dkimball

14 ms·

61.
by dkimball 17y ago
On the other hand, difficult now doesn't mean difficult forever; an eighteen-wheeler would have been written off as requiring impossible amounts of energy to use, if someone had described it in the 16th Century. ("_How_ many horsepower?!")
62.
by dkimball 17y ago
You have a very good point about the dangers of zooming in, especially on self-selected subsets; but I didn't mean that LOLcat fans are less intelligent. I think that simpler forms of humor indicate, not lower intelligence in those enjoying
63.
by dkimball 17y ago
I haven't seen theories of "philosophical anthropology" independently verified by MRI very often, so it's very interesting to see this -- confirming that all human beings experience humor and find it in incongruity, and thus, among other th
64.
by dkimball 17y ago
I'm kind of disappointed that Steve Krug didn't think up something like this for _Rocket Surgery Made Easy_ ( http://www.sensible.com/rocketsurgery/index.html ); this would be a very convenient source of manpower for his model of "hallway u
65.
by dkimball 17y ago
That's almost certainly true, and it may be less than 40 years. Northrop-Grumman has already produced a 100kW solid-state laser capable of being mounted on a fighter or a small ship ( http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/19/business/fi-lase
66.
by dkimball 17y ago
For what it's worth, the W3C has always reminded me of the United Nations. It doesn't really have a power base or coercive abilities of its own, and its authority is dependent on the willingness of its member organizations to sacrifice thei
67.
by dkimball 17y ago
I see from other comments that this may not be true, but if it isn't, I'd advise that Amazon should start doing it as soon as they can. It would be an application of the "Gilette model" of sales -- sell the razor, or the printer, or the vid
68.
by dkimball 17y ago
Then here we part company: as a Roman Catholic, I believe that human beings come first -- although we are to be stewards of the earth rather than masters of it.
69.
by dkimball 17y ago
That's a good point, but I think that that lesson would be better learned in the core-knowledge curricula (which the child's going through whether he/she likes it or not) than by wrecking his/her enjoyment of computer programming or violins
70.
by dkimball 17y ago
I agree that any system that fails to provide growth is in a certain amount of danger. For what it's worth, I try to remain objective in appraising China's situation; I'm not exactly delighted with them, but I try to avoid being actively di
71.
by dkimball 17y ago
@old-gregg: > "Ever heard of soil erosion/degradation? Check out what happened to Easter Island. It takes thousands of years to turn a desert into a jungle, so in practical terms forests are non-renewable." On forests, my point was that
72.
by dkimball 17y ago
I'm not a libertarian, to say the least, but I think that this writer has a point. I don't know where the saying originates that "a democracy only survives until its citizens realize that they can vote themselves money" -- I believe it was
73.
by dkimball 17y ago
I see. Thanks for letting me know.
74.
by dkimball 17y ago
This is extremely heartening. I think we always over-estimate the level of threat that we face at a given time, and underestimate the possibility of finding some sort of a solution. But on the other hand, not needing enormous quantities of
75.
by dkimball 17y ago
Also, do you have anything to say about changes to brain chemistry and physical fitness as one ages?
76.
by dkimball 17y ago
On consumption of meat and fish: Americans overconsume meat anyways, IMHO, and the oceans at present are _severely_ depleted due to the use of trawler fishing and the complete disinterest of the world in responsible management of the oceans
77.
by dkimball 17y ago
What I mean is not "physical room for people," it's "exploited versus un-exploited resources." It's not as if we're running out of room for farming -- and even if we were, it's not as if we're managing the oceans in anything that vaguely re
78.
by dkimball 17y ago
Wait just a second, didn't we have an article about the exact same thing, but about how it was _worrisome_, not _amazing_, just two weeks ago? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492 ) What is this, Pravda?
79.
by dkimball 17y ago
I'm not sure if this was meant to be humor or not, so if it wasn't, I apologize; but if it was, you win an internets. (Is that an acceptable expression around here?)
80.
by dkimball 17y ago
Your medical expenses will grow as you get older, even if your thought processes don't ossify. Sidenote: I don't think "conservative" is an appropriate term here; in fact, I don't like the word in almost any context. Desiring to enrich ones
81.
by dkimball 17y ago
Note that the Vatican's not the only one saying this. Others have pointed out that a larger proportion of elderly to young population results in smaller amounts of wealth creation, larger amounts of wealth consumption (healthcare and the li
82.
by dkimball 17y ago
It's a mangled version of Marvin Harris and Fernand Braudel. I tried to read _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, and gave up in disgust; Jared Diamond is a Green with an axe to grind. In the case of the American Indians, geography and disease did rui
83.
by dkimball 17y ago
What aspect of the 'tribal' spirit, as I noted above and as discussed on historyexplained.com, do you object to? I'm sufficiently fond of freedom, and sufficiently disgusted by cringing, fawning, and gossip magazines, that I find such a soc
84.
by dkimball 17y ago
Because Europeans knew that there were civilizations other than their own in the world, Europe had things it needed from the rest of the world, and Islam was in the way (and if you think the Muslims are bad now, you know nothing about the 1
85.
by dkimball 17y ago
I would add that China faces the prospect of, to say the least, internal political instability. Like all postmodern authoritarian governments, theirs is based on the idea that in exchange for sacrificing freedom and autonomy, the population
86.
by dkimball 17y ago
Preach it, brother! :) That's exactly what's been driving me off from gaming -- vast quantities of filler that just pad out the total play time. I'd have to add something else: the propensity for filler, especially "filler quests" in RPGs,
87.
by dkimball 17y ago
From what I've seen, at least, it seems that children don't have short attention spans intrinsically; they just have short attention spans for what they find uninteresting. All aristocrat-peasant societies socialize their population to flat
88.
by dkimball 17y ago
I don't think it's about progress so much as topicality -- the widely-maligned "relevance." A Restoration comedy about vainglorious mercenaries and cuckolded husbands might be better than an episode of Seinfeld on an objective measure, if o
89.
by dkimball 17y ago
Please tell me that this isn't the general consensus. Of the games he depicts on the first page, the only vaguely interesting one from where I sit is Demon's Souls; in my experience it's rare to get even one good game a year. There's even t
90.
by dkimball 17y ago
You're speaking of "sex," not "gender" -- the former is biological and there are two of them; the latter is cultural or social and there could be arbitrarily many. I say this while being a conservative; the semantic distinction is a useful

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