griffinmahon

The speaker's previous presentation at a different year of the same conference, about using online records to fabricate your own death or the birth of a made-up baby, is also worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs.

He's probably better described as an anarcho-syndicalist (I don't think "social libertarian" does the radicalness of his politics justice): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism#Noam_Choms....

Just as a heads up, the adjustment of putting your heels on a 5lb plate is actually used to train depth in the squat. "Ass-to-grass" is the squat standard for weightlifting (i.e., like in a 3rd world squat, you should want to be able to sit down on your heels comfortably), and the idea is that squatting a bit higher weights than you can do without the heels elevated with the heels elevated trains that depth in the movement. Point being, eventually you might be able to get to just under parallel if you keep working on the heel-elevated squats!

Also, re toes slightly out, this is how you should squat, you shouldn't square up with the rack or keep your feet parallel, because (again, referencing the 3rd world squat) if you were to sit down on your heels, mobility permitting, you would basically have to have your toes slightly outward.

The absurd award of the Peace Prize is not without precedent, though. Consider that Henry Kissinger was a laureate in 1973.

I read an NYT article a while ago that made the argument that the effect of people who did not support the Vietnam War evading the draft was a military that was, twenty or so years later, when the people who did join became senior, very conservative or willing to wage war. Along the lines of the critical theory idea that some of the Left have become ineffective by not involving themselves in actual politics, I think it's important to not be deterred by this idea of war, as the only way the military-industrial complex will change is if people with better values come to make up more of the military. Maybe this will come to be the case as younger people see decreasing future job prospects and turn to the military as a career.

This reminds me of the Fleming Bond novel Moonraker, in which a whole chapter is devoted to the idiosyncrasies of the villain who is being challenged by Bond via bridge.

At first glance there seems to be pieces that could be simplified. E.g., in this image http://community.wolfram.com//c/portal/getImageAttachment?fi..., there are 2 1x1 bricks in multiple places (on the top level at the "nearest" corner, for instance) that could be replaced with a 2x1 brick. I wonder what part of the program results in this.

Clapper came to my school to talk and I asked him "to speak about the allegations of perjury". He was not amused, and repeated the line about having forgotten about the PATRIOT Act.

In addition to your misreading of Homage to Catalonia, you also misattributed -- the author you're looking for is Thomas Friedman.

An interesting problem that came up during development of the Navy version, which has to land on carriers: when the landing gear and hooks were first tested, the placement of the back wheels was such that they created a sine wave in the arresting cable which just happened to be "down" when the hook moved over the cable, meaning the hook wouldn't catch and the plane could never land this way. They then had to go back and redesign the arrangement of the landing gear and hook.

How did you know what he meant then?

Saw "5000" in the title and immediately thought of this book.

I actually don't think it's much of an ode to war or anything. I go to the Naval Academy like Heinlein did, and when I read the small details of military life and the grandiose calls to serve, I read them as criticisms or as satire.

I read Starship Troopers and The Forever War back-to-back in like three days, and I wasn't so much of a fan of Haldeman's book, the writing just didn't seem as good to me as Heinlein's and in any case they're nearly identical -- though obviously the relativity thing and time making the "forever" part true was a very good point.

Fish oil yay, multi-vitamin meh.

I only made a clarification, not a stance on the matter.

The plants dying point is somewhat irrelevant in this context as 80,000 Hours's philosophy stems from Peter Singer's brand of utilitarian ethics that interpret suffering as it relates to experience, or consciousness.

I love his writing in his essay "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh" [1], regardless of its political/journalistic merits

[1] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2001/09/mcveigh200109

Also relevant is the reversed phrase, "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by X (some other reasonable cause)."

One of their counter-arguments to your second sentence is that if you, the ethically-minded person who will donate a significant portion of your income, aren't in that position at the potentially exploitative job, odds are someone else will be who isn't ethically-minded. On the other hand, if you were to go work aid on the ground in Africa, it's likely that you, who maybe has a valuable skill-set capable of earning more, could be replaced by another person who wants to work in aid.

You could say though that USAID is not Americans, per se, but the American government caring about African people, and anyway it could also be raised that in relative terms not that much goes to foreign aid, and also that not all of it is employed solely for humanitarian reasons.

Btw, I appreciated your Wiki link above.

Hitchens fan?

I like your distinction, and for the same reason think that there shouldn't be separate laws for the assault of a police officer -- there should just be laws for assault.

I go to the Naval Academy, and am currently a plebe so I am in the first mandatory cyber course, this one, right now (and have my exam on Wednesday!). "Cyber" is truly a technology word you only hear in the gov't/military.

Chris Inglis -- former NSA deputy director -- is a member of the cyber department.

Yes.

Shouldn't the act's terribleness, or if it actually qualifies as abuse, be related to how long the ride was? Some people put their dogs in cages at night, for instance.

I thought the same thing. Why couldn't they just make the ground green?

"Callous" is probably an imprecise word choice for the sentiment you're trying to communicate. And anyway it's not necessarily immoral to go to war for this reason depending on how you perform the calculus, e.g., depending on how much government money went into training and considering most soldiers don't kill others, it might be morally permissible.

I also doubt that the commenter would wholly support going to war or that he would seriously disagree with any of the assertions in "your second paragraph". But life is hard, and people have to try to achieve their goals and form a coherent narrative out of things. You might do better to reconcile a critique of the military with the fact that people in the military are not all bad or in the wrong.

This is like that one TED talk on longevity that found green zones where people lived much longer. One factor found in these people's lives was an ambulatory day, just generally walking a lot -- but, surprisingly, none of these groups went out of their way to exercise.

I like this a lot -- I love the idea of poring over Ulysses -- but the clicking on the reading page doesn't feel responsive enough for me and I wish annotations were displayed better (I'm used to Genius..)