Elrac

24 ms·

151.
by Elrac 11y ago
The author accepts as a given that religiosity correlates with better health. There are numerous studies that support this, after all. This is "received wisdom." So I think this is a good time to point out that there's some n
152.
by Elrac 11y ago
Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman have investigated this question by teasing out correlations like this. Their conclusion, as discussed in [1] and [2] is that three factors correlate well with a drop in religiosity: (a) egalitarianism (i.e. n
153.
by Elrac 11y ago
Nice try, poor logic. What you call "people [not believing] in killing each other" is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. I believe that explanation is simply that there's nothing to be gained from killing a desperate
154.
by Elrac 11y ago
I grant part of that. But now _you_ have to tell me: How do you claim to know that no one was arrested and suffered life imprisonment? The point you seem to be missing is that you have no way of knowing! This is the "wonderful" th
155.
by Elrac 11y ago
My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to be
156.
by Elrac 11y ago
You need to be a bit more careful with sweeping generalizations like "no one." Here are two cases just off the top of my head that almost perfectly contradict what you wrote. http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/0
157.
by Elrac 11y ago
For what it's worth, I feel the same way as you do about the US, and I'm a US citizen. I've told friends that I may return to the US "when the US becomes a democracy again." Unchecked police brutality is just one of
158.
by Elrac 11y ago
Fair enough! We share most of our view of what's what, and differ mainly in interpretation. For what it's worth, I consider consciousness to be a capability, like the ability to digest cellulose or to echolocate; and I consider it
159.
by Elrac 11y ago
Cool, thanks!
160.
by Elrac 11y ago
Much of the description of Jshell is in the future tense. Can someone give us an idea of the state of progress?
161.
by Elrac 11y ago
Don't forget Groovy! It's expressly built to bring "dynamic feeling" to Java.
162.
by Elrac 11y ago
This starts off with a rephrasing of theo-philosopher Alvin Plantinga's claim that evolution makes (e.g. human) perception optimal for survival, not truthiness to reality. Many feel that Plantinga has failed to substantiate this claim
163.
by Elrac 11y ago
> I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. OK, I'll bite: Just what makes you believe that? What evidence convinces you this is true?
164.
by Elrac 11y ago
There's a significant downside to this: in the long term, this leads to the evolution of super-resistant bacteria. I have little doubt this treatment will be effective in the short term but no idea what the rebound will look like.
165.
by Elrac 11y ago
Thankfully, I'm not doing much C any more. Those hoity-toity hand-holding languages have spoiled me, and now I don't want to be bothered about memory management and other "trivia." :)
166.
by Elrac 11y ago
Absolutely, and it's something I consider somewhat of a liability in (e.g.) Scala. You can drive yourself crazy if you're not careful. However, I feel that doing the "implicit casting" thing only for the single, limited
167.
by Elrac 11y ago
I didn't say it was a problem. I was objecting to "C++ has all that."
168.
by Elrac 11y ago
1 point for "magic concatenation;" I wasn't aware that works! "nice try" on "auto-conversion".
169.
by Elrac 11y ago
Magic concatenation: the "+" operator is understood by the compiler to be the concatenation operator if either operand is a String. "Magic" in the sense that it's an exceptional affordance made by the language (not
170.
by Elrac 11y ago
Woo hoo, thanks for the tip! But I still need to worry about creating a memory leak with this. :(
171.
by Elrac 11y ago
Only for small values of "all." The magic of concatenation and auto-conversion of strings that's baked into the Java compiler and, to a lesser extent, the Go compiler, is missing in C++ - not vital but convenient. Similarly,
172.
by Elrac 11y ago
"Between C and Java" hits it very well, I'd say. When I jumped ship from C to Java, Java's object orientation wasn't exciting to me, and its exception handling is an acquired taste. But dynamically growable, garbage
173.
by Elrac 11y ago
An unpublished work of Deepak Chopra??
174.
by Elrac 11y ago
What I found most disturbing is that this doctor looks like Deepak Chopra.
175.
by Elrac 11y ago
I've been using this for about 2 years at work, and am pretty happy to have a program that provides ssh access and an X Windows servers "out of the box." It's nice that I can recommend this to my colleagues and then not
176.
by Elrac 11y ago
Not the guy you're asking, but I recently said "portico" when I meant to say "patio." I mixed up the two words because they both start with a P and have something to do with architecture. I think this is the kind of
177.
by Elrac 11y ago
Treaties are always negotiated in secret? I'd expect at least the decision makers to be in the information loop. I'm not sure that's really the case. Isn't it unusual that (as I've been hearing) even the Congressfol
178.
by Elrac 11y ago
But the US _is_ the bad guy! Largely through ignorance, incompetence and inaction, the US has allowed its elected government to be bought (at embarrassingly low prices, I might add) by corporate interests and persuaded/bribed to work f
179.
by Elrac 11y ago
Sorry if this information is visible somewhere: Which dialect of regexp does RegExr "do?" In the past, when I've looked for a good Internet RegEx test site, I've had trouble finding one that "does" the Java dia
180.
by Elrac 11y ago
In order for Hersh's comments about Opus Dei to discredit him as you're trying to do, they would have to be false. Do you know this? _The Nation_'s Greg Grandin thinks the discreditors have more egg on their faces than Hersh

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