Comments on: Tremendous Exponential Future vs. Incredible Selfish Stupidity

By: orexis side effects

orexis side effects — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:25:40 +0000

Great read! Clearly you are pretty knowledgeable about this topic.

By: K. S. Matsuo

K. S. Matsuo — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:51:40 +0000

My Kindle 2 arrived yesterday and I wanted to post a review before I forgot my initial impressions. The first thing I noted was the shipping package. It appeared to be in the standard Amazon brown box that all Amazon shipments come in, but upon closer look I saw that it was a custom package exclusively for the Kindle. The brown box had a pull tab to ease opening, no need for a cutting tool. Next to the pull tab were the words “Once upon a time…”. Cool.

The interior packaging was black and stylish, but it could have been a brown paper bag for all I cared. I opened it and looked at the Kindle. Right on the Kindle’s main screen is all you need to know to get the device setup. Basically, just plug into the wall to start charging and flip the switch to start using. It is that simple.

There was a Getting Started document and guide as well as a welcome letter, but after glossing over these quickly I found I didn’t need much help. You can pretty much figure everything out by just trying the buttons.

I went to the Kindle Store and noticed that it had a list of suggestion based on my past Amazon purchase and viewing history. Nice touch as I was able to easily find a book that I had intended to purchase. I clicked that books link, hit buy and within a few seconds I had the item in my library.

Reading on the Kindle 2 is practicaly effortless. With no previous experience with Kindle, I was still able to feel comfortable reading and paging within minutes. I read while exercising, lying in bed and on the train ride to work this morning. You really do forget the device is there. The reading experience is much easier than flipping through a dog-eared paperback.

I am happy with my purchase knowing I got the best digital reading device on the market today.

By: dirigo

dirigo — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:40:09 +0000

C’mon. It’s a joke. Mostly.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/10/05/091005sh_shouts_borow

By: rmp

rmp — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:04:44 +0000

nailheadtom, my first inclination was to say no they are not. On further reflection, they both can be seen as a moral issue and an issue of correctness or skill. Their biggest problem is they are too general to be of much use. The same can be said for the word love. The definitions are in the eye of the beholder and most often the others hearing or reading the statement, don’t know what the definition is so miscommunication and confusion flows easily.

By: nailheadtom

nailheadtom — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:42:22 +0000

Are “right and wrong” and “good and bad” the same thing?

By: dirigo

dirigo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:53:08 +0000

RMP, interesting you refer to the early ’70s, which is when I was enrolled full-time in my undergraduate program in Boston – after the service. A heady time for me for many reasons.

Very early on, as I was beginning to comment on UT (and in the process meeting you fine folks here), I mentioned there once what I still think was a most prophetic public speech, given at Harvard’s 1978 or ’79 commencement.

Given my taste for fiction (as an antidote to reality; or, as a salve for it), I found what Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian master, had to say about the future totally arresting.

In a nutshell, aside from attacking the litigiousness of American society (which didn’t sit too well with the worthies in Cambridge), Solzhenitsyn asserted that the future was indeed upon us, suggesting also that, without enough education, many simply wouldn’t make it over the next several decades.

In his most pithy phrase, he said, simply, mankind was about to undergo an “anthropological leap.”

And there was no turning back.

By: ondelette

ondelette — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:53:10 +0000

Paul Krugman had a good piece on global warming today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html
Time is really running out.

By: sysprog

sysprog — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:39:03 +0000

Agreed.

If it were true that a cartoonishly pure “bad guy” and pure “good guy” actually existed, then those unreal pure guys would be incapable of making moral decisions. If one’s inclinations are purely good or purely bad, then there’s no morality involved, and one’s choices have no moral content.

The only way to have a moral world is to have a world of mixed morals.

On a less serious note,

Frank Zappa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu6dUX5MNcY

“This is the central scrutinizer…
…you have just destroyed one model xqj-37 nuclear powered pan- sexual roto-plooker and you’re gonna have to pay for it!
so give up, you haven’t got a chance.”

By: rmp

rmp — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:00:07 +0000

I appreciate your spicing things up. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we couch things as either right or wrong. Things have beneficial or unbeneficial consequences to varying degrees would be a better way to frame things than good or bad. Our American good guys or bad guys approach has gotten us into a myriad of serious problems and often kept us from solving them. We are generally way to simplistic when examining and solving problems.

By: sysprog

sysprog — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:47:35 +0000

I was just trying to spice things up.

The wording in that second link (“always wrong”) was a direct quote from the linked site – - a Christian site.