Balladeer

I don't see anyone here telling anyone else that they are being immoral.

I am not discounting the discussion. I am discounting the hostility within the discussion. Bigot is a derogatory term just as idiot is. Both can be used to accurately describe someone but it is not polite. The vehemence in some of these posts is more than enough to offend those who hold the belief that the LGBT lifestyle is immoral.

I have voted.

In other news I am very disappointing at the level of name calling, from the SW leadership no less, this thread has sunk to. Bigotry is intolerance of other people's beliefs and it goes both ways. Not that the description could not be accurate for some but the hostility is unwarranted.

Huh, I thought there would be more concern about sensitive information being made available to anyone who knew where to look for it on a used machine. Especially with the rise in identity theft already.

In the middle of Crazy Love by Francis Chan and Green Rider by... I'll have to look later. The first really is crazy. The second, not bad but not great. Concepts are good but the flow is lacking.

You are weak.

Do you, like me, feel like taking a nap when a big storm system is moving in?

No I like to watch out the window or go tornado chasing.

Are increased ER visits and arrests on full moons a statistical coincidence?

No, though I consider this more of a social phenomenon than something caused by none of the moon being shaded by the earth. People just thinking that a full moon does weird things to a person will incline those people to do things they would consider weird.

Do you crave different food in February than you do in July?

Yes, more from the temperature. I like hot foods when I am cold and cold foods when I am hot. Gotta regulate, you know.

Could the time of year you were born actually have a bearing on your personality?

Eh, I don't buy into this but I suppose it is possible. At least for places that have perceptible changes of seasons. If the first six months of a child's life is spent indoors or swaddled in blankets they may have a different disposition from a child who spends the first six months with more outdoor time in short sleeves. Switch this to the 6-12 month age when kids are starting to walk and gain their freedom of movement, always being bundled up at this age may make for a more subdued child, possibly, or a more cantankerous one...

Are spring and fall times of change for you personally?

Sort of, it's more revolving around summer though, and again it is a socially based. End of spring means kids stay home from school, big change in schedules and activities. Beginning of fall kids go back to school and the change is reversed and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Is November melancholy everywhere?

Not for me.

Is April actually the cruelest month?

Not for me. Though April has been cruel before.

I predict that about half the country will be disappointed come Tuesday night and about 75% will be disappointed round 4 years from now.

if you like the taste of coffee why would you put all that other stuff in it

To the effect of what Nalyd said, The tongue enjoys many tastes and some of those tastes can be found raw in nature but culinary delights are most frequently found when tastes are mixed together and cooked a certain way. Would you eat your steak without seasoning, or your pizza without sauce, cheese, and toppings, or your vanilla ice cream without *gasp* chocolate syrup?!

I never did say I liked the taste of black coffee, just opinionated that if you don't like the way your coffee tastes if you try it differently you'll likely find a flavor you do like.

This item was brought to my attention in my class and I was one of the 60% who did not know that industrial copy machines save a copy of every document you scan to a hard drive. (And that many companies do not erase said hard drive before selling old machines.) I found it disturbing in the least and wanted to make sure the well-informed spiderweb community was also informed about this. If this is old-news that was already beaten around the bush while I was inactive, don't mind me. Otherwise...

Discuss.

My class post on the matter:

"Goodness... Why is it even necessary for the copiers to hold this information on their hard drives? Wouldn't it be sufficient for the machine to hold the document in RAM while printing or faxing and then deleting it as soon as the job was processed? I see this as an unnecessary addition on the part of the manufacturers, and grievously so. It's not even a matter of making sure you don't use a copier for sensitive documents, it's all the sensitive documents that other companies have about you and are copying, too. There's almost nothing you can do about it besides asking the company about their copier policies and requesting they change them if they are not deleting this information."

It took me years to accept the bitter taste of coffee.

What is this bitterness you speak of? My white-chocolate-peppermint mochachino is not bitter. It is rich and sweet and makes me tingly warm from head to toe. Granted, the tingling is probably more like the jitters but if you don't like the taste of coffee, ur doin it wrong...

My favorite drink is DrPepper. All that other stuff is rubbish. Rubbish I tell you!

Fo, Fum?

but half the point of sarcasm is usually the person your are sarcastizing doesnt know

 

also this is a really good idea that caught on and everyone uses⸮

I like the alternate punctuation for exclamations. They're cute. You should totally turn them into smileys so we can use them here.

Oh, goodie, time to buy more SW games I don't have time to play.

I went as a medieval theme person with green cloak and fancy dress. Made the sleeves, headpiece, and belt out of another dress. Some people took pics but I don't have any yet.

The only games I have purchased myself but never played were made by Jeff. I have a few that other people bought for me that I never cracked. Civilization IV comes to mind. Used to play Civ a lot but its so time consuming that I just never opened the newer version.

A baby raised without any kind of communication or touch will fail to develop and eventually waste away and die: this is known as hospitalism, because in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the standard of care in hospitals was to give babies as little human contact as possible, in hopes of protecting them from infection. Unfortunately, instead of protecting them, this mostly just caused them to die. Sensory input is absolutely essential to survival.

 

I once spoke to a guy who's been totally blind since shortly after birth. He has no real concept of what darkness looks like: he's intellectually aware of what it is, but the idea has no referent for him. He doesn't report seeing a constant field of black before his eyes; he's not aware of seeing anything at all.

I was disappointed in the article's lack of statistics on the percentage of infants that actually died from this. The supporting article does a little better but I don't think that it gives us a perfect case study. These babies wasting away are not deprived of their senses, they are deprived of human contact. Which, while it may be a good starting point and the closest we can get to a real case study, it is imperfect. I would argue, though, that it is not the actual lack of human contact that is killing them, but their sense of loss going from constant contact to none. Thus its other name of anaclitic depression. If sensing human contact is a pre-requisite for thriving, than any baby that does not develop the ability to sense anything would die in the womb.

And maybe there is our answer right there. Has there ever been a baby born without the sense of touch that survived? I did a small search and could not come up with anything that was not philosophical.

With the game already made and sitting on a shelf I don't see what Jeff has to lose other than the time it takes to negotiate who gets how much with Steam. I hope he does.

Am I right in thinking that a person who can sense nothing (from babyhood) is incapable of thought ?

Braindead, yes, but otherwise no. A capable brain with no input is still capable. Not sure what those thoughts might look like but in the least I bet at least one concept would be something like, "Its dark, its dark, why is it always dark?"

I also bet that the imagination might surprise us if such a person ever existed and was later able to communicate what they spent their time thinking about.

To what extent is language tied up with cognition? Can the latter exist without the former?

Only to the extent it takes to convey your concept to someone else. Indeed the mute/deaf/and blind can still think about whatever it is they are feeling. Helen Keller could think perfectly fine without language. Giving her language just unlocked her ability to communicate with the world.

Do you THINK in language? Even when your imagining a sensory experience?

No. I think in pictures/concepts. I always have. I find it difficult sometimes to properly express my thoughts to others because what I am thinking does not really have adequate words to describe it.

To what extent to basic neurological responses qualify as "thought?

To the extent that the thinker is conscious of it. With my definition, dreams are not necessarily thoughts. Not until one is either in a waking dream or thinks about the dream after waking up.

What qualifies as "language"? Does a pet communicating a desire for food count?

A language is any form of communication that is repeatable. That is, a word or a concept has a specific sound or symbol or gesture assigned to it. That sound or symbol or gesture always refers to the same word or concept and is repeatable to convey the same word or concept to many people/animals. Pronunciations and spellings may change over time but if it is not repeatable, no thoughts can be communicated.

Is language the primary avenue for cultural programming? The only one?

Yes. There are few other ways to convey how one is supposed to act in order to be culturally accepted without language. Observation of the behaviors of others might be an alternative, but then body language also comes into play. It is difficult to observe behaviors without seeing some type of gesticular language at the same time.

Do different languages produce inherently different behaviors?

No. I have seen much of the same inherent behaviors written throughout history no matter what language the people were speaking.

Does having more ways of expressing something make it easier to understand?

Depends. I love my Thesaurus. I love being able to find one word that means the same as a certain combination of other words. But it is only 'easier' to understand if that word is in the other person's vocabulary. I remember I had the hardest time wrapping my head around the word 'dynamic'. For years I struggled to put the concept to a picture in a way I would fully understand it. Now that I understand it, using it increases my understanding of other concepts, but did not help when I did not know the word.

Is naming direct, or are all things defined in opposition to, or as a distinct part of, something else?

Depends on the language. I would say English is pretty direct. What is it? An arm, a hand, a finger? I would think that if they were named as parts of each other we would stick with something like carpals and metacarpals. You might have to explain this concept further for a fuller answer.

To what extent are words and meaning subjective? Do they, in fact, have any absolute definition?

They are as subjective as the common collective allow them to be. People are adding new definitions to old words all the time and new words to old definitions. (And new words to new definitions for that matter.) Languages are always changing and evolving. A definition will only be absolute if those speaking the language always agree that it should never change.

As culture and language evolve, which leads the way? Is there a feedback?

Culture leads the language. Made up words are often used unofficially by those in the culture before they become part of the language. Feedback is plausible. 100 ways to say the concept of 'love' could do the culture a load of good I say. We should test it. >.>

Burn it! Burn it to the ground!!

>:oK

Anything to do with this?

if it makes your inner nerd feel better, i've been working on a XMPP <--> CalRef chat bridge. sockets are fun!

I only know him from his artwork. Beautiful BoE graphics artist.

I don't much care for them - I skip past them most of the time.

Not that I read them often either, but you seem to be fretting that people don't recognize you. Tell you what I've decided to do. My avvie will always have the purple border that I use on my website. When I want a new avvie, I change the inside but people can easily tell it's me. Not that I change my name all that often or that anyone would notice if I did or that I'm here enough for it to make a difference... just sayin'. Throwin' out suggestions fer ya.