slurry

Magical realism in general and Garcia Marquez in particular are more critically problematic than many realize.

I don't think this thread should gloss over that entirely, even if the tone of objection is unlovely.

The reason I think it's so valuable is that a version of it probably informed the board's decision to appoint Eich despite the already controversial Prop 8 donation. "Sure, there's this $1000 he gave and that's terrible, but look at all the great FOSS code he's contributed! The controversy can't last long, we're Mozilla, we're the good guys. Everybody knows that."

Lots of people out there do not think like this.

Lots of people care about social justice and see no problem using IE.

There are a lot of dense conurbations and they are fairly close to one another. That's obviously relevant for cell service.

Many parts of e.g. east and central Africa have lower-density settlement patterns that may be tougher to cover.

Interested to know.

'Lost contact' therefore suggests something very wrong has happened.

I'm also skeptical of Politifact's competence to adjudicate public health scholarship.

On the other hand full employment through monetary policy is pretty much science fact. Yet neither the United States nor the EU even pretend to pursue it. (China pretty much does, however. It works pretty well for them.)

It's not like providing a decent living for near everyone is this unsolved problem which, if could only we find the correct technocratic solution, we could just roll up our sleeves and implement.

The problem is that a lot of people are against doing it. At all.

That actually, to my mind, increases the probability that it is nothing serious. When Westerners 'discovered' the Caucasian alphabets there was a brief mania for them among the small number of people who got excited by that kind of thing. One result was the 'Theban alphabet':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theban_alphabet

Which looks semi-profound and a little like Georgian, but is only just a bog-simple glyph cipher on top of the Latin alphabet, based partly on the recent publication of Georgian grammar in Latin.

Voynich's Caucasian characters may have just been following the latest trend in cryptography/occultism.

Most oil countries are badly run; and whatever you think of Hugo Chavez and his party, Venezuela was already at least halfway into the ground before they came along, tbqfh.

That seemed really obvious to me in the early 90s, too. I don't mean that to sound dismissive or get-off-my-lawn-ish, just to point out that there's a history of VR overhype which makes skepticism understandable.

But, if you are going to have a two-ish party system, left-right is IMHO a more efficient way to organize it than personalities, culture clash and historical grievances - especially if you then also have left and right as factions within the historical parties. Which is how the US and Argentina organized their parties until very recently, Ireland still does. I think that's a bad system and creates too many opportunities for arbitrage and corruption.

Plus, multiparty systems tend to work on a left-right spectrum anyway.

It maintains a consistently hawkish editorial stance on China.

People used to give US politics flack for having clear cut left and right parties.

But the Argentine party system has typically been liberals (UCR and allies) vs. nationalists (Peronists and allies), with each having left and right factions, but also factions based on personalities, and on support/opposition to whatever the most recent dictatorship happened to be.

So, if you met an Argentine and find out only that he is a member of, say, the UCR that gives you as about as useful information as finding out someone was a Democrat in 1955, when that might have meant anything from a John Birch society segregationist to a left social democrat.

That's a big opportunity for corruption, in both the Argentine and historic US cases.

Things have gotten a little more 'normal' since the Kirchers have been so polarizing and the old parties have broken down some. But it's still in my opinion a source of great inefficiency not to have a well-established left-right party system.

And, if the whole setup is tuned very specifically on the CVT working properly and the rubber band goes snap, that could be a bad thing.

In addition, many jobs cannot be outsourced.

It might have been just an object of contemplation. Like, you can see how all of the heavenly bodies fit snugly into a perfect geometric figure and just wonder at it.

If there's any rhyme or reason to how the symbols are arrayed on the sides, it could have been a mnemonic or instructional device for casting horoscopes.

And, while it's probably too opaque to have been used for scrying, there's that too.

It has, however, stabilized locally for periods of time in one area of industry or another.

And it is likely to do similar things again.

Glass would have been expensive for a mere gambling device, whereas bone dice were cheap.

It's a Platonic solid found in Egypt, the epicenter of Neoplatonism.

And the symbols on the sides are astrological.

"I also don't understand how people chose to have a full-time job...AND kids"

You clearly implied that holding any full time job and having kids was irresponsible. Because "I don't understand how [something about mores]" is a construction that American English speakers use to point out things they consider irrational, dumb or otherwise undesirable. You even anticipated that your comment would make people mad ("before you reach for the downvote button", "not judging anyone"). Because you went a good sight further than "I don't buy a house I can't afford." I think my initial judgment of "naive and/or jerkish" stands.

America has a lot of liberal news outlets, but not many left ones.

I am genuinely curious how this experiment will play out.

"Only have kids once you're independently wealthy" qualifies as rational only on HN or Reddit.