blog: moon rolling eyes

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's astrological blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/moon-roll-eyes.htm

[Kilmatead]

It's not about what other people (claim) they know, its about what one can figure out and understand for oneself. Thanks Socrates!

Unsurprisingly, Platonic science (Socrates was Plato, after all) - drunk on its own eminence - always seems to be more poetic when it appreciates its own perspective on what we actually cannot figure out and understand for ourselves. Plutarch (the greatest of these Platonists), wrote in Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon:

Supposing that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it but merely caught views of it in the distance, and were told that its water is bitter and undrinkable and briny, and then someone said that it supports in its depths many great animals with all sorts of shapes, and is full of monsters, to all of whom water is as air to us, he would seem to be making up a parcel of fairy tales; just so is it with us, it seems, and such is our attitude towards the moon, when we refuse to believe that she has men dwelling on her. inhabitants, I think, must wonder still more greatly at this earth, a sort of sediment and slime of the Universe appearing through damps, and mists, and clouds, a place unlighted, low, motionless, and must ask whether it breeds and supports animals with motion, respiration and warmth.

Curiously, while much of later science would stress the interests of the moon being in a counter-point influence upon the Earth (not least in Lunar and Menstrual Phase Locking), Plutarch was still to stress the influence of the Earth itself...

Nothing then prevents the moon [...] from allowing the light around her to be reflected and to stream about, and the rays of the stars to flow together and to be united within her; thus she combines and digests the vapours proceeding from the earth...

In this case, those vapours being of course the drawings of the butterfly vs. the scribblings of the father.

[namsupo]

Too much ouzo?

[nikos]

you cannot expect of the greeks to have the answers for everything, but you have to think what the rest of the humanity was doing at the time -- all barbarians living on trees

many claim that phikosohpy proper (arts, morality, politics, nothing technical) didn't advance much from the time of the greeks back then, mostly because there cannot be any definite solution about such matters. They thought of all the questions and people have been trying to answer ever since

[Kilmatead]

...what the rest of the humanity was doing at the time -- all barbarians living on trees

Um... yes... well, Post-Etruscan Rome was in the early stages of growth, and was far more unified (even at that time) than your quarrelsome lot of city-states - indeed, they bore the most resemblance to Sparta in focusing on foreign conquest, and did wonders for the development of command-structure warfare, something Alexander learned to exploit down the line, even as he relaxed it for the actual conquered themselves post-facto (debatable whether that was inspired or lazy, but hey, can't say he didn't learn from History).

Confucius was born roughly around the same time Athens invested in a Popcorn Democracy machine, and I don't recall him living in a tree - though if he did, he'd have a heck of a lot more fun doing it than would the Stoics. True, China was pretty much a literal basket-case at the time, but they were well out of their Neanderthal-nappies and well on the way to perfecting the chopsticks.

The Persian Empire was not exactly slouching on the couch channel-surfing either - Darius and Xerxes commanded a pencil-pushing correlative admin system that would make GPS satellites jealous, until you lads caused them to lose their self-confidence by insisting on having your whiny "independence" thing.

The Mayans were "not quite yet" the taco-inventing Civilisation we know and love today, but they (like Rome) were planting the seeds for the real thing, and that makes them more than notably "not in the trees".

many claim that phikosohpy proper (arts, morality, politics, nothing technical) didn't advance much from the time of the greeks [...] They thought of all the questions and people have been trying to answer ever since

Don't be so quick to dismiss the Greek technological (even if spelling "phikosohpy" is not your strong point) - you do win a prize (a few centuries later, so well past the Classical Era) for the utterly-amazing, astoundingly-stupefying, and completely unsurpassed (this cannot be understated!) Antikythera machine. While obviously not as significant as inventing Viagra, there's a few songs to be sung yet for the early sciences.

Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking that Western-traditions are "all there is" when it comes to arts, morality, and politics... it's merely one cul-de-sac, not the whole street. If anything, Western civilisation has gone out of its way ever since to undermine its own survival by lauding its Greek traditions a little too much, and not realising that the bigger picture may have nothing to do with the questions people are trying to answer - then or now. Western kids are blinded by their own backsides, and have been for far too long. (Not to be base, but the internet-porn's current fascination for the anally-orientated can be seen as a metaphor, if you have an enlightened mind, and a tolerant moderator. )

In summary: don't knock the tree-dwellers... trees are cool. They defeated Saruman after all.

[longfellow]

Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking that Western-traditions are "all there is" when it comes to arts, morality, and politics... it's merely one cul-de-sac, not the whole street.

True this! Most non-Western cultures don't even see a man when they look at the moon, they see a hare or rabbit. The rabbit is usually pictured with a mortar and pestle. What it's making varies from culture to culture; it could be as simple as rice cakes, it could be the elixir of life itself!

[nikos]

sure there were other precursors or glimpses of brilliance here and there before and alongside greeks, but where were the irish for example at the time?
the comparison is always relative to europe who are the only ones that care for that part of history anyway

[Kilmatead]

...where were the irish for example at the time?

Celts were hanging out in Switzerland and France mooching your women, livin' off the EU dole, and generally waiting for either Jesus or Caesar (whichever came first) to kick us through the goal-posts of life. In other words, not much has changed - we're not here to add to your mouldy old traditions, we're here to heckle them from the cheap-seats!

(There's nothing worse than taking pride in your ancestors - except, perhaps, being ashamed of them - romancing history is always a sure path to heart-break, not nobility.)

Then again, I wanted to be a Cossack when I grew up. I'm still waiting. Stenka Razin is alive and well and just waiting to topple the new Czarist pretenders! Hang the rich! Where's my horse and scabbard... and was that "turn left" or "turn right" at Jerusalem? My map is somewhat outdated...

[dunno]

nikos, I have a suggestion for you seeing as you have spare time to worry about tshirts and rolling eyes.

Why not focus on improving the network transfer speeds in X2, why is it that extreme copy and Teracopy can be so fast and X2 soooo Slooooowwww.

http://techfreakmentor.blogspot.com/201 ... nsfer.html

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-speed ... n-windows/#!

[nikos]

you are in this forum long enough to know that this is not the way to get things done. So I will have to answer you in the same coin
so instead of relying on other people's speed recommendations that contradict themselves (see the data table on the 1st link you posted) why don't you quantify what is "slow" on your system and what copy options you use in xplorer2 to manage the slow-down? Also you must consider that there is such a thing as "hastily assembled" so not everything fast is better, it could hurt reliability. I would even say slow is better in many situations

[drac]

Your wife told you that slow is better, didn't she? In computers, fast is better. Reliability is expected in all cases.

[sanferno]

Your wife told you that slow is better, didn't she? In computers, fast is better. Reliability is expected in all cases.

[nikos]

sure, go on and take over all the network bandwidth because speed is best and see how many friends you'll make in the workplace!
and while you are at it, go and overclock your cpu, because clearly for computers speed is best

[dunno]

sure, go on and take over all the network bandwidth because speed is best and see how many friends you'll make in the workplace!

Erm, I'm a home user, so you mean that you could do something about it but you wont because of the other users in the workplace, but but but, what about us home users, cant we have a "fvck I'm at home alone" setting for networking bandwidth.

and while you are at it, go and overclock your cpu, because clearly for computers speed is best

Now Now, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I know and you know that anything is possible with 0's and 1's, so why not break the mold and do something original which nobody else has done.....why stay stuck in the paradigm, you do know the definition of paradigm.....

[Kilmatead]

As I know next to nothing about networks, I'll say as little about it as possible - but in this instance I think what Nikos is saying is that you should provide a demonstrable case where you've compared Teracopy/Fastcopy (which integrate fine into x2 by themselves anyway) with x2's performance (especially details of what settings you use, etc). Making blanket statements about "this blog says this" doesn't really give him anything to go by.

In a non-networked situation, I never found Teracopy faster in anything (and I do know how bus-tolerance bandwidth works), so what claims it makes are largely specious (again, that's in a non-networked space). As I said, it integrates with x2, so why not just use it instead if it's truly better?

By the same token, laptop users who probably don't know what a mathematically interesting and ridiculously complex task proper overclocking can be (Nikos, we're looking at you), shouldn't confuse the issue with nonsensical associations.

If x2 is poor at networks, admit it and join the rat-race; and (I know this is a separate thing), your common FTP excuse (to "not recommend it") falls flat on real-world users. Even I know that, and I could care less. Endless "workarounds" (which other file-managers don't seem to suffer from) will never endear you to a consumer base.

Just sayin'.