The problem with nuclear power is that we can't get all the uranium we need from reliable countries. A lot of it comes from Russia, the Central Asian Republics, and less stable African states. Aren't the worlds most productive uranium mines in Canada and Australia? Those two countries combined account for almost half of the world's uranium output, Russia around 8%, other former Soviet states 22%, Africa about 15%. Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: IPad
Dave said: There have been rumors that Apple was coming out with the second coming of Jesus. Apple cures cancer. Analysts disappointed by lack of world peace. Apple stock falls 10% Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: IPad
Dave said: There have been rumors that Apple was coming out with the second coming of Jesus. Apple cures cancer. Analysts disappointed by lack of world peace. Apple stock down 11%. Rich ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: The worst
Nick said: My friends I hate to write this. Been putting it off for a while. My younger sister, Lesley, the youngest of the four of us, mother of my five-year-old niece, Sarah, could not fight off the sepsis that attacked her body. Lesley died this morning. I have never hurt so much. Nick I'm so sorry to hear that, Nick. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Brin: Re: is Brin-l active?
Nick said: And we're cooking up a new project, a wiki for SF and fantasy, starting with a focus on a particular writer's works... Guess who. Benford? Bear? Baxter? Rich GCU I Give Up! ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Foswiki up and running
Nick said: And... a blast from the past, pasted below. I'll let whoever emerge as the folks who lead the wiki project decide how to respond. As usual, I'm inclined to let the community choose and will only intervene directly as a last resort. I don't know whether I get any kind of vote, but if I did I'd vote to let Jeroen back. People, situations and communities can all change quite a lot in six years, and everything seems much more relaxed here than it did back then. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: DeLong on health insurance reform
John said:
Say I have two $1 bills. I could choose to go to McDonald's and buy a
burger and fries.
Now someone takes one of my dollars. Now I can only buy a burger, or
fries, but not both. My choices have been limited. My freedom to
choose has been limited.
That is obvious.
Yes, but it's not the whole story. Suppose that Alice has two $1 bills
and she could choose to buy a burger, fries or a shake, each of which
costs $1, and further suppose that Bob has no money. Then Alice could
choose from one of 36 possible futures (as each dollar could supply
one of {burger, fries, shake} to one of {Alice,Bob}, so she could
choose, for example, a burger for herself and fries for Bob or a
burger and fries for herself). Alice has quite a lot of freedom, but
Bob has none.
Suppose George insists that Alice gives $1 to Bob. Then Alice can't
choose any of the 36 possible futures. The most she can do is to pick
one of six partial futures, for example the one in which she has at
least one burger. Bob can also choose one of six partial futures, for
example the one in which he has a shake. The outcome is that Alice and
Bob collectively choose one of the 36 total futures. Alice's freedom
has been curtailed a bit, but Bob has been given some freedom in
compensation.
I guess that you would argue that Alice's two $1 bills are hers, and
that if she wants to use them to give Bob some freedom she could
choose to give one or both to him but that George isn't justified in
forcing her to. I further guess that Nick would argue that it's more
fair for George to make Alice give the dollar to Bob as the gain in
freedom for Bob outweighs the loss of freedom for Alice.
Rich
___
http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: DeLong on health insurance reform
John said: Yes, but it's not the whole story. It is not my whole post, either, since you cut the quote off early. I know it wasn't your whole post let alone your whole argument but it was enough for me to hang my toy example from. I suspect you double-counted the 9 possibilities where each person gets 1 item, and also the 6 possibilities where 1 person gets two different items. 36 - 9 - 6 = 21. My reasoning in more detail was that one dollar can be spent in six ways: (Alice, burger); (Alice, fries); (Alice, shake); (Bob, burger); (Bob, fries); (Bob, shake) The spending of the two dollars is independent so the total number of ways they can be spent is 6x6 = 36. However, I think that you're right as burgers are indistinguishable from each other, as are portions of fries, as are shakes, at least in a simple toy model. I was counting the case in which the first dollar buys Alice a burger and so does the second as two cases rather than one. As you said, there are six such cases that I've counted twice. I was also counting cases in which the first dollar buys Alice a burger and the second buys Alice fries as distinguishable from the one in which the first buys her fries and the second a burger. If they're indistinguishable it's clearer to describe them as Alice doesn't have a shake or whatever and there are actually only 3x3=9 cases rather than the eighteen that I counted. So the correct count is 36-6-9 = 21, as you calculated. Your method of counting has the virtue of being more elegant as well as the greater virtue of being correct. Thanks for the correction. Also, if each person chooses one of 7 uniformly, the 28 outcomes will not be uniform: for example, Bob with 2 burgers will be half as likely as each with a burger. It seems that the outcome will be less predictable, more randomized. Yes, that's true. There will be some quite odd cases in which Alice buys Bob a burger and vice versa too (and similarly for the other two products). Do you think Nick would argue the same thing (Alice must give everyone a dollar) if Alice had $10 and 9 others had no dollars? What if Alice had $20 and ten others had $2 each? What if, instead of dollars, we had coupons for a medical treatment to extend life by a year? Must Alice give up years of her life? What about contracts to provide 1 year of manual labor to XYZ corporation? If Alice was liable for 2 of those contracts, and Bob was liable for none, must Bob take 1 of the contracts? What would you guess Nick would argue? I think that in the cases with the money or the coupons Nick would argue that Alice should be made to give to the others, but not in the case with labour contracts, but I suppose we'll have to wait for him to give his opinion. Of course, not all years of extended life have the same cost in expended resources so that example's a bit strange. Similarly, the opportunity cost of making different people engage in manual labour varies wildly. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: DeLong on health insurance reform
Nick said: I'd argue for democracy -- none of this business of X must give Y money. A social contract, not force. That's why I said the original post failed to address the critical question of what take means. If you prefer, recast the questions as In this situation, is it morally right for Alice to give Bob (et al.) whatever? or more simply Should Alice give Bob (et al.) whatever? (Although as far as I can see in lots of cases the way it works seems to be that the democratic process decides on norms and then those are imposed by various kinds of coercion on dissenters so it largely comes to the same thing. Whether one sees this is a good or bad thing I suppose depends on how much one tends to dissent.) Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: DeLong on health insurance reform
Rob said: So.you admit you hate America. Am I missing a reference here because this hating America stuff doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever to me? Rich GCU Perpetually Confused ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: The Role of Government in a Libertarian Free Market
Rob said: A few people have been removed, a couple of them long term listees and one was a moderator here. We definitely are not queasy when it comes to pulling the pin. I'm definitely queasy about it, but I guess I'm not part of we. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Passive-Agressive posting (was Re: The Role of Government in a Libertarian Free Market)
Patrick said: It's a put-on. And it's a put-on anyone who's been on the Internet for more than 5 minutes has seen dozens of times. The repetitive I'm just asking questions to try to understand, the feigned cluelessness, the detached pose, the deliberate obtuseness ... it's all carefully calculated to do one thing and one thing only - get the other person to blow his top so you can disregard them as being irrational or rude. Or else it could be the socratic method. Perhaps it's a mirror that shows people what they want to see. It's kind of like playing with that old Eliza computer program. Anyone remember that? Why do you say anyone remember that?? Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Torchwood: Children of Earth
Gary said: I've also been watching Primeval on BBC America. SciFi Channel just started showing it. I didn't care for the first few episodes, but became hooked as the story arc developed. Of Course, BBC didn't renew Primeval and tonight's cliffhanger episode will be the series last episode. The BBC didn't renew Primeval because it wasn't a BBC series: it was made by and shown on ITV in the UK. Apparently it was ITV's attempt to counter the success of the revived Doctor Who but was somewhat less successful in the ratings. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Why not discuss the topic?
Charlie said: It originated a long time before Benjy. Traders in the Mediterranean used a form of insurance to indemnify the trader against loss if the cargo was stolen, and mutualised risk was used by Chinese traders (who would spread their cargos across many vessels to lower the total risk). The Greeks and Romans had benevolent societies which are similar to modern mutuals. The idea of insurance goes back to at least the Old Babylonian period in the early second millennium BC. It's such an obvious idea that it wouldn't surprise me if it's even older than that. Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Why not discuss the topic?
Dave said: Your presumption of the freedom to behave this way comes an exorbitant cost to others on this list, but you seem to have no problem demanding that we pay that price. Really? And there I was thinking that it was easy to skim or skip posts that don't interest you, and even dialup networking costs are hardly exorbitant in most places. Rich VFP IPoAC ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Why not discuss the topic?
Charlie said: Yeah, that's what I was alluding to with Mediterranean traders. Guaranteed by Hamurabi (sp?) himself, IIRC. Oh, okay. And yes, it's mentioned in Hammurabi's law code (which was probably a set of examples of what the king would do or had done in different circumstances rather than an actual code of laws). But if I recall correctly, the Babylonians of that period didn't themselves trade much or at all in the Mediterranean basin, but by land into Anatolia and Egypt, across the Zagros mountains into what is now Iran and Afghanistan, and by sea through the Persian Gulf with the coast of Arabia and the Indus civilisation. (There was trade on the Mediterranean involving the Minoans, the Egyptians and others though, and it's very possible I may not recall correctly.) Rich ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Galactic Effect On Biodiversity
Charlie said: It's closer to the first example you suggest than the second, but it's part of a general trope of less-good science writing that pitches every new minor spin on science as rewriting the whole body of theory that is really starting to wind me up. The Physics Revolutionised For 51st Time This Year stories in New Scientist are getting a bit tedious, aren't they? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars question about Culture
Dan M said: Anyways, I was trying to subscribe without bothering anyone. It's too bad that Google likes the 4 year old website. If you found the old one at http://theculture.org/culture/faq.htm then you should rest assured that I've updated it with correct subscription and unsubscription information. Rich GSV Watching The Cogs Turn ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Redistribute the wealth
Nick said: So I don't think any of us can justify whining about being forced to pay taxes unless there's been another revolution that I haven't heard about. So if you aren't forced to pay taxes, what happens if you choose not to? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Redistribute the wealth
Nick said: Let's start with the public schools and hospitals and keep going with the hatchet until nobody gets *anything* that they didn't pay for. Toll booths on every road and park! You damn socialists and your free air and sunshine! Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 'Heroes': Five Ways to Fix a Series In Crisis
Rob said: Last I knew, Heroes was tracking within a week of original views here to over there. (As best I recall) I miss the days when we got Battlestar Galactica a long time ahead of the US. I was somewhat amused by the fury I heard expressed in some parts of the internet about that, as if it were against all the laws of God and Man. Of course, it was co-funded by a UK television company so... Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: No more feeding the troll (was Re: Debunking B.S. from the so-called debunker )
Charlie said: But this is a private forum, on a private server. It's entirely reasonable for the host to both partake in the conversation and to express displeasure at behaviour deemed disruptive. And, of course, anyone who's unhappy with the situation can fairly easily set up a third Brin-L. Rich VFP Non-Proliferation Agreement ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Channeling...
Dave said: Thanks for helping me remember that it is Erik, not Eric. I was fooled by Rob's message, I think. I remember him getting annoyed with people continually making that mistake when he was here. I miss Erik's points of view, but not entirely his methods of presenting them. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Books, was Proper function..
Doug said: About sixty thousand pages of history, I'd estimate. Not nearly enough, anyway. Well that sounds like a hell of a lot to me. I've read a bit of American history, especially the Civil War, but I don't have the kind of command of the facts that you do on what you've studied (especially with my library still in boxes). It would be a lot if I'd focused on one period but I've been trying to at least make an attempt to cover all regions and periods fairly evenly (despite my innate bias towards Romans and Egyptians). The rough map of history I drew a few years ago(*) has around 90 such region-period boxes on it so on average I've only read around six or seven hundred pages on each. On quite a lot of them I've read *nothing*. And that map doesn't even show south-east Asia, most of Africa, the Pacific and Australia or the Americas, nor does it include such short-lived but not entirely negligible polities as the British Empire, the Soviet Union or the United States of America. Rich (*) http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000147.html ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: $10
Dave said: In this case, Jon claims that John Williams is channeling erstwhile list-member Eric Rueter with his gruff posts. I don't recall a list member of that name, but there was an Erik Reuter. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Books, was Proper function..
Doug said: But you must have read thousands of pages of history! About sixty thousand pages of history, I'd estimate. Not nearly enough, anyway. But the problem is the opportunity cost of reading the Baroque Cycle. In that number of pages I could get through, for example, the whole surviving part of Livy's history of Rome, or a handful of modern histories. I'll get to it eventually, I suppose. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Some random thoughts on Wall St. and the meltdown
Charlie said: Which is why, to take a completely random example, I weigh Dan's and Rich's opinions on physics or the oil industry far higher than I do Dan's on biology or economics, or Rich's on modern warfare (say...) I'm pretty sure that I know much more about modern warfare than I do about the oil industry! Rich GCU ;) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Some random thoughts on Wall St. and the meltdown
Kevin said: 6. Most people who have never studied physics would be unlikely to pontificate on the subject. Most people who have never studied economics not only will pontificate on the subject, but will explain to you in terms that suggest you are an idiot, why they are right and you are wrong. That they are unqualified will never occur to them. Sadly, there are a large number of people who will do just that. For example, a few years ago I wrote an article on faster-than-light communication and causality in special relativity in which I showed as clearly as I know how that the existence of a communication system whose signal is instantaneous in the frame of a transmitter and receiver that are at rest with respect to each other can be used to violate causality. This is an unambiguous prediction of special relativity, and is a special case of a more general violation of causality by faster-than-light communication in the theory. Furthermore, it doesn't rely on anything except the two postulates of special relativity. (General relativity doesn't change the prediction; it just makes the demonstration more difficult.) Nevertheless, the article spawned an interminable comment thread in which I've repeatedly been accused of being an idiot on the basis of other people's intuition about how time must be. Unfortunately, special relativity has been supported (in the form of quantum field theory, which combines special relativity with quantum mechanics) to something like one part in 10^14 whereas the vague intuitions of non-physicists about time and causality are presumably on less secure footing. You can see the whole train wreck at http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/89.html Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Meltdown
Dave said: 2) This, too, shall pass -- Either the tantrum will play itself out or others will learn not to try to engage someone whose only interest seems to be contradiction and sniping. I don't suppose he cares one way or the other what I think as long as I don't force him to agree with me, but I think that John is not just contradicting people but arguing from a coherent position: many problems are too complex for even intelligent planners to solve centrally, their attempts to do so are often counterproductive, assembling a large number of levers of coercive power in the hands of governments amplifies the degree to which those planners can make far- reaching mistakes compared to the possibilities for planners in corporations, and governments tend to make those large and expensive mistakes with other people's resources at little cost to themselves Rich GCU Putting Words in His Mouth ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Books, was Proper function..
David said: My favorites of his are the ones that start with The Atrocity Archives. Not everyone would come up with Lovecraftian computer science. I must read more Stross. At the moment all I've read was A Colder War, which I thought was great (and which is available for free online). Having said that, I've had his _Singularity Sky_ and _Iron Sunrise_ on my bookshelves for a couple of years now and haven't quite worked up enough enthusiasm to read them. I'm having - and here I might have to turn in my Culture List membership - the same problem with Banks' _The Algebraist_ and _Matter_. The next fiction I'll read will probably be Greg Egan's _Incandesence_. I've enjoyed his novels quite a lot, flawed though they are, but wish there was more of a market for his short stories. As I'll probably be off work ill for one more day I might read it tomorrow. Rich, who has some enthusiasm for reading the Baroque Cycle, but that enthusiasm is outweighed by being intimidated by the sheer number of pages. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Fair Trade
Jon said: You have it bass ackwards, Rich. Fair trade makes poor people less poor. Some poor people less poor in the short term, anyway. Are you in favour of subsidies in general? (Not that fair trade is quite a subsidy, but it's close.) What is GCU Way? I was just commenting on being behind reading Brin-L email. For anyone who doesn't know, a GCU is a General Contact Unit, a type of sentient spaceship from Iain Banks' Culture books. Many of the Culture ships have names that are witticisms of various kinds. People on the Culture list often amend such shipnames to their emails (but in this case I was just adding a parenthetical aside rather than a witticism). Presumably the Marus here are an emulation of this habit. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: BOOKS
Ronn said: *BTW, I haven't heard anything from them in awhile . . . unlike a few years ago when that was a quite active list . . . 147 emails so far this month and around three thousand so far this year on the Culture List seems to be at least roughly comparable to Brin-L's 330 this month and almost three thousand this year. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Culture link
Jon said: can you forward the link, rich? thanks. Of course: http://www.culturelist.org/ Rich GCU Full of Dangerous Socialists ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and Ideals.
Kevin said: Minor nit. The battle of Manzikert was in 1071. Yes, you're right. Thank you. Rich, who must read more about Byzantine history. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Science and Ideals.
Dan M said: Historically, empires can last a long time. The eastern part of the Roman Empire, which was split by Constantine in the 300s, lasted roughly 1500 years, and was defeated by another empire. IIRC, the Chinese empire lasted about the same length until it was overtook by the Ghengas Kahn...who's rule ended up merging into that empire. It may be an aside, but both of those statements are misleading. To begin with, Constantine reunified rather than splitting the administration of the Roman state. The history of the separation between West and East bears closer examination. Under the Republic, the Romans had a long history of the division of the supreme magistracy, first between two consuls and later into first an ad-hoc and later a formalised triumvirate. This tendency briefly re-emerged during the second century with the co-imperium of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Verus, which enabled the presence of emperors at several trouble-spots concurrently. During the troubled third century this need for divided absolute authority became even more pressing and was formalised by the emperor Diocletian's institution of the tetrarchy, in which there were two senior emperors (Augusti) and two junior emperors (Caesars). It was Diocletian's intention that the Augusti should periodically abdicate in favour of their junior colleagues who would in turn appoint two new Caesars from the best men of the state. The succession of the emperors would thus be regularised, putting an end to the cycle of rebellion and civil war that had plagued the empire for fifty years. Unfortunately, it didn't work like that, as sons of the Augusti who had been passed over in favour of new, unrelated emperors, asserted their supposed hereditary rights, alternative centres of power crystallised and a new phase of civil wars began. The ultimate victor was Constantine, who became sole ruler of the Roman empire in 324. Before Constantine, there had been many temporary Roman capitals - for many decades the capital had effectively not been Rome but wherever the emperor was. Under the tetrarchy, for example, the capitals of the Augusti had been Nicomedia in Asia Minor, Mediolanum in northern Italy, Sirmium in what's now Serbia and Augusta Treverorum (modern Trier). One of Constantine's several innovations was the establishment of a permanent new capital at Constantinople. Rather than this city being the capital of an Eastern Roman Empire, it was the capital of the whole empire. Even during periods of division of the imperial authority, the empire itself was seen as a unitary whole and the usual procedure was for edicts to be issued in the name of all the current emperors and to be enforced across the Roman world. It's commonly held that the final division of the Roman empire occurred in 395 at the death of Theodosius I, at which Honorius became emperor in the west and Arcadius in the East. From then until the extinction of the western dynasty in 476 there was always an emperor in Constantinople and another usually in Ravenna. However, even as these two centres of power solidified, the Roman world formally remained whole. The two emperors provided each other with military assistance even as late as a major joint naval expedition against the Vandals in 468. Even the man sometimes seen as the last fully legitimate western emperor, Julius Nepos, was appointed by the eastern emperor Leo I. Furthermore, following the overthrow of the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, many of the Germanic successor rulers claimed to be ruling not as independent kings but as representatives of the emperor at Constantinople. As for when the Eastern remnant of the Roman empire fell, I think there were two very clear periods during which large swathes of territory were lost and the character of the empire deeply changed. The first was during the lightning conquests of the Muslim armies in the seventh century, which cut away from the empire the ancient Roman provinces of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. Augustus might well have recognised the sixth century empire of Justinian as a successor, however much transformed by the passage of centuries, to his own; but the Byzantine empire of Heraclius and his successors was a different world. The second major collapse occurred with the defeat of Romanus Diogenes by the Seljuk Turkish sultan Alp Arslan at Manzikert in 1054. (The Seljuk sultanate was a successor to the Arab Caliphates that had inflicted the earlier defeats on the Byzantines.) In any case, much of this is a distraction from the central questions: what endured for those 1500 or more years, and was it totalitarian. In my view the main continuity was that of the administrative bureaucracy created by the Romans, despite the changes at the highest levels of power, the shifts of culture and
Re: Honest terminology
Alberto said: So you believe that the logic of capitalism should be used to decide on who lives or who dies? For example, think how many children's lives in Africa could be saved if we took all those infected with HIV, gassed them, burned their bodies (in an anthropothermic power plant - let's now waste biofuel!) and saved the money they bleed from HIV researches and treatment? Add those old people with cancer - why do those selfish bastards want to live a few more years? Kill them all and God will know his own? Rich VFP Albigensian Crusade ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Sanity prevails
Bruce quoted: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- attributed to Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein Can anyone non-fictional do all of those things adequately well? I think it's much better to do a few of them very well and rely on others to do different subsets and trade skills or goods and so forth. It seems to me that all the people who've done most to advance human civilisation have specialised in one or at most several fields, and it's becoming increasingly important to specialise as human civilisation becomes ever more complex and our collective knowledge ever vaster. Rich GSV Pin Factory ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality
Nick said: And just what Kauffman (or is it Axelrod) suggests is signified by the mathematical relationships between gene counts and cell differentiation counts, if I am remembering it correctly. I'm struggling to recall (and away from my books), but isn't the mechanism of cell differentiation still quite a mystery? Of course, with all the stem cell research going on, perhaps there's a lot of new evidence coming out all the time. If you're interested in that sort of thing, I can highly recommend Sean Carroll's _Endless Forms Most Beautiful_, a good recent popular book on evo-devo, the evolution of development. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Correlation v. causality (was Re: Poll finds more Americans believe in devil than Darwin)
Nick said: I'm pointing out that there's a correlation between skepticism about science and good science. The country that includes a lot of skeptics about science is the same country that excels in science. Therefore, one may leap to the conclusion that skepticism about science causes good science. It's not scepticism though. The people in the US who don't believe in evolution by natural selection by and large aren't saying we don't think evolution by natural selection is an adequate explanation for the extant biological diversity so for the moment we won't believe in it even though there are no plausible alternatives but rather we don't believe in evolution by natural selection because these fairy stories are so much more plausible despite the total lack of evidence for them! That's not scepticism, it's misplaced credulity. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Uplift at Yellowstone
Matt said: A feature of the books (I gather) is to name spaceships by their designation (GCU, ROU, and others, similar to the way that naval ships are organized into classes based on size, speed, and purpose) along with something apropos to the personality of the owner, mission, commander, or whatever (e.g.: ROU Nail in the coffin). ...the personality of the ship. All the Culture's ships and habitats (and many other machines besides) are sentient machine intelligences. Rich ROU Minor Correction ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Netiquette
Nick said: And, ipso facto, the sina qua non for this group. Semper fidelus, As we're all being so exact, that should be sine and fidelis. Rich ROU Pedant ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Mirror particles form new matter
David said: What? They can't even call them anti-matter? Now they're mirror particles? The level of science writing seems to be constantly sinking. : ( When I read the headline I got quite excited as mirror matter means something quite different to antimatter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_matter Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: san
Jon said: okay, but what is kun and kami-sama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_titles Rich GCU One Line Reply ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Death working overtime
Rob said: We have a cluster of deaths going on it seems. Yesterday Marvin Zindler, the famed reporter who got the Chicken Ranch shut down died of pancreatic cancer. Today Bill Walsh, former coach of the 49ers died from leukemia and Tom Snyder, longtime talk show host died also from leukemia. Another notable was Bill Robinson, a baseball player on the championship 79 Pirates. His cause of death is currently unknown. Ingmar Bergman died too. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged
William said: It has a supernatural God that makes the world, a supernatural Jesus, it has Jesus coming back from death, it has heaven and it has resurrection and blah blah blah. If you don't believe all of this tosh you are not a Christian. I think it's possible to disbelieve some aspects of it while believing other things of a similar character and still be a Christian. For example, the Nicene Creed was a formal rejection of Arianism(*) - that's what the eternally begotten of the Father... begotten, not made part is about - but I don't think anyone could sensibly argue that Arians aren't Christians, and the First Council of Nicaea certainly didn't stamp out what was afterwards the Arian heresy. Rich GCU Truth Versus Truth (*) Arius and his followers believed that Jesus was created by God the Father at some point in time rather than having existed eternally. I'm not entirely sure how eternally begotten is any different to created, but then I'm not a theologian. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged
Dan said: If we were to differ, say on the latest work in mesoscopic physics, we could straightforwardly reconcile those differences by reference to the literature. Yes. And if we differed about physics beyond the current frontiers of knowledge we could in principle resolve those differences through further experiments. Actually, this is almost but not quite true because there are not only theories whose predictions differ only beyond the scope of current experiments - for example, general relativity and gauge gravity - but also differences in interpretation of theories. I don't know if we have any differences in our interpretations of quantum mechanics, for example, but I doubt it as I don't really have any strong preferences for any particular interpretation. When it comes to our philosophical viewpoints, we have no such recourse. I'm a theist, and you are a non-theist.at least that's what I've gleamed. Yes, that's true. There is no experiment that either one of us can propose to falsify the belief of one of us and confirm the belief of the other. So, where does this place discussions of religion? Is there nothing empirically based that can be said about them? I know that testable empirical claims can be made about religion. Religion is an addiction, like one to cigarettes or crack, or heroin. It holds societies together. It is inherently dysfunctional. It aids the lives of the religious, it harms them. These are statements that can be tested. I see David's comment as referring to this. I think there are at least four classes of interesting question that can be asked about religions: - Questions about direct religious experience. What are the neurological mechanisms underlying feelings of transcendent presences or oneness with the universe or grasping eternal meanings or whatever? - Questions about the truth or otherwise of beliefs and assertions that are beyond empirical investigation. (However, some religious beliefs are clearly within the realm of empirical investigation, such as the beliefs of young Earth creationists.) - Historical questions. How did religions arise? How do they change with time? Which factors help some prosper when others fail? How do ideas flow between them? - Sociological questions, such as those about the benefits or otherwise to society of religions, the dynamics of religious communities and so forth. Collectively, these classes of questions include plenty of aspects of religions that can be empirically investigated. It's only some of the second class that are necessarily in the realm of belief. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged
Dave said: The point being that religion -- whether you consider it the core of your being or a mental illness, is beneficial to humankind. So is your position that religions are useful rather than true? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: How to survive in a black hole
Pat said: Wait a minute! As I have always understood black holes, don't you have all the time in the world left? No, you don't. From the viewpoint of a distant observer you *appear* to fall ever more slowly towards the horizon (and your image becomes ever dimmer and redder), but from your viewpoint you cross the horizon in a finite amount of proper time. From then on the singularity is always a (rather short) finite proper time in your future, at least until you hit it. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: How to survive in a black hole
Damon said: Really though, isn't this largely academic, since you probably wouldn't survive the tidal forces involved? Sufficiently large black holes have low enough tidal forces at the horizon that you should be able to survive crossing that without too much difficulty. You'll still be shredded before you hit the singularity though. Would you be able to escape if you dropped some exotic matter into the singularity? I don't know enough general relativity to know. There are certainly solutions for charged or spinning black holes in which you can fall through the horizon, miss the singularity, and effectively emerge in another universe. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that for the spinning, uncharged case you have to pass through an infinite blueshift surface on the way through though, so you'll be fried even if you aren't shredded. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: *Of course* it's all about talent . . .
Ronn said: Gerson might feel even worse after Wednesday night's exit of the matronly Melinda Doolittle from American Idol. In today's music industry, Plain Janes need not apply. Michelle McManus, who won the original Pop Idol a few years ago, was obese at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_McManus On the other hand, her recording career rapidly disappeared after the victory, and I didn't think she was all that talented anyway. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: mail programs
Charlie said: It's nothing to do with the Mac, it's to do with the way email works. I'm pretty sure that allowing people to sneak onto your computer to steal things isn't to do with the way email works, on Macs or otherwise. At worst it's problems with individual implementations that cause such things. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: mail client?
Julia said: And no, no one else is going to eliminate the s just because you don't like them; it's a convention that's been used for years and years, and most of us are used to it and find it useful and find the lack of them annoying, to say the least. If the s aren't a standard, they are at least a widely supported convention. I don't think I remember using a mail client that didn't use them, and it must be five years since I used one that didn't colour different levels of quotation differently. If people don't quote clearly, quote so much text that there's no new content on the screen when I load the email, or top-post or otherwise show themselves unwilling to provide me with context, I tend not to read their emails. I don't suppose most people consider that too much of a loss ;) Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: mail client?
Jon Louis said: i wonder why mail client program(?) don't offer alternatives to more and more s, like different font types, or colours. They typically do. For example, Mail.app (the OS X mail client that comes with the operating system) is currently showing your text indented and coloured blue. If I'd quoted standardly formatted quotation as part of the text that I was quoting then that quoted quotation would appear green. The s act as a marker to enable Mail.app (or Thunderbird or whatever) to do this. The standard format for email is plain ASCII text so it's not possible to mark quotations in italics or different colours directly. HTML emails aren't, if I recall correctly, a recognised standard and support for HTML in email systems is quite patchy. Does anyone know whether voice interfaces support quoting through different voices or pitches or something? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Not reading statistics gets a Drubbing
Alberto said: Sampling from friends to prove something is very unscientific. Just to add unscience to the discussion, just because I know lots of vegetarians (and a few almost-pure carnivores) doesn't mean that I must reject the hypothesis that humans are omnivores. No, but you would have to reject the hypothesis that all people eat meat. Rich GCU Counterexample ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Not reading statistics gets a Drubbing
AndrewC said: Yes, shame you don't have it. and the US You can quote all you like, the research has been done. De'nile ain't just a river in Egypt. So far as I can tell, Dawkins is talking about his friends at universities in the UK and US, his point being that there are at least some people for whom religion doesn't seem to be an innate part of existence. I'd imagine that his friends tend to be more atheistic than the rest of the population. I'd also imagine that nobody has performed rigorous research on Dawkins' friends as a population. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Actuarial Science Fiction
Jim said: Not necessarily their economic future, but certainly how long that future might be. Most actuaries (at least the ones whose companies' bottom lines aren't beholden to just a handful of clients) prefer conservative assumptions simply because we have to make sure you have enough to live on for many years. On the other side, what happens if human longevity increases drastically? It annoyed me a little to read recently a projection on the BBC News website that there will be such-and-such a (very large) number of people with dementia by 2050, as if there would be no improved treatments (or even cures) for types of dementia by then. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Victory Is Not an Option
Debbi said: I believe the long-growing roots of Western democracy were discussed on-List before the war: Sparta, Rome, the Magna Carta and so on. Sparta was a democracy? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: New take on Fermi Paradox
Andrew said: Entangled photons. Certainly FTL. Instant? Um Entangled photons can't be used to transmit information faster than light. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: New take on Fermi Paradox
Robert C said: Unfortunately, the argument, as I remember it, is that that you can only measure the direction (say) of a photon after its collapse. It could be `up' (i.e., an arbitrary direction) or down (i.e., another arbitrary direction, but 180 degrees in the opposite direction). You cannot predict ahead of time which photons are `up' and which are `down', so you cannot convey a message. Yes, that's entirely right. The results of some measurements on entangled systems will be such that they couldn't be explained by local states of the components of the system, but while examining each component the outcomes will look random. It's only when the results of measurements on the various components are compared after the fact that the spooky correlations can be seen. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Conversion of John C Wright
Ritu said: Shangyang was a legendary Chinese university, the rough estimate of the date is approx 21st century BC. Takshila, Nalanda, and Ratnagiri were some of the most famous ancient Indian universities [some of them were established centuries before Christ was born], Al Azhar was an Islamic university, established sometime in the 9th century AD and predated the first Chritian-Era European university by almost 2 centuries. Let's also not forget the great Hellenistic centre of learning at Alexandria, which included the famous library. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Dan said much that was interesting including: From the Roman side, I'm not sure why the final war was that devastating. I haven't read as much as you have about that era, but the decline and fall of the Byzantine empire was more tied to the Byzantine bureaucracy and the internal squabbling (to the point of killing) over fine points of theology. Interestingly, I wouldn't even describe the Empire as Byzantine until after Heraclius. Whereas Justinian's empire in the mid sixth century was manifestly Roman, and Justinian saw himself as the heir of Augustus and Diocletian, Heraclius clearly didn't. The near terminal crisis of the empire during his reign changed the entire character of the empire, and provides what seems to me the most natural break-point between Roman and Byzantine (although, of course, there are many continuities that span the divide). But let me say something about that crisis... For the whole period of the Dominate, from the end of the troubled third century until the final war between Rome and Persia, the military strategy of the Romans was dominated by the Persian frontier. Even during the period of the fall of the western part of the Empire, the bulk of Roman forces were tied up in the east. (Indeed, if not for this the western provinces would almost certainly not have fallen, and if the threat of Persia had receded then the recovery of the west by Justinian's generals Belisarius and Narses would probably have been much more complete.) For much of this period the massive Roman forces and fortifications along the frontier preserved the peace although there were limited wars in the buffer regions. During the century and a half between the fall of the west and the final war, there were relatively small wars during 502-6, 526-32 and 540-57 (a more serious pair of overlapping wars on different fronts during which Antioch fell to the Persians). Then in 602, the apocalypse that the balance of military might between the two powers had postponed for centuries finally broke out. The Romans had been weakened by another bout of civil war, military unrest and the invasion of the Balkans by the Avars. The Persian king Khosrau II took advantage of this weakness and invaded Roman Mesopotamia. In 608, Heraclius, the son of the Exarch of Africa, rebelled against the emperor Phocas, whose rule had been generally disastrous, and took Constantinople in 610. The renewed civil war in the Roman Empire further strengthened the position of the Persians, who invaded Syria, taking Damascus in 613, Jerusalem in 614 and conquering Egypt in 616 (it remained under Persian control for a decade). At the low point for the Romans, the empire in the east was reduced almost to the city of Constantinople itself: the Avars controlled the Balkans and the campfires of the Persians were visible just across the Bosphorus. The imperial government came within a whisker of abandoning the city and moving the capital to the safety of Carthage. I don't think anybody at the time can have expected anything except the imminent dissolution of the Roman Empire. Remarkably, that's not what happened, largely because of Heraclius himself. Unlike most of the later Roman emperors his charisma could inspire immense loyalty and courage in his troops and he turned out to be something of an organisational and military genius. He totally reformed the administrative and military structure of the Empire (and along the way replaced Latin with Greek as the official language of the imperial government). His reorganisation largely endured for eight centuries, which is why I consider him the first Byzantine emperor. Heraclius was also the first emperor to lead his troops in person for over two hundred years, and his campaigns between 621 and 627 were spectacular indeed. A combination of strategic and tactical brilliance and skillful exploitation of weaknesses in the Persian political system brought the Persian empire to its knees, plunging it into a series of crises that fatally weakened it. By the end of the war, the Romans had recovered all the territory they'd lost to Persia, but they were territories ravaged by a quarter of a century of foreign occupation and war. It was only seven years after the end of this last war between Rome and Persia that the armies of Islam erupted from Arabia. By that time Heraclius had fallen into terminal illness, and his generals failed him. Syria fell to the Arabs in 634, the Persian army was defeated in 636, Armenia and Egypt were conquered in 639, Africa in 642, Persia itself in 651... Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Alberto said: Great message. Thank you. But we all hear from the Roman's point of view. What was the Persian logic for keeping up a war against Rome? Did they see Rome as the heirs of Alexander and they wanted to take revenge? I'm very aware of my bias towards the Romans in my reading about history and one of my intentions for next year is to read several histories of the Persian empires to compensate. Having said that, I think that it's largely Rome that was to blame for the wars against the Parthians and Sassanids. The motivations for the Romans were mixed: the prestige attached to military conquest, the promise of plunder from the famously wealth East, the almost pathological desire to secure the Republic against threats from its few peers, and later the religious opposition of Christianity and Zoroastrianism (the latter of which was much more tolerant of other religions than the former). The war that started over half a millennium of intermittent conflict between the two powers was engineered purely so that Crassus could have military exploits to rival those of his fellow triumvirs. Marcus Antonius' Parthian expedition had a similar motive. And so it went... I don't think the Parthians wanted revenge for Alexander's conquests. In general they were fairly philhellenic and during their expansion they largely absorbed the Greek administrative system and the Greek elites of the crumbling Seleucid empire. Maybe such a motive was more likely for the Sassanid monarchy, but again I know so little about Persia that I'd hesitate to say. By the way, I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before but you might be interested in reading the first of my (slowly) ongoing series on the period from the crisis of the third century to the Arab conquests, The Pirenne Thesis and the End of Antiquity: http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000140.html With a little luck I might find time to finish the second part soon! Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Afghanistan Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Charlie said: Much of the world simply isn't able to provide soldiers as most 1st world countries have been cutting back to basically a defence force, and there have been enough friendly fire incidents in joint task forces in the past to make military forces wary of combining troops. And the US didn't need extra troops. Providing soldiers is not the only way to support an ally (and Britain did provide soldiers anyway). Many other countries provided soldiers, ships and aircraft, including a substantial contingent from the constantly maligned France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 2001_war_in_Afghanistan#Nature_of_the_coalition Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Charlie said: Actually, I do. And compared to just about any other cause of death you can think of, terrorism is way way down the list. Like I've said, the response is disproportionate to the risk. The number of people who died from terrorism in the US in 2001 was about the same as the number who die in fires every year. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
JDG said: This strikes me as classic generational arrogance - the old saw that *our generation* dealt with threats much more sensibly than the young'uns out there. I like to delude myself that I'm in the same generation as you, so it's not generational arrogance on my part. Since I became an official adult in 1992, the major crises have the wars in the Balkans, the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, the terrorist attacks of 11/9, and the continued proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (you may add to this list as you wish; certainly some natural disasters belong on there too). The responses to all of these seem to me to be inadequate to disastrous. And in any case, it would be crazy to claim that they were my generation's responses rather than my parents' generation's responses. But my point was that while there might have been some unfortunate responses to superpower confrontation between the Soviet empire and NATO, the threat then was much more serious than what we face now. Even the worst case scenario for the war against the terrorists or rogue states is not going to include the general collapse of human civilisation. Rich, who was 2^5 years old on Monday. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Dan said: I really don't see this. For example, with AQ, the evidence is that they see the lifestyle of the West as decadent and evil, and the dominance of the West to be anathema to the proper order of things. My take is that the radical fringe of Islam is a sort of cargo cult. I think that fundamentally most people everywhere want prosperity and security for themselves and their families, and a sense that they're respected. The Islamic world once had all of those things. For the period from, say, AD800 to AD1400, Islam was one of the world's two most powerful civilisations (especially in the period when an expansionist Abbasid Caliphate skirmished with China's T'ang dynasty in central Asia). Indeed, even at the end of that period the great conqueror Temur-i-Lang thought that the important parts of the world were the Islamic states, India and China, and that Europe was too insignificant to bother conquering. Since then, the position of the dar al-Islam relative to the European civilisation has clearly shifted dramatically in favour of Europe and its overseas extensions. For the last two centuries, the once mighty Islamic world has suffered military reverses, the dismemberment of its last major empire, and near total colonisation by Western powers. The essential problem facing us today is that the model used by the radical Islamists to explain this immense political, economic and social cataclysm is utterly incorrect. The reason for the explosive expansion of the Arab armies was partially the unity given them by Islam, but was mostly the weakness of the Roman and Persian empires in the aftermath of their final apocalyptic war. Following that expansion, the reason for the prosperity of the Islamic states in the AD800 to AD1400 period wasn't their adherence to strict Islamic laws - in fact most of them were pretty lax about applying such things - but their position straddling the trade routes crossing Asia. For most of that period, the most important trade routes in the world were the silk roads that ran from Chang'an in the east through the Tarim basin or the northern foothills of the Tien Shan mountains, through Samarkand and the other great trading cities of Central Asia, into Persia and Iraq and then to the Levantine ports on the Mediterranean and south into Egypt. The power and wealth of Islam were the result of its openness and encouragement of trade. Then later the Atlantic states of Europe mastered the art of oceanic navigation, discovered America and bypassed the silk roads by opening up direct contact with India, the East Indies and China. As transcontinental trade dried up, so the Islamic world supported by that trade began the long, slow decline from its brilliant apogee into today's decrepitude. Unfortunately, the radical Islamists don't see it that way. One of the characteristics of Islam is that the success of Islam-the- religion and the success of Islam-the-states are closely tied together in the minds of many Muslims (certainly more so than the two kinds of success are in the minds of Christians). Attacks on the dar al-Islam are easily seen as attacks on Islam itself, and failures of the dar al-Islam are easily considered the effects of moral failings on the parts of the people. In my opinion, the radical Islamists have built a cargo cult on this basis: they see the recapitulation of the forms of Muslim behaviour from the great days of Islam as the key to regaining prosperity, security and respect. But the shallow aping of forms misses the deep reasons for the success of Islam. This is seen most clearly in the case of the Taliban, whose viewpoint seems to be that the relative poverty and impotence of Afghanistan isn't due to the withering of trade through the region (which once supported some of the most magnificent and rich cities in the world) or other more recent but secondary historical factors but is caused by the people not being strict enough or literal enough in their interpretations of the Koran and application of the Sharia. It's also apparent in the web of international Islamic terrorism, which seeks to regain the greatness of the Islamic world through fantasies of recapitulating the heroic military actions of the first armies of Islam against the infidels. Unfortunately, although these attitudes are clearly idiocy of the first order to most of us, they are pretty seductive to certain groups of people both inside and outside the Islamic world. Equally unfortunately, they are doomed to failure and generally deleterious to the well-being both of Islam and the dar al- Islam. Quite how we can convince people in the regions where the failure of the Islamic states is most total that the things they ought to be emulating from the glorious past of Islamic are openness to trade, toleration, meritocracy, egality, respect and encouragement for
Re: AAA Batteries Delivered and Installed
Nick said: Okay, show of hands -- how many people, reading the subject of this email, had the same thoughts I did when I saw this on a truck this afternoon? My first thought was Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battery. Rich VFP Taking The Second Amendment A Bit Too Far ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Gay marriage in the closet
JDG said: Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic, but everyone in New Jersey was and is free to marry, regardless of their sexual orientation Even the children? I'm not sure I'd agree with such laws. Rich GCU Raising The Pedantry Stakes ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: We Will Not Be Afraid
DanM said: The nature of the attack was that it was made by folks hiding among the general population, pretending to be engaged in lawful activities. Contrast this with Pearl Harbor, where the attackers were clearly members of the air force of Japan. Weren't they members of the Imperial Japanese Navy? Rich GCU Pedantic ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: PC Software - prices high, little choice
Andrew said: As I've said before, the Mac is for technosnobs. Pure and simple. Saying it over and over doesn't make it true. And if it were true, that also doesn't mean that it's bad. Rich, who is a technosnob, but also just one data point. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: PC Software - prices high, little choice
Andrew said: To you, maybe. To put it another way, I take a very engineering view, rather than a scientific one to technology. Well, that sounds like the sort of attitude that Mac people I know take. OS X, for example, has the advantage over Windows that it's actually been properly engineered. Until Vista, even Microsoft didn't have any idea about the dependencies between pieces of Windows code and by their own admission were utterly appalled when they tried to map those dependencies(*). Software engineering is something that seems foreign to Microsoft - it appears that they solve problems by throwing large numbers of developers at a problem and slipping release dates until it appears to more or less work. Apple, on the other hand, seem to go out of their way to constantly improve their software designs (and I'm clearly not just talking about externally visible things like user interfaces). Rich (*) No, I don't have a citation. It was in an interview with some senior Vista project managers that I read quite a long time ago. I didn't keep the URL as I never expected to be referring to it. It may have been one of Rob Short's video presentations about the Vista kernel (Short is the head of the kernel team). ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Infinities large and small
DanM said: Right, but there are not as many integers as there are real numbers between 0 and 1. :-) And there are the same number of those as there are subsets of the integers. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Someone Must Tell Them
Dave said: A couple of weeks ago, she sent me the following, which sums up some thoughts I've ben having lately about what's wrong with the current administration's approach to terrorism -- it gives the terrorists just what they want: for us to be afraid. For us to lose our freedoms in the name of a little illusory safety. For us to be _not_ US. One of the most striking things about the July 7 attacks was how utterly unterrified we all were. I know people who were very close to the bombing attacks and their response was uniformly calm and practical. In fact, those attacks seemed to cause more anxiety and fear on the other side of the Atlantic than they did here. I think a positive first step would be switching nomenclature from terrorist to idiot, for calling them terrorists tends to suggest that we're terrified of them or at least potentially so. Besides, news stories that start A group of idiots demonstrated their stupidity by blowing themselves up... are so much less glamorous from their point of view. Rich ROU Global War On Idiocy ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Researchers Identify Human Skin Color Gene
William said: Little parasols. Why don't we just put a big parasol at the Earth-Sun L1 point? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Morality
JDG said: Given the existence of universal truth, I don't see how the number n of people who fail to recognize and accept that universal truth is at all relevant. After all, that universal truth is, by definition, universally true. Yes, indeed. But Dan was specifically talking about transcendental truths. If we have no way to determine those truths, and thus no way to act on them, then they're of no use to us whatsoever. So far, nobody has presented me with an acceptable criterion for a moral assertion to be true, let alone for something like God exists to be true. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Jobs, not trees! (Collapse, Chapter 2)
JDG said: Additionally, if my memory serves me correctly, Egypt went on to become one of the most important and productive provinces in the Roman Empire. Thus, it hardly seems to have been depleted. In fact, Egypt was so productive that there were people who argued against its annexation as it was so much richer than the existing provinces that whoever controlled it would necessarily dominate the Roman state. This in fact turned out to be true. Octavian - later the emperor Augustus - took control of Egypt not as a new Roman province but as his own personal property, and this was an important part of his stabilisation of the turmoil of the collapsing Republic. Throughout the early Principate it remained an anomalous province controlled more or less directly by the emperor. Its importance was shown again a century later during the civil wars after the death of Nero, the key event of which was Vespasian gaining control of the Egyptian corn supply, which fed the city of Rome. The economic decline of Egypt only started almost a century after that, with Marcus Aurelius' suppression of an Egyptian revolt and the detrimental effects on the Egyptian economy of several years of warfare. I'm not sure why the solution of dividing Egypt into a number of smaller provinces took so long to occur to the Romans. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What should we believe when there is no reliable information?
JohnR said: True, oh so true. There are actually irrational people in America who think that somehow the universe created itself. LOL. Even more amazingly, there are people there who believe that the universe was created by a God who was somehow not ever created. I suppose Americans are better than the rest of us at believing absurd things as they've had more practice at it!/WTG ;) Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
JohnR said: I may be wrong, because I do not have a lot of confidence in history, but it is my understanding that the One Hundred Years War that took place in Europe following the Protestant Reformation had a huge impact on the population of Europe for many decades. The Hundred Years War lasted from 1337 to 1453. The Reformation was started by Luther in 1517. Were you thinking of the Thirty Years War? Rich GCU Hundred, Thirty, Whatever ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Jobs, not trees! (Collapse, Chapter 2)
Damon said: IRC, thinking back to my college classes, the downfall of both the Old and Middle kingdoms came during times of political unrest... It's quite hard at this distance to determine the causes of the end of the Old and Middle kingdoms when we can only barely discern even the symptoms. What is clear is that the end of both was a gradual process, with a weakened central authority coexisting with strengthening regional administrations for many decades, rather than a dramatic downfall. (There was a tendency towards regionalism throughout Egyptian history, especially when weakened pharaohs allowed administrative or religious posts in the nomes to become hereditary. A strong king was largely one who could impose his will in appointing people to these posts.) In the case of the First Intermediate Period, it's been suggested that a period of reduced inundations of the Nile in turn reduced the agricultural surplus on which the Old Kingdom regime depended, and local people looked to local powers to provide for them during a time of famine. The Second Intermediate Period saw the Nile delta dominated by the Hyksos kings, who invaded Egypt from Palestine. The Middle Kingdom had seen a gradual infiltration of Egypt by asiatics (including people from the Eastern Desert) and perhaps the support of these people for the Hyksos invaders proved the deciding factor. (As I've already said, the increased power of the priesthood of Amun was a factor in the end of the New Kingdom, as was the erosion of the Egyptian empire in Palestine and Syria under pressure from the Hittites.) Rich GCU Not An Expert ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Morality
Nick said: And in normal SQL logic, there is NULL, TRUE and FALSE. But if you imagine we are just computers, no wonder you won't make room for faith. NULL values are the work of the Devil! Rich GCU One Line Reply ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
JohnR said: So what? In the USA people need to eat less anyway. And globally, there needs to be a reduction in population that could most easily be effected by widespread starvation. People extol the virtues of abortion and birth control, but doesn't starvation, disease and war control over population just as well? I fail to see the advantages of birth control and abortion. That is, I would if I did not believe that every human being on this earth is a child of the same Heavenly Father and hence truly brothers and sisters. So you want your brothers and sisters to die in large numbers through famine, pestilence and war? Or have you just failed to write clearly enough to convey what you really mean? Rich VFP Nice Family! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: The Morality of Killing Babies
Ritu said: That's not necessarily true. Belief is not a prerequisite for understanding words on a paper. While the scriptures cannot be accepted without belief, understanding them is a simpler task. And all the latter requires are tools of basic comprehension, further study, and reasearch. This drive for understanding might be fuelled by belief, but it might as easily be fuelled by doubt. Or simple curiousity. Belief doesn't have much of a role in understanding scriptures, but if we had enough information, I would not be surprised to find that belief might have actually hindered such understanding over the centuries rather than helped it along. I think JohnR's argument is that belief breathes the fire into the words and unless you believe you don't experience that fire and so don't truly understand. But I think there is no fire, just the power of wishful thinking to make people feel intense things. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Morality
JDG said: I think you are neglecting the possibility that one might actually be true and another might actually be wrong. I'm clearly not neglecting that possibility and in fact in this thread have been fairly open to it. However, nobody has yet presented me with a criterion for deciding which one is true if one in fact is. Why, for example, Christianity rather than, say, Atenism? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Morality
William said:
Agnosticism : ~Believe {God(s) exist} is true
Atheism : Believe {God(s) exist} is ~true
I think you're wrong on the former. In my opinion, a better
characterisation is that agnostics think the truth value of {God(s)
exist} is either unknown or possibly even unknowable.
Erudite discussion of the relationship between the latter position
and Godel's incompleteness theorems is left as an exercise to for the
reader.
Rich
___
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Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
JohnR said: There is nothing rational about a vegetarian diet. Vegetarianism is just a form of holier-than-thou for atheists. Yeah? Well, I'm vegetarian for aesthetic reasons and I really don't much care who else is or isn't vegetarian as long as they don't try to make me eat meat. And there in fact is a rational argument in favour of vegetarianism, because a given area of land can feed more vegetarians than meat eaters essentially because of thermodynamics. More solar energy gets into plants used as human food than into plant-eating animals used as human food. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
Charlie said: Rich, atheist and vegetarian. Me, atheist and omnivorous. Doesn't matter a damn to me what you eat. You overlook the obvious fact that I am holier than you are. Rich GCU Saintly ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
JohnR said: My atheist father used to tell me that might makes right is a bad philosophy? Why? Isn't might makes right basically the religious position? I believe in an all-powerful God. That God says these things are good and those are evil, therefore I believe these are good and those are evil. (And if one happens to live in one of those unfortunate societies whose gods rule that human sacrifice or whatever is good and necessary, well that's just too bad for you.) If not, then I fail to see how the religious and atheist positions differ. Or: how does God Himself decide what is good and evil? Isn't He, at least, basically in the same position as us atheists? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
JohnR said: What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we would have a decent operating system. That's called OS X. Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier to use (and prettier!) than XP. And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data? Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
JohnR said: Or you could buy a machine with lots of RAM, hard drive and a fast chip. Then install VMware and a half dozen operating systems and use all of them at the same time. I wonder if anyone finds doing that to be useful? I tried doing that at work but the video performance was annoyingly slow. We mostly use VMware for server applications. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: The Morality of Killing Babies
DanM said: I think the most critical question involved is the understanding of the transcendental: Truths that are true, whether or not they are believed by humans, or even whether they are perceived by humans; Reality that exists apart from our perception. But that seems like an especially useless position. If we're discussing which things are good and which are evil then believing that there are transcendental truths doesn't help at all if different people have different positions on what those truths actually are. So far as I can tell you're reduced either to an argument from authority (whether that of a priesthood, a holy book, one or more historical figures, or the general sentiments of society) or an argument from what makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. At best, I suppose, you can argue that some of those priesthoods, holy books, historical figures or warm and fuzzy feelings are divinely inspired rather than ultimately reducing just to opinion, but once again we can argue endlessly about exactly which of those things are touched by the ineffable mystery of the transcendental. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
Andrew said: Again, Jews believe there are universal standards for good and for righteousness (and that the most certainly don't need to be a Jew to be righteous) - and further, the Bible states that the Law of the Land is the Law. So is that an argument from the authority of the Bible, an argument from the authority of the people who wrote Bible, an argument from the authority of the traditions of the ancient Jewish people or something else? No. You're commiting the basic theological falicy (again, in Jewish terms) of thinking of G-d as a Human. To eff the ineffible. Which is understandable (especially since Christians HAVE adopted a Human aspect to their G-d) but from our POV the question is meaningless in context. Well, that sounds awfully like you're saying that these things are true because an all-powerful and ineffable God said so but that we shouldn't really look too closely into such matters. Which, to me (although presumably not to others), sounds awfully like an argument from the authority of one's imaginary friend. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Morality of Killing Babies
Dan said: Actually, it is possible, with a simple assumption, to do more than that. Again, I fully admit that there is no proof, but I think that...if the transcendental is partially and imperfectly discerned by humans, then one can reach some general conclusions about our best bets at approaching the truth when it comes to ethics. I'll stop here to see if you think that is a presupposition that is worth exploring further. I'm always interested to hear what you have to say on such things, even though I'm fairly sceptical about the possibility of discerning anything transcendental. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars
William said: I got Singh's _Mac OS X Internals_ the other week. 1641 pages of hard-bound fun to dip into! That one's on my list of books I'd like to read in the near future. At the moment, I'm reading Scott's _Programming Language Pragmatics_, Hennessy and Patterson's _Computer Architecture_ and Bacon's _Concurrent Systems_ though. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)
Andrew said: Here's a hint: A base price of £1000 is more than I spend on an entire PC which is considerably more powerful than the one you linked. This seems somewhat unlikely when 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 processors cost around £470 each and the base Mac Pro configuration has two of them, as well as a relatively high-end graphics card. Rich ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
