I didn't know that. I always thought it very unfair that individuals have a much higher tax percentage to pay than corporations, and somehow I tought the US wasn't like that.
> Out of the total number of human concepts that have ever been communicated, the majority are only available to English speakers.
Wait, I'm not sure if I agree with the rest of your post, but this last sentence is surely an exaggeration, no? You mean over 50% of human concepts that were ever communicated are only available to english speakers?
Sure, you can express pretty much any concept from a foreign language in English, and vice-versa if the language is thorough enough. What you lose is the power and conciseness that comes from having a single word expressing a concept that would take 10 or 18 words to be correctly expressd in English. I have memorized a few interesting ones in some languages: 'Litost' (czech), 'Prozvonit' (czech also),'Tartle'(scottish), 'Mamihlapinatapei' (an idiom from Tierra del Fuego), 'Ya’aburnee' (arabic), and my own language's 'saudade', which to some is just translated as 'longing for something you have lost', but is, for native speakers, of course, something else.
Usually, the people who espouse such views are never the speakers of dying tongues.
I'm not saying your view is the wrong one, or that it isn't rational. The sentence in the beginning of my post was spoken by an anthropologist who studied a tribe who was losing its language, and yet didn't completely grasp the other, mainstream language, fully. I never forgot that sentence. The youths of the tribe, he said, were in a constant limbo, their language and culture dying, and never part of the bigger, dominating culture. Their children's children will probably be ok, will probably be fully assimilated, but to not think of the fate their parents and grandparents is not right.
Many efforts are futile, but it doesn't make them all wrong. Sometimes it is the right way to act.
If you're talking about contemporary literature, then maybe, as I wouldn't know much about recent stuff. If not, then you're... I don't even know what to call it... to dismiss the french, russian, spanish, italian classics... wow.
Well, if he said "If we want to lead our lives the best way possible, then you ought to read this and this, not that" it would still be pretentious. Is it really clear cut that one set from all of literature is the best for everybody? Of course "read whatever you like is a bit on the opposite side, too easy, too shallow. One could then decide "fine, I'll just read kid's comics all my life." Read varied literature, from different cultures, try different genres, and try to read some classics, as they're classics for a reason, would probably be better advice.
> one of the most bloody and backwards "achievements of the human species"
You know very well he is celebrating where this has taken Europe and not the brutal aspects of its history, which, if you're honest, you'll agree are present in all cultures, especially when they rise materially and technologically above neighboring ones. If you stand by your statement, would you prefer to have western civilization go back to pre-roman times? Was it less bloody and more civilized than present-day Europe? C'mon.
I have zero tech friends. Zero. Not one of my friends cares about privacy. Never have for as long as they have started using email in the late 90's. Me, I just gave up trying to raise the issue. So much so that I don't care anymore. It's a lost war. I'll take care of my own privacy whenever I care about it, and that's it. The rest of the population will deal with it when it gets too crazy. If it ever gets too crazy, and if they ever begin to care.
edit: Just to add: I know this is defeatist and negative, but it's the truth in my case. Got tired of it. It's easier if you have tech friends or activist friends and they share your concern.
I don't get people who don't get this ;-) Imagine if it got to the point where the whole 50m fresstyle race was won by reamining underwater full time. Gone would be the frantic flapping of arms and legs making waves and splashes, which is how non-swimmers understand how fast paced the event is, like the running 100m sprint. People gliding like dolphins viewed in underwater cameras is just not as exciting.
When I was a child in the 80's in Brazil this was still widespread. I remember walking over a relatively short friend of mine (we were both around 8 years old) and his grandmother physically made me step back over him to undo it, so it wouldn't prevent him from growing.
By the way, why would dentists be "cracked out" on amphetamines? Is it a very competitive field or are the hours terrible for a dentist in the US? (I also thought it was a bit over the top, but the dentist in the example stuck out even more for me -- I don't live in the US, and the dentists I've known had pretty normal, non-stressful work lives.)
To all you western europeans complaining: come down to Brazil, and I'll take you on a tour of our "Top Ten Most Abandoned-Halfway Billion Dollar Government Works" ;-)
Oh, and just to give an example, the construction of one of our nuclear power plants began in 1984 but was halted in 1986, only to begin where it left off in 2010, to be finished in 2015. Wait, now it is in 2016. Nope, just checked, it should be in 2018. All the while, the cost to maintain the stuff that was already bought or built is around 20 million a year, since 1986. So yeah, this one is on our TOP TEN list. This little swiss tunnel is not.
There are literally dozens of alternative school models throughout the world, and I've done research on a lot of them when I had my kids. What I found was broad and varied. Different results, different opinions from parents and former students, different conclusions from researchers. Both on the positive and negative sides. I never got to make up my mind, and I ended up putting my kids in a public school in a small town where there was only one school per age segment. It's a pretty good public school, probably like a good private school, but there's a difference in that the student body is truly varied. My kids study with the son of the garbage collector and the daughter of the supermarket owner. There is a Waldorf school not too far from here, in a neighboring town, but it's as diverse as a very expensive school with everyone arriving in imported cars can be. So I chose not to put my kids there.
edit: Plus, I'm not too fond of Waldorf's philosophy, and even less of the Anthroposophy's.
This is what I do also. I go for the 3-star. If I read a 3-star that seems legit and indicates the person really evaluated the product, I even look at their other reviews, as their 4 and 5 star reviews might be useful.
email is awesome, but I do miss receiving long letters from friends far away. Man, do I miss that. I only have two friends left who still write letters. I would give many parts of the internet to have that back.
I use a Samsung flip phone. I still prefer the flip ergonomics to a touch-screen one (for ordinary voice call use obviously). Someone calls me, I pick up the phone, flip it open to answer if I want to, talk, close it to end the call, all with one hand, without having to even look at the thing (I can check the outside lcd to see who it is before answering it also). When I want to call someone (I only call about 5 people regularly (wife, mom, dad, sister, closest friends), I just flip it open and press the corresponding speed dial button. For this kind of use, a touch screen doesn't come close.
Weel, they could have been straightforward and said 'Yes.' And then they would explain how it's only trace amounts or whatever, and how this is a realistic expectation or a safe level and how it compares to other companies etc. This would have been the more honest answer.
I remember back when i did film photography, some people used to recover the silver from the solutions used to print onto paper (you know, from a negative).
What?? You want to sell a self-driving car but you want it to be a good driver only in pristine, well-marked roads?? What kind of half-assed solution is that? Well, now that I think about it, the car could determine if the road wasn't good enough and tell you to take over, but then you'd have to be ready to do it and not busy reading a novel or talking with your mother on the phone, so it would defeat the purpose of doing the driving a bit. Anyway, I'll bet the only real solution will be to make the ai better. Just as with airplanes, you can't hal-ass something like this and blame it on lack of road paint, it would be too dangerous (you know, with airplanes, how they're so safe because otherwise they'd be so dangerous).