Around the Web on 11-30-05
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Rob returned from a recent trip to China with an interesting observation about the language.
[M]any concepts in Chinese are made up by combining antonyms. For example, the concept "business", is represented by combining the two characters for "buy" and "sell" ('How is your buy/sell going?'). The concept "whole" is represented by combining the two characters for "over" and "under" ('You don't know the over and under of the situation'). (For more, see the following website and scroll down to the section "Opposing Words in Chinese")Zach Oakes asks whether a cheap computer and an operating system might be an incredible bargain when combined.
Today a computer packed with three 3.2Ghz processors and 512MB RAM will start selling at $300. That's not a typo. It is, for all intents and purposes, both the fastest and cheapest computer on the market.
The computer I'm talking about is the Xbox 360.
...
My mind is still spinning over this - until now I never gave it a single bit of thought. Now I'm mad … somebody find a way to put an OS on that damn thing!
I didn't have the answer, either, but I have a hunch that somebody out there will, and fairly soon.
The General notes that others have less-constructive "uses" for the Xbox in mind.
[T]heir glee is not a product of the physical destruction as such (which is bad enough), but instead the effect this destruction would have upon the other people in line who value the XBox 360 and are eager to get theirs. This is not harmless fun, it is pure poison. Their enjoyment comes not from the achievement of values, but from the destruction of the values of others. Their response to the phenomenon a happy man, is to take his happiness and mangle it. This is what Ayn Rand so eloquently identified as, "hatred of the good for being good"Via Noodle Food, this entry was quoted by CNN.
Cox and Forkum have a good roundup on Iran to go with this fantastic cartoon on same.
The Resident Egoist discusses power structures in socialist, fascist, and capitalist states.
But what is the true nature of the power structure in a capitalist society? It's decentralization, or separation. Here, not only is there a separation of powers within the institution of government itself [e.g.: 3 branches of government], there is also strict separation between the state and other social institutions [e.g.: Separation of Church and State and Separation of State and Economics].Andy Clarkson discusses the importance of reading Playboy.
Maintaining a large, whatever "large" may mean, number of troops in the Mid-East is part of the long-term plan. Is 150,000 the number? I don't know. But, I would bet it is far more than the previous level of 20,000. Closer to 150K rather than 20K is likely. Why? Iran. And that may explain the current hesitant, slow-go approach in Iraq -- keeping Iran surrounded.The Gaijin Biker has an amusing photo of an anti-Bush protest in Japan that may have been better attended by the police than by the protestors!
Of course, that was due as much to Tokyo's dispatching a ridiculously excessive number of cops as it was to the low protester turnout, but still...Bubblehead fisks a "Captain".
Let's look at the "fact" he presents to demonstrate the superiority of Iraqi culture over Western: "While our European ancestors were hanging from trees, these ancient people were writing algebra and solving quadratic equations." Could be a good point, except that algebra was invented in 820 A.D., several hundred years after the height of Greek and Roman culture -- a little bit past the "hanging from trees" period. Quadratic equations? Sorry, discovered by an Italian (Lodovico Ferrari) about 1545 A.D. Not too good on the research there, "Captain".Another target sunk!
Lubber's Line ponders an interesting equipment purchase by Israel.
[According to reports, the] Germans are going ahead with plans to sell Israel two new AIP-equipped [Air Independent Propulsion --ed] Dolphin class SSK submarines. Israel already owns three Dolphin submarines acquired from Germany in a deal made after the first gulf war. These Dolphin subs replaced Israel's German built Gal Class submarines, which entered service in 1977.
The Dolphin class is designed for interdiction, surveillance and special-forces operations with torpedo and cruise missile weapons capabilities.
...
If the news reports are correct and Israel does have nuclear weapons, it looks as though a sea based nuclear deterrent force is in the making.
-- CAV
Updates
12-1-05: Corrected author and link for first entry on list. HT: The General and apologies to the guys at Thrutch.
5-8-06: Added hypertext anchors.
3 comments:
Yo, Gus, while the general solution of quadratic equations was discovered in 1545, I suspect the fellow bragging up the "Iraqis" was thinking of certain surviving problem books in Babylonian mathematics in which certain classes of quadratic equations were solved. That tradition, however, didn't continue past Hellenistic times, however, and probably had no influence at all on Islamic mathematics. Iraqis? Dubious equivocation there. Though Babylonian mathematics probably did have an influence on ancient Greek mathematics--though the usual point about Greek mathematics holds fully there, which is that whatever techniques might have inspired the Greeks, their emphasis on rigorous proof, and more generally on pursuing mathematics for its own sake, as a model of logical analysis and a guide to truth, was all their own.
Yo, Gus, nice website on the Chinese characters. It's good to see well-written characters on the 'Net. A couple of addenda, however. Mai-mai "buy-sell" (or, better, "buying and selling") is better translated "trade" or "custom" than "business," since business has so many distinct meanings in English. (Business or trade in the general sense of international trade, for example, is mao-yi.) Also, besides hei-bai "black and white" there are numerous other words for various aspects of morality or truth; one interesting example in the same line is shi-fei. In classical Chinese, shi meant "that" (opposed to "this") but came to be used as the copula (because it was often used after long subjects as a resumptive pronoun), and its negative was fei. The phrase shi-fei meant "yes or no" (with the connotations of Abelard's Sic et Non), as well as "allowed or disallowed" (and thus "right and wrong" in the sense of licit or legal, I believe). However, the modern basic meaning is "gossipy," "rumor-mongering," and even "conspiratorial," the idea being that such a person repeats things whether they're true or false. (The general term for morality or ethics is ren-yi "benevolence and righteousness," to give the usual one-word translations for each.) These show that it's important to keep in mind that many of these words indicate particular shades of meaning; there are other words with much the same meaning but different connotations, just like in English.
Adrian,
The website on the Chinese characters came straight from Thrutch.
Your comment on the Babylonians having solved certain types of quadratic equations is right on the mark (I thought some of these had been solved for quite a long time, but was too lazy to look.), but the "Captain" seems to have extrapolated the whole of algebra from this fact, to put it charitably.
Thanks for the links. The best part about your comments is that they are invariably edifying.
Gus
Post a Comment