Title Here

curi42 (7:14:17 PM): well i think pet projects shouldn't be allowed if author doesn't know how many ball bearings we used last year.

curi42 (7:14:47 PM): how does he know we need his pet project more than extra ball bearing production?

curi42 (7:15:04 PM): his project being *good* isn't enough. it needs to be better than alternate uses of the funding.

this is a major reason taxes suck. if they just left us our money, we'd get the stuff we thought was important. and all our combined knowledge about what was important would go into money distribution. but instead a few people who've only even heard of a few ways to spend money get to spend giant sums on their pet projects.


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

qqii

i think people get persuaded of stuff all the time, but generally not by design. also they tend to hide it. also people tend to discuss certain major key issues, which they are inconsistent and irrational and entrenched about. they then don't persuade each other on those issues, and fail to notice all the progress on varied other stuff.


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ap and unschooling

lets start with unschooling. is it any good? will it fail to be negligent? front and center on unschooling.com we find:

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience." -- Anne Sullivan

leave child to self. add water. mix. instant better child.

but that's not all. being outside causes people to be smarter. so does handcrafts instead of technology. we must oppose anything artificial!

ok next is AP. front and center we find:

“If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle; we won’t have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering. -Mahatma Gandhi

So first off children are tools for a political end. Next they are supposed to grow up ignorant -- this must be preserved at all costs. If they grow up ignorant, we won't have to struggle with them, they won't know anything but what we told them, so they'll act just like we always wanted. PS it's all about peace and love! (PPS if you've ever seen Trigun... lol)

But ok that's not quite as damning as the other one. Let's find another. Off to the What is AP? page written by the founders.

Whether you're new to Attachment Parenting (AP) philosophy or not, you've probably experienced that living in our culture can be confusing at best and very difficult at worst. All the popular childrearing books on the market today seem to negate each other--"Don't pick up your baby every time she cries, you'll spoil her"... "Babies can never be spoiled by picking them up" ... or "Babies need to learn to comfort themselves or they'll never learn!" New parents are quickly overwhelmed. The beauty of Attachment Parenting is that it is so simple! AP teaches parents that it's ok to listen to their baby and listen to their own hearts. It's a way of parenting that helps parents see the world through their child's eyes, a world of innocence, a world of unknowns, a world with so much to learn and a world that requires love in order to live. Even when parents feel confident in practicing AP they often have to weather criticism from well-meaning family and friends. Ours is a non-nurturing, no-touch culture against which AP runs counter. The pressure can place a lot of strain on parents. API was born out of these concerns and a desire to support all parents.

so let's see. they hate our culture. they think if we just "listen to our hearts" everything will be ok. now, you're supposed to listen to child too. ... unless you're heart overrides him. hell, even the most abusive parent will listen to child unless he doesn't feel like it. also the main problem with parenting today is failing to hug, "nurture", and love children enough. so do that. also don't stress out. if you're too stressed we have forums where people will say you're doing a good job and mean people are banned. and if you're really stressed, we recommend you just take a break for a while, to nurture yourself. as long as your heart says it's ok.

in conclusion i maintain left-wing parenting sucks. and although right-wing parenting also sucks, i think it's slightly better. mainly because i hate negligence so much.


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (10)

BBC can't count

Greg Dyke today admitted he didn't want to leave the BBC asmore than 1,000 staff walked out to stage protests outside BBC buildings in London and elsewhere in the country including Swindon, Cardiff and Belfast.

Between 700 and 900 walked out of BBC TV Centre in White City.

source


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and it gets worse

same source as last entry.

curi42 (1:23:54 PM): "We got very badly criticised by the Hutton report. Whether that's fair or not is for another time. But if you are that badly criticised it is right for the director general to go."
curi42 (1:24:15 PM): oh dear. no wonder they think bush should go. he's been criticised. whether the criticism is true can wait until after he resigns.


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Message (1)

saudia arabia is worse than you understood

read this

a few things to note:

casual mention that in Egypt nearly everyone knows someone who was illegally arrested. arrested means they disappear, get tortured, threatened, killed, whatever

fire at a girl's school. girls try to escape. religious police get in the way. send some back into burning building to get their fucking abaya's (black dress/robe kinda thing that covers their body completely). girls sent back in mostly burned to death.

this one city needed a sewage system. so the govt gives this guy a bunch of money to do it. he keeps it and builds himself a palace instead. gets away with it. so then this city has no sewage system. then to make matters worse some prince wants to tax sewage trucks that collect sewage. and the companies try to force their drivers to pay the tax, but many drivers can't or don't. so no sewage gets collected for a while! people's houses get flooded. disease, mosquitos, etc the beaches aren't safe. fish dying. and there is this lake full of sewage above the city on a fault line. one earthquake of magnitude like 5 on richter scale and city will be 1.5 feet deep in sewage.

free press? haha. NO

westerners get assassinated.

religious police go around terrorising people. and get paid for each arrest!

omg the segregation of the sexes!

so there's a hajj festival thing and 400 people die. some of natural causes, some (30 or 50 or something) get trampled to death, one swallowed by sand while sleeping, etc etc and this is *no big deal*. so routine not to be noticed.

and it goes on and on and on


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (4)

i hate commies

green leftist commie types are inclined to "knit their own pasta" ROFL

courtesy of emma in comments


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Message (1)

curi's blocks

UPDATE: this entry is old. go here if you want my tetris.

i wrote a tetris clone is python using pygame. started 24hours 20min ago

the source code comes in 2 files:

[removed]

you wanna run tetris with blocks in the same folder. but first you need to have python and pygame installed.

NOTE: you have to right-click save-target-as to get the files, then name them correctly (tetris.py and blocks.py) because if you just click you'll open them in your browser. this will remain until someone explains to me how to put them up right.

get python here

get pygame here

the game isn't documented yet, but:

KEYS:

KEYPAD 4 or LEFT ARROW = LEFT
KEYPAD 6 or RIGHT ARROW = RIGHT
KEYPAD 5 or DOWN ARROW = TURN COUNTER CLOCKWISE
KEYPAD 8 or UP ARROW = TURN CLOCKWISE
SPACE or KEYPAD 0 = DROP
ESC = QUIT
B = redraw the screen. a debugging function. should never do anything. if it does there was a bug. tell me.

also there are some constants at the top of the blocks file you can change with a text editor. you can change the size of the blocks in pixels, the number of rows and columns the game uses, and the minimum brightness of blocks (they get a random color). changing anything but those 4 is highly NOT recommended unless you're a programmer.

if you find a bug please tell me. hopefully stupid, large bugs, if any, will be found before monday.

UPDATE:

version 1.1 now. a redraw bug fixed. rotation keys swapped. arrow keys added. b key added. game a little faster now. your score displays while you play. keypad 0 drops

INTENDED FUTURE FEATURES:

pausing (p key). game will get faster relative to your score up to a max speed. controls to send piece all the way left or right with one keypress (7,9,c,v keys). you currently can't slide a piece after hitting drop. i might change that. no guarantees (you can if you wait for it to fall)

NOT intended features: seeing next piece and a key to make piece drop faster but not instantly while held down, custom keybindings in-game. music. just play your own.

suggestions welcome, including extra keybindings


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Message (1)

Alias is r0xx0r despite my complaints

WARNING: MASSIVE ALIAS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 1

------

ok so anyway, my thesis is: Sydney isn't hardcore enough!

For one thing, have you ever seen 24? Did you notice Jack? Jack is hardcore! Sydney's just not. One of Jack's best qualities is the way he shoots people. Sydney almost never shoots people. So that's my first two points: Sydney should be more like Jack, and should shoot people more often. Also, when she shoots people, she should use bullets, and shoot to kill, instead of using tranquiliser darts.

Oh, my other thesis is the show has kinda bad morality. Far worse than say 24 or West Wing or Buffy or even worse than most anime (anime is from *Japan* so the morality is a bit lacking and addressed at a different problem situation. Like they worry about pacifism and have trouble justifying using force ever. The majority of Americans don't have that issue. Though apparently the media does. *ahem* anyway)

so like when Vaughn wanted to report Sydney's dad for being a KGB agent (before they knew about her mother) ... to get him punished. wtf. regardless of his past he (Jack Bristow) is now a double agent working for the US government and a really valuable asset towards like saving the world. and Vaughn would give that up because long ago in the past Jack did bad things? b/c he should be punished? what for? how does punishing him help anything? it doesn't!

so then sydney said no b/c ... he's her dad. her argument was like he shouldn't be punished b/c A) she cares about him and B) she shares genes with him. it's such a bad defense you almost want to see him punished. except nah, cause he's far more hardcore than Sydney, almost like a mini Jack Bauer. ok rather different, but he's still cool.

ANYWAY

and they were pissy about sacrificing (via framing) that SD6 agent to save sydney. but sheesh. jack saved an important double agent who routinely makes the world a better place. at the "cost" of getting a bad guy killed. one who'd done some pretty horrible stuff. and sydney gets pissy b/c somone died. oh how sad. *cough*

and then later she decided "i would have done the same thing, to save someone i cared about" which was supposed to mean it was acceptable to her. nevermind that right isn't in terms of what I (or whoever is wondering) would have done. and nevermind the issue shouldn't be decided by who we care about more -- this was an issue of national security and life and death. it needed an objective answer about the real and major effects each option would have on the world.

and sydney handcuffed anna esperanza (sp) instead of killing her one time. and shot her handbag instead of her one time. etc keeps running away while beingt shot at rather than fighting effectively. (in season 2 sydney fires a machine gun a few times which is cool)

like there was the scene where they (sydney and anna) are trying to climb up a rope ladder at same time, and fighting. everytime one gets advantage they try to climb more, and get grabbed from behind. when obvious thing to do is first throw other person off then climb peacefully.

and Alias uses some unrealistic crap to avoid some hard but right decisions. like when sydney and her father are both captured in cuba (sydney went there to help father, who was supposed to assassinate anini hasan (sp) the weapons dealer), and Hasan wants Jack to shoot Sydney. then he shoots the guards and they win the fight unharmed. what weak sauce guards!!!

He should have shot her irl, i think. assuming guards weren't that lame. cause alternative was them both dying.

update: just saw an ep where sydney knocks this badguy out instead of killing him, then a few minutes later he wakes up, gets a gun, and comes after her. easy victory turned into barely getting through alive.

this is a fairly common theme. sydney always leaves a trail of live enemies behind her. she shouldn't.


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