I Had A Random Thought...

[Dewar]

Ouch, a useful paper with a bad grade because "it's late". Yet another reason to not like how Academia works, because you just know a dozen useless papers got at least as good a grade as you did. And then there's the citations. Citation after citation after citation, a million billion citations, a labyrinth of mountain high material.

 

This is what Academia teaches you, but at least in computer graphics I hate that shit. It's boring and trite and doesn't apply to anything I care about. If you came up with a new way to make a character's skin look more real or something then just tell me, as often as not the entire history of such does not need to be involved. Then again I'm just ripping on the worst aspects of it all, it's not to say everything works as such and is horrible.

 

They still gave me a 90% which was just fine as the class was pass/fail anyway. That bites about your physics programming class, most of my teachers would have just deducted 5 or 10 percent but let me re-submit it. 

[elmuerte]

The worst part of academica is the part where the most imporant thing about your job is getting articles accepted. The actual research comes third.

[Gormongous]

The worst part of academica is the part where the most imporant thing about your tob is getting articles accepted. The actual research comes third.

 

This. Unless you're managed to get a grant for writing a book, any research that goes more than six months without getting you an article published is an honest-to-goodness waste of your time.

[elmuerte]

It's warm and moist... I feel like a Dali painting.

 

[Zeusthecat]

I had to take a personality profile test for this DISC training we're doing at work and I just got the results today. It turns out I'm a douche as I suspected.

 

But seriously, I am really skeptical of these types of things. I try to be honest when I'm identifying what does and doesn't describe me but so much of it is a coin toss as to which group of words I should pick. That and of course I think I have all these wonderful traits that I most likely don't really have. So yeah, douche confirmed.

[clyde]

I'd love to know if those tests have any actual prediction-value. I have a hard time taking them more seriously than a Cosmo quiz (except the part where they will call the cops if you say you have thoughts of harming yourself or others).

[Zeusthecat]

I think they can be accurate up to a certain point but are inherently limited beyond that. The facilitators of the test offer a general statement on each set of results that says it is very important to know yourself. Well, how do I know if I know myself or if I only think I know myself? I may think I'm personable and nice but others may think I'm a fuckface. If anything I think the results might be more accurate if you identified how you think other people view you, or just had a bunch of other people take the test for how they feel about you and conflated it with how you feel about yourself.

 

I believe in democracy dammit!! If I think I'm nice and everyone else thinks I'm an asshole, then I'm an asshole!

[Justin Leego]

This air is warmer than nostrils

[Frenetic Pony]

This air is warmer than nostrils

 

Which begs the question of how warm nostrils are.

[shammack]

The temperature of your nostrils is 98.6 degrees, the same as a sweltering jungle! "Bleugh." But the temperature of Winterfresh nostrils tastes: much, much coolerrrrrrrrr!

[Frenetic Pony]

I was thinking, what are the top 10 most influential people in history?

 

Making a list:

 

Karl Marx: Without him no Marxism, no communism, perhaps no Moa Zedong, no Lenin, no Vietnam, no anti communist hysteria, etc. etc. Definitely a negative influence overall, but one of the most influential people none the less.

 

Genghis Khan: The largest single empire in history, at least to  uniting so many territories and countries it's unbelievable. Of course the empire broke up after his death, but many peoples that weren't unified before were unified because of Khan.

 

Albert Einstein: The two great physical theories of science we currently have are hugely influenced by this one man, who not only was one of the largest contributors to modern quantum physics, a field that is increasingly influenced so much of our technology, but deserves the majority of credit for general relativity to begin with. Not to mention his letter to President Roosevelt concerning the creation of a nuclear weapon, a feat the Germans never managed.

 

Elizabeth the First: Under her rule England ruined Spain as the great world power of the time, supplanting their naval dominance with that of England's and expanding trade and expeditions, which would lead to the greatest empire in history and the spread of capitalistic and democratic all over the globe.

 

John Adams: The leader of the US war for independence, and thus a man without whom the US may well not exist. More importantly the example set by the US of a democratic revolution has far outlasted Marxism and rocked countries for over two hundred and thirty years now.

 

Alan Turing: After nigh a century of pie in the sky thinking from the likes of everyone from Charles Babbage to Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing demonstrated for the first time the proof of the greatest invention in history, the computer. Not only that but he helped develop much of the concepts we use today to understand computing, and even helped build the first computers in the world.

 

Well that's what I've got anyway. Lot of bloody Englishmen that's for sure. I realize it could be called "Western culture centric" or some such bullshit, but take it up with history itself yeah? What is it about a dreary, rainy island off the coast of Europe that makes people there think "I should do something that will change the world"?

[Patrick R]

I would go with all nine members of Slipknot and also Dracula.

[Gormongous]

I was thinking, what are the top 10 most influential people in history?

 

These lists are always a little bit ugly because they show how much "world history" is just the history of western Europe, but I'll add a few anyway.

• Alexander the Great: Conquers everything between Greece and India. More importantly, begins Hellenizing it, giving the eastern Mediterranean a single, unified culture from which almost every social and intellectual force of the next thousand years comes.
• Paul of Tarsus: Takes a insular Jewish sect and turns it into an aggressive, expansionist religion that spreads throughout the Hellenistic world. No small feat.
• Constantine: Legitimizes Christianity and brings it into the mainstream with his conversion, making it a world religion. Also, founds what will be the bastion of Christianity for the next thousand years.
• Charlemagne: Unifies Western Europe under a single cultural identity, more or less creating "Christendom." Provides Christian rulers with a model to follow that leads directly to the Renaissance and Reformation.
• Napoleon Bonaparte: Upsets the old colonialist order, changes the face of Europe forever, and writes pretty much everyone's law codes for them. Big fucking deal, I say.
• Otto von Bismarck: Created a powerful new state in Europe that upset the balance of power over the long term, pretty much forcing both World Wars, which in turn would kick-start scientific and social developments for the next half-century.

Martin Luther and Muhammad should probably be in there too, but they both felt counter to the spirit of how my list was shaping up.

[elmuerte]

What about Hitler? He's probably the most influential person from the last 100 years. His attempt to create the 3rd German empire is still affecting our lives today (but it's sadly decreasing rappidly).

[Gormongous]

What about Hitler? He's probably the most influential person from the last 100 years. His attempt to create the 3rd German empire is still affecting our lives today (but it's sadly decreasing rappidly).

 

I thought about that, but Hitler wouldn't have happened without World War I, which wouldn't have happened without Bismarck, and it felt a bit indulgent to name them both.

[Justin Leego]

and so Jesus of Nazareth is not on your list because he didn't exist or because he didn't spend most of his time in Europe?

[Ucantalas]

I've done my Top 10 Most Influential People of History:

-Me.

(I'm something of a solipsist.)

[Frenetic Pony]

What about Hitler? He's probably the most influential person from the last 100 years. His attempt to create the 3rd German empire is still affecting our lives today (but it's sadly decreasing rappidly).

 

Honestly Stalin was more influential, he killed more people and the USSR lasted far longer than the Third Reich, and even he was fomented by Marx in the first place.

 

and so Jesus of Nazareth is not on your list because he didn't exist or because he didn't spend most of his time in Europe?

 

This will be insulting to anyone that believes in religion

Jesus just took buddhism and fused it with judaism. Religion has been used as an excuse for a million billion things throughout history, but is not often the cause of events.

 

Bismarck and Boneapart maybe... perhaps along with Isaac Newton. But I wanted to limit it to the top 10. If I hadn't Alexander the Great and Muhamed and any number of other people would have been on there. As for Eurocentric... well what else do you want I suppose? Banking, calculus, modern guns, capitalism, democracy, communism, fascism, the list goes on and it all came out of Europe.

 

Frankly I blame banking and the printing press, the first funded the entire creation of the modern age, the other spread it across the globe. Before them every civilization in history rose and fell in a cycle or at most just stayed stagnant for centuries. I'd include whoever came up with the modern bank, but I don't think anyone knows specifically who that is beyond maybe somebody at the start of renaissance Italy.

[Justin Leego]

Fair enough, though banking, calculus, gunpowder weapons and to an extent capitalism can also be seen as indebted to exchange of knowledge, methods and materials by countries benefiting from the Silk Road trade routes, particularly technologies and conceptual systems developed in China, India, Arabia and Persia before export to Europe. European intellectuals and industrialists were just better at Zynga than anyone else.

 

The idea of Jesus having blended Buddhist tenets with Judaism is an interesting one, but I'm not sure that the theory about Jesus travelling to India is still upheld in academic circles?

 

Even so, it's not necessarily offensive to those that are religious (and certainly palatable to syncretistic relegions such as Buddhism). For example, it could be construed as evidence that a God being can be found and experienced by any person irrespective of cultural or religious context, though the explanation of said experience is likely to be made within that context.

 

Good stuff for the random farts and poops thread.

[Argobot]

I would go with all nine members of Slipknot and also Dracula.

 

TWIST

Dracula is actually the secret 10th member of Slipknot. Inspiration for his decision to join a shitty faux metal band came shortly after he read that one Anne Rice book about a vampire joining a shitty faux metal band and thought, "I can do better than that."

[osmosisch]

The idea of Jesus having blended Buddhist tenets with Judaism is an interesting one, but I'm not sure that the theory about Jesus travelling to India is still upheld in academic circles?

As far as I'm aware he/his followers mainly cribbed from Mithraism.

[Justin Leego]

Sure - the counter-argument is that Mithraism cribbed from early Christianity. Their proximity makes sense of Paul's animosity towards mystery cults at least.

[tegan]

The idea of Jesus having blended Buddhist tenets with Judaism is an interesting one, but I'm not sure that the theory about Jesus travelling to India is still upheld in academic circles?

I thought he was talking about Barlaam and Josaphat.

[Zeusthecat]

I'm gonna take a hard left turn here real quick.

 

Not too long ago I was disgusted to find out that beaver anal gland secretions are used in artificial vanilla flavoring and other foods containing "natural flavors" in their ingredient list.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castoreum

 

Soon, however, my disgust turned to curiosity as I started wondering how they go about obtaining these secretions. I have to imagine there must be the beaver equivalent of a dairy farm and it is probably someone's job to, um, extract this stuff. Or maybe they hook them up to some elaborate "milking" machine like they do with dairy cows. Taking it one step further, how the fuck did this practice start in the first place? Who is the first person that tasted a beaver's ass, ran and told all his/her friends, and convinced everyone to start putting it in food? I imagine this person would have been very persuasive.

 

So I guess food with artificial vanilla flavoring or natural flavors isn't necessarily vegan as I originally thought. Feel free to resume your discussion on influential people.

[I Saw Dasein]

arl Marx: Without him no Marxism, no communism, perhaps no Moa Zedong, no Lenin, no Vietnam, no anti communist hysteria, etc. etc. Definitely a negative influence overall, but one of the most influential people none the less.

Doubtful, there were communist thinkers before Marx and contemporary with him. There were also revolutionary movements before him, obviously. The situations in Russia and China were such that some kind of leftist revolutionary organization would have risen up with or without Marx. I agree that Marx is influential, but in his absence there still would have been some form of communist ideology and there would likely have been revolutions in the same countries.