Ollinson

Your use of "screen" seems to suggest that you group e-ink displays and lcd displays together. Do you really see no practical difference between the two in reading experience?

A sincere question because I don't enjoy reading on a tablet but a kindle to me in terms of eye strain is identical if not better than a book.

I should have included this in my original post but InstantWatcher sounds like what you're looking for.

That website is how I discovered netflix has thousands of movies in the first place.

Well let me put it this way. I was stuck in a hotel for a few days with nothing but netflix to keep me entertained. I browsed through all the documentaries and found nothing worth watching that I hadn't already watched. Frustrated, I found a website called instantwatcher that gave me the ability to view ALL the netflix documentaries. I ended up watching almost 9 GREAT documentaries that were otherwise hidden from me.

I had a close friend who refused to wear his Patka/Keski Dastaar anymore (sorry if this is incorrect, I'm going off of images on google) and was nearly disowned by his family.

The crazy thing is his family wasn't, to my eyes, even particularly religious.

I was honestly shocked to find out that there are almost 8000 movies available right now on netflix streaming.

Their "custom tailored" selection screen gives the impression that they have 300 films available at most.

I find that nice pair of in-ear etymotics with their biggest foam tips is the best way to block out noise.

The noise isolation is so strong that I can't even listen to music at higher than half volume without discomfort.

I'm curious how you interpreted this culture shock.

Was it that you regretted not having similar experiences?

All of the people criticizing homeschooling on the basis of socialization seem to advocate the "throw them in the water and let them learn how to swim" methodology.

I have to ask though what is the real advantage of this? With home schooling you can teach a child tools that help them navigate society. Give them some fundamental sociology, explain why certain kids their age act a certain way towards them. Let them read books that not only highlight such encounters but explain the multitude of outcomes possible.

With public school in many cases you sink or swim and the result could set you back decades (emotionally and otherwise). Home schooling promises a baseline of support. Maybe it wont breed the greatest multi-cultural prodigies or tortured artists but it will keep the most susceptible from disappearing into an educational gutter.

I say this as someone who attended a public high school with metal detectors and an enrollment of 3,000.

That's 4-5 pages that claim to adequately cover the financial and political current events of 71 countries

I think I'm justified in being skeptical.

The economist is very good at providing readers with the illusion of being informed.

Think about how multifaceted US policy is on any given day of the year. The economist boils down similar issues to a blurb on a page with a heading that says "middle east." So now you can turn that page and be confident that for this week you know what's going on in the middle east.

The truth is the economist fills a void. Before reading an issue you know nothing about current events in India. After reading you know something. Something is vastly more power than confessing ignorance in any situation. And if anyone questions you, well, the economist said so.

Sticking to the theme of US elections, it also came out for Barack Obama in 2012. That's pretty contrarian considering The Economists history and Mitt Romney's policies on Wall Street.

The vast majority of economist articles can be summed up as "you thought it was that way, but it's actually this way."

I subscribed to the economist sometime in the middle of 2012 and did not have a positive experience.

I'm convinced that much of the allure of the economist comes from that it is frank contrarian news source.

I don't like the anonymous authorship for reasons which have been stated on hacker news in other economist posts.

The economist is sneaky. All of the articles are fact/numbers based and then shoehorned with a political interpretation that you can't realistically argue with unless you are an expert in the some very niche domain. This leads to many people in my field (finance) having strong opinions on an impossible variety of subjects which ultimately boils down to parroting the economist. The culture of "lying with statistics" comes to mind.

I realize many of these problems are inherent in journalism but the economist relies more than others on being opaquely unimpeachable. Reading the economist felt less like a dialog and more like "believe us or appear uninformed in public."

We know that the output which describes his life is true but the details of the input are dodgy at best.

The input in this case matters a lot.

This is also called the euphemism treadmill. Over time almost any word assigned to a social stigma will become pejorative. The word retard used to be the only way to refer to the "differently abled" in polite society.

I believe the OP is talking about a car service, not a medallion taxi cab.

I live in Queens and the only complaint of yours I can qualify is that they don't take credit cards.

Car service cabs are plentiful and cheap in my area. Many of the drivers directly communicate with you by phone and have GPS.

hah I like your endless cycle analogy

I think a lot of what you call fluff/noise was the author's attempt to show the humanity of scientists who some readers might misidentify as gods on earth. I absolutely agree it can sometimes be tedious but I don't think it was just padding to make the already 900+ page book longer.

I mentioned this in another comment but really BusTime has been one of the greatest public transit innovations in NYC of the past 20 years.

Bus routes are not supposed to replace train routes. It is by design that bus routes are longer, buses are meant to service areas not accessible by train.

I'm curious if you traveled by bus since the introduction of bus time last year? It has really changed my commuting life. In the past I might be standing out in the cold or heat for a half hour waiting for the next bus. Now I can predict when my bus will show up and spend mere minutes waiting for it.

The state of nutritional science really is pathetic. The ability to prey on the FUD surrounding "a long and healthy life" is second only to promises of get rich quick schemes.

Sometimes I think it would be more practical to educate the public about coming to terms with death rather than all of these food pyramids, cubes and spheres.

It really is wacky.

I understand why the author made the omission though. I've been on public bus systems in many major US cities and they are entirely the domain of the elderly, handicapped or impoverished.

The NYC bus system though is used by all walks of life, much like the subway itself. In a way I'm glad that the bus system is seen by transplants as less sexy because it keeps the rents in all those neighborhoods not directly serviced by subway lines much cheaper. With Bus Time and a huge fleet [1] of buses, the NYC bus system is often more reliable than the trains.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_local_bu...

After a while I realized that all this "freedom of speech" talk is really just a euphemism for "let us form hate groups and post pictures of 13 year olds in bikinis."

This just sounds like another example of the euphemism treadmill.[0]

Here's an interesting article from 5 years ago about a NYC agency with "retarded" in the name which refused to remove the word [1]

The answer isn't as cut and dried as "professionals say so."

[0]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/nyregion/08name.html?_r=0

I've raised free range chickens on my small personal farm for years and let me assure you, they don't need to any human intervention to be inspired to procreate.

If anyone is committing rape on my farm it's the roosters, not me.

Don't forget taxes.

These days I watch more hours of twitch.tv than I do films and TV shows combined.

The article itself criticizes Jaynes' use of The Iliad as an example; he handwaved these criticisms away by saying that "consciousness" was added at a later date. The article is candidly critical of Jaynes and so are all the quoted scientists.

A lot of people here seem to think this article is promoting Jaynes' arguments or hypothesis but it's not. I'm not surprised though, most hacker news posts on controversial topics are usually advocating for or against an idea; the faster you can write off the argument as bunk the more time you save for other worthy content.

This article is a discussion of speculative science, not an argument. How does it contribute and how does it fail? What does it mean that we choose to speculate or apply the scientific method? It gives perspective on how we research questions now and the role of religions and myths in the past.

Unscientific ideas can inspire useful and possibly prescient thoughts. To me that was the real subtext of this article.

The people you're quoting clearly read at least part of the article (they quoted or paraphrased it). I think it's fair to assume they thought anyone reading their comments would read them in the context of the article. The article itself is very critical of Jaynes' ideas and almost all the quoted professionals say "yes that's very interesting, but he has no proof and most of it is flat out wrong."

Anyway that's my long way of saying most articles aren't worth reading but this one is.

I'm sure Jaynes would have made the same argument against your example that he did when others told him about examples of consciousness in The Iliad, "they are later additions or mistranslations."

A pretty convenient and unconvincing argument on his part.