—“Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.”— Bill Gates, Playboy, July 1994
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 19:14:00 UTC
Source: Facebook
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You know when you drive around town in America and notice a beautiful woman? In
You know when you drive around town in America and notice a beautiful woman? In Ukraine we at surprised when a woman isn’t….
Like flowers.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 12:43:00 UTC
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SILENT EPIDEMIC OF TRAFFIC DEATHS IN UKRAINE
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ECAEXT/Resources/UkraineSafetyOpEdmay2010.pdfTHE SILENT EPIDEMIC OF TRAFFIC DEATHS IN UKRAINE
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 12:36:00 UTC
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It’s a lot easier to love your fellow man when you realize that aside from the p
It’s a lot easier to love your fellow man when you realize that aside from the passionately envious left, pretty much everyone else is a well meaning fool beset with overwhelming incompetence.
Think locally. Act locally. You are too ignorant to do otherwise.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 12:30:00 UTC
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THROWING CIVILIZATION DOWN DYSGNEIC STAIRCASES One of the unfortunate byproducts
THROWING CIVILIZATION DOWN DYSGNEIC STAIRCASES
One of the unfortunate byproducts of developing a significant knowledge of the failures of representative democracy – particularly American first-past-the-post, two-party representative democracy – is that you no longer question whether the whole process is despicable just because you disagree with it. Its just despicable period – agree with outcomes or not.
We are throwing our civilization down the stairs of cultural Mayan pyramids in sacrifice to an even more ridiculous belief than the appeasement of the gods by human sacrifice.
At least murdering criminals and captured enemies for entertainment purposes is doing some good in the world. But democracy is just the opposite: it’s reversing five thousand years of genetic pacification.
The enlightenment was as devastating to politics and philosophy as it was enabling for science and technology.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 12:02:00 UTC
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“Some people will never learn anything, … because they understand everything t
—“Some people will never learn anything, … because they understand everything too soon.”—Alexander Pope
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 09:59:00 UTC
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THE DANGER OF A LITTLE LEARNING —“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drin
THE DANGER OF A LITTLE LEARNING
—“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”— Alexander Pope.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-11 09:38:00 UTC
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THE REASONS THERE ISN’T ANYBODY OUT THERE? 0) The universe isn’t really old enou
THE REASONS THERE ISN’T ANYBODY OUT THERE?
0) The universe isn’t really old enough to have confidence it’s baked more advanced civilizations. It takes a long time to bake the elements, and then longer to bake life, and longer for intelligence to evolve. On evolutionary time scales, the universe isn’t that old.
1) Why do we think we’ve cracked the technological walnut? Why won’t it take us just as long to invent interstellar travel as it took to invent either farming, science, or the industrial revolution? Why isn’t the computational power necessary to harness the first principles of the universe a logarithmic advance over our current understanding? I mean, most of our prosperity today is the more the result of harnessing fossil fuels than of technological advancement. So why won’t it take us another half billion years to do it? (not that I think it will – but we have no way of knowing.)
2) Out here in the spiral-suburbs its pretty peaceful despite nearly exterminating all life ever 65M years or so. But most of the universe is a very hostile place for life. Most of the starry-places are dangerous given the long period required for life-baking (evolution)
3) Why would anyone more advanced be interested in us given the likely costs of travel? If you can travel, why go slumming? We aren’t terribly interesting.
4) Why would anyone interested in us come here visibly and personally, instead of sending (small, fast) machines to come watch us?
5) Its intuitively unlikely that given our rather young technology, and our inability to solve the fundamentals of the universe that advanced civilizations would communicate by the rather primitive (radiation) means that we do. I mean, smoke signals, yodels, horn blasts, and drum beats seem as silly to us as pushing radiation into the void will to others.
6) Intelligence emerges via predators. And even though predators seek to pacify once they achieve dominance, I am having a hard time imagining a benevolent ET. I mean, if we’re less advanced, the only value one gets out of the terrible expense of interstellar travel is a planetary life system that they have to compete with us for.
So. Shhh… Be a good child and listen.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 21:38:00 UTC
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They are less concerned with discipline and order because the kids have had enou
They are less concerned with discipline and order because the kids have had enough time and attention. And there is very little demand for excellence, only effort. And zero status signalling going on.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 10:35:00 UTC
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Never would have imagined that I would be sitting in Eastern Europe. Or that I w
Never would have imagined that I would be sitting in Eastern Europe. Or that I would feel at home here. Or that I would see these people as the soul that we have lost to Anglo imperialism.
Why police the world? They are not worthy of our science, law, norms. They cannot make use of them.
Modernity will evolve without our policing. Just as communism would have eventually failed without our policing – albeit, perhaps at greater human cost.
We need only defend ourselves from their primitivism – not defend them from themselves.
Source date (UTC): 2015-09-10 10:27:00 UTC