Free Capitalist

Ok then I wasn't clear enough in what I meant by that one instant when one's courage shows -- it's not so short of an instant that only a reflexive reaction is allowed. It's a couple of seconds, a conceptual moment, when you must volitionally choose between safety and danger, but don't have days and weeks to philosophize and figure out your answer. That's where courage lies, because courage is not reflexive, nor is it deliberate. It's conceptual, but instantaneous. Anyway, I already pointed out what interested me in that article (despite its obvious materialism): it wasn't the notion that genes determine our courage, but that courageous men in some sense live on, while the cowards who stay in safety are actually the ones who die out.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/s...icle4615314.ece

Of course, by "cooperative" I refer to the level of conscious control over our bodily functions (which is cooperative, and not master-slave); I obviously don't mean that there's some additional will directing our body in parallel with ourselves.

should be: "which exist in cooperative rather than master-slave relationships"

Joining the military has nothing to do with bravery. Bravery is that one instant, that split of an eye when you decide to run from danger, or run towards in defiance of all. I'd like to know that I'd be brave when that moment comes but I don't until I'm faced with it, and neither does anybody else who hasn't been in it. Bravery has a lot to do with one's convictions and ones values, it it also has to do with adrenaline and hormones intensely pumping into your body to enable you to do what you think you must. We are not just disjoined minds, we live in bodies which are genetically determined, and which exist in a cooperative master-slave relationships with us. Obviously there's something materialistic in the above posted article, as is always with these new 'scientists' trying to derive everything from evolution. I'm by no means endorsing every single part of it. I just thought there's something extremely visceral in the notion that the courageous don't die off, but in fact in some evolutionary sense live on, while it's the safe cowards who end up disappearing from history.

I didn't mean to come off as one of those who attribute every human action to evolution. I just found it interesting that there's a biological foundation for men acting heroically, though whether they choose to do so or not still depends only on their will (and values).

I'm glad everyone is loving it. I absolutely adored the movie.

There are major structural impediments that had forbidden the World Trade Center towers to be taller than they were -- first and foremost, wind resistance. The further a building rises from the earth and away from the earth's rotational inertia, the more the air will buffet it. Think of 50 mph winds, perpetually buffeting the tower even at perfectly calm weather. Then add storms to that. Also earthquakes. Such were the physical limitations that have put a very real cap on how tall skyscrapers could be just a decade or two ago. I'm not sure how Burj plans to solve that.

http://www.gilgameshgames.org/ Wasn't Rev. Wright right? The chickens are coming home to roost.

They did in other, intellectual things. Not in fitness and physical perfection. Persians and all the rest were frequently flabby and fairly pudgy, not that they ever minded it. There's a story when Spartans defeated a Persian squadron, they stripped them down to search for hidden items, and, chiseled and tanned as they were, faced down the sight of a flabby, pale-skinnned "soldier". The historian actually records that they started laughing. It's simply inconceivable that Middle Easterners could've fathered physical perfection, as much today as then (since nothing's changed in the last 2000 years).

Looks to be an actual photo. It's from the official website and has a date stamp on it. Besides, the top with the cranes would look less real if 3d-generated.

Take a look at this: http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/2008/08..._dubai_1009.jpg

It's such a shame he left the US to go back to the Soviet Union. The famous filmmaker Eisenstein did the same. I don't know why.

To avoid starting a new thread, I thought I'd put this here; and it's quite appropriate for this anyway: Ode to the Olympics A large painting depicting the Olympics, in China: "Confucius, Laozi, Quyuan and Socrates are featured watching the Olympics. " Hillarity, or tragedy, I don't know. PS. Note, it's not even, "Confucius, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Socrates watching the Olympics" but, "Confucius, Laozi, Quyuan, and Socrates watching the Olympics" Like I said, it's either hilarious or very tragic.

Dueling was banned in the 19th century because all of the cream of the crop of society -- the army officers, the leading intellectuals -- were basically killing each other off. It is true, if we lived in a completely laissez-faire society there would be no grounds to ban such a thing, as bad as it could be.

You know, you're right, I'm surprised that the true promise of object-oriented programming hasn't been exploited. I guess each company wants to waste money building all its own chairs and tables, and thereby waste someone like Ray's money. The market should be catching on, there should be people latching on to this ability to make profit by selling a longer-lasting game, but it's not happening as of yet.

That's a fairly unpleasant thing to say. Money in principle is an honorable thing, but some things, such as personal convictions, aren't for sale. If you reduce everything to the profit motive, then we have a lot more disagreements that I care to go into in this thread. Do you know what the Olympic victors got in the ancient days? A laurel wreath. That's all. No endorsements, no huge chunks of money, no major financial inducements at home. They competed for honor, and simply to have the laurel wreath, that highest badge of excellence, while their competitors got nothing, was the highest indication of honor and personal excellence they ever needed.

Because at the moment they're probably not an egregious violation of the very principle you stated "how much the body can accomplish using just its body. The original Olympics were in the nude or in a loincloth, but when revived by the Victorians they had shoes and shirts. That's simply the standard of the modern competition. If they're improving shoes, it's a small enough change. But once you see shoes with thick springs and pneumatic-action, you bet the Olympic Committee will not like it.

Ah but you see, "how much the body can accomplish" is precisely the Olympic goal, precisely the "excellence" goal. In Steroid Games, the pursuit is "what new devices can we come up with", and it shifts the emphasis from the human body, which is constant, to human inventions, which are ever-increasing. Of course I wouldn't oppose Steroid Games, but I would question their very purpose. I mean what the heck is the point? If pumping the body full of steroids, and other enhancers is good, why not just build super-fast robotic bodies attach to human nerves and head? That will surely win most of all!

I'll address the core of the poster's question. The conflict between natural, and artificial performance helpers is a vexed one. Sure people were special shoes, but it's not like they're going to check every person's shoe, to detect various little springs. People wore shoes since the beginning, and if they're a little bit better now, then I suppose that couldn't be helped. But the point of Olympics and all athletic contests is to measure human excellence, which means excellence of the internal human body. When you tamper with that, you are stepping outside the point of having these competitions in the first place. The point is not "to win", the point is "to be excellent". When you're not "you" when you win, then you can hardly claim to be excellent.

Or so he said. Hmm? The conspiracy grows deeper? I'm just kidding

Like I said, I wouldn't discount the possibility that there was a Chinese embassy in the first place. It didn't have to be a big parade noticeable to the whole city; we're just talking diplomatic contacts, perhaps a relatively quiet meeting between two nations. I think some papers were discovered in recent years which show that some such contact did take place. This is where "1434" takes off, but that doesn't mean the diplomatic contact wasn't there. Just like "1421" takes off with the fact that a gigantic, and technologically impressive fleet left China and sailed as far as eastern Africa. I can accept that fact, and even appreciate some Chinese ingenuity behind this. Even if it underlies the whole premise of "1421", it seems to be a fact, and I'm comfortable with it. I dispute Menzies on the many particulars. Like I said, clever authors like him always begin with explosively controversial big facts, which inevitably are true. While you waste time denying that such a fleet sailed, the mainstream community will be against you because such a fleet probably did sail. And the criticism of Menzies on where it counts -- on discovery of America, on ocean-worthiness of those 400ft ships -- that all gets swept by the wayside. So I'm fine accepting the big facts. If he starts with them, they're probably true. But where he really seeks to stake his claim is in the small distinctions, and that's where the true falsehood lies,

Sigh...

The prequel, about how the Chinese discovered America in 1421, is highly controversial. It is not as easy to dismiss it as one might think. Cranks who make it onto a world stage usually have some very good arguments they can fall back on. The facts are, that in 1420 a gigantic fleet shipped out from China, containing some ships that have measured 200+ feet in length, dwarfing Columbus' Santa Maria. That much is pretty certain. Also, at that time China was on a cultural high, not unlike the Muslims. We know this humongous fleet reached at least the eastern coast of Africa, and explored it. Conventional history has it that having performed the exploration, the fleet turned back, its intrepid navigator was imprisoned at home, and detailed records of the voyage were burned by the court eunichs. "1421" argues that what the eunichs burned was this fleet continuing on past Africa, circumnavigating it, then sailing across the Ocean, exploring America, returning to Spain and passing off this knowledge to the Spanish/Portugese, and then sailing home, getting records burnt, etc. One of the pivotal arguments on which this rests are is a pair of highly, highly controversial maps. One of them is a European map from 1450s, showing parts of the American coast, before they ever were supposed to have such knowledge. There's an even more explosive Chinese map, dating from 1418 and again showing parts of America. The original didn't survive, so the proof is a 1700's copy of that map. There's other evidence the book falls on, including some hearsay that the Spanish knew exactly where they were going; and that Columbus wasn't afraid to miss, because supposedly he carried the Chinese maps with him. Like I said, a complicated story, and like all successful pseudo-intellectual works, it is strongly wedded to hard facts, and a few 'maybes' which push the course of history its way. The "1434" is a sequel to all this. That the way Italians discovered their perspective in painting, built their simply stunning and ingenious machinery, was that this giant fleet stopped in Italy and taught them. I don't know the details, but there supposedly was some sort of a Chinese embassy to Florence in 1434; I don't know enough but I wouldn't discount that fact. Hinging on this, the author sketches how the fairly advanced science of China was generously shared with the Italians, who created the Renaissance. And again, the ostensible factual details all look extremely strong. The book has supposed sketches of machines from 1300, that then find their way to Leonardo's handbooks. There's an image of a Chinese painter employing projection, in the same way that Italians later would in helping them paint perspective. Again, a very involved argument, deeply mired in hard facts and speculative maybes. That's the sort of enemies we're dealing with. No self-respecting scholar will even accept a Renaissance, and the only famous author who does, does it to ascribe the credit to someone else. We need serious, great scholars, like in the day. Anyway, fine the Chinese may have had surveyors performing projection on a building, like Italians later would. But I have a factual stumbling block this author will never get me across -- the Chinese never invented perspective. Chinese paintings are the flattest things that can ever be found in the pictoral arts. They didn't even understand shadow, let alone perspective. So he can pull out all kinds of arcane Chinese manuscripts which look similar, but the fact is, the Chinese never had that Renaissance. So they couldn't have caused it in others. So there. Having realized that, I let myself sleep untroubled at night.

Ray, why so defensive. No one is attaching you, geez. No one's made any judgment on the Progressive Method, mainly because few people on the forum have the ability to have experience with it firsthand. So none of the comments apply to you personally. I mean come on, we're all adults here. Given that, I'm not sure what you meant by your clients losing weight while eating happy and being merry. Are you going to tell me that you don't mind the "McDonalds diet"? That a typical fast-food meal a couple times a week is completely fine, that you're indifferent if your clients pursue it, and that as a health professional you find no problem with this cholesterol and fat content? I'm not sure what that parenthetical aside was about us as biological creatures 'built' to store fat. Sure, we are. But boy, were those 50s Americans fit and slim. How slim are those Europeans! Our American human nature must've changed.