A sobering reminder

When you wake up on Christmas Day, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking forward to all the wonderful scooters and knitwear and shiny gadgetry Santa the home invader has deposited under whatever kind of arboreal arrangement you've got going, remember this:


Somewhat unrelated, that sentence above is quite likely by far the longest sentence I have ever done.
Mix and match:
1) Happy/Merry/Sad
2) Multiple/singular/Dawkinsian
3) Denominational/dimensional
4) Celebratory/suicidal/awkwardly familial
5) Christmas/Holidays/'thang'.

Technocratic linguistics

We should all learn Esperanto dammit!

From here, as always:

I'm a native German and English speaker myself. Sitting in both boats as I do, I can understand the sensitivities involved with favoring one language over another. But I find that English is really easily the best language for international communications.

English has several features that I think make it a better language. It's semantically open, unlike French. Adding new words to English is very simple. We can even create new verbs and nouns from the last names of people (ie. bork). It adapts existing foreign words easily. I'm often able to use "uber" and "verboten" in English without getting at looks.

English doesn't require special accent marks in order define meanings. English has simplified definite and indefinite articles. Compared to German, "a", "an", and "the" are much simpler. English features no real gender. No worries about matching verbs, nouns, and articles; or even changing the meaning of a word. For possession, the Saxon genitive is efficient and simple. It accomplishes more in less space to say "John's car" rather than "the car of John". English also features simplified demonstratives, and very simplified declension of nouns. None of the der, den, dem, des conflicts that plague German and make it difficult for non-German speakers to learn. In English the placement of adjectives doesn't affect its meaning. In French you have scenarios like "un homme grand" (a great man) and "un grand homme" (a tall man). In English, you rely on the context of the adjective. Finally, English has a more direct simplified sentence structure.

of course, English has its downside, thinking contextually in English to find meaning vs thinking literally in French can create some confusions, I'm sure.

Sure, some people advocate English everywhere just because they're linguistically lazy and somewhat arrogant, but truly, there legitimate reasons for stressing English as an international language of commerce vs say, Irish where it can take an "aoi" to stress a "long i" sound, or Chinese were choosing a written form is as much a decision about your politics as it is about efficiency (simplified used in China vs traditional used in Taiwan).

Obviously, there are points worth debating here. I'm willing to let certain features go; the differentiation of 'a' and 'an' isn't strictly necessary in my books. It can be retained for aesthetic purposes if you wish, as could a whole host of other linguistic features.

One day, we will all speak in binary or hex, and it will be good.

Matter of time I suppose

Begun has, the Photoshopping

A distinguished pantheon

OKAY

Nickels in front of fucking bulldozers

You've all seen this by now, I sincerely hope.

BUT HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. Selling crack-laced baby formula will make you less money than this scheme, and is (probably) illegal in many many countries.

But who the hell invented picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer...from consumers?!?

Too much awesome?

Perhaps.

This is seriously good. Fans of Crooked Timber should have already seen it, but for the rest of you, this is quite funky. What is that music?

I think we have a winner!

Another snarky statesman!

The Coolidge effect:

The term comes from an old joke, according to which President Calvin Coolidge and his wife allegedly visited a poultry farm. During the tour, Mrs. Coolidge inquired of the farmer how his farm managed to produce so many fertile eggs with such a small number of roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters performed their duty dozens of times each day.

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge," pointedly replied the First Lady.

The President, overhearing the remark, asked the farmer, "Does each rooster service the same hen each time?"

"No," replied the farmer, "there are many hens for each rooster."

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge," replied the President.

Goddamn it

How many times does this need to be said

This. is. Bullshit. I sincerely hope that this is appealed, and smarter heads prevail.

What is wrong with people? Can we stop legislating against thoughtcrimes already? I don't care how many impure thoughts you have, and I don't care how they're represented. Until you come back to me with some goddamn actual evidence of harm committed, I don't give a shit how perverted you are. And don't even try the enabling argument.

First the filter, now this. So much for judicial review...

A question we all need the answer to

So, umm....yes?



I especially admire their incredible jaw muscles. Originally from this.

Cute little placeholders

Dotting coffee tables of idleness

This has to stop. Today. Forever.

Neat

Trying to put it all together

Jonathan Haidt - 5 Moral Values Behind Political Choice

It's a nifty video. Watch it.

A couple of things I gathered: 'The for or against disease' How to interpret/apply this in political (social, intellectual) life? I think it's the idea of compromise. Though even that feels like i've compromised on the meaning of the phrase.

See, I agree that we should try and understand our opponents and examine our biases and all that jazz, but it seems to me that conservative 'traits' are such that they are inherently against that sort of thinking. Libruls, atleast to me, are at the very least not entirely against listening to their opponents and questioning their biases and so on; they have 'traits' that actually encourage those things. The very 'traits' that mark conservatism (order, stability, deference, respect) seem to work against conservatives in questioning their biases, listening to their opponents and so on.

This is kinda sorta what I meant when I tried to figure out a method of distinguishing between geuninely trying to reach mutual understanding ('communicative action' or some variant, in the Habermasian jargon) versus communication in order to push a view or obtain some goal ('strategic action' in the Habermas, or 'dogmatic thinking' to borrow a term from Sam).

It seems that, within this no doubt simplified structure, liberals are much more likely than conservatives in aiming for and obtaining communicative action.

The way dialogue should be

The way my entire goddamn life should be

This really happened.

On trying to get rid of a dusty pile of Richard Dean Anderson (that's "MacGyver" to you) figures from SG-1:

ASSISTANT: I wonder if I am adequately explaining the freeness of him.
CHRIS: I really think I’ve got it.
ASSISTANT: He could go home with you right now.
CHRIS: Uh huh.
ASSISTANT: I could just, you know, pop him in your bag.
CHRIS: Or you could not.
ASSISTANT: He’s poppable.
CHRIS: Palpable, even.
ASSISTANT: Oh, touche!
CHRIS: Thanks.
ASSISTANT: So you’ll take one!
CHRIS: I didn’t say that.
ASSISTANT: Oh, come on.
CHRIS: What guarantee do I have that it won’t come to life and try to murder me in my sleep?
ASSISTANT: What?
CHRIS: I would like some sort of guarantee that this is not a killer doll. Like Chucky.
ASSISTANT: It’s not Chucky.
CHRIS: No, it doesn’t look like Chucky. But it could, you know, sympathize. With the killing.
ASSISTANT: But MacGyver is a good guy!
OTHER ASSISTANT: It’s Captain -
ASSISTANT: Nobody cares.
CHRIS: So was MacBeth. Then he murdered the King of Scotland.
ASSISTANT: Good point.
CHRIS: I thought so.
ASSISTANT: But this figure wasn’t made in Scotland! HA!
CHRIS: Where was it made?

It gets better. And there's more.