filosofo

The point of the book isn't so much to argue against war in general as to argue against the idea that war is inevitable.

The idea that war and specific acts of war are unavoidable parts of the human condition is supposed to seem as insane and pathetic as the protagonist's passive view of his life, a view that comes from his beliefs about time travel.

Some of the most heated, seemingly-intractable arguments I've participated in have led me later upon reflection to change my mind. I'm thankful the other party didn't take this viewpoint that arguing is pointless.

Also, a just society needs to operate by certain fictions: for example, that people are innocent until proved guilty or that all men are created equal. Among those should be the assumption that others can be persuaded through logical means (as opposed to say force or habit). I think it's somewhat akin to the principle of charity.

Probably to keep them from being broken by the styling on the article's page, which could change in unknown ways at any given time in the future.

Better to keep the example on its own independent page.

What's crazy is thinking that someone necessarily agrees with the contents of a book she's reading.

According to this page <https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/merc...; "you must have documented 501(c)(3) status or you will not receive the reduced nonprofit transaction fees."

Where does PayPal state that you must have 501(c)(3) status to accept donations? (I'm concerned because I do something similar to CompuerGuru--accept donations for free software via PayPal and have done so for years).

I'm experiencing the same issue with Chrome 7.0.517.41 beta on Ubuntu.

The fact that people did bad things at one time doesn't imply that what they did was accepted generally or approved by moral standards of the time. For example, many contemporaries opposed the tactics of the Inquisition (mentioned in the article as the advent of waterboarding).

Using the same logic we could characterize 20th-Century people as accepting mass-murder, because it was practiced by numerous nations on a never-before-seen scale.

Read "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams.

It is not one of those books like Strunk and White's that teaches you a set of arbitrary rules.

Rather, the author defines a set of general principles. Then he develops and illustrates those principles with good and bad examples. And talks about the exceptions to those principles.

Much of what separates really good writing from merely correct writing seems ineffable; it sounds the right note. Williams makes many of those seemingly indescribable qualities identifiable, so you can then recognize them in others' writing and learn to build them into your own.

I have a great amount of respect for Richard Stallman, but I don't understand how he reconciles his concerns about a large "surveillance state" (#24) with his insistence that governments take away enough power from companies to make them "squeal." (#17)

Doesn't one work against the other? In other words, a government with enough power to make citizens' organizations squeal by practical necessity risks becoming a "surveillance state."

People walk because their parents absolutely, positively would not give up teaching them to walk.

Citation, please? All three of my kids have taken the initiative themselves to learn to walk, and I've never seen a non-walking older child without a physical disability.

You might appreciate "Life: The Movie" if you haven't already read it.

The author details the ways in which entertainment has become the metric by which many Americans judge their lives.

Slightly O/T, but can someone explain why with JavaScript disabled this blog post is completely invisible?

I can't see any technical reason or understand why one would penalize NoScript users (like me).

The title plays off the ambiguity of "hacked" to be needlessly sensationalistic.

Someone has modified and redistributed GPL-licensed code in an apparently shady way. That doesn't strike me as newsworthy.

If this is more than just hyperbole on your part, it reflects poorly on your guests.

There are badly-behaved people on television shows around the world; to conclude that such people represent their native countries in any meaningful sense is naive at best.

Trying to get my head around this. What does "keeping one's job" even mean? isn't there still a mutual contract, and both parties can break out of it? So the boss can act on behalf of the company, and you can't. But presumably you can still quit the job on your own decision. Does that make the boss your subordinate?

No, but I suppose it might imply that you could be your own subordinate. Since the boss can fire you, but you can't fire your boss, you have a subordinate relationship.

That's funny, because "subordinate" has replaced the previous generation's "inferior" as the commonly-used term for an employee down a step in the org chart.

However, to answer your question: if someone can determine whether you get to keep your job, whether you like it or not you are that person's subordinate.

But even people who have unchecked that box show up when I make the same request authenticated as a Facebook user.

That's not really fair. There have been very few exploits in up-to-date versions of WordPress, and the ones that are found are quickly patched.

The news-making hacks of WordPress are almost always of sites running versions significantly outdated.

I can't get the site to load, but if he's using the Atkins diet it's well-known to cause odors due to ketosis.

Restriction? Henceforth, demonstration. You'd thought, "what person couldn't workup contrived composition?"

The Slate article struck me as a tongue-in-cheek dig at the Obama administration. For example:

"Drupal's defenders are eerily reminiscent of those movement Democrats who were constantly knocking at your front door in the summer of 2008."

or

"If Drupal were a piece of legislation, it would be the farm bill"

No one should take comments like that as a serious criticism of Drupal or the Whitehouse's use of Drupal; it's poking fun at Obama supporters. It's a joke.

Or use the <button> element with the text-indent background image trick. That works in IE6.

And, although our long-term memory for images and words that we've assigned meanings to is quite good, we don't do as well with passwords, which (ideally, at least) should look like a near-random string of characters. It's another challenge entirely to remember which password to associate with a specific account.

It seems like this is easy enough to solve with a little instruction: have users make up a phrase that has to do with the account, and use the first letters from each word as the password: it's unique, non-dictionary, yet memorable.

"Beaten" exaggerates what happens, which according to the book is a single "spank" by a smiling man holding what appears to be a slender reed.

Yeah, I've been reading it to the kids recently.