What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

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Jason
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Jason » Tue Aug 29, 2017 12:32 am

Amusing endnote from the book I'm reading:
Electoral politics is a little like fishing. When you fish you get up early in the morning and go to where the fish are - not to where you might wish them to be. You then drop bait into the water (bait being defined as something they want to eat, not as "healthy choices"). Once the fish realize they are hooked they may resist. Let them; loosen your line. Eventually they will calm down and you can slowly reel them in, careful not to provoke them unnecessarily. The identity liberals' approach to fishing is to remain on shore, yelling at the fish about the historical wrongs visited upon them by the sea, and the need for aquatic life to renounce its privilege. All in the hope that the fish will collectively confess their sins and swim to shore to be netted.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:29 am

The 'The Left' is an easy, yet effective, shorthand, but I'm bored and frustrated by shorthand politics - it suits the political chancer in its application far more than meeting any shortfall in descriptive necessity. Contemporary Western politics relies too heavily on the ad hom imo - the 'The Left' and the 'alt-Right' being two ready tokens by which that lazy fallacy is raised, almost to the level of an art form.

:tea:
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Hermit » Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:04 am

Brian Peacock wrote:The 'The Left' is an easy, yet effective, shorthand, but I'm bored and frustrated by shorthand politics - it suits the political chancer in its application far more than meeting any shortfall in descriptive necessity. Contemporary Western politics relies too heavily on the ad hom imo - the 'The Left' and the 'alt-Right' being two ready tokens by which that lazy fallacy is raised, almost to the level of an art form.

:tea:
Nevertheless, I must say the analogy Śiva quoted is not merely amusing. It is the best I have encountered in a long time.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by JimC » Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:08 am

Hermit wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:The 'The Left' is an easy, yet effective, shorthand, but I'm bored and frustrated by shorthand politics - it suits the political chancer in its application far more than meeting any shortfall in descriptive necessity. Contemporary Western politics relies too heavily on the ad hom imo - the 'The Left' and the 'alt-Right' being two ready tokens by which that lazy fallacy is raised, almost to the level of an art form.

:tea:
Nevertheless, I must say the analogy Śiva quoted is not merely amusing. It is the best I have encountered in a long time.
And the jihadists simply throw a lit stick of dynamite into the water...
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Jason » Tue Aug 29, 2017 8:20 pm

Image

Finally arrived. Delving into it now.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Tero » Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 am

A nostalgic look at a play I read in German, the peak of my German skills first year in college. I had to buy several plays but will only read one. In English this time.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play Romulus der Große (Romulus the Great, 1950)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_the_Great
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Sean Hayden » Sun Sep 03, 2017 8:10 pm

This Is Reggae Music, The Story of Jamaica's Music. Lloyd Bradley :biggrin:

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Tero » Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:08 pm

It bogs down in a few spots, but all in all, one of the most amazing biographies I ever read.
http://www.amazon.com/Snoring-Bird-Fami ... 006074216X

I gave my hard cover to someone.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by normal » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:36 am

Have started Frederick Forsyth's Avenger. So far there's been mostly character development and background for the story. And that has been done in an excellent way. Now I just hope the story will be as good as the introduction :pop:

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Clinton Huxley » Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:54 am

Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War about his scientific tussle with Stephen Hawking over whether information is truly lost when it falls into a black hole.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Sean Hayden » Mon Oct 02, 2017 8:23 pm

What do those guys mean by information?










Sean asked as though he may be of some help here. :hehe:

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Clinton Huxley » Mon Oct 02, 2017 8:40 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:What do those guys mean by information?








Sean asked as though he may be of some help here. :hehe:
Basically this (from wiki)
The black hole information paradox[1] is a puzzle resulting from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Calculations suggest that physical information could permanently disappear in a black hole, allowing many physical states to devolve into the same state. This is controversial because it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science—that in principle the value of a wave function of a physical system at one point in time should determine its value at any other time.[2][3] A fundamental postulate of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is that complete information about a system is encoded in its wave function up to when the wave function collapses. The evolution of the wave function is determined by a unitary operator, and unitarity implies that information is conserved in the quantum sense.

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Sean Hayden » Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:57 pm

:lol: Oh, is that all? --found this while getting lost in all that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by cronus » Tue Oct 03, 2017 11:08 am

Days of the Comet H.G. Wells, an edition so old it could be a first edition...late 20's edition...channeling history whilst reading.
What will the world be like after its ruler is removed?

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Re: What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:12 am

I'm just finishing up The Craft of Research. I went to the library today and picked up a couple of books to help me identify a research project. I think my best bet is with How To Create A Mind, Ray Kurzweil. It seems to go to the heart of the question I raised here before about augmentation. :biggrin:

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