bitops

Any Danish kid born in the 80's (myself included) more likely than not has fond memories of watching "Bamses Billedbog" at 6pm on the weekends.

Also, plenty of cartoons are dubbed into Danish, so I'm not totally convinced about the economic argument. Denmark is a rich country with plenty of money to spend.

Even as a kid growing up in Denmark, with all the British/American shows on TV (not dubbed) it was easy to learn a lot just by reading subtitles and following along. I give Saturday morning cartoon re-runs a lot of credit for helping me to learn. I remember sitting on a train with a friend of mine and us both realizing that we both knew a lot of English a year before we were going to start learning it in school.

I've found that most Scandinavians (or at least Danes) have a pretty easy time with English. Because the sentence structures are so similar, you're mostly plugging in English words that you're already familiar with and using the same sentence.

That said, on a deeper level, English is a very different language. That's most likely because it is such a cross between other languages.

Zero represents the state of "nothingness" - the universe before anything exists. The blank slate, tabula rasa, etc. The empty page before you write anything it.

Zero is a very deep concept and it is far from useless. See the book "Zero: history of a dangerous number".

I am thinking here of the "meat industrial complex" that powers a lot of large commercial meat production, not the friendly sustainable organic farm where I am sure we all shop.

Our brains are big enough now after generations of evolution. Time to put those big brains to use so we can figure out how to continue the existence of the human species. I really doubt it'll be by continuing to eat lots of cows.

Not. Bloody. Likely.

At least where I went to school they had family student housing for grad students who were married. Going to grad school would likely involve you taking a student loan, but then you'd be able to make more money afterwards.

Keep in mind that while you're under 30 (and assuming you don't yet have kids and a mortgage) you have a lot more room and leeway to take risks than later in life. Don't lock yourself into misery too early in life. :)

Quit.

A really great book that helps you get appreciate the concepts in Lisp, without really talking about Lisp directly too much, is "Patterns of Software" by Peter Gabriel. http://amzn.to/TxDKGG

I found it to be a very enlightening read. Definitely a book you have to sink into with plenty of time and quiet.

Just calling the election based on "right now" is just for political adrenaline junkies. YMMV.

> In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes.

So true - I'd say Danes are pretty blind to their own prejudices and backwards attitudes. I'm sure you remember "Perkerspillet" from some years ago?

"Perkerspillet", which roughly translates to "The Nigger Game", was an online flash game where the player was a stereotypical "gangsta" Turkish immigrant. You drove around the city in a souped-up BMW, trying to pick up Danish women and make money to further enhance your ride. They had to rename it to "The Mujaffa Game" after people stirred up controversy.

IMHO, I feel like the Danes often act like they're entitled to say whatever they want in the name of free speech, as if there'll be no consequences. That's why the Muhammad cartoon incident was such a wake-up call.

I have a hunch that part of this is related to the fact that nerdess is German. Or at least, she's based in Germany per the site.

I'm from Denmark (and a guy), and I can say from firsthand experience that attitudes towards women in Europe are still very old-school. Not everywhere, certainly, and Europeans are open-minded liberal socialists etc, but behind the scenes the old attitude of "women and technology don't mix" is very much alive.

For example, many guys in Europe I've spoken to will make jokes about girls not really being fit to work on cars, working with computers, or doing anything "technically hard".

Even some years ago, there was an advertising campaign for a lotto (or something similar) with the tagline "so simple even a woman could understand it". The advertisement featured a pretty blond woman standing in her kitchen, listening to the boys hoot and holler about their winnings next door with a vacant expression on her face. This was plastered all over the main train station in Copenhagen.

So, while I agree it probably seems like an alternate reality in the US (assuming that's where you're from), it's not so far-fetched in other parts of the world. Just my $0.02.

It is much much harder to ask someone to be open to a new way of seeing life, especially in the areas you mentioned. Pick your favorite controversial political topic - a prime example of how difficult it is to get people to open up.

I agree with this point of view insofar as that's the behavior we usually observe in most people. I think it's also true that it is possible to stay open-minded your whole life and never get stuck in one way of doing things. It's not easy though, and of course we all develop habits over the course of our lives which can be very hard to shake off.

But with every single listing of a country that has more than one currency, there is a political reason why (see Ecuador) and it has real implications for the society to use a currency that you don't control.

Look at why Europe is so messed up right now - they adopted a single currency without a real government to match. Much as I might not like her, Margaret Thatcher was right when she said that "single currency is a federal Europe through the back door". It's either that or big trouble down the line.

I see you're from Denmark, so think of Legoland (in Billund, I assume you've been - it's silly!). Yes, they take all kinds of currency there, but it's very isolated and localized. At a broader national level, there is just the (sic) kroner. I've never once paid with US dollars at a pølsevogn in Copenhagen. :)

The full argument is quite long, but at heart, yes - I believe that the gold standard was a bad idea and remains a bad idea. Going back to it will not solve any of our current economic problems, it's a waste of time.

Thanks for sticking with the conversation btw! It was fun. :)

Yes, 100%.

> Every action has an implication. I would have upvoted you if you'd described what kind of implications rather than implying that having "implications" is something that governments should intervene in.

Fair point, I upvoted you for it.

I agree that the government's choice of language was extremely poor and wrong-headed. They certainly didn't do anyone any favors by just labeling the guy a terrorist and saying that's it.

I don't think it matters whether or not you lost money on going through with the act. If you want to throw your hard-earned money away to make a point, I suppose that's a privilege.

The point is that they all convert into dollars and I will certainly never use BerkShares for as long as I live. I only take US dollars.

Also, the banking structure around these things is really inconvenient. I worked a short stint as a teller at Bank of America and never once have I seen anything but greenbacks. This was in Santa Cruz county as well, where people would definitely be willing to try such crazy ideas.

You need to back this argument up with a good reference.

[EDIT: multiple currencies in the same country. Argentina is a beautiful country but it has had some severe issues over the years. You need to have one currency before you can do things like local currencies. URVs in Brazil were a genius way of pulling this off.]

> that makes it unclear who the victim of this crime really is.

Ah, okay - sorry, I missed this. There isn't really "a victim" here per se; it'd be hard to point at a person and say that they were hurt by what this guy was doing. Rather, it's a crime because it has the potential to destabilize the rules of how our financial system works. And, by implication, how our political system works. Money and politics go together, everyone accepts this.

Government rhetoric (I guess) requires them to label it terrorism, but that's really stupid. They could have used it as an opportunity to explain how our economic system actually works. Of course, if you explain how the system works, people may ask deeper questions, etc.

[EDIT: I welcome downvotes on comments that are not constructive. If you think this is totally off the wall, please give a good explanation why.]

Sort of, but not really. The issue here is mixing the ideas of "a dollar" with "a piece of gold worth a dollar" or "a piece of silver worth a dollar". They are not the same thing.

There's an abstract notion of 'Value: $1.00' that both a piece of paper and a piece of gold links up to.

Hopefully that is a clear explanation.