What Are We Gonna Do Tonight, Brain?
Dean
Friday Night Open Thread: Go!
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[digression]
For anyone doing international travel, pick up an unlocked quad band phone off Ebay and then pick up a sim card in the country you are visiting. Calls from the UK on her cell to the USA are 5p/minute - about 10 cents. To get international calling on my VZ Wireless, I have to pay $3.99 a month and 20 cents/minutes to the UK.
Our cell phone system here is soooooo 90's compared to the rest of the world.
[/digression]
She said the Brits were taking the failed attacks in stride. I'm not worried - now. However I'm starting to get a bit fed up with militant Islam, especially when I hear that 40% of the 2million Muslims in the UK want Sharia law enacted.
WTF? I thought they came to the UK to escape that crap.
The enthusiasm level's not as high as usual tonight. I want to see this code ship already.
Trying to get rid of it now.
Anyone want to buy a world?
I love GSM phones. Pop in the SIM and off you go. Top off as necessary. Cheap international rates. Plus the phones seem cooler than ours.
Instead I'm stuck to VZWireless - not because I want to be, but they are the only network that I can get inside my home. For other networks you have to walk about a block towards I-95 before you get a signal.
And I live in MegaCity 1 - near the main transport route - I-95. I've complained to Judge Dredd but he just said, "Shut up, punk."
This is cool, particularly the ones that form whole ecosystems: Bacterial Natural Selection.
Since glycerin is a byproduct of biodiesel production, what are you going to do with it all? Produce ethanol of course!
Weird: Giant tropical penguins.
Jan
Jan
The zorse reminded me of that, of course.
A few months ago there was a big story about animals being poisoned by contaminated food in China. Knowing what I do about industrial production methods and regulations in china and other parts of the world I suspected it came from juvenile (as in not well developed) manufacturing processes and handling and regulations in those cases. By cross contamination in manufacturing and shipping methods. Well, this article doesn't exactly prove the point, but it does kinda verify what I suspected. Except for the transportation end of the equation which I still suspect is at least partially at fault. The buy offs and regulation corruption were to be expected of course. I've seen that out the wah-zoo in India, China, parts of Africa and some other places.
As a result of the big animal food recall however I've done some research on feeding my pets and learned a lot though. I only feed them meat and dry dog food I now find safe. No cans of dog food. It comes out cheaper, they like it a lot better, and since it's meta meant for human consumption I know on most cases it is a lot safer, depending on where it comes from. They're doing a lot better than ever now that I've dumped that canned crap. I'll never let my dogs eat that crap again.
I wouldn't let a buzzard eat that shoddy shit anymore.
Somebody calls Death before Discovery
What I find the most interesting about this case is kinda illuminating about modern people. I'm not surprised at all by the case, after all I've seen dozens pretty much like it. But what I actually find most interesting is this: a man kills his wife and son, then hangs himself. But shortly before the bodies are found then someone edits a Wikipedia entry about the murders.
Now let me speculate a second. Suppose it was Benoit, then what would that say about him? Suppose it was another person who either knew about it, or even just suspected or had a hunch about it due to the fact that Benoit had missed an appointment and had rushed on his intuition to be the first to pen an entry.
Now a lot of modern people will say, "isn't it odd and bizarre, maybe even creepy that this happened." That somebody wrote an entry which kinda, sorta, maybe corresponded with the actual facts of the case. But how many modern people would stop to ask themselves how odd it is to even want to make a Wikipedia entry about the matter prior to real knowledge on the subject. Or for that matter after real knowledge of the subject.
Suppose you're Benoit and you've just murdered your legacy. And the last thing you want to be known for is a Wikipedia entry about the matter before the cops find the corpses? It's the last thing you find important. A public declaration of your crime on the internet. Seems kinda Titus Andronicii to me.
Suppose you're another person, with or without real knowledge of the affair and you feel that you're first and most important duty is to record something, which may or may not be factual, on an internet site? That is a man has lost his wife (that's your assumption), or murdered her, and your first inclination is to record it first on Wikipedia? That's your claim to fame? Your big accomplishment? A public declaration of the fact that you were the first to get it on-line? Because if it isn't on-line then, well, what...? Somebody else might just beat you to the rabbit-punch? I guess even a rabbit-punch is something to be feared in the kingdom of the tad-poles.
And yet I'll bet a lot of people, having grown up on the internet, being immersed in our culture, have never, maybe would never, stop to think about the implications of what they think most important, or their desire to be first to announce anything, true or false, as long as it gets on the internet. And I'll betcha dollars to doughnuts know one will ever really care even who they were if they got it right. As long as it's on the internet, on Wikipedia, in the media, then that's what's most important. A man murdering his wife and child, that's an interesting story, getting that on the intent first, for what, about 20 seconds of anonymous fame? That's considered some kinda achievement by modern people. Something to be worked out. Gee, a fella just lost his wife, or maybe he murdered her. What's the most important use I can make of my time right now, having found this out? Let me hop on the internet and post an entry to Wikipedia. If I'm first, won't that be something? Look at me mommy, I'm finally somebody. Modern man worships his own words, and his words about those words, in such a sycophantic fashion that he can't even imagine a world in which his actions are anywhere near as important as what he says about those actions. His own actions, or those of another. And that don't strike him as funny at all, just perfectly natural, and that would be funny too, if it was perfectly natural.
You know sometimes modern people and the things that strike them as important are so juvenile and so bass-ackwards in every way that they make me laugh out loud just to see and read em. And then again, when I really stop to think about some of these things, and the fact that they seem totally incapable of seeing the irony and the joke of which they are the subject in their own comedy, it makes me feel kinda queer and peculiar. Makes me kinda squirmy about them. Like the pathos of the ancient Greeks was just some kinda warmup for God only knows what kinda hell is coming down the pike and modern man will remain as blind to its approach as he is blind to the fact that the joke is that its coming for him. As a matter of fact he seems constitutionally incapable of getting the joke at all. Well, I guess every Age gets the insight and genius it deserves.
Ours is a blurb on Wikipedia.
I'm sure our descendents will be amazed and enthralled at all we can do with our amazing technology.
Speaking of amazed and enthralled I just finished the best Western I've read in a long, long time.
It was one helluvah book. When reading it I kept saying to myself that Cole and Hitch talk like I think.
Appaloosa
That man can really write something fearsome. You should give it a look-see. It'll clean your plow.
It's not meant for the youngins though. Steer them clear.
It gets kinda rough in parts.
Well, night all.
That's interesting, because Jared Diamond claims zebras cannot be domesticated -- and apparently we've been trying a long time, as he also says no new animals have been domesticated for 4500 years.
Of course, it could be a very small genetic change.
The article I read is pretty old. I'm guessing around 20 years, since I read most of my Gould books early in my marriage, and the book wasn't new when I read it. Thinking may have changed since then.
The basic technique was called cladistics, which is a way of measuring the age of divergence of two genetic lines. If I recall correctly, the one zebra line branched from the ancestral stock before horses, and the other after.
Jan
The Evolution Of MJ
Jan
All kinds of animals are domesticated.
For instance as a little boy I had a pet squirrel. Despite being a squirrel and living in a cage most of the time it wouldn't run off if you let him out and he'd crawl all over you without biting or even being terribly squirrelly. Squeaky we called him. He did a lot of that kinda thing. He'd even turn his head and look at you when you called his name and croak like a barn door though he'd pretty much ignore you otherwise.
Though like my Great Bernard he didn't care much for gunfire. That would get his attention.
I think what Diamond was implying, and I don't know this fella though I suspect he is some kinda scientist, probably some kinda evolutionary biologist or paleontologist or something of that ilk, meaning he's gonna naturally be as wrong as lollipop rain much of the time, is what Triti said, new species aren't really being domesticated. (Assuming the quote about what he said was accurate.) New animals are all the time tough. Individual animals.
But then again man doesn't need every animal species domesticated. It would be kinda counterproductive to domesticate all species, not to mention a huge load of work, and then if they become domesticated en masses you gotta feed em or put food out for them. Domestication is a two way proposition, the animal agrees to certain kinds of beneficial behavior, (including even being edible in some cases even if the individual animals never really think it will happen to them til it's too late to rebel) man agrees to feed, house, provide shelter and/or range land for the animal and the animal knows it is safe, even if it isn't truly free. So the animal gets security and basic needs met, man gets whatever advantage the animal offers. If the animal feels the effort is worth it, and man feels he can provide to gain the benefits, the contract will survive. Many individual animals will do that if properly cared for, and with some whole species, well, it just seems they are naturally inclined to accept such a proposition a priori (man too has to accept the terms right off too or it isn't worth his effort either) on basic principle if it is offered.
Though truth be told not even all dogs are truly domesticated, most are, but some are always touchy and on the line, depending on temperament and circumstances. Some go squirrelly over practically nothing and start tearing hunks outta little kids and people. Just like a wild animal would. The only difference is one is called a pet up to a certain point til put down, the other a cougar.
So you can domesticate most individual things, no matter what they are - I've also had a rose tarantula and my neighbor had a boa as pets - if you keep it well fed and give it some basic considerations. But what is the incentive for man to domesticate all tarantulas and contractors? Nothing. And what is the incentive for all mountain lions to become domesticated when they can meet most of their own needs and they don't really feel that most other things are threat enough to make an association with man a good or necessary security proposition? Little worth risking. So if you're gonna domesticate anything, dog, zebra, squirrel, or even a kid, man, or a woman, you gotta ask yourself do both parties agree that it's worth the effort and if so can, or will both, do their jobs? So then sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. But not all bear care either way, and even a tame, slow-witted domesticated old bull, if you rile him just right can gore a man to death as quick as a rattlesnake can drop him with a calf-strike. And the bull won't give shinola for how domesticated he's supposed to be.
Anyways, a lot of scientists nowadays make me laugh.
Always the forest, never a tree.
(I'm speaking generally of course. I don't know Diamond from a coal in the ground.)
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.