The United States is a maritime superpower, able to project power across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Losing the Pacific coast would end that. I can't imagine it being let go easily.
67 karma · joined June 2, 2010
Bernard Darnton. Christchurch, New Zealand.
We know that super-AI is more likely than not to be existentially dangerous. It would be remiss to foresee the apocalypse and assume someone else will fix it.
I've never really believed that "you don't own your stuff - your stuff owns you"; I've always thought that was claptrap. But it was interesting to me that in the face of losing all my stuff it didn't really bother me too much.
There are so many facets to this book. It's the story of Malcom McLean's drive to make containerisation a reality. It's a history of the global economy since WWII. It goes into detail about labour relations on the docks and about how changes in shipping change the fortunes of cities.
One stand out chapter details the logistics of getting military materiel into Vietnam before and after containerisation and then McLean's idea that there was no point bringing all those empty boxes back - might as well stop off at Japan and pick up some transistor radios.
This book is well worth your time.
Newborns flail around not even knowing they've got arms. Then they learn to guide their arms and hit things. Then they grab. After a while they develop a sort of lobster pinch with the thumb against four fingers and can pick things up. Then they develop the thumb and forefinger pinch and can gently manipulate small things.
I'm pretty sure my nine-month old son would behave just like this, even though he's never seen an iPad. In his technologically-deprived state he contents himself with examining crumbs and bits of fluff from the carpet.
He concludes that different people procrastinate for different reasons and that those reasons boil down to:
- learned helplessness (you have a low expectation of success)
- boredom (you don't value the task), and
- poor impulse control.
He then gives specific advice for working out which applies to you and then for dealing with each of these, which is far more useful than either saying, "Just do it," or telling an impossible-to-apply just-so story about mammoths and frontal lobes.
The basic idea, in one sentence, is that our preferences in art are a result of our ancestral environment.
He cover various ways in which both natural and sexual selection pressures have shaped how we appreciate various artistic products and how we create them. He explores aesthetics from Aristotle to post-modernism and looks, from the Darwinian perspective he's formulated, why we regard forgeries and modern art "readymades" the way we do.
I was disappointed because I wanted to get my hands dirty and so I got The Definitive ANTLR Reference a day or two later. While it has nothing like the breadth of Fowler's DSLs it has enough depth to be very useful.
http://www.pragprog.com/titles/tpantlr/the-definitive-antlr-...
http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/087477...
The best thing you can do for your children is help them to become good decision makers and the best way to do that is to let them make lots of decisions.
You can still make your values known and prevent damage and injury but let them do as much as possible and learn what works.
A great introduction to this type of thinking is Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.
Rene Carmille founded the Demographic Service in Vichy France and began conducting the first decent Jewish census in France because previous efforts had been such a shambles.
He took lots of German money to put together a punch card operation and set to work but failed to produce many names and addresses of Jewish families. However, he did manage to secretly put together a list of 300,000 veterans and others to mobilise as part of the Free French army when the allies invaded.
He was tortured and killed by Klaus Barbie in 1944.