plytheman

This is a little aside from the topic at hand but do you have any links or literature to expound on the 90s media blitz you mention? I was born in 87 and so grew up with only a faint impression of the 80s through what was lingering into the 90s. From talking to people older than me and looking at various media I can't help feeling like society took a hard turn in the 80s and through-out the 90s to where we are today. I've largely thought that it was due to a combination of technology and corporations/consumerism but I've never read or heard anyone else make that link until your comment.

Not that I know of. We were just running off the materials En-Roads provided. From what I remember, though, each bloc is given cues as to what industries and population they represent which then plays into their arguments. So it isn't outright said that someone should argue a conservative or liberal angle, but knowing you need to defend your nation's industrial production or vulnerable communities lends itself towards some political talking points on one side or the other.

I dunno, on the other hand, I got a B.S. in Ecology and have about 5 years of experience doing field work, long term monitoring, and data analysis and report writing on said research. Ostensibly that should be plenty of experience to prove I know my field and can learn new methods and skills related to it. Despite that I can't seem to find anything that isn't more seasonal work below my worth now or wanting a Masters degree even though I have plenty of real-world experience.

I agree that there's some serious gap between steps 1 and 2, but I did alright in finding internships and experience and still can't find squat.I admit I knew going into my undergrad that a Masters would be needed to find a /good/ job, but I didn't think I'd need one to find any job at all. I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons to explain it, but this job market blows. I never want to hear someone tell me they can't find good employees or fill positions fast enough when I apply to five or six jobs at a time every week and don't even get a rejection email from half of them, let alone an interview.

The real sad state is why is that site uploaded as a reddit video? Instead of linking to the original content it's a video of someone else clicking through? As for the Smithsonian site, I've got AdBlock, uBlock, and ScriptSafe running so I didn't get anything too obnoxious, but it is pretty pitiful that we need that many add-ons just to browse the web.

Given what you say about wind farms being placed on traditional farms, I wonder if the localized warming the paper discusses would actually be a benefit to the crops. It could extend growing season just a bit more and maybe help buffer against frosts and cold-snaps.

Advice on a good mail service? I've got one foot in the door of really increasing my privacy online but one is still stuck behind with Google products.

For a while now I've felt like I've just been trolling the same stale corners of the internet while learning nothing and not really being entertained but out of boredom keep refreshing the same junk. (Probably says more about my own habits and life and use of time than the web, but that's another story) I really enjoyed reading this more than anything else I've come across in a while and it's given me a bit to think on now. Thanks for posting it!

Personally I (30 years old now) went to Catholic school (K-12) and learned cursive somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade and was forced to write in cursive until I graduated 8th grade. Most of the time as a kid I hated it and wished I could write in block letters and once I hit freshman year of high school I never looked back. Fast forward through four years of high school and three gap years when as a freshman in college I realized I really missed writing in cursive. After a pretty rocky few weeks of abysmal looking script I got back into the groove and took four years of notes in handwriting and continue to journal and write notes and letters in cursive.

I've always been somewhat artistic and take a lot of pride in my handwriting as I would a drawing. I look at others' writing to see how they draw letters I like and try to incorporate it into my own style. I take my time writing each letter and word and try to make it as consistent and beautiful as I can (and while others compliment me on my writing I'm always a bit dissatisfied) and generally take a lot of pleasure in the simple act of writing. For me it's a means of expression for myself.

Despite all that, I've tried really hard to come up with defenses for teaching it in schools much like I was taught and I generally come up pretty empty handed. Other than reading some random bits of cursive here or there in our society there really is little need for it. I'd like to think that its artistic merits are enough to justify it, in giving kids a chance to express themselves, but I doubt most kids appreciate it for that - even I hated it as a child. I'd like to say it will help improve people's writing, but frankly most people's writing I see, cursive or otherwise, looks like, as Sister Anne back in 7th grade would say, chicken scratch. As a piece of tradition which unites us as a thread through previous generations I do like it, in a way it's a cultural link to my parents, grandparents, and beyond, but that doesn't necessarily stand as a great argument against more practical skills that could be taught in that time. If the opportunity cost of teaching it can be ignored, though, it doesn't seem otherwise harmful to keep teaching it for the sake of tradition. Maybe keep teaching it but not spend as much time on it to satisfy all camps?

I'm curious when self-driving cars become common place how the law will react to it. It's my assumption that the law will still require a driver to be sober in the event that manual control is needed, though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.

I don't have any authoritative source to confirm or deny why certain things were closed, but I would like to point out that there were some rangers still on duty and search and rescue employees on hand to rescue people in National Parks.

>Fuck off Google.

Not map-related but I find myself saying that every time google throws a pop-up at me on youtube. No, I don't want my gmail and youtube account name to be the same. No, I don't care what changes have been made to channels. I was pissed enough when I was forced to use the same password on Youtube (relatively insecure, I would log in on public computers etc) with my GMail (more secure and I was very selective where I'd access it from). Also, getting to my favorite-ed videos on YT is a royal pain now.

As for maps, I was trying to make a quick map for my job but I don't have access to ArcMaps so I was trying to use the free Google Earth. All I wanted was a nice looking terrain map without sat imagery but apparently they took that option out a few releases back in the free version.

Yeah? And who's going to pay for all their modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine? I'm no expert on native/Western interactions but it's my understanding that typically the native population nose dives because of new diseases and those that survive are left to try and make money in a new, grander system of society which is completely different from what they've done for generations prior.

Right now they have a way of life in which food is plentiful; they want fruit they pull it from a tree, they want fish they reach into their lagoon. I'm sure they have their share of injuries and sickness but is it really worth trading their current life away for? And what will they replace it with? Over-harvesting their food sources to sell away? Performing their rituals for gawking tourists until the very acts are meaningless? Being exposed to a slew of diseases they've never had to worry about before only to find out that our modern antibiotics cost too much for their measly incomes?

Regardless of how they've done it these people have survived for what... 65,000 years? I don't think they need anything we have to offer. Meanwhile look at how nearly every other native population has fared after coming into contact with Westerners. Sure our society has plenty of great aspects and advantages to it but these things come with a cost. I don't think it's possible for our modern world to mesh with the Sentinelese without totally destroying their way of life if not a majority of their population.

I now find myself wishing I'd read the copy of "The Coral Sea" by Alan Villiers which is sitting on my bookshelf at home. From my understanding it's a book, published some 50 or 60 years ago, chronicling the history of various Pacific Islands and how Western exploration and exploitation have effected them. The general synopsis from what I've read elsewhere has been that they haven't fared too well.

Speaking as someone who isn't a programmer at all and needed (still needs, actually) to learn a language for dealing with a massive amount of data for a school project, I decided to have a stab at Python and have been working my way through his book. Overall I'd say it's pretty great. The good is that, as you mentioned, the early chapters (really the whole first half) are quick, repetitive exercises which I feel gave me a good understanding of the dirt basics of how Python works. Now I'm getting into the more tricky chapters and still really enjoying them.

I sometimes feel a bit more explanation from him on how or why certain things work would be nice, or maybe a few hints for where to start looking for answers in the extra credit would be good, but for the most part I think he's effectively covered enough of the basics needed to land me on the ground running. Between the exercises I've done so far and the basic script someone at reddit was kind enough to throw together for me I've managed to modify and make my own scripts to start processing the data for this project. Also it feels pretty awesome to write a script for an hour then actually see it work in less than a second and do what would have taken me days otherwise to do.