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cubancigar11

237 karma · joined September 28, 2011

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cubancigar11··on The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires
> I can only invest during a timeframe of no more than approximately 20-30 years

What you have concluded in you comment can be summed up in one word - short-sightedness. The only way to defend that position (which, in fact, you use) is to say that most people are and historically have been short-sighted, hence it is 'natural' ergo correct. You further imply that this... process... is out of our control.

This is disingenuous, and I will tell you why. You question egalitarianism because historically societies can be seen as contrarian among themselves. But you whitewash over the fact that we ARE in fact much much better-off than most people who have ever lived. We are better off than Aristotle himself and a large part of it can be attributed to the fact that he existed. He obviously didn't foresee the future and how he is going to literally effect it, but he did contribute to it because he was egalitarian.

But you already agree that you want more Aristotles, Platos and Socrates. What is disagreeable that you want them in a short of time frame at the cost of everything else because of 'particular gamete being lucky' or some other factor you don't know. In short, you are looking for profit and explaining away the lack of moral imperatives by invoking Darwinism. But:

1. There is no immediate pressure on us to produce Aristotles et. al. because they are not going to bring immediate benefit. We CAN plan for a long term future, though, and that means we can improve our chances of survival.

2. Darwinism requires diversity. Hence it is simply better to invest in disadvantaged, if you were egalitarian.

Let us be honest - the truth is that you are coming from a position of an individual with significant wealth who is looking for next Aristotle to increase his personal wealth by taking his, and you don't really care about Aristotle or his effect on anyone else. All the arguments are simply dressings to make that short-sightedness and greed look good.

cubancigar11··on Calibre beta announced
It might be legal but it definitely is a very poor strategy.
cubancigar11··on April Fools: migrate Apache Subversion project over to the git repo
I think the point is that the old packages will fail to install on future computers.
cubancigar11··on Facebook Refused No-Poaching Agreement With Google
I think it is obvious that the wages of Infy etc. were also pulled down because of this collusion. If silicon valley moves towards a organized labor movement (that I have long held that it should), it is essential that such labor movements are formed in other countries.
cubancigar11··on Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search
Merge is indeed faster on multiple processors than, say, heap sort. Though it will still be nlogn.

Regarding hashes - it is not clear if you want the cadidate to mention collisions or not.

cubancigar11··on Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA
I just want to pitch in saying that India has faster and cheaper internet than San Jose. Sad, true and 'WTF' unbelievable.
cubancigar11··on The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
I agree to that. But when numbers have limitations we cannot chose to depend on our personal 'hunch'. That was my original objection. That the 'appaling problem in India' is just marketing news and it fits squarely inside 'problem in foreign land' trope.
cubancigar11··on The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
"Following your link : "This list indicates the number of, and per capita cases of recorded rape. It does not include cases of rape which go unreported, or which are not recorded""

And unreported rapes will be higher in India - much higher - than Botswana (92.9), Panama (28.3), Jamaica (24.4), Belize (6.7) because?

"Your statistics cannot be used for international comparisons." Glad I was able to bask in your unabashed superiority, testos. Btw, they are not 'my' statistics, which show that Canada has several degrees higher rape incidents that go 'unreported, or which are not recorded' than USA. That data point was left in the comment just for your argument.

cubancigar11··on The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
It is a giant ponzi scheme, what are you gonna do :|. One of the most expensive things one can own is a house, but the house of a poor person is many times cheaper than the house of a rich person. Add the race to have a bigger house and you have got inflation - just when you start to earn 1000 times more you need to pay 2000 times more if you want to live with people of same status.
cubancigar11··on The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
It is a myth that India has appalling rates of rape. Rape is appalling, but it is fun nowadays to portray India as particularly bad when in reality it is pretty average statistically.[1] For example, rapes per capita: USA (27.3), Sweden (63.5), India (1.8), Canada (1.7). The counter argument generally is that India has lax laws, but to me that is a non-argument.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Rape_statistic...

cubancigar11··on The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
I heard it was education that correlated negatively with fertility. Although education and careerism go hand in hand, I think the difference is still huge.
cubancigar11··on Steve Jobs threatened Palm’s CEO, court documents reveal
He is called Mahatma because people called him so. Those people and their children are dead along with him so it is easy to dig-up dirt on him. I read a great quote somewhere - 'nobody becomes a leader without doing questionable things'. I firmly believe it to be true for Gandhi and MLK and Jesus, but that doesn't steal away the fact that he was indeed a great leader of Indians and the whole world looked up to him for non-violence.

Regarding him being a wife-beater, I want to know your sources. I know for a fact that RSS propagates a lot of lies about Gandhi and Nehru family. I firmly believe he practiced non-violence and was NOT a wife-beater, WAS against caste-system, WAS against British rule over India. His secrets that are coming to light now (such as his sexual deviations) are things that were public when he was alive but almost nobody cared, or cared enough to propagate. Today, his legacy is major political problem for India and so it is being dug-up by some, while others want to hide it.

Whether he was responsible of India's independence or not, I don't know if it can be debated after 70 years of the fact. And I don't think one will ever get to the 'facts' by debating on this point. The maximum one can do is to read more and form informed opinions.

On-topic, while I agree that 'you can dig up endless dirt on the successful', the topic here is not the dirt, it is the person himself. Gandhi didn't become Mahatma because he was a 'racist' or 'wife-beater' etc. But Steve Job became successful due in large part to him being an asshole.

cubancigar11··on Steve Jobs threatened Palm’s CEO, court documents reveal
Gandhi was a lawyer (barrister) trained in English tradition. He was treated as 'part of the ruling class' in India. It is only when he reached Africa that he saw his real place among British who he was raised to admire and copy, and the treacherous ways British ruled India. His statement quoted above comes from his transition period.

It is Gandhi the old, not Gandhi the young, who is respected. No one is born a Mahatma. Except may be Jesus :)

cubancigar11··on Why Free Speech Loses in India
I have read the book and its criticism. TL;DR: The book suffers from cherry-picking for telling a story. It ought not to be taken seriously as an endeavour in study of Hinduism. I mean, its in the title - An ALTERNATE History. Otherwise it is a fun read. (Imagine a book called - 'Nazism - An alternate history' based on Inglourious Basterds.)

The criticism comes from people who are taking the book seriously. :)

cubancigar11··on Why Free Speech Loses in India
If it is foolish to you, then so be it. To categorically ignore the power play implied by defining a section without any input from it (and ignore rest of the comment, I suppose, along with the book and its criticism) seems intelligent to you then so be it. I am deeply aware of my inability to explain what has already been explained by others, so I resign.

"Cause I doubt they would agree." That should tell the complexity of defining Hinduism and the amateurish level western 'Indologists' have achieved which they spread around, calling any criticism to their approach 'foolish'.

cubancigar11··on Why Free Speech Loses in India
What seems scholarly to you looks extremely offensive to most Hindus. And ultimately it should be Hindus who get to decide the meaning of Hinduism. The over-the-top reaction to what is effectively a caricature in the likes of 'Innocence of Muslims' is enabled because such treatment of Hinduism by Christians has a history, a history that still plays its part in everyday life of Indians (not just Hindus). Point in case, the article talks about the 'criminalization of homosexuality', but fails to mention that it was criminalized by British-raj. Indian judiciary just rejected to get involved into executive branch, a very sensible approach IMHO.

The article itself refers to such treatment by naming Edward Said, for example. But then swoops in with personal judgements, calling Rajiv Malhotra's essay as a right-wingist parody and trying to link everything with rise of business-friendly nationalist Modi.

This is to be expected. Economical rise of any non-western country has historically correlated with doom-and-gloom about it in articles in western media, whether it is liberal or conservative. Even now it is hard for me to read an article about China in The Economist. Just today I saw an article about Chinese government cracking down on sex-racket, and how it is fomenting unrest and civil disobedience among Chinese.

cubancigar11··on Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)
Daniel_Newby, you are [dead].
cubancigar11··on Why Watson and Siri Are Not Real AI
This is where I find X-Men to be an awesome concept. What we are chasing in AI right now is Magneto (the might), but every time we reach there, we compare ourselves with Prof. X (the intellect).

I actually like this direction. Intellect is about predicting problems, and might is about solving them. It is better for humanity to stay on the intellectual side and let machines handle the hard work. Imagine a choice between AI propelled super efficient kill-bots vs. Skynet, if you will.

cubancigar11··on Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Hurting the soviets was about establishing hegemony. If you don't agree here, then, I mean, I don't have that much energy! :)
cubancigar11··on Chronicle of a Death Foretold
You make it sound like communism is good if you don't have USA as an enemy. As if the military-industrial complex needed an enemy.
cubancigar11··on Indian School Girl Creates Washing Machine That Runs Without Electricity
We had a project in our mechanical class to create 'stuff' using lathe machine and what not. All 35 in our class were divided into groups of 3 and were supposed to come up with 'novel' ideas.

5 groups (including mine) came up with washing machine :)

cubancigar11··on Chronicle of a Death Foretold
That's dishonest. US didn't fund war in Afganistan with freedom and democracy as end goal any more than it funded Osama with 9/11 as end goal.

You can't stop counting after reaching lucky numbers!

cubancigar11··on This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
> khari boli, a language restricted to the "cow belt".

Khari boli is a dialect that, after independence, turned into standardized dialect of Hindi. But it was widely understood unlike Begali. And it was in no-way restricted to cow belt[1], even after ignoring how big that belt really is and how much population it holds. People in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat fully understand Hindustani[2]. Hell, Ghandi was from Gujarat and he used Khari boli.

> You gave an explanation why Bengali was prevalent, OP's point was that Bengali was prominent. Why it was so was besides the point.

OP said there were more Bengali speakers than Hindustani. I am saying that it is not true.0 I will have to check what effect inclusion of Bangaldesh might have had, but remember we are talking about national language. It ought to be understandable to large parts of nation - large parts of ethnically different groups.

Btw, if you want to step onto political land-mine, try comparing grammar and vocabulary of Bengali and Bhojpuri/Bihari. The idea of Hindi vs Bengali will take a new meaning :) Language is indeed political.

> It still does not change the fact that it was imposed.

Hindi was supposed to be encouraged over English, but it has never been imposed. You just have to get down in Chennai railway station to know that. The anti-Hindi propaganda is purely political in nature. As a matter of fact, no body in even "cow-belt" (Haryana + Delhi + UP + Bihar) + Madhya Pradesh + Gujarat [1] speaks standardized Hindi (though they all understand Khari boli). If you speak it in Delhi - the heart of Hindustani as it was - you will literally be laughed at.

> BTW I am by mo means Tamil.

I don't care man! :) I am not a native speaker of khari boli either.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_belt

2. http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-political-map.ht...

cubancigar11··on This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
It is not racist to call someone racist.
cubancigar11··on This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
Au contraire. It is not polemic to call a spade a spade. Nor it is documentary work to propagate a biased and watered down version. In fact, it is propaganda. If you have the appetite for colonial misrule these articles might help paint a backdrop:

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-...

2. http://www.celdf.org/downloads/NATURE%20and%20EMPIRE%20-%20L...

cubancigar11··on This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
Indian army and RAW are nowhere influential enough to be compared to Pak-army and ISI. India has done one good thing in establishing democracy - its political has curbed the military power from day 1 of independence. Unfortunately it is the opposite in Pakistan.
cubancigar11··on This Google ad has moved people to tears across India and Pakistan
'there were far more Tamil'

That is false. Citations please?

'and Bengali speakers'

This ignores the fact that Bengali attained its status because of British who ruled India from Calcutta and enabled Bengali hegemony. No native speakers learned Bengali as second language in rest of the undivided India. Only Bengali diaspora moved to different parts of country as part of British civil services.

'Hindi... was given a formal status of national language by the predominantly Northern Indian Congress government post-independence to use it as an instrument to exert central political influence on the rest of the country'

Another propaganda. Hindi-Urdu (or Hindustani) was the most spoken and widely understood language in undivided India. Hindustani was official language of British. It might lose to Bengali IFF one divides it into Hindi and Urdu. But that division happened AFTER independence, when the spoken Hindi was standardized to a Sanskrit base, and Arabic-Persian words were mercilessly pruned-off to enable non-Hindustani speaking people to grasp it easily. The only people who got the short end of the deal were Tamil, because Tamil language has got almost (almost) nothing to do with Sanskrit.

To blame a newly formed government of an enslaved country, of 'exerting political influence' is the racist tirade Tamils latched on to, after there beloved masters left the country and didn't leave them in charge.

cubancigar11··on As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry
> <i>Honestly, this is part of what I mean about learning to support a reasonable argument. It's not effective to construct examples to "support" a point you've already committed to.</i> Point taken.

As I said, I am still reading and since the subject is close to me I tend to run into my own biases.

<i> > so are the humanities enforcing Orientalism, or actually combating it?</i> I am not a Marxist who believes every odd thing is intentional. But I do believe that humanities aren't as critical to The System as they are portrayed to be. They are very well an integral part of The System. And The System is all about money which humanities don't bring any more - hence the decreasing interest. For example, science is about pursuit of pure knowledge, but then most of its funding comes from DARPA, isn't it? So, in a peaceful world, scientific pursuit WILL dwindle. That is just the fact. Whether intentional or consequential, or whether science wants to bring peace or not, those questions are beyond my understanding as of now. And I think they will remain conjectural even after my death.

cubancigar11··on As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry
Yes, true. The role of humanities is not as hard-cut as I probably sound in my previous comment. It is indeed a virtue to be able to self-judge. I suppose one can say that humanities is now a mature field which has hit its natural plateau, kind of like classical thermodynamics.
cubancigar11··on As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry
You have given good examples yourself. Before the acceptance of French into humanities, it was just a language evolving with its speakers. After that it was given the status of "official", with official grammar to maintain purity. But who decided which vernacular was pure and which wasn't? The powers that be. The privileged noble who had time for it. While it resulted in better economic opportunities for everyone (while requiring no effort from those who already spoke the pure form), it also quashed the cultural diversity.

English is another example. People in most of the world learn British English, simply because English was taught to them when British ruled them because they wanted to create a English speaking cheap workforce. Now that British are gone, their legacy remains. For example, Shakespeare is still mandatory to learn in India, and novels that are today confined to humanities in Britain, are most read in India - they don't read catcher in the rye, they read The Tempest and The Woman in White etc. You can see that firsthand - Indians use idioms that long ago fell out of use in Britain. "Please do the needful" anyone? "I was doing that only"? This is not just about Indians. Germans, as I have been told, learn UK English in school. But eventually all their clients are American, so they end up learning American vernacular and spellings. They can't be blamed, every default is American now.

Coming to Eastern philosophy, consider this: the earth is round, people are equal so how come there is something called East or West. It is arbitrary! It is THE example of grouping and stereotypes[1]. There is a large branch of sociology and history dealing with this idea.[2] I will leave it at that since this is closer to my heart and thus I am prone to be biased. Plus, I am still reading more about it.

The idea is not that Chinese philosophers would fit in my description or not, the idea is that the philosophers you call Chinese are just a sect of a philosophers in China. But when first non-Chinese went into China, their interest wasn't in philosophy but in the money Chinese had. Through that economical agent they measured everything that was there - the economically weak Chinese philosophers were neglected and forgotten into history and the official Chinese doctrine accepted as the one true 'Chinese'. "Because that is what makes them different." It is why when China dabbles into modernism we call them copycats and not just coming to equal terms. They HAVE to be different, right?

I went overboard, I suppose. I am not a good writer nor a native English speaker. Indian, actually. Regarding music, I think it should belong to science and mathematics :)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroup

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism

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