TheLarch

It is dangerous. However, when you consider the economic, environmental, and health advantages it looks better. See http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safe....

I feel notably worse inside a week when I stop cycling.

You know what the worst part of cycling is? The endless noise and pollution from cars.

Cars are a scourge. It is no wonder why drivers are so angry all the time. Who in their right mind wants to spend their time utterly immobilized, doing nothing but trying to avoid hitting other cars?

Cycling is always a bit of an adventure, always exhilarating.

I am surprised to hear you assert that there is no time saving to be had in running red lights.

In my opinion it's just too bad for annoyed drivers. They are welcome to join us.

What angry drivers usually don't get is that the equation is much different for cyclists. Our capacity to cause harm is a tiny fraction of that of a car. Also, we can't get tickets that raise our car insurance premium. Wheeeee!!!

My hat is off.

Someone pointed out to me recently that the ubiquitous icon for 'save' is the depiction of a floppy drive, which is essentially a skeuomorph (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph).

And looking forwards to each new kernel release! And trimming it down to the bare essentials to minimize resource usage.

Also I knew the purpose of every process running on my box. Now I am just as bewildered as I am by Windows.

So much time. So much time.

Fascinating! I wish I had studied some geology. I learned here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSSxdogrv1s that the mountains and lakes around Puget Sound run north-south because of glacial descent, and that the huge boulders we find scattered about the area are called 'erratics' as they were moved here by glaciers. I show everyone I can that video but I just get weird looks.

I wished the article had fleshed out the ramifications of the ice cap a little better.

I'm not usually nostalgic but my circa 1994 Slackware CD distro is special.

Incidentally I can't overemphasize how far basic sysadmin skills will get you.

Also no one knows how to shield a spaceship from the interstellar medium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Interstell... over such distance.

"while working with PHP, I tend to feel vaguely annoyed"

Exactly! I was never satisfied with my PHP code, as there does not seem to be a better and worse answer in many cases.

For the record I did not mean to assert that PHP has become secure, I meant that I presumed it had. Some years ago it was a laughingstock on Bugtraq.

Thanks for the feedback!

"Since when did something need to have novel features or ideas in order to be productive?"

It doesn't. But if your language ideas are admittedly no better than the next guy's, what's the point?

Around 2001 I felt jaded with the industry and determined to do whatever was expedient to earn money. That meant using PHP, because that was purportedly the place to be at the time.

I have never felt so uninspired by a language. My overwhelming feeling from the get-go was that it was a collection of libraries, which would be fine -- but why create a new language?

PHP has the rare distinction among languages of not containing any novel features or ideas. Not only that, but it borrows liberally from several other languages, resulting in an overabundance of syntax. Instead of a tool for attacking problems, it's a reheated leftover. There is not suggestion of a better or worse way to accomplish some goal.

Finally, the original premise of PHP, interspersed functional code and HTML, is high on my list of really bad ideas. Code written in this style is doubly-challenged in terms of reuse and maintainability. Again, there is again no semblance of better or worse with this approach. If you had Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds produce the same website with PHP, there would be very little in common between their approaches.

Given the success of Facebook et al, I presume that the interspersed code/html thing has been superseded, and further that the egregious security issues in PHP have been fixed. But the picture in my mind's eye is something that lumbers along despite its thorough mediocrity. I will allow that making PHP adequately consistent and secure are impressive feats.

Sincere question: how am I wrong here?

====== edit ====== Drop extra 'the'

I secretly thought the diagrams were kind of cool. I'm saddened to learn they were taken from elsewhere.

I've never heard anyone call a lag bolt a screw, and yet they are pointed and never mated to nuts.

Perhaps there wasn't a lawsuit, but rather this is an artefact of the organization the created it, in Northcote Parkinson style. That is to say, perhaps Sally, a middle manager in the NAFTA Bureau, Cyclicals Division, Building Materials Department, Fasteners Group, has five reports and each of them plays a vital role.

Godspeed, Sally.

Thanks for pointing that out. I read a Beethoven bio recently and it kept talking about "the quality of musicians available at the time," meaning they were quite inferior. I guess what you're saying is part of that observation.

"They imply a message that human runners have improved constantly since 1896"

But they have! World population increased from one billion to 7.4. Also I imagine that the proportion of people who have the opportunity to train for the Olympics has increased. Already you'd expect a vastly improved pool of talent. Additionally though diet and training techniques have improved steadily. Do you really think Bolt couldn't beat Thomas Burke (12s 100m 1896)?

The same effect is apparent among classical musicians. I can't figure out how to Google this, but my understanding is that pieces once considered nearly impossible to play are routinely played at music schools now.

I agree that some laws promote justice at the expense of freedom, and have no problem with it in many circumstances. I am by no means the first to point out that there is a "regressive left" trend nowadays. Leftists can be authoritarian too, as was Stalin.

I gave you an example of SJW's who regard the "patriarchy" as a threat more significant than the free speech of the men who were trying to have a meeting. In other words, they valued "social justice" more than freedom. I feel you ought to address this before asking for another example.

I'm not so sure. "Social justice" often tramples free speech.

My view is that freedom is the essential right, and that social justice can only follow, not precede it. Here is a clear example of a movement that values its perception of social justice over freedom of speech: https://www.google.com/search?q=university+of+toronto+mra+fi....

Now, is SJW politics of language? Arguably yes.

You're right in that the mainstream is guilty as well. I see SJWs as attempting to suppress free speech however, which I perceive as unambiguously tyrannical.

Well, you're right in that vagina literally means vagina in English. And yes, there are occasions where language is unambiguously metaphorical. I do not, however, appreciate how either of these undermine my larger claim. Not sure if you disagree with me on a more fundamental level or not.

Interesting, thank you. However I did not intend to condemn all radical politics. Rather my point was that the promulgation of any political views by foisting a sympathetic vocabulary onto the public is tyrannical. Are there any political ideas that require a new vocabulary? I don't know.

This is disappointing! If you find it snarky and not that great, why submit a link? c) is not logically consistent is it?

There is a continuum: someone, somewhere called it a sheath, and the metaphor was so apt that it was repeated until it eclipsed whatever word was current usage before. Neither you nor anyone else is qualified to judge which words are metaphorical and which aren't.

You have a point. There is always that possibility that a particular employment of language politics is just, so to reject all political neologisms risks rejecting the just ones too.

I struggle with the language of women's rights, for instance. I think about Orwell when I hear 'mansplaining' for example. Yet, at the same time I often see challenges that are unique to women.

OK read it. Not impressed. Orwell is a liar because: "Let's move to his first rule 'Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print'? Yet we only need to read as far as the second sentence of his essay to see him talk of the 'collapse' of civilization. That would be a literal collapse would it?"

This is pedantry. All language is metaphorical at some level. 'Vagina' literally means 'sheath'. Should we avoid that one? How about describing an argument as 'crystalline'? I would argue that 'collapse' in that sense is no more metaphorical than crystalline.

When I hear neologisms from the radical left or right this is the first thing that comes to mind. I don't take it as a writing style guide, rather as a guide to spotting tyranny.

The neologisms from FOX and social justice warriors are politics of language.

I saw: "and further milquetoast simulacra" in paragraph three, and quit reading. Am I too severe?

There seems to be something about solar in particular that engenders overly optimistic claims. I've read several breathless stories over a span of decades about next-generation solar panels for instance, and yet we still have the same old ones, albeit manufactured more and more cheaply.

Oh yes! Thanks.