A few one-paragraph thoughts
As
you can see, I shortened the name of this blog to just "Sixteen Volts".
It's more effective that way, and sounds better. Although if I were
starting a blog now, I would have several other names that I would
rather use.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom behind the idea of "that what is seen and that what is not seen", especially when combined with the adage "The squeaky wheel gets the grease".
The article "The Physics of Gluttony" gives a simple message to the morbidly obese: If you want to lose weight, either eat less, or breathe more. But of course, the fabulous individuality of the morbidly obese gluttons is not bound by boring laws of physics, since everything is socially constructed.
Could somebody explain me this: when hockey players start a fistfight on ice, why are they not charged with assault?
I believe that it was John Derbyshire who once defined a creationist as somebody who believes that the modern humans emerged about 50,000 years ago and have not gone through any significant evolution since then, and most certainly not by different geographical populations changing in different ways. Amusingly enough, the same definition applies to creationists in both left and right. A commenter in an earlier posting recommended a Finnish article "Tiedesodan ojasta relativismin allikkoon: Steve Fuller ja intelligent design" that criticizes relativism. Near the end, this article asks for anybody to present even one example where neodarwinism or science based on it has led to socially questionable results. I guess there ought to be many examples of this happening, when we remember how vigorously leftists tend to oppose neodarwinism.
Several times when I have tried to start to use some web service that requires a username and password, my initial attempt was rejected because somebody else already had the same username. Why exactly couldn't several users have the same username? The users are assigned a unique identifier inside the system anyways, so the password could determine at login time which of the users who have the same username you actually are. And don't get me started with not allowing spaces in usernames: humans have used them for centuries to separate words, but apparently nobody ever bothered to tell this to computer nerds.
It is kind of interesting that mocking people for certain inherited characteristics that cannot really be changed is perfectly acceptable, but mocking them for some other inherited characteristics that cannot really be changed is bad and wrong. But even more interestingly, the same also applies to many acquired characteristics, especially the social standing in various hierarchies. I wonder why that is.
Not smoking has a massive benefit for productive people, but it has a much lower value for the unproductives. Now that smoking keeps getting rarer among the productives, this filthy habit keeps turning into an ever-better indicator of mental health problems, anti-social attitudes and general loserdom. This is even more true smoking in public, especially in places where smoking is not allowed. When I see some guy smoking somewhere where smoking is forbidden, I can already be pretty certain that I wouldn't want to have that person as a roommate.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom behind the idea of "that what is seen and that what is not seen", especially when combined with the adage "The squeaky wheel gets the grease".
The article "The Physics of Gluttony" gives a simple message to the morbidly obese: If you want to lose weight, either eat less, or breathe more. But of course, the fabulous individuality of the morbidly obese gluttons is not bound by boring laws of physics, since everything is socially constructed.
Could somebody explain me this: when hockey players start a fistfight on ice, why are they not charged with assault?
I believe that it was John Derbyshire who once defined a creationist as somebody who believes that the modern humans emerged about 50,000 years ago and have not gone through any significant evolution since then, and most certainly not by different geographical populations changing in different ways. Amusingly enough, the same definition applies to creationists in both left and right. A commenter in an earlier posting recommended a Finnish article "Tiedesodan ojasta relativismin allikkoon: Steve Fuller ja intelligent design" that criticizes relativism. Near the end, this article asks for anybody to present even one example where neodarwinism or science based on it has led to socially questionable results. I guess there ought to be many examples of this happening, when we remember how vigorously leftists tend to oppose neodarwinism.
Several times when I have tried to start to use some web service that requires a username and password, my initial attempt was rejected because somebody else already had the same username. Why exactly couldn't several users have the same username? The users are assigned a unique identifier inside the system anyways, so the password could determine at login time which of the users who have the same username you actually are. And don't get me started with not allowing spaces in usernames: humans have used them for centuries to separate words, but apparently nobody ever bothered to tell this to computer nerds.
It is kind of interesting that mocking people for certain inherited characteristics that cannot really be changed is perfectly acceptable, but mocking them for some other inherited characteristics that cannot really be changed is bad and wrong. But even more interestingly, the same also applies to many acquired characteristics, especially the social standing in various hierarchies. I wonder why that is.
Not smoking has a massive benefit for productive people, but it has a much lower value for the unproductives. Now that smoking keeps getting rarer among the productives, this filthy habit keeps turning into an ever-better indicator of mental health problems, anti-social attitudes and general loserdom. This is even more true smoking in public, especially in places where smoking is not allowed. When I see some guy smoking somewhere where smoking is forbidden, I can already be pretty certain that I wouldn't want to have that person as a roommate.
Denying multiple users with same username is good policy, atleast in some cases. If the web service has some user interaction (sending messages to other users, discussion forum, etc..) it would be pretty difficult to immediately know, which "Joe" has written the text in hand. Imagine some web service where you are constantly talking to other persons, then there is some Kathy/Ike that you can't stand. But then there is some other Kathy/Ike that you are very fond of. Could be annoying.
Of course there could be link to "Joe"'s user information page, but who could bother to read, say, some discussion between "Mary", "Joe", "Mary", "Joe" and "Joe" when there could be 2-5 persons discussing?
Many web services rely for users to make some community between themselves and unique usernames are essential to this.
If there is no need for any user interaction, then multiple users with same username should be allowed. Or atleast I can't now think of an argument to deny this.
You are absolutely correct about the space issue.
I have been wondering this inherited/acquired mocking/not mocking characteristics issue also and it would be nice to come up with some kind of list with these.
(Sory for bad english)
Posted by soopa | 10:08 AM