Comments for Rocannon

Comment on tools-hnb,xpdf, and ratpoison by In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is Cringing.

In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is Cringing. — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:41:19 +0000

[...] In similar fashion, Firefox sees differently than Explorer, which sees differently than Elinks, and Elinks sees differently than a text [...]

Comment on groundhog gyges by final post #4010 #911 #hamlet #grief #antigone #enlightenment

final post #4010 #911 #hamlet #grief #antigone #enlightenment — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:15:40 +0000

[...] since we are reading the 7th chapter of the Republic, you may absolutely totally enjoy the following video segment from Groundhog Day, which is a particularly apt representation of a riff on the Ring of Gyges, which is central to the [...]

Comment on more globalizing by escrubb

escrubb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:41:15 +0000

Didn’t we already have Goldman Sachs as the de facto head of the Fed?
ha! I kid. (Paulsen)

Comment on #google, #scaffolding, #standards, #metaphors, #branding by Ruthie Palmer

Ruthie Palmer — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:17:32 +0000

Yeah, we can and should interrogate our use of these tools more. We do use blogspot because it’s easy, but there may be equally easy tools out there, as you suggest.

Your post hit home with me, particularly because I have long been in the “Google is WAY EVIL” camp. I feel similarly about Apple and Oprah and pretty much anything else that is uber powerful and blindly followed by millions of users. In the case of google, though, I find boycotting it basically impossible, which adds to it’s creepiness. I think your post indicates well just how difficult it is to stick to your principles in this regard, and for the less tech-literate among us (e.g. me) it’s all but impossible. Or is that just an excuse, do you think?

Comment on more globalizing by Frank

Frank — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:00:22 +0000

I find the decision to allow corporations to run for public office to be particularly interesting in light of my long-held belief that the U.S. is really run by the Military Industrial Complex, with our elected officials just puppets of these corporate powers who be. Will the president also be allowed to appoint corporations to his cabinet? We could have Goldman Sachs as the de facto Chairman of the Fed and Raytheon as Secretary of Defense.

Cheers,
Sully

Comment on more globalizing by Frank

Frank — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:24:52 +0000

As a loyal Pastafarian I can only applaud the efforts of Fundamentalists to bring the Bible into the schools, and failing that to teach their children at home. We believe that not only should the Creationist Theory of Intelligent Design be taught alongside the questionable Theory of Evolution, but alternative Theories should also be taught, such as our Creationaist Theory of the Flying Spaghetiti Monster. Let the children make up their own mind! See Youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loCekJ_i2z0

Cheers,
Sully

Comment on Homer and Dewey by Ruth Palmer

Ruth Palmer — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:10:49 +0000

I like this approach of integrating the readings from the 2 courses. Re: the confusion around pp 55; I don’t have my book with me, and I’ll probably be struck down for saying this, but I tend to think Dewey’s greater strength lies in the larger argument more than in the somewhat vague particulars.

Comment on Post 2012… by Ruthie Palmer

Ruthie Palmer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:19:20 +0000

Great thoughts on Kurzweil. A lot of people didn’t like that reading. I thought it was crazy and great. I share your questions about money in Benkler’s vision. It’s great that people are willing to produce stuff for nonmarket motives, but in the end we all need to make a living, so to what degree is this model going to grow and sustain itself? I suspect Lanier’s statement that advertising may be the only clear and certain way to finance online creation may be on the money (snort).

Comment on The global warming narrative by dan

dan — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:17:45 +0000

Oh certainly, I do not think the man is parroting. Def not. However, his graphs, while ‘clear’, are clearly produced for a non-scientific audience, an audience that “cannot” be very critical of the graphs, because to do so would require greater skill and knowledge. I found many of the charts vague, or at the least, unbacked up by more technical stuff. Obviously, that is normal in a lecture in a given amount of time…

I very much appreciated his tone. His ‘alarmism’ is powerful, but quiet. I do believe he is trying to sound the alarm, just in his own way, which is a good way. I much prefer it to more metaphorically correct alarmism:)

It’s so difficult to know where the discourse belongs because it is ‘scientific discourse’ and therefore, must be analyzed by ‘scientists’ to be well analyzed. It is the transition from the scientists to the policymaker/actors that is the problem. How do the ‘actors’ make their decisions? It cannot be knowledge/skill. It must be a certain decision about who they believe, which scientists, or in this case the ‘majority of scientists’. So many say it is one way. We must therefore believe them…because we don’t have the expertise to actually decide for ourselves. Specialization…trusting peer review…

William Harvey was widely discredited and mocked for arguing against the vast majority of ‘scientists’ that the blood system was circulatory in nature, rather than emanating from the ‘center’ and out through the pores, as theorized by Aristotle and Galen. Copernicus and Galileo thought that Kepler was wrong about eccentricity, as did many others (in both cases, blood and physics, there was a desire for a ‘center’. just a side note because I find it interesting).

Of course William Harvey was engaging in vivisection and therefore had a bit of an image problem, and we aren’t just talking about Biology in the case of climate change, but Apocalypse, or at the very least, climate wars and crises.

Comment on The global warming narrative by Ruthie Palmer

Ruthie Palmer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:16:31 +0000

I share your discomfort about the climate change narrative. I wonder how you feel specifically in response to Pachauri’s lecture on the subject, though; I found it interesting because he doesn’t appear to be trying to be interesting or alarmist at all. This man is NOT just parroting; he’s an authority on the topic, he’s the real deal. And his presentation is about as dry and non-narrative as can be (I recognize that this is just another TYPE of narrative and all, but it doesn’t seem like an example of the ignorant sort of alarmist spouting that you dislike). So where does this kind of discourse belong? Is there a place for it? Perhaps we don’t “need” stories like this to motivate people to change their behaviors when other stories will do just as well, but if the science (with a small ‘s’) in Pachauri’s story is sound, perhaps that is its own justification.